Well, it's now been a while since the No vote from Holland and where
are we now. Well, exactly where we could have expected, exactly where
we were before. After all, that's what people voted for.

However, I'm still disappointed and still think that a lot of people
voted based on misinformation and misconceptions about the
"Constitution". At least the yes campain admitted several mistakes,
like calling the damn thing a constitution in the first place. It's a
treaty, a nice one for sure but just another treaty.

And it's been pointed out before, it's a bit silly to hold a referendum
on a text of which some 95% is currently active law. The rest was
just tinkering on the sides to streamline the process. Ironically
people who voted against it because of the so called "bureaucracy" in
Brussels have themselves contributed by not allowing them to clean it
up.

I actually found a nice article by Terry Wynn
on the EU Budget which neatly
debunks several myths about where the money is actually going and where
the "scandels" about fraud come from. Basically, the statistical method
used by the auditors practically guarentees a large over estimate in
actual fraud. Plus most of the "errors" are committed by the Member
States, not the EU.

In any case, it's nice to know where people were getting these figures
about the Netherlands paying 15 times as much as Denmark. After all if
country A pays one euro and country B pays 50 euros, sure, country B
has paid 50 times as much but it's kind of missing the point. Ratios
are useless without a baseline. Not to mention that the "allocations to
countries" is not exact. Some organisations specifically open accounts
in Belgium to receive grant money, making Belgium overrepresented. The
leaders in Belgium are going to present a chart that shows that Belgium
pays the most per head compared to any country in the EU.

Lies, damn lies and statistics. The money came from the EU and went to
the EU. Arguing over which countries it came from or too is not in the
spirit of the EU.

Anyway, the whole thing is getting out of hand. The Belguim's foreign
minister has compared our Minister-President to Harry Potter, which is
funny because they do actually look similar.

And the concessions? Well, they're not going to mention the T-word
(Turkey) in the next EU summit, though the plans are still going right
ahead. The EU discount is conditional on the UK giving up it's 4.4
billion euro bonus, which they're hardly going to give up lightly (who
would). And the value of the Euro just keeps going down. I'll keep my
money in Australia for the time being...
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