The EU And The House Of Lords - Not The Best Of Friends

Say what you like, but I have become a great supporter of the role that the House of Lords has played over the last eight years. Especially when they come out with stuff like this:

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The UK House of Lords EU Committee says the public has a right to know what goes on behind closed doors.

The peers claim important decisions are reached, yet no report is ever made to Parliament and no publicity is given about them by the Home Office.

However, the Home Office insists that meetings of the G6 are "transparent".

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Just to clarify. The G6 largest EU nations meet to discuss and influence EU policy. But this happens with no press reports, or statements to Parliament in this country. Indeed, the peers noted that:

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In their report, entitled "Behind Closed Doors", the peers said the only way they could get hold of any information about the latest talks was in an English translation from the German Ministry of the Interior.

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So the only way we can know what happened is by consulting the German Home office? What was that about transparency, Mr. Reid?

Apparantly this is it:

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"The G6 is transparent - they have a press conference at each meeting and the conclusions are published by the host nation," she [a home office spokeswoman] said.

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So holding a press conference and releasing a document not in English is transparent? More like translucent to me, possibly opaque in places. Sven with the England football team did this, and his decision making was never transparent.

Filed Under:

• transparency
• eu
• g6
• lords

Movement For European Reform - The New Tory Grouping - But Only In 2009

Short changed over the EPP. Cameron has now been politically astute, but dangerously pro-european over his latest announcement that the Tories will form the Movement For European Reform, but only in 2009.

You see, Michael Howard made a pledge that the Tories would stay in the EPP until at least 2009. So, some silly people (Angela Merkel), couldn't quite comprehend the fact that David Cameron is a different man to Michael Howard. If John Reid, upon entering the home office, kept all of Clarke's pledges simply because they are there, we would be in a right pickle.

Also, the plan did not go down well in Brussels, with those Tory MEPs who like the EPP, because they get an easy ride (office space, expenses, etc.) that some of which would be lost in moving to a smaller grouping.

So in announcing the new group, but delaying it to 2009, Cameron keeps Merkel happy, Tory MEPs happy, because the parliament session ends in 2009 and they don't have to contest their seats as Tories, and it keeps people like me off Cameron's back, asking when he's going to fulfill his only manifesto commitment.

He's good with the old rhetoric too:

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We refuse to accept failure as Tony Blair has.

We want to win the arguments, build support and get things done. That is why we are starting today with the creation of our new group and our new movement.

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Winning an argument with the Commission could be tricky, as they simply have to pass a regulation and then can go directly above your head, Mr. Cameron.

We'll hold you to this someday.

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Nigel Farage Speaks Common Sense...

Just a few things to keep us from getting bored...

In the last few days, I've been watching a series of videos put on Youtube by someone called UKIPWebmaster. The ones that I will recommend are by none other than my "local" (South East Region) MEP, Nigel Farage of UKIP. Such a man who speaks such common sense about the EU deserves a bit of publicity...

Nigel Farage on who's who in the EU commission

UKIP MEP Nigel Farage confronts José Manuel Barroso

And perhaps the best of the lot... Tony Blair gets busted.

And some more are there from his friends in the Independence and Democracy Group which I won't mention...

Back Onto Blogspot

As you can probably tell, I am now back on the lovely blogspot servers, having given up the FTP experiment. Google Sitemaps, I have come to the conclusion, is not worth it for a blog. So what are the lessons that I have learned? With two blogs on the blogger platform, I can compare the pros and cons of being on blogspot.

1) Unknown to most, while you are on the blogspot server, all of your posts are automatically submitted to Google's blog search database. This does not automatically happen outside of blogspot.

2) People expect a blogspot address.

In short, I am back for good on blogspot. All requests to the awardspace site will be redirected here until no-one uses it any more. I can promise that this is the last movement of domain for a long time, so please, update your links/bookmarks. The RSS feed, however, is in the same place.

The Perfect Remark

Following on from a comment on another eurosceptic blog, I am seeking to find the comment most likely to get yourself a severe reprimand from all parties concerned in the EU for being politically incorrect. Or generally being a pain. My attempts are below. Comments welcome.

1. Would you buy a used car from this commission?
2. The Norwegians have twice rejected EU membership. Does that say something?
3. The EU IS run for the benefit of France and Germany, isn't it, Mr. Barroso?
4. Name that institution - Unelected, unaccountable and unwanted. (Could be all of them, with hindsight) Actually the EU sponsored regional assemblies, quote William Hague.
   
5. (Tones of withering sarcasm) The EU does it's utmost to uphold democracy both in it's own institutions and those of its members.

As you can tell, I'm not that good at this wit malarkey, but have a go yourself.

My Top Incoming Links - EU Watch

For no other reason than I've seen other bloggers do this, and it gives me a chance to show off my Google Analytics site tracking, I have compiled a list of the most referrals to this blog from other sites. Because this blog gets less traffic than Conservative Comment, I've lowered the bar to include every way of accessing the site. So here we go:

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1. Conservative Comment, surprise oh surprise - it's my other blog, with 53%
   
2. Blogger, with 23%
3. Rightlinks, with 7%
4. The Road To Euro Serfdom, with 7%
5. Google, with 3%
6. Technorati, with 3%
   

Note that this is a record of incoming traffic from 20th June onwards. July's update will also include search engine traffic and blog directories, that I have tagged and Google stores separately.

I can gather that for blogger, read my blogger profile. I can provide proof that the google hits are from searches.

I hope that the more comprehensive list next time around will yield more useful information.