Stupid fucking assholes? Isn’t that, like, double redundancy?
No, but trade agreements between Commonwealth countries go swifter and a free trade agreement is hardly off the table.
And if that’s the level of commitment the UK is comfortable with, that’s fine. Nothing says you need a single currency to make business flow.
I predict both sides, the UK and the EU, will be perfectly fine in ten years.
The UK plans to leave the EU for purely selfish reasons, but still wants to retain the benefits of a union founded on cooperation and solidarity. The vast majority of the Leave campaign has been founded on exactly this - “we’ll leave so the Polish can’t take your jobs but we’ll make sure we retain all the neat benefits while paying for none of them.”
The UK is no battered wife - the UK is a partner asking for divorce, signing over the kids, but still demanding child support. I see no issue with the EU attempting to curb that sort of behaviour. While I certainly hope that the entire Brexit situation comes as something of a wake-up call to the EU and leads to things like social benefits regulated by cost of living, that does not change the fact that the UK is behaving like a toddler, throwing its toys out of the pram. I, for one, do not think the EU is obligated to pick those toys back up again.
An interesting point of view, and so elegantly expressed. 
Are you seriously suggesting that the reasons given for wanting to remain were *not *selfish? that they were motivated by altruism or similar feelings?
Though I wanted to remain I never saw it as being the hard slog of the righteous. It was the easier choice with the least painful changes and the maintenance of the status quo. Less scary, definitely less difficult to contemplate.
In short, it was better for me and my family. Nothing changed, I got to carry on as before.
Fair enough. Sorry I was a bit of a douchebag back there. I’m still not happy about the UK leaving, but I’ve no beef with you.
Not a problem, I didn’t take any offence from it, it has just been a loooooong week that’s all.
I notice that the only argument that the REMAIN campaign has to use against the BREXIT campaign is that of racism.
That’s it, the total sum of all you have.
Now lets see, does anyone recall any mention whatsoever of the Common Agricultural Policy?
This was set up well before UK joined, and the intention was to appeal to a particular segment of the French and German electorate, by guaranteeing price support for uneconomically produced farms goods.
What this policy actually did was to set a tariff wall around the EU, preventing other producers from selling into the EU - which ensures that low coast producing nations, especially in the developing world have reduced trading options.
The result is that prices were subsidised by the EU taxpayers, and cost more in the shops to buy. This is what led to the UK rebate, and although there have been reforms to CAP, it still is a trading barrier and it still costs EU taxpayers lots of money.
We are paying more for our food, just to keep French and German weekend farmers in business.
I could go into the reasons why these groups were protected, and I could also mention the social effects, but instead lets just look at how this is a racist policy.
The EU was set up with 6 member, France, Germany, Holland, Luxembourg, Austria, Italy. No way would you class these as anything but white European nations, despite there being a smallish percentage of ethnic minorities.
When you actually examine the groups that were price protected, the picture is far more depressing - because those micro farms are almost exclusively owned by white and generally middle class people.
This trade barrier protects hopelessly inefficient white hobby farmers, at the expense of world trade, so those unfortunate little brown people find their markets restricted and hence their income and development opportunities are similarly limited.
It comes as no surprise then that the lack of ability to generate in income from subsistence farming increases poverty, reduces stability and encourages economic migration. Those people in nations that are unable to have fair access to international markets may not understand why CAP is reducing their life opportunities, but they do understand poverty, they are much more likely to follow any two bit serial promiser.
The reason that CAP was reformed to a degree was the imminent arrival of Eastern Euro nations, which are largely heavily agrarian and made CAP in its original format just unsustainable, CAP was not reformed because it was immoral and wrong.
If the EU wants to address the matter of economic migration, then it need to understand that other nations need to have a real prospect of development and relative prosperity,CAP will always prevent that - the EU has had a significant role in causing economic migration.
I am quite happy to discuss why I voted BREXIT , my reasons are rational and logical, they are economic, they are social, some relate to my personal values of not being reliant on others to control my fate.
To accuse BREXIT voters only of racism, or perhaps some of you might even be bright enough to insult the intellectual capacities of BREXIT voters is to completely misunderstand what just happened and until you actually take the small inconvenience of making the effort then you will never get the picture. To stereotypically put all BREXIT voters into two highly simplistic camps of Nationalism and Racism, you are actually insulting your own intelligence.
You may even be surprised to note that the vote was nothing like as close as you imagine, but you will not be interested in how or why the REMAIN campaign went wrong. You are like little children that have not got their own little way, this was a vote, and that’s it, we are out, DEAL.
Fell free to discuss, I am happy to throw in a few things that your own personal prejudices to REMAIN caused you to be blind to the substantive issues.
Well, that and the fact that it’s in Britain’s direct economic interest to be in. To be inside rather than outside those tariff walls, for example.
Yes. Lots of different benefits one could find there. Some people feel that just having farms around, maintaining the approximate rural, agricultural character of certain regions, is aesthetically desirable. There may be value in certain specific regional food traditions, the products of which could not be replicated by foreign suppliers. There is an environmental benefit, at least compared to some of the other potential uses of the land. And finally there is the security value in not being so dependent on imports.
None of these points have anything to do with race.
So you believe that paying more for our food to support hopelessly inefficient agriculture at the expense of offering viable markets for subsistence economies in developing economies is a good thing, well great.
You wonder why there are economic migrants, when Europe systematically bars their trade into the EU?
So why didn’t REMAIN campaign on that ticket then?
Instead of being an inward looking self regarding little European, how about looking at the wider world, far more development, far more opportunity. why limit your main trading partners to just 26 nations out of a global economy of hundreds?
BREXIT is racist, yet its the REMAINS who want to surround themselves with trade barriers, pot calling kettle, not much eh?
Fact check: The original six EU memebers were France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium. Denmark, Ireland & the UK joined in 1973. Austria didn’t join until 1995.
Fine, it still does not change the complexion of the original members.
I did note one interesting thing, and that is the day when the referendum result was announced, there was a meeting of some senior EU ministers.
My view of EU membership is, if you have been in the EU zone for one month, one year, one decade or forty years, you are an equal partner, however its worth noting that that gathering of senior EU ministers only included those from the original 6 members - now if I were , say Greece, Ireland, Poland etc, I would be wondering why my representatives were not there, this was not some little sideshow, it could be the most important event in the EU for years to come, and yet those little Europeaners deemed it fit not to have representatives from all the other EU states present.
Seems to me a pretty reliable indicator of just who the EU really is, and who matters, and whose interests it represents.
So, if you are Denmark, or Lithuania, or Poland or Rumania etc, maybe you should think again, because your gravy train has just dried up, the second biggest contributor has walked away - either the gap will be filled up by others, or the transfer of free money from the major EU nations to the spendthrift Greeks, Italians, Spanish will reduce somewhat.
Look at the charts of who pays what, and see why we are sick of being taken for saps, multiply that number by 40 years or so, and then add some more.
Meantime even France at one time or another has been a net beneficiary of EU grants, just shows how screwed and corrupt it is.
I notice no comments here trying to shoot down my comments on the Common Agricultural Policy,
OH COME ON, AT LEAST GIVE IT A TRY,
Try to justify CAP, try to tell us that it is not a barrier to free trade, try to knock down my assertions that CAP is racist in its effect on poorer nations - which it quite clearly is.
Once we have got through that, we will then look at the future proposals within the EU, such as tax harmonisation, and we may discuss what effect that will have in national independence, we can discuss the flawed tax regimes of a number of EU nations, and we can discuss how the British will follow the harmonised tax rules because it has a relatively efficient tax enforcement system, and compare it to the usual suspects who think that tax evasion is the right of the citizen and how dare other nations complain, even if they are being bailed out.
Yes lets go to tax harmonisation once we have done the trade barrier racism thing.
Then we can go on to the undermining of national democracies, we can go on to holding someone to account.
I also note that EU is about to sign up to a trade deal with the US, and from what I can see, the terms are not at all favourable to the EU, now why would we want the same deal, its a bad one. I just wonder how many EU citizens are actually aware of this trade deal, and perhaps they might like to have a say in in prior to implementation, but try to find any mention of this in the public arena from the EU directorate and you will fail to find it - and this is yet another example of how undemocratic the EU is, to negotiate deals and yet not properly informs its citizens.
There is so much wrong with the EU, and we have tried to fix it, but the answer is nein, non, geen, they sent David Cameroon back from his EU summit last April time with sod all and made him look completely foolish, with promises to ‘consider’ various matters he had raised, and he returned like a little schoolboy trying to make it appear that something had actually changed. The EU ministers spoke on camera and we so unbelievably patronising, there, there, there, little Englanders, just do as we say.
We said NO
The EU has been screwing us for decades, stealing our money, imposing its rules, controlling us, to be honest this is not a healthy relationship, its more like an abusive one, and now the EU blames the victim for walking away, it behaves just like a violent controlling husband.
Let’s just analyse what is being proposed here…
The proposition is that any member that is now considering to leave the EU must be kept in line and given and example of international punishment to ensure they stay in line like good little Europeans.
The way the quoted poster sees it, the UK is to be punished for its behaviour of having a democratic vote and choosing to walk away, that is the logical proposition being made by the quoted poster, and I expect an awful lot of REMAIN voters and perhaps other EU citizens also see it like this, so in effect the EU is being held together by fear of an active policy by the EU to punish nations , in order to dissuade others from exercising their democratic rights to stay in or leave the EU project.
If you genuinely believe this is the EU position, then all I can say is that this makes it even more important to walk away than ever - just think about what you are saying, in effect one state has seceded and the EU will not allow others to do the same without being hurt. The closer EU integration becomes, the greater any likely economic trade sanctions.
Clearly, this is not a voluntary joining of like minded democratic nations, it is the imposition of central control using economics as a weapon against its own citizens.
Do you rally think that its all about money? because it most certainly is not
Is it “punishment” if the UK is denied privileged status and derived benefits vis-à-vis the organization they’ve chosen to withdraw from?
There is a world of difference between the natural consequences of an action, and the active imposition of punishment sanctions.
I do not see the EU behaving in the second way, but yes there will be consequences that logically follow.
Its just as a BREXIT supporter, my view is those consequences do not justify continuing along the EU project, through to a federal Europe where nation states have almost no control over their internal affairs, and where the electorate has very little say in how it is run.
If we are going to move to a Federal Europe, then we would need a full election right across the EU to obtain consent of all its citizens, but what we actually have a creeping move where national rights are centralised and subsumed with nary a word from the people.
Matters that may be in the interest of some EU nations may well not suit others, but once national governments are emasculated then there will be little to prevent such policies. What we will then have is a tyranny of the majority.
You don’t think this is likely, you think that veto voting or qualified majority voting will somehow ameliorate these effects? So remind me, what happened to Spain, Ireland, Greece and Italy? They were tied into the Euro straightjacket which meant they could not independently change their interest rates, they could not devalue currency. Instead we all, including the UK, had to bail them out - to our own detriment.
When the Exchange Rate Mechanism fiasco took place and the UK was shelled out in 1982, the UK lost over £3 billion in a matter of a few hours - all because we tried to tie our currency to the Euro (at too high a value) and I think most folk would consider this attempt to tie us to a fixed exchange rate as a precursor to becoming part of the Euro zone. There were cries of doom and disaster that day, but we got over it, and it taught us good and proper that national governments absolutely must retain enough independence to enact policies in their own interests and not the collective interest of a hegemony largely centred around France and Germany.
I also note that the individual who made an absolute killing that day, George Soros, warned us against BREXIT, but he would wouldn’t he, he is hoping to another Black Wednesday worth of currency turmoil so he can make another £900 million killing.
Do you know what actually caused that Black Wednesday? It was the Bundesbank raising interest rates in order control their own national budget to pay for the rebuilding of East Germany - the effect of the Germans pursuing their own policies for their own national interests, couple this with the financial straightjacket that had been imposed by the ERM and we had a cocktail that was disastrous to the rest of Europe and especially for the UK.
Again and again I see financial crises emerge in the EU, and national governments tied by rules and policies that prevent them from taking effective action, somehow we all seem to suffer, but some nations seem to suffer much less than others, and seem to recover more quickly.
And what do REMAIN have to offer, more of the same, closer ties, less control, less democracy, less accountability.
There will be further crises in the EU financial world - just as UK will also have financial woes, this is one aspect of the world economy, but just how well will the smaller EU nations cope with solutions designed to benefit the larger EU nations?
This sort of behaviour by Germany is exactly why we cannot remain, because France and Germany will always pursue their own national interests even if it is to the detriment of the rest of the EU. By remaining in the EU we become a passenger, subject to the whims of others and we simply do not have the flexibility to take actions in the UKs own interest.
All I have seen from the REMAIN camp is fear of change, not a word about freedom, not a word about national controls, familiarity with the devil you know is not sufficient reason for me to elect to continue with this undemocratic imposition of Federal Europe.
Sure, but isn’t that true of every currency? You could say that Mississipi is tied into the U.S. dollar straightjacket, or Hull could change interest rates if they had their own independent Pound.
Sure, except that the ones making the policy decisions about devaluation, and interests rates are national Governments, not a rule set by a policy decided by a corporation of other nations.
The EU will of course act in the interests of the main influential nations, but Greece isn’t one of them, and when Greece is in need, it has to do what it is told.
There is completely no doubt what Greece or Italy would have done if they had not been stuck with the Euro, they would have devalued and raised interest rates, they may well have put up luxury goods import tariffs, but you cannot do this under the Eurozone.
The bail out that the Southern Euro nations got, was so that German held debt didn’t go bad - it was about the protection of the finances of the Northern EU states.
So some of these Eurozone countries are stuck with an austerity situation largely of their own making, but they do not have the national control to find a way out, they are so heavily in debt they are beholden to foreigners who have decided how Greece will move in the future.
Given the desperate employment situation for young Greeks, Spaniards, Italian etc, this will cause economic migration within the EU, and ultimately social problems in their own countries as they lose their future wealth creators.
Oh, by the way, we have not begun to touch on refugees have we? Well lets do so, now
German and Sweden trumpeted their much vaunted humanitarian credentials - especially for Near East refugees - so much so they have agreed to bring in hundreds of thousands of people.
Once someone is a refugee, this has a legal meaning, these people are not yet allowed to work until they have been cleared by a change in their status. This means they can remain under EU protection for around 2 years after which they will be granted migrant worker status. They will be granted such status because Germany and Sweden have agreed to do so
Once they have migrant worker status, they are then free to travel to any EU nation and work and live. This further means they are most unlikely to stop in the refugee housing, they will pass on elsewhere.
So what we actually have is Germany and Sweden writing migrant worker cheques for other EU nations who will have to pick up the tab when they arrive in their borders.
It means that the UK simply does not have a controlled border any more, Germany and Sweden are allowing these people in, giving them the right to live and work here in the UK.
Now if the UK consents to this, along with other EU nations, then that’s fine, but I think, the BREXIT vote tells you something different - and it is simply this, we no longer have any control whatsoever over the number of migrant arriving as refugees into the UK.
This is very different to having natural born EU citizens with rights of movement.
I have also noted, being that I work in prisons, a number of extremely serious individual offenders from the new EU members, we are talking of murders and rapes of the very worst kind. Once these evil individuals have served their prison terms - if indeed they are released at all - we do not have the right to deport them, because they are EU citizens.
I am going to quote you from a source that was very much in the REMAIN camp so I don’t get accused of choosing my sources to be dubiously supportive
Please remember that many if not most have previous convictions, including murder in their home EU nations, also remember, I meet these very same people on a day to day basis, I am responsible for working and training them for release.
It is hard enough to deport serious criminals from non-EU nations due to the lengthy appeals chain, its is in theory possible to deport EU criminals, but the hurdles are so much higher as to be practically impossible.
You can argue that information sharing about EU criminals crossing borders is rudimentary, but have a reality check here folks, crossing an EU border with a legal passport is just a matter of holding the picture up, the official taking a two second glance, and walking through the control gate
There are no sorts of checks on legal EU passport holders, it is not like the bar codes are read by scanner and the relevant information is downloaded - you just walk straight through, and in the Schengen zone - movement is effectively border free. That also means that you have no idea who has entered the Schengen zone or has walked away. Criminals and terrorists have an extremely easy time of moving around, and we can witness events in France and Belgium to se what that means.
So aside from all the political in or out rhetoric, I have personal experience of what free movement means in relation to criminals.
It is therefore perfectly rational for me to have concerns about migrant border controls without being racist, because it has direct consequences in my day to day job.
This was my exact point, really, and perhaps “punishment” was a poor choice of words. I must admit, however, to being absolutely incensed by the rhetoric of the Leave campaign which has promised an attempt at retention of current privileges without making commensurate contributions. If the UK wants to participate in the internal market of the EU, if it wants unrestricted mobility for its own citizens in terms of pursuing work, etc, then it had better fucking expect to make the contributions every other EU member makes to qualify for those privileges.
I have no issue with a nation choosing, in good faith, and on the basis of a well-informed democratic vote, to leave the EU over matters of national sovereignty or other such concerns. I take grave issue, however, with the notion that the UK can simply fuck on off out of the EU and retain whatever privileges it sees fit. It implies that the Leave campaign (note: I do not mean to impute every Leave voter with this, only the leaders of the campaign, i.e Farage, Johnson and Gove) is perfectly willing to exploit other current members of the EU based on some vague and insipid notion of exceptionalism.
In short, if you want EU privileges, play by EU rules. No dawdling with the invocation of Article 50, no retaining privileges you aren’t qualifying for on exactly the same terms as the rest of the EU, etc. Any attempt by a member of the EU just so that it can essentially wheedle out of its obligations while retaining the majority of its privileges needs to be cracked right the fuck down on by Brussels. If you want to fuck on off and go your own way because you’re dissatisfied with Brussels, by all means, do so with my applause and commendations - it’s about time somebody stood up to them - but don’t go trying to retain privileges you aren’t paying for in kind.
Sure, but, so? Does the lack of a central government change the reality of the Euro in any way? Would anything different have happened if it was a EU government making the decisions? And if so, aren’t you completely against such body of government? Bit of a catch 22 there.
Isn’t that true of anything resembling a nation, which is sort of what the EU is setting up to be? People in Northern England says the literal same about the South.
The first link is a 404, the second one literally goes against your thesis claiming that the UK could, indeed, deny entrance to serious criminals from the EU, and the third is behind a paywall. Just saying.
But sure, the idea behind freedom of movement means that a Rumanian EU Citizen should be treated just like a UK Citizen in the UK. You have every right to find that a terrible idea, but it was clear from day one that you have to deal with the disadvantages along with the advantages.
What process would they use to do this, exactly? I don’t think there’s any mechanism for that in the treaties.