That's like leaving things to the American states rather than federal government. Even though the states are the primary abusers of civil rights.
Is Britain about to leave the EU?
- Thread starter Mega Tsunami
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That's like leaving things to the American states rather than federal government. Even though the states are the primary abusers of civil rights.
Silurian
Deity
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The House of Lords has limited powers and its members are appointed by the Prime Minister.
From The Telegraphy
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/pol...-Osborne-defeated-by-House-of-Lords-live.html
The Queen is just a rubber stamp
From BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/bbc_parliament/2327561.stm
EnglishEdward
Deity
It is mostly symbolic, but there are a number of stories:
(a) Queen Victoria refused to sign an Act prohibiting lesbianism
(supposedly because she refused to believe that it existed,
but possibly to protect her not so hetero-sexual relatives)
(b) Queen Elizabeth II refused Margaret Hilda Thatcher's request
to dissolve Parliament immediately after the recapture
of The Falkland Islands.
Police regularly use their discretion as to when to enforce
laws and when not to. Otherwise most of us would be in court.
The UK government decided to impose a non discretionary charge
upon defendants for all contested criminal convictions of nearly £1,000.
This resulted in various magistrate stating that this meant that victims
did not get compensation and the innocent were pleading guilty.
When the government dug in many of those magistrates resigned at
which point the government backed off because it needed magistrates.
The current arrangements within the umbrella of the EU court are not satisfactory.
(1) For instance the Australian Julian Paul Assange is effectively imprisoned in
the Ecuadorian embassy in London because he is afraid to go to Sweden and risk
being extradited to USA and maybe water boarded under a President Donald Trump.
(2) Thirty party rights laws that the UK and EU have gone along with mean that
one can buy a product, and then people one has never heard of sue you for all that
you have via front companies that conceal their identity behind limited liability walls.
There is a genuine debate as to whether the UK should have a structured written
constitution, a supreme court like the USA or a new UK Human Rights Act; but
that is all a poor excuse for hiding in the imaginary protection of the EU.
Verbose
Deity
Well, that's still his own choice, and I'm sorry to say, but we can't really help him with the paranoia. We do try to prevent people from locking themselves up in order to subvert proceedures of criminal investigation, but some like Assange manage to anyway.
It's a bit of a rough road to go down to say that Assange is the persecuted party, given that he's hiding to avoid having to answer a serious criminal charge - which is, incidentally, unrelated to his role in Wikileaks.
EnglishEdward
Deity
The Swedish police can come to London to interview him.
He is not hiding; we know where he is.
The claims that merely being in the EU protect human rights are the red herring.
Normally I don't object to talking semantics, but that couldn't be further from the point.
Silurian
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So I take it that you do not dispute that Assange would, highly likely, still be subject to extradition if we left the EU.
Who has claimed that we are merely in the EU to protect human rights.
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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Absolutely no one who followed the whole ting believes that:
1. the criminal charge is serious
2. it was unrelated to his role in wikileaks
But that is OT from this discussion.
We need the EU in oder to have some kind of bill or rights is indeed a rather sad and desperate excuse. We need an exterior imperial power to grant us rights because we cannot grant ourselves rights?
Is it the "european man's burden" now, to oversee the natives of england who cannot be trusted to rule themselves? Because that was the argument the UK itself used to justify its empire abroad. How can the very same people who decry past wrongs of imperialism now recycle the old imperialistic excuses to support the EU?
gay_Aleks
from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
There is the joke that God wouldn't trust the British in the dark...
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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No one trusts the big imperial power, and for good reason. Even as allies they always have so many conflicting interests that you will inevitably be let down on many occasions, if not outright trampled for the sake of some more important emergency coming from another corner of the empire.
That was what got the UK a bad reputation with its allies: they inevitabely underdelivered compared to expectations. And this applied to many other empires. And applies to the EU, which is just the latest attempt at empire in Europe. And suffers from the same failures of such constructions: too many interests at state, conflicting priorities, lack of sensibility to local needs, lack of flexibility... To supress discontent about all this it must supless democractic processes. But that only works for so long in these "multinational" empires, because people group along "national" communities and demand national solutions for their problems. Then the empire goes the way of Austria-Hungary. Let's hope that it won't require a world war.
For supression of democractic processes, and for examples of assymetrical treatment, you need look no further than the way the treaties concerning this attempt at creating an empire were passed. The EU would not make referendums, and when those are made it never really loses them, only repeats them under threat until the natives agree. Except when they're french and too important to threat.
That was what got the UK a bad reputation with its allies: they inevitabely underdelivered compared to expectations. And this applied to many other empires. And applies to the EU, which is just the latest attempt at empire in Europe. And suffers from the same failures of such constructions: too many interests at state, conflicting priorities, lack of sensibility to local needs, lack of flexibility... To supress discontent about all this it must supless democractic processes. But that only works for so long in these "multinational" empires, because people group along "national" communities and demand national solutions for their problems. Then the empire goes the way of Austria-Hungary. Let's hope that it won't require a world war.
For supression of democractic processes, and for examples of assymetrical treatment, you need look no further than the way the treaties concerning this attempt at creating an empire were passed. The EU would not make referendums, and when those are made it never really loses them, only repeats them under threat until the natives agree. Except when they're french and too important to threat.
The problem I have with that argument is that it works even better to support the secession of any region, county, city or neighbourhood from the United Kingdom. I have far less chance of seeing an exception to British law applied to my city than I do of seeing one applied to EU law for my country, and British law is an awful lot more pervasive and enforcible than EU law around here.
EnglishEdward
Deity
Setting asides the question of Ireland which would be another digression all in itself,
the UK is united by having a common language English and an obvious frontier the sea.
The reasons for sub-dividing the UK are not the same as for example Austria-Hungary
whereby there was no common parliament and different areas had different languages.
At this point people may well think, what about Scotland? I think that the EU has
exacerbated the Scottish question. Being subordinate to London was OK when London
was sovereign, but with London being subordinate to Brussels and thereby France and
Germany; it is difficult to argue against a Scottish desire to cut out the middle men.
How does a common language and 'obvious frontier' (except in Northern Ireland, or the Channel Islands, or the Isle of Wight, or the Isle of Man, or the Orkneys, Shetlands and Hebrides) compensate for having laws imposed upon you by a central body in London over which you have no say? If you live in Brighton, for example, you can vote all you want for the Greens - that's never going to affect the legislation actually passed down from Westminster. The same is true if you live in a seat that turns in MPs from anything other than Labour or the Conservatives, or if you happen to vote against the majority of your co-constituents. If you vote Tory in Edinburgh, your voice counts for precisely zero in any of the bodies that can pass law upon you.
Also, the UK has 73 seats in the European Parliament, making it the third-largest voter behind Germany (96) and France (74), out of a total number of 751 MEPs. Britain is no more subordinate to France and Germany than Cornwall is subordinate to Birmingham and Newcastle.
Also, the UK has 73 seats in the European Parliament, making it the third-largest voter behind Germany (96) and France (74), out of a total number of 751 MEPs. Britain is no more subordinate to France and Germany than Cornwall is subordinate to Birmingham and Newcastle.
Verbose
Deity
No they can't. The Swedish prosecutors had agreed to do just that, at the embassy where Assange apparently feels safe. And then the Equadoreans withdrew the offer, for reasons unknown.
Funnily enough, it's entirely possible IF the prosecutors get to do their initial interview with Assange (after which they would decide if there is any reason to issue a warrant for his arrest for the rape charges, or not), they might decide drop the whole thing. He is currently wanted for absconding and obstructing standard legal procedures.
Procedure however doesn't depend on the party under suspiscion being afraid of putative clandestine US death-squads and the like, nor on some UN debating society expressing sympathy for said party's situation.
The suspiscion is growing that what Assange doesn't quite want to put to the test is not whether the US is out to get him or not, but the disctinct possibility that no one really sufficiently gives a damn about him anymore.
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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It is true that a small region of the UK, especially if it is a peripheral and sparsely populated region, will have very little influence, as a community, on the government of the country.
What happens to such peripheral communities? Their youngest and brightest pack and leave, population declines, they become rural retreats, where people make a living from the land or from tourism or some state-supported industrial or services scheme. In short: they lach a "life". Never die out completely, there is value to land still, there will be people making a living there. But they are structuraly (the structure being the distribution or political power and influence, the organization of markets, and so on, which always create advantages to being in the centre where decidions are made) to be a comparatively poor, peripherical, backwater region. The UK already has obvious regional assimetries, with Greater London sucking the life out of the country, and this has been going on for a long time. It is a feature of the modern world.
But now introduce the European Union into the picture. What happens, sould the "federal EU" project go forward?
The center of the EU, which not accidentaly coincides with the geographical centre, the axis from London through the low countries to Paris, across the rhineland urban area south Germany to Berlin, will prosper. And keep attracting population. That will be where the people who make decisions live, where the vast majority of the population will reside, where the state institutions will be most active and most of the income from taxes will be spent. Yes, London can be part of that. But no other portion of the UK will. If you think that the regions of the UK have it bad now, it will be much worse under a "more unified europe".
Vast regions of the EU will not be part of that "central prosperity zone" (if indeed the EU manages to create some prosperity, it seems to be though now...), and the assimetries are already showing in demographics. Entire countries will become locked intothe role of "poor periphery" and bereft of any policy instruments to fight against that situation. As sovereigns they could at least carry out development policies aimed at attracting or retaining ambitious people. As backwards provicnes without a sovereign government, only capable of enacting the "commmon policies" coming from the centre, they will be locked in to relative powerty and irrelevance. What was once a continent with dozens of vital communities competing with each other for talent, each small enough that the individuals who where part of them could hope to make some kind of difference, will be a single big megalopolis of byzantyne complexity with multiple insulated social levels, and a vast "desert" countryside.
I do believe that large states are bad for humanity. But recognize that there is a minimum size in order to afford all the complexity that a modern sovereign state requires. That is a product of out technology level, something one must accept and deal with. The 80 million people state is probably unnecessary, and the population of the UK would lead better and more furfilling lives if they had split their country into three or four sovereign states. Bit it is not for me to say that, it's not my country. The 500 million people EU, which if allowed to continue on the course its leaders wish will destroy my country, is most definitely unnecessary, a megalomaniac empire that will be inhabited by depressed people living under a system they will feel can not control nor escape from. Many are already feeling like the depressed characters from Kafka's novels. Which is not surprising: this is a remake of the austrian-hungarian disfunctional empire. In fact the idea of an EU was launched by the remnants of the displaced elites of the AH empire. Those few who had lived and prospered at the top layer of the society of the Empire, aristocrats, civil servants and finaciers, were the only ones who missed it, people like Nikolaus von Coudenhove or Louis de Rothschild.
Summit tonight.
The Irish cabinet are meeting this morning to discuss it.
We are one week from a general election here but the government is concerned about the situation of Irish people in the UK.
There is talk of linking child benefits to the rates in the home country - would the UK be happy paying the higher rates in Ireland.
The Irish cabinet are meeting this morning to discuss it.
We are one week from a general election here but the government is concerned about the situation of Irish people in the UK.
There is talk of linking child benefits to the rates in the home country - would the UK be happy paying the higher rates in Ireland.
gay_Aleks
from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
Yes, or they will just yell "Well, don't let the door hit you on the way out, UK!" and live their lives without those annoying northeners which don't seem to ever stop complaining.
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