This weekend saw a tragic statement from a pathetic French president, seeking to hold on to what litttle popularity he has left at home and distract attention away from his own country's shameful selfishness by launching a nationalistic attack at his European neighbours, not to mention blatantly lying in the process!!

Jacques Chirac, personally humiliated by the French rejection of the EU constitution (since it was his unpopularity that caused many to vote against his beloved constitution), took a desperate swing at the UK rebate in order to stir up some good old-fashioned anti-British nationalism at home and portray himself as the 'defender of France'.

He went so far as to say "There is no link between the British cheque and agricultural subsidies" which is a complete lie. These subsidies are almost solely responsible for the huge disparity in what Britain receives from the EU (compared to the likes of France who get loads to spend on lazy farmers), which is why Margaret Thatcher argued that the UK needed the rebate in the first place.

Follow up:

Without the rebate, France (with a similar GDP and population to the UK) would contribute only a tiny fraction of what the UK would to the EU budget. This is because France get millions and millions of pounds back in farm subsidies (which throughout the EU account for about 40% of the EU budget). The UK doesn't rely so heavily on farming, so we'd get shafted - and this is what was happening until Margaret Thatcher successfully argued for a rebate in 1984.

CAP for Dummies
The EU spends loads of money subsidising farmers. France has vast vast number of farmers, so gets more money than most from this deal. The UK has far fewer farmers so gets f**k all.

France would never give up a deal that sweet, so we got a rebate to balance things out - so to say that "There is no link between the British cheque and agricultural subsidies" is, as I have explained, a lie. "Tragic" really, but what would you expect from a pathetic Chirac but to blame someone else?

But wait, there's more! While France still gives less to the EU than the UK, Chirac had the cheek to ask for Britain to give up its rebate entirely as a mark of "solidarity" claiming that our wanting to keep what he called the "British cheque" was "pathetic."

It's not just the UK that loses out on EU farm subsidies. The CAP, the system that guarantees farmers these payments, means that African farmers can't sell their produce to European countries because they get undercut by subsidised EU farmers! So while everyone's off cancelling their debt, the CAP helps ensure that poor African countries can't become self-sufficient.

That money should be being used to encourage research and investment in hi-tech industries like IT, bio-medicine, engineering and god knows what else! Chirac proved just what a tragic position he was in by trying to claim that the outdated and anachronistic CAP is modern!!

Professional fudge-miester Bertie Ahern, who also moonlights as Prime Minister of the Irish Republic, called the arguments between Britain and France "embarrassing" but then again it's easy to sit and judge everyone elses flaws when your own country is the sponge of Europe! (More on this later, but suffice to say for now that Ireland's GDP per capita is second in the EU only to Luxembourg, yet in 2003 they were still one of 4 countries who were net beneficiaries of EU funding and the other 3 all had GDPs that were roughly half the level of Ireland!)