Now that the Lisbon Treaty (formerly known as the EU Constitution) has been forced through by the arrogant political and bureaucratic elite against the wishes of most ordinary people, here's a handy A to Z guide to the EU superstate which now controls all our lives.
A: Accountability - this is totally lacking in the secretive EU where over 45,000 bureaucrats produce more than 2,000 laws every year, where critical reports are always kept secret, where whistleblowers are always fired and where scandals are always hushed up.
B: Brussels, the capital city of the EU superstate where everyone connected with the EU lives in enviable comfort thanks to their huge salaries, special low EU taxes, huge pensions, generous expenses, short working days and long holidays.
C: Constitution see under 'L' for Lisbon Treaty as the Constitution rejected by the French and Dutch is almost exactly the same as the Lisbon Treaty rejected by the Irish.
D: Democracy - that is when people get to vote on something and the politicians accept the results of those votes.
The EU is undemocratic because we seldom get the right to vote on anything and when occasionally we do vote and the answer isn't the one the euro-elite want, they make us vote again and again to get the result that suits them.
E: Expenses - if you thought Westminster politicians' thieving was bad, it's nothing compared to what's going on at the European Parliament.
See "M" for millionaire as with over £300,000 a year in receipt-free expense allowances any MEP can easily become a millionaire in just one 5-year term at the European Parliament.
F: Freedom - this is something which the British have been proud to have defended for centuries and which our politicians are now giving away through cowardice and self-interest.
The situation is so serious that former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev was reported as having said: "The most puzzling development in politics during the last decade is the apparent determination of Western European leaders to recreate the Soviet Union in Western Europe".
G: Galvin Report.
This is a highly confidential audit of how European politicians use the £180,000 a year they get to pay for assistants.
Although the European Parliament has refused to release the Galvin Report, we now know that at least 90 per cent of politicians audited were found to have 'irregularities' in the way they used this huge allowance - that means they're stealing our money H: Health Service - the NHS is just one of the many areas which will fall under the control of Brussels eurocrats once the Lisbon Treaty is implemented.
Other areas that will move from British to EU control include education, immigration, transport, social benefits, tourism, taxation, policing, sport, defence, foreign policy and even family life.
I: Independence - Once the Constitution/Lisbon Treaty is implemented, Britain will effectively lose its status as an independent country as most of its laws, defence and foreign policy will be decided by twenty seven unelected bureaucrats in Brussels.
"I" can also stand for Immunity from Prosecution as all EU politicians and employees cannot be prosecuted for any acts committed during the course of their duties.
So when the EU anti-fraud commissioner Siim Kallas recently claimed that there was so little fraud in the EU that no EU official had been found guilty for over seven years, he was possible forgetting that nobody could have been prosecuted anyway due to their contractual immunity J: Justice - this used to be administered by British courts.
But now British law has become subordinate to EU law.
EU law is decided by the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
All decisions by the ECJ are binding on Britain and there is no right of appeal.
But the ECJ is not a proper court as the name suggests.
Its purpose is to force "ever closer union" between EU members.
This it makes all its decisions with the aim of creating one single superstate run from Brussels rather than treating EU members as independent sovereign countries.
The former German president recently wrote that the ECJ "blithely ignores national law", "pulls judgements out of a hat" and "systematically ignores fundamental principles of the Western interpretation of law".
K: Klaus (Václav) is almost the only European leader courageous enough to speak out against the disastrous Lisbon Treaty and how the EU is taking over our lives and replacing democracy with bureaucracy: "I thought that we live in a democracy, but it is post-democracy really which rules the EU...
The citizens of the EU member states are concerned about freedom and democracy.
But democracy and freedom are losing ground in the EU today.
It is necessary to strive for them and fight for them".
L: Lobbyists - there an estimated 15,000 lobbyists in Brussels.
Their only job is to wine and dine euro-politicians and influential eurocrats and offer them all kinds of favours like free holidays and jobs for them and their relatives in return for getting laws passed which suit the interests of the lobbyists' paymasters.
Recently a newspaper caught a senior official in former trade commissioner Peter Mandelson's department allegedly offering to supply sensitive information in return for favours from journalists masquerading as lobbyists M: Can stand for both Member of the European Parliament (MEP) and also millionaire as any MEP can become a millionaire in just one 5-year term at the parliament by cheating (though always within the rules) on their incredibly munificent expenses N: No - that is what the French and Dutch said when asked if they wanted the EU Constitution and what the Irish said when asked if they wanted the Lisbon Treaty.
It is also what the British would have said had Gordon Brown kept his promise and allowed us to vote O: OLAF - this is the EU's own anti-corruption investigation unit.
Although corruption is widespread throughout the EU administration, thanks to OLAF's blundering incompetence and deliberate cover-ups, not one EU official has been successfully prosecuted by OLAF.
However, all the whistleblowers who have courageously reported massive corruption to OLAF have lost their jobs.
P: PIGS - Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain - these are four countries which have made massive amounts of money from the EU thanks to the hard work and taxes of people in countries like Britain, Holland, Germany and Denmark.
PIGS are similar to BEES (Baltic and East European States) - another group that have lived well thanks to the generosity of Northern Europe's industrious taxpayers.
Q: Quote - perhaps one of the quotes which best illustrates the contempt that the eurocrats have for us when they decided to pass off the rejected Consitution as the Lisbon Treaty comes from the Constitution's architect former French president Valéry Giscard D'Estaing: "In terms of content the proposals remain largely unchanged, they are simply presented in a different way...
the reason is that the new treaty could not look too much like the constitutional treaty".
However, a close second must from our Prime Minister Gordon Brown when asked if he would stick to the Labour election manifesto commitment to a referendum on the Constitution: "The Manifesto is what we put to the public.
We've got to honour that manifesto.
That is an issue of trust for me with the electorate".
R: Referendum - both Blair and Brown promised the British people a referendum on the Constitution/Lisbon Treaty.
This promise was shamelessly broken and the British people never had the chance to vote on probably the most important change S: Strasbourg - Ludicrously, the 785 MEPs work in the European Parliament building in Brussels for three weeks a month and then have to travel to meet in the European Parliament building in Strasbourg for one week a month.
They take with them thousands of officials and tons of documents.
This completely unnecessary travelling circus costs European taxpayers over £200 million a year, but it does make Strasbourg hoteliers and restaurants delightfully rich.
T: Transparency - this has led to us finding out that many of our Westminster MPs have been thieving our money for years.
Although MEPs get about £300,000 a year each in expense allowances, as there is absolutely no transparency in the EU, we have no idea if they are using this money legitimately or just stealing it.
U: Unelected - the only people in the EU who can propose new laws are the twenty seven unelected EU commissioners.
If these were all highly talented administrators, the fact that they are unelected might not be so worrying.
However, most are third-raters who have been sent to their lucrative Brussels job as a reward for years of unquestioning sycophantic service to their political leaders or because they have been mired in so many scandals that they are an embarrassment and so are shunted off to Brussels to get them out of the way.
V: Vote - on 4th June we will have a chance to vote in the EU elections.
We need to send a message to our greedy, arrogant, out-of-touch euro-leaders that we're fed up of being taken for granted.
In Brussels they're not listening, we need to make them.
W: Westminster - this is an almost impotent relic of the past.
When New Labour came to power in 1997 about 40% of our laws were made in Brussels.
Now it is over 80%.
Moreover almost all these laws come in the form of regulations which must be implemented exactly as Brussels specifies and cannot even be discussed by the British Parliament.
This leaves very little for our Westminster MPs to do, yet they keep increasing their salaries, expenses, number of employees and holidays while doing less work every year.
X: Xmas - there is so much money given to eurocrats and MEPs and they get so many champagne dinners, free holidays and other benefits, that for the lucky euro-elite every day must seem like Xmas.
Y: Yes-man (and yes-woman) - unfortunately for us, these are the kind of people who tend to become EU politicians and top-level EU bureaucrats.
Most of us don't know their names, don't know how they spend and waste our money, don't know what they stand for and don't know what they do for us.
Yet every year thousands of new rules and regulations pour out of Brussels adding unnecessary costs to our businesses and restricting our freedom and independence.
Z: Zero - we should have zero trust when EU politicians and bureaucrats say they are listening to us and working for us.
The EU has achieved a lot by helping to bring peace and economic growth to the PIGS and the BEES and by creating a single market without trade barriers and tariffs.
But sadly it has turned into a huge bureaucratic monster that spews out new laws, enriches those fortunate enough to have a place on the gravy train and arrogantly ignores the wishes of the people it claims to represent.
The EU needs to be fundamentally reformed.
Its budget should be halved as should the number of employees, many of its policies, such as in agriculture and fisheries, should be scrapped, EU commissioners should be elected and a wide range of powers should be handed back to the member countries.
A: Accountability - this is totally lacking in the secretive EU where over 45,000 bureaucrats produce more than 2,000 laws every year, where critical reports are always kept secret, where whistleblowers are always fired and where scandals are always hushed up.
B: Brussels, the capital city of the EU superstate where everyone connected with the EU lives in enviable comfort thanks to their huge salaries, special low EU taxes, huge pensions, generous expenses, short working days and long holidays.
C: Constitution see under 'L' for Lisbon Treaty as the Constitution rejected by the French and Dutch is almost exactly the same as the Lisbon Treaty rejected by the Irish.
D: Democracy - that is when people get to vote on something and the politicians accept the results of those votes.
The EU is undemocratic because we seldom get the right to vote on anything and when occasionally we do vote and the answer isn't the one the euro-elite want, they make us vote again and again to get the result that suits them.
E: Expenses - if you thought Westminster politicians' thieving was bad, it's nothing compared to what's going on at the European Parliament.
See "M" for millionaire as with over £300,000 a year in receipt-free expense allowances any MEP can easily become a millionaire in just one 5-year term at the European Parliament.
F: Freedom - this is something which the British have been proud to have defended for centuries and which our politicians are now giving away through cowardice and self-interest.
The situation is so serious that former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev was reported as having said: "The most puzzling development in politics during the last decade is the apparent determination of Western European leaders to recreate the Soviet Union in Western Europe".
G: Galvin Report.
This is a highly confidential audit of how European politicians use the £180,000 a year they get to pay for assistants.
Although the European Parliament has refused to release the Galvin Report, we now know that at least 90 per cent of politicians audited were found to have 'irregularities' in the way they used this huge allowance - that means they're stealing our money H: Health Service - the NHS is just one of the many areas which will fall under the control of Brussels eurocrats once the Lisbon Treaty is implemented.
Other areas that will move from British to EU control include education, immigration, transport, social benefits, tourism, taxation, policing, sport, defence, foreign policy and even family life.
I: Independence - Once the Constitution/Lisbon Treaty is implemented, Britain will effectively lose its status as an independent country as most of its laws, defence and foreign policy will be decided by twenty seven unelected bureaucrats in Brussels.
"I" can also stand for Immunity from Prosecution as all EU politicians and employees cannot be prosecuted for any acts committed during the course of their duties.
So when the EU anti-fraud commissioner Siim Kallas recently claimed that there was so little fraud in the EU that no EU official had been found guilty for over seven years, he was possible forgetting that nobody could have been prosecuted anyway due to their contractual immunity J: Justice - this used to be administered by British courts.
But now British law has become subordinate to EU law.
EU law is decided by the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
All decisions by the ECJ are binding on Britain and there is no right of appeal.
But the ECJ is not a proper court as the name suggests.
Its purpose is to force "ever closer union" between EU members.
This it makes all its decisions with the aim of creating one single superstate run from Brussels rather than treating EU members as independent sovereign countries.
The former German president recently wrote that the ECJ "blithely ignores national law", "pulls judgements out of a hat" and "systematically ignores fundamental principles of the Western interpretation of law".
K: Klaus (Václav) is almost the only European leader courageous enough to speak out against the disastrous Lisbon Treaty and how the EU is taking over our lives and replacing democracy with bureaucracy: "I thought that we live in a democracy, but it is post-democracy really which rules the EU...
The citizens of the EU member states are concerned about freedom and democracy.
But democracy and freedom are losing ground in the EU today.
It is necessary to strive for them and fight for them".
L: Lobbyists - there an estimated 15,000 lobbyists in Brussels.
Their only job is to wine and dine euro-politicians and influential eurocrats and offer them all kinds of favours like free holidays and jobs for them and their relatives in return for getting laws passed which suit the interests of the lobbyists' paymasters.
Recently a newspaper caught a senior official in former trade commissioner Peter Mandelson's department allegedly offering to supply sensitive information in return for favours from journalists masquerading as lobbyists M: Can stand for both Member of the European Parliament (MEP) and also millionaire as any MEP can become a millionaire in just one 5-year term at the parliament by cheating (though always within the rules) on their incredibly munificent expenses N: No - that is what the French and Dutch said when asked if they wanted the EU Constitution and what the Irish said when asked if they wanted the Lisbon Treaty.
It is also what the British would have said had Gordon Brown kept his promise and allowed us to vote O: OLAF - this is the EU's own anti-corruption investigation unit.
Although corruption is widespread throughout the EU administration, thanks to OLAF's blundering incompetence and deliberate cover-ups, not one EU official has been successfully prosecuted by OLAF.
However, all the whistleblowers who have courageously reported massive corruption to OLAF have lost their jobs.
P: PIGS - Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain - these are four countries which have made massive amounts of money from the EU thanks to the hard work and taxes of people in countries like Britain, Holland, Germany and Denmark.
PIGS are similar to BEES (Baltic and East European States) - another group that have lived well thanks to the generosity of Northern Europe's industrious taxpayers.
Q: Quote - perhaps one of the quotes which best illustrates the contempt that the eurocrats have for us when they decided to pass off the rejected Consitution as the Lisbon Treaty comes from the Constitution's architect former French president Valéry Giscard D'Estaing: "In terms of content the proposals remain largely unchanged, they are simply presented in a different way...
the reason is that the new treaty could not look too much like the constitutional treaty".
However, a close second must from our Prime Minister Gordon Brown when asked if he would stick to the Labour election manifesto commitment to a referendum on the Constitution: "The Manifesto is what we put to the public.
We've got to honour that manifesto.
That is an issue of trust for me with the electorate".
R: Referendum - both Blair and Brown promised the British people a referendum on the Constitution/Lisbon Treaty.
This promise was shamelessly broken and the British people never had the chance to vote on probably the most important change S: Strasbourg - Ludicrously, the 785 MEPs work in the European Parliament building in Brussels for three weeks a month and then have to travel to meet in the European Parliament building in Strasbourg for one week a month.
They take with them thousands of officials and tons of documents.
This completely unnecessary travelling circus costs European taxpayers over £200 million a year, but it does make Strasbourg hoteliers and restaurants delightfully rich.
T: Transparency - this has led to us finding out that many of our Westminster MPs have been thieving our money for years.
Although MEPs get about £300,000 a year each in expense allowances, as there is absolutely no transparency in the EU, we have no idea if they are using this money legitimately or just stealing it.
U: Unelected - the only people in the EU who can propose new laws are the twenty seven unelected EU commissioners.
If these were all highly talented administrators, the fact that they are unelected might not be so worrying.
However, most are third-raters who have been sent to their lucrative Brussels job as a reward for years of unquestioning sycophantic service to their political leaders or because they have been mired in so many scandals that they are an embarrassment and so are shunted off to Brussels to get them out of the way.
V: Vote - on 4th June we will have a chance to vote in the EU elections.
We need to send a message to our greedy, arrogant, out-of-touch euro-leaders that we're fed up of being taken for granted.
In Brussels they're not listening, we need to make them.
W: Westminster - this is an almost impotent relic of the past.
When New Labour came to power in 1997 about 40% of our laws were made in Brussels.
Now it is over 80%.
Moreover almost all these laws come in the form of regulations which must be implemented exactly as Brussels specifies and cannot even be discussed by the British Parliament.
This leaves very little for our Westminster MPs to do, yet they keep increasing their salaries, expenses, number of employees and holidays while doing less work every year.
X: Xmas - there is so much money given to eurocrats and MEPs and they get so many champagne dinners, free holidays and other benefits, that for the lucky euro-elite every day must seem like Xmas.
Y: Yes-man (and yes-woman) - unfortunately for us, these are the kind of people who tend to become EU politicians and top-level EU bureaucrats.
Most of us don't know their names, don't know how they spend and waste our money, don't know what they stand for and don't know what they do for us.
Yet every year thousands of new rules and regulations pour out of Brussels adding unnecessary costs to our businesses and restricting our freedom and independence.
Z: Zero - we should have zero trust when EU politicians and bureaucrats say they are listening to us and working for us.
The EU has achieved a lot by helping to bring peace and economic growth to the PIGS and the BEES and by creating a single market without trade barriers and tariffs.
But sadly it has turned into a huge bureaucratic monster that spews out new laws, enriches those fortunate enough to have a place on the gravy train and arrogantly ignores the wishes of the people it claims to represent.
The EU needs to be fundamentally reformed.
Its budget should be halved as should the number of employees, many of its policies, such as in agriculture and fisheries, should be scrapped, EU commissioners should be elected and a wide range of powers should be handed back to the member countries.
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