A New Exercise in Democracy? EU Can't Be Serious

Maybe the weather has got to my head, or maybe I'm just trying to avoid the inevitable clasp the inevitable doom of Wolves' position in the Premier League. Either way, someone should ban me from going on any pro-EU websites, most of all the official EU website, Europa.

Lording it up on their website is an article titled "New Exercise in Democracy". Wow I think to myself, perhaps they've all smoked pot in Amsterdam and come to their senses that democracy ain't all that bad. Wrong! The article refers to the and is described as:

Introduced by the Lisbon treaty, the European citizens initiative is intended to make the EU more democratic by giving citizens a more direct say in its policies.

OK, sounds good. I want the EU to consider banning overseas religious preachers. So what do I do? Write a letter? Arrange a meeting? Get the number twenty bus in to town to speak to my local elected representative? None of the above. I need to save up enough money to finance a multinational petition covering at least three EU countries with at least 300,000 (yes, three-hundred-thousand) signatures.

And that's not even half way there. The European Commission then decides whether the interests of those 300,000 people from a minimum of three EU countries is worth their time or own interests shutting it down immediately, or giving it the thumbs up for phase two. Phase two can't be that big a deal can it? After all we've convinced 300,000 people from more than 3 EU countries to sign a petition and then we've convinced the EU Commission that all 300,000 people's interests are worthy of their attention. So what more?

After the thumbs up, we need a total of 700,000 more signatures from a minimum of a total of nine EU countries. Oh and that's not the only thing. You know those signatures I've been banging on about? I slipped up. I need to go back to those 1 million people and convince them to also give me their national identification number, in the form of their social security numbers or passport numbers.

Not only that, due to data protection laws I have to also invest in security measures to protect the information of over 1 million people with a minimum of 7 million pieces of information. The costs of all of this would be a minimum of half a million pounds. That's assuming I get the bare minimum of requirements fulfilled.

Never in the history of mankind has there ever been a physical petition of 300 thousand or more signatures, ever.

A new exercise in democracy? Somehow I doubt it. Somehow, anybody with half a mind would doubt it.

A new farce force in politics ...

The English Democrats have formed an unholy alliance with some other minor parties and called it the Alliance for Democracy.

Joining the English Democrats in their "Anglo-Christian Democratic Alliance of Political Parties" are the Christian Party "Proclaiming Christ's Lordship", Jury Team, Popular Alliance, the UK Fascist First Party and Veritas.  Strangely absent are the England First Party, a BNP off-shoot that the English Democrats formed an electoral pact with during the 2009 EU elections.

Let's have a look at the English Democrats' new bed-fellows:

The Christian Party ... well, what can I say?  The Christian Party is headed up by a Scottish Reverend and has a homophobic, anti-abortion, illiberal manifesto.  As well as the UK Christian Party, there is a Christian Party Scotland and Christian Party Wales - something the English Democrats criticise other British political parties for!

Jury Team isn't even a proper party, it's just a rich bloke paying deposits for no-hopers who can't make it onto a party list.  Jury Team candidates collectively gained only half a percent of the national vote between them in the 2009 EU elections.

The Popular Alliance is an off-shoot of UKIP and Veritas, itself an off-shoot of UKIP.  The Popular Alliance has a policy to "restore British culture, tradition and history, especially in schools".  Their website describes them as a "Political party opposing Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem, UKIP, Veritas and BNP as an alternative for government".

The UK First Party is yet another UKIP off-shoot and already has an alliance with the Popular Alliance.  The UK First leadership and its handful of activists consist mainly of disgruntled former UKIP members including Greg Limp-Wrist, one of the EU moles who writes on the anti-UKIP "Junius" blog.

Veritas is the original UKIP off-shoot, formed by Robert Kiljoy-Slick when he threw his teddy out of the pram after failing to get himself installed as leader.  Veritas' biggest achievement is to still be in business despite having virtually no success in its 5 year history.  Robert Kiljoy-Slick once tried to take over the English Democrats but failed.

The combined vote in the 2009 EU elections of every party in the Alliance for Democracy (Veritas and Popular Alliance didn't stand any candidates) was just 4.4% - 1.8% less than the BNP, slightly over half the Green vote and just over a quarter of the UKIP vote.  Three of the six parties in the Alliance for Democracy are UKIP off-shoots, one of them is specifically opposed to one of the others, one of them has a "British" party to cover England with local parties for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and all of them except the English Democrats are UK parties.

I'm not sure how you can have an alliance of Anglo-Christian parties in England, Scotland and Wales as they claim to be and I'm surprised that the English Democrats are so keen to declare themselves a Christian party when one of their national council members and founder members, who happens to be one of their best people, is Jewish.  There's even a Scottish and Welsh branch of the alliance!

I could be wrong, of course, but I seriously doubt anyone will be unduly concerned about this schizophrenic alliance of British/Scottish/Welsh/English nationalist Christian (apart from non-Christians) unelectable political parties.