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Posted: 07-10-2009 12:08 Post subject:

I'm afraid its going to be very difficult to seperate the truth form the scarmongering when it comes to the EU. In Ireland we have had two votes on the Lisbon Treaty and the amount of crap told by the Yes and No side muddied the waters for everyone. Thats why so many voted no the first time.

If you were to believe the the No side, we would if we agreed the treaty, have French and German presidents marching into our homes to make sure our woman had abortions if they wanted them or not and that our men were to nbe press ganged into the new EU army that was going to march all over the world.

Then of course if you were to believe the Yes side, then the EU would come into Ireland like the second coming of of Lord and bring peace, harmony, jobs for everyone and money to burn.

I'd say the only way to ever make sense of it is to have a degree in European Law. But one things for sure take everything you read with a pinch of salt especially articles with the headline 'EU draws up plans to establish itself as a world power'

Posted: 21-10-2009 09:47 Post subject:

Half in, half out of Europe – that’s great if you’re Norway
As Lisbon reopens the old splits, there is an alternative to full membership. But would it work for Britain?
Roy Hattersley

Jens Stoltenberg, the recently re-elected Prime Minister of Norway, could not have been more frank. Asked if entry into the European Union was on his government’s agenda, he replied — almost with pride — that Norway was the only country that had twice rejected Brussels’ embrace. There were, he said, no plans to hold a third referendum. “I was there the last time it was defeated . . . and I don’t seek new defeats.”

He might have added that half of his “coalition of workers, farmers and dreamers” was against membership in principle and that, since Norway benefits from an agreement with the EU that provides the benefits of free trade without the threat of federalism, only diehards want to argue about going right in or staying right out. That is certainly the view of Hallvard Bakke, who left the Oslo Government to lead the successful “no” campaign in 1994. Yet the argument persists. In 1905 the union with Sweden was ended by a referendum that recorded 368,208 votes in favour of separation and 184 against. Norway believes it does better on its own.

Since then almost everything except the landscape has changed. Even the passion for independence has altered character. A hundred years ago it was the product of Norway’s romantic isolation. Now it is built around a popular determination neither to risk nor to share its prosperity — an annual national income of £60,000 per head — with its neighbours.

Iceland once felt the same, but its banks and self-confidence collapsed. If Reykjavik decides to wrap itself in the security of full EU membership, powerful voices in industry and the Foreign Ministry will argue that it would be folly not to follow suit. Liechtenstein will still share the privileges of special access to the single market. That, say devotees of union, is irrelevant. Liechtenstein is Ruritania. Norway — cloudless blue skies, piercing sunlight and snow- capped mountains — is Shangri-La with gas and oil reserves. Both blessings inhibit rational argument.

Nothing in any EU treaty, from Medina to Lisbon, limits Norway’s control of its natural resources. But access to oil and gas has a strange effect on the national psyche. And Norway has another national asset that encourages the belief that there is nothing to gain from amalgamation with less successful economies. Its Sovereign Wealth Fund, in effect the country’s collective investment portfolio, is valued at about £260 billion. That too is beyond the reach of Brussels.

A country that prudently husbands its earnings — contributing only 4 per cent of the income to subsidising the annual budget and spending the rest on national infrastructure, long-term pension provision and international good causes — does not think it has much to gain from a closer alliance with the profligate states of the European Union. Indeed, there are still people who argue against the economic access agreement. And they are beginning to make a fuss again.

etc...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6882977.ece

Posted: 05-11-2009 01:14 Post subject:

Cameron's 'never again' vow on EU

David Cameron has said "never again" to powers being transferred from the UK to Brussels without a referendum.

He said all future treaties would be put to a public vote as he outlined his new European policy after ruling out a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

He also promised a sovereignty bill if the Tories win the next election to "lock in" the supremacy of UK laws.

And the Tory leader vowed to repatriate powers on the Charter of Fundamental Rights, employment and criminal law.

Mr Cameron unveiled the new set of policies after abandoning a pledge to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, which is now to come into force on 1 December.

He has been accused of backtracking on a "cast iron" pledge to hold a referendum if he becomes prime minister, but he said: "I did not promise a referendum come what may, because once the Lisbon Treaty becomes law there is nothing people can do about it."

He added: "I recognise there are some who, now that we cannot have a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, want a referendum on something else... anything else.

"But I just don't think it's right to concoct some new pretext for a referendum simply to have one for the sake of it."

But a Conservative government would amend the European Communities Act 1972 to prohibit the transfer of power to the EU without a referendum.

That would cover any future attempt to take Britain into the European single currency, said Mr Cameron.

"We will give the British people a referendum lock to which only they should hold the key, a commitment very similar to that which exists in Ireland," he added.

etc...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8343022.stm

Posted: 05-11-2009 18:31 Post subject:

So, whats Mandy going to do about this?

Posted: 07-11-2009 16:18 Post subject:

'Reggie Perrin' test will check older workers for signs of mid-life crisis under EU plan
By Ian Drury
Last updated at 1:37 AM on 07th November 2009

Every worker over the age of 45 could be forced to undergo 'Reggie Perrin' tests to identify those at risk of a mid-life crisis.
Under an EU plan, firms would be ordered to carry out psychological tests on older staff.
The aim would be to spot troubled employees who are thinking of quitting their jobs because they begin to doubt their own abilities in middle age.

Other ideas put forward by the EU's economic and social committee, to encourage people to postpone retirement, include forcing over-45s to go on training courses to keep them productive.

But business chiefs, politicians and pensioners' groups described the measures as insulting to older workers and warned that they could cripple small firms.
The most controversial proposal involves making workers undergo assessments to identify those at risk of a mid-life breakdown.

Critics dubbed them 'Reggie Perrin' tests after the TV character played by Leonard Rossiter, who faked his own death to escape his boring job.
The EU committee said: 'The policies target workers at risk due to their personal belief that they lack adaptability skills, self-motivation and the ability to learn.
'If older workers are to stay in work, it is vital for firms to introduce an anticipatory mechanism as early as the middle of a worker's career, to avoid workers becoming at risk.'

Firms and taxpayers would share the cost of tests and training, but the Federation of Small Businesses warned that its members would struggle to cope with additional red tape.
A spokesman said: 'Now is not the time to bring in burdensome requirements which could put them off employing more people.'

Tory MEP Roger Helmer said: 'Forcing older people to take part in retraining or assessments is an outrageous attack on personal freedom.

'It is simply not the role of the state to conscript people on to courses.'
Neil Duncan-Jordan of the National Pensioners Convention said: 'If this committee is looking to raise the esteem in which older people are held, they're going a funny way about it.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1225881/Feeling-hill-Its-time-Reggie-Perrin-test.html#ixzz0WBAplKMM

Posted: 07-11-2009 18:10 Post subject:

Posted: 08-11-2009 01:20 Post subject:

I think the possible problem with this is that employers will use the tests as an excuse to squeeze people out!

Posted: 08-11-2009 01:28 Post subject:

No change there then.

Posted: 11-11-2009 12:22 Post subject:

Taken for a £6m (donkey) ride by Brussels wasters
By Jason Groves
Last updated at 8:09 AM on 11th November 2009

An internet diary 'written' by a donkey in the Netherlands has topped a new list of the most wasteful projects funded by the EU.
The 'Donkeypedia' project is part of a £6.4million Brussels initiative to promote a 'year of intercultural dialogue'.
It tops a new list of 50 wasteful EU projects drawn up by the think tank Open Europe.

The list was released to coincide with a statement yesterday from the European Court of Auditors confirming that officials have refused to sign off the EU's accounts for the 15th year in a row because of fraud and mismanagement.
Mats Persson, research director at Open Europe, said the list had been compiled to provide 'a light-hearted illustration of what is wrong with the EU budget, and the need for fundamental reform'.
Mr Persson added: 'The European Commission tries to put the blame for fraud and waste on the member states, but the real problem is the EU budget itself.
'Too often, EU money is wasted on inefficient projects which are based on unrealistic expectations, or for which there is no real demand.

'Because of the way the EU's spending schemes are set up, bizarre or wasteful projects can receive funding which never would have received money if subject only to national spending priorities.

'Unfortunately the focus of the EU budget is to get the money out of the door, not to spend the money wisely.'

The Donkeypedia project involved a donkey named Asino travelling through the Netherlands meeting primary school children and keeping an Internet diary. Shocked

The 'art education' project was supposed to promote 'intercultural dialogue'.
In one diary entry, Asino wrote: 'I was under a chestnut tree sleeping in sand, when I opened my eyes there were animals all looking at me. I was embarrassed!
'Now I understand a little how people from different cultures may feel in the Netherlands.'

Another initiative named in the new list was a £75,000 grant awarded to the Swedish city of Malmo to create an Internet version of itself for use in the computer game Second Life.
The game, in which players act out fantasy roles in a lifelike world, is said not to be particularly popular in Sweden.
The Malmo initiative is set to be abandoned next year, leading one Swedish IT expert to brand the project a 'bizarre joke'.

Also in Sweden, the town of Orsa was awarded a £730,000 grant to create a wood design centre showcasing 'gender equality design'. The funds ran out before it was finished. Rolling Eyes

Shadow Europe minister Mark Francois said the list underlined the need for reform of the EU budget.
EU auditors have signed off the European Commission's accounts but said there were still problems with the wider EU budget.
Mr Francois said there was still 'unacceptable mismanagement' in the way taxpayers' money is spent by Brussels.
He added: 'EU countries need to take more responsibility for how EU money is spent. There should be penalties for national and local authorities that fail to ensure that EU funds are spent properly.
'There are also still too many shocking examples of wasteful or pointless expenditure of taxpayers' money. This strengthens the already powerful case for major reform of the EU budget.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1226807/Internet-blog-written-donkey-tops-list-wasteful-projects-funded-EU.html#ixzz0WXagG7Dp

Posted: 11-11-2009 12:49 Post subject:

Posted: 12-11-2009 14:01 Post subject:

Just discovered this on the Beeb's website.

Posted: 19-11-2009 13:55 Post subject:

A bogus, pompous, ludicrous, overpriced job
We do not need an EU president. Ministers can operate better by themselves without a figurehead getting in the way
George Walden

The manner of the birth of the new European presidency tells you everything that is wrong with it. Instantly it has provoked confusion, a satirical focus on personalities and rancour between nations large and small. Everyone is talking about who the president and foreign minister of this abstract entity will be, no one about how it will actually work.

Perhaps that is because, in their hearts, people know that it can’t. The EU is not a country and, far from “gaining weight globally by speaking with one voice”, acting as if it were could imperil many of its achievements to date.

I was a communist specialist at the Foreign Office when EU political co-operation first got under way in the 1970s. It proved a winner. Previously, the instinctive reaction of the French, the Germans and the British to an East-West problem had been how they could use it to score points off one another. Afterwards — notably in the Helsinki process, in which I took part — the Nine (as we then were) experimented successfully with the novel approach of facing the adversary together.

As principal private secretary to David Owen and Lord Carrington I later saw how intimate senior European foreign ministers had become, lunching and dining and above all breakfasting at international gatherings ad hoc and à la carte, or at discreet, unpublicised meetings.

Meanwhile, a web of contacts was forming between specialists and commissioners for foreign affairs in Brussels, anonymous folk for the most part, working to keep the Nine pointing in the same direction. In this way the habit of co-operation began growing human roots, with few illusions about how far the co-ordination of the foreign policies of sovereign nations could go.

Now these flexible, realistic procedures, which were to play an important role in the fall of the Berlin Wall, are to be rigidified in a search for superpower status, complete with unelected presidency and make-believe foreign ministry. At a time when the leap from nine to twenty-seven has already made consensus harder, gains in EU effectiveness are in danger of being squandered by overweening institutional change. Rather than a sober, bottom-up pragmatism, we shall now have top-down presumption and conceit.

One of two things must happen. Either the president and foreign minister will feel their oats and get ahead of community opinion, so that their pronouncements will be discounted by other nations. (Look at the galumphing remarks on an EU tax by the front-runner, the Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy.) Or they will be so nervous about offending the French, or the Latvians, or whomsoever, that they will restrict themselves to grandiose pieties, reducing the whole show to a sort of regional United Nations. Either way the new posts will be otiose.

Though not without consequence. Imagine the scope for overlap, overkill, sharpened national rivalries, bureaucratic turf wars and confusions, and the cost inflation that the expansion of content-free diplomatic stage-strutting will most certainly produce.

The rotating six-month presidency was a clumsy, ultra-democratic device, but the world knew it for what it was, and tempered expectations accordingly. Rotation was a necessary pretence. A presidency is for real.

A lot about it, though, will be bogus. Clarity about status is vital in diplomacy — hence fancy words like plenipotentiary — there being little incentive to negotiate with someone who lacks the power to deliver. Diplomats can seem ethereal souls, but they are the first to sense that they are dealing with someone who, as they would be unlikely to put it, is all fur coat and no knickers.

etc...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6922222.ece

Posted: 19-11-2009 17:29 Post subject:

Posted: 19-11-2009 17:50 Post subject:

Posted: 19-11-2009 18:52 Post subject: