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Courtesy of The Sunday Telegraph”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/8098792/European-Commission-spent-124000-on-gay-activists-conference.htmlHere’s a snippet:-
As European leaders grapple with budget pressures, one arm of the European Union is continuing to party.
The European Commission has spent £124,000 on a five day conference for 200 homosexual, bisexual, transgender and “intersex” activists.
The event, which culminates this weekend in The Hague, featured a series of workshops which were condemned as “politically correct drivel” by MPs.
Subjects discussed include “Liberation from infrahumanisation – a long term global strategy” and “Human rights and ‘I’: knowing intersex demands”.
Delegates at the event in the Netherlands enjoyed lavish food and hospitality as David Cameron moved to guarantee that the EU budget would not increase by more than 2.9 per cent and insisted that its largesse on dubious projects around the world must end.
But on the opening night of the gay and lesbian conference, delegates from 37 countries were treated to a welcoming dinner in The Hague’s medieval Hall of Knights, one of the city’s main tourist attractions.
The real cost to European taxpayers of the event will be far higher than the quoted cost, as many of those attending are representing publicly-funded bodies and will claim travel and accommodation expenses. The event was staged by “ILGA-Europe” – the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association.
The theme was described as “Expressing our differences, challenging our prejudices, developing our alliances.”
One of the many baffling sounding workshops was entitled: “Gender and Sexuality in the Media: the problem is that there is no problem.” In the programme notes an official writes: “What is perceived as heteronormativity may differ among cultures. What does not differ is an overshadowing lack of ability to see and acknowledge that there indeed exists a distinction between heteronormativity and everything else.”Blood Boiling
I would like one of these herberts who thinks this a good use of money to come and explain him/herself on TV/Radio so they could answer a few questions!
From Bruno Waterfield in the Daily Telegraoh:-
Trade unions representing the EU’s army of 55,000 officials have refused to discuss proposals for a 40 hour working week – an extra 2.5 hours – the key measure in a Brussels drive to save taxpayers £870 million a year by 2020.
The longer week is vital to a European Commission plan to save money by cutting the number of EU officials by five per cent at a time when national public sector workers are facing huge redundancies and sweeping austerity programmes.
But the measure, already regarded as minimal by cash-strapped national governments seeking to cut their EU contributions, has been rejected outright by trade unions representing civil servants who are among the best rewarded in the world.
“The unions and staff associations replied to this proposal with a categorical ‘Niet!’,” the Equipe d’ Union Syndicale, a group of trade union leaders, told its members.
“The attractiveness of the European civil service would deteriorate. It would be a socially-backward step that the unions and staff associations reject emphatically.”
Martin Callanan, the leader of the European Conservatives, said: “Public sector staff the world over are facing cutbacks and wage freezes. But here in Brussels they seem to think they live in an economic microclimate where money grows on trees and the world owes them a very comfortable living. They need to get real and start to talk to us about how they can help Europe out of this crisis.”
The EU staff unions are also opposed to any changes to a generous flexitime scheme that meant that 2,000 Brussels officials, earning from £104,000 to £185,000 a year, were entitled to three months off work on full pay last year.
Despite being paid six figure salaries, the EU’s most senior civil servants have been allowed to join the scheme, originally meant for lower paid secretarial staff, that gives them an extra 24 days off work every year for those that put in an extra 45 minutes a day in the office.
The perk comes on top of annual holidays of 24 days as well as seven days off for public holidays, and in 2010, 11 “non-working” days out of the office when the Brussels institutions are closed in summer and at Christmas.
The allowances mean that last year many EU staff were entitled to 66 days, 13 weeks or a over quarter of the year off work.
In response to a commission request that senior management grades be taken out of the scheme, EU staff trade unions have demanded the opposite, that “principle of recuperation needs to be consolidated”.
“It should be applicable in all the institutions, and to all staff, without an exemption clause for the management,” said the group of trade unions.Stephen Booth, of the Open Europe pressure group, said: “This protest shows a complete lack of self-awareness and is an insult to taxpayers all over Europe who face falling living standards and the threat of redundancy.”
If only I’d bothered to learn French, German and Flemish when I was a youngster!
The liberals stood at the last election saying that they would support and in/out referendum on Europe. The Tories look like they might rebel and we are finally going to get a say;
Cleggers said in 2008 – “Nobody in this country under the age of 51 has ever been asked that simple question. That includes half of all MPs. We’ve been signed up to Europe by default: two generations who have never had their say.”
And the Liberal on line petion for a referendum is still open here ..
http://ourcampaign.org.uk/europe
Vote .. let’s support the Liberals and have a say at last.
crizzy has raised the subject of religion within our schools and perhaps now is the time to consider where we should stand within the world of politics.
Under pressure our PM has walked away from the European table, now I say "well done Dave".
I have never been in favour of any style of European Union and if DC has any "gonads" at all he should IMO call a general election and give us the people a say to go along with the 26 or stand proud and do our own thing.
It may also get the Lib. Dems. off the backs of the Tories in order to do the job in hand without restraint.
Wave the UNION FLAG and be proud.
Billy's Outback Shack
Celebrates the abandonment of a union which binds countries into an unwilling alliance against the wishes of a great portion of its populace by waving the flag of a union which binds countries into an unwilling alliance against the wishes of a great portion of its populace.
I never cease to be astounded by the self centered, short sighted hypocrisy regularly demonstrated by Tories.
Count me out of this "debate".
It has been a fascinating couple of days watching all this unfurl. I’m no fan of Cameron but applaud him for using the veto.
Like you Billion, I’m no fan of our EU membership.
What most appals me is that no UK voter born after 1957 has ever had a say in whether or not we should remain in the EU. (And strictly speaking, no one here ever voted for the EU – it was then the "common market", then the EEC and now the current corrupt, self-serving, inefficient, undemocratic bureaucratic monster – the EU.) So even if the EU had been great for the UK and was honest and efficient, membership should still be put to the electorate every so often (12 years?), just so future generations aren’t tied to something previous generations allied themselves to.
I’ve no way of knowing how this will all pan out for the UK, but I can’t help feeling that the EUROzone is ultimately going to break up. Isolation isn’t always a bad thing.
A few other things.
1) BBC reporting seems VERY biased. (eg GB "isolated" said in funereal tones as though the veto and "isolation" was undoubtedbly a bad thing.)
Any old political has-been who tied his colours to the EU project has been wheeled out to criticise Cameron (Heseltine, Ashdown), even David Owen was allowed out onto R4 Today programme and spent nearly all his time demonising the tory party and anyone who thought the EU above criticism. Most critics of the veto were the same numpties who declared our not joining the EURO as a disaster, what does that say about their judgement?. Was there equal time given to those whose views were opposite? I didn’t think so.
Moreover, very little rigorous cross-examination of Cameron’s critics was done by BBC interviewers. This may be because they haven’t got much of a grasp of the many issues, but could conceivably be because they sympathise with the views of those they’re interviewing and are reluctant to ask awkward questions.
2) Nick Clegg. Has a fiscal interest in the well-being of the EU. Why isn’t the public made aware of this before he is interviewed on the subject? Andrew Marr today never pointed this out (surprise surprise) and Clegg never offered it up. Had it been an MP with an interest in say, a Tobacco firm, you could be sure that this would be brought to the public attention when being interviewed about legislation that affected that industry (and quite rightly so.)
3) Why do so many commentators and MPs abuse the term Europe? Europe is a geographical land mass. The UK is in disagreement with the EU – the EU is NOT Europe. Perhaps it makes it sound more dramatic if you say the UK is isolated in Europe. It’s not. If it is isolated it’s isolated in the EU.
4) Why are the LibDems called the LibDems? They’re neither Liberal or Democratic.
Anyway, bring on democracy. Let’s have an in/out referendum. If the EU is so good for the UK then its supporters should be happy to make their case via the ballot box.Yeah…we showed Jonny Foreigner – up yours Delors (is he still about) – who won the war anyway – Don’t tell em your name Pike…
The trouble is we as a nation have a distorted view of our own importance in world affairs. Once upon a time we had an empire but that has been eroded by the development of mankind and the world. The last great thing we had to be proud of was the stability of our financial industry, but due to the avarice of those in that industry that respect and confidence has evaporated.
Perhaps we could reduce the levels of immigration by having a large sign at all our border controls "You are now entering a third world country".
In 2017, as things stand, no one in the UK under 60 years of age will ever have had a chance to vote on our membership of the EU. As a simple question of democracy is that right?
BTW There’s been some excellent articles and blogs of all varieties on this topic. Here’s one of my favourites (which needless to say I agree with:-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8948267/Britain-should-pity-those-still-trapped-in-the-euro-nightmare.htmlThe trouble is we as a nation have a distorted view of our own importance in world affairs. Once upon a time we had an empire but that has been eroded by the development of mankind and the world. The last great thing we had to be proud of was the stability of our financial industry, but due to the avarice of those in that industry that respect and confidence has evaporated.
Perhaps we could reduce the levels of immigration by having a large sign at all our border controls "You are now entering a third world country".
True but also once upon a time we had a Commonwealth!
With regret I say we turned our back on them where there was already a good trading market which the EU is supposed to be.
Billy's Outback Shack
I’m no fan of Cameron but he did well to use the veto – my view Cameron made the right call has been re-enforced by Clegg coming out and criticising him for doing so.
I am one of those who was able to vote in the referendum in 1975 and (for the only time in my life) I voted for something supported by the Labour Party and I voted no.
Since then I have seen integration by stealth.
In the mid 1990’s I was ridiculed when I wrote a paper predicting what would happen if a single currency went ahead. The only part I got wrong was the timing, I thought it would happen around 2005.
Now Merkel seems to be succeeding in what the Kaiser and Hitler failed to do in two World Wars – creating a "United" Europe with Germany in control – she already has Sarkozy as her lap-dog.
The sooner we tell Europe where to go and we regain the right to govern ourselves the better.
It has taken far too long but hopefully Cameron has started the beginning of the end (and if it has the collateral result is ending this ridiculous coalition then all the better – the coalition has now served its main purpose of finishing the Liberal Democrats for a generation)
paulostermeyer
, you claim DC
I really do not think he had much choice and am convinced he was not the architect of the veto however the pressure has been building for some while to give the people some kind of say in the matter.It may or may not be a foregone conclusion after all we are all aware how many "odds on" horses lose but at least the argument can be laid to rest once and for all.
Perhaps a chance to rid ouselves of so many petty laws introduced by Eurp MP’s and control our own lives and destiny which as islanders is our God given right.
Billy's Outback Shack
The crazy thing is that, when the euro explodes, this country will end up paying out billions of pounds to help rescue it or to help deal with the fallout.
Cameron keeps telling us that he will not be giving any more billions to the eurozone rescue fund but we will still end up paying anyway through the back door — by jacked up, sky-high extra contributions to the International Monetary Fund.
We will be told that it is not in our interests for the euro to collapse because British banks and companies are exposed to billions of pounds of commitments in eurozone countries.
The bleeding hearts who are saying that we lose control by not being in the thick of what is happening in the new Europe accord conveniently forget that we will end up pouring billions of pounds into the coffers of the euro countries anyway.
What I find absolutely inexcusable at a time when thousands of people are losing their jobs, support is being withdrawn from thousands of community projects in this country and we are told that deep cuts have to be made, is that we are sending billions of pounds in foreign aid to countries where corrupt officials and tinpot dictators just salt the money away in extravagant living.
How can we possibly justify sending foreign aid to India, which has its own space race? It’s outrageous. Foreign aid should be the first thing to be cut.
Left-wing councils are deliberately cutting things like libraries and valuable community services to make a point about the "cuts". I bet not a single lesbian outreach worker, diversity co-ordinator or travelling people liaison adviser has been culled.
There are millions of pounds of public money being wasted in this country. Millions, if not billions, of pounds are sloshing around. It’s just that it’s being wasted on the wrong things. Foreign aid is just a symptom of the problem.
We are in hock to Europe, whether we veto the latest treaty or not. The gravy train is nowhere near hitting the buffers yet.Cameron did the only logical thing.
The Eurozone is fracturing big-time. The Euro-politicos have no idea what to do and are about to run out of road down which to kick that can. Their populations won’t accept their headless-chicken "solutions" of direct rule by technocrats who are already part-responsible for this mess – technocrats who will do what, exactly? With whose money?
Germany prospers precisely because Greeks, Spaniards, Italians etc buy its output – German exports outside the EU are minimal. Germany needs to keep selling to its bust EU partners to stop its own people being thrown out of work. Germany depends on the hookey exchange rates it fixed at the outset of the euro to keep going an industrial machine whose output is way too much for its own people. Germany has to side with the EU for its own national interest – otherwise it would high-tail outta there.
The UK is not in that position. It can and should be out of that mess. The UK pointed out at the outset why the euro wouldn’t work and stayed out. Now that its warnings have come to pass, it would be bizarre to sell itself cheaply into that mess purely to buy a bit more time for the headless chickens Merkozy and the Brussels machine.
All Merkozy have to offer is to shake you by the hand and call you a good chap. The socialists at the EU, on this thread, at the BBC, etc regard that as due payment for handing over your rights to self-determination and economic control. But then it has become very clear recently just how little regard such socialists have for democracy and independence.
The UK’s future is as an international state, a kind of super-Hong Kong or super-Singapore. Its strengths are its location, its financial (still) and legal infrastructure, its political stability, its air- and sea-ports and transport facilities, its arms business, its technological innovators and its military and (expect a reversal of cuts soon) naval capability.
In among that lot are things that nations like Russia, China, GCC states would be ready to pay big money to get a piece of for their own strategic and security purposes – and which the US and countries like Germany would be ready to pay bigger money for some of them not to get a piece of. That’s quite apart from those looking to avoid the high taxes of the EU.
The future is far brighter for the UK away from the deadweight of Euro neighbours who have always taken much more from the UK than they have ever returned.
Cameron has taken absolutely the right step.
What most appals me is that no UK voter born after 1957 has ever had a say in whether or not we should remain in the EU. (And strictly speaking, no one here ever voted for the EU – it was then the "common market", then the EEC and now the current corrupt, self-serving, inefficient, undemocratic bureaucratic monster – the EU.) So even if the EU had been great for the UK and was honest and efficient, membership should still be put to the electorate every so often (12 years?), just so future generations aren’t tied to something previous generations allied themselves to.
I was just of eligible age to vote in 1975 and therefore rather enjoyed exercising my franchise for the first time. I voted ‘yes’ but that was a decision very much coloured by my parents’ opinion: and therein lies the reason for the decisive 67% in favour of remaining in the Common Market. The large majority who voted in that referendum were either alive during WW2 or were first generation descendants (me) of those who did, and would inevitably feel that a united Europe was a far, far better scenario to a dis-united Europe: let’s learn from a ghastly history and move forward together
Time has moved on and times have changed. Those with first-hand memories of WW2 are fading away fast, and the Common Market has morphed into the all-but-unrecognisable EU edifice. So current generations should most certainly be allowed to exercise their franchise in a new referendum on membership
Second time around I’d vote ‘no’ but would not take any pleasure in doing so. The Common Market ideal seemed fine to me and promised a cohesive, stable collective of wealthy and powerful trading nations but, like so many a political ideal, has been ruined by a succession of our inglorious leaders
Cameron did the right thing, and it was quite brave in my opinion
I have a suspicion Germany will be the first country to leave the Eurozone and then the EU, not the peripheral Greeks etc. And from there…
Drone
makes an interesting observation by refering to "The Common Market" as it was then.
Now the reference is to a much different ideology being a "UNITED STATES of EUROPE"
Is this what we want?
As I mentioned earlier if we want a common market we had it once and perhaps still can our COMMON-WEALTH partners.
Billy's Outback Shack
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