"I have no idea how people will vote when the In/Out referendum comes, but I’ve noticed one thing: whenever the debate moves on to hard numbers – our deficit with Europe, our surplus with the rest of the world, our Brussels budget contributions, the tiny part of our economy dependent on sales to the EU, the vast part subjected to EU regulation – Euro-enthusiasts quickly shift their ground and start harrumphing about influence.
The statistics might have a Eurosceptic cast, but they are not exactly a fun read. Few of us want to wade through ONS graphs or European Commission tables. Fortunately, we no longer have to: Lee Rotherham has done it for us, and presented his conclusions in easy gobbets.
The EU in a Nutshell is a miscellany of facts and anecdotes about the system which rules us. It’s a book you can delve into in pursuit of a particular fact, or crack open for entertainment at virtually any page.
There are sections on how the Brussels institutions work in real life, on how the Euro-quangos have multiplied, on what each country thinks it is getting out of membership (complete with historical detours). And, of course, there are devastating numbers.
Take, for example, the argument about the European Economic Area. We’re all familiar with the traditional integrationist rebuttal: if Britain went for a Iceland-style market-only deal, we’re told, we’d have to apply lots of directives over whose drafting we had had no say.
How many directives? Here the Euro-grandees tend to become a bit vague. Fortunately, the Icelandic Foreign Ministry has run the numbers, and discovered that 93.5 per cent of EU legal acts don’t apply to Iceland. (The Norwegian Parliament, using a different methodology, came up with the figure of 91.2 per cent, reflecting Norway’s relative eagerness to opt in to common policies not required by the EEA Treaty.) British Euro-enthusiasts are forever telling us about the 2,500 – 2,500! – EU laws that Norway has had to adopt since 1992. For some reason, they rarely mention the nearly 30,000 that Britain has had to assimilate over the same period.
Here’s the kicker: Norway sells two-and-a-half times as much per head to the EU as Britain does. Switzerland, which isn’t in the EEA but instead relies on a series of sectoral free trade deals, sells four-and-a-half times as much. So much for the risible notion that three million British jobs ‘depend on the EU’. (I write this with conviction, as one of the tiny handful of Britons whose job genuinely does depend on the EU: no one looks forward more eagerly to his redundancy.)
Dr Rotherham begins by updating an old favourite. The Lord's Prayer runs to 70 words, the Gettysburg Address to 271, but EC Regulation 1284/2002 on the Marketing of Hazelnuts (In Shell) requires 2,509. And still people tell us that this project is somehow about boosting trade and business.
'I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space,' says Hamlet, 'were it not that I have bad dreams.' Bad dreams, indeed.
The referendum is on its way, my friends, perhaps sooner than you think. Buy this book, read it, digest its facts. The time is coming when you’ll need to deploy them."
I will buy the book. I am a supporter of Dan Hannan and read his blog quite often which is always a boost to the spirit when he speaks about the lunacy of the EU. I also like his talks on 'The Anglosphere'.
ReplyDeleteHe is a blowhard and a curate's egg to boot. He hates nationalists, those that threaten the status quo, and only shouts from behind the barricades. If push came to shove he would fall into line behind the bankers.
DeleteIt is necessary to think of the big picture, and to avoid petty jealousies. He is against the EU and spreads the word against considerable odds. The sooner we are out of the EU the sooner attention will move to the cause of England, which at present is a minority interest in comparison to anti-EU feeling.
DeleteI tend to think for all his bluster he would not be so ardent were it not for the big pay packet
DeleteI would be interested to know how the writer thinks that a referendum is on its way as Mr Cameron's friends love the cheap East European labour that the EU provides and would scrap the minimum wage and have Poles working for £3 an hour if they could, probably three times more than they would earn at home. As Robin tells us, the city and big business have been behind cheap labour immigration since the 1950s with no thought for the future. Ed Milliband would probably do it for the indigenous votes and to swap Eastern Europeans immigrants for more third worlders who would rub our noses further in diversity and ensure them lots more postal votes. Interesting you mention Norway; somehow they still managed to sign up to the Schengen agreement and their borders are pretty porous, more fools them. However, I read recently in a Short History of Norway that such was the Norwegians' love of and fellow feeling for us, their Viking blood gave us our democracy and bolshy spirit of independence, that they said they would only join the EEC if we did. We did and then they voted twice not to, some friends they are; but aren't we and they glad the Norwegians were not brainwaished as we were into saying yes.
ReplyDeletePolish labour is not cheap, these intelligent economic migrants work the system that has been traitorously and purposefully provided for them.
DeleteUnlike settled, home owning English people they can claim housing, and a host of other benefits and not pay tax by returning home before the deadline for paying tax occurs and then return. Most of the money they earn is sent home and in the mean time we have incurred the cost of education , healthcare, translation, unfair competition for work; both intentional and unintentional, social division , cultural swamping and ghettoising of English streets and towns, rising ethnic tension at perceived injustice, and to top it all draconian retribution from the police and courts should you dare to complain.
I have less of a problem with the eastern europeans, within two generations they would assimilate perfectly into our parent society, they look like us and are Christians and share our european heritage and culture. However it is the scale of the immigration that is so devastating.So great are the numbers that they can create and maintain their own society without the need to integrate as smaller numbers do.
'The wars of the peoples will be far worse than the wars of the kings'.
I think I read somewhere that the Poles who came here during or after the War or in the 1950s in small numbers are not too happy with the way the present generation are here in such numbers and forming their own areas with Polish shopes etc. I thought well of the Poles until I worked with them and then found them arrogant in a way you would expect the Germans to be. They also held noisy parties and disturbed the locals but that did not seem to worry them, further evidence of arrogance I suppose. Plus we seem to be getting their criminals as well, as are countries such as Sweden. You are right, though, sometimes when I see them coming down the street and before they speak I am not sure if they are slavic or not and the earlier generations have now totally assimilated. Other races can never assimilate ( be the same as ) they can only integrate, until the time that, as the one worlders would wish and so many have been brainwashed into going along with the plan, we assimilate to them and cease to be white.
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