Jul 11th 2007 Strasbourg Commentary

11 July 2007

UK Independence Party From the Office of Derek Clark, MEP, East Midlands Rowan House, 23 Billing Road, Northampton NN1 5AT Tel: 01604 620064 Fax: 01604 636002 Email: mep@derekclarkmep.org.uk Strasbourg Commentary It’s Wednesday in Strasbourg and to-days press are running the story “Barroso hails the European Empire”, well at last I now know we were spot on with our predictions over the years. Nigel Farage, UKIP leader, commented on this during his morning speech whilst the President of the European Commission shook his head in denial. Nigel Farage was at the time responding to a speech by the new EU President in Office, Jose Socrates, Prime Minister of Portugal, and other speakers who included EU assistance to Africa in their self congratulatory outpourings. Nigel’s comments that if the EU was serious about helping Africa the first thing they should do would be to ban Mugabe from the impending African Conference and, secondly, withdraw the EU fishing licences which reduce African fishermen to poverty went down like a lead balloon. There are none so deaf as those that do not wish to hear. Wednesday lunchtime and we hoped to stage a demonstration outside in the courtyard against the new Constititution(sorry I meant Treaty). To do so you must get written permission, we duly applied as did the UEN (Union for Europe of the Nations), they got permission and guess what?, we were denied! I do not know if this was a good or bad thing. We were going to use the large, inflatable bulldozer that had been confiscated by the Belgian Police in Brussels two weeks ago. I stood by it to keep an eye on it whilst the police deflated and then rolled it up to put in the back of their van. The police wanted to know what I was doing and I told them it was our property. At that time it was undamaged, save for a few scratches from the gravel it was dragged over. I was right to be suspicious. When we got it back from the Belgian Police on Tuesday it was found to have been attacked by knives with many slashes in the tough fabric. Welcome to the “Common system of Justice and Security” as mentioned in the new Constitution (sorry, Treaty). Derek Clark MEP Strasbourg Wednesday 11th July 2007