Busy week

This week has been spent chasing around the Strasbourg Parliament, doing everything in my power to undermine the institution. To that end I was able to start the entire story of the misuse of funds by Euro-MPs,

Robert Galvin, who is head of unit, internal audit and is based in Luxembourg.

Well informed rumours are suggesting that the silence surrounding this report is well warranted. One comment from a senior official has been passed on to me, "the reason that we cannot make this report open to the public is that we want people to vote in the 2009 (european) elections".

That of course could be Chinese whispers but my scource is normally pretty accurate.

From what I can guess the activities of some Members of the European Parliament will make the Conway affair look like pretty small beer.

This story was picked in almost every media organisation in the following few days, as can be seen here and here.

Elsewhere I demonstrated in the Parliament against the Parliament's vote in favour as reported in today's Sunday Telegraph,

EU Parliament votes not to take any notice of the people's wishes

There were surreal scenes in Strasbourg last Wednesday as the European Parliament prepared to ratify the Lisbon Treaty by a huge majority. (It says something for the reverence in which we hold that parliament that not a single British national newspaper bothered to report the fact.)

Dressed in yellow chicken suits, three protestors against the refusal of EU governments to allow referendums on the treaty were chased round the corridors and up and down the staircases of the futuristic building by 15 burly security men trying to arrest them.

When Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party and one of the 50 MEPs of different parties who have been leading the pro-referendum campaign, was summoned to this fracas, he was interviewed by a television crew.

Pointing out that no officials had intervened last month when the parliament was invaded by anti-GM Greens dressed as bananas, he asked why it was only pro-democracy protestors who had to be silenced?

At the end of the interview, Anne-Margrete Wachmeister, head of the parliament's audio-visual unit, gave orders that Mr Farage' s comments must not be broadcast.

Overhearing this, Shirin Wheeler, presenter of the World Service's Record programme (and daughter of the distinguished BBC correspondent Charles Wheeler) intervened to say that, unless this order was withdrawn, the BBC would withdraw its parliamentary coverage from both Strasbourg and Brussels. The official backed down.

Meanwhile in the chamber itself the battle continued. When it was proposed that the parliament "would respect the result of the Irish referendum", the only one to be allowed on the treaty, only 129 MEPs (including one Tory, Nirj Deva) supported it, while 499 (including four Tories) voted that the wishes of the Irish people should not be respected. But what if they vote in favour of the treaty? It is good to know that our democracy is in such reliable hands.

In the picture I am the chicken on the right.

I also revealed that Tories had failed to vote in favour of a referendum, and some had even refused to support an amendment that caled for respecting the result of the Irish referendum.