EU Crisis Royal Mail Cops Stoned Galloway Egypt Blah Blah

Gisela Stuart acknowledges that the EU is heading for trouble.

Europe is in crisis and many of the critical comments which used to be so typically British can now be heard elsewhere. The traditional response to crisis in the EU is "more Europe" – to force through integration that would not previously have been tolerated. This may happen again, but proponents of further integration and political union are playing with fire.

Europeans will never view the union as the citizens of California and Texas see the American union. Without this, political union in Europe is impossible. If the potential benefits of co-operation between Europe's nation states are to be realised, the EU needs to be closer to the vision of the former West German chancellor Ludwig Erhard, a fellow native of Bavaria: a commitment to free trade, but otherwise much less power to the union and much more for member states.

My own view is that the obvious outcome of continued compulsory unification by Brussels will be increased nationalism and conflict. If the EU goes ahead with the Lisbon Constitution then there definitely will be trouble - may be not at first but not far down the line. In the same way that there will be trouble if New Labour stay in power at the next general election.

And talking of the election - perhaps NewLab are not looking to the middle classes rampaging in the streets in order to invoke the Civil Contingencies Act, but rather our old friends the 'Real' IRA and other assorted murderers and wannabe terrorist heroes.

So, the cops keep a database on protestors? Not really news, though, since they've been doing this sort of thing since they were established. Wouldn't you be more surprised to find they weren't keeping files on everybody?

Reading the letters page of the Observer yesterday concerning Mandelson and the intention to privatise the Royal Mail I noted that none of the correspondents mentioned the EU. None of the paper's own writers ever mentions it either (same for the Guardian). I emailed the following to the Observer to see why their journalists avoid mention of the EU:

Dear Sir,

What a pity that neither the writers published in today's Observer (8/3/09) nor your own correspondents mention the root cause of the Royal Mail's problems, ie EU postal directives, and persist in behaving as if it's all down to the government.

Mandelson, Brown and Co have no option but to obey the EU's directives requiring a fully open ('liberalised') postal market by 2010. Neither do the Tories, which is why they won't be voting against privatisation. No doubt they're hoping that this will all have blown over by the time they get into office.

Without acknowledging this fact all these argument are pointless and dishonest. That suits the government because they don't want electors to know that our ministers are merely lackeys of Brussels and that we are no longer masters of our own postal system.

What I find unforgivable is that the EU dimension is consistently absent from the reporting in both the Observer and the Guardian. Is this because your writers do not know about the relevant directives, or consider them to be unimportant? Or are they deliberately avoiding mention of them? If so, why?

I await satisfaction...

And h/t Blaney's Blarney for this beaut: George Galloway Stoned In Egypt (not, not weed; real stones). Presumably George didn't like the fact that Egypt blamed Hamas for the war.