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Originally Posted by
-:Undertaker:-
Why can the people not scrutinise the European Union in a fair and free referendum?
Do you even know what scrutinise means?
scrutiny - Thorough inspection of a situation or a case
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The free market shouldnt be in blocs, having a trade bloc defies the idea of the common market and its pretty simple with the views of Nigel Farage and Ron Paul played into it, the free market is that; its free without much regulation at all. One nation trades with another and so forth - thats the free market. A trade bloc which seeks to exclude others because they are not in that organisation is not a free market.
That would be the ideal, but unfortunately you are going to find it very hard to get 100% free trade reciprocal trade agreements with the rest of the world. And then you are going to have to have some sort of body with power to make sure that free trade continues - which leads to blocs.
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See now this is where we trip alex, because whether you like it or not (which you do because you've given your support for a federal Europe) the aim is to create a European Superstate. If you have something that has its own currency, its own regulations (which overtakes priority of those on a national scale) and if you have something which aims for political, social and economic union then you are speaking of nothing more than a state. The European Union in idealogical terms is socialist with Jose Barroso being a former Maoist and many former Soviets hold positions withion the European Union which is ironic, as they were unelected in the Soviet Union and are now unelected in the European Union.
And yes I agree with it having its own regulations and there are significant benefits to having one currency (and yes they should take prevalence over national laws or what would be the point in them?). I'm not a particular fan of Borroso, but it is worth noting that his last party affiliation was a centre-right party and he was a maoist in student years. What happens today is more important than what happened in the past.
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As usual you attempt to play it as the usual 'evil right wing media brainwashing everybody' - back in 1997 I could of said exactly the same about Labour and called for elections to be scrapped because everyone was being influenced by the eurphoria and press. It does not wash. How on earth can you accuse people of being ignorant over the European Union when the EU itself refuses to give anybody a say on whether or not they even wish for it to exist, and when it has to it makes them vote again - thats damn right arrogant.
I still stand by what I say.
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I do not agree with the idea that one nation state should be bullied into what it does not want by other nations and as a libertarian yourself (apparently) you should be on the same line as myself. Let us take Iran for example, why can Iran be denied nuclear weapons when Israel has them but is not signed upto any international treaties and still denies they exist despite the fact they clearly do. It fuels extremism and creates wars, it doesnt prevent them.
Unfortunately to have a common market that works you need to have common rules, if there wasn't you'd have each nation protecting their own inefficient industries and a loss in economic welfare. How hard is this to understand? Where has Iran come from?
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As for British law, yes it can come first because we live in Britain and we are a sovereign state. If the EFTA is not an option then a seperate treaty should be organised, if not then we go back to what the rest of the world does which is trade with obstacles but try to minimise them as much as possible by putting hope into the idea that the European Union might open up in terms of trade, rather than isolate itself in a trade bloc while the rest of the world is posed to outpace Europe.
You won't get another treaty. The EU is open to trade from all over the world, not free trade, but it is open - there are tariffs on many imports. The USA has similar tariffs and jump at the chance to look after themselves. Eventually there will be free trade over the world, but you have to accept that it takes time to do so.
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The Soviet Union had elections but we clearly know what a sham they were, the same goes for this. The states of the USSR also technically had the right to leave the Soviet Union and eventually did, however if you have studied history you will know how hard it is to do that and the same is occuring now. We are being tangled up into this web which is political, social and economic which is making it harder and harder to leave. They can add as many clauses as they wish to do so, all an illusion because the pace of European regulation and legislation is outpacing any withdrawl clause rapidly and almost, well it does, defies the idea that you can just leave whenever you wish.
You are not honestly comparing the UK elections to soviet elections. Then why does the Lisbon treaty now include an exit clause and outline how a state can leave the union?
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You know as well as I do and UKIP itself, the FPTP system will not allow that ever to happen and I can gurantee you that as soon as that system is thrown off and a real proportional representation system is put into place the European Union will be over - either by the hands of UKIP itself or the Conservative Party which would be forced back into conservative and libertarian ideals with the threat of UKIP and other parties that would arise from a fair and free election. I shall take my mum and dad as an example as well as the rest of my family a few years back, we disagree with most of the policies of the Liberal Democrats yet we voted for them and why? - because under FPTP the only choice/real effect we could make was to vote for the Liberal Democrats to keep Labour out who destroyed this city and we did not want that again.
We also have something like 40% of people who do not bother voting, FPTP leaves them isolated and quite rightly because their vote is a waste of time. Lets not pretend, UKIP is a mainly conservative-natured party and i'm sure you would agree also that its ideals and idealogy of conservatism and libertarianism appeal much more to the vast majority of conservatives than the policies of the Conservative Party in 2010. Infact you even see it on this forum, conservatives on here have said they would vote for UKIP but they vote Conservative because they know that under this system UKIP haven't a cats chance in hell of forming a government.
I completely disagree - you are blaming the system when really it is the inadequacies and the unpopularity of UKIP and its policies that means that it doesn't get elected. If UKIP was a single-issue party on leaving the european union and then promised to have a general election afterwards - it would be much more likely to get elected. Its right-wing agenda and undertones puts people who are eurosceptic and left-wing off voting for them. I'll give you my example - I live where Ken Clarke is in office - a 14000-strong majority - my vote essentially won't count. PR doesn't ever mean you get strong governments. They fall apart when coalitions fall apart. Even though in principle i support reform, care has to be taken into not setting up a system where forming any sort of government becomes impossible.
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To see how corrupt and unfair the system is, just look at the Liberal Democrats now;- ahead in the polls yet predicted to get the least seats. Labour;- behind in the polls yet predicted to retain the most seats. The issue of parliament, I would like to undermine it yes because direct democracy is a far better solution. Again, as Nigel Farage pointed out, that parliament spent 18 hours debating the invasion of Iraq but spent over 600 hours debating the fox hunt ban.
Now i'm sorry, what sort of tinpot democracy is that?
There is argument to what you're saying and I agree with the majority of what you say in this respect. But predictions on seats are very very hard to make due to you have to make a wide variety of assumptions. When you start assuming a uniform swing, any prediction is likely to be wrong.
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Theres not need to include all this regulation as it strangles business, Europe has always been more inclined to use more regulation hence why their financial sectors lagged behind those of ours and the City of London. The taxpayer already pays for it Alex, as well as paying for things such as new motorways across Europe while our own roads fall into disrepair because 'we havent got enough money' - and yourself and the eurocrats wonder why people are against the European Union. :rolleyes:
i wouldn't use this as a good example. frankfurt is regarded as a major financial sector, that's why the ECB is based their. It was highly regarded that London would have been the headquarters of the ECB if we had joined the EMU. I'm perfectly happy that our money goes towards building better roads - it will improve efficiency of all businesses across europe.