Vote for Dave?

"A vote for the Conservatives is also a vote for a referendum on the EU constitution. We're the only party that has stuck by the promise to give people their say". That is in a letter signed personally by William Hague, dated 26 May - as unequivocal as you can get. There are no caveats whatsoever. The message is clear, simple and direct: vote Conservative and you will get a referendum.

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Empty promises

A Populus poll for The Times has the Tories on 30 percent for the euro with UKIP in second place on 19, relegating Labour to third place on 16. The Lib-Dems get 12 percent, the Greens poll 10 and the BNP are on 5 percent (eight percent in the North).

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I got to ask Robert Goodwill (Shadow .. Transport) the same question yesterday at one of those local Conservative Association do's.

Actually, I got to ask him two questions: Just how precisely the Tories intended to claw back Fishing & Agriculture from Brussels, bearing in mind that they'd need the agreement of the other 26 member states in the Council .. and about a referendum on the treaty.

Seems the former isn't a pledge to act swiftly as soon as they get into government as such - more a 'process' which, with the help of lots of brand new like-minded buddies in the new political grouping in the EU parliament, 'might take a few years' (his own words). Which is why, he quickly added, if they want real reform of the EU, all eurosceptics must vote Conservative next Thursday bla bla bla.

As for a referendum, he muttered something about how it would be very difficult to do anything if the Treaty had already been ratified by all member states, but that they certainly wouldn't 'let it rest'. When I suggested that surely it would be even more 'difficult to do anything' once the treaty was in force, he said I really shouldn't be so despondent, because he was also a sceptic (prodding himself in the chest) and he wasn't despondent.

Then, the discussion returned to MP's expenses, Parliamentary Reform and how good old Dave was going to sort it all out.

Complete waste of time (and they didn't even run a raffle yesterday either!)
JO

Have any of these spin masters picked up and dusted off the the North / Paterson paper on how to repatriate UK fishing grounds I wonder?
(That question was rhetorical by the way - but at least it would be a start , with more meat on its bones than the empty reflections of a target audience)

The fact that British ratification has only proceeded after a broken promise to the electorate, holding a referendum whether the damn thing has become binding or not is simply rectifying a broken contract to us. But what are the implications of a referendum result not accepting the treaty after it has been ratified by all members and has become law? I know it is possible to tear up treaties although we have not done so for for a very long time. But does the treaty fall across all members or would we then revert to pre-Lisbon and the rest keep Lisbon? I would imagine there would be uproar and demands from other members that we are expelled. This political club means our representatives hold more loyalty to other club members than us.

Using the example of the old Hamlet advertisment “A large expensive cigar in everything but size and price“, I esteem the boy Dave as a trustworthy and honourable politician in every thing but truth and morality. Just what is his problem? Cognitive dissonance?

He cannot see the people of Britain as any more than numbers at the polling station. It is legally accepted that he can lie to us in a manifesto and we, the voters, should have no expectation of 'contract'. Obtaining power by deception seems a much more heinous crime than getting a sale by deception, yet the perfidious judiciary see no connection.

BBC Radio 4 Today Program http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/ne ... 075012.stm

.... UKIP will get more votes than the Labour Party in the European election, an opinion poll in the Times says. Europe editor Mark Mardell looks at how an increased vote for the party would affect the UK's future in the EU. UKIP leader Nigel Farage discusses if an increased share of the vote could transfer to success in domestic elections. ...

Nigel Farage implies that the expenses/allowances of at least some UKIP MEPs have been used for party political purposes.

The interviewer appears to be rather tough initially and then allows the painting of a Farage mirage of an ascendant UKIP.

I will never forget Cameron's outburst about "fruit cakes" when he showed his contempt for the notion of opposing the EU and people who do not vote for him. With those few word he lost my vote for ever.

Hi Julian. If you can think of a design that encapsulates that slap it up on the T-shirt thread. The idea is an auction for visual satire.

As demonstrated by Stuart Wheeler's failed bid to force Gordon Brown to honour a written manifesto commitment, the LibLabCon can now write whatever it wants in its manifestos and break every single commitment without fear. The judge ruled that Brown's lie was 'politics dressed up as law' - words to that effect. But surely, if a political party writes a manifesto and is elected on the basis of that manifesto, it becomes contractual?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7233175.stm

In any case, Hague had so much promise a few years ago, and all that promise has gone the way of Gordon Brown's manifesto commitment. The 'mainstream' is a sewer of lies.

Hi everyone,

Could you please enlighten me as to how much credence can be given to the horrifying and sinister stuff written on the Eutruth website. I'm absolutely terrified!

http://www.eutruth.org.uk/

Thanks.

Why don't you say what specifically worried you and we'll try to de-spin back to the facts. Some things on there are simply facts. Notice the UKIP colour scheme?

Hmm, not mainstream UKIP then
Bit tough to say Farage is 'working for the EU' he takes a salary as an MEP (and a whole lot more no doubt) to get a platform to decry the EU. One gathers his dictatorial style has severely restricted the party's growth, but nothing that perennial incompetence can't explain, nothing more sinister than that.

The Spectator has a ludicrous article "The rise of British racism may be horribly close" http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine ... l#comments

Why would a magazine by and for the Smirking Classes produce such an article?

Martin Wingfield has placed a search button http://news.google.com/news?q=%22britis ... &scoring=d on his blog for BNP stories, none of those which I have seen are positive or even neutral, excepting The Sun which has "Get real, Mr Politician or you’ll find yourself sitting next to a Nazi" http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ne ... -Nazi.html which on the face of it has a rather stronger statement on immigration than that of BNP.

... The main reason why the BNP will do well is because the main parties seem to have completely lost touch with what their supporters actually want out of life.

... And then there's the question of immigration. Of course, I can quite understand why the champagne socialists are worried about the plight of poor Ndjama. His village has been sacked by rebels, he has nowhere to live and nothing to eat. Of course they would want him to have a home in Britain. Fundamentally, they are good people with big hearts.

But mostly they want Ndjama to come here because when he does, he's not going to be living in their street. So, Ndjama will go and live in someone else's street and that person will be quite cross. Especially when he goes to work one day and finds Ndjama at the wheel of his forklift truck.

The Labour Party say that immigration is good for Britain and morally the right policy to pursue. This may be so. But those who put them in power, emphatically, do not think this way. We are all tribal. We like being in a group and we distrust outsiders.

We have our family unit, our bunch of friends, the town where we live, the football club we support, and, especially if we are Scottish, the country of which we are proud. The big-hearted, liberal-thinking chaps and chapesses who advise Brown and his gang of fiddlers may think this is backward and pre-historic. They think tribalism could even be dangerous. And again, they may be right. ... And if you let half of Africa come to Britain - no matter how morally correct this may be - you're going to wind people up and gift the BNP your seat.

Then we'll see how tolerant these champagne socialists are. When they go to work and find themselves sitting next to a Nazi. ...

Talking shops always remind me of that scene in that Woody Allen film where Woody is chatting to a group of people from the smirking classes (I like that name) and a woman suggests writing a sartorial newspaper piece to condemn a rally held by the local group of Nazis. Woody has a different idea. He thinks that they should get down to the rally with baseball bats.

We've been talking about the European Tyranny, and the extent to which our leaders conspire in it, for a long time. It's even possible that our talking has done some good. A lot of people in the UK seem to have had their minds changed to the extent that they now want to withdraw from the EU. However, it is also quite apparent that our political masters have no intention of doing anything remotely akin to what the people want.

Is anyone starting to organise the resistance? In Woody's terms, when do the baseball bats come out?