The occupied field doctrine

Wednesday, May 4, 2011Skender
The European project depends, far more than is generally appreciated, on a sense of inevitability. Voters might not care very much for the constant transfers of power to the EU but, as long as they believe that they can’t be stopped, they put up with them. The phenomenon is known in Brussels as the “occupied field doctrine”: once the EU has acted in any area of policy, its jurisdiction in that area is guaranteed in perpetuity.

Repealing a goodly chunk of Schengen would, of course, shatter that doctrine. People might start demanding the return of all sorts of powers. Why should the EU run agriculture given the disastrous mess it has made of the CAP? Or fisheries? Or monetary policy?

Daniel Hannan on his blog April 26th, 2011

Inflation is a tax

Sunday, January 16, 2011Skender
Inflation is a pernicious and arbitrary tax, a tax that falls hardest on those who have done the right thing. It is, in essence, a mechanism to transfer wealth from savers to the state.
Daniel Hannan

Nobelprijswinnaar rijft onderzoeksgeld binnen met ongefundeerde bewering

Sunday, January 24, 2010Skender
(Rajendra) Pachauri heeft persoonlijk financieel belang bij onderzoek naar de 'smeltende' gletsjers, omdat hij een onderzoeksbureau heeft - Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in New Dehli, dat veel subsidiegeld binnenhaalt.

Volgens The Times heeft de Indiƫr een groot deel van de 2,7 miljoen euro subsidie van de Europese Unie binnen gehaald om onderzoek te doen naar de klimaatproblematiek, die dus niet blijkt te bestaan.
Maartje Willems op Elsevier.nl

Sterling flexibility helped Britain

Monday, January 4, 2010Skender
Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, has acknowledged for the first time that Britain's freedom of action outside the eurozone has allowed the country to limit the damage from the downturn.
...
"Sterling flexibility has provided an additional support to demand," he said.
...
Such a policy is not possible for countries such as Ireland, Spain and Greece, which face debt-deflation strains within the eurozone.
telegraph.co.uk

Grensconflict

Monday, November 16, 2009Skender
BHV is een grensconflict en symbooldossier: het ergste der problemen.
Carl Devos in De Standaard

Nationalism and democracy

Thursday, August 20, 2009Skender
What, though, do we mean by nationalism? The traditional definition is the desire of a people or a language-group to form an independent and unitary state. Seen like that, is it so very different from what we mean by democracy?
To the democratic radicals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the two concepts were inseparable.
"The Plan - Twelve months to renew Britain" by Douglas Carswell and Daniel Hannan.

Government spending

Saturday, August 15, 2009Skender
Governments don't tax to get the money they need, governments will always find a need for the money they get.
Ronald Reagan (Hat tip: LVB)