Add a comment May 7th, 2008 by ThunderDragon
It seems that Labour are pro-referendums and direct democracy when they think that it will give them the answer they want, yet not when they think we’ll give them an answer that they don’t want. Whilst you can easily demonstrate that any political party has done this over time, for one party to do this within a couple of months shows contempt for the electorate of this country.
Either they do or do not believe in referendums and direct democracy. Wendy Alexander’s argument for a referendum in Scotland is that:
It’s time for them to put up or shut up… If [the SNP are] convinced [they've] got a majority, we shouldn’t leave it to the fag end of a parliament to get around to testing public opinion.
This can just as easily be applied to Gordon Brown’s government in Downing Street. If they’re so convinced that they are right and that the people support them, they should hold or referendum. Put up or shut up, as Wendy says.
Not to mention Labour’s lack of internal referendums on leadership…
Add a comment March 17th, 2008 by ThunderDragon
The nationalised of Northern Rock is to be shrunk to half its size, with thousands of jobs being axed, due to EU competition rules.
I thought the idea of the nationalisation was to prevent thousands losing their jobs through the inevitable slimming down that any private purchaser would enact?
Why didn’t Brown and Darling think of the EU rules before they decided on nationalisation? Or did they just not look through it properly - despite the length of time they took to come to a decision?
Seems like the next queue won’t be outside Northern Rock, but ex-Northern Rock outside the Job Centre.
A Labour government planning to axe thousands of jobs in a nationalised bank primarily based in the north of England. You couldn’t make it up.
2 Comments March 12th, 2008 by ThunderDragon
The news that the Lisbon Treaty has now formally been passed by the House of Commons has been very much slipped out, without very much - if any - fanfare, with MPs voting by 346 votes to 206 to approve the EU (Amendment) Bill, despite the extreme importance of the issue.
They just won’t give us a referendum on this important issue, despite every MP in the Commons having been elected on such a pledge.
Now we can only pin our hopes on the unelected House of Lords to do what is right and democratic and give us, the people, our referendum.
1 Comment March 7th, 2008 by ThunderDragon
As the news informs us that MPs have decided not to allow us a democratic vote on the Lisbon Treaty…
The European Union and related issues is a topic that causes great schisms across most parties, one that is usually widest across the Conservative party, but recently it is the Lib Dems who have been most split by it, primarily over what we should have a referendum on, the “Libson Treaty” or EU membership itself.
Referendums and Democracy
Referendums are a form of direct democracy, whereby we the people answer a yes-or-no question on a subject of importance. In some countries, such as Switzerland, referendums are standard events. In others, such as here in the UK, they really aren’t. After all, we have had only one referendum ever. Which just happened to be on entry to what is now the EU.
Referendums are important events, no matter how often they are carried out, and just become even more important the rarer they are. After all, the last referendum decided that we would be members of the Common Market, which has become the EU without we the people getting another vote. Even though the last vote was held a decade before I was even born.
Read the rest here.
2 Comments March 5th, 2008 by ThunderDragon
The loser today is Nick Clegg, as about a fifth of his party vote against his orders with the Conservatives and for democracy, and three frontbenchers resign.
But, of course, the real loser today is Britain, who has pretty much just had the Lisbon Treaty ratified without the people being asked.
Add a comment March 4th, 2008 by ThunderDragon
Saturday was the night when this years British entry to the Eurovision Song Contest was chosen.
At the very least, it is a better song than last year’s embarrassingly bad entry.
It just needs to be “Eurovisioned” up a bit. Hopefully we’ll end up doing better this year as well… hey, stranger things have happened… haven’t they?
Add a comment February 29th, 2008 by ThunderDragon
The Liberal Democrats are said to be “
hopeful” of achieving a vote in the House of Commons on their
absurd idea of holding a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU -
rather than on the Lisbon Treaty.
Yeah, right. In the same way that I’m hopeful that tomorrow I’ll win millions on the lottery without buying a ticket.
They walked out of Chamber just a couple of days over the Speaker’s refusal to grant them a referendum. Unfortunately they haven’t stayed out since. But they’re never going to get anywhere near having a referendum on EU membership.
Add a comment February 27th, 2008 by ThunderDragon
Liberal Democrat MPs walk out of the House of Commons…
…in a huff as part of a pre-arranged stunt after their ridiculous call for a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU - rather than over the current Constitution “Treaty” being debated - was denied by the Speaker.
Are they now going to stay out of the Commons?
Please, please do.
At least for the rest of this debate.
Please? Pretty please? With a cherry on top?
It’s not as if they add anything to the discussion, anyway!
3 Comments February 26th, 2008 by ThunderDragon
Nick Clegg wants a vote on EU membership but not on the EU Constitution ‘Lisbon Treaty’.
How does this make any sense?
If you consider that the British people should have vote over whether or not they stay within the European Union, surely you also think that they should have a say over the direction in which it develops? You can’t seriously believe that the people should have a choice over membership but not the direction in which that organisation develops.
If a referendum is held on the Treaty and the British people vote “yes”, then it is obvious that they want to stay within the EU. If they vote “no”, then the issue of EU membership itself becomes an issue.
I agree completely with Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP, over this when he says:
Whilst in the long term I agree that this is the referendum we want, calling for it at this time is only to cover up their weasel-like position over a referendum.
Instead of hiding behind this call, they [the Lib Dems] should be honouring the promise they made to their voters that they would support a referendum on this treaty.
The Lib Dem leadership should either back a referendum on the Treaty or finally accept that they don’t want the British people to vote on the EU at all.
The Lib Dem membership seem to want to back a referendum on the Treaty, so why don’t the leadership? Is it because they’re chicken, and want to be able to sit on the fence? Yes, of course it is.
Add a comment February 22nd, 2008 by ThunderDragon
A secret European Parliament report has uncovered “extensive, widespread and criminal abuse” by Euro-MPs of staff allowances worth almost £100 million a year.
Senior Euro-MPs and European Union officials have tried to hush up an internal audit that found severe problems and endemic misuse of funds worth at least £98.4 million a year, more than £125,000 for each of the 785 Euro-MPs. (The Telegraph)
So MEPs are stealing £100 million from the European people every year. But this isn’t really all that surprising - pretty much the lot of them are just pigs with their snouts in the trough. What is most disgusting is the piece of the article that follows the revelation of the obscene amount of taxpayer’s money being stolen:
Such is the extent of the abuse found in a sample group of 167 Euro-MPs that “terrified” parliamentary authorities have shrouded the report in secrecy and security…
“We want reform but we cannot make this report available to the public if we want people to vote in the European elections next year,” said a source close to the decision.
Only Euro-MPs on the parliament’s budget control committee are allowed to see the report.
To do so, they must apply to enter a “secret room”, protected by biometric locks and security guards. They may not take notes and must sign a confidentiality agreement.
Excuse me? You can’t make reform if the people know how corrupt you all are? How does that make sense? That level of security stinks of a cover-up of an even greater level of corruption and criminal abuse than already revealed. Even so they have the audacity to claim that “the document is not secret. It is confidential.” - and to flatly reject an inquiry by the EU’s own anti-fraud office. One rule for us, another for them.
Trixy has the transcript of an email sent by the President of the European Parliament, asking MEPs to submit a declaration of their financial interests “within two months”. Which is a long time. And yet this isn’t the even first time a request has been made for this, originally made back in November. So they’ve had four months already, and get another two months grace now. That’s six months before they even start chasing them up. Absolutely ridiculous. And I thought giving British MPs two months to submit a list of any family members who work for them was ridiculous.
I was going to say “well at least it seems that our elected representatives really aren’t all that corrupt after all”. But then I realised that MEPs in the European Parliament are our elected representatives as well.
