Thank you for your comments. Yes, it is depressing that the EU levy is to be increased and there is no sign that the bucket loads of money we send to the EU will be spent with any more care.

You might be aware that four hundred MEPs and their assistants are taking a three-day study break in Madeira. They will be accommodated in two five-star hotels and the bill for their ‘jolly’, likely to be up to £350,000, will of course be met by the beleaguered taxpayers of the UK and Germany.

Last month the EU released the figure for the UK’s EU contributions during 2009. It came to £6.7 billion (up £226 million on the previous year). It is difficult to see how this can possibly be justified at time when the NHS has to ration drugs for the treatment of cancer.

Regards,
Daniel

Quite agree – I don’t think significant numbers of politicians have been openly anti EU since the referendum in 1975. That was probably the last time when there was any form of open debate about membership. Heath turned out to be as duplicitous as Brown.

What I find particularly depressing is the way in which we wave through any number of EU diktats without considering whether they are in our national interest & then enforce them against ourselves. The French, Italians, Spanish just shrug & ignore anything that doesn’t appeal to them.

Also ironic when we are in such financial straits that all government spending is to be cut except our EU levy which is to increase. Why can’t we freeze it until things improve? Or spread the burden across some of the net non-contributors?

regards
geoff

Sensible criminals do not brag to all and sundry about their activities and Conservatives do not, for similar reasons, present themselves as the lap dogs of Brussels.

Their nonsense about ‘being in Europe but not run by Europe’ was particularly deceitful. They know the imperialistic nature of the EU and that it is all about former nation states being run by ‘Europe’. The fantasy that it can be just a cosy forum where nations iron out their differences and co-ordinate plans for trade, green issues, etc., is absurd.

The term Eurosceptic is widely used but it is not (together with the often used ‘anti-European’) very helpful. It is possible to be pro-European while at the same time despising the federal institutions of the EU, which in any case only rule 27 of 47 countries in Europe.

It is perfectly possible, for example, to be pro-North Korea in that one respects its people, its culture and its traditions, without respecting its disgraceful government.

A more useful expression would, in my view, be EUsceptical as it indicates scepticism of the federal powers rather than the nations whose power it absorbs.