Nationalist Internet Incest

One of the fallacies of the internet is that social media is able to beat main stream media at its own game. The Western Mail, the Daily Post, the Daily Mail, the Daily Mirror etc can publish shit, but we have this free on-line  media that can counteract their lies, but this is a very partial truth.

The fact is that Social Media gives us a rose tinted glass that we see our own world through. I follow people I agree with on Twitter I friend people I agree with on Facebook. I block and unfriend people, and create my own little bubble of social media followers who agree 100% with me!

The racists have also created their own little internet spaces that convince them that they are the voice of the people.

My social media profile tells me that there are lots and lots of people that agree with me that the best answer to Brexit is Welsh Independence, they are correct. But to make that point on Social media we have to un block and re friend our opponents in order to persuade them to support our cause, because nationalist internet incest isn't going to move the cause forward at all!

We have to confront the trolls, not ignore them, we have to make the case for independence to those who currently oppose it, not just revel in those who support it! 

Wales in Europe

A message from Plaid Cymru supporting a vote for the UK to remain in the European Union

Wales benefits from being part of the EU, economically, socially and culturally.

The EU helped to establish peace and keeps the peace in Europe: a role that should never be underestimated and which we value.

Nearly 200,000 jobs in Wales are linked to our access to the Single Market and its half a billion people. Thousands of students and young people benefit from EU programmes enabling them to
study and work in other countries and learn new languages.

These are just some of the advantages to Wales.
And thanks to the EU we have laws on equality, on the environment, on workers' and consumers' rights, on farming and food quality, to tackle climate change and much more.

The United Kingdom already opts out of the Schengen travel area, which is why we still have passport control at the UK's external borders. And of course we never joined the single currency.

There is a lot we would like to change about the EU, but we can only do that from within. There's no point shouting from the sidelines. We choose instead to work with our sister parties in the
European Free Alliance and progressive colleagues across the EU. That is how we will get a more open, democratic and effective Europe within which Wales will play its full part.

Not In or Out, but a New Europe

The European debate in the UK is rather odd. It is portrayed as one of two stark choices IN or OUT. If an in/out referendum were to be held tomorrow I would suspect, based on what my friends and family say, that most of the voters of Wales would vote OUT (not a scientific survey, but this is a blog not an academic essay).

The oddity is that most people who tell me that they would vote OUT are not anti-European; they are opposed to a European Superstate. They agree with the idea of a Common Market, they agree with the idea of a "level playing field" where employment rights or animal welfare standards etc are equal thoroughout Europe they like the idea of free trade and free travel in Europe; what they don't want is an United States of Europe.

Such attitudes are not "little Englander" attitudes, they are not UKIP attitudes; they are actually Pan European attitudes. Large numbers of the citizens of every part of Europe want to rein back the idea of a European Superstate and re-embrace the idea of a Common Market. Supporting either the Europhobes or the Europhiles in an UK stark choice referendum will be bad for Wales. What we should do is unite with those, thoroughout Europe, who want a new European settlement where independent nations are In Europe, but not under Europe's thumb!

Should Plaid be more Eurosceptic?

In response to my post Reflections on the Euro Result James D made an interesting comment:

James D said...

I think there's another side to it: the Tories and the English Independence Party did well in a European election because of their Euroscepticism, whilst the Liberals got buried thanks to their being Eurofederalists. Plaid would do a lot better to fight to reclaim our rights from both Westminster and Brussels, rather than schizophrenically taking from one and giving to the other.

I think that James makes a fair point. Plaids enthusiasm for the EU isn't in tune with the view of the majority of Welsh voters and it does appear to be a bit hypocritical to be asking for separation from one Union which is too big and remote to consider the needs of Wales but to enthuse about full membership of a bigger even more remote union.

Of course the support for Europe is, like the support for Socialism, one of those policies adopted by the party in the mid eighties, when the party started to move away from its nationalist beginnings. In the 1975 EEC referendum Plaid Cymru was against the UK remaining in the community, Dafydd Elis was a particularly vigorous campaigner for a No vote.

Having been a supporter of the EEC in 1975 I was pleased when Plaid changed its oppositionist policy. However the policy was, at the time, one where Plaid wanted Wales to be part of a reformed EEC where economic co-operation was not dependent on Europe wide rules and regulations, but was an Europe of the Nations. A policy similar in many respects to William Hague's In Europe but not run by Europe stance. A return to such a policy would make much more sense and be more in tune with Plaid's heritage than appearing to support the creeping moves towards an European Nation State.

YouGov: EU

Yesterday's daily YouGov survey asked about attitudes to the EU in response to the Lisbon vote in Ireland. Here are the results:

Three quarters of those surveyed would like to see a referendum on the Lisbon treaty in the UK and all EU member states. A minority of 11% think votes should not be held in EU countries.

Most of those polled believe that the 35 years of EU membership has had a negative impact on Britain's laws and institutions (69%) and personal freedoms (61%). Only 24% and 18% said that membership has had a positive impact on personal freedoms and laws and institutions, respectively.

Opinion is roughly split on whether Britain should continue its membership of the European Union with 44% supporting continued membership and 48% opposing.

Today's survey includes these questions?

The wife of the failed July 21 bomber Hussain Osman was sentenced for 15 years for not informing the police of the attempted suicide bombing in advance. Do you think the sentencing is ….
Too harsh
Too lenient
About Right
Don’t know


In the US, the state of California has granted marriage licences to gay couples for the first time. Do you think Britain should follow suit?
Yes
No
Don’t know

To what extent do you think that gay couples should enjoy the same rights as heterosexual couples?
A very large extent
A large extent
A small extent
A very small extent
None at all, the two types of couples should be treated as separate
Don’t know

I'll post the answers tomorrow. If you would like to join YouGov so that your opinions on questions such as this can be counted click here

Europhile or Ostrich?

This comment by Stephen Farrington seems to typify the head in the sand attitudes of supporters of European integration to the Irish referendum result:

Redrafting the treaty in the wake of less than 0.1 per cent of Europeans rejecting it would be futile

To dismiss the Irish vote in this way is disingenuous. The truth is that the Irish are the only people of Europe who have been allowed to express an opinion.

Had the rest of Europe been given the same opportunity that the people of Ireland were given, Stephen and other Euro-whores know that a result similar to the Irish one would have occurred in the majority of the 27 nations. Which is precisely why the other 26 have chosen not to hold a referendum.

Ignoring the result in Ireland, a country which has a fairly positive attitude towards the EU, is like Gordon Brown ignoring a bad opinion poll in the Labour heartlands because it only asked the view of a 5000 sample!

The fact is that the majority of the people of Europe, not just the Irish, don't like the way in which the Union is turning into a superstate rather than the economic community that it was established to be.

Rather than dismissing the Irish view, whilst ignoring the views of their own people, the mandarins of the EU might serve the people of Europe better if they took the representative view of the Irish into consideration and concentrated more on building up the European Economic Community and rather less on trying to create the U S of E!

Other Good Posts on the Irish Referendum:
Tim Roll-Pickering
Shiraz Socialist
Alert: Euro-Federalists already planning to subvert Irish Referendum results

EU Treaties must be ratified unanimously. Each country ratifies a Treaty on the assumption that all other countries will do so too. If one country says that it cannot ratify a Treaty as it stands - in Ireland’s case because the Irish people have rejected it - there is no point in the other countries proceeding, and the Irish Government should request them to stop.

Sign the Petition!

I dont have much faith in on-line petitions, I don't know of one that has ever succeeded in changing anything.

But if there is one petition that deserves to succeed it i this one:

We, European citizens of all origins and of all political persuasions, wish to express our total opposition to the nomination of Tony Blair to the Presidency of the European Council

Sign it!

The need for a Referendums Act

I Want a Referendum is holding a private ballot in 10 constituencies across the UK to determine how many people think the UK should hold a national referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and whether people think the UK should agree to the treaty or reject it. One of the constituencies chosen for the private ballot is the Aberconwy constituency where I live*

I received my ballot paper this morning. I was disappointed to discover that the ballot paper and leaflet giving both sides of the argument are only in English, especially as Guto Bebb stated on yesterday's the Politics Show opt out that he had been busy translating all the material.

The ballot paper has two questions

1 Should the United Kingdom hold a national referendum on the EU's Lisbon Treaty Yes/No
2. Should the United Kingdom approve the EU's Lisbon Treaty Yes/No

I will be voting NO to the second question. Since the UK joined the European Community in the 1970's, gradualist reforming treaties have changed the institution out of all proportion and these gradual reforms seem to be leading inevitably towards an United States of Europe, a new European Empire. An European Superstate which will result in Wales having even less of a voice in the economic and social debates that will effect the country than it currently has in the British Union.

I am uncertain about the first question. I will probably vote yes, in favour of a referendum but I will do so with some doubts. The reason why this government is refusing to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty is quite simply that it strongly suspects that it knows that the result will not be the result that it wants. Exactly the same reason why Margaret Thatcher and John Major's Governments didn't call referendums on the Single European Act and the Mastricht Treaty.

If referendums are to be used as part of the democratic process then calling them at the whim of a government only when it knows what the result will be is an abuse of the democratic process. If referendums are to be used as part of the democratic decision making process then they should be triggered "automatically" by circumstances laid out by a Referendums Act whether the government likes it or not.

Many of those who are calling for a referendum on Lisbon are the same people who wanted a referendum on the SEA and Mastricht. So why haven't those (especially the MPs amongst them) who have been calling for referendums for the past 21 years used that period to campaign for a Referendum's Act? Because they are as guilty as the present government of only wanting a referendum when they think the result will be the one that they want; because they are frightened that a democratic system that triggers referendums according to circumstances rather than whim might cause a referendum to be forced upon them when the result isn't likely to go their way. The unsavoury truth is that many politicians on both sides of the argument over a referendum on Lisbon are opportunists rather than democrats.


*As the constituency is in the process of boundary changes, it could be the Conwy constituency that is being balloted.

The New Emperor of Europe

For all the flaws in its system, the USA is in the process of electing its president. Meanwhile the worlds second biggest power block, the EU, is in the process of stitching up a deal amongst a handful of the great and the good to give the job of European President to one of its own.

Amongst the candidates for the job of second most powerful man in the world is Tony Blair. Personally I can't think of a person less suited to the job and sincerely hope he doesn’t get selected. However the reasons the French establishment have given for not backing Blair are a cause for concern. According to Friday's Telegraph:

Valérie Giscard d'Estaing, the former French president and the father of the now defunct EU constitutional treaty, said that Europe's first president must have majority support from his home country, which should be a nation that "respects all its European commitments". Something that he claimed Britain did not do.

"Tony Blair cannot be president of Europe," agreed Edouard Balladur, the former conservative French prime minister close to Mr Sarkozy, writing in yesterday's Le Monde newspaper.

Despite his "declarations of good intent," for 10 years, Mr Blair "did nothing to put an end to Britain's special status", with its opt-outs in the fields of justice and home affairs and non-membership of the euro and border-free Schengen zone.

These comments don't just rule Blair out but, in effect, say that nobody from the UK could ever be EU president unless or until the UK toes the French line. They also show the fatal flaw in the SNP and Plaid's policy of Independence in Europe.

No country could ever be independent in Europe, because the movers and shakers who are at the heart of the institution and who are responsible for its development don't see the EU as a federation of independent nations. They see it as the restoration of the Napoleonic or Holy Roman Empires.

The SNP and Plaid's aims are in practice policies of leaving the British Empire in order to be a peripheral part of the New European Empire.

I much prefer the English Democrat's policy of getting out of the UK and out of Europe.

I Want a Referendum

I'm not sure that I do, actually. I have a general problem with referendums, in that I feel that before any other referendum is called there should be a Referendums Act, that automatically triggers referendums in particular circumstances. That referendums should be called or not be called for political expedience, to me, appears abhorrent.

The referendum bit of the Government of Wales Act 2006 is a case in point. If the creation of the National Assembly was a sufficient constitutional change to merit a referendum, then the Government of Wales Act 2006 that gave the Assembly law-making powers for the first time should also have been the subject of a referendum, but it wasn't.

Under the present Act, Wales could become virtually independent by judicious use of LCO's without ever needing to call upon the referendum clause of the Act!

The Government of Wales Act 2006 says that we must have a referendum, not to give the Assembly extra powers, but merely to change the administrative way in which the extra powers it was given, without plebiscite, are exercised - which seems a bit silly to me.

This exemplifies the problem of referendums. Constitutional institutions change gradually. The EU that Britain is a member of today is not the EEC that we voted to join in 1976, there is no doubt that huge changes have happened in the last 30 years. If we didn't vote on other occasions when things changed there is no moral, historical or traditional reason for saying we must vote on the current proposed changes.

It appears to me that we have two choices, either we trust our elected representatives to legislate as they see fit without the need for further referendums - on any subject - ever, or we have a law that says that these changes must be decided by referendum whether it is convenient to our elected representatives to hold a referendum or not. The idea that referendums should be held on an ad-hoc basis for political convenience is just illogical.

Sorry, what was meant to be a link posting has turned into a sermon :-(

I want a referendum can be found here. Enjoy!