Paul Remfry, UKIP, South Herefordshire

In the Middle: Some Thoughts about Books and Access

2011-10-11T06:40:00.000+01:00

In the Middle: Some Thoughts about Books and Access: by J J Cohen I've published three books with Palgrave Macmillan ( 1 2 3 ). I've published three with the University of Minnesota Press...

Slates found at Nevern

2011-10-04T21:11:00.002+01:00

Intersting slates with motifs have been found at the Nevern Castle dig.
Wales online

More evidence on real Climate Change

2011-10-04T21:07:00.001+01:00

More evidence that warm periods are good for humans...
Irish Weather

ProQuest Uncovers More Treasures from European Rare Book Libraries

2011-09-22T20:40:00.000+01:00

ProQuest Uncovers More Treasures from European Rare Book Libraries

3,000-year-old bog body is likely to be sacrificed Irish king | Irish News | IrishCentral

2011-09-22T20:24:00.000+01:00

3,000-year-old bog body is likely to be sacrificed Irish king | Irish News | IrishCentral

More on the Nazi origins of the EU

2011-09-19T15:42:00.001+01:00

Bloggers
Youtube

William Wallace and the Scottish Revolt of 1296

2011-09-19T15:37:00.001+01:00

An excellent article on why history, like science, should always change as new data comes in....
Breaking of Britain

Suburban life at IA hill fort

2011-09-19T15:26:00.000+01:00

Guardian

Earliest map of UK

2011-08-07T17:01:00.001+01:00

A late fourteenth century map of the UK (without Ireland) has just been published on the web.
Physorg

Discovery of tomb of Saint Philip

2011-08-07T16:56:00.000+01:00

Rewriting Roman History in the SW

2011-08-07T16:51:00.000+01:00

New Roman settlement found near Exeter
Physorg

Drought in Ancient Egypt

2011-08-07T16:48:00.002+01:00

Global warming killed off Old Egypt. Yes the climate has been going up and down for approximately 4 billion years....
New Scotsman

Real Green

2011-08-02T07:52:00.002+01:00

The cashier told the old woman in the line at the supermarket that she should really use the “bag for life” reusable carriers because the single use plastic bags weren't good for the environment. The woman apologised and explained, "We didn't have the green thing back in my day."

However - back then, they returned their milk bottles, soft drink bottles and beer bottles to the shop. The shop sent them back to the factory to be washed and sterilised and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. They were all recycled.

But they didn't have the green thing back in those days !

In her day, they walked up stairs, because they didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. They walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a car every time they had to go half a mile.

But she was right. They didn't have the green thing in her day !

Back then, they washed the baby's nappies because they didn't have the throw-away kind. They dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling tumble drier - wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

But that old lady is right; they didn't have the green thing back in her day !

Back then, they had one TV, or radio, in the house - not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief, not a screen the size of a cricket pitch. They didn't have battery operated toys, computers, or telephones. They didn't have iPods, iPads and all the other i-paraphernalia.

But she's right; they didn't have the green thing back then !

In the kitchen, they blended and stirred by hand because they didn't have electric machines to do everything for you. They didn't have air conditioning or electric stoves with self cleaning ovens.

But she's right; they didn't have the green thing back then !

Back then, they didn't fire up an engine and burn fuel just to cut the lawn. They used a push mower that ran on human power. They used hand operated clippers to trim the shrubs. They exercised by working, so they didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she's right; they didn't have the green thing back then !

They drank from a glass filled from the tap when they were thirsty, instead of using a plastic bottle every time they had a drink of water. They refilled their writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen; and they replaced the razor blades in a razor, instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. When they packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, they used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not foam chips or plastic bubble wrap.

But they didn't have the green thing back then !

Back then, people walked or took the bus, and kids rode their bikes to school, or rode the school bus instead of turning their mums into a 24-hour taxi service. They had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And they didn't need a computerised gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza place.

They didn't have the green thing back then !

Does that make you think !

More on UKIP to EUKIP

2011-07-27T07:02:00.001+01:00

A note on Nigel 2004 and Nigel 2011

Nigel Farage on ‘political parties at the European level’

Sharply conflicting views have been expressed in the UK Independence Party’s debate on whether it should become associated with ‘a political party at the European level’. (A ‘political party at the European level’ is also known as ‘a pan-European political party’ or PEPP.) The purpose of this e-mail is not to rehash the main points of the debate, but to bring attention to two statements from Nigel Farage, the current leader of the UK Independence Party. The first (Nigel 2004) was made over seven years ago in early 2004 and the other (Nigel 2011) in the latest issue of the UKIP magazine, Independence. The statements are attached in two files in PDF format. The words are all Nigel Farage’s; I am not making anything up.

Nigel 2004 was opposed to the state funding of political parties in general and to the ‘European Union funding of political parties’ more specifically. By contrast, Nigel 2011 asked party members to vote in favour of taking that part of EU-funded PEPP money to which the UK Independence Party might – through its representation in the European Parliament – be entitled. In other words, Nigel 2004 was against the introduction of PEPPs as a concept, whereas Nigel 2011 is in favour of UKIP accepting EU money for UKIP, even though that money would arise only because UKIP had become associated with a PEPP.

In brief, Nigel Farage in 2004 was against the PEPP idea, but now he is in favour. This is an important change of view, which needs to be analysed.

Nigel 2004

I am going to start with Nigel 2004. The 2004 statement strikes me as impressive and admirable in its own terms, as well as expressing an attractive set of political beliefs. I agree wholeheartedly with every word. The statement arose from a legal action, organized with support from MEPs across Europe, against EU funding of political parties, which was then at an early stage. In my view, Nigel 2004 contained three main arguments.

First, Nigel 2004 was ‘opposed on principle’ (my italics) to ‘state funding of political parties’ as it was ‘not an appropriate use of taxpayers’ money’. Indeed, there appeared in his view to be no ‘evidence that suggests...the voters in my country... are happy for their money directly to finance political parties at the European level’. Farage’s perception was that ‘far too much money’ was ‘already being spent on political projects...most certainly here in Strasbourg’.

Secondly, Nigel 2004 seemed to have few illusions about the EU. In his assessment the purpose of PEPPs was ‘to discriminate against certain political parties’, meaning by implication certainly the UK Independence Party and perhaps a few others. As he recognised, recipients of EU money would be ‘required’ to subscribe to ‘pre-set political ideals, such as agreement with greater European integration’. (UKIP existed of course not just to stop the further integration of Europe, but to achieve the withdrawal of the UK from the EU.)

Thirdly, Nigel 2004 was concerned that one condition of taking EU money would be acceptance of EU so-called ‘democratic principles’, including ‘the rule of law’. This might sound ‘fine’, ‘but’ – in Farage’s words – ‘we are seeing shifts and changes in the law’. The danger was that dissident parties might be ‘not just denied funding, but possibly even banned’. Although that was a danger, he believed that it would not be ‘legitimate’ for a British Government to sign up for a constitution which included such an attack on democracy and freedom. The conclusion was that – although UKIP might in the circumstances under discussion ultimately be ‘banned’ – Farage would be ‘perfectly happy [for UKIP] not to qualify for this funding’. (I have inserted ‘for UKIP’ here. That is clearly what is meant.)

As I said, Nigel Farage’s position on the PEPP issue in 2004 was – in my view – impressive and admirable. The world would be a better place if all politicians could show that degree of idealism, principle and grit.

Nigel 2011

But Nigel 2011 is not on the same wavelength. His latest piece starts by claiming that the current debate is ‘effectively the same as we had in 1998’, which was about whether UKIP should participate in European elections and send MEPs to Brussels/Strasbourg. Well, it is not the same debate at all. A political party’s participation in elections in its own country (the 1998 debate) is clearly not the same thing as an association between its parliamentary representatives and the parliamentary representatives from other countries, and between a political party in one country and political parties in other countries (the 2011 debate).

The true forerunner of the current debate was the 2004 legal action, which I have just discussed. UKIP’s position was decided on the National Executive Committee which Farage attended. Indeed, Farage refers later in the Independence article to the ‘court case’ he fought ‘against huge sums of money – taxpayers’ money – being made available to support these [i.e., the mainstream, pro-EU] parties’. He accepts that ‘he lost’. But, whereas in 2004 he was ‘happy’ not to qualify for tainted money from an undemocratic institution, he evidently no longer feels that his 2004 position is worth defending. Instead of the subject being one ‘of principle’ (my italics again), the latest thinking is that ‘in life you need to play with the hand you are dealt’. Indeed, the argument has become entirely one about money. To quote, ‘If we do not access some of this money, the whole sum will go to the pro-EU side.’ As the jam pot is finite, let’s make sure we – UKIP’s MEPs – have as much of the jam as we can get. Once again, ‘huge sums’ are mentioned. But now the context is not the squandering of taxpayers’ money, but the supposed availability to UKIP of EU funds.

In fact, as I and many other people have pointed out, there is much doubt about the availability of any money to UKIP as such, were its MEPs to become associated with a PEPP. The relevant EU regulations make clear that no PEPP money may be used by national political parties for national political activity. Instead – as the PEPP proposal stands today – UKIP’s participation in a PEPP would have the effect of adding roughly £20,000 - £25,000 to MEPs’ expenses allowances. The extra money could be spent only for the purposes of the pan-European party (not UKIP) and such expenditure would be regulated by the European Parliament.

And that’s all, as far as UKIP as it now exists is concerned. (There would also be some money for a think-tank, perhaps located in London, but more probably in Brussels or another city on the Continent, and – in my view – it would be invisible and irrelevant to the average UKIP member.) Whether an extra £20,000 or so on MEP expenses amounts to ‘a huge sum’ is a matter of opinion. In my view, the new dosh would be chickenfeed relative to the wider political debates in which the UK Independence Party is involved. Does anyone seriously believe that our country’s independence can be restored by the EU – the EU, for heaven’s sake – adding a bit more than £20,000 to the allowances of UKIP’s MEPs, when the money can be spent – to repeat – only for the purposes of a foreign political grouping (i.e., a PEPP) and such expenditure must be regulated by a foreign legislature (i.e., the European Parliament).

Nigel 2004 and Nigel 2011: which Nigel should we support?

In politics party unity is at a premium. Divided parties tend to lose elections. The voters do not know what a divided party stands for; they cannot support a party that, because it has conflicting policies, does not seem to be sure what it believes in. So members of the UK Independence Party must at present support Nigel Farage. As I have often said, he has great gifts as a public speaker. He is also undoubtedly very effective in delivering sound-bites on the media, an important skill in today’s world of almost universal attention-deficit-disorder.

But party members who joined in 2004 or before are entitled to ask which Nigel Farage they are to follow. Should it be Nigel 2004 or Nigel 2011? As this note has shown, Nigel 2004 and Nigel 2011 are very different people. For myself I have little difficulty in supporting Nigel 2004. However, I am much less enthusiastic about Nigel 2011. Someone once said, ‘a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds’. Ok, but we hobgoblins of little minds should be free to express our opinions when the inconsistency becomes too blatant.

Tim Congdon

26th July, 2011

More on UKIP to EUKIP

2011-07-26T11:10:00.001+01:00

Gerard Batten MEP,
UK Independence Party,
PO Box 2409,
Ilford,
IG1 8ES.

020 7403 7174

22nd July 2011

Steve Crowther,
Chairman,
UK Independence Party.

Dear Steve,

Open Letter: European Political Parties

On 11th July you gave me a piece of paper asking me to ‘abide by the result of the members’ ballot’ on this subject. I understand that if I sign this then should the members vote ‘Yes’ to the question posed I will be ‘required’ to join a European political party of the NEC’s choosing.

Fist of all let me say that I have only ever joined one political party in my life: the Anti-Federalist League in 1992 which changed its name to the UK Independence Party in 1993. I opposed Britain’s membership of the EU prior to 1972 and I voted No in the 1975 referendum. The only policy towards the EU that I am interested in is that of withdrawal – which has to be unconditional in my view since if there are any conditions they will be set by the EU not Britain.

I have to decline to sign the piece of paper you gave me. I am making this an open letter to you as you have written in Independence magazine telling the members that you have asked the MEPs to abide by the decision whether it is ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, and so I think they therefore have a right to know why I am not signing it.

My reasons are as follows:

1.If and when there is a European Political Party which at the very least encompasses the policy of unilateral national withdrawal from the EU in its Constitution or Statute I will give serious consideration to joining it. However no such part yet exists and it is a hypothetical question.

2.No individual can be ‘required’ to join a political party – especially one that doesn’t exist. That proposition is, with all due respect, a nonsense.

3.Even if a suitable party existed then there is the issue of who else might be admitted as members? Such a party’s membership would be drawn from across Europe and UKIP cannot be expected to control it. It might admit as members those we did not, collectively or as individuals, wish to be associated with. Until we know the basis of membership from its statute we cannot make a decision; and even if we joined we might subsequently have to leave if people we did not approve of were allowed in.

4.Who is to be on the pay-roll of the hypothetical party? Who it employs is of equal importance to who its members are. I can think of a number of people whose financial benefit I wouldn’t want to indirectly contribute to by being a member of a European Political Party of which they were an employee.

5.The UKIP NEC may well eventually approve of a particular political party but the decision to join it must be an individual decision of belief and conscience. If the membership do vote ‘Yes’ then will the refusal of an MEP to join a EPP elicit sanctions of some kind? If so, then this should have been made plain to the members so that they can make a properly informed decision. It has not.

As I said, I will be pleased to consider membership of an actual European Political Party when one exists with a Statute encompassing withdrawal that we can consider. I hope that the NEC will realise that the issue of requiring MEPs to abide by the decision of the members on this issue has not been properly thought out and will respect my position.

Yours sincerely,

Gerard Batten MEP

Angle Blockhouse to be excavated

2011-07-18T18:30:00.001+01:00

Wales News

Human Bones found in Broch

2011-07-18T18:28:00.001+01:00

BBC

Caligula Found

2011-07-18T18:21:00.001+01:00

Why oh why do journalists always describe Caligula as a lunatic etc etc. Then again why do they believe what they write in the Sun and the Mirror. Poor old Caligula had a very bad press....
Discovery

Some Very interesting Mummy Scans

2011-07-18T18:20:00.000+01:00

Chicargo

UKIP to EUKIP?

2011-07-13T07:12:00.003+01:00

I have printed below Professor Tim Congdon's paper on the attempt to join UKIP to a pan-European Party. I make no comment on his deductions and the facts he brings forward to back his assertions.
However I do ask what sort of party wishes to join with its proven enemy simply for the dubious benefits of cash for the few?
That such a view of putting great effort into European elections, which are irrelevant to the ex.UK leaving the EU, and in comparison placing so little effort into the only election that counts - those for MPs - leaves me wondering who is at the helm of UKIP and what their objectives really are...
Paul Remfry

Vote ‘no’ to pan-European parties
An article from Tim Congdon in the July issue of Independence on the theme ‘Timeo dietam Europae et dona ferentes’ (‘I fear the European parliament when bearing “gifts”.’)

“Political parties at European level [meaning: pan-European parties] are funded from the general budget of the European Union. This budget may not be used for the funding of other political parties and in particular national political parties.” Repeat: the EU budget for pan-European political parties “may not be used for the funding of national political parties”. I quote from the official website of the EU (http://europa.eu). My quotation is the official and definitive statement on the subject.
The UK Independence Party is undoubtedly a national political party. Indeed, its purpose is to restore in full the independence of the United Kingdom. As every member of UKIP deplores, this independence has been largely stolen from our country by a corrupt political elite collaborating with the EU’s bureaucracy. If UKIP is not a national political party as the EU understands that concept, I will eat my hat. So the EU’s budget for pan-European political parties is not to be used by national political parties, while UKIP is a national political party. It follows – logically, inescapably – that none of the EU’s money for pan-European political parties can be used by UKIP in the United Kingdom for UKIP’s own ends.
At this point you might say, “Full stop, end of story. There is nothing more to say. Let’s move on to the vital, important work that UKIP must do to take Britain out of the EU.” And I would agree with you 100%. Nevertheless, the team pushing for UKIP’s association with a pan-European political party claim on their website that an extra £400,000 a year would come to “our party”. This claim – which is their only argument – is false. No money would become available to “us” in UKIP for the purposes of “our party”. Do not believe the “yes to PEPPs” side if that is what they say.

How much money has been approved for all expenditure on PEPPs?

The 2011 EU Budget has a section on the European Parliament's expenditure
and within that there is an allocation for 'political parties at the European level' (i.e., PEPPs)
The figures are,

17.4m. euros for the PEPPs as such, and
11.4m. euros for the Foundations.

This 28.8m. euros is divided up, according to a key in EP regulations.

But surely, you might protest, the “yes” side cannot be indulging in total fantasy. I have over the last few days carried out some homework on various EU and European Parliament websites, and am confident that I know how the “yes” team have derived their numbers.
The full story is quite complicated. You need an Excel file (which is available from me at timcongdon@btinternet.com and is also attached with this e-mail) to appreciate the detail of the calculations, but I can give the main points here. Remember that any sums arising from UKIP’s association with a pan-European political party come out of the EU Budget. That is why their expenditure is subject to European Parliament rules.
The promotion of pan-European political parties is seen by Eurocrats as part of the larger process of European integration. Indeed, so keen are the Eurocrats to expand pan-European political activity that they are hugely increasing the amounts spent. In 2009 the EU’s expenditure in this area was just under 17 million euros, whereas in 2011 the budget allocation has leapt to 28.8 million euros. The cynical and wasteful increase of almost 70 per cent in a mere two years is an insult to our taxpayers. It has occurred while our own government has had sharply to cut expenditure.

How does the key work?

EU regulations say 'The available budget for the political parties is distributed annually
as follows: 15% is distributed in equal shares among the parties which have obtained a
a positive decision and 85% is distributed in proportion to the number of elected members.'
Box shows sums available and basis of apportionment.

Based on no. of PEPPs Based on no. of MEPs Total
PEPPs, m. of euros 2.61 14.79 17.4
Foundations, m. euros 1.71 9.69 11.4

So, for example, of the 11.4m. Euros for the Foundations (i.e., think tanks), 1.71m. Is distributed
according to the number of PEPPs which have 'obtained a positive decision' (meaning
they have complied with EU criteria which a PEPP must meet). If there were 15 PEPPs,
each Foundation associated with a PEPP would receive (1.7m. divided by 15) euros,
or 113,300 euros out of this particular box.

The 28.8 million euros has two destinations. First, in Germany think-tanks or “foundations” affiliated to political parties have long been subsidized by the state. 11.4 million euros out of the 28.4 million is to finance the establishment of such “foundations” at the pan-European level. I estimate that the grant to the UKIP-related foundation due to our MEPs’ adhesion to the pan-European party would be about £170,000.
Secondly, the balance of 17.4 million euros is to be added to MEPs allowances. I believe – and I am sure most members of UKIP also believe – that MEPs’ allowances are too high already. At any rate, any MEP who joins a pan-European political party would see his or her allowances topped up by over £20,000. Let me underline once again that the resulting expenditure would be for the purposes of the pan-European party as regulated by the European Parliament, not for UKIP in the United Kingdom.

What would 'the European Alliance' receive by becoming a PEPP?

I am assuming that UKIP has 11 MEPs and that it belongs to 'the European Alliance',
which has met the EU's criteria for being 'a political party at the European level'.
I am also assuming that the European Alliance has 32 MEPs as members.
The following box shows how much the European Alliance would receive.

Receipts from being one of 11 Europarties Receipts from having 32 out of 736 MEPs
i.e., 1/11 of amounts in box above (2.61, 1.71) i.e., 32/736 of amounts in box above (14.79, 9.69)
PEPP's money, euros 237,000 643,000
Money for a Foundation, in euros 155,000 421,000

So the total amount for the European Alliance (i.e., for its MEPs and its Foundation)
would be about 1.45m. euros, which - at the present exchange rate - is roughly £1.3m.
This is why the 'yes' side say that - by joining a PEPP - UKIP would stop 'our enemies'
receiving £1.3m.

So the figure of “£400,000 for us in UKIP” on the “yes” website is explained, more or less. If all MEPs join “the European Alliance” or whatever, a new think-tank – perhaps located in Brussels – would be given a grant of about £170,000 and MEPs would receive altogether another £230,000 or so in extra expenses allowances. Do you approve of these uses of money in the name of the political party to which you belong? Is the 28.8 million euros budget to be seen as an excellent use of resources or the squandering of taxpayers’ money by a loathsome Euro- elite?
UKIP’s (or – in fact – UKIP’s MEPs’) acceptance of this sort of bribe from our enemies would be a shocking and deplorable betrayal. The “yes” side may say that the Conservatives, Labour and the LibDems have already participated in “political parties at the European level” and taken the money. They might ask, “why should UKIP be any different?”. The answer – I would hope – is that the UK Independence Party stands for principle and conviction, and is therefore opposed to politicians’ boondoggles. Politicians in the Conservative, Labour and LibDem parties are tacky and selfish, and we shouldn’t and won’t copy them. Let Conservative, Labour and LibDem MEPs join the other pigs at the trough. UKIP must not take money from a set of institutions that we detest.
Let me reiterate that no extra money would be directed to UKIP headquarters, any of UKIP’s branches or UKIP regional accounts. MEPs would indeed have (yet more) on their allowances, but could spend it only for purposes approved by the European Parliament. And do I need to say that the European Parliament’s officials loathe what UKIP stands for?
Vote No to the pan-European party idea in the forthcoming ballot.

Professor Tim Congdon CBE
12th July, 2011

Receipts for UKIP's MEPs as members of a PEPP

The PEPP's MEPs would receive 880,000 euros (237,000 + 643,000), to be spent on
for purposes regulated by the European Parliament.

The Foundation would receive 576,000 euros (155,000 + 421,000).

UKIP's MEPs would receive 11/32 of the 880,000 euros, which is 303,000 euros.
The Foundation would receive - as a result of the 11 UKIP MEPs' membership
of the PEPP - a sum equal to 11/32 of 576,000 euros, or 198,000 euros.
The total sum received by the MEPs for PEPP activities and by the Foundation
as a result of UKIP's participation in the PEPP would be 501,000 euros, which -
- at an exchange rate of 1.15 - is £436,000.

Spot your MP giving your money to their Masters...

2011-07-13T07:08:00.000+01:00

TUESDAY, 12 JULY 2011
The infamous 274 - Number 1
That is the number of MPs who supported the Coalition's decision to bung the IMF an additional £9.2billion when the vote, without a debate, was taken in the House of Commons late last night, on the draft International Monetary Fund (Increase in Subscription) Order 2011.

Richard North is hoping to publish over the next 273 days profiles of each and every one of the 274, having started this evening with Nigel Adams, MP for Selby and Ainsty.

It is the intention of this blog to link to Richard North's post on these 274, each and every day - and it would help if other blogs did likewise. These bastards need to be 'named and shamed' to the widest audience possible!

Of the remaining 130 MPs who were not present, perhaps the question should be asked of them where they were and why - allowing of course for the Speaker and his Assistants etc.
POSTED BY WITTERINGSFROMWITNEY AT 15:31

Lies, Damned Lies and the Media...

2011-05-25T17:41:00.001+01:00

The public portrayal of history...

King William Wallace??

2011-05-25T17:33:00.001+01:00

New evidence has been uncovered that royal clerks thought that William Wallace aspired to be king of Scotland.
Breaking Britain

EU controls all UK banks

2011-05-23T10:19:00.001+01:00

I'd like to say told you so, as we slip further and further down the slippery slope...
Express

More on potential IA massacre in Derbyshire

2011-05-22T20:23:00.002+01:00

Archaeologists have found evidence of a massacre linked to Iron Age warfare at a hill fort in Derbyshire (England). For the first time in the UK, scientists have found carelessly-buried Iron Age skeletons which suggest a selective massacre of women and children.
Nine skeletons were discovered in a section of ditch around the fort at Fin Cop in the Peak District. Scientists believe 'perhaps hundreds more skeletons' could be buried in the ditch, with only 10 metres out of 400 so far investigated. Construction of the hill fort has been dated to some time between 440 BCE and 390 BCE, but it was destroyed before completion. The fort's stone wall was broken apart and the rubble used to fill the 400m perimeter ditch, where the skeletons were found. A second, outer wall and ditch had been started but not finished.
Dr Clive Waddington of Archaeological Research Services, who directed the excavations, said: "There has been an almost accepted assumption amongst many archaeologists that hill forts functioned as displays of power, prestige and status and that warfare in the British Iron Age is largely invisible. For the people buried at Fin Cop, the hurriedly constructed fort was evidently intended as a defensive work in response to a very real threat."
The finds include the skeleton of a pregnant woman crushed beneath a collapsed stone wall, one of a number of defences which appear to have been built hastily before some kind of catastrophe. The remains of a teenage boy were discovered huddled at the bottom of the ditch, along with seven more skeletons, all women or children. All were found in a 10m long section of ditch, the only part to be excavated so far. The ditch was 5m wide with 2m deep vertical edges and would have guarded a 4m high perimeter wall.
There could be gentler explanations for the deaths: none of the nine skeletons show signs of violence, suggesting death would have been from flesh wounds or suffocation - or possibly disease. Explanations could include a disastrous plague or the punishment of a household by the rest of the community. The absence of adult male remains in the ditch is also a puzzle, especially as traces of cattle, sheep and pigs were found, along with horse bones, which suggest that Fin Cop's inhabitants included people of high status.
Similar evidence of Iron Age warfare has not been found at other sites, probably because many hill forts are built on acidic soil that accelerate the decay of organic matter.
Hundreds of volunteers and schoolchildren have taken part in the excavations since 2009, and the campaign won the Best Community Project at the British Archaeology Awards in 2010. Local people are keen to find out more; Ann Hall of Longstone history group said: "Locals have always viewed the hill as a peaceful spot. Now we have uncovered sad evidence of an ancient massacre and learned that our well-loved landmark may also be a prehistoric war grave".
Culture24

Bronze Age Battle

2011-05-22T20:18:00.002+01:00

Evidence has been found of what appears to have been a cavalry battle fought at a river crossing some 3,600 years ago in Germany.
BBC

For those who think they are Conservative

2011-05-21T17:37:00.001+01:00

Did you know that only 1 in 15 of 'your' MPs are actually EUrosceptic? The rest vote again and again for more of the EU to rule over us. Don't believe me, then look up the figures for yourself...
1 in 15

Stop the EUro bailouts...

2011-05-21T17:28:00.001+01:00

How to stop your money going down the EUro drain....
Peoples' Pledge

Ashton moves to annex remainder of Med. Coast...

2011-05-19T11:33:00.003+01:00

Our real foreighn Minister Ashton says EU aid policy in the Mediterranean will be “bigger, bolder”;
EUobserver quotes our Foreign Minister Cathy Ashton saying that she is working on a new strategy to support the EU’s southern neighbourhood in North Africa and the Middle East. “It's new, it's bigger, it's bolder. It will, I hope, be a recognition that the European Union takes its responsibilities in its neighbourhood seriously,” Ashton said.

Deutsche Welle quotes Open Europe’s Pieter Cleppe saying, “The EU has spent over €13bn between 1995 and 2013 on funding in the region but it consistently put [its own] security ahead of democracy.” The article cites Open Europe’s report on EU aid to its Mediterranean neighbours, which noted that the now-toppled regimes in Egypt and Tunisia were allocated a combined total of €169m in budget support, representing around 80% of the EU's overall funding for those countries. This, despite Commission demands that any recipient should meet “strict” criteria on good governance and administration.

The only logical reason I can think of is that EU intends to destabilise the southern Mediterranean coastal countries and then move in to clean up the mess. The New Roman Empire of the EU is on the up.

How UKIP deals with local power!

2011-05-19T11:28:00.000+01:00

Power to the people: first UKIP-controlled Council has big ideas.
My good friends Cllr Pete Reeve and Cllr Lisa Duffy have big plans for Ramsey Town Council, the first ever UKIP-controlled Council in the country.

It is a blueprint for a much more democratic society. While some Tory backbenchers write books and talk about localism, UKIP Cllrs are now practising it.

So, UKIP's plans for Ramsey? Youngsters from all of Ramsey's schools having control over a small budget. Community groups making presentations to the Town Council directly. Public participation at Town Council meetings extended from a paltry 2 minutes to 15 minutes. Open politics. Citizen's truly empowered and give a voice.

Those who dismiss UKIP as being just about the EU are either incredibly ignorant or burying their heads in the sand. This is hopefully the first of many UKIP Councils up and down the country that turn the way local government operates upside down.
Michael Heaver

Real Global Temperatures Science

2011-05-18T15:27:00.001+01:00

Chinese Scientists Discover What IPCC Has Purposefully Avoided: Identify Solar As Primary Cause of Global Warming
Read here. The IPCC Climategate scientists have long had marching orders from their political masters to prove that human CO2 emissions are the principal cause of global warming. This politically correct agenda thus requires that IPCC scientists diminish or ignore other climate influencers, including solar.

Unfortunately for the IPCC, there still exist thousands of scientists who conduct objective climate research to determine the real causes of climate change, in spite of political agendas.

Recently, Chinese scientists reconstructed past temperatures and determined that swings in temperature averages are a result of multiple, natural oscillations that are driven by solar radiation variability. Their research does not implicate CO2 as a major contributing factor.

"In an attempt to gain that understanding, Qian and Lu began with the reconstructed global-mean temperature anomaly history of Mann et al. (2008), combined with HadCRUT3 data for 1000-2008, relative to 1961-1990...they used a wavelet transform procedure to identify four oscillations in the millennial temperature time series...Next, they similarly examined a reconstructed 400-year solar radiation series based on 10Be data...determined that "the ~21-year, ~115-year and ~200-year periodic oscillations in global-mean temperature are forced by and lag behind solar radiation variability," and they report that the "relative warm spells in the 1940s and the beginning of the 21st century resulted from overlapping of warm phases in the ~21-year and other oscillations," noting that "between 1994 and 2002 all four periodic oscillations reached their peaks and resulted in a uniquely warm decadal period during the last 1000 years,"...As for the future, they predict that "global-mean temperature will decline to a renewed cooling period in the 2030s, and then rise to a new high-temperature period in the 2060s."" [WeiHong Qian, Bo Lu 2010: Chinese Science Bulletin]

C3 Headlines

A lack of justice!

2011-05-15T19:28:00.001+01:00

Some very good figures straight from the govt on why we no longer have law, order or justice in this country...
Witterings from Witney

Royal Navy Mutinies

2011-05-15T17:16:00.003+01:00

A study of Royal Navy Mutinies from 1740 to 1820 is taking place.
Physorg

Celtic Princess Excavated

2011-05-15T17:03:00.000+01:00

Celtic Princess unearthed in Germany
Irish Times

Unknown works of Ovid discovered

2011-05-15T16:56:00.000+01:00

EXPERTS from Huelva University, Spain, have discovered 71 unknown manuscripts of Roman poet Ovid (43BC-17AD). The manuscripts, most of them codices and fragments which were not known to even exist, have been found in different libraries around the world and most of them belong to Ovid’s greatest work, The Metamorphosis.

The professor of Latin Philology at the university, Luis Rivero, commented that these are versions or interpretations of the work which date from ancient times to the modern age, and almost complete the collection of all manuscripts concerning the author and his work, amounting to 538.

This makes Huelva a reference point for researchers of Ovid worldwide.

Ancient Greek Temple found in Russia

2011-05-15T16:50:00.000+01:00

Greek Reporter

Glastonbury Abbey Events

2011-05-13T18:20:00.000+01:00

Archaeologists have made the exciting discovery that human activity took place at Glastonbury Abbey much earlier than was previously thought - as early as the third or fourth centuries BC. The Abbey is hosting a one day Symposium on 9 June to publicise these findings. We would love to see you there - please can you also publicise to your readers and online audience?

PRESS RELEASE: POTTERY FRAGMENTS FROM GLASTONBURY ABBEY CAST NEW LIGHT ON THE DARK AGES

ARCHAEOLOGISTS are gearing up to share their discovery that the history of Glastonbury Abbey site reaches right back to the Dark Ages.

Previous studies of the Abbey's pottery had identified early Roman, Anglo-Saxon, medieval and later material. But a one-day symposium hosted by Glastonbury Abbey, exploring exciting new research into the historic excavation archives 1908 - 1979, will show that human activity took place there as early as the third or fourth centuries BC.

The research project has also shown that Middle Iron Age, Late Iron Age, late Roman and Early Medieval wares are present. The new identifications show that the history of human occupation on the site stretched back much further than had been thought, and presents exciting new evidence from the late 4th or 5th centuries - the early Christian period.

John Allan, Consultant Archaeologist to Glastonbury Abbey, and one of the speakers at the Symposium, said: 'We now realise that the Abbey site had a much longer history than previously known, reaching right back into prehistory and including the mysterious Dark Ages. We hadn't realised these periods were represented in the excavated pottery, until this project.

'A scatter of exotic Saxon, Norman, medieval and later ceramics attests the great wealth of the abbey. Scientific analysis has now established the precise origins of some of these finds; the most distant come from Italy, Spain, Portugal and France.

'The excavated pottery is also remarkably rich in elaborate jugs from Ham Green and Bristol, making a striking contrast with the finds from other sites in the area, such as those from the recent excavations at Shapwick.'

Janet Bell, Glastonbury Abbey Curator, said: 'High level scientific research carried out on the fabric of the pottery has revealed very unusual trading and marketing patterns at the Abbey, and connections with exotic places such as Tuscany, Valencia and Seville in the late medieval period.

'The Abbey was using high quality tableware such as the Saintonge polychrome jug, from Western France (on display in the museum). This probably came to the abbey through the Bordeaux wine trade in the 1300s, and would have most probably been used to serve wine at the the monks' table. Other exotic finds include a tin glazed tile from Seville, that probably decorated the Abbot's lodging around the time of Henry VIII's reign.'

How did the research come about? In 1981, Ralegh Radford (Glastonbury Abbey Director of Excavations 1951 - 1964) published an interim report suggesting a series of churches, a Saxon enclosure ditch, potentially the earliest cloister in Britain, and craft-working activities including unique glass furnaces. Several attempts at full publication were never completed. Following Radford's death in 1999, his excavation archive was retrieved and deposited with the National Monuments Record at Swindon, making the publication of a full report a feasible proposition.

The research has been conducted by the Archaeology Department at the University of Reading, funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council.

Katherine Gorbing, Director of Glastonbury Abbey, said: 'Abbey volunteers have also made an invaluable contribution to the project: Peter Poyntz-Wright, a member of the excavation team in the 1950s and 60s, has been transcribing his own original site notebooks, Doug Forbes is scanning photos and drawings, Lindsay Beach has audited and sorted finds ready for specialist study and our volunteer Collections Care Team have gallantly marked thousands of tile fragments and pottery shards.'

The cost of the Symposium is £30 (students with card £25) to include morning coffee, buffet lunch and afternoon tea. Glastonbury Abbey season ticket holders and the local Glastonbury residents can book places at a special reduced price of £15. Places are limited so early booking is advised. Details of how to book, plus the full programme and list of speakers, are available online at http://www.glastonburyabbeysymposium.com/abstract.php?&id=1004&rpn=programme

The Symposium is generously supported by the Somerset Archaeological & Natural History Society.

NOTE TO EDITORS:
* For interviews, further information or any assistance, please contact Emily Pykett at Watershed PR on 01308 485693 or 07966 259823 emily@watershedpr.co.uk
* 011 offers a unique series of visitor events at Glastonbury Abbey. A full list of the events, classes and performances taking place at the Abbey will shortly be available on the Abbey's website.
* The Abbey is open daily between 9am and 6pm until 27 May and between 9am and 9pm from 28 May - 31 August. Entrance to the Abbey is £6 for adults, £4 for under-16s and children under five go free. For more information, please visit the abbey's website at http://www.glastonburyabbey.com/
* Find out more about rediscovering the historical excavations at Glastonbury Abbey at http://www.glastonburyabbeysymposium.com/

More Con EUsceptic dealing...

2011-05-12T15:50:00.000+01:00

Immigration Minister Damian Green last night confirmed that the UK has opted in to negotiations on the EU’s draft directive designed to collect and share air passengers’ personal details with authorities across Europe. Once approved, the directive on so-called “passenger name records” would mean data including names, addresses, credit card details, travel partners, and what a passenger ate will be held for five years and can be handed over to EU police forces. The draft law applies to flights in and out of Europe but Britain wants the powers to apply to flights within Europe as well.

Open Europe Research Director Stephen Booth is quoted in the Telegraph and the Mail saying that, “Despite their tough rhetoric in opposition, Conservative ministers have handed over crime and justice powers to Brussels at an alarming rate since they’ve come to office.” He added, “It is completely undemocratic that the Government can choose to hand over British citizens’ personal data to police forces all across Europe without so much as a vote in Parliament.”

ex.UK to stump up up to another £3.6 billion for EU

2011-05-12T15:47:00.000+01:00

The Daily Mail reports that, according to comments by Greek officials to Dow Jones Newswires, Greece could request another bailout worth up to €60bn. The article cites Open Europe’s calculations that, under a €60bn bailout, the UK would be liable for between €900m - €3.6bn, due to its commitments under the IMF and the European Financial Stability Mechanism (EFSM). Chancellor George Osborne suggested that the UK would be a “reluctant partner” in any bailout. Open Europe’s Raoul Ruparel is quoted in the Mail saying, “The original bailout hasn’t worked and throwing good money after bad sends the wrong signals, since Greece has failed to meet the existing rescue conditions…The line needs to be drawn somewhere.”

Handelsblatt reports that politicians from the German coalition government are creating a front against a further bailout for Greece. FDP MP Frank Schäffler is quoted saying, "new aid won't have a majority in Parliament, it is wrong, because it doesn't solve Greece's problems."

Writing on Dutch site De Dagelijkse Standaard, Open Europe's Pieter Cleppe reveals that the Netherlands could be liable for €3.5bn under the proposed Portuguese bailout, arguing "how is it possible that the Dutch government keeps on writing blank cheques without any guarantee that things will improve? How responsible is it towards the citizens of Southern Europe to burden their governments with ever more debt, without the prospect of it all being paid back?" Open Europe's figure was also reported by Elsevier, while Belgian daily De Morgen cites Open Europe's calculation that Belgium could be liable for €2.56bn in the Portuguese bailout.

Bloomberg reports that the European Commission has announced that the interest rate on the Portuguese bailout will be between 5.5% - 6%, comparable to the rate currently paid by Ireland. According to Yle, Finnish parliamentary negotiations over the Portuguese bailout have been delayed until Friday. Differences persist between the parties with the True Finns still against the bailout, while the Social Democrats continue to argue for greater private sector involvement through a debt restructuring. Bloomberg reports that it is unclear whether an agreement will be reached in time for Monday’s Ecofin meeting, but if it isn’t, then Finland could request that the Portuguese bailout include some burden sharing for private investors in exchange for supporting the rest of the package.

The Irish Times reports that EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn has said that he expects a reduction in the interest rate on Ireland’s bailout loan to be agreed “shortly”. However, the FT notes that France is set to veto any proposed reduction unless Ireland agrees to raise its 12.5% corporate tax rate.

The True Cost of the EU to the UK

2011-05-10T18:20:00.001+01:00

Here are the figures, if you are strong enough to take them....
The Cost of the EU

Free Speech officially abolished in ex.UK.

2011-05-10T17:39:00.003+01:00

Warning you may now be sued if you tell the truth about the European Union or publish anything else that THEY do not want to be heard.

Telegraph

Two MEPs on UKIP leadership

2011-05-10T17:37:00.001+01:00

Mike Nattrass
Subject: Marta attacks Nigel
Date: Tuesday, 10 May, 2011, 9:11

You should be aware of this item.....

My view for what it is worth is that Nigel is a great speaker.
However he makes a bad leader because he mixes with the wrong people, has some very bad habits, has no idea how to motivate staff and is very selfish. He takes all the credit for himself via his own publicity machine, for which others pay.
UKIP should not be a "One man band" but this where he has taken it.
I did not notice any National Election Campaign and we are not a Right Wing party, a fact that needs to be made clear. Wanting Independence is not a Right Wing policy, it is a basic UK right.

SENIOR UKIP MEP CALLS ON NIGEL FARAGE TO STEP DOWN AS PARTY LEADER

Andreasen says he cannot take the Party forward after dismal election results.

Strasbourg 9 May 2011. Senior UKIP MEP Marta Andreasen today called for Nigel Farage to step down as UKIP Leader following the party's dismal performance in last week's UK wide elections.

In a statement she said,

"Party members and supporters are justifiably angry. After promises of success and claims that the party would triple the number of its seats, after large amounts of party members and donors money was spent on what was a poorly led campaign, the result was frankly dismal. I do not for one minute lay any blame for the results at the candidates or party workers door. Their work-rate and commitment to UKIP is beyond reproach. This campaign was masterminded at the top and that is where the axe must fall.

"As someone who passionately shares UKIP ideals and who works day in day out to further the party message in the European Parliament and in my constituency of the South East, the result was a bitter disappointment.

"It is time for change. Mr Farage has abjectly failed to deliver and is not leading the party on the course to victory. Even he must recognise this fact.

"I am calling on him to step down as Leader of UKIP and make room for a new Leader who resonates more with the public and who will move us forward to where I know we should be.

"UKIP can become an even more significant and powerful voice of dissent towards the UK government's ongoing capitulation to the European Union. It should also build on articulating the concerns of the Great British public on a number of home policy fronts. With the Liberal Democrats in free-fall, Labour in a mess and the Conservatives popularity on the wane, there are opportunities to be grasped.

"I do not believe that these opportunities will ever come to fruition with Mr Farage as Leader." Ends
Andy Carling
EU Affairs,
New Europe
www.neurope.eu

The origins of Parliament, 954-1327

2011-05-10T17:20:00.000+01:00

Expanded from the Ford Lectures of 2004, this lengthy examination of the origins of the English parliament is both insightful and thought provoking, if at times repetitive, and at least at some points not fully convincing. At first glance the reader might find the choice of terminus a quo with the accession of AEthelstan in 924 rather surprising. Surely the history of parliament goes back no further than the early to mid-thirteenth century? Interestingly, Maddicott makes a strong case for a long evolutionary prehistory for parliament in the councils of the late Saxon kings and their Anglo-Norman successors, even if, in the end, the decisive foundation of parliament as an institution is indeed located in the thirteenth century.

Professor Maddicott is well known for his earlier work in the political history of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and his biographies of Simon de Montfort and Thomas of Lancaster in particular provide a natural lead in to the question of the origins of parliament. Yet he backs up to the coronation of AEthelstan, arguing that the formation of a unified kingdom extending beyond the tribal boundaries of Wessex necessitated the creation of assemblies that were "large in size, geographically and socially diverse in composition, and frequent and regular in occurrence" (4). Among other things, Maddicott suggests, these assemblies functioned as an alternative to royal iteration, no longer feasible in an expanded kingdom. The Anglo-Saxon councils were closely associated with the great feasts of the church, at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsun, and were the occasion for ceremonial crown-wearing. They were also forums for the distribution of patronage, both land grants and offices, with at least an element of consensual involvement from the great men of the realm. In all these elements, Maddicott sees a precursor to the later institution of parliament.

It is between the coronation oath of Edgar in 973 and Edward the Confessor's return to England in 1041--having agreed to maintain the laws of Cnut--Maddicott claims, that "the origins of the constitutional tradition in England" are to be found (40). The site of assemblies became increasingly fixed in a limited number of towns, most notably London, Oxford, and Gloucester, although Maddicott recognizes that the kingship was not exclusively town-based in this period. He notes a growing institutional sense to the assembly, recognized in the frequent use of the term "witana gemot" in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle between 1035 and 1055, and also in the tendency, clear in the reign of Cnut, to view the witan as representing "all the people of England."

With the arrival of the Normans, Maddicott argues, came a confluence of two different models of governance, what he terms English council and feudal counsel. If prior to 1066 in England law was made by king and witan, in Normandy it had originated in ecclesiastical councils under ducal supervision. Although councils continue after the conquest, elements such as crown-wearing disappear by the reign of Henry I, and the festal court gives way to councils specifically concerned with the business of governance, more often held at rural
hunting lodges than in urban centres. Counsel, under the Anglo-Norman kings took on a decidedly feudal flavor, as part of the vassal's obligation to render auxilium et consilium. The councils of the king were attended by his tenants in chief. It is during this period that Maddicott's argument for continuity from Aethelstan to Edward II appears most tenuous.

The heart of the book is to be found in chapters 3-6, which cover the period from 1189 to 1327, what might be called the "long thirteenth century." Maddicott describes 1189-1227 as a period of transformation. Central to the emergence of parliament in this period is a new role and authority for the great council of magnates, occasioned initially by the absences of Richard I, then by the perceived abuses of John, and finally by the circumstances of the
minority of Henry III. Of greatest moment, perhaps, was the need for conciliar consent to direct taxation, a necessity occasioned initially by the crusades and embodied in the famous Saladin Tithe of 1188, and then perpetuated by the Anglo-French wars of the following three centuries. Maddicott considers the thirteenth on moveables taken by John in 1207 to have been particularly significant because of its large yield, appearance of having been granted in a great council of magnates, and its distinction of being the last direct tax collected prior to the concession of Magna Carta by the king. Magna Carta would build on this precedent in clauses 12 and 14 to make taxation dependent on a properly constituted assembly. The great council that assembled in London in February 1225 was, Maddicott argues, unlike its predecessor in 1207, a "'model parliament' avant la letter i" (109).

The earliest known use of the word parliamentum in an official document dates to November 1236, and it subsequently appears in the Chronica Maiora of Matthew Paris in 1239, and in the chancery rolls in June 1242. The word appears to refer to exceptionally large assemblies conducting a broad range of business, and it may be that the term gained acceptance as a means to distinguish the body from the increasingly well-defined king's council. The acceleration of the growth of parliament was tied to the loss of the crown's continental holdings and the end of Anglo-Norman peripatetic kingship, along with the emergence of Westminster as the seat of government. Maddicott posits 54 meetings of parliament between 1235 and 1257, 39 of which met in Westminster/London. The timing of parliaments was increasingly tied to the law terms, particularly Michaelmas, Hilary, and Easter. The need to obtain consent to taxation transformed parliament into a venue in which the king's actions could not only be examined and discussed, but opposed. As early as 1237 a request for taxation in parliament resulted in demands that went beyond the confirmation of Magna Carta and called for specific remedies. But who was present at these parliaments? The higher clergy and lay magnates, who also served on the council from which parliament was now differentiating itself, but also, Maddicott argues, the lesser tenants-in-chief as established by Magna Carta, not initially as elected knights of the shire. Occasionally burgesses from the towns and representative of the lower clergy were also in attendance. By 1258, a variety of
forces and factors had created a genuinely representative body, one that could be identified with the "community of the realm."

The year 1258 saw the culmination of the reform movement in the Provisions of Oxford, which while placing governance in the hands of a baronial council, nonetheless provided for the meeting of parliament three times per year. It was the Michaelmas parliament of 1259 which issued the Provisions of Westminster, effectively establishing parliament as a legislative body. During the ascendency of Simon de Montfort, both knights of the shire and burgesses made more regular appearances at parliament. More significantly, Maddicott argues, the knights saw their role extended beyond taxation to the larger world of politics and government. The Marlborough parliament of November 1267, following Henry III's recovery of power, in enacting the Statute of Marlborough, a diversified reforming code, confirmed the legislative function of parliament that would prove so significant in the reign of Edward I.

Throughout the first twenty years of his long reign, Edward I generally held two parliaments per year rather than three, at Easter and Michaelmas, frequently, but not exclusively, at Westminster. Other venues were occasionally dictated by his military or diplomatic activity. This period saw the bulk of the parliamentary legislation that has earned Edward the nickname the English Justinian, legislation the moved from the king and his council to parliament, rather than up from the commons as would become the case in the fourteenth century. Only two of the thirty parliaments of these first two decades were attended by knights and burgesses, with two others attended by knights alone. Nevertheless, this period saw the emergence of the written petition, seeking remedies to grievances or injustices, or the
granting of favors. The latter part of the reign, dominated by wars necessitating heavy taxation, led Edward to constitute parliament more broadly. Eleven of twenty parliaments between 1294 and 1307 had some form of representation from the commons, whether knights, burgesses, or both. Edward's government was confronted with the Confirmatio
Cartarum in 1297, and the Articuli Super Cartas in 1300, the king conceding to address specific written demands in return for a parliamentary grant of taxation. Even so, Maddicott argues that the parliaments of Edward I resembled a gathering of continental estates rather than a single representative body.

The reign of Edward II, for all its troubles, proved a watershed in the evolution of parliament. Of 27 parliaments during the twenty-year reign, 17 were attended by knights, burgesses, and the lower clergy, with the knights and burgesses at two more, and the knights alone at still two more. The commons' presence may be accounted for by the desire of both the king and his opponents to legitimize their positions, giving the commons an increasingly less fiscal (tax) role. Many of the MPs were repeatedly re-elected, and the parliaments of Edward II were relatively long in duration. The coalescence of these factors likely contributed to a sense of corporate identity in the commons previously unknown. This may explain the emergence of the common petition. It may also explain the emergence of the usage of "peers" for the magnates in parliament which appears between the publication of the Ordinances in 1311 and their revocation in 1322.

The final chapter, "English Exceptionalism? The Peculiarities of the English Parliament," argues that while there are certainly comparisons to be made with continental Europe in terms of the development of representative institutions, there are nonetheless significant divergences. First of all, Maddicott argues that England did not possess the semi-independent principalities that led to a regionalization incompatible with a national conciliar government.
Another distinguishing factor, particularly with regard to France, was the recurrent pattern of disputed royal succession. This, he argues, strengthened the role of political assemblies, and allowed an association with restraint on royal power. Another point of divergence with the French model is the limited extent to which Parliament in England evolved into a court, a consequence of England's professionally staffed central courts. Most important of all, however, was the impact of national taxation in England, a burden that also fell on the nobility. Additionally, the primary unit of representation in parliament was the shire, rather than the towns as commonly on the continent, and indeed in Scotland.

J. R. Maddicott has provided us with a very thorough and thoughtful discussion of the evolution of the English Parliament. Readers are likely to find the tenth- through twelfth-century material interesting, as well as the arguments for English exceptionalism. The
heart of the book, however, and the material that will be most closely studied by students and scholars, remains the three chapters covering the century from 1227 to 1327.

Maddicott, J. R. The Origins of the English Parliament 924-1327. [Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press 2010]. $55.00. ISBN: 978-0-19-
958550-2.

Reviewed by J. S. Hamilton
Baylor University
jeffrey_hamilton@baylor.edu

EU report on 'Green' Energy

2011-05-09T16:27:00.002+01:00

Its official! Even the corrupt EU don't believe in so-called 'green' energy sources, but they continue to plug them, because they make money from them....
No Tricks Zone

One Reason the NO's won so convincingly!

2011-05-09T16:21:00.003+01:00

I have never seen an article so carefully written to make the reader do exactly the opposite of its stated intentions!!! Congratulations to the NO campaign for obviously hiring all these luvies...
Environmental Women

The failure of the Yes Campaign

2011-05-09T16:18:00.003+01:00

At least one member of the yes campaign can see what went wrong and I can do little but agree with their assessment.
Liberal Vision.

Analysis of EUroscepticism

2011-05-09T16:14:00.001+01:00

Coffee House

Comments on MHDC elections, May 2011

2011-05-09T14:31:00.003+01:00

1) In wards where we stood last time we had a really good increase in support and got some very good percentage share of vote figures

2) In several wards where we had candidates we had a real effect on who was elected. In MHDC because of the absence of any Labour candidates it is fairly safe to assume that those who voted for us would have, in the absence of a UKIP candidate, voted for the allegedly anti-Eu Conservatives as it is very doubtful if they would have voted for either Lib Dems or Greens both of which Parties are openly pro-EU.
The end result was that Malvern Hills bucked the national trend and saw Conservatives lose seats and Lib Dems gain. This is a positive result as it will cause concern among Conservatives that they are losing more and more support to Eurosceptics which may increase pressure on the pro-EU Party hierarchy, particularly to hold a referendum on the EU. The 2 Conservative candidates for West ward were particularly vocal at the count about our impact on their results.

Closer examination of above

1)

A) Alfrick and Leigh
Mike Savage , 303 votes compared to 149 , + 103% and 12.25% share of valid votes cast
Mark Starr , 241 v 133 , + 81% and 9.75 % share

B) Priory
Richard Spencer , 273 v 110 , +148 %

C) Chase
Last time Caroline Bovey this time Jeanette Sheen 375 v 348 , +7.75%

In the other wards where we had candidates there is no comparison with previous elections

2)

A) Alfrick and Leigh
No impact as only UKIP and Conservatives contested ward.

B) Chase
2 Conservatives and 1 Lib Dem elected but the 3rd Conservative candidate was only 127 votes behind the elected Lib Dem so if we hadnt stood the reallocation of our 375 votes would have meant a 3rd Conservative almost certainly elected.

C) Link
2 Conservatives and 1 Lib Dem elected but the third Conservative candidate was only 192 votes behind the elected Lib Dem so if we hadnt stood our 391 and 286 votes would have meant a 3rd Conservative almost certainly elected.

D) Pickersleigh
3 Lib Dem candidates elected but all 3 Conservative candidates were in easy reach of the bottom 2 elected Lib Dems. Caroline's vote was 348 so if we hadn't stood and her vote had been spread across the 3 Conservatives then the end result would have been at least 2 and possibly 3 Conservatives elected.

E) Priory
No impact as UKIP vote though good would not have altered outcome if we hadn't stood.

F) West
2 Greens elected, as the gap between bottom Green and best Conservative was only 43 votes then if we hadn't stood then the reallocation of Harvey's vote of 171 would almost certainly mean 1 Conservative would have been elected.

Conclusions
1) We are making real progress
2) We had a significant impact on the result of the local election and local Conservatives should be making their feelings felt with the EU Conservative HQ.
3) More people of previously LibLabCon persuasion are coming over to our way of view.

Mark Starr

Pettyfogging Bureaucracy

2011-05-05T14:10:00.003+01:00

For those of you who imagined that pettyfogging - I wuz only obeyin' orders - bureaucracy had died with the defeat of the Nazis in 1945....
Lichfield

Euro migrants set for UK benefits

2011-05-03T08:33:00.000+01:00

Monday, 2nd May 2011

The Government must spell out how it intends to prevent hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans from travelling to the UK to draw unemployment and other benefits, following a change in the law on 1 May, says UKIP Leader Nigel Farage.

“As of Sunday, the working populations of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia have the right to draw benefits in the UK on the same basis as UK citizens. Their combined population is over 74 million people,” said Mr Farage.

“The benefits they are now entitled to, thanks to a European Union ruling and the impotence of our own government, include income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit.

“We know that a week’s unemployment benefit in the UK is worth more than a weekly wage for many in countries like Hungary. We also know that there are 38,000 children in Poland already receiving UK Child Benefit.

“What steps will the government be taking to protect our taxpayers from this benefit ‘bonanza’, which could be potentially catastrophic for our budget, at a time when the British people are facing cutbacks and austerity?

“In 2004, when these states joined the EU, our government failed to put in place proper transitional arrangements for immigration, as other EU countries did. Our Home Office estimated that 13,000 people a year would come here looking for work.

“Instead more than 800,000 came over the next 4 years – and that was to look for work. Now that they can claim benefits from the moment they arrive, what steps has the government put in place to limit the demand?”

Mr Farage added that the new rules would equally apply to a further 70m-plus EU citizens if Turkey joins the EU, as David Cameron has proposed.

UKIP

True cost of Wind Farms leaks out...

2011-05-02T11:16:00.001+01:00

Remember that many in our current govt, certainly in the Westminster Council and no doubt Brussels, find wind farms a nice little earner for their families...

BBC

Some science on Natural Disasters

2011-04-30T21:22:00.001+01:00

Watts UP

Excellent Referendum Idea

2011-04-29T15:09:00.002+01:00

Three MEPs elected under the UKIP banner agree to pool their EU budgets to advertise for an EU Referendum to get the UK out. Buy Mail on Saturday

USE OF MEP FUNDS ..... BUDGET FOR INFORMATION PURPOSES!

Please look at the attachment.

It is an advert asking readers of The Daily Mail (or any paper) to sign up to a request for a referendum on Britain's membership of the EU.

Can you think of any better information about the EU and it could be used in any paper.

If Trevor Colman, Nikki Sinclaire and I pool our EU budgets to fight the EU with adverts on this basis, would you say that it is a good use of our EU budget for education/information about the EU?

What do you think?

As three UKIPers in the Non Attached section of the EU parliament we fight for our country. MEPs should stop wasting time in any European Parliament and save taxpayers the money. We look forward to the Independence of country and our own redundancy.

MIKE NATTRASS MEP

WRONG AV Referendum?
• EU makes 75% of UK law
• Prisoners to get the vote
• Cuts at home to bail out Greece, Ireland and Portugal
• Unlimited EU migration
• The EU costs us £48,000,000 per day
When did you get your say on our membership of the European Union?
www.haveyoursay.eu Tel 0800 157 7916
Campaign for a Referendum
Referendum Petition
I the undersigned call upon the Prime Minister and his
Government to enable an Act of Parliament, to allow the
British people a referendum on the United Kingdom’s
continued membership of the European Union.
Sponsored by Non-attached Members of the
European Parliament, Nikki Sinclaire MEP
Mike Nattrass MEP & Trevor Colman MEP
Signed
Name
Address
Postcode
email
Please return to: Campaign for a Referendum,
123 New John Street, BIRMINGHAM B6 4LD
Advertisement
The opinions stated above are those of the authors. Sole liability rests with the authors. The
European Parliament is not responsible for any use that may be made of the above information.

The Royal Star of Charles II

2011-04-24T20:23:00.000+01:00

Physorg

Anglo-Saxon Legal Heritage

2011-04-24T20:19:00.003+01:00

A resumé of Anglo-Saxon legal heritage. Take a look as this is now extinct, replaced by Napoleonic law at the will of our LibLabCon governments. Remember, despite 2,000 years of 'freedom' in our laws we are all now guilty until we prove ourselves innocent....
LegalWeek

Take a trip around King Raedwald's grave...

2011-04-24T20:16:00.001+01:00

Sutton Hoo burial chamber reconstructed.
Evening News

The real 'Green' life the govt wants for us....

2011-04-24T20:09:00.001+01:00

This is how life really was before fossil fuels. Forget all the nostalgic clap-trap, take a look at reality....
IA Massacre

Coptic Nuns Strike

2011-04-24T20:04:00.001+01:00

And you thought graffiti was a modern scourge....
Heritage

Welsh Rock Art

2011-04-22T21:59:00.000+01:00

New excavations have recently been carried out by the Welsh Rock Art Association, on a piece of megalithic rock art, known locally as the 'Llwydiarth Esgob Farm Stone'. The farm in question is located on the Isle of Anglesey, off the north coast of Wales. It is believed to have been moved to its current location at the beginning of the 20th Century, by the renowned antiquary Thomas Pritchard.
Whilst Wales is considered less important - in terms of rock art regions - compared to the rest of Europe, this piece has significant and unique decoration. The stone is made from a distinctive localised hornblende picrite and, from the way the designs extend to the bottom edge means that this is a fragment of a much larger stone.
The farm is set in an area with several standing stones and a possible Neolithic chambered tomb, all of which are on a Northwest Southeast alignment, including the chambered tomb. Several Neolithic axes and axe hammers have also been found in the area, originating from as far afield as Cumbria in Northern England, as well as local and near-local origin. All this evidence leads the team to believe that this is an Early Bronze Age site of some significance.
The artwork takes the form of three concentric circles, cup-and-ring, cupules and intersecting grooves. Differing techniques were used to record the markings, using several tracings and photography (using artificial light sources at different angles). A final image was produced using computer graphics. Analysis of the concentric circles and the depth & width of the grooves lead the team to believe that two, not one, artist had produced the circles, using different tools and at different times.
At the conclusion of their investigations, the team was left with several unanswered questions: principally, what designs does the missing section have and what was the orientation of the fragment that they have. The final unanswered question is, what was its function? The experts can only speculate that it may have formed part of the entrance to the nearby chambered tomb. One thing that is certain is that, although resembling other patterns found on both sides of the Irish Sea, the design sequence on the Lywdiarth Esgob stone is totally unique.

Past Horizons

Bronze Age Climate Change

2011-04-22T21:54:00.001+01:00

A large gap in prehistory could signal that Britain underwent an economic downturn between around 800 BCE and 500 BCE where experts still struggle to explain what happened, where bronze is in decline and iron was not widely used.
"By 1000 BCE the bronze axe had become almost a proto-currency," says historian and presenter Neil Oliver. "It was wealth that was divorced from its use as a metal. And, a little like economic bubbles that we see today, it spelt danger. Attitudes to bronze were about to change, with dramatic consequences not only for Bronze Age elite, but for all British society. By 800 BCE, Britain - along with the rest of Europe - was heading for an economic meltdown."
The difficult thing for historians and archaeologists alike, is that no-one knows for sure what caused this decline. "There are all sorts of explanations that people have suggested, including climatic change, environmental destruction caused by over-exploitation or even internal revolution by the exploited peasantry. Alternatively, it could be external invasions - there is no generally agreed explanation for what looks like a major event, "says Timothy Champion, professor of archaeology at the University of Southampton.
What is known is around this time, is that bronze in Britain was beginning to be dumped. "The significance of [copper and bronze] is as much social as it is a tool," says Sue Hamilton, professor of prehistory at University College London. "It was made into ornaments and smaller objects. Copper was used so people had ways of adorning and distinguishing themselves but it's not until the late Bronze Age until you have a full set of tools." So if the idea of status was beginning to turn away from bronze without anything to replace it, social upheaval, it is believed, was inevitable.
But what caused the value of bronze to lose its value? Could it be the fault of the impending Iron Age? "There is iron in the Mediterranean by around 1200 BCE," says Prof Hamilton. "It became more evident in Italy around 1000 BCE [and] it was cropping up in a variety of places. This is much earlier than we ever imagined." But because iron rarely appeared in Britain before around 600 BCE, many question whether this could have had a trickle-down effect. "There were major changes in society but I don't think it was because of iron," says Sir Barry Cunliffe, emeritus professor of European archaeology at the University of Oxford.
But scientists have recently discovered something else interesting about the period - evidence of severe climate change. Results suggest that around the time of the bronze being dumped, there was a sharp decline in temperature, all revealed by the midge population. "We find there's a big change in the midges in a very short period of time - maybe over 50 years or so. And this corresponds to other evidence from pollen and from peat bogs where, similarly, the evidence is temperature declined and rainfall increased," says Stephen Brooks, of the Natural History Museum.
And without the technology to quite literally weather the storm, it is thought that this had dire consequences. "As bronze economy was collapsing, Britain's population also fell - possibly for the first time since the Ice Age," says Neil Oliver. "What we're seeing in the early Iron Age is a changing belief. It's as if the people of Britain - hit by climate change in different ways - are having to reassess their lives and their place in the great scheme of things in new ways."
By around 550 BCE, it is thought that the decline had ended and the climate had stabilised. Iron began to appear across Britain in increasing quantities. And this created a revolution in farming and food production. "The time of crisis was becoming a distant memory and the population of Britain grew rapidly," says Neil Oliver. "Agricultural surplus lay at the heart of a newly emerging economy... and that depended heavily on iron. Unlike bronze, it wasn't the preserve of the elite. And that together with its strength and new widespread availability was set to transform society and push us one more step into the modern world."

BBC

Early European Writing

2011-04-22T21:46:00.000+01:00

What is thought to be the earliest European example of clay tablet writing has been found in Greece. The tablet fragment, measuring 2.5cm by 4cm, is believed to date from 1,500 BC and was excavated from an olive grove in the village of Iklaina in southwest Greece, but the area would have been Mycenaean at the time the tablet was written.
The tablets were usually just dried in the sun rather than being baked and so remained very brittle. It is thought that this fragment had been preserved because it had been discarded and burnt in a fire, thus hardening. The symbols used are from a writing system known as 'Linear B' which was a very ancient form of Greek, being replaced by the ancient Greek alphabet some 400 - 600 years later. The Mycenaeans used Linear B to record items of economic interest. The tablet bears out this theory as the front face refers to manufacturing and the reverse possibly lists properties.
The tablet was found by Michael Cosmopoulos, professor of Greek studies and Anthropology at the University of Missouri-St Louis, who had been excavating at the site for 11 years. The excitement surrounding the find is based on the fact that, if the initial dating is confirmed, it pushes back European writing by over a hundred years. The other interesting fact is that, at the time of the writing, the settlement where it was found was a satellite of the city of Pylos, the alleged seat of King Nestor, who features in the 'Iliad'. Michael Cosmopoulos said, "This is a rare case where archaeology meets ancient texts and Greek myths".

National Graphic

More EU non-history

2011-04-10T08:18:00.003+01:00

With the ConDem govt, happily helped on their way by Liebour, cutting back on both pseudo and real history in the ex.UK its nice to know that we are subsidsing fake history to replace our glorious history. Just look at Camp Cameron's historical lies and distortions about this countries recent history whether he be in America or the East.

The cost of the 'EU museum' has soared to £137m. Cost estimates for the “House of European History” – a museum celebrating the EU's “historical memory” – have more than doubled to almost £137m before work has even begun on the project. The rocketing costs raised questions of a potential conflict of interest, since the board of trustees running the project includes the person who chairs the European Parliament's Committee on Budgets, the body responsible for allocating the funding.

Telegraph

I presume the star place in this House of Horrors will go to those great Europeans Ghengis Khan, Napoleon, the Kaiser, Adolf Hitler and of course Joe Stalin. Incidently did you know that a poll some five years ago found that nearly three-quarters of the French rightly thought that Napoleon was a war criminal??
Surely then he should have star position in EU museum!

UK net contribution to the EU doubled to £9.2bn in 2010

2011-04-10T08:14:00.002+01:00

British taxpayers contributed an average of more than £300 each to the EU last year, almost twice as much as in 2009. According to the Office for National Statistics, the UK ’s net contribution to the EU institutions increased from £5.3bn in 2009 to £9.2bn last year.

The increase is equivalent to the extra money being raised from the increase in National Insurance for higher-rate taxpayers, or the new 50p top rate of income tax. Taxpayers are being forced to contribute more following Tony Blair’s decision to reduce the size of this country’s rebate

Telegraph

More War for New Roman Empire (EU)

2011-04-09T07:29:00.003+01:00

EUobserver reports that a Hungarian junior minister, speaking on behalf of EU Foreign Minister Catherine Ashton, has said that military intervention in Bahrain, Syria and Yemen is “a possibility”. Its amazing that the Foreign Minister of New Rome cannot be bothered/does not care to announce the planning of possible future wars she, as a CND woman, wants to pursue...
EUobserver

EU damages industry

2011-04-09T07:26:00.001+01:00

A Handelsblatt article under the headline “Who will protect industry from climate protection?” notes that the German government’s plans to enhance climate protection – driven by the EU’s emission targets – are, surprise, surprise, endangering Germany's industrial core.
Handelsblatt

Interesting comment from ConHome on AV

2011-04-08T17:22:00.001+01:00

Imagine you've got an avearge seat, where by far the most votes go to the three main parties. The trick will be to get the second preferences of the people who vote for the other 2 main parties, as eventually it's going to be a 2 horse race between 2 of the 3 main ones eg:

Result on first preferences
Con 18000
Lab 15000
Lib 11000
UKIP 3000
BNP 250

In this case obviously you knock out BNP first and redistribute their 250 second preferences, then as, assuming they've hypothetically all voted UKIP 2nd, UKIP are eliminated next as their total has only risen to 3250. Then you move onto UKIP 2nd preferences and redistribute.

The point is that it's still the three at the top that you've got to watch, because which ever the third placed on is, is going to have an awful lot of 2nd preferences to redistribute.

Consequently far from immigration and grammar schools, it's the soft left that are going to have 2 bites of the cherry (Lab/Lib), and the Tories won't be able to afford to seriously annoy them as they'll probably need their second preferences.

Hence, AV is going to drag us even further to the jostling centre.

EU may allow ex.GB referendum

2011-04-08T09:06:00.001+01:00

So the EU accepts in principal they may have to let ex.GB have a referendum. In that case they intend to tax us to pay for political propaganda to get they result that they want. Now that's fair isn't it!!!

Express.

Staffordshire wind farm plans finally rejected

2011-04-07T12:05:00.001+01:00

Campaigners fighting controversial proposals to erect six 126-metre wind masts in Brineton are jubilant following South Staffordshire Council's decision to refuse the scheme.

Members of the local authority rejected the major planning application earlier this week (Tuesday, April 5) following years of concerted campaigning by the Stop Turbines Action Group (STAG) and UKIP West Midlands MEP Mike Nattrass.

The application was rejected amid concerns that Wind Prospects' scheme would have caused disruption to roads, would have had a considerable visual impact and would have spoilt the tranquility of the area.

Welcoming the decision, Tony Lendon, chairman of the STAG campaign, said: "The application was thrown out completely by South Staffordshire Council which is absolutely brilliant news.

"So much hard work has gone into our campaign against the wind farm. We wait now to see what Wind Prospect do - whether they drop their plans for good or whether they decide to appeal the council's decision.

"We have campaigned against these plans for years and I would like to say a big thank you to everyone who has supported us," he added.

UKIP West Midlands MEP Mike Nattrass, said: "I welcome the council's decision. This is a victory for the environment, for villagers and for common sense.

"The case has always been strong against this wind farm. English Heritage itself stated the masts would have been detrimental to the views from Weston Park.

"Furthermore, it is clear that if you take away the subsidies wind farms simply would not be viable as they are cannot operate when it is too windy or on calm days."

PRESS RELEASE

WEST MIDLANDS MEP MIKE NATTRASS
Visit Mike's web-site at: www.ukipmep.org

Stone circle damaged by govt interference...

2011-04-03T18:00:00.001+01:00

Longhorn cattle introduced as part of a Higher Level Stewardship conservation grazing scheme onto Carnyorth Common near St Just (Cornwall, England) have destabilised a stone of the ancient Tregeseal Circle. Two years ago some 4 or 5 stones were loosened for the same reason. Clumps of cattle hair on many stones show that they are using them as rubbing posts. It is only a matter of time before this herd create more havoc.
These concerns were relayed to Natural England several years ago by the Save Penwith Moors group. According to the group, the presence of these animals will not only damage this important archaeological site but, as has been witnessed by local regular walkers of this moor, has also caused a dramatic drop in the number of walkers and horse riders over the past two years.
Save Penwith Moors consider the current Higher Level Stewardship agreement covering this Common an unnecessary and very expensive waste of public money (about £20,000 a year for 10 years); a ruin of the moor through visually intrusive new barbed wire fencing, gates and a cattle grid; amd am intimidating and potentially dangerous presence of free-roaming cattle that can - and do - frequently graze on the north-eastern part of the Common for which there is no known ownership and is not part of the area for which HLS payment is currently being made.
It is high time that this scheme for Carnyorth Common is abandoned and all the new stock proofing removed. Most of these issues are now being assessed by the Parliamentary Ombudsman as part of a complaint of alleged maladministration by the Natural England HEATH project and Higher Level Stewardship agreement.
Contacts: Save Penwith Moors - Ian McNeil Cooke (Co-ordinator) Tel: 01736-368282 Email: info@savepenwithmoors.com

First American settlers in Texas

2011-04-03T17:56:00.000+01:00

The first human inhabitants of North America settled at least 2,000 years earlier than the people previously identified as the first Americans. So say archaeologists, who have unearthed a trove of stone artifacts belonging to the early Americans at an archaeological dig in central Texas, in the U.S. southwest; details of the finds are reported in Science magazine. The ancient stone artifacts were found lying undisturbed at an archaeological site over 60 kilometers southwest of Austin. Michael Waters, director of Texas A & M University's Center for the Study of First Americans, led the dig at the site near the head of a small stream in what's come to be known as the Buttermilk Creek Complex.
Waters say the latest relics were buried in a clay layer beneath sediment containing artifacts of the Clovis people, thought to be the earliest American settlers. But Waters say the stone artifacts include a wide variety of tools dating as far back as 15,500 years ago. The dating - which relied on a technique known as optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) that can tell how long minerals have been buried - is robust, says the team. And, they add, the observed sequence is also reliable; the sediments have not been mixed up after the tools were dropped.
"We found many, many chisel-like tools, indicating that people were working bone, working wood, you know, many hard materials," Waters said. "What is special about the site is that it has the largest number of artifacts dating to the pre-Clovis time period, that these artifacts show an array of different technologies, and that these artifacts date to a very early time," he added.
Evidence of Clovis people were first discovered in 1932, and ever since, Waters says, archaeologists have argued about whether other sites also belonged to the Clovis civilization or were older, unrelated settlements. The discovery strengthens the case for two theories that traditional archaeologists laughed at not long ago - that the first Americans came earlier than 13,000 years ago, and that they didn't walk over a land bridge into North America from Siberia, but came by skin boats at least 16,000 years ago (or long before) skirting along coastlines of the Aleutian Islands and then Alaska, Canada and America.
Waters believes they came by boat, hunting seals beside Ice Age glaciers a few miles at a time, surviving Ice Age weather, bringing families and pet dogs. He thinks the first colonies in America sprouted tens of thousands of years ago along the Columbia River basin between Washington and Oregon.
The tools found in Texas are flint blades small and thin, designed by people who carried everything they owned. It is likely that flint tools made up only 5 percent or so of the belongings of these people. Many of the tools are cutting blades used to whittle and shape bone and wood; there were no distinct spear points. Waters thinks the Buttermilk people used the stone tools to make spear points from bone. Some tools had notches with convex edges - carving tools; some chisels had edges dulled from scraping hard surfaces.
One artifact gave Waters a thrill when found: a golf-ball-size nodule of hematite, worn flat on several sides the way schoolroom chalk wears flat. Hematite when mixed with animal and plant oils produces red ochre - paint to adorn spear shafts, clothing - or skin. "These people from 15,500 years ago were decorating themselves," he said.
Rolfe Mandel, a geoarchaeologist with the Kansas Geological Survey, said the Texas discovery is "a very big deal." The Texas discovery upends that, Mandel said, people didn't just enter Alaska and sprint with babies to Texas; they migrated, perhaps for centuries.
On the other hand, professor Dillehay, from Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, said that the OSL technique used by Waters was less reliable than radiocarbon dating, which has been applied to other early American sites. And assigning the artefacts to Clovis and pre-Clovis technologies was not straightforward because the site lacked the projectile points required to reliably distinguish between the two. In addition, said the Vanderbilt anthropology professor, the tools come from a floodplain deposit that is just 6-7cm thick. This, he said, was "potentially problematic" because of the possibility that artefacts were transported around by water.
Professor Gary Haynes, from the University of Nevada in Reno, US, praised the "good work" by the research team. But he said it was plausible that natural processes could have caused some stone tools to migrate downwards in the clay - giving the impression of a pre-Clovis layer.
Waters has been working at the site since 2006, and analysis of the artifacts collected from the site is ongoing. Waters says, "These studies will help us figure out where these people came from, how they adapted to the new environments they encountered, and understand the origins of later groups like Clovis."

Edited from EurekAlert!, BBC News, VOA News (24 March 2011), AZ Central (25 March 2011), Irish Examiner (26 March 2011)

LibLabCon govt agrees to bail out EU regions

2011-04-03T17:18:00.002+01:00

You thought the ConDem govt was upset that Lab agreed to fund EU excess spending? Wrong as ever. If you think the worst about these liars you won't go far wrong.

Witney

Wind Farm to destroy historic environment

2011-04-03T17:13:00.001+01:00

Archaeologists have asked that Neolithic and Iron Age sites be protected during the construction of a new wind farm in Caithness (Scotland). Npower Renewables propose erecting nine turbines at Burn of Whilk; while there are no known archaeological remains on the site itself there are five designated Scheduled Ancient Monuments (SAMs) nearby.
Highland Council archaeologist said the wind farm would sit in a "historic ritual and burial landscape". A broch at a place known as Warehouse along with Cairn Hanach, a chambered cairn on the south side of Warehouse Hill, are among the five SAMs. The others are a cairn at Watenan, the Hill O' Many Stanes stone rows and Cairns of Warehouse.
Highland Council archaeologists have asked that the landscape be "preserved by record" before construction work starts. They have also recommended the SAMs be protected during the work and efforts be made to reduce the farm's visual impact. Historic Scotland had objected to the project but withdrew its objection after the plans were revised. Council officers have recommended Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross planning applications committee approve the planning application.

BBC

Oh and if you didn't know what will happen watch the following clip
YouTube

MORAL MUTATION

2011-03-26T14:02:00.000Z

With the onset of European dictatorships - notably in post-revolutionary France, the Third Reich and the USSR - the 19th and 20th centuries saw the guardianship of public morals pass from religious authorities to atheistic political ones. In this way, public conduct came to be ruled by political correctness, as strictly defined by secular bodies, rather than by moral virtue, as determined by tradition and that sense of a universal purpose, which is greater than human understanding, and is therefore open to interpretation.

The contemporary, and as yet rather restrained, heir of those bloody dictatorships is the European Union (EU) which is a complex system, consisting of the incumbent political parties of 27 former democracies, the governments they create and a burgeoning, central bureaucracy. Money from taxpayers and consumers is channelled, by this system, into those parts of the civil infrastructure, which support the incumbent parties and, for the last few decades, have ensured that these parties remain collectively in power and that they resolutely continue with the work of removing from society all concept of moral value, other than that defined by themselves.

It is natural that men should strive for power and that, having achieved it, they should seek to perpetuate it, by perverting or weakening the democratic processes, which endanger that perpetuation. It is therefore highly necessary that those-not-in-power should succeed in restraining the powerful by retaining the ability to remove them from office, at regular intervals. When all the incumbent parties are part of the same political complex, however - as is the case in the EU - it is not possible to change the regime merely by rotating the parties.

Not content with this, the political élites are proceeding to force society into such a condition that (they hope) it will become incapable of removing them. Hunting down and eliminating moral virtue, which they cannot define or control, and replacing it with a legalistic political correctness, which they can fine-tune and direct at will, is their method of establishing their power in perpetuity.

The basis of this method, the fine sounding Droits de L'Homme (now translated as "human rights") appeared during the French revolutionary period and has since become a world-wide cult, spawning first the United Nations Organisation (UNO) then the Council of Europe, then the European Economic Community, and a plethora of international bodies and courts, and finally the EU.

In each case, economics - or, quite simply, money - was used initially, or at an early stage, as a Trojan Horse to insinuate the artificial human-rights agenda into formerly democratic legislatures. By this means, negative rights (everything allowed unless forbidden) have been gradually replaced by positive ones (everything forbidden unless allowed) and the traditional, or God-given, right of individuals to stand equal before the law, and be judged on their merits, has been subverted so that the law increasingly sorts individuals into arbitrary and unequal classes and treats them accordingly.

Curiously, or infuriatingly, this unequal treatment, or "positive discrimination", is rationalised as tending to create social equality, where this is perceived, by the élite, to seem to be lacking. Justice thus becomes the victim of social engineering, and society becomes fragmented, as ever more minorities, disadvantaged groups and ethnic communities are identified, vaguely defined and given special privileges.

These privileged classes then become the flying columns of the élite's attack upon the majority. They are ever ready to provide "victims", in legal cases designed to test and advance new human-rights laws, and they become tribally captive to the incumbent parties, and their allied international, and supranational, organisations, all of which spew forth laws of this kind, at the most astonishing rate.

These developments go hand-in-hand with the churning of global populations, which produces cultural heterogeneity incompatible with democracy and thus confirms the powerful in power, by reducing the electorate to factions, which squabble ineffectually among themselves and are incapable of exerting a popular will.

That, at any rate, is the plan. Some might call it a purely spontaneous process; but this distinction is academic. It is happening, and rapidly; and we must stop it, while enough remains of our formerly exemplary judicial processes and of our formerly renowned system of democratic representation. Moreover, arresting this moral mutation can only be achieved through the displacement of the incumbent pro-EU parties, which means electing a patriotic party, in the United Kingdom, ready for the challenges of independence in a changing world and yet respectful of the traditions, which have provided us with genuine moral guidance, and with the instinct and the institutions to follow it.

Nigel Farage

Corrupt EURO'fascists' attack...

2011-03-26T11:09:00.002Z

Pro-Brussels peers behaved 'like a pack of hyenas' in the Lords this week when urged to declare strings-attached pensions they receive from the European Commission.

The peers, including the increasingly unseemly Neil Kinnock, ganged up on Ukip's Lord Pearson in an extraordinary manner.

Some shouted at the Ukip man, heckling him, sneering, scoffing and generally making him feel threatened.

Lord Pearson's 'crime'? All he did was ask why ex-Brussels Commissioners are not required to declare their fat EC pension loyalties before they make parliamentary speeches.

The crucial thing about these pensions is that they are 'forfeitable'.

That means they can be taken away if recipients criticise Europe. By any standards, surely, this is an ongoing financial inducement. It seems amazing they can get away with not having to declare it.

Mail

More details on UK's decision to join Euro

2011-03-25T15:18:00.001Z

The UK has a treaty opt-out from having to join the euro, as does Denmark.

All other EU member states, present and future, have or will have a treaty obligation to join it, and there is no treaty mechanism for any country to leave the euro once it has joined.

Therefore it will inevitably end up with the UK being in an untenable position as the only EU member state which is not in the eurozone.

That could have been avoided if Clegeron had decided to demand treaty changes:

a) To relieve member states which are not yet in the euro of the legal obligation to join it; and

b) To set up a process for a member state which is in the euro to make an orderly withdrawal;.

in return for allowing the proposed treaty amendment to establish a permanent bail-out mechanism and associated measures on EU economic government of the eurozone states.

Instead he has now gone to the European Council with an unqualified mandate from both Houses of Parliament not to negotiate, but to simply agree to what the eurozone states think they want.

Although Parliament will have other opportunites to vote against that treaty amendment prior to final ratification, if there was any chance that either House would ever do so that chance has now been reduced to zero by the fact that both Houses have formally pre-approved it.

The Lords debate on Monday evening starts at Column 527 here:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201011/ldhansrd/text/110321-0002.htm

and ends with the government motion being agreed without a vote. You will see the objections raised by Lords Pearson, Stoddart and Eatwell, with the latter saying:

"Would the Minister explain why he is asking this House to agree to a Motion that he asserts is going to be in the best interests of the UK when he does not even know the mechanism that the Motion will create?"

The Commons debate was on March 16th starting at Column 421 here:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm110316/debtext/110316-0004.htm

Note what Bernard Jenkins said:

"Can we be absolutely clear what we are doing here? It used to take months, even years, to change a European treaty. Tonight, we are going to debate this motion for 90 minutes and then the Government will go to the European Council and agree to that change in the treaty. That is correct, is it not, because the next time this comes back for scrutiny it will be a fait accompli?"

And John Baron:

"Given that this vote will have to be unanimous and we therefore have veto, is this not an ideal opportunity at least to try to extract concessions from the EU? We could take such an approach on, for example, the working time agreement, in line with the coalition agreement."

"Will my right hon. Friend return to the power of the veto that we have? I accept that the matter will come back to this place and that we will discuss it again, but surely we should now be trying to extract concessions in return for not using our veto. I ask him again, because he uncharacteristically did not address the point last time, whether we could be using our veto to extract concessions on the working time agreement, which was, after all, in the coalition agreement."

And Bill Cash:

"My right hon. Friend is going through all the procedures and the technical side of things, but, as he knows, that is not really what the treaty is about. I hope he will agree that it represents a huge change in the relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union."

"The essence of this debate is not just the technicalities, which we heard about at great length from the Minister, but something far more fundamental-the political landscape of Europe. The Minister knows it and the Foreign Office knows it. To give an example, there was a massive row between Nicolas Sarkozy and Mr Kenny about the terms of European economic governance only a few days ago. Furthermore, as was said this week in The Economist:
"Mrs Merkel has struck a Faustian bargain with France's Nicolas Sarkozy."

He knows that France is losing influence, and as one senior EU official commented:

"France needs Germany to disguise its weakness, and Germany needs France to disguise its strength".

The fact is that we have the strength to prevent this hybrid treaty arrangement, which presents Germany with a predominant role. We have great sympathy for Germany's predicament, given that it contributes so much to the European Union and is having to pay out so much. I have fairly regular meetings with German politicians, who tell me that if their country had the opportunity, it would almost certainly go back to the Deutschmark. There is a serious crisis in Europe, but the response is about the nature of a treaty, something in which this Government are acquiescing-it is not far short of appeasement.

The plain fact is that this is a serious moment for the future of Europe. This is a new, unprecedented situation, and it is accompanied by other proposals, which, as I understand it, will also be considered on 24 and 25 March, namely the proposals for the euro pact, which has otherwise been known as the competitiveness pact. However, nobody really knows exactly what the ingredients of it are, any more than they knew about the ingredients of the proposal that we are discussing this evening in its earlier stages. Indeed, I had to use an urgent question to extract from the Government the fact that it was even being made. That is the manner in which Europe works: by secrecy and behind closed doors. Indeed, there are already signs of committees meeting, and we are discovering-through leaks and otherwise-the manner in which they are going forward."

"I say this with great respect for my right hon. Friend the Minister, but he talks about how we would be under no legal obligation and how there would be no transfer of powers or competences, but that is not the issue. The issue is whether the United Kingdom is affected. That is the point that I put to the Prime Minister repeatedly, and he cannot answer it. The fact is that the arrangements in question do affect the United Kingdom."

"This is a bad treaty proposal. The leverage comes now, when we have the opportunity to say no. The Government propose that this will be dealt with in a Bill, but that will be far too late. The Government are acquiescing in this, and I regard that as a form of appeasement to the modern problems of Europe in the form of a predominant Germany, which is not in the interests of Europe, not in the interests of the United Kingdom, and not in the interests of Germany itself."
Denis Cooper

Con MPs virtually unilaterally vote for EURO

2011-03-25T07:44:00.002Z

Do you remember how many, many liars (aka MPs) told you how lucky we were to be outside the EUro? Well now they have voted to join it. Oh happy days....
The Public Whip

For those of you who may have forgotten...

2011-03-19T15:00:00.002Z

Trust Libya with nuclear power, says SarkozyPresident Nicolas Sarkozy urged the West to trust Arab countries with nuclear technology yesterday as he signed a deal that could see France supplying Libya with a new reactor.
During a meeting with Col Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, Mr Sarkozy agreed to help the country with a nuclear-powered project to desalinate seawater. France has Europe's largest civil nuclear power industry and a vital commercial interest in exporting reactors and technology.

Any Libyan reactor could be supplied by Areva, France's leading nuclear energy company. Until he invited international inspectors into Libya in 2003, Col Gaddafi had a covert nuclear weapons programme.

But Mr Sarkozy denied that the new deal came with any risks attached. "Nuclear power is the energy of the future," he said. "If we don't give the energy of the future to the countries of the southern Mediterranean, how will they develop themselves? And if they don't develop, how will we fight terrorism and fanaticism?"

Related Articles
The president added that if the West considered that Arab countries were "not sensible enough to use civilian nuclear power", this would risk a "war of civilizations".

Mr Sarkozy's visit to Libya and the nuclear deal both came immediately after the release of six Bulgarian medical personnel and one Palestinian, all of whom had been sentenced to death for allegedly infecting hundreds of children with HIV.

Mr Sarkozy denied that the nuclear agreement was linked to Col Gaddafi's decision to free the prisoners, who had spent almost eight years in Libyan jails. But the French leader added that without the release of the foreign medical personnel, he would not have travelled to Libya.

Mr Sarkozy's domestic critics attacked his agreement with Col Gaddafi. Sortir du Nucleaire, an anti-nuclear campaign group, said that civilian and military uses of nuclear technology were "indistinguishable" and added: "Delivering civilian nuclear energy to Libya would amount to helping the country, sooner or later, to acquire nuclear weapons."

The French Socialist Party said it was "too soon" for Mr Sarkozy to be throwing himself "into Gaddafi's arms".

By David Blair, Daily Telegraph Diplomatic Correspondent 12:01AM BST 27 Jul 2007

How to make money when we leave the EU

2011-03-19T09:25:00.000Z

Bruges Group

ConDems condemned by ex.Con

2011-03-17T08:23:00.001Z

PRESS RELEASE
WEST MIDLANDS MEP MIKE NATTRASS

The former Chairman of the South Staffordshire Conservative Association says the Tories’ pitiful record on Europe has prompted him to defect to UKIP.

Forty-six-year-old Lyndon Jones, who was elected Chairman of the South Staffordshire Conservative Association in March 2009, has now joined UKIP after becoming totally disillusioned with his former party.

Lyndon, who is married and lives in Wombourne, said: “UKIP is not just about the EU. I am passionate about this country which has been failed by the ConDem coalition which has betrayed our Armed Forces and the British people.

“Before the General Election the Conservatives said they would look after our Armed Forces but after the election they just slashed the defence budget.

“I fought for the Tories at the last General Election as I believed the party would stand up for this country and its interests. Sadly, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems have sold this country down the river.

“David Cameron gave a cast iron guarantee to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Sadly he reneged on that promise.

“I feel very strongly that we should be allowed a referendum on Europe but we are not going to get that referendum with the Tories.

“I am totally disillusioned with the Conservatives and I have joined UKIP because I believe in the party’s policies,” he added.

UKIP West Midlands MEP Mike Nattrass said: “I am delighted to welcome Lyndon into the party.

“He is well known and well respected in South Staffordshire. The Tories have let him down and let this country down.

“UKIP is the only party standing up for the interests of this country. Lyndon will be a great addition to the party.”

ENDS

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CALL CRAIG WINYARD, MEDIA & COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER FOR MIKE NATTRASS MEP, ON 0121 333 7737 OR 07881 660941.

EU to fund its side in any referendum...

2011-03-15T18:33:00.001Z

Wonder where all the money comes from for glossy political campaigns? Oh yes the poor old taxpayer pays for it....
England Expects.

Doesn't this also ring true of the ex.GB Educational Establishment!

2011-03-15T15:11:00.001Z

The Foundary

The Types of PR

2011-03-14T20:02:00.002Z

Want to know more about AV and FPTP, well look here
British Academy

Nuclear Problems in Japan.

2011-03-14T18:17:00.003Z

After watching the hopelessly biassed BBC reports from Japan, here are some cold hard facts to keep in mind concerning the problems with three of the damaged nuclear reactors. Fortunately this is based mostly on hard facts rather than scare tactics and twaddle!
Morning Bell

Dail Mail lies about People's Pledge to leave EU

2011-03-14T16:41:00.001Z

UKIP Leader Nigel Farage says he welcomed the article in the Daily Mail today highlighting the launch of the People's Pledge calling for a Referendum on our membership of the European Union.

"However the Daily Mail's leader argues that we must stay in the European Union due to its trade deals," Mr Farage said.

"This is transparently not the case. We can have free trade with the EU without being a member of that organisation.

"Currently the EU has trading deals either completed or in negotiation with over 60 different countries. And everyone from Neil Kinnock to Giscard d'Estaing has said that if Britain wants to set up a trade only deal then it could.

"And on Commonwealth Day we are reminded that there is a whole world out there that Britain should be trading freely with. But our membership of the EU's antiquated Customs Union prohibits us from negotiating such deals.

"I call on everybody to get in touch with the Daily Mail to make these facts clear to them."

More Ancient Climate Change

2011-03-13T16:36:00.000Z

Unreported Heritage News

Another MP taking the EU cent by the billion...

2011-03-13T14:51:00.003Z

Environment Minister’s family has earned £2m in EU farm payments. The family of Conservative MP Richard Benyon earned £2m in EU farm subsidies between 1999 and 2009. Mr Benyon is the Environment and Fisheries Minister.
Surely those responisble for trying to cover up this MPs 'earnings' from the EU are guilty of a crime that should be investigated? At the least they should be sacked for breach of public trust.
Mail on Sunday

Recent Tim Congdon Lecture on the EU

2011-03-13T14:42:00.001Z

The handover of Britain
The 2011 Goldsmith Lecture
- Given at the Sir David Davies Lecture Theatre, University College London, by Professor Tim Congdon CBE, on 22nd February, 2011 to the New Britain pressure group

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,
I am much honoured to have been invited to give the 2011 Goldsmith Lecture. Like previous lecturers, I am set the exam question ‘Talk on “The State of our Nation” in about 30 minutes’.

As this is gives me plenty of scope, I will start with a self-indulgence. I am going briefly to recall my own schooldays. One of the ‘O’ Level texts in English Literature at my school was Shakespeare’s Richard II. The pupils were all assigned roles and had to read them in the classroom. In a moment of inspiration the schoolmaster asked me to take the part of John of Gaunt on his deathbed. ‘The State of the Nation in 1399, viewed from the perspective of 1595.’ Here it goes, if with a little abbreviation,

This precious stone set in the silver sea
Which serves in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house
Against the envy of less happier lands
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England...
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land
Dear for her reputation through the world
Is now leas’d out – I die pronouncing it –
Like to a tenement or pelting farm.
England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of wat’ry Neptune, is now bound in with shame
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds;
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.

John of Gaunt’s speech gives me my theme. Britain has made a contribution to the progress of civilization out of all proportion to its population and size. Its people are rightly proud of its history, traditions and institutions. Yet in the last 40 years the government of our country has been handed over to an alien bureaucracy in a foreign capital. How has this come to pass?

In a footnote the Arden Shakespeare edition of Richard II explains the message in the last two lines of the quotation, ‘These lines clinch the rhetorical development. The sentiment and implication [are] that England can never be conquered except from within and must rest true to herself.’ So my theme is ‘The Handover of Britain’. My argument will be that our country has lost its independence not because of surrender to a conquering foreign power, but because of betrayal by its own political class. The betrayal has not been sudden, well-organized and deliberate. Instead it has occurred in a series of spasms, incoherent and unplanned, a case of cock-up rather than conspiracy. Nevertheless, it has been betrayal, and shocking and disgraceful betrayal at that.

I.

A basic question is, ‘why did so many people come to believe in “Europe”, in the sense of an unfolding process of “ever-closer union”?’. If we are to answer it, there is a prior question, ‘why do people have a certain set of political beliefs at all?’. Most people think to some extent about issues that are outside and beyond their immediate everyday experience, and all human cultures have had a religion of some sort. A reasonable surmise is that – if a set of political beliefs is to appeal to individuals and have traction even in modern societies – it must to some extent have the character of religion.

In the opening chapter of Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy Schumpeter did not beat about the bush. In his words, ‘Marxism is a religion.’ After all, Marxism had both a holy text (Marx’s Das Kapital), which its devotees accepted as a matter of faith and against the weight of evidence, and an eschatology, with the successive phases of history (feudalism, capitalism, socialism) culminating in man’s ultimate destiny, a utopian communist end-state. One measure of the success of proselytizing religions is that they attract converts and increase in numbers. The growth of numbers thereby becomes self-justifying and self-reinforcing. By appearing to prove that the religion is worth following, it persuades more followers to join. Indeed, when the expansion of a religion or a political belief-system confirms the predictions in its scheme of history, the momentum may appear overpowering and unstoppable. In the early twentieth century communism attracted new followers only partly because they believed in its core message. They joined the Communist Party because Stalin’s Five-Year Plans met their targets, because the Soviet Union was being ‘electrified’, because the Red Army defeated Germany in the Second World War, and so on. As communism grew, it acquired prestige from its expansion. It seemed to be ‘the future’. As it appealed to a growing number of converts, its forward momentum became part of its brand appeal to yet more converts.

The same kind of argument can be made about European integration. In the aftermath of the Second World War it is hardly surprising that many of the leading statesmen of the era were determined that a similar horror must never happen again. This is not the place to recall at length the contributions of the ‘founding fathers’ – Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman, Paul-Henri Spaak and Alcide de Gasperi – to the new multi-state European institutions of the 1950s. However, from the start the ultimate intention was a full-scale political union to end war. (The Coal and Steel Community of 1950 was concerned planning the production of the two materials then regarded as essential to making armaments.) After some false starts, the architects of European unification persuaded their governments – originally only six governments – to sign the Treaty of Rome in 1957. The aim was to forge a common market, with free trade in industrial products, and inter-governmental support and cooperation for agriculture.

How did this essentially economic grouping acquire the status of an overarching political idealism, a matter of faith, to its followers? The answer is that it grew and added new members. As with Marxism, its growth and the expansion of its membership resembled that of a stage-by-stage construction endorsed by history. First of all, the rate of output growth in the original six Common Market states was far higher over the 15 years from 1957 than in the United Kingdom, which had been the principal potential member in 1956 to have disdained joining. The UK was thus perceived by its own political elite as having made a fundamental strategic error. When it applied for membership for the third time in the early 1970s, it was joined by Ireland and Denmark. By early 1973 the EEC had nine members. Greece was welcomed in 1981, as it escaped from military dictatorship. The accession of Spain and Portugal in 1986 was again to help these two countries prevent the return of authoritarianism. Now the membership had risen to 12. In 1995 Austria, Finland and Sweden joined the club, while in 2004 came the largest expansion so far, as eight former Communist bloc countries and two Mediterranean island states (Malta and Cyprus) gained admission. Over the 54 years from the Treaty of Rome the number of countries involved in European integration has climbed from six to 27.

Now, if an association of nations has climbed in number from six to 27 over two generations, it is Good Thing or a mistake? Is it a success that has been blessed by history or a failure? For many of those two generations of Europeans, the movement towards European integration was a Good Thing and a success that had been blessed by history. The mere recital of numbers – numbers of member states, numbers for gross domestic product, numbers of cars produced by the EEC and then the EU, numbers of foreign holidays taken in member states – appeared sufficient to demonstrate the validity of the integrationist idea. Just as religions of the spirit seek their validation by the growth of the number of adherents, so the religion of ‘Europe’ could claim endorsement by listing the various indices of its economic and political expansion.

Moreover, European integration – like the most dogmatic forms of Marxism – could evidently be seen as a stage-by-stage historical programme. This stage-like character gave further apparent legitimacy to integration, since one stage seemed to follow logically from the previous one, and the whole process could be represented as inevitable and unstoppable. (The coordination of iron and steel production is succeeded by industrial free trade and the planning of food production, then by the harmonization of an assortment of social arrangements [such as weights and measures, and professional standards], later to the sharing of cultural norms, and so on.) The stage-by-stage evolution was not just a feature of the integration process in the large, but also of various aspects of that process, such as the adoption of a new common currency. Thus, the Delors Report 1989 envisaged the introduction of the single currency as having three stages.

By this means history was schematized. It could be portrayed as having an inner logic, and as serving a desirable final destiny. As explained by Karl Popper in The Poverty of Historicism, the schematization of history is always a mistake. The narrative of Europe over the centuries has been unpredictable and kaleidoscopic, to say the least, and amply disproves the notion that the direction of history is a straight line. Nevertheless, the schematization of history appeals to the large number of bureaucrats and politicians who like to think in terms of clean and definite categories that unfold in neat and predictable ways. (The EU’s current environmental objectives are summarized in the formula 20/20/20 by 2020.) The best kinds of historical schemas are those that contain a future in which such people can believe. For the high proportion of Europe’s more thoughtful citizens who wanted a structured idealism – indeed, a certain amount of religion – in their politics, the doctrine of ‘more Europe through ever-closer union’ became compelling in the late twentieth century.

The dominant ideological schema of the mid-twentieth century was Marxist historical determinism, of which of course The Poverty of Historicism was a critique. Communism drew support – like the religion of Europe today – from tens of millions of ostensibly clever and rational people. In our own country its thinking infiltrated every major institution and affected people’s conduct in virtually all walks of life. The peak of enthusiasm for communism probably came at the end of the Second World War. Although only a minority regarded the Soviet Union as a better place than Britain, this minority was large enough to include millions of people. They could and did transfer their intellectual and emotional allegiance – even if only privately– to a foreign set of principles and a foreign power. As Orwell wrote in a 1945 essay, they were subject to ‘transferred nationalism’. To quote, ‘A Communist...is one who looks upon the USSR as his Fatherland and feels it his duty to justify Russian policy and advance Russian interests at all costs. Obviously such people abound in England today, and their direct and indirect influence is very great.’

Since then the credibility of Marxism has disintegrated. Today in Britain only a madman would look upon the USSR as his Fatherland or advance Russian interests at all costs. Nevertheless, the fact cannot be escaped. Within living memory our country saw the transfer of emotional and intellectual loyalty, by very large numbers of people, often people in positions of public trust and responsibility, to a hideous and tawdry foreign set-up. Transferred nationalisms are dangerous. In the last 30 years, for those of our fellow citizens who are susceptible to transferred nationalism, the natural object of their affections has been not Soviet Russia, but the European Union. Let me re-jig Orwell slightly. ‘A Europhile...is one who looks upon the European Union as his homeland and feels it his duty to justify EU policy and advance EU interests at all costs. Obviously such people abound in Britain today, and their direct and indirect influence is very great.’

II.

When a young person leaves school or university, does that person choose a career that is more likely to be a success or a failure? Obviously, the person chooses a career path that is more likely to be a success. We have just seen that, for most of the closing 40 years of the twentieth century, the movement towards European integration was – or at any rate could be represented as – a dominant geopolitical trend, one of the most successful historical forces of the day. For people interested in ‘public affairs’ (i.e., a career in ‘government’ or ‘politics’), involvement in that trend was a sensible career choice. Many talented and ambitious young people therefore decided to participate in the process of European integration. Further, they saw their participation not in passive terms, but actively as a means of promoting ‘ever-closer union’.

Government in modern democracies is riddled with illusion. The media report that ‘X did such and such’ and ‘Y favoured this, that and the other’, where X and Y are presidents, prime ministers or whatever. The message is that presidents, prime ministers and other high personages took the decisions and implemented the policies. The truth is different. The high personages – the politicians reputedly ‘in power’ – receive advice from a number of sources about available policy options and their relative desirability. These policy options then define, or seem to define, ‘the possible’. Once an option has been chosen, the high personage tends to move onto another policy area and to forget about the decision taken. Actual implementation falls to others. So the civil service, the bureaucracy, both spells out what is and is not possible, and then translates into practice whatever the politicians’ decisions may have been. Clearly, the politicians and the bureaucracy share power. It is an illusion that only the politicians wield power.

Needless to say, relations between top politicians and senior bureaucrats are sometimes tense. In his Diaries Richard Crossman discussed how, as Minister of Housing in the first Wilson administration in the mid-1960s, he worked with his Permanent Secretary, Dame Evelyn Sharp. She was agreeably left-wing in her general political complexion, ‘and yet’ – in Crossman’s words – ‘a tremendous patrician and utterly contemptuous and arrogant, regarding local authorities as children which she was to examine and rebuke for their failures’. Indeed, ‘she sees ordinary human beings as incapable of making a sensible decision’. As Elie Kedourie mocked in a review of Crossman’s book, the minister found himself surrounded by such people, as if ‘in a padded cell, guarded, shielded and comfortably supplied by his civil servants. At times he is appreciative of their attentiveness and efficiency, at others he lashes out in suspicion of these very same qualities. Here then they are, in their Ministry, these frères ennemis...Whether or not it is because they inhabit the same padded cell, we find Ministers and civil servants talking the same language.’

In other words, politicians are fantasizing if they think that – as top ministers, with the massive authority supposedly extended to them in a modern democracy – they can do whatever they wish. In reality the taking and implementing of decisions are largely the work of the bureaucracy. The balance between political and bureaucratic inputs varies over time and space. Obviously, in any one nation a new government with a large electoral majority can at times reorganize and bully the bureaucracy, and see that ‘the people’s will’ is done. But since 1957 the balance of forces in the European project has moved radically towards the civil servants. The European Union’s bureaucracy has had four advantages, of which two are related. As the years have passed, the Eurocracy’s advantages have become overwhelming. The politicians have been outsmarted and outmanoeuvred.

The first is that the EU bureaucracy is European. It therefore acts for the pan-European institutions that are seen as having ever greater legitimacy, relative to their national counterparts, in the construction of things European. It can stand above the fray of jealousies and squabbles among the member states. Its impartiality – or at any rate its superficial impartiality – lends it authority. Second, the bureaucrats are on average of much higher quality than the politicians. By ‘quality’, I mean that the civil servants are more intelligent and honest than the politicians. Two languages and a degree are necessary qualifications for entry into the European Civil Service, which now numbers over 23,000 people. By contrast, the accidents of political life are such that people with few educational qualifications can climb ‘the greasy pole’. As far as their relative honesty is concerned, over the decades so many scandals have tarnished the reputation of national politicians in the various EU member states that little needs to be said by way of demonstration. (At the moment one thinks of Berlusconi’s high jinks in Italy. Whatever their other inadequacies, politicians seem able always to serve up a salacious titbit of some sort to entertain the citizenry of Europe, and also to discredit themselves as responsible public servants.)

The third and fourth advantages of the European bureaucracy over the national politicians should be seen together. The third is that the bureaucracy is permanent, whereas politicians come and go. Indeed, the rotation of government ministers in some countries – such as Italy and Belgium when coalitions cannot be formed – sometimes proceeds at such an extraordinary speed that they barely have enough weeks ‘in power’ to attend even a single meeting of the Council of Ministers. By contrast, the bureaucracy is entrenched. Although Commissioners are appointed for terms of five years, they are backed by teams of Eurocrats chosen from the European Civil Service and the European Civil Service provides a lifetime career. Finally, EU civil servants in Brussels do not have to seek re-election and to justify themselves directly to the citizens of any one nation. They do not have the distractions of having to answer letters, phone calls and e-mails from constituents, or to fight the intra-party and inter-party battles of contemporary politics. The European bureaucracy is permanent and committed to the building of the European Union; national politicians ‘hold power’ only temporarily and are often so frazzled that their only serious commitment is to the next plane home.

This is not to deny that in their own countries politicians retain a great deal of power, at least in principle. However, in practice the bureaucracy can and does obstruct what the politicians want. In the last 20 years a favourite bureaucratic tactic has been to appeal to a European directive or regulation of some sort, whenever a minister suggests an initiative or policy direction that the civil service does not like. Since national governments can be reprimanded and fined by the European courts, the politicians may have no choice but to abide by their civil servants’ instructions. (I use the word ‘instructions’ deliberately. Often the politicians are expected merely to sign on the dotted line.) The popular perception of British government is that the ministers of the crown are the masters and the civil servants are, as their name implies, the servants. In reality whenever a policy area with a European dimension comes into consideration, the civil servants are the ventriloquists and the ministers of the crown are their dummies.

III.

So in the final decades of the twentieth century many people believed in a quasi-religion of ‘Europe’. Many of the brightest and best of the last two generations of Europeans have fashioned careers in the pursuit of this quasi-religion. A large bureaucracy has been recruited – supranational, permanent, clever and unaccountable to electorates – with the same goal in mind. The members of this bureaucracy undoubtedly see themselves are superior to the national politicians whom they encounter. By an understandable extrapolation, they come to regard themselves as worthier to govern Europe than those politicians. Given the background, it was perhaps not so remarkable that from the Single European Act of 1986 to the Lisbon Treaty of 2009 national governments accepted a huge transfer of powers – of so-called ‘competences’ – from themselves to the European Commission. The Single European Act, the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, the Treaty of Amsterdam of 1997, the Treaty of Nice of 2001 and the Lisbon Treaty of 2009 are indeed the ‘inky blots and rotten parchment bonds’ that now constrain the national governments of Europe, including our own. (Fortunately, the UK decided to keep the pound and the freedom to conduct its own monetary policy. Unlike Ireland and Greece, it has not suffered the indignity of being ‘leas’ d out’ like ‘to a tenement or pelting farm’.)

In the early 1980s the nation states of Europe remained sovereign in most vital respects, having ceded to European community institutions only the customs union, and farming and fisheries policy. The laws passed by national legislatures were the laws of England and Wales, of Scotland, of France, Germany and so on. In setting farm prices and such like, the use of administrative orders – in the form of directives and regulations – was common sense. It hardly encroached on the prerogatives of the legislatures or challenged the sovereignty of the nation states. But today ‘social policy’, ‘environment’, ‘consumer protection’, and ‘freedom, security and justice’, are ‘shared competences’ where – to quote from the Lisbon Treaty itself – ‘member states cannot exercise competence in areas where the Union has done so’. As the Eurocrats have ensured, these words and phrases – ‘social policy’, ‘environment’ and so on – are large, vague and uncertain. Disputes about their exact meaning are inevitable. It is unrealistic to expect that disputes about the interpretation of the treaties are for elected politicians, given the transience of their involvement in these issues and their presumed intellectual shallowness. Instead such disputes are largely entrusted either to the European Commission or, if the Commission and national governments are at loggerheads, to lawyers in the European courts. The relevant lawyers – in the European Court of Justice or the European Court of Human Rights – have invariably been inculcated in the quasi-religion of integration. So, when a dispute about the definition of a competence arises, the courts’ verdicts have the effect of expanding the power of the Union (and hence of its unelected civil servants and lawyers) at the expense of the member states (and of their elected politicians).

Sure enough, some figures of great influence in the European construction – for example, Giscard
d’ Estaing at the time of the Laeken Declaration in 2001 – have noticed that a major constitutional upheaval has taken place. They have also seen that, along with the centralization of power in Brussels, the essence of this upheaval has been a change in the balance of power between bureaucrats and politicians, and that the net effect has been a loss of democracy. But the lesson of events time and again since 1986 is that these expressions of concern are brushed aside by the bureaucratic juggernaut that the European Commission has become. Frankly, the Europhile political class believes itself to be the intellectual avant garde and to be right because it has history – the inevitability of history – on its side. It is indifferent to popular approval or disapproval. The European Commission is inhabited by dozens of Dame Evelyn Sharps. Remember Crossman’s words that she was ‘a tremendous patrician and utterly contemptuous and arrogant, regarding local authorities as children which she to examine and rebuke for their failures’. The difference between the Dame Evelyn Sharp of the mid-1960s and today’s EU Commissioners is that, whereas she was contemptuous of local authorities, they are contemptuous of nation states.

An objection might be entered at this point that the European Commission cannot do whatever it likes. Directives and regulations have to be accepted by the Council of Ministers, and at the Council of Ministers the nation states hold votes in proportion to their populations and are represented by elected politicians. Wasn’t an example set by de Gaulle in 1965 when he initiated the ‘empty chair crisis’ by withdrawing French officials from the European institutions? De Gaulle’s worry was that the Commission was assuming too much power. He objected to the proposed move to ‘qualified majority voting’, on the grounds that it would dilute member states’ ability to control the bureaucracy. But on only one occasion, in the negotiations on the rebate led by Margaret Thatcher in 1984, has the UK shown the toughness in its approach to the EU and its bureaucracy that de Gaulle displayed in 1965. De Gaulle’s intransigence led to the Luxembourg Compromise of 1966, which said that QMV would not used when a nation’s material interests were affected. Today that compromise has been forgotten. Even more alarming is that on the Council of Ministers the UK’s representative is only one in 27. In 1965, when its government had the courage to leave the room as a protest, France was one of six members. What would happen nowadays if one of the UK’s ministers walked out of the Council of Ministers in disgust at a particular proposal? Unless that step were plainly in the context of the UK’s prospective departure from the EU, the rest of Europe would laugh.

IV.

The British have traditionally made a great song and dance about their history, and the specialness of their institutions (the home of parliamentary democracy, the rule of law, the separation of the executive from the judiciary, the bicameral parliament in which one house is for revising legislation, and so on). My argument in this lecture has been that – to the extent that we still make a great song and dance about the marvel of our constitutional arrangements –we have become ridiculous. The fact is that many of our key traditional constitutional arrangements are null and void; the reality is that, as in other member states of the European Union, the dominant source of new legislation is not the democratically-elected House of Commons, but – as I said at the start – an alien bureaucracy in a foreign land; the truth is that elected politicians from our own country have to kowtow to unelected functionaries from several foreign countries. Perhaps even worse, long-established protections of individual rights are being eroded. Winston Churchill was not alone in deeming habeas corpus to be a defining feature of the English-speaking world of free nations. But in the last few years British citizens have been arrested in this country at the instigation of foreign police forces and then imprisoned somewhere else in the EU, even though no charge has been levelled against them.

The enormity of the betrayal must raise questions about the motivations of the politicians that have been responsible for it, as well of course of their civil service advisers and associates. No one is claiming that heads of state, senior ministers and top officials have received direct bribes from European institutions to persuade them that they should surrender powers to the EU. Nevertheless, corruption has been at work. In politics a distinction can be drawn between ‘hard’ and ‘soft corruption’, just as in diplomacy there is one between ‘hard’ and ‘soft power’. Hard corruption is the payment of specific sums for an identifiable improper action, usually in its immediate aftermath. Soft corruption is the hinting that unspecified favours will be granted, perhaps at a distant date in the future, for an action just far enough from the border-line of political propriety. Whereas hard corruption deals in money, soft corruption deals in jobs and honours.

The EU abounds in soft corruption. Bluntly, there is no doubt that the British political class has been turned by the jobs and honours on offer. The Labour Party’s manifesto in the 1983 general election included withdrawal from the EEC. Neil Kinnock, an MP since 1970, was prepared to fight the 1983 election on that manifesto. However, after becoming leader in October 1983, Labour’s opposition to European unification was watered down and eventually abandoned. After losing the 1992 general election Kinnock became a European Commissioner and stayed in Brussels for nine years. His wife, Glenys, was a Member of the European Parliament from 1994 to 2009. In 2009 she was made a life peer and for a few months she served as Minister of State for Europe. On 14 June 2010 The Daily Mail carried a story on how Neil and Glenys Kinnock had ‘received more than £10m. in pay, allowances and pension entitlements during their time working at the European Union in Brussels’. According to the story, ‘the couple’s lavish lifestyle’ was ‘funded from the public purse’.

The growth of soft corruption is related to the rise of the so-called ‘career politician’. A career politician might be defined as someone who wishes to be engaged on a full-time basis in political advocacy from which he or she intends to make a living. The intention to make a living from politics does not rule out the possibility that the individual concerned may, at some stage, have entertained strong political beliefs of a selfless and idealistic kind. But the winnings from a political career tend to go towards people who approve of and participate in the current drift of public policy. Whatever someone’s original views, the case for joining the latest bandwagon is also the case to pay school fees and afford a large mortgage. As the EU has grown, it has proliferated jobs of all sorts. All too often the bandwagon for European integration has been financially rewarding for those who have joined it.

Greater involvement in, and hence more commitment to, European integration offers temptations even to those who are meant to be wholeheartedly opposed to it. In autumn last year I stood for the leadership of the UK Independence Party. One reason was that a significant group of party members was worried that the favourite leadership contender – Nigel Farage – had become attracted to the idea of UKIP associating itself with a pan-European party. The experience brought home to me how important the insights of the Virginia School of Political Economy, or ‘the economics of politics’, are to modern political activity. Its leaders – James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock – did their main work in the 1960s and 1970s, but its relevance to understanding the European Union’s emasculation of our own parliamentary institutions is greater than ever.
Buchanan and Tullock’s central point was that the tools of economic analysis can be applied to topics such as politics, bureaucracy, law, constitutions and so on, as well as to economists’ more familiar concerns like the determination of the prices and quantities of goods and services. When they were writing, an implicit assumption of most public debate was that the government existed to serve the public interest. By extension, the purpose of political action was Benthamite, to achieve the greatest good of the greatest number. The Virginia School’s most devastating proposition was that the Benthamite assumption was invalid. Politicians are human beings, not the expressions of ‘the general will’, whatever that might be; they are greedy and imperfect, and have their own self-interested material aspirations. So in practice many government decisions are taken with a view to the aggrandizement – including the financial aggrandizement – of political cliques, the greatest good of oneself and one’s chums.
In the case of the EU, the idea of pan-European parties has been invented by the supranational bureaucracy so that politicians align themselves with like-minded Europeans in other countries and hence approve further integration. The European Parliament is to offer subsidies (ostensibly to pay for ‘research’, ‘think-tanks’ and such like) to MEPs who form such parties. So subsidies to promote integration are now being offered to MEPs of separatist parties – including the UK Independence Party – which exist in order to reverse European integration! If the Virginia School is right, these MEPs – elected to protect their country’s independence – might even have wanted to accept the money that was being dangled in front of them.

V.
The betrayal of our nation’s traditions and institutions has been so comprehensive that this lecture might conclude on a gloomy note. But I will end with a hint of optimism. As might have been expected, bureaucratic government from a foreign capital is of lower quality than democratic government from London. The flood of directives and regulations has affected all of us in different ways, but millions of people are now being hurt by ‘legislation’ coming from Brussels, and the decisions of European courts. Public support for the European Union has declined, just as the political elite has become steadily more enthused by it. Clear majorities of the British people want their country to leave the European Union. Last August a YouGov poll found that 47 per cent wanted the UK out of the EU, compared with 33 per cent who preferred to stay in. Bizarrely, the latest Eurobarometer of public attitudes – which is financed by the European Commission – had earlier demonstrated a similar result. It showed that 33 per cent of its UK respondents regarded the EU as ‘a bad thing’, while 29 per cent viewed it as a ‘a good thing’. Indeed, the growing discrepancy between popular hostility to the EU and the willingness of successive British governments to hand over so-called ‘competences’ to EU control is becoming dangerous. When people believe that politicians are out-of-touch and untrustworthy, and ignore what they want, the risk of civil disobedience increases. In a modern democracy politicians must respect the wishes of citizens and voters.

Sooner or later the wrong of the UK’s acceptance of the 2009 Lisbon Treaty must be righted. The Lisbon Treaty was undoubtedly a radical change in the constitutional arrangements of every EU member state, including the UK. All three of the main parties gave clear pledges in their manifestoes at the 2005 general election to hold a referendum in the event of another big European constitutional upheaval. Yet all three of them then pretended to believe that the Lisbon Treaty was not important enough to justify the holding of a referendum. This was scandalous, an orchestrated insult to the intelligence of the British electorate.
The case for a referendum on the UK’s continued membership of the EU is now overwhelming. On 28 November 1996 Jimmy Goldsmith’s Referendum Party proposed the wording of the question in such a referendum. To quote,
Do you want the United Kingdom to be part of a federal Europe or do you want the United Kingdom to return to an association of sovereign nations that are part of a common trading market?

There is little doubt that – if this question were asked of the British people now – it would deliver a decisive outcome. Undoubtedly, the majority would be in favour of an association of sovereign nations participating in a customs union. The UK could then leave the European Union. If Britain’s voters can be given a referendum on how electoral results are to be calculated (i.e., the referendum on AV), they must be entitled to a choice on the very definition of the nation to which they belong. The referendum needs to be held as soon as possible, to stop more damage being done to our traditions, our institutions and our way of life.

VI.

So what of the State of the Nation in February 2011? Britain has been betrayed by its own political class. It has been conquered from within and become untrue to itself. Let Shakespeare have the last word.

That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.

Thank you.

Richard Ure (ed.) King Richard II in The Arden Shakespeare (London: first published by Methuen in 1956, reprinted by Nelson in 1997), p. 54.
They think of the weather and the sky, and eventually move onto cosmology; they worry about their circle of friends and acquaintances, and hence of ‘society’; and so on.
Joseph A. Schumpeter Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (London: Unwin University Books, 5th edition, 1952), p. 5. (Schumpeter’s italics.)
Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (eds.) The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell vol. III (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970, first published by Secker & Warburg in 1968), p. 414.
Elie Kedourie The Crossman Confessions (London and New York: Mansell Publishing Ltd., 1984), p. 6. On the notion of ‘the Whitehall village’, see p. 2 of Jock Bruce-Gardyne Ministers and Mandarins (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1986).
This is a reference to the praise for habeas corpus in Churchill’s speech in Fulton, Missouri, on 5 March 1946. See also, for example, Tom Bingham The Rule of Law (London: Allen Lane, 2010), pp. 13 – 14.
For the appalling case of the imprisonment without charge in a Hungarian prison of Mike Turner and Jason McGoldrick, see the website www.freemikeandjason.co.uk. This is only example of the abuse of European Arrest Warrant whose legitimacy in the UK arises from the UK’s membership of the EU.
Simon Mcgee ‘Revelead: How the Kinnocks have enjoyed an astonishing £10m. ride on the EU gravy train’.

A Look at Energy Production

2011-03-13T12:33:00.001Z

The Case Against the Case Against Conventional Energy

MPs should declare their EU payments...

2011-03-12T08:45:00.002Z

So a certain Michael Heseltine has received nearly £1million from the EU over the past 10 years. How many other MPs, lords, officials also have this conflict of loyalties? All officials in receipt of EU funding should have their voting rights curtailed on EU affairs. Simples...

Mail.

Evil Robin Hood tax ideal for greedy politicos

2011-03-10T08:15:00.001Z

MEPs flawed methodology for a EU Financial Tax would place a burden of between £40bn - £180bn on the UK
The European Parliament yesterday voted to support a financial package which includes an EU wide financial transactions tax (FTT). Open Europe’s research suggests that due to the proposal’s flawed methodology and the complex logistics for organising the burden sharing, the tax could cost the UK between £40bn - £180bn a year, if levied at a rate of 0.01% - 0.05% on derivative, equity and bong trades as suggested. Meaning that due to the massive burden such a tax would probably be politically and economically unfeasible.

Citing Open Europe’s findings Allister Heath, writing in CityAM, argues that the real cost of the tax would be far greater than MEPs realise. He uses the failed experiment of taxing financial transactions in Sweden during 1980s as evidence that Tobin taxes cause far more harm than good.PA reports that EU Taxation Commissioner, Algirdas Semeta, called the decision premature, saying: “taking into account the potential impact that this could have on European competitiveness, it would be irresponsible to proceed with such a tax without first analysing and fully understanding all the implications."

CityAm

Cons admit LibLabCon policy will sink GB

2011-03-04T16:51:00.005Z

It is nice to see that even members of the Conservative Party, while blindly following Camp Cameron, have realised that they are blithly handing away the main wealth creating aspects of this ex.nation. Will they do anything about it? Don't make me laugh! Oh and any Lab's gloating, your miserable lot intend to do the same as Camp Cameron with knobs on....
ConHome

Democratic Parliaments useless in EU

2011-03-03T16:10:00.001Z

EUobserver reports that the Commission is set to gain considerable power as new rules on decision-making in the 300-odd EU committees dealing with the detailed implementation of EU laws – a procedure known as ‘comitology’ – came into force yesterday. The article notes that, under the new rules, a qualified majority of experts from EU member states will now be needed to block a Commission proposal on technical issues, while the experts’ ability to transfer controversial decisions to the Council of Ministers has also been restricted. An EU official is quoted saying: "The Commission is in control of the agenda and can push its own interests. It can now adopt its own proposals unless there is a qualified majority of member state experts against it.”

DC lies to Foreigners rather than his Constituents!

2011-03-01T06:07:00.003Z

In an interview with Al-Jazeera, David Cameron has rejected calls for an in/out referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU, arguing that leaving the EU would “not be in [Britain’s] interest.” On his Telegraph blog, Dan Hannan has argued that rather than guessing at the outcome, and then working backwards, people ought to consider instead whether it is right in principle to consult the country.
It is funny how unprincipled people often talk of principals...
Al-J

EU Greens will destroy our industry

2011-03-01T06:02:00.001Z

Die Zeit reports that the President of the German Industrial Energy Association Annette Loske has warned that EU environmental targets are pushing a “policy of de-industrialisation”. The article alleges that that EU Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger is also lobbying against measures proposed for the EU’s low-carbon “Roadmap 2050”.

Meanwhile, in the Mail Christopher Booker argues that although wind turbines are expensive, inefficient and unsightly, Britain is committed to building thousands more in order to meet EU renewables targets. He claims Britain ought to take notice of other EU countries turning against EU policy, following Holland’s announcement that it would slash its annual subsidy by billions of euros.

Zeit

Sexual Problems start in Brussels...

2011-03-01T05:58:00.002Z

The European Court of Justice could tomorrow rule to scrap the insurance industry’s opt-out from the EU’s 2004 Gender Directive, which will mean insurers can no longer offer different products and prices to men and women based on their sex. The ECJ’s Advocate General has argued in a preliminary opinion in favour of removing the opt-out, since it constitutes gender-based discrimination. The Court’s verdict follows the Advocate General’s opinion in 80% of cases.

Open Europe has published a new briefing showing that, should the ECJ decide to ban the insurance industry from charging different prices, it could, on average, cost a 17 year old female driver an extra £4,300 by the age of 26. In a worst case scenario, this cost could rise to £9,000. The ruling could also see the insurance industry needing to raise an extra £936m in capital due to increased uncertainty in the market.

Open Europe’s findings were featured on the front page of the Metro and the Express, and were cited in the Telegraph, the Sun, the Mirror, the Mail, the Press and Journal, and several regional papers. Open Europe Research Director Stephen Booth is quoted saying: “That these judges would magically rule that young women should pay more in the name of equality is simply perverse. Instead of making prices fairer between men and women, this ruling would increase costs for consumers taken as a whole.”

Meanwhile, the Guardian and the Telegraph also note that the ECJ ruling could cost male pensioners £340 per year due to a decrease in annuity rates.

OE

Wind Power damages Denmark

2011-02-28T16:38:00.001Z

Interesting to see the real cost of so-called green energy!

Wind Energy

We will never let you vote - Cameron

2011-02-28T16:17:00.002Z

So Camp Cameron finally admit what those of us capable of reading between the lines have said for years. What makes me really laugh is that his appoligist says:

"To be fair, David Cameron is simply doing what ninety-nine per cent of public figures do on the question of an In/Out referendum, namely guessing at the outcome, and then working backwards. He evidently believes that a plebiscite would result in a ‘No’ vote and, unlike most supporters of the EU, he is being creditably honest in admitting that this is why he doesn’t want one."

I say let's be honest rather than 'un'fair! He is a liar, was a liar and always will be a liar. How can lying about your real position be being 'creditably honest'?

Hannan

Govt signs away UK armed forces...

2011-02-28T09:14:00.001Z

With links to various docs

WFW

Govt based corruption

2011-02-28T09:08:00.002Z

The situation in the UK, Ireland and taxpayer gifts to corrupt regimes....

Helen Szamuely

Unusual Roman fort defences

2011-02-28T09:03:00.001Z

An external 'gatetower' has been unearthed in excavations at Neath.
BBC