The Last Ditch

The people who should be our puppets use their puppets to make puppets of us

Euro Puppets: The European Commission’s remaking of civil society | Institute of Economic Affairs.

Tell a statist that the government spends too much of GDP; that the state should be scaled down and taxes reduced and the response is highly predictable. He will start talking about doctors and nurses, teachers and policemen. Within minutes, unless we are battle-hardened by many years of political debate, he will have established an apparent moral ascendency. Onlookers will wonder how we could be so cruel.

But that's not just, or even mainly, how tax money gets spent. For example, I was horrified to learn from Chris Snowden's linked report for the Institute of Economic Affairs that an estimated €1 billion of the EU's budget is handed over to "sock puppet" charities, NGOs and other fake "civil society" actors in order to promote the political objectives of the EU Commission.

Most of these "civil society" organisations would not exist at all if it were not for EU funding. So far from being genuine expressions of voluntary, non-governmental and non-corporate opinion, they are mere political creatures. It is astro-turfing on a massive scale. The table below (from Chris's report) takes the list of the EU Civil Society Contact Group's members from its own site and shows both the income each receives from the European taxpayer and the percentage of its funding that represents. 

Nota bene that much of the remaining funding for supposedly independent "civil society" groups is received from taxpayers at the national level! For example

Women in Europe for a Common Future received an EC grant of €1,219,213 in 2011, with a further €135,247 coming from national governments. This statutory funding made up 93 per cent of its total income while private donations contributed €2,441 (0.2 per cent) and member contributions just €825 (0.06 per cent). 

In what universe can even the most dewy-eyed believer in the essential goodness of the state justify such a monstrous lie? If an organisation raises just 0.06% of its funding from its membership dues, it is not independent. If it gets 93% of its money from the state, it is the state's creature. This is taking money by force from the masses to tell them what to think - most notably about money being taken from them by force!

This is not about being pro- or anti-EU. It is not even on this occasion about being pro- or anti-state. Democracy is supposed to be about the people agreeing what they want done by state bodies and appointing public servants to get on with it. The servants are not supposed to steal their masters' money in order to promote their own objectives. That they do so is corruption, pure and simple.

Come on, statist readers. Justify this gangsterism if you can. And spare us the "doctors and nurses" bullshit for once.

EU civil servants instructed to troll blogs

EU to set up euro-election 'troll patrol' to tackle Eurosceptic surge - Telegraph.

Sometimes I wish I were more cynical. Then I would not be shocked that EU politicians facing a concerted EU-sceptic campaign would get nasty in defence of their privileges.

Consider the Kinnocks, for example. Neil was perhaps the least effective politician in British history and Glenys was just a small-minded provincial parroting the views she grew up with. The entire family, sitting as a committee, could probably not have passed a GCSE in economics. Yet they became rich - as they never could by wealth creation - on the back of EU taxpayers. Tasked with investigating whistle blowing by the EU's Chief Accountant, Neil fired the whistleblower. It's shocking if you believe politicians when they claim to have a vocation for public service. It's perfectly understandable from their selfish point of view. And though the Kinnocks are a good example, there are versions of them from all the EU countries.

So the EU's political class has "form", one might say, and we should not be surprised if they abuse their power in defence of their seat on the gravy train by directing EU budget towards political propaganda that should be financed by their parties, not taxpayers.

If I were more cynical, I would not be shocked by the EU's civil servants getting involved. After all, they have something of a conflict of interest too. The pretence of their impartiality will not stand long in the face of any danger to their privileged existence. We must expect the British mandarins in Brussels who would actually lose their jobs if Britain leaves the EU to be the most aggressive trolls.

UKIP's deputy leader is even more naive than me, it seems. He observed that:

Spending over a million pounds for EU public servants to become Twitter trolls in office hours is wasteful and truly ridiculous

Only if you look at it from the point of of EU citizens, Mr Nuttall - the one point of view that is never consideed. From theirs, there could be no more effective and important expenditure.

One Europe for all, including murderers

You thought the whole 'EUSSR' thing was over the top? Have a look at this poster – Telegraph Blogs.


Europeans should be every bit as shocked to see the hammer and sickle on the above EU propaganda as they would be to see the swastika. Tellingly, their leaders don't think they will be. I wonder why?
When will people get it into their heads that this symbol
represents every bit as vile an ideology as this one?

Not yet, apparently. At least not in the EU's corridors of power.

Are we sure it wasn't an inside job?

Armed robbers target Santander in Tooting (From Wandsworth Guardian).

Is it too cynical to speculate that this could be nervous depositors jumping the queue or the bank's management hoping to claim on the insurance?

h/t @GawainTowler

So we were right about this too?

EU-sceptics who predicted the failure of the single currency have been feeling pretty smug for a while. Now, those who have long complained that our political class was being bribed into support for the EU can also start telling their EU-mug friends "I told you so". According to today's FT:

A British MEP who leads the European parliament’s most powerful committee on economics and financial regulation is facing the threat of being ousted in a post-summit backlash against Britain.

The moves against Sharon Bowles, the Liberal Democrat who chairs the Economic and Monetary Affairs committee, threaten to make her one of the first casualties of UK prime minister David Cameron’s decision to wield the UK veto ... Although no formal request to change the committee chair has yet been tabled, some MEPs are openly calling for Ms Bowles to resign and are questioning whether a British MEP has the credibility to lead a committee dealing with the eurozone – a movement gathering momentum after Britain’s defiant stand at last week’s summit ... In a sign of the mounting pressure on British representatives in Brussels, Elmar Brok, a veteran German MEP, said it was time to “marginalise Britain, so that the country comes to feel its loss of influence” ...

So far so good. Our EUSSR comrades are wielding sticks and carrots to steer our political donkeys. Need we worry at all about their chosen beast? After all, the LibDems are among the EUSSR's most committed fifth columnists, so it seems a little mis-directed. Wait though, there may be some logic in their choice:

Although Ms Bowles’ views often clash with those of the UK Treasury, her position makes her the most influential British MEP and one of the diminishing points of UK leverage over a bout of Brussels rulemaking that seeks to reshape the City of London

Aha! Fortunately, the key word here is "seek." Good luck with that, comrades. And good luck with the Tobin Tax and censoring the output of the ratings agencies too. In fact, I hope you do both as soon as possible, the better to drive your investors to the City. We actually don't need the 15% of the EU's financial transactions carried out in your inferior, less trusted markets but times are tight and we wouldn't say no if you are really that stupid.

The EU is and always was a corrupt, anti-democratic farce. All that could perfect my schadenfreude as this delicious end-game unfolds would be for a British Prime Minister to have the testicular fortitude to lead us out before it collapses or we are expelled.

Not that being expelled from a collapsing edifice is such a terrible fate.

That EU summit

Don't treat us as "congenital idiots", Mr Cameron. Unless, of course, we are.

"Downing Street said yesterday that a referendum is unnecessary. It is, at the very least, an odd negotiating strategy for Mr Cameron to throw away the strongest card in his hand before the game has even started." - Telegraph leader

via conservativehome.blogs.com

The press are calling on Cameron not to treat us as "congenital idiots", but what if - politically and economically - we are? Let's not get into the whole 'in or out' issue of the EU. It inflames too many passions. Let's just look at one of the mooted solutions to the problems of the Euro.

The proposed EU Tobin Tax is a threat to Britain's economic future. The burden will fall, not merely disproportionately, but mainly on the City of London as the only global financial centre in the bloc. This has been reported in the quality press, as has the threat from City folk to move their businesses elsewhere, but there's no sign that the British people care.

David Cameron's political future depends, not on getting things right, but on pleasing that clueless majority. If he had the charisma of a Margaret Thatcher or a Tony Blair he might shape their opinions but he hasn't. He can't even influence the views of his coalition partners. Nor does it help that he short-sightedly joined in the scapegoating of bankers to cover for the failures of the political class at EU and national level.

Marcus Brigstocke's idiotic recent comment on Have I Got News for You to the effect that the bankers are always threatening to leave and winning political concessions, so "...maybe the public sector workers should all threaten to leave too..." probably better represents the general population's view than anything I can say. What, after all, is the City of London to a Warrington benefits claimant who is now more 'the man on the Clapham omnibus' of British politics than you or me? Well a great deal, actually, but if he doesn't understand that, a hapless, charisma-free, David Cameron can't help but listen to his ignorant views with attention.

For those of us who believe Britain would be 'Better off Out' the Tobin Tax proposal is further proof that our European 'partners' do not have our interests at heart. Yet it does not prove that the EU is rigged against us. It isn't. It's rigged, by its original French designers, against the German people. It was designed to exploit an historical guilt that no living German should now feel.

Unlike their federal government, which is as feckless as any group of politicians spending other peoples' money to buy votes, the hard-working German citizenry is largely debt-free. They produce fine goods, deliver fine services and more than pay their own way in the world. They are peaceful global citizens and no longer go in for armed evangelism. Would that we could say as much. Yet, true to the French design of the European Project, they have seen their pensions and public services cut, while they contribute more and more to bail out their feckless, massively-indebted neighbours. They are the EU's greatest victims.

Properly viewed, the EU is just a cynical game played to rules written by Frenchmen. It is a game played brilliantly by France and the other consistent net beneficiary nations. Only Britain and Germany ever naievely treat it as a serious political project. From this point of view, David Cameron is simply a bad coach of the British national team. Whether we believe Britain should play this game or not, for as long as we are in the league, we are entitled to have him try to lead the national team to victory.

The 'congenital idiocy' of British voters is something of an obstacle, perhaps. If Cameron believes in the EU and wants to see EU-scepticism decline however, then he needs to man up and do his job. Or make way for a new manager who will.

The Peoples Pledge

Peoples Pledge - Home.

I spent yesterday at the congress of The People's Pledge at the Methodist Central Hall in Westminster. The campaign has a simple aim which unites people across Britain's political continuum; it asks voters publicly to register the following pledge;

I am voting for an in-out referendum on EU membership. I will use my vote to help secure a majority of MPs in Parliament who support an EU referendum.

and to campaign for that referendum. If you agree, please click on the link above and sign up. 

It's a cross-party organisation and I found myself in uncomfortable company. The Communist Party and RMT union both support the campaign, as does UKIP. Most supporters want the referendum so they can vote to leave the EU. Some pro-EU people support it because they want to resolve the issue once and for all so Britain can really commit to political union.

Apart from squirming at receiving fraternal greetings from the Central Committee of the British Communist party, I also found it embarrassing that pro-EU speakers (whose support is of great value to the campaign) were howled down by the antis, even when they made sensible points. I found it uncomfortable to look around at those doing the howling. I agree with them on Britain leaving the EU but  I didn't much like the look of them. I couldn't help feeling the media, to the extent they decided to cover the event, would have fun with the images of elderly - and rather snarly - Daily Mail readers.

The scariest part for me was the confusion on all sides between politics and economics. Pro-EU speakers spoke of banding together against the peril of an economically-rampant China as if we would need gunboats to make the Chinese buy and sell stuff. Anti-EU speakers spoke of locking ourselves into a failing bloc in economic decline, as if by remaining a member we could only sell to EU countries. In fact overseas trade only accounts for 15% of GDP and EU countries account for only 50% of overseas trade. This, despite forty-odd years of being trapped inside the EU's tariff barrier, which makes us less competitive in global markets.

The economic vision of most participants seemed to be at the level of the medieval guilds. It was as if Adam Smith had never written the Wealth of Nations. Of course, this wasn't true of all those there, as conversation over drinks and dinner with my old Blogpower mucker Ian Grey of Shades of Grey confirmed. 

To be fair, this was a well-organised political event that drew more than 2,000 delegates from across the country. It was far bigger than the 'Occupy the City' nonsense that is dominating the newspapers. It made very clear that many people in Britain (opinion polls suggest a majority among supporters of all parties) want to have a say on whether Britain continues with the EU project or not. Politics is a dirty business and sometimes you have to work with whomever will help you to your destination, even if they plan to mug you on the way. I also learned new respect for the abilities (if not the ideas) of Keith Vaz, who was the only pro-EU speaker who could get the hall to listen to him politely. He really is an ingratiating little slime ball.

For me, however, the speaker of the day was Ruth Lea. She calmly and wittily put the economic case for Britain's withdrawal from the EU and skewered the scaremongering of those who pretend millions of British jobs depend upon membership. We run an enormous trade deficit with the EU. There is no way BMW will stop selling us their cars or Poggenpohl their kitchens. Even if, when we leave, our EU friends want to get all politically medieval on our economic arse, we are a market they can't afford to lose. Liberated from the tariff barrier and the Eurocratic obsession with regulating our every economic breath, we would become an even more important one.

The answer to a question they will never ask us: 'Do you want Britain to leave the EU?'

Second Poll Shows UK Wants Out of EU - Guy Fawkes' blog.

Yes.

German politicians make war on truth

Europe declares war on rating agencies - Telegraph.

Do Wolfgang Schauble and Heiner Flassbeck understand what they are saying? They want to "break", "dissolve" or "ban from rating countries" the independent agencies investors rely upon to rate investment risk.

Is this what Chancellor Merkel meant when she asserted the primacy of politics over economics?

If independent sources of information are suppressed, you arrogant fools, investors will not simply assume that your assessments of risk are correct. They will find other reliable data or they will assume the worst. Frankly, a politician furiously demanding the suppression of independent data sources is the best evidence yet that the EU bail-outs will not work.

Independent rating agencies, though they have erred (as all humans - with the apparent self-exception of German politicians - must) add to the overall value of financial assets by making risks more transparent and allowing comparison of rival investments on a consistent basis. Risks which are obscure must be priced on a worst case basis, diminishing value.

Germany's politicians are out of order here, and dangerously so. Not least when they indulge in such racial epithets as "anglo-saxon" to attack their perceived enemies. As a group, German politicians are ill-advised to raise the spectre of national stereotype.

h/t Samizdata, which makes the chilling point, in this context, that so far from being doomsayers, the rating agencies have a track record of undue optimism. Think about that, Wolfgang, as you bark your deluded orders to your imagined army.