Now the government want ID cards for Sheep!!

I recently visited took my fellow MEP candidates to a sheep farm near Rugby and the Rugby farmers market to see for myself what the potential impact new EU rules on electronic tagging of sheep (EID)could have on our local farmers.

It was an interesting experience and although I arrived firm in the knowledge that EID was a bad idea, I left utterly convinced that we had to put a stop to it.

The EU has decreed that all new born sheep must have an electronic tag from the 1st January 2010. The tags cost around £1.50 each in addition to the cost of an electronic reader. This is plainly ridiculous when some sheep are only worth £2.

The argument for it is that it will make it easier to trace the movement of sheep, but we already have an effective batch movement system in place that works perfectly well and doesn't cost an arm and a leg to install. The UK has 30 million sheep, which move from field to field far more frequently than anywhere else in Europe. We also have some pretty wet and windy weather which is not conducive to electronic systems. I think it will be fairly difficult trying to read an electronic tag half way up a mountain in a storm.

Still for some strange reason the UK signed up to this, not just once but twice!!! Even the European Commission has said that nothing can stop it coming in. We will continue the fight but it's not looking good at the moment!

Special Olympics

I have just taken part in a football tournament to raise the profile of the Special Olympics and the work they do to develop sporting opportunities for people with learning difficulties.

The Special Olympics do a great job all around the world and I am a big fan. So it was a great honour to take to the pitch alongside other MEPs, including my boss Neil Parish and Chris Heaton Harris, the Chairman of the European Parliament Sports Intergroup.

Also in attendance were some of the Anderlecht first team players and the Anderlecht manager. I am not sure I did enough to convince him of my talents but the event itself turned out to be a great success!!!

We also had the honour of having the global Special Olympics Ambassador at the event and he presented the medals to everyone at the end of the day. Unfortunately our team officially finished third, but the result was really the most irrelevant part of the whole day!

I recently visited an Abattoir in Hereforshire. RE Williams and sons in Weobley was the first stop on a tour round the region that Conservative MEP candidates are doing in order to see exactly how the food chain works - from farm to fork!

Abattoirs are much maligned institutions and I must admit that I along with probably most people, do not really know what goes in inside them and just how affected they can be by EU and government legislation.

So we went to visit them and got a taste of just the problems that it small abattoirs are facing. They are affected not only by increasing fuel costs and the toughening economic situation but also by the reams and reams of EU legislation which gets passed down from Brussels. Every year or so this legislation changes and all the time small businesses have to keep up with the changes, some of which are incredibly technical and can easily come into force without any proper explanation to those who actually have to adhere to it.

We saw vividly how this could affect an abattoir and next I will be off to a farm and a farmers market in Rugby to see how the Electronic Identification of sheep is going to affect our sheep farmers.

Croatia 1 England 4

Who could ever doubt Fabio Capello! We all knew he was just tinkering with the team short of unleashing the real England on an unsuspecting Croatia.

Of course all along I thought that England would be fine in Croatia - there was never any doubt that we were going to win easily, after all the only reason we lost to Croatia last time round was because our manager wasn't very good!

Mmm, OK maybe not. But in truth the new England team looked nothing like any England team I have ever seen. Decent passing, composure on the ball, Wayne Rooney pulling the attacking strings and pace on the wings with Theo Walcott and Joe Cole.

We still looked a bit dodgy in defence and David James still doesn't fill me with confidence when he comes for the ball, although his shot stopping is still as good as ever, not though it was needed the other night.

So things are finally looking up for the national team, although Ukraine and Belarus will still prove to be tough tests. I am confident that with this team and this manager, we can get through to South Africa in 2010.

The only disapointing thing about this match was the fact that it wasn't shown on terrestrial TV. There should have been at least some highlights on either BBC or ITV. To deny the millions of people who don't have access to Setanta sports even a highlights package is a real shame. This must be looked at before England's remaining away games, all of which currently will not be seen on terrestrial TV.

Roof falls in on the Strasbourg Parliament

Last month the roof literally fell in on the Parliament in Strasbourg and as a result for the first time the normal monthly session has been held in Brussels!

This is great news for all of us who have been complaining for years about the crazy travelling circus that sees MEPs and their staff undertake a monthly 500 mile round trip between Brussels and the pictoresque Alsacien city nestled next to the German border.

These monthly trips emit roughly the same amount of CO2 emissions as all the patio heaters in the EU, yet clearly oblivious of the irony, MEPs recently voted to ban patio heaters because they were too damaging to the environment.

It looks likely that the next session will also be in Brussels as the Strasbourg parliament will take several weeks to repair. The momentum is now well and truly in favour of ending the Strasbourg sessions altogether and holding all of them in Brussels.

Unfortunately the French government is still digging its heals in and is refusing to negotiate an end to the Strasbourg sessions. There are potential options, such as turning the Parliament into a university, but what ever happens, it is clear that the French will have to be offered something in return for giving up their right to host the Parliament. Until they do give in, the biggest and most obvious example of European mismanagement and waste, the monthly trek of MEPs to Strasbourg, will remain a symbol of everything that is wrong with the EU.

Beijing Olympics and Tibet

Tomorrow, the Olympic flame will go through London and by all accounts, there will be one mother of a demonstration against it because of the human rights abuses happening in Tibet. There are still calls for athletes to boycott the games and I saw one TV interview where a British athlete was given a really hard time for not considering boycotting the games.

Now, what is happening in Tibet is a disgrace and we must put as much pressure as we can on the Chinese government to change their policy and attitude towards Tibet, however, I believe it is wholly unfair to make athletes make the ultimate sacrifice in order to ease our own moral guilt about the situation.

There has not been a call to boycott the Shanghai Grand Prix this year, the English women's football team were not crucified when they played the World Cup in China last year, anyone of us can book a flight to Beijing, Shanghai or Hong Kong and spend our holidays in China and many of our companies are doing roaring trade with the country, so why are we making our Olympic athletes feel guilty about going to China?

I also feel that an Olympic boycott would be absolutely the wrong thing to do if we want to see a change in the situation in Tibet. The whole reason why we know so much about what is going on there is because the Olympics are coming to China. If this wasn't the case, we would be none the wiser. If we impose a boycott, China will be able to close itself off from the rest of the world and we will condemn the people of Tibet to many more years of Chinese domination.

On the other hand, if we send all our athletes, and all our journalists, not only will we get more than a glimpse of the situation in China, but the Chinese will be more exposed to the views and attitudes of the Western world. They will also be under more pressure to comply to the accepted norms of the international system. China wanted to host the Olympics because she wanted to show the world that she was a modern, mature and legitimate nation. The government will take any criticism that threatens to undermine this image very seriously and this may give the Tibetans room for manouver.

The Common Agricultural Policy 2008 Reform

The CAP is currently going through its Mid Term Review, or Health Check, after the 2003 reforms.

The CAP is hugely complicated, however it basically boils down to two sections -

Pillar 1 - Direct payments to farmers through the Single Farm Payment - This pays farmers an annual subsidy based partly on the historical claims made on that farm and partly on the size of the farm. This payment is no longer directly linked to production so farmers are free to grow as much or as little as they choose and that they can sell on the open market.

Pillar 2 - Rural Development funding - This funding aims to support rural areas to develop and diversify and various schemes are available for farmers to sign up to. The Environmental part of Pillar 2 is the most important however there are also funding schemes for marketing of agricultural products, farm adaption and forestry, among others.

In 2003 the major reform of the CAP decoupled Pillar 1 payments from production and started moving more money directly into Pillar 2. In 2008 the European parliament is now looking at how that reform went and how further reform can be achieved.

Needless to say, there is not much appetite for reform within the EU and many countries are actively trying to block any attempt to reform it. Despite this, we will be battling hard to get some further reform.

The main features of this years reform are :-

- Gradual phasing out of export refunds and subsidies

- Increase of milk quota (probably about 2%) ahead of the ending of the quota system in 2015

- Increased modulation (movement of funds from Pillar 1 to Pillar 2) probably 2% per year up to 2012.

- Possible capping of payments to large farms(The European Commission has just proposed increased modulation rates on farms which receive over £75,000 per year in single Farm Payment.)

- Ending of the Energy Crop Scheme

- Simplification of Cross Compliance Regulations

I will continue to post about how the negotiations are going on the reform over the coming months. The Commission produces its legislative proposal in May and the Parliament will then debate the issue over the summer and autumn. However, any views or comments on this that could provoke a debate on this are very much welcomed!!!!

The Budget

I watched in disbelief as Alastair Darling lectured us all as to how great the economy is and how great a job Labour has done making everyone rich and happy!!! He seemed completely unaware of the fact that virtually everything is getting far more expensive. Energy bills have gone through the roof in the last year, petrol is reaching ridiculous prices, food seems to be following suit and to cap it all off council taxes are going up yet again! He then clobbered virtually everyone by raising taxes on petrol, cars, alcohol and tobacco.


The government really does seem to be out of touch with the realities of every day life, telling fantasy stories about how well prepared the economy is to deal with a global slowdown. In reality, we are not in good shape and the next year is going to be very difficult. Surely then, in these circumstances it is time to free people from the straitjacket of increased taxation, trim the ever growing size of state bureaucracy and put the money raised into education and health.

BBC Debut

I had my first taste of TV this week as I appeared on the BBC Record Europe programme to discuss the current controversy over MEP's expenses and a potential assistant's statute.
It was a nerve racking experience and I really didn't know what to expect. However it was interesting to see Chris Davies and Herbert Bosch arguing even before the programme started!!

The interview can be seen on the link below :-

http://search.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/search/results.pl?tab=av&q=record+Europe&edition=d&scope=all then choose the programme on the 04/03/2008

EU Constitution - His opinion of your opinion!!!!

In Strasbourg last week the European Parliament voted through the Lisbon Reform Treaty. Conservative MEPs and staff took the opportunity to stage a peaceful demonstration against the lack of democracy shown by both Gordon Brown, in not allowing us to have a referendum despite promising it in 2005 and by the European Parliament for effectively silencing any criticism of the Treaty in the run up to the vote.

Our demonstration certainly had more decorum than the UKIP attempt, which saw their staffers dressed up in chicken costumes being chased round the Parliament by scores of angry security men. This was undoubtedly funny, but devalued the message we were trying to get across. This Treaty is no laughing matter - it gives away British veto rights in over 60 areas, it places our UN Security Council seat under threat, it enshrines a foreign policy role for the EU, it introduces a Charter of Fundamental Rights which could take us back to the industrial action of the 80's, it is self amending, it allows courts in one EU country to enforce a criminal conviction from another, it gives the EU competence over sport and for the first time, free and undistorted competition is no longer a goal of the EU.

It represents a major shift in sovereignty towards Brussels and it is imperative that the British people are given a say in this process. Sadly Gordon Brown doesn't appear to respect the will of the people!!