LIVE24SEVEN // Lord Digby Jones
Digby Lord Jones THOUGHTS FOR APRIL 2016
There are 56 words in the Lord’s Prayer; the Ten Commandments took 297 words to encapsulate a Code for Life; the Founding Fathers of the USA took 1300 words to write The Declaration of Independence.
Dear Reader, can someone please explain to me why it takes 27,000 (!!!) words to write the EU Directive on Duck Eggs??!!
"Europe" is something that is "done" to people; distant, remote, seemingly oblivious to the daily lives, worries, aspirations and needs of real people in the real world, the unelected, unaccountable, anonymous, handsomely remunerated bureaucrats in Brussels have no legitimacy in the eyes of the 520 million citizens whose lives they affect in so many ways every day. Democratically-elected governments can be voted out of office on a predictable, known basis; those grey, hidden stalwarts of officialdom in the Berlaymont have no need to worry what electorates think, their emotional intelligence is irrelevant, they can get on with spending other people's money as they mess up wealth-creation, enterprise and global competitiveness in their unrelenting mission of "doing Europe" to people.
For one week a month, month in, month out, the entire European Parliament ups sticks from Brussels and moves to Strasbourg. French sensitivity demands a base of EU law-making on French soil (the dears!), so €80 million of hard-earned taxes is spent moving for a few days every
month...and back again. Fleets of huge trucks take all their impedimenta (so much for the Green Agenda! Pass environmental laws that mess up small businesses across Europe of course, but pollute big-time on your own doorstep)! There you are, Europe is just "done" to people; can you imagine how a democratically-elected politician could justify that?
The Common Agricultural Policy is "done" to us, adding some 17% to UK food bills; energy regulation is "done" to us, adding £149 to each household's annual domestic energy bill in the UK. Big multinationals, with their thousands of lobbyists in Brussels, have fashioned EU business regulation to suit themselves (no wonder the Footsie 100 want to stay in!), but the 100 most burdensome EU regulations cost small businesses in the UK £33 billion every year! "Get more productive!" scream the politicians, "Be more globally competitive," they urge, as Brussels "does" Europe to the biggest wealth and job creators in the land, those small businesswomen and men who labour every day under the onslaught of expensive job-destroying rules from unaccountable and unelected EU
Bureaucracy...the
SPT...the Sales Prevention Team!
of Birmingham
Our taxes provide a €23 billion EU overseas aid budget and some €3 billion of that is admitted as being lost in corruption. For 21 years (!!!) the European Court of Auditors has refused to sign off the EU Accounts. They state that €133.6 billion of EU Budget payments are "affected by material error".
...and we all just let it happen, year after year. "You don't understand," we are patronisingly told. "There is a bigger picture," they say. "Yes, of course there are problems, but..." the vested interests (trade unions, farmers, multi-nationals, socialist ideologues) recite, "Of course it needs reform, but..." they excuse. At what point exactly should the "but..." be defeated by the realisation that the Emperor really is naked?
This is Asia's century; the 28 States of the EU had better get on the page of a reformed, globally-competitive society – and quickly – or our grandchildren's generation will be consigned to a very cold, austere, unpleasant life. "Europe accounts for just over 7% of the world's population, it produces around 25% of global GDP, but is responsible for 50% of global social spending." Those are the words of none other than Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, in December 2012.
The European Central Bank states that in 2020 the ratio of working age people to pensioners in the EU will be 3:1. By 2050 it will be 2:1. In 2006, France's pension liabilities accounted for 362% of French GDP; in the UK it was only 91%. A little girl born today in the EU has a 33% chance of seeing her 100th birthday; a little boy has a 25% chance. Who's going to pay for the promised, unfunded pensions for those millions of people who will be living for some 40 years in retirement? Quite how is any country in the EU going to afford it?
So where is the money going to come from to pay for all the goodies that Social Europe guarantees everyone? The unaccountable Eurocrats burden down those who need to make the money with uncompetitive regulation, the Socialists promise everyone the earth and then
some...and the vested interests just tell us all to subscribe to the "It'll Be Alright On The Night" Party!
That wonderful vision of ensuring that never again would France and Germany go to war against each other, 28 countries living in sustainable peace for over 70 uninterrupted years, that amazing feat of providing a peaceful transition to a stable home of democratic capitalism for the Eastern European countries wriggling free from totalitarian communism, a tariff-free single market of 520 million relatively sophisticated consumers to which to sell goods and services...fabulous achievements for which every EU citizen should be
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