Bob Piper has been a Labour Councillor for the Abbey
Ward in Sandwell, West Midlands, for nine years. He is a lifelong supporter of Aston Villa Football Club and a follower of Yorkshire County Cricket Club.
The views expressed here are mine in a personal capacity, not those of the Labour Party, Sandwell MBC, Aston Villa or Yorkshire County Cricket Club. Get it! Mine... just mine!
Is dizzy becoming a Ukipper? He rails today about what he considers to be the absurdity of making smokers go outside... and then suggesting a ban on patio heaters.
I dream of the day when we finally have a politician that speaks honestly about Europe and just says 'if they write a directive we agree with we'll implement it, if they don't they can bugger off'. Once we get it through our thick skulls that we don't need to create a law for every single EU directive then the world will be a much happier place.
Well, dizzy, despite what you say about Hague's sloganeering, the fact is all three major political parties are totally committed to continuing down the road of further European integration which has proceeded relentlessly, whoever is in Government, for the last 40 years. I quote from Wikipedia:
The Governments retained the most power in the Council of Ministers, but since the mid-1980s had increasingly been taking decisions through qualified majority votes (about 71% of the votes). This system was called the Community method, or supranationalism, as institutions not directly controlled by the governments wielded significant power, and members could have decisions they disagreed with imposed upon them through majority votes.
Throughout this relentless march to Eurofederalism the only opponents in Parliament have been the Labour left (largely the Campaign Group) and the Tory right (only 22 rebels opposed the Maastricht Treaty) and in recent years both groups have continued to dwindle in numbers as the candidate selection process replaces them with leadership clones. Even if we had a hung parliament, Cleggy and co. would make further European integration one of their main planks of a coalition.
So if dizzy is dreaming of his day... he has got a lot of long dreamy days ahead of him.
Wow Bob, I never realised you;re reading comprehension was so poor, but clearly it is. I am not advocating leaving the EU you stupid old git. I'm merely pointing out that the other member states of the EU regularly ignore the stuff they want to. Go to Greece and have a look if they enforce road traffic laws that EU directives for example. Our problem is that we obsessively follow everything and we simply shouldn't.
Stupid boy, dizzy. I don't know, typical Brit, has a couple of weeks on a Greek island and comes back with an analysis of the whole EU.
I wish I had a quid for every daft sod like dizzy who has said Britain should ignore the working time directive because they've been on holiday to somewhere like Benidorm and the waiter who closed the bar at night time served them breakfast in the morning. The silly sods don't realise that the same thing happens in Torquay... but that doesn't mean Britain has ignored the working time directive.
Dizzy, you're over 30 now, stop pretending to be a spotty thick oik!
February 1, 2008 11:27 AM | permalink
I dream of the day when all chestnuts actually re- read the decision to go into the EEC (Ted Heath) and read it as said:
'For closer Union of member Countries'.
....and still these very clever and articulate bastions of our society claim to have been 'conned'.
Nope....just failed. Bog standard failed.
Gary