EU Constitution is going to die: Prime Minister Brown to hold a referendum on it

[Blackleaf]

Hey, Germany and Angela Merkel. I hate to disappoint you, but the British (except maybe Tony Blair) believe in democracy and that is why Britain, when Gordon Brown is Prime Minister, WILL hold a referendum on the Eu Constitution? And you know what that means? Yep, the British are sure to vote overwhelmingly against it, thereby killing the EU constitution altogether (at least in Britain. If it gets into power in any other country is no concern of ours). The British aren't stupid - we know that after the French and Dutch voted AGAINST the constitution in 2005 that the EU will still try to force it through anyway, but this time call it a "treaty" rather than a constitution so that it doesn't have to go to the vote in the EU's Member States. But the British, though, should STILL have the chance to vote on it. Even though Blair is currently denying the people the chance of a referendum on the EU that he promised to us during the 2005 Election, he only has a week left as PM, so the more anti-EU Brown is almost certainly going to allow People Power. And if the British vote against the Eu Constitution - which is almost certain - then the chances are that the whole thing will become dead throughout the EU.

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EU referendum is Gord's ace


By TREVOR KAVANAGH
June 18, 2007

The Sun

Gordon Brown become British Prime Minister in just 9 days' time, and will probably give the British people a referendum on the EU Constitution (which was promised by Blair during the last election but won't give it to us). Brown is more Eurosceptic than Blair, and the British people are sure to vote against the EU Constitution, killing it.



GORDON BROWN hasn’t ruled out a referendum on the new EU constitution. He’d be mad if he did.


Tony Blair may have reneged on his pledge to give us a say. But Gordon is the man who will have to live with the consequences.

The tsunami of Sun readers who just demanded a referendum — 86,000 and counting — gives a foretaste of public fury if we mutely surrender more power to Brussels.

No other issue — taxation, immigration, Big Brother — generates such potent emotion than our place in the European Union.

And Mr Brown finds himself taking the helm at precisely the moment our fate as a sovereign nation state is in the balance.

As an experienced politician, he knows every crisis presents both risk and opportunity.

If he plays his cards right this week’s EU showdown could give a flying start to his premiership and his promise to be straight with the British people.

Whichever way Tony Blair wriggles, the treaty before this week’s Brussels summit means a change to the way we are governed.

We cannot trust his promise that Westminster’s freedom to enact its own laws will be guarded by so-called “red lines”.

Those lines will be constantly under threat.

Even France’s ex-President Giscard d’Estaing, the man who dreamed up this ghastly blueprint, admits Europe’s 450million voters are being duped.

It would be outrageous for the treaty to proceed without the say-so of the British people.

And if they say NO . . . so what?

As a new Prime Minister who had nothing to do with the con trick stitched up behind our backs in Brussels, Gordon doesn’t have to be identified with it.

He can simply spell out the pros and cons and leave us to make up our minds.

The sky won’t fall in, any more than it did when France and Holland rejected the wretched constitution two years ago.

Both governments remained intact and Brussels carried on as if nothing had happened.
Britain would not have to leave the EU.

And don’t believe Peter Mandelson’s ridiculous claim that we would disappear into some economic black hole if we did. We would not be cut out of trade deals with the Continent, any more than America, India or China are.

Europe needs us more than we need them.

Indeed, we would flourish as a semi-detached but friendly neighbour.

We would be able to run our own economy — already stronger as a result of being outside the Euro.

We would remain in charge of relations with other countries instead of being checked by an EU foreign minister.

And we would not have to defer to a powerful new EU president — perhaps Tony Blair, as I suggested last week — at talks with other world leaders. Mr Blair used to say he would rather be castrated than take on the job of running Europe.

He doesn’t say that any more. Not since his dream of sorting out the Middle East evaporated and French President Nicolas Sarkozy offered him the post in return for British collaboration.

If the constitution goes ahead, the post of President will be filled in 2009, more or less the same time as a UK election.

Mr Brown showed considerable steel as Chancellor when he blocked Mr Blair from blundering into the euro.

He is not anti-EU in principle. He just doesn’t think they run things very well.

And he doesn’t want to give them even more power to continue not running things very well.
For Gordon, a referendum would scarcely be a gamble.

It would be a surefire winner, beating even his gift of independence to the Bank of England.

A referendum would shoot the Tory fox and sow consternation in a party still bitterly divided over the European Union.

It would ensure the gratitude of the British public.

And it would turn the next election into a walkover.

thesun.co.uk

 

[cortex]

How England is Losing the Plot

As if I needed anymore reminding about why I don’t want to go back to England…I picked up this week’s Maclean’s Magazine and found a headshot of Queen Elizabeth and a headline, “England’s Shocking Decline.” The by-line reads, “The Queen’s once-proud subjects now lead Europe illiteracy, unemployment, teen pregnancy, divorce, drug use, obesity, alcoholism, crime, and STDs. Bloody hell.” The article inside is titled “Why is England Rotting?” It is written by Martin Newland, British journalist and former editor of The Daily Telegraph (thanks Wikipedia).

He starts out by discussing the recent Royal Navy debacle involving Iran, and how the conduct of the Navy officers involved has caused many people to wonder where the famous British “stiff upper lip” has gone. Newland presents a cross-section of British society, covering everything from the fiscal policies of Blair and Brown’s Labour party, to the drinking habits of ordinary Brits and uses it as a scathing indictment of modern-day Britain. :

Britain is, apparently, awash with disposable wealth, laden with opportunity, bursting with economic and social optimism. CEOs and union bosses can live happily together, either side of an agreed minimum wage. The social safety net, which guarantees word class public services for everybody, free at the point of need, have been sealed off from market forces, offering care for those unfortunates who find themselves unable, through no fault of their own, to benefit from Britain’s economic miracle.

But this rosy picture is just a facade, and beneath it, lies a very dismal picture of Britain. Particularly in regards to its youth.

NEETs, or young people “not in education, employment or training,” now comprise one-fifth (1.2 million) of the British 16- to 24-year-olds….And with the challenges of globalization becoming every day more apparent, Britain’s record on education declines steadily, despite a doubling of spending from £29 billion ($62 billion, using current exchange rates).

The policy’s of Blair and Brown’s Labour Government are apparently much to blame:

Recent statistics showed that fully one-half of state secondary schools are failing to provide pupils with a good standard of education, and 40 per cent of 11-year-olds are leaving primary school without having reached an appropriate level in reading, writing and math. Grade inflation, through which the government stands accused of covering up low achievement, is endemic. In 1989, for instance, a grade of 48 per cent was needed to get a C in GCSE math. By the year 2000 it was 18 per cent.…

The pressure on universities to accept, and then pass, undergraduates who have little aptitude for further education has the inevitable effect of devaluing Britain’s knowledge base and competitiveness. Employer and business organizations are already bemoaning the low literacy and numeric skills of graduates….

Newland also talks about the disastrous effect of Brown’s fiscal social policy:

The International Monetary Fund is warning that public spending is too high and that public sector wage demands threaten Britain’s stability. But both show every chance of rising under a Brown premiership. The state now employs a quarter of workers in Britain, and the 900,000 hired since 1997 almost equals the fall in unemployment in the same period…. The welfare bill is becoming unmanageable. In 1971, only eight per cent of the working population was on benefits. Today the figure is 18 per cent, and some economic think tanks estimate that one-third of British households rely on benefits for at least half their income….

Gordon Brown has taken advantage of 10 years of growth to pump billions into public services, but with negligible results. In 1997, for instance, spending on the National Health Service was £33 billion ($71 billion), rising to £90 billion ($194 billion) last year. Although critics of the NHS would argue for negative productivity, the most generous estimates point to a productivity increase of just 9.9 per cent between 1998 and 2004 — a period during which spending doubled…..

Perhaps the greatest indictment of the NHS is the fact that thousands each year die from hospital-acquired diseases and infections. Officially, death rates stand at around 5,000 a year, but some experts, pointing to misreporting of suspicious deaths by hospitals, suggest a figure four times as high.

The answer to the problem is simple cleanliness. All those extra billions, all those extra targets and managers and doctors and nurses, and thousands are still dying each year for the lack of properly mopped floors and cleaned toilets….

Taxation has risen to a 20-year high to cope with funding the state and the public services. Since 1997, the amount raised through personal taxes has risen from £175 billion ($376 billion) to nearly £370 billion ($796 billion). The OECD says that over the past four years, taxation of working families has risen in Britain, but fallen across Europe….


But even more frightening is England’s rapidly spiraling social decay:

Tony Blair recently announced a plan to provide pregnant problem mothers with state “super-nannies” to teach them good child-rearing practices. At the same time, local government authorities employ nurses to provide underage girls with morning-after contraception services — the most notorious example of this was when a nurse met a girl at a McDonald’s and administered the dose in the restroom. Another girl of 14 had an abortion after counselling from school health workers. In both cases, parents were not informed because of the child’s right to privacy….

Increasingly, but belatedly, politicians are beginning to identify the decline of marriage and the family as the major cause of this and other social dysfunctions including ill health, crime, rampant promiscuity and welfare dependency….

Despite overwhelming evidence of the benefits, social and economic, of marriage to society, Gordon Brown in one of his first acts as chancellor abolished the married couples allowance, which gave tax breaks to a husband and wife who stayed together….

Labour’s highly complicated tax credit system, born partly from a need to reduce child poverty, made welfare benefits for lone parents far more generous and, perversely, rendered a poor family headed by a single parent better off than a poor family headed by a couple. An out-of-work couple with children would thus be better off by between 27 and 35 per cent if they broke up, and a couple earning minimum wage with children would see their income rise by 12 per cent if the father moved out....

Britain leads Europe — and most of the world — in terms of single-mother households. Commentators and politicians are increasingly linking this to the fact that the country offers the most generous benefits in Europe to those same households. They recall former president Clinton’s success in reducing teenage pregnancy rates and lone parent households by changing welfare entitlements….

Whatever the case, those couples who do take responsibility to provide for themselves are forced to work to meet the bills, and many children rarely see their parents. Government has plowed millions into child care facilities without considering the benefits of manipulating the tax system to allow one carer to remain at home….

As a means of targeting the poor and encouraging the low-paid into employment, Gordon Brown shuns tax allowances, whereby the individual is allowed to retain more of his earnings at source, in favour of tax credits where income is taxed and returned after means testing….

….it is the poor who now pay the largest share of their income in direct taxation. A minimum wage earner in the U.K., after the first 26 hours’ work per week, pays over 30 pence in every extra pound he earns direct to the taxman….

David Smith of the Institute of Economic Affairs. “If you look after your children and stay with your partner, you are poor and the kids are debits. If you leave home the state takes over your family and you, alone again, are richer.”

The Conservatives say it is the decline of the family unit, the fiscal and practical challenges to good parenting, poor education and the nanny state, that is the root of so many of Britain’s social and cultural problems. It remains to be seen whether the Conservatives, when in power, will make the difficult decisions they accuse the current government of ignoring….

W.F. Deedes [says], “We are, dear boy, on the verge of a permanent change in the national character. It is very sad.”

Man, I couldn’t have said it better myself. This article pretty much sums up all the issues (and then some) that I had with England. The points about social change in England were especially compelling to me, because I’ve seen how it has affected Britons across the board, and Muslims have been no exception. The moral standards of British Muslims has fallen drastically along with that of the rest of the population. These are just some of the highlights from this excellent article.

 

[FiveParadox]

Re: European Union Constitution

I have several concerns, in relation to the European Union and the expansion thereof.

The E.U. has already assumed a sort of judicial authority in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and, in my opinion, this is not acceptable. The United Kingdom is a sovereign nation, and the highest judicial authority thereof should always be vested in the decisions of Her Majesty The Queen in Council. That, in and of itself, should be reason enough for the citizens of the United Kingdom to vote overwhelmingly against such an international constitution.

 

[cortex]

The point is that although the UK may be a sovereign nation they are not capable of ruling themselves --see the shocking decline of England above. Without the assistance of other more competant peoples ie the French , the Dutch, the Spanish, the Italians, the Germans , the Poles etc---The British -and in particular the English will forever remain a LITTLE people.
Why not join with us to help the LITTLE people of England?

 

[FiveParadox]

Re: United Kingdom is Strong

That’s a rather negative take on things, cortex.

The “little” people of England, as you so refer to them, are directly responsible for the founding of such nations as Canada, the Commonwealth of Australia, New Zealand—even the United States of America, though as a somewhat failed experiment. The United Kingdom holds a seat on the United Nations Security Council, too—doesn’t quite seem a failed State, in my opinion.

 

[Phil B]

The point is that although the UK may be a sovereign nation they are not capable of ruling themselves --see the shocking decline of England above. Without the assistance of other more competant peoples ie the French , the Dutch, the Spanish, the Italians, the Germans , the Poles etc---The British -and in particular the English will forever remain a LITTLE people.
Why not join with us to help the LITTLE people of England?

What utter twaddle!


By the way -love how you changed what the byline actually says....:roll:

Actual unmanipulated article is here

 

[cortex]

That’s a rather negative take on things, cortex.

The “little” people of England, as you so refer to them, are directly responsible for the founding of such nations as Canada, the Commonwealth of Australia, New Zealand—even the United States of America, though as a somewhat failed experiment. The United Kingdom holds a seat on the United Nations Security Council, too—doesn’t quite seem a failed State, in my opinion.

You confuse the past with the present. The nations you speak of are successfull in spite of the little people-not because of them. Their time has come and gone--and rather quickly. Their continental nieghbours have found a way forward--the little people are mired in the past.
Im only trying to help--to help the little people---only trying to educate --to elevate them---the least they could do is KNOW THEIR PLACE!--and show some gratitude---The Cheek!