Bushill Matthews and gravy

Following the Tory expense scandal that accounted for their leader Giles Chichester and chief whip Den Dover, the Conservatives have appointed Phillip Bushill Matthews to lead their delegation in the European Parliament.

Speaking to a local newspaper Bushill Matthews said: "The national press only seem interested in selectively promoting the 'gravy train' image of the European Parliament."

This is a bit rich, coming from him, as his own book on the Parliament was called "The Gravy Train" (sadly no longer stocked by Amazon though available in the odd second hand shop).

Anyone reading the book would find that it actually tried to debunk much of the gravy train image, but its title (and cover complete with picture of him climbing on a train) show that he is another Tory trying to ride two horses.

Who says the Lisbon Treaty is boring?

Who says the Lisbon Treaty is boring? This amusing 'Spoofers guide to how to not vote No' by Jason O'Mahony is well worth a read and a chuckle!

Stubb made Finland's new Foreign Minister

Following on swiftly from Jens Peter Bonde’s announcement that he will step down in 2009, it has now been revealed that Alexander Stubb will resign as an MEP with immediate effect to become Finland’s Foreign Minister.

While Bonde was one of the longest serving MEPs, Stubb, who sits in the EPP group, was only elected in 2004 but swiftly made an impact with his never ending enthusiasm, championing of the EU and his desire to see Britain really engage more with the EU (his wife is from Britain).

Stubb quickly became one of the most recognisable faces around Parliament and his website still gives you some insight into how he doesn’t follow the nerdish stereotype attributed to some of us on the Constitutional Affairs committee.

I’m sure Alex will do an excellent job in his new role and I’m confident he will not make the same mistake as his predecessor who was forced to quit after the Finnish papers discovered he sent 200 texts to a member of the Scandinavian Dolls erotic dance troupe, most of which were apparently quite keen to forge international relations of some sort or another.

Mistaking your constituency for Alabama, USA

There has been much guffawing at the three West Midlands Tory MEPs, Philip Bradbourn, Philip Bushill-Matthews and Malcolm Harbour, after a blogger spotted that the picture on the front of their website, purporting to be of the largest city in their constituency, was actually of Birmingham Alabama, USA.

It was swiftly removed and replaced with a picture that anyone can find a few pictures down on a google image search, but you can see the original, and just how far it is from the UK's second city on Tom Watson's site.

Coincidentally there is a Leeds just a short drive from the Tory's newly expanded constituency and mistaking the two is easier than you might think. I'm sure the Tetley's Brewery is just round the corner from the station.

Republican race sees new campaigning techniques

Novel campaigning techniques from America: ultra conservative presidential hopeful Huckerby urged supporters to prevent neighbours who intended backing anyone else from leaving home. "Shovel your snow into their driveway," the former Arkansas governor and Baptist preacher suggested, "let the air out of their tyres, disconnect their battery cable". Not something that would cross the minds of British Conservatives. Surely?

Godfrey and his fistful of euros

Following this week’s part session I dashed back to Yorkshire to go head to head with my favourite curmudgeonly UKIPer Godfrey Bloom, in a debate at the University of York on Britain’s place in the EU.

Godfrey imparted his usual mix of myths, allegations and outrageous statements to the audience, culminating with him calling for an end to all aid to Africa because it was holding the continent back.

So no real surprises until Godfrey led the charge to the bar for the post-debate drinks. Kindly offering to get a round in, Godfrey dipped into his pockets but found, to his consternation, that he only had euros! "No Problem" said the students -we accept euros here..

The European Parliament was yesterday lucky (?) enough to be treated to a hilarious spat between arch Eurosceptic Tory Roger Helmer and the former leader of the Conservative MEPs (turned Lib Dem) Bill Newton-Dunn. Both aired their dirty washing in a series of reply-to-all emails that dropped into the inbox of every British MEP and their increasingly amused assistants.

For your enjoyment I'll re-print the row in full (to make clear who's saying what I've italicised Roger Helmer's comments):


"It makes me proud to think that we have to go cap-in-hand to the EU Commission for permission to spend our own money."


"But, as even Roger knows but is unwilling to admit, it is not UK money. Years ago the UK parliament made over part of its VAT revenues to the EU to be the EU's own resources."


"Yet another reason why we should be Better Off Out".


"Which is not your party's policy. Why not be honest, just for once, and join UKIP?"


"Dangerous ground, here, Bill. You may accuse me of many things, but dishonesty is not one of them. I have been absolutely clear and direct about my views on Europe -- which is what gets up your nose."


"Not at all. You twist, distort, sail close to the wind implying things...you are deeply dishonest - not least with yourself, since everybody knows you should be in UKIP"


"As I have frequently observed, Bill, you need a dictionary, as you seem to have a poor grasp of the plain meaning of words".


"Your self-delusion is that you are honest - like fundamentalist religious preachers who preach one thing but are really something very different. Ring any bells ?"

A constituent emailed me yesterday asking me if I had heard about a new play in London by Richard Bean. It’s apparently a farce with the central character a Labour MEP.

My interest piqued, I googled away to discover that it had received a bit of a savaging in the press, mainly because it was so absurdly Europhobic!

And which bastion of liberal, pro-European England was it that criticised the play most fiercely? Why, it’s the Evening Standard whose reviewer was “repelled by the loutish simplicities of its Europhobic politics”!

Nicholas de Jonhg’s review also reveals the play includes “the odd vibrator, handcuffs and a prosthetic hand”, the line “Your wanking hand is on fire" and the sight of an MEP with a vibrator in his mouth, which suggests the play isn’t set in Constitutional Affairs Committee, Working Group E.

The Times review concludes with “Yuk”.

One vaguely positive review I found is the Telegraph’s, which enjoyed the gags about the EU and, incredibly, managed to shoe-horn a dig about the Reform Treaty in, which is obsessive even by my standards!

I was very amused to read the one performance that came close to salvaging the show was Richard Moore’s, who played a “boorish”, "curmudgeonly", “no-nonsense Yorkshireman”, UKIP MEP. I wonder who their inspiration was?

Headlines galore for the EU after the press saw the Commission's You Tube video promoting European cinema, which features a series of sex scenes from award-winning films with the tag line “Let's come together”.

Predictably the League of Polish Families is outraged (when are they not outraged?), while Godfrey Bloom, having made himself the Parliament's go-to man for sex-related stories, just as predictably responded with: “The EU has been screwing Britain for the past 30 years.”

Though if Godfrey, and everyone else advocating British withdrawal (ahem) from the EU, got their way the video would have featured a series of people sat on their bed on their own. Not so splendid isolation!

Some people have even suggested the video was a tad conservative. After all 27 countries are now in the EU and I couldn’t count more than two people in one scene at a time.

The video was posted on the EU’s own You Tube channel EUtube, available online at http://www.youtube.com/EUtube

Like many national parliaments, the European Parliament has rules that members may not vote on matters where they have a pecuniary personal interest. This is intended to stop, for instance, members who hold shares in a company that might be affected by a decision from benefitting from the way they vote.

In yesterday’s vote on capping mobile phone charges, two of the Eurosceptic Tory MEPs got up to say that they would not be voting because they stood to gain financially if phone charges went down, because they owned mobile phones. Following their logic, I suggested that the President find out if there was any member who did not possess a mobile phone and that member alone might decide on this particular piece of legislation!

Obviously, MEPs benefit from any consumer protection measure that protects the general public, since they are themselves also members of the general public. The attempt to make it impossible for any member possessing a mobile phone to vote on this measure was in fact no less than an attempt to sabotage it – though an amusing one!

I was greatly amused to see the results of last week's council by-election in Croydon.

The Conservatives' campaign slogan for the Bensham Manor ward was "Send a message to Mr Blair!", which the locals promptly did by voting in Labour candidate Alison Butler by over a thousand votes, a swing of 10% to Labour!

You can view all the results here which reveal a couple more interesting issues. The UKIP candidate stood as a UKIP candidate and not as an Independence Party candidate and registered 40 votes; that's just 25 more than the Monster Raving Loony Party. There was also no BNP candidate which will not help UKIP fight the allegations that the parties have a deal not to stand for the same seat.

On a lighter note, I couldn't help but feel sorry for the People's Choice candidate who was anything but after managing just nine votes.

Jyoti Basu, the 93 year old elder statesmen of the communist party of India (and a former Chief Minister of Western Bengal), has announced that he would like to step down from his position – only to be told by his Party that he has to carry on until at least 2008. Despite reports that he is “unamused”, his party members and beyond continue to beg for him to stay even longer.

Perhaps Tony Blair's advisers should give him a ring and ask for some tips!

Any debate on immigration in the UK is normally accompanied by much brow-furrowing over what it actually means to be British, in particular English.

One of my constituents has sent me what his Swiss friend believes being British represents.

He suggests: “Being British is about driving a German car to an Irish pub for a Belgian beer, then travelling home, grabbing an Indian curry or Turkish kebab on the way, to sit on Swedish furniture and watch American shows on Japanese TV. And the most British thing of all? Suspicion of anything foreign.”

Swedish phones, Chinese clothes, South American coffee and Indian tea can all be added to that list.

Another suggestion I have had as to what being British truly means, is a propensity to worry excessively about what being British truly means.

I have to admit I am becoming sceptical about one aspect of Europe. But before Godfrey Bloom corners me in a Brussels lift waving UKIP membership forms at me shouting, “I told you so, I told you so!” I should stress that my cynicism is strictly reserved for the Eurovision Song Contest.

While its history is hardly a glittering one I am sure the standard has declined to the point where the most original gimmick wins the contest rather than the best song. Hence Finland’s monsters claiming victory.

I am well-known for my attention to detail and even while watching Terry Wogan introduce scantily-clad Croatian singers I can’t take my politician’s hat off. So while many of the performers were mediocre, I found the voting utterly fascinating.

As ever, national affinities feature prominently: Cyprus always gives maximum points to Greece, for instance, and the Nordic countries seem to like each other. Germany gives top points to Turkey, thanks to the couple of million votes from the Turks living in Germany. But there were also some unexpected results that go counter to supposed national likes and dislikes: Turkey giving 10 points to Armenia, for instance, and Serbia giving top score to Croatia.

I hear Belfast International Airport is to be renamed after George Best, following the trend set originally by JFK (New York) and continued by other airports like John Lennon (Liverpool) and Robin Hood (Doncaster).

As a regular user of Leeds-Bradford I have been wondering if they too will follow suit, and if they do what it will be called?

Leeds legend John Charles would be the obvious choice if you were to name it after a sportsman but I can’t imagine many Bradford fans would be happy with this. Could I one day really fly into the Dean Windass International Airport?

There is one internationally renown name that falls neatly between Leeds and Bradford, and right on the airport’s doorstep. Guiseley paid host to the very first, and now a very famous, chip shop owned by Harry Ramsden. Surely not?

I was amused to see that the "European Reform Forum" set up by arch-Eurosceptic Bill Cash MP has concluded that there is a "need to reform the existing European Treaties". They call for wide ranging debate and agreement on a set of reforms.

Isn't that exactly what the Constitutional Treaty - which they opposed vigorously - sought to do?

An important part of being an MEP is learning about and responding to the concerns of constituents. I receive dozens of letters every day on a wide variety of issues, some of which I am able to help with directly, others I can raise with my colleagues in the European institutions, and still others who need pointing in the right direction to find help elsewhere.

Most messages from constituents are admirably specific, making clear what the constituent's concerns are and how I can help address them. This is not always the case, however, and I thought readers of this blog might be interested to read two slightly more quirky messages that I received on the same day last week. Here's the first, which I confess leaves me rather unsure how to proceed:

"Dear Mr Corbett,

"I am writing to tell you that my wife and I have grave concerns about the proposed revision of the EU regulation governing organic food and farming in the EU. Could you please pass on these concerns to the EU Agriculture Commissioner, Mariann Fischer Boel, and let me know what she says.

Thank you,

[constituent's name]"

Well, I was just thinking that I'd be delighted to, if you told me what those concerns were, when along came a second message - a robust bit of lobbying if ever I saw one:

"I am writing to tell you that I have no concerns about the proposed revision of the EU regulation governing organic food and farming. Please pass on my lack of concerns to the EU Agriculture Commissioner, Mariann Fischer Boel, and let me know what she says."

Inspired.

Readers with long memories will remember Dan Hannan's previous attempts to draw parallels between the European Union and various historical empire-builders. He hasn't resorted to the old trick of dragging in Hitler yet, but in a letter to the Spectator last week (subscription required), he did the next-best thing:

"I'd have thought Genghis was a clear-cut leftie. His tactic, on conquering a tribe, was to liquidate the aristocracy and elevate the lower orders. He was a proto-Europhile, mingling his subject clans so as to prevent the development of a sense of national identity."

Unity in diversity, anyone?

I'm speechless: a letter in the Yorkshire Evening Post defies further comment:

"A recent report quoted the value of the euro as 66p per euro. This proves that in no way could this be acceptable in this country as this would make the poor even poorer. £200 becomes £120! Everything would almost double in price. The entire economy would end in total chaos."

A recent exchange of correspondence in the FT made me laugh. First came an article entitled 'The unavoidable English language', discussing the spread of English vocabulary into other languages. Within a couple of weeks, the following two letters had appeared on the letters' pages:

From Mr Florian Lennert.
Sir, With only a little schadenfreude I read the fascinating article “The unavoidable English language” (September 24) regarding the takeover of the global linguistic hinterland by the wanderlustig Anglo-Saxon language. This phenomenon clearly is a welcome manifestation of the zeitgeist and serves as the leitmotif of a contemporary weltanschauung. Clearly, a language blitzkrieg would not be desirable, would create a lot of angst and would lead to a not so gemütlich lebensraum for all. So we language doppelgänger should accept this diktat of realpolitik and not abseil into weltschmerz with a rucksack full of schnapps. Instead we should celebrate the glitzy gestalt of English, our ersatz language of choice.

And subsequently:

From Mr Jem Eskenazi (not a nom de plume).
Sir, I read Florian Lennert´s excellent letter (October 1) while waiting for my fiancée who was shopping for some lingerie (not too risqué, but with a certain je ne sais quoi and just a hint of décolletage), from a cute boutique hidden in a cul-de-sac in our neighbourhood (a sense of savoir-faire makes keeping one´s eyes glued to the FT de rigueur in such a milieu, lest one appear gauche or make a faux pas).

While having a tête-à-tête with her afterwards in a gourmet restaurant (we ate à la carte; she had the soupe de jour as entrée and I had the escargots, which were a tour de force only bested by the plat de résistance, the courgette soufflé – the raison-d´être of this niche establishment, founded by a young entrepreneur, that reinstates the joie de vivre in the most depressed soul), we wondered whether your writer was right in giving a “budget” as an example of an English word used in French.

Au contraire, it is a French word – bougette – adopted by the English during the 15th century. C´est la vie!

Despite several days of anticipatory panic-buying, the threatened fuel protests failed to materialise on Wednesday. According to the BBC, campaigners were quick to declare that they never really wanted a big turnout anyway:

"Organisers said the campaign was meant to be symbolic and that it had put the government on the 'back foot'… Mr Spence, who was among a small group of protesters at the Shell refinery in Jarrow, on south Tyneside, said: 'We didn't want a lot of people here, I would rather there was just a handful of us'."

But the most amusing part of the report was from a refinery in Cheshire, where apparently two demonstrators turned up, only to be "frightened off by the size of the media pack"!

Chris Heaton-Harris and Roger Helmer, two Tory MEPs in the East Midlands, have launched a 'Great Kilroy Hunt', and are putting their money where their mouths are…

Many readers of today's Telegraph are getting rather excited about the prospect of a Conservative party led by Ken Clarke, but one writer stood out in particular.

Sir - I can picture Kenneth Clarke standing for his party's leadership - but running?

Digging back through my archived press clippings, I discovered this little gem from the Huddersfield Daily Examiner in 2002: a letter to the editor which neatly parodies much Eurosceptic argument. (Depressingly, it's only very slightly exaggerated…)

I feel I must add my voice to the current debate on Europe. It strikes me that there are far too many foreigners there and that we should have no part of it.

I proudly served my country in at least three world wars and can honestly say that I did not do so for the benefit of greasy long-haired types with a liking for smelly cheese and the over-use of perfume.

Our so-called leaders should take heed before our national heritage disappears under the jackboot of Belgium. I can foresee even our weather being taken over by the warmer and sunnier climes of Europe. Where would we be then, Mr Blair?

I don't agree with everything I read in the Telegraph, but as MEPs have to cope with an increasingly diverse range of languages in the European Parliament, I can definitely sympathise with this:

"You'd think that after four years as Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw would be used to dealing with exotically named politicians around the world. Yet, visiting Strasbourg yesterday to address the European Parliament for the first time, he became somewhat tongue-tied.

"'He referred to some work done on Iraq by a Greek MEP by the name of Giorgos Dimitrakopoulos,' I'm told. 'He made three valiant attempts to pronounce it, but then gave up and settled on calling him plain George. He should be grateful he didn't have to refer to his Polish colleague, Janusz Onyszkiewicz.'"

I never cease to be impressed with Dan Hannan MEP's ingenuity. He is a master at twisting any subject, no matter how esoteric, into a platform for his anti-European prejudices.

Reviewing a book on ancient Rome in the Telegraph, he draws a strained parallel between the fall of the empire and the modern-day European Union. Of course, the attempted analogy is gloriously silly, and he knows it.

Even setting aside the obvious differences between a voluntary union of sovereign countries and an empire established through military might, it seems Dan Hannan's politics are as shaky as his history. His comments about an over-centralised bureaucracy are wide of the mark: the European Commission is a tiny body, with fewer employees than Leeds city council in my constituency.

And no "large foreign populations" have been imported, although last year we did welcome into our Union eight fledgling democracies, all of which were under totalitarian rule until only a few years earlier.

Anyway, if Mr Hannan wants to push the analogy, no doubt he will remember what happened when the Pax Romana finally collapsed? There was no glorious era of self-government; instead, Europe was swamped by the barbaric Dark Ages, an era from which it took centuries to surface.

Now, who says we have nothing to learn from history?

While sitting in a meeting earlier this week, I observed that some organisations just can't do anything these days without first hiring a consultancy to research the options.

And then I picked up this snippet in the Yorkshire Evening Post:

"Men from Leeds wash their cars for longer than anyone else in the country. Research commissioned by Flash Car Wash showed one in three Leeds men will spend over two hours cleaning their car."

In the darkness of the current EU crisis, there are at least a few moments for me to enjoy.

I'm particularly fond of the comment of the Irish Commissioner Charlie McCreevey in the most recent issue of European Voice:

"For the great majority of people, transatlantic dialogues, inter-institutional committees, gender institutes and the like hold little interest. They are people who just want to earn a decent living, be able to afford a few pints, go to a game of football and have a bit of sex."

And, enjoying that particular press freedom that not even politicians would dare entertain, the Guardian says that:

"the European democratic deficit is not only a matter of secret or unresponsive leaders but of muddled and unrealistic citizens."

This is not something that any politician could get away with saying, even if some of them no doubt think that!

Politicians in Europe often try to speak each other's languages, with mixed results.

English is the most widely spoken lingua franca, but has its pitfalls. For instance, the letter "J" can be pronounced as in 'jam' or as in 'jugoslavia'. Perhaps this explains why the Swedish Prime Minister announced his priorities for the Swedish Presidency of the EU Council as "Yobs, Yobs, Yobs".

Not to mention the MEP who said, when it was time to leave a meeting, "Alors, c'est l'heure", only to find that one of the British MEPs thought he said "Hello sailor"!

Even monoglots can make linguistic cock-ups. Brian Simpson MEP, debating the proposed "open skies" air travel agreement with the USA at a time of embarrassing revelations about the US President, referred to Mr Clinton's support for an "open flies agreement"!

A graphic on the Tories' website exhorts users to

"become a member of the most open and democratic British Party"

Now, why would they want their visitors to join Labour?

I was amused to learn, via Google, that the Tories are advertising my book on their website!

When Radio 5’s Simon Mayo asked Ken Clarke yesterday what slogan he would put on a pro-constitution billboard, Mr Clarke’s suggestion was:

“The constitution makes the decision-making clearer and easier inside a Union of twenty-five, when the old rules that applied to six won’t apply, and it makes no significant extension of powers to the EU – what it does do is make it clearer than ever before that this is to be a union of nation states and not a federal superstate and it, I think, will enable us to take clearer decisions, it will stop the competence of the Union being extended surreptitiously as some people fear it might, and it will, I hope, enable us to get more workmanlike in this giant organisation we have now created on the key things like striking up some common foreign security policy attitudes, making sure democracy, liberal values, free market economies are truly entrenched in the ex-Communist states in the East, making sure Europe’s voice in the world continues to be heard against the Americans, the Chinese, the Indians, our friends and our enemies, and making sure that we get the best advantage out of what is in terms of population the biggest free market in today’s globalised economy.”

It had better be a big billboard.

A rather comical article in today's Scotsman discusses the outcome of Kilroy-Silk's 'week with the gypsies' for a TV documentary. It has the following inspired opening:

"In every Western society, there’s a group of people against whom it’s easy to be prejudiced. We don’t trust them, not do we like the way they look. We don’t know quite how they make a living. All we know is, they never seem settled, causing trouble wherever they go and leaving behind a mess. For all these reasons, the Kilroy-Silks of this world are an easy target for bigots."

Eurosceptic blogger Tim Worstall has stumbled across the modern equivalent of cinematic subliminal messaging:

Sitting in the pub last night, in the usual communal huddle trying to do the Mail on Sunday crossword (hey, we really know how to live it up down here in Portugal!) over a quiet pint or two, we came across this set of clues:

Concise: "Make States Co-operate."
Cryptic: "Lies are fed out to produce governmental union"

Answer: Federalise.

Now I know the Mail is pretty biased on these sorts of issues, as I am myself, but isn’t it going a little too far to stick these things into the bleedin’ crossword?