"A Concert with Vegetables."
Thus spake a commission spokesman today to a dumbfounded press room.
"Next Friday evening there is a Concert with Vegetables, that is for you. The press corps are expressly invited to attend this 'concert of vegetables' in the framework of the launch of the European Year of Creativity and Innovation" he told journalists.
A Sikh man who wanted the right to wear a turban while being photographed for his French drivers' licence has lost his case in the European Court of Human Rights.
Shingara Mann Singh, a French national, lost a series of appeals in France against the authorities who refused to issue a new licence with a photograph of him wearing a turban.
Under French regulations, motorists must appear 'bareheaded and facing forward' in their licence photographs but the Sikh religion requires men to wear a turban at all times.
Mr Singh, 52, took his case to the ECHR but the Strasbourg-based court dismissed the case.
No, not the way that, as always seems to happen, the French go to Strasbourg they get their way and we almost never do (thus showing that European law is very similar to French and very different from our own).
No, it's something different. Why do the French authorities insist that he be photographed without his turban?
After all, he's always going to be wearing one so surely that's what you'd like his ID photo to look like, wouldn't you?
Derek Clark is a UK Independence Party MEP for the East Midlands. Robert Kilroy Silk's behaviour is doubly annoying for him.
The former TV presenter was elected as a UKIP MEP in 2004 - but left the party shortly afterwards to found his own Eurosceptic party, Veritas. Six months later he gave up as leader of the fringe party - and now sits as an Independent.
"We think he should resign altogether and give the seat back to us," Mr Clark told the BBC.
"This chap has taken himself out altogether. ITV won't let him communicate with anyone in the outside world at just the time he has a job to do. He is being paid and he is not doing his job, simple as that."
I have to say I do like that line "keen advocates of the ‘adding insult to injury’ school of thought".....Keen advocates of the ‘adding insult to injury’ school of thought they’ve now put their name to a petition calling on the Silver Fox to stand down as an MEP.
Oh, what fun they must have had putting the news release together.
“All five of the East Midland's MEPs (that is, all of the region's MEPs other than Kilroy Silk himself) are backing an online petition calling for him to stand down,” they write.
MEP Derek Clark then puts the boot in: “Its not just that he hasn't been working while in the jungle, it's that he hasn't spoken in the Parliament since 2005. No one has seen him in the region for years, we even had a competition for anyone who could spot him.”
There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost. Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch! Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government. And that’s close to 40% of our national income.
A European package of spending increases and tax cuts said to be worth €200bn (£170bn), or 1.5% of the European Union's gross domestic product, was unveiled yesterday as the EU's answer to the swelling financial and economic crisis.
The commission's two-year plan is aimed at restoring consumer and business confidence, shoring up employment, getting the banks lending again, and promoting green technologies. It reshuffles EU spending schedules and increases loans from the European Investment Bank (EIB), but leaves the bulk of the extra spending and fiscal stimuli to the 27 member states.
The 27 countries would provide €170bn of the €200bn - or 1.2% of European GDP - while the other €30bn would come from Brussels' coffers in the form of EIB loans, and accelerating payments from the cohesion and structural funds, which go mainly to the new members in central Europe.
So they're not announcing that the EU is going to be spending the money the EU already has. Rather, they're announcing that the EU is going to spend money which the national government's have to find from the pockets of the taxpayers. That is, an unelected body is telling elected bodies how they should gouge the citizenry.
So, to go back to the four ways to spend money. The fourth method provides the very worst result....and this announcement is of the fourth way squared. Without even the limitations placed by the ballot box upon how the money is splurged.
Given that it's very difficult indeed to believe that this money will be anything other than entirely wasted....if not spent on things which make matters actively worse.
