Tabloid Edition

Ceterum Censeo.....

Forgive me, it's been a long running thing of mine that the European Union should be destroyed. And I looked back to the Latin of Cato to provide me with my rhetorical hook to hang it all on.

Ceterum censeo Unionam Europaeam esse delendam. And therefore the European Union must be destroyed.

OK, OK I agree, it doesn't read on T-shirts. But the shorter version does: Unionam Europaeam delenda est.

Excellent, but where am I  to have these made? Well, actually, I can have my custom sweatshirts made by the good folks at www.Threadsmith.com.

Good clothes, made by good people, with a good slogan.....all I need now is people to wear them, right?

Yet Another Reason.

Yes, Another Reason.

New Logo

A new addition to our database of logos, from Jim Roelofs. Use it often and widely, Jim wants it that way.

Ceterum censeo Unionem Europaeam esse delendam

Yes, it’s been said before but it needs to be said again. Madsden Pirie has the details this time.

Ceterum censeo Unionem Europaeam esse delendam

Official! Teabags Spread Foot and Mouth, the EU Says So.

Tim the Englishman notes that teabags are now defined as animal waste under EU rules. Obviously the morons in Brussels don’t know that you put the milk in after you take the teabag out. Go read the full entry but the argument appears to be that:

The reason, according to the EU's Animal By-Products Order 1999, is that teabags, and indeed used coffee filters, could have come in contact with contaminated milk

Gosh, now, let’s see. Can we in fact guarantee that anything thrown out of our house has not come into contact with contaminated milk? That glass that got chipped? The baby’s bib? The car that you brought the milk home from the supermarket in (where it might have got crushed at the bottom of the boot)? What about you, how can we guarantee that when you pop your clogs you will not have, in your 7 or 8 decades, come across contaminated milk? Does this now mean the rendering of all human corpses? Are we in fact just gearing up for Soylent Green?

Bah.
Ceterum censeo Unionem Europaeam esse delendam

It's Got to Go.

A report today on yet another bunch scamming the EU out of money.

A criminal gang of professionals and academics led by a Sicilian professor defrauded the European Union of millions of pounds in a fake youth training programme, Italian police claimed yesterday after a string of dawn raids across the country.

OK, so they've been caught, will probably (given the Italian justice system) get punished, all is rosy, no?
No.

According to investigators, the organisation pretended to hold courses for young people in the showbusiness and tourism sectors, mostly in the Sicilian capital, Palermo.

What in hell is our tax money doing paying for courses in showbusiness and tourism? Doesn't Italy already have enough fat tenors, lecherous tour guides and indolent waiters?
It's got to go.

Ceterum censeo Unionem Europaeam esse delendam

 

New Graphics.

We have a new entrant into our database of graphics expressing our opinion of the European Union. As always you can find all of them in one place, at the post Ceterum censeo Unionem Europaeam esse delendam and please feel free to borrow them as long as you link back to that post and to the originators of the graphic.
This is from a think tank in Central Europe, Slovenia I think (my apologies, my command of slavic languages is not all that good).  It's pointed out to me in the comments that they are actually from Slovakia. My apologies.
So, from the Institut pre Slobodnu  comes this:

An Eloquent Convert

In rather more more gifted language than I am capable of Anthroblogogy tells it like it is for the EU. I've said it before, and despite the death of Bernard Levin I have no doubt I shall have to say it again, repeatedly, that there are people out there who can really write, and I am merely a pale imitation. Please do go read, as this man can write.

St Crispin's Day.

Today is, of course, St Crispin's Day. Three things to do today.
1) Go visit these guys and see why you should support the Campaign for an English Parliament.
2) Wonder why in hell I'm talking about such things just because it's some Saint's Day. So read this from Henry V by Bill Shakes:
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin;

If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

And just if you need it again,

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

3) Join with us in regaining and preserving the freedoms which the English developed over the past 900 years or so by spreading around the phrase Ceterum censeo Unionem Europaeam esse delendam

The Guardian on Fishing.

A Guardian leader today manages to notice the problem with fishing in UK waters:

So much so that in the North Sea, an area that once teemed with fish, cod stocks are now running dangerously low. The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (Ices) - a group of marine scientists who specialise in the North Atlantic - has released its annual survey of fish stocks. It recommends a minimum cod stock size of 150,000 tonnes in the North Sea. Alarmingly, the current stock is estimated to be less than one-third of that figure, at just 46,000 tonnes. The figures show a similar tale for Irish Sea cod, as well as sharp declines in Bay of Biscay hake and North Sea plaice numbers.

Good, we're glad you noticed. They are, however, able only to see the proximate cause, not the ultimate one. They actually think that further European Union involvement is the answer, when it is in fact the EU, through the vile and absurd Common Fisheries Policy which is the problem.

A one-year ban would certainly require EU funds to bail out the fishing industry, but the price tag would be relatively small - compared with the cost of the common agricultural policy, a drop in the ocean.

Economists have been shouting for decades that the only solution to this Tragedy of the Commons in fisheries is direct ownership of the fish by the fishermen. Only by moving from a hunter-gatherer structure to one of well defined property rights, along with the markets that implies, can there ever be a solution. The four best run fisheries (and the only four with expanding stocks) are New Zealand, Norway, Iceland and the Faroes. All have variations on such property rights.
The waters under discussion were, until our entry into the EU, 80% within the UK's Exclusive Economic Area, as defined under the UN treaty, the Law of the Sea. We could, if we were independent, solve this problem ourselves. But we're not independent, we are part of the EU and thus have CFP imposed upon us.
The solution? Yes, you guessed it, Ceteram censeo Unionem Europaeam esse delendam.