This is a blog from November 22nd of last year. Following a typically pompous and offensive speech by Nigel Farage in the plenary chamber in Strasbourg former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofsadt gave us a few home truths. It’s a great bit of footage and well worth seeing again to remind ourselves of some of the very serious questions about Farage’s UKIP and how much work they actually do in the interest of the United Kingdom.
Farage Taken to Task for Lack of Work
Guy Verhofstadt, the former Belgium Prime Minister and current leader of the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), took Nigel Farage to task today for his lack of work in the parliament. Mr Verhofstadt pointed out to Mr Farage that it his salary was the greatest waste of tax payers money as he has failed to attend a singe sitting of his committee (the fisheries committee) in two years.
As rants go I suppose Mr. Verhofstadt did make a bit of effort with his rant but I am struggling to give it more than a C minus. He got himself worked up but the timing was poor, it lacked humour, he relied too much on his notes and he failed to bring the rant to a successful climax.
Having as the object of his rant Nigel Farage was a brave choice though and his hope that his efforts would receive wide interest on the television showed commendable optimism. It is a pity that he fails to recognise that he is hopelessly outclassed by UKIP’s leader. I had a look at the number of times Nigel Farage’s most popular rant was viewed on YouTube and found that he scored 1,092,969 while Mr. Verhofstadt’s best effort has only been seen only 103,505 times. One could say that since Verhofstadt’s rant was more recent the viewing numbers might increase but his rant about the UK government of a year ago has only been seen 18,612 times.
As for the actual content, he talked of the salary ‘we’ are paying to Mr. Farage. A foolish thing to say, if the ‘we’ is the EU it is nonsensical, the EU does not have any money other than the contributions of tax from member states and the only two significant net annual contributors are Germany and the UK; it is ‘we’ (Britons) who are paying a disproportionately high part of Mr. Verhofstadt’s salary and this Briton does not feel that he is getting good value for money.
The former PM of Belgium’s suggestion that Nigel Farage should attend the Fisheries Committee was absurd. UKIP MEP’s enter the EU Parliament on a completely different basis to Europhile ones, they are there to extricate the UK from the EU not to sit around giving consequence to the people who have made such a comprehensive mess of the fishing industry. They state this on their campaign leaflets and they never promised dutiful attendance at committees and in the Parliament, the same Parliament which seems to have been very badly attended on the video clip. Barely half of the MEPs seem to have turned up! Perhaps the Europhiles should consider their own attendance.
It was about time someone told the truth about Farage. Great!
Moderation- why?
Most of the time, the extreme right wing anti- EU parliament members don’t attend meetings..so all the others have to do the work. Probably better that way for all of us.