Dead Lisbon Treaty Ratified in the Lords

The Lisbon treaty has been ratified in the House of Lords despite the fact that it is dead, after all Ireland voted no.

Fantastic. As David Cameron said at PMQ's, Gordon Brown has less spine than a bunch of jellyfish.

The BBC has this.

Lisbon Treaty falls, as the Irish vote no!

Ireland has voted no, by 53.4% to 46.6%.

Fantastic.

Full results here.

Irish Vote No! to Lisbon Treaty!

According to Guido and Iain Dale sources at the count report the No's have it.

The question will be will this kill the constitution, or is there a plan C?

Oustanding.

Everyone wants a Referendum except Gordon Brown!

It seems that on the question of the EU Constitution or treaty if you prefer everyone wants a referendum. Pro Europeans want one, even the leader in today's Observer wants one running the headline:

This cowardly refusal to make the political case for Europe

The problem is this however. There is no case or desire for the Europe that Europe's political elites want to build. All over Europe people want an European union, but they don't want one that interferes quite so much and they certainly do not one with an overarching identity.

Want they do want is free-ish trade and co operation between governments where possible.

Someone needs to make the case for not driving headlong into a European super state, and in part that is what David Cameron is doing by leaving the EPP (European Peoples Party) grouping in the European parliament and forming a new group of right of center parties less keen on massive integration.

A referendum, to be or not to be?

The big question political anoraks will be asking is will there be a referendum on the latest EU treaty which many see as a constitution.

The short answer is no, because if there was, it would be lost and by a handsome margin.

However what will I suspect happen is there will be many demands in the press for one, and rightly so. The proposed treaty is in almost the same every detail the constitution that the French and Dutch have already rejected. In fact quoting from the normally biased BBC, quoting a pro integrationalist Kirsty Hughes gives us this:

"It's much worse than the usual European stitch-up," says writer on European affairs Kirsty Hughes, a firm believer in European integration.

"It's essentially the same as the constitution, but many leaders are trying to sell it as something different, in order to avoid a vote. It's a collective lie."

The press are less than impressed. Saturday's Sun says:

WHATEVER deal is done in Brussels, Tony Blair will surrender power to the EU.

Britain will forever lose its right to veto EU laws in dozens of areas — including energy, agriculture and fisheries, transport, culture, tourism and even immigration policy.

The PM and Gordon Brown are right to fight over their “red lines”. But they are not enough.

With every fresh EU treaty, Britain’s sovereign right to set its own laws is being further eroded. And all without a referendum.

Mr Brown becomes Labour leader tomorrow.

This shabby surrender of British power could come back to haunt him.

Note the use of bold text. If the majority of the print media go on this big time then Gordon Brown will be in problems.

The big question on Europe has to be why? Why do this now? It seems that in many ways the EU is trying to grab as many if not more powers than the federal US government. The people of Europe are not interested. Why don't these people who want to make their names in history just stop, and leave that to someone else.

The Telegraph has this, the Times has this and this and the Mail on Sunday has this.

Just why would we do that?

Just why would we, the British, or indeed any one else, want to sign away powers over things like immigration and asylum, culture, fisheries and agriculture to supra national body like The European Union?

It is madness. If we need immigrants to comer here and work and the rest of the EU don't or vice versa why should there be a one size fits all policy rammed down our throats from on high?

The same applies to the other areas, just why would anyone hand over these powers to someone so far away?

Why would a supra national body want the powers, and think that they might be more competent in those areas than a national or local government?

This is madness.


The BBC has this on the signing of the new constitution which has been called a treaty so as not to scare the voters.

Gordon Brown and the Euro Spin Cycle

Dizzy Thinks has this interesting article on Gordon Brown getting Blair to stand up to the French.

Interesting piece, I recomend you read it.

The real legacy of two World Wars

A few weeks ago I was watching a drama documentary about the sinking of the Lusitania, and in particular noted that Charles Voegele, Quarter master of the German U Boat U20 would not issue the order to sink her, and also other incidents where he had been unhappy about sinking non fighting vessels. In fact on her mission the U20 only sank merchant vessels. One of his comrades scolded him in an earlier incident pointing out that his family in Hamburg could not get enough to eat because of the naval blockade of the Royal Navy.

In both World wars we tried to strangle each other in terms of both food and supplies. The Germans with U Boats and us with a surface fleet. This has led to what is the real devastating legacy of the wars. The devastation to both African and South American agricultural business that the European Common Agricultural Policy is immense.

Argentina used to be a wealthy country, exporting lots of agricultural produce, but post war, Europe started to feed it self with food produced on subsidised farms. Africa can't progress because it can't compete with American and European dumping.

This is of course all nuts. I am paying tax to keep black people poor. People I have never met, are not my enemies, and to whom I have no ill will. I would rather not pay the tax. We then get taxed even more to provide aid to people who for no particularly well explained reason we keep poor with MY money but make such a bad fist of that, that most of us then have to give yet more money to charity to try and make up for it.

Frankly I would rather not pay the tax to keep Africans poor. I can then spend the money on better things, and not only that, but a rich African is a little more likely to buy goods our country makes than one who can't even feed his own family.

I think it is an affront to tax me to keep someone else poor. It is disgusting, there is no other word for it. I do hope all those farmers across Europe who riot when they think they may lose the CAP can sleep at night. Disgusting small minded b*rstards the lot of them.

So why bring this up now, well there is a person called Erik who keeps raising subjects he thinks I should be discussing, (well Erik, it is my blog, and I will blog about what I feel like) but I was going to write something along these lines. Then Erik drew my attention to this article in the Telegraph about how much more this is going to cost us in the next few years.

In short our payments to the EU are going to double, and the money we get back is going to go down, and whilst a bit of it will go to getting Eastern Europe on its feet which is a good thing (provided the money is well spent) we are still paying to keep Africa poor. Well done Tony, giving away our rebate whilst still screwing Africa and getting us to pay for it!

It is nuts it really is!

Metrication Madness! please sign this petition.

EU directive 80/181/EEC provides for everything to be measured in SI units. That is metric.

This is not a problem for lots of things but will be for others. For example if you own a vintage car, or are involved in model engineering you buy lots if things in imperial units. In particular the directive will ban when it comes fully into force in 2009 mentioning non SI units on the packaging.

In principle article 4 of the directive does make the following provisions:

The use of units of measurement which are not or are no longer legal
shall be authorized for:
— products and equipment already on the market and/or in service on
the date on which this Directive is adopted,
— components and parts of products and of equipment necessary to
supplement or replace components or parts of the above products and
equipment.
However, the use of legal units of measurement may be required for the
indicators of measuring instruments.

Were we living in any other European country this would of course be a get out of jail free card, and any one who wanted to could and would ignore the directive. As one person on a model engineering list observed:

Depends where it is implemented; you can rely on most EU countries to implement in a liberal fashion, while the UK Civil Service will go out of its way to interpret everything in the most narrow, constraining and damaging way.

And will later bleat about other countries not applying the rules they themselves have made, and impose on the UK populace.

So I urge you to sign the petition here, the full text of which is:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to undertake to secure permanent derogation from those aspects of European Union directive 80/181which will, at the end of 2009, make the use of imperial units of measure illegal.

And under more details:

The economic and social effects of this ban will be wide ranging. Industries which export world wide will have major problems - many parts of the world still employ imperial standards. Spare and replacement parts for existing equipment built to imperial standards will cease to be available - it will not be possible to package, advertise or catalogue such items. Thousands of citizens with interests in vintage vehicles, preserved railways, model engineering, etc. will be deprived of legal access to tools and materials to pursue their interests. Public opinion is firmly in favour of retaining the option to use imperial units of measure if they so wish.

As an example of UK based EU madness, consider the fate of animal rendering plant in the UK. The EU waste directive specified that waste must be properly disposed of etc. blah blah. All very reasonable stuff until you ask yourself the question what is or is not waste. Rendering plant across the EU produce tallow as a result of the rendering process which they then use as fuel to render the next animal. Saves on cost and carbon emissions. Good idea. Not here though. The bureaucrats have defined tallow as a waste product of rendering so now not only do they have to pay for fuel they did not have to pay for before, they also have to get some one to dispose of a perfectly usable resource.

You can read the actual EU directive here, and the working paper on it here.

*cough* Thanks to Renaud for pointing out the lack of "out" in get out of jail free, now corrected. (oops)