Swiss sense at Europe's heart - voters reject extra holidays!

Swiss heed warnings from their government and business that more vacation would raise labor costs and put the economy at risk. Swiss public broadcaster SSR said two-thirds of voters and each of the nation’s 26 cantons (states) had rejected the measure, which required majority approval of all federal and cantonal voters.

Direct democracy at work in crushing socialism!

Gotthard Underpassed! A feat unlikely to be quickly surpassed.

The breakthrough video may be viewed on this link with a report here. The definitive work on the massive importance of the St Gotthard Pass and its influence on Europe's history was published in its English translation from the German original in 1979, it was titled "The Gotthard Switzerland's Lifeline" and was written by Arthur Wys, who in his introduction stated the following: "Hardly any other traffic route has had such a marked and lasting political and state establishing effect as this, the most central of all passages across the Alps. The Gotthard was not merely the place where the Confederation came into being, it was the main reason for its creation. Although hewn by Nature as a watershed and cultural frontier, it has served for centuries not to separate the peoples on its two sides but to unite them in both purpose and action. Not only for Switzerland but for the whole of Europe, the Gotthard has become one of the most important and unifying international transit routes." If true as it was in 1980, when the first road tunnel high above today's completed tunnel first opened, how much more so has that become today. Soon no longer will the lorries have to crawl to great heights, spewing diesel fumes along the way, to risk the elements and dangers of the fantastically engineered N2 as it snakes its way through the treacherous Alpine valleys. The Swiss Confederation, the Confederation Helvetique (more correctly translated into English as Celtic Confederation) is alone responsible for this great achievement. Switzerland with its direct democracy, regular referenda and independent-minded cantons proudly illustrates how a nation with four different languages can stand as one when bound by democracy. A shining example of the way ahead for all Europeans, deliberately ignored by the founding fathers of the corrupt and non-democratic EU, the disastrous economic effects of whose ambition and self-serving greed we are only just beginning to properly perceive today. Europeans are fortunate that we have a nation such as Switzerland at our Continent's heart, shining as a beacon in proof of what free peoples, when working together, can voluntarily achieve and steadfastly remaining apart from the disaster that is engulfing all around them. Details of the technological marvel that is the Alp Transit may be found here.

France slowly grinds to a halt.

As pipeline deliveries of aviation fuel to the airports of Paris are halted from the strike ridden refineries and panic buying of petrol, diesel and LPG hit the service stations all across France those who have brought the former nations of the EU to their economic knees and destroyed their democracies will do well to pause for thought. Le Figaro report in french linked here. As I described in my novel Millennium Blitzkrieg, written way back in the mid to late nineteen nineties, it is those who can control the supplies of energy to our sophisticated societies who will have the final say as to their social arrangements. And where are the bloated self-serving troughers who have grown fat, idle and complacent from their disastrous EU experiment? Well many of them this week have been on a "training" beanfeast in five star hotels in Madeira, read here. Meantime the centre for any hope for Europe has once again returned to the Continent's heart deep in the Alps, upon which topic and the Swiss democratic model I will once again have much more to say during the course of this weekend.

The EU after Ireland’s NO

I have been silent on the Irish No, for which this blog campaigned so hard, as the consequences were certain to be confusing for a considerable period of time. President Sarkozy’s address yesterday to the European Parliament at the beginning of the period of the French six monthly rotating Presidency of the EU now seems a fitting moment to record some early impressions. The reaction of the majority of the leaders of the main member states of the EU has been predictably disgusting. What better proof of all the worst accusations that this blog and its forerunner have hurled at the EU down the years can there possibly have ever been? The behaviour of the British governing party, its two chambers of Parliament and the nation’s present monarch have been particularly grotesque. Lodging in Rome the ratification papers effecting the mandate of the 28-30th June 2007 meeting of the Council is or will be an affront to every principle of British constitutional democracy. Happily at the beginning of next year under the Czech Presidency a new era will begin for the nations of Europe. I suggest a priority for that Presidency will be a beginning of a phase shedding the supra-nationalist elements of the NICE Treaty (which federalists find so offensive in a national context) and pursuing an agreement on the properly accountable operation of a body responsible solely for the running of a free trade area and such other areas as may be agreed from time to time by simultaneous referendum of the entire population as safeguarded by protections available to minorities in the direct democracy of the cantons forming the Swiss Confederation. The non-democratic close-shave of the Lisbon Treaty and nightmare consequences of a continuing acqui communitaire must never be allowed to be repeated.