Proud to Be British?

I had to laugh during my visit to the British Embassy today.

A big poster advertises its mission to provide the 'highest standard of service', even though they summarily closed the passport office last week and relocated it to Paris to cut costs. Of the 'service' that remains in the consular section, this is what the highest standard looks like:

As I had predicted, security was tight outside the embassy with lots of menacing looking anti-tank bollards blocking the pavement. I had to hurdle over one of them to get to the consular section.

Once there, the punters are left outside in the cold until they are called, one by one, into a room where they are x-rayed, frisked, and have their phones confiscated. Woe betide those who visit the place on a rainy day.

Once negotiating the security staff you go up the stairs and wait in what seems like an interminable queue while the two staff members on duty bumble about. You reach the cash desk where there is a big poster explaining which impossibly high fee goes with which basic administrative task.

Three attested copies of my passport were to set me back 36 euros which I thought was rather steep. We're talking about some good old fashioned ink and stamps here.

However that was nothing compared to the cost of registering your marriage, at nearly 100 euros, or giving up your citizenship (which I might otherwise have been tempted to do today, given that being British can sometimes seem a lot more trouble than it's worth).

I brought the question of these 'fees' up with the woman at the desk who told me, rather apologetically, that they were set by the government to cover the costs of the embassy staff.

I said I thought that was what taxes were for. But apparently the government is too busy spending our hard-earned on illegal wars to spend any on a foreign service British nationals might actually need.

Having swallowed the fees news, I took out my card to pay. Things were looking good until the machine broke down. Apparently it had been doing that all morning. A problem connected to the telephone line. Well, fair enough, but perhaps they would accept payment in cash. Pounds to be precise?

Of course not. I would have to go to the bank, get euros (of which I had five on my person), and wait in the stupid queue again, all in order to come back the next day to get the attested copies because this apparently simple procedure was to take them a full day to complete...

This contrasts markedly with my experience at the Irish Embassy, where I went for the same purpose with my Irish passport. I walked straight in - no queues, no checks - rang the bell, took a seat, and seconds later some pleasant old soul took my passport and attested the copies I'd brought on the spot - FOR FREE!

Rule Britannia, eh?

Neologisms of Note

It was over two hundred years ago that the Brits gave up on the idea of policing the English language, as the French continue to do with their Academie Francaise, and let usage reign supreme as the arbiter of whether something is, or isn't, acceptable.

So let's start using some of the new words below, many of which seem DESIGNED with the EU institutions in mind, and see if they make it into next year's updated edition of the OED!
I got this as a foward and have posted all the non-crass suggestions it contains...Further suggestions very welcome in comments!

Now excuse me while I stop testiculating and go and perform some percussive maintenance on my computing device, so I can return to my vital 'work' in the adminisphere.

Later...

SALAD DODGER. An excellent phrase for an overweight person.

TESTICULATING.Waving your arms around and talking bollocks (accurate description of parliament's plenary sessions).

BLAMESTORMING.Sitting round in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.

SEAGULL MANAGER. A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves.

ASSMOSIS. The process by which people seem to absorb success and advancement by sucking up to the boss rather than working hard.

SALMON DAY.The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die.

CUBE FARM.An office filled with cubicles.

PRAIRIE DOGGING.When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on. (This also applies to applause for a promotion because there may be cake.)

SITCOMs. Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage. What yuppies turn into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids or start a 'home business'.

SINBAD. Single working girls. Single income, no boyfriend and desperate (applies to most girls I know in Brussels...no matter how gorgeous or talented)

AEROPLANE BLONDE. One who has bleached/dyed her hair but still has a 'black box'.

PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE. The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get itto work again.

ADMINISPHERE.The rarefied organisational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the 'adminisphere' are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve. This is often affiliated with the dreaded 'administrivia' - needless paperwork and processes (believe me, this strikes a chord)

404. Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error message '404 Not Found' meaning that the requested document could not be located.

OH - NO SECOND. That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've justmade a BIG mistake (e.g. you've hit 'reply all').

JOHNNY-NO-STARS. A young man of substandard intelligence, the typical adolescent who works in a burger restaurant. The 'no-stars' comes from the badgesdisplaying stars that staff at fast-food rest au rants often wear to showtheir level of training.

Revealed: Contents of MEPs Expenses Report

Dutch MEP Paul van Buitenen has defied the Parliamentary Authorities and published an executive summary of the controversial report highlighting abuses of MEP expenses on his personal website.

This clearly states that the current system of staff payments, which can take numerous different contractual forms which alter depending on the MEP's nationality, is far too complicated for the Directorate General for Finance "to monitor effectively the legality, regularlity, and sound financial management of the Members' contractual arrangements".

It goes on to cite a variety of abuses, including payments of the 186000 euro staff allowance to dubious service providers who carry out irrelevant activities like child caring or trading in wood, or, in one case, no activity at all. In some cases, these providers have registered only one or indeed NO assistants to manage the MEPs office, well below the average staff ratio, and include payments to wives and family or the MEPs themselves.

In one exceptional case, an MEP was found to be the sole owner of the service provider to which he paid his allowances. This service provider was registered in a different country and did not figure in his declaration of interests (go figure!). He is now under investigation by OLAF, the EU's anti-fraud bureau.

In other forty two cases, Members who did not get re-elected paid generous 'lay-off payments' to their assistants to exhaust their budgets, one of whom received a total payout of 8890 euros from five separate MEPs over a three month period, in breach of the PEAM rules.

Other abuses related to non-payment or registration of VAT for which they are liable and inflated travel expenses for assistants (in one case, amounting to three times their annual salary).

Small wonder few wanted this to be published.

However it must be said that, if the sample of 167 MEPs is representative of the whole, the number of extreme abuses are relatively few. The really worrying thing is the fact that the vast majority of MEPs fail to register or protect their staff, fuelling fears that working for a parliamentarian often amounts to outright exploitation, particularly for stagiaires.

The audit shows that in 80% of cases, MEPs failure to register assistants with a social security scheme to protect them against unemployment or illness - a slap in the face for the majority of staff who are not recipients of their chief's largesse.

It is time the Parliament stopped trying to hide the evidence of abuses and faced up to its responsibilities, both to the staff it employs and the citizens it represents - whose tax dollar, lest we forget, is paying for these scams.

The new Members' statute, which comes into force next year, will represent a major step forwards in terms of fairness and transparency. It should be accompanied by a beefed-up assistants' statute which ensures all staff are paid a reasonable wage, through a less complex and more accountable system.

Then, and only then, can we iron out the discrepancies that make working in politics such a lottery.

European Parliament Must Clean Up Its Act

The Daily Telegraph has just blown the whistle on the widespread and criminal abuse of expenses by MEPs in the European Parliament.

So endemic is the extent of the fraud, it is claimed, that the Report which documents it can only be seen by Members of the Budget Control Committee in a secret Bond-style room accessable by having your thumb prints and eyeballs scanned, or some such.

I asked around. It's on PHS Second Floor, if office gossip is to be believed. Maybe someone will leave the door open. It wouldn't be the first time security here were lax.

But I digress. Keeping something secret is one thing. All governments do that. But what is disgraceful is Parliament's subsequent behaviour when it came to light in the press.

The Torygraph reports that "Harald Rømer, the secretary-general of the European Parliament, was asked late on Monday night by Hans-Gert Pöttering, its president, and a group of senior Euro-MPs, to take measures to ensure that there was no "collateral damage" from the report".

"We want reform but we cannot make this report available to the public if we want people to vote in the European elections next year," said a source close to the decision.

Well I would have to take issue with that. Only a few months ago MEPs - the only parliamentarians in the Western world not to be held accountable for their spending - voted against plans for an annual audit of their expenses.

That they could make such a cynical move and then protest that highlighting the "criminal abuse" being perpetrated by - I'm willing to bet - a massive majority of the people's representatives would damage the image of European democracy before the 2009 elections is hypocritical in the extreme.

What they really mean of course is that, were the names to be published, the public would be so pissed at their behaviour that they might *gasp* be deselected and lose all their privileges. What a disaster for democracy.

While making this report public might be painful for Parliament in the short term it would ultimately earn it respect from even the most eurosceptic quarters, particularly if it were accompanied by a raft of radical proposals for Parliamentary Reform.

As it is, by covering up - badly - for colleagues who are essentially criminals, the good name of all, not to mention the European Project as a whole, could be damaged beyond repair.

And that would be a disaster for Europe's future influence and place in the world, whatever Torygraph propaganda might say to the contrary.

So if you want to take action, I suggest you WRITE TO YOUR MEP DEMANDING TO KNOW IF THEY HAVE MADE THEIR ACCOUNTS PUBLIC. AND IF NOT, WHY NOT.

Why Do We Bother?

I just don't understand it. While we expend vast amounts of energy frustrating Turkish attempts to join the European Union - despite Erdogan's best efforts to reform it in line with our rigorous standards - we approach Serbia, that hotbed of xenophobic nationalism and protector of war criminals, with open arms.

Indeed, if all goes 'well' the Slovenian Presidency will sign a Stablisation and Association Agreement with the Serbs this Thursday, offering them closer trade relations and relaxed visa requirements.

My question is, in exchange for what? Why exactly are we handing all of this to Serbia on a platter when there is precisely 'no evidence', according to Serge Brammaerts, the new Chief Prosecutor for the International Tribunal tasked with bringing war criminals to justice, that Serbia is cooperating in the search for Mladic?

This is the first and only main requirement the EU imposed on Belgrade for the SAA to be signed - and now we are all but ignoring it. So much for the EU commitment to upholding Human Rights.

The Presidency defends its decision on the basis that pro-Western President Boris Tadic has just been re-elected, as opposed to the pro-Moscow nationalist Tomislav Nikolic. But I'm afraid that doesn't really cut the mustard.

Firstly, the contest was exceptionally close, with almost half the population voting for closer ties with the Ruskies and in favour of ultra-nationalist sentiments. That's hardly evidence of a revolutionary change in mindset.

Secondly, both candidates came out against independence for Kosovo - one of the EU's main objectives.

And thirdly, ties with Russia have been effectively institutionalised after the same said Tadic allowed Gazprom and others to buy up almost all of Serbia's industry and major enterprises.

What we are looking at is a new Russian Satellite whose infrastructure, economy, and legal institutions are in need of nothing less than a major shakeup. Of what possible advantage could a country like this be to the EU?

However, thanks to Kostunica, we may not have to worry about that, at least for a while. He has come out against the planned agreement, accusing the EU of "directly undermining the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbia and its constitutional order" through a planned peace mission to Kosovo.

As the government coalition relies heavily on support from his faction, his move could topple the government by the end of the week. And that would mean forming a new coalition with none other than uber nationalist Tomislav Nikolic. Good to see that times have changed so definitively.
Instead of pretending that Serbia is yet in a fit state to join the Union we should focus on countries that can offer us something in return.

Turkey, with its access to and influence over Central Asia and its gas reserves, its highly educated labour force, growing economy, and potential for overcoming regional security issues, is far and away a better prospect than countries like Serbia who would simply take and not give.

EU Should Stop Being A Schoolyard Bully

Subsidiarity - the principle that government power ought to reside at the lowest possible level - is a concept beloved of Liberal Democrats. However, too many of our elected members are a little vague on what that means in practice.

You see subsidiarity should mean it's the council which handles your bin collection; regional and national government which organises matters like education policy and road building; and the EU which does things countries can't handle alone like combat climate change.

So far, so good. But the problem with power - and the backbone of traditional liberal thinking - is that, if their remit is unchecked, law-makers will attempt to intrude ever further into the realm of the personal. Sunsidiarity should be accompanied by a healthy respect for the limits of the law and the need for smaller government.

Now the EU is a byword for big government and I am more than a trifle bemused by its endless efforts to overstep the mark. When not making laws for the sake of making laws, or making policy on a lowest common denominator basis, it is busy issuing resolutions on areas over which it has no competence, from Foreign Policy to - bizarrely - school uniforms.

The issue? Banning hijab for Muslim school girls across the EU. You see, in a report on Children's Rights to be voted tomorrow at the European Parliament's plenary session paragraph 127 "Urges Member States to ban headscarves and hijab at least at primary school, in order to anchor more firmly the right to be a child and to ensure genuine and unenforced freedom of choice at a later age" which passed in committee with a considerable majority.

Now think what you like about the issue of hijab, especially for under 16's. I personally agree with the logic behind this paragraph, which, according to Committee members, is to ensure young girls get to participate fully in things like swimming and gymnastics without having their parents' preferences thrust upon them - especially important in primary schools where none but the most fundamentalist of zealots could consider a girl to have attained puberty. I'm not sure I like the 'at least' qualification, as it smacks a little of cultural hegemony, but at least it's only a suggestion.

However that is beside the point.

This is a clear cut case of Europe overstepping its mandate and interfering, in a nanny state sort of way, with decisions that can be dealt with perfectly adequately at the level of the school board, let alone local or national government. Surely these are issues which communitites should deal with on their own, in full consultation with local parents, if we are serious about 'integrating diversity', as the jargon goes.

The top down approach of a bunch of privileged, mostly middle aged, white people - however well intentioned - runs entirely against the grain of what is feted as Europe's Year of Intercultural Dialogue. Of all people, Europe's Liberals and Democrats should agree with this. But we're supporting the report anyway, despite murmurings of opposition from the likes of Sarah Ludford MEP. It is definitely time for a policy rethink.