Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2016-09-15-Speech-4-221-000"
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"en.20160915.31.4-221-000"2
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"Madam President, there are actually going to be a few aspects of this job that I am going to miss. I will miss the glint of the westering sun on the façade of Strasbourg Cathedral. I am actually going to miss the company of some of my colleagues here. We do not agree very often, but they are good friends and loyal and engaging companions.
But I am not going to miss wasting our time on these utterly pointless resolutions about whether they should have the death penalty in the Philippines and whether the Zimbabwean Government is doing enough for women’s rights. Can I tell you, no one in those countries knows or cares what we think. The idea that they are waiting in Manila to see what the European Parliament’s resolution on human rights in the Philippines has decreed is beyond a joke. And the reason we are doing it is not because we think it is going to have any impact on the real world. We are doing it to make ourselves feel better or, more precisely, we are doing it to send a signal to the world about what very nice people we are. It is the ultimate moralistic form of lawmaking and it is this kind of thinking that led to the failures of Schengen and the euro and all the rest of it, because we were projecting our values, rather than looking at the reality.
This is not going to be Britain’s problem for very much longer, but of course we have a continuing interest in the prosperity of our friends and allies – and I would urge you, my friends, to focus on the things where we can make a difference, rather than using legislation as a way of sending a message."@en1
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