The European election results
The Leader of Ukip, Robert Kilroy-Silk, (Ukip – The UK Independence Party – wants to take the UK right out of the EU), which got 16% of the British vote, has vowed to “wreck the EU Parliment”, which I doubt he will succeed in doing, given that his party only got 12 seats. He added: “We want to expose its waste, its corruption and its erosion of our sovereignty.”, which may not be such a bad thing.
Ruth told me that she heard on the local radio this evening, that all the major German parties will each cash in millions of Euro more than they spent on their election campaigns in campaign cost reimbursements from the EU - the CDU will make a profit of around 20 million Euro, apparently. It is just such “milking” of the EU, which causes people to (rightly) get worked up about the cost of the EU Government, and if UKIP exposes gravy-trains like this, then good luck to them.
There has been a lot of complaining, both in the UK and Germany, about the low turn out for the elections – in fact, the turnout varied a lot. In Belgium and Luxembourg, 90% of the electorate voted, in Italy, 73%. You can check the turnout per country on the EU Parliment’s election web site.