EU for beginners

Yesterday I had France for beginners, today Chrenkoff has the complete guide to the EU:

Meanwhile, the Old Europe’s struggle against the dastardly New European regimes and their “unfair” low corporate tax rates continues unabated (for some background, see my previous post). The bad news is that Gerrit Zalm, the Dutch finance minister who will take over the EU’s finance policy for the next six months, agrees with Germany’s and France’s push to set a minimum (higher) corporate tax base across the Union. The good news is, he is not in favour of sanctions against countries that break the proposed minimum tax base. That’s a relief. But still, we couldn’t have some competition and pro-business policies in the EU, could we?

This matter has been brought up again by the German Chancellor Schroeder at a meeting with the Polish Prime Minister Belka. In response to Schroeder not-so-subtle hints, Belka “congratulated the German Chancellor on the development level of his country and promised that it would be easier to discuss tax harmonization once [Poland] reached a similar level.” I saw Belka on TV when he delivered this line – he was looking straight at Schroeder and grinning broadly; it’s as close as you can get in diplomatic-speak to saying “Fuck off and don’t try to ruin our economic growth.” Germany, of course, could harmonise its taxed downwards, which could possibly help to reduce its 4.3 million-long unemployment queue. Here’s hoping.

In other economic news, the Belgians are considering the introduction of a four-day working week.

Chrenkoff also touches on other topics, such as Medallagate, nudist cycling and the condom ambulance.

Paul Johnson, however, says “Want to Prosper? Then Be Tolerant

On the evidence of the second half of the 20th century it would appear that Islamic state control is a formula for continuing poverty, and Islamic fundamentalism a formula for extreme poverty.

The more I study history, the more I deplore the existence of those–be they clerics, bureaucrats or politicians–who think they know what’s best for ordinary people and impose it on them. We have a pungent example of this know-all mentality in the EU. The bureaucrats of Brussels have created yet another brand of intolerance that determines by law everything from the shape of bananas to the number of seats in a bus, from apple growing to house plumbing. As a result the German economy is contracting and the French economy is stagnant. There are now more unemployed people in single-currency EU Europe than there have been at any other time since the worst of the 1930s, and many of them will never work again.

Let those of us fortunate enough to live in the U.S. or Britain hang on to our traditions of tolerance at all costs, resisting like fury all those who seek to undermine them with political correctness or any other kind of dogma.

Stephen Pollard states, Remember this when you vote: the EU isn’t working: “If the [15] EU [states, before expansion] was an American state, it would be poorer than almost all its 50 neighbours. . . Today, the average American spends 77 per cent more on consumption than the average EU citizen — not only because US GDP is higher but also because taxes are about 12 per cent lower.”

Tolerance goes a long way.