Looking Glass World

The European Union awards yearly stipends to qualified European political parties; recently, they've published a request for proposals--applications are due in November. This concept is codified in the Treaty of Rome (once section 138a; now section 191), which contains cause for the cash:

Political parties at European level are important as a factor for integration within the Union. They contribute to forming a European awareness and to expressing the political will of the citizens of the Union.

Europe's got it backwards, as Elaib at England Expects explains:

Surely they have got the whole thing upside down. The function of political parties is, as I have always understood it to do the latter of these suggestions “express the political will” of the citizen/subject. But of course here in Brussels that is thrown on its head.

Gloriously this might explain why the Parliament is in a position that 80% vote in favour, for of course political parties in Brussels prime purposes are firstly to act as important factors “for integration”, and almost as important they “contribute to forming a European awareness”. This might be a small start in understanding why they have got things so horribly wrong.

Not only un-democratic and silly, Elaib says the grants are illegal in the U.K., having been rejected by Parliament four years ago.

If only Sammy Davis Jr. were still alive. He could launch a European political party of black, one-eyed Jews, dedicated to purging the racist and binocular power structure that, for centuries, blocked this tiny minority from access, or entry, to the corridors of the governing elite. The Black One-Eyed Jew party would storm the walls of civilization, promoting increased awareness of the historical glass-eye ceiling, and thus speeding necessary social and political integration into new centralized EU institutions.

The EU governing laws are spread over a constitution preserved in aspic, dozens of treaties, a million laws, hundreds of thousands of papers of many colors, and a similar stack of council decrees and decisions. Somewhere, some provision surely mandates an anti-discrimination, post-modern, diversity-enhancing preference. Should it seek an EU grant this November, Sammy Davis' Black One-Eyed Jew party is a lock.