Nobhead Rifkind

David Cameron is to throw his weight behind a shake-up of Parliament by endorsing a plan to strip Scottish MPs of the right to vote on English matters at Westminster.

Former Tory Scottish Secretary Malcolm Rifkind told The Observer last night: 'Since devolution there has been a growing English consciousness and that has given credence to the unfinished business of devolution. The issue is not an English Parliament. It is how you reform the way in which the House of Commons operates so that on purely English business, as opposed to United Kingdom business, the wishes of English members cannot be denied.'



Well, Mr Nobhead Rifkind, The issue is not about an English or a Scottish Parliament. It is how you reform the way in which the House of Commons operates so that on UK business, as opposed to European Union business, the wishes of British members of Parliamnet cannot be denied.'

For the following are European Union Competence's which the UK Government have signed away

Competition, Trade, Asylum and Immigration, Foreign Affairs, Industrial Policy, Agriculture, Fisheries, Energy, Transport, Regional Government, Consumer Health, Social and Employment Policy, Justice and Home Affairs.

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Repeat performance

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”



“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over”



Both quotes by the Nazi Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels

Has any on seen von Stauffenberg spare briefcase

Gukchi-il

David Miliband, the foreign secretary wants an apology after a Labour MP compared his approach to the new EU treaty to Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Germany.

Michael Connarty, the chairman the European Scrutiny Committee, said to Mr Miliband after he tried to explain there was no threat to British sovereignty from the reform treaty reminded him of Chamberlain's "peace in our time" declaration shortly before the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1938.

Connarty, who had summoned Mr Miliband to give evidence about the implications to UK sovereignty of the treaty, told the Foreign Secretary he was ready to apologise "if it hurts your sensitivity".

Click Here to see the exchange.

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Punch Drunk & José politics

Read more at EUreferendum
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Piss Poor Treaty

Bulgaria is threatening to block the new European Union Treaty in a row over whether the word euro must be pronounced "EV-roh" or "Eh-Yoo-Roh".

The EU has insisted that the non-Cyrillic euro is used in official documents in the Bulgarian language, overriding Bulgaria's Ebpo, pronounced evro. Telegraph

Bulgarians argue that euro, pronounced "Eh-Yoo-Roh", sounds more like their word eurina ("Eh-Yoo-ree-na"), meaning urine, than Evropa (EV-roh-Pah), meaning Europe.

"This is not a 'you say tomato I say tomayto question'," said a Bulgarian diplomat. "This goes to the heart of Bulgaria's national identity.





But all this isn't new. Latvia, which is due to adopt the euro in 2008, has already said it will call the euro the “eiro” because the “eu” dipthong doesn’t exist in Latvian. Joining in its linguistic rebellion are neighbouring Lithuania, which has opted for “euras”, Hungary, which wants the “o” to have an accent, Malta, which prefers ewro, and Slovenia evro.

As Richard North points out on the EUreferendum blog, this is just one of the strawmen (fake fights), which EU leaders use to pull the wool over the eye's of its citizens, in preparation for the IGC
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"substantially equivalent"

There have been renewed calls for a referendum on the proposed European Union Reform Treaty, after a committee of MPs found it was "substantially equivalent" to the Constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters.



The House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee said it was "likely to be misleading" for the Government to claim that the treaty no longer had the characteristics of a constitution. And it warned that the special UK opt-outs and protocols secured by the Government to protect its so-called "red lines" may not prove effective in practice.



The committee also criticised the "secretive" process by which the draft of the new treaty - due to be signed by EU heads of government in Lisbon at the conclusion of an Intergovernmental Committee (IGC) later this month - was compiled.
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End of the Brown Bounce!

The commanding lead of the Labour Party evaporated in three new opinion polls published yesterday but could they torpedo Gordon Brown plans to call a snap election.



A poll in the Guardian newspaper showed the two parties neck and neck with 39 per cent each. The Times gave Labour 39 points and the Conservatives on 36. A Channel 4 poll put Labour on 40 per cent and the Conservatives on 36 per cent.
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