Bill Carmichael: Greedy EU wants more not less

MEPs in Brussels showed they were entirely detached from reality this week by approving moves to extend maternity leave to 20 weeks on full pay, in a move that would cost British businesses about 2.5bn a year at a time when many are struggling for survival.

If that was not bad enough, our European masters then blithely demanded an inflation-busting increase in the EU's budget of almost six per cent.

This in the same week when Chancellor George Osborne announced cuts in public spending in Britain of 11 per cent in real terms.

Why should we be spending more on Europe and less on the services that taxpayers actually value? It makes no sense at all.

Don't these MEPs and Eurocrats read the newspapers? If they do, they clearly feel that they are entitled to escape the belt-tightening that has been forced on the rest of the world.

Britain's net contribution to the EU stands at more than 6bn and will increase to more than 10bn by 2014 – enough to pay for a fifth of our education budget, or a tenth of the NHS bill.

Yet the EU has its own priorities – like fighting "global warming", whatever that means, and yet more aid to the Palestinians – oh, yes, and adding to the 9bn a year cost of EU red tape that is throttling Britain's wealth-creating private sector.

But what really riles the European Commission most of all is that it is forced to go cap in hand to national governments to plead for funding in the first place, with all the messy complications that involves, like democratic accountability and taking into account public opinion.

So the Commission has come up with a clever ruse to get around the will of the people. Instead of national governments taxing us and then handing over huge wodges of cash to Europe, why not allow Brussels to tax citizens directly?

In other words, let the parasite sink its teeth directly into the nation's creative bloodstream.

The proposals include a plan for a special Euro-VAT, presumably on top of the 20 per cent we'll be paying in January, plus taxes on air travel, carbon emissions, banks and financial transactions, with all the money going direct to Europe's bulging coffers.

Let's not forget that financial auditors have refused to sign off the EU's accounts for 15 straight years because of widespread corruption and fraud. The Commission's own chief accountant once described the EU's budget as "an open till waiting to be robbed".

The injustice of taxation without representation sparked a grand democratic revolution that put the United States on the road to greatness.

Perhaps we need something similar in Europe?

Rallying cry

It didn't take long for new Labour leader Ed Miliband to break a promise, did it?

In the last major hustings of the leadership election, he said he would attend this week's demonstration by public sector workers in

Westminster against public spending cuts.

But after his victory, Labour strategists began to fear that if Miliband appeared to be too close to the unions, it would cost him the support of middle England.

So when the placard-waving brothers marched through the streets earlier this week, "Red" Ed was nowhere to be seen.

A spokesman for Miliband said there was "never a firm commitment that he would attend".

So when he told supporters, "I'll attend the rally, definitely", he must have been talking about some other rally, obviously.