This referendum concept is absurd; clearly the voting mass (as opposed to most who do not bother) do so on very limited knowledge and even less intelligent analysis. If left to the thicko public, we might even bring back capital punishment (to be carried in detail on the front of papers and in TV bulletins - as much blood as possible please).

Democracy doesn't work. The voice of the people is ill informed and brain dead.

Good luck Arab countries.

JK2006 wrote:
This referendum concept is absurd; clearly the voting mass (as opposed to most who do not bother) do so on very limited knowledge and even less intelligent analysis. If left to the thicko public, we might even bring back capital punishment (to be carried in detail on the front of papers and in TV bulletins - as much blood as possible please).

Democracy doesn't work. The voice of the people is ill informed and brain dead.

Good luck Arab countries.

Democracy can work,well so long as they agree with your thoughts.
Also the politicians are doing a great job as thickos themselves.
The real problem is the meejah,and how its vested interests warp the facts before we can consume them.Take away the carrot and the donkey may well not become an ass.

the referendum will not happen.

The UK will never leave the EU.

veritas wrote:
the referendum will not happen.

The UK will never leave the EU.

True Veritas,very true.
But only an intelligent fool would over ride the public and chain us to a sinking ship.

No word from ITK? Given his well published views on freeloaders and looneys I'd have thought he'd have backed us to pull out of the EU,especially given how many billions we waste on benefits for Romanian roma etc.

Totally agree LO - I'm a great believer in a United Europe - not because it's any good but because it's inevitable. we simply cannot exist in the world alone these days.

Very well put LO.

I really don't think the British electorate is in any way capable of voting in a referendum on EU membership when the only information they get from much of the mass media is deliberate misinformation, lapped up because it conforms to pre-conceived Johnny Foreigner notions of Europe.

Sure the EU has many faults, but it also has many plus points such as the Working Time Directive referred to by LO above.

And all this guff about the Human Rights Act. I just had a conversation with my neighbour who was moaning about the act and how 'Europe' was dictating to us what human rights were. He was of course a bit gobsmacked when I pointed out that the HRA is a piece of British legislation. The EU laid down guidelines on human rights which each individual country is free to interpret according to its own circumstances. So the British government was free to interpret those guidelines in a way that suited us, and that law is then interpreted by British judges.

But hey,it's easier to believe what the largely Eurosceptic press says. Straight bananas and all...

The problem with the discussion about Europe is that it's several discussions jumbled together. As you're taught at Cambridge: define your terms. Are people meaning to argue for or against European economic integration, or political integration, or cultural integration, or some or all of these things? Ted Heath is partly to blame: the old booby wanted everyone to speak with a French accent and play Ode to Joy every morning whilst polishing a bust of Elgar and making good money in Berlin and Milan. Ever since his woozily sentimental nonsense the debate has been so much mush. Until you clarify these things you're just producing a babbling mess. What the proponents of economic integration don't seem to understand - or want to admit - is that it won't work without an integrated European budget. What the propenents of European political federalism don't seem to appreciate is that it must end up in unification (saying it merely leads to 'ever closer' ties is like saying a door is being pushed ever closer to a door frame). But I'm in favour of referenda, in principle, because I believe in education. You can't give up on these things. You have to fight for them - rather than sitting back in an armchair shaking one's head at 'humans' or pontificating loftily on the events thousands of miles away, like Sidney and Beatrice bloody Webb, get on and FIGHT here and now where you can make a difference!

I can understand the Euro sceptics and quite frankly we should never have joined, but once we had, we should have got a fair shake of the stick, instead we got an awful lot of franco-german sniping (more franco than german to be fair), and economic sabotage.

Some of the insane directives from brussels didn't help, nor the attitudes of our own pro american leaders trying to juggle that with adherance to european laws...

And some of it has been potty..the metric rules as one barmpot idea, they simply relabled a pound of sliced whatever to the equivalent number of grams.That understandably pissed off ordinary people used to buying fruit and veg in the markets to find their regular stallholder was gone due to a £50,000 fine for daring to sell somebody two pounds of apples...

Not a way to win friends and influence people to vote for the EU Lobby.

The key thing is that the debate has to be extricated from any dreams of 'Europeanness'. History teaches that the broader the community the less it means. If the English, Welsh, Scots and Northern Irish can't really believe in Britishness (and Scouse and Geordies can't even believe in Englishness), they're never going to believe in Europeanness. So that abstract supra-national ideal that some at the heart of the European Parliament really take seriously is nonsense. Once we rid ourselves of that social/cultural dimension we'll be much more able to debate other, more specific, collaborations in a clear and constructive manner. Of course, we'd have to treat 'the public' as a complicated conglommeration of individuals rather than merely a bunch of people far less intelligent than those Platonic Guardians on the JK messageboard, but let's give it a go, eh?

EU integration is not inevitable,in fact the well educated French/german public et al is getting a wee bit bored of paying for loony lala greeks(nod to ITK) etc.
Monetary union is a disaster,and will have to be relaxed to avoid bankrupcy.The public at large in the EU is showing no great pleasure in continued integration...so the pressure for this is coming from the so called 'elite',the very people who think they know better than the masses.Well if they did how come the EU is in such a mess?
We voted for a trade block,we're getting a US of Europe,this is not in evitable,ask the Swiss,and even the edges like Ukraine and Serbia etc are starting to go off the idea of joining after seeing the mess.
The EU has made us lazy,the hard working Pole,and the lazy gypsy are taking over many towns.Schools are choked by immigrants kids holding back the natives with their lack of english.The working class kids can't compete with well trained and educated competition for the traditional starter jobs,so idleness and lack of good education reinforce the stereotypes we need to ween ourselves away from.

The masses are not as daft as some here would like us to believe,they don't need to loose their job to a lower paid Pole to know the EU is failing us in many ways.It's not the upper classes who suffer,it's those lower down who feel it most,and those are the ones we really need to help first.

"Democracy doesn't work. The voice of the people is ill informed and brain dead."

Its that way for a reason "THEY" want to keep us that way because the truth would see them routed immediately. picture the two main parties as organised crime gangs playing poker.... both shoot at each other and both win and lose chips but if anyone tries to interfere with their game thay unite ! As for One Europe ... its not for me personally as its another step towards world government. Paranoid ?? Maybe I am but i am entitled to my views just as you are yours.

coppullcaveman wrote:
i am entitled to my views just as you are yours.

Bit defensive, isn't it? Who said you weren't??

I agree..... but sometimes I even doubt myself as it seems so ludicrous ! certainly not meant to come across as it did I know this forum as one of the most tolerant and open on the net. I guess Im used to dealing with "sheep" rather than free thinkers like your good selves on here

Today the German Dax index fell by 6.2 per cent and the French CAC-40 by 5.9 per cent after last night's announcement by Greek prime minister George Papandreou that the hard-bargained agreement by Eurozone leaders to bail out his crisis-hit economy will be put to a public ballot

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2055872...NK-Euro-bailout.html

Is it still inevitable we'll have to join this happy throng? I doubt there will be much left at this rate.

The resurgence of xenophobic prattling in the Tory ranks, however predictable, is indicative of an issue that some of my English friends have never quite satisfactorily resolved: post-imperial angst. The sun set on the English empire 80 years ago and yet there remains a very sizable number of my countrymen who are too obdurate or too stupid to accept the fact. Alas, this constituency still accounts for a very large part of the 'modern' conservative party.

Get over it.

Sheesh!

Locked Out wrote:
One of the biggest problems we have here is, I think, that a lot of Brits are labaouring under the misapprehension that the Pound is in some way a superior currency to the Euro, and that because of our membership of the EU the Pound is being dragged down. All that is needed, apparently, is for us to get out of the EU and the Quid will soar off into some dreamy sunlit upland. Britain was a joke abroad before we joined the EU and if we leave we'll be not only almost entirely unproductive, we'll also be utterly, totally and comprehensively isolated. There's little confidence in the UK economy in the world outside this sceptred isle as it is. Beleaguered it may be, but the Euro is a real currency - a world class currency. But I suspect that even as they are flailing their arms and drowning because they didn't think to pack a Plan-B lifejacket, the Referendum campaigners will still be spluttering on about how we're better off out. Welcome on board the SS Britannic.

The Euro is indeed a world currency,and one most of the world wants to sell

Locked Out wrote:
One of the biggest problems we have here is, I think, that a lot of Brits are labaouring under the misapprehension that the Pound is in some way a superior currency to the Euro, and that because of our membership of the EU the Pound is being dragged down. All that is needed, apparently, is for us to get out of the EU and the Quid will soar off into some dreamy sunlit upland. Britain was a joke abroad before we joined the EU and if we leave we'll be not only almost entirely unproductive, we'll also be utterly, totally and comprehensively isolated. There's little confidence in the UK economy in the world outside this sceptred isle as it is. Beleaguered it may be, but the Euro is a real currency - a world class currency. But I suspect that even as they are flailing their arms and drowning because they didn't think to pack a Plan-B lifejacket, the Referendum campaigners will still be spluttering on about how we're better off out. Welcome on board the SS Britannic.

I travel for work all round the world,and except for our silly military adventures we are admired far more abroad than we admire ourselves at home.
As for the mutated EEC,what a joke,best off out of it.If we could run the greatest empire in the world we can surely run our own affairs.