By steriotyping and underestimating your opponents in any election (or indeed any situation) is often a fatal error.

A good point only moderately negated by you doing the very same thing immediately afterwards about corbyn and Mc Donald

Its posts that like that that make me consider your posts as satirical genius rather than the alternative.

Have you actually read it Jamba? Not exactly positive for either side, particularly the brexsists and the section on trade deals is particularly relevant to the last few comments on this thread about whether free trade agreements are likely.

JY sense of humour failure, I even put a winky thing-a-me-bob on to help everyone out ?

@jimw yes I have now Inwas just thanking you for PSA as I hadn’t seen it. I am very open to what factcheck have to say, as posted I gave them a few quid with an open mind as what they may find. I strongly believe our massive trade deficit with the EU will be very much in our favour, the EU ismpretty sick economically at the moment and its getting worse – all plays into our hands imho.

With everything going so well in Europe, we have a far right candidate winning a landslide in the first round of their Presdential election eliminating the mInstream parties. He has hinted he may dissove Parliament if he wins the second round this forcing an early election. Add this to FN in France who look quite likely to eliminate Hollande/PS from next years Presidential election.

Austrian Presidential Election

Apologies if this has been posted. Very funny, however all of the ECHR’s “good bits” can be replicated in a domestic bill but with the broken bits fixed and without a court superior to our own. All voted on by ojr Parliament and subject to change if a future Parliament of any persuasion decides is necessary

[video]http://youtu.be/ptfmAY6M6aA[/video]

I strongly believe our massive trade deficit with the EU will be very much in our favour, the EU ismpretty sick economically at the moment and its getting worse – all plays into our hands imho.

There’s just no way of spinning us having the best position, They do not want to lose our trade[3%] where as we cannot afford to lose theirs[44%]

That is the reality, everyone who can do maths knows this*, only Brexiters think al this favours us
Its not a rationally well founded view its just misguided bullish posturing,
* without us they are harmed without them we are ****

€’s JY, look at the €’s – even the trade deficit with Germany alone will tell you how that discussion will go. You are confusing yourself with percentages and ignoring my point that Europe are on their knees economically and starring into the abyss with Greece and the migrant crises. The US doesn’t want us to Leave as the whole EU could implode.

You are confusing yourself with percentages

😆

My mistake 44 % is not considerably bigger than the 3% I feel so foolish now that i was so easily misled and confused. Forgive me

😆

You are confusing yourself with percentages and ignoring my point that

Oh the ironing

Neither Euopre nor the UK will recover if we present the wrong reasons for the weak economic environment, the fundamental cause is excess leverage – and the fact that we are now in a balance sheet rather than a normal recession – and hence the current policy mix based on unorthodox monetary policy won’t work whatever Draghi pretends. That’s the given. None of this is unique to Europe or the UK or even US, Japan and parts of Asia where the same patterns are evident albeit with regional variations.

Of course, Europe does have the added problem of a flawed currency project at its heart and the lack of fiscal union. That exacerbates other issues and makes structural adjustments in deficit countries appalling in terms of wages and unemployment. We are not part of that folly nor will we be. Well done Gordie and Dave.

So let’s examine this abyss based in Greece and the migrants as causes and asses the magnitude. I will pass that over for fun at this point

1. Since we like percentages, what is the scale of the Greek issue in relation to the Eu economy? How has this changed?
2. What are the exposures to Greek debt now, how have they changed and who is at risk? Again quantifiable measures of risk would be helpful?
3. From 1 and 2 does Greece represent a systemic risk to the rest of the EU including the UK?
4. What is the scale of the migrant issue, where are the main flows from and why are they coming?
5. Leaving aside the moral and legal obligations that we have, from a purely economic perspective what is the impact on the EU and on the countries of origin?

An easy 5 for starters – then we can get back to the real problems in Europe.

As as supporter of the EU who has benefited greatly from the free movement of goods and labour I’m frustrated by exactly the same things as Jamby.

The EU has become a lobby-sensitive bureaucratic juggernaut thundering through the quiet lanes of Europe.

It is a sham of democracy with very little regard for the best interests of its citizens. The idea was a level playing field but the rules are such that countries have been given tools to create unfair advantage. The advantage going to the country with the lowest company taxes, the lowest level of investment in the welfare state, the most unfavourable conditions for workers, the lowest wages, the least investment in the future… .

The advantage going to the country with the lowest company taxes, the lowest level of investment in the welfare state, the most unfavourable conditions for workers, the lowest wages, the least investment in the future..

Sounds like the plan for the UK post Brexit really…

Good points Ed, but scrapping it or reforming it aren’t options on the ballot.

Apologies if this has been posted. Very funny, however all of the ECHR’s “good bits” can be replicated in a domestic bill but with the broken bits fixed and without a court superior to our own. All voted on by ojr Parliament and subject to change if a future Parliament of any persuasion decides is necessary

But I don’t want a bunch of politicians changing what are deemed to be fundamental human rights – what broken bits are there in the convention?

As as supporter of EU freedoms who has benefited greatly from the free movement of goods and labour I’m frustrated by exactly the same things as Jamby.

+1 – yes, it’s flawed in various ways

It is a sham of democracy

Ok

with very little regard for the best interests of its citizens.

Not so OK – you cannot simply ignore the very great benefits that have accurd to citizens eg safety, peace, basic rights, consumer protection etc.

The advantage going to the country with the lowest company taxes, the lowest level of investment in the welfare state, the most unfavourable conditions for workers, the lowest wages, the least investment in the future… .

Pretty much all falsifiable….

It would be nice if it were politicians changing human rights but in fact it’s the non-elected commission.The main broken bit is that the elected representatives can be over ridden by the commission, and eurocrats have more real power than euro MPs. I doubt Brits would be happy if the Lords ruled the roost, only had to consult parliament and could override if they wished. The commission has to consult interested bodies (lobbies) before parliament so you have laws created by lobbies that parliament can do no more than rubber stamp.

Mm yes but the commission has no real power does it, because if they weren’t too far the countries would just leave, or ignore them. Not quite the same as a government.

Why TTIP isn’t a good reason for Brexit

In terms of protecting citizens from pollution the Commission has rarely acted in the interests of public health and often followed the interests of lobbies.

Take car pollution. Public health experts are unanimous in attributing excess deaths to NOX and there is increasing evidence to say that diesel soot is carcinogenic. In Tokyo they simply banned diesel engines. But in Europe the car lobby proposed a set of standards and testing procedures that meant they could go on building and selling filthy diesel engines that poison us. If they had a testing procedure and standards that really protected public health there wouldn’t be a diesel vehicle left on the road.

Here’s my NOX and CO2 test procedure:

Cycle 1: vehicle at its maximum speed on an autobahn.
Cycle 2: cold start and driven from Bordeaux Merignac to Bordeaux Centre via Pessac by people chosen at random from the electoral register.

My soot test: A 1m3 bag is filled with exhaust gas with the engine under full load at 3000rpm. The whole contents of the bag are weighed and analysed.

Every big heavy Merc, Audi and BMW would produce horrific figures but a petrol Twingo would be fine (if you accept that the transition to electric vehicles and the clean production of electricity to charge them is going to take a few years and petrol cars are the least unhealthy solution till then).

How many years have doctors been telling the world (and the EU) that bisphenol A should be banned in food packaging? And yet the Commission has yielded to lobby pressure to go on poisoning us.

Frank Fields just spoke for Vote Leave. He referred to how Labour has lost 4m votes since the Blair peak and how the party has failed to engage with those traditional Labour voters worried about immigration. He also stated it was quite negative for Labour to campaign for the EU in order to protect workers rights as its an admission of failure. He of course pointed out that in every Parliamentary vote he can recall Corbyn, like him, has voted “against” EU related legislation.

@Edukator 🙂

See my post about VW, compensation agreed in the US already, in Europe with Germany’s vested interest nothing yet – strange eh ?

it’s the non-elected commission.The main broken bit is that the elected representatives can be over ridden by the commission, and eurocrats have more real power than euro MPs.

Whilst the European model does have some democratic flaws – largely as it wants to make sure all countries are represented all of that is overstatement to the point of lies

The commission, nominated by the elected leaders of each country, has to be approved by the MEP’s who are democratically elected and also by the leaders of the countries – simple majority from both. Whilst its possible to criticise this model it is nothing like the lords which is just political patronage and birth right. Its also a bit rich for the UK to have lords and lecture others on democracy.

Secondly the commission proposes laws but the MEPS must pass the laws- separation of the executive form the legislature. Given this I am unsure as to what the claims of “over ridden” and “more power” actually mean in concrete terms – could you be explicit and cite examples?

a Commission proposal only becomes
an EU law when it attracts the support of two
majorities. It needs both a majority in the Council,
representing at least 55% of EU countries and
65% of the EU population, and a majority in the
Parliament.

Even fact check accepts its not the most powerful EU institution – council of ministers is.

I doubt Brits would be happy if the Lords ruled the roost, only had to consult parliament and could override if they wished

Well yes but that is not what is happening in Europe.

Its so hard to have a factual debate on this

To be clear the EU model is a fudge in places, but nowhere near as bad as the Uk’s system and the claims if the anti lot are way greater than the reality of the problem. in many cases they are not even an accurate description of how it operates never mind being reasonable criticism.

in Europe with Germany’s vested interest nothing yet – strange eh ?

Strange you leaping to political conclusions , you desire to be true, that are utterly unsubstantiated by the facts….if only

@tmh we certainly both agree on excess leverage, personal and government especially.

A concrete example Junkyard.

Do some research yourself on Bisphenol A and make up your own mind whether it has anything to do with low male sperm count and various ailments.

The research convinced the French government and many Euro Mps, the majority even. In a democratic world there’s every chance it would have been banned. But the lobby sensitive Commission is in favour of Bisphenol A and while that remains the case there can be no political debate by Euro Mps because the Commission decides what can be debated.

A government does the right thing for public health and gets attacked.

Has this bindun?

Power resides with those that promulgate laws that is the Commission, it is the executive, but is answerable to the Council of Ministers and the Parliament.

The Commission has no role in the ECHR, which is a charter under the auspices of the European Council which is then interpreted the court.

I’m going raise this again as it rarely gets mentioned, aside from the obvious economic and political reasons for remaining in Europe, for me the most powerful reason to stay in is about the future and our place in it. Whether we like it or not, save for any catastrophes, the world is on a path towards more integration, not less. Globalisation is moving from an economic/trade concept, to something more social, cultural and political. Nation states will probably become less important, and will cede power and influence to trade blocs, federated super-states, and other trans-national alliances and groups. So given all this, are we really going to swim against the tide and isolate ourselves from our closest neighbours? It’d be like Manchester declaring itself an independent nation state. What’s the point?

The latest EU strop concerning France is the banning of toxic pesticides used to treat cherries and other fruits. France has banned the poison and now has various countries and industrialists lobbying the Commission (not the parliament) to put an end to France’s ban.

A European Commission spokesman said the Commission would analyze the report and it would be debated at a closed-door meeting of experts representing the 28 EU member states on Friday.

Note the lobby-sensitive Commission will debate the issue not the parliament and if the Commission decides there is no problem the parliament will never get to debate it. So who has the final word, parliament or Commission? The Commission.

Wrecker, are you suggesting the UK (although a dog in a UJ t-shirt is frequently a representation of England) is Obama’s poodle?

😉

Has this been done? I laughed.

What has the European convention on human rights ever done for us?

so basically the fact they don’t do what France wants show that what you said was true.

WTF does “lobby sensitive” mean – the passive shitty slurs of the antis plunge new depths.

So they debated it behind closed doors – how is that meant to prove your claim?

As for the second one france banned something, the EU did not, other EU manufacturers appealed to the EU about this – what point is this meant to prove?

Can you state a case where the claim you have made can be shown

Yes the EU and local govt often disagree. Hardly news, what you have shown, not what you claimed.

They don’t do what is right and good and in the interst of European citizens. The examples I gave are ones I’ve ssen on the news where the commission is clearly not acting in the interests of citizens but instead in favour of the corporate world.

Lobby-sensitive means that asking the likes of BASF, BMW and Monsanto for their views is part of the Commissions remit. Lobbyists (my nephew amongst them) are paid to influence the Commission to act in their interests. The Commission has a record of going with these interests so I refer to them as “lobby sensitve”. It’s not a slur it’s the way the system works.

The fact the debate is behind closed doors has nothing to do with my claim (though it means we’ll never know how a decision was reached and who argued which way which is an improtant part of the democratic process). My claim is that the decision will not be made democratically by the parliament because it won’t be put to parliament and even if it were the Commission could use its vote to cancel out a parliament decision as both must vote the same way for anything to be passed.

The pesticide one shows that a government is answerable to the Commission not the parliament and therefore any decision taken will be one taken by bureaucrats and lobbyists rather than an elected parliament.

I have given you two cases where my claim is substantiated.

On the chocolate thing, it wasn’t really a victory for the average UK citizen, it was a victory for the UK chocolate manufacturing lobby. Palm oil used to be banned in chocolate in Europe, now manufacturers can add palm oil and still call it chocolate (that was the real debate: palm oil or no palm oil, even if the industry talked about “other vegetable fats”). Really, honestly are you pleased that the lobby-influenced Commission allowed chocolate to be made with palm oil? And allows it to be wrapped in plastic containing bisphenol A? Because the manufacturers wanted to maintain a competitive advantage despite the health risks and their lobbyists got what they wanted.

dazh, I don’t think the ‘economic’ benefits of being in Europe are as clear cut as you suggest. Over the last decade or two our trade with the US has grown and our trade with the EU has shrunk, and we don’t even have a trade deal with the US. Neither does the EU for that matter. Also 80% of the worlds population lives in the developing countries, so our trading future doesn’t lie with the EU either. Yes, more integration and partnering is good, but not necessarily with the EU, and we don’t have to give up our ‘sovereignty’ to unelected bureaucrats. It just feels like too much compromise and erosion of control over our own destiny.

We have zero influence in the EU, we are but one vote, and voting in the EU is like the Eurovision Song Contest so we stand no chance to influence.

Perhaps our influence is diminished by electing people like UKIP to represent us.

@dazh – there is no doubt in my mind that a properly constructed and operated European Economic Community is what would be best. However, we don’t have that any longer (ever ?) and what we do have is going faster and faster in the wrong direction. The other major players want that other direction. That, in a nutshell is the problem.

I’ll keep repeating it but even the Remain campaigners talk about the need for a reformed EU but I will reform away from what they want and not towards

I didn’t quote it before but Frank Field’s comments about UKIP have been picked up by the press, he says those pose a significant threat to Labour as the Labour Party has failed to grasp and respond to immigration as a concern to many of its core voters. He made the comments in his Vote Leave speech today and they are highly

I have given you two cases where my claim is substantiated.

You have not even come close, you have shown some minor disagreement between France and the EU and used it to “support” the view you already had

@wobbliscott we don’t trade as much with the EU but it is still, and by a massive margin, our largest trading partner- clutching at straws to suggest its weakening and wont remain our largest trade area – geography and the European wealth sort of ensures

80% might live in the developing world but they neither need nor can pay for much of what we sell to Europe . Yu state that fact as if it means we can swap all our EU trade to them, we cannot and so its a pointless “fact”.

We have zero influence in the EU, we are but one vote

The ability of the brexiters to contradict themselves instantly is impressive.

I reckon most people reading this forum will understand, Junkyard.

Wobbliscott has it about right on current trade including services

British trade

I am sure they will understand what you are doing and why you are doing it.

Yes what he said was correct but the conclusion he tried to suggest – we can somehow just swap trade to the rest of the world as they are 80% of the worlds population is simplistic, disingenuous and entirely without foundation- we could trade with them now but chose Europe for some reason being enough to convince anyone but the committed Brexiter.

What am I doing and why am I doing it? Please tell.

I’m being objective about the EU but still want Britain to remain in, which even to me defies reason so if you can work out a logic to it I’m interested, Junkyard.

I’m being objective about the EU but still want Britain to remain in, which even to me defies reason

Nothing unreasonable about it.

The concept is good bit the execution is flawed, so what do we do? We try and change it. Can’t do that if we leave.