Who will Rule Us after Lisbon?

It all seems a bit confused after the vote on the Third Reading of the EU Treaty Amendment on Tuesday as I posted first thing this morning. We have the Queen of course somewhere up there above us, President Barroso of the EU Commission, who as I also posted earlier seems to believe that avoiding hunger is not aided by growing food close by, post-Lisbon will also provide the new EU President f0r 2.5 to 5 years appointment, the notable Dr Hans-Gert Poettering, President of the false EU Parliament will I feel sure still be hovering around, but Gordon Brown MP., as PM., has at that point ceded Parliament's powers to the ECJ and the British Courts so we must now add this figure, who has unsurprisingly been previously unknown to me:

18 January 2008

Jack Straw, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, today announced that Ms Jenny Rowe will become the first Chief Executive of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom upon its creation in late 2009.

In the interim Ms Rowe will act as Chief Executive designate and take up the post overseeing the creation of the Supreme Court. She will work with the Supreme Court implementation team and the Law Lords.

Jack Straw said:

'I look forward to working with Jenny Rowe in establishing the new Supreme Court that will endure as a symbol of our commitment to justice and the independence of the judiciary.'

The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom replaces the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords. The Supreme Court will become operational in October 2009 and will be situated on Parliament Square in the refurbished Middlesex Guildhall building.

When the new institution opens, the existing Law Lords will become the first Justices of the Supreme Court, and the Senior Law Lord will become the President. For the purposes of appointing the Chief Executive under section 48(2) of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, the Lord Chancellor consulted the current senior Law Lord, Lord Bingham of Cornhill.

The Supreme Court - symbol of England's oppression by the EU - Takes Charge!

The Supreme Court, that outfaces the Palace of Westminster across Parliament Square, this week showed its muscles in clearly demonstrating to this downtrodden, once free country, whom, down to the very smallest detail, now controls the nation that once was England, both to its citizens and all those others who nowadays live therein.

Demonstrating the complete helplessness of the House of Commons, the Prime Minister at Question Time yesterday had this to say about a Supreme Court ruling on paedophilia:

The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend speaks for many people in saying how completely offensive it is, once again, to have a ruling by a court that flies in the face of common sense. Requiring serious sexual offenders to sign the register for life, as they now do, has broad support across this House and across the country. I am appalled by the Supreme Court ruling. We will take the minimum possible approach to this ruling and use the opportunity to close some loopholes in the sex offenders register. For instance, we will make it compulsory for sex offenders to report to the authorities before any travel and will not allow them to change their name by deed poll to avoid having their name on the register.

Well may he waffle, for it was he and all those seated around him, who gave birth to this beastliness!

The choosing by this Court of the issue, on which to first confront Parliament, of forgiving child abusers, is interesting to say the least, particularly given the sordid goings on in the capital of Belgium over recent years, read here, which is the effective back yard of the odious organisation of which this abhorrent and unconstitutional court is a creature.

Happily there are a few in England who already recognise the grave dangers to all our freedoms this Supreme Court represents, keep the symbol of the raised garden spade at the forefront of your mind during the coming challenges:

A simple garden spade against the English Supreme Court - Symbol of EU Oppression

Amongst all the violence and damage, caused mainly by the mindless kettling policy of London's police force, at the tuition fees protest during the vote in Parliament yesterday afternoon (passed by 21 votes thanks to 28 Liberal/Democrats voting directly contrary to their manifesto promises of only seven months ago) this one piece of well thought through action against the windows of the obsecenity that is an English Supreme Court, itself a foul and unconstitutional concept imposed upon us by the EU, at least was successfully and peacefully accomplished and happily recorded

We must hope that the occupants of that building give due thought to the significance of this act and the inherent treachery of their own positions. (For more on this blog on the "Supreme Court" enter those words in this blog's search bar above).

Supreme Court President's speech on end of Judicial Independence in England!

The entire speech, given by Lord Phillips last evening may be read from this link; the section presently causing the most controversy is, I believe the following:

My conclusion is that our present funding arrangements do not satisfactorily guarantee our institutional independence. We are, in reality, dependant each year upon what we can persuade the Ministry of Justice of England and Wales to give us by way of “contribution”. This is not a satisfactory situation for the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. It is already leading to a tendency on the part of the Ministry of Justice to try to gain the Supreme Court as an outlying part of its empire.

This blog repeatedly warned of exactly this end result, particularly in a posting on 17th January 2008, linked here.

Parliamentary Supremacy

I have been sent a copy of the following email sent by Denis Cooper to a recipient in the UK Parliament the contents of which are self-explanatory and of supreme importance: Quote Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2008 12:18 PM Subject: Declaration 17 annexed to the Treaty of Lisbon Dear, I wish to draw your attention to Declaration 17 annexed to the Final Act of the Lisbon Treaty, page C306/256 here: Link which asserts a legal doctrine which is fundamentally incompatible with the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. It starts: "The Conference recalls that, in accordance with well settled case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Treaties and the law adopted by the Union on the basis of the Treaties have primacy over the law of Member States, under the conditions laid down by the said case law." and then reproduces an Opinion from the Council Legal Service: "It results from the case-law of the Court of Justice that primacy of EC law is a cornerstone principle of Community law. According to the Court, this principle is inherent to the specific nature of the European Community. At the time of the first judgment of this established case law (Costa/ENEL,15 July 1964, Case 6/641 (1)) there was no mention of primacy in the treaty. It is still the case today. The fact that the principle of primacy will not be included in the future treaty shall not in any way change the existence of the principle and the existing case-law of the Court of Justice." "(1) "It follows (…) that the law stemming from the treaty, an independent source of law, could not, because of its special and original nature, be overridden by domestic legal provisions, however framed, without being deprived of its character as Community law and without the legal basis of the Community itself being called into question."’" In my view the Conservative party should propose an amendment to the European Union (Amendment) Bill to explicitly repudiate this Declaration, asserting that notwithstanding the EU treaties and EU laws, and the doctrine of the European Court of Justice, the British Parliament remains the supreme law-making body for the United Kingdom, and giving a crystal clear direction to British courts that they must continue to uphold the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy. If this is not done, then if at some point in the future MPs decided that they could not accept a particular EU law passed by qualified majority voting, or a particular EU decision agreed by Ministers without the prior approval of Parliament, or a particular judgement of the Court of Justice interpreting and/or extending EU law, and accordingly passed legislation contrary to that EU law or decision or judgement, they could find that British judges declared their new law to be invalid, ruling that the British Parliament had irrevocably surrendered its legislative supremacy by endorsing Declaration 17. I do not see how any MP can assume that such circumstances would never arise, and nor do I see how the present MPs can take it upon themselves to put at serious risk the future legislative supremacy of the Parliament of the British people, by default, and without the knowledge and consent of the British people. An amendment along the lines I suggest would avoid any possible doubt developing in the minds of British judges, making it clear to them that despite Declaration 17 annexed to the Lisbon Treaty they must continue to rank the will of the British Parliament above the will of the European Court of Justice, and they must continue to observe the long-established principle that no Parliament can bind its successors, by means of an international treaty or by any other mechanism. Therefore I urge you to put it to your colleagues that the Conservatives should table such an amendment. Yours etc Unquote Explanatory background to this email was provided as follows: Quote

For clarity, the primacy claim was imbedded in the previous Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe as Article I-6:

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/en/treaties/dat/12004V/htm/C2004310EN.01001101.htm

"The Constitution and law adopted by the institutions of the Union in exercising competences conferred on it shall have primacy over the law of the Member States."

plus there was Declaration 1:

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/en/treaties/dat/12004V/htm/C2004310EN.01042001.htm

"The Conference notes that Article I-6 reflects existing case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Communities and of the Court of First Instance."

To disarm critics, the transparent primacy claim of Article I-6 of the previous Treaty has been removed, and relegated to Declaration 17 annexed to the Final Act of the Lisbon Treaty, page C306/256 here:

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2007:306:0231:0271:EN:PDF

On the one hand, from the federalists' point of view this has the merit of disguising the claim. On the other hand, whereas Article I-6 was an integral part of the previous Treaty, Declaration 17 is a non-binding political declaration attached to the Treaty of Lisbon, and potentially therefore it can also be detached from the Treaty.

The federalists' objective is to induce the national legislature in each member state to endorse Declaration 17, perhaps unwittingly, in the expectation that the judges within that state would subsequently conclude that the legislature had resigned its legislative supremacy, effectively transferring its sovereignty to the ECJ as the final arbiter of the EU treaties and EU laws.

If that ploy was successful, in our case the consequence would be that British judges would no longer accept the doctrine of the legislative supremacy of the British Parliament, but would instead accept the doctrine of the primacy of EU treaties and laws, as warned by Martin Howe QC in his 2003 booklet "A Constitution For Europe: A Legal Assessment of the Draft Treaty".

Howe explains that across the EU national courts have rejected the primacy claim made by the ECJ, and the reason the primacy Article I-6 (or I-10 at the time of writing) was put in the previous Treaty was that "the draft Treaty is attempting to prevail over and reverse these national decisions". He later writes:

"... Parliament will have enacted Art I-10 [renumbered as I-6 in the final text], which states that the Constitution and European laws have primacy over national laws. This would give rise to an argument that by doing so, Parliament has abolished its own supremacy."

"... the present judicially approved view is that Parliament lacks the power to take this step because it cannot fetter its own sovereignty or deprive itself of the right to repeal the Act. However, the doctrine of the supremacy of Parliament is not written in stone, but rests on continued judicial acceptance of its validity."

"It is on this kind of fundamental question that a drift of judicial opinion can occur over time"

This is why I believe that the Conservatives should table what is really a modest amendment to the European Union (Amendment) Bill, repudiating Declaration 17, asserting the continuing supremacy of Parliament notwithstanding the EU treaties, and issuing a clear direction to British courts that they should continue to uphold the supremacy of Parliament notwithstanding the EU treaties.

For those who haven't already seen it, this is the letter I sent to my MP ......... about this. I suggest that anybody else who has a Conservative MP should send a similar letter. Unquote

Parliamentary Sovereignty and William Hague MP

I believe it timely to repeat a posting of 17th January 2008 on Parliamentary Sovereignty together with two very pertinent comments it attracted:

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Parliamentary Supremacy

I have been sent a copy of the following email sent by Denis Cooper to a recipient in the UK Parliament the contents of which are self-explanatory and of supreme importance: Quote Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2008 12:18 PM Subject: Declaration 17 annexed to the Treaty of Lisbon Dear, I wish to draw your attention to Declaration 17 annexed to the Final Act of the Lisbon Treaty, page C306/256 here: Link which asserts a legal doctrine which is fundamentally incompatible with the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. It starts: "The Conference recalls that, in accordance with well settled case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Treaties and the law adopted by the Union on the basis of the Treaties have primacy over the law of Member States, under the conditions laid down by the said case law." and then reproduces an Opinion from the Council Legal Service: "It results from the case-law of the Court of Justice that primacy of EC law is a cornerstone principle of Community law. According to the Court, this principle is inherent to the specific nature of the European Community. At the time of the first judgment of this established case law (Costa/ENEL,15 July 1964, Case 6/641 (1)) there was no mention of primacy in the treaty. It is still the case today. The fact that the principle of primacy will not be included in the future treaty shall not in any way change the existence of the principle and the existing case-law of the Court of Justice." "(1) "It follows (…) that the law stemming from the treaty, an independent source of law, could not, because of its special and original nature, be overridden by domestic legal provisions, however framed, without being deprived of its character as Community law and without the legal basis of the Community itself being called into question."’" In my view the Conservative party should propose an amendment to the European Union (Amendment) Bill to explicitly repudiate this Declaration, asserting that notwithstanding the EU treaties and EU laws, and the doctrine of the European Court of Justice, the British Parliament remains the supreme law-making body for the United Kingdom, and giving a crystal clear direction to British courts that they must continue to uphold the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy. If this is not done, then if at some point in the future MPs decided that they could not accept a particular EU law passed by qualified majority voting, or a particular EU decision agreed by Ministers without the prior approval of Parliament, or a particular judgement of the Court of Justice interpreting and/or extending EU law, and accordingly passed legislation contrary to that EU law or decision or judgement, they could find that British judges declared their new law to be invalid, ruling that the British Parliament had irrevocably surrendered its legislative supremacy by endorsing Declaration 17. I do not see how any MP can assume that such circumstances would never arise, and nor do I see how the present MPs can take it upon themselves to put at serious risk the future legislative supremacy of the Parliament of the British people, by default, and without the knowledge and consent of the British people. An amendment along the lines I suggest would avoid any possible doubt developing in the minds of British judges, making it clear to them that despite Declaration 17 annexed to the Lisbon Treaty they must continue to rank the will of the British Parliament above the will of the European Court of Justice, and they must continue to observe the long-established principle that no Parliament can bind its successors, by means of an international treaty or by any other mechanism. Therefore I urge you to put it to your colleagues that the Conservatives should table such an amendment. Yours etc Unquote Explanatory background to this email was provided as follows: Quote

For clarity, the primacy claim was imbedded in the previous Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe as Article I-6:

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/en/treaties/dat/12004V/htm/C2004310EN.01001101.htm

"The Constitution and law adopted by the institutions of the Union in exercising competences conferred on it shall have primacy over the law of the Member States."

plus there was Declaration 1:

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/en/treaties/dat/12004V/htm/C2004310EN.01042001.htm

"The Conference notes that Article I-6 reflects existing case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Communities and of the Court of First Instance."

To disarm critics, the transparent primacy claim of Article I-6 of the previous Treaty has been removed, and relegated to Declaration 17 annexed to the Final Act of the Lisbon Treaty, page C306/256 here:

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2007:306:0231:0271:EN:PDF

On the one hand, from the federalists' point of view this has the merit of disguising the claim. On the other hand, whereas Article I-6 was an integral part of the previous Treaty, Declaration 17 is a non-binding political declaration attached to the Treaty of Lisbon, and potentially therefore it can also be detached from the Treaty.

The federalists' objective is to induce the national legislature in each member state to endorse Declaration 17, perhaps unwittingly, in the expectation that the judges within that state would subsequently conclude that the legislature had resigned its legislative supremacy, effectively transferring its sovereignty to the ECJ as the final arbiter of the EU treaties and EU laws.

If that ploy was successful, in our case the consequence would be that British judges would no longer accept the doctrine of the legislative supremacy of the British Parliament, but would instead accept the doctrine of the primacy of EU treaties and laws, as warned by Martin Howe QC in his 2003 booklet "A Constitution For Europe: A Legal Assessment of the Draft Treaty".

Howe explains that across the EU national courts have rejected the primacy claim made by the ECJ, and the reason the primacy Article I-6 (or I-10 at the time of writing) was put in the previous Treaty was that "the draft Treaty is attempting to prevail over and reverse these national decisions". He later writes:

"... Parliament will have enacted Art I-10 [renumbered as I-6 in the final text], which states that the Constitution and European laws have primacy over national laws. This would give rise to an argument that by doing so, Parliament has abolished its own supremacy."

"... the present judicially approved view is that Parliament lacks the power to take this step because it cannot fetter its own sovereignty or deprive itself of the right to repeal the Act. However, the doctrine of the supremacy of Parliament is not written in stone, but rests on continued judicial acceptance of its validity."

"It is on this kind of fundamental question that a drift of judicial opinion can occur over time"

This is why I believe that the Conservatives should table what is really a modest amendment to the European Union (Amendment) Bill, repudiating Declaration 17, asserting the continuing supremacy of Parliament notwithstanding the EU treaties, and issuing a clear direction to British courts that they should continue to uphold the supremacy of Parliament notwithstanding the EU treaties.

For those who haven't already seen it, this is the letter I sent to my MP ......... about this. I suggest that anybody else who has a Conservative MP should send a similar letter. Unquote

2 Comments:

Grahnlaw said...

Martin, your friend seems to have the facts right (although I disagree with his attitude and conclusions), as you would know, having commented on my posting on the EU Treaty of Lisbon: Court of Justice, http://grahnlaw.blogspot.com/2008/01/eu-treaty-of-lisbon-court-of-justice.html But, there is always cause to think about the legally and practically feasible options, before commencing action. The primacy of EC law is well settled in law. I do not see that any member state could unilaterally renounce its obligations under the treaties and the 'acquis' while continuing to be a member. Crudely put, a country can play according to the rules on the inside or by its own rules on the outside. There you have the choice, as far as I understand.

11:00 AM

Martin said...

A reply forwarded from Denis Cooper: Your blog does not allow anonymous comments, and I seem to have mislaid my username and password. The following is the comment I would have posted, if I had been able to do so: grahnlaw writes that: "The primacy of EC law is well settled in law". He means, it is well settled in the case law of the European Court of Justice, as stated in Declaration 17. However, as that Declaration also makes clear, the principle of primacy was not mentioned in the founding Treaty of Rome, and nor has it been mentioned in any subsequent Treaty ratified by the British Parliament. So far it is no more than a legal doctrine devised and advanced by the European Court of Justice, but repeatedly rejected by national courts across the EU. For example, in his judgement on the "Metric Martyrs" case Lord Justice Laws upheld the continuing legislative supremacy of the British Parliament, stating that British courts would recognise the validity of laws passed by Parliament even if they contravened EU treaties or laws - the sole proviso being that it must be clear that the contravention was intentional, not accidental. However if Parliament fails to repudiate Declaration 17 British judges could easily come to a different view in the future, concluding that by accepting the EU's primacy claim Parliament had irrevocably surrendered its own legislative supremacy. This is not a matter of "a country can play according to the rules on the inside or by its own rules on the outside". It is the essential difference between: a) A sovereign state endeavouring to act in good faith towards its counter-parties, by fulfilling its "international obligations" as far as that is possible and tolerable, and its sovereign legislature giving appropriate directions to its judiciary, and b) A non-sovereign state accepting that its judiciary will accept directions from the European Court of Justice irrespective of the position taken by its legislature. As the European Court of Justice is the final arbiter of the EU treaties and laws, effectively the British Parliament is being asked to agree that its sovereignty will be transferred to the lawyers at that Court, at their behest.

4:39 PM

A fine kettle of fish

On 11th March, 2008 in the evening, MPs in the House of Commons voted by 346 to 206 for what was effectively the Treaty of Lisbon, if ratified, to become English Law, read Jurist here. In doing so, however, quite extraordinarily in my view, (indeed I remain in a state of some considerable degree of shock over this which rendered me incapable of blogging throughout yesterday) what they actually voted for was the defeat of the following: That this House declines to give a Third Reading to the European Union (Amendment) Bill because it does not protect the Parliament of the United Kingdom itself or its enactments from judicial rulings of the European Court of Justice and of the Courts of the United Kingdom. In other words, should the Lisbon Treaty be ratified, an event now almost entirely in the hands of their Lordships in the 'other place' as far as the UK is concerned, thereafter this House of Commons is entirely at ease with being overruled and indeed subservient to the judiciary in the European Court of Justice and the UK. Of course the Lisbon Treaty also is at some risk elsewhere on the Continent, from its workplace implications across Scandinavia, the German Constitutional Court consideration and the Irish Referendum to name but three pending complications, but let's assume for a moment it goes ahead - where will the House of Commons, and it follows the British electors, then stand? Well at first look it might seem simple, no House of Commons can supposedly bind its successors, but other changes have been afoot again at the behest of the EU. The butchering of the role of Lord Chancellor who was the head of the judiciary and sat on the woolsack in the Lords has already been accomplished by BLiar and Lord Falconer - a new Supreme Court for the UK is under construction close to the Parliament it will then rule, read here. At first it appeared the main effect of this seemed to be the Justice Minister trying to walk backwards after handing the 'gracious speech' to Her Majesty (an art he should easily have accomplished having never seen what lay ahead throughout his political career), but now we see the full potential of the EU's insistence that the Head of the UK's judiciary be separated from that of the Government. Now we seem to face a new ruler and this House of Commons seems to have provided such future Lord Chief's of Justice (Supreme Justices or whatever they be called) a powerful basis to argue that, in future, other parliaments will be unable to regain the powers thrown away last Tuesday. As Bill Cash MP asked the Speaker on a Point of Order after the debate - what value now has the parliamentary mace other than for scrap? A neat constitutional trap appears to have been sprung, but where does that leave us? The Commons seems for this parliament to now be in the hands of the Lords - let us trust they show more constitutional awareness and soundness of voting choices! I will blog further on this as my concerns coalesce into some tentative conclusions.

Smashing the Supreme Court Windows.

A video of the smashing of the unconstitutional and unlawful Supreme Court windows can now be enjoyed online. Note the huge Christmas Tree these illegitimate parasites have chosen for themselves in this supposed age of austerity!

Hypocrite Hague attempts to defend his useless EU Bill!

An astounding article by William Hague, Britain's smug and self-serving Foreign Secretary, appears on the web site of the UK Telegraph Group this morning, extraordinarily timed at 10:15 am GMT on a Sunday morning. It may be read in all its mealy-mouthed platitudes and outright evasions from this link.

Note these two paragraphs from the bilge and garbage set out by Hague in his article:

So we must change the law to ensure that by law the British people's wishes can never be ignored in such a way again. This will mark a fundamental shift of power from Government to Parliament and to the voters of this country, a shift long overdue. 

The EU Bill we are bringing forward will put into the British people's hands a referendum lock on any further changes to the EU's Treaties that hand over powers from Britain to the EU, a lock to which only they will hold the key.

Hague's Bill does the actual reverse of what these words say! For a start his Bill does not forbid the transfer of  "powers" it transfers the decision of what may be transferred in future to a Government Minister, and we all should by now know (Hague's actions down the years alone being enough proof of the following assertion) that any such appointee from the present world of British politics is the last creature on earth to be capable of honourable thought or of sufficient independent judgement. Secondly it transfers from Parliament to the UK Supreme Court, an unconstitutional and illegal body, the right to arbitrate in the event of disputes, with any right of appeal being decided by a similar court run by foreigners across the English Channel.

The inevitability of the Glorious Revolution.

Bertrand Russell in his "A History of Western Philosophy" writes as follows:

 "James II, unlike his brother, was totally destitute of subtlety and finesse. By his bigoted Catholicism he united against himself the Anglicans and the Nonconformists, in spite of his attempts to conciliate the latter by granting them toleration in defiance of Parliament. Foreign policy also played a part. The Stuarts, in order to avoid the taxation required in war-time, which would have made them dependent upon Parliament, pursued a policy of subservience, first to Spain and then to France. The growing power of France roused the invariable English hostility to the leading Continental State, and the revocation of the Edict of Nates made Protestant feeling bitterly opposed to Louis XIV. In the end almost everybody in England wished to be rid of James. But almost everybody was equally determined to avoid a return to the days of the Civil War and Cromwell's dictatorship. Since there was no constitutional way of getting rid of James, there must be a revolution, but it must be quickly ended, so as to give no opportunity to disruptive forces. The rights of Parliament must be secured once and for all. (Blogger's added emphasis.) The king must go, but monarchy must be preserved; it should be, however, not a monarchy of Divine Right, but one dependent upon legislative sanction, and so upon Parliament. By a combination of aristocracy and big business, all this was achived in a moment, without the necessity of firing a shot. Compromise and moderation had succeeded, after every form of intransigeance had been tried and failed"

Now Parliament, has itself, made the country, and itself, subservient to foreigners. Our Judiciary has been made subservient to the EU fanatical  and treacherous Ken Clarke, who carries the constitutional defying title of  Justice Secretary. (Read a report of last evening's protest against all this of Lord Phillips, the Lord Chief Justice, from here.) The head of the abhorrent Supreme Court is now intended to grovel at Clarke's feet. The lesson from history is clear!

UPDATE 0945 GMT. After an extended delay, the BBC has now provided the 'Listen Again' feature for this morning's interview which followed the 0800 -0810 new bulletin.  The text description of the entire slot has clearly been considerably censored since the first entry, to presumably make it appear that the report is not the bombshell to the EU governance of the UK that it truly seems likely to become. The broadcast, which I assume has not been tampered with is linked here.

In losing its Common Law, England has lost its Common Sense

The hearing, before the abomination which is known as the "Supreme Court", in England, scheduled for today, on the question of a legally set retirement age, highlights another area of severe damage inflicted upon the country by the obscene, malfunctioning and hopefully soon to be abandoned European Union, by its treacherous supporters buried deep and furtively within the nation's body politic.

Read some background from the FT here (£) with broadcast reports no doubt widely spread and normally ill-informed elsewhere.

Common sense does not function with a Constitutional legal system which defines what is legal. Under Common Law everything is legal bar what is specifically prohibited; that is why  the European Human Rights stipulations, with which we are now so stuck, the common sense English should normally not need.

But are there now enough of us left even to grasp this point?

Rights, some of which jar so violently with our history, too often, as in this case, become themselves great infringements on the past reasonable and agreed civilised interactions between individuals!

Many over sixty five worked on to the delight and benefit of their employers in the past, obviously perfectly voluntarily. Now thousands must retire before they might wish through covert systems designed to apply old limits and employers are compelled to employ worthless timewasters until they are on the verge of death.

Fear stalks the corridors of power.

Yesterday, in Washington, the flags on the White House, the Capitol and other statehouses across the USA flew at half mast in honour of the targeted and shot Congresswoman Representative Giffords and the other innocent victims of the Arizona gunman who struck last weekend. Pictures in this blog post here.

This was not the manner in which other such maniacal mass killings have been recognised in the USA in recent years.

Elected officials, used to mealy-mouthed and lying talk on the duress and sacrifices of public service, who have instead been complicit in the destruction of the West's monetary systems, while greedily ensuring they personally would be exempt from the consequences, sometimes even by filling their own coffers at their electorate's expense, seemed finally confronted with the possibility that one day, they too, might be held accountable for their actions.

Today in Britain's Parliament, the Coalition Government plans to finally destroy the last Parliamentary protections for Britain's citizens and instead place them in the hands of an appointed supreme court, itself only accountable to a similar foreign body, similarly composed of appointed Judges, mostly foreigners, where Britain's vote, voice and Common Law heritage counts for nothing.

Von Heseltine's henchmen will do well to now remember that actions, such as the destruction of a Parliament and a democracy, do indeed carry consequences; pensions for public servants require the ongoing consent of the people who must pay in the decades ahead, the horrendous EU Bill to be debated in Parliament today must be substantially watered down or ideally totally rejected, that is the duty of the MPs to their constituency electorates. Any breach of that duty today will still be on the record when their pensions become due!

Cameron's Coalition facing Collapse?

The Sovereignty Bill, designed to castrate the British people of their last scrap of sovereignty, and hand it to the illegal UK Supreme Court, founded as ordered by the EU, and acting solely at the command of non-elected EU appointees is to be debated for six hours next Tuesday, one day after Parliament resumes.

According to the BBC, linked here, "Eurosceptics have already tabled 46 amendments and 5 new clauses" but even with Labour voting against the Bill (hypocrites as they always become once returning to opposition) the anti-democratic forces of the Cameroon's and Clegg's LibDems with their huge and corrupted payroll vote might just see the last straw for England's constitution passing into law.

All the more reason to marshall every vote against the three main parties in next Thursday's vote in Oldham!

The Constitution of Greece seems to put Britain's to shame!

Greece is in a mess but so is every other European nation state locked within the Eurozone and to an only slighty lesser extent those outside the euro but within the strait-jacket of the anti-democratic EU Treaties.

Consider the events of the last week since the Greek hung election results were first announced. The baton to try and form a working coalition has passed from the party with the largest vote, on to that with the second largest share and thereafter that coming in third in votes.

Each party leader had three days to try and cobble together a working majority, they did not need that amount of time and so the constitutional authority then reverted to the President of the country who became charged with the task of forming a government of national unity. This attempt seems likely to fail this morning, when a new election will be called with authority in the country then in the interim apparently resting with the judges of the supreme court.

What has happened in Greece, with an angry electorate turning against the two main parties that have feathered their own nest by handing national democracy and wealth to the EU and in turn tothe banks and multinational corporations who feather the nests of these cuckoos appointed to be in charge. All this now seems likely to be repeated right across the EU as the inevitable contagion of bankruptcy and poverty spreads.

How will Britain's own constitutional arrangements stand-up if the anger against the established main parties inevitably crosses the Channel? Looking at recent similar situations in our post-war past the answer would seem to be less than encouraging.

The almost minority government of Harold Wilson from 1964 to 66, weakened as it was by the Patrick Gordon-Walker fiasco was not made to appear in a more favourable light by Edward Heath's clinging to Downing Street in February 1974, (almost imitated by Gordon Brown in 2010,) and the manipulations of the minority government that followed under Wilson with another election in October 1974 and eventually the ill-fated Lab-Lib Pact under Jim Callaghan and David Steel.  All of that a somewhat chilling forerunner of the  distasteful mess we behold today in the basically opposing views contained within the expediency only Coalition Government.

(My warning of the dangers of continuing this farce, directed at Paddy Ashdown this past weekend, while ignored, did at least receive the courtesy of a reply to Orphans of Liberty, which may be read here.) So the Liberal Democrats as yet seem unready to confront their longstanding policy errors over the EU and thus avoid the electoral consequences about to be meted out to Britain's two main and Leveson-revealed thoroughly corrupted parties.

Well may we watch events unfold in Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland and no doubt eventually Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium and France with some detachment as we are outside the euro area, we may not do so, however, secure in any knowledge that our constitutional arrangements (nor either our economy) are anywhere like sufficiently resilient to see us through this now rapidly unfolding disaster!

Czech Supreme Court asked to fast track Lisbon's Constittional Review

The report is linked here, with the main points as follows: The Czech Senate has proposed that the US assesses six points of the treaty, including the possibility of the Council of the EU's decision making method being changed from an unanimous to a majority vote, which would strip member states of their right to veto, the way of the recognition of the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights, and the Czech Republic's legal obligation to observe it. "Is this dimension of parliamentary democracy sufficient, in view of the EU's character as a community of states (not a federal state)?" the senators ask the US in their request. They also ask whether the treaty violates the article of the Czech Constitution saying that legislative power in the Czech Republic is held by parliament. We have seen, as elsewhere in Europe, that there are few parliamentarians with democratic principle, are there then Judges in the Czech Republic prepared to defend their constitutional law?

The final failure of Two Party politics?

The Leader, linked here, in today's Daily Telegraph begins and ends as follows: "This is bigger than Tony Blair, bigger than his administration, bigger than Labour. The loans-for-peerages affair has redefined how we think about government. The administration of Britain has always depended on a degree of self-restraint from the ruling party. With no written constitution and no Supreme Court, there are few checks on the power of the executive." .......... "The danger now is that the official response to the crisis serves to make matters worse. Public funding for political parties, for example, would increase the power of party leaders over their MPs, and of the mainstream parties over everyone else. Politicians are quite arrogant enough without being able to compel money from the rest of us, instead of having to ask politely. And there is no point in removing powers over patronage from Downing Street only to give them to yet another quango. If this whole sordid business teaches us anything, it is that any concentration of power will tend, over time, to encourage nepotism and maladministration. One way to forestall future abuses is to make government officials more directly accountable to Parliament."