Cucumbers at Dawn

It’s all getting a bit nasty in the European Parliament these days. In fact, MEPs are getting so hot under the collar there will soon have to be weapons scanners on the entrance doors to the hemisphere with burly Belgian cops sweeping metal detectors up and down the trouser legs of infuriated MEPs.

Ok perhaps not, but Spanish MEP Francisco Sosa Wagner’s strong words about Cucumbergate were accompanied by a threatening wave of his mean green cucumber cudgel right in the middle of the chamber!

The EU has been caught in the crossfire between Spain and Germany over accusations that the recent deadly outbreak of E-coli all began with Spanish cucmbers. As a result thousands of farmers in Spain had to destroy millions of pounds worth of crop. The EU, as compensation, has proposed donating £134million in aid, yet the Spanish are threatening legal action unless Germany reimburses their loss 100 per cent. This is one cucumber sandwich that the British will not be having with their tea.

Meanwhile Europe are also getting tough on taxation. EU chiefs are demanding direct tax powers which could cost families up to £200 every year. That’s despite the cost of bailing out our neighbours costing the UK over £12.5 billion, far more than has been saved by savage government cuts.

Cuts which, incidentally, the European Commission approve. The fact that the European Commission has come out and demanded Westminster should stick with their “Plan A” for budget cuts and tax increases suggests that we probably are doing the wrong thing. What with protests in Madrid, Lisbon and Athens over EU and IMF enforced austerity measures, as well as three failed Eurozone economies and many more ailing governments in the single currency, the Commission seem increasingly out of touch with their people and decreasingly less likely to give a hoot anyway.

In fact over the next six months the European Commission are unrolling the “European Semester” where they will demand member state governments submit national budgets and reform programmes for EU approval. Jean Claude Trichet, the President of the European Central Bank, has described the new European Semester as the beginning of centralised fiscal policy.

We will watch and wait to see whether Osborne is happy to dance to the Brussels beat.

The one thing that is desperately missing from this dialogue is the fact that actually, Eurozone countries should be able to leave the common currency and return to independent fiscal governance. Currently the ECB in Germany controls interest rates across the Eurozone, to the detriment of weaker economies and in part responsible for the collapses in Ireland, Portugal and Greece. I put this forward to Barroso in the last President’s Question Time.

Notice how he fails to answer the question and instead talks about how the Euro was not responsible for the world recession (well duh? But really, it was a massive contributing factor to the so-called euro contagion) and that he is sure Greece wants to stay in the Euro. Frankly, they don’t really have much choice given how endebted they are now to the EU and IMF. No wonder Brussels is doing their utmost to make sure the next IMF President is a European, and, surprise surprise, from France.

I also challenged Parliament over a little and at first seemingly unobtrusive amendment to a directive on HGV charges that plans to add an EU carbon toll. It is basically the first indirect tax to be levied by the Commission. Although the UK does not partake in the Eurovignette scheme, the government has been discussing joining in 2015, yet before that the Commission reserves the right to make their little “experimental” carbon charge obligatory. We all know that such costs are never fronted by big business and always land in the consumer’s purse, but what is worse is the fact that taxation powers should be discussed and passed by unanimous vote at Council level with all 27 leaders of the member states agreeing to the proposals.

This matter however has been slipped through Parliament as it “only relates to transport” which is an EU competence under the provision of the Lisbon Treaty. A sneaky backdoor way to introduce an indirect tax, because frankly, the Commission know full well not all member states would agree to such a policy.

Sneaky sneaky Europe.

Last Post

For years now people have been campaigning about the closures of local post offices. But rarely in the protests have you heard criticism of the EU.

Yes, successive Governments have stripped support away from the psot office. They've failed to help Royal Mail modernise as more and more licensing applications are done online, benefits paid directly into the bank account and so forth. The post office needed revolutionising and it just didn't happen.

But the real threat to the Royal Mail was the EU Postal Services Directive, which ordered under competition law for the delivery of mail to be privatised. Without this, the Post Office was left with no choice but to rely on taxpayer's money to stay open, money which over the years has been withdrawn.



I presented this argument to the European Commission yesterday stating:

"When the EU ordered the postal sector open up to competition it destroyed a vital British service. As a sovereign nation our post offices were run by Royal Mail and linked with national savings, licensing, welfare and pension collection to name a few.

In 1975 we had 25,000 post offices, now there are less than 12,000, despite a population boom. After being forced to sell off its profit making arm, post offices couldn’t stay open without government support. Thousands shut, stripping communities of access to vital services.

The EU postal reform says good-quality postal services should be available throughout the Union. That is exactly what we had.

“It’s a disgrace to strip Britain of an efficient public service merely to satisfy Competition law. Do you wish to privatise the NHS too? The UK must be allowed to fully opt out.”

In 2008, our Government commissioned an independent review of the Postal Service. The Hooper report warned that a forced restructuring under European law would be highly likely. That same author today is advising Westminster that the only option left for Royal Mail now is to sell it off completely.

Government support for post offices was withdrawn, causing widespread closure of vital sub post offices isolating whole communities from access to necessary services.

It’s another example of erroneous EU law interfering with a perfectly suitable British model.

Successive Governments in Westminster have let down the postal service by failing to move with the times and account for technological developments. But what this has done is leave the door wide open for Brussels to march in and destroy Royal Mail and the postal service sector entirely.”

Today, Richard Hooper, who authored the report in December 2008, will recommend the Westminster Government that a sell-off is now the only way to raise the money to modernise the service, threatening huge job loss and massive service disruption.

Embracing modern technology through necessity

Apologies for a long period since posts. It's so unbelievably busy in UK politics, and trying to mix that with the Brussels agenda would mean needing 34 hours in a day!
It's been chaos and confusion with the ash cloud grounding flights and Parliament ballsing up this month's voting.



I've grilled Baroness Ashton over her views on the Falklands ahead of an EU summit with Latin America.



I've attacked the Commission over Common Asylum Policy.



And have opposed the transfer of millions of peoples personal and banking details from the EU to America.



And that's as well as radio, tv, election launch, magazines, papers and general political heave-ho.

So please excuse my absence, and rather than allow me to write an epic blog post of everything I have said or done, let the power of multi-platform media give you verbatim all of the week's action! Feel free to comment on what you see and hear

ICE WAR!

When the Arctic started to change shape, Russian explorers managed to navigate a submarine 4,200m below the North Pole where they planted their countries National Flag, reinforcing Moscow's claims to the Arctic. In an angry retort Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay told Canadian TV "This isn't the 15th Century. You can't go around the world and just plant flags and say "We're claiming this territory"."Why are people getting their knickers in a twist over the planets most inhospitable territory? Because buried just below is an estimated quarter of the planets oil and gas reserves.

Several countries with territories bordering the Arctic, including America, Russia, Canada and Denmark, who have sovereignty over Greenland - have launched competing claims to the region. And so in wades the EU.

Current UN laws place territorial waters 200 nautical miles beyond their land borders. The North Pole is currently not regarded as part of any single country's territory, although the Russians claim Geologically, the North Pole is an extension of the Russian Coastal shelf, and is therefore part of their territory. The US and Canada are locking horns over the North West Passage, Russia and Norway are caught in a tussle over the Barents Sea and Canada are also trying to see off Danish claims to a small island just off Greenland.

Denmark, an EU member state since the start of Britain's membership back in the seventies, is Europe's best claim to the territory alongside Iceland, who are looking to join the Union next year and will no doubt prove very popular if she manages to wield any power up North.
Recent talk has seen the five key competitors for a slice of the ice talk about carving up the region based upon geography and size. Although I can't see America or Russia looking to share. What does Europe want? Well the Commission has been very vocal in issues such as biodiversity and ecological protection, read here the EU's favourite guise for political blackmail. But just under the cover of Green Good Will lies the real reasons why the Arctic is so in demand, and why Europe are so keen to stop anybody barging in and taking what they want by warbling about melting ice caps and nature.

What I worry about is what this sort of posturing will do. Although nobody is coming out on the subject, there is a lot of side glancing, snooping and plain chauvenism when it comes to claming the pole. And we've seen many a time before in history where such posturing can lead.
It is for this reason I grilled Baroness Ashton, former Secretary for the CND during the Cold War, over whether her first hand experience of the Arms race has taught her nothing over this race for resources in the Ice War.

The point is, why are we even caught up ion all of this? Do we want to be part of a group sizing up to Russia and America over Arctic rights? Whether we do or not, the point is, again, that it is not you or I making that decision.

More ironic perhaps is the conjecture by the EU that Regional Fishing Rights have been extended to the Arctic while they stop and figure out what to do, meaning like a German laying his towel on the sunbed at daybreak, Brussels has already decided upon fish quotas for the area before being able to claim any rights.

The problem here is being part of a Union that has Foreign Affairs at all. Any action taken by the EU would only undermine NATO and the UN, two global organisations who are supposed to be the circus ringmasters when it comes to these kind of knotty disputes. Surely any interest from Brussels would only aggravate relations with America, whose new President seems to have forgotten International tact and historical allegiances in his recent neutrality over the Falklands, and would surely send the wrong sort of message to our biggest not-so-friendly neighbour Russia. Lord knows what sort of affect Moscow's old satellite states queuing up to join the EU gravy train is having on the aging superpower anyway. But if they start heckling her over territory she believes is rightfully hers, then you've read it here first: I predict a riot.

Hold on to your hats boys and girls because we have an unelected soviet sympathiser, guided by a Dane, heading up an External Action Service coordinating foreign policy that nobody wants on behalf of 27 nonethewiser European countries, looking hungrily at that big floating fridge on top of the world.