Our current Wanker of the Week is Prime Minister David Cameron, for daring to suggest that we do not need a referendum about continued EU membership because we had one in 1975. We calculate that he was 8 years old in 1975, but apparently he doesn't see that there's anything wrong with strapping us to an evil, corrupt, power-mad régime for which only those approaching their pensions voted and which has itself changed out of all recognition since they did. No surprise there, then. He has ambitions to run an evil, corrupt, power-mad régime himself.
Still, lest we should be tempted to shrug our shoulders and just get on with it, let's recognise one or two things that have surfaced in the news in the last couple of weeks ...
First, President Sarkozy of France and Angela Merkel of Germany have decided that Britain should pay £13 billion to shore up the failing economies of Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy and other countries in the Eurozone. We sensibly kept out of the Euro because we could see what might happen, but France and Germany have looked at their stalled economies, then looked across the Channel and seen that ours hasn't totally failed yet, and plan to make sure they drag us down to their level.
They want to slap a financial transactions tax on all 27 countries in the European Union in order to prop up the 17 nations in the single currency. The City of London would be disproportionately hit as it accounts for about 70 per cent of the financial services industry in Europe. A transactions tax – also known as a Robin Hood tax because it targets rich traders – would see a small percentage taken from foreign exchange and share transactions, and of course that's exactly the kind of business London specialises in. It's pretty obvious, then, that the French and the Germans are deliberately targeting Britain, a hostile move suggesting that they haven't forgotten Trafalgar, Waterloo, two World Wars and one World Cup even if we have.
The conservative think-tank the Adam Smith Institute dismissed the plans as an ill-judged raid that would mean Britain’s annual contribution to the EU soaring threefold from around £7billion to around £20 billion. London is currently the world’s leading centre for foreign exchange, with twice as many US dollars being traded on the UK foreign exchange market than in the US itself. But high finance of this sort can be trusted to be completely unsentimental. Traders will simply up sticks and base themselves abroad, and London will lose its international status as a financial hub. Perhaps that's what Sarkozy and Merkel want?
This is what columnist Simon Heffer had to say ...
Chancellor Merkel has managed to use the hard-earned money of German taxpayers to bail out profligate Eurozone countries without suffering any political fall-out. This is unlikely to remain the case and Mrs Merkel knows it. That is why yesterday she played down talk of the European Central Bank — funded by German-backed Eurobonds — paying off the debts of these all-but-bankrupt nations.
Instead, there was forceful talk of Eurozone countries being coerced into balancing their budgets and reducing their debt through what Merkel and Sarkozy called a ‘true European economic government movement’ made up of all the heads of state and led, initially, by the EU President Herman Van Rompuy. Frau Merkel called for a ‘stronger coordination of policy’ and ‘a new quality of cooperation’ within the Eurozone. Although she will not yet admit it, this all suggests the first step has been taken towards a fiscal union that will leave Germany dictating the financial terms for the rest of Europe.
It is the one country that is able to do so. Greece, Ireland and Portugal are economic basket cases. We have heard more and more about the trouble in Spain, where unemployment is over 20 per cent. Italy is tottering — the figures for 2010 show it has debts of 116 per cent of GDP, making the country second only to Greece at around 143 per cent. Meanwhile, the recent addition of France to the list of at-risk economies has caused real shock and panic across the Channel. Its banks hold about an eighth of Greek debt, or $57 billion, its stock market has tumbled and credit rating agencies are talking of removing France’s triple A status.
So, after a summer of increasingly shrill panics around the Mediterranean, the contagion is moving north. Individual bail-outs have been tried, but they obstinately refuse to work. Only an idiot would think they would: they treat only the symptoms of Europe’s economic decline, not its causes. If only everybody could be like the Germans, and spend just a mite more than they earn, then all would be well, the markets seem to say.
Germany lay in ruins in 1945, but it then invested in manufacturing plant, developed first-class education, innovated, raised its productivity and competed on quality not price. Over the next 60 years it won the peace as comprehensively as it lost the war. If the euro is to survive — and with it the European project — the other 16 Eurozone countries will have to be like the Germans. Indeed, they must lose the freedom not to be like the Germans. Be in no doubt what fiscal union means: it is one economic policy, one taxation system, one social security system, one debt, one economy, one finance minister. And all of the above would be German.
That is not merely the price the markets would demand to be confident about the euro’s future, and to be happy to buy debt that could help fund Greece, or Ireland, or Italy. It is also the price that Germans themselves seem to be demanding for their support. Where Hitler failed by military means to conquer Europe, modern Germans are succeeding through trade and financial discipline. Welcome to the Fourth Reich.
To be fair, Germany does have a point: they've managed themselves well, and everyone else hasn't. The same can't be said of the EU officials in Brussels, though – but that doesn't stop them from throwing their weight around.
Rail users, already battered by the recent 8% fare increase, now face fare rises of 50%, enforced by new regulations from Brussels. The rules proposed by the European Commission would create a 'user pays' system - official jargon for passengers having to cover the entire cost of rail travel without any government subsidy. If implemented, the policy would remove all British Government funding. At present, £4billion of taxpayers' money is ploughed into the rail network every year.
The EU report also proposes a Single European Railway Area, which would lead to the abolition of 'technical, administrative and legal obstacles which still impede entry to national railway markets', so that in essence the railways of all nations will be controlled Brussels. They are also advocating the increased use of road charges, and the removal of tax breaks for company cars.
Even closer is the end of the 60 watt light-bulb. The EU has decreed that they will follow 100w bulbs into oblivion in order to force us to buy more expensive, dimmer CFLs that contain mercury and can trigger migraines and epilectic fits.
It's for our own good, of course. They want us to use less electricity. They claim it will solve Global Warming which is a laugh for a start, but the real reason is that there just isn't enough electricity around: wind farms don't work, scientists and engineers have failed to provide practical forms of wave or tidal power (or have been prevented from doing so by inadequate investment), and years of vacillation and failing-to-grasp-the-nettle by politicians has left us all with an ageing infrastructure of fossil fuel power stations and no prospect of timely nuclear replacements.
Retailers are seizing the opportunity to make a quick buck: Argos have increased the price of a Philips 11-watt CFL by 25%, and Sainsbury’s cheapest energy-saving bulb has gone up 65% in two years.
And the EU is advertising for a 'pirate cultural advisor' to help naval commanders understand the gangs who seize ships and kidnap passengers and sailors along the coast of Africa. We don't know what the salary will be, but we're willing to bet it will cost the EU more than a load of shells and some napalm would.
It seems to us you don't have to understand terrorists before you shoot them. Or are we being naïve?
The GOS says: So, to sum up, within twenty years our houses will be lit by nasty little fluorescent jobbies full of poisonous gas, it will cost a fifth of our annual salaries to go to work by train, we'll have to pay to take our car out of the garage but if we do there'll be so much traffic on the road because of the cost of rail travel that we won't be able to go anywhere, our officials will be cuddling up to Somalian pirates and we'll be kow-towing to the Germans.
And David Bloody Wanker Cameron can't see why we might want to express an opinion about that ...
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