Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

N,
The European Union could be considered to be initiated in 1951 with the treaty of Rome in 1951, and concreted more firmly in 1957 as EEC and subsequent consolidations of the state up to the Lisbon Treaty in 2009.

That is, without considering any negotiation prior to 1951, a period of approximately 60 years. A more than reasonable period of existence for unions of the type it is. During that period, there seems to have been a gradual and generally appropriate integration and consolidation of culture, economic, foreign policies and humanitarian standards and other processes.

However, during that period, and under different political
administrations, Britain has been a constant thorn in the flesh of Europe. Many in Europe would have preferred that Britain had expelled itself completely and continued with its free trade politics and policies elsewhere. That would have been disastrous to Britain and not generally beneficial to Europe, but for the latter probably only a minor hiccup. (You wouldnt have the French bail out of the Royal Navy without our peripheral membership of the EU.)

For a five year period, after I retired, I wandered around Europe and I was surprised by the commonality of the people and the cultures of the different countries, rather than the differences. The humanity and aspirations of the majority of the communities, seemed have more similarities, than differences. The emotional and primitive, irrational nationalistic, or, tribal positioning, which is advocated by the far right of this country, was not often evident. (Of course, there were differences and certainly condemnation of America and Britain over Iraq.)

You use the word amorphous, but I dont think a the EU has to be formless, unformed, shapeless, unshaped, structureless, unstructured, indeterminate, ill-organized, vague, nebulous .

It has to have a political and legal system respectful of the diversities of the community as a whole. There is minutia of the regulations and laws, which are problematic. Even these can be negotiated and amended as necessary, rather used as obstruction to mutual development.

(If you look at the people from the North of England and compare them with the South, there often superficially seems tremendous differences. Dig a little deeper and the South could almost be seen as very similar.~)

As far as disenfranchising the populace, think of the French form of representative system of government, from the village up to central government. (It may have some problems, but in general it works very well and the French wont give it up. (Rightly so.))

Anyway, I found it fascinating to travel around Europe, without having to proffer my passport at borders, change currencies and be charged exorbitant rates by the money lenders for doing so. Also, finding the majority of the populace of various countries friendly, helpful and informative.

.

Fred

'Britain has been a constant thorn in the flesh of Europe' Good! can't have it too easy now can they. I once heard that many of the EU politburo were communists in their formative years, I never bothered/had time to check this out but should surely cause some concern if true.

Do you not think its is a little strange for the UK to be devolving powers to the Welsh Assembly when Westminster is reliquishing powers to your beloved EU? Is there any point? Which would you prefer, a fully devolved Wales or an EU that keeps sucking in the oxygen?

Would you like to see Wales fully devolved from the UK?

It could be construed from your post that the best bit of the EU is that it allows you cross borders without your passport and fx and i'm glad you enjoyed your 5 year walkabout. Did you tend to visit similar places in each country or did you step far enough off the beaten track to see the opposite side of the utopia you witnessed?

Raw,

Many "horrid" Henries grow up be quite nice adults and vice versa.

Having had close contacts with many communists and full blooded tories, generally preferred the latter, but thought bother suffered because of simplistic ideology that some in both groups to be deluded.

(That is from my positioning, which is obviously sane.)

Mixed feelings about Welsh Assembly, but don't feel the job they are doing is to bad and don't think they would lose by becoming an integral part of the EU. I applaud their position on Education and NHS, but wonder if they will be able to continue financing as of previous.

Devolving, from UK, I feel that both countries are to intertwined to do so.

Wandered through all strata other than the elite and although I spent more of my time in the country areas and smaller towns, I did have more exposure to the latter.

I did watch with interest over a number of years the improvements of "living", health, accommodation infrastructure in Portugal and Spain.

A large amount of the improvements benefited from the financial support and influence of the EEC and EU.

(I wonder how much British money contributed to the economic crash, which is occurring in Spain due to the housing bulge collapse.)

Rawdm999,

Devolution is not always bad. I have been pushing for Yorkshires independence from the rest of you ordinary folk, for many a year.
Remember, we have the upper hand. We have all the sheep.

But seriously, your post says it all re the Wales/Scotland and EU issues.

'A large amount of the improvements benefited from the financial support and influence of the EEC and EU.
(I wonder how much British money contributed to the economic crash, which is occurring in Spain due to the housing bulge collapse.)'

Sometimes don't understand how your mind works. On the one hand you are saying EEC & EU money is ok to pump into the economy but on the other hand with your Britain Bash you say we contributed to the crash. The EEC/EU money temporarily inflates the economy and when that money is spent the economy must be self sustaining at the new/false inflated level, otherwise bust/unemployment etc. Maybe, having finished the infrastructure projects the Spanish authorities had too many spare construction workers to deal with and the obvious answer was to build houses, illegally or not. It also works in both directions, we had foreign investors inflating the prices of our housing stock, however, our economy is broader based than Spains.
Santander did pretty well out of our housing crash.

Greek

You can have devolution as long as you agree never to restrict exports of your real ales and in times of shortage you Yorkshire folk, with the goodness of your heart, export them first and save the dregs for domestic consumption.

edit. you can keep the sheep but the welsh invasion may arrive shortly.

Rawdm999,

OK agreed.

Also your bit answering ,''A large amount of the improvements benefited from the financial support and influence of the EEC and EU", is again correct. Of course the bottom line must be, We contribute more to the EU than we receive. Simple economics prove what a raw deal we are getting.

No longer see Fred's posts (squelched), but from some replies that must be to him, it is obvious he is still arguing for the sake of it.

Thursday November 25,2010
By Daniel Hannan, Conservative Euro MP for South-East England Have your say(0)
HERES a nasty coincidence. All the welfare cuts put together will save 7billion: precisely Britains share of the Irish bail-out.


In other words, every penny we save from these painful benefits reductions will go to prop up the euro.

That 7billion is in addition to the 14billion which we pay into the EU budget every year: a budget that keeps rising.




Britains share of the increase for next year not our share of the budget, our share of the increase will be 435million: enough to pay for 12,000 nurses, 15,000 police officers or 22,000 Army privates.

But our direct contributions are only part, and not the most important part, of the overall costs of the EU.

The Common Agricultural Policy hurts our farmers and costs every household an extra 1,200 a year in higher taxes and higher food bills. The Common Fisheries Policy has wiped out what ought to have been a great renewable resource off our coasts.

Worst of all is the cost of red tape. Here, I can do no better than to quote a survey by the most recent internal market commissioner, Gunter Verheugen. He found that the cost of regulation in the EU was 600billion euros a year. On the European Commissions own figures, the advantages of the single market are worth only 120billion euros a year.

In other words, Eurocrats themselves admit that the costs of the EU outweigh the benefits by five to one.

What about commerce? We are often told that half of Britains trade is with the EU. True, but look at the balance of that trade. For most of the period of our membership, we have run a healthy surplus with the rest of the world but a deficit with Europe.



Since the financial crisis hit, we have run a small overall deficit on the non-EU share of our trade, too. Even so, our deficit with the EU last year was 14.4billion, as against just 1.1billion for the rest of the world.

Those figures are the answer to those who say that, if we left, our exports would suffer.

The other members benefit far more from cross-Channel commerce than we do. In any negotiation, the customer generally has the last word over the salesman.

In any case, we dont need to be part of the EUs political structures to be part of the single market.

Norway and Switzerland both sell around twice as much per head to the EU as we do.

They participate fully in the freedoms of the European market but are outside the CAP and CFP, police their own borders, settle their own human rights issues, trade freely with non-EU countries, and make only token contributions to the EU budget.

Oh, and unlike EU members, they pass the majority of their own laws.

Norway and Switzerland are thriving as independent states. So could Britain.


http://www.express.co.uk/ourcomments/view/213564/European-Union-Costs-are-five-times-the-benefits

RaW,
"
(I wonder how much British money contributed to the economic crash, which is occurring in Spain due to the housing bulge collapse.)"


Before you engage your fingers re-read my posting.

Not suggesting that "housing" was the only cause of Spanish problems.

I'm not really sure what's worse. The Euro-phobic idiots who write that nonsense, or the other idiots who buy the Express and believe the garbage they read!

You are the complete idiot if you think that being a member of the Evil Empire is what we should do. It is a matter of both our freedom and our prosperity.

http://cdn.images.dailyexpress.co.uk/pdfs/25noveuropecoupon.pdf

Fred

'Not suggesting that "housing" was the only cause of Spanish problems.'

(I wonder how much British money contributed to the economic crash, which is occurring in Spain due to the housing bulge collapse.)

There are some key words your statement ' British money, contributed, economic crash, occuring, Spain, due to, housing bulge crash.'

Engage your brain, re-read what you had written.

Somewhere in that statement I must have missed 'all that money we used to spend in Spain on our holidays every year!'

Fred doesn't have a brain and Hilary seems to have lost hers.

Raw,

I am not sure how much British money was "invested" in to the Spanish house market.

But that market was inflated for years and inflating more and more year by year, due to the "investors" a large number of them being British. They were being over optimistic, opportunist, greedy or just stupid.

Watching it as I passed through, was like watching an accident waiting to happen. (The same applied in Portugal, but I am told to believe to a lesser extent.)

The repercussions of the house building and sales are accompanied by unemployment and slowing down of the Spanish economy, with more dependency on the state.


Get a primer on economy.

Tim.

Buy yourself some chips, wrap them up in the Express and eat both.

I see Camerons pals are showing their true colours once again.

"Howard Flight rapped by PM over 'breeding' gaffe"

Making him a lord is true recognitions for services rendered.

Has he given money to the party funds or just served the party?

If this is the beginning of a tory maladministration, then I wonder what the corruption level of the country will be at the end.

Perhaps. Cameron could design a corruption index.

8-) %

Are they even good enough to wrap chips in?

Cutting edge journalism under Desmond

In 2000, Express Newspapers was bought by Richard Desmond, publisher of a range of magazines including the celebrity magazine OK!. Controversy surrounded the acquisition because, at the time, Desmond also owned a selection of pornographic magazines such as Big Ones and Asian Babes which led to him being nicknamed "Dirty Des" by Private Eye. He is still the owner of the most popular pornographic television channel in the UK, Television X.

Express Newspapers left the National Publishers Association in 2007 over unpaid fees. Since payments made to the NPA fund the Press Complaints Commission, it is possible that the Express and its sister papers could cease being regulated by the PCC. The chairman of the Press Standards Board of Finance, which manages PCC funds, described Express Newspapers as a "rogue publisher".

The Express group lost an unusually large number of high-profile libel cases in 2008-2009; it was forced to pay damages to people involved in the Madeleine McCann case, a member of the Muslim Council of Great Britain, the footballer Marco Materazzi and the sports agent Willie McKay.

The string of losses led the media commentator Roy Greenslade to conclude that Express Newspapers (which also publishes the Star titles) paid out more in libel damages over that period than any other newspaper group; although most of the individual amounts paid were not disclosed, the total damages were disclosed at 1,570,000. Greenslade characterised Desmond as a "rogue proprietor".

In late 2008, Express Newspapers began a redundancy plan to cutting 80 jobs, with the aim of reducing costs by 2.5 million; too few staff were willing to take voluntary redundancy. In early 2008, a previous cost-cutting exercise by the group triggered the first 24-hour national press strike in the UK for 18 years. In late August 2009, plans for a further 70 redundancies were announced, affecting journalists across Express Newspapers (including the Daily and Sunday Express, the Daily Star, and the Daily Star Sunday).

Also in August 2009, the Advertising Standards Authority criticised the company for running advertorials as features alongside adverts for the same products. The ASA noted that the pieces were 'always and uniquely favourable to the product featured in the accompanying ads and contained claims that have been or would be likely to be prohibited in advertisements'.

In January 2010, the Daily Express was yet again censured by the Advertising Standards Authority over a front-page promotion for "free" fireworks". This led to comment that the Express has become "the Ryanair of Fleet Street", in that it is a "frequent offender" which pays little heed to the ASA's criticisms".

Hi Hilary,

I usually believe about half of what I read in newspapers, and I agree that they often stretch the truth, but in this instance, I know that all those figures posted from the newspaper article are correct, or if not exact, just about right. Reason being it is difficult to know exact figures, is that the EU itself admit to not knowing the exact figures, on many of their expenditure programs.
For years I have studied what EU account figures I have been able to peruse, you know those accounts that have not been signed off for 14 years. But signed off or not, they do give figures that baffle common sense when you see what the money is spent on.
I would also like to recommend a book to you, or anyone else who doubts the high cost of membership and the huge amount of figures that appear to have an infinite number of zeros.

The Great European Rip-Off, by David Craig and Matthew Elliott.
A story of Bureaucracy, Hypocrisy and Kleptocracy.
All facts and figures given are backed up by evidence from official papers or/and reports. Those that have been released, that is.

Well before you get half way through the book, you keep thinking, 'I though I had an idea what was going on but had no idea of the scale of monetary misuse and out and out fiddling'.

The EU Dictators are as corrupt as any foreign government, as long as you include the actions they take that are not easily found in the public domain.

I am a member of The Tax Payers Alliance, an independent body that looks for waste in the EU and any tax raising body, as well as corruption. It is free to join and is a very prominent organization that is often mentioned and speaks in the media.
They often give facts/figures of such practices very early on, when they are prominent news items.