EU, impartial facts. Where to find

[firedfromthecircus]

Thought this extract from AA Gill in the Times was worth a read:

We all know what “getting our country back” means. It’s snorting a line of the most pernicious and debilitating Little English drug, nostalgia. The warm, crumbly, honey-coloured, collective “yesterday” with its fond belief that everything was better back then, that Britain (England, really) is a worse place now than it was at some foggy point in the past where we achieved peak Blighty. It’s the knowledge that the best of us have been and gone, that nothing we can build will be as lovely as a National Trust Georgian country house, no art will be as good as a Turner, no poem as wonderful as If, no writer a touch on Shakespeare or Dickens, nothing will grow as lovely as a cottage garden, no hero greater than Nelson, no politician better than Churchill, no view more throat-catching than the White Cliffs and that we will never manufacture anything as great as a Rolls-Royce or Flying Scotsman again.

The dream of Brexit isn’t that we might be able to make a brighter, new, energetic tomorrow, it’s a desire to shuffle back to a regret-curdled inward-looking yesterday. In the Brexit fantasy, the best we can hope for is to kick out all the work-all-hours foreigners and become caretakers to our own past in this self-congratulatory island of moaning and pomposity.

And if you think that’s an exaggeration of the Brexit position, then just listen to the language they use: “We are a nation of inventors and entrepreneurs, we want to put the great back in Britain, the great engineers, the great manufacturers.” This is all the expression of a sentimental nostalgia. In the Brexiteer’s mind’s eye is the old Pathé newsreel of Donald Campbell, of John Logie Baird with his television, Barnes Wallis and his bouncing bomb, and Robert Baden-Powell inventing boy scouts in his shed.

All we need, their argument goes, is to be free of the humourless Germans and spoilsport French and all their collective liberalism and reality. There is a concomitant hope that if we manage to back out of Europe, then we’ll get back to the bowler-hatted 1950s and the Commonwealth will hold pageants, fireworks displays and beg to be back in the Queen Empress’s good books again. Then New Zealand will sacrifice a thousand lambs, Ghana will ask if it can go back to being called the Gold Coast and Britain will resume hand-making Land Rovers and top hats and Sheffield plate teapots.

There is a reason that most of the people who want to leave the EU are old while those who want to remain are young: it’s because the young aren’t infected with Bisto nostalgia. They don’t recognise half the stuff I’ve mentioned here. They’ve grown up in the EU and at worst it’s been neutral for them.

The under-thirties want to be part of things, not aloof from them. They’re about being joined-up and counted. I imagine a phrase most outies identify with is “women’s liberation has gone too far”. Everything has gone too far for them, from political correctness — well, that’s gone mad, hasn’t it? — to health and safety and gender-neutral lavatories. Those oldies, they don’t know if they’re coming or going, what with those newfangled mobile phones and kids on Tinder and Grindr. What happened to meeting Miss Joan Hunter Dunn at the tennis club? And don’t get them started on electric hand dryers, or something unrecognised in the bagging area, or Indian call centres , or the impertinent computer asking for a password that has both capitals and little letters and numbers and more than eight digits.

Brexit is the fond belief that Britain is worse now than at some point in the foggy past where we achieved peak Blighty
We listen to the Brexit lot talk about the trade deals they’re going to make with Europe after we leave, and the blithe insouciance that what they’re offering instead of EU membership is a divorce where you can still have sex with your ex. They reckon they can get out of the marriage, keep the house, not pay alimony, take the kids out of school, stop the in-laws going to the doctor, get strict with the visiting rights, but, you know, still get a shag at the weekend and, obviously, see other people on the side.

Really, that’s their best offer? That’s the plan? To swagger into Brussels with Union Jack pants on and say: “ ’Ello luv, you’re looking nice today. Would you like some?”

When the rest of us ask how that’s really going to work, leavers reply, with Terry-Thomas smirks, that “they’re going to still really fancy us, honest, they’re gagging for us. Possibly not Merkel, but the bosses of Mercedes and those French vintners and cheesemakers, they can’t get enough of old John Bull. Of course they’re going to want to go on making the free market with two backs after we’ve got the decree nisi. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

 

[JohnH]

Most of what both sides are saying will happen if we leave is pure conjecture. No-one really knows what will happen to the economy.

Agreed. It's hard to come up with facts about the future, when the future hasn't happened yet.

No-one really knows how badly the EU will react to what is quite clearly a snub.

A snub? I'm sorry, I don't see this as a popularity contest. This is supposed to be representative democracy. This is supposed to be a system where politicians are given power, and are then expected to use that power to create an environment in which "We, the people" can live happily in security and prosperity. If these tosspots can't do that, then they get the boot. I don't give a shit if they feel snubbed. "We, the people" owe them nothing.

They would prefer us to remain as it make the whole EU stronger, but let's be absolutely clear, they don't need us. They may well decide to take a hit just to prove a point. Again though, that is just pure conjecture.

They would prefer us to remain because the European Union is a political project which tries to accumulate as much power and money as it possibly can -- and the UK has a lot of money and power.

If they don't need us, why have so many threats been made by Donald Tusk, Angela Merkel, Wolfgang Scheuble, Mariano Rajoy, Francois Hollande and Emmanuel Macron? As I said a few pages back, the elites are crapping themselves because if the UK leaves the EU, the rest of the world is going to take a close look at what's left. And all they're going to see is a bankrupt continent that the Germans can't afford to bail out.

We can't be certain that the longest period of peace in European history is down to the EU. It might just be because everyone has been really peaceful feeling the last 70 years. :facepalm:

Again, I'm sorry but I don't understand why people keep repeating this. The "European Union" didn't exist until 1993. Before then, it was the "EEC" and that certainly didn't possess the nukes that were keeping the Soviets at bay.

Even after the Cold War, the EU didn't manage to stop Ceaucescu murdering his own people during the Romanian uprising, it didn't stop the hideous slaughter of the Balkan conflict (including the 8,000 men and boys that were led away from Srebrenica and executed while Dutch peacekeepers stood by and did nothing) and it hasn't stopped the terrorist attacks in London, Paris (twice) or Brussels.

If anything, it was Angela Merkel's open-border policy that *allowed* ISIS-trained terrorists to enter Europe without any checks and partake in last November's atrocity in Paris.

One thing we do know is that if we remain things will stay much the same.

I doubt that very much. The EU is holding back a whole bunch of announcements until the day *after* the Brexit referendum...
EU Referendum: Plans for EU army 'kept secret' until after Brexit vote
EU burying power-grab laws until after referendum
EU accused of 'devious plot' to hide budget proposals until after referendum

So something's afoot. Once the UK has been tied to the mast, I guess we'll find out where the boat's really heading.

So it really comes down to an ideological position. Do you favour better co-operation amongst the peoples of the world to the betterment of all, or isolationism, a them against us attitude that is reminiscent of the empire builders of the past?

Crikey fella, you're making the European Union sound like a hippy commune. The EU makes threats to its member states, ignores the results of national referendums, removes democratically elected politicians, forces states that aren't even members to pay into its coffers, keeps all of its policy-making meetings secret, breaks its own laws when it wants, lies to its own citizens and so on and so on. The EU is a self-serving, corrupt, incompetent, power-hungry, anti-democratic, totalitarian monster. Next Thursday will be our one and only chance to GTFO. We need to seize it.

Incidentally, for those who complain about the money we send to the EU. We spend about 12 times more in subsidies for the banks every year than we send to the EU. You know, those bankers who have everybodys best interests at heart. :roll:

I think the banks *and* the EU know how to keep the gravy train running; Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have both donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to the 'Remain' campaign.

 

[al-onestare]

Thought this extract from AA Gill in the Times was worth a read:

We all know what “getting our country back” means. It’s snorting a line of the most pernicious and debilitating Little English drug, nostalgia. The warm, crumbly, honey-coloured, collective “yesterday” with its fond belief that everything was better back then, that Britain (England, really) is a worse place now than it was at some foggy point in the past where we achieved peak Blighty. It’s the knowledge that the best of us have been and gone, that nothing we can build will be as lovely as a National Trust Georgian country house, no art will be as good as a Turner, no poem as wonderful as If, no writer a touch on Shakespeare or Dickens, nothing will grow as lovely as a cottage garden, no hero greater than Nelson, no politician better than Churchill, no view more throat-catching than the White Cliffs and that we will never manufacture anything as great as a Rolls-Royce or Flying Scotsman again.

The dream of Brexit isn’t that we might be able to make a brighter, new, energetic tomorrow, it’s a desire to shuffle back to a regret-curdled inward-looking yesterday. In the Brexit fantasy, the best we can hope for is to kick out all the work-all-hours foreigners and become caretakers to our own past in this self-congratulatory island of moaning and pomposity.

And if you think that’s an exaggeration of the Brexit position, then just listen to the language they use: “We are a nation of inventors and entrepreneurs, we want to put the great back in Britain, the great engineers, the great manufacturers.” This is all the expression of a sentimental nostalgia. In the Brexiteer’s mind’s eye is the old Pathé newsreel of Donald Campbell, of John Logie Baird with his television, Barnes Wallis and his bouncing bomb, and Robert Baden-Powell inventing boy scouts in his shed.

All we need, their argument goes, is to be free of the humourless Germans and spoilsport French and all their collective liberalism and reality. There is a concomitant hope that if we manage to back out of Europe, then we’ll get back to the bowler-hatted 1950s and the Commonwealth will hold pageants, fireworks displays and beg to be back in the Queen Empress’s good books again. Then New Zealand will sacrifice a thousand lambs, Ghana will ask if it can go back to being called the Gold Coast and Britain will resume hand-making Land Rovers and top hats and Sheffield plate teapots.

There is a reason that most of the people who want to leave the EU are old while those who want to remain are young: it’s because the young aren’t infected with Bisto nostalgia. They don’t recognise half the stuff I’ve mentioned here. They’ve grown up in the EU and at worst it’s been neutral for them.

The under-thirties want to be part of things, not aloof from them. They’re about being joined-up and counted. I imagine a phrase most outies identify with is “women’s liberation has gone too far”. Everything has gone too far for them, from political correctness — well, that’s gone mad, hasn’t it? — to health and safety and gender-neutral lavatories. Those oldies, they don’t know if they’re coming or going, what with those newfangled mobile phones and kids on Tinder and Grindr. What happened to meeting Miss Joan Hunter Dunn at the tennis club? And don’t get them started on electric hand dryers, or something unrecognised in the bagging area, or Indian call centres , or the impertinent computer asking for a password that has both capitals and little letters and numbers and more than eight digits.

Brexit is the fond belief that Britain is worse now than at some point in the foggy past where we achieved peak Blighty
We listen to the Brexit lot talk about the trade deals they’re going to make with Europe after we leave, and the blithe insouciance that what they’re offering instead of EU membership is a divorce where you can still have sex with your ex. They reckon they can get out of the marriage, keep the house, not pay alimony, take the kids out of school, stop the in-laws going to the doctor, get strict with the visiting rights, but, you know, still get a shag at the weekend and, obviously, see other people on the side.

Really, that’s their best offer? That’s the plan? To swagger into Brussels with Union Jack pants on and say: “ ’Ello luv, you’re looking nice today. Would you like some?”

When the rest of us ask how that’s really going to work, leavers reply, with Terry-Thomas smirks, that “they’re going to still really fancy us, honest, they’re gagging for us. Possibly not Merkel, but the bosses of Mercedes and those French vintners and cheesemakers, they can’t get enough of old John Bull. Of course they’re going to want to go on making the free market with two backs after we’ve got the decree nisi. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

I can't stand the man but that's pretty much it. Spot on.

 

[JohnH]

Re:

we don't have the same passports, currency or army (in fact there is no EU army and there wont be it is one of those pipe dreams that will be vetoed by France and Britain) with other EU states though.

Sorry fella, I'm afraid this is another one of those things that the BBC hasn't been telling us about...

The EU already has its own in-house small rapid-reaction force: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurocorps

Then they have another rapid-reaction force which has actually been let out of the barracks on a few occasions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EUFOR

Then they have yet *another* rapid-reaction force, but this one's 31,000 strong and is made up of other country's troops (including the UK): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU_Battlegroup

Then they've got the European Maritime Force (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Maritime_Force), the European Gendarmerie Force, "a European intervention force with militarised police functions" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_ ... erie_Force) and 6 intelligence agencies (http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/20 ... officially).

As for Britain and France's veto, all member states have signed the Treaty of Lisbon. Article 42, section 3 says:

"Member States shall make civilian and military capabilities available to the European Union for the implementation of the common security and defence policy, to contribute to the objectives defined by the European Council."

Yep, that text says exactly what you think it says. I'm sure that when the time comes for the EU to tell France and Britain to integrate their "military capabilities" into the EU army, they'll both kick up a fuss. But if the matter goes to the European Courts, the judges will simply point out what the UK and France signed up to. And then they will both be swallowed up -- which will make the EU a nuclear power.

(If anyone thinks that last part is a bit far-fetched, take a look at what's happening to the Dutch army: last year, the 11th Airmobile Brigade (about 1/3 of their entire army) was absorbed into the German army -- men, officers, equipment, vehicles, the lot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11th_Airm ... etherlands)). In 2019, the Dutch army's 43rd Mechanised Brigade (another 1/3 of their army) will be swallowed up by Germany's 1st Panzer Division (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/43rd_Mech ... etherlands)). Dutch soldiers will be getting their orders from Berlin. According to a Breitbart article (http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/04 ... ep-closer/), the rest of the Dutch army and the entire Dutch navy will be absorbed into the German Wehrmacht and Kriegsmarine, while the Czechs are also rumoured to be talking with the Germans about merging their militaries.)

 

[hamster]

Interesting that Prof Patrick Minford, the Brexit side's economist stated that UK manufacturing industry would effectively be wiped out in his scenario, but he expects that services will fill the gap.

I'm just not sure that people could be retrained or have the right skills or education. The desperate state of the NE of England following the collapse of heavy industry has not yet been eliminated, and that's in a generation.

 

[M-Power]

Re:

Exceptional fact backed up posts JohnH. The more i find out about how the EU operates and proposes to operate, the more deeply disturbing the long term ramifications are for the UK remaining. Only the ideologically blind could vote remain. Any thinking person should at least have great doubts.

The EU needs massive reform, which will never happen. It needs to be properly accountable to its electorate but it isn't. We can forget any notion of electoral democracy in the UK in years to come as the EU increasingly subsumes control over most if not all of our central decision making.

The original EU concept was fantastic. If a miracle happens and we vote out, maybe we will precipitate a rethink in Brussels. This whole EU thing is turning into a massive social experiment at the moment. History never seems to teaches us anything.

 

[hamster]

I think the banks *and* the EU know how to keep the gravy train running; Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have both donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to the 'Remain' campaign.

Unlike Rupert Murdoch's media interests which have of course remained strictly impartial... :roll:
And exactly how much would that much media coverage cost???

Sorry, this EU standing Army issue is a non starter. Exactly the same share command etc happens every day in NATO. If you are going to mount an operation (for example a naval one against people smuggling in the Med) you actually need to pre-organise units across national boundaries and get them to train together. Then you need to roster them to ensure availability.
We already share an aircraft carrier with France, for example.

Of course you could go it alone...and pay loads extra for a larger defence budget, thereby negating all the savings from leaving the EU.

 

[M-Power]

Interesting that Prof Patrick Minford, the Brexit side's economist stated that UK manufacturing industry would effectively be wiped out in his scenario, but he expects that services will fill the gap.

I'm just not sure that people could be retrained or have the right skills or education. The desperate state of the NE of England following the collapse of heavy industry has not yet been eliminated, and that's in a generation.

The U.K. has a long tradition of high end manufacturing and this will continue. The middle classes of China and other developing economies crave high end British brands. We are only a small nation and punch way above our weight. No reason to assume we can't continue to increase trade with the ROW.

We should always give safe haven to our fair share of genuine refugees but focus only on cherry picking the best educated immigrants from countries that already do and wish to trade with us, this benefitting our economy too. Investment needs to focus on the midlands and north of England. Less focus on London and the SE. Tax breaks for new industries and investors that relocate there. Restore the respect these areas once had a century ago and balance the distribution of wealth better across the nation.

 

[technodup]

Governments shouldn't be in the pension business.

Nor should they be in the housing business, the health business, the ...

Government is usually quite bad at being in business full stop.

 

[M-Power]

Re:

http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/newsreferendum/msn-users’-brexit-poll-even-germans-and-french-say-britain-should-quit/ar-AAh1uEt?li=BBoPWjQ