The reason why it is a Europe-only kool kidz klub is because, with greater integration like that (abolition of national armies etc) it will truly be one big European state called the European Union whose sphere of influence is forever constrained by the "European" prefix.
so... what do you expect to be done?
you do realize that in its current shape and form, it's pretty much doomed to fail, right?
take greece, were the union more solid it'd make more sense to look after a fellow constituent republic or however you'd wish to call it than "teaching lessons" by tanking the country's quality of life and basically wrecking everything
hell, they probably wouldn't have had the wiggle room to cook the books in the first place
and by all means - break free, my vision of taking down both the english and french imperial aspirations is to pretty much have the voluntary empire as you've put it slam its own institutions in there instead, you might recall me saying that your independence debacle would be far easier if it were just declaring scotland a separate subdivision of the union in the parliament
it's pretty fitting if you ask me
I don't think there's any doubt that the status quo is not going to last, no matter how much Cameron wants it to. As an independent state Scotland will most likely not have those opt outs, but in my eyes it's no big issue.
opt-outs shouldn't have existed in the first place, you should be glad that you won't be part of the blatant breach of equality between member states shenanigan
Yeah, that's pretty much it. The UK is basically the cockpit of the British empire; it is designed as a state to uphold the rule of the few over the majority, to preserve elites and social orders and to act as a "home nation" (the kind I talked about earlier) to rule over its colonies in Canada and the like. As a result the UK is still massively centralised; most "cockpits" are. Now that the Empire is gone, long may it stay that way, the UK feels lost because it's like the driving seat for a car that no longer exists.
Culturally there's still old Imperialist aspirations and all sorts of stuff going on and lots of historical anti-revisionists are kicking about (the Union/Empire was a force for good, those natives actually needed civilising and the sun shone out of Victoria's arse etc) but this is to be expected. The UK still feels like it has "great power" status and should thus participate on the world stage like some kind of competitor to its continental neighbours, even though it is the sick man of Northern Europe and its internal problems are so great that money simply cannot and should not be wasted on any more adventures. It thus needs vast amounts of reform to remove the various structures that keep it in this vestigial cockpit state; devolution everywhere, reform of the political system to ensure greater democratic representation and the grip of the elites needs to be broken.
I can't see any of that happening in the near future, hence why I think independence for Scotland is the best option because it will shake up the British system so much that reform may become possible. Once that reform takes place and the old forces that still drive us in Imperialist directions are gone, then I'm sure Britain will turn to Europe with much less animosity.
that is a barrelload of insight
i'll note it down, already mentioned the reform thing above
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Topic: Sheb's European Megathread: Remove Feta! (Read 1751856 times)