EUsceptic Roundup

Hello and welcome to the inaugural EUsceptic Roundup, bringing you news of the wonder that is the European Union; as you may be able to tell, many of us are simply huge fans of the whole thing and we would love to bring you good news of the EU's achievements.

Only, those are a bit thin on the ground, so we'll just communicate the shitty bits, as per.

We could hardly have a EUsceptic Roundup without kicking off with something from EU Referendum. Since the EU is, lest we forget, an organisation that has not had its accounts signed off for the last 11 years; many times the Commission has promised to tackle fraud—the man who was, until recently, in charge of this was our very own Welsh Windbag—so it is worth remembering just how it deals with whistleblowers, such as Marta Andreason, and, reported on by Helen, Hans-Martin Tillack.

The other item on Bondes Briefing for October 5 concerns the German journalist Hans-Martin Tillack who had committed the unpardonable crime of writing about corruption in Eurostat.

For that he has been smeared by past and present employees of OLAF, whose job, theoretically, is to deal with the waste and fraud in the Commission and related bodies. Instead, it would seem, they sent the Belgian police to raid Mr Tillack’s office. Said police, finding it much easier to deal with a German journalist than, let us say, Marc Dutroux, the paedophile murderer, confiscated Mr Tillack’s computer and various files.

That's right: people who expose fraud and corruption in the EU get sacked, gagged and all of their records and computers taken away by policemen. Welcome to the new, honest EU; much better and less corruption-ridden than that nasty old Santer Commission.

The inimitable EU Serf highlights the moves towards tax harmonisation.

Imagine that the tax system is set up by a meddling greedy idiot like Gordon Brown. Badly designed, with perverse incentives, it would normally be swept away following an election, or even restructured by its original designer.

This is design by committee however, and the chances of change later on is almost impossible.

Quite: the EU Commission is directly answerable to no one at all, which is why Tim Worstall is outraged at Sarkozy's proposal that, amongst other things, the EU should have its own tax-raising powers.

That last is the really scary part: giving an unconstrained bureaucracy their own stream of money?

My full and complete reaction? Bugger off laddie.

It's worth remembering that Sarkozy is held up by many of those who think that the EU can be modernised as the man for the job: he's going to make it all better you see?

Of course, it's worth remembering what we contribute to the EU ourselves, since opinions seem to differ wildly: the Bruges Group have helpfully pointed out what our contributions are this year and next.

Meanwhile, for those of you who enjoy a nice tipple, Kevsoft points out that you'd better get the pints in before they get a fuck sight more expensive. The EU have, in their wisdom, decided that booze is far too cheap and, what with us all being irresponsible children and unable to decide for ourselves precisely how much we wish to drink, are planning to jack up the duty right across the Union.

Of course, they are going to need that duty to pay for the EU inspectors who ensure that European wine comes up to the EU's exacting standards.

A wine-maker has accused the Government of a "colossal" waste of taxpayers' money after four officials were sent to his vineyard to pick 10 bunches of grapes as part of a European Union sampling exercise.

Would someone care to remind me of why, precisely, we have inspectors to monitor the quality of wine? Shouldn't the consumer decide whether they like the wine or not? You know, leave it to the markets?

Still, that's only right when it is being decided that the only voice that the 25 countries in the Union should have at the UN is... you guessed it! The EU Commission.

The UN's deputy secretary general believes the European Commission will in future represent the EU in the United Nations as the voice of the European bloc worldwide.
...

"It is not going to happen with a flash and a bang," he added, but said he hoped that "it will happen as quickly as possible."

So, remind me again: when was it, precisely, that we elected the Commission to speak for us? Oh, yeah, that'll be "never".

Wonko highlights the problem with flights to the US.

The US requires that personal details of airline passengers is provided to them within 15 minutes of a flight departing en route to the US.

The European Federation ruled that this was illegal under European Data Protection laws.
...

Flights leaving the UK will not currently be affected because the British government has come to a temporary agreement with the Americans. When that agreement expires, however, the British government will have to make a choice - the US and the rest of the world or the European Federation.

This one could run and run...

Your humble Devil listened to Francis Maude have a bit of a chat, and decided to point out that the stance on the EU that he and the TOries are taking is both mendacious and deluded. (Warning: as per usual, very strong language!)

To finish off this inaugural roundup, let us contemplate the wonderfully democratic way in which the EU makes the laws that we are compelled to obey.

The European Commission will from next week onwards start to send its proposals for EU laws directly to national parliaments for comment - but it has made clear that it will not review any of its plans if national deputies dislike them.

Oh goody!

Except that that is actually the penultimate item, for I have a wonderful new award, The Head In The EU Sand Award (anyone got a better name?), for this week's edition of The Spectator. This magazine, now edited by that fucking awful little tit, Matthew d'Ancona, managed to write about the Tory Conference on page 5, page 10, page 11, page 13 and page 16 without once mentioning the fringe meetings of The Bruges Group (featuring, ironically, an excellent speech by Christopher Booker on how the media were ignoring the EU question), the Better Off Out group, the UKIP Tax Launch or their subsequent meetings. In fact, the Speccie writers managed to get through the whole magazine without, I believe, even mentioning the EU. So, a special "well done" to them.

So, why not join the EUsceptic Bloggers Yahoo group, which gave rise to this roundup, and which is moderated by our very own Serf?

Meanwhile that's the EUsceptic Roundup for this week: we will be back a little earlier on Sunday afternoon, here, next week. Please send your nominations to dk[AT]devilskitchendesign[DOT]com with "Eurosceptic Roundup" as the subject line.

Toodle pip!