Bog Off Gordon

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 22 October 2007 17:04:47

Being a Euro-sceptic I can understand all the huffing and puffing regarding last week's signing of the revised European Treaty in Lisbon. I mean, are we really surprised that 95% of the failed constitution has wound up in this treaty? Did you not expect this after they lost the original one?

What is really annoying for me is not the inroads on national sovreignty but the fact that a "supposedly" democratic institution needs to work in this way. The Dutch and French have made sure that their voters can't object. We were promised a referendum in the UK but had this taken away from us. After all this is not the constitution but a mere "tidying up" of EU policy and institutions.

I'm not fundamentally opposed to the EU. I believe in free market and greater cooperation among nations, that should help to build a more secure world. What I object to is the undemocartic way in which things are done. Not only on this level but also on day to day governance. The EU is supposed to be a trading bloc that allows free access to other members markets. It is not there to have a common foreign policy or impose laws that are infringements on the rights of member states.

Why to we need to hand power to unelected officials? The EU parliament has very little power over the Commission itself. In addition it is toothless in preventing fraud on a vast scale. Mere propaganda? If so, then why have the auditors refused to sign off the EU Commission accounts for 7 years because of endemic fraud and poor financial control? When people expose these failings it is not the politician or civil servant who is punished but the whistleblower.

I think that the government should be forced to allow us our say on this. What is Gordon Brown afraid of? Are they really afraid that we'll ruin the EU dream? Why are politicians the only ones able to understand what they are signing? In my experience most politicians, of any party, have fewer brain cells than the people they represent.