German efficiency

If this is true then the Germans are getting prepared in case of an EU meltdown. Or they're just 2 faced. article

Tey cannot audit and sign off the european budget each year,how the hell they are going to audit and sign off 26 countries acconts is beyond me,Perhaps Milliband should ask Kinnock how it is done ,He also failed when he was in Brussels

Margaret Thatcher had no part in taking us into the EEC in 1973

Yes she signed the Single European Act in 1987 that launched the target of a single market by 1992.

The Mastrict Treaty introduced the EU in 1993 when John Major was PM

johndrew

Heath did not hold a referendum on entering the EEC. He simply took us in. Nor did we have to give up a lot of our industrial might to join, as claimed by minilite in an earlier post. (Most of that resulted from the actions of the Thatcher administration and the emphasis on service industries, as a means of destroying unions. One major consequence was deregulation of banks and abolition of credit restrictions for individuals. Lokk where that has got us!). Although it started as mainly a trading agreement, the Treaty of Rome indcated that the objective was ever closer union. A referendum was subsequently held under Labour which focussed mainly on the Common Agricultural Policy. Callaghan attempted to re-negotiate our contributions but was undermined by the leader of the opposition, who stated that this was no way to treat our friends and neighbours. She, for it was none other the Thatcher, then went and "handbagged" them shortly after when she became prime minister.

The details of the putative treaty which Cameron vetoed are scant. The only objection on his part appears to be the danger of taxation and regulation in some minor way of the City of London. It is true that financial services form a larger part of our economy than elsewhere. The economic position we face is due to a significant collapse in this area. It seems that the main hope of recovery is that we return to the situation which preceded that collapse, so that it can happen all over again. There was an excellent documentary on the genesis of the crash in the Storyville programme (Inside Job) on Wednesday on BBC2 and available on iPlayer. I would recommend watching it. In summary, there were people calling in the US for regulation, which would have prevented the crisis. However, this was violently resisted by all the economic advisors to the US government (Greenspan, Bernanke, Summers etc.), who all had association with Wall Street. The point was made that both Republicans and Democrats were so dependent on funding from Wall Street that they found it impossible to act. A similar situation exists here and I find it surprising that that the recent Kelly report on funding political parties has received so little attention. In summary,it proposes that no-one should be able to donate more than £10,000 annually (a figure which I consider to be too high) and that the parties should receive money from the public purse, based on how many seats won at the most recent election. Of course, this will be ridiculed by the population at large but the per capita donation would only amount to some 50p. The benefit would be that politicians might be encouraged to listen to the public rather than doing the bidding of finance and commerce. Tight regulation of investment banks would almost certainly follow such a move. This might cause us to lose a part of the economy but it badly needs to be rebalanced wit a strenghtened industrial base to provide jobs for poeple who cannot participate in the financial and knowledge industries.

Looks like 'there's trouble at' mill' as far as the Coalition goes.

Clegg attacks Cameron

Or is he Clegg attempting to 'be his own man' (in hindsight, of course!).