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EUROPE

The Government has introduced a new Bill to ratify a new Treaty, signed in Lisbon late last year (you remember....Gordon Brown turned up late!) Anyway this Treaty is either the best thing since sliced bread (according to Gordon) or the highly suspicious thin end of a very intrusive wedge (according to Ian).  Don't get me wrong - I am all in favour of Europe. I go there on holiday sometimes. I have many European friends. I love French food. But I also have an abiding distrust of European integration when it hands over more and more power to unelected officials. My real fear is that the Treaty of Lisbon will do just that  - and that we, the British people, ought to be given a chance to decide on the issue by voting in a referendum.

Last week I accompanied two Somerset Parliamentary colleagues (David Heathcoat-Amory and John Penrose) to Downing Street to hand in a petition demanding just that

The three musketeers

Petitions give the Government a pretty clear indication of what folk really think (provided enough people sign them)

If you haven't created a petition before it needn't involve standing around on chilly street corners with a clipboard and a pencil. You can actually do the whole thing on-line and straight to Number 10 Downing Street. You will not require a degree in computing to do it either. The instructions are quite straightforward: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/steps  I offer one important caution: there is no guarantee that Gordon Brown will read your petition or take a blind bit of notice of it even if he does.

Here are a few Euro facts:

Europe is the second biggest democratic electorate in the world - 495 million constituents across 27 nations. There is a Parliament (which doesn't have much effective power) packed with 785 MEPs all of whom are elected by a confusing form of Proportional Representation which means you don't vote for the person, only the party. This may explain why Elections to Europe are shunned by so many voters. Anyway these MEPs are supported by 5,800 staff. Then there's the Commission, which does have the power but isn't elected by anyone at all. They run a budget of £950 million every year. And every year they are accused of mismanaging the budget. For instance the EU spent £14,400,000 on a study to show how its own administrative costs could be reduced!

The Parliament meets alternately in TWO places hundreds of miles apart:

StrasbourgBrussels

This wildly expensive arrangement was made years ago just to satisfy the French. Strasbourg is in France. Brussels is the capital of Belgium.

I wish I had the contract for shipping tons of documents from one place to the other every other month!

There is also another body called the Council of Europe, set up just after the second World War. It has 47 countries on its books and meets as a talking shop.

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  ©2003,2004 Ian Liddell-Grainger. All rights reserved. www.somersetwest.org.uk