President Blair - WOW

Firstly Chirac tried to diss Blair by saying he should renegotiate the UK rebate.
This rebate is somehow attached to farm output/farmed goods imported - not 100% sure how.
Anyway,with loads more countries becomng part of the EU, our rebate was about to increase by 2/3 from £3B, to £5,000,000,000 an not insubstantial lump, so other countries were keen on us doing the *decent thing*. To be honest the staus quo was going to be ludicrous, poor countries join the EU, one rich country [UK] gets richer because of it- mind its just like the EU!

They even tried reasoning with us, by allowing us to keep infinitum our last year's rebate amount into the future. Blair was having none of it.

Next he manages to get other countries on our side agreeing that the agricultural dumping/overpaying/fraudulent system we have should be overthrown .

I don't know what's going on behind the scenes, but it's just amazing that France may have to accept that it should pay it's fair share of the bureaucracy of the EU. [ its the main reason for the CAP [common agricultul policy] .

And we'd have to give up our rebate [ but we wouldnt need it then, so fine- the EU budget would drop by over 60%]

Africa and other really poor nations could start ,hopefully, to enrich themselves with agricultural exports.

The EU could perhaps turn towards stamping out the endemic corruption in its running.
I know I've just slung this in, but I may get round to it in a later posting....