EU CRUNCH TIME FOR CAMERON.

Oh dear, oh dear. The poor old European Union is huffing and puffing and making out that agreeing to new arrangements for the UK is a huge problem. As we get closer to the supposed 'crunch meeting', key players are letting it be known that the negotiations are hard, agreement may or may not be possible, there are 'sticking points' and so on. The truth is very different.

Of course there'll be agreement, mainly because there's very little that can't be agreed. Cameron's 'demands' are virtually meaningless and will make almost no difference to anything. The EU will continue on its merry way as before and all of the fuss that's been made over the last year or so will be forgotten. Migration into the UK will continue; paying benefits to migrants will continue as will having to provide them with all of the social facilities enjoyed by long term residents, such as free access to the NHS and assorted local authority services. The UK will continue to be beset by vast volumes of rules and regulations issuing from the faceless bureaucracy that will continue to shuttle back and forth between Brussels and Strasburg, not forgetting the vast costs incurred by simply having the various EU bodies of parliament, council, commission and God knows what else.

The European Union is a huge conglomeration of nations which serves no one but itself. It is inherently socialist, protectionist and inward looking. It is like an old-fashioned 'closed shop' trade union, with its leadership hell bent on maintaining power and status at all costs; no one can 'enjoy' its privileges unless they're members and no one can be members unless they sign up to its ways. Leave, and you forfeit all rights. This is a doomed organisation, utterly unfit for a world in which communications and trade are global; while it may have been a good idea, once, its day has passed.

Cameron will return from his latest round of talking just like Neville Chamberlain did in 1938. He will have at least a metaphorical piece of paper to wave at onlookers and will claim that he has achieved a wonderful result, and that all is now well. He will say that we can now vote to stay in this organisation without fear but that to leave it would be both foolish and highly dangerous.

POPPYCOCK.

Vote to leave. Get out. Open up the UK to business and opportunities with the rest of the world without all of the baggage of the EU around our necks. Di it now. Do it in June. Do it as soon as possible. Just DO IT !

WOGAN SIGNALS TIME FOR CHANGE.

I didn't dislike Terry Wogan, but neither was he entirely my 'cup of tea'. His death yesterday was sad but hardly justified the extensive coverage afforded by the BBC.

As with the demise of David Bowie a couple of weeks ago, the BBC and other media went overboard. The BBC made Wogan's death the main news story of the day and gave it massive coverage on every news broadcast. The story was deemed more important that David Cameron's EU discussions, the upcoming Iowa primaries in the US, the inquest into the still unexplained death of a young soldier at Deepcut barracks in 1995 and its possible implications in relation to 3 other deaths, the ZIKA epidemic, a financial crisis in Nigeria, the murder of 11 people at  a party in Mexico, and much more. Indeed, the events in Nigeria and Mexico did not even merit reporting.

Terry Wogan may well have been a very nice, generous man; he was undoubtedly a good and well-liked broadcaster, but the effusive praise now heaped upon him is simply out of all proportion. This is another example of the media seeing itself as being 'the story', rather than being the reporter of stories; it sees its own as being more important than all else. The pompous, opinionated and self-indulgent hordes of television and radio presenters and regular guests need reminding that they are NOT the story.

It is time for change.

CAMERON, JUNCKER AND TUSK PLAY GAMES WITH US ALL

David Cameron's much reported discussions with Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk are a sham, as anyone with half a brain cell must know. All Cameron is trying to do is to show how hard he is 'fighting' for the UK, while Juncker and Tusk are trying to show how tough they are. In reality, this is a case of 'aunt sallies' being set up simply so that they can be knocked down, and both sides can claim 'success', 'victory' and anything else that occurs to them. To cap it all, Cameron is desperately trying to finish things off so that he can call a referendum as quickly as possible, and before the opinion polls move even further in the direction of 'leave'. To this end, he is prepared to have the referendum campaign going on at the same time as campaigns for the Scottish parliament, Welsh assembly AND most local authorities throughout the UK; this is utterly ridiculous, though not to Cameron.

The whole EU re-negotiation is a political exercise designed from the start to end with Cameron claiming enormous reforms that will free the UK from vast swathes of intrusive EU rules and regulations; in truth, it will achieve very little, though that won't prevent an utterly disingenuous and Europhilic Cameron from telling the voters that we must stay in this 'reformed' organisation as we now have membership on our own terms and to leave it would be terribly dangerous.

Ha, bloody ha. Whatever Cameron 'achieves' will be dressed up as victory, though it will be a hollow one. The potential confusion caused by holding 4 separate electoral campaigns at much the same time will be destructive for all of them, but will allow Cameron and his fellow Europhiles to muddy the waters still more. For me, the clearer it becomes that Cameron and his fellow travellers are hell-bent on rushing the population into an early and ill-conceived vote, while campaigning to remain in with lies, half-truths and scare-mongering, the more I am certain that the only way to vote is 'LEAVE'.