BRITS AT THEIR BEST: Threats to Freedom - SOS -December 2007 - January 28, 2008 British Constitution, Democracy Movement, EU, Immigration, Global Vision Iris Binstead, SOS 2007

The famous map, released by the EU on St George's Day. It is but one of a number of plans for carving up England (and later Wales, Scotland and Ireland) and creating new regions. In addition to forcing the British government to abandon post offices, and adding to immigration woes, the European Union has been hard at work destroying the nation state. SOS Editor Iris Binstead has the details.

We are constantly being told that the benefits of EU membership are self-evident and for this reason no cost/benefit analysis is needed. Below is a list of a few of the ‘wondrous advantages’ of EU membership, based on a DVD promoted by the Independence and Democracy Group in the EU Parliament. (DVD takes a bit of time to load.)

According to the Western Morning News, 23.4.08 new European Regional Assemblies which cross borders will have the power to force different parts of Europe to work together. According to the Daily Mail, the way in which funding will be allocated will split England into three lumps joining them to other countries. Under the programme known as Inter-Reg, South coast counties will be joined to Northern France and known as the ‘Manche Region’. The ‘Atlantic Region’ will include western England, Wales and parts of Scotland plus Ireland, parts of France, Spain and Portugal. The ‘North Sea Region’ will include eastern England with Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and parts of Germany. The regions are to have legal status and their own budgets.

Britain’s Royal Mail provided an efficient service before postal services became an EU ‘competence’. Post offices are now subject to EU Competition Rules whereby governments are unable to give state aid to organisations within their countries without EU permission and this is the reason that 2,500 sub-post offices in Britain will be closed. Postal services are controlled by EU Directives 97/67/EC and 2002/39/EC, and the closures were agreed in a letter from Neelie Kroes, the EU Competition Commissioner, to David Miliband dated 28.11.07 C(2007)5623 final. This letter, which is 19 pages long, can be seen here. Paragraph 11 includes the following: ‘The transformation programme will involve POL (Post Offices Limited) reducing the size of its network by around 2,500 branches.’ The UK Independence Party has further details.

The initial findings of an independent review of the UK postal sector commissioned by the Government warned that there was now a threat to the Royal Mail’s financial stability. It said “The liberalisation of the UK postal service has produced ‘no significant benefits’ for either households or small business”. (BBC News, 5.5.08) Writing in the Daily Telegraph, 9.5.08, Jeff Randall states: “There exists no commercial, political or social problem that meddling by the European Union cannot make worse”. He says that if ministers do not wake up it will not be long before they are sounding the Last Post over the grave of Royal Mail’s Universal Service.

The reason many councils have reduced their waste collection to alternate weeks - and some have included bugs in wheelie bins to measure the amount of waste thrown out - is because of EU directive 93/31/EC on the control of landfill waste. Each country is set a target for reducing landfill. By 2010 it is expected that the EU will fine countries which have exceeded their targets at the rate of £150 per ton. This is why we are asked to recycle as much waste as possible.

Under EU Directive 2004/38, EU citizens can move freely from one European country to another. We have received more immigrants than any other European Union country causing an explosion in the population. Britain is a small, crowded island and this large-scale immigration has adversely affected our schools, Health Service and housing, while the extra traffic on our roads has added considerably to pollution levels. This directive, which came into force on 30 April 2006, states that ‘Expulsion orders may not be issued by the host Member State as a penalty or legal consequence of a custodial penalty’. This makes it impossible for the Home Secretary to deport foreign convicts.

UKIP MP Bob Spink, commenting recently on immigration policy and the inaccurate statements put forward by Liam Byrne, a Home Office Minister, said that: “It is not the case that British job seekers get the first crack of the whip and that only the skilled migrants we actually need will be able to come.”

The House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, which has made an in-depth study of the effects of immigration, states that the benefit to the economy of each migrant is just 28p per week. (Daily Mail, 29.3.08) According to Anthony Browne, Director of the Policy Exchange think tank, writing in the Daily Mail on the same date, the argument that mass immigration benefits the British economy can no longer be defended. The claim that our economic boom was based on mass immigration and not a credit bubble appears a little thin now that immigration is still at record levels and the economy is collapsing.

Writing in the Daily Mail, 18.12.07, Richard Littlejohn says that the Home Office is giving illegal immigrants grants of £4,000 each to go home and set up a business – a shoe factory in China, a fish farm in Angola. According to Mr Littlejohn, the scheme is advertised in foreign language newspapers and there is nothing to prevent anyone arriving on a day trip to London, claiming to have been here for years and volunteering to go home in exchange for a grant.

It now appears that Italy is the first EU country to take steps on border controls for travellers from Europe’s passport-free Shengen zone (the EU countries plus Norway and Iceland, except UK and Ireland and as yet Bulgaria and Romania) as part of their security measures to crack down on immigration and crime. (from http://www.ukip.org, 12.05.08)

The House of Lords European Union Committee (Sub Committee on Environment and Agriculture) has been studying the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and has produced a report entitled ‘The Future of the Common Agriculture Policy’. One of its findings was that the average cost of CAP to a family of four in Britain is £760 a year. (Jeffrey Titford MEP, Bulletin from Brussels, 6.5.08)

There have been various estimates of the annual cost of Britain’s EU membership ranging from £50.6 billion upwards. (Estimate by Gerard Batten MEP for the Bruges Group) At this level the amount paid by every taxpayer is £1,632 per year.

By far the largest cost is the Common Agricultural Policy which chiefly benefits France. Because Tony Blair gave away a large part of the rebate negotiated by Margaret Thatcher, the cost of our net direct payments to Brussels will increase from £4.1 billion to £6.1 billion this year rising to £6.4 billion in 2009/10. A report in the Sunday Times, 17.2.08 based on the ‘barometer’ from the British Chamber of Commerce, showed that the cost of new regulations to British business (according to Government figures) had increased by £10 billion to £66 billion in the last year, mainly due to EU directives.

As a result of a hearing in the High Court on 22 April, Stuart Wheeler has been given permission to apply for judicial review of the Prime Minister’s and Foreign Secretary’s refusal to hold a referendum on whether the Lisbon Treaty should be ratified. This hearing will take place in the High Court on 9 and 10 June. Legal cases of this nature cost a great deal of money and Stuart Wheeler has asked for assistance. May I suggest that anyone who values the right of the British people to govern themselves should give as much as they can afford to this appeal.

This has been rammed through the House of Commons with minimal debate and is now going through the House of Lords. It should be noted that at least eleven Lords are pensioners of the EU, must support it and do not have to declare their conflict of interest.

According to Daniel Hannan, MEP (Telegraph blogs, 6.5.08) four pro-EU charities – NSPCC, One World Action, Action Aid and Oxfam – received £43,051,542.95 between them in 2007 from the EU. When the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, introduced the bill to ratify the Lisbon Treaty, he said that it was not only the Labour Party that favoured the bill but also the non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Some also receive money from the British Government.

The majority of Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs voted against the referendum that had been promised in their election manifestos. It is obvious that these Anti-British MPs no longer represent their constituents, who should avoid voting for them at a future general election. All MPs swear an oath of allegiance to the Crown and yet only 48 voted in favour of Bill Cash’s amendment which would have safeguarded the supremacy of the UK Parliament (Declaration 17). This amendment read:
“Notwithstanding any provision of the European Communities Act 1972, nothing in this Act shall affect or be construed by any court in the United Kingdom as affecting the supremacy of the United Kingdom Parliament.”

According to Helga Zepp-LaRouche, writing in Executive Intelligence Review, 7.3.08, the so-called Solidarity Clause in the Constitution means that each country, whether it agrees or not, will be bound to participate in military action against terrorist actions in any EU country or in any EU war. ‘Terrorist action’ is not defined.

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, 6.4.08, Liam Fox, Shadow Defence Secretary, stated that the Treaty proposed giving the EU a defence capability that would duplicate many of the functions of NATO and potentially compete with it. He believed that NATO, which successfully provided our defence for 60 years, should continue to have primacy and he did not wish to weaken the bonds with the United States and Canada. It was largely their forces who were fighting and dying alongside the British in Afghanistan.

Ireland is required by its constitution to have a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Ian Dale, a political blogger, quoted the the 14.4.08 Irish Daily Mail as reporting that the Irish Government had hatched a plot to deceive the voters. According to a leaked email, the Government is considering a last-minute change to the referendum date (widely expected to be 12 June) in order to catch out the ‘No’ campaign.

Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern has personally been assured that the EU Commission will ‘tone down or delay’ any announcements from Brussels which might prove unhelpful. The leaked email stated that ministers rejected an October referendum, which would have been procedurally beneficial, because they feared ‘unhelpful developments during the French Presidency’, particularly in regard to defence. It was suggested that the constitutional commitment in the Lisbon Treaty could be seen as undermining Ireland’s military neutrality.

According to the Daily Telegraph, 3.5.08, talks about ‘Embassies for the Union’ have taken place behind closed doors. (This was because officials fear ‘political fallout over plans to implement the new Treaty before it has been fully ratified’.) A high-level EU document seen by the newspaper discusses plans for a ‘European External Action Service’ (EEAS). The suggestion is for 160 offices to be set up around the world, including in EU member states.

These offices would become embassies rivalling established diplomatic services. Britain currently maintains 139 embassies and high commissions in capital cities.

The European Commission has informed the British Government that stickers quoting the EU’s founding treaty must be distributed to as many people as possible. Passport holders will be asked to put the stickers declaring the rights of European Union ‘citizens’ on the back of their passports. (Telegraph.co.uk, 12.05.08)

The EU Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso decided that Italy’s new commissioner, who is replacing Franco Frattini, should be given the transport portfolio rather than portfolio of Justice and Home Affairs. Astoundingly, given his conviction for diverting government money, Jacques Barrot, the French commissioner, who was previously in charge of transport, is now to take on the justice job. This is considered one of the most prominent portfolios in the EU executive. (EU Observer, 23.4.08)

Mr Barrot was convicted in a French court in 2000 for ‘abuse of confidence’ involving the diverting of £2 million of government money to his party. He received an eight month suspended prison sentence but was pardoned by Jacques Chirac, the leader of the party that benefited from the fraud. (Reported by Nigel Farage MEP, leader of UKIP to the EU Parliament, 22.11.04)

Evidence seems to be pointing to global cooling rather than warming. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, 4.5.08, Christopher Booker reported that North America had its snowiest winter for decades and the US National Climate Data Centre run by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations said that snow in January on the Eurasian land mass had been the worst ever recorded. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that slow-cycling movement of water in the Pacific, known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), had unexpectedly changed into its cool phase. This normally happens approximately every 30 years and ultimately affects climate all over the world. Alterations of PDO have coincided with temperature changes in the 20th century, warming after 1905, cooling after 1946 and warming after 1977. In an previous article (Sunday Telegraph, 20.4.08) Mr Booker states that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) case is flawed by its reliance on computer models which fail to take into account all the evidence available. Even on the IPCC’s own evidence, their report states that ‘anthropogenic greenhouse gases can contribute only in a minor way to the current warming, which is mainly of natural origin”.

According to Nigel Lawson writing in the Daily Mail, 5.4.08, Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have all embraced the fashionable belief that carbon dioxide emissions must be cut back drastically at enormous cost to the British economy and the living standards of the people. During this century, partly due to the rapid growth of the Chinese economy, carbon dioxide emissions worldwide have been growing more quickly than ever, but there has been no global warming at all. In the meantime the EU has a target of 10% of Europe’s road fuels to be biofuels from plants. Roger Harabin, BBC Environment Analyst, said on 14.1.08 that this has caused rising food prices and rainforest destruction, and that some biofuels barely cut emissions at all.

The EU has given Britain the unrealistic target of 15% renewable energy by 2020. To meet this target would require the building of 10,000 extremely expensive and largely useless wind turbines at a cost of between £40 billion and £80 billion. (Sunday Telegraph, 30.4.08)

The Bruges Group reports that the EU intends to expand its control over railways and proposes that, where lines are used for both freight and passengers, freight trains will receive priority causing possible delay to passengers. International freight trains would have priority over national freight trains.

The EU intends to take over EU member governments’ control of electronic communications, thus creating new regulations and more costs to taxpayers. It intends to take control of road safety, infrastructure and signage and to expand its power over energy with a powerful regulatory agency to control the market.

There will be more attempts to enforce a social Europe. The Commission intends to control health by standardising the health market across EU nations. It intends to establish its own military force.

The EU intends to take over criminal law, create a European Public Prosecutor and give Eurojust the power to direct law enforcement in member states, initiate arrests and prosecutions and take control over national law enforcement.

According to The Times online, 13.2.08, the Government is planning a database called MIAP (Managing Information Across Partners) which will number all children for life and keep details of their achievements, plus any exclusions or expulsions, on record for access by prospective employers. This database, which is compulsory and will store a ‘tamper-proof’ CV, will be used by government agencies to track individuals until they retire. There is already a children’s database on which children are numbered, but the number is destroyed when they leave school.

Contrary to reports in the media, the Government is going ahead with its ID scheme but is repackaging it.

Jacqui Smith, Home Secretary, has launched the ID scheme ‘Delivery Plan’. According to NO2ID the plan is to grab as much data as possible as, quickly as possible, to endeavour to dupe as many people as possible to be enrolled in the ID database (the National Identity Register) making universal registration appear inevitable. Airport workers will be the first to get biometric ID cards. (Daily Telegraph,5.3.08) Daily Telegraph, 7.4.08, reported that 5,000 children a month are added to the DNA database.

Bruno Waterfield, Telegraph journalist, reports on his blog (13.5.08) that a little known element of the new Lisbon Treaty inserts a reference which will allow the EU to develop a greater EU dimension relating to ID cards and passports. This will allow UK authorities “access to EU-wide databases of digital photographs and fingerprints taken from biometric visa applications. EU plans for future databases holding a fingerprint register of all European passport holders are expected in the next decade and British securocrats, typical of the breed wherever they are from, want in.”

According to the Sunday Times, 27.4.08, Terry Battersby, the British head of information technology at the Centre for the Development of Enterprise, is facing the sack because he exposed alleged corruption at a European aid agency. He told the EU fraud investigators that his boss, the agency’s former director and now energy minister of the West African country of Mali, had approved the award of lucrative EU contracts to a company in which he had a financial interest. (As reported by Eurofacts, 9.5.08)

Tom Wise, Independent MEP, a member of the EU Fisheries Committee, has written a booklet entitled ‘Dead in the Water’on the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). He says the policy destroys economies, environments and lives. He describes the devastation and depletion of fish stocks due to EU policy and the damage caused by discarding under-sized fish or fish in excess of quotas. He reports in detail on the Spanish fishing fleet - the largest in the EU - and their flouting of the rules. Tom Wise’s booklet can be purchased from The June Press Ltd, PO Box 119, Totnes, Devon TQ9 7WA, Tel:08456 120 175, email: info@junepress.com. Price £3 plus 10 % for postage and packing in the UK, 20% Europe and 30% rest of the world. Web sales here.

Full text of the Treaty as signed in Lisbon in December 2007 and a detailed analysis and review – by Anthony and Andrew Cowgill – ISBN978 0 9558262 0 7 – available from The June Press, as above, price £27.50 plus postage and packaging.

Let us persevere in the defence of freedom. Send a link to this site to friends and to your MP.

SOS

SAVE OUR SOVEREIGNTY
5 Battery Park, Polruan-by-Fowey, Cornwall PL23 1PT
Tel: 01726 870850
Contributions to SOS are welcome.
e-mail: iric.binstead@virgin.net
PLEASE COPY AND PASS ON OR REQUEST ADDITIONAL COPIES