Anti-EU Campaign links and update

DEFENDING HEALTHCARE AND SERVICES (Circulation: Campaign for an Independent Britain supporters and Petition signatories) Dear Friend Many people have long been concerned about the effect Private Funding Initiatives (PFIs) and general cost reductions are having on our health service. People are asking why, if the British economy is doing so well, do we continue to face cuts and closures in our NHS? That is why Campaign for an Independent Britain launched our ‘Support for Nurses and Pensioners – or Billions for Brussels?’ leaflet at the TUC conference earlier this year. The response has been fantastic; we’ve had to do three re-prints in as many months. People are clamouring to be told the truth – that both the privatization and the general cost-cuts in the NHS are as a DIRECT result of the billions we lavish on the European Union and because of Brussels-enforced PFI programmes. Please order and distribute more of these leaflets if you can (there’s a link to the order form at the end of this newsletter.) And, if you’re able, do attend our important meeting on this subject, to be held in Leicester on 25 November. (Details from CIB Vice Chairman, George West, at gc.west@btopenworld.com. Together with other Parliamentarians in both Houses of Parliament, I have regularly called upon the Government to conduct and publish a roper cost/benefit analysis into the value (if any) of staying in the European Union. These calls are always brushed aside with a lofty ‘the benefits are obvious.’ Yet when the Swiss government conducted exactly such an analysis earlier this year they concluded that EU membership could cost up to NINE TIMES as much as staying out! (Very sensibly, the Swiss have long decided to have nothing to do with the EU). Now, our friends at the Bruges Group have launched an campaign to pressure the UK government into conducting a proper study into the costs of EU membership. I hope you will support them – there is a link to the Bruges Group campaign from our site at http://www.eurosceptic.org.uk. We’ve been inundated with replies to our SwitchOffThe.EU website launched the week before last. This, you will recall, is in response to the EU proposal that we will all have to drive around with our headlights on in broad daylight. The issue is not whether this is a good idea or not (although motoring organizations and even the Department of Transport say it might actually result in MORE traffic accidents) but that such decisions should be taken in our own country, by our own lawmakers – not by foreign bureaucrats. Please forward the email message published at http://www.eurosceptic.org.uk/ campaign/c06s1.html to alert people to this issue. What all these campaigning issues have in common is that they emphasise how powerless our Government is in the face of the Brussels machine, and the extent to which they will try to cover up the facts of their impotence. Otherwise, of course, people might start asking searching questions regarding why we pay our Ministers and Civil Servants huge salaries when all they do is rubber stamp insane Directives from their masters in Brussels. Faced with the task before us, and the conspiracy of silence from our politicians, I make no apology for ending with an urgent appeal: if you can help us financially, either by joining Campaign for an Independent Britain and/or by making a donation, please do so. There are details of how you can help at our website http://www.cibhq.co.uk. Thank you for your support. Yours sincerely LORD STODDART OF SWINDON Chairman, Campaign for an Independent Britain ================== USEFUL LINKS Campaign for an Independent Britain: http://www.cibhq.co.uk Campaigning website: http://www.eurosceptic.org.uk/campaign General facts about Britain and the EU: http://www.eurosceptic.org.uk NHS information and leaflet order line: http://www.eurosceptic.org.uk/ health CIB Head Office 81 Ashmole Street London SW8 1NF Tel: 020 8340 0314 Fax: 020 7582 7021 Email: info@cibhq.co.uk

Lord Stoddart regrets that owning to pressure of work on the campaign it may not be possible to reply to individual enquiries.