EU politics: chipping away at the symbols
Tuesday 6 August 2013
 Acknowledging that "Britain's long-running political civil war over Europe is as much about symbols as it is about substance", it seems that Mr Cameron is going to ditch the substance and go for "style". He is looking for one or two symbolic trophies he can claim in a renegotiation before he asks Britons to support continued membership in a referendum promised for 2017. One of those, he would have it, is the commitment to "Ever closer union", which has "long been a red rag to John Bull, the patriotic cartoon Englishman draped in a Union Jack flag who feels his country signed up to a common market in 1973 but has become entangled in ever more intrusive European governance". "We understand and respect the right of others to maintain their commitment to this goal. But for Britain - and perhaps for others - it is not the objective," Cameron said in January. And now, his "aides" are hoping to airbrush out the offending phrase or make clear it applies only to those, notably in the euro area, who want to pursue deeper integration. Another symbol in London's sights is the concept of "European citizenship", established by the 1992 Maastricht Treaty. To British sovereignists (and Foreign Office lawyers), says Reuters, Europeans are citizens of their nation state, not of the EU. But the focus is going to be on the burgundy-coloured passports that Britons, like other EU nationals, have to carry, with the words European Union embossed on the cover above the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the royal coat of arms. Thus, a return to the traditional black British passport without the offending EU moniker could be another symbolic win for Cameron. Sadly, these tactics may work for some. Few enough people have any real idea how their own governments work, much less the EU and the higher echelons of world governance. They will be impressed by the showmanship. Whether it will be enough to win Cameron the general election is moot – although with Ed Miliband so obligingly proving to be so useless, Mr Cameron could well get away with this sleight of hand. For the rest of us, though, it does indicate that he has no intention whatsoever of dealing with the real substance of the EU. But then we knew that already. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 06/08/2013 |
Local taxation: a question of context
Tuesday 6 August 2013
 And by the same means, according to the Daily Mail does DEFRA determine that people would be willing to pay £3.95 a month for each person in a home for improved litter clearance. That "only" amounts to £189.60 a year for a family of four says the siren voice, neglecting to say that it would also cost the same for a family of two, given the basis on which Council Tax is levied. But then, by incremental means, DEFRA has deduced that the mythical "four-person household" would be willing to pay more than £900 for noticeable improvements in ten aspects of their local environment – a rise of almost 90 per cent on the average English council tax bill of £1,045. And there the whole edifice comes tumbling down. Clearly, people would not be prepared to accept a 90 percent increase in Council Tax. All such surveys manage to do is demonstrate how easily it is to rig such surveys. Clearly, when asking people such questions, context is everything. First, go to someone and tell then that that their council CEO gets paid over £250,000 a tear including bonuses and pensions, and that the filth on the management team collectively takes home £10 million a year. Then ask said person if they would be prepared to pay a 90 percent increase in Council Tax for having the streets cleaned and other services carried out that they thought they were paying for already. You guessed it! From such a survey – based on a properly structured sample – you would be lucky to get ten percent agree to the proposition (there will always be some. It is exactly the same with water. Tell people that they are getting water and sewerage for just £1 a day, and most people will agree it is good value. Tell the same people that they are paying twice what they need to for an inferior service, just to make some rich foreign equity investors even richer, and you will get a different response. Unfortunately, in respect of the latter, we don't get a choice – which is why we do not really live in a democracy. But then, that really is up to us. If we keep taking this sort of garbage served up to us by our masters, without active protest, then we deserve what we get. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 06/08/2013 |
Portugal: creating the withdrawal clause
Tuesday 6 August 2013
 I took loads of photographs but owing to a small disaster last week when I lost my camera, it was on new equipment that Mrs EU Referendum had to rush out and buy. The new camera has a larger SD card and, to my horror, I find my computer will not read it, so I cannot upload my pics from here. It will have to wait until I get back. Thus you have a stock picture from the Monastery, and what is also missing is the pic of the plaque set in the pavement in the street outside, with the names and facsimile signatures of all the signatories on that fateful 13 December 2007. But at least we had the joy of walking all over Gordon Brown. It seems an awful lot of bother going all the way to Lisbon just to talk to camera about Article 50, but Peter Troy felt that our director, former BBC journalist Tony Baker, needed some really powerful images to help bring the subject alive. Talking heads on their own won't cut it. It wouldn't matter so much if so many people hadn't made such a fuss about this new exit provision, with even people like Tim Congdon taking his bat home. It is a pity that those people who have been so opposed to this Article have not taken the time to explore its origin, and in particular the Europoean Convention where in April 2003 the debate on a withdrawal provision was launched. Many of the objections that are brought up now were rehearsed then. But, from reading around the subject, and from a knowledge of the wishes of the father of the European Union Treaty, Alterio Spinelli, it is very clear that the EU needed a withdrawal clause as much as we wanted one. Spinelli was adamant that the EU could not seen as a "prison of nations", and had to have an exit provision just to show that all its members were there voluntarily, and remained in the Union willingly. In effect, in the eyes of its advocates, the EU needs an exit clause to confer legitimacy on the Union. One of the best defences of the withdrawal clause during the European Convention came from Mr Henrik Hololei, representing the Government of Estonia. I know the possibility for voluntary withdrawal from the Union sounds like a sacrilege to some of you, he observed. And, "as all of you, I hope that this clause will never be used", he added, then going on to say: But it is important to have an option like this in the Treaty. And not only because such clause formally existed even in the Soviet Union and Yugoslav constitutions and I do not want to answer to my people when they ask if SU and Yugoslavia were more democratic in paper than EU? Having not this article in makes it difficult to defend the new Constitutional Treaty in my country.And so it is that, nearly seven years after Mr Brown signed the treaty that brought the withdrawal clause into being as Article 50, we are just around the corner from the venue, preparing to defend it anew. Never in my widest imagination did I ever think I would be doing this, or that it would ever be so necessary. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 06/08/2013 |
EU Referendum: the charade continues
Monday 5 August 2013
 Now, to continue with the pretence, the Financial Times is bigging up the expected appointment of Ivan Rogers, David Cameron's adviser on European and global issues, as ambassador to the EU. A former Treasury official and City banker, "he has emerged as the favourite to take on one of the toughest jobs in British diplomacy: renegotiating Britain’s relationship with the rest of the EU ahead of a proposed referendum", says the FT. This post is "laden with political sensitivity", the paper intones, as it tells us that Mr Rogers is credited with fostering improved relations between London and Berlin. And this, we are also told, is "a factor that could prove crucial in Mr Cameron’s attempt to extract a better deal from the EU ahead of an in-out referendum planned for 2017". However, if it is not this piece of news you are feasting your eyes upon, then an alternative on offer is the appointment of a new Dr Who. Of the two bits of news, there need be no guesses as to which is deemed as more important by the majority of the media claque. Moi, I'm off to rainy Manchester and thence to Lisbon for the final session of filming for the "Norway Option". I'll write again when I get there – Lisbon, that is. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 05/08/2013 |
Tuesday, 6 August 2013
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