EU

[RF]

Re the EU , we only joined it to desabilise it to prevent the whole continent becoming one great power block against the UK ( as dreamed of by messrs Bonaparte and Hitler ).
As someone with many european friends and relations , I can assure you that they view "Great Britain" as just a curious wet grey island off their coast , whose population seem content to live under one of the most uncaring and exploitative establishments in Europe , which distracts them with Football and Big Brother so they dont notice it .
The regular doses of anti EU propaganda which are drip fed daily to our population are aimed at keeping the mass of the population in the UK in ignorance as to what the EU is all about , so that they are not inclined to want to ask why they are excluded from many of the benefits that the rest of the European people routinely enjoy .
Keep the Pound is the cry . Fine . Then you pay nearly 5% of all your money to that fine upstanding institution , the British Banking system , to change one lot of coloured bits of paper to another lot , every time you go abroad . Yes , its Commission free . They just give you a crap exchange rate and take it that way .
The Queens head is only on the banknotes because the Germans had made copies of the British banknotes printing plates during WW2 , and the Russians took them out of the Riechsbank and wouldnt hand them over to us . Before that , our banknotes didnt have the monarchs head on them , but hey , why let the truth get in the way ?
Do you really suppose that the old guys sitting outside the cafes all over Europe feel any less of a Catalan , or a Cretan , or a Slovene , or a Czech because they have Euros in their pocket now instead of what was there before . None I meet .

I really think that we actually ought to try it for once . Come out of the EU for say 5 or 10 years , just to see what it would be like . We wouldnt have to pay all that money into the coffers of Brussels , would we . No . You would need it all , and more , to pay the immediate imposition of 10% customs charges on everything we export there .
And we could all go on working harder , for longer, in lousier conditions , paying even more for our houses and cars than we do now , for the benefit of the set of spivs who are the power here . Cant wait , me .

I think we've got a few pirates to sort out here at home , as well as around the Horn of Africa ! :-)

I have reproduced this for the load of complete tosh that it is. And Jose is welcome to shunt it into the off topic section, or perhaps better still, blast it into outer space....

[Karl Heidenreich]

RF:

I have reproduced this for the load of complete tosh that it is. And Jose is welcome to shunt it into the off topic section, or perhaps better still, blast it into outer space....

I concurr with RF in his request.

[hammy]

OH.....Well sorry !!

As a newbie here I hadnt realised that it is OK to post whatever anti EU xenophobic opinions you like , but not to say I actually think the EU is a good idea .

Or that I think it is a shame that the factions holding power in the UK rubbish it for cynical reasons while doing everything they can to keep the population here in ignorance of what it really does .

Yes , Jose , please do censor it all . We could burn some books too if you liked .

[RF]

hammy,

I am perfectly happy to discuss the EU -in the off topic section.

My views on the EU are informed and not xenophobic.

And all three main political parties in Britain fully support EU membership, and the Lisbon Treaty.

[hammy]

Fair enough .

[RF]

hammy,

It may surprise you to learn that the reason the UK joined what at the time was called the European Economic Community on 1st April 1973 was that the then British Prime Minister, Edward Heath, had a personal ambition to achieve a united Europe. This especially so as he had been the chief British negotiator in the 1961/1962 British application to join the EEC which was at the time blackballed by President Charles de Gualle of France. De Gualle refused the British application of 1962 because he feared that once in the EEC the British would take the side of the Germans in EEC matters to the detriment of French national interests, not least threaten the French agricultural subsidies provided through the EEC.
Heath took the French refusal as a personal insult, and to ensure his application of 1971 succeeded he got his chief negoiator, Geoffrey Rippon, to agree to EEC access to all UK fishing waters outside the UK three mile limit, along with cutbacks in UK steel production. These terms severely damaged British economic and strategic interests. Heath then lied to the British people, and his own party, the Conservatives, saying that joining the EEC was for trading purposes only, in spite of the political aspirations stated in the 1957 Treaty of Rome, upon which the EEC was founded. The actual terms of entry were also partly concealed from the British public.

Saying that Britain joined the EEC to disrupt it simply is the opposite of Heaths' intentions.

Heaths' successor as Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, was also in favour of the EEC. But his party, the Labour Party, was largely against membership. In an act of equal deceit, Wilson went through the motions of ''renegotiating membership'' which in fact changed nothing, and then got his way by giving the British public a referendum vote on whether to stay in the EEC using the issue of trade with Europe. Political and monetary union were issues airbrushed out of the debate, those on the anti side who raised it were denounced as extremists. I didn't get a vote in the 1975 referendum as I was under the voting age.
That was the only time the British people got a direct vote on the EEC. Since then we have had the Treaty of Maastricht, which encompassed Economic and Monetary Union, and changed the EEC into the European Union. Under these arrangements Britain is one of only two net contributors to the EU budget (the other country is Germany) so that the British taxpayer is now contributing some £18 billion a year, principally through Value Added Tax. That figure is a conservative estimate, the true cost is concealed, not least because in each of the last thirteen years the EU Court of Auditors have refused to sign off the EU's annual accounts on the grounds of inadequate financial controls and alleged fraud. As a taxpayer and voter I think this is a complete rip off, and done solely for the benefit of the politicians and bureaucrats of the EU, including and especially British politicians - such as Tony Blair.

If this is xenophobic, I would like to know why.

[hammy]

Well , first of all , I was there for all of it .

Ted Heath had been a Tank Regiment officer during WW2 , and in the campaign across Europe after D-day . Like many of his fellows of all parties and throughout the establishment as it then was , he had seen what a war was like up close , and I can remember the general support there was at the time because many people took the view that joining it was going to make it impossible to have another conflict like that one .
A nuclear holocaust between Russia and the USA into which we would be dragged , yes , that remained a threat , but at least we could rule out another European war .
My own parents had been on opposite sides of the Second world war , and while neither had suffered too much of the horrors , they both knew people who had , so in our house , and for most of our neighbours and aquaintances , joining was regarded as a good thing to do .
Most of the Anti feelings at the time centered around the issue of distancing ourselves from Canada/Australia/New Zealand and the rest of the Commonwealth , rather than over loss of sovereignty .
A single currency was regarded as just a pipe-dream at that time , as an issue that was over the horizon , like Esperanto

Whatever De Gaulle may have said were his reasons for not wishing Britain to join , the obvious one was that France was the "leading light" in the organisation , as Germany was still in a state of "communal contrition " at the time , and definitely not throwing their weight about in the world , despite their resurgent economic strength . De Gaulle had a great dislike and distrust for Britain , which mostly stemmed from a variety of slights and injuries to pride inflicted on him and his Free French government during the war years .

As regards the terms on which we went in , Britain by then had ceased to be a power , and the economic situation was poor . Seen as desperate to get in , we took the deal we could get .
As regards the Fishing , that had been in decline in local waters since the inception of steam fishing fleets in the 1890s , and the process of regulation conservation and control was already underway in the 1970s and has continued to date .
Steel was in oversupply throughout the world , a situation that is still true today , despite all the closures and rationalisations and modernisations and de-nationalisations over the last 40 years .

You say the terms were , in part , concealed . Of course they were . This is Britain , where you get democracy one day every four years or so , and the rest of the time you are ruled by a party committee ( the cabinet ) who exercise dictatorial power ( the Royal Prerogative ) , rubber-stamped by an impotent "peoples assembly" ( the houses of parliament ) , but always subject to the diktats of the Media , the Lawyers , and the Moneymen .
The process of reform proceeds at the usual glacial pace , but having got rid of ( most of ) the hereditary peers , we can but hope for slightly better things to eventually come . Dont hold your breath .

I dont think that there was an intention to disrupt the organisation of the forming European State per se , so much as the carrying on of a British national policy which has been in place since 1400 or so ,ie the prevention of a situation where Britain is left isolated "against" a united , homogenous Europe , acting with a united purpose . ( And , until recently , that no major european power should possess the city of Antwerp with the Scheldt estuary --- the raison d'etre for the state of Belgium ) .

I voted in the 1975 referendum , and I voted YES .
We were by then members , and there could be no going back , cap in hand , to our former Commonwealth "Friends" .
The "Renegotiation" of terms was I remember seen as rather spurious , but it was seen as the best of a bad job at the time .

Mrs Thatcher also "renegotiated" in her turn , obtaining the ( trumpeted ) Rebate .

Britain contributed more moey to the E U because , measure for measure , Britain was generally better off than most other countries in the Union . Especially the southern european countries , Portugal , Spain , Italy , Greece .
As a boy in the 1950s I can remember having to wear some secondhand clothing and shoes , but at least I had Bloody shoes ! I can clearly remember seeing poor people in rural Greece as recently as 1990 who routinely went barefoot .

You have to remember what the E U is FOR , beyond all the glowing idealism .
We live in an internatinal Capitalist economy , which relies on "Economic Growth" each year .
When growth slows , or goes slightly into reverse for a bit , this is called a "RECESSION" , and Oh dear God , the Horror ! !
Growth in this context simply means that the demand for goods and services this year was greater than it was last year .
One way to promote growth is to continually increase the population , both through encouraging people to breed , subsidising the process of raising offspring , and encouraging people to come and live here .
( Fertility treatments on the NHS , child allowances , and no real control of immigration .)

But another way to increase growth is to get the EXISTING population to consume more , and you do this by raising their income , and by using mental conditioning ( basically Advertising , but also by constantly showing them a "better life" being lived by characters in entertaining TV shows )

The "subsidies" paid out to the Poorer countries along with "economic development projects " are intended to provide the money for those people to go out and buy THINGS -- ( it really doesent matter , in economic terms , what ) . Some of these things will be made elsewhere in the E U , and even if they are not then there will be an E U supply chain somewhere along the line that will be benefitting from some of that spent money .
I suppose one of the most marginal cases would be someone buying their vi***a over the Internet from a far-east supplier , in which case the only person who obtains a financial benefit from the transaction is going to be the Postman , via his wages , but in most situations the return is going to be better than that .

Britain has never been in the position where it is receiving more "grant aid" than "contributions paid" , but I would question whether the true bottom line , which is "economic growth obtained" from "investments made" is a minus figure .
One must also bear in mind that EU Grant Aid for economic development projects is often dependent on the target state coming up with a proportion of the total funding . As public spending is regarded in britain as a "Bad Thing" , this funding , controlled now by Whitehall to a quite anal extent , has often been refused , and so the Blue signboards marking E U projects that are so familiar to those who travel on the continent are as rare as hens teeth here .

Your last point , re the waste , corruption , and poor book-keeping is a valid one , but you make it from a country where standards are ( usually ) very high and have been for a century or more . Some of our partners are not that far along the curve , yet , but the positive point is that reforms do happen and that things do improve within the E U .

I think our biggest problem in Britain is that we are deliberately kept in the dark about the whole purpose and direction of the E U .
As witnessed by the last E U elections here . When did you hear ANY debate about what the differences between the candidates were In regard to what the E U was doing .
There is no discussion beyond "Stay in --- or --- Come out" and even the consequences of either course are barely mentioned .

[RF]

I can agree with virtually all you say hammy.

You are older than I am and have some experience of the immediate aftermath of WW2. You mentioned Edward Heath's military service in WW2, it can also be added that Heath was in Germany immediately prior to the start of the war and saw at first hand Hitler and how he was operating as a dictator, before getting out through Poland. A lot of the post-war idealism also existed after WW1, indeed in the minds of people like Schuman the seeds of the EU were sown in the 1920's and temporarily buried under the Great Depression and then another, this time genuinely global, world war.

I particulary agree with you that the EU isn't properly discussed in this country, and that is basically because it doesn't serve the ruling nomenklatura to do so. They are the real beneficiaries from the EU, and the reason why I would like to see the EU scrapped and replaced with a genuine free trade area, such as EFTA.
We do have our day of democracy every four or five years, and the biggest single block of eligible voters are the most ignored - those who don't vote. I do vote, even though my vote doesn't count, or at least won't count until millions more people vote for who I vote for. I think we are making some progress in that area, even Gordon Brown had to acknowledge that some 40% of the European election vote was for parties who have never been represented in the House of Commons, and that 40% of course excludes many people I have come into contact with who refused to vote not through apathy but because they objected to the EU for various reasons.
So - when I vote I make sure that I know what I am voting for, otherwise it is a spoil ballot paper from me. I will never vote for the three main parties, they don't deserve my vote.