Britain and the European Union

[Karl]

The problem might be the comittments of BJ to the leave campaign. He was a fence sitter for a very long time and expressed a lot of EU sympathies.

 

I think they have the right group leading the charge. Farage hasn't got the gravitas.

[Apech]

Michael Gove eh?

[Chang]

At least the Brexit group have the more snappy name "Vote Leave."

 

The poor old Europhiles are lumbered with "Britain Stronger in Europe." I can see you in the sandwich boards with the pro European slogan printed on them Apech.

 

Edited April 13, 2016 by Chang

[Karl]

Michael Gove eh?

Michael Gove eh?

 

Teachers pet ? :-)

[Chang]

Farage calls out the IMF - It's only protecting its own as it always does.
Published Apr 12, 2016

 

The international financial institution that admitted that it broke all its financial rules to back up the failing Euro project has announced that the prospect of the UK Leaving the EU is so troubling to its ideas that the entire global economy could be troubled.

 

UKIP Leader Nigel Farage said, "The IMF has been hijacked by the architects of the failing EU project, so of course they want the UK to remain.

 

"This is all about the big banks and the establishment protecting their interests within a cosy EU cartel that looks after multi-national corporations and dismisses the democratic wishes of the average man, woman or small and medium sized business.

 

"The IMF was wrong when it supported the Euro, wrong when it failed to predict the global recession and is wrong now it is trying to scare the British people.

 

"The best way for the UK to protect its economic interests is by taking back control from Brussels, cutting burdensome EU red tape and start trading with the wider world - all things the EU bans us from doing as a member of their undemocratic and diminishing club."

 

"The IMF in its own projections has the UK growing faster than the Eurozone and Germany individually in both 2016 and 2017 yet still tries to pour the cold water of fear onto the legitimate hope s of a nation. Hope s that we can run our country and economy and country to the benefit of the people who live here, rather than the bureaucrats and technicians of international institutions like the IMF and the European Union."

Edited April 14, 2016 by Chang

[Chang]

Corbyn: there is a strong socialist case for Britain staying in the EU.

 

 

Jeremy Corbyn in first major referendum speech will say there is strong Socialist case for Britain staying in EU.

 

I can think of no better reason for voting to leave!

Edited April 14, 2016 by Chang

[Chang]

Here are the European Commission members. They propose the laws we are expected to abide by.

Not one was elected by the people they are supposed to represent..

 

 

[Karl]

Corbyn: there is a strong socialist case for Britain staying in the EU.

 

 

Jeremy Corbyn in first major referendum speech will say there is strong Socialist case for Britain staying in EU.

 

I can think of no better reason for voting to leave!

Isnt that his point ?

He sticks it to the Blairite Europhiles in his own party and damages Cameron's train. Corbyn is no Europhile. His kind of old guard socialism doesn't fit with the new breed of technocratic socialists.

 

The EU in a sense is Blair, or perhaps Blair was moulded by the EU. It's a clear sense of his much touted third way which is really Germanic Democratic Socialism. It is facist industrialism and banking wedded to high levels of social welfare. It is really serfdom. A group of ultra rich and the rest of us working to pay off our debts with little top ups provided out of the pockets of the marginally more wealthy labourers to those on the bottom rung.

 

This is what Germany is like. It's workers and managers wear identical uniforms. Everything is efficient and orderly. Neat and clean. Then the technocrats at the top pull the strings to keep it like that. Of course Germany is the hub. It is like London. In Germany it works because they are in the position they are. The accommodation of East Germany and the flood of Turkish immigrant workers has led them to the conclusion that Germany's way is the only way. It works, so it must be exported to every country. Unfortunately they make the same strategic error that they did in the last century. They assume people are robots and it's only a matter of stamping out their individual cultures to get them to see the Great German ideology.

Edited April 14, 2016 by Karl

[Karl]

Here are the European Commission members. They propose the laws we are expected to abide by.

Not one was elected by the people they are supposed to represent..

 

 

 

I dont even want elected people telling me what I can and can't do, never mind the unelected. By what right....none.

[Apech]

It may surprise you all to learn that I agree with these criticisms of the EU.  The bloc uniformity and forced fitting into the German model and the unelected commissioners telling everyone what they must do - despite that fact they may have voted for something completely different.  But I'm afraid to say you are all falling for a false hope - that is that Brexit will cure these ills.  Leave the EU and the economic model won't change, the legislation won't change, the erosion of 'democracy' won't change, the influence of the UK in the world may change in that it will lessen (possibly).  If the EU subsequently collapses or goes through critical transformation then we will not unaffected - we will just be powerless to influence.  Brexit is just a dream of returning to the 1950's, of Agincourt, of the battle of Britain, of Tea Clippers rounding the Horn and watching flags fluttering on seven continents while sipping G and T in the club, cricket on the village green as the sun sets like a satsuma amidst the pink clouds, half a pound of mature cheddar wrapped in greaseproof paper from that nice Mr. Sainsbury round the corner and returning home with the clank of old pennies and half crowns in your pocket.  It's gone.  It's not coming back.  Get real.

[Chang]

I can well see your point Apech but you are wrong.

 

We cannot turn the clock back and i am not suggesting that we do. Cutting ourselves free of the European Superstate will not cure our ill's but it will give us opportunities, whether we are strong, wise and brave enough to take advantage of these remains to be seen.

 

I will not remark on your statement that should the U.K. leave we will be powerless to influence the E.U., assuming that this was said in jest, for I have seen little enough "influence" from the U.K. in all the years we have been part and parcel of the Euro Farce.

 

Tickety boo old chap.

Edited April 14, 2016 by Chang

[Apech]

I can well see your point Apech but you are wrong.

 

We cannot turn the clock back and i am not suggesting that we do. Cutting ourselves free of the European Superstate will not cure our ill's but it will give us opportunities, whether we are strong, wise and brave enough to take advantage of these remains to be seen.

 

I will not remark on your statement that should the U.K. leave we will be powerless to influence the E.U., assuming that this was said in jest, for I have seen little enough "influence" from the U.K. in all the years we have been part and parcel of the Euro Farce.

 

Tickety boo old chap.

 

Well, we are not strong, wise or brave.  Or at least I have supreme confidence in saying that about our leaders - who will be either Gove (god forbid) or Mini-Trump Johnson (even more god forbid) once Cameron resigns.  They will continue to be spineless liars and opportunists.  The City will do whatever it pleases - including relocating to Frankfort or somewhere equally grey and metallic.  Immigration contrary to popular opinion will be unaffected - apart from perhaps some kind of fringe effect of delaying the employment of well trained nurses and doctors for the NHS - you will note no effort of any government so far has made any significant difference to what is an economic necessity.  We will still be in NATO so we will be able to fight pointless wars with abandon.  The US will continue to pay lip service to the special relationship while doing whatever it wants.  Russian bombers will still buzz our shores.  The weather will remain unpredictable - except in that one will be able to say it will be bad.  Public transport will be appalling.  The roads will be jammed.  And it will still take three hours to buy a packet of paracetamol in Boots the Chemist because they try to sell you buy one get one free shower gel and sign you up for a card you don't want.

 

No nothing will change, nothing will improve -- you bunch of bloody optimists!

Edited April 14, 2016 by Apech

[Karl]

It may surprise you all to learn that I agree with these criticisms of the EU.  The bloc uniformity and forced fitting into the German model and the unelected commissioners telling everyone what they must do - despite that fact they may have voted for something completely different.  But I'm afraid to say you are all falling for a false hope - that is that Brexit will cure these ills.  Leave the EU and the economic model won't change, the legislation won't change, the erosion of 'democracy' won't change, the influence of the UK in the world may change in that it will lessen (possibly).  If the EU subsequently collapses or goes through critical transformation then we will not unaffected - we will just be powerless to influence.  Brexit is just a dream of returning to the 1950's, of Agincourt, of the battle of Britain, of Tea Clippers rounding the Horn and watching flags fluttering on seven continents while sipping G and T in the club, cricket on the village green as the sun sets like a satsuma amidst the pink clouds, half a pound of mature cheddar wrapped in greaseproof paper from that nice Mr. Sainsbury round the corner and returning home with the clank of old pennies and half crowns in your pocket.  It's gone.  It's not coming back.  Get real.

 

For some I expect that vision is true. Undoubtedly there are a group of elite who wish to restore good old Blighty, there are the modernisers who wish to throw out those backward looking elite.

 

However, there are the rest of us Apech. We are not the elite. The problem with the EU is that it gets us further down a path which we have even less chance of affecting. I do not want to live in a Germanic superstate. I like the Germans, I like their cars, sausages, beer and mostly every technical product they produce. I love their country and have ridden and stayed there many times and that's the point. The strength of Europe is not in a gradual homogenising of the whole, but in the fantastic differences between each country-and in the past, between each principality. Europe forged ahead because of its competitiveness and difference.

 

We made mistakes, we had a huge war, but this has made us so fearful that we have lost our joy in sovereignty. It's as if a child did something wrong and must now be put into a padded room where it can't hurt itself or others. This kind of sufficating bureaucracy does not inspire anyone. The lack of competiveness stifles innovation and progress. The EU isn't progress is regress. The judgement is clear to anyone that looks at the trading figures and the social situation. Europe is dying from bureaucratic nannyism and corporate corruption.

 

A Brexit won't return us to the days on the village green no matter what the old guard imagine. I've met those people. They want Britain for themselves and are just as anti-progress as the EU-just in a more individual way. Yet Brexit gives us an opportunity to challenge those people in a way we cannot do in a Germanic superstate. For me, well it's pretty much over, but not for the younger people who have been denied real education and been allowed to drift like ghosts in a machine. We are failing them. They have no hope. Crappy jobs, living at home, no family, life as a state dependent. What kind of life is that ? It's worse than a battery farm chicken. The economy isn't growing, everything is stagnating and opportunities are reduced to functionalism. This isn't a good thing. The young deserve better than that. Humanity deserves better than that. Better we wipe ourselves out in a cataclysmic nuclear holocaust than live our lives on our knees being directed in every aspect of our existence. It is not Liberty, that is serfdom.

 

What we could become must start with Liberty. Liberty can only come when we stop being afraid of independence. Independence can only occur if we begin to break the bonds which we have become reliant upon. We must first want to be free and accept what freedom is. We must want it regardless of what fears it may hold because it is the only way that we can survive and find happiness. Happiness is not being bolted to a work bench with your mind being continually flooded with hobgoblins and nightmares. That is not living. Better to cut your throat than endure a single day of that.

[Apech]

@Karl

 

Two wars actually.  Both of which in their way led to the deconstruction of the British Empire - brought about principally because of American insistence and our own bankrupt condition.  But we fought those wars on the basis of our centuries old tradition of divide and conquer foreign policy.  In other words if one European nation appears to be becoming dominant, whether it be Spain, France or Germany then we are automatically against them.  This still, I think , informs our horror at Merkel and Scheuble (sp?) ... we just don't like to see a dominant power in Europe.

 

 

 What we could become must start with Liberty. Liberty can only come when we stop being afraid of independence. Independence can only occur if we begin to break the bonds which we have become reliant upon. We must first want to be free and accept what freedom is. We must want it regardless of what fears it may hold because it is the only way that we can survive and find happiness. Happiness is not being bolted to a work bench with your mind being continually flooded with hobgoblins and nightmares. That is not living. Better to cut your throat than endure a single day of that. 

 

What makes you think that we will be granted liberty?  The erosion of our liberty, enshrined in law, doesn't come from Europe but from our own disease of intersectional political correctness.  The right to free speech and even the right to a fair trial are being taken away in the name of victim centred social justice.  The insidious ideas of the regressive left who have usurped the throne of the repressive right and spouting their memes such as 'Islam is a religion of peace', 'a patriarchy oppresses women', 'our society is institutionally racist' and 'white men are the inheritors of privilege'.  The UK and America invented a large portion of this nonsense and we won't have any liberty while it remains the dominant thesis of those in power.

Edited April 14, 2016 by Apech

[Karl]

@Karl

 

Two wars actually. Both of which in their way led to the deconstruction of the British Empire - brought about principally because of American insistence and our own bankrupt condition. But we fought those wars on the basis of our centuries old tradition of divide and conquer foreign policy. In other words if one European nation appears to be becoming dominant, whether it be Spain, France or Germany then we are automatically against them. This still, I think , informs our horror at Merkel and Scheuble (sp?) ... we just don't like to see a dominant power in Europe.

 

 

 

 

What makes you think that we will be granted liberty? The erosion of our liberty, enshrined in law, doesn't come from Europe but from our own disease of intersectional political correctness. The right to free speech and even the right to a fair trial are being taken away in the name of victim centred social justice. The insidious ideas of the regressive left who have usurped the throne of the repressive right and spouting their memes such as 'Islam is a religion of peace', 'a patriarchy oppresses women', 'our society is institutionally racist' and 'white men are the inheritors of privilege'. The UK and America invented a large portion of this nonsense and we won't have any liberty while it remains the dominant thesis of those in power.

All good and important points Apech.

 

I refer to it as one war cut in two. It never really ended and many statesman realised the peace would be over in less than quarter of a century. It was also an unnecessary war not led by the people, but a group of idiots who's idea of foreign policy lacked any finesse. Churchill in particular couldn't wait to have a war, he loved war and lived for it.

 

I don't think we will be granted Liberty. We must claim it and fight for it. It is far better to break a larger enemy into smaller groups if we wish to achieve success. The problem with the EU is that it is in a desperate fight for the survival of an idea. The idea is patently wrong, but there is now so much inertia and vested interest in maintaining it, that not one thing can be allowed to be seen to fail. One of those things is for Britain to remain loyal to the idea. This is not a good idea. Not for us, not for Europe and not for the rest of the world. You only need to see what has been done to Greece in the name of the EU dream to understand the kind of scorched Earth politics that underpin the people who are forcing it forward. Sometimes people can't see when the body has died and they keep spending greater and greater resources on trying to re-animate it. The EU is a corpse already, we don't need to make the population who live under its flag corpses in order to pronounce the time of death.

 

Think of Britain leaving as a kind form of euthanasia. A wake up call for everyone. After that, we will have to fight our own battles on British soil, but, at least we won't be shackled to a far greater tragedy.

Edited April 14, 2016 by Karl

[Apech]

@Karl,

 

Yes good point about the two phase war.  Someone once described (I don't know who though) British foreign policy as - avoid doing anything but when forced, act entirely in our own interests.  And actually I wish we had stuck to that.  But of course politicians like to meddle in world affairs - and usually come unstuck e.g. Blair.

 

I once read a fascinating book about German history from Bismark to Hitler ( I seem to have lost it so don't know the title) and I think we have an extraordinary misunderstanding about who the Germans are, how they think and why they do what they do.   This is probably why we mishandled the end of both wars strategically.  In particular the relationship between Germany and the countries to the East is something I doubt we will ever relate to properly.  There's always a sense of tremendous intellectual power mixed with insecurity which we as English particularly don't share.  Generally speaking English people despise philosophy unless it is a form of empirical pragmatism and also while others dream of perfection - we think, in our hear of hearts that England is already the new Jerusalem and there is nothing more to do than be what we are.  Our feet are firmly grounded in self belief and confident of our boundaries.  A faith in our own rightness which makes us perfidious Albion to the French.

 

I think this is also why being an EU member instinctively seems like an act of betrayal of our own value.  In much the same way as, while being for a time part of the Roman Empire it is not instilled in our blood in the same way as in most of the rest of Europe.  I was proudly told by two Portuguese professors once how they had been civilised as part of the Roman Empire for over 700 years and had inherited one of the purest Latin based language forms - to which my reaction was well poor you - you can see why English is such a powerful and adaptable language then being as it is such a bastard tongue.  While the tendency to wish to remain pure makes the Romance languages strangely stale and self-preserving.  English just eats up other languages as it goes with it's ever widening lexis - what Melvyn Bragg called it's treasure hoard of words.

 

This is also the great mistake of the EU in thinking top down.  To have an ideal vision and an ideology which builds its cities in the mind first and then in reality later - only to realise that in the real world they do not work.  Instead they should have let the thing develop organically in response to changing environments and with enough adaptability to meet the needs of all its members.  Rather like an unplanned city. 

Edited April 14, 2016 by Apech

[Chang]

 

 

 

 

What makes you think that we will be granted liberty?  The erosion of our liberty, enshrined in law, doesn't come from Europe but from our own disease of intersectional political correctness.  The right to free speech and even the right to a fair trial are being taken away in the name of victim centred social justice.  The insidious ideas of the regressive left who have usurped the throne of the repressive right and spouting their memes such as 'Islam is a religion of peace', 'a patriarchy oppresses women', 'our society is institutionally racist' and 'white men are the inheritors of privilege'.  The UK and America invented a large portion of this nonsense and we won't have any liberty while it remains the dominant thesis of those in power.

 

This, unfortunately, is completely true.

[Karl]

Good post.

Yes, if it had come, then it should have grown that way. As long as people are not badgered, cudgelled, bribed and steered by an intellectual elite so certain that top down planning will achieve a great and glorious good. It never has. It doesn't matter how much rope is allowed around the ankles, in the end it's just soft authoritarianism and its anti-life. It isn't how humans are. We cannot be turned into robots or worker bees. Successive regimes have attempted it and caused horrifific bloodshed and misery, there isn't a better way of doing the same thing. Best to abandon trying before the blood starts flowing-which it inevitably will.

[Karl]

Guess which bank will lose most from Brexit and which bank is lobbying hardest and shoving in the most money to keep us trapped. Clue: the same bank that lobbied for the bailouts, got Greece into the EU and so many other hooky things there isn't a book big enough to fit them all in.

 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-14/guess-which-major-bank-loses-most-brexit

[Apech]

[Chang]

The latest fear mongering by the Government who will stoop to any level to convince the electorate to vote to remain in the European Super State.

 

Unfortunately for George Osborne his financial predictions are invariably incorrect.

 

George Osborne: Brexit would leave UK ‘permanently poorer’

 

Chancellor issues warning in Times article as Treasury claims Britain’s economy would shrink 6% by 2030 costing every household the equivalent of £4,300 a year.

 

In the starkest warning so far by the government in the referendum campaign, the chancellor describes Brexit as the “most extraordinary self-inflicted wound”.

Edited April 18, 2016 by Chang

[Karl]

Osborne is a self inflicted wound.

Edited April 18, 2016 by Karl

[Apech]

I have to admit it is very significant that not one of them is talking about the benefits of being in the EU but only the risks arising from leaving it.

[Chang]

This is doing the rounds on the internet. One can but hope that it is untrue.

 

Betrayed by liars

 

Prime Minister David Cameron and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn have both agreed to join together to ask the EU Commission to intervene and challenge the decision legally if the UK vote to leave the European Union, the Stronger In movement are now in alarm at the sudden shift towards Brexit support. Both the Prime Minister and the Labour leader are at the forefront of the plan to stop any vote to leave the EU and will try to secure a second referendum or make the vote void.

 

The EU have also indicated to David Cameron that if one party overspends within their allocated budget the UK electoral commission could enforce the second referendum due to rules being broken.

 

Both leaders are fighting for their political lives by joining the remain campaign, but victory for Brexit would surely put their creditability in the limelight and certainly would mean the end of David Cameron, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel has given David Cameron her personal assurance that the EU will fight any Brexit victory through the courts which could take years with no time limit to reach a decision.

Edited April 18, 2016 by Chang

[Karl]

I remarked on that possibility previously. "You can check out but you can never leave". No matter how many times you vote against their wishes they will have us continue voting until we come up with the answer they want. I'm still suspicious about Boris and his agenda. He already said he thought a leave vote woukd trigger further negotiations and was swiftly smacked down by Cameron. If you remember the quip about divorces at PMQs ?