{"id":901,"date":"2005-10-21T12:18:00","date_gmt":"2005-10-21T12:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2005\/10\/21\/the-eu-budget-and-cap-reform-tedium-continues\/"},"modified":"2005-10-21T12:18:00","modified_gmt":"2005-10-21T12:18:00","slug":"the-eu-budget-and-cap-reform-tedium-continues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2005\/10\/the-eu-budget-and-cap-reform-tedium-continues\/","title":{"rendered":"The EU budget and CAP reform tedium continues"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As expected, negotiations over farming subsidies have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/business\/story\/0,3604,1597284,00.html\">gone all to hell<\/a>, US trade representative Rob Portman stating that &#8220;The responsibility at this point lies squarely with the EU&#8221; &#8211; which is partly right, but a tad unfair really &#8211; the blame really lies, as ever, with France &#8211; but also with <a href=\"http:\/\/europhobia.blogspot.com\/2005\/10\/eu-and-tony-blair-ineffectual-loser.html\">Tony Blair&#8217;s piss-poor &#8220;leadership&#8221;<\/a> during the UK EU presidency. <\/p>\n<p>And so, in typically new Labour style, Mr Blair, titular EU president, asks everyone to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/article\/0,,13509-1835551,00.html\">avoid the details<\/a> when discussing the EU budget. Because, let&#8217;s face it, little Tony seems to have trouble speaking in anything other than meaningless platitudes &#8211; why should he suddenly have to try and cope with the nuances of the single most divisive and important issue facing the EU when he&#8217;s managed to be in power for so long without ever discussing anything in anything other than the broadest of terms?<\/p>\n<p>I <a href=\"http:\/\/europhobia.blogspot.com\/2005\/06\/treaties-constitutions-referenda.html\">had<\/a> some <a href=\"http:\/\/europhobia.blogspot.com\/2005\/06\/showdown-is-looming.html\">hopes<\/a> before this UK presidency kicked off, but always knew that Blair would let us down, despite <a href=\"http:\/\/europhobia.blogspot.com\/2005\/07\/well-that-didnt-take-long.html\">frequent pleas for action<\/a>. Although I do like to see my political perception being spot on (God, I&#8217;m good etc.), this whole thing really is fucking pathetic. Sometimes <a href=\"http:\/\/europhobia.blogspot.com\/2005\/07\/president-blair.html\">I don&#8217;t like being proved right<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>(A handy overview of the farming subsidies issues can be found at the <a href=\"http:\/\/commonagpolicy.blogspot.com\/2005\/10\/half-speed-ahead-in-doha-round.html\">Common Agricultural Policy blog<\/a> (another recent discovery).)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As expected, negotiations over farming subsidies have gone all to hell, US trade representative Rob Portman stating that &#8220;The responsibility at this point lies squarely with the EU&#8221; &#8211; which is partly right, but a tad unfair really &#8211; the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2005\/10\/the-eu-budget-and-cap-reform-tedium-continues\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}