EUROPEAN MADNESS.

I read that the European Union parliament has voted itself a budget for next year of €126.5bn., an amount equivalent to £107bn., that is £107,000,000,000. It also seems that the MEPs are not really very happy with this sum as it represents a budget increase of 'only' 2.9% over last year; they want greater powers to determine their budget independently in future years.

Let's be clear. The EU is an organisation that is, effectively, a super QUANGO though with greater powers, and perhaps we need to invent a new acronym in recognition of its multinational nature; perhaps ISGO - Irrelevant Supra-Governmental Organisation might be appropriate. It does not provide any of the usual governmental services such as health, social services, education, defence, transport etc., etc. What it does have are TWO parliament buildings which it uses alternately and a vast bureaucracy to support its separate, and non-elected, Commission as well as the Parliament; the Members and Commissioners exist on huge salaries and claim vast expenses, generally without being required to provide any proof of the expenses. And it plans to spend £107,000,000,000 next year.

£107,000,000,000 is enough to pay the wages of almost 5,000,000 people on UK national average earnings. How can it be that this organisation can be such a consumer of financial resources ? It is crewed by hordes of essentially faceless politicians, most of whom have never been heard of, even in their own countries; many of them have previously been kicked out of office in their own countries, but been rescued by their polictical friends and sent to Brussels. These self-serving and irrelevant people represent no one but themselves, in pursuit of a goal that no one outside of a political elite wants.

£107,000,000,000 is a huge amount of money. For many years, the accounts of this organisation have been subject to severe qualification by their auditors and yet no one has done anything about it. When one Chief Accountant refused to sign off the accounts on the grounds that there was insufficient supporting evidence for much of the expenditure and she could not vouch for their accuracy, she was suspended by her boss, Neil Kinnock, and subsequently sacked. That she was entirely justified in her behaviour was subsequently accepted by a tribunal, but the accounts were not changed.

£107,000,000,000 : simply remember this number and be under no illusions. The budget will expand, the corruption, waste and inefficiency will not be tackled, and we will become increasingly subservient to this organisation. The EU has little or nor real use. It is vastly expensive and grossly inefficient. It is utterly corrupt. It is entirely unnecessary.

Is it not time that this ISGO was gone ?