We live in a scary world.
As I write Muslims across France are preparing for a twelfth night of insurgency; a cruise liner has been attacked off of the coast of the most unstable country in the world, Somalia; Venezuela is being dragged towards oppressive socialism; suicide bombings by non-Iraqis are continuing in Iraq; a terrorist attack killed 50+ in India, but went largely unreported; Arafat’s replacement doesn’t seem to have brought about the instant peace that many hoped for; global warming is damaging the environment…
Cox and Forkum have an excellent (as usual) cartoon on Venezuela:
But amid all this turmoil there’s always room for good news. The EU is haemorrhaging support across the continent in reaction to the continual bad press it receives on ’standardisation’ (a synonym for imposition) and its lack of democracy. And, best of all, the UK is the country with the lowest support for the EU!
Interestingly though, support hasn’t even been maintained in the May 2004 accession countries that held referenda on joining. Malta, for example, had 56% support for the EU when it joined and this has slumped to 38% in the latest poll.
And then, while looking into this, I found more than was scary. Democracy is the thing that makes citizens in Western countries happy to be treated with slightly less than respect by our governments. We know, whatever they do, we can remove them from power in elections.
That is why the EU and UK’s treatment of England is so unacceptable. The following picture shows the UK with four stars (that can be clicked on the EU’s website). These stars represent each of the three countries of the UK and London. Hang on… aren’t there four countries?
The EU does not consider the UK to be comprised of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland… England doesn’t exist in a civic sense… Little did the people of London realise, when they agreed to an elected Mayor, that they were agreeing to the part-regionalisation of England - maybe they wouldn’t have minded. But the people of the North East certainly did, and so would we if we were asked. Devolution should have created a federal-like system of four countries with Assemblies / Parliaments. Instead it created an unequal concatenation of one country with a Parliament (with many powers), three Assemblies (London, Wales and Northern Ireland with slightly smaller powers) leaving England at the mercy of Scottish, Welsh and Ulster MPs.
Fighting this inequity is the Campaign for an English Parliament.
November 8th, 2005 at 5:07 am
Drawing from Indian experience of dealing with Islamic fundamentalists I can tell you that any lack of firmness in dealing with the rioters will only encourage them to take their worthless agitation to the next level. I won’t be surprised if the riots were to ultimately pave way for a extreme right government like that of Le Penn. There is no Margaret Thatcher on the scene to takeover.
Islam has become a threat to ever nation that hosts large amounts of Muslim population precisely because many amongst the Muslims are not patriotic to their native lands, rather they are patriotic to Mecca and Medina. This makes them susceptible to ideology from the Middle East.
November 9th, 2005 at 5:07 am
The question is why are these people from third world being forced to immigrate to Europe (and I am a citizen of third world). It is because of the cultural hypocrisy that Europe has imposed on Africa. The leftist ideology, the Global Warming ideology, are the brainchild of Europeans. These ideologies have all but stopped industrial development in Africa. Leaving Africans no choice but to emigrate. The French are the most leftist and the most Green fundamentalist nation in Europe. For decades they have been pouring their ideological BS in Africa thus making industrialization impossible in nations like Algeria, Ivory Coast and others. Now their faulty ideology is coming back to haunt them in the form of rioting immigrants.