Call me gullible, but this story very much has a ring of truth about it:
Brussels has fined Britain more than £150million for failing to display the EU flag on a string of projects part-funded by Europe. Several schemes were also penalised for failing to use the flag on their letterheads.Via Independence Home.
The fines relate to £3.8billion given to the UK by the European Regional Development Fund over a seven-year period. The fund has contributed to dozens of projects including the Eden Project, in Cornwall, the Millennium Bridge, in Gateshead, and the redevelopment of Liverpool’s King’s Dock.
Funding from the ERDF usually has to be matched pound for pound by Government cash. Britain is a net contributor to the EU budget and critics have long complained that ERDF funding is essentially recycled taxpayers’ money. This year the UK will contribute £6.4billion more to Brussels than it receives back.
UK Independence Party MEP Nigel Farage called the fines an ‘outrage’. He said: ‘The ERDF is using British taxpayers’ money to tell us what a great job the EU is doing. It is a rotten deal for Britain – and in return we have to plaster the country in horrible blue flags.’
Communities Secretary Eric Pickles condemned the ‘over-bureaucratic rules’ surrounding ERDF money.He said he would be pressing the European Commission to cut back on ‘needless bureaucracy’.
The ERDF lays down strict rules on the display of the EU flag. Any project accepting cash has to display the flag on a permanent plaque in a prominent position.
15 comments:
The Mail exaggerates in headlines, cherry picks their stories, but they also sometimes get good stories that most of the other papers don't pick up on. I never entirely discount them as a news source.
Lay off the Mail! My dream job is to be a DM journalist.
. . . and just because it's in the Guardian - or on the BBC - doesn't necessarily mean it's true.
The Mail is far & away the most trustworthy part of the MSM. That is a long way from reliable but certainly puts them ahead of lying fascists (eco & otherwise) in the BBC & Guardian.
The use of government politicians names, who would complain & precise numbers, which can be checked convinces me it is true. The fact that the BBC, Grauniad etc don't report it convinces me they are just corrupt, government funded, propaganda organs willing to tell any lie & censor any fact in the Nazi cause (but to be fair I knew that already).
on a permanent plaque in a prominent position.
surely there's scope for some imagination there...
w/v billed - you're not charging us to comment now, are you?
JT, I'd take this one at face value.
S_L, explain?
U, I usually don't even dignify the Graun and the BBC are so cack-handed that it's fairly easy to counter their propaganda.
NC, sure, on global warmenism and the EU the Mail is pretty solid, but it is among the most Home-Owner-Ist of newspapers - they just let themselves down by relying on actual, correctly reported facts and figures too much (which lay bare the HO lies and logic).
McH, you can bet your bottom Euro that there are 18 pages of 'guidance' on how big, how prominent and how permanent the plaque has to be.
I'd prefer to believe Nigel.
Just to add, Mark, I don't like the Mail much either. But I do think they're the one newspaper that can outlast the internet because they actually go out and find unique stories.
The Times paywall is quite funny because The Times rarely produces a hot story. Take away the lifestyle stuff, the columnists, the press-releases-disguised-as-science, and the stories everyone else has, and you don't have much left to The Times.
JH, me too.
JT, it's OK, the Mail, provided you factor in their biases. I have seldom found factual errors in it.
Unless my memory is faulty I recall Gordon Brown saying that the Lisbon Treaty was completely different from a constitution because the requirement for a flag had been dropped. By hook or by crook me thinks an EU flag on every flagpole is what we'll get.
I can actually forsee the day when it will be illegal for a private citizen to fly their own country's flag on a private flagpole without also flying the flag of the EU.
As for the Eden Project I went there a couple of years back with low expectations and even then I was slightly disappointed. The weather was a bit crap so we didn't spend much time outside but the overall impression on me was of three giant restaurants and a shop with two small botanical gardens attached on the side. I've been worse places but the Eden Project didn't really do it for me.
The Mail has good columnists and plenty of porn in it.
Lots of saucy photos dressed up as stories.
I have a scrap book full of 'em.
M, that's a bloody good point re the flags. It winds me up no end that most car number plates have an EU flag on them as well. As to Eden Project, click the label for my take on it.
EK. Hmm. I find the DM just makes me angry, that's the whole point of it.
Mark there is nothing wrong with a paper gaving views you & I disagree with. What is wrong is suppressing facts which, as you acknowledge with housing, the Mail are much less guilty than the others.
As an example when I went looking for newspaper reporting of the fact that a Chinese submarine had been able, unnoticedm to surface in the middle of a US carrier fleet (indicating their noiseless engines work & that they can sink US carriers at will) I found that the Mail, almost alone worldwide had reported this news which indicates a major change in the world balance of power.
You don't get news like that in the Gruaniad & BBC,
Mrs R always check the Mail website first. It's easier, because the headlines are all there on one page.
Other news sites have their own style, and pick up different aspects of a story. The BBC, sadly, often seems to miss out important bits.
The Mail has also, we Rigbys believe, been instrumental in keeping David Kelly's death in the news.
NC, Mrs R, maybe you are right. I trawled today's edition and found the glorious Professor Plum story.
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