In or Out?

^^^ The Melvins?

I heard an interesting perspective the other day on another forum. Bascially someone said there should never be a referendum on the issue of the UK's EU membership, because it is impossible to inform the public, in an unbiased way of the pro's and con's. The poster said "We pay politicians and their civil servants to make these kind of decisions on our behalf"

I thought, what a fantastic way of looking at things. Perhaps we should do away with elections altogether. After all, how can the peasants really understand monetary policy and the process of policy and lawmaking? We are mere debt slaves to the elites, why the hell should we even be allowed out after dark?

Our membership to the EU is complex. My instincts tell me you don't ask to jump on a sinking ship. Europe is big market for the UK, but not the only market, and it's immediate and mid term future looks pretty bleak to me. The PIIGS nations are up to the eyes in a level of debt that cannot be paid back, and yet the technocrats who have been undemocratically put in charge of some of these places are hell bent on driving their respective populations into the ground with austerity measures. There was even talk of the European parliament being able to veto the public spending plans of member states.

Anyone who has sat through a session (televised) of the EU parliament, may believe it all to be a case of the emperors new clothes; loads of men and women all agreeing and slapping each other on the back. When one person stands up and says "But look, the tw&t's naked" the whole assembly looks the other way, blocks their ears and shakes their collective heads in disgust and disapproval. This cabal of gravy trainers, and some sympathetic media have long nurtured a culture where questioning the validity of this collectivist plot is at best dismissed as right wing racist lunacy, and at worst almost an act of treason against the union. This has not helped the debate.

Nah, looks like a load of bollox to me, and for that reason...I'm out..

Dean wrote: Where are the other markets and are they truly viable? We can look to the grass on the other side of the fence but to me it looks as poorly maintained and weed-ridden as our own plot and that of any of our EU neighbours. There is also the question of whether they (The Americas, The Far East, etc) would want us to join them in competing for a portion of those markets. We have delusions of grandure that have persisted since the Industrial Revolution and the days of British Empire that we can no longer support, we are a small island in a big world and our eventual place in that heirachy of nations will be determined by our ability to compete.

I'm not sure about all that Dean.

We will compete if people abroad want our goods and services. It works the other way around too. European companies are not going to cease trading with us because we're not part of their circle jerk. It would make no sense to put up such barriers. I'm inclined to think the picture painted by the neo-liberal pro EU media that we would be ruined if we left the union is just scaremongering.

We need to remember the origins of the European project and what it's purpose was. Primarily it was to prevent war in Europe again. A noble aspiration in itself, but beyond that I'm convinced it was about federalisation and centralising of power, through slow incremental steps disguised a trade agreements and social charters. The developments in recent years in the PIIGS nations, and how they have managed these situations through undemocratic means, employing the services of those who engineered the economic crisis to impose austerity on the people to claw back THEIR bad debts, is very sinister. People need to be upset about this. It was through the mechanisms of the EU power structure that these dubious appointments were allowed to happen.

The T wrote: Dean wrote: Do you mean the Maldives? The Malvinas (Malvi Pla, Es Malvins and Malvi Gros) and are off the coast of Ibiza in the Med - they're Spanish. The people in Las Malvinas (Falkland Islands in your vernacular I think?) want to remain subjects to the British monarchy; now whether they want in and out the EU is another matter

If people care what the islanders think then they'd call it what the islanders call it. It is not part of the European Union.

^That is correct, just like the dictatorship did in the 80s, so Fernandez is doing now, trying to use patriotic fervor to make the masses stop thinking about the sorry state of the economy, which even for "21st century socialism" South American standards is bad.