1. Conservative home- http://conservativehome.blogs.com/

2. Dan Hannan MEP- http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/au...

3. Polling Report- http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/sw...

4. Drudge Report- http://www.drudgereport.com/ (always an interesting story

5. Foxnation http://www.thefoxnation.com/ (American)

6. Trueblue blood - http://trueblueblood.com/

7. Iain Dale - http://iaindale.blogspot.com/

8. John Redwood MP- http://www.johnredwoodsdiary.com/

9. The Freedom Association- http://www.tfa.net/

10. Blue blog- http://www.conservatives.com/News/Bl...

Daniel Hannan MEP: Seven reasons why Conservatives must leave the EPP

Daniel Hannan is an MEP for the South East and blogs at Telegraph.co.uk.

Hannan_danSome of you may find this hard to believe, but I’m going to miss Christopher Beazley. The pro-euro MEP has decided not to seek re-nomination – mainly, he says, because he disagrees with the Conservative Party’s commitment to leave the European People’s Party (EPP) in 2009 and form a new, anti-federalist group in the European Parliament. All Euro-candidates have been asked to sign a statement in support of party policy. A lesser man might have held his nose and signed, or signed with his fingers crossed behind his back; but Chris has behaved with edifying principle. Heaven knows he and I have disagreed over the years. But he has never sought to disguise opinions which he knows to be unpopular with his constituents. Not every politician can make the same boast.

Now is a good moment to remind ourselves of why David Cameron has promised to leave the EPP, and why candidates are being asked to support him.

(1) The European Parliament lacks an Official Opposition
At present, every political alliance in Europe – the Communists, the Socialists, the Liberals, the Greens, the Christian Democrats – supports the euro, the constitution, a common foreign policy and an EU criminal justice system. Indeed, the EPP goes further than the others, demanding a single EU seat at the United Nations, a European army and police force and – my particular favourite, this – a pan-EU income tax to be levied by MEPs. Once there is a mainstream conservative bloc positing a different kind of Europe, the cartel will be broken. From that moment, Euro-federalism will cease to be inevitable, and become one among a series of competing ideas.

(2) Our message must be consistent
“I want Conservatives to be saying the same thing in Westminster, in Brussels and in Strasbourg,” says David Cameron. Spot on. In the past we have suffered electorally – especially at the 2004 European Election, when we got our worst share of the vote since 1832 – because we were thought to be dissembling. We fought Euro-sceptic campaigns in Britain and then, when elected, we scuttled off and sat with the most integrationist group in the chamber.

(3) An independent group will control its own resources
Every political group in the European Parliament receives millions of euros for political activism. Some of this money is passed on to the national parties to allocate as they wish; but a good deal is held back to spend on pan-European campaigns. So what does the EPP spend our money on? You guessed it: campaigns to promote the European Constitution, the Common Agricultural Policy, the Charter of Fundamental Rights and so on. A chunk of money – the money to which Tory MEPs ought to have been entitled – was spent in support of “Yes” campaigners when Sweden voted on the euro. Outside the EPP, we’d be free to create a campaigning machine to promote a completely different vision of Europe: one based on free markets, national independence and the Atlantic Alliance. This, of course, is what the other side fears.

(4) Leaving the EPP will put Conservatives in the mainstream
Nothing – nothing – could be further from the truth than the idea that the only parties outside the EPP are far-Right. The persistence of the notion that “Tory MEPs may end up with Italian fascists” is one of the most successful pieces of black propaganda I’ve ever encountered. No one has ever proposed such a thing and, for what it’s worth, the party that is descended from Mussolini’s, the Alleanza Nazionale, is currently applying to join the EPP. Nor does anyone deny that there were enough respectable parties to form a new group two years ago. This time, there are several more parties in play, including from Romania and Bulgaria, as well as others that have become uncomfortable with their existing affiliations. G

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Chris Heaton-Harris MEP: A Rough Guide to the EU Budget
Chris Heaton-Harris writes A Rough Guide to the EU's Draft Budget for 2009.

For the past nine years or so I have been a Member of the Audit Committee of the European Parliament (known as "Budgetary Control") and have been trying to make some sense of the Budgets of both the European Commission and European Parliament.

We all know that every year the European Court of Auditors fails to sign off (or as they say “give a positive statement of assurance on”) the accounts of the European Commission and one question every candidate for the European elections next year will be asked is “what are you going to do to stop all the fraud, waste and maladministration, so that the accounts get signed off?”

Well, this time of year is budget time! Cannily, the process was designed so that just about everyone in the European Parliament who might care about the Budget is away on holiday around the time amendments for the budget should be submitted. This year most Committees of the Parliament (which only returned from recess on 25th August) have deadlines for the tabling of amendments around the 27th August. As you will see later on, almost every item of expenditure has its own “budget line” and this is what MEPs will try to amend. This is where MEPs, if they wanted to, could try to tame the beast.

Every year, helped by my poor members of staff, I go through the budget over the summer months and table dozens (occasionally hundreds) of amendments to try and prune out some of the rubbish that I have found contained within it. Every year I lose most of these amendments in the Committee and Plenary votes, thanks to EPP, Socialist and Liberal MEPs defending the status quo. And every year I still get asked by hundreds of different people why am I not doing anything about it!

This year is my last attempt, as I am standing down from the European Parliament next June and moving onto pastures new. However, I don’t want to leave this subject alone; I want to try and translate the Budget into plain English to explain how much money is spent by the European Institutions, where it goes, and why it is mightily difficult to make any amendments to the Budget at all. Whilst I have made the occasional political comment, the whole point of this exercise is not to say that all this is a complete waste of money and we shouldn’t give Europe a penny (although, given the accounts are never signed off, I do subscribe to that argument) – the idea here is to try and describe how big the beast is and how the scrutiny process works.

THE EU'S BUDGET FOR THE COMING YEAR IS £116BN

Firstly the numbers: all the amounts I talk about below are contained within the “Draft Budget” and most can be amended by the European Parliament or Member State governments should they want to.

This year the total Draft Budget for the European Union is £116bn. This is a 3.1% increase on last year’s amount. Of this money the European Commission’s 2009 draft budget is £95bn and the European Parliament’s 2009 draft budget is £1.25bn.

The European Commission: OK, so let’s look at the big beast first – the draft budget for the European Commission for 2009 of £95bn (yes, billion!)

- Agriculture & Fisheries

Unsurprisingly, the single biggest expense belongs to the agricultural sector and the Common Agricultural Policy – it accounts for a whopping £35.75bn! In addition to this, you will find that the UK is paying more than any other Member State in agricultural levies to the Commission - £374m. At a time of rapidly rising food costs, this is essentially just an extra European protectionist tax being levied on UK consumers.

Some of the items in the agriculture and fisheries draft budget for 2009 incl