John Buckley
- Registered: 6 Oct 2013
- Posts: 615
Anyone got a large wet sponge?
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Weird Granny Slater
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 7 Jun 2017
- Posts: 3,002
Anti-Europeans never accepted the UK’s 1973 membership, or the 1975 referendum result (which, some will remember, was a decisive 67 / 33 in favour), so they can occupy no principled high ground when it comes to claiming that an argument is settled, and they’ll just have to get used to Remainers continuing to argue their case.
But Brexit's a very tabloid affair, though, and perhaps a bit like following the Burton-Taylor business: they obviously loved each other, and even remarried, but couldn’t live together. Perhaps Burton’s words on Taylor capture UK-EU relationship best:
‘She has wonderful eyes, but she has a double chin and an overdeveloped chest, and she's rather short in the leg.’
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'Pass the cow dung, my dropsy's killing me' - Heraclitus
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
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Guest 1224- Registered: 9 Mar 2014
- Posts: 100
At least Monsieur Dixon was educated it seems. It is not two late to buy him a pint of wine down the pub as an apology from all brexiters for his wisdom.
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howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Captain Haddock
- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 7,925
howard mcsweeney1 wrote:Interesting piece from Charlie on future border plans with the two Irelands.
If he carries on at this rate our (sic) Charlie is going to run out of backs of fag packets to write his cunning schemes on!
Let's go back to the late seventies and see how the common travel area (CTA) worked.
I'm sitting at Tn3 and get a West African in transit to Eire who claims he is going on holiday to visit 'the land of his ancestors' or some such rubbish. I search his bags and find his school certificates and a letter (probably forged) from a previous employer stating what a good worker he is.
It's a weekend so I 'phone the Head of the Irish Immigration Service at home. His wife answers. Mr ****** is on the golf course, could I tell her what it's all about. I tell her. She says 'he doesn't sound at all like the sort of person we want over here. If you want to refuse him entry I'll tell Mr ****** when he comes home'.
I put man on next plane back to West Africa knowing that even if he appeals against my decision he doesn't stand a chance as I have refused him whilst in transit to the Irish Republic where the authorities have informed me he is not acceptable.
Let's now look to Charlie's soft border of the future and the CTA.
A penniless Eastern European arrives at Dublin Airport and claims he is exercising his right under the Treaty of Rome to seek employment in Eire. The Irish can do nothing to refuse him entry. Within a week he is in Slough working illegally.
The ONLY solution is bio-metric ID cards for ALL in UK to allow us to identify who should be here, what conditions there are attached to their presence and what their entitlements are e.g. housing, education, health, driving qualifications etc. It's not sodding rocket science.
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"Shall we go, you and I, while we can? Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds"
Neil Moors- Registered: 3 Feb 2016
- Posts: 1,295
I live in a country where there are compulsory ID cards, and they really do take care of a large number of issues that we grapple with in the UK. As with everything, it is all in the presentation. Call them ID cards and you have no chance; call them something like "Access to Public Services Card" and they will fly off the shelves.
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howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Courtesy of the Telegraph.
The European Commission was today plunged into a row over its travel expenses after it emerged that Jean-Claude Juncker had splashed out £24,000 of taxpayers’ money on a private plane for a two-day visit to Rome.
The commission spent half a million euros on travel for its commissioners in January and February 2016, which works out at £8,000 being claimed by each of the 28 commissioners every month.
Costs soared whenever private planes were chartered for flights to the trips to 26 EU countries and 23 nations outside of the bloc. The commission said "air taxis" were chartered 28 times in 2016, more than twice a month, and added the flights were often shared with the presidents of the European Council and Parliament.
Mr Junker’s flight by "air taxi" was revealed in travel expenses for the first two months of 2016, which were published today after a Spanish NGO made an information request.
In February 2016, Mr Juncker flew by private jet just 220 miles from Brussels to Strasbourg. Five years ago, the Commission paid £11.3 million for access to a fleet of six jets.
EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini spent just under £68,000 on a visit to Baku, Azerbaijan, according to analysis in Belgian magazine Knack. A chartered airplane for a delegation of six to eight was used to travel from Azerbaijan to another summit in Armenia before returning to Brussels.
Mr Juncker is the president of the Brussels-headquartered European Commission, which is demanding Britain pays a financial settlement for leaving the EU.
While no figure has been made public and will be subject to tough negotiation, the bloc is believed to be pushing for up to 100 billion euros. The Telegraph reported that the UK was considering an offer of £36 billion.
UKIP MEP Nigel Farage told The Telegraph: "Outrageous! Juncker spending £24,000 on a private jet at taxpayers' expense is clearly over the top especially when many normal flights are available.
Keith Sansum1
- Location: london
- Registered: 25 Aug 2010
- Posts: 23,857
Although its double standards when you look at the earnings of MrFarrage
ALL POSTS ARE MY OWN PERSONAL VIEWS
John Buckley- Registered: 6 Oct 2013
- Posts: 615
Old news really, this has been going on for umpteen years now. Another eye watering cost to the taxpayer is what they lavish on cocktail parties etc., and other elements of "entertaining". Mind you, aren't we lucky to have such men (and women) of prestigious standing working hard on our behalf, so surely they are worth every penny? Can't be an easy job can it, just imagine the stress they must be under.
Alternatively, this could all be yet more lies put out by those nasty eurosceptics!
Ross Miller
- Location: London Road, Dover
- Registered: 17 Sep 2008
- Posts: 3,696
Having lived and worked in Brussels I can attest to the delights of the soirées at the Council of the European Union (aka the council of Ministers)
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"Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today." - James Dean
"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength,
While loving someone deeply gives you courage" - Laozi
Jan Higgins
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,798
Milking their lax system is bad enough, condoning and not tightening the system up is a pure disgrace.
It seems these bureaucrats are a law unto themselves and answerable to nobody so they will continue to abuse their power.
Guest 1881 likes this
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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John Buckley- Registered: 6 Oct 2013
- Posts: 615
Absolutely correct Jan, the European Commission are in fact "answerable to nobody" and seem to have a right of entitlement to the high life.
Quite simply, they engage in this practice because they can!
Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 7,925
'Our' Mayor has a chauffeur driven car, they have private jets. It's only a difference of scale.
It's the nature of the beast and was ever thus.
"Shall we go, you and I, while we can? Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds"
Guest 1881- Registered: 16 Oct 2016
- Posts: 1,071
#782 is exactly right. This is the reason that I ended up voting for BREXIT. I felt/feel that our MEPs are not elected in via a straight forward electoral system and I especially objected/object to MEPs from other contributing nations having a veto over what goes on in my 'backyard' (e.g. not allowing us to support our own industries, the neo-liberal policies, unrestrained border controls - which is more suitable to countries with land borders and not necessarily island nations like Great Britain and Ireland). The private jet issue, whilst inconsequential in financial terms, is evidence in itself of the wrong skew the EU has taken, it is far too unwieldy, unfit for purpose (in terms of the people it is supposed to serve) and a far cry from the Common Market/EEC mandate that the UK entered into.
Capt, #784, you are quite right, however at least some UK citizens/subjects have the right to oust the mayor at the ballot box. None of us have that same ability with Juncker or, most probably, his successors.
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Just because you don't take an interest in politics doesn't mean that politics won't take an interest in you. PERICLES.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
At least we know why the EU needs a big pay off from us, Junket and his mates have a lifestyle to maintain. Does anyone remember the Channel 4 drama "The Gravy Train" exposing corruption and this was even before the EU came into being?
Keith Sansum1- Location: london
- Registered: 25 Aug 2010
- Posts: 23,857
we are where we are time to get on with now,,,,
ALL POSTS ARE MY OWN PERSONAL VIEWS
Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 7,925
A possible solution for the Irish 'border'?
You described vividly the hurdles that the traffic of people and goods would face if a hard border were to be established between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland as a consequence of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union (“The border that isn’t—yet”, July 15th). Yet this does not need to be so.
Article 24 of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which lays down the rules to be respected by member countries when they establish customs unions or free-trade areas in order that other countries are not discriminated against, contains a little-used provision on “frontier traffic”. It allows members of the World Trade Organisation to deviate from these constraints in respect of “advantages accorded to adjacent countries in order to facilitate frontier traffic”. There is no definition of frontier traffic, so an exemption from customs regulations and duties for the intra-Ireland movement of goods could be covered. This would be a good basis for avoiding a hard border, although checks would be necessary at the harbours in order to stop goods from the other part of the island being further exported to the rest of the UK or the EU respectively.
One can look to a broader precedent. Goods originating from northern Cyprus can enter and freely circulate in the entire EU as Cypriot goods.
PROFESSOR GIORGIO SACERDOTI
Former member of the appellate body of the WTO
"Shall we go, you and I, while we can? Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds"
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Interesting viewpoint Bob and I fully respect the source who in his day job sells ice creams near me from a van that moves slowly and plays "Greensleeves".
