Garlic Eclairs and Bratwurst Everyone?

Every 5 years or so we elect members of Parliament to try and run the country for us and while I'm sure they go there with the best intentions, party politics always seems to get in the way and we never seem to get what we want. MPs are and I'm quoting from the MP's own website here

The UK public elects Members of Parliament (MPs) to represent their interests and concerns in the House of Commons.

Seems pretty straight forward to me but it's an absolute no no for MPs from either side of the political divide to agree even when the truth is so obvious it's painted on Rudolf's red nose in fluorescent yellow paint. Even if 99% of the population think it's a good idea they have to argue the toss because if they don't Mr Whip will come down very hard on them. Although quite a few MPs have been known to enjoy such attention. How about we get told the truth, not their twisted version. Stop moaning and tell us straight.

 I've heard so much hot air about this EU agreement that we have decided to give the two fingers to that I thought I better find out a little bit about it. So after literally minutes of hard reading I came across a couple of basic summaries that highlight what it's all about. Below I have put together a simple explanation.

The new treaty is being put in place to bring all the countries closer together financially with lots of strict new rules that are very much like the original rules that were put in place when the Euro was set up. The rules that just about everyone ignored. Firstly

• a cap of 0.5% of GDP on countries' annual structural deficits - this basically means someone in a posh office in Belgium is going to tell you how much you can spend to sort out your issues, but that's okay because no one will listen anyway. In the original treaty to set up the Euro countries had to have their GDP below 60% or on a downward trend. Italy has never met this requirement, but they make nice pizza.
• "automatic consequences" for countries whose public deficit exceeds 3% of GDP - this is exactly the same as the original criteria for joining the Euro except for the adding of the "automatic consequences" whatever they might be? Maybe more expensive suits in France and Belgium jumping up and down while everyone just ignores them, but this time using long swear words that translate to inserting man sausage in tea towel holders.
• the tighter rules to be enshrined in countries' constitutions - This is a great one, this means everyone in Europe agrees to change their local laws to allow unelected bureaucrats from some faceless European body to tell you how to spend your money. It's like the bloke from number 6 knocking on your door and telling you to sell your new winter coat because it's posher than his. He's definitely getting a punch on the nose. 
• European Stability Mechanism (ESM) to be accelerated and brought into force in July 2012 - Yep lets give more money to countries who are so far in debt that they've run out of digits on their calculators and let's do it quicker.
• adequacy of 500bn-euro (£427bn; $666bn) limit for ESM to be reassessed - basically we have no idea how much money we want to chuck at this problem before we call it a day so how about we just double it and see what happens.
• Eurozone and other EU countries to provide up to 200bn euros to the IMF to help debt-stricken eurozone members - Yep please give us even more money and we'll spend it wisely, honestly, would we lie to you, remembering that the EU often forgets to publish it's own accounts as they fiddle on a monstrous scale. So badly that their own internal audit office said you couldn't trust the numbers they were producing.

To paraphrase even further they want us to agree to to give the EU a lot more money and very soon, while spending our money the EU is going to tell us how to spend the money that's left and change our laws to stop us from saying no. You wouldn't touch this deal with a barge pole because it's bollocks. We are currently in a bad place because we've decided to do something about our debt before the shit hits the fan and we have to beg someone else to bail us out.

As one of the EU prime ministers put it, we wanted more Europe and 1 country, us, want less. Too bloody right. So if a Frenchman knocks on your door this week and asks to borrow your life savings so he can buy 19 gallons of Greek yogurt, 16 four leaf clovers and 406 pepperoni pizzas my advise would be to kick him in the crown jewels.