Great Britain?

Britain drifts further into debt with each passing day the cost of our membership of the European union is astronomical, estimates put it at about a thousand pound per head of our population.

Hard figures  of the true cost of the EU are difficult to come by. MPs have called many times for a cost-benefit analysis, to prove or disprove the benefits of membership. Successive Governments, both Labour and Conservative, have refused, on the grounds that the "benefits" are self-evident. In truth they are afraid of what such a study would show. The Bruges Group have  produced an authoritative study.

£28 billion for business to comply with EU regulations,

£17 billion of additional food costs resulting from the Common Agricultural Policy

£3.3 billion - the value of the catch lost when the Common Fisheries Policy let other countries fish in our territorial waters

£14.6 billion gross paid into the EU budget and other EU funds.

That is about £65 billion, its a mind boggling amount, even allowing for our rebate which they want to stop, what we could do with that money rather than hand it over to a faceless entity that quite frankly we would be better of without.

Used better, this sum could transform the UK - increase pensions, recruit more doctors, nurses, teachers and police, build advanced transport systems and start paying off the national debt.

The total budget for EU 'administration' alone is £34 billion. The European Commission claims on its website to employ 25,000 staff. The true figure, according to an Open Europe study in August 2008, is 170,000.  Nearly 10,000 of these receive over £54,000 pa - over twice as many as in the whole of Whitehall.

Britain's new EU Commissioner,  will get £750,000 for just one year's service - including £200,000 in salary, £250,000 in "transitional payments" on leaving the post, and a raft of perks. He/She will also get an annual pension of £8,000 pa for one years service - twice what a UK pensioner gets for a lifetime of work.

Will we ever produce a leader or a party with the sense and courage to take us out of this “club” We are not and there is no need for us to be wholly dependent on Europe for trade, we have the rest of the World to deal with, were we  to be blacklisted by the remaining members for  pulling out.

Other benefits would include the pulling out of the human rights bill in its entirety and the return of English laws, Laws that have sustained our Country for hundreds of years Laws passed by elected officials elected by us the British people. finally to curb immigration, give our Judges back the powers to send criminals to prison for lengths of sentence that will make them think twice about committing crime, allow us reclaim the streets from the thugs and drunks that currently own them.

Fanciful if not wishful thinking you may say but why cant these things come about, is it to late for Britain, can we only slide further into  the abyss, I say its not to late there is just about time for a u-turn, its up to us find this leader and back him and make Britain Great again.

Great Britain has a ring to it.

Great Britain. lets make it so again.

DurdensView Tags: Europe, Commision.Human rights, crime, judges, Great Britain

More EU Madness

Here we go again, it is going to appear that I am obsessed with the EU, but I can assure you its not obsession but concern, the latest nonsense this time from the court of European Justice is that employees have the right to ask for statutory leave to be “reallocated” when it is spoilt by sickness. Under the terms of the judgment, employees will be allowed to carry any annual leave marred by illness over into the next holiday year.

Which really gives the green light for all sorts of scams by workers, watch the claims come in by the millions, this in effect handing every worked a couple of weeks extra holiday a year with full pay. I know that their are going to be some genuine cases where someone takes a week of work  then catch’s  a cold or something and spend the week in bed, and only recover in time to return to work, but this is now going to be the norm for lots of people and how can an employer protest when the worker has the EU behind it, as usual our Government timidly go along.

The ruling, made over a case in Spain, is in effect a new interpretation of the European Working Time Directive, which applies in Britain across the entire private and public sector. The Judgement came in a case heard at the EU court, in Luxembourg, regarding Francisco Pereda, who works for Madrid city council. Mr Pereda had been scheduled to take a month’s annual leave in the summer of 2007. He was injured shortly before the annual leave was to start and was refused a request to move his holiday by his employer. Judges decided that the employee should have been allowed to take his holiday at another date — and if necessary that it could be carried forward to the next holiday year.

Though that applied to somebody who had booked a holiday then became ill prior to it happening the same rules would apply if you became ill while on holiday.

This cannot be a good thing, long term effects will on our pockets as industry tries to recoup the money it will cost with inevitable price rises.

DurdensView Tags: EU, Working Directive

Europe, A Powder Keg

Race riots in Italy threaten to get out of control, in the Midlands we have had consecutive weeks of  demonstrations in Luton and Bedford, by BNP supporters on one side, and anti Fascist’s on the other culminating in violence on our streets, 12 months ago in Roquetas del Mar in Spain riots erupted there after the death of an African immigrant.

I could go on with examples but you get the pattern Europe  is beginning to become a cauldron of resentment and hate, since the EU was founded and borders opened, migration has exploded, sadly a proportion of people moving from Country to Country are not the model citizens you would want, but rather the low life's and criminals that have no future in their own places of birth, so they are transporting their misery to others.

The freedom to just move from Country to Country was always going to be exploited, and even the most liberal and welcoming Nation would start to feel resentment as the “foreigners” came in and started to take their jobs by working for less pay, in this Country our builders have felt the brunt of it as cheap labour has all but forced the British Labourer out of the market, never mind that quality of the imported labour is not as good.

The European Union of today is the result of a process that began half a century ago with the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community. Those two industries then still provided the industrial muscle for military power, France and Germany formed the union really as a means to make sure war could never happen between the two Countries.

The other four founder states (Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands), also saw the new Community as a means to ensure peace by binding Germany within strong European institutions. For the most part they too, like the Germans, saw the Community as a stage in the development of a federal polity and have largely continued to do so.

If the union had stayed as that, “Just a business arrangement” with peace thrown in as a perk it would have been a fantastic creation, but we have unelected faceless people in Brussels with this desire to mix the whole of Europe so much that no Country has an identity left, and this is where  the problems start,we are all basically to different, its fine to visit each other for a couple of weeks a year, and broaden each others horizons, but to live with each other peacefully you need to embrace each other culturally..

To go live in a Country and not embrace their way of life , to settle in a community then shut yourself of and stay with your own kind, to criticise your hosts way of life, and then to try to make them adapt to yours, to encroach on each others houses and job’s, burden each others  health services, take advantage of  other more generous benefits systems, these are the causes of the unrest across Europe.

Sadly I don’t know what the answer is the EU is to big a beast to control it’s rules and laws are like a juggernaut running downhill with nobody at the wheel, but what I can tell you is that when it does hit the wall at the bottom and it surely will the resulting bang will be heard all over Europe.

DurdensView Tags: Race Riots, Brussels, Italy, Germany, EU

Lisbon Treaty

The Irish have voted yes to the Lisbon treaty at the second attempt if they had voted no another referendum would be held in a year or so  and and every year until the Irish had caved in.

The treaty is supposed to streamline decision making within the EU but in reality its the old school network looking after each other, it needed all 27 member states to agree before it could be made binding. the Czechs and Poles had held out but it looks likely now that they to will sign up to,  the Czechs could yet throw a spanner in the works by waiting until we have our general election. if that were to happen The Conservatives have promised the British public a referendum on the Treaty, this Country would vote a resounding no thus scuppering the ratification. So expect lots of pressure to be bought on the Czech Premier to sign before our election is held in May.

We in this Country already suffer enough being a part of Europe and their ridiculous rule making, the last thing Britain needs is to give more power away.

If you are unsure what the Treaty is go to this link for a understanding of what it is about, http://europa.eu/lisbon_treaty/glance/index_en.htm

DurdensView Tags: Irish, Lisbon Treaty

Turkish Smokers Punished

From today Turkey falls into line with the EU and extends its ban on smoking to bars and restaurants , previously it had applied to offices, public transport and shopping malls. predictably bar owners are up in arms because of anticipated loss of revenue, and they are right to be so, Turkey  is known as a smoking nation with a high percentage of smokers, other Country’s that have put the ban in place have seen business’s fold because of the ban notably in England where even now pubs are closing at a rate of up to 5 a day.  Turkey hope to join the European union and would need to sign up to the smoking ban then anyway, but I fear a more sinister reason, Prime Minister Recip Erdogan a pious Muslim does not smoke and discourages smoking around him, none of his Ministers smoke, he even goes as far as taking cigarettes of staff and making them promise to stop, this new legislation dovetails nicely with Islam’s distaste for drinking and smoking and  its feared this is his way of punishing establishments that serve alcohol.  An army of 4500 snoopers have been employed to enforce the ban in a country that is the fourth largest tobacco producer in the world, where 22 million people including half the adult population smoke.

EU Arrest Warrants

Deborah Dark from Richmond in West London is on the run from the French Judicial system, there is a Europe wide arrest warrant out for her. the 45 year old grandmother is the victim of Europe’s fast track extradition system. Her problems started when she went to Spain to visit her sick father.

On her way home she was arrested at French customs when cannabis was found hidden in her hire car. she was tried and acquitted after 8 months on remand. The alleged crime took place in 1988 when she was 24 years old, Deborah was stopped while driving a hire car home from a holiday in Spain with her 8 year old daughter, customs found cannabis hidden in the car.

Miss Dark claimed at the time that a boyfriend had asked her to hire the car in her name as he had no licence, and she knew nothing of the drugs, the court believed her and she was acquitted. She ended her association with the boyfriend and returned home.  The prosecution appealed her case 2 years later and she was sentenced to 6 years jail in her absence. Neither Miss Dark or her lawyer were made aware of this.

Twenty years later on a holiday to Turkey she was arrested at gunpoint, detained strip searched and handcuffed, only after Interpol conceded there was nothing on their database was she released, only to be arrested again a year later this time in Spain, who after investigation refused to extradite her to France. The warrant is still active. Our own legal system also refuse’s to extradite her.

What a nonsense of a system where  a trial could take place without the defendant or any legal sort of legal representation attending, then once this shambles produced a verdict how could the “guilty” party not be sought out and informed. another example of European law that falls on its face in practise. Our own laws have served us well enough for hundreds of years, the sooner we revert back to them the better.