You have to smile ... - by Richard... Tuesday, October 06, 2009

You have to smile ... - by Richard... Tuesday, October 06, 2009

eureferendum.blogspot.com

If you're in a hole, keep digging!

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He can't be that stupid - by Richard...

Ken Clarke has told the Conservative Party conference that he will introduce a nightclub-style "one in, one out" policy on new rules on business, vowing that a Tory government would introduce no new regulation without getting rid of an old law.

"We will introduce a system of regulatory budgets across government, that means no new red tape will be introduced without a compensating cut in the costs and burden somewhere else," he says, promising to serve as a "bouncer" to prevent red tape from reaching the statute book.

Now, this may be the man who had not read the Maastricht treaty, but he is no fool. He cannot, just cannot be unaware of the torrent of law coming onto the statue book from the EU – much of it in the form of EU Regulations, which have "direct effect" coming nowhere near parliament.

If he not so stupid as to realise that there is nothing he or a Tory government can do about this EU law – without, of course, pulling out - then he obviously must think we are so stupid that we do not realise he is talking utter tosh. The idea of "one in, one out" is utterly preposterous.

But he is also suggesting that the public would also be able to nominate unpopular laws for parliament to debate. And if they are EU laws? What then? When are the Conservatives going to stop rushing out these meaningless gimicks, treating us like idiots, and get down to some serious business?

COMMENT THREAD

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Dannatt under fire - by Richard...

From a fellow officer. And about time too. The saintly Dannatt is getting rather too full of himself.

COMMENT THREAD

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Letters in the Daily Telegraph - by Helen...

Today's Daily Telegraph has its usual crop of variable letters on the subject of the Conservative Party and that referendum that is disappearing into the far horizon. Most of them are variations on the same old themes; the one that gets to the core of the matter is by Lord Willoughby de Broke, the other UKIP peer (who is not standing for the leadership).

SIR – Charles Moore (Comment, October 3) says that he does not support Ukip because "only the big, old parties contain the DNA to govern".

Whichever party forms the next government here will not "govern". Most of our national law is now made in Brussels, where Britain has 8 per cent of the vote.

Do we want to go on being governed by the unelected and unsackable Brussels bureaucracy with its endless flood of suffocating law? Do we want to go on seeing a largely discredited Parliament acting simply as a rubber stamp for EU legislation?

Our parliamentary democracy worked when our elected representatives made our laws. The only way now to restore that democracy is to give the people of Britain the power of binding local and national referendums, as in Switzerland.

I have introduced a Bill in the Lords to give them that power. I look forward to the howls of protest from "the big, old parties".

Lord Willoughby de Broke

We are all looking forward to those entirely predictable howls of protest from "the big, old parties" and from all soi-disant experts on the British Constitution.