This EU is on life-support
By way of token tram reference - an EU tram somewhere to the east - prize for guessing where ! Built under the communist regiment.
Just why there is a credible cause for the UK to renew its marriage with an institution that it exchanged vows with over three decades ago under totally different arrange- ments - is a complete mystery. Its as if you found that charming young person you committed to at the altar (or registry office) has changed gender and become an alien form taking charge of your life.
The self serving elite who endorse the current set up are so far out of touch with the real world as to be living on Planet Pluto at the edge of our galaxy. What is not headlined in our media, nor spouted by those urging 'more of the same - remain' are the countrywide protests in France against that government's economic policies (not to mention a state of emergency continuing in that country): that the fiscal dogma insisted on by which those unfortunate states signed up to the Euro are struggling to find a way out of the economic mess this single currency has created. Papering over the chasms of financial malaise in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece is only just managing to keep the lid on a major economic crisis affecting millions. Issuing fiat currency (ie paper money) to keep creditless banks and governments in business is now the role of Central Banks. Our own Central Banker in Chief - the Governor of the Bank of England (and a Canadian national) has more discretion but joined the queue of doomsayers defending a now discredited political and economic structure.
The Germans are looking elsewhere for an alternative to their current leadership with a new political force 'Alternative for Germany' taking on three institutionalised political parties. The Dutch signalled recently their unhappiness with EU membership at recent polls - and are looking to the UK for a signal that departing this sclerotic EU is indeed possible through a popular revolt.
Freedom of travel mantra beloved of the EU pretorian guard in Brussels - has spawned a terrorism ride to work without checks. In tandem, an unending surge of refugees and economic migrants threaten to swamp western Europe - with little to halt this tide of humanity seeking alternatives to their own condition. The EU's response is to offer bribes to Turkey to put obstacles in place to those putting their lives at risk by embarking westward. In the meantime many EU Member States have installed physical deterrents along their south east facing borders to hold back mass migration. Turkey's demand for its own citizens to have unrestricted access to the EU (with some conditions) does wonders for Mrs Merkel and Francois Hollande having to deal with increasing demands for their own departure and radical change of government policies. Failing such change the rise of hard right and far left movements have become a force in Austria, Hungary, Germany and France.
Fortunately Britain has its own natural defences but even these are compromised by the head in the sand mantras of the European Commission and its surrogate institutions created to provide a cloak of democratic cover - the European Parliament in Strasbourg which provides such generous benefits to its MEPs and staffers, and the European Court of Justice (so called). Not to mention the myriad agencies staffed with bureaucracies all nibbling away at the EU trough.
Boris and other clear eyed UK politicians has the measure of the monster we have spawned when Britain signed up to those European Free Trade vows decades past. Its laughable that this Conservative Government has to rely on foreign visitors to add their six penny or dollar's worth of gloom and doom to make the case for staying in the EU. They obviously take us all for mugs.
