You've been stitched up, you've been strung a line - the Eurosceptics, the right wing press, the UKIP pillocks have all been lying to you.

Ah, yes, but the UK Parliament can refuse any drafted bill. Parliament legislates, Civil Service enacts.

The EU Parliament has no such powers. It can suggest or amend, but cannot refuse any drafted bill. The only things the EU Parliament can do is refuse to sign of the EU budget - not happened for, what, 16 years? The Parliament also has the theoretical right to dismiss the Commission if two-thirds of MEP’s vote for this. This would cause huge chaos and simply will not happen. As the driving force behind policy initiative is the Commission, such an act would deprive the European Union, in many senses, of its modus operandi. Stop their own gravy train, as it were.

Therefore, the powers lie with the Commission, and the Commission is nothing like the Civil Service. Since the 27 Commissioners are appointed by the Commission, there is no will of the people. Our current Commissioner is Catherine Ashton, a woman who has never faced any democratic vote whatsoever.

So yes, the EU is a lot less democratic than the UK.

*Edit to add*

Stitched up? Not really - I'm just interested in where 60-odd% percent of my labours, taken from me under threat of gaol, actually goes. As should everyone be.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit was 2011:12:18:16:35:31 by Carter.

Oh come off it - you've constrcuted a massively convoluted "what if...?" scenario to demonstrate a point that is massively weakened compared with your flouncing around earlier.

Then you come up with another one just to keep us entertained....

60% of your labours? What merry work of fiction is this?

What's that actually going to turn into once we've had a quick look at it eh?

My guess is that you're talking about some kind of tax figure, and by the end of it we're going to discover that it's actually going to be considerably less that 1% of your tax that pays for one of the most effective and productive common markets in the world, delivering over 50% of exports...

Or have you got something else illogical up your sleeve?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit was 2011:12:18:16:44:28 by Huguenot.

But I am not actually wrong, though. Am I?

As for 60-odd%, of course I am talking about tax, and of course I realise that the EU is but a very small allocation of that tax take but that should not detract from the fact that we should all be asking where the money goes.

The fact the EU has not had its own accounts signed off for the 17th consecutive year and it hounds its own anti-fraud unit should raise massive alarm bells.

The UK government spends about 640bn a year in total, and the net cost of EU membership (expenditure less direct income from grants or funds) is about 6bn, or about 0.94%

However, not all of government income comes from taxes, only 588bn does, so that's about 0.86%.

If you were earning 100k a year, then in total income tax and NI payments after allowances would be about 35k.

So even if you were earning 100k a year, in fact net only 300 quid of your earnings is paid towards the EU each year - or 0.3%.

That's less than a third of a penny for every pound you earn.

For that you get a common market, freedom of trade, freedom of movement, freedom of domicile, consistency of regulation and a continent wide commercial infrastructure.

You get a market worth over 50% of our total exports.

You get huge leverage on global markets when negotiating access to shrinking resources and energy insecurity.

Despite what certain people will tell you, there's virtually no difference in the democratic accountability of the EU organisations compared with the UK.

So what kind of insane idiot when faced with figures like that would still be campaigning to pull out of Europe?

Time to close this thread - it's like listening to two drunks arguing too late into the night after a boozy Christmas office party - and is getting boring.

There is a healthy debate to be held on the subject but batting tennis ball facts, figures and insults back and forth is not adding to the sum of human knowledge.

To the contrary Marmora Man - the essence of this debate is facts, figures and the propensity of the anti-Europe brigade to deliberately misrepresent and misuse them in pursuit of a destructive hidden agenda.

Your own anti-European position is well established, and I reserve the right to ignore instructions from you to shut up as the right wingers continue a campaign of misinformation in the national press and on people's doorsteps.

I have no doubt that clarification of the democratic foundation of Europe and the minor investment if requires to deliver massive economic returns are 'boring' to you - you'd prefer these points were never proven at all.

H, you have no data to support your position because it is incapable of being supported by data. Your position is:

"One is a group of visionary, inclusive, capable politicians who recognise that the long term security of Europe relies upon the creation of a united region with sound political and economic strategies that can negotiate effectively in a world of shrinking energy reserves and mineral resources.

The other is a group of short-sighted financial carpet baggers, ably supported by narrowminded xenophobes and competitive economic blocs who would try and bring the European economy to its knees. They will attempt to do this in piecemeal fashion, by rolling Greece, rolling Italy, then Spain or Ireland until there is nothing left."

and you have maintained this ridiculous blinkered position throughout. You are the narrow-minded zealot, blinding yourself to reality, to the sheer desperation of those 'visionary' politicians as they fight like rats in a sack to reconcile the irreconcilable. The supreme irony, of course, is that you live in Singapore, where the evidence of the idiocy of your views is in your face at every turn.

Anyhow, when that European superpower emerges from the ruins we'll all be too old to care.

"The supreme irony, of course, is that you live in Singapore, where the evidence of the idiocy of your views is in your face at every turn."

Too clever for me mate, do explain? At the moment the rain is in your face wherever you turn - is the Euro responsible for that? Or is the EU? Or do you not differentiate?

The hyperbole of course, is all your own words here

I notice that Norway's refusal to engage on equal terms with the EU has created high tarriffs that mean there's a butter shortage on.

Evidence perhaps that your claims that there'll be no impact of withdrawal from Europe as misplaced?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit was 2011:12:19:14:03:27 by Huguenot.

Or, again, in the real world....

Norway's new diet craze means a shortage of butter.

[globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com]

[www.msnbc.msn.com]

[www.dietdoctor.com]

Mind you, if you get your news from a rankly hypocritical rag that criticises hedge funds whilst Guardian Media Group profits from them and practices tax avoidance by using Cayman subsidiaries, then you can't help but have a hugely distorted and narrow-minded view of events.

Sanctimonious champagne socialists - you gotta luv 'em.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit was 2011:12:19:14:43:21 by Carter.

Regardless of the long running ping-pong argument on this thread on this specific and largely irrelevant sidetrack regards norweigan butter I think the point is, that craze aside, the shortage has come about because of the vagaries of the climate, something the common agricultural policy, for all its problems, was designed to overcome and has done so with enourmous success. Score one for europe then (though it managed to do this happily when it was just a common or garden common market)

Firstly CAP issues ahve nothing to do with the Euro, increased economic integration or, well anything currently being discussed,

Secondly this is a problem of Norway's making though, rigidly maintaining protectionist tarrifs when a crop failure has meant there's nothing left to protect (this year anyway).

This is why it's so boring discussing with you Carter - you deliberately miss the point. You end up on some stupid tirade against the messenger instead of trying to understand the message.

Nobody is denying that the demand is up because of a local fad, the problem is what you do when demand is up and you have artifical market restrictions imposed by your trading relations.

Here is the Helsingin Sanomat:

---

"In a wider context, however, Norway’s Customs policy is to blame, for it makes it practically impossible for the shops to replenish their shelves with imported butter.

“It is too late to ask now”, says Danish-Swedish dairy giant Arla’s communications director Theis Brøgger.

Norway is not an EU country, and the import tariff on butter from abroad has been set at 25 Norwegian krone (EUR 3.30) per kg. For this reason dairies from other Nordic Countries do not really export their products into Norway at all.

After the butter shortage hit the country, Norway agreed to lower the import levy to a mere four krone per kilogramme of butter, a move that failed to resolve the problem.

“We have nothing to offer at such short notice. Also, from the business point of view such short-term activities are not really worthwhile. Norway has already communicated that the Customs duties will be raised back to normal on January 1st”, Brøgger says."

---

You see? You get it now?

Being outside of large trading markets renders your economy highly sensitive to mild fluctuations: you don't have the resources or the trading relations to compensate.

Out of the EU (because of spending 0.3% of your paypacket on it)? Look forward to empty shelves.

Why do you think even William Hague says leaving the EU is a stupid idea? It's not me isolated here, it's you.

Carter - you are missing the point. The increased demand may be due to dietary habits, but they can't buy it from overseas for political reasons.

But I actually think that the Guardian article is quite balanced - Norway is a prosperous country, economically it looks like staying out of the EU was the right thing for them to do (although I guess it depends on how much you like butter).

It's relevant, El Pibe, by illustrating how countries that make compromises to support the common good are favoured when it comes to economic relations and by return, those outside the bloc are less well favoured.

They suffer as a result.

Besides, Carter has already said that in his mind there is no difference between the EU and the Euro.

Ah yes, the CAP.

How devastating for the Norwegians, having to pay slightly higher prices for butter.

But at least they are not suffering increasing poverty and famine. If surplus food is produced due to the CAP then the EU intervenes in the market either by subsidising export of the product at below cost price; by storing it, creating the EU 'food mountains'; selling it later; or destroying it. Such exports are generally dumped on poor countries, especially in Africa.

To me the CAP is one of the most evil things ever to come out of the EU. There is one policy proven to kill our fellow human beings.

[www.civitas.org.uk]

well as we know paying higher prices for food is pretty devastating as we're finding out here where food bills in low-middle income households are seeing high percentages of disposable income eroded by these price rises, mostly from foodstuffs outside of the EU, ie beyond their control.

And carter, the evidence seems to CAP standing for copy and paste, poor effort.
But you're not wrong that there are things that need subsantial reform in the CAP, but the real lesson is that shielding a large internal market from the whims of the market can be incredibly successful in guaranteeing (in this case) food security and ensuring supplies across the market despite failures in localised parts of it.

It's the old bundle of straws analogy innit, stronger together.

Yes I got the point huguenot, maybe I should have said 'score one for multinational cooperation in a supranational legislative structure' rather than 'score one for europe', just to be clear ;)

So let me get this right?

Without trying to sound to hyperbolic here, you would choose to inflict poverty, famine and death on another continent rather than pay free market prices for food, even if those prices rise (or fall) on a temporary basis due to localised market conditions, such as a wet summer in Norway? Out of sight, out of mind, eh?

"...shielding a large internal market from the whims of the market can be incredibly successful in guaranteeing (in this case) food security..."

Isn't that pretty much the definition of protectionism, on a continental scale?

Then every few years we get @#$%& like Geldof or Bono telling us of the suffering in places like Ethiopia or Somalia. Well yes, thanks for that. Really we should know already because we are helping to @#$%& create it.

It sickens me to the core.

So lets drag this back on topic. Whither the Euro?

As $deity$ is my witness, I bloody well hope so. Because then we have the greatest chance yet to be rid of the cancerous, murderous, wealth-destroying, self-serving and self-preserving parasite that is the EU and then all the people of Europe and beyond will be freer and better off as a result.

And Huguenot? I am anti-EU, not anti-Europe.

Please learn the @#$%& difference.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit was 2011:12:19:18:20:04 by acm.

Quote:

Hugenot
To the contrary Marmora Man - the essence of this debate is facts, figures and the propensity of the anti-Europe brigade to deliberately misrepresent and misuse them in pursuit of a destructive hidden agenda.
Your own anti-European position is well established, and I reserve the right to ignore instructions from you to shut up as the right wingers continue a campaign of misinformation in the national press and on people's doorsteps.

Hugenot - you always get very het up it when others, allegedly, put words into your mouth. You have put words in mine; I challenge you to find my "well established anti-European position" - because I damned if I can remember ever posting one. I might have, in passing, made comments about the illogicality of the creation of a common currency before securing common fiscal polices but I am most definitely not an Anti European.

And you ask me why I accuse people of prejudice? This says it all:

Because then we have the greatest chance yet to be rid of the cancerous, murderous, wealth-destroying, self-serving and self-preserving parasite that is the EU

Patently unsubstantiated, ridiculous, prejudiced rubbish.

You're right acm, it is a form of protectionism but not the one you're thinking of.
This isn't about protecting the market from competition like the Norweigan version, this is about guarateeing production by innoculating famers from the wilder fluctuations in the global market.

Like the Norweigans we actually do all pay a little bit extra, but this time in order to guarantee we don't have shortages by stabilising prices. Norway hasn't done that as now they're paying a fortune for their butter!

The reason is about food security, something Britain really needs to understand because we, simply put in words of two syllables or less, cannot feed ourselves.

Gone are the days when we could sow the lands of empire with wheat, guaranteeing our bread whilst Indians and Irish starved by their millions, hell, we don't even get preferential treatment from the commonwealth anymore.

So I'm curious as to your solution for this once the cancer of Europe is excised from Britain. You'd ether kill britons in the fools errand of 'independence' or you'd kill fuzzy-wuzzies by harking back to the glory days of empire and all those lovely plantations. Or maybe we can depend on cheap imports of wheat and rice from China, tha'd be sensible.

Forgive me if I'll take your 'sick to the core' for the plight of africans at the hands of EU dumping with a pinch of salt.

Britain practically invented doing well at the cost of the poor, we have a foreign office that likes to keep strongmen, usually educated here, in power, we sell weapons to these terrible people and push a globalisation agenda that kills far more people than a bit of cheap EU sugar* ever will.

But yes, dumping is bad and should stop, however food security in an increasingly unstable and competitive world is of paramount importnace, now as much as in the post-war world. Thankfully our politicians understand (or are made to understand) this. I'd love to see Farage get into power only to be told the hard truths "sorry Nige old chap, we simply can't survive on our own, simple as that; another brandy?'.

Anyway this seems to have moved on from the Euro, but probably because the Euro crisis is being exploited by eurosceptics with an anti EUrope agenda, much like here really.

*It's also interesting that no african nation took the EU to task at the WTO, it was Brazil and Australia annoyed we were undercutting their prices!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit was 2011:12:20:09:26:41 by El Pibe.

El Pibe, I take your point about the potential problem of food scarcity in the coming years and that the lessons of the Great Depression of the '30s is that protectionism is not the way to go.

I also recognise the distinction between the EU and the Euro but understand why people are starting to use the terms interchangeably. And the reason for this is that the logic of the Merkozy proposal for greater political and fiscal integration to shore up the Eurozone and prevent further contagion is itself blurring the EU/Euro distinction.

If we go back to basics, and I'm allowed to simplify the workings of the EU with a bit of help from Wikipedia, we can state it thus:

The EU operates through a hybrid system of supranational independent institutions and intergovernmentally made decisions negotiated by the member states.
By acceding to the treaties the 27 members of the EU have pooled their sovereignty in exchange for representation in the institutions. The EU operates solely within those competencies conferred on it upon the treaties and according to the principle of subsidiarity (which dictates that action by the EU should only be taken where an objective cannot be sufficiently achieved by the member states alone).

The first problem with the recent Merkozy summit was that to permit some of these institiutions to oversee the fiscal and budgetary policies of the 17 Eurozone members required amendment of existing treaties by all 27 members of the EU.
Such a proposal throws the principle of pooled sovereingty out of the window in that a country that can no longer set its own spending plans is no longer sovereign (in my opinion), but more of a satellite state, quasi-colonial. As such, the danger is the particular EU institutions become more powerful that the individual states.

The second problem is that the attempt to shore up the rules for the 17 Eurozone members is calling the concept of subsidiarity into question.

So, in my opinion David Cameron was correct to refuse to endorse the proposals. The matter was an ill-thought out panic measure which failed to address the immediate problem of the Euro which is that possibly as much as €3 Trillion has to be found and put aside to rescue the Eurozone countries and meet future debt obligations. It was a recipe for institutionalised austerity for decades to come with no provisions for economic growth.

Now, whether this leaves Britain isolated to our detriment or not I'm not sure. However it does not stop us from trading with the EU as before. Nothing has changed from a trading point of view. We are still full members of the EU.

If we are now isolated, in my opinion it is a price worth paying for refusing to hand fiscal/budgetary control to others. There is an non-democratic wind blowing through the EU at the moment brought on by panic attempts to rescue the Euro and we already have two member states with non-elected technocrats running the show.

There's a bit of a whiff of totalitarianism in these panic measures if people pause for thought and consider the ramifications.

I'm inclined to agree with you on many of those points.

There is a very reactive and ill thought out element to current EU activity. It's also almost certainly too little too late, the data points to a series of defaults being imminent regardless of centralised fiscal strictures placed upon Eurozone memebers.
You can't blame the Germans frankly, they've seen other members fritter away their money and are basically telling them they can no longer be trusted with Germany's cash. Fair dues.

Cameron was right not to commit this country to those rules, but we weren't really expected to join up anyway, plus this was a about general strategy going forward, not signing on any dotted line.

What Cameron has done though is commit the cardinal sin of using the diplomatic domesday device to absolutely no effect other than to piss of all our closest and most important allies and marginalise any influence we may have had.
Especially as the rest will carry on regardless.
As I read a commentator say somewhere 'for heaven's sake don't let him near the nuclear deterrent!!!'
Even Thatcher was far too clever to do so, and when it looked like she was moving that way, a cannier Tory party than this lot binned her.
All to play to the gallery of some hooray henries on the backbenches and a couple of favourable headlines in the Daily Mail.

Not clever.


And back briefly to the minor aside about food security and protectionism, I think I managed to get the point across that this is protecting supply, not protectionism per se, and its success is causing the EU headaches, so in terms of achieving its goals it's demonstrably effective if not neccessarily the 'right' way of going about things.

edited twice for spelling and two unforgivable grocers' apostrophes



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit was 2011:12:20:10:52:49 by El Pibe.

Marmora Man Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Time to close this thread - it's like listening to
> two drunks arguing too late into the night after a
> boozy Christmas office party - and is getting
> boring.
>
> There is a healthy debate to be held on the
> subject but batting tennis ball facts, figures and
> insults back and forth is not adding to the sum of
> human knowledge.


Agreed. I admit that I am no expert on this stuff, it is not my satrong point. As a result, I read threads like this with interest, hoping to learn a few things. However, the last few pages have become tit for tat, and I am now rather confused.

I shall look elsewhere for some explanation.

Its Classic Old Gites ! (sic)

It's a bit like climate change denial.

The anti-Europe gang make all sorts of specious unsubstantiated claims that don't stand up under analysis.

They're then addressed one at a time to expose the myths.

The anti-Europe brigade then deny all the facts, poo poo all the evidence and attempt to sow confusion.

Are they a gang or a brigade? If you cant't answer that, I'm not sure I can trust your analysis.

A good point

can i suggest gang? So it's a health and safety brigade, anti european gang, and perhaps neocon cabal. The liberal lefties, hampstead/white wine liberal handwringers, right wing nutters and revanchist proto lysenkoists can fit around this basic taxonomy.

"...The reason is about food security, something Britain really needs to understand because we, simply put in words of two syllables or less, cannot feed ourselves."

Actually, Something Britain really needs to understand is there is absolutely no such concept of food security. The just-in-time method as employed right now and the entire corporatisation of the food supply means unless you have stores in the larder or are prepared to slaughter the cat then, given an interruption in the supply, there is no more than three or four days of food. That has already been seen on the ground in New Orleans with Katrina.

Let's look the regulations from the EU that Huguenot is so bewitched by. Let's look at Monsanto, the owners and manipulators of the world's food supply.

Monsanto Global Food Supply

Now, Monsanto are large enough to be able to employ army's of people to comply with every crap regulation spouted from bureaucrats with no real purpose in life other than to keep themselves in a job. For example -:

Bananas must be curved - EC Commission Regulation No 2257/94 - all bananas must be "free of abnormal curvature" and at least 14 cm in length. However the provisions relating to shape apply fully only to bananas sold as Extra class; some defects of shape (but not size) are permitted in Class I and Class II bananas.

Is that clear? Good.

Now, it must be pointed out that on the 29th July 2008, the European Commission held a preliminary vote concerning the repeal of certain regulations related to the quality of specific fruit and vegetables that included provisions related to size and shape. As of 2011, the specific rules for bananas have not been repealed.

Bananas

Bless them. It's only been three years. And that's just bananas.

And do you know what really @#$%& me off?

Somebody, some petty little tw@t thought of this, had meetings, had consultations, no doubt a few good 8 course dinners with fine wines with "scientists" at a conference in Geneva, and then wrote this down. Somebody thought this was important.

Now, imagine the absolute bureaucratic regulatory nightmare that your average small-holding farmer, organic or otherwise, has to go through just to comply with this shit. Food is food. If it doesn't kill the person eating it, and if you can sell it then leave well alone.

Frankly its a wonder we have any farmers left at all.

Back to Monsanto.

Pigs - Greenpeace

A Greenpeace researcher who monitors patent applications, Christoph Then, uncovered the fact that Monsanto is seeking patents not only on methods of breeding, but on actual breeding herds of pigs as well as the offspring that result.

So, not only do they want to own the worlds crops, but the livestock as well. Just to help things along, Monsanto worked with the US Government to start a trade war with the EU over GM crops. Or -:

"The US embassy in Paris advised Washington to start a military-style trade war against any European Union country which opposed genetically modified (GM) crops..."

Monsanto Trade War - Guardian

A military-style trade war.

Now, the point of this rather long post.

As the biotechnocrats understand full well, mandatory GE food labels will cripple the industry: consumers will not buy gene-altered foods, farmers will not plant them, restaurants and food processors will avoid them, and grocery stores will not sell them. How can we be certain about this? By looking at the experience of the European Union, the largest agricultural market in the world. In the EU there are almost no genetically engineered crops under cultivation or GE consumer food products on supermarket shelves. And why is this? Not because GE crops are automatically banned in Europe. But rather because under EU law, all foods containing genetically engineered ingredients must be labeled.

GE Food Labels

"...Not because GE crops are automatically banned..."

Make no mistake. As soon as they take enough EU parasites out to dinner and work out how to lie - sorry, lobby - on the labeling, you will be serving this crap to your kids. It will all be glossed over with regulation, designed for and written by the big boys. You or I matter not in this world now. We currently have absolutely no influence on any of these things. As long as these decisions are removed from us and given to some faceless technocrat removed from any democratic process, then we will be continue to be @#$%& over.

We need to get control back. Until we do, we are truly expendable.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit was 2011:12:23:05:20:20 by acm.

EU parasites I'll not allow. It's public sector parasites. Can you use EUSSR?