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On May 08 2014 03:45 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: PMQ Time
What the hell is going on in this video ? Why are they standing up every second for no reason ? British democracy seems pretty lively, I like it.
On May 09 2014 00:58 Joel-E wrote: Oh and just for the record, Nyxisto, the reason German and French mainstream parties oppose UKIP and other euro-sceptic parties is because that they know that if Britain leave, then Germany and France will follow. Without britain it's simply not worth to stay in. Also, If germany and france left, britain would follow, without Britain, france and germany, the EU is nothing.
German I don't know, but french well we already voted against the Lisbon treaty but nobody cared.
They will I think. Without France and Britain, who are the germans going to export their massive car industry too? And thats unfortunate, I told you they we're undemocratic.
If the UK and France would leave the EU the value of the Euro would go down even further which would mean we could sell even more cars. Sorry, what you're saying doesn't make any sense, you don't need to be a member of the EU to buy German cars.
No, but to export you're cars outside of the EU, you need to have a trade agreement put through the european commission.
So you want the UK to leave the EU and start protectionist policies? Because that worked out so well in the past. I don't see either Germany, France or the UK leaving the EU anytime soon. There's nothing to gain for any of the parties involved. Why would a country drive itself into political isolation voluntarily?
Edit: also regarding democracy. I think people are wrong if they equal direct democracy with maximum freedom. A functioning democracy is not a mob rule. Many people in the EU don't see the benefits they have because of it. The EU probably wouldn't even exist if the people would have had a vote in every decision. As KwarK mentioned the EU started with the French German steel & coal union only five years after the war, which is pretty amazing.
We actually voted for the most important decisions, and back then europe was something that almost everybody was striving for. It was a way out of constant war in europe.
I don't think that's true at all. Every important treaty starting with the Schuman Declaration wasn't up for public vote. Back then basically all of it happened between statesman on the highest diplomatic level. I'm also pretty sure many people hated each others guts only five years after the war. I think you have a highly romanticized view of the past. Compared to the 50's - 70's the EU today is way more democratic and transparent than it ever was.
Today europe is just an undemocratic structure that impose its stupid rule.
No, it stands for the exact same things it stood for in the past. I just hope we don't need a war every few decades to remind people of that.
I don't romanticize anything. The schuman declaration, and everything prior to maastricht, like the rome treaty, were all economic trade agreements - it's perfectly normal that we don't ask people to vote for this: the elected government had the legitimacy to sign them and at no point the national sovereignty were in question. It's pretty amazing to see someone arguing for an undemocratic structure like it's something good or normal. The europe today is a fiasco, and there are no real arguments against that... So I guess the best answer is to reassure yourself into thinking everyone who think different is either dumb or racist (like most pro european I come past these days), and continue into your undemocratic process.
What the hell is going on in this video ? Why are they standing up every second for no reason ? British democracy seems pretty lively, I like it.
On May 09 2014 00:58 Joel-E wrote: Oh and just for the record, Nyxisto, the reason German and French mainstream parties oppose UKIP and other euro-sceptic parties is because that they know that if Britain leave, then Germany and France will follow. Without britain it's simply not worth to stay in. Also, If germany and france left, britain would follow, without Britain, france and germany, the EU is nothing.
German I don't know, but french well we already voted against the Lisbon treaty but nobody cared.
They will I think. Without France and Britain, who are the germans going to export their massive car industry too? And thats unfortunate, I told you they we're undemocratic.
If the UK and France would leave the EU the value of the Euro would go down even further which would mean we could sell even more cars. Sorry, what you're saying doesn't make any sense, you don't need to be a member of the EU to buy German cars.
No, but to export you're cars outside of the EU, you need to have a trade agreement put through the european commission.
So you want the UK to leave the EU and start protectionist policies? Because that worked out so well in the past. I don't see either Germany, France or the UK leaving the EU anytime soon. There's nothing to gain for any of the parties involved. Why would a country drive itself into political isolation voluntarily?
Edit: also regarding democracy. I think people are wrong if they equal direct democracy with maximum freedom. A functioning democracy is not a mob rule. Many people in the EU don't see the benefits they have because of it. The EU probably wouldn't even exist if the people would have had a vote in every decision. As KwarK mentioned the EU started with the French German steel & coal union only five years after the war, which is pretty amazing.
We actually voted for the most important decisions, and back then europe was something that almost everybody was striving for. It was a way out of constant war in europe.
I don't think that's true at all. Every important treaty starting with the Schuman Declaration wasn't up for public vote. Back then basically all of it happened between statesman on the highest diplomatic level. I'm also pretty sure many people hated each others guts only five years after the war. I think you have a highly romanticized view of the past. Compared to the 50's - 70's the EU today is way more democratic and transparent than it ever was.
Today europe is just an undemocratic structure that impose its stupid rule.
No, it stands for the exact same things it stood for in the past. I just hope we don't need a war every few decades to remind people of that.
I don't romanticize anything. The schuman declaration, and everything prior to maastricht, like the rome treaty, were all economic trade agreements - it's perfectly normal that we don't ask people to vote for this: the elected government had the legitimacy to sign them and at no point the national sovereignty were in question. It's pretty amazing to see someone arguing for an undemocratic structure like it's something good or normal. The europe today is a fiasco, and there are no real arguments against that... So I guess the best answer is to reassure yourself into thinking everyone who think different is either dumb or racist (like most pro european I come past these days), and continue into your undemocratic process.
On May 09 2014 02:12 Nyxisto wrote: I don't think everybody in the EU needs to have a vote on everything. That's not how representative democracies (which all Western states practice) work. If all the Wilders, Le Pens and Farages of this world that promise their people independence would get voted into power I'd be more than a little worried for all the minorities in the EU. Especially in the UK that seems to be where the Ukip draws their voters from. If something's wrong it's either the fault of Brussels, the Muslims or the gypsies.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but they're still pretty far out from being voted into power. Taking the UK case for a moment, you're painting their platform with perhaps too narrow a brush. Do these issues appeal to more than just nuts that have irrational blaming of all problems on foreign influence, immigration?+ Show Spoiler +
Maybe indeed they're cloaking some more extreme policy ideas behind wide-appeal issues. It still isn't blaming everything that's wrong on Brussels & immigrant minorities (majorities in some localities, UK case) if their focus is reversing harmful policies before tackling others.
On May 09 2014 02:12 Nyxisto wrote: I don't think everybody in the EU needs to have a vote on everything. That's not how representative democracies (which all Western states practice) work. If all the Wilders, Le Pens and Farages of this world that promise their people independence would get voted into power I'd be more than a little worried for all the minorities in the EU. Especially in the UK that seems to be where the Ukip draws their voters from. If something's wrong it's either the fault of Brussels, the Muslims or the gypsies.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but they're still pretty far out from being voted into power. Taking the UK case for a moment, you're painting their platform with perhaps too narrow a brush. Do these issues appeal to more than just nuts that have irrational blaming of all problems on foreign influence, immigration?+ Show Spoiler +
Maybe indeed they're cloaking some more extreme policy ideas behind wide-appeal issues. It still isn't blaming everything that's wrong on Brussels & immigrant minorities (majorities in some localities, UK case) if their focus is reversing harmful policies before tackling others.
Obviously giving up national sovereignty isn't just something that worries nationalistic nut jobs. But the conservative European parties already cover that. I don't think I'm pointing European's populist parties with too thin of a brush. 90% of what they claim to be facts is just flat out wrong. Not 75% of legislation for the UK is made in Brussels. That's not even remotely true.
(http://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2014-05/Faktencheck-UK-Independence-Party/seite-1 The article is in German but I think the translated version is still readable.)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but they're still pretty far out from being voted into power.
Well the Front-National seems to lead in French polls regardint the European election coming up in May.(http://www.euractiv.com/sections/eu-elections-2014/second-poll-puts-french-far-right-lead-eu-elections-301579) And the Ukip seems to score about 18%. I think that's pretty scary.
Nyxisto there is one thing you're missing about UK politics. There really isn't a choice to vote for anyone who believes in anything but the exact current system of government. There isn't an alternative vote, we pretty much have a 2 party system since the massive decline of the Lib Dems, and the parties are pretty much the same except for some minor ideological differences. Trust in politicians is ridiculously low, and the reaction of most people in the UK over the last 15 years has been apathy. Farage offers personality, and he has the ability to use lies to tap in to people's fears in a way that's about as subtle as a sledgehammer. It works, apparently.
Look at the situation with Hungary and the EU for example. According to UKIP, we should have been overrun with Hungarians by now. Millions of the things, all clogging up our drains, having foreign accents and taking our jerbs. I can't see it where i live, but its been forgotten about and they moved on to the next big fear. It runs in a cycle like this constantly, massively wrong prediction based on Britains natural xenophobia, which are then forgotten to make way for the next one.
But as i said, it works.
The other parties know what they are doing, and they know what they are talking about (relatively speaking), but all they seem to do all day is call each other names in parliament in a desperate attempt to appeal to the middle and upper class. Just watch PMQs, they are trying to win elections based on wit alone, and they are mostly very unwitty people.
UKIP has a clear stance, no matter how misguided and based on lies, its simple, clear, appeals to the masses and has an obvious goal.
On May 09 2014 02:12 Nyxisto wrote: I don't think everybody in the EU needs to have a vote on everything. That's not how representative democracies (which all Western states practice) work. If all the Wilders, Le Pens and Farages of this world that promise their people independence would get voted into power I'd be more than a little worried for all the minorities in the EU. Especially in the UK that seems to be where the Ukip draws their voters from. If something's wrong it's either the fault of Brussels, the Muslims or the gypsies.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but they're still pretty far out from being voted into power. Taking the UK case for a moment, you're painting their platform with perhaps too narrow a brush. Do these issues appeal to more than just nuts that have irrational blaming of all problems on foreign influence, immigration?+ Show Spoiler +
Maybe indeed they're cloaking some more extreme policy ideas behind wide-appeal issues. It still isn't blaming everything that's wrong on Brussels & immigrant minorities (majorities in some localities, UK case) if their focus is reversing harmful policies before tackling others.
Obviously giving up national sovereignty isn't just something that worries nationalistic nut jobs. But the conservative European parties already cover that. I don't think I'm pointing European's populist parties with too thin of a brush. 90% of what they claim to be facts is just flat out wrong. Not 75% of legislation for the UK is made in Brussels. That's not even remotely true.
(http://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2014-05/Faktencheck-UK-Independence-Party/seite-1 The article is in German but I think the translated version is still readable.)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but they're still pretty far out from being voted into power.
Well the Front-National seems to lead in French polls regardint the European election coming up in May.(http://www.euractiv.com/sections/eu-elections-2014/second-poll-puts-french-far-right-lead-eu-elections-301579) And the Ukip seems to score about 18%. I think that's pretty scary.
I hate that kind of stance. The europe is doing good ? Really ? Economically, socially ? Politically ? Don't you think it's pretty normal that formations against it rise and propose reform. I'm all against the FN in France, or Ukip, because pointing out immigration is easy, just like it was easy to point out Greece during the crisis. But There are reasons that those formations are so strong right now : they are the only formation that propose something to face the difficulties.
Did you ever read tracts from the Front National ? If they're so strong in France, it is because they have arguments, they are good on many many topics, including economics and social topics. What is killing the european dream right now is the inability of european high officials to see that and face those arguments with their own.
I agree with most what you're saying. Actually the UK's political scene looks very much like ours. Our liberal party dropped completely out of parliament and we're now left with the social democrats and the conseratives and some very small left and green opposition. But I don't agree with the "all established parties are the same" argument. I think thats just oversimplification and frustration, and that's not completely the fault of politics.
@ WhiteDog
The EU is still the biggest economy on this planet and pays 50% of all social benefits although not even inhabiting 10% of the worlds population. Standards of living are very high here. It does not make sense to argue with you if you neglect every argument with some kind of "we're all doomed" rhetoric. And regarding the FN. They're clearly a national-socialist party. Economic protectionism,nationalization of key branches, social conservatism to the point of racism, and your occasional holocaust denial. I hope you can see why I, from a German perspective, am reacting a little allergic to that.
I agree with most what you're saying. Actually the UK's political scene looks very much like ours. Our liberal party dropped completely out of parliament and we're now left with the social democrats and the conseratives and some very small left and green opposition. But I don't agree with the "all established parties are the same" argument. I think thats just oversimplification and frustration, and that's not completely the fault of politics.
Well i see what you are saying, but sometimes an oversimplification can be valuable. Not all voters have time to get themselves a degree in politics, and i'm just exploring reasons for the high proportion of UKIP voters.
Labour, for example, our traditional socialist party, are now a right of centre party. They flirted with the idea of becoming socialist again, but realised that our politics have pretty much moved irreversibly to the right and there is nothing they can do about it. Basically now they do nothing but argue against what the conservatives are doing. Its created a nasty partisan atmosphere about English politics and left Labour looking reactive instead of proactive. Unfortunately, the creative policies they have attempted to put out there have been left looking woefully badly thought out.
So we end up with 3 choices. Conservatives, whose policies benefit the rich. Labour, whose policies benefit no-one. UKIP, whose policies actively hurt everyone, but at least they're hurting someone in revenge for the nasty state of our politics, and they provide someone to blame other than ourselves for whatever problems they are bringing up.
EDIT: Again you will notice a massive oversimplification, and necessarily with that comes a certain amount of falsity, but IMHO this is the best explanation for why people are voting UKIP. There's obviously not going to be a reason as simple as this, but i think without doing a 200 page long study, the state of our politics can be boiled down to this without going to far wrong.
MORE EDIT: I'm probably being a bit harsh on the conservatives here. Although i detest the way they have gone about austerity, it HAS worked and in addition to benefiting the rich, it seems to have benefited the economy as a whole on average, and the labour market (also on average, the proliferation of minimum wage jobs is still maddening).
On May 09 2014 02:12 Nyxisto wrote: I don't think everybody in the EU needs to have a vote on everything. That's not how representative democracies (which all Western states practice) work. If all the Wilders, Le Pens and Farages of this world that promise their people independence would get voted into power I'd be more than a little worried for all the minorities in the EU. Especially in the UK that seems to be where the Ukip draws their voters from. If something's wrong it's either the fault of Brussels, the Muslims or the gypsies.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but they're still pretty far out from being voted into power. Taking the UK case for a moment, you're painting their platform with perhaps too narrow a brush. Do these issues appeal to more than just nuts that have irrational blaming of all problems on foreign influence, immigration?+ Show Spoiler +
Maybe indeed they're cloaking some more extreme policy ideas behind wide-appeal issues. It still isn't blaming everything that's wrong on Brussels & immigrant minorities (majorities in some localities, UK case) if their focus is reversing harmful policies before tackling others.
Obviously giving up national sovereignty isn't just something that worries nationalistic nut jobs. But the conservative European parties already cover that. I don't think I'm pointing European's populist parties with too thin of a brush. 90% of what they claim to be facts is just flat out wrong. Not 75% of legislation for the UK is made in Brussels. That's not even remotely true.
(http://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2014-05/Faktencheck-UK-Independence-Party/seite-1 The article is in German but I think the translated version is still readable.)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but they're still pretty far out from being voted into power.
Well the Front-National seems to lead in French polls regardint the European election coming up in May.(http://www.euractiv.com/sections/eu-elections-2014/second-poll-puts-french-far-right-lead-eu-elections-301579) And the Ukip seems to score about 18%. I think that's pretty scary.
There might even be an argument to be made that it's a vote AGAINST the status quo aka. the two parties are basically too invested in keeping too many of the UK-Eurozone agreements intact. Jock's argument isn't the first time I've heard proposed that conservatives & labour are more of the same first, and changes second. How can you register dislike to both major party's approach to the reach of EU policies to the UK? Vote against them until one opts to put more effort into acknowledging growing opposition to business as usual.
The EU is still the biggest economy on this planet and pays 50% of all social benefits although not even inhabiting 10% of the worlds population. Standards of living are very high here. It does not make sense to argue with you if you neglect every argument with some kind of "we're all doomed" rhetoric. And regarding the FN. They're clearly a national-socialist party. Economic protectionism,nationalization of key branches, social conservatism to the point of racism, and your occasional holocaust denial. I hope you can see why I, from a German perspective, am reacting a little allergic to that.
National socialism was german you know, and from my perspective you cannot understand its rise if you take aside what France did after WW1. In France right now, things are different and so is UK. There is a racist belief deep down in the FN, and that is the reason they will never be in power, but it is not its core right now, things are way more complicated. Economic protectionism has nothing to do with the nazi btw, most of our economies have been built thanks to protectionism : there was approximatly a 40 % tariff in the entire western world prior to 1950. The economic globalization is a recent occurence, and being against it doesn't make you a "nationalist". There are tons of valid explanation for a short term localized protectionism, and the europe actually need it (for energy, against social dumping, against fiscal dumping, etc.).
Now about the EU being a big economy yes but it was the case before the union. The problem is our results are piss poor since the euro, even within the EU the result of the euro zone is on average always lower than the results outside of the euro zone. The purchasing power seems to be rising, and the inflation is low, but this is mirage for most people : inequalities and statistical measure taking into account (in reality inflation is not a general increase of prices, housing and groceries are rising way faster than purchasing power), the result is most of the poorest in western europe have lost purchasing power in the last decade (or maybe even before).
People have reasons to be nervous about the situation. One exemple, do you know paludism is surfacing in Greece ? Yeah the biggest economy in the world.
The European economic project started almost immediately after the second world war and has resulted in huge growth. Looking at just post Maastricht is misleading, the common market predated that.
Yes, also claiming that the economic relations in the 50's to 70's didn't touch national sovereignty is ridiculous. They changed the political shape of Europe more than they have changed at any other time. The Schuman Declaration basically established a supranational authority because even in the 50's people understood that national states wouldn't cut it anymore.
Seriously you're both delusional, what kind of national sovereignty did we lost from 50 to 70 ? Nothing that the GATT and then the WTO didn't do to every country in the world. Countries still had power over their money, their budgetary policies, on taxation (aside from the import taxation), etc. The european project resulted in a huge growth ? Quantify that please, I'd love to see it. If you are talking about the catching up effect that occured after the second world war, you're mistaking yourself, if you're talking about the general increase in trading within the european community, I repeat the same would have happened without the europe under the impulsion of the GATT. I'm not saying the europe is a bad thing overall, but you're all talking about things that happened 40 years ago, while I talk about the last 10 to 20 years. Plus, the europe was not a commercial trade agreement, it was supposed to be more, a political unification of the europe what's left of this I wonder.
The entire point of the ECSC was to strip France and Germany of their ability to make war on each other, that's a pretty big hit to national sovereignty right there. They lost national control of their heavy industry and bound their economies together. But this is beside the point because I wasn't talking about national sovereignty, I was talking about the economic growth spurred by the single market which can be seen throughout the postwar years by comparing the common market to growth outside of it. You're attacking me and calling me delusional regarding things which I haven't defended, I'm not a huge fan of the political side of the European project.
On May 09 2014 05:07 KwarK wrote: The entire point of the ECSC was to strip France and Germany of their ability to make war on each other, that's a pretty big hit to national sovereignty right there. They lost national control of their heavy industry and bound their economies together. But this is beside the point because I wasn't talking about national sovereignty, I was talking about the economic growth spurred by the single market which can be seen throughout the postwar years by comparing the common market to growth outside of it. You're attacking me and calling me delusional regarding things which I haven't defended, I'm not a huge fan of the political side of the European project.
I don't know what you are talking about, we didn't lost national control of heavy industries - in fact in 1981 Mitterand made public most of the biggest banks and some industries (but the europe force us to privatise everything in the 90s). Sure we bound our economies, but as I said it is the same for the entire world at that time, and not it is not a specificity of the european zone. Comparing the market to growth outside of it is also irrelevant because it is the case in the entire world : trading usually rise higher than growth since Bretton woods in the entire world (even African countries have a high trading to growth ratio right now in comparaison to before 1950). If you wants to talk about things that actually forged the globalisation it is bretton woods and the GATT, but not the european union which was more of a long term investment that completly stopped its course in the last 10 year.
The chief constable for Cambridgeshire police has admitted it should not have become involved when a Ukip councillor complained about a blogger who tweeted a "fact check" of its policies.
Simon Parr has asked for an internal review into the incident, which has sparked concern over perceived attempts to clamp down on free speech.
"I believe in this instance police attendance was not required and I have asked for our approach to this sort of incident to be reviewed to ensure we do not get involved unless there is clear evidence that an offence may have been committed," said Parr.
Parr's comments followed a visit last weekend by two police officers to Michael Abberton, a Green party member. He said he was asked to delete some of his tweets, in particular a retweet of a faked poster giving 10 reasons to vote for Ukip, including scrapping paid maternity leave and raising income tax for the poorest 88% of Britons.
The police visit was prompted by a complaint from a Ukip councillor who was unhappy about the tweets. Police said they made inquiries "as to whether any offences had been committed under the Representation of the People Act but none were revealed and no further action was taken".
Ukip complained that Abberton was impersonating and misrepresenting the party.
On May 18 2014 01:28 BungaBunga wrote: Who is your favorite politician in the UK?
not really my favourite politician but one of my favourite moments of the last couple of years.
My favourite politician is probably Jeremy Hunt (funnily enough, i can't stand the conservatives). He's one of the only conservatives to use their ethos to improve society as a whole. His policies have actually strengthened the NHS to a degree, and made it easier for whistleblowers. He used many of the recommendations of the staffordshire hospitals inquiry, which was surprising and pleasantly so.
The socialist in me wants to say someone more obvious to my views, but i don't really feel like there's anyone representing them right now.
Required watching. Amateur, racist, condescending, paranoid and stupid.
How he became leader of a successful party is just bizarre, Its depressing that we are so short of options that so many people would rather turn to this guy than any of the mainstream parties.
Favourite moment: NF: Well what is racism anyway? JOB: How can you say you're not something if you don't even know what it is?
EPT
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/25YVSQq.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/MFc8w8Q.jpg)
