National Sovereignty vs European Union

ꕤ Article SOURCE http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1489643/Vote-for-EU-constitution-or-risk-new-Holocaust-says-Brussels.html Vote for EU constitution or risk new Holocaust, says Brussels By David Rennie in Brussels 12:05AM BST 09 May 2005   A senior European Commissioner marked VE Day yesterday by accusing Eurosceptics of risking a return to the Holocaust by clinging to "nationalistic pride". Margot Wallstrom, a Swede and the commissioner who must sell the draft constitution to voters, argued that politicians who resisted pooling national sovereignty risked a return to Nazi horrors of the 1930s and 1940s. Mrs Wallstrom, vice-president of the commission for institutional relations and communications, was speaking in the former Jewish ghetto of Terezin in the Czech Republic. She blamed the Second World War on "nationalistic pride and greed, and … international rivalry for wealth and power". The EU had replaced such rivalry with an historic agreement to share national sovereignty. Her fellow commissioners also issued a joint declaration, stating that EU citizens should pay tribute to the dead of the Second World War by voting Yes to the draft constitution for Europe. The commissioners also gave the EU sole credit for ending the Cold War, making no mention of the role of Nato and the United States. Richard Shepherd, the Tory MP for Aldridge-Brownhills, said it was "breathtaking" to link Nazism to the defence of national sovereignty. "It's a monstrous rewriting of history to promote a profoundly undemocratic project." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1489643/Vote-for-EU-constitution-or-risk-new-Holocaust-says-Brussels.html ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- COMMENT Blast from the past:  2005. Check out the US puppet No. 1, Sweden and the propaganda: Pay tribute to the dead:  Vote YES! But the dead didn't die in vain, so that their nations would be usurped by supranational bodies and corporate interests. Meanwhile, the US refuse to stand by the 1998 Rome Statute (re war crimes, genocide etc) because it means avoiding prosecution for war crimes ... so the US uses the argument that to be party to the Rome Statute is an assignment of national sovereignty contrary to the US Constitution, or something like that. And here's US puppet Sweden using preposterous emotionally manipulative propaganda and alluding to promises of some non-competitive and eternally peaceful 'European' nirvana, to urge sovereign nations to "share national sovereignty." It doesn't matter who voted for this or which politicians agreed:  national sovereignty cannot be assigned and these agreements are void, in my opinion.  lol Stand up, Europe. Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (TCE) (commonly referred to as the European Constitution or as the Constitutional Treaty) Would have replaced the existing European Union treaties with a single text establishing:  Charter of Fundamental Rights Qualified Majority Voting into policy areas which are decided by unanimity among member states  [ ** I'm not following what is ultimately in effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_establishing_a_Constitution_for_Europe ꕤ

New UK Foreign Secretary - Philip Hammond

 Global Post Article

Agence France-Presse July 16, 2014 1:01pm

Eurosceptic named new UK foreign minister as EU vote looms

British Prime Minister David Cameron named eurosceptic Philip Hammond as his new foreign secretary on Tuesday in a major cabinet reshuffle ahead of next year's general election.

Former defence secretary Hammond, who replaces William Hague, supports Britain leaving the European Union unless significant powers are returned to London before a referendum promised for 2017.

The prime minister has pledged to hold a referendum on Britain leaving the EU if he is re-elected.
...
It also saw the government turn more eurosceptic as Cameron seeks to face down the anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP), which many lawmakers fear could take seats from the Conservatives at the election.
"Belatedly, the prime minister has understood that his too-male, too-southern, too-posh cabinet is a serious political liability," wrote The Times.
...
In his first public comments as foreign secretary, Hammond vowed that his approach to the EU would be one of "enthusiastic engagement with the reform agenda".

"But our position is very clear," he told reporters at the Farnborough airshow south-west of London. "It won't be the politicians in smoke-filled rooms who decide whether the deal is the right one.

"It will be the British people in a referendum who decide whether the deal is the right one."
...
"But the fact that someone who has said that they'd vote to leave (the EU) if substantial powers were not returned to the UK in the renegotiation is now foreign secretary sends a clear message to the rest of the EU."

Hammond has been replaced as defence secretary by Michael Fallon, a veteran loyalist.
...
Hague will remain in parliament until the next election but his resignation as foreign secretary marks the end of the political career of a man Cameron called "one of the leading lights of the Conservative Party for a generation".

A former Tory leader, Hague was a leading voice urging the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad before the House of Commons last year voted against conducting missile strikes.

EXTRACTS - FULL Article - Global Post - here.

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HAMMOND

Accountant - [Source - Daily Mail - here]

Oxford educated

• Philosophy
• Politics
• Economics

Connections

director of Speywood Medical Limited in 1981

• Castlemead Ltd
• Castlemead Homes
• CMA Consultants

Business interests in:  house building; property; manufacturing; healthcare; oil & gas.

Consulted in Latin America for WORLD BANK in Washington DC.
Consultant for govt MALAWI 1995-1997.

*appointed to front bench -- as spokesman Health - by William Hague in 1998.

Minister of Defence 2011-2014.

Claim to fame:

Reckons banks are not responsible for the financial crisis:  "they had to lend to someone".

[WIKIPEDIA]

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Daily Mail Article

....

At first sight, his replacement by Defence Secretary Philip Hammond is bizarre, when Britain badly needs to build European alliances.

Hammond is an accountant who displays the warmth of an undertaker and less personality than most laptops. [LOL]

On reflection, however, we can see a logic in his appointment.

Hammond is no fool, and a paid-up Eurosceptic. When he tells European governments that if Britain does not secure a renegotiation of its EU membership he, for one, will vote to get out, they will need to believe him.

And if it all goes wrong and the Prime Minister finds it expedient to ditch Hammond downstream, there will be few mourners to make a fuss.

His replacement as Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, seems a good choice. ...

Fallon inherits Armed Forces demoralised by Hammond, who seemed to care only for numbers rather than people. If Fallon, a bright and decent former Business Minister, can restore the confidence of our soldiers, sailors and airmen that they are not mere turkeys in Downing Street’s eyes, being fattened up for redundancy, he will earn his corn.

Of course, it is welcome that Cameron has promoted a string of women to ministerial roles. All that is now needed is that they should prove themselves worthy of them. [LOL]

EXACT ONLY
Source - Daily Mail - here.
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 Daily Mail Article - Quentin Letts

...  richest member of the Cabinet — his fortune, mainly from property development, is sometimes put at £7million but is probably more — yet there is nothing showy about Mr Hammond.

He has a mournful visage, cadaverous limbs, the shoulders of a hungry heron — and the resilience, as yesterday’s reshuffle appointment showed, of a mollusc on a storm-tossed rock.  [LOL]

... young Philip won a scholarship to Oxford University from his state school.

,,, The voice has a faint John Majorish twang and like Major he is proud, particular, not to be underestimated.

He is discreet. Wary. Reliable. These qualities will earn him  trust in diplomatic circles but  the embassy dinner party circuit should not expect an injection  of garrulous wit.

The new European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker may not find sober Philip much of a boozing companion.
...
Some say that if the Prime Minister came to grief, a Hammond-Theresa May ticket — the Dull Duo! — may be in the offing.

But which would be the boss? Now he is Foreign Secretary, he is at least on level pegging with Home Secretary May.

Significantly, Mr Hammond  has also spoken, briefly, of his desire to leave the EU. For the man now in charge of our Foreign Office, this is a potentially explosive position, yet somehow nothing with P. Hammond ever explodes. Rhetorically, he is the king of ‘phutt’. [what? LOL]

Yet the Euro News agency yesterday described him as ‘l’eurosceptique Philip Hammond’. In recent years, though, Foreign Secretaries have invariably ‘gone native’. Even William ‘Save the Pound’ Hague lost his zeal there.

History suggests Mr Hammond will go the same way, but if he can bring the same determination to EU renegotiation as he did to defence cuts ... 

EXACT ONLY
Source - Daily Mail - here.

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Source:  The Sun - here.

 COMMENT

Sounds an interesting sort, Hammond.

DM doesn't sound too keen on Hammond.

Eurosceptics in the UK?

Germans in the House... and the Eurosceptics went quiet

: QUENTIN LETTS - yesterday in Parliament

By Quentin Letts

Published: 07:53 AEST, 10 July 2014

German politicians were visiting. ...
...
If our German friends were taking a written note of the following half-hour, they may have gained a skewed impression of what is electorally important in Britain.

Issues included: child abuse, strikes, Aberdeen to London air connections, a charity walk in Derbyshire’s High Peak constituency, ‘revenge’ pornography, blackmail by Westminster Whips, gay cake decorating in Ulster, female genital mutilation and the fact (can it be right?) that no serving American president has ever visited Wales. Gay cake decorating! A fruit cake?

Europe was mentioned but once, and that at a tangent when the European Arrest Warrant was raised by admirably sceptical David Nuttall (Con, Bury N).

But no one attacked Jean-Claude Juncker for his Campari intake. No one demanded a renegotiation of our European Union membership. No one tore into Mr Cameron for being too close to/too distant from Angela Merkel and Co.
...

FULL article - here.
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COMMENT

David Nuttall (Con, Bury N)

Nuttall is rated as one of the Conservatives' most rebellious MPs.

Nuttall also handed PM David Cameron a petition for the in/out referendum on the UK's membership in the EU...David Nuttall voted against in the House of Commons Second Reading vote on marriage equality in Britain.

Nuttall ... 42 policies were listed including reintroduction of the death penalty and conscription, privatizing the BBC, banning the burka in public places and preparation to leave the European Union.  The Daily Telegraph believes the whips sent Edward Leigh [British Conservative politician] to try and persuade the group not to table the amendments.

[source:  wikepedia]

LOL.  What on earth is going on in the UK?