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Topics that dare not speak their name!
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Many areas which ought to be discussed during the election are not being dicussed because Phoney Blair, Michael Howard and Charles Kennedy don't want them discussed. Why? Because the British Government no longer HAS ANY POWER AT ALL in those areas - it's been handed over to Brussels. And they don't want you to know that.
Read this and be afraid... AND BE ANGRY.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/04/17/nbook17.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/04/17/ixhome.html
The biggest issue of all can't be mentioned
The real reason for the collapse of the Rover-Shanghai deal, it turns out, was the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations. These enact EU directives which would have imposed on the Chinese greater obligations towards redundant employees than they could and would accept.
Even the BBC now asks why "Europe" has become the great unmentionable issue in this suffocating election - but it is missing at least half the point. It is true that all parties seem eager to keep the EU out of view (Tory candidates, for instance, were startled last week to be issued with a set of focus-group-tested mantras on this topic and warned not to vary from them by an iota).
The politicians' stock explanation is that discussion of "Europe" should be deferred until the referendum on the European constitution in a year's time. This could prove to be more than just a convenient excuse: with the voters of France and Holland seemingly set to kick the constitution into the long grass, we may find ourselves denied any debate on this issue at all.
There is, however, a more serious respect in which "Europe" has become the black hole in this election. The discussion of many vitally important issues is now avoided because they are in fact no longer the responsibility of our Westminster Parliament. When even the Cabinet Office website admits that half our laws are now made in Brussels, this means that a whole range of policy areas which would once have been at the centre of election debate are off the agenda.
Here are nine key issues which have effectively been excluded from discussion, because the views of British voters are no longer relevant to how they are handled.
1. The Coming Energy Crisis
Within a few years, with the rundown of North Sea gas and our ageing nuclear power stations (currently providing nearly a quarter of our electricity), we face the prospect of a major energy crisis, which in the electronic age would be far more devastating to economic life than Heath's "three day week" in the 1970s.
Yet no party is prepared to argue the unworkability of an EU-agreed energy policy which pledges that, within 15 years, we will derive 20 per cent of our energy from "renewables", mainly wind. To achieve this - which would entail building 20,000 turbines - is out of the question. No party dares question the EU-Kyoto orthodoxy by pointing out that wind energy is hopelessly unreliable and uneconomical, and that without a new generation of nuclear power stations a crisis is inevitable.
2. The Waste Crisis
Our waste disposal policy is in chaos thanks to the insane complexity of EU waste rules and its diktat that we must replace most of our landfill sites with giant incinerators. This is not going to happen. Thanks to the EU's bizarre definitions of "waste", Britain is prohibiting all sorts of imaginative recycling systems, such as the use of sewage pellets to fuel power stations.
Labour ministers' slavish attempts to comply with ill-drafted EU law are proving increasingly self-defeating: eg the current nationwide wave of fly-tipping, or the fiasco of the EU's ban on burying "animal by-products", from fallen farm stock to old supermarket chicken tikka. Yet neither of the other parties dares question this shambles because they accept the EU's right to dictate waste policy.
3. The Defence Crisis
The Armed Forces face an unprecedented crisis in the provision of their materiel - their planes, ships and vehicles - which is intimately connected to the demands of EU defence integration. The recent award of the Army's biggest ever truck order to a German firm rather than an Anglo-American consortium was just the latest instance of how the politics of EU integration are now overriding military considerations.
The Tories promise to spend more on defence and to reverse the abolition of old regiments. But neither pledge makes sense without addressing the central issue of whether our armed forces should be reorganised and re-equipped according to the needs of EU defence policy.
4. Immigration and Asylum Rules
In January when Michael Howard first proposed a limit on immigration, he was caught out when Brussels officials explained he had no powers to do so. The Labour Government had signed up to directives which prevent Britain deciding its own immigration and asylum policy.
Mr Howard responded that he would repatriate those powers. But although he has continued to make immigration a central election issue, he has carefully avoided getting drawn into further discussion of how he could implement a policy which would be viewed by Brussels and his EU partners as illegal.
5. Road Safety and Traffic Control
Few issues have become more contentious than speed cameras and congestion charges. Even Labour's manifesto admits they will consider a new system for charging road-users. What no party explains is that Brussels now plans to take control of all "road use policy" across the EU, through its proposed Road Safety Agency, including speed limits. Furthermore, among the declared intentions of its Galileo satellite system is a plan for electronic charging for road use of EU roads, including congestion charges; and satellite-controlled automatic "speed limiters", making it impossible for drivers to break the limit even if they want to.
6. Overseas Aid
Tony Blair makes play with his plans to more than double Britain's overseas aid spending to £6.5 billion a year. What he doesn't highlight is the frustration of his ministerial colleagues at the extent to which UK aid priorities are now dictated by the EU, and how inefficiently and corruptly much of it is administered.
A junior aid minister, Gareth Thomas, recently complained at the way EU aid is weighted towards Mediterranean countries, in the hope of deterring emigration - so that Egypt, for example, receives 100 times more per head than the much poorer Bangladesh. The Tories say they would "repatriate" some aid policy, but do not explain how they would do this in face of unanimous opposition from Brussels and EU partners.
7. Foreign Policy
Because it is obscured by headline exceptions such as Iraq, few people, even politicians, are aware how much we must now comply with the EU's common foreign policy. In 28 policy areas we have already handed over our right to decide our own policy, which is one reason why the British Government has appeared to take such a pusillanimous line over such issues as the tyranny of Mugabe, Botswana's persecution of the Kalahari Bushmen and appeasement of the mullahs in Iran.
8. Competition and State Aid Rules
When, with Government support, Peugeot planned a car plant at Coventry which would have contributed more to the Midlands economy than Rover, the deal was scuppered because it took too long for Brussels to approve it under EU "state aid rules". Although the rules are widely flouted by France, Germany, Italy and Spain, Britain is punctilious in its efforts not to use subsidies in a way which might "distort competition". This has also resulted in abandoning such socially desirable policies as the Public and Private Partnerships which helped to clean up scores of former industrial sites and put them to beneficial use.
9. The Growing Deadweight of EU Regulation
When one West Country MP was recently approached by a constituent asking why, as a lorry driver, he was forced by the EU's working time rules to take a 20 per cent cut in wages, the MP had to point out that there was nothing any British politician could do about it.
EU regulations are regularly put at the top of the list by business organisations, from the CBI to the British Chambers of Commerce, as by far the biggest single factor undermining the efficiency and competiveness of British industry. Despite weak noises from the Tories, no British politician has any practical idea as to how to curb this regulatory blizzard, which is why it is not an election issue.
These are just some of the issues which will remain undiscussed at this election, reflecting how much of our government has now passed to the new system centred in Brussels, unaccountable to any electorate. This inflicts endless damage, from the chaos over our new "118" system for directory enquiries to the continuing disaster of our fisheries.
But the more the power to run our country is taken out of our politicians' hands, the more reluctant they are to talk about it. This is why debate will continue to centre round the same obsessive little list of issues - schools'n'hos-pitals, crime'n'tax - ignoring that ever greater "European black hole" into which our right to govern ourselves is steadily vanishing.
Read this and be afraid... AND BE ANGRY.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/04/17/nbook17.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/04/17/ixhome.html
The biggest issue of all can't be mentioned
The real reason for the collapse of the Rover-Shanghai deal, it turns out, was the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations. These enact EU directives which would have imposed on the Chinese greater obligations towards redundant employees than they could and would accept.
Even the BBC now asks why "Europe" has become the great unmentionable issue in this suffocating election - but it is missing at least half the point. It is true that all parties seem eager to keep the EU out of view (Tory candidates, for instance, were startled last week to be issued with a set of focus-group-tested mantras on this topic and warned not to vary from them by an iota).
The politicians' stock explanation is that discussion of "Europe" should be deferred until the referendum on the European constitution in a year's time. This could prove to be more than just a convenient excuse: with the voters of France and Holland seemingly set to kick the constitution into the long grass, we may find ourselves denied any debate on this issue at all.
There is, however, a more serious respect in which "Europe" has become the black hole in this election. The discussion of many vitally important issues is now avoided because they are in fact no longer the responsibility of our Westminster Parliament. When even the Cabinet Office website admits that half our laws are now made in Brussels, this means that a whole range of policy areas which would once have been at the centre of election debate are off the agenda.
Here are nine key issues which have effectively been excluded from discussion, because the views of British voters are no longer relevant to how they are handled.
1. The Coming Energy Crisis
Within a few years, with the rundown of North Sea gas and our ageing nuclear power stations (currently providing nearly a quarter of our electricity), we face the prospect of a major energy crisis, which in the electronic age would be far more devastating to economic life than Heath's "three day week" in the 1970s.
Yet no party is prepared to argue the unworkability of an EU-agreed energy policy which pledges that, within 15 years, we will derive 20 per cent of our energy from "renewables", mainly wind. To achieve this - which would entail building 20,000 turbines - is out of the question. No party dares question the EU-Kyoto orthodoxy by pointing out that wind energy is hopelessly unreliable and uneconomical, and that without a new generation of nuclear power stations a crisis is inevitable.
2. The Waste Crisis
Our waste disposal policy is in chaos thanks to the insane complexity of EU waste rules and its diktat that we must replace most of our landfill sites with giant incinerators. This is not going to happen. Thanks to the EU's bizarre definitions of "waste", Britain is prohibiting all sorts of imaginative recycling systems, such as the use of sewage pellets to fuel power stations.
Labour ministers' slavish attempts to comply with ill-drafted EU law are proving increasingly self-defeating: eg the current nationwide wave of fly-tipping, or the fiasco of the EU's ban on burying "animal by-products", from fallen farm stock to old supermarket chicken tikka. Yet neither of the other parties dares question this shambles because they accept the EU's right to dictate waste policy.
3. The Defence Crisis
The Armed Forces face an unprecedented crisis in the provision of their materiel - their planes, ships and vehicles - which is intimately connected to the demands of EU defence integration. The recent award of the Army's biggest ever truck order to a German firm rather than an Anglo-American consortium was just the latest instance of how the politics of EU integration are now overriding military considerations.
The Tories promise to spend more on defence and to reverse the abolition of old regiments. But neither pledge makes sense without addressing the central issue of whether our armed forces should be reorganised and re-equipped according to the needs of EU defence policy.
4. Immigration and Asylum Rules
In January when Michael Howard first proposed a limit on immigration, he was caught out when Brussels officials explained he had no powers to do so. The Labour Government had signed up to directives which prevent Britain deciding its own immigration and asylum policy.
Mr Howard responded that he would repatriate those powers. But although he has continued to make immigration a central election issue, he has carefully avoided getting drawn into further discussion of how he could implement a policy which would be viewed by Brussels and his EU partners as illegal.
5. Road Safety and Traffic Control
Few issues have become more contentious than speed cameras and congestion charges. Even Labour's manifesto admits they will consider a new system for charging road-users. What no party explains is that Brussels now plans to take control of all "road use policy" across the EU, through its proposed Road Safety Agency, including speed limits. Furthermore, among the declared intentions of its Galileo satellite system is a plan for electronic charging for road use of EU roads, including congestion charges; and satellite-controlled automatic "speed limiters", making it impossible for drivers to break the limit even if they want to.
6. Overseas Aid
Tony Blair makes play with his plans to more than double Britain's overseas aid spending to £6.5 billion a year. What he doesn't highlight is the frustration of his ministerial colleagues at the extent to which UK aid priorities are now dictated by the EU, and how inefficiently and corruptly much of it is administered.
A junior aid minister, Gareth Thomas, recently complained at the way EU aid is weighted towards Mediterranean countries, in the hope of deterring emigration - so that Egypt, for example, receives 100 times more per head than the much poorer Bangladesh. The Tories say they would "repatriate" some aid policy, but do not explain how they would do this in face of unanimous opposition from Brussels and EU partners.
7. Foreign Policy
Because it is obscured by headline exceptions such as Iraq, few people, even politicians, are aware how much we must now comply with the EU's common foreign policy. In 28 policy areas we have already handed over our right to decide our own policy, which is one reason why the British Government has appeared to take such a pusillanimous line over such issues as the tyranny of Mugabe, Botswana's persecution of the Kalahari Bushmen and appeasement of the mullahs in Iran.
8. Competition and State Aid Rules
When, with Government support, Peugeot planned a car plant at Coventry which would have contributed more to the Midlands economy than Rover, the deal was scuppered because it took too long for Brussels to approve it under EU "state aid rules". Although the rules are widely flouted by France, Germany, Italy and Spain, Britain is punctilious in its efforts not to use subsidies in a way which might "distort competition". This has also resulted in abandoning such socially desirable policies as the Public and Private Partnerships which helped to clean up scores of former industrial sites and put them to beneficial use.
9. The Growing Deadweight of EU Regulation
When one West Country MP was recently approached by a constituent asking why, as a lorry driver, he was forced by the EU's working time rules to take a 20 per cent cut in wages, the MP had to point out that there was nothing any British politician could do about it.
EU regulations are regularly put at the top of the list by business organisations, from the CBI to the British Chambers of Commerce, as by far the biggest single factor undermining the efficiency and competiveness of British industry. Despite weak noises from the Tories, no British politician has any practical idea as to how to curb this regulatory blizzard, which is why it is not an election issue.
These are just some of the issues which will remain undiscussed at this election, reflecting how much of our government has now passed to the new system centred in Brussels, unaccountable to any electorate. This inflicts endless damage, from the chaos over our new "118" system for directory enquiries to the continuing disaster of our fisheries.
But the more the power to run our country is taken out of our politicians' hands, the more reluctant they are to talk about it. This is why debate will continue to centre round the same obsessive little list of issues - schools'n'hos-pitals, crime'n'tax - ignoring that ever greater "European black hole" into which our right to govern ourselves is steadily vanishing.
0
Comments
1) Will kick in by July. There is hardly any oil left in Saudi.
2) No problem here garbage isn't going anywhere, RK.
3) As the ability of any of our neighbours to attack us is nil I wouldn't worry about it.
4) I think we should all be nomads, myself.
5) Sounds like a good idea, even if the only people it won't affect are criminals.
6) Conflicts with 4, so whoever wrote this article has a bad memory.
7) Bollocks. If we can go shoot the iraqis en masse without a UN resolution, we can ignore the EU too. (Unfortunately)
8) If you follow the rules you lose. Nothing new in that. is there? The rules are made for the sole benefit of those who make them. If we had got into the EU at the start we could have swung things our way.
9) You have no right to govern yourself. The queen owns it all and you are cannon fodder/producer of goods.
Well, RK it's more hysterical we are all doomed" crap. We'll be fine.
Yes, but that doesn't mean its not too 'French' for us.
lmao. not too long ago the Saudis increased thier reserve estimates to over 1.2 trillion barrels, more than was thought to exist in all the oil reserves discovered.
Theres more than enough oil to last for the next 50 to 60 years, but we do need to start to think of other sources of energy, and well lets face it, renewable energy just isnt going to cut it, even the most hard core enviromental scientist are now starting to say that it just isnt feasible, with the technology at hand, well see what the next 30 years brings.... but it really looks like our only choice is going to be Nuclear
About all this EU crap... I am Canadian, but have been living in england for 4 years now, and well, all this really shocks me, how you can just give away so much of your soverienity (sp?). I think the germans still have a long way to go before the rest of europe should be trusting them with anything, and well the french... i think there quite happy to just go on pissing off the whole world. The EU as it stands is quite a joke. Everyone is just slowly donating thier countries to the french and germans, they are getting handed to them what they couldnt take by force years ago.
Craig
They are lying. They have a 30-50% water/oil ratio already and it's getting worse. Hence the mad scramble for Iraq's oil.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/08B97BCF-7BE6-4F1D-A846-7ACB9B0F8894.htm
http://home.entouch.net/dmd/ghawar.htm
Reserves which are currently un-economic will become economic in the future, there is also the "oil sands" in Canada.
As for Saudi Arabia oil reserves - 264.2 billion barrels
Iraq - 115 billion barrels (proven, not resources amount)
So its all complicated but there is enough oil to keep the worl going for a few more decades yet.
Bopz
Sources - I robbed all this out of a lecture handout which stole the data from
www.nationmaster.com
Why is this “unworkable” and why do you describe building turbines as “out of the question”?
Too often the word “can’t “ is substituted where the word “won’t” should be… IMHO.
I want one on my land to power my house so I can fuck off my electric bills and start selling leccy instead.
Oh and wind turbines are eyesores compared to what exactly?
I know you don't get out much, but for your information we are an island. Who said turbines had to be onshore? Who said they had to be wind, when wave power exists.
BTW The same people with the NIMBY approach are also the same people likely to want to use cars/electricty etc to the nth degree in the future. At some point they will need to change one of these positions IMHO.
fusion energy sources will be available in the future, clean, cheap, and readily available, but until they get here we will have to use nuclear.
Renewable energy is a great idea, but it just doesnt generate enough power. Even the enviromental groups own scientist are now starting to agree with this.
Don't get me started on recycling another Green idea I'm against - its economic nonsense and I refuse to do any recycling. The manufacturers should be encouraged to go easy on packaging, they're overdo it.
So anyway Bitch Kid, what do you propose instead then, exactally, as a renewable engery source? Please, do tell me! At least this topic has some point for once.
Anyway, I hope you see how name fucking isn't funny for long.
for now Nuclear is the way to go, until new sources of energy generation are created/discovered
How is a finite resource not going to run out?
If its abiotic :yes:
TBH, you fucking nobber.
So you would let your kids suffer for your mistakes?
I like you less than before now.
Even though it has been proven to work. Massive area for a entrepreneur to exploit too.
With all the disposal problem that come with it. personally I'd rather have a wind turbine in my backgarden than a nuclear waste dump. Call me picky.
Even though it's a finite resource...
Actually economically it makes sense. You can charge the same for a product without all the packaging. Just think of the profits.
No arguement there.
Now there's an idea.
Let's let the world grind to a halt because we have no means of production, no plastics etc anymore. Do you have any idea how many of the things around you are oil derivatives?