Very Bad value
“That’s a non-argument, I’m afraid. ”
Not at all, its a start.
Allow people to opt out of funding the EU, NHS, Pensions, Unemployment, Child Benefit, “Free”Schooling for your children etc, each opt-out removing a %age of income tax ,right down to ZERO.
Just leave the proper functions of the State i.e. Law and Order and Defence on a Land value (%age) tax.
]]>On Sunday 29 May, the referendum is in France.
On Wednesday 1 June, the referendum is in The Netherlands.
I’ll try to do live blogging in the evenings (Central European time) of both days on the results; here.
If by any chance there is a ModBlog downtime during these evenings, the live blogging will be on my backup blog; here.
See more here.
]]>That’s a non-argument, I’m afraid.
]]>No thanks!
]]>Of course not. I always forget that flippancy never translates over the web. Ah well. Besides, technically I guess they’re not corrupt at all, because it’s all legal. Cue copy and paste from something I wrote about it recently:
“In 2002, the EU’s chief accountant, Marta Andreasen suggested that the EU’s budget – approximately €100 billion a year – was “completely vulnerable to fraud and errorâ€Â. How dare she! Her honesty was duly rewarded in the only way politics knows how – she was sacked.
“A big problem is that a lot of the amoral activities of the MEPs aren’t actually illegal. For example, they pay a special rate of income tax that is far lower than the European average; they can now make about £800 a week on their travel allowance – by claiming the most expensive notional fare before hopping on an easyJet; they can claim their £180 daily attendance allowance on days when they do no work; they can pocket a further £2,400 a month for “general expensesâ€Â, which remain completely unaudited and £10,000 a month for secretarial allowance, most of which ends up in the accounts of immediate family members. All tax-free, of course.
To their credit, an amendment to this situation was proposed and voted on last month. It’s subsequent rejection makes all the above officially clean and above board. If accountability were a disease, the EU would be a cure-all antidote.”
This isn’t meant to be a personal attack on Paul by any means, but for a lot of people only tangentially interested in EU affairs the only thing that they’ll hear about is the negative. Especially if their newspaper of choice is the Times, Telegraph, Mail, Express, Sun etc. etc.
I’d like to think I have slightly more than a tangential interest in EU affairs. I ‘studied’ the damn thing as part of my degree for a start. Admittedly, I ultimately don’t give a shit, but I do know about what goes on, good and bad.
My newspaper of choice is The Economist. Make of that what you will. I like to think it would suggest ‘free of party politics; for free-thinking and competence’, but I have as deep a distrust of people who base their views on what newspaper they read as I do of members of political parties, religious zealots and Arsenal fans.
Of course, being ‘for competence’ does make me pretty much congenitally opposed to the constitution as it stands.
]]>However this week, I shall be attending these events culled from a french website:
17/5/05, time tbd: Maison de l’Europe a Paris, 35 rue des Francs Bourgeois, 75004. The European Outlook after the British elections and before the French referendum. Speaker: one Richard Corbett MEP, apparently one of Blighty’s Constitution monkeys. For more info, email maison-europe@paris-europe.com
17/5/05, 6:30: IN the National Assembly Building!!! Salle Victor Hugo, meet a bunch of Socialists. Just go for the venue.
18/5/05, 8:30: in the Cirque d’Hiver in the 11th. Lots of PS top dogs. Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe, PS leader Francois Hollande, erstwhile EU Commission President Jacques Delors, and two people I’ve never heard of called Jack Lang and Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Sound British and German don’t they? UPDATE: both former ministers under Mitterand and possible 2007 socialist presidential candiates.
31/5/05, 6pm: Maison de l’Europe (address above) The consequences of the referendum to adopt the treaty for a European Constitution. Maybe dull and self-congratulatory. Could be bloody.
]]>This isn’t meant to be a personal attack on Paul by any means, but for a lot of people only tangentially interested in EU affairs the only thing that they’ll hear about is the negative. Especially if their newspaper of choice is the Times, Telegraph, Mail, Express, Sun etc. etc.
]]>