Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2013 18:25:57 +0000
From: REDACTED
To: REDACTED
CC: REDACTED
Subject: Re: UKIP Voting – in Brussels!
Hi REDACTED,
I’m not sure when REDACTED circulated this explanation of voting policy from an ‘EUKIP insider’, but, I’m afraid to say that it’s, at best, disingenuous!!!
EUKIP MEP’s have in fact voted for/signed up to EU legislation in the past, and they continue to do so!
[In early 2007, UKIP MEP Derek Clark signed an agreement in Bucharest endorsing subsidiarity and the Common Agricultural Policy?
Roger Knapman, ex UKIP leader, described (at the time) this as a “. . .major departure from what we believed to be UKIP’s policy – withdrawal from the EU, a complete rejection of its authority and of the CAP. Subsidiarity is an EU doctrine which assumes EU sovereignty. . . Accepting subsidiarity accepts ultimate EU sovereignty.”]
Now to the very recent Fisheries Resolutions:
1 On the final resolution relating to the fisheries vote (A7008/2013 Rodust), EUKIP did not support it, but abstained. This was a vote to remove from the CFP the hugely unpopular, disgraceful and non-sensical discards policy where dead fish are thrown back into the sea. The Tories, including Euro withdrawalists Hannan and Bannerman, supported the motion.
In fact, if one peruses the various RCVs (electronic votes) it gets worse; much of the time EUKIP were voting against each other! Example:
Amendment 220: most of ukip voted ‘for’ but Farage and Bloom voted to
‘abstain’.
Amendment 253: most of ukip were ‘against’ but Farage ‘abstained’.
So, where was the EUKIP whip – is there one? Indeed, did EUKIP have a common policy on this motion or did different researchers and MEPs arrive at different conclusions?
Apart from providing ‘jobs for the boys’ who fall within the favour of Farage and his sycophants, what do the numerous staff in the Brussels branch of ukip actually do? Certainly, most MEPs in ukip do not bother to attend their committees and ukip has two MEPs with amongst the worst attendance in Brussels – ie Nuttall and Bloom. Attendance records can be checked by googling Vote Watch
EU.
[REDACTED, maybe your ‘insider’ could answer these questions?]
2 If EUKIP only vote in favour of repealing legislation, why did they not vote to support the Rodust motion, to end discards?!
3 EUKIP say: “We do not vote FOR any EU legislation (unless it is to straight repeal something, or it censures the Commission, both super-rare), as we do not recognise the legitimacy of the EU, to make laws to govern our country.”
The best that can be said for this claim is that it’s a perfect excuse not to do any work or to scrutinise legislation. In other words, it enables EUKIP MEPs to remain even more lazy than their reputation suggests.
They cannot, of course, have it both ways. If they vote in favour of censuring the Commission or repealing legislation, then they must recognise the legitimacy of the EU by voting in favour of motions!
The fact is, the EU legislates for the UK. By ignoring such legislation, EUKIP MEPs do not take part in the process and produce no influence on that process whatsoever. This was evidenced by Godfrey Bloom’s absence in his Finance Committee, when – due to that absence – a crucial vote affecting the UK tied. The legislation therefore proceeded to Plenary (when Bloom’s Committee vote could have halted it) and was passed. Had Bloom bothered to attend, the motion would have been thrown out before it reached Plenary. A Tory MEP referred to this in a Blue Card she put to Bloom some months ago. (Look it up)
Naturally enough, the excuses EUKIP employ are no more than to cover up gross laziness and slothful inactivity. As Verhofstadt has stated of Farage, ‘what you are doing here is incredible; you are cheating your own taxpayers’. That outburst referred to Farage’s absence on his own Fisheries Committee. Since then, Farage has resigned from his fisheries Committee and is now about the only MEP who does not bother to sit on any Committee.
4 Farage pushed off half way through the voting that Wednesday. No surprise there: Farage does whatever he wants but is notorious for excusing himself from voting – a primary purpose of an MEP. If he had an interview, why did he not conduct it before voting or after voting? Or could it be that affairs of state are secondary to publicity to satiated the vast ego of this upstart spiv?
5 Finally, here is an example of EUKIP’s absurd position: if the EU voted to cease the killing of the first born, would EUKIP abstain because the legislation emanated from the EU?
The reality is that the EU makes laws. The reason MEPs are sent to Brussels is to represent their constituents and nation. They are not sent to join a well-paying gravy train and do as little as they possibly can get away with doing.
Finally, the claim that UKIP only votes to repeal legislation or censure the Commission is a lie. On the 27th January, 2005, in a treacherous action, EUKIP MEPs voted to support ‘closer social, political and economic integration’ in the EU, in a motion connected to the holocaust, whose subtext called for ‘closer political, economic and social integration’ with the EU, for brainwashing in schools and for the outlawing of ‘xenophobia’, a thought-crime defined by the EU as merely an aversion to the Euro? EUKIP MEPs, who breached their own party constitution, neither apologised nor renounced this treachery.
Rgds
REDACTED
Greg Lance - Watkins (Greg_L-W)
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