Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2013-06-12-Speech-3-174-000"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20130612.35.3-174-000"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spoken text |
"Mr President, this report is emblematic. It is not so much important in itself as symbolic of the powerlessness of democracy and of popular will in Europe. In every Member State there is a majority of people who are against the waste of money involved in this monthly peregrination between two seats.
For what it is worth, I am pretty relaxed about which one we choose. I would be very happy to meet in Strasbourg all the time. It is a reminder of the days when the European Union was still a club of nations sharing out the institutions rather than having a federal capital, but my point is not really about the ‘one seat’ issue. It is about the way in which, repeatedly, this Chamber votes to do something about it and nothing happens.
The reason nothing happens is because of what Milton Friedman calls ‘the tyranny of the status quo’, the sheer volume of vested interests which have grown up around the established dispensation from the authorities of the two towns, down to the removal men and lorry drivers who bring the empty trunks – or empty but for the occasional wash-bag or rattling pair of shoes – back and forth every month in that huge fleet of lorries emitting all the carbon emissions which we are always lecturing everybody else about. It does not matter how you vote because the system carries on unchanged."@en1
|
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata | |
| lpv:videoURI |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples