Enjoy your last day..


Last day? Of what? Last day for a lot of things. Lots of things that really matter. Or should really matter.

Ancient laws, concepts, paradigms, ways of living that have, over centuries, become part of our lives.

All are to be swept away at midnight tonight, as the Lisbon Treaty comes into force. Remember the Lisbon treaty?

The one Gordon Brown signed, covertly, almost secretly, after all the other signatories had gone home.

The one he signed after breaking his and his party's promise to give us a referendum.

The one the Irish signed after - in spite of having had a referendum and voted 'No'  - a second referendum got the 'right' answer, the answer the Eurocrats wanted.

And at midnight tonight, the final bolt slides home, and the door is locked. We're in. We're bound by the treaty. And that means some of our own inconvenient little traditions have to go.

The excellent Captain Ranty has made a little list, from which CF borrows extensively, below. By all means read his list, but be warned: it will - or it fucking well should - piss you off, mightily.

So, what are we losing? What's being taken away? Well, among other things:

Habeas corpus ad subjiciendum. Until today, no-one could lock you up without having a lawful reason to do so. Today, for the last time, if you believe that you have been incarcerated and no evidence supports that incarceration, you can demand a Writ of Habeas Corpus from the court. Tomorrow - when Habeas Corpus is gone - you could be incarcerated for up to eight months without charge.

Courts de jure : "courts by jury": as the clock strikes midnight tonight, your right to be judged by a jury of your peers disappears.

The dear old five pound note: according to the Treaty, "All member states must use a single currency". And it's not going to be fucking Sterling, now, is it?

Innocence until proven guilty. From tomorrow morning you, 'the accused', are guilty until you can prove your innocence. Instead of having to convince '12 good men and true' that you are innocent, you now have to prove to one man - the judge -  that you are not guilty.

Sovereignty.  Under the EU our sovereignty is dead and buried. No more English, no more Scots, no more Irish, no more Welsh. We are all 'European' tomorrow.

Democracy. When you wake up on Tuesday morning, we will have given away this method of rule, swapped it for an oligarchy. Our new rulers in Europe are not elected, they are selected. We had no say in whether or not Blair became President, and none of us chose Baroness Whatsit of Nonentity to be Head of Whateveritis, did we? None of us had even heard of her, much less voted for her. Expect more - much more - of the same.

If you're not yet filled with either boiling rage or abject terror, perhaps you should look very carefully at this, the most chilling statement from Captain Ranty:

"Legally, I could not have said any of this after midnight ... To criticise the EU becomes a crime then."

How in the name of fuck did we come to this?


_

25 comments:

banned said...

I'm even less than not Enlish; I'm to be Balkanised into a North West Region Of Englander or a London Region Of Englander.
Cunts.

Jill said...

Habeas corpus has been under such assault. From terrorism charges to the European Arrest Warrant. It's my pet constant fury dontchaknow. MUCH more important to a democracy than a vote in which only one of only two ticks between two nigh-on identical parties actually decides anything.

Captain Ranty said...

Thanks CF.

I didn't mention the furious, but secret shenanigans to have us all using the Euro soon. Now it no longer a secret. No need. It is written right there in the treaty "All member states must use a single currency". I wonder if I will be paying for my 2010 Christmas scoff in Euro instead of our beloved sterling?

I was too saddened to mention that we have a death penalty reintroduced from 1st December. Buried in a footnote (FFS!) it is clear: no policemen or women involved in fatal shootings will be charged. There may not even be investigations.

Fuck me gently.

Our world changes tomorrow and I have no idea how we change it back.

CR.

richard said...

CR, you are correct about the death penalty, which can be imposed in a "national emergency".
you forgot (or were too disheartened, i suspect) to mention slavery.
you can be reduced to slavery
under a "national emergency", to fulfil your "normal civic obligations."
also you may be forced to work if you are imprisoned (which is already the case in the US where privately-owned prisons produce goods via very cheap prison labour)
there is also the allowance for forced conscription into the army, with conscientious objectors being forced to do alternative work if they don't want to fight.
CF and CR, the 4th Reich is here. there is a very good chance, given the history of Statism's love of violence towards it's own citizens, that we are all goners.
the wise man might consider a permanent holiday to a non-EU nation, preferably one with a nuclear arsenal, and probably not the United States of FEMA.

Hurf Durf said...

"To criticise the EU becomes a crime then."

What the fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck?

Fuck EuroFederalism.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, I'm going to need to see your sources for this one before I can take it seriously. We've covered the Treaty in my EU Law courses this semester, and the opt-out clause seems to cover most of your complaints so far.

13th Spitfire said...

Though I am also very critical of what has been said, where does it say we cannot criticize the EU anymore. I have read the damn thing (so I thought) but I could not find it, clearly I must have missed it. Link anyone?

Constantly Furious said...

@13th Spit':

Captain Ranty was asked this on his post too, and replied:

"Here is a short segment from an old article (still looking for a piece I read only last week):

Although the Connolly case involved enforcement of an employment regulation against an E.U. employee, nothing in the opinion limits the court's rationale to this narrow context. Freedom of expression, the opinion argues, may be stifled if necessary for "the protection of the rights of others." And the "rights of others" include the "right" of the European Union to prevent damage to its own "image and reputation." The principle would certainly sustain a national government's law forbidding criticism of the European Union. Indeed, since the European Court of Justice can override national laws in order to enforce E.U. laws, the Connolly principle could conceivably be used to invalidate a nation's constitutional protection of free speech—at least where criticism of the European Union or other governments is involved.

"In short, Connolly takes a major step toward reinstating the offense of seditious libel—that is, the crime of criticizing the government so as to injure its reputation.

"Historically, the truth of the statement was no defense against the charge of seditious libel. Indeed, truthfulness harmed the government all the more. As Lord Holt put it in the 1704 English case Rex v. Tuchin: "nothing can be worse to any government than to endeavor to produce animosities as to the management of it . . .no government can be safe unless it is punished. "

"Before Connolly, seditious libel had been purged from the Anglo-American legal tradition. In England, an important step in this direction was Fox's Libel Act of 1792, which allowed juries to render general verdicts of acquittal in seditious libel prosecutions. The European Union, though, recognizes no right to a jury trial. Cases are decided by professional government employees, not by one's peers"

The link:

http://www.davekopel.org/Media/Mags/SilencingOppositionInTheEU.htm

Captain Ranty said...

Thanks CF. You beat me to it.

CR.

Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tVt3mvb-dE

"...England, bound in with the triumphant sea
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself..."

arthur said...

EU will not be satisfied with the status quo, so what will it plunder first? Possibly our financial institutions in City of London - transferred to Frankfurt or Paris - and naturally sterling replaced by the euro. I hope I'm being paranoid, but........

Dingdongalistic said...

Erm...

Do you happen to have a better source for this information, than "Captain Ranty's blog"? Because astonishingly, I fail to find a source on the relevant page you linked to, either, apart from one rather dubious interpretation of an ECJ ruling on the termination of employment of a Commission worker -- we only have the word of the person writing that article that it would apply on a broader level than EU employment law.

As for the other allegations, nothing. Nada. Zilch.

David

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