'De euro is helemaal niet goed voor onze welvaart'

OPINIE - Pepijn van Houwelingen −31/01/13, 06:00

De bewering dat de euro goed is voor onze welvaart is zo'n grote leugen dat men gewoon niet kan geloven dat het niet waar is, vindt Pepijn van Houwelingen.

Het Europese integratieproject is, met Camerons aankondiging van een Brits referendum, op losse schroeven komen te staan. Omdat de EU bij velen bovendien allang geen warme gevoelens meer oproept, is het niet verwonderlijk dat voorstanders van verdere integratie zich nu verbeten achter hun laatste verdedigingslinie hebben verschanst: zonder de EU en de euro kan Nederland niet welvarend zijn. Guy Verhofstadt bleef dit afgelopen zondag in Buitenhof maar zeggen: als Nederland net zoals de Britten een referendum organiseert en uit de EU stapt, volgt een economisch armageddon.

Maar is dat zo? Hetzelfde werd immers alom verkondigd toen de president van IJsland zo moedig was een referendum uit te schrijven. De bevolking van IJsland verwierp met een grote meerderheid het verdrag dat toen met Nederland en het Verenigd Koninkrijk was gesloten over de terugbetaling van leningen en zie, na een paar zware jaren klimt IJsland op dit moment weer snel uit het dal. Waarom zou Nederland niet rijk en welvarend kunnen zijn buiten de EU en zonder de euro? Kijk naar Zwitserland - een land dat net zoals Nederland veel naar de EU exporteert en een grote financiële industrie heeft - of Noorwegen. Ook het Verenigd Koninkrijk kan op dit moment goed handel drijven met het continent terwijl het de euro niet heeft ingevoerd. Er bestaan zelfs veel kleine en erg welvarende landen die net zoals Nederland bijzonder afhankelijk zijn van de internationale handel maar toch hun eigen munt hebben. Singapore is een mooi voorbeeld.
Lees meer op: Volkskrant .nl

'I feel like a stranger where I live’

As new figures show 'white flight' from cities is rising, one Londoner writes a provocative personal piece about how immigration has drastically changed the borough where she has lived for 17 years

By Jane Kelly

7:30AM GMT 29 Jan 2013

"When you go swimming, it’s much healthier to keep your whole body completely covered, you know.” The Muslim lady behind the counter in my local pharmacy has recently started giving me advice like this. It’s kindly meant and I’m always glad to hear her views because she is one of the few people in west London where I live who talks to me.

 

The streets around Acton, which has been my home since 1996, have taken on a new identity. Most of the shops are now owned by Muslims and even the fish and chip shop and Indian takeaway are Halal. It seems that almost overnight it’s changed from Acton Vale into Acton Veil.
 

Of the 8.17 million people in London, one million are Muslim, with the majority of them young families. That is not, in reality, a great number. But because so many Muslims increasingly insist on emphasising their separateness, it feels as if they have taken over; my female neighbours flap past in full niqab, some so heavily veiled that I can’t see their eyes. I’ve made an effort to communicate by smiling deliberately at the ones I thought I was seeing out and about regularly, but this didn’t lead to conversation because they never look me in the face.
 

I recently went to the plainly named “Curtain Shop” and asked if they would put some up for me. Inside were a lot of elderly Muslim men. I was told that they don’t do that kind of work, and was back on the pavement within a few moments. I felt sure I had suffered discrimination and was bewildered as I had been there previously when the Muslim owners had been very friendly. Things have changed. I am living in a place where I am a stranger.

Read more at: The Telegraph

Aan de leiband van de Brusselse zonnekoninkjes

Volgens De Telegraaf stationeert de Europese Commissie vanaf half februari een vaste begrotingscontroleur in Den Haag.

Deze Brusselse ambtenaar, de European Semester Officer, houdt dagelijks in de gaten of en hoe de ministeries de aanbevelingen uit Brussel uitvoeren, zo meldt het Financieele Dagblad. Volgens ingewijden wordt het de Belg Jean-Luc Annaert. Hij zou per half februari naar Nederland komen.
Annaert heeft geen bevoegdheid om politici of ambtenaren te corrigeren of terecht te wijzen. Acht lidstaten hebben sinds kort al zo'n European Semester Officer. Het is een van de manieren waarop de Commissie probeert meer greep te krijgen op begrotingen en economisch beleid in de lidstaten.
 

Toch fijn dat we op de vingers worden gekeken door een organisatie wier eigen jaarrekening nog nooit door de accountants is goedgekeurd, en die, terwijl alle lidstaten streng bezuinigen, glashard volhoudt dat ze meer geld nodig heeft om de Brusselse schoorsteen rokende te houden...

Update: "EU-spion met pek en veren land uit"

De partij van Wilders ziet er meer heil in om een vaste Nederlandse controleur in Brussel te stationeren die kan toezien op juiste besteding van het Nederlandse belastinggeld.
 

Een schot in de roos van Geert Wilders. Misschien wordt die Brusselse jaarrekening dan in de toekomst toch ooit nog een keer door de accountants goedgekeurd!

Constructive criticism

Cartoon by A.F. Branco

Daniel Hannan: Waarom GB uit de EU moet

Geplaatst door Michael van der Galien op 18 oktober, 2012 - 12:00

Sterke column.

In de Telegraph legt Tory MEP Daniel Hannan uit waarom Groot-Brittannië beter af is buiten de EU. Kerncitaat:

Consider Switzerland. The Swiss declined to join the EU, instead negotiating a series of sectoral trade accords covering everything from fish farming to the permitted size of lorries. As a result, they are fully covered by the four freedoms of the single market – free movement, that is, of goods, services, people and capital – but are outside the CAP and CFP, free to determine their own human rights issues, and spared the budget contributions which EU members are required to make to Brussels. Has their trade to the EU suffered in consequence? Hardly. In 2011, their exports to the EU were, in per capita terms, 450 per cent of Britain’s. Let me repeat that astonishing fact. Switzerland sells four-and-a-half times as much per head to the EU from outside as we do from inside.

Eurocraten willen niet dat dit soort cijfers ons onder ogen komen. Ze willen ons immers doen geloven dat we alleen zaken kunnen doen met andere Europese landen als we lid zijn van de EU. Dat is onzin: Zwitserland doet het prima, maar is niettemin onafhankelijk.
Lees het hele artikel even door, Hannan legt echt op bijzonder overtuigende wijze uit waarom GB uit de EU moet stappen... en eigenlijk gelden dezelfde argumenten natuurlijk voor Nederland.

Uit: Dagelijkse Standaard

***

 

Mijn duit in het zakje: Laten we vooral ook niet vergeten dat het Nederlandse volk dertig jaar of langer is voorgehouden dat de massa-immigratie ons geld opleverde en een verrijking was voor ons land. Nee, dat hoefde niemand uit te rekenen, dat wás gewoon zo, punt. Tot die lastige Wilders het liet uitrekenen door bureau Nyfer en bleek dat diezelfde massa-immigratie ons per jaar 7,2 miljard kostte (en nu nog kost!). Waarna Elsevier  de totale kosten van die immigratie nog eens uitrekende en, tot en met 2010, uitkwam op een negatief saldo van 216,4 miljard euro. En dat bovenop het feit dat we nettobetaler zijn aan de EUSSR. Geen wonder dus dat we steeds meer verarmen!


Dave's EU speech: waffle, platitudes and vague promises

By Alexandra Swann

This morning David Cameron gave his long-awaited speech on his vision of our future relationship with the European Union. While it wasn’t the tantric experience we were promised, for the first time Cameron is talking about the possibility of Britain leaving the European Union which is undoubtedly a victory for Ukip and, more importantly, public opinion.

What did we learn? There will be no referendum unless the Conservatives win a majority at the next General Election; Cameron will first launch consultations into the sort of renegotiation that no one with the faintest knowledge of Brussels politics believes possible; Cameron is keen for Turkey to join, with the door open to others; and the “in” campaign has begun, with Cameron’s full backing.

What we saw this morning was a shameless and thinly veiled attempt by Cameron to win back the votes he knows he will need to form a Conservative government in 2015. He knows that the rise of Ukip is his single biggest problem; the party have been polling up to 16 per cent and won 21.8 per cent of the popular vote in the recent Rotherham by-election. It is estimated that Ukip could cost Cameron 51 seats, handing power to Labour. It was a desperate appeal to Eurosceptics; Cameron pleading “vote for me, or you will never have your referendum” or, more accurately, “if you vote for Ukip and cost me my majority, you'll only have yourselves to blame when the referendum never happens”.

Read more at: The Telegraph

The veil descends

National Review's Happy Warrior
January 15, 2013

In the summer of 2010, mourners lined the streets of Wales's capital city to pay tribute to a seven-year-old boy killed in a house fire. In fact, Yaseen Ali Ege was brutally beaten to death, and then set alight with barbecue fuel. By his mother. For failing to learn the Koran. Over the preceding months, Mom had used a stick, a rolling pin, and a hammer on her son, but, despite these incentives, he had memorized only a couple of pages. And so she killed him, and subsequently declared she felt "100 percent better."

This month, at Cardiff Crown Court, Mrs. Ege was sentenced and jailed by Mr. Justice Wyn Williams for what he declared "a dreadful crime" that had inflicted "a good deal of pain" on an innocent boy. The judge, however, was discreet enough not to pass comment on more basic cultural questions. He had no view on whether or not being forced to learn the Koran is an appropriate educational priority for a "Welsh" schoolboy, so long as the parental hammer and kerosene remain locked up in the toolshed. Nor on whether a child so raised can be a fully functioning member of Western society. Yaseen's headmistress at Radnor Primary School, Ann James, called him "a delightful little boy and beautifully behaved who always had a smile on his face," and forbore to mention that on the day of his murder he had been kept home from class and the "teddy bears' picnic" because his mother felt he needed to focus on his Koranic studies.

Read more at: SteynOnline

'Nederlandse topbestuurders: ook voor u tien anderen'

Waarom is de Nederlandse bestuurlijke top - die in het algemeen toch niet bekendstaat om zijn liefde voor kapitalisme - als het over de eigen beloning gaat ineens zo verzot op marktwerking? Vraagt Pepijn van Houwelingen zich af.

Zomaar een citaat uit het boek Onder Regenten, over de elite in het 18de-eeuwse Hoorn: 'Noch aan het ambt van schepen noch aan de regentschappen van de godshuizen en het weesmeesterschap waren enige inkomsten van betekenis verbonden. Het waren niet meer dan ereambten.' Noblesse oblige dus. Afgaande op de lijst met topinkomens die vorige week door minister Plasterk openbaar is gemaakt, denken Nederlandse bestuurders daar tegenwoordig wat anders over.

Een publieke functie is niet langer in eerste plaats een ereambt en daar mag dus best een flinke vergoeding tegenover staan. De bestuurders zijn het naar hun eigen mening meer dan waard. Zoals Weber al schreef: 'Das Glück will 'legitim' sein.' Maar is dat in dit geval ook zo?
Lees verder op Volkskrant. nl

Zie ook: Dossier topsalarissen

I Will Not Be Intimidated

January 8, 2013

By Steve McCann

As a young boy I was shot by a man whose clear intent was to kill me as I had deliberately, by throwing broken bricks at him, interrupted his attempt to rape a young teen-aged girl, allowing her to escape. To this day I can still see the evil in his face and the sun glistening off the barrel of the pistol he aimed in my direction. As I turned and began to run away he fired hitting me in back. The bullet entering my chest felt as if someone had hit me with baseball bat followed immediately by an excruciating burning sensation as I fell to the ground from the impact. Perhaps it was the adrenaline, but I was able scramble to my feet and run as far as I could until finally passing out from the shock and loss of blood. Fortunately, someone came to my rescue and took me to a military hospital and the first step on my journey to the United States.

According to the current incarnation of the American left, who traffic constantly in victimhood and noble intentions, I should be in the vanguard of the mandatory gun control and confiscation movement. That somehow it was the inanimate object this soldier was holding and not him that was responsible for the attempt on my life or to ignore the fact that his mindset was such he would have used any weapon at hand to accomplish the same goal. 
 
On the contrary, I own a handgun today because of the experience of coming face to face with the evil that permeates some men's souls. I and the girl I rescued were defenseless. There were no police or armed citizens around and the death of another homeless and unknown boy and girl, buried in an unmarked mass grave, would have been just another easily ignored casualty of the post-War period. I was determined that I would never again face a similar circumstance. I have had in my possession firearms for virtually my entire life, as I have been fortunate to live in the one nation on earth that has embedded in its founding document the right to bear arms.

Read more at: American Thinker

Americans never give up your guns

28.12.2012

By Stanislav Mishin

 

These days, there are few few things to admire about the socialist, bankrupt and culturally degenerating USA, but at least so far, one thing remains: the right to bare arms and use deadly force to defend one's self and possessions.

 

This will probably come as a total shock to most of my Western readers, but at one point, Russia was one of the most heavily armed societies on earth. This was, of course, when we were free under the Tsar. Weapons, from swords and spears to pistols, rifles and shotguns were everywhere, common items. People carried them concealed, they carried them holstered. Fighting knives were a prominent part of many traditional attires and those little tubes criss crossing on the costumes of Cossacks and various Caucasian peoples? Well those are bullet holders for rifles.

 

Various armies, such as the Poles, during the Смута (Times of Troubles), or Napoleon, or the Germans even as the Tsarist state collapsed under the weight of WW1 and Wall Street monies, found that holding Russian lands was much much harder than taking them and taking was no easy walk in the park but a blood bath all its own. In holding, one faced an extremely well armed and aggressive population Hell bent on exterminating or driving out the aggressor.

 

Read more at: pravda. ru