Belgians today awoke to their 150th day without a government.

The Christian Democrats and Liberals have so far been unable to get their acts together and form a coalition leaving Belgium without a government.  The job of governing the country is being taken care of by the outgoing government.

Belgium is the model on which Federal Europe is based – a multi-national, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-linguistic unholy union of people who don’t even like each other, let alone want to be stuck in a union.  The longer Belgium stays in this state, the more obvious it becomes that the EU model is fatally flawed.  The federal state that eurofederalists like the One Eyed Wonder of Wankistan and David Camoron want will flounder very early in its life and end up fractured along racial, religious and lingustic lines, just like Belgium is now.

The good news is that the EU not-a-constitution is due to be signed in December and it looks increasingly likely that Belgium won’t have a government to ratify the treaty as the incumbent rump government doesn’t have the authority to deal with matters of that importance.  This, coupled with a likely referendum in Denmark, could be another significant nail in the EU not-a-constitution’s coffin.

The Brussels Journal has some bits and pieces on Belgium’s farcial inability to govern itself.

Technorati Tags: Belgium

You can download the November edition of the Euro Realist newsletter here.

Technorati Tags: Euro Realist, Europe

According to Prodicus, enough Danish MPs have signed a motion to force a referendum on the EU not-a-constitution.

THis is excellent news – the not-a-constitution theoretically can’t go ahead without every member state ratifying it.  With the leaders of every member state desperately trying (and mostly succeeding) to avoid a referendum, we could very find that our fate as an independent nation relies entirely on the Danish people doing the right thing and voting against the not-a-constitution.

There is, of course, a possibility that the Republic of Ireland might hold a referendum but the Irish are eurofederalists and we can’t rely on them to derail the EU gravy train.

The One Eyed Wonder of Wankistan won’t let us have a referendum now and that’s for sure.  Even if it wasn’t for the fact he’s a rampant eurofederalist and the bribes he was undoubtedly offered the other day, he wouldn’t give us a referendum because the Tories are calling on him to do so.  There’s a difference between stealing populist policies like reforming stamp duty off the Tories and changing his mind on holding a referendum.  There is no way in the world that he is going to hand the Tories a propaganda victory over the EU not-a-constitution.

So it will fall to our neighbours on the continent to put a stop to the not-a-constitution.  Our fate in the hands of foreigners … at home and abroad.  Not a good position for an Englishman to be in.

Technorati Tags: EU Constitution, Denmark

I get the occasional email from my UKIP MEP, Mike Nattrass, about dodgy votes he’s seen in the European Parliament.

Yesterday he sent me this email:

Votes were fast and furious and as usual with hundreds being taken by a show of hands, some were wrongly counted. I screaméd “CHECK!” after one particular vote was said to be “in favour” and they checked it on the buttons.

The President said it was passed but the check showed only 134 in favour and 499 against. How’s that!

Ok, if it was 299 in favour and 334 against I could understand the mistake but how can the corrupt mafioso, President Barosso, not see the 350 extra hands voting against?  Simple answer: he can’t.  It was quite obviously a deliberate fraud but will he get into trouble for it?  Will he bollocks.

Technorati Tags: European Parliament, Fraud, UKIP

Microsoft has lost an appeal against a fine of $690m which the European Commission had imposed following an anti-trust suit.

The European Court of First Instance dismissed the appeal and upheld the decision that Microsoft was abusing its market dominance by shipping Windows with Media Player built in.

The European Commission has been bleating on about how good this is for consumer choice and how consumers will be much better off as a result of the decision.

What a crock of shit.

Firstly, who will pay for the $690m fine?  Microsoft?  Of course not, they’ll just bump up their prices some more and the consumer will pay.  Already, the price of software in Europe is higher than the US and in England it’s even higher.

Secondly, what’s wrong with shipping Media Player with Windows?  It’s a free download from the Microsoft website – what difference will it make to the price?  A couple of quid as a token gesture to stop the European Commission from suing them again?  A previous anti-trust suit made them take Java out of Windows – now, whenever I install Windows I have to go and download Java from the internet before I can browse a website that uses Java.

It doesn’t make Windows better, it makes it more irritating for me, the consumer.  I want my Windows disc to be so chock full of programs and gadgets and tools that I don’t have to spend half an hour downloading stuff that I need from the internet before Windows is useful.  I want to be able to use Java-enabled websites out of the box.  I want a media player out of the box.  Windows Media Player is great – it does pretty much everything I want it to.  It doesn’t play DVD’s but I’ve got something else to do that.  It has a “thing” for Microsoft’s proprietry formats when you rip CD’s but my MP3 Player is quite happy with WMA files.

This ruling was nothing to do with giving choice to the consumer.  It was about extracting loads of cash for the EU propaganda fund from the big bad American corporation.  I don’t very often defend Microsoft – I don’t like the way they do business – but in this case, they were in the right and you have no idea how much it pains me to say that.

Ashley Mote, the disgraced former MEP who left UKIP to join a white supremecist group in the European Parliament, has been banged up for 9 months for benefit fraud.

Bizarrely, under the EU’s rules, Mote is still allowed to keep his job.  One of the many protections MEP’s get – immunity from prosecution for instance – is that if they get locked up for less than 12 months they can keep their job and their salary.  Ashley Mote is on £60k a year.

Makes you wonder just how corrupt and criminal you have to be to cross the line with Federal Europe.

The EU has pledged aid to Greece following the devastating fires they have experienced in the last couple of weeks.

A €3m emergency aid package has also been approved for the hurricane victims in the Carribean.

Meanwhile, English flood victims still haven’t recieved a penny from Federal Europe and most likely never will.

The EU is interfering again in the free market and is recommending that a tariff adding up to 66% onto the cost of energy-saving lightbulbs from China is retained for another year.

The tariff is to protect the four European energy-saving lightbulb manufacturers from cheap Chinese imports but only the German company, Osram, is asking for the tariff to be extended.  The Dutch firm, Philips, is asking for the tariff to be scrapped as it already makes lightbulbs in China and environmental groups are backing them up pointing out the duplicity of Federal Europe in pontificating on the use of energy-saving lightbulbs to cut energy consumption at the same time as they are artificially inflating the price of the bulbs.

We are a free-market capitalist society in England – if China can provide cheap lightbulbs then let them do so.  Socialist economic protectionism creates a false economy precariously balanced and in need of constant “tweaking” to keep it steady.  Not only this, but it is detrimental to the consumer who find themselves paying more for goods to subsidise unprofitable manufacturing cartels.

PJC Journal has a post on the apparently imminent break-up of Belgium and an article in Le Figaro calling on President Sarkozy of France to prepare for the annexation of Wallonia, the French speaking region of Belgium.

It’s no secret that Belgium has been on the rocks for a while.  Flanders has had an independence movement for a long time and the already tenuous union of four regions speaking different languages has been weak for years, partly due to cultural differences and partly due to money.

The Flemish region has been subsidising Wallonia for years and opposition to this state of affairs is increasing.  The threat of break-up is now so real that the King has summoned his Crown Council to try and resolve the problem.

What is now Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg were once united as a single country but in the late 1500’s an 80 year war started which resulted in the Netherlands (including Luxembourg) gaining independence from Spain and Belgium remaining under Spanish rule.  Luxembourg subsequently split from the Netherlands when the Dutch Crown passed to a woman and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg passed to the Dutch Queen’s cousin.

The situation in Belgium is strangely similar to the situation in the UK.  Four “regions”, all of which have their own culture, history, heritage and language (Dutch, French, German, Flemish/English, Welsh, Scots Gaelic, Irish Gaelic).  One of the “regions” (Flemish/England) subsidises the others but one of the subsidised regions (Flanders/Scotland) is full of resentment for its wealthier neighbour and wants independence.

It looks like it’s only a matter of time before Belgium – the multi-national, multi-cultural federation on which the EU is modelled – ceases to exist and with a bit of luck the EU and the UK will follow suit.

The Electoral Commission has been asked to look at ways to reduce the number of MEP’s the UK sends to Europe from 78 to 72.

To accommodate Bulgaria and Romania, the UK is losing 6 MEP’s from the European Parliament but the suggestion that Scotland should lose one of its MEP’s has been met with predictable opposition north of the border.

The Electoral Commission has sent Jack Straw a letter explaining that “Scotland’s situation is unique and that these reasons would justify the retention of its current allocation of seven MEPs.  These reasons relate to the impact of devolution, geographic size, expected population growth and political culture”.

The Scottish Executive says that the size of Scotland and devolution means that Scotland should have a higher level of representation in Europe and “lowering the number of MEPs serving Scotland to six would not allow a properly balanced representation of all the main parties in Scottish political life”.

Let’s do some simple maths.  60 million people in the UK, 5 million of which are in Scotland – that’s 8.3% of the population.  8.3% of 72 MEP’s is … 6 – the number of MEP’s that it has been suggested Scotland should have.  So what the Scottish Executive is actually asking for is over-representation, not fair representation.