Two petitions I signed on the Number 10 website were responded to today. The responses can be found here:
The respective websites for the campaigns are these:
Malta is too small to show on the map of Europe that appears on Euro coins…
But the EU isn’t too concerned about such things and is exaggerating it’s size. A great result for our friends in the beautiful island of Malta! Of course this will only appear on new coins and so it will first appear on Slovenian Euro coins.
I started this reply on Robert Jackman’s blog and realised it was turning into a long rant. So here it is instead:
You see Enoch Powell’s speech wasn’t wrong in sentiment, it was just that is was racist. His warning about multiculturalism has been shown to be right and will be shown that way more in the future. In Channel 4’s poll 41% (Update: thanks Stop Whining it’s actually 33%) of Muslims want Sharia law here in the UK — that’s not hysteria, that’s a fact. If that proportion doesn’t grow with the world’s increasingly extreme religious groups (Christians and Muslims mostly) then we will still have a very large number of Muslims in this country who believe in Sharia law by 2050.
That’s not scare-mongering.
But the environmental thing is.
You said “Climate change could tear the very fabric of our everyday lives to shreds”
I have yet to read anything that shows me how this can be done. In El Nino the net effect to the US agricultural sector was an increase in yield. The US produces 25% of the world’s food. If global warming turns out to happen as per the approximations then we will have slightly more food. A dire warning indeed.
If sea levels start to rise (they haven’t yet — check) then we may have trouble on the coasts, but that will be minor trouble. It won’t be the loss of the south of England or the islands off Scotland. It may be, at worst, that we need more defences along the East Anglian coast.
Environmentalism is a great way for the left-wing parties (Lib Dems, Labour and the Tories (oops)) to tax us more. We needn’t pay these taxes, they say, because they are only be used as a disincentive to non-green activities. But what of people who must fly, or want to, God forbid, go on holiday? Should these people sacrifice a good life because some scientists have made some wild predictions that haven’t come true and so have made some more? No. Actually what we should be doing is saying to ourselves: Oil dependence is causing wars, damaging the ability of third world countries to progress and is silly as it is a finite resource — let’s do some research into alternatives.
Taxing petrol has not reduced car use — it’s just damaged the economic effectiveness of those people who would rather not stand on a wet and rainy street corner waiting for a bus full of damp people sneezing or worse. Taxing aeroplanes and other, apparently non-green activities will not change behaviour. Tax is not a behavioural management tool — it is a revenue device.
How many people, for example, have given up smoking because of the cost? People pay such high tax not because they are keen to top up the coffers but because the government has decided it wants people not to do something. How liberal is that?
William Hague did say that there was a danger from the Euro and do you know, I don’t think the Italians or Germans would disagree now. One exchange rate across Europe — has that been tried? (Yes) Did it fail? (Yes) Should we try it again? (Er, no).
And Michael Howard did not turn “tabloid paranoia over immigration into a political weapon” — he made policy that is much in keeping with what the majority of people want. Immigration is not a bad thing in and of itself, but the amount of immigration we have had recently has been too much to allow sensible assimilation or cultural attitudes.
The Conservatives may have a historical reputation for “whipping up hysteria” but that is only because socialists make such a hash of running the country. It is not hysterical, for example, to suggest that the mismanagement of the NHS since 1992 (sorry Mr Major) has caused it to come nearly to its knees in England.
And the thing I wish most was that the Conservative Party was the one saying the things I have said above. Increasingly they are not and it is UKIP which is taking the libertarian and economic issues as their own.
But Mr Jackman, I like your writing so onto the blogroll you do go…
Comments are here for this post
As probably many other Councillors have, I today received a manifesto from The New Party.
The UK has a major problem with new political parties. Inertia amongst the membership of the other parties (and those who are not members of a party) means that new parties must have some major backing to make any headway at all. UKIP is the only recent new party to have gained any sort of significant political power and the last party to start and gain power from the incumbent two is the Labour Party.
So it is interesting that The New Party is offering free membership; it is interesting that The New Party introduction letter is written by a former Labour Councillor; and when you read the detail you can see a bizarre mix of Labour’s social ideals alongside genuine free market economics to reform, positively, the NHS, welfare, pensions and education. In truth, the economic section shines.
But there are problems:
1) Their policy on drugs is out of date and will, inevitably, fail as badly as the other parties’ policies have. Cameron’s hinted at a more relaxed drugs policy and this is right.
2) The Party notes the ideological and practical problems that Planning regulations introduce. But their solution is odd — very odd. They would allow local Councils to set up Planning-free zones. I don’t think I can say anything helpful about this policy but it strikes me as a half-measure. It would be better to limit planning authorities’ powers in some areas (and strengthen in others)? Actually, in my opinion, the single most important area of planning reform needed is a reduction in the number of appeals processes available to people — it should be simpler and much, much quicker.
3) The lovely glossy manifesto completely ignores devolution and the fundamental constitutional problems that it has created.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some great policies in there — some that Cameron would do well to incorporate into a radical first term’s manifesto — but there doesn’t seem to be a single message. I may be wrong here, but I suspect each section was written by different people completely independently of the other sections. The “wills” and “woulds” are particularly jarring.
If you agree with the Manifesto of The New Party you should join it — inertia is a result of people not doing what they should. But you may want to wait for Cameron’s policies to know whether that party reflects your opinions more closely than do the Conservatives. I strongly suspect the Conservatives policies will be excellent with only a very few mistakes (like the Barnet formula’s continuation etc).
The following is a press release from the Conservative budgets spokesman, Richard Ashworth MEP:
We should be parting the Parliament, not procuring it
Brussels, 27th September — MEPs have today signed off a £100 million appropriation of the European Parliament buildings in Strasbourg, less than a week after oneseat.eu - the online petition calling for the European Parliament to be based in just on place - received its millionth signature. Richard Ashworth MEP, Conservative budgets spokesman in the European Parliament, said the vote in the Parliament’s ‘bureau’ sends out the wrong signal about its eagerness to vacate the premises and sit exclusively in one location.
Every month, the European Parliament decamps from Brussels to Strasbourg for the four-day session. Transporting MEPs, staff and paperwork costs the European taxpayer at least £130 million per year and causes untold damage to the environment through extra emissions.
Many MEPs lament the wasteful “travelling circus” but they are powerless to stop it as the EU’s treaties stipulate the Parliament must sit in Strasbourg twelve times per year. Only national governments can decide to change the treaties.
Mr Ashworth said:
“It will take around nine years before the Parliament gets any return on its investment. In that time, the EU would have spent over a billion pounds of taxpayers’ money shuffling people and papers around. Some MEPs are acting as if they have saved the taxpayer money - but they could save a great deal more if we finally end the monthly jaunt.
“The agreement requires us to return the land to the City of Strasbourg if we sell the buildings so we effectively only have the leasehold anyway.
“Although we are powerless to stop ourselves coming to Strasbourg, we can send out a clear and consistent message to national governments that we want this item discussed. Hopefully the signatures of one million EU citizens will be enough for national governments to debate Strasbourg at the next EU summit but I fear they will interpret our £100 million spending spree as a statement of intent to keep travelling between two Parliaments.
“Strasbourg has lost its relevancy. It was a fitting symbol of Franco-German reconciliation after the war but - sixty years on - it has become an expensive wedge that causes division, rather than unity.”
I have just one question: what’s in it for them?
The EU’s only good feature is freedom of movement of people. How must the negotiations sound to Bulgarians now?
“You can join the EU!”
“Oh great, what are the benefits?”
“Freedom of movement of people; unfortunately there’s loads of expensive regulation and bureaucracy but you get freedom of movement.”
“Excellent, when can we join?” replied the Bulgar.
“1st January 2006 — oh, but you won’t be able to move around freely within the EU.”
“So, could you list those benefits again please?” (warily)
etc.
This post has been written by Miss Anon and posted on her behalf:
It’s all very well for people to have a heated debate about the influx of Romanian, Bulgarian and Polish workers ‘invading’ this country but for years we’ve welcomed Australian students, travellers and workers giving them two year Visas; we’ve allowed French, Italian, Spanish and Dutch people to work in this country without ever thinking that they are different. That these countries have been in the EU for a long time has meant that we never consider their movements here an issue.
Can we really tell how many French immigrants have come to this country knowing they have a home in both countries. Are we concerned, really, that some people have their cars registered in France and are effectively immune from parking tickets over here? I would say no.
Yesterday the Daily Express wrote an inflamatory article about the price of cheap flights from eastern Europe with an indignant tone… The cost of flights from Romania and Bulgaria will be £8 from when they join on the low cost operator, Wizzair. But why the uproar? We’ve had these low cost airlines from Spain, Portugal, Italy, etc for years. Why don’t we have a similar debate about Spaniards or Greek students? All these people use our NHS, for example and students don’t need to pay for healthcare.
Could it be that there is debate because we think of eastern Europeans as slavs; do we think that they are somehow more dangerous or nasty than people from southern Europe? If we’re going to have an EU where people are able to move freely around, then they should be allowed to move freely around — otherwise what’s the point?
Miss Anon
Bill Cameron asks whether Barroso is trying to turn us against Turkey’s accession to the EU…
And I have another question: If the UK government goes against the principles of the EU and refuses Romanian and Bulgarian workers the right to come here, when will that restriction have to be dropped according to the agreements?
If it happens under the next administration, whoever that may be, it would be very damaging indeed.
Update: (16:21, 26 September) I wrote this post in a hurry and, after re-reading and after receiving complaints, I’ve tried to clear up what I meant in the comments!
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