Kent Brockman said it best. Democracy simply does not work.

Kinda reminds me of Fianna Gael/Labour relationship

Can we not just secede from this nonsense EU & throw out lot in with Canada? We mostly speak the same language & half the young people in the country are there already.

It’s bad, as the holders of the presidency it is our mess to sort out.

Its bad because right now, while national governments are all tightening our belts we need a strong Europe, one which is able to deliver targeted developments and lift the bloc’s employment prospects. However, as we are all aware, the EU costs a crazy amount just to run itself, and what this budget does is remove the hope of the EU being able to do anything to help recovery.

The EU itself will not be reduce the expense of running itself (its up to leaders of each state to reform that) so what we will see is cuts to subsidies to farmers and fishermen, cuts to regional development and the certainty that the European Union will not be in a position to deliver a strong Europe comeback, which will weaken us as America and Asian states seek to suck global power from these shores.

Although, great for Eurospectics, because Cameron can now show that they are sending billions to Brussels and all its doing is funding an inefficient institution to run itself. Its a great shame and hopefully MEP’s will send this back to the table and leaders will agree on something stronger than what they are presenting to us now.

So to summarise:

(1) The MEPs don’t believe in Europe’s ability to control its admin expenses; and

(2) The MEPs believe that a good way to save the economy is to take more money away from citizens and spend it on CAP and regional development projects.

We’re in worse trouble than I thought.

(1) Well I’m not sure how MEP’s feel on the matter, but I wouldnt be holding my breath on them reducing costs, and in reality, its all the various institutions that create the union (and the fact that it rotates between two cities) and the many, many other expenses which are impressively inefficient that create the sizable admin costs and MEPs have as much power as you or I in altering that framework. Its up the likes of Hollande, Cameron and Kenny to deliver that kind of reform.

(2) MEPs as well as economists around the world would hold that view since the 1930’s when Keynes published his ‘General Theory’. That exact policy is what took American out of the great depression and towards prosperity and has been successfully implemented over and over since. Government’s spending more during recessions has found to lift economies time and time again, cutting payments to farmers (who are not making ends meet as it is) and reducing job creating developments across Europe will do nothing to help lift the Economy. In Ireland we cannot depend on the government to supply all essential services, provide payments to the poor, elderly and sick, prop up businesses (through the banks) and reign in the budget to something which resembles something sustainable AND pump enough money into our economy to revitalize it in a meaningful way. Even if they did, we are a small open economy, which requires strong economies internationally to sell our products to.

While the Irish Banking Crisis has been renamed the European Banking Crisis and the EU has become vilified in recent years, people are ignoring that in reality we its the EU we are depending on to pull us out of this mess.

Keynes’ theory depends upon governments pumping money into the economy to reinflate it. Even if you take it as correct (which not every economist does), this depends on running at least a temporary deficit.

The MEPs don’t want to do this. In fact, they say they are worried about that very prospect (though they don’t explain how it will happen). What they want to do is spend more and tax more – rob Peter to pay Paul – and to do so directly rather than in the roundabout way that inflation does it.

The EU hardly costs a “crazy amount to run itself”! EU administration costs 4% of the EU budget, where most civil services cost between 10% and 25% of their budget.

Europe has 320million people to feed. It is slowly becoming a net importer of food as production drops across the EU every year. Farming is getting more uneconomic each year so more drop out. This is a dangerous trend. One of the founding principles of the Common Market (now EU) after the second world war was a secure food policy for europe. It will not be good if we become dependent on other economic blocks to grow our food. Food shortages are the biggest political concern and the big driver in regime change in countries in middle east and africa. Our smugness in Europe could dissappear fast if we had food scarcity. World population has exploded over the past 50 years resulting in dramatic increases in food requirements. One example….in 1950 the world consumed 6 million tonnes of beef. By 2020 the world will need 50 million tonnes to meet demand. So before you bitch about supporting agriculture think about where you want your food to come from to feed your family in 10 years time. You cant eat you iPad!

This is standard procedure the Council agree what their nations are willing to provide to fund the EU for a set number of years and then that is passed to the Parliament to set detailed annual budgets. In fact, this has taken longer than hoped this year because they couldn’t agree the first time they met.

And Wednesday nights legislation needed to be enacted before the markets opened, because somebody leaked the plan to liquid IRBC. It was a rushed piece of legislation and its unfortunate that it was, but at least the Government acted swiftly, worked throughout the night and managed to have President Higgins sign off on it two hours before markets opened saving the country billions of euro.