Newsletter November/December 2009

FROM THE SECRETARY:

We have a new Leader. Lord Pearson of Rannoch got 48% of the vote with Gerard Batten coming second. Let’s hope that UKIP goes from strength to strength in the coming year.

Evelyn Rolph - Branch Secretary

Lisbon Treaty
The Czech President, Vaclav Klaus, finally signed this Treaty on 3rd November which meant it was ratified by all 27 EU member states. This allowed the EU to appoint its first President and Foreign Secretary. The President’s job went to the Belgian Prime Minister, Herman Van Rompuy whilst Gordon Brown, backed by France and Germany, pushed for Cathy Ashton (who had gone to Brussels to replace Peter Mandelson as Trade Commissioner in October 2008) to take the post of Foreign Secretary. This meant that the most powerful job, in charge of financial services, would not go to a Briton. Peter Mandelson had warned Gordon Brown about this.

I now hear that the Commissioner in charge of finance will be Frenchman, Michel Barnier, who is a dedicated federalist and wants taxes to be harmonised across the EU. He is also determined to scrap Britain’s rebate and wants Paris to be in competition with the City of London. French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, is gloating that a Frenchman is now in control of the City and says that the lightly regulated Anglo Saxon model has gone and has been replaced with the heavily regulated European model. As British manufacture has steadily fallen, Britain relies more and more on its financial services which bring some £68 billion in tax revenues to the Treasury each year. If the City is hobbled, it will take the country longer to get out of recession, if at all.

At the same time the EU has set up three supervisory bodies to oversee banking, insurance and pensions, and securities with the power to overrule national regulators.

The new EU president will be paid 350,000 euros a year and will have a staff of 22 press officers, assistants and administrators, in addition to 10 security agents. The total cost of the President and his team will be 6 million euros a year.

Cathy Ashton has no experience of foreign policy. In her youth, she was treasurer of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which campaigned for Britain’s withdrawal from NATO. She chaired the Hertfordshire Health Authority and sat on the National Council of One-Parent Families. She was enobled by Tony Blair in 1999 and steered the Lisbon Treaty through the House of Lords, cancelling the referendum on it that all three parties had promised.

British Commonwealth
Rwanda became the 54th country to join the British Commonwealth at the end of November. Rwanda and Mozambique, which joined in 1995, are the only nations which were not once part of the British Empire or constitutionally linked to one of its members. This is where Britain should be trading - not the EU! You will remember that one of the conditions of joining the “Common Market” in the first place was that Britain abandoned trade with its Commonwealth.

Day-to-day news from November

2nd - The EU’s proposed Consumer Rights Directive will end the right of shoppers to get their money back for unwanted or faulty goods. Instead of money-back guarantees, the Directive would allow traders to offer only the repair or replacement of faulty goods. A trader’s liability for replacement or repair would also be cut from six years to two. This is to bring us into line with the other EU member states.

4th - David Cameron withdrew his “cast iron” guarantee to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty if he wins the next election. However, he did promise that Britain would not allow new powers to be handed to Brussels without a public vote. He doesn’t seem to understand that the Lisbon Treaty is “self amending” so there will be no need for any further treaties.

Two Conservative MEPs, Roger Helmer and Daniel Hannan, resigned their front-bench posts in disgust.

9th - Tony Blair’s decision to cut a large part of the UK’s rebate from the EU budget has cost the economy £9.3 billion over the 5 year period 2007-13.

9th - The EU Commission has enquired whether it’s possible to buy swine flu vaccines for its staff, thereby violating its own policy that “risk groups” should be protected first.

9th - Open Europe has issued a briefing note detailing 50 new examples of EU waste. It runs into millions of pounds (see www.openeurope.org.uk)

10th - The European Space Agency and Nasa have signed a letter of intent to put together a joint mission to Mars in 2016. [Can we afford it? - Ed].

12th - A Professor of Clinical Microbiology, Professor Susannah Eykyn, asked her village shop if they wanted to sell her surplus eggs, approximately 3 dozen a week. In order to comply with the EU Welfare of Laying Hens Directive, she received a visit from a “hen inspector” wearing protective clothing, and a Defra inspector who spent a total of 6 hours poking around in her kitchen to make sure the eggs were being packed to comply with EU labelling regulations.

13th - John Rice, a Labour Derby Ward councillor, has joined UKIP and will stand for the council election in Bootle, Merseyside.

The former Labour Mayor of Redditch will stand for UKIP against former Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, at the next General Election.

13th - The Government has at last conceded that we need nuclear reactors to provide electricity in the future but they are so worried about breaching EU rules on state aid that they are delaying the completion of a crucial £140 million loan to a British company which makes special forgings for new reactors.

14th - The Government has spent £340,000 in building four “bat bridges” over motorways. It says it is legally bound to protect bats because of European protected species legislative requirements.

14th - For the 15th year in a row, auditors have refused to endorse the spending of large parts of the EU budget.

17th - The EU has decided that anybody going through IVF treatment needs to be tested every one or two months for HIV, hepatitis, human T-lymphotropic virus and syphilis. This will increase the cost so much that it will put fertility treatment beyond the means of most couples.

17th - The Government has announced that Identity Cards will be available in Manchester from 30th November.

18th - Wind turbines up to 50ft high could be erected without planning permission. The Government wants to cut the red tape and expense involved.

24th - The EU have said that the Government has 10 weeks to apply for assistance from the EU budget to help pay for storm and flood damage repairs in Cumbria. When Hull and Tewkesbury were severely flooded in the summer of 2007, the EU said the bureaucratic process would take 9 to 12 months to complete.

27th - Civil servants in the EU are to receive a 3.7% pay rise despite negative or near to zero rates of inflation across Europe.