Prescient words on the eurozone problem.....

"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money... Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values...Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs; upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: Account Overdrawn"
Ayn Rand

The peoples of any nation work to better their lives, financially and socially -  and in so doing, improving the financial state of the nation in which they live. What the political elite of the European Union is doing is putting those people, who are attempting to 'better their lot' and thus the prosperity of their nation, into a position of endless penury for the sake of political ideology.

That the political elite in their attempt to 'unite' Europe seem to have forgotten their history is best illustrated by an extract from Margaret Thatcher's "Statecraft" (page 327):

"What we should grasp, however, from the lessons of European history is that, first, there is nothing necessarily benevolent about programmes of European integration; second, the desire to achieve grand utopian plans often poses a grave threat to freedom; and third, European unity has been tried before, and the outcome was far from happy."

Just a few questions:

• Who, in their right mind, would agree that money contributed (voluntary or otherwise) to a common cause, namely the growth of their nation, should be spent without the consent of those contributing?
• Who, in their right mind, would agree to a life of penury and servitude when they have, within their grasp, the means to cease a life that amounts to slavery?
• Who, in their right minds, would entrust their future to members of their society without first ensuring that those members had the faintest idea about that which they professed to know?

Is it not time that the people of our country were offered a more participatory form of democracy, one in which the people are the masters and politicians their servants? Is that not what the word 'democracy' means?

Once again, just asking.............

Repatriation of powers: really?

The Daily Telegraph carries a report that David Cameron has ordered a review, involving every government department, of every aspect of the UK's membership of the European Union, with a view to creating a 'menu of demands' where repatriation of powers are concerned. Coupled with the Daily Telegraph article, the Mail (bless it's socks) carries a report that more than two-thirds of people believe the European Union is 'over-mighty.

At the risk of being accused of needless repetition - it ain't going to happen for one reason and one reason only: 'Acquis Communautire', a term which means that competences (or powers), once ceded to the EU, can never be returned. That Cameron can propose and allow to continue this fallacy is but disingeniousness on his part - a characteristic of which he has prior form. That the media can also propagate this idea, with no attempt that I have seen to question the possibility that this can be achieved, is an act of negligence on their part.

Let us digress for a moment and consider 'sovereignty', 'self-governance' and 'political power'. 'Sovereignty' is generally held to be the ability of having supreme, independent authority over a geographic area, such as a territory, ie a nation. It can also be said that 'sovereignty' has always been defined as the ability to guarantee the best interests of its own citizens, thus, if a state could not act in the best interests of its own citizens, it could not be thought of as a “sovereign” state. 'Self-governance' is generally held to be the ability to exercise all of the necessary functions of power without intervention from any authority which they cannot themselves alter. 'Power', in the political sense, is held to be the ability of a section of society which is elected to administer some, or all, public resources including defense of the realm. (Let us not, at this moment, enter into a discussion about 'administer' and 'dictate'). That the UK's membership of the European Union means that it is unable to qualify for just one of those terms means that Cameron and the rest of the political class, who maintain we 'must' remain a member of the EU, are in effect guilty of treasonous behaviour in that, without the people's consent, they have ceded, elsewhere, the ability of the UK to decide its own future.

And that, dear reader, is why first we need to slaughter our political elite and then tell the European Union that they need to indulge in the dance known as a 'Foxtrot', adding the word 'Oscar'!

Update: As has been pointed out to me the second paragraph has been badly worded - the "acquis communautaire" is just the body of law. It, itself does not prevent the repatriation of powers.  What does that is the Commission's monopoly of the power of initiation, combined with its role as guardian of the treaty.  Since it requires a law to repeal a law, and the Commission will never repeal a law unless it is replaced with another one, this ensures that the acquis continues to grow. However, this only applies to competences already defined in the treaties. There is nothing, in theory, to stop the member states reducing the Commission's powers (and thereby the acquis) with an amending treaty. In practice, though, that isn't going to happen.