EU

[DeletedUser5582]

After the strike chat just wondering what folks think about the EU bearing in mind we have players from all over the Globe here and what we thought of it?

Here is a video though which have just watched (um watch very first bit when the bridges all being built across map and spot the one country not getting a bridge....:icon_confused

So monetary Union good or bad?
End of democracy?!
New era for peace and plenty?

Discuss!

 

[DeletedUser7797]

Strangely Jo we've just been having a similar chat in WZP on TW4.

Opinions in the tribe are divided, I won't tell you which way people are swaying towards.

For myself, I consider myself an earthling and try and avoid nationalistic or xenophobic rants.

 

[DeletedUser5582]

bamsters (just for old times sake)

Only time ever felt nationalistic was when Cadbury's was sold to the firm whose name cannot leave my lips (or be typed) over fears that I would be forced to eat babysick (I lived in the US for a few years and I still have nightmares over what they call cheese and their chocolate otherwise would cheerfully have stayed!)

Um and no Fox's custard creams.

So not looking for xenophobic rants or such like more a chat about the power of the state (if you regard EU as a state) over the citizen and what we are seeing here?

That video (apart from assuming we had the mental age of the tasting department in the US food company that must not be named) was really quite disturbing on quite a few levels.

 

[Maggie Wallis]

Why, why oh why Jo?... you should of just combined the two discussions... what we should do is give the public sector a pay rise, increase their pensions, stop the cuts and spend spend spend whilst putting 2 fingers up to the EU...

Give it 6 months and all the over paid merchant bankers and CEO's will be gone taking their large bonuses with them and even the poorest of immigrants will no longer want to come to Britain... Then we will be Britain, run by the British for the British...

What's the EU ever done for us I hear you ask... well here is 3 things for every hot blooded football loving man that reads this forum...

1) The EU stopped the monopoly by British Sky Broadcasting so pubs can show premiership round ball matches from any satellite service...
2) If it wasn't for the EU we wouldn't be able to use Opera on our Windows PC's to send super quick trains...
3) Downloading and watching hardcore porn would still be illegal in Britain...

 

[DeletedUser282]

The common market is a great idea.
The European Union is a bureaucratic nonsense.
The idea of monetary union between countries of vastly different economies being considered a good idea still baffles me.
The general lack of democracy, in the lack of elections for the commission, the essentially rubber-stamp parliament. The EU constitution being rejected in referendums and replaced with the Lisbon treaty, being a treaty so that it wouldn't need a vote anymore. The redoing of the Lisbon treaty vote in Ireland, and all the money the EU spent on supporting the Yes campaign. All this lack of democracy worries me.

In terms of economics, it seems quite ridiculous that our net contributions to the EU are ever rising, as is the EU accounts, in a time of cuts in Britain, and far worse cuts abroad.
The MEP payment system is far more open to corruption than the MPs expenses in westminster ever were, The auditors haven't signed of on the budget for an incredibly long time, and one auditor Marta Andreasen, raised concerns about the commission's accounting system was open to fraud. She refused to sign accounts she believed were unreliable and so was fired for "violating Articles 12 and 21 of staff regulations, failure to show sufficient loyalty and respect." Utterly ridiculous. She has since joined the anti-EU membership party UKIP.

"Italy needs reforms, not elections." -Herman Van Rompuy
Those be dangerous words.

 

[DeletedUser]

Why, why oh why Jo?... you should of just combined the two discussions... what we should do is give the public sector a pay rise, increase their pensions, stop the cuts and spend spend spend whilst putting 2 fingers up to the EU...

Give it 6 months and all the over paid merchant bankers and CEO's will be gone taking their large bonuses with them and even the poorest of immigrants will no longer want to come to Britain... Then we will be Britain, run by the British for the British...

What's the EU ever done for us I hear you ask... well here is 3 things for every hot blooded football loving man that reads this forum...

1) The EU stopped the monopoly by British Sky Broadcasting so pubs can show premiership round ball matches from any satellite service...
2) If it wasn't for the EU we wouldn't be able to use Opera on our Windows PC's to send super quick trains...
3) Downloading and watching hardcore porn would still be illegal in Britain...

And in a few years time we'll have to take a loan from Zimbabwe as they'd be better off than us.

 

[DeletedUser]

The common market is a great idea.
The European Union is a bureaucratic nonsense.
The idea of monetary union between countries of vastly different economies being considered a good idea still baffles me.
The general lack of democracy, in the lack of elections for the commission, the essentially rubber-stamp parliament. The EU constitution being rejected in referendums and replaced with the Lisbon treaty, being a treaty so that it wouldn't need a vote anymore. The redoing of the Lisbon treaty vote in Ireland, and all the money the EU spent on supporting the Yes campaign. All this lack of democracy worries me.

In terms of economics, it seems quite ridiculous that our net contributions to the EU are ever rising, as is the EU accounts, in a time of cuts in Britain, and far worse cuts abroad.
The MEP payment system is far more open to corruption than the MPs expenses in westminster ever were, The auditors haven't signed of on the budget for an incredibly long time, and one auditor Marta Andreasen, raised concerns about the commission's accounting system was open to fraud. She refused to sign accounts she believed were unreliable and so was fired for "violating Articles 12 and 21 of staff regulations, failure to show sufficient loyalty and respect." Utterly ridiculous. She has since joined the anti-EU membership party UKIP.

"Italy needs reforms, not elections." -Herman Van Rompuy
Those be dangerous words.

This.

The EU is a mix of incompatible economies, something many educated sorts have been rattling on about for years to ignorant ears. This was inevitable, and is what the EU gets for being greedy.

Capitalism is pretty old now, how the system can be getting even worse despite our increasing knowledge is hardly a good sign of the type of attitudes the people in charge have.

 

[DeletedUser]

The idea of monetary union between countries of vastly different economies being considered a good idea still baffles me.

Yeah, the monetary union was kind of doomed to fail since they're all such different economies. I really wonder if ther euro will survive all this, it might just become the domain of France and Germany. Hope it sticks around as it makes going on holiday so much easier

I don't think the Euro is the root of the problems though, it's more just making the solution more difficult.

 

[DeletedUser5582]

not sure can add anything to Gargareth's post on this

@Frazzled. The Euro is merely a symbol of what has gone wrong here and the video link I posted celebrating its 10 years was more a comment on the EU than the currency.

Having a currency backed by well nothing but political will was/is perhaps the biggest hoodwink of all time. Now on a GBP it has the bearer promises to pay on demand, though not sure how you;d get on if you went to Threadneedle Street and asked for the |real| value of your paper note to be given to you so probably not a huge difference here but the Euro is not backed by any such "promise". Once the markets saw that the politicians would renege on promises it meant the risk of holding anything in Euro's vastly increases. To get out of the current problems would mean a tacit admission that fiscal union without a political one can't work.

If you apply that to the EU in general and the technocrat fear of any sort of democracy what exactly are we looking at?

Have we gone from a single market ideal to a political one and what does this mean?

 

[DeletedUser]

I'm still waiting for my colonial era reparations. Please pay it before you go bankrupt.

 

[DeletedUser]

Im still waiting for you to stop eating our mcdonalds.