The fact that you're not all killing each other in the grand tradition of Europe since the Romans?
Mutually assured destruction and economic interdependence did more for that than the European Union ever did. Consider how the European states did not go toe to toes with Russia in open combat, but the European Union was nonetheless happy to provoke them. No joke, when the Russians invaded Georgia, George Bush wanted to extend NATO Membership to even Ukraine - which Germany warned was an unnecessary provocation which would result in Russian invasion. Yet Germany then offered Ukraine EU Membership with the condition of a common defence policy...?
I'm not even going to go into the nutcase in charge of EU affairs in the Bundestag whose chief principal response to critics within the EU is economic warfare. Sanction the Russians! Cut the Greeks! Sanction the Hungarians! Tariff the Brits!
No, I get that argument and there's merit to it. But whereas most of the rest of Europe has been willing to cede national sovereignty on these issues, Britain has to be the one to always opt out. It skews the rest of European supranational policymaking.
Most of the rest of Europe has not been willing, they have just been ignored. The ceding of national sovereignty has supposed to have been by referendum but they've committed themselves to ignoring democracy and now they have given themselves the powers to just keep taking more. Consider how they gave the authority for Frontex to operate in people's nations without their permission, you only have sovereignty now if you actively defy Brussels and refuse their authority as the Slavs are doing. You are familiar with the Irish referendums and the whole thing with the European Constitution and the Schengen Treaty? This to me does not suggest success, democracy or unity, and given the great success the EU has had in ruining the Eurozone without the UK, I think its dissolution or its reformation is absolutely necessary.
It would be intriguing to see the Commission reform along American Presidential lines, but I'd rather the Continentals subject themselves to the whims of think tanks without the UK you know?
Heck, so many Yuropoor nations don't even get a choice willing or not. Pretty much all of Southern Europe has been screwed over because their parliaments cannot set their own currency rates and so are wholly dependent upon the ECB for financing. Is there something to do with the different histories the Continent and the UK have had? I'm not just talking about the Continent's habit of being united under dictators every now and then, I mean in terms of democracy and taxes. Back when the Kings still had great power, the Parliament did not control any armies (least till Cromwell who chopped the King's head off, but never again), what it did control was taxes. If the King had need of financing he went to Parliament to raise taxes, and this limit was fundamental to the birth of British democracy. Another big milestone, this time with collab from the British B team in their evolution to the A(merican) team. No taxation without representation - again, because taxes found the basis of government. No laws without impartial men to enforce them, no impartial men to enforce them without payment from the state to support them, and in this manner the Prime Minister grew more powerful than the King until the King was ruler symbolically and all power was left to the PM and his mandate from his constituents. Maggie Thatcher, AKA the Iron Lady AKA the Iron Bitch, one of the things she got right that no one can argue thanks to the benefit of time - when the UK was busy debating entering the Euro precursor, its intellectual proponents claimed that the UK would descend into economic collapse if it did not join the Euro. Malvinas Thatcher up front rebuked it as an attempt to remove any teeth from national democracy, as a parliament or senate that has lost the ability to set its own budget is ruling only in name. Today with the UK being the financial capital of the world those arguments are shown to be false and the tragedy the Eurozone crisis has wreaked has shown we were fortunate to have escaped such madness. It also shows the frightening speed in which the people who pushed for a political Union have succeeded, all with such great deceit. Only when they gauged the nation states were incapable of stopping the EU did they drop the pretense that this was about free trade and not about power.
Though enough from me, what else speaks of success to you in the EU being a model you want the US to adopt? What do you find appreciable, how do you think it handles democracy or multiplicity of ethnicities? What do you find criticism worthy, what do you think Washington gains from a centralized EU?
But! You missed the 'I want to vote leave but I can't give the government any data to track me down with, they're just waiting for me to slip up, I'm not letting those bastards take my tax credits or my body-pillow away' option off your poll.
Why haven't you paid your TV license to gain access to fair and unbiased News yet?
So, do we believe in the phone polling, which is pointing towards a Stay, or internet polling, which points toward Leave? Do we think there are going to be any more large-scale Islamic terror attacks in the interim (as that'll surely affect the polls)? Do we expect any voting day shenanigans, or perhaps another late-day attempt to let 16 and 17-year old Lib Dem victims vote in the poll?
Who knows
I don't think they've done polls after Brussels exploded, and YouGov has taken the pro-EU stance which is very painful as they're usually quite disinterested
Also we're a bit too far out for the polls to be of much use, in our general election the only poll that accurately got the elections right was released after everyone had already voted but before the results were polld
As the facts surrounding the Brussels attacks begin to emerge it is becoming apparent that it was the work not of an isolated cell of Islamic militants based in Belgium but of a much wider network of jihadis in Europe. We already knew of the link between the Paris terrorists and the Molenbeek district of Brussels, home to a large Muslim population and where the last fugitive suspect of the Paris attacks, Salah Abdesalam, was seized last week. Now we also know that DNA traces were found at one of the sites of the Brussels attacks, the airport, of Najim Laachraoui, believed to have been the terrorist who made the explosive devices that created carnage in Paris.
The terrorist threat we now face is clearly a European-wide one. Dealing with it requires Europe-wide co-operation. That much is uncontroversial. But whether that co-operation is best achieved through membership of the European Union is much more contentious. Inevitably the issue has become, at least for the time being, the central focus for both sides in the referendum campaign on whether Britain should remain in or leave the EU.
https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/03/24/after-brussels-uk-security/
Hahaha, yougov are even putting guardian articles up
They don't even mention how the Schengen Area and Merkel's leadership of the European Union allowed these thousands of Jihadis to set up all across Europe
Foolish stat merchants!
Yeah, but the UK is rather unique in caring that much about preventing the movement of people within the EU.
We are at the point where
Germany and Sweden instigated border controls. Even if they put them behind their borders for PR purposes, being not borders in the same way Japan has not carriers. Italy, Greece, Macedonia, Austria, Hungary, France, Portugal, Poland, Czech. Rep., Serbia, Croatia, Denmark, Britain and more were opposed, to be honest it would be easier listing the countries who wanted the free movement of people - countries that gained from its citizens having easy migration channels to Germany m8
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Topic: Breeki British Brexit thread (Read 156068 times)