RENT AND GO IN MARPLE TOWN

My local town of Marple seems to have an on going problem as regards small businesses trying to make a start. They hear that this is a town of many well to do folks and think it is a good place to start a business.Well not really.Rent and Council tax can bleed your profits to such an extent it can send you packing, and it does.But,while you were there you fed the council with extra riches.however that does not help your business dreams does it? I am the UKIP candidate for "Marple north" I want this problem sorted out,Governments and councils are seemingly obsessed with rip off charges.I can bring these down,and bring them down I will as regards Council taxes at least.We want you to prosper, like we need small Government we also need smaller cheaper councils, without this small new businesses will fall by the wayside as usual. so vote UKIP at your local Elections and help us to help you keep your profits.

Greek elections to be held in May

The unelected Greek Prime Minister/EU regional administrator, Lucas Papademos, has announced elections next month.

Papademos is a former governor of the EU Central Bank and was appointed Prime Minister of Greece when the EU overthrew the elected Greek Prime Minister for announcing a referendum on the austerity measures the EU was imposing on the country.

The main parties in Greece all supported the EU coup d'état, the appointment of an EU administrator as Prime Minister and the deep austerity that has caused severe hardship to millions of Greeks and they are expected to pay for their treachery at the polls on 6th May.

Since EU austerity measures were put in place in Greece, unemployment has hit almost 21% and some Greeks have been abandoning their children on the streets because they can't afford to feed them.  The suicide rate in Greece has gone up 40% since the start of EU austerity and an estimated 20,000 Athenians have been made homeless out of a population of about 660,000.

There is a gap in the Greek political system for a Greek version of UKIP - a party opposed to the EU and committed to a sustainable low tax economy, small government and personal freedoms.  Anyone opposing EU austerity and the reintroduction of the Drachma is bound to make a significant impact in the elections.  Anyone pledging to instigate criminal proceedings against Papademos and his co-conspirators for their part in the EU coup d'état will probably win a landslide.

The Tory Party Identity Crisis

Lately there have been a whole raft of articles on the parlous state of the Tory Party, some of them unintentionally hilarious. For example, in a recent post on his blog Dan Hannan stated - apparently seriously - that "Conservatives go into politics to do things". Several more right-wingers have written similar tripe in the same vein, so much so that you can hardly open a newspaper or blog without hearing how the party has ' abandoned its values'.

And precisely what values are those, then?

It's amazing how little Tory politicians understand their own party or it's history - or more importantly, perhaps, do not want to,

Throughout most of it's history the Tory party travelled light ideologically. It's only one guiding principle was to protect the right to rule of an elite in a cynical conspiracy to power.  Canny enough not to tempt revolution by being too stubborn in holding onto all privilege, it saw its role as giving ground gracefully and pragmatically to it's opponents so that at least some or most of the established order was preserved.

In the earlier stages of it's history this utterly cynical outlook to governing - what Disraeli famously described as 'Tory men and Whig measures' - wasn't all bad in its outcomes: serious reform was often enacted pragmatically and with sensitivity to existing institutions, without the year-zero mentality that radicals are prone to.

However, the major weakness of the Tory approach was that the Tory party in government is very largely defined by the ideas of others. In the 19th Century when the ideas of the Whigs were largely benign, that may have been acceptable, but after the Second World War especially the ideas on the so-called 'progressive' wing of politics - economic and cultural marxism, supranationalism in the form of the EU - have largely proved both wrong, often deeply destructive and sometimes downright malevolent.

In this context the Tory tradition of pragmatic surrender has proved largely a disaster for Britain. Only the Thatcher government  (partially) reversed the otherwise malign trend over the past 60 years or so. But very significantly, Thatcher was often accused by her foes - not least on the 'Wet' wing of the Tory party - as being not a Tory but a "19th Century Liberal".

And it is the radicalism of the Thatcher years that many of today's right-wing Tories - entirely mistakenly - confuse with true Tory principles. In fact, these were largely inherited from factions of within the original Liberal party who split and joined the Tories, not least the Liberal Unionists who joined the tories to form the 'Conservative and Unionist' party during the  Irish home crisis in the early part of the 20th Century.

In the face of an increasingly restive electorate thoroughly fed up with the direction of travel being taken by Britain's elites, the  current schizophrenia within the Tory Party, between a 'Wet', pseudo-aristocratic Tory leadership  which is content to pander to anti-Liberal (in the true meaning of the word) ideas and it's radical Liberal wing is no longer sustainable. Hence the plummeting Tory membership, steady rise of UKIP, and the snowballing defections of senior Tories to UKIP's ranks.

In fact, viewed in a historical context, the rise of UKIP, a broadly speaking Libertarian Party, may herald a full-scale  de-merging of the Liberal tradition from the Tory one and reemergence of a strong Libertarian tradition in British politics.

Let us hope and pray for such an outcome.

Priti Patel; the plastic Eurosceptic and paper tiger

Amongst some UKIP circles Priti Patel, the Conservative Party's rising star is spoken about with awe and fantastical admiration inspired by outright ignorance. Up until now I've just accepted it. As far as I'm concerned she is a plastic Eurosceptic and nothing more than a paper tiger.

Many consider her as some sort of Eurosceptic hero, a champion of right wing politics. She isn't. Making token comments and populist soundbytes, as we surely should be learning about Daniel Hannan MEP does not make you a genuine article. It just makes you someone who is not only playing the game but playing the people.

An article from The Daily Telegraph has her headlining the notion of a new breed of Eurosceptic Tory MPs. Conservative Home also has her highlighted in a blog post about 'a new Eurosceptic group'. A post on Ian Dale's blog states 'many believe her to be 'emerging as the most effective Eurosceptic voice of the Parliamentary class of 2010.'

Perhaps some people perceive her as a 'Eurosceptic voice' as she headed the press office of the now defunct Referendum Party but her Eurosceptic credentials end there. Just as heading a press office for the Referendum Party doesn't make you a Eurosceptic answering the phones in whorehouse doesn't make you a pimp.

A basic look at her voting record in parliament shows her to be anything but Eurosceptic. In fact, the popular website theyworkforyou.com sums up her voting record for EU issues as 'voted very strongly for stronger EU integration'. A closer look at exactly what she's voted for provides a more detailed case.

Another description Priti Patel MP is given is a 'rebel', an MP who speaks her mind and isn't afraid to stand up to her own party. Again, this is a misnomer. She has time and time again sided with exactly what her party has told her to side with. The website Public Whip rates her as having rebelled just once out of 400 times. Hardly a candidate for a James Dean movie.

In my opinion the only difference between Daniel Hannan, another plastic Eurosceptic, and Priti Patel is that at least Hannan does it with a bit of class.

Looks like a UKIPper, talks like a UKIPper, acts like a Tory

UKIP in his heart,
Tory in his pocket

The latest gem from the Tory vote splitter, Dan Hannan MEP, is priceless:

I think I've decided what to do when I put myself out of a job as an MEP. The next big task, once we're safely out of the EU, will be to repair the Anglosphere: the community of free English-speaking democracies.

He looks like a UKIPper, talks like a UKIPper but acts like a Tory.  He talks up his eurosceptic credentials but he's still supporting the most pro-EU Tory government since Ted Heath and serving the only Tory prime minister ever to actively campaign against a referendum on our membership of the EU.

Dan Hannan isn't a real eurosceptic and he does very little to advance the cause of euroscepticism by splitting the eurosceptic vote and attracting eurosceptics to the europhile Tories.  The only way he's going to put himself out of a job is by doing the decent thing and resigning as an MEP.

EU VAT rules could cause churches to fall into disrepair

The Diocese of Hereford is warning that many historical church buildings could fall into disrepair because of a change in VAT rules that will force it to pay VAT on building repairs.

What the Diocese of Hereford fails to mention - probably through ignorance - is that this VAT change is down to EU rules.  The EU won't allow the British government to reduce or abolish VAT and the British government's lobbying for the EU to abolish VAT on repairs to church buildings has been unsuccessful.  To help the Church, the British government has been spending taxpayers' money on grants to cover the cost of the VAT on building repairs.

The Church's VAT bill for building repairs is £38m and 0.3% of that is paid over to the EU for what they laughably call their "own resources" budget.  So that's a £114k hidden contribution to the EU because the British government refuses to defy the EU over charging VAT on repairs to Church buildings even though it is the British government's policy that the Church shouldn't have to pay VAT on repairing its buildings and now the Church is saying that it won't be able to afford to repair its buildings because they're going to have to pay the EU's VAT.

UKIP on 11% in Survation poll

A Survation poll for the Mail on Sunday has UKIP level pegging with the Lib Dems on 11%.

The survey will make dismal reading for all three LibLabCon leaders: 68% think "we're all in this together" doesn't apply to ministers, 64% think Cameron is nepotistic, 42% think Ed Miliband is nepotistic (30% don't), more people would rather have dinner with George Galloway than Ed Miliband and Boris Johnson is three times more popular than any of the party leaders as a dinner party guest.

A couple of weeks ago, Survation had UKIP on 8% and the Lib Dems on 11%.  UKIP is making gains but it's not at the expense of the Lib Dems whose share of the vote has stagnated.  Comparing the latest figures with those from Survation's poll in March, UKIP's gain has mainly come at Labour's expense who have dropped from 39% to 35%.

City State London

Allister Heath of City AM writes that 'Boris is right to want to transform London into a city state'.

 London is to England what Singapore is to Malaysia, Hong Kong to China or New York to America. Not only economically dominant but with a social and cultural demography radically different from it's hinterland. Compared to the rest of the country London is, of course, far more affluent, far more multicultural, far younger, far more gay and far more single than Britain as a whole.

Not surprisingly then that London is far more left-liberal in its political attitudes  than the rest of Britain. This would not matter, except that unlike New York, Singapore or Hong Kong, London is also the capital of its hinterland country: thus the perceptions of our  political rulers are strongly distorted by Metropolitan attitudes often wildly different from the rest of the country. The situation is greatly exacerbated by our highly centralised form of government, which means none of us can escape the effect those attitudes have on our daily lives, wherever in Britain we happen to live.

Its therefore no wonder that our masters so often seem to woefully out of touch with the country they purport to govern with the result that the people are giving up on politics, or that London's dominance is deeply resented. In fact the push for Scottish independence is not so much the result of alienation from England but with alienation from what they see as London's culturally arrogant and semi-colonial rule. But you could probably find pretty much the same feelings in Leeds, Sheffield or Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle or Cardiff.

The Mayor  limits his analysis to economics and taxation, but isn't there even stronger grounds for giving London much greater autonomy from the rest of Britain on a whole range of issues? Take for instance the issue of immigration. If London feels it needs large quantities of foreign labour to fill its skills shortages, then why not issue visas that allow the recipient to work only in the London area? Instead, we have immigration policies largely suited to the London economy imposed unwillingly on the entire country.

Of course, a proper commitment to localism and devolution, not just the same old empty promises of our present coalition, would also greatly help the situation. Ultimately, it's not just London that needs autonomy from Britain in order to prosper, but if the Union is to survive, and British society is to  function correctly the rest of the country desperately needs more autonomy from London.

Why Cameron's 'Big Society' vision will never catch on

This posting is going to kind to David Cameron - not, I assure you, something that will be a regular occurrence.

We have heard yet again in the last few days of yet another plan to resurrect his vision of the 'Big Society'. Yet again, it's almost complete lack of resonance with the public to date is explained as merely a matter of poor communication, and we are promised this time it will be different.

It maybe true that poor communication is an issue. Also true that the 'push me pull you' effect that this wretched coalition government has on policy generally means that,  while some policies will help the voluntary sector (e.g. "free schools") others are destructive (recent changes in tax policy; the Equality Act) or profoundly  alienating to important players such as religious groups (e.g. gay 'marriage').

However, the bigger reason that the policy will never catch on is that in runs counter to human imaginative capabilities.

John Lennon famously said: "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans".


This encapsulates one of the problems with selling the Big Society vision perfectly. Unfortunately, especially in our younger years, what grabs our imagination are the great dreams we have for ourselves: the beautiful trophy partner, the powerful sports car, the big house and the glittering career. It's true that, even if these great dreams are realised, they often leave us strangely unfulfilled, and what we look back with affection at is often the very small things that seemed entirely trivial at the time but in fact were our happiest moments. Often, a good number of those moments are provided by involvement in local voluntary institutions such as our church, cricket club or scout troop. Apart from the social good it does, it is for that reason that increasing voluntary participation in society is a very good idea and likely to significantly increase the sum of human happiness.

However, even when voluntarism does grab our imaginations, it does so because its impact is small, local and impacts people we care about. To try to sell what is by necessity an intimate experience as a remote, grand vision for society generally is completely contradictory, impossibly confusing and doomed to fail.

David Cameron is entirely right in trying to build a 'Big Society', but extremely foolish to think he could ever sell this vision to the wider public. By trying to do so, there is tragically now a significant risk that he will make such initiatives the focus of widespread derision. Instead, he should have quietly got on with taking the measures necessary for creating a more fertile ground into which voluntarism could have spread its roots and flourish, knowing that he was very unlikely ever to get any credit for doing so.

BBC promoting Greens in London

Last night the BBC ran a special edition of Newsnight in which they invited four candidates for London mayor.

The Tories and Labour were, of course represented, as the two biggest parties by far.  The Lib Dems were invited, not because they are going to win, but presumably because they're part of the coalition and of course their candidate is a gay ex-copper which ticks the diversity boxes.

So who was the fourth candidate invited on the programme?  Logic would tell you it would be the candidate for the party consistently polling in 4th place (sometimes 3rd) in London, the fourth largest party in the UK.  But logic doesn't apply in the BBC, just institutional bias and political agendas so naturally the BBC chose the Greens who fill the three main criteria for getting on a BBC election programme of being on the far left, environmentalists and not being UKIP.

So many times we see the BBC unduly influence elections by ignoring the UKIP candidate and promoting a no-hoper Green extremist for no other reason than because in the mind of your average BBC producer, that is how the world should be.  If you're not a europhile environmentalist then you're a far right extremist who must never be given the oxygen of publicity, regardless of what the electorate says.

We've seen this happen so many times in elections.  In Norwich, Glenn Tingle was polling well ahead of the Greens and his opponents were even predicting a UKIP win and then the BBC propaganda machine kicked in and suddenly UKIP was on the fringes and it was a battle between the LibLabCon and the loony Greens.  Even the Tory fifth columnist Dan Hannan criticised the BBC's bias against UKIP.  In 2010, Lord Pearson threatened to issue legal proceedings against the BBC if they didn't stop their political bias against UKIP in their American-style "Leaders Debate".  In the run-up to last year's vote on an EU referendum in the Commons the BBC pulled Nigel Farage from an appearance on Breakfast at the last minute so they could replace him with a pro-EU Tory instead.  These are just a few of many examples of institutional bias, politicking and gerrymandering at the BBC.

I have sent the following complaint to the BBC today, I would urge you to do the same:

In last night's GLA election themed Newsnight, you had four candidates for the London Mayor: Tory, Labour, Lib Dem and Green.  Despite the fact that UKIP have been consistently out-polling the Greens in every opinion poll by 2% you chose to promote the Green candidate.  UKIP has even been polling above the Lib Dems at times. This is exactly what you do whenever UKIP is doing well in pre-election polling: you invite on the LibLabCon and UKIP's place is always filled by a Green.

Your excuse will no doubt be that the Greens have two assembly members but that has no bearing on the mayoral election and is a reflection of public opinion in 2008, not 2012 so I don't want to hear it as an excuse. I want to know why the BBC's inherent bias against UKIP and in favour of environmentalists (with emphasis on the "mental") is allowed to so obviously surface in persistent discrimination against UKIP, why the BBC's legal obligation to be impartial is ignored where UKIP are involved and why the BBC seeks to unduly influence elections by promoting candidates that it would like to win over those that polling shows are most popular with the electorate.

I don't want excuses, I don't want denials, I just want an explanation as to why you aren't doing your job properly and a promise to put in place immediate steps to end the BBC's political bias.

30th anniversary of the invasion of the Falklands

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands.

It was marked here by remembrance services and in Argentina by sabre rattling speeches by politicians pledging to uphold their illegitimate claim to the islands.

Cast Iron Dave has given a Cast Iron Guarantee™ to uphold the right of Falkland Islanders to decide whether they want to belong to the UK or Argentina – a promise he’s going to struggle to keep now that we’ve decommissioned our last aircraft carrier and we’re reliant on the French for military support.

The closest friendly country (if you can call it friendly) to the Falklands is French Guiana. The closest British Overseas Territory is the Pitcairn Islands which has no facilities that could be used for a military excursion. The closest friendly countries capable of being used as a launchpad for military action are South Africa and New Zealand. Our closest military base is 2,400 away at Tristan da Cunha. The US is siding with Argentina, as is most of South America.

A spangly new destroyer, HMS Dauntless, is on its way to the Falklands and defences on the islands have been bolstered but that won’t stop the continued harassment of Falkland Islanders in non-military ways: threats of legal action against companies doing business in the Falklands, banning Falklands flagged boats from ports and enlisting the help of their neighbours to harass the islanders.

Of course we should defend the right of the Falkland Islanders to choose whether they want to remain a British Overseas Territory or not and everyone has the right to live without harassment or fear but if we are going to make a promise to the Falkland Islanders to protect them then we need to be able to back up that promise with some action. Right now we’re not in a position to do that thanks to the criminally irresponsible behaviour of successive British governments who have run down our military and over-extended our forces fighting illegal and unwinnable wars.

Cross-posted from: Wonko's World

English Democrats collapse in London

The England Watch blog has been looking at the English Democrats' efforts in the London elections ... or rather the lack of effort.

The EDP have been desperately trying to find people to put themselves forward as a candidate:

... we need to stand over 374 candidates, so even if you wouldn’t be able to do any more than just put your nomination papers in, and would therefore stand just as a paper candidate, please do let us know if you would be willing to do this to help us to get a Party Election Broadcast across England

This time round the EDP are standing only one candidate in the super constituencies: former BNP member, Mark Twiddy.  Last time they put forward 13 candidates.  In 2008 they put up 24 London-wide candidates, this time they've got 8 - one is a former senior BNP member and another is an EDL supporter.  Last time they sort of had a candidate for mayor in Fathers4Justice leader Matt O'Connor who resigned from the party at the eleventh hour because of their dishonesty and chronic incompetence.  This time they have no mayoral candidate.  Last time they had a party election broadcast.  This time they couldn't even scrape together enough paper candidates to qualify for one.

But rather than try and make the best out of a pretty pathetic showing, their London campaign guru, Steve Uncles, is spending most of his time attacking UKIP on his English Pisspot blog.  He has even claimed that independent mayoral candidate, Siobhan Benita, is supporting the English Democrats complete with fabricated quotes and a dodgy photoshopped picture of her with the EDP candidates - surely a breach of Electoral Commission rules and possibly even a criminal offence under the Representation of the People Act 1983?  We'll soon find out, it's been reported to the Electoral Commission this morning and we've informed Benita's campaign manger.  Benita might not be very complimentary towards UKIP but she's yet another victim of the English Democrats' bungling incompetence and dirty tricks.

Two defections to UKIP in Derby

The defections are coming in thick and fast as people of all political persuasions are becoming more and more disillusioned with the LibLabCon.

UKIP Derby has claimed its second scalp in a week with former leader of the Tory group in Derby City Council, Martin du Sautoy, on Tuesday and former Labour, then independent, Councillor Alan Graves today.

The current leader of the Labour group has declared Graves a traitor for "betraying" his constituents in 2009 when he ditched Labour and went independent.  The leader of the Tories don't seem particularly interested but the Lib Dem leader really deserves an award for her comment:

I'm surprised Alan Graves has gone to UKIP because that is quite right wing and I wouldn't expect that from someone who was a Labour councillor.

UKIP is a centre right party with the emphasis on centre.  There's something for everyone in UKIP, that's why Labour and Tory councillors and members are leaving their old parties and joining UKIP.

Galloway wins Bradford West

A shock result in Bradford West last night has returned the Scottish communist Islamist, George Galloway, to parliament.

I'd like to thank my campaign team, Allah
and the voting public of Kashmir for electing me

This is usually a safe Labour seat thanks to the extremely high immigrant population but Galloway has managed to take it from them for the Respect party with a campaign specifically targeted at the muslim vote.  A letter he had distributed to the mosques in Bradford could easily be an application to be declared a good muslim rather than a begging letter for votes.  The Respect rosette's are even a declaration of their Islamist credentials.

But this is how democracy works of course - the people of Bradford have decided that they want a Scottish communist who laments the loss of the Soviet Union, supports repressive regimes guilty of human rights abuses, doesn't even live in Bradford and who is quite happy to stand in any constituency anywhere in the country to get into power.  George Galloway has surely got to be the first communist Islamic fundamentalist to enter parliament and his election last night is a truly worrying development.

Every party except UKIP and Respect lost vote share in the election.  Respect got a massive 52.83% increase over the last election in Bradford West, UKIP a more modest 1.31%.  But when you consider that Labour and the Tories both lost over 20% of their vote and the Lib Dems over 7%, a 1.31% increase for UKIP is actually a pretty big vote of confidence.

The full results were ...

George Galloway (Respect) 18,341 (55.89%, +52.83%)
Imran Hussain (Lab) 8,201 (24.99%, -20.36%)
Jackie Whiteley (C) 2,746 (8.37%, -22.78%)
Jeanette Sunderland (LD) 1,505 (4.59%, -7.08%)
Sonja McNally (UKIP) 1,085 (3.31%, +1.31%)
Dawud Islam (Green) 481 (1.47%, -0.85%)
Neil Craig (D Nats) 344 (1.05%)
Howling Laud Hope (Loony) 111 (0.34%)

Garry Bushell and the EU f@#k hotels

Garry Bushell paid a visit to Brussells with Paul Nuttall and a man with a camera to check out the EU's favourite "f**k hotel".  There's no way of linking to the individual article on his blog so I'm sure he won't mind us reproducing it here.  It contains some naughty words and adult themes as they say on the telly but it's a great read.

March 24.While I was in Belgium, I paid a visit to the European Parliament. Now I’m as sceptical about The Project as the next man, as long as the next man is Nigel Farage, but even I was shocked by what I saw inside the belly of the beast. Here is my Brussels diary:

There is a dirty sexy secret lurking alongside the dull and respectable facade of the European Union. Two hotels in easy walking distance of the Brussels Parliament provide short-term rooms to rent for grubby encounters. It costs £21 to hire a room for two hours in Studio Intime in Parnassusstraat – and nobody books one to sleep. Inside the air is heavily perfumed and cupids adorn the walls; outside the canopy is blue with yellow stars mirroring the European Union flag. The two establishments known locally as “fuck hotels” are used largely by EU staff for afternoon delights. Over an hour long period, I watched three couples leave and walk back to work in the lavish Parliamentary building less than fifty yards away. Studio Intime is open about its purposes, advertising its services as providing “rendezvous rooms in Brussels...totally intimate.” Nine different rooms are available from 9am until midnight. The ad promises “complete discretion, impeccable rooms with showers”.

These fuck hotels are an open secret within Parliament. But when you consider the many official perks on offer here you might conclude that tax-payers are the ones getting properly screwed. The children of EU civil servants get free private education, they pay tax at special low rates and they get preferential mortgage rates from banks. The first car they buy is VAT free. Staff can smoke in their offices and bars, where the booze, like the coffee and the high-quality canteen food is subsidised. Half a lager costs you £1 and you can have it for breakfast. The Parliament has a brand new massage parlour, a state of the arts gym, and two saunas.

The masseuse is Melody Fortuna, a beautician whose tasteful promotional picture features her naked bathing in milk she has poured from a stein: http://pokeuroparl.eu/site/estheticienne/melody-fortuna/. Despite the beauty treatment studio being called “POKEuroparl”, there is no suggestion that anything underhand is available here. But has milk ever looked sexier? Talk about Watch out there’s a Hump about...

The Brussels Parliament is bigger than the grandest Las Vegas hotel, but depressingly soulless; the labyrinthine nature of the building perhaps mirroring the baffling complexity of the institution. Inside, the carpets, like the corridor walls, are uniformly as grey as a ghost. The building’s nine bars appear to be thriving though. At 3pm on a Monday I watched a merry group of eight demolish several bottles of champagne. They were interpreters, all on a little under 1,000 Euros a day. In the EU, you get to say “Cheers!” in twenty-three different languages...

The gender imbalance is hard to avoid. Civil service figures reveal that 80 per cent of the younger staff are female, while 70 per cent of the oldest are male. The atmosphere is sexually charged and affairs are rife. “Conversation is how much they get paid and how they get laid,” shrugs a cynical barman. In the EU’s second seat, in Strasbourg, open smoking in the MEPs’ bar is allowed. In Brussels, smokers are supposed to use smoking shelters, which are sited bizarrely inside and are wide open, so that the smoke drifts out anyway. But MEPs who choose to light up at the tables instead go unpunished.

My investigation unearthed a staggering catalogue of waste, privilege, and double standards. More than 1,000 EU officials earn more than David Cameron, who is on £142,000 a year. Civil servants are big earners too. Those in the highest pay grade take home more in a month – £15,482 - than a British nurse earns in a year. Four in every ten are on more than £70K a year – for working a 37 hour week. In Britain, the MPs expenses scandal shocked the nation; but MEPs have it much easier. They don’t need to claim expenses, they all receive a monthly allowance of just over £3,000 – no receipts required. There are 754 MEPs who in addition to their hefty salaries get £237 a day just for signing in; many sign in and disappear. “No-one ever checks,” one tells me. They have chauffeur-driven limousines laid on for them at a cost of £4.25million a year; all drivers sign a confidentiality clause “guaranteeing absolute discretion.” It’s unclear where they are taking them however because, as debates on YouTube show, the chamber is usually empty. The only place you will see it full is in filmed footage inside the recently opened Parliamentarium – a plush visitors’ centre built at a cost of £18million which is devoted to plugging the EU. The centre is as bizarre as it is deserted. One wall, more than 100 yards long, is covered in historical pictures which bafflingly include minor British pop stars Sigue Sigue Sputnik. Another long wall displays head-shots of MEPs. A third room boats an array of furniture and flat film footage of the sea and various citizens. It’s like Armchair Theatre for the lobotomised. But on the plus side, visiting school-kids do get the chance to role-play at being MEPs.

The EU has also given the go-head for a House Of European History at a cost of £137million to “promote an awareness of European identity.” Its history will begin in 1946 so it does not include World War Two – known here as “the European Civil War.” They don’t want to upset the Germans.

The Eurozone crisis may be sparking chaos across southern Europe but in the EU the spending never stops. Arguably the biggest waste is Strasbourg. Each month staff and MEPs pack up and commute to eastern France. This “travelling circus” costs £135million a year. But the arrangement, thought up to symbolise French-German friendship, brings so much money into Strasbourg the French won’t allow it to stop. The third seat in Luxembourg has two debating chambers that have never been used and more than 3,000 permanent staff. Their new HQ, with sports facilities and a swimming pool, cost £716million to build.

While the EU lectures member states about austerity and cutting their budgets, they’re merrily raising theirs. The thought of economising never seems to cross their minds. When van Rompuy and Commission President José Barroso flew to China last year, they went in separate jets. This place is the biggest organised racket since the Kray Twins – and vastly more lucrative. “Life in the Brussels bubble is completely cut off from the reality of life outside,” Scouse UKIP MEP Paul Nuttall tells me. But sensitive to mounting criticism, the EU pays news agency AFB to pump out pro-EU propaganda. In 2008, they also launched a European parliament TV channel which costs £7million a year to run and has 830 viewers a day. The total cost of pro-EU propaganda is £2.02 billion per year, according to research by reform group New Direction. The BBC has benefited from low interest loans from the European Investment Bank. And the EU look after their own. Two British MEPs who lost their seats in 2009 were given jobs working for van Rompuy. The EU also gifts money to professors to undertake ‘research on the EU’; many of these Jean Monnet professors teach European studies at UK universities. Their classes are of course uncritical.

THE European Commission, a short walk from the Parliament, is the real seat of power. 5,000 laws a year are passed but only one in five appears before MEPs, the rest go through as directives and decrees. “The Parliament is democratic facade, a confidence trick,” says Nuttall. “Article 17, paragraph 2 states that the Commission has the sole right of legislative proposal. If MEPs make amendments, the Commission has the power to insist on a unanimous decision.” Yet rules and regulations don’t seem to apply to the EU themselves. Despite passing laws to force down greenhouse gas emissions, they ignore the fact that travelling to Strasbourg creates an extra 18,884 tonnes of CO2 per year. Similarly despite their energy saving policies, the large neon sign on the Paliamentarium building is left on all night, even though there is no-one to see it and no passing traffic. More disturbing is the revelation that Eurocrats are breeding. It is estimated that around one in eight civil servants are second generation, a small but rising number are third generation. They are becoming a hereditary class. Rebel Euro-sceptic MEP Godfrey Bloom says: “Nothing prepares you for the reality, the waste, the remoteness of it all. When I first arrived in 2004, I was saddened and sickened by what I found.” “It’s the death of democracy – at your expense,” says Nuttall. “EU membership costs the British tax-payer £50million per day. If people knew what was going on here, they would be up in arms.” If you support a British referendum on EU membership, sign up here.

There is another, dearer ‘fuck hotel’ called the Treviso on Place Stephanie which is used by the more well-heeled Eurocrats. This one rents out its rather more glamorous, brothel-style rooms at a hefty £66 an hour. Its promotional material tempts would be adulterers with a promise of "room service and discretion assured." Anne De Schepper, the hotel's manager, said that EU officials prefer to book out rooms over their long lunch breaks. “Eurocrats are 80 per cent of our business,” she revealed. “We are busiest at lunch time, followed by early evening in between the end of office hours and the time people need to get back to their homes.” She added: “Unlike the traditional hotel industry, we have not experienced the economic crisis thanks largely to the Europeans in Brussels.”

Euro Facts: EU security bosses recently issued a memo warning that middle-aged Eurocrat adulterers were being targeted by Mata Hari style interns who were said to be trading sex for EU secrets. They said they were easy prey for the "pretty trainee with the long legs and the blonde hair."

Reports by the Parliament’s internal auditor leaked last year revealed that EU staff are allowed to authorise their own expenses and pay allowances to family members. The auditor, British accountant Robert Galvin, found serious problems with the way “personal entitlements” and perks, worth more than £81 million a year, are being paid to civil servants. His investigation, kept secret from most MEPs, revealed multiple examples of officials being paid twice for the same thing or claiming allowances they were not entitled over a three year period. Cash is paid without proof of “eligibility of costs” or any proper audit checks that the money is spent properly. Rule-breaking is common. The reports also found “critical” irregularities and conflicts of interest concerning procurement contracts worth more than £600 million a year. Marta Andreasen, the former whistle-blowing European Commission chief accountant, said: “The parliament’s bureaucracy operates with a total lack of transparency, which is how it gets away with these irregularities.”

Euro Stats: Total number of staff employed by EU: 6684. Of whom, 5540 are civil servants, 129 are temps and 1015 work for political groups.

As well as Brussels, I visited the beautiful Black Forest with my band, and Bologna, one of the mainstays of the Italian Oi and Punk scenes, as part of my signing tour for the Dance Craze book (both trips reported on the Gonads blog). Here I noticed teenage skinheads with ‘Oi’ tattooed on one arm and the hammer and sickle on the other – a sight to blow the minds of the UK media who, to a sheep, are happy to write off skins and streetpunk as exclusively rightwing phenomena. They were never that in 1980/81 and they aren’t now.