startledcod

So, post Lisbon Treaty ratification, what power DOES the EU have?

2009-11-11T01:52:00.001Z

The EU is meant to: define and implement a common foreign and security policy, including the ‘progressive framing’ of a common defence policy.

Brussels has ‘exclusive competence’ on five issues where only the EU may legislate:

· The Customs Union

· Competition rules

· Monetary policy in the eurozone

· Conservation of marine biological resources

· Commercial policy.

Then there are ‘shared competences’, where member states can act, but only if the EU has chosen not to. These include:

· The internal market

· Social policy

· Economic, social and territorial cohesion

· Agriculture and fisheries

· The environment

· Consumer protection

· Transport

· Energy

· Health and safety

· The ‘area of freedom, security and justice’.

There are ‘shared competences’ where EU action does not preclude member state action:

· International aid

· Research and development

· ‘Space’

There are also areas where the EU has competence to carry out ‘supporting, co-ordinating or complementary action’:

· The protection and improvement of human health

· Industry

· Culture

· Tourism

· Education

· Sport

· Vocational training

· Civil protection

The EU is also meant to make ‘arrangements’ for the co-ordination of member states’ economic and employment policies, and to carry out ‘initiatives’ to ensure the co-ordination of social policies.

If it seems that the EU may take action more or less wherever and whenever it pleases it could well be right.

Fingers on the buzzers – list in what areas member states do have exclusive control.

Stunned, shocked, incredulous, speechless

2009-10-08T13:28:00.003+01:00

It is almost impossible, no, it is impossible to imagine how someone within the Department for Children, Schools and Families could spend £35,000 on a photocopier that should have cost £1,000.

Waste on that level, the staggering abuse of tax payers money, should be considered a criminal offence. There is just no explanation or excuse that could ever justify such incompetence. Isolated incident, no, they managed to spend £50,000 installing three loos in a primary school – value of job £5,000.

How many sets of body armour could the wasted money have bought? Whose job will be lost as a result of this waste?

You couldn’t make it up. Despair, utter, utter despair.

Why didn't he do what said?

2009-10-02T15:58:00.004+01:00

On 17 March 1998 Gordon Brown the new Chancellor set out his stall in his first proper Budget. It is worth reviewing some of his then statements and the consequent reality.

"The Chancellor is above all the guardian of the people's money." - if only.

Scolding the Conservatives opposite, he said: "Last year, spending exceeded revenues by £23 billion, and when we came to power we inherited not only a cyclical deficit but also a structural deficit in excess of two per cent of national income." It sounds pretty grim doesn't it?

This year, government borrowing will be about £200 billion and our structural deficit (the overspend that has nothing to do with recession) has reached 10 per cent of GDP.

We are in this mess because at the peak of the economic cycle, 2005-2007, Mr Brown ran a sizeable deficit (borrowed) so that he could spray money around willy nilly.

In his last three years at the Treasury, Mr Brown borrowed more than £100 billion, most of which went to unreformed public services, funding an explosion of administration costs and salaries. The public sector's pay bill rose by 30 per cent in the five years to 2008/9 and at roughly £158 billion accounts for almost a quarter of government expenditure.

"To balance the Budget for one or two years and then let it run out of control in the years that follow is simply to fail." - so that's a fail then.

It is a fact that no Labour Government has left office with the deficit or unemployment lower than when it came to power. This tradition is most certainly not a noble one and it seems ridiculous that Brown has taken it so much to heart. He has destroyed our economy.

Skating on thin ice

2009-10-01T19:44:00.002+01:00

Today the Telegraph reported: Mr Brown also said last night that he believed that the actions of some British bankers that contributed to the financial crisis were criminal offences. Asked whether any would be prosecuted for “criminal misconduct”, he said: “If there are any cases – and I believe there are – that show this is the case, then there will be proper prosecutions."

I think Mr Brown should be careful what he advocates. His recklessness with other people's money makes the behaviour of Sir Fred Goodwin et al seem very lightweight. Criminal misconduct is a polite way to describe his wanton and stupid management of the UK economy.

That said I do believe that the invesment bankers who parceled good loans with sub-prime loans and sold them on as a good loan book were committing fraud. Successful prosecutions would be an excellent way pour encourage les autres.

Tony Woodley - never caught short

2009-10-01T17:57:00.005+01:00

When Tony Woodley, the Joint General Secretary of the Unite Trade Union (what a long and important title) ripped up a copy of the Sun at the Labour Conference he said "In Liverpool we learnt a long time ago what to do."

As I watched, seeing he's from the Pool, I presumed he was tearing it up for loo paper. That's what they use there, right?

He carried on "I suggest the rest of the country do the same", what, put Andrex and the loathsome puppy out of business!

Train smash TV

2009-10-01T12:10:00.002+01:00

I know that this clip is on many, many blogs but it is just too good not to get a link here as well. Things to note: the absolute thunder in Gordon Brown's face and Adam Boulton looking like a naughty schoolboy.

Absolute classic!

Catchy names for Brown's teenage mum policy

2009-09-29T18:17:00.004+01:00

Gulags for slags
Slut huts
Broody hen pens
Camps for tramps
Jail for tail
Vandal incubators
And the policy was nicked from the BNP!

Good summary of Gordon Brown's record

2009-09-29T12:10:00.003+01:00

Edward Heathcoat Amory wrote a useful piece on GB's record. What is more, although I suspect GB knows the scale of his failure all we ever get is hubris.

Not long now.

The Police should hang their heads in shame

2009-09-29T11:24:00.002+01:00

Maybe it was when the Police Force turned into a Police Service or perhaps when the Police, like virtually everyone else on the public payroll, started wearing hi-vis health and safety jackets but something fundamental about the Police changed.

If the Police have any roles surely catching criminals and protecting the Queen’s subjects, especially the vulnerable are top of the list. In the tragic case of Fiona Pilkington they failed – totally. It wasn’t the system that failed, it wasn’t the Council that failed (although they did have responsibilities) it was Police Officers in the local Station who failed. They failed to protect the vulnerable and they failed to arrest criminals. Whatever the regulations, whatever the targets, whatever the mountain of paperwork they had to fill out, whatever else was going on in their lives, the local Officers failed.

That a Police Officer told this poor terrified woman that if they were to attend the scene it would exacerbate/inflame the situation tells you all you need to know about the scale of the failure.

The cry for 'Bobbies on the Beat', actual physical Officers walking along the street, has echoed around the country for so long it is ridiculous. However, if this street had had a Policeman walking up and down the abuse would not have happened and Fiona Pilkington and her daughter would be alive today.

Shame on you.

Maybe the long shot candidate is the one

2009-09-28T23:27:00.002+01:00

He doesn’t appear in any polls, he isn’t even in the running but maybe, just maybe, Alistair Darling is the man to replace GB. He’s calm, he’s sensible, he’s realistic, he appears honest. We know that he has been way ahead of GB in being honest about the s**t.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man.

Alistair Darling for PM.

One of the main differences between 1996 and 2009

2009-09-28T22:52:00.003+01:00

Cast your mind back to 1996 when John Major was in such trouble and was being universally traduced by the press etc. etc. Compare that to GB's situation now where he is, to be fair, getting a rough ride.

The BIG difference is that John Major, for all his weaknesses and shortcomings, was seen as an honourable and honest man. Gordon Brown is seen as a liar; nobody believes him, his mendacity has devalued his brand, almost totally. He is pathologically unable to acknowledge or confirm the truth.

Dead man walking, and that's fair.

Those who believe Roman Polanski shouldn't be extradited are wrong

2009-09-28T10:10:00.003+01:00

At times, Roman Polanski has had to bear more than most. His father was sent to a concentration camp, his mother died in Auschwitz. When barely into double figures he escaped the Warsaw Ghetto and survived as a result of the kindness of strangers. His heavily pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was brutally murdered. He has achieved remarkable success from tough beginnings, but so have many people. There is nothing in Polanksi’s setbacks that excuses what he did in 1977.

Polanski was 44 when, at the end of a photographic shoot for a magazine he was guest editing, he plied a 13 year old girl with drink and drugs and raped and sodomised her. It was not consensual. Indeed, the girl has to be persuaded to return following Polanski’s inappropriate behaviour in an earlier photographic session.

He was charged with rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, lewd and lascivious acts upon a child under 14, and furnishing a controlled substance (methaqualone) to a minor. These charges were dismissed under the terms of his plea bargain and he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of engaging in unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.

When on bail awaiting sentence he left the US never to return. He has been hiding out in France (where he is a citizen) and avoiding going anywhere where he thought he might be arrested.

It is 40 years since Sharon Tate’s murder yet the passage of time has not diminished our revulsion at that crime. Why should the passage of 32 years diminish our revulsion at a 44 year old man’s abuse of a 13 year old girl.

He should be extradited and serve time in prison, presumably until he dies.

A really great piece on the Irish Eruo referendum

2009-09-24T22:40:00.001+01:00

Read this.

Its reasoned and sets it out well. We are relying on the Irish to buy us time.

Oh how are the mighty fallen and falling and falling

2009-09-24T21:42:00.002+01:00

Baroness Scotland, Attorney General:

The Home Office confirmed yesterday that she will also be 'named and shamed' on a register of employers of illegal immigrants. The list mostly contains takeaway restaurants and massage parlours. Read more:

These guys are very cool

2009-09-24T15:50:00.001+01:00

Check out the Pogo Dudes!

This will render you speechless

2009-09-24T15:25:00.001+01:00

Nicked this from Tory Bear.

It is beyond parody.

Weird.

Ed Balls needs to improve his English

2009-09-23T11:12:00.001+01:00

Check out this piece in today’s Independent written by Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families.

In it states that "at the G20 meeting this week world leaders will, I believe, be fulsome in their praise for the swift and decisive leadership of Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling in the last year."

Oops! I think he doesn't know the meaning of fulsome – ‘offensively flattering or insincere’.

Or maybe he does and he is stating how he sees it.

You couldn't make it up

2009-09-22T23:56:00.001+01:00

Peter Mandelson attended Burberry’s first catwalk show at London Fashion Week in eight years.

“It was very chic’ a wonderful; reinvention of the look,” said Lord Mandelson, who was attending his first fashion show in Britain.

Good to know that he has the time, despite his numerous onerous duties, to bone up on the previous Burberry looks thus enabling him to pronounce with authority on Burberry’s reinvention. ……….. or was he bluffing?

Attorney General - incompetent or dishonest? Either way she should go.

2009-09-22T12:47:00.000+01:00

Everyone gets it, how come Patricia Scotland and the Prime Minister don’t? Why were they both waiting for the UK Borders Agency to report before deciding whether or not she should resign/be fired.

As Baroness Scotland oversaw the drafting of the legislation governing the employment of illegal aliens including the requirements she should have been intimate with it's requirements. Did she check the documents? Were the documents in order? Did she keep copies as she was required to do under the terms of her own legislation? If the answer to any of these questions was ‘no’ then she had broken the law as the UKBA have no confirmed with the imposition of their £5,000 fine.

Her statement is particularly mealy mouthed: "I fully accept the findings of the UK Borders Agency that I made a technical breach of the rules. I apologise for having made this inadvertent error. Having examined the documents I accept entirely I should've taken copies of them. I sincerely apologise for my error." What other sort of breach of the rules is there other than technical? What sort of error is there other than an inadvertent one? This statement would be just about acceptable coming from any politician, with the possible exception of the Home Secretary, but not from the Attorney General who oversaw the introduction of the legislation. If the holder of that office can’t get it right how can they, or their legislation, command any respect? Her tautological English only serves to heighten the feeling that she knows she is busted.

There is another question which has remained unanswered but at which we can speculate which questions Patricia Scotland’s competence. Were the documents in order? No, yet we are led to believe she thought they were. Or did she realise that they were not in order and proceed to make the hiring anyway. What is it, incompetent or dishonest?

Gordon Brown could have led on this one with a very simple telephone call.

GB – Pat, have you broken the law?

PS – I’m not sure, I’m waiting for the Border Agency to report.

GB – Don’t be ridiculous, you were in charge of this legislation and I presume you have checked, did you break the law? (Nokia flies across room)

PS - Er yes, I did.

GB – Do you wish to resign or would you like me to fire you?

Everything about this just serves to confirm the view that this is a discredited Government that is clinging to it's jobs and power.

The Attorney General should resign or be fired.