Dubya Comes To Town
I haven't posted for a while as I've been in Rome, watching Wales whup Wop backside, and back in the UK, for minor surgery, thereby bagging a week off. Upon my return to Brussels, I was surprised that the Belgian police had deemed me worthy of deploying quite so many riot vans - they've blocked off streets, and wagonloads of armoured coppers are zipping up and down the main roads. It turns out, however, that they weren't there for me at all. Some low IQ'd, gung-ho Texan with an ill-thought out foreign policy is visiting Brussels, and they were worried he might go on a rampage through the Schuman area, looking for Weapons of Mass Destruction under every shrub.

Pah! Enough of the monobraincelled warmonger. Far more importantly for the UK, the cowardly, terrorist-surrendering Spanish have ratified the EU Constitution by referendum. No-one is surprised; Spain have done bloody well out of Europe - annually, they receive a fortune from EU Region 1 funding. Despite their record of biting the hand that feeds them (cf. Spain taxing the British for importing gunpowder during the Napoleonic wars), they certainly weren't stupid enough to spurn the billions of euros poured into their economy by the EU every year.

Of far more serious note is the BBC's reporting of the referendum result. They have been consistently and persistently pushing the original New Labour line on the Constitution - that it is a "tidying up" exercise, and nothing more. Even the Government have desisted from this line of argument, but still the BBC push on. They don't even use the word "constitution" in the headline: "Spain voters" have approved a new "EU charter", apparently. Reading on,

"The EU constitution is designed to streamline the EU's decision-making process after the bloc brought in 10 new members - mostly from central and eastern Europe - last May."

Oh really? So all that business about an EU Foreign Minister; transferring more powers from national governments to Brussels; giving up national vetos; increased legislation and bureaucracy; increased EU control over employment policy, social security policy, competition policy, economic policy, trade policy and energy policy, are all secondary and necessary to a "tidying up exercise"?

What rubbish. Typically, the BBC are acting as a propaganda machine and pushing their own pro-EU agenda. This is bad journalism at best, and a blatent lie at worst. The worst aspect is that the BBC are a trusted information source for many people who don't really know about or understand the way the EU works, and this sort of whitewashing misreporting poses a real threat to the "No" campaign in the UK.

It's enough to make me wish I were American. I'd rather have George W Bush as my President than have my country's sovereignty spirited away through the back door and gifted wholesale to the undemocratic, mindlessly bureaucratic and socialistic EU.
- posted by Foxy @ 21.2.05