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December 2011 Stand alone! December's
Strasbourg session was dominated by the response to Britain's decision
not to sign up to the summit deal on rescuing the Eurozone.
Baroness Cathy Ashton The High representative endured a mammoth grilling from MEPs this week on a variety of subjects. She was asked questions on many issues, and even answered one or two of them. It is sad to consider that what should be an important event was at one point attended by only 20 or so MEPs out of a total of 732. However, as a prominent Middle East peace activist told one of my staff on Tuesday "she is of absolutely no use at all", and so we should not be surprised if she failed to arouse much enthusiasm. I, however, kept her company throughout her ordeal and kept the questions coming. Sadly we fell out a little at one point after she was somewhat rude to me, but she apologised, and so in the Spirit of Christmas I forgave her. It will not always be so, I can promise her!
Dead in the Water The EU received
a bloody nose from Morocco this week. An EU-Morocco fishing agreement
was due to be renewed which
would have seen
the EU paying €35
million a year in order to plunder North African waters.
There are some serious human rights issues involved in this,
and
so under pressure
from
activists and the media MEPs were effectively forced to reject
the extension. The Moroccans responded swiftly and decisively
by ordering
all EU boats
to leave their waters immediately.
The EU loves a beneficial crisis... The current crisis
is being used as justification for EU member states to pool their resources
in the area of
defence procurement.
This is,
of course, helpful when it comes to further harmonisation
of our armed forces.
State Aid - but not for British Workers. This week the
parliament approved the mobilisation of the European Globalisation
Adjustment Fund
(EGF) in
favour of the Trentino-Alto
Adige/Südtirol
region of Italy.
Uzbekistan The EU often enters into treaties, conveniently overlooking little problems that might upset the apple cart. I like to remind them of these problems where I can. And so, in response to concerns flagged up by a constituent, I objected to doing deals with Uzbekistan, and country in which child labour is routinely exploited to the point that schools are actually shut down during the harvest season.
And so... This year has
been an exciting one for us. My petition calling for a referendum
on our
continued membership
of the EU prompted
a debate
in
the House of Commons, and other similar
petitions are out there calling for
the same thing.
We must keep the
pressure
on. Campaign For A Referendum NEW Petition We achieved our first goal of collecting 120,000+ signatures gaining the debate in Parliament we wanted on 24th October 2011. To keep the pressure on the government, we started a NEW petition on 31st October 2011. The aim is to collect as many signatures as we can in 12 months. Please register your signature on the link below even if you signed the previous petition.
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