UK Independence Party
Enfield & Haringey Branch
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FROM THE SECRETARY:
My apologies to those Enfield members who received their newsletters very late in January and February. My husband, Fred, gets on his bicycle to deliver these by hand which saves me a considerable amount of postage and for which I am very grateful. He was kept busy delivering election material - BHP ward in January and Jubilee in February, added to which was the snowfall.
We cancelled our 2nd February meeting because of the snow and the fact that TfL had shut down the whole of the bus network. This is the first time that I can remember the weather preventing the UKIP stalwarts from getting together!
Evelyn Rolph - Branch Secretary
Rubbish collections
The government is to set up quangos (to be called Joint Waste Authorities) to take over the collection of rubbish from Borough Councils under the 2007 Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act. They will run waste ‘police forces’ which can punish householders who break bin rules. There has been a huge increase in the rat population owing to fortnightly rubbish collections.
A Police State?
Dame Stella Rimington, the first female head of MI5, warned that Labour is turning Britain into a police state by restricting civil liberties - precisely one of the objectives of terrorism. As well as being watched on CCTV on transport and in the street and having a note made of who we phone or email, now pub licensees are being told they must instal CCTV cameras to watch the comings and goings of their customers. Often it is a condition of granting a licence. Sir David Omand, a former security chief, said an innocent citizen’s right to privacy would have to be “sacrificed” to allow the Government to combat terrorism.
Day-to-day news from February
2nd - Nigel Farage went to Peterborough for a BBC News 24 interview. There he met some young people critical of the EU. One 16-year-old girl said she had been turned down for a job at a local factory because she could not speak Polish.
3rd - Utilities and private firms in Wales could be forced to print all their bills and literature in both English and Welsh to put both languages on an equal footing. Very few Welsh people cannot speak English.
4th - The wildcat strikes in support of the Lindsey oil refinery protesters continue. Peter Mandelson said that out-of-work Britons can go to the Continent to look for work although some jobs in eastern European countries are advertising salaries of 31p an hour.
4th - Most of Britain's big energy supplies are owned by German, French and Spanish firms which have cut prices in their home countries while keeping prices high in the UK.
5th - The EU will give extra funding this year to dairy farmers as they have been particularly hit by the economic downturn.
6th - The EU wants to limit all types of shark fishing as they are being pushed towards extinction. This could spell the end of rock salmon or huss being sold in fish & chip shops.
6th - The Swedish government plans to reverse a 30-year-old ban on building nuclear power plants, giving the green light to a new generation of reactors. Italy also wants France to help it build new nuclear reactors.
10th - Germany's Constitutional Court is considering claims that the Lisbon Treaty is unconstitutional as it undermines the Bundestag, the country’s parliament. It is particularly concerned about the Treaty being "self amending", i.e. the EU does not need to refer back to national parliaments when it wants to change the conditions of the Treaty in the future.
The Czech lower house has approved the Lisbon Treaty but it now has to go through the Senate.
11th - The EU wants to tax air and noise pollution from lorries.
11th - B&Q has stopped selling domestic wind turbines after a survey revealed that they could only supply a fraction of the energy claimed by the manufacturers.
12th - French President Sarkozy has defended the French bailout of the car industry saying it had "nothing to do with protectionism". France wants to move its car factories back from the Czech Republic to protect French jobs. The EU has approved 1.7m euros in aid, from the European Globalisation Fund, for unemployed Spanish car workers.
13th - The European Police College, located in Bramshill, UK, has come under suspicion of fraud. The college organises training for senior police officials from across the EU. The European Court of Auditors said it had identified cases where EU funds were used to finance the private expenditure of some of the college's staff.
13th - The Home Office has said the cost to the taxpayer of companies storing details of email and internet use under the EU’s 2006 directive on data retention will reach £46m.
13th - The European Central Bank (ECB) wants a greater role in bank supervision but the UK is against the idea. The Maastricht Treaty only allows the ECB to take on additional duties with the unanimous backing of the EU's 27 member nations.
16th - The EU is to re-introduce set-aside subsidies for farmers. The idea is for farmers to leave land uncultivated in order to discourage over-production.
16th - France has rejoined NATO but on condition that two senior command positions are given to Frenchmen. President Nicolas Sarkozy has threatened to boycott April's NATO summit unless he is allowed to choose where he sits at the conference table.
17th - The EU wants to introduce an EU-wide 112 emergency number. The snag is you might get through to a centre that does not speak your language.
17th - France and Greece will be able to continue their ban on the cultivation of genetically modified crop maize after a Commission panel of food-safety experts failed to reach a qualified majority on whether to allow the EU Commission to force the states to lift their bans.
18th - The EP's TV channel, launched in September, attracts less than 1200 viewers per day from a potential audience of over 400 million and costs £53,000 for every hour broadcast.
18th - The EU wants to cap salaries for football players, limit transfers and ban transfers for under 18s.
20th - Europe Minister Caroline Flint wrote to The Guardian saying, "Let me be clear, there are no plans for a European Army." Meanwhile, Labour MEPs voted for an "integrated European Armed Force" for "further development of co-operation between national armed forces so that they become increasingly synchronised".
20th - Whilst Czech President Vaclav Klaus spoke to the EP about free speech and having choice even if it meant disagreeing with the EU, MEPs walked out in droves. Nigel Farage said it was the first time he had been able to stand up and cheer what was said from the front of the room. "At the end about 50 of us stood up cheering wildly," he said.
23rd - The Chinese had originally agreed to be a partner in the EU's Galileo project but decided to go ahead with their own system which will run on the same wavelength. As the Chinese system is ahead of the Galileo one and their satellities will get there first, they will be able to claim ownership of the wavelengths and the EU could only use them with Chinese permission.
25th - The Government is planning to sell one-third of what is left of the Royal Mail, possibly to the Dutch TNT, in spite of opposition from many of its own MPs. It would retain control of the Post Offices.