Dave (the rave) Cameron and the Common Market!

Dave (the rave) Cameron.

Now I have very little time for David Cameron; I think I've intimated this in previous posts. In fact I am way to the left of the Conservative Party and have always believed in the Labour movement and unions and all that – so that about sums me up.

However, I am not sure you can call people like Tony Blair, Gordon Brown or the new Labour Party leader, Ed Miliband, part of the Labour Movement – or The Ed Miller Band as I have started to call him.

The Labour Party is the party of Kier Hardy, Harold Wilson, Aneurin Bevan and the like not a bunch of middle class middle of the road men in suits. But let's face it they wouldn't have been elected if they hadn't have drifted towards the middle to New Labour!

Can you see any difference between Cameron, Blair, Clegg or Miliband (either of them)?

Well it appears there is a slight difference.

In the 1970s Great Britain joined the Common Market which was forced through parliament by the Conservatives led by Thatcher's predecessor, Edward Heath. If I recall correctly the Labour Party were against it but don't bet on it as I may be wrong.

There was a referendum and the UK voted to stay in the Common Market – they have referendums on everything in America, as propositions, so this might sound strange to them and, by the way, it is referendums and not referenda!!

It was the Common Market the people voted for and not the United States of Europe.

Since then little things have crept in; Britain were obliged to convert to a metric system. They had already converted the currency to decimalization in 1971 which was understandable; the old system had 4 farthings to a penny, 12 pennies to a shilling and 20 shillings to the pound. Now we have 100 pennies to the pound as opposed to 240 which is what it used to be. They had ten shilling notes, sixpences, half pennies (pronounced hay'pennies) and half a crowns; that was two shillings and sixpence (2/6d) which is worth 12 and a half pee (pence) these days.

The metric system is something different; miles were supposed to have been converted to kilometres, feet and yards to metres, pounds to kilos and so on. But ask anybody how far they are driving and they will tell you in miles! Ask them how far away their car is parked and they will tell you metres!

On the M25 they tell you the length of the tunnels in yards and give distances in miles. In supermarkets goods are priced in kilos. The temperature is given in Celsius! If it reaches 100 degrees Fahrenheit they use Fahrenheit; go figure!.

Confused?? Of course you must be – this is all to appease The European Community – or The Common Market as the majority of people here call it.

MEPs were elected – Members of European Parliament – Butter Mountains appeared, Sugar Mountains and the rest of it. British Beef was encouraged and the best beef in the world discouraged. People here can only dream of Argentinian beef let alone American.

With the MEPs, Britain now has a mini government in parish councils, borough council or local councils, members of parliament and the aforementioned MEPs – all representing the same neighbourhood.

A few years ago they introduced the Euro to replace all the currencies of Common Market member countries and the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, Gordon Brown, decided that Britain didn't need to change its currency and that kind of saved Britain; Tony Blair wanted it to change but he bowed to Brown.

I thought it was a good idea at the time but I was wrong.

If Greece, Ireland or Italy still had their own currencies they could have devalued when things got tough recently which would have made their exports more attractive and boosted their economies.

But they can't do that, can they, because they all have the same currency. They can't devalue the Euro can they – can they????

The countries that use the Euro are called – the Euro-zone or even the Eurozone; a new word!!!!

On the news these days in Britain in every bulletin, which on some stations is every half hour, is the fact that David Cameron vetoed a . . .. what did he veto? Not many people know. They know he vetoed something but I have asked one or two intellectual members of the vagrant train and they don't seem to know. The fact is he vetoed nothing. A veto is when your vote stops the thing going through and as far as I know Dave's vote (they call him Dave here and they also have a TV network called Dave which is rather like the TV Network Spike in America) didn't stop anything. The new treaty in the common market that he thought he was stopping is still going through – as far as I know.

He 'vetoed' because he wanted to protect the interests of Britain; the interests of London more like as it is the financial centre and Germany wants Berlin to have a share, France want Paris.

He also did it to appease the 'back benchers' and Euro-skeptics in his party but if what he did changes things for Britain’s membership maybe he did something right for the wrong reasons.

The populations of the countries in the Common Market have different traditions, different personalities and to have them all living in a uniform way would be wrong to me; and what do I know? Nothing!!

It seems strange that Britain fought a war against Germany – for a few years by themselves – and at one time the Greeks suffered under the Italians and the Germans – even the Bulgarians too, I think. They went through a civil war and junta and now they are under the thumb again. They are broke and in need of help and they are now going begging, cap in hand, to the Common Market dominated by the Germans. It must really stick in their craw.

Greece, a country which had to fight the Germans with their resistance, gave many thousands of words to the English language as opposed to Germany who contributed very few one being schadenfreude!