Euro-troublemakers want us to increase benefits

The national press is reporting that the British government has been told by officials of the Council of Europe to increase the benefits it pays to unemployed people.  There are a number of points to be made here.

First, the Council of Europe is not the same as the European Union.  The two organisations are entirely distinct from one another.

Second, the call for higher benefits payments appears to pertain to a document called the European Social Charter.  I have tried to find the text for this document on the Council of Europe's website, but the best I could find was that the treaty upholds the right to be protected against poverty and social exclusion.

It appears that the Council of Europe cannot force the British government to increase its benefits, but its decree can be referred to in any litigation claims brought against the government by British citizens.

It is perhaps unsurprising that at least one Tory MP is calling for the United Kingdom to withdraw from the Council of Europe, but frankly we should never have entered in the first place.

The Council of Europe aims to uphold the European Convention on Human Rights, which it describes as a treaty designed to protect human rights, democracy, and the rule of law.  That is a sick joke.  There is nothing democratic about a treaty that seeks to be binding on supposedly democratic member states in perpetuity.

Democracy is by its nature fluid.  It allows governments to change their policies and procedures in response to changing circumstances, and the electoral process often provides a strong incentive for such changes to take effect.

Many working people in this country are struggling to subsist on meagre wages.  If benefits are increased for those not in work, will benefits also be increased for those in work?  How much money would such an increase cost?  Are the totalitarians who run the Council of Europe able to suggest a way in which such higher expenditure could be met without plunging the economy into another recession?

I do not condone Britain's membership of the undemocratic Council of Europe any more than I condone Britain's membership of the undemocratic European Union.