Candid talk 19 07 10

Pondering the Constitutional Treaty signing in Lisbon last night

What was that Gordon?

Three cheers for Peter Roberts

You will remember Peter Roberts. He was the businessman who set up the Number 10 petition against road pricing. Well according to reports in both the Telegraph and the Daily Mail her has forced a Government U-turn.
However neither paper has seen fit to mention theat Peter is the UKIP PPC for Telford in Shropshire, so just to let you know, here are his comments about today's news.
"At last the Government has seen some sense on road pricing", said Peter Roberts, the man behind the 1.8 million strong petition against the new tax. Mr Roberts, a UK Independence Party PPC in Shropshire, was delighted the Government had changed its policy on the introduction of pay per mile taxation.

"This was always going to be an additional tax on the motorist and I am pleased it is being dropped", he continued. "However, we must not be complacent: The EU's Galileo satellite system was one of the reasons the government wanted to introduce a national road pricing system. This expensive and controversial copy of the American GPS system was at the heart of the tracking technology required for Road Pricing and the intention was to make the motorist to pay. Now the EU has decided to raid the Agricultural budget to pay for it instead, rather than reimburse the taxpayer. Whatever happens now the taxpayer still picks up the bill".

The campaigner has already set his sights on another objective, to support what is left of Britain's once proud automobile manufacturers, "We have some of the best and most respected car manufacturers in the world producing in the UK. Land Rover, Jaguar, Bentley, Rolls Royce and Aston Martin operate in a market of luxury vehicles which will always be at the high end of C02 emissions. They are fairly low volume in global terms and the environmental impact of their products is negligible. The anti –car environmental policies of both the Government and opposition seem deliberately designed to destroy these companies with their punitive taxation of British made products. You could stop making cars in the UK and it would have absolutely no effect on global CO2 emissions".

"It is about time British policy makers concentrated on British interests rather than following fashionable fads" he said.

The Bumper Book of Government Waste

The latest book to come out the excellent Taxpayers Alliance is The Bumper Book of Government Waste. Published only last week, it is the perfect book if you want to understand why it would be possible to cut taxes by upwards of £4,000 per household and still not cut services. (Now whether services could or indeed should be cut is another story, and one I will go into in future).
Currently it is only in hardback so it is ideal for throwing at any passing politician or bureaucrat. It estimates that £101 billion is wasted per annum by the British Government. This is a scandal and one that should be addressed immediately.

I do have to declare an interest as I am one of the sources for the authors Lee Rotherham and Matthew Elliot.

Next year it will be even worse.

Watch the EU Spinning Fraud

This email has landed in my intray today - by circuitous ways naturally,

Subject: Press kit Discharge 2006
Importance: High

Dear Members, dear advisors,

DG INFO, which I represent, would like to submit an idea for the forthcoming discharge procedure.

On November 13 in Strasbourg, the Court of Auditors will present its 2006 annual report. It is widely predicted that for the 14th time in a row, there will be no positive DAS.

In order to be "on par" with the Court & the Commission, which will both come up with carefully-crafted press packs, I would like to compile a 2006 discharge press kit of our own & need your help in that sense.

The idea is simple: based on your experience of business at Cocobu, you are invited in this press kit to present your views on the discharge and all its related aspects, including thus themes such as national declarations, methodology, the sampling method, etc.

The philosophy of this press kit is equally simple: one text per MEP, maximum 1 page A4, preferrably in English. Language should not be too technical and clearly present your main strategic ideas. It should be as short as possible, too: the more
creative ideas are often the simplest & shortest ones. Do not worry about the fact that we do not know the contents of the Annual report: it is the Court's & the Commission's niche, we should be more forward-looking.

Once completed, the press kit will be displayed in the Nov 13 Cocobu room and sent to the press.

So, I would kindly ask you:

1. if you're interested to participate
2. if you could provide me with your contribution by Thursday am of next week (ie it leaves you a full week to draft it)
3. if you're interested, if I can use photos (send them to me if you have some preferred one)

I am at your disposal for any question / query. A reminder will be sent on Monday.

With kind regards,
JY Loog

Jean-Yves LOOG
European
Parliament
Press ServicePhone: +32.2.284 46 52
Visit http://www.europarl.europa.eu/

So yet again it appears that the European Court of Auditors will refuse to sign off the Commission's accounts. What is interesting is the institutional response. Here we have a Parliament press officer asking MEPs to get their rebuttals in early, indeed written a whole month before this news becomes official because they know that the annual spectacle of the Court of Auditor's Report is a running and embarrassing sore.

However we can see from the suggestions the official line to take (which will be worked on together with the Commission and the Court), "national declarations, methodology, the sampling method, etc".

The basic line is this; The Court of Auditors cannot sign off the accounts because it does not have access to the national spending of EU funds. Therefore in order to show how squeaky clean the EU is, what is required is that the CoA be granted audit oversight of national spending. Of course this would only be national spending which involves EU funds, not discreet national budgets. This is the Monnet method in miniature. There is no guarantee that they would indeed not gain oversight of in the UK's case, the National Audit Office. Given the breadth of current EU fiscal interests and spending in the individual nations then even with strict compliance with a rule barring CoA from looking into other spending the scope would be massive anyhow.

From an integrationist perspective this all makes perfect sense. Whether, as a supposedly sovereign nation we are happy to have the Court poking its nose into our business is a different matter.

For information this email was sent to members of the European Parliament's Budgetary Control Committee, COCOBU. The Committee that infamously refused to meet a whistleblower because they were told by the Commission he was sick. The Commission works on a Catch 22 rule. All officials are happy to work here, the wages are good, the job is secure. You would have to be mad to be unhappy. Thus if you are unhappy and point out fraud (See Marta Andreasen, Robert McCoy, etc) then you must be sick. And of course sick people can make other people sick by their very presence). After all honesty is contagious.


Cross posted on England Expects

Candid writing

Candid writing, like Candid talk will be a irregular column of articles published eleswhere. The first is an article on the website of Politea, a Dutch political website focusing on matters European Union. This quarter they are discussing the growing phenomenom of Euroscepticism in Europe and I was asked to write about the Independence/Democracy Group in the European Parliament. This is a political alliance that includes UKIP, that is joined by a common belief that the sheer scale of European Union ambitions are anti democratic in conception.

"So what are you for? - Independence/Democracy Group in the European Parliament
As the media officer for the Independence/Democracy Group in the European Parliament I was delighted to be invited to provide a discourse on precisely that question. OK, so you are in the European Parliament the most avowedly federalist of the European institutions and you, as a group set your face against further integration. Aren't you barking up the wrong tree?

The point is that the Ind/Dem Group is a coalition of varying degrees of Euroscepticism united around a belief that only the nation state holds sufficient emotional loyalty for its citizens that the workings of a participatory democracy are effective.

Therefore you will find in the Group sub delegations such as the UK Independence Party that verges on the libertarian, to the Danish June Movement which has its roots in the hard left. Between them range the French MPF, traditionalist catholic, the Swedish Junelist, a centrist social democratic party, Polish Catholics, Dutch Calvinists, Greek orthodox nationalists, an Irish independent (Kathy Sinnett) who majors as a disability rights campaigner, and a free trader from the Czech Republic. Associated with the group, but without electoral representation as of yet (the elections are in November) are the Romanian National Initiative Party an anti-corruption movement and others, Atlanticist free traders in Portugal and Germany, neutrality campaigners in Austria and so on.

Thus must now be very obvious the Group is very much a mixed bag. But they are utterly united on three core issues. Firstly they are opposed to any further integration. Next they vigorously oppose the constitutionalisation of the European Union, and finally they are committed to transparency and rooting out corruption. With these three issues they are as one.

Back in 2004 they were the only Group in the European Parliament to have successfully campaigned for ‘No’ votes on the European Constitution in France and the Netherlands. Today they are the only group that has consistently demanded that those voices, the clear voices from the people of those countries that they did not want the planned Constitution, are respected by the Euro elite.

The Ind/Dem Group has been at the forefront of the campaign to force the Commission to reveal the names of those who draft and those who advise on the drafting of legislation. It was the Ind/Dem co-President Jens-Peter Bonde who finally forced the Commission to disgorge the names of thousands of secretive ‘expert committees’ who are so powerful, yet unknown. Now we know what the committees are we are demanding to know who sits on them.

The Ind/Dem Group is at the forefront of the campaign to ‘Make every vote count’. Currently in the Parliament over 80% of votes take place by show of hands. Not only is this prone to error, (in one recent case after Ind/Dem MEP Graham Booth queried a result an electronic check was carried out. What had been called ‘Rejected’ had in fact been passed by over 500 votes to 48), but it is also utterly undemocratic. The only power a citizen has over their politicians is the power to sack. If you do not know how they have voted, then there is no accountability.

Overall the Ind/Dem Group, though small, punches significantly above its weight on matters that are its common interest. Questioning the European status quo was impossible only a few years ago, but is, partly thanks to the activities of Ind/Dem members growing across the continent. Even the European Commission’s Eurobarometer polling confirms this trend. It will not stop until it has forced the elite to listen.

Gawain Towler

Nigel Farage on UKIP's National Conference

This posting has been purloined from Devil's Kitchen via 18 Doughty Street,

Is it cos I is ignorant?

I know that the current education system is failing, but this attack on UKIP by a Lib/Dem on Youtube has got to take the biscuit,

"If you want a government that will keep the UK to Europe for a better future as we done in the first place...Vote Liberal Democrats".

Lord help us

Update,

I recieved this splendid email from the chap before he deleted my comment on his video post,

"well my dear sir, say what you like about my hand writen, but at least I don't support the UKIP that will never win an election as they are simerler to the BNP.
It is that simple, if you have nothing good to say, don,t say anything my dear sir".

Like my correspondent, words fail me.

Candid Talk 07 10 07

First attempt at what will become a regular round up of thoughts on what is happening in Dorset, the UK, Europe and elsewhere.

Farage Speech

We are here because we are not happy with the staus quo
We are hee because we do not trust the political establishment.

We want the United Kingdom to be part of the 21st Century global economy, not a small backwater in the European Union.

We must give people the opportunity, through direct democracy, that the voice of the people can be heard through the application of local referendums.

We the people of Britain should be masters of our own destiny

Live blogging the Conference

Here at the Troxy in Limehouse

Farage speaking now

Thanks for Marta Andreason for becoming Treasurer,

Launch of a immigration policy that calls for a moritorium on immigration for a period of five years.

Good joke about work permits,
If Goldman Sachs needs a banker...they can get a work permit
If a Kentish fruit farm needs some short term fruit pickers...they can get a work permit,
If a political Party needs to employ a Spanish citizen...then she can get awork permit.

Government keeps wriggling

They must think it is a soporific term. Yet again the Government is hoping that by endlessly repeatingthe mantra from the Council mandate people will end up believing, "The constitutional concept, which consisted in repealing all existing Treaties and replacing them by a single text called 'Constitution', is abandoned".Thus, flying in the face of what we all know to be true we have junior Foriegn Minister Lord Malloch Brown respondingto UKIP peer Lord Pearson this week,

"Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP) Hansard'>http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200607/ldhansrd/text/71001w0019.htm#07091813000112">Hansard sourceasked Her Majesty's Government:
Further to the Written Answer by Lord Malloch-Brown on 18 July (WA 26), whether, when they signed the European Union Constitutional Treaty in 2004, they agreed that the United Kingdom's existing labour and social legislation, common law system, police and judicial processes, independent foreign and defence policy and tax and social security system could have been changed by the resulting constitution, had it come into force.
Lord Malloch-Brown (Minister of State (Africa, Asia and the UN), Foreign & Commonwealth Office)
The constitutional treaty contained many sensible changes, which the Government supported, and which would have helped an enlarged EU deliver more effectively. But as the mandate for a reform treaty states clearly: "The constitutional concept, which consisted in repealing all existing Treaties and replacing them by a single text called 'Constitution', is abandoned".
The reform treaty not only amends the existing treaties but also better safeguards our national control in key areas such as labour and social legislation, police and judicial processes, foreign and defence policy, and social security policy.

Astonishing in the light of this sort of response, Brown thinks that his government will be regardred somehow as more honest, as something that will restore trust

Gawain Towler selected as PPC

Or at least that is what the press release says

Last night (4th October) at a packed meeting in Charlton Marshall’s Charlton Inn, the North Dorset Constituency association selected local man, Gawain Towler, as the party’s new Prospective Parliamentary Candidate (PPC).
John Baxter, the association Chairman said he was delighted, “Gawain is an excellent candidate and will do North Dorset proud”, he said. “Whenever Mr. Brown calls an election, UKIP here will be ready for him”.
Mr. Towler said, “From the age of 14, when at school in Iwerne Minster, I have dreamt of fighting this seat, I am honoured that the membership chose me last night”.

“We need to make it clear that the UK Independence Party is the party of freedom, not just from the eurocrats of Brussels, though certainly that, but also from the impositions of our own control freak government, the idiocies of the South West Regional Assembly and of course the pettifogging attentions of our local councils”. He continued, “It’s about time they learnt to trust people with their own lives rather than assuming that they always know best”.
Graham Booth, South Western Counties Euro MP said, “I am delighted that Gawain has been selected, I have known him for a long time now I know that he will be a doughty fighter for Dorset and freedom”.

Notes
Gawain Towler currently works for the UK Independence Party in the European Parliament as their press officer and Chief of Staff. He grew up and still has a base in Wimborne. He is married with two small children. Before working for UKIP he was a journalist and founder of the Brussels based satirical and investigative magazine, ‘The Sprout’. He has previously stood as a Parliamentary candidate for the Conservative Party in Scotland.

Well the qustioning was pretty harsh, but agreement was there, we are ready, we will do the work and well if Brown does call the election we will put up a good show.

John Baxter, Constituency Chairman congratulates new PPC Gawain Towler