The Museum Of Modern Thinking

Well, crap. Our misguided, incompetent, control-freak Government has denied us a referendum on the EU Constitution Lisbon Treaty. This is in the face of public opinion, if we extrapolate I Want A Referendum’s constituency campaign, which showed 88% of people do. The turnout of 36.2% is higher than most local elections, making a mockery of some politicians’ claims that people aren’t that interested. I know 36.2% doesn’t seem a lot, but in the last general election it was only about 40% if memory serves.

I’m pleased to see all but three Conservatives voted for a referendum, I have no surprise that most Labour MPs were totally spineless and voted on the party line, and I am disgusted with the Lib Dems trying to muddy the issue and general lack of cojones (thank you Nick Clegg for that gem). I’m very pleased that 25 Labour MPs rebelled against Gordon Brown, and 15 Lib Dems rebelled (3 of which resigned) – at least some MPs have their electorate’s interests at heart. The bill now passes to the House Of Lords, where I hope some of them will see sense (it’s happened many times before) and kick the bill back down.

For those of you just joining us, the Lisbon Treaty is nothing but the old rejected EU Constitution, but with the added bonus of stripping more power from us. But don’t believe me, here’s what our good friends on the continent say:

“The substance of the Constitution is preserved. That is a fact.” – Angela Merkel, German Chancellor

“A great part of the content of the European Constitution is captured in the new treaties.” – Jose Zapatero, Spanish Prime Minister

“The good thing is…that all the symbolic elements are gone, and that which really matters – the core – is left.” – Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Danish Prime Minister

“They haven’t changed the substance – 90 per cent of it is still there.” – Bertie Ahern, Irish Taoiseach

“It’s essentially the same proposal as the old Constitution.” – Margot Wallstrom, European Commissioner

“Only cosmetic changes have been made and the basic document remains the same.” – Vaclav Klaus, Czech President

“There’s nothing from the original institutional package that has been changed.” – Astrid Thors, Finnish Europe Minister

“This text is, in fact, a rerun of a great part of the substance of the Constitutional Treaty.” – Valery Giscard d’Estaing, Author of the European Constitution

Reproduced from I Want A Referendum’s “They Said It” (.pdf)

Even a pro-Labour, cross-party committee found that the Lisbon Treaty would shift power to Europe, and condemned the Government’s handling of the treaty, including the fact the Government had not told the electorate the truth about the treaty – for more information, read the committee’s key findings.

I sincerely hope the Lords force Labour to honour their manifesto commitment to a referendum, and that the pathetic Lib Dems find more cojones and vote with their conscience.

The worst part of the treaty? It creates an EU President and Tony Blair(!) is vying for the job – dear God, no.

After playing the trial game of N+ on my XBox 360, I had such a blast I had to buy the whole thing from XBox Live Arcade – which I rarely do. Myself and my son had a great time playing as rivals on the trial, so I was looking forward to beating him on the full game as well (yes, yes, I’m Competitive Dad, I know).

So I get home, pay the money to MS for my points, download the full version and play for a bit. My wife and son come home, I switch XBox off, have dinner, switch XBox back on – and I’m screwed. The dreaded RROD shows up, putting paid to victory over my eight year old son, and also stuffing the hope for some quality Bioshock time while my wife’s away with work. Man, that makes me sound like a geek, but there ya go

Anyhoo, the returns procedure from MS is very simple, but I guess they’ve had the practice, what with their 19% RROD failure rates I logged a call on the XBox website, got emailed a UPS label, stuck XBox in a box, put label on box and dropped it off at a local UPS depot – done. I’m now going cold turkey, which probably explains my blog postings I’ll get my XBox back in time for my birthday I hope, and Devil May Cry 4 is on my list – the demo of that was also great, I even got used to playing as Nero…

As previously mentioned, I’m posting my progress on paying down my debts and building up my savings. It doesn’t seem so long since I posted my last update, but I’m going for commitment and consistency.

Total Savings: 30.12% of monthly income – increase of 10.27%

Total Debt: 10.10 x monthly income – reduction of 0.22 (yipes – need to get some debt snowflakes on that)

I know it looks like the my total debt has shot up from last time (it was 5.67), but I did not include my car loan in the previous figure, which I really should.

With Mervyn King (governor of the Bank Of England) predicting the standard of living will fall, it makes sense to tighten the belts and get some savings behind me – as should we all.