Toby on Tuesday

'Schengen and Shenanigans'

Last week I wrote about the Euro-currency as it approaches its endgame in Greece.   Today I want to write about the endgame of the Schengen zone, that other totem of EU ideology.   For Wednesday 4th May, 2016 will go down in history as the day when the EU finally committed suicide.   For that was the day when the Brussels Commission approved visa-free travel to the 26-nation Schengen zone, and in consequence to Britain and Ireland too, for nearly 130 million citizens of Turkey, Kosovo, Georgia and Ukraine.   All are unstable and dangerous countries, but the most unstable and dangerous is probably Turkey, with its borders onto Iran, Iraq and Syria.   And just to underscore what has happened, on 4th May Turkish became an official language of the EU, while the Commission issued a press release which declared that Turkey’s “accession process will be re-energised, with Chapter 33 to be opened”..before 30th June...”and preparatory work on the opening of other chapters to continue at an accelerated pace.”   And to confirm the legal position, any citizen of all four countries will shortly be able to enter the Schengen zone for up to 90 days for tourism and up to 180 days for business.   And any holder of an EU identity card – not even a full passport – has absolute right of entry into Britain.   

So it’s not surprising that one principal growth industry in Bulgaria and Romania is the creation of fake identity cards and the forgers can expect a rush of new business once all that visa-free travel starts at the end of June, just after our Referendum.   Now it’s well worth reading an article by Adrian Mogos on the Balkan Insight website which reports that, “For a few hundred euros I obtained a new Romanian identity complete with a new name of Turkish origin.   For the next few months I was no longer Adrian Mogos, but Murad Alin Erdogan from Timisuara.   Why choose a Turkish name?   Because most illegal immigrants crossing Romania are Turkish and I wanted to follow in their footsteps.   It was not difficult to obtain a fake identity card, nor to use it”   Now the most celebrated Mr. Erdogan of all is Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President of Turkey, who has already announced plans to create a new Islamic Union, led by Turkey.   So for nearly 80 million Turkish citizens, plus all those who have arrived there from Syria, Iran and Iraq, they can soon have a visa-free jaunt to Bulgaria or Romania, a cheap EU Identity Card and then it’s off to the races in York or Thirsk or Epsom or Aintree, all with the help of the British taxpayer!

And even the EU itself has admitted that there is no system in place to detect visa-free entrants from those four countries who overstay their welcome beyond the approved 90 or 180 days.   So it’s not surprising that the most committed advocates of a “Remain” vote in June are starting to get a bit windy about the EU’s chaotic migrant system where, as with the Euro-currency, ideology is about to hit reality   Even Yorkshire’s sole Conservative MEP, the pro-Remain Timothy Kirkhope, has acknowledged that proper entry and exit checks should be in place before the deal with Turkey gets underway.   As a former immigration minister, he should at least understand what is happening.   In his own words, “Getting a system in place where there is order and discipline is absolutely essential.   Unless you have a system in place to check in and check out, it’s not possible to run any kind of sensible immigration system at all.   It sounds very reasonable to say it is just for 90 days, but how the hell do you know it is just 90 days, and how at the end of 90 days do you locate and remove them?”   Welcome to UKIP Mr. Kirkhope, but the truth is that the EU has no system in place to monitor all those new arrivals, let alone departures, and the policy is firmly underway.

Understandably the nations of Europe are now busy jettisoning Schengen as quickly as they can.   Outside the EU, Norway has reintroduced border checks, while Switzerland now has 2,000 soldiers in tanks patrolling its border with Italy as the migrant route moves there.   And within the EU, Sweden now controls its border with Denmark, which itself now controls its border with Germany.   Austria has built huge fences at four of its border crossings and reintroduced checks at the strategically vital Brenner Pass, while France, Belgium and even Germany have reintroduced border controls.   So much for the Schengen dream of a borderless Europe.   These are the natural responses of countries seeking to survive, but the Schengen dream of a border-free Europe is dead.   I have no doubt that in time sanity will prevail and the great Continent of Europe will recover, indeed Britain’s task as in the past will be to help it towards its recovery.   But the ideological EU project finally brought its own existence to an end on 4th May, 2016 when it opened its borders to so many who wish it harm.   And once Britain has voted for “Leave” on 23rd June, then a sensible Europe can start to emerge from the ashes of the whole insane EU project!

Until next Tuesday!

Toby

Toby on Tuesday

'Penelopes and Pepperpots' 

In a world of anodyne apparatchiks and faceless fixers, politicians with a spark of character are a breath of fresh air.   And the air doesn’t get much fresher than with our Minister of State for the Armed Forces, the magnificent Penny Mordaunt.   More bracing than a sea breeze the MP for Portsmouth North, named by her parents after the Leander class frigate HMS Penelope, is a Royal Naval Reservist.   Famous for her salty speeches, she was the Spectator magazine’s Parliamentarian of the Year in 2014.   Unsurprisingly, she is a leading light in the “Leave” campaign.   And interviewed recently, she declared “One reason why I decided to Leave is because I think it’s the only route open to us to get the better deal that we need to thrive – but also to try and wake up the EU from what it’s currently sleepwalking into, which is a disaster.   The suffering that it’s putting on certain member states because it can’t get its act together over the Euro, that forced harmonisation, is horrific, and is just the sort of thing that is going to lead to those countries not thriving, but failing.   Take a look at what’s happening on the Continent now.   The tremendous potential for civil unrest.   The tremendous ill-feeling built up in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, because of the forced harmonisation in the Eurozone, the tremendous austerity...So it is fragmenting.   People are taking back control against the EU’s rules to try and get some control over the situation, to try and protect their states’ interests.   So it is fragmenting now.   The dominoes are already tumbling.   And we need to help Europe realise this and get a grip.”

Now the splendid Penny Mordaunt’s warning could not be more timely when Greece’s Euro-crisis is erupting again and will soon reach its end-game.   To summarise, Greece has £3.5 billion of debt to repay in July and, with debt at 200% of GDP and an economy shrunk by a quarter since 2010, the funds for this just do not exist.   Yet Germany’s Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schauble, is insisting on further cuts in Greece’s public spending in order to maintain the myth that the country can achieve a 3.5% “primary surplus” by 2018.   This is the economics of the madhouse, yet Herr Schauble is determined to sacrifice the Greek people on the altar of a fantasy that the Euro is somehow a functioning and stable currency.   The truth is that all that money lent by Germany’s banks to encourage Greek borrowers to buy BMW’s and Volkswagens can never, ever be repaid.   Debt forgiveness plus devaluation is the only way for Greece to recover, but this will be to challenge the ideological purity of the Eurozone.   Whatever the outcome of our Referendum on 23rd June, both the Eurozone and the Schengen zone are heading for implosion and Penny Mordaunt is right to alert us to this, so that we can be prepared.

And in her interview, the magnificent Ms. Mordaunt went on to say, “I think leaving will not just make us safer, more secure and give us what we need to thrive, it will enable Europe to really start to reform.   And without that is it going to end very badly indeed!”   Of course, UKIP has been saying all this for years, but its is refreshing when one of the ablest of the younger Ministers in our Government has the courage to say these things too.   Portsmouth North is incredibly lucky in its MP.   Now the original HMS Penelope was so famous for surviving so many air attacks and shrapnel holes that she was nicknamed HMS Pepperpot.   One day in 1942 she arrived in Gibraltar with yet more damage from near misses and received the signal from Vice-Admiral Malta, “True to your usual form – Congratulations!”   And today we can all echo the same message to her redoubtable namesake Penny Mordaunt – Congratulations!

Until next Tuesday!

Toby

Toby on Tuesday

'Loose Change and Changeability" 

We’ve seen the “Remain” camp’s Project Fear that reached its climax with President Obama’s bullying and hectoring intervention in the Referendum debate, an intervention which will lead countless undecided voters, who object to being threatened, to support “Leave” on 23rd June.   The British people have never taken well to being browbeaten, as our history shows.   And we’ve seen its Project Falsehood, with the tawdry document worthy of Joseph Goebbels that has landed on our doormats at a cost to taxpayers of £9.3 million.   Now I want to write about Project Farce in the form of George Osborne’s and our discredited Treasury’s forecast of every household being exactly £4,328.03 a year worse off in 2030 if we dare to vote “Leave”.   It is the 3p that’s so totally brilliant and makes this great comic document part of our unique tradition of Whitehall farce.

Now, by way of background, the Treasury’s own record of forecasting and economic judgement has always been a national joke.   In 1990, it bounced Britain into joining the Exchange Rate Mechanism of the European Monetary System, driving around a million small businesses into bankruptcy and leading to Black Wednesday two years later.   Then it persuaded Gordon Brown to sell half our gold reserves for less than $300 dollars an ounce in order to buy Euros just before the gold price rose by over six times.   Its next wheeze was to try to bounce Britain into joining the Euro itself, claiming that UK trade would rise by 50% over 30 years if we did so, a blunder that only Ed Balls with his five tests prevented.   For this decision alone, history will always judge Ed Balls kindly.  And the Treasury’s gift for forecasting reached its zenith between last November when it claimed to have found £20 billion of additional spending capacity, which then mysteriously disappeared by the time of the March budget.   So to forecast everything down to the last 3p in 2030 shows a gift for humour among the Treasury’s mandarins that nobody ever knew existed.   And as our very own George Osborne has accused those who question these forecasts of being “economically illiterate”, I thought that I would try to spell out just three little variables that could cause them to veer slightly off course.

The first variable is that nobody knows exactly who the EU members will be in 2030 and this could possibly have an impact on Mr. Osborne’s predictions.   Only the other day, our cautious and “Remain” supporting Home Secretary, Theresa May, declared, “The states now negotiating to join the EU include Albania, Serbia and Turkey – countries with poor populations and serious problems with organised crime, corruption, and sometimes even terrorism.   We have to ask ourselves, is it really right that the EU should just continue to expand, conferring upon all new member states all the rights of membership?   Do we really think now is the time to contemplate a land border between the EU and countries like Iran, Iraq and Syria?”   Welcome to UKIP, Home Secretary, but then your boss the Prime Minister is hell-bent on Britain being totally absorbed into an aggressive and ever-expanding superstate called Europe!   The next variable is the full extent of the ever-expanding EU budget, to which Britain is after Germany the main contributor.   Now Mario Monti, former Prime Minister if Italy, is Chairman of the EU’s High Level Group  on Own Resources with a mandate for increasing the EU budget to deal with the eurozone crisis, the migration crisis and the terrorism crisis.   And in his own words, “The EU is going through a crisis which leads me and others for the first time to consider whether we are not heading towards disintegration.   Although the EU has developed itself historically through a process of crisis, response to the crisis, and advancement, this time around it may well not happen.”    All of which is shorthand for let’s hike that EU budget again.   And another variable is that the Treasury has forecast just 3 million new migrants arriving in Britain from the EU by 2030, when all the anecdotal evidence is that the true figure is likely to be several times greater.   But we can all sleep easy because George Osborne and his chums have calculated the figures down the the last 3p!

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, the admirable Liam Halligan was sufficiently shocked to compare the Treasury document to George Orwell’s 1984, declaring “Those of us backing Brexit aren’t “economically illiterate”, Mr. Osborne.   This Treasury document, though, including no possible Brexit benefits, and entirely ignoring the growing prospect of another systemic eurozone crisis, is deeply disingenuous – doing a disservice to our democracy.   ‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’   That’s how George Orwell opened his dystopian masterpiece 1984, calling into question his entire faith in government.   That’s how I felt reading through this disgraceful Treasury document.”   For my part I prefer to see in it the rich tradition of British comedy, with George Osborne playing the part of Brian Rix or of Peter Sellers or even of Edmund Blackadder himself, led astray once more by the Treasury’s Baldricks and all their cunning plans!

Until next Tuesday!

Toby

Toby on Tuesday

'A Lie Becomes The Truth'

“When it becomes serious you have to lie!”   Those were the immortal words of Herr Juncker, President of the European Commission, when discussing the EU’s development.   And his advice has clearly been taken to heart by our very own master of spin, our Mr. Cameron, when combining fear with fiction in his preposterous work of EU propaganda that has been coming through our letterboxes at a cost to taxpayers of £9.3 million.   But of course the original master of spin, from whom both Herr Juncker and Mr. Cameron seem to have learned their craft, was none other than Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda in Germany from 1933 to 1945.   He was the one who first dreamed up guidance for today’s politicians such as, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it”, “Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free will” and, “A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth”.   Our own admirably impartial Electoral Commission has ruled that using public money for Mr. Cameron’s document is “not in the spirit of a fair referendum and should not have been done”, which is a telling understatement.   So I thought that I would try a little truth test on the mind-numbing assertions to which we have all been subjected in a document of which Joseph Goebbels would certainly have been proud.

Let me offer you three examples from this work of fiction, which has been decried by our independent Electoral Commission and is an insult to the intelligence of the British people, and also the related facts.   The document’s very first claim is that, “The UK has secured a special status in a reformed EU.”   The truth is that, in the words of Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, Vice-President of the European Parliament, Mr. Cameron’s paltry deal is “not legally binding” and “nothing more than a deal hammered out down the local bazaar” which could soon be rejected by the European Parliament.   Of course it was the same ever-charming Graf Lambsdorff who declared that it was “a mistake to admit the British into the European Union!”   The document’s next fictitious claim is that, “we will keep our own border controls.”   This would be laughable if it were not so serious when 140 million citizens of Turkey and Ukraine are about to receive the right to visa-free travel into the EU’s 26-nation Schengen zone.   And once inside Schengen, EU passports can easily be bought in Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania, three of the most corrupt nations on the planet, entitling the purchasers to come straight into the UK just like anyone else in the EU, obtain National Insurance numbers and access exactly the same benefits as every UK citizen.   And after five years in the Schengen zone they can come here anyway.   Finally, the third example from this work of fiction is that after Brexit we would lose access to the EU’s Single Market, as if the EU were primarily an economic and not a political construct.   The fact is that on 24th June we could rejoin Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein in the Swiss-based European Free Trade Association, a fine organisation founded by Britain, and remain in the European Economic Area with an EU trade deal to reflect our status as its principal customer.   After all, Switzerland exports four and a half times as much per head to the EU as does the UK without needing to be a member.   These are just some of the falsehoods that litter this dismal document and those associated with it should hang their heads in shame.

But to return to the father of modern political propaganda, Joseph Goebbels.   On 22nd April, 1945 with defeat looming in World War Two, together with his wife Magda and their six children, Goebbels moved into the Berlin Fuhrerbunker to be close to Adolf Hitler.   There on 29th April Hitler appointed him Reich Chancellor.   On the following day Hitler shot himself.   Then on 1st May Goebbels and Magda administered cyanide to their children before taking their own lives.   However, Magda Goebbels left another son who survived the war, Harald Quandt, from her earlier marriage to the prominent industrialist Gunther Quandt.   And in post-war Europe the Quandts’ industrial empire went from strength to strength, based principally on their holding of some 46% of BMW, so that they are now thought to be the richest family in Germany.   And the EU’s relentless expansion into Bosnia, Turkey and Ukraine, at huge cost to the British taxpayer, is due in large measure to German industry’s incessant need to obtain and control new markets for its products, not least the Quandt family’s BMWs.   We should think on these things when the tendentious propaganda from Mr. Cameron lands on our doormats.   And the printer responsible for this tawdry document is Williams Lea, now owned by Germany’s Deutsche Post DHL, which itself receives substantial grants from the European Commission.   So welcome to the wonderful world of the new Europe!

Until next Tuesday!

Toby

Toby on Tuesday

'EUkraine'

The Ural Mountains are a range that runs through western Russia from the Arctic Ocean in the north down to the Ural River and Kazakhstan in the south.   And the minerals that they contain are vital to the Russian economy.   Now, in his bombastic speeches which have become all-too familiar, David Cameron has often declared that he wants to see a European Union that “stretches from the Atlantic to the Urals.”   If he wishes us to take him at his word, which presumably he does, then David Cameron is arguing that the EU should absorb not just the whole of Ukraine, once part of the Soviet Union and where the people in the eastern half of the country remain loyal to Moscow, but also much of western Russia.   That is the logic of his remarks and, when combined with the preparations now well underway for the creation of a “European Army”, this must be a cause for serious concern.

Where this is relevant is that David Cameron, along with 26 of the 27 other EU leaders, has recently signed up to a new Ukraine-EU “Association Agreement.”   With a population of 45 million in Ukraine, this takes the EU deep into Russian Europe, offering Ukraine visa-free travel and generous financial incentives funded in large measure by British taxpayers.   In time honoured EU fashion, trade is being used as a pretext for political expansion with Ukraine being offered a “Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area.”   This is a real commitment for Britain, yet it has scarcely been reported let alone debated in Parliament, while our voters will be open to all the risks involved in a partnership with this dangerous and unstable country.   Now, only one country in the whole EU has had the integrity to offer its voters a referendum on this latest piece of EU empire-building and that is Holland, one of the project’s original founder members.

And on 6th April the voters of Holland went to the polls to pass judgment on the proposed EU-Ukraine agreement.   On a low but sufficient turnout, 61.1% of the Dutch electorate rejected the EU’s deal, with just 38.1% in favour.   The Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, declared that while the vote was not binding his government would have to “reconsider the deal.”   An official in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, stated that “Dutch Eurosceptics could not take Ukraine hostage to express dissatisfaction with the EU.”   The truth is that, as always, the EU will ignore public opinion and press on with its ambition to create an aggressive superstate running from the north of Scotland down through Turkey to the borders of Iraq, Iran and Syria in the south and right up to Russia’s Ural Mountains in the east.   

The combined population of Ukraine and Turkey amounts to some 125 million, all shortly to enjoy visa-free travel into the EU.   Recently John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007, said, “The European project is fundamentally flawed.   I think its best days are probably behind it and there will be increasing tensions.   Britain can’t control its borders – it’s ridiculous to say it can.   If I were British, which I’m not, I’d vote to leave.   You have lost your sovereignty.”   Now it was John Howard who secured the Queen’s role as Australia’s head of state in his own 1999 referendum.   We should heed his words, vote “Leave” on 23rd June and, supported by our friends across Europe, including Holland, and the Commonwealth, become a free and independent people once more!

Until next Tuesday!

Toby

Toby on Tuesday

'Take the current when it serves' 

 

Recently I wrote about two countries which are about to join the EU – Bosnia, where the First World War broke out in 1914 and which has enjoyed visa-free travel to the Schengen zone since 2010, and Turkey, where visa-free travel starts in June, despite the warnings from the courageous King Abdullah of Jordan that it is deliberately “unleashing ISIS terrorists into Europe” and “the fact that terrorists are going to Europe is part of Turkish policy.”   In both cases, the process for EU membership is well underway.  Today I want to write about a country that has successfully left the EU – Greenland.   As the world’s largest island with only a tiny population dependent on its fishing industry, the potential for Greenland is enormous.   And in 1982, following a dispute over the folly and injustice of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy, to which Ted Heath had signed up Britain, Greenland had a referendum on continued EU membership.   53% of Greenland’s voters opted to leave, around the same proportion of British voters who I believe will opt for “Leave” on 23rd June.   The same fear tactics and pressures were brought to bear on Greenland then, but the good sense of its people prevailed.   And what is significant is that in 1984 Greenland and the EU signed the Greenland Treaty which allowed for an amicable withdrawal and continued trade, precisely what Britain should now be seeking.   So a precedent already exists for the way ahead for Britain.

Now where this is relevant is that when Michael Howard was leader of the Conservative Party, Conservative policy was to withdraw from the Common Fisheries Policy.   Today, as Lord Howard of Lympne, he has declared his support for leaving the EU.   But as soon as David Cameron became leader of the Conservative Party, he followed the Ted Heath line and dropped the policy.   And in so doing he condemned our fishing industry to the continuation of a deeply destructive system that embodies all that is wrong with the EU.   Until 1973, Britain enjoyed the finest fisheries in Europe, representing 70% of the Continent’s fishing grounds.   But under the EU’s quota system, we now have only 13% of the EU’s whole fishing quota.   We have to import vast quantities of cod, haddock and other species which have always formed part of our national diet.   Ted Heath’s government had no authority to give away our territorial waters in 1973 and this great crime, for crime it was, must now be put right.   And under EU rules huge quantities of good fish are simply destroyed.   Last year’s “reform” of the Common Fisheries Policy has already failed and the scandal of discarded fish continues unabated.   £2.5 billion a year of fish sales have been taken out of our economy, while industrial fishing techniques which destroy marine life continue to be permitted under EU law.   And while the UK fleet, which is made up mainly of smaller fishing boats, receives only 4% of the English quota, the five largest foreign-controlled industrial fishing vessels take 32% due to quota sales, a figure that is simply unacceptable.   Electric pulse trawling, which the EU allows, destroys marine life and the ecology of our seas.   If you really need an allegory for the sheer awfulness of the EU, then just look at our membership of the Common Fisheries Policy.   If we still had any gumption left as a country, this alone should have led us to follow Greenland out of the EU years ago.

And there is a huge psychological advantage as well for Britain in coming out of the Common Fisheries Policy.   Under international law we would have the right to reclaim the 200-mile exclusive economic zone under our control, as well as our 12-mile zone for UK fishermen.   We could restore our fishing industry and our boat-building industry, and recapture the sense of our being an outward-looking, adventurous maritime nation again, open to the world beyond the disaster that is the EU.   And our nation’s security could be strengthened by rebuilding our Border Force patrol fleet.   Believe it or not, we now have just three Border Force patrol vessels for a coastline that is as long as America’s East Coast, although America’s Border Force patrol fleet is the same size as her Navy.   We can become a seafaring people once more when we vote “Leave” in June.   As voters weigh up the risks and advantages in a “Remain” or “Leave” vote in June, and are inundated with information and misinformation, they must sometimes think that they are being asked to choose between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.   Well, I would say that there’s a very simple answer to the choice between forming part of a political union with Bosnia and Turkey or following Greenland out of the EU – the time has come to turn our backs on the Devil and set out onto the Deep Blue Sea!

Until next Tuesday!

Toby

take the current when it serves
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Toby on Tuesday

'No laughing matter...'

Anyone witnessing the surreal shambles which those who govern us have created can only be reminded of the classic 1930’s comedy “Another Fine Mess”, with George Osborne playing the role of Stan Laurel and David Cameron that of Olly Hardy.   You can almost hear our Dave yelling at little George those memorable words, “Well, here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into!”   With last year’s overall majority behind them, it takes carelessness of a high order to land any Government in this state.   As Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith was that rare beast, a politician with a strong moral compass and a clear sense of what he hoped to achieve.   In a cabinet dominated by flaky PR men and fixers, his authenticity stood out like a beacon, so to have forced his resignation over last month’s Budget was a serious blunder to put it mildly.   And although that resignation was triggered by a cut of some £4 billion over three years to disability benefits rather than over the EU, it is worth looking at the EU dimension to this debacle.

 

What we do know is that in 2004 Iain Duncan Smith, moved by his time spent in Glasgow’s Easterhouse estate, notorious for its levels of child poverty, chose to devote his political life to tackling the underlying causes of poverty.   He therefore created the Centre for Social Justice in a search for innovative solutions.   In time its policy group released two major reports, “Breakdown Britain” and “Breakthrough Britain”, on the themes of ending economic dependence, unemployment, family breakdown, addiction, educational failure and indebtedness.   Unsurprisingly perhaps, the European Court of Justice deemed a good many of the proposals to be “unfit for a modern democracy” and “frighteningly authoritarian”, although what standing the ECJ had to pass judgment on serious proposals for ending poverty in Britain through encouragement of productive work was unclear, to say the least.   Despite this, Iain Duncan Smith’s radical ideas became mainstream and much of the credit for the high level of employment now being enjoyed in Britain must go to the Centre for Social Justice’s pioneering work.   But what caused him finally to snap last month was the way in which the Treasury continued to chip away at his department’s budget, while ring-fencing favoured expenditure, not least on Overseas Aid and the EU.   

 

This year, the Overseas Aid budget will run to some £12 billion and this is due to rise to around £16 billion in 2020.   And our net contributions to the EU (including welfare payments sent abroad to dependents of EU migrants) after our rebate and transfers to the UK from the EU is running at a similar level.   Economists speak of the “multiplier effect” of public spending which can boost the UK economy, but all of this spending is precisely the opposite as it is money that leaves the UK for good.   Although we are, after Germany, the second largest contributor to the EU budget, our influence in Berlin and Brussels is precisely zero, as is clear from this year’s “reform”, when our Dave let himself be completely stitched up by Frau Merkel.   Yet like Overseas Aid the cost of our EU membership can only grow relentlessly in the years ahead, not least when the looming accession costs of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Turkey are added.   And of course the net EU budget contribution is really just an additional form of Overseas Aid.

 

So it is hardly surprising that Iain Duncan Smith finally reached the end of his tether.   Now last week I wrote about the gifted Atkinson brothers, Rowan, as in television’s Maigret, the master detective of 1950’s Paris, and Rodney, the great sage of Europe.   And there is a curious link here to Stan Laurel (born Arthur Stanley Jefferson in Lancashire) and Olly Hardy.   For the Atkinsons’ entrepreneurial grandfather, who was at the cutting edge of new media in his own time, owned a cinema in North Shields which had been managed by a certain Arthur J. Jefferson.   Now Arthur J. Jefferson was none other than the Father of Stan Laurel and in 1908 he wrote a short play called “Home From the Honeymoon” on which “Another Fine Mess” was based.   All these connections give life its flavour and from the talented Atkinson brothers, through Arthur J. Jefferson’s “Home From the Honeymoon” and then Laurel and Hardy’s “Another Fine Mess”, we come to the graceless duo of Osborne and Cameron, with their botched Budget and their cack-handed efforts to give away our country to the failed construct of the EU – which is really no laughing matter at all!

 

Until next Tuesday!

 

Toby