The Comprehensive Cuts Review

The new Chuckle Brothers coalition will have announced their Comprehensive Spending Review by the time you read this.  It really should be called the Comprehensive Cuts Review because the axe will fall with brutal force across the whole economy.  Now, let’s be honest, had we won the last election we too would have been faced with the problem of cutting deficit in half in four years and difficult choices would have had to be made.  But what the Tories are doing, helped by their Lib/Dem lap dogs, is aiming to reduce the whole deficit, which does run the risk of causing another recession and inflicts extra pain on millions of people.  The Tories are quite cleverly using the deficit as an excuse to pursue those right-wing policies that they have wanted to introduce for years, but didn’t dare for fear of upsetting the electorate.  You know the cries; “End the Welfare State” “Privatise the Post Office” “Change the NHS” “No new schools” and only the well off going to University.  Oh, and by the way, cut back on worker’s pensions but allow the bankers to keep their bonuses.  Somebody should remind Cameron, Osborne and Clegg that it was the bankers who caused this problem and that the high deficit was a result of having to bail them out.

Old Chestnuts!

Disruption has very much been the order of the day during the last couple of months.  Strikes in France and Belgium over proposals to raise retirement age to 62 have seen MEP’s finding alternative ways to get to Strasbourg in particular.  This has raised the issue yet again of why do we go to Strasbourg at all.  You may know that the original treaty setting up the EEC stipulates that Parliament must hold 12 sessions a year in Strasbourg, whilst the rest of the time we are in Brussels.  Some of us have long argued that this is an expensive nonsense and consistently voted to end the practice; however France refuses to agree to this suggestion so the show carries on at a great cost to European taxpayers and a lot of disruption for us.  Another “old chestnut” that has also reared its head again is the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy.  You know the scenario.  We pay farmers for producing food we don’t always need with the vast amount of it going to subsidise inefficient farming.  Meanwhile, British and Northern European farmers who are efficient lose out and get little help in areas of crisis like dairying.  I and a few colleagues from Denmark and Sweden will be attempting to ensure that the Commission’s proposals for a fundamental reform of the CAP at least get an airing before the farmers on the Agriculture Committee block it.  That’s what normally happens.  I would like to see a fundamental shift in CAP priorities away from direct subsidies and into rural sustainability, so that we could pay farmers for looking after our countryside and allowing them to grow crops for which there is a market, rather than ones that have the highest subsidy.  I know it’s radical which is why it will probably never happen, but we keep trying.

Anybody seen the British?

As Chair of the European Parliament’s Transport Committee, I get to attend gatherings of the Transport Ministers across Europe from time to time.  Since the General Election, two important gatherings have taken place, one in Saragossa Spain, in which the future course of the Trans European Transport Network was discussed and one in Antwerp Belgium to discuss European Maritime Policy.  In Saragossa, no British Minister bothered to turn up, but ok, you could argue that Trans European Networks don’t affect us; a maritime island!  So why then did no Minister turn up in Antwerp?  After all, the EU country with the longest coastline surely must have an interest in Maritime policy.  Well, apparently not.  “Has anybody seen the British?” one Minister asked and I know their absence was noted by more than just the other Member States.  It did not go un-noticed by the industry at large.  Not an auspicious start.