CAP Reform

Apprarently CAP is not going to be reformed, nor was it this governments intention of reforming it. It was merely a bargening chip to, temporarily, maintain the British rebate.

"What particularly upset these MEPs were Beckett's evasions – something to which British MPs are inured. Although repeatedly challenged to give some detail, her responses were 'insubstantial or misleading', whence at least five MEPs walked out. This apparently left a flustered Beckett, pleading for MEPs to remain in their seats.

What did emerge, of substance, however, was confirmation of that which we all knew – that Blair's rhetoric on reforming the CAP was completely empty. According to Bloomberg, Beckett revealed that: 'All people are talking about is the next financial perspective beginning in 2014.' In other words, nothing is going to happen until after the 2006-2013 budgetary period, and the current CAP settlement is locked into place until then."

EU Referendum then goes on to point out that tourism is a bigger part of the economy than farming, but relient on the landscapes that farming produces with the logical conclusion that we should if anything subsidise the production of attractive landscapes rather than subsidising rich land owners simply for existing.

Needless to say Chirac jumped on this like a hyenna onto a newly dead carcas

No sooner has Beckett admitted that there will be no changes to the CAP until 2014 then, right on cue, in weighs Jacques Chirac declaring that he is not willing to make any concessions on EU agricultural policy as part of discussions on the EU budget.

On this, he could not have been more unequivocal. Speaking yesterday in a television interview on the occasion of the Bastille Day national holiday, L'Escroc said: "I am not prepared to make the smallest concession" on CAP, adding that the EU had two problems to resolve: To fix the next budget and to emerge from the crisis brought about by the "no" votes in the EU referendums. He said he was defending the CAP "not only to defend the interests of French farmers."

Not a month ago, Blair was making his song and dance about reforming the CAP and then talking about abolishing it. Now, it is all over – the CAP will remain unchanged for the next nine years and probably for many more years thereafter.

The British rebate is however still in the debate and as we now have no amunition left to defend it is an almost certain to be scrapped meaning that our relationship with the EU becomes even more unfair.

Tony played a political blinder bringing the link between CAP and the impoverishment of the third world to the worlds attention on the back of Live 8 and the Make Poverty History campaigne. Now this vegitable Beckett has undone all of that and probbaly considned us to putting £5 billion a year into the corruption filled pit that is the EU.