Jose Manuel Barroso appears to have declared himself the first Emperor of Europe.

For some reason he has decided that the EU is like an empire and, being its president, he must surely be the emperor. If ever there was evidence needed that the EU has imperialistic ambitions, Emperor Barroso has just provided it.

My grasp of Latin is pretty poor but I think this sums it up (please correct my grammar if it’s wrong):
Venio, Vidio, Vicio, Dictatio

Monty Python eat your heart out. The Ministry of Silly Walks has nothing on the Ministry of Ridiculous Appointments.

It started with appointing a no-mandate Scottish MP as Prime Minister without an election, followed this up with Traitor Bliar as Middle East Peace Keeper and excelled itself yesterday by appointing Jabba Prescott as the British representative on the European Federation’s Council of Ministers!

Prescott is an absolute liability, a complete cretin. He fails to understand the most basic concepts of government – things like “no means no” and “public servant” and “don’t punch journalists for asking you questions”. Bliar might have sold us up the river with the EU Constitution but Prescott has the capacity to inflict some real damage through sheer incompetence.

The European Federation has banned the use of mercury in thermometers and barometers becaue mercury is dangerous and they might get broken.

In one of my previous jobs I wrote COSHH datasheets for a defence company and mercury is some pretty nasty stuff if ingested. The amount of mercury in a thermometer would make you ill if you drank it but unless you set out to deliberately poison yourself it would be pretty difficult to ingest a thermometer full of mercury and if you were trying to poison yourself you’d probably plump for a bottle of domestos and/or 50 paracetamol. In other words, the risk of mercury poisoning from thermometers and barometers is negligible.

Despite the negligible risk, the EU is banning the use of mercury putting an entire small but specialised industry out of business. They are not, however, planning to put the energy saving light bulb industry out of business despite mercury being used in the bulbs.

Compare the number of mercury thermometers per household and the number of energy saving light bulbs per household, take into account that non-energy saving bulbs are also being outlawed by the EU and which one poses more of a public health risk?

Consistency: one policy area the EU hasn’t claimed.

… but we don’t know what deal he’s done.

The Danes say the EU not-a-constitution is keeping the old constitution almost intact. Bliar says that the “red lines” haven’t been crossed and that the bits of the not-a-constitution that are bad for us aren’t in it.

The French have had the reference to a free intrenal market – what the UK actually joined all those years ago – changed to an “internal market” so that they can continue to prop up failing state industries as they do now but without having to ignore the fines the EU gives them for breaking the rules.

Angela Merkel told journalists there is “no news” on the not-a-constitution, reinforcing the contempt for public opinion and accountability that has marked the fourth recich’s presidency of the European Federation.

One piece of information that has been given on the not-a-constitution is that the voting has been changed so that all is required to pass something is a 55% majority of member states that make up 65% of the population of the European Federation. This means that the UK, which is quite often a lone voice of opposition to the illiberal eurofederalists, will be continually and consistently out-voted.

This is an excellent example of how Federal Europe brings the continent together in peace and friendship, casting aside any previous animosity in a show of brotherly love, a Europe of equals and a continent united in common purpose.

Poland has demanded extra voting rights in the EU because they would have had a bigger population if the Germans hadn’t killed so many Poles during the war.

Fantastic!

Transport Ministers from all member states have agree to spend another €2.4bn (£1.63bn) on the Gallileo project on top of the €1bn (£680m) already committed.

Gallileo is Federal Europe’s rival to the American GPS system which is free to use worldwide.  The Gallileo system will cost money to use and is being built and run by a private consortium whereas the GPS system costs nothing to use and was built and run by the US Military.

The original plan was for the EU to stump up the cash for the first four satellites and the other 22 were to be built by the private consortium running the project.  However, the consortium is concerned that the project might not be the cash cow they were expecting and have missed several deadlines for starting work.

The Guardian reports that ministers have refused to spend any more public money on the project but Chinese news site Xinhua claims that public money will be spent on the project.  The money will, of course, be public money whether it is paid for by an extra lump sum or from existing EU funding because the EU is funded entirely by the six net contributors to the EU budget of which the UK is the second highest coming in slightly behind the Netherlands thanks to the repidly diminishing rebate.

The FT reports that Stephen Ladyman, one of the British Transport Ministers, has said that he doesn’t see the strategic case for Gallileo and if they can’t figure out how they’re going to make any money out of it then the UK will seek cancellation of the project.  The French Transport Minister said that Gallileo is “strategic and indispensible” if the EU is to ever free itself from the yolk of oppression of the American pig dogs (I made that last bit up).  He also said that the “British brake” could be overcome.

Our masters in Brussels have had another genius idea – capping the price of international mobile phone calls between EU member states.

The European Federation has decided to put a cap on the amount of money an operator can charge roaming customers for making calls within the EU.  The small minority of mobile phone users who will benefit from the cut-price roaming costs will do so at the expense of the majority of mobile phone users who will now have to pay for the lost revenue.

When government interferes in the free market economy it’s bad enough but they can be held to account and can be reasonably expected to have the national economy in their best interests.  The cap on roaming charges will mainly benefit mobile phone users on the continent who spend far more of their time travelling across the EU’s porous borders where travelling from France to Germany, for example, is as natural to them as it is to travel from England to Wales.

The European Federation has finally caved in to pressure and abandoned its plans to outlaw imperial measurements.

If the EU had gone ahead with its forced metrication programme it would have made any expression of imperial measurments illegal, whether they were in an instruction book, a letter in a newspaper or the rough jottings of a carpenter in a notepad.

Schools no longer teach imperial measurements and some local authorities have started siting new road signs at metric distances from junctions with imperial measurements as it is currently illegal to have metric road signs.  Signs such as the one here on the left which is featured on the BMWA website – 383 yards is equivalent to 350 metres.

Back in march I asked how can a pint conform to EU standards?  This was in response to the EU’s attempt to ban the use of the crown mark on pint glasses.  They have back-tracked on this plan as well following a public outcry and decided that dual marking will be acceptable – pint glasses can continue to bear the crown mark as long as they use the CE mark as well.

This is a small victory for common sense and anti-metric campaigners but it’s important to remember that there is still a long way to go.  We still have to have foreign measurements on our goods and and until we leave the EU it won’t change.  Our children are being brought up without the imperial measurements that have served us perfectly well for centuries in order to remove the main barrier to metrication which is that the vast majority of people in this country just don’t understand metric.

On a related note, the Metric Martyrs are campaigning for a posthumous royal pardon for Steve Thoburn, the metric martyr that died a criminal for selling bananas in pounds and ounces.  Steve had both imperial and metric scales on his market stall but was prosecuted by the metrication nazi’s at Sunderland Trading Standards anyway.  His martyrdom resulted in his early death at just 39 years old shortly after he learned that his appeal had been rejected by the European Court of Human Rights.  You can sign the petition here.

If you do nothing else today, sign this petition calling on the Prime Minister to refrain from signing any agreement to create a new European Union treaty without first holding a referendum to ascertain the opinion of the British public.

I had a revelation today only to be told by a colleague that I’m possibly slightly deluded.

My suggestion was that Tony Bliar being elected in 1997 was part of a deliberate plot by the illuminati to piss me off.  Now this isn’t mere conjecture.  Everything Tony Bliar does I find personally offensive.  Everything he says fills me with rage.  Just the sight of him on TV makes me shout at the TV.  Just knowing that he’s breathing is enough to wind me up.  It can’t be a co-incidence can it?

So what has Chairman Bliar done to piss me off in the last couple of days?  Other than breathing of course.  How about the EU constitution for a starter?

Last year, when the European Federation proposed establishing an EU Constitution which would give our masters on the continent even more of our sovereignty, Bliar said that we would have a referendum.  The French and Dutch held a referendum and and, in a pretty shocking result for two of the most europhile countries in the EU, they rejected it.  Bliar cancelled the referendum and declared the constitution dead.

Great, except it’s not.  Bliar is now involved in a push to get a treaty signed this year to establish an EU constitution.  Will we be getting the referendum we were promised seeing as how the reason for cancelling it was a crock of shit?  Will we buggery.  It’s a slimmed down version, it’s no longer a major treaty so there’s no need for a referendum.  That’s what the traitor says.  Of course it’s bloddy well trimmed down – the illiberal, crooked eurfederalist shitbags in Brussels have already got most of it in on the sly with lots of smaller treaties and directives.  There’s very little left to go in it.

I want the referendum I was promised Bliar.  That or your head on a platter.  Either way I demand satisfaction.

Mrs Sane brought home a new £20 note today and we both commented on the fact that it looks significantly different to any other bank note.

It looked kind of familiar though so I did a Google search and guess what, it bears a rather uncanny resembelence to the euro notes.  Funny that.  The £2 coin looks just like the €1 coin as well.

Funny that.