Apparently Mr Milipede Senior... I want to say Milipede Prime, but that makes him sound like a TRANSFORMER (robot in disguise)...
...though I guess, wot with him being a DECEPTICON, he ought to be called MEGAPEDE...
...which, I suppose, would make the other one GALVAPEDE (the even-more-evil model sent back from the future to replace him)...
...I'm drifting...
...Apparently Mr DAVID Milipede was appearing on Questionable Time* in his role as his own representative on Earth (no one else will do the job) and described Hard Labour's SHAMEFUL SHACKING UP with the Tories' Europhobic Wingnut brigade as a "repositioning".
(*with one of the Dimbledonkeys. It's too early to tell which.)
This is, of course, the RANKEST hypocrisy. It was Hard Labour who agreed that the EU budget should rise to its current level in the first place.
But more than that, Hard Labour's policy on the economy is – Mr Bully Balls has bellowed it often enough – to SPEND more NOW to invest for jobs and growth for the FUTURE. Plus, they oppose every cut – even the ones they'd have done themselves... in fact, ESPECIALLY the ones they'd have done themselves – because they "hurt the least well off".
So why does that not apply to Europe as a whole? What happened to "workers of the world unite"? Don't Hard Labour BELIEVE in their own economic strategy? (Clue: no.)
Wouldn't it actually make SENSE for the EU budget to INCREASE (a bit) so as to provide some RELIEF to hard pressed citizens at a time when their own NATIONAL budgets are having to CONTRACT under AUSTERITY?
In fact, although you wouldn't know it from ANY of the commentary, most countries in Europe (24 out of 27 Union members) are INCREASING their own national spending budgets. Including GREAT BRITAIN.
At a hundred and forty billion euros, (equivalent to about a hundred and ten billion quid), the EU budget is about ONE SEVENTH that of Great Britain. Or about 1.05% of Europe's GDP – compared with Britain's spending escalating north of 40% of OUR domestic product.
Is the EU budget all spent WISELY? No, of course not. But 94% of it IS injected back into the European economy. Which is the kind of STIMULUS all Parties keep saying that they want.
And in a week when the Conservatory Defence Secretary Mr Hammond-Organ is splashing three-hundred-and-fifty million pounds on what as far as we can tell are ENTIRELY DECORATIVE nuclear
What's more, since the Germans ACTUALLY pay for most of the EU budget anyway, isn't this in fact a way to achieve the MUCH-DESIRED "reverse fiscal transfer" (giving some money back-ness) where the better-off Germans help out their poorer neighbours in return for the favourable exchange rate that is powering their economic success?
Actually the contributions to the EU budget from Germany, France and Italy are all MORE than those from Great Britain. So you can understand why our constant WHINGEING is beginning to BADWORD them off. Plus we already HAVE a negotiating position agreed with them to keep to a real terms FREEZE. Reneging on that now is only going to BADWORD them off MORE!
What does Hard Labour really GAIN by joining forces with the like of Mr Bill Strapped-for-Cash, Mr Peter Bone-headed, Mr Mark "Utterly" Reckless, Ms Anodyne Dorries and all the rest of the chorus of discontent?
"Humiliation" for Mr Balloon, apparently. Humiliation? Really? Do you think ANYONE will remember another little embarrassment after the Omnishambles Budget and the Pleb-Plod-Gate-gate scandal?
They point to "divisions in the Coalition". Well durr! We're LIBERALS and the Conservatories are.... less so. Of course the Coalition is divided: WE are divided from THEM – but the Liberal Democrats AS A PARTY have been remarkably UNITED under enormous pressure; the Party that's SPLIT is of course the Conservatory Party; it's Mr Balloon who has lost all control over his militant tendency.
Personally, I think Labour LOSES MORE, by showing – once again – that they've got NO PRINCIPLES at all.
Apparently it's "hateful and outrageous" to vote with the Conservatories... but they end up following their Whips' orders anyway just to score a cheap point. And they have the chutzpah to call US "spineless".
Oh Labour, whatever happened to you? Remember the days when Lord Blairimort bestrode the World like a COLOSSUS? Okay, an evil warmongering, fascist colossus, complicit in murder and torture and intent on tearing up Britain's traditions of liberty and fair play, but... Actually, seriously, the FIRST DUTY of ANY Liberal in 2010 was to bring down that slathering zombie monster that Labour had become. EVEN if it meant supporting the lesser of two evils. But at least they were an enemy WORTH opposing.
I suppose we shouldn't EXPECT any better from Her Majesty's Loyal Opportunists. They were just the same under the so-called Saint John of Smith when they voted against the Maastricht Treaty (which they supported) just to tweak the nose of Mr Major Minor. (Like it made ANY difference to his IMPLODING ADMINISTRATION, but it showed us the way Labour would go in Power.)
But it's this "repositioning" that WORRIES me. When you add it together with Hard Labour's border-line RACIST policy towards immigration, it's in danger of sending out a really NASTY message. Not content with engaging in a race to the bottom with the British Nasty Party for the working class vote, it seems that they want to "reposition" to take advantage of the UKIP tendency too. After all, Mr Farago is such a NICER class of bingot, donchaknow. (Yes, do please vomit.)
Captain Clegg warns of a CATASTROPHE if we wrap ourselves in the Union Flag. And we all know that CATS wrapped in FLAGS are EVIL!
Great Britain has spent most of the last twenty to thirty years standing on the side-lines of Europe shouting "NOT LIKE THAT", haranguing and hand-bagging when we should have been HELPING, helping to build a consensus.
There's every chance to build alliances with friends across the continent who want to build a better, less top down, more democratic Union. And that does NOT mean Lord Blairimort's plan for a MORE top down Presidency, that presumably sees HIM elevated to President (and thence presumably Supreme Chancellor and then EMPEROR...). No, funnily enough, the DARK SIDE does NOT cloud our vision as far as THAT plan goes.
A toxically xenophobic press (ironically mostly foreign-owned) with their own self-interested agenda, aided and abetted by a complacently parochial BBC who have utterly failed to inform OR educate – let alone entertain – anyone about the culture, politics or daily lives of our nearest neighbours, have COMPLETELY DECEIVED the British people into thinking of Europe as AT BEST an expensive irrelevance and possibly, in the more FEVERED imaginings, a malign PLOT against us.
(Because if you're going to take over the World, then surrendering any claim to territorial expansion, sharing your sovereignty for the greater good, contributing from your own treasury to support the less well-off and not building ANY secret rocket bases inside volcanos are DEFINITELY the first steps you would take. If ONLY Mr Blofeld had seen it that way!)
The idea that the rest of Europe looks to Britain with JEALOUSY – of what? Our tattered industrial heritage? Our democratic institutions riddled with privilege and self-interest? Our swift and efficient and not in any way biased in favour of the super-rich and powerful legal system? Or those protections of our civil liberties that keep government at the service of the people, the constitution that is famously not worth the paper is isn't written on? – Perfidious Albion, they think. Invited to join the Jeux Sans Frontières but forever spoiling the game by shuffling the chairs like wayward children.
Of COURSE the Conservatories want it all back the way it used to be; when a quarter of the globe was pink, every schoolboy (girls not allowed) could quote that BADWORD poem by Tennyson and EVERYONE ON EARTH HATED US. They're Conservatories; they're always looking backward to an imaginary golden childhood.
But we don't have to behave like children any more.
And what is Labour's excuse (this time)? The great NANNY, actually ENCOURAGING the children to throw a tantrum, colluding with racists and press barons and Tories. Oh my. All to encourage us to "hold on to nurse for fear of something worse".
Repositioning, Triangulation, Opportunism. It's all too easy to say whatever you think people want to hear when you don't believe in anything at all yourself. But it doesn't earn you any TRUST.
We're still two-and-a-half years away from a General Election, but Labour are further away than ever from being a Party we could trust with the government of Great Britain again.
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