Duff, Duffer, Duffest. Democracy a tad scary for the Lib Dems

Just listen to this. It is Andrew Duff, the senior and highly respected Lib Dem MEP from the eastern counties of England. Not only does he find it nigh on impossible to mention this country by name,

The country I know best

But worse he wants to ban referenda on European matters,

"The fact that Referenda are prohibited from being used to ratify European Union Treaty changes does also seem to be to be a constructive step"

Now I wonder why he would think that?

More propaganda, more prizes from the EU

It is a recurring theme, the great gamut of prizes handed out by the EU to further its own interests, pop prizes, architecture prizes, film prizes journalist prizes and so on. All with the stated intention of using taxpayer's money to promote a particular and partial view of the European Union ion the minds of they citizens of the 27 nation states.


And now another one has hove into view. This one, the Civis Media prize is essentially a German/EU junket involving money, a gala dinner and the honouring of various TV, radio and internet sites. What they must do to share in your largesse is to support European integration, through projects that show up the positive benefits of migration.

The website is effusive,

"The CIVIS Media Prize honours the best programmes on the theme of integration and cultural diversity in Europe."

The event will be glittering (just take a look at the film of last years event, a sort of C-list Bafta)

"The prize-giving ceremony and the TV gala of the European CIVIS Media Prize 2011 will take place on May 26, 2011, at the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin. The Federal President Christian Wulff and the President of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek, are the patrons."

And it has a very very defined purpose.

"The aim of the CIVIS Media Foundation is to sensitize journalists in Germany and Europe for the themes of integration and cultural diversity. The organisation contributes to intercultural understanding and to European integration through the activities of the electronic media. CIVIS promotes the innovative and professional treatment of developments in the European immigration society."

What it sets its face against is clear enough,

"One-sided reporting can easily contribute to a general feeling of uncertainty and does not serve the purpose of enlightenment."

Got that, it appears that I do not serve the purpose of enlightenment... Evil nasty person that I am.

It is supported by the European Parliament and the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights amongst others.
If the German media establishment want to have a prize like this, that is fine, and entirely up to them. But to wrap it up as an EU supported project, with EU funding and promotion (funding in kind) then is utterly out of order.

There is no Dutch boy

The late Wim is no longer head of the ECB, but even if he was he wouldn't be able to do anything about the rolling crisis hitting the Eurozone. Latest news comes out of Greece iytself, where a newspaper, the Eleftherotypia has reported what we all know, but few dare say,

Greece has accepted that it cannot avoid restructuring its debt, a Greek newspaper cited a senior European Commission official as saying on Tuesday as market fears of such a move persisted despite denials by Athens.
Financial markets are increasingly convinced Greece will have to renegotiate the terms of its public debt, recognising that its economy cannot grow fast enough to service a burden that is set to swell to 160 percent of national output.
"The Greek government has realised that there is no other way and has accepted a mild debt restructuring," daily Eleftherotypia said, quoting a senior Commission official speaking on condition of anonymity.

Publicly, Greek ministers have consistently denied the government is considering such a move.

Batten down the hatches, and buy land.

Is Barroso Peter Sellars in disguise?

I only ask because I came across this great pile of steaming platitudes, and I thought of the magnificent Party Political Speech created by Peter Sellars in 1958,



Barroso

"Future belongs to those who prepare for it today. The future is now."

Sellars

"Does this mean, I hear you cry, that we can no longer look forward to the future that is to come?"

Update
Somebody has questioned Sellars own politics, and I checked and was impressed to discover this defence of free speech and opposition to a no platform policy,

In January 1960, the British Film Institute announced a film lecture series; among the guest speakers were Sellers, the leftist film gadfly Ivor Montagu and Leni Riefenstahl, director of the Hitler documentary "Triumph of the Will" a quarter-century before. Montagu denounced Riefenstahl, the BFI revoked her invitation, and Sellers, the half-Jewish comic, issued this modest, brave statement in defense of Hitler's favorite director: "Miss Riefenstahl has presumably been invited to lecture because of her outstanding talents as a filmmaker. Alongside her contributions to the art of filmmaking, our efforts, if I may say so, Mr Montagu, appear very puny indeed." And Sellers' gesture appears both brave and gallant.

Not listening.. Nah nah nah

This is today's press briefing at teh European Commission. A series of questions go in about the situation in Finland and how this will impact upon negotiations on the Portugese bail out.

Essentially the EU will ignore the election result and just keep plodding on. At every point they stone wall, and they wriggle and wriggle.



Someone comes in rather splendidly demanding to know if the EU was happy with its program of austerity (which the EU calls fiscal conservation!) and bail outs. They are indeed happy (but in 500 words).
My favourite moment is when the spokeswoman,, Pia Ahrenkilde on being asked if the EU is listening to the messages being sent by the various people's of Europe, she came out with this,

'We are ... listening with care to the signals that they are sending,' she said, assuring reporters that the commission was pursuing 'precise policies that aim to create growth and jobs in Europe and improve the situation for all people.'

Not listening very hard I would say.

The other woman in the broadcast is Chantal Hughes, a former FCO type ( in the true foriegners office tradition take a look at this gushy article written after she transfered to the EU press service). By these we are governed.

Tough job at the Guardian

Here is Jessica Reed, dep editor and twitter Tsar of the Guardian's Comment is Free page.

I am sure that the uber right on denizens of CiF will appreciate her latest tweet. After all, we are all in ths together.

Pasties protected in Chişinău

Good to see that the EU carries on regardless, the latest ground breaking sucess is that Cornish Pasties are to be protected in the Former Soviet Republic of Moldova.

This agreement is a further step in strengthening our system of GIs around the world, and it also gives relations between the European Union and the Republic of Moldova a new, positive dynamic. It

Meanwhile, back on planet earth Gideon Rachman in the FT highlights a few local difficulties,

What do the following stories have in common?


1. France has started to block trains from Italy to intercept illegal migrants from North Africa.

2. A Eurosceptic party has made big gains in the Finnish general election.

3. Political squabbling in Portugal is raising doubt about the country’s ability to negotiate a bail-out.

4. There are growing demands in Greece for the country to default on its debts.

Answer: These are all symptoms of the same problem. The political understandings that underpin the EU are beginning to unravel.

Quite. Meanwhile the Eurocrats are fiddling with ensuring that in Moldova, pasties are protected.

Lube for Lags

As we are all well aware, as a country we face a financial problem of serious proportions. So it behoves all aspects of the state to look carefully at spending plans and prospects.

Universities are charging more than ever before, libraries close, the military are emasculated, and prisoners must have extra lubrication handed out with their condoms. Seriously,

See this little snippet from the HMI report that came out this week after a snap inspection in November,

Housekeeping points
5.30: Lubricant, to accompany barrier protection, should be freely available to all prisoners.

Now I know that we are trying to cut down on the Aids rate amongst our prison population, but that is what the condoms are for, and as far as I am aware they are pre-lubricated (unless they are the special novelty variety of course). I have no idea how many condoms are handed out, and it may well make a subject for an interesting FOI, especially in the light of the following Australian experience.

So what are convicts using the extra lubrication for? Maybe this story in Australia might point us in the right direction,

"I kept seeing these big, burly men going to the condom machine and taking one or two every day," he said. "I lived in fear that their use would involve me."
"One day I worked up the courage to ask a big Tongan man who I had become moderately friendly with and said timidly, 'Excuse me, bro,' because everyone is bro in jail. 'I see you're taking a condom every day, and I cannot believe that you would be using it as is the intention - you don't seem that sort of guy and I am confused.' "
Adler was told the inmates were discarding the condom and using the lubricant as hair gel.
"The jail population is quite poor and they would prefer not to spend their limited money on hair gel when it can be retrieved from the condom packet - thank goodness,"

This anecdotal evidence is backed up by a formal study into sex in prison,

Professor Donovan said with so little anal sex occurring in male prisons, sex cannot account for the use of 30,000 condoms a month in NSW jails. So, what happens to all those condoms and dams?
“Before condoms were introduced into NSW prisons there were strong objections by prison officers who thought that they might encourage more sex and rape, or be used as weapons. These predictions were wrong,” Professor Donovan said.
“The uses of condoms are varied. Some are liberated of their lubricant to be used as hair gel, others are used as household ties or masturbatory aids.
“Dental dams in women’s prisons are rarely used for oral sex. Instead they are reborn as tobacco pouches, hair bands, and doilies.”

Now you know.

Oh the Finnish expertise

Open Europe disdainfully dismisses others

A lot has been said about the True Finns, with the European media all of a sudden forced to become experts on Finnish national politics - it has to be said with varying degrees of success. That many still refer to the True Finns as a "right wing" party indicates the need for a bit more analysis and a bit less reliance on labels that are flying around.

Of course they are one of the successful ones, after all a search shows that the slightly Eursceptic organisation first seems to note the existence of Timo Soini's True Finns  in a fleeting aside in a briefing about Portugal, then on the 4th April, where they describe the True Finns as running on a

"highly populist platform"

and has them straddled by Gert Wilders PVV and the Austrian FPO.

The next day after being slapped in the comments section they posted this, which does to be fair suggest that there has been some research going on, even a little more than a Wikipedia scan. And today they hold everyone else in disdain.

Their expertise is hard won, but at least admits that Timo and his Finns could really throw the European Union economic plans into disarray.

Noting as everybody seems  to do that their polling rating has dropped in the last poll, and this nifty graphc shows this, as well as their remarkable growth since 2007. But as a friend within the party advises us

The latest polls show some decrease in the support for True Finns (16.9%), but even the carriers of the polls admit now that it is incredibly difficult to predict our support because this is such a historical situation we're experiencing. So, some of the professors of Statistics and Pol. Sc. say that the actual support may be something like 20 to even 25% even if the polls don't show that. And in certain districts (Central and North-Eastern Finland) the support is close to 25% even in the polls.
Timo and the True Finns are in every possible media every day: newspapers (big and small), TV (all channels) and radio, not to mention blogs, discussion forums etc. The candidates are working enormously in the market places, malls and events. The foreign media keeps on trying to create a picture of a xenophopic, extreme right wing populist party, but the Finnish media is not playing that card anymore: now they say that the True Finns don't handle the politics, attack Timo's personal views on abortion,, gay rights etc. even if they have nothing to do with the party line. Unfortunately, some of the unexperienced candidates can't handle the pressure and are mocking even their fellow candidates. In addition to this, some activists have attacked viciously some parties' campaign (not True Finns, though) and these kind of phenomena have been absent in the previous elections in Finland. Some claim that Finland has become a country of anger and hatred, partly because of these (sometimes even violent) attacks and because of Ture Finns' support. As far as I've read the articles, the foreign media has absolutely NO CLUE on Finnish politics and the True Finns; they try to attach us to Swedish Democrats, Front National and PVV, even if we have no connections whatsoever with them.
Oops, this turned out to a long one :) Hope this gave you some idea of the current situation. There is still one very big TV debate for the chairmen of the parties to come, and that will be tomorrow evening. Then we can say that most of the work is done, even if Timo will still visit some districts on Friday and Saturday.
The turnout for the "pre-voting" (or whatever you call it) was higher than for the last national parliamentary elections, so we can be happy about that. However, the True Finns voters will most likely go voting more on the actual election day, Sunday. The voting will close at 20:00, so we'll receive the results of the pre-voting period at that time and the final results by midnight.

Looking forward to it

The last thing Athens needs

It would take a dark dark comedian to come up with this one. Greece's bond spread vis-a-vis with Germany at record highs, nobody trusts its restructuring plans, members of its socialist government muttering about default, German Ministers muttering louder, and others suggesting that Greece is only a heartbeat away from civil unrest or public revolt.

So now would be a really good time for this to happen,

The European Commission ordered Greece Friday to repay almost 260 million euros ($375 million) in misused farm payments.

The European Union executive hit Athens with a bill for 137.33 million euros for "ineligible expenditure and major shortcomings" in an olive cultivation programme and weak "on-the-spot controls."

Now repeat after me, nobody could haver known that Greece was cooking the books before joining teh Euro.

It would as Mr Wilde once said, take a heart of stone not to laugh.

Questions to which the answer is No

Economic & Monetary Affairs >Commissioner Olli Rehn is in the States this week, and at the Brookings Institute he gave a talk today entitled,

Is the Euro Saved for Good?

He concludes his fantasy thusly

But let me be clear, the euro is not on the list of problems. Instead, it is an essential part of the solution. It contributes to growth by enhancing cross-border economic activity and competition, and is essential for macro-economic stability.
Lastly, let me recall that the euro is not just a technical monetary arrangement, but rather the core political project of the European Union. As such, it is a symbol of our political will and determination to work together for our common good.
That is a further reason why it is worth taking Europe seriously when we say that we are ready to do whatever it takes to defend the euro and financial stability in Europe.

Let us remember this, remember that the Euro is not at heart an economic project but a political one. As such it is, and will remain at odds with economic reality, and will always be vulnerable to asymmetric shocks.

Race crimes rise in France/Anti Semitism too

I was lead to this story by a tweet from New Statesman politics editor Mehdi Hasan

France, 2009-2010: 6% rise in violent crime. 119% rise in racist crimes. What do French police do? Arrest veiled women.

It is a nice piece of staggersish demotic. Sounds pretty appalling and highlights how ghastly the French are over the Burka ban.

Rise in racist attacks

Another grim statistic published Monday was the amount of racist crime in France. A government agency counted 1026 acts of racist violence or threats of racist violence in 2009, most of which were directed against North Africans. This was up from 467 in 2008.

But take a look at the numbers, following this quote comes this,

Six mosques were attacked, which was two more than in 2008.

According to statistics, anti-Semitic violence had also risen from 459 reported acts or threats of violence to 815. Thirty attacks were also made against French synagogues in 2009.

So there is an almost equally staggering increase in attacks against Jews,  What we do not hear is a break down of those who have committed these crimes. But I don't think that anybody would be surprised if there were a link between those burka clad lovelies and the anti-semetic attacks. We do not know from this report the increase in the attacks on synagogues, but I would guess that the attacks against the Jews are more dare I say targetted, more 'racist' in intention on average than most of those against North Africans.

I may be wrong as the French state is very selective about the data it produces on such matters, but call it an educated guess.

In honour of Roger Henson

I bring you Roger Henson. I would say an icon for our times. Particularly his startlingly honest promise,

"I cannot guarantee I can help everybody, but I will my best for the people of North West Cambridgeshire"

Would that all candidates were as honest, straightforward and aware of the limitations of office as Mr Henson.

5 years, 2,500 posts 500,000 visitors

For a blog that is very much niche reading, I am quite chuffed.

Thanks to all of you who have wandered over here and had a look,

Hope to break the million before 2015. 

Gad its tough working in the European Parliament

Really it is, much worse than working elsewhere, I wonder why we do it.

What? You don't believe me. Well the staff Committee of the European Parliament has produced a survey of staff attitudes, and I can tell you all is not well in the Towers of Babel. Called the Well-Being at Work survey it makes salutary reading for those who do not have to suffer the indignity of being a Eurocrat.

The survey questionnaire was sent via email to 7900 colleagues: 4722 permanent staff members, 1639 temporary and contract agents, 1539 parliamentary assistants.

And there was an impressive 19,93% response rate. But we work hard, Oh so hard,

Overtime
The survey revealed that recourse to overtime is a quite everyday practice in order to meet work commitments. Over the last 12 months, with various frequency, 68,83% of concerned colleagues worked during free time in order to meet work demands; 37,61% more than 10 hours a day, 43,64% outside the standard work timetable (evening, week-end).

I mean trying to fit all that governance of Europe stuff into the statuary 37.5 hrs a week is tough. And almost 40% had, at least once, worked a 10 hour day. Call a freaking ambulance.

Around 50% of respondents consider always or often their work to be stressful (48,75%); to feel exhausted after work (53,05%) and too tired (53,17%). This has inevitably an impact on private life, 42,2% find that the job always or often prevents them from giving time to partner or family.

It is one of those permanent annoyances of life that having a job means that you cannot be with your family. Deal with it.

Now look at this bit. It appears that not only is working for the European Parliament stressful, bad for your family and might make you miss lunch once in a while, we are also the victims of an extraodinary amount of workplace grimness,

Concerning harassment, revealing results can be identified by comparing the data obtained regarding the EP Secretariat and those given by Eurofound for 27 EU Member States in its Fifth European Working Conditions Survey. 15,64% of respondents in the EP had experienced verbal abuse at work against 10,8% reported by the Eurofound as average level in 27 Members States; 16,18% of colleagues who replied considered themselves to be a victim of threats and humiliating behaviour against 5.0% in EU27; 16,72% of the EP respondents declared having experienced psychological harassment against an average of 4,1% in the EU27.

If you work in the European Parliament you are subject to more abuse, harrasment and threats than elsewhere. I tell you it is awful, here we are trying to create a Europe of peace, harmony and compulsory kittens and this is how we treat each other. It's a disgrace that these things can happen.

So why are we so selfless? Why do we suffer al these dreadful slings and arrows. Well maybe it is to do with this, the month pay table (In Euros),

Not forgetting these extras

Family allowances, which, depending on your family situation, consist of:

the household allowance (2% of salary + EUR 170.52);
the dependent child allowance (EUR 372.61);
the pre-school allowance (EUR 91.02);
reimbursement of educational expenses up to a limit of EUR 252.81, double in certain cases.

Other allowances
The expatriation allowance (16%) or foreign residence allowance (4%); these percentages apply to the basic salary;
The secretarial allowance: awarded on a personal basis to beneficiaries before 1 May 2004 (C4/C5: EUR 131.84 – C3/C1: EUR 202.14).
Protection of secretarial work in case of promotion to grade AST 7: compensatory allowance(link externaltype doc)

So now you know. You mustn't mock I think we deserve sympathy and care. (Oh and those nice EU plates on our VAT free cars).

BNP fat cats sipping the cream

Though there are stories that Andrew Brons and Nick Griffin are finding it difficult seeing eye to eye on many things, there is one thing where they agree. And they agree with Labour and many of the Lib Dems as well.

And that is that MEPs should be able to fly on taxpayer funded Business Class flights on short haul (under 4hrs) flights in Europe.

This is the amendment that they failed to oppose (unlike UKIP and the Tories).

"Calls on the Bureau to amend its rules relating to travel expenses (item 1004) included in its own decision PE 422.536/BUR, in order to establish the purchase of tickets in economy class for flights of less than 4 hours as a rule; considers that this new way of applying the Members' Statute should permit exceptions, taking into account the age of individual MEPs and their state of health; calls for this rule also to be applicable for Parliament staff;"

And here they are on the voting list (Amendment 3 Fernandes Report)

Those voting against were the Lib Dems.

Andrew Duff, Bill Newton Dunn,

I am sure there are lamposts in the Eastern Region and the East Midlands for those two.

Those abstaining (and how you can abstain on this I am not sure, but there you have it.)

Abstain: Edward McMillan-Scott, Graham Watson,

Abstain: Labour : Mary Honeyball, Richard Howitt, Stephen Hughes, David Martin, Linda McAvan, Arlene McCarthy, Claude Moraes, Brian Simpson, Peter Skinner, Catherine Stihler, DerickVaughan, Glenys Willmott,

Abstain : BNP: Andrew Brons, Nick Griffin

There you have it. The BNP vote with the old elite and refuse to repuduiate luxury flights.

Oh My Freaking Cripes. Sometimes I hang my head in horror

What is this?

No wiser, how about this?


No really, we need Europe to stop us singing all alone, with the wrong words and out of tune.

Somebody wake me up when the adults have come back. How much is this extravaganza costing us?

You can even vote for your favourite Kareoke track.

Guys, Guys, there is a financial crisis that is swamping your precious political experiment and you want us to vote on our favourite Kareoke tracks?

For Pete's sake, get serious.

Iceland: Delusion vs Reality

There are two views of the possibility of Iceland joining the EU. One is from Brussels/Strasbourg typified by the following release from the EPP,

On Thursday, MEPs supported a Resolution on Iceland's Progress Report 2010, concerning the country's EU membership bid, by a large majority. Iceland is already part of the European Economic Area (EEA) and its legislation is to a high extent aligned with that of the European Union. For the moment, the screening process is still in progress and the first negotiation chapters might be opened during the summer.


The Rapporteur, Cristian Preda MEP, welcomed the reforms increasing the independence of the judiciary, while stressing the need for a thorough implementation of these measures. He also noted that he hopes for a positive result to the Icesave referendum this Sunday, allowing the negotiations to concentrate on substantive issues instead of bilateral conflicts.

MEPs also encouraged Iceland to keep up a good pace in the ongoing negotiations on mackerel quotas, in particular with the goal of reaching "a Resolution of the mackerel dispute based on realistic proposals which safeguard the future of the stock, protect and maintain jobs in the pelagic fishery and ensure a long-term, sustainable fishery."

Here is the voting in the Parliament, pretty conclusive, No?

So it is apparant from this that the accession of Iceland to the EU is a done deal...

Or not, if we look at the reality,

The vast majority of Icelanders are still opposed to joining the European Union according to a new opinion poll published today, March 17, in the business newspaper Viðskiptablaðið. 55.7 percent oppose EU membership while 30 percent favour the step. 14.2 percent are uncertain.


A recent poll by Capacent published on March 10 put the opposition to EU membership at 50.5 percent, the support at 31.4 percent and the uncertain at 18 percent.

The last poll before that was published by Capacent in July 2010 putting the opposition at 60 percent, the support at 26 percent and those uncertain at 14 percent.
Every poll published in Iceland since August 2009, made by different polling companies, has shown a large majority of Icelanders against joining the EU and only about 1/3 in favour.

They are desperate aren't they.

No you fools, don't make it worse

The NFU is one of those organisations that has, to put it politely lived past its sell by date. If Disreali were alive today he would be chucking his extinct volcanoes quip at them. As a voice of the establishment there is scarcely better.

So it should come as no surprise that they are desperate to foist upon us anpother unelected nannying nincompoop who can disrupt our lives from an ineffably superior position. I give you the EU's own Chief Scientific officer.

THE NFU has called on the European Commission to honour its promise to appoint a chief scientist to assist on vital decisions relating to food security and climate change...
Katy Lee, assistant director in the NFU’s Brussels office, said science was often ignored by EU policy makers and urged Mr Barroso to fill the role ‘as a matter of urgency’.

We welcomed the intention to create a chief scientific adviser back in 2009 but we are disappointed the post has still not been filled,” she said.

What the hell are they playing at, from the face of it it looks as if the EU had ditched the self agrandising idea and the morons at the NFU want to breath life into its revanent.

“We are faced with huge global challenges to feed a growing world population sustainably and it is clear that the solutions from the EU must be underpinned by sound science and not destroyed by intransigent politics.”

Stuart Agnew MEP, the UKIP Agriculture spokesman, and normally friendly towards the NFU was moved to write in their comments section,

Whilst the NFU always lobbies hard for the interests of farmers, I believe that on this issue they are attempting to shoot their members in the feet. The EU can be relied upon to engage a scientist who has fully bought into the myth of man made global warming (which is the opposite of ´sound science´) and his recommendations are likely to make life very difficult for farmers. Quotas on emissions are a real possibility, to say nothing of the red tape and record keeping that will further engulf farmers.

We had an example of EU `sound science` when they insisted on the burning of carcases of animals with Foot & Mouth Disease, not to mention a great many that did not have it. The longer this post remains vacant, the better. I will vote against any such appointment, if I get the opportunity.

No wonder the NFU are known across the country as No F  Use

The BBC must "look behind the headlines" before it publishes a report on Climate Change

Or at least that is what I have just been told be someone at the Science and Environment desk of BBC Online.

You see I was trying to let them know about UKIP's response to the devastating John Muir Trust study just published, into the uselessness of Wind Farms.

The chap at the other end of the line let me know that BBC Scotland had already reported on the study (here) . And is was obvious that he wasn't happy with the tone of the report, you see it wasnt critical enough,

"It is obviously wrong that the BBC produce reports without looking into the methodology of the study," he told me, displaying that Reithian responsibility the BBC is so famous for, "We must look beyond the headlines of the executive summary, before producing our own reports".

Yes indeed that is exactly what you should do. As I pointed out to him, it would be nice if the BBC did the same with reports predicting the demise of human civilisation through the dire effects of Climate change.

So I suggest that people should start holding the Science and Environment department to this fine new approach to studies on climate change and renewable technology.

Coulson's new company

The FT reports that Andy Coulson s new pr consultants are to be called Elbrus Consultants.

Which is a pity as there is already a firm that he could easily have worked with as I reported back in November,

Ever heard of Algirdas?

Ring a bell? How about Šemeta? No?

How about Algirdas Šemeta? OK have you heard of George Osborne? Well Mr Šemeta is like him but more important. He is the European Commissioner for Taxation and Customs Union, Audit and Anti-Fraud. And he has a key message.

Let me say a few words on EU tax governance. Each Member State has the right to decide on its own approach.

Which sounds excellent until his next sentence,

closer coordination of tax systems and smarter taxation are crucial for EU recovery and growth

The plans are truly bizarre and their logic is as sprung as GM Hopkins verse. Try this for example,

Tax competition is accepted - and may even be a good thing - as long as it does not endanger the capacity of Member States to collect the revenue that they would fairly expect.

So we set a high tax rate, Denmark sets a low one, that is tax competition. Business move to Copenhagen from Britain. This harms Britain's tax raising capacity. That is harmful tax competition.

And what is going on here?

The Code of Conduct on business taxation is our tool to ensure that this principle is respected in the EU and beyond. It is a soft law instrument: under a peer review process, Member States examine their potentially harmful business tax measures and commit to correct them.

It has proved useful in the past. It is not ambitious enough anymore. There is a need to find renew support on the principles at political level and to sharpen our instruments. In this period of intense consolidation efforts, no margin of manoeuvre exists: transparency and trust is the standard and no one can steal a tax base or tax revenue from its neighbour. And let me emphasise that this principle is also valid in our relations with third countries.

Valid in their relations with third countries. What! The EU is going to force the US to change its tax rates? You cannot set that low tax. It's not fair>

Yeah right.
No they will attempt to bully Switzerland and Norway.

Category mistake

The latest Cuts Index, conducted by ComRes and to be broadcast on ITV News at Ten, shows nearly two thirds of the population (59%) fear that Government spending cuts will cause moderate (38%) or significant hardship (21%). 58% think that quality of life of locals in their area will suffer as a result of spending cuts.

Of course, if you are asked if the cuts are going to cause hardship then you are likely to look at the question and say yes. People will loose their jobs. This they will cause hardship.

But if the question was slightly different. Such as:
Mass overspending by this and the previous government is driving the country into penury and therefore certain people, most likely local council climate Change officers may well find themselves unemployed.
Do you think that the hardships likely to be faced in the coming years will be made less awful by swifter cutting now?

I wonder what the answer would be?

To find a (European) people

Those industrious chaps at Eurobarometer have been set a tough task, to find a people. You see in order to seel the prioject it is necessary to find people who cleave to that project. Thus the concept of New Europeans

This is how they describe it,

This Eurobarometer survey has been commissioned in order to gain insight in European citizens’ connectedness to other countries. Connectedness is a broad, rich concept; it can take several forms, objective or subjective. The challenge in this research was to identify a category of 'New Europeans': who are they, where can we find them? They were defined as people who live in the EU and have connections with more than just the country where they live. "New Europeans" tend to be hidden in the existing data sources and include children of migrants, mixed couples, international students, retirement migrants and expats.

But of course they have difficulty finding their target audience, especially in Britian.

The strongest increases in national attachment are in the UK, from 84% to 91% (+7 points)

Seems like the EU will need to take a Brechtian approach to the population.

After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

Farage on Prisoner Votes

UKIP leader Nigel Farage today has a few lines in the Express responding to the European Council's Human Rights Commissioner, Mr Hammarberg.

The key quote is I think this,

Mr Hammarberg believes in democracy in which he says “the will of the people shall be expressed in elections”. But like so many of the elite he wants to decide what answers are given. That is not democracy: That is autocracy.