Err, not strictly true Mr. Redwood - surely?

With a post entitled “Europe again – its always there to trouble us” John Redwood writes:

“I used the opportunity to ask the Minister about the status of the UK’s HS2 project. He confirmed what I have been telling many of you. HS2 is a project which the UK can and does decide for itself. It is not mandated by the EU, and is not on the maps as a crucial part of the EU’s European networks. Critics of the scheme should attack it on its domestic merits and defects, not as a further illustration of too much EU power. There does not seem to be any wish by the EU to find EU money raised from member states to help this project.“

Agreed that HS2 is a project which the UK can and does decide for itself; that it is not mandated by the EU, ie there is no EU Directive or Regulation ‘enabling’ its construction. That is a fact – however knowing our political elite have this overriding aim to show what “good little Europeans we are” I still suspect this to be another of Cameron’s “We have decided to ……” with a view to negate the ensuing “Brussels Effect”. Perhaps Mr. Redwood did not pay attention to Justine Greening and Statutory Instrument 3066/2011 in which it is notated that our rail system is now known as “the rail system within the Community (now the EU)“. If that phrase does not mean that our railway system is no longer under our control – then I must have missed something! Oh and by the way, Mr. Redwood, it is on TEN-T maps – go trawl the TEN-T website……. Ask yourself why the EU has part-funded the rail link between Dublin and Belfast and beyond? Ask yourself why would they do that if it was not to provide a ‘transport corridor’ from one outer region of the EU, through the UK, to mainland Europe and why there may have been a little ‘arm-twisting’ on HS2. Are we to see a bridge or tunnel connecting Larne in Ireland to mainland Britain?

That, insidiously, we are being subsumed into the “EU net” is beyond doubt and I find it utterly unbelievable that an avowed, supposed, Eurosceptic appears to be following the public trend of believing that which he is told and doing so without question. There has been much effort expended in obtaining sight of the emails that exist with regard to Huhne and his speeding points – cynic that I am, perhaps the police might wish to spend some time obtaining emails and correspondence between our political elite and those bodies set up to ‘investigate’ the viability of HS2, together with said correspondence twixt the EU and our ‘government’?

One thing is certain – we, the public (and I suspect MPs), are not privy to all the facts about HS2 and why it is being implemented and yet we are expected to fund it. That is democracy? So much for “transparency in government”; so much for ‘honesty’ on the part of our political elite; so much for the ‘honour’ of our political elite. Until the foregoing becomes the norm we will continue to live under what is becoming more and more evident as a democratised dictatorship. Until we get some form of direct democracy and an element of ‘referism‘, we will continue to be ‘bled dry’ as a result of the vanity of those who are supposed to serve us!

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