It's a clever trick, but a trick nonetheless and it is what the EU has been doing for years in order to achieve its 'slice by slice' growth into controlling all aspects of our lives. It has welcomed, promoted even, the endless stupid laws and rules about straight bananas and the like in order to create the disinterest that has allowed it to grow its influence as people have been encouraged to see it as something of a joke, not to be taken too seriously.
So like the boy who cried 'wolf' when another, perhaps significant, maybe life-changing diktat comes out from the EU, we all ignore it and associate it with the meaningless crap that they have been making sure we focus upon.
And the pro brigade has gone much further than this, labelling anyone who is anti EU as being also anti Europe. Little Englanders with a narrow view of the world and a jingoistic, small-minded, selfish, even racist outlook.
And so, just as the race card has been played to such an extent as to make any questioning of extreme Muslim behaviour in the UK unacceptable, any dissent on our membership of the EU is similarly dismissed.
Without any investigation of the reality or the truth.
There are a few things that should be understood as part of this whole EU debate in my opinion. Things which even people who want us to stay in the Eurozone would be hard pressed to deny, but which they will obviously not want to be raised publicly:
One is that if we stay in, we will be part of a single European state, with universal laws on issues including trade, employment, human rights, mobility of population. A single entity where there are no internal borders or barriers to accessing welfare, healthcare or unemployment benefits, regardless of contribution or 'paying in' to the system. And where most UK rules are set by bureaucrats in Brussels and Strasbourg rather than by the people we vote for - or vote out - at our domestic elections.
Our sovereignty will be subsumed into the EU machine. And we will no longer have local, democratic control over our borders or our laws. Our trading agreements with the rest of the world will be decided on a pan-European basis and not in the interests of the UK as the distinct trading nation on which our country has been founded. We will also have a single defence force that is controlled by the EU and not by the MoD or our government.
So our defence policies will be decided with Greece, Portugal, Germany, France and 23 others, having a majority sway over our own domestic military interests and policies. In effect we could have a Greek or an Italian, a Frenchman or a Spaniard deciding the fate of British subjects living in Gibraltar or the Falklands. You might welcome that of course.
The second issue, and this hasn't been widely reported for obvious reasons, is that a UK exit from the EU would almost certainly bring the whole stinking edifice down with it: This is why the stakes are so high because this is not a referendum just about UK membership, but, in reality, about the entire future of the EU. It makes me smile when EU ministers dismiss the UK as a minor player, insulting our electorate and taking an arrogant approach to what we say and do. The fact is that without the second biggest contributor to the EU it will fail entirely, and quite quickly.
We know about the financial trials and tribulations of southern Europe and Ireland: They are essentially insolvent and, without being able to devalue their currencies, are trapped in an unending cycle of unemployment, recession and poverty. But France is also bust, even if they are trying to tell the world otherwise. The Netherlands is teetering on the brink of failure. Only Germany is booming and that is only because they are enjoying a massive (at least 30%) exchange rate advantage because their currency is tied to weaker nations such as Greece, Spain and Italy. It's all a sham and the British taxpayer is propping it up to the tune of £13billion a year (2010 figures).
Some 47% of the EU budget is spent on the CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) - essentially propping up inefficient European farmers or making highly efficient UK & German farmers very rich indeed. It was designed, at the outset of the EU (and as a way of getting France on board), to enable the medieval French subsistence farming economy to continue in perpetuity and it's certainly doing that. 47% of what we pay goes to farmers. I'll leave you to decide whether that's a good thing, but bear in mind that this is on top of the massive tariffs that are charged to non-EU agricultural producers in Africa, for example, which preclude them from trading their way out of poverty by rigging the market against them.
So we perpetually have to send aid to feed their populations instead of allowing them to compete with our subsidised farmers and trade their way into the first world. We are, in the name of the EU, raping Africa. And the consequent wars and genocide means that we also then spend further £billions and lives, trying to sort out the mess that we are directly involved in creating.
The third issue is about accountability. The EU's accounts have not been signed off as being a true a fair record (and it spends £130 billion a year in our name and at our expense) (2010 figures) for the last 17 years. And the reason? 'non-compliance with the rules governing the spending, such as breaches of public procurement rules, ineligible or incorrect calculation of costs claimed to EU co-financed projects, or over-declaration of land by farmers'. (source ECA - European Court of Auditors). In layman's terms, this means 'corruption'.
Accountability also covers the people who wield this mega power over us. Whose decisions affect our daily lives in hundreds of ways. They take our tax money and decide how it is spent, but how accountable are they to we who fund this whole thing?
Herman Van Rompuy is President of the European Council. He was appointed on November 19th 2009 as the first such president at an 'informal' meeting of the council. There wasn't a vote. So even the people (MEPs) that we elect (but we don't really because no-one really gives a shit or knows who their MEP is) didn't get to vote on the issue. Let alone 'us' whose taxes pay for his office and the £130billion a year he spends in our name. He is effectively a glorified MEP voted in by a small, largely disinterested constituency in Belgium, who has some mates in the EU who rigged his election. Who we didn't vote for but who is effectively running Europe for us. How good of him.
He is paid £320,000 a year (2009 figures), has a staff of 60 plus 10 bodyguards, a travel budget of £4 million and an office budget of £22.3 million (same date figures). Breaking (sorry) I've just learnt that he's now paid £520,000 (2013). Now that's austerity for you.
Manuel Barosso is President of the European Commission. He's a former president of Portugal and was appointed without a Europe-wide vote, by his mates in the European People's Party. You can google him as easily as I can so I'm not going to reproduce wiki stuff here. Let's just say that he's a corrupt fuckwit and be done with it. He is paid £363,000 a year plus yada yada yada.
More than 99% of the European population didn't vote for either of these people and yet they're spending our money and passing laws that affect all of our lives....
*******
The EU spends £130million a year just transporting the whole circus between Strasbourg and Brussels so as not to upset the French. Apart from haulage contractors and moving companies, there is not a single benefit to taxpayers to be gained from this ridiculous and unnecessary process. £130 million is small beer of course in the overall scheme of things, but it is, I think, a good indicator of the sheer, bare-faced unaccountability, untouchability and arrogance of these people.
You can google 'wasteful EU projects' as well as I can (and there are some big ones) so I'm not going to dwell on this too much. £5.25 million on chauffeur-driven cars to take Eurocrats around Strasbourg in a single year is perhaps worth a mention.
So these unelected people are enjoying salaries and benefits including pensions that render the term 'solid gold' completely redundant. They are enjoying benefits that would make Solomon blush and yet they're presiding over unprecedented levels of poverty, hardship, unemployment and despair, particularly in southern Europe, to an extent that we have not seen for decades, possibly centuries.
And these Eurocrats will do anything to preserve their cushy (in the extreme) way of life. Including selling out their own citizens. They have been (and are) stealing money out of the very banks that their fellow countrymen have put their life-savings into, in Cyprus and Greece - and don't think that this will stop there. It's not widely reported for obvious reasons, but legislation is now in place for so-called 'bail-ins' in the UK - where personal money can be taken by the EU to bail out failing banks. That's your hard-earned money. And it can be taken out of your bank account to pay for their fuck-ups. Without your consent.
I have blogged, here, here and here about what I call economic blitzkrieg; an end to democracy in Europe and the threat that the EU poses to our way of life and our ability to have any influence whatsoever on the way we are governed. Rather than re-stating my arguments in this piece, maybe you might have a read sometime?
I have also blogged here about whether our exit of the EU would have the disastrous effect on UK jobs and prosperity that Messrs Heseltine, Clarke, Mandelson and Clegg have suggested. The fact is that it wouldn't and it would free us up to be the global trading giant that we can still be. The fact is that we are still (just) a player on the world stage, but we won't be if we are consumed into this EU fiasco. Mr Putin might say (his official at any rate) that we are a small country, but he (they) would not even dignify Greece or Portugal or Albania (potential new joiners - and when will we see any benefit from Albania joining?) with even that status.
We currently have a balance of payments deficit with the Eurozone of £46 billion. That means we buy more from them than they do from us to the tune of £46 billion a year. So will we lose trade or jobs if we exit the EU? I'd say it's doubtful in the extreme. They may be a couple of audits short of clean bill of financial health, but even the EU is not that stupid. If we go they would still need to trade with us or their current recession would be like a walk in the park by comparison. And, as I say in the blog (linked above) our membership of EFTA (the European Free Trade Association) would give us all the same trading rights and agreements that we have now, but without the ridiculous laws that are currently imposed upon us. (Although we are a founder member of EFTA we would have to re-join if we chose to leave the EU, but that would be a formality).
So what does the EU do for us? In the 32 years that it has been in operation and despite Maggie's rebates, we have never once secured more money back than we have paid in to this project. So it has been a one-way street of us paying for stuff but arguably not really getting any benefit from it. For 32 years. That's quite a long-term investment for no discernible return. Especially when 47% has been paid to subsidise French farmers. Brie is fairly cheap I suppose.
Examples of EU benefits? (This was originally a 'note to self' to put some EU benefits in here as a way of providing some balance - I don't just throw these things together despite what you might think ;) ). But the awkward thing is that I'm really struggling to find any. And I'm not joking nor being cynically obtuse here, I really am struggling. This is quite an interesting piece from 2011 on this very subject. And here is the pro-EU BBC's take on the same thing from May this year.
Apart from the frankly bogus claims about economics, business/employment and our trading status, even the BBC can only come up with a couple of things that it sees as 'benefits' in the area of 'employment laws and social protections'. When we already have long-established laws of or own covering these issues. £13 billion a year is a hell of a lot to pay for a slight reinforcing of these things (when our own arrangements have worked perfectly well hitherto).
The bottom line in all this is whether we're better off in the EU or not. And I will make the case on this basis. But I would strongly argue that this is not just about the UK. I am vehemently anti the EU but I'm also very strongly pro Europe. I love Europe. I am a proud European. I have worked and have friends in Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Holland, Belgium, Ireland. They are great places. They're not Germany (which I like and which has it's undoubted merits). They're not Brussels or Strasbourg.
They are real places with their own distinctive history, heritage, culture, food, music, ways of life. They are, broadly speaking, old countries, civilised and with a mature outlook and view of the world. They are wonderful places, rich in culture, history and lifestyle that we should be celebrating, protecting, enjoying and sharing, not trying to subsume them into some sort of homogeneous Germanic state.
They have been conned by the EU as have we. It was established as the 'Common Market' after the last unpleasantness (WW2) as a way of promoting free trade and better linkages across a local geographical area and, most importantly as a way of preserving nation states, protecting them from oppression from bigger more powerful countries and preventing the seemingly endless conflict that afflicted Europe for the first 45 years of the last Century.
But the bureaucrats enjoyed their power, their perks and so the Common Market became the European Economic Community - a closer relationship - and then the European Community (so more than just economics) and finally, latterly, the European Union. A United States of Europe. Be in no doubt that this was always the plan and a push for a single 'state' is the real objective. You may of course see this as a good thing. A single trading block that can rival the US and China as a major economic power in the world.
And that is the only thing that I can (grudgingly) see as a possible benefit of the EU. But it's an advantage for the strong not the weak members. It gives Germany major benefits but leaves Greece, Spain and Italy floundering. German companies are currently buying up businesses in southern Europe like it's going out of fashion. It's a take-over of Europe by Germany via its puppets in Brussels and this prospect of a stronger presence in the world rings very hollow in Spain, for example, where 50% of 18-24 year-olds are out of work. These struggling countries are tied to the Euro so they have no prospect of devaluing their currencies and becoming competitive on the global stage again. So they have no prospect of prosperity or success or opportunity because of the EU. Far from eliminating the prospect of conflict, this situation is resulting in real hardship, a growth in membership of extreme parties (of left and right) and an increased likelihood of civil unrest and renewed conflict. And one could hardly blame them, given the way that they have been sold out by the EU.
And do we need this global strength in the UK? We trade with the US and have a so-called 'special relationship'. (certainly when they need someone to cover their backs in another meaningless war); we have the Commonwealth - Australia, Canada, India, parts of Africa. And we would certainly not lose our ability to trade with Europe if we opted out of the EU - because that would be economic suicide for them.
All-in-all, I really cannot see why we would be better off being part of a single European state. I simply do not see how laws being made in Brussels which reflect issues in Albania or Greece or Spain will improve upon laws made democratically here in the UK. I don't see how moving the seat of government further away from the people it is supposed to represent will be a positive thing for us. How people who may never have heard of your village or town or city will be able to address the issues you daily face? How people who you cannot vote out of office will have any need to have your interests, views, values at heart?
So it will be up to you in the referendum. The EU currently spends more than Coca Cola on advertising in Europe, trying to influence you to have a positive view of it. If it was a clear force for good in Europe, why would it need to do this? Clarke, Heseltine, Clegg and Mandelson all have EU pensions and all have a vested interest in the UK remaining part of the corrupt EU. The question you need to ask yourself (punk - sorry couldn't resist) is whether you will be better off, whether the vast majority of our fellow European citizens are better off in the EU. In my view the answer is clearly 'non'.
The question is whether you are British first and happily a European second. Whether you want to be able to have some say in how you are governed or not. You might, of course, want to relinquish your rights and identity, your influence, control and freedoms to unelected people to whom you are paying £millions in Brussels and who don't give a flying shit about you as they sit sipping Krug on their yachts in the Med. On the other hand you may not. It really is up to you in this coming referendum.
Whatever you decide, it will be the biggest and most important thing you ever do on a ballot paper.
Thanks for reading.
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