The Cost of EU Membership

Next year our membership of the EU will apparently increase by 60% to £6.4 billion.

Apparently we 'should be sharing the burden of membership' with the new countries from Eastern Europe according to the Government.

Hopefully someone will do a cost benefit analysis of this. I for one increasingly wonder whether the cost is worth it. I'm sure there are many others who will be thinking the same this evening.

Ireland says 'No'

The BBC are reporting that the Irish have voted 'No' in their referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

Good for them!

Let's hope that buries the plan and allows a new relationship between the countries of the Union to be negotiated. Let's also hope that the negotiation is carried out by a Conservative Government which will stand up for the UK's rights and ensure a repatriation of our eroded sovereignty from the EU.

Nuclear Power Plants

Apparently so little attention had been taken to Gordon Brown today, his announcement that the energy crisis is such that we should be considering sites for nuclear power plants in addition to replacing those already built was missed entirely by the media. Only when Downing Street staff pointed it out to journalists was it reported.

I should be very clear, I'm not in favour of nuclear power in its present form. I'm not convinced that it's safe and I'm certainly not convinced that its expansion is desirable. I recognize that the coming energy crisis is going to need radical solutions. I think these need to be environmentally friendly ones.

I welcome the advances that are being made in tidal power sources.

These, to my mind, offer the best solution to the energy shortage. In the short term we may need to rely upon the refurbishment of our current nuclear power stations. This should be a short term solution only, buying us time to develop further a full range of environmentally friendly options.

The subject reminded me of an e-mail I received back in March. The correspondent was asking me how I would deal with a conflict between my party policy and a local issue which was universally opposed by my constituents. The question came on the back of my comments about the EU Referendum vote in the Commons and the example used was a plan to construct a reactor at Winfrith.

I'm afraid I received the e-mail while I was away in Spain and it was lost when my lap top crashed. I'm therefore happy to answer the query here and hope that the gentleman who asked me the question might understand that I wasn't able to answer his original e-mail.

That answer is quite simple. If I'm elected at the election then I will have been elected on a party platform which will be clearly laid out. I'd react to subsequent decisions on the basis of representing the best interests of my constituency. If that mean opposing a decision otherwise backed by my party or the government of which I was part then so be it.

BIC Wedding Fayre

I spent this afternoon helping man the Rubyz stall at the Wedding Exhibition at the BIC. In fact I didn't need to do that much really, Dame Kitty was a draw in her own right and I was lucky if I could get a word in edgeways!

I never knew that weddings were SUCH a huge business. It's the first time we have exhibited there, this is only the first day of two and we have already taken bookings for over 500 people, filling up what available space we had on Saturday evenings throughout April and May.

The range of services and products on offer is astounding. It's a real testament to the ingenuity and entrepreneurialism of people that they should develop businesses that cover such a diverse range of services.

Talking to other business owners there it was apparent though that everyone is suffering under the burden of extra regulation, both directly and indirectly applied by government.

I heard more than once that people were wondering whether it was worth continuing with their businesses and more often that they were no longer keen to employ people because of the regulation and additional cost concerned.

We must make moves quickly to begin to simplify legislation for businesses, take away some of their tax burden and make it easier and more flexible for them to employ people. Rescinding our introduction of the EU's Social Chapter would be a great start.

The place was packed and the organisation was clearly very professional. It's success is a huge credit to the BIC staff and Bournemouth Borough Council's events team.

This week news broke that the Conservative Party would not be coming to Bournemouth for our conference next year. I have to admit to having known this for a couple of weeks. What is heartening is that we will be returning, and more importantly for the staff of the Council and BIC, I know the party chairman has sent a message to them making it clear that the decision in no way reflects on their service, professionalism and the standard of the venue.

Another EU Constitution

The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, (right) proposes placing the reintroduction of the EU Constitution at the heart of the German presidency of the EU over the next six months.

Her Europe Minister justified the move on The World at One by saying that while France and the Netherlands had rejected the Constitution in referenda, eighteen countries had ratified it.

From memory, 15 or 16 of these countries, including his own, had ratified the constitution with no public vote nor any real debate. Where the Constitution did come under public scrutiny it was voted down decisively.

The EU Constitution was killed off eighteen months ago, that's where it should stay in my opinion, dead and buried.

Ashley Mote and the Far Right.

I've attended quite a few political meetings in my time. In North Devon the hustings that were traditionally held in Bideford's Panier Market on election eve could be quite robust, even boisterous, but always good hearted and never threatening.

Similarly, I've attended meetings of the Labour Party, Liberals, Liberal Democrats, CND and Green Party, all of whom I disagreed with to varying degrees. I never felt threatened or uncomfortable at any of these either.

Then I went to a UKIP fringe meeting during the 2004 party conference in Bournemouth. For the first time at a political meeting I truly felt uncomfortable. The intolerance and hatred in the room was palpable. Intolerance of anything or anyone that didn't conform to the supporters viewpoint and hatred of the change that was taking society from that comfortable norm the audience wanted to preserve.

The people there were genuinely frightened by the changes in society and their country they were witnessing. Their response was to blame the EU for this shift and to hark back to a country that simply doesn't exist any longer.

To a large degree they are right, the EU has imposed many changes on our country, some for the better, but many more for the worse. We have to reach out to those people who feel this way, reassure them that the pace of change can be altered and that while it's impossible for us to go back, the erosion they perceive of their core values can be reversed.

What makes this task all the more important is the news today that the former UKIP MEP (he was expelled by UKIP for being involved in a court case over alleged housing benefit fraud) has joined the same group in the European Parliament as the French National Front, Allessandra Mussolini's Fascists from Italy and a rag bag of far right parties from Bulgaria and Belgium amongst others. For me this confirms the feeling I had at that meeting two years ago, that it's a very short step from the legitimate concerns many UKIP supporters have to something much much nastier.

Wimborne - twinned with Bratislava?

Full of cold this evening, so a quick post from me tonight.

One thing has struck me, looking at this blog, which is that now that we've passed 1,000 views of the site and there are almost 900 individual viewers, why is it that readers from Slovakia are in second place?

Is there a particular interest about our area in Slovakia? Is there a twinning arrangement I don't know about? Perhaps one of our Slovak viewers could enlighten me.

Anyway, you're all very welcome.

EU Expansion

Bulgaria and Romania joined the European Union at midnight. So now we’re part of a community of 27 rather than 25.

I welcome the accession of the new states and the continued expansion to include, in time, Croatia, the other Balkan states and Turkey. Not least because I firmly believe the bigger the Union the less likely moves towards political integration.

One of my first political memories is of my Mum stopping in at the polling station to vote in the 1975 European Community referendum on her way to take me to school.

My parents voted ‘Yes’ to staying in the Common Market as it was then called. They voted to stay in a trading block, not to confirm an eventual political Union.

I’ve seen the effects of the gold plating of European legislation by this government on my business. It’s caused an incredible increase in bureaucracy and cost.

The Liberal Democrats favour greater European integration and the ultimately the introduction of the Euro.

I see no benefit in either of these courses.

We need to engage constructively with Europe, with the goal of renegotiating our membership. We should obtain more opt outs, not fewer, from the Union in order that we can return to managing the majority of our affairs. If this agreement isn’t forthcoming then reluctantly I’d support a referendum on our future participation in the Union itself.

The balance needs to be shifted back in our favour, the sovereignty of the UK’s parliament must be paramout when considering the laws that effect us all.