Re: What now for the UK? : Mon Dec 12, 2011 6:35 pm  

DaveO wrote:

Why is he a weak leader? Because he has let the Eurosceptic tail of his party wag the dog and did what he did to appease them as much as anything. He should have told them to feck off and played a hand not influenced by any potential domestic rebellion of a bunch of nice but dim Tory MP's who are clearly too thick to appreciate the very simple truth Kosh has spelt out.

Although you may not agree with them the MPs you describe are democratically elected by the public to represent their constituents. Whilst democracy is not de rigeur at the moment in Europe (and never has been in Brussels) it's worth pointing out that we still vote for our representatives in Parliament and they represent a wide range of views reflecting a wide range of views in the country. Judging by recent surveys it seems the "thick" MPs you mention represent a significant proportion of public opinion, even if it doesn't match your own.

Re: What now for the UK? : Mon Dec 12, 2011 7:00 pm  

C

Re: What now for the UK? : Mon Dec 12, 2011 7:00 pm  

Come on Cameron and resign you stupid fool.

Re: What now for the UK? : Mon Dec 12, 2011 7:26 pm  

Dead Man Walking wrote:

Come on Cameron and resign you stupid fool.

Lol be quiet. Stop trying to turn a huge positive into a negative.

Re: What now for the UK? : Mon Dec 12, 2011 11:00 pm  

What happens if the Euro collapses?

Re: What now for the UK? : Tue Dec 13, 2011 1:44 am  

Horatio Yed wrote:

What happens if the Euro collapses?

Another round of public bailouts which would make those initiated by the sub-prime fiasco seem trivial.

[Kosh]

Re: What now for the UK? : Tue Dec 13, 2011 8:34 am  

Staffs FC wrote:

Although you may not agree with them the MPs you describe are democratically elected by the public to represent their constituents. Whilst democracy is not de rigeur at the moment in Europe (and never has been in Brussels) it's worth pointing out that we still vote for our representatives in Parliament and they represent a wide range of views reflecting a wide range of views in the country. Judging by recent surveys it seems the "thick" MPs you mention represent a significant proportion of public opinion, even if it doesn't match your own.

Majority opinion isn't always the correct opinion. And neither does democracy prevent the dimwitted from being elected. The whole of Europe is in a mess at the moment - including the UK - largely because of the spectacular failure of elected politicians. I don't see how pointing that out is in any way undemocratic. Neither would it have been undemocratic for Cameron to at least attempt to negotiate a deal that could have been presented to Parliament for democratic scrutiny rather than running scared of a confrontation with those self same elected representatives in his own party.

We've ended up with a bad deal for the UK and a bad deal for the rest of Europe. Cameron is a miserable excuse for a statesman but he's hardly alone in that TBH.

Re: What now for the UK? : Tue Dec 13, 2011 10:41 am  

Cameron's veto doesn't actually prevent the Eurozone group from enacting anything, it merely makes it less easy.
We now have a situation where he has stepped-out of any discussions, we don't even get to sit-in on the meetings.

He has achieved, not just nothing, but worse than nothing.

Way out of his depth and so used to getting his own way, he couldn't negotiate his way out of a paper bag.

[DaveO]

Re: What now for the UK? : Tue Dec 13, 2011 10:44 am  

Staffs FC wrote:

DaveO wrote:

Why is he a weak leader? Because he has let the Eurosceptic tail of his party wag the dog and did what he did to appease them as much as anything. He should have told them to feck off and played a hand not influenced by any potential domestic rebellion of a bunch of nice but dim Tory MP's who are clearly too thick to appreciate the very simple truth Kosh has spelt out.

Although you may not agree with them the MPs you describe are democratically elected by the public to represent their constituents. Whilst democracy is not de rigeur at the moment in Europe (and never has been in Brussels) it's worth pointing out that we still vote for our representatives in Parliament and they represent a wide range of views reflecting a wide range of views in the country. Judging by recent surveys it seems the "thick" MPs you mention represent a significant proportion of public opinion, even if it doesn't match your own.

My comments about these Tory MP's being dim are based the facts of about how the single market works and how trade outside it works. Those things are facts and I find it astonishing some of them apparently think we can just leave the EU and if we do we will be just like Norway (which shows their ignorance of the Norwegian economy and how that works as well).

The fact they peddle this rubbish to an electorate the majority of which is basically ill informed on the issue as a possibility means they are really misleading people either deliberately or because they really are dim.

In a democracy like ours the elected representatives are put there to represent our interests not reflect opinion polls. The two are very different things. They are supposed to be in a position the rest of us are not to make informed judgements. What they are doing instead is peddling a myth that plays to nationalistic tendencies easily stoked up by a biased press. It's a vote winner but its an unrealistic myth of withdrawal that they peddle.

However as it is in many Labour strongholds, in some Tory areas you could put a blue rosette on a monkey and he would get elected. Having seen some of the Eurosceptic Tory MP's interviewed they struck me of such low calibre their constituents would have been better off with the monkey. I wonder how many people in some of these areas having seen their MP on TV for the first time are wondering how on earth anyone ever voted them in!?

Re: What now for the UK? : Tue Dec 13, 2011 11:06 am  

DaveO wrote:

... What they are doing instead is peddling a myth that plays to nationalistic tendencies easily stoked up by a biased press. It's a vote winner but its an unrealistic myth of withdrawal that they peddle...

The only truths about Europe I have heard from any of the sceptics are all numbers ... but none of the facts/reasons/comparisons behind those numbers. e.g. How much it costs but no mention of the benefits or what the alternative would cost.

Lots of mention of federalism and European state and no real analysis of what that would mean (if it were to occur).

If you ask most Brits about federalism, they will immediately think of centralisation, of control over them from a distance.
If you ask a German, Austrian, Swiss etc the same question, they immediately think the opposite, of the benefit of subsidiarity and the local power that federalism gives them.
e.g. The Germans have 16 local Länder, the Swiss have 26 Cantons ... only the stuff that can't be dealt with at the Länder level or is more effectively done at the higher level is allowed to be controlled at that higher level.... and the terms of what is dealt with at which level are enshrined in law, not subject to the whim, gerrymandering or political advantage of successive governments (e.g. Thatcher's abolition of shire county authorities because the persky electorate kept voting for the other guys).

That's just one example of how the majority of the UK population don't actually understand what they are voting for half the time

The current government would love us to be a sort of offshore tax haven with a nice large malleable pool of unpaid and unemployed, kept in their place and desperate for work at almost any price.
European ideas of trying to make the world a better place to live, for as many as possible, is not an aim for this government.
They are not called "conservative" for nothing.