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- Jihadist Videos on University Facebook by Rupert Sutton, Huffington Post UK
- Skintland: Heads I Win, Tails You Lose by Alex Massie, Spectator UK
- Green tax on conservatories by James Slack and Tamara Cohen, Daily Mail
- Saudi princess: What I'd change about my country by Staff writers, BBC
Beware the Euro spin!
This week, ministers will be meeting in Europe to cut various backroom deals. Expect lots of spin, spoon fed via pet media pundits, designed to try to convince us that this horse-trading is actually a good thing
This week, ministers will be meeting in Europe to cut various backroom deals. Expect lots of spin, spoon fed via pet media pundits, designed to try to convince us that this horse-trading is actually a good thing.
Here are some examples of the type of thing heading our way;
"Ministers have safeguarded Britain’s interests"
If so, then why are we still on the hook for billions of pounds to bail out a currency we choose not to join? And why have we failed to return a single power from Brussels to Britain?
And if it is all such a good deal, why not but it to the people in a referendum?
"Britain has a "referendum lock" - but now is not the time to trigger it"
After reneging on that "cast iron" guarantee to hold a referendum on Europe, the Conservative leadership crafted the "referendum lock". It was designed to create the impression of firm resolve. But an impression of a referendum is as close as this measure will ever go in giving us one.
Now that a new deal with a fundamentally different kind of Europe is being agreed to, lawyerly small-print is being cited to explain why you cannot have a say after all.
"Dealing with the Euro crisis trumps the need to renegotiate"
The future of the Euro does not hinge on whether Britain has control over its own fisheries policy or employment law.
Dealing with the Euro crisis is the biggest once-in-a-generation renegotiation opportunity we will ever have. If ministers cannot muster themselves to ask for anything back now, what chance is that they will ever do so?
"Eurozone fiscal union is in our interests"
If the Eurozone is “a burning building with no exits”, why not try to help the victims escape, rather than keep them trapped inside? How does a future of debt and stagnation for millions of Europeans assist either them or us?
And if the Eurozone bloc of 17 do fuse as one, how can we ever veto any initiative ever again? How is that in our interests?
"An EU referendum would plunge Britain's economy into chaos"
Not true. The British economy is in a mess because successive governments have spent way beyond what the tax base can sustain. Governments of all three parties have acted as though they could engineer growth using monetary (and to some extent fiscal) stimulus. It has not worked, instead sowing the seeds of disaster; a credit bubble and bust, plus chronic malinvestment.
Holding a vote on Europe would, of itself, be no more economically disruptive than one on, say, AV or electoral reform.
Voting to quit the EU, however, might just enable us to begin to make some of the supply-side reforms needed to make Britain competitive in the longer term.
"We are winning the arguments in Europe"
If the EU really is moving our way, why are they about to move towards full fiscal fusion?
"The single market must be completed"
Overwhelmingly most goods and services produced by people in the town or county where you live are not made for export. Even fewer are made for export to the EU. Yet they must all comply with every single market rule. This explains Europe's burgeoning red tape – and how it acts as a drag on Britain’s overall economic competitiveness.
Alas, however, many big corporations and lobbyists tend to like more single market regulation. It is a good way of shutting down the competition.
Douglas Carswell is the Conservative Member of Parliament for Clacton. His articles are cross-posted on The Commentator with permission. Follow him on Twitter @DouglasCarswell
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The spin has never stopped in the EU. I read at the weekend that Portugal has fiddled its austerity figures by moving substantial commercial pension assets onto the Government balance sheet, but not the liabilities. It seems old habits die hard.
Douglas,
Cameron, Clegg & Miliband are just different factions of the same failed extremist pro EU party.
Cameron is worse than Heath. Why his people are not telling him the enormous damage he is doing to the Tory Party is beyond ex-members like me.
I am now a member of UKIP - & I donate more to them than I did to the Tories. I am not alone.
It is time for you to join us - you can do no good in Camerons lying duplicitous cabal of anti democracy EU fanatics.
"Dealing with the Euro crisis trumps the need to renegotiate"
The mendacious classes realise even that's not going to work and they are now falling back on lawyerly semantics. After IDS's off-message comments on Sunday we're now being told the Referendum "lock" can only be triggered if there is a significant transfer of powers from Westmnster to Brussels.
Truly if these scumbags want us to trust them again, acting like two-bit ambulance chasers and is not the way to do it.
If one ignores the EU spin.....& the Global Warming spin.....& the anti capitalism spin, not going to be much to read in the papers apart from the sports reports & the TV schedules in Welsh.....
and if Cameron and the Conservative leadership sells us out, yet again, what will Mr Carswell do.....same as always, huff and puff a bit but remain a Conservative party MP.
If this means treaty change, when do we get our EU referendum?
Where is Baroness Ashton amongst this mayhem?
Why is the UK being dictated to by unelected Eurolords of the Presidential state of Europe?
But Mr Carswell what is the point of talking about it all the time??? - EITHER YOU DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! - or you put up and shut up!!
"Dealing with the Euro crisis trumps the need to renegotiate" This is based on the misunderstanding that we can get any powers back in the first place. We can't. We need to just get out of the EU ASAP before it takes us down with it. Not wasting our money on the EU's fraudulent and wasteful schemes means we can clear our deficit, get taxes down and get back to being the country we should be. We can't influence it, we can't reclaim powers, and they don't like us anyway. Better we leave and make our own trading agreements and start scaling back the public sector as the private sector recovers.
short of shooting all the career politicians ... this is going to happen and then we can make our way, in an orderly queue, into 1984.
MP complains of others lying.
MP belongs to a club which strongly opposed any publication of expenses.
MP is not worthy of any trust.
You are in the wrong Party. It is your government you are complaining about. Speak to Hannan, Helmer, Mercer, Brody, Leigh, etc etc and form a Gang of Ten and do a deal with Farage to go and rebrand UKIP in time for Euros 2012 and use the vote from that to run in GE 2015. You have one chance to write your name into British history, instead of as a footnote in Whittakers Almanac. Jump - you will be amazed what changes once someone stands up to say NO.
What you need is voice recognition software, then you can continue to sit on your hands, without interupting your blog output.
Why is this even a question, we need a referendum and so we should get one and if the rebels had any real backbone we would. More conservative MPs rebelled against the governemnt on the referendum vote then the LibDems have in total, it they wished to, the rebels could paralyse the current government until the people of the UK were given a simple "In/Out" vote and the Lib Dems would have no choice but to let it happen or risk going to the polls right now where they would be wiped out.
But unfortunately the days where MPs had the strength of conviction to pull it off are long since gone.
Timing is very important in a negotiation. Cameron should wait until the EU next needs something from him.
As for putting the present "deal" to a referendum - that's simply ridiculous. There is no "deal" and certainly not one that the UK is party to. We need to concentrate on fixing our own problems, and building up our exports to east Asia and the Anglosphere.
I blame Thatcher. Siging us up to the Single European Act without asking us.
If only Labour had been listened to, we'd have left the EU in the 80s.