The EU set up the Committee of the Regions in 1994 with a huge lie. Its real purpose was to establish direct governance links between Brussels and European local government whilst bypassing those pesky democratic national governments and states. Sometime over the last ten or fifteen years, the EU decided either that this regional policy was a huge error or that, following the Treaty of Lisbon, that it was no longer needed. Today the Committee of the Regions is a poorly-funded embarrassment in Brussels, with an unknown President (the fourth or fifth EU President?), currently Karl-Heinz Lambert, and the third-smallest budget in the EU, largely spent on itself. The EU will never abolish it, of course, but it will just be gradually pushed further and further to the margins, absent from news releases, ignored, underfunded and unfashionable. Its Presidents and members feature on no ballot papers, and I'll bet there's not more than half a dozen people in the UK who know more than one of our 24 members. Shortly to go.
Yet during its lifetime, it has wasted more money and fomented more conflict than pretty much any other EU cabal. Ambitious regions, in conflict with their national governments, have even established 'embassies' in Brussels, in the most egregious display of snouts-in-the-trough misuse of tax money. Catalunya is one consequence, one that the EU now bitterly regrets.
It is quite possible that Catalonia will gain independence, but not from this referendum, at least not with any legitimacy. It will take a proper referendum, sanctioned by the Spanish government, overseen by observers, absent threat or coercion.
What a bloody mess. What utter stupidity - Spain's and the EU's. Forgive me, but everything the EU touches turns to shit. This could all have been avoided if skill and experience rather than zealotry and purblind anti-democracy had driven these fools.
13 comments:
Yeah, well we all knew that whatever the EU touches it turns to sh1t, so no change there then.
Karl-Heinz Lambert would actually be the eighth EU president (I was always under the impression that there could only be one (a la Highlander).
For completeness sake they are:
Jean-Claude Druncker - European Commission President
Donald Tusk - President of the European Council
Mario Draghi - President of the European Central Bank
Antionio Tajani - President of the European Parliament (previous holder Martin Schultze)
Juri Ratas - Presidency of the Council of the European Union
There are also these two:
Klaus-Heiner Lehhne - President of the European Court of Auditors
Koen Lenaerts - President of the Court of Justice.
Forgive me, but everything the EU touches turns to shit.
No apology necessary. Simple statement of the truth.
It's for good reason the EU flag is known as the Star Spangled Sphincter
Wonderful to see the EU shoot itself in the foot in this fashion. I have not heard the usual fan club of Blair, Heseltine, most MPs etc condemning the EU attitude to violence or Spain. I would imagine people in Gibraltar will be looking on with keen interest, I suppose this will bolster those there who want to stay part of the EU?
As the saying goes - "the ghost of old Franco is never far away"
The bottom feeders of the EU are not fools. They may be evil, but stupid? No. Everything they do is for the greater glory of the EU. They are secular Jesuits.
Right now, they are waging psychological warfare against the people of the UK by refusing to engage in negotiation about the exit question which is of greatest importance to us: the post Brexit relationship. By this simple means, they make our government look weak and foment discontent.
The UK government should withdraw from negotiations unless proper discussion of our post Brexit trading relationship begins at once. And those blighters won't get a penny of divorce danegeld (apologies to any Danish readers).
@decnine
I think you are doing the Jesuits a dis-service: the Jesuits always say:
"question everything" and the EU questions nothing.
Wasn't the EU plan to butcher the UK into messy pieces? I'd have thought the Grande Stratégie has always been to fragment member States into completely-dependent mere counties of Euroland, in which case Catalunya should fit nicely into it. A sort of Schleifenplan, if you'll pardon the pun.
Decnine and Sackerson, I agree.
Be careful what you wish for. The EU are past masters at using a "beneficial crisis" to further their aims - in this case to dismantle the nation state. The very existence of the EU makes possible the anti-nationalist separatist movements, whether Catalonia today, Scotland yesterday, or the Northern League tomorrow.
The EU has provided enough rope for Spain to hang itself by. The EU will pretend innocence, shrug, and will beef up the Committee of the Regions in response. Spain has behaved very badly, and the EU will be the winner. The answer is always "more Europe".
Between the shadow and the ghost,
Between the white and the red,
Between the bullet and the lie,
Where would you hide your head?
For where is Manuel Gonzalez,
And where is Pedro Aguilar,
And where is Ramon Fenellosa?
The earthworms know where they are.
Your name and your deeds were forgotten
Before your bones were dry,
And the lie that slew you is buried
Under a deeper lie;
But the thing that I saw in your face
No power can disinherit:
No bomb that ever burst
Shatters the crystal spirit
George Orwell
Steve
@terence patrick hewitt
The Jesuits also said "give me the child to the age of 7 and I will give you the man."
Precisely why the EU pumps propaganda into our schools.
The EU always looks to Germany and uses it as a model.
Germany was created when the German Principalities united to form one, federal state.
So as far as the EU is concerned, regions united within one state is a good thing. It allows the federal Government to exert control, whilst allowing the regional governments some autonomy over local matters.
If it worked for Germany, it should work for the rest of Europe! The regions could be encouraged by devolution; the nation-state would be further weakened, and the Federal Government would (eventually) rule supreme.
Except, as usual, they failed to consider that only the Germans are German. The rest of Europe has very different ideas and history. Strengthening regional government in some countries would be very risky .... but as usual, one size must fit all in the European Empire they're creating.
The reason we have such an issue with Scottish nationalism now is because Blair was so gung-ho to implement the EU's policy of divide and rule in the UK.
"What a bloody mess. What utter stupidity - Spain's and the EU's"
Maybe the stupidity of both the Catalonia and Spanish governments' in the way they have both approached this issue.
But this is all going to plan for the EU who wish to see the break up of all nation states so they can rule smaller, weaker, more compliant regions and the EU do not care how this is achieved or what destruction and discord it will take to achieve their goal.
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