EU power grab and Farage

The City has woken up to realise the EU are out to grab their lucrative business and big bonuses. We can expect a few revisions of EU rhetoric from all British political parties in the next few months. Election time is but a year off and where is the biggest and best source of political donations? Why as throughout history, from the rich, now not so rich, merchants of the City of London. He who pays the piper calls the tune, well the EU reel anyway.

'EU directive seen as attack on London' is the second headline on the front of today's Business Telegraph with the Commission accused of launching a 'blatant attack' on London's financial services industry with proposals to regulate hedge funds and private equity. But hold on over 80% of this business is in the UK. It all reminds me of the great fish swindle of 1972 when we started out with 80% of the fish but now have around 10%. Where did the rest go? To the French, Spanish, Danes etc. However our fishermen lived largely where the chattering classes never reached, places like Peterhead, Great Yarmouth & Lytham. But our wealthy bankers live in Richmond, Kensington, Chelsea and the Home Counties and have the ear of even a Labour government in a pre-election year. Will this save them from the fate of our fishermen? We are in for an interesting time.

It is now becoming so obvious that our great leader has noticed the problem and is quoted on the forum by one of his sycophants thus:

UKIP Leader Nigel Farage stormed: "The latest proposals out of Brussels on financial regulation are just another power grab."

"The entire European Union system is paralysed by the fear that someone, somewhere, might be going unregulated, doing something, anything, without their permission.

"They're also refusing to let a good crisis go to waste. The Commissions' proposals centre on regulating hedge funds and private equity: neither of which has had anything at all to do with the current problems.

And just for good measure they've thrown in some financial protectionism. Only funds which are domiciled in Europe can be sold in Europe, that's just to make sure that you can't invest your money with anyone of who the Commissars disapprove.

"The entire set of proposals reek of an attempt to close down The City. Not for any rational or logical reason but simply because the bureaucrats in the Commission simply do not understand markets."

The link goes to an article in the FT which shows one does not have to go to Brussels to find out what the EU is up to. NF as we all know goes mainly for other more earthly pleasures. Alas NF is, as we City boys say, way behind the curve.

One of NF's bigger porkies is to claim to gullible TV interviewers that UKIP is by far the most democratic of all the British political parties. Well that's as long as you forget about kicking democratically representatives off the NEC, removing democratically elected representatives from MEP lists, parachuting dodgy Sri Lankan ex post office staff onto MEP lists bypassing all the checks that NF also likes to boast we have. And yes Marta was democratically voted into number 2 on the South East MEP list but no mention of her failing to supply things like CRB checks and electoral roll numbers that lesser mortals had to supply just to get on the short list in the first place.

Like the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, democracy is what Nigel in Brussels says it is.