You state in your Guardian article : “£124.88 per week for the next 33 weeks (standard rate, regardless of earnings)”

The truth is: “33 weeks at the lower of either the standard rate of £124.88, or 90 per cent of your average gross weekly earnings” see http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/MoneyTaxAndBenefits/BenefitsTaxCreditsAndOtherSupport/Expectingorbringingupchildren/DG_10018741

So the 20 weeks will make no difference for low paid women.

I am actually amazed to read that your refusal of the 20 weeks is based on a calculation which is wrong!

They were not, of course, funded by the EU at all. The money was all provided by UK taxpayers. For every £2.80 we contribute to the EU’s badly managed coffers we only get about £1 back. The EU made a profit on all the projects and then scooped up again with the fines which will benefit non-contributing member states such as France.

The draconian fines on the UK for the trivial issue of signage stand in stark contrast to the treatment of France over the infinitely worse crime of ethnic cleansing which it has committed against the Roma. All that seems to be happening to them so far has been a ticking off from Commissioner Reding and ‘an investigation by the European Union in to their legality’.

It is easy to imagine the proceedings of the committee detailed to carry out the investigation. They will probably spin it out a bit but basically it will be something like this,
Eurocrat No 1. What does everyone think, did they do it?
Eurocrat No 2. Well, it would be difficult to deny it, there are scores of eye witnesses and anyway it was all on TV.
Eurocrat No 1. So they did it?
Eurocrat No 2. Yes.
Eurocrat No 3. So what is the punishment, a fine?
Eurocrat No 4. Oh no, it was the French. The most we should do is another meaningless ticking off and even that had better be reasonably mild or they will get in bad mood and the UK will have to send them yet another truckload of money to cheer them up.
Committee Chair. Any other points? No, OK, thank you all for coming, here are your expense forms. Please send them to the UK Treasury – not the EU Finance Office, they are very busy just now. I believe they are trying to work out what they did with all the money they received back in 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, etc.

It is not that there is one rule for France and another rule for the UK. The rules are the same but the punishments only seem to apply to Great Britain.

Who will pay for this largesse? Another burden for employers voted in by people who don’t have to worry about their own employment.

We’re cutting defence by 8% – let’s cut the EU levy by the same amount.

regards
geoff

William Wilberforce convinced the public and his parliamentary colleagues that it was a bad thing, they outlawed it and the world was a better place. He had the advantage of belonging to a parliament which although it was part of a deeply flawed system, was nevertheless a sovereign one and it did have the power to create laws. The EU parliament does score over Wilberforce’s House of Commons in that women and people without property qualifications can vote for its members and be its members but it lacks one important feature; it does not have any very significant power.

This lack of power leads to absurdities like the one we see in this article. Instead of politicians asking for our mandate to do this or that, they ask for our support, in this case handing over responsibility for this terrible problem to us and asks that we alleviate it by purchasing hand cream!

Quite often politicians want us to support something and quite often my reaction is, you asked for our votes you got them, so do something. They are especially exasperating when the problem they want you to solve is one that they created.

This problem is not confined to the federal institutions of the EU and it is certainly not confined to Mary Honeyball; at least she is engaging with the problem and also with the public – something which seems to be impossible for so many of the political class.

It is important to recognise, in fairness, that the problem is as stated a global one but it is certainly an EU one and the wholesale opening of borders between poor countries and wealthy countries by the EU has certainly increased human trafficking/slavery.

One can see that raising funds to help the victims of trafficking/slavery is absolutely commendable but we are asked to help raise awareness. The awareness of whom, the public? Why us if we can only buy hand cream? If it is the politicians then we must have voted for some poor candidates if they don’t know what’s going on.

As for the Body Shop having a petition calling on governments to do something I hope they don’t include the EU Government. Being an unelected body of Marxists, Maoists and gravy train enthusiasts held to account by a powerless parliament they are unlikely to make a successful response.

I have the strange feeling that you’d have simply voted the proposition with your colleagues of the PES if the Murdoch press, the Daily Mail and the Telegraph were not running a scare campaign against it. It is a bit sad to think that instead of being the champions of progress in Europe, our MEPs may actually be scared to be the victims of negative campaigns from the British conservative press.

Here at World Spinner we are debating the same thing……

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

What is happening? Nurse, nurse…..