Britannia Radio

ACTION STATIONS - new topics

6.  The Cost of EU Membership
Commissioner:  Jose Manuel Barroso
President, European Commission
European Commission
BE-1049 Brussels, Belgium
jose-manuel.barroso@ec.europa.eu

The UKâ?Ts membership of the EU costs every person in Britain about £1500 a year â?" some 2000 times more than the British monarchy. The European Commission has freely admitted to losing some five million pounds a day of my money and that of other taxpayers.

Worse, the Bruges Group now estimates British membership of the EU is holding back our GDP by at least £28 billion a year, which, under current conditions, would transform the UKâ?Ts economy.
You have recently started rumours that the British government â?" which probably means the discredited Peter Mandelson â?" is revisiting the possibility of the UK joining the eurozone, despite our having a public debt level far beyond the 3% of GDP required by the Maastricht criteria.  British public debt is now some 276% of GDP when all liabilities included correctly.

Despite the crass fiscal stupidity of the British government in pouring billions into the British economy out of thin air, let me tell you that Britain will never join the euro. We may be enduring the consequences of yet another economically illiterate socialist government. But any attempt to use their current incompetence to shoehorn the UK into the eurozone via some sort of rescue package will be comprehensively crushed by the British people.
There is not a shred of evidence that the UK would benefit.  Quite the reverse. And we all know membership of the creaking eurozone will only take us nearer the longer term risk of our losing control of our taxes.

The UK is essentially a global trading nation with close and substantial trade ties with the British Commonwealth, the USA and the rest of the anglo-saxon world, and with the Far East. Most other EU countries trade amongst themselves, and always have. We do not belong in your club, and never have.

Meanwhile, the current global financial crisis is likely to damage all our lives and prospects, and be the ruination of many people and businesses.
The European Central Bank appears to be out of its depth and may be unable to hold the eurozone together.  Despite all the public squabbling between Angela Merkel and Gordon Brown we still have no idea what the ECB plans to do to address effectively the most severe recession in the countries of the eurozone for more than three decades. At best it is tinkering around the edges offering an injection of 1.5% of GDP.
Meanwhile, the eurozone financial system languishes in intensive care with little prospect of effective restorative medicine in the foreseeable future. Business confidence is plunging, and unemployment is rising so fast it can be said to be out of control.

Only the fall in inflationary pressures offers any real mitigation. But even that will prove to be a hostage to fortune as the injection of new money far beyond the growth of wealth stores up huge inflationary pressures for the future.

Like many other forced federations in the past, the EU may eventually implode. Finance could well be the trigger.  Consider what has happened over the last five decades. The Central African Federation, the United Arab Republic of Egypt and Syria, the Federation of Malaysia and Indonesia, the West Indian Federation and the Soviet Union have all gone. Belgium is now going the same way. It is inevitable the EU will follow.

Which brings me to a simple direct question. What, exactly, can the British nation not do or achieve as a member of your club that it could not achieve or do as a sovereign independent nation acting in its own best interests, and as an enlightened member of the international community?

7.  Support for the Czech Republic
President Vaclav Klaus
Prague Castle
Prague
Czech Republic

Your country takes over the presidency of the European Council on 1 January, and has been put under intolerable and intolerant pressure to keep the European â?oprojectâ? going, as the federalists wish. You and your elected parliament have been successively insulted by delegations of MEPs representing the Constitutional Affairs Committee and the presidents of the various political groups in the European Parliament.

You have distinguished yourself from them by proclaiming the essential sovereignty of your country, and you are probably the first national leader since Mrs Thatcher to do so. I write to offer support and encouragement to you and your government to stand your ground throughout the next six months.  You should know that you will have the wholehearted support of millions of British people in turning back the tide of federalism that threatens to overwhelm us.

You may not agree that we Brits should leave continental Europeans to their project, if that is what they want.  But we have experienced more than 35 years of the EU. We did not encounter the horrors of the Soviet Union as you did, so our positions are inevitably coloured by these differences.

Meanwhile we share your concerns and support your efforts over the next six months.

8.  Metrication Muddle Goes on the UK
Commissioner: Vice President Günter Verheugen
Commissioner for Enterprise and Industry
European Commission
BE-1049 Brussels, Belgium
Guenter.Verheugen@ec.europa.eu

Despite your renewed claims that metrication is not to be forced on unwilling and rebellious British traders and the public, your directives on metrication are still causing unwanted and preposterous trouble.

Recently, James Cookson, a farmer in Northumberland, has been threatened by local trading standards officers with prosecution for leaving vegetables at the roadside, for people to take and pay for by leaving money in an honesty box.

He does not label these items in imperial units.  Neither does he do so in metric.

Yet local trading standards officers consider this a breach of your directive since metric units are not displayed, nor using for pricing â?" despite the facts that there are none.

Perhaps you might consider how the lack of clarity over the meaning and enforcement of your metrication directive has damaged the EU in the eyes of millions of Britons, and how it continues to do so.

Maybe I should encourage you to carry on with such nonsense, as a means of hastening the day the UK leaves the EU and takes its £1.5 million/hour with us.

9.  Unlawful Extraditions Between EU Countries
Commissioner: Vice President Jacques Barrot
Justice, Freedom and Security
European Commission
BE-1049 Brussels, Belgium
Jacques.Barrot@ec.europa.eu

Can you please explain how the EU can claim any legitimacy as a government when it enforces so-called â?~lawâ?T to extradite a national from one sovereign state to another without the need to provide solid evidence to a judge who must also hear the defence.

And why does the EU further undermine centuries of British protection against the powers of the state by making â?~lawfulâ?T, in Euro-speak at least, extradition of nationals to face trial for alleged â?~crimesâ?T which are not even crimes in the country of origin of the accused?

What, exactly, is the difference between such totalitarian behaviour by a regime that claims to be a lawful authority and the totalitarian regime in the Soviet Union?

10.  European Citizensâ?T Consultations Are A Waste of Public Money
Commissioner: Vice-President Margot Wallström
Institutional Relations and Communication Strategy
European Commission
BE-1049 Brussels, Belgium
Margot.Wallström@ec.europa.eu

Why are you so afraid of the sceptical British view of the EU?

Why is it necessary to set up a series of meetings in the UK, paid for my British taxpayers, to persuade them that EU membership is â?~a good thingâ?T?  I refer to the meetings of the European Citizens Consultations arranged for 20/21 March 2009 in London.

Equally, why was it necessary for the European Policy Centre â?" another of your shadow institutions â?" to call a meeting in early December 2008 to discuss campaigning against campaigners against the EU?  A more Kafkaesque proposition is difficult to imagine!

They wanted to know who anti-EU campaigners are and where they are.  They even asked themselves the eccentric question: why should such people exist?  It does not take vast quantities of my tax money to find out.

The answers are incredibly simple.  In fact they are so clear and obvious that your expensive and high-powered bureaucrats cannot cope with them.  Instead they have to seek more complex answers hidden in the far corners of our minds.
They ask themselves why sceptics are being heard â?oeven in mainstream political partiesâ? and among key opinion-formers.  They complain that â?onew political actors with an EU-sceptical agenda have considerable resources at their disposalâ?.  They wonder why the downward trend in the publicâ?Ts perception of - and support for - the European project means that governments are confronted with growing disenchantment with their EU activities.

So here is a suggestion.  Ask yourself why the British are consistently at the bottom of opinion polls measuring support for the EU.
Rather than waste time on meetings to discuss the blindingly obvious, would it not be infinitely more effective to abolish the thousands of pages of regulations and directives which have so badly damaged the British way of life, and caused immeasurable harm to tens of thousands of workers, small businesses and private individuals?