Fortsätt till huvudinnehåll

EU needs constructive criticism

It is a poor argument on the part of the Euromaniacs to label sceptics as unprogressive and Little Englanders, as they so often do. As someone who spends much of my time outside the UK, I can hardly be considered a Little Englander and as a beneficiary of the freedom of movement and residence that comes with EU membership, the last thing I would want is a break-up.

However, it does not help to turn a blind eye to the shortcomings of the organisation as at present functioning. There is a democratic deficit. Legislation, often ill-considered, is churned out, some of which can only be implemented at considerable expense and to little gain, or is positively counter-productive. Its protectionist trade policies work in the interests of the big trade cartels which have the resources to lobby at Brussels and Strasbourg, and against the interests of consumers. It has failed to devise an effective policy to protect fish stocks, despite ample scientific advice which would have enabled it to devise a workable strategy. And the Common Agricultural Policy is nothing but an expensive scam.

The benefits from infrastructure projects simply end up in the pockets of landowners in the areas that gain, since they just lead to an increase in rents and land prices. And the huge resources that were put into the Republic of Ireland merely generated a monster land price bubble, followed by a disastrous implosion.The EU is in need of constructive criticism instead of the uncritical support it gets from the Euromaniacs.

Kommentarer

Populära inlägg i den här bloggen

The dreadfulness of British governance

I wrote to my MP on two entirely separate issues recently. The first was to do with the replacement for the Inter City 125 train, which at £2.6 million per vehicle, is twice as expensive as it ought to be. The second concerned the benefits of a switch from business rate and Council Tax to a tax based on site values. In both cases, the replies were full of spurious, unsubstantiated assertions and completely flawed arguments. This is typical. You will not get an iota of sense from the government on any area of public policy at all - finance, economics, trade and employment, agriculture, housing, health, transport, energy. All junk. If you write to your MP you will invariably receive answers that are an insult to your intelligence, no matter what subject you are writing about. Of course they cannot understand statistics. They are innumerate. Whitehall is staffed with idiots with a high IQ. Look at their IT projects. And mind your purse, they will have that too.

How much more will the British tolerate?

The British are phlegmatic, tolerant and slow to rouse. Thus there was no great reaction after the terrorist attack in July 2005. The murder of Lee Rigby created a sense of outrage, but nothing more, since it appeared to be an isolated incident. Two serious incidents within a fortnight are another matter. Since the first major terrorist incident in 2001, authority has tried to persuade the public that Islam is a religion of peace, that these were isolated events, or the actions of deranged "lone wolves", having nothing to do with Islam, or to reassure that the chances of being killed in a terrorist attack were infinitesimally small. These assurances are are beginning to wear thin. They no longer convince. If government does not act effectively, people will take the law into their own hands. What, however, would effective action look like? What sort of effective action would not amount to rough justice for a lot of innocent people? Given the difficulties of keeping large n...

Battery trains fool’s gold

A piece by the railway news video Green Signals recently reported the fast charging trials for battery operated electric trains on the West Ealing to Greenford branch, in west London. In a comment under the video, I described the project as technological overkill, bearing in mind that before dieselisation in the 1960s it was worked by the tiny steam locomotives of the Great Western 1400 class, a 1932 design based on an 1870s design. The money that has been spent on the experiment would have paid for a small fleet of the old things. Elsewhere in the comments, I was critical of the 800 series trains. This produced a response from the makers of the video, as follows. “I may be grasping at straws here but I am guessing you don't like 8xx series trains all that much and rather wish we still had Kings, Castles and (for the branches) 14xx's. Fair? ” My reply was as follows... Yes you are grasping at straws. The model for long distance stock is the class 180, which is a 23 metre veh...