More on archives and the UK Euro-regions

There might be precious little evidence of joined-up government or a competent level of knowledge of archival matters among civil servants (see our previous blogs One Step Forward, Two Steps Back and A Whiff of Controversy) but one thing is certain, when it comes to EU matters, it is best foot forward. Foot in Mouth as it were.

We read in the latest issue of Public Servant (issue 25 22 April 2005) in an article entitled EU gives devolution debate new impetus by Jennifer Spinks, that the English Euro Regions should follow Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (also defined as Euro Regions, unbeknown to their inhabitants) in bypassing Whitehall for funding and policy initiatives.

Miss Spinks candidly admits the proponents of regional government want the EU and the [Euro] regions... to gradually become the leading policy makers, outflanking central governments.

The use of the plural governments clearly implies a programme of EU wide dismantlement of member nation states and division of the EU into two tiers of European Commission and regions with no intervening national governments, despite suggesting regional government is under discussion chiefly in respect of the UK whose Euro regions supposedly suffer greater economic disparities than Euro regions in any other member state.

As we have noted in previous blogs, British archivists are in a headlong dash to collaborate with this dismantlement of the UK, probably in most cases not realising that the regions into which the Society of Archivists [sic] is divided, along with English Heritage, Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and Civil Service areas of operation, exactly conform to the EU map of the English Euro regions.

Prof. Martin Burch

Miss Spinks bases her article on a report entitled Asymetric Devolution and European Policy Making in the UK by Martin Burch, Professor of Government and International Politics at Manchester University. We presume Professor Burch's research was funded by the European Commission.

The funding by the EU of biased academic research in support of EU integration was first exposed by Dr. Richard North, successively researcher to the UK Independence Party and the Conservatives in his article Propaganda: How the EU uses education and academia to sell integration, co-authored with Martin Ball, Robert Oulds and Dr. L. Rotherham, published by the Bruges Group (click here.)

The true function of the Euro regions (described by the Government as Government Regions) is usually denied or watered-down by their proponents. A good example is The Times letter page of 29 March 2005 click here which fortunately was swiftly counteracted on 2 April 2005 click here

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