We have followed the drama of the removal of the UK "opt out" from the European Working Time Directive from afar, but with some dismay.

This was negotiated in 1993 by John Major as one of his Mastricht “victories”. It was that same "victory" that had him proclaiming "game set and match" as he scuttled back to his hotel. There, he was to meet his civil servants for a debriefing so that they could tell him what he had signed away, before he had to address the Commons later that day.

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One day the British will wake up to what is, and has been, going on since 1973.

That is if there are enough of us left because I have no doubt that all the new arrivals are part of the plot too. Don't they all have votes?

It may not have crossed your mind but the RNLI will find itself in the same bind. All lifeboats in the UK are staffed by volunteers all of whom have full time jobs. A typical shout may take the crew out for 6 hrs and the boat may very well have several such shouts a week.

Mountain Rescue?

On a quick visit to France I was following some of the 'debate' about the Working Time directive on French Radio. At the same time they were talking about the Irish revoting on the Lisbon Treaty. They were talking about all the 'opt outs' they would give the Irish to get them to vote YES.

What value do any opt outs have from any treaty after this? What value are the opt outs that Tony Blair is supposed to have negociated to leave Gordon Brown free to side line the British referendum?

I do not think for one moment that Irish voters are fools. They can spot a pig in a poke and will give this revote the answer it deserves (hopefully).

TA?

Technically the Territorials are paid for attendance.
As with all regulation it is only as powerful as the judge that enforces it.

The TA does have a problem already with drivers' hours. Civvy HGV drivers find they're out of hours when it comes to driving Army trucks at the weekend.

We could all fill pages with the people affected if we (and other countries) are no longer allowed to "enjoy" this opt-out. The carers who accompany the disabled on holiday are classified as being "on call" the entire time; as soon as one carer reaches 48 hours he or she will have to return to the UK as another carer takes over; you can imagine the extra travel costs. Ditto, I think, doctors on call (ie when they're at a dinner party they are classified as "at work"). The armed forces are exempt, though, aren't they? Particularly if serving in the embryonic EU navy…

Why must the EU always stick it's nose in to everything even if only to try and fix what isn't broken.

Why are they doing this anyway? What is the point?

Or is it just because no one else gets an opt-out and they don't like it when things aren't all the same everywhere...

When push comes to shove, it is because they are bloody amateurs at the game of law-making. It takes real skill to make good law - any idiot can make bad law. And it takes even greater skill to understand that law has its limitations, and then to back off without interfering.

The opt-outs aren't worth much. You opt in or out of the EU. There's the other option of opting in and only doing what suits you. This takes politicians who will dig their heels in to fight their corner. If you have politicians who are highly enthusiastic about The Project, no matter what they say, you can forget that.

It's not just the EU either. Successive governments here have shown a willingness to concoct laws to ban this and that, which sound as if they are taking some problem of the day seriously, but which haven't been thought through and really do nothing much at all. In many cases, had the existing body of law been enforced properly, there would have been no need for new laws. I also think that the public and certainly the papers, rather like the idea that when something happens, like a spate of children attacked by dogs, there's a law banning whatever and that solves the problem with no further thought.

Then there has been the tendency of the Labour government to enact laws as a 'mark in the sand'. It seems to me that purpose of laws is to be clearly understood and obeyed and address a problem, not a potential problem or a non-problem, and not as a vague statement of how the government would like people to behave.

Then we have things like the health and safety culture which I suppose comes from the EU, but which has been taken up enthusiastically here. That something is potentially dangerous, whether or not it's an appreciable problem in reality, trumps all other considerations and leads to another clutter of regulations, which complicate and make things more expensive, but don't solve any problems. I'm thinking of part P of the Building regulations making it illegal for unqualified people to do domestic electrical installations. The annual number of deaths from fixed wiring had been a very low and fairly constant for many years. There just wasn't a problem.

Actually, it's a mistake to see the EU as a foreign power imposing itself. Our politicians have played a huge role in shaping it. They take up things which have come from the EU, but which they've pushed for, and embellish them. You don't have to look far for examples.

Lastly, I don't think you can blame the EU for being what it is, which is an state, or embryonic state, effectively controlled by bureaucrats with no proper democratic control. It is the intention to create a state, and what do you expect civil servants to do, left to themselves, but to concoct extra things to be administered? Bureaucrats doing things for bureaucrats with no reference to anything else.

I'd say the thinking of the EU was very much in line with the meddlesome nature and belief that government regulation can and should deal with every issue, that governments in this country have had increasingly for decades.

The freedom of an Englishman resides in the Judge that enforces regulation on him.
While Judges forget their Oath to "...do Right ..." they are quite capable of enforcing any law, no matter how Wrong. Until the Judiciary can look the regulators in the eye and say "Let's ask a jury", knowing that a jury may not rewrite a law, but they may decide whether it applies to the case in front of them, and that, in British Law, is a spike in the lunacy of tyranny.
Our politicians are tax-teat poodles, it is our Judiciary who enforce the lunacies we suffer.
The idea that a bailiff may barge my door down about an alleged debt before I even know they were sending legal notices to the wrong house should be an anathema to any Judge who claims to understand Common Law.
Sadly our Judges, like Feminists, are too stupid to understand the charges against them.
Our Judges are stupid enough to think that Parliament is entitled to destroy what it was chartered to preserve, like voting someone to be Sheriff entitles them to become the local Mafia Capo.

Would any member of our Judiciary like to discuss whether Albert Venn Dicey really thought that the 'Sovereignty of Parliament' entitled Parliament to fling aside the Constitutional document that defined Parliament and the Monarchy?

If regulation over-rules Common Law and common sense then a Judge has failed to understand what was made explicit in the US Declaration of Independence, namely that the Judiciary are there to curb legislative stupidity.




And Europe now suffers.
This subject is very ably covered in the preface to the 8th edition (written in 1914, three after the Parliament Act in 1911)
of "An Introduction to the Study of the British Constitution", which, of course, is the source of the idea that Parliament can fuck everything up and call it "Law".

Worse than that, with so many EU pensions and grants flying around with politicians and the people who matter', you might say palms have been greased.
ECJ decisions take priority I believe, so that's bound to affect the way judges do things. They don't like having their decisions overturned.

I think the problem is that we don't have a written constitution that's taken seriously. Well we do have constitutional documents which form a constitution and they are written, but clearly, they are ignored when it's convenient and they can be quietly forgotten in a way that the US Constitution couldn't be discarded without fuss.

I can't see a codified constitution coming about any time soon, because it would need to make the position of British sovereignty and the EU clear.

I'd be interested to know how the concept of being a part of the EU and having a national constitution fits with other EU members. My guess is that largely, they have written constitutions but the issues have been finessed.

I didn't regard the EU Constitution as a proper constitution because as far as I can see a constitution should be a concise document stating the rules by which a people grant power to the government to govern. This was a rambling mess granting permission to the mess which is EU government to do what they want without much reference to anything.




I'm not familiar with it, but I'd guess it assumes a concept of nationhood as a fundamental precept and that's what the EU is trying to corrode to set in its place a concept of EU nationhood, by stealth and corruption and without asking if it's what anyone wants - well, the consent of "the people who matter" is assured.

This is the raw blurb
It needs careful understanding. The Dominion stuff can be ignored. Some stuff in here struck me between the eyes, so I won't mention it to see what hits you.
Helen, the interpretation of this document as a modern blogosphere essay would be a serious project. However there are elements that I think would interest our American friends, and you may find support for the idea that the American Revolution was the Third English Revolution.