Lisbon's Bills Fall Due
do tonight, Nicolas?
Nicolas: What we do every night.......think
up ways to make the perfidious
Anglo-Saxons pay for everything!
The former protests that he for one is nobody's poodle:
The Frenchman who has emerged as Britain’s favourite bogeyman is bewildered by the fury in London over his appointment as the European Union’s single market commissioner.
“There’s absolutely no sense in it,” said Michel Barnier, referring to British suspicions that his appointment is part of a plot by Paris to usurp London’s role as finance capital of Europe.
“I’ll be acting in the European interest,” he told The Sunday Times. “I will be an independent commissioner. I will work with everyone — for the European interest, not for any one group.”
That, of course, is precisely the problem. Europe's interest may well be very different from that of the United Kingdom's. We derive a huge proportion of our GDP from the City and the financial sector. Others may see divvying up some of that particular cake as being in 'Europe's' interest. As an inherently Socialist racket, the EU Comrades that run the show would love to do a bit of 'spreading the wealth about'. Now those hostile to British success in this sector have their very own man in place to do just that. And this is to be compounded by the appoinment, as we shall see, of a Franco-Romanian as Agriculture Commissioner. Oh how those Lisbon Invoices are about to come due.
The proof of the pudding will be in the eating, of course, but whatever reassuring noises Barnier may make, the damage has already been done by Sarkozy. Some elements of the City of London will draw their conclusions from the words of Europe' political elite and not from those of mere functionaries. There will be those that are already planning for a future beyond the deathly grip of Brussels. They can read the writing on the wall just as well as anyone. And it is a wall upon which Sarkozy will feel compelled to write often.
This appointment is, of course, proof positive of the failure of Gordon Brown to act in the UK's interest. So desperate was he to secure a 'top job' for the UK that he managed to slot into the post of EU Foreign Minister one Baroness Ashton who spent the early part of her adult life as, at best, a fellow traveller of Communists and an important functionary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament at a time when that wretched confederacy was busily doing the handiwork of the Soviet Union in undermining our defences and NATO. Meanwhile Sarkozy was inserting into a job of real importance his very own placeman.
Hard upon his heels comes yet further evidence of the disastrous nature of Labour's policy in Europe and the singular failure of our engagement with the EU.
One of the very worst aspects of the EU from a British point of view has always been the Common Agricultural Policy. It is to fund this crooked and fraud-ridden racket that the UK pays out huge net contributions to the EU. Labour's record on tackling this is particlarly egregious, almost non-existent in fact. Now to compound Brown's failure over the financial brief a French lickspittle from Romania has been inserted into the Agriculture slot.
This is one Dacian Ciolos who is being hailed by the French as the "second French commissioner" and who is, so the Daily Telegraph tells us, a protégé of Monsieur Barnier:
As agriculture minister [Barnier] staunchly defended the massive subsidies to France from the EU budget - and last year urged Africa and Latin America to copy Europe and set up their own versions of the CAP.
He now has a perfect opportunity to push his views on European farms policy through his friendship with the new EU agriculture commissioner, Dacian Ciolos, 40, a Romanian technocrat who has spent so much of his life studying and working in France that he regards it as his adoptive country.
Mr Ciolos, whose wife is French, has been nicknamed the "second French commissioner" by newspapers in Paris and Bucharest.
He studied agriculture in Rennes, is a fan of the French system of farm subsidies and production - and is also a friend of Mr Barnier.
"The second victory is that our friends, the Romanians, have agriculture," Mr Sarkozy boasted after learning that his discreet lobbying for Mr Ciolos' appointment had borne fruit.While considering his stance on reform of the CAP, which in any case benefits backward Romanian farmers more than most in Europe, Mr Ciolos will have a powerful voice whispering in his ear: that of Mr Barnier.
Mr Barnier told French reporters that he would be keeping the work of his colleagues, and particularly Mr Ciolos, whom he cited by name, under close watch.
"It is a duty to participate and be interested in what others do," he said. "He (Ciolos) will be independent but I will give him my opinion."
In case Mr Ciolos was uncertain of that, Mr Barnier added that he saw it as essential to "preserve farm regulations, because feeding people is not a service like any other."
The fact that the two men are friends and hold similar pro-regulation and pro-subsidy views on European agriculture reveals just how skilfully the French president played his cards over the Commission appointments.
It will be remembered that the EU Rebate so skilfully won by Margaret Thatcher was partly surrendered by Tony Blair against a promise to review the CAP. We now know what sort of review we are going to get: instead of reforming the CAP, or preferably abolishing it altogether, we are going to have an even grander and more expensive scheme thrust upon us:
The French government has summoned a meeting of what it called the "G22" - senior ministers from 22 European states - in an attempt to influence a rethink of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
It has not, however, invited Britain or other so-called "reform nations" - the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Malta - all of which have argued for a full overhaul of EU farm subsidies.
Bruno Le Maire, the French agriculture minister, said the aim was to "produce a battle plan to defend a strong common agriculture policy, to support a renewed CAP."
Just in case there should be any doubt about the nature of this particular group, it has the Qualified Majority Voting (QMV) strength under the transitional arrangements inforce until 2014 ( The Nice Treaty rules) and is thus well-placed to deliver a 'strong defence' of the CAP. So, whatever this Cabal comes up with can be pushed through whatever the UK's views may be. You may be sure that that defence will not involve a diminution in the size of the UK's contributions!
Now it must be said that direct responsibility for the situation in which the UK finds itself lies in the hands of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, Quislings who cheerfully sold the British Interest down the river with nary a care in the world and deliberately went out of their way to avoid seeking the consent of the British People to their shameful surrender of UK sovereignty.
But never let it be said or suggested that the leadership of the Tory party lacks its own Collaborationist tendency. After all Dave has made his views clear as to where he stands, as he told Andrew Marr on the latter's eponymous programme on 22nd. November 2009:
"DC: I'm disappointed. I wanted us to have a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.
AM: You could promise a referendum on the principle of Europe now.
DC: What I cannot do is a referendum on Lisbon Treaty because it is now part of the European Law, so if you had one it would either be a pointless tilting at Europe or it would effectively be an IN/OUT referendum. Now I think we should be in the EU fighting for the sort of Europe we want. We want a Europe of trade and co-operation, not a superstate, so I do not want an IN/OUT referendum because I do not think 'OUT' is in Britain's interest."
There you have the Ruling Political Class's view of our membership of the EU, neatly encapsulated. They all reckon, for reasons they seem curiously unwilling to expand upon, that it is a 'Good Thing' and they are not going to run the risk of The People deciding otherwise for all the goats in Greece.
Aux armes citoyens! Vive La Révolution!
UPDATE: Not brilliant but worth five minutes of your time
