[spireitematt]

I'm not in favour of any 'dictatorship',certainly not the one running about in your imagination. No, just purely on a competency level the EU politicians run rings round the tories. I'd take anyone over those ****.

Basically i've tried to debate with you but i just really struggle to see what your position is. You voted remain,but you're a eurosceptic armed with an arsenal of farage scaremongering and downright inaccuracies about the EU and brexit. You seem more like a hard core brexiteer than someone who has reservations about EU membership.

One minute you bemoan the negotiators not being real people,with real jobs or businessmen,then you say you want lawyers running the thing (which they already are to a degree) like hague who isn't a lawyer ....and on and on and on. And of course the euro superstate that the UK could have vetoed anyway as a member.

Enjoy your twix.

I want a European Union or Partnership where all EU countries are in a trading union and countries can do there own trade deals with non-EU countries without the EU interfering. I want Europe to work together on Science and Energy and look at new ways to improve our World and atmosphere. We cannot be Little Britain looking inwards we have to look outwards and work with Europe and the rest of the World. I don't believe in a European Union with its own Parliament and MEPs and presidents and commissioners.

I think a mixture of people and politicians, business people and lawyers need to be doing the negotiations so that each sector is being represented in negotiations and not the Tories just doing it behind close doors and probably selling us down the river. I'm not a hard core Brexiteer and I'm not a staunch remainer either. I'm not a fan of Farage he's just a Tory by another name because that what UKIP are they are Tories by another name just more right wing.

Hague isn't a lawyer but he's a good negotiator and he was foreign secretary so he could help especially with it being a diplomatic process. The European Union first started off as a coal and steel community then it progressed to the common market which we joined and then it progressed to the European Community and then the European Union with its own Parliament and courts, surely its going to move into a European Superstate a federal Europe with open borders. It has it's own flag and its own anthem which is Ode to Joy and even its own currency. When the EU was set up there were 6 countries Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands but its grown from 6 countries to 28 countries and they want to expand it even more to 32 countries and its just not feasible especially when 3 of the countries are holding up the rest. The UK, Germany and France put the most money into the EU and if we leave who will fill the void? Italy? The bigger it becomes the more unsustainable it will be and then eventually its own success will be its downfall.

The poorer countries which join the EU don't become any richer the citizens from the poorer countries migrate to the richer countries in the EU to work and live. It doesn't benefit the countries but the people.

The Euro doesn't help matters either. Look what the Euro has done to Greece.

Youth unemployment in EU countries are as follows:

Greece 43%
Spain 39%
Italy 36%
Portugal 25%
France 23%
Poland 14%
UK 12%
Netherlands 9%
Germany 6.4%

I will admit the EU have done some good things like the EU Working Time Directive. The Erasmus programme. Air travel is cheaper and you can bring back as much duty free as you want without paying import duties, brings tourism to the UK and people come to work in our NHS.

Deep down I don't think we will leave the EU because if we were going to leave we would have triggered Article 50 the day after the referendum instead of triggering it in March 2017. There will be another referendum and it will end up being remain and we will stay because eventually the people who voted to Leave will get fed up of hearing about Brexit and give up hope. If we do end up staying in the EU though I can see Anti-EU parties splitting the Labour and Tories vote share which will result in hung Parliaments and coalitions or minority Governments.

[hibeejim21]

The UK has 'managed' its apparently low unemployment figures by the simple ruse of "zero hours contracts". That is, classifying people as "employed" when they actually do no work at all, nor draw any actual wage for the work they do not do. As far as the regional disparity in many nations across Europe, the UK has exactly the same scenario at work, with many areas of the UK having the same appallingly low employment prospects as, for example, the south of Italy.

You do know the greeks admitted massive falsification of their financial data to gain admittance to the euro ? Germany did not want them in the euro and vetoed their first application. As you pointed out earlier sometimes individual governments have to take responsibility.

After the collapse of the soviet union the EU had to adapt and help these nations or we would have had even more instability and possibly war on our doorstep. Other nations have decided they wanted more close co-operation as it made more sense to their needs.

The south of Italy and spain have always been poor,do you really think preventing them travelling to other nations to work is going to help?

[hibeejim21]

The eurozone has just posted its fastest annual growth rate since the beginning of the debt crisis, partly due to France’s strong performance. Frances performance far outstripping the UK over 4 quarters.

The latest unemployment figures also show an improvement -- the euro area jobless rate has dropped to 8.9% for September, the lowest since the start of 2009.

The UK has seen less wage growth than most EU countries over the last 9 years.

Putin must be laughing his cock off, his plan has worked to perfection with the aid of useful little puppets like farage.

And worryingly ....


Two internal Ukip whistleblowers filed complaints to the UK’s Electoral Commission over fears the party was making “unusual arrangements” with a pro-Trump website in the months before the 2016 EU referendum, the Guardian has learned.

[0762]

I'm delighted to see the signs of positive momentum in Europe and that will hopefully be a massive 'slap in the face' for the UK and these shameless brexiteer c#### by the time the country is wrongly removed from the EU. I wanna see a 'buoyant EU' at that moment in time and it will provide the 'ammunition' to consign a lotta these Tory and UKIP b####### to a political wilderness BUT sadly irretrievable 'damage will be done' to the UK by these numpties!!

[Devongone]

One of the major problems the whole Brexit debate has highlighted is that there is NO agreed basis of fact.

Economics is pretty much a sham subject, which can almost cope whilst it is still dealing with fact, but once it sallies off, on the basis of the more contentious facts it thinks it has perceived, into prediction, its lack of science is betrayed as it veers massively away from what actually comes to pass.

Depending which figures you take and how you choose to interpret them, France is either an economic tiger starting to roar, or a basket case of unemployment, bureaucracy and resistance to change.

Our own productivity plunges us right down the European league table, but the figures used aren't the same across the continent, they aren't collected in the same way and our apparently lower rate of unemployment actually counts against us when the final results are collated. So, should we worry, or not? What does this *******s mean?

Misuse of data is common throughout the EU, because it is common across the social sciences. We turn the contentious into fact by glueing a thin-air figure to it, extrapolate to the next supposed conclusion, which should then have a massive + or - in red alongside it, but we disregard that and in the end, by force of rhetoric and inertia, we end up somewhere we may, or may not have intended.

We see no irony in campaigning against fixed-odds betting terminals being able swallow a hundred pounds every twenty seconds of some punter's money in a world which is ruled by men sitting at terminals watching mathematical constructs flash up coloured lights as they buy and sell products they never own or see, gamble on the rise of fall of currencies that may either enrich, or impoverish entire countries across the globe and make huge profits which will be pumped into more and quicker ways of carrying out the same dark magic.

And we poor saps let it happen. We debate the mess it creates as though it has some external relevance, which sadly it does, because we decide it should. Wars start, people starve. We're the chimps who discovered fire and won't stop playing with it till everything burns.

How long does growth rate matter when your planet stays the same size?

[0762]

Add in the reported record levels of CO2 in the earth's upper atmosphere Devongone! Whose fault? We've been debating this ozone issue for long enough since Berlin 1995 and prob well before that 1st 'UN Climate Change Conference'. IMO greed and self-interest prevails regardless - not enough major participants heeding the warnings!

[Devongone]

Add in the reported record levels of CO2 in the earth's upper atmosphere Devongone! Whose fault? We've been debating this ozone issue for long enough since Berlin 1995 and prob well before that 1st 'UN Climate Change  Conference'. IMO greed and self-interest prevails regardless - not enough major participants heeding the warnings!

Academically we seem keen to append the word science to anything in the belief that it adds to its veracity. It is the equivalent of Paul Daniels's white coat, which allowed him to proclaim a trick had been performed under laboratory conditions. No it wasn't Paul! And no, Economics, Business, Finance, Sociology, Psychology and a whole range of other subjects don't become science just because you add the word and plunder the odd statistic and a contentious probability here and there.

But then a lot of science is so keen to step outside itself and be popular it forgets to be scientific too.

We have regressed so far that we need a picture of a dead three-year-old on a beach to stimulate us emotionally and intellectually we'll debate facts forever, irrespective of whether they are already proven fact, or fiction. Global warming's just a picture of a dying glacier crashing another iceberg into an ocean no-one visits. Put it on Facebook, collect a few likes. Put it next to Kevin Spacey looking gay.

[ritchiebaby]

Cynical, but perfectly true, Devongone.

[hibeejim21]

"One of the major problems the whole Brexit debate has highlighted is that there is NO agreed basis of fact."



You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

[hibeejim21]

Jonathan Lis on twitter has some very interesting stuff on where we are with brexit currently. Check back his tweets from 1-37.