Dave on a sticky wicket

The overwhelming vote by the House of Commons against the ECHR ruling on prisoners’ votingrights hopefully shows that the EU worm is beginning to turn, even if less than a third of MPs bothered to turn up for the vote.

Dave now has a real problem.

If the Government defies Strasbourg there might follow stiff fines and even stiffer claims for compensation. There would be resignations from Ministers and an end to the coalition. There could even be resignations from the Disneyesque Supreme Court – no bad thing, since Judges these days appear to be administering political correctness rather than the law.

If Dave defies Parliament, he risks a backbench revolt that could do for his leadership, and it would be an open admission that Parliament is no longer sovereign, a situation that has existed for a long time but which politicians have refused to face. The fissures in the Tory Party that did for Maggie would reopen and the Party would once more be hopelessly divided on Europe.

Now we have the farce of the Attorney-General saying that the ECHR does not have the last word and the Justice Secretary saying that it does.

They are all missing the point. The ECHR is right.

Prisoners were not disenfranchised before the Blair Reign of Terror. Blair took the vote away from them. No government has the right to do this. If any government can remove a citizen’s voting rights at will then goodbye democracy.

Almost simultaneously the EU published the results of a poll on public perceptions of it. A majority of people in Germany, Greece, Cyprus, Latvia, Austria, Portugal, Slovenia and Sweden mistrusted the EU. But a massive percentage of Brits distrusted it to the extent of about three times the next highest level of distrust. When asked whether they thought that the EU was a ‘good thing’ all other countries voted ‘yes’, although in many cases by only a tiny margin. The UK gave a resounding ‘no’.

Sooner or later the tipping point will be reached. The imposition of shed loads of European law by non-elected, corrupt, self-seeking bureaucrats in Brussels who are loathed in Britain can’t go on forever, surely.

In addition, there is the monstrosity of the European Arrest Warrant under which Brits can be hauled off to face ‘justice’ in a jurisdiction which is thoroughly corrupt for something which is not an offence under English law, such as ‘holocaust denial’. As for European Court of Human Rights, 23 out of 47 judges had no judicial experience before being appointed. They are there to implement Brussels diktats, not to dispense justice. They also get tax-free salaries of £180,000 a year, plus 3 months annual holidays and index-linked pensions.

The latest loony Brussels nonsense is to create Europe-wide regulation of financial services, so goodbye to the City, the ambition of the French since time out of mind.

In the last referendum in 1975, we voted to join the Common Market, a trading bloc. We did not vote for ‘closer and ever closer union’. I rarely agree with Wedgie-Benn but when he said that he would not obey any law passed by people he could not vote for, I said ‘Amen to that’.

This is the BBC..........

The BBC reported on newly-weds who had their reception at Colonel Saunders. We really needed to know that, didn’t we?

The former boss of Radio 4 says that there should be more blacks on ‘The Archers’ (‘an everyday story of farming folk’). On radio.

But to be fair, the Beeb has rejected complaints by (white) parents that a cartoon show called ‘Rastamouse’ is racist because the dialogue is in patois. Dey baan backacow, man. But Rastamouse must be on the weed or he is not a true Rasta. That ought to worry parents more.

BBC TV News reports ‘a large rat was seen scuttling along Downing Street’. Leaving the sinking ship of state, then. (No rats have been seen in the House of Commons. A lot of vermin and parasites, though)

I think we should be told.

Why are Wikileaks disclosures only from the west?

More EU nonsense

‘EUobserver notes that in a report published yesterday the House of Lords EU Committee concluded that the EU’s police training mission in Afghanistan has achieved “very little” in the past four years due to understaffing. The mission, which will cost €54.6m for the year 2010-11, is described as “woefully inadequate” and “has the wider effect of bringing EU Common Security and Defence Policy missions as a whole into disrepute.” The report notes that after four years of work, around 70% of Afghan police cannot read or write and process basic paperwork. The report also highlights “the slowness of EU bureaucracy” to get the project off the ground and the lack of cooperation with NATO forces. The Committee's Chairman, Lord Teverson, is quoted by the BBC saying, “there is no formal agreement between the EU and NATO in Afghanistan, which we find utterly unacceptable.”