Nail, meet head.

Following the recent election, Vaclav Klaus will be succeeded as Czech president by Milos Zeman, a former prime minister and head of the Citizens' Rights Party. I had a bit of soft spot for old Vaclav, as he seemed to be one of those rare politicians who understood -and could readily articulate- concerns about the yawning chasm that has opened up between those who are elected to govern and those who do the electing.

Klaus, who had direct and bitter experience of an earlier European form of totalitarianism, had very firm views on recent developments within the EU. He summed it up thus:

"The manifestations of transnational progressivism—global governance and the European Union—are supplanting liberal democracy and nation-states and driving us into the stage of post-democracy. The EU wants to replace the project that is malfunctioning today by even bigger doses of the same. That is entirely absurd. In contrast to Marx, supporters of global governance do not believe that salvation will arise via the proletariat: they humbly suggest that it will come from themselves."

It's going to get worse before it gets worse

It would appear that the tide of opinion on the EU might have taken a significant turn (unless, that is, you work for the BBC). Significant change in public opinion has been rather slow to arrive, perhaps because –up until now- the pro-EU faction had very successfully skewed the debate to the extent that anything 'anti-EU' was seen as anti-European, anti-progress, xenophobic ‘little Englander’ nonsense. That was, at best, an intellectually feeble tactic, because it’s clear that one can be in favour of increased co-operation, trade, labour movement and so on without being in favour of central planning and big, unaccountable government.

Let's be absolutely clear about this: the EU is not Europe. The EU is a concerted attempt to run Europe from a central source. And what’s worse is that this concerted attempt is fuelled by a chilling determination not to allow anything as inconvenient as ‘democracy’ to get in the way. Just ask voters in Denmark, Ireland, France and The Netherlands; how many referenda on the constitution did the EU bigwigs ignore? What was it about the word 'no' that they didn't understand? And don't even bother asking voters in Greece and Italy anymore, because they now have their very own 'appointed' governments.

It has been clear for some time that there is a political and bureaucratic elite that is absolutely determined to establish a United States of Europe. The drift towards fiscal (to be followed, inevitably, by political) union among Eurozone members continues apace, with no indication that the electorate in any of these countries will get to have a say. They won’t get a say because the architects and drivers of this project do not trust us, the great unwashed, to do the right thing. They have, effectively, placed a firewall between themselves and the people they purport to represent. Impervious to anything as vulgar as public opinion, the EU leaders believe themselves to be protected from the ‘virus’ of democratic accountability.

Their disdain is what should alarm us most. History tells us that when people can’t change things via the ballot box, they find other ways to change things. When the mere casting of votes means so very little to the drivers of the EU project, the likelihood increases that they will only be deflected from their purpose by something that might turn out to be altogether less pleasant than the average election.

All previous attempts at 'unifying' Europe have ended in tears; this one will as well.

A plea for metric time

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have complete confidence in the ability of the EU leaders to come up with a cunning plan to subvert the pesky laws of economics. If anyone can find a way to keep us printing, borrowing and spending non-existent money for another few decades, then Sarkozy, Merkel and company are just the lads and lasses to do it.

In fact, I think we should go all the way with the Euro boffins and adopt some more of their wizzard schemes. For instance, I’d like to see the UK move over to the ‘metric’ time system used in some parts of the Eurozone. Over there, I am given to understand, they have 20-hour days (in two blocks of ten), an extra day in the week and a 'rollover' 32 extra hours each month that you can use for holidays and special occasions (or you can 'bank' them until your retirement). It may sound a little complicated, but it’s really a much fairer system than what we have now. Why, in this day and age, should we be shackling folk to the social construct of an old-fashioned calendar and to the oppressive restraints of strictly ‘linear’ time?

Under the metric system, the extra day (Euroday, added on between Thursday and Friday) is made up of the 4 hours that are taken from the 7 ‘old’ days in the traditional calendar. That leaves 8 hours extra per week, or 32 per month. If you want to 'bank' your extra hours until retirement, you can apply for a special licence from the EU time commissioner. Or, if you are happy to use those 32 extra hours at the end of each month, you simply notify your employer in order to qualify for the time off. The current ruling is that no more than 66.6% of this ‘extra’ time can be used to augment the normal weekend allowance. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled on several test cases involving folk who have tried to use only a few of the 32 hours (carrying the remainder over to the following month), but the administration involved in maintaining that kind of system would be nightmarish.

The EU time-boffins are currently drafting an updated version of the legislation, to allow for more flexible ‘time-banking’ arrangements. It should be ready by 2015, or next Tuesday.