Thread: EU Positions Announced

Originally Posted by Iolis

In the meantime, you may lie back, think about the England that ceased to exist a long time ago and learn a little bit more about what you so clearly know nothing about.

Who knows, you may even get to like it!

You mean an England (UK) that was in the EEC but not the EU? Yes that was a long time ago.
I reckon an referedum will come if some of the smaller parties (BNP & UKIP for example) do well in an election, then the 3 main parties will pretend that they have always wanted a referedum just so they get the votes back.

What does the EU give us? (that we couldnt get ourselves? or didn't have when we were just part of the EEC)

I actually think a referendum on leaving the EU would be healthy. Clearly its an unhappy dysfunctional relationship. There is something very wrong when the English poll as significantly less positive about the EU than Yanks.

Could well be the end of the other older Union, which would be a pity.

At least it would make for affordable housing in London.

Originally Posted by Iolis

Originally Posted by studentfeckwit

Originally Posted by Iolis

Originally Posted by jagman

Most of us understand the leagalities/tehnicalities of it Iolis.
Doesn't make it any more morally right or acceptable though does it?

Then if you do not believe that it is neither morally right or acceptable then as in any othe democracy you may peititon your MEP who are your representatives in the Parliament.

It is no good being Eurosceptic and complaining about lack of democracy while consistently failing to either turn out for elections to the European Parliament every four years or failing to take an interest in the activities of those who are elected every four years.

Neither is there anything wrong with petitons to our own Parliament for our Government to act on an intergovernmental level.

It is this intergovernmental pressure that led to legislative change under the Lisbon Treaty to involve more closely the National Parliaments in the EU legislative process.

Iolis, I fear that in your lawyerly wish to read & interpret legislation and show us uneducated proles what we've missed out, you miss one very basic premise.

"Us proles" do not want the EU. We do not want its structures set above us, no matter how "representative" and "democratic" they may be. We do not want our Parliament usurped by a state that we did not ask for and do not wish to be beholden to. We certainly do not want to be ruled by persons who do not represent us or our interests, or who are selected by an elite clique who cannot be held responsible for their actions; and I don't give a merry damn what their rules say, it is wrong that leaders are not chosen by those they claim to serve.

You may as well place a lioness and her cubs in a small cage, with a bowl of water and a bag of food. Sure, the lions can survive in the cage, but they will constantly yearn to be free of their imprisonment and live as they please.

Manuscript Amendment:

Throughout text:

For the words:

"we","us" and 'our'

Substitute: "I" and 'my' as appropriate

Correction in text:

Parliament remains legally supreme (See AV Dicey The Law of the Constitution), it may expressly repeal the European Communities Act 1972 which gives effect to the supremacy of EU Law by a simple majority of one vote. Politically however, it is unlikely to do so.

The 'elite cllique' to which you refer are your democratically elected 'representatives' who are accountable to you through the ballot box

That your 'interests' are represented was demonstrated when, for example, John Major secured the Maastricht opt-out from the Social Chapter. It was represented again when the Government secured an opt out of the Shengen agreement. When you helped to electe a Labour Government in 1997 your 'interests' were again represented when the Government acceded to it giving you the employment rights you now have. It represented your interests again in an opt out over the single currency. Your 'interests' were again represented when the Labour Government you elected to represent your interests objected to the Charter of Fundamental Rights in the Lisbon Treaty to enforce any breaches of fundamental rights on the part of the Union in the European Court of Justice.

Since you believe in the democratic process you presumably understand the principle that if a majority vote in favour of something, that you are bound by it regardless of your own wishes to the contrary. Your wishes were represented in 1975 when in a referendum you were given the opportunity of remaining in the Union on the terms agreed by the Government or leaving it. As a United Kingdom subject you are presumably responsible enough in casting a vote to be fully aware of the implications of what you are doing which includes being aware of the laws governing your own country which actually do not include the right to a referendum and also include the absolute right of your government to enter into foreign treaties without your consent. Your government, the one you elect, did just that in 1986 when it signed the Single European Act, in 1992 when it signed the Treaty of Maastricht, in 1997 when it signed the Treary of Amsterdam, in 2000 when it signed the Treaty of Nice and in 2009 when it ratified the Treaty of Lisbon.

In other words, ... goes into useless dribble for a few hundred words ...

We have an EU. We are in it. We will reman in it because leaving it will produce consequences that will be even more horrible and give you even more reason to complain while you are scrambling about to re-join it!

I get the impression that by expressing dissent against the EU I've touched a nerve.

While I accept that my elected representatives are empowered to take decisions on my behalf, you'll have to do much better than bleating "suck it up cos that's how it is". FYI, as my username suggests, I am too young to have voted Labour into power in 1997 or voted in any of the referenda held previous, and ever since I became old enough to exercise my vote, I've devoted myself to getting rid of this shower of shits.

Parliament has passed an act (EC Act '72) that expressly gives the EU supremacy over itself. While Parliament does have the theoretical power to repeal this statute, this is the same "power" that the Queen has to remove the PM from post and dissolve Parliament tomorrow morning. As you rightly identify, it ain't going to happen.

Thus, regardless of the background semantics, Parliament has ceded control of the UK statute book to the EU. This is certainly not what my elected representatives are there to do on my behalf!

This ceding of control (I avoid the term 'sovereignty', but in practical terms that's what it is) is in breach of the 1975 referendum, which referred to economic union only, not political. Please correct me if I'm wrong on the detail of that.
I conclude that my democratically elected representatives, and those who my parents and grandparents elected in years before my birth, have vastly exceeded the mandate given them by the electorate by signing this country up to a new superstate that they had no right to join.

As for your BBC link - I concur with stacker1, that's 30 mins of EU-sponsored rubbish I've just wasted my time listening to. Can you provide similar from a non BBC, non governmental source?

Originally Posted by stacker1

What does the EU give us? (that we couldnt get ourselves? or didn't have when we were just part of the EEC)

Er, lets have a quick look shall we?

Well, we ceased to become the EEC when we became the European Community after Maastricht and now, following Lisbon, the European Union.

It created the concept of European Citizenship which supplemented but did not replace your own. Thats why you have 'EU Citizen' on your passport. It gave you the right to consular protection from the embassy or consulate abroad of any of the member states if your own diplomatic or consular representation was absent with the right to move freely, live and work in any of the 27 member states of the Union and to derive the same benefits there as any other resident. To have your professional and legal qualifications recognised in all of those countries. To be able to set up business there if you want to an earn money - just as a couple of million British Entrepreneurs are doing as we speak.

But what else that it give you that your own wretched, corrupt and inept politicians would not.

Well, the Soocial Chapter following Maastricht that the Major government opted out of and New Labour opted into which broke the stranglehold that employers lobby groups had over MPs, within which many MPs had and continnue to have a pecuniary interest, gave you the right not to be worked into the ground by your employer by compelling him to meet the working time directive. A glance through the seventeenth edition of Butterworth Emmployment Law Handbook at the directives issued by the Council and the Commmission under the authority of the treaty provisions fleshed out by the consultation, co-operation and co-decision procedures involving the Commission, the Council and the Parliament and now incorporated into our law by statutory instrument list over 50 employment directives ranging from the right not to be worked into the ground by your employer who is required under the working time directive to have regard to your health and safety, the right to be informed and consulted by your employer on any transfer of employment and to have your accrued rights protected and preserved by a new employer. The right to equal pay for work of equal value between men and women and the right not to be discriminated against on grounds of sex, age, religion, disability or sexual orientation, the right to maternity leave and to be safeguarded agaist financial loss caused by an insolvent employer, together with the right to maternity leave. The list goes on and it is easy to understand why those employers who remember the 'good old days' during the 1980s when you did not even have the right to a paid holiday should would dearly love to be able to discard enforceable EU law and return you to a time when the workforce was casualised, sackable with no notice and with little recompense and when the catchphrase 'lucky to have a job' was common currency!

Your MP or any MP did not decide one day that it would be a good idea to give the plebs employment rights, it was the EU that did that and many of them were actually written by our own trade unions in consultation with employers and submitted for consideration to the Commission and the Parliament.

Apart from that, the European Court of Justice developed the doctrine of Direcct Effect which allowed its European Citizens to compel its delinguent governments to properly implement its laws by taking them to court at the lowest tribunal and given them authority to disapply inconsistent domestic statutes. When our own government decided to introduce cuts to legal aid in civil cases and made it too expensive to actually access the courts or altered the law of evidence to create an inequality of arms within the courtl, or made your liable in costs if you lost your case, or made the awards for breach so derisory as not worth pursuing by court action (all of which has actually been introduced in the United Kingdom) in order to deter the vindication of your lawful rights, the EU set in place a system of reporting to the Commmission to allow it to take enforcement action against a delinguent state through the European Court of Justice. In other words, it gave you what your own shabby legislature did not.

I could go on and on by mentioning that large scale capital projects were financed not by our own Treasury, but by money from the European Union devolved down through the regions,motorways, bridges, and many of the buildings which sprang up in the 1980s and 1990s were paid for with EU money provided by the EU - which included part of our own contributions. Thoose who served in the squallor of Northern Ireland in the early 1970s and look at it now would do well to ponder who actually paid for the redevopment of the Province - our own taxpayer of was it actually the taxpayers of the European Union as a whole that tore down the slums and the ghettoes! Those who saw the building site bill-boards with the small EU flag in the bottom right-hand corner will know exactly where the money came from.

And while all this was going on, our own pathetic bunch of so-called 'representatives' in Parliament were claiming the political credit for it Claiming that it was their economic polities that were responsible for it while pocketing their generous salaries and expenses and laughing all the way to the Bank.

With each directive and regulation issue by the EU and transposed into our law, the transposing statutory instrument was presented as if it originated from the appropriate minister until the EU actually cottoned on to what was happening and made the government annotate each transposing regulation to make it clear that it was enabled in accordance with the European Commmunities Act 1972.

So in whose interest is it that we actually withdraw from Europe? Is it yours? Or is it in someone elses? There is much that some of our own idiots in Parliament would like to do that EU law prevents them from acomplishing and you can bet your pension it has nothing whatever to do with advancing your interests.

But why should I engage in a litany of 'What the Romans did for us' to the members of the Judiah Peoples front! who, in their Monty Python world of make-believe take for granted that which they seek no part of!

As I have already said, open your eyes, look around you and get an education!

Originally Posted by studentfuckwit

Thus, regardless of the background semantics, Parliament has ceded control of the UK statute book to the EU. This is certainly not what my elected representatives are there to do on my behalf!

Another one that either cannot or will not read the treaties as amended. When you have actually read what has or has not been ceded to the EU and you understand what terms such as 'subsidiarity', and areas of competence actually mean then you will be in a position to make an assertion supported with authority.

I suggest that you cannot because you simply cannot find the treaty, extract from it or even understand what it says so you will, instead, take the easy route and do your parrot impressions!

I suggest that like a literary critic, you engage in an evaluation of that which you have not read and probably would not understand if you did!

Originally Posted by Iolis

It created the concept of European Citizenship which supplemented but did not replace your own. Thats why you have 'EU Citizen' on your passport. It gave you the right to consular protection from the embassy or consulate abroad of any of the member states if your own diplomatic or consular representation was absent with the right to move freely, live and work in any of the 27 member states of the Union and to derive the same benefits there as any other resident. To have your professional and legal qualifications recognised in all of those countries. To be able to set up business there if you want to an earn money - just as a couple of million British Entrepreneurs are doing as we speak.

Just how many people are going to visit countries that do not have a British embassy or consulate and need help while they are there? How come being part of the EEA (like Norway) gives you almost the same right to live and work in the EU? No American qualifiacations are recognize in the EU then seeing as they are not part of the EU?

Originally Posted by Iolis

Well, the Social Chapter following Maastricht that the Major government opted out of and New Labour opted into which broke the stranglehold that employers lobby groups had over MPs, within which many MPs had and continnue to have a pecuniary interest, gave you the right not to be worked into the ground by your employer by compelling him to meet the working time directive. A glance through the seventeenth edition of Butterworth Emmployment Law Handbook at the directives issued by the Council and the Commmission under the authority of the treaty provisions fleshed out by the consultation, co-operation and co-decision procedures involving the Commission, the Council and the Parliament and now incorporated into our law by statutory instrument list over 50 employment directives ranging from the right not to be worked into the ground by your employer who is required under the working time directive to have regard to your health and safety, the right to be informed and consulted by your employer on any transfer of employment and to have your accrued rights protected and preserved by a new employer. The right to equal pay for work of equal value between men and women and the right not to be discriminated against on grounds of sex, age, religion, disability or sexual orientation, the right to maternity leave and to be safeguarded agaist financial loss caused by an insolvent employer, together with the right to maternity leave. The list goes on and it is easy to understand why those employers who remember the 'good old days' during the 1980s when you did not even have the right to a paid holiday should would dearly love to be able to discard enforceable EU law and return you to a time when the workforce was casualised, sackable with no notice and with little recompense and when the catchphrase 'lucky to have a job' was common currency!.

Your MP or any MP did not decide one day that it would be a good idea to give the plebs employment rights, it was the EU that did that and many of them were actually written by our own trade unions in consultation with employers and submitted for consideration to the Commission and the Parliament.!.

So it's given us some laws that may or may not be useful, because we couldn't have asked for that ourselves, God bless the EU for doing something that we probably would have done oursevles.
Just to note having maternity leave might sound like the EU are being noble, but then the money isnt coming out of their pocket, I'm sure businesses/taxpayers have plenty of money to spare when maternity leave goes up to 12 months.

Originally Posted by Iolis

Apart from that, the European Court of Justice developed the doctrine of Direcct Effect which allowed its European Citizens to compel its delinguent governments to properly implement its laws by taking them to court at the lowest tribunal and given them authority to disapply inconsistent domestic statutes. When our own government decided to introduce cuts to legal aid in civil cases and made it too expensive to actually access the courts or altered the law of evidence to create an inequality of arms within the courtl, or made your liable in costs if you lost your case, or made the awards for breach so derisory as not worth pursuing by court action (all of which has actually been introduced in the United Kingdom) in order to deter the vindication of your lawful rights, the EU set in place a system of reporting to the Commmission to allow it to take enforcement action against a delinguent state through the European Court of Justice. In other words, it gave you what your own shabby legislature did not.!

Do I get a choice over who is in the European Court of Justice, Do I have a choice who is in the British parliment? Again when the ECJ make a ruling that people are happy, its great not so great though if they make a ruling you don't agree with.

Originally Posted by Iolis

I could go on and on by mentioning that large scale capital projects were financed not by our own Treasury, but by money from the European Union devolved down through the regions,motorways, bridges, and many of the buildings which sprang up in the 1980s and 1990s were paid for with EU money provided by the EU - which included part of our own contributions. Thoose who served in the squallor of Northern Ireland in the early 1970s and look at it now would do well to ponder who actually paid for the redevopment of the Province - our own taxpayer of was it actually the taxpayers of the European Union as a whole that tore down the slums and the ghettoes! Those who saw the building site bill-boards with the small EU flag in the bottom right-hand corner will know exactly where the money came from.!

And while all this was going on, our own pathetic bunch of so-called 'representatives' in Parliament were claiming the political credit for it Claiming that it was their economic polities that were responsible for it while pocketing their generous salaries and expenses and laughing all the way to the Bank.

EU money eh? Do they print their own or something? Where does the money orignally come from? That is the worst argument about the EU, that it gives money to us. It bloody takes money from us and gives us some back. Thats hardly an achievment is it? Quietly "tax" us they announce loudly that you are giving us some back.
As for pocketing salaries and expenses, I take it the EU hierarchy work for free?

Originally Posted by Iolis

So in whose interest is it that we actually withdraw from Europe? Is it yours? Or is it in someone elses? There is much that some of our own idiots in Parliament would like to do that EU law prevents them from acomplishing and you can bet your pension it has nothing whatever to do with advancing your interests.

I'd say its in my interest, I never ask to be part of it, I don't want to be part of it. If I don't like the British goverment I'll vote against them, I don't get much say what happens in Europe, most of what it offers us we can do by oursevles.

Originally Posted by Iolis

But why should I engage in a litany of 'What the Romans did for us' to the members of the Judiah Peoples front! who, in their Monty Python world of make-believe take for granted that which they seek no part of!
As I have already said, open your eyes, look around you and get an education!

You mean be part of something that imposes diplomatic sanctions when people vote the wrong way, like in Austria in 2000 or more recently having a second referendum on the Lisbon treaty because they didn't like the answer they got the first time?

Angela Merkel - might be German and a bit odd looking but I'd buy her a drink.



Tony Blair warned Gordon Brown a week ago that his campaign to become the first president of the European Council was doomed after a decisive intervention by the German chancellor Angela Merkel, according to senior Whitehall sources.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2...n-brown-eu-row

[quote="stacker1"]

Originally Posted by Iolis

It created the concept of European Citizenship which supplemented but did not replace your own. Thats why you have 'EU Citizen' on your passport. It gave you the right to consular protection from the embassy or consulate abroad of any of the member states if your own diplomatic or consular representation was absent with the right to move freely, live and work in any of the 27 member states of the Union and to derive the same benefits there as any other resident. To have your professional and legal qualifications recognised in all of those countries. To be able to set up business there if you want to an earn money - just as a couple of million British Entrepreneurs are doing as we speak.

Originally Posted by Staker1

Just how many people are going to visit countries that do not have a British embassy or consulate and need help while they are there? How come being part of the EEA (like Norway) gives you almost the same right to live and work in the EU? No American qualifiacations are recognize in the EU then seeing as they are not part of the EU?

A complete non-sequitar. Last time I looked, the USA was not a member state of the EU. You may not visit a state without a British embassy or consultate but you may one day visit one that has either been closed down or burnt down. You are not free to live and work in Norway without the permission off the Norwegian Government.

Originally Posted by Iolis

Well, the Social Chapter following Maastricht that the Major government opted out of and New Labour opted into which broke the stranglehold that employers lobby groups had over MPs, within which many MPs had and continnue to have a pecuniary interest, gave you the right not to be worked into the ground by your employer by compelling him to meet the working time directive. A glance through the seventeenth edition of Butterworth Emmployment Law Handbook at the directives issued by the Council and the Commmission under the authority of the treaty provisions fleshed out by the consultation, co-operation and co-decision procedures involving the Commission, the Council and the Parliament and now incorporated into our law by statutory instrument list over 50 employment directives ranging from the right not to be worked into the ground by your employer who is required under the working time directive to have regard to your health and safety, the right to be informed and consulted by your employer on any transfer of employment and to have your accrued rights protected and preserved by a new employer. The right to equal pay for work of equal value between men and women and the right not to be discriminated against on grounds of sex, age, religion, disability or sexual orientation, the right to maternity leave and to be safeguarded agaist financial loss caused by an insolvent employer, together with the right to maternity leave. The list goes on and it is easy to understand why those employers who remember the 'good old days' during the 1980s when you did not even have the right to a paid holiday should would dearly love to be able to discard enforceable EU law and return you to a time when the workforce was casualised, sackable with no notice and with little recompense and when the catchphrase 'lucky to have a job' was common currency!.

Your MP or any MP did not decide one day that it would be a good idea to give the plebs employment rights, it was the EU that did that and many of them were actually written by our own trade unions in consultation with employers and submitted for consideration to the Commission and the Parliament.!.

Originally Posted by Stacker 1

So it's given us some laws that may or may not be useful, because we couldn't have asked for that ourselves, God bless the EU for doing something that we probably would have done oursevles.
Just to note having maternity leave might sound like the EU are being noble, but then the money isnt coming out of their pocket, I'm sure businesses/taxpayers have plenty of money to spare when maternity leave goes up to 12 months.

You appear to have difficulty in assimilating information, so I will repeat it. These laws were part of the social chapter at Maastricht. They were opted out of by the Tories and denied to the public who at the time had few, if any employment rights. They were opted into by Labour. In other words, their grant or withdrawal is determined by the whim of who is in Parliament at the time. Cameron stated two weeks ago that he wishes to 'repatriate' these powers. You have disengeniously sought to suggest we may have got them 'if we asked for them'. We now have them and they will remain valid and enforceable and not dependent upon the whim of who happens to hold a whipped majority in the Commons.

Originally Posted by Iolis

Apart from that, the European Court of Justice developed the doctrine of Direcct Effect which allowed its European Citizens to compel its delinguent governments to properly implement its laws by taking them to court at the lowest tribunal and given them authority to disapply inconsistent domestic statutes. When our own government decided to introduce cuts to legal aid in civil cases and made it too expensive to actually access the courts or altered the law of evidence to create an inequality of arms within the courtl, or made your liable in costs if you lost your case, or made the awards for breach so derisory as not worth pursuing by court action (all of which has actually been introduced in the United Kingdom) in order to deter the vindication of your lawful rights, the EU set in place a system of reporting to the Commmission to allow it to take enforcement action against a delinguent state through the European Court of Justice. In other words, it gave you what your own shabby legislature did not.!

Originally Posted by Stacker 1

Do I get a choice over who is in the European Court of Justice, Do I have a choice who is in the British parliment? Again when the ECJ make a ruling that people are happy, its great not so great though if they make a ruling you don't agree with.

You have attempted unsuccessfully to articulate a distinction without a difference! You do not elect judges - they are appointed by those who are elected both in the UK by those you elect and in the EU by those you elect. It is a fundamental principle of justice that a court whether in the UK or the EU will arrive at judgements that some are happy with and others are not.

Originally Posted by Iolis

I could go on and on by mentioning that large scale capital projects were financed not by our own Treasury, but by money from the European Union devolved down through the regions,motorways, bridges, and many of the buildings which sprang up in the 1980s and 1990s were paid for with EU money provided by the EU - which included part of our own contributions. Thoose who served in the squallor of Northern Ireland in the early 1970s and look at it now would do well to ponder who actually paid for the redevopment of the Province - our own taxpayer of was it actually the taxpayers of the European Union as a whole that tore down the slums and the ghettoes! Those who saw the building site bill-boards with the small EU flag in the bottom right-hand corner will know exactly where the money came from.

And while all this was going on, our own pathetic bunch of so-called 'representatives' in Parliament were claiming the political credit for it Claiming that it was their economic polities that were responsible for it while pocketing their generous salaries and expenses and laughing all the way to the Bank.

Originally Posted by Stacker 1

EU money eh? Do they print their own or something? Where does the money orignally come from? That is the worst argument about the EU, that it gives money to us. It bloody takes money from us and gives us some back. Thats hardly an achievment is it? Quietly "tax" us they announce loudly that you are giving us some back.
As for pocketing salaries and expenses, I take it the EU hierarchy work for free?

A government in the United Kingdom does not have money of its own. The EU Commmission does not have money of its own. The UK takes its contributions from each taxpayer. pools it and then allocates it. The EU takes contributions from each of the member states, pools it and the Commission then distributes it under the authority of the democratically elected Parliament who has to approve the budget. Again, you fail spectacularly to advance any sort of cogent argument.

Originally Posted by Iolis

So in whose interest is it that we actually withdraw from Europe? Is it yours? Or is it in someone elses? There is much that some of our own idiots in Parliament would like to do that EU law prevents them from acomplishing and you can bet your pension it has nothing whatever to do with advancing your interests.

Originally Posted by Stacker 1

I'd say its in my interest, I never ask to be part of it, I don't want to be part of it. If I don't like the British goverment I'll vote against them, I don't get much say what happens in Europe, most of what it offers us we can do by oursevles.

There we go again. "I never asked for it and I don't want it". Well you were outvoted in 1975. Your elected Parliamentary representatives have exercised prerogative powers to make treaties on behalf of the country and far from not having a say, read the earlier posts and you will see how our own Parliament is involved in the legislative activity of the EU and if you have a look at the Green and White papers that the Commission publishes with legislative proposals, you can write to your MP in the UK Parliament with your imput. You can also lobby your MEP, so do not tell me that you do not have any say at all. You do, it is just that you have never been told where to look or how to go about exercising your right to have your say

Originally Posted by Iolis

But why should I engage in a litany of 'What the Romans did for us' to the members of the Judiah Peoples front! who, in their Monty Python world of make-believe take for granted that which they seek no part of!
As I have already said, open your eyes, look around you and get an education!

Originally Posted by Stacker 1

You mean be part of something that imposes diplomatic sanctions when people vote the wrong way, like in Austria in 2000 or more recently having a second referendum on the Lisbon treaty because they didn't like the answer they got the first time?

Diplomatic sanctions are not the same as economic sanctions and if the Austrians want to elect a Holocast denying Nazi then the EU does not have to talk to him. As for Ireland, we keep hearing how they were 'bullied'. Nothing could be further from the truth. Just as the Czech republic used its veto to extract concessions from the Lisbon Treaty to prevent the Sudeten Germans exercising their right to recover property they were expelled from at the end of the war as the price of ratification, so too did the Irish who objected to the reduction in the numerical strength of the Commission which would have meant the loss of their EU Commissioner. They also wanted guaratees that their military neutrality would be respected, and other concessions which they got from the Treaty as the price to be paid for ratification.

In conclusion, your arguments are neither pursuasive nor compelling.

Originally Posted by Schaden

Angela Merkel - might be German and a bit odd looking but I'd buy her a drink.



Tony Blair warned Gordon Brown a week ago that his campaign to become the first president of the European Council was doomed after a decisive intervention by the German chancellor Angela Merkel, according to senior Whitehall sources.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2...n-brown-eu-row

The report is accurate but the timing is out. Angela Merkel hates Blair's guts and campaigned openly nearly 18 months ago by writing to each of the heads of state lobbying against his selection. Some may recall an internet signature campaign over a year ago against his selection.

I can understand her objection. His post would have been to represent the EU yet, he is from a country that does not enjoy a happy relationship with it, that has refused to join the Euro, does not belong to the Shengen area, has opted out of the charter of fundamental rights and has continually used its veto in the Council of Ministers.

As Henry Kissenger once said: "Who do I telephone when I want to speak to Europe?"

Now he has his answer!

Iolis, it has been with some enjoyment that I have followed your exposition on the benefits of Europe to the assembled sceptical members of Arrse.

Would it not be an idea to suggest a proposition by Arrse (or a group of its members) in order to prove the worth(lessness) of the European System t0 those who are sceptical.

For example:- James Shortt ,he of waltyness?

A European directive (law) that prohibits an individual from using false claims of military service in order to procure pecuniary advantage?

Or would our walt hunter friends have better luck luck persuing a Stolen Valour Bill/Act through Europe rather than Westminster?

Originally Posted by rampant

Iolis, it has been with some enjoyment that I have followed your exposition on the benefits of Europe to the assembled sceptical members of Arrse.

Would it not be an idea to suggest a proposition by Arrse (or a group of its members) in order to prove the worth(lessness) of the European System t0 those who are sceptical.

For example:- James Shortt ,he of waltyness?

A European directive (law) that prohibits an individual from using false claims of military service in order to procure pecuniary advantage?

Or would our walt hunter friends have better luck luck persuing a Stolen Valour Bill/Act through Europe rather than Westminster?

Thank you for your comment :o

In my personal opinion, it might succeed as a legislative proposal if the impeached activity complained of was a problem which needed to be addressed throughout the 27 states of the Union as a whole.

If, for example, in additon to the British, the Italians had a problem with their Walts wearing an unusually high number of bravery awards or the German Walts claiming to be the holders of an unusually copious awards for efficiency at Dachau or Bergen Belsen! You can see the problem here given the distinct lack of European participation in post-war military activity of any particular note :D

It is usual for Regulations, Directives and Decisions issued by the Commission or the Council to be issued only when harmonisation in any specific area of competence is necessary throughout the Union as a whole.

The proposal you advance although a perfectly valid one within the United Kingdom may be found objectionable on the grounds that it offends against the principle of subsidiarity. This principle holds that a member state must be free to legislate for itself because the EU is only empowered to intervene only to the minimum necessary to advance a provision in the treaty. If it were otherwise, it would create genuine hostility among the populations of the member states giving them real and substantive grounds to complain of unnessary and unwanted inteference from Europe.

Interestingly enough, the Lisbon Treaty provides that the Commission is empowered to consider legislative proposals if advanced by at least one million citizens in a 'significant number of member states' and if this is an idea that is worth pursuing to that level and to that extent then the Commission would be bound to consider it.

Regards

Cheers, I will copy this across to them:

Keep up the good work:

Rampant (Commissar of Cant)

Originally Posted by Iolis

Originally Posted by Schaden

Angela Merkel - might be German and a bit odd looking but I'd buy her a drink.



Tony Blair warned Gordon Brown a week ago that his campaign to become the first president of the European Council was doomed after a decisive intervention by the German chancellor Angela Merkel, according to senior Whitehall sources.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2...n-brown-eu-row

The report is accurate but the timing is out. Angela Merkel hates Blair's guts and campaigned openly nearly 18 months ago by writing to each of the heads of state lobbying against his selection. Some may recall an internet signature campaign over a year ago against his selection.

I can understand her objection. His post would have been to represent the EU yet, he is from a country that does not enjoy a happy relationship with it, that has refused to join the Euro, does not belong to the Shengen area, has opted out of the charter of fundamental rights and has continually used its veto in the Council of Ministers.

As Henry Kissenger once said: "Who do I telephone when I want to speak to Europe?"

Now he has his answer!

Angela Merkel?

For those among you who complain that you are neither informed, consulted nor have any influence over the shaping of EU Law, then perhaps I might draw your attention to the Regular Green Papers published by the Commission inviting you to participate.

Most ten-year olds in the other states in the Union learn about this process in their schools. Unfortunately the 'Sun' and the 'Mail' and your own government think it is rather a step to far as far as you are concerned and besides, it does not sell newspapers does it!

You might, for example like to take part in the public consultation regarding the protection of personal data which closes at the end of December which is a concern at the moment across the Union, albeit not to anyone in our own 'Duckhouse' Parliament whose members are too busy agonising over whether they should have included anything in the Queen's speech regarding their expenses.

Originally Posted by Iolis

Originally Posted by studentfuckwit

Thus, regardless of the background semantics, Parliament has ceded control of the UK statute book to the EU. This is certainly not what my elected representatives are there to do on my behalf!

Another one that either cannot or will not read the treaties as amended. When you have actually read what has or has not been ceded to the EU and you understand what terms such as 'subsidiarity', and areas of competence actually mean then you will be in a position to make an assertion supported with authority.

I suggest that you cannot because you simply cannot find the treaty, extract from it or even understand what it says so you will, instead, take the easy route and do your parrot impressions!

I suggest that like a literary critic, you engage in an evaluation of that which you have not read and probably would not understand if you did!

Thankyou for ignoring everything else in my post. I assume that everything else I have said about this gross grab for continental power is true, except for this one small point that you choose to pick apart.
It's a shame that you feel the need to resort to ad hominem argument - I used to follow your posts with interest, as they were some of the few on ARRSE that didn't resort to mudslinging to make a point. How times change when vested interests come to the fore.

As you are so insistent that anti-EU parties read the treaties themselves, I tried to. Because they are written in dense legalese that I have neither time nor inclination to interpret (setting aside the simple problem that I, like the majority of ordinary Britons, do not have any legal training or access to relevant materials with which to understand many of the terms within them), this is a problem ... so I shall resort to using the EU's own "treaty made easy" website to base my assumptions and opinions on.

Originally Posted by EU Lisbon Treaty site

The members of the European Parliament are elected by direct universal suffrage every five years to represent the citizens of the member countries. Parliament's powers have been gradually extended with every new treaty. The Treaty of Lisbon is no exception, giving more powers in relation to lawmaking, budget and international agreements.

So the EU "Parliament"'s own powers are extended by the Lisbon Constitution. Nowhere does the website mention how I can vote for the EU President. Nor can I find any mention of how the EU President may be removed from office at any stage of his two-year term; ergo that office is not democratically accountable.
(of course, if you can point me to the relevant part of the various treaties that form the EU Constitution which state how ordinary citizens can remove the President at any stage, I shall gladly eat my words)

Originally Posted by EU treaty site again

Lawmaking: the 'co-decision procedure' (renamed 'ordinary legislative procedure') has been extended to several new fields ... These areas include legal immigration, penal judicial cooperation (Eurojust, crime prevention, alignment of prison standards, offences and penalties), police cooperation (Europol) and some aspects of trade policy and agriculture. From now on, then, Parliament will have a role to play in almost all lawmaking.

I didn't ask for the EU to extend any of its powers over me, particularly legislative ones, nor do I want this.
Ref my bold; exactly why should our adversarial common-law legal system's legislation and penalties be harmonised with the Continental napoleonic/inquisitorial system? The two are as chalk and cheese.

Similarly, the European arrest warrant, which allows for an individual to be arrested and extradited for an offence committed anywhere in Europe as shown here by the EU's own website:

European arrest warrants issued in respect of crimes or alleged crimes on this list have to be executed by the arresting state irrespective of whether or not the definition of the offence is the same, providing that the offence is serious enough

In other words, you can be arrested and extradited on the say-so of bureaucrats in another country whose burden of proof may well be significantly less than that demanded by the British legal system. Indeed, the Europeans say that this must be done "as quickly and as easily as possible" - and the warrant agreement is specifically drafted to circumvent the normal procedures for extradition. This is not democracy, this is authoritarianism.

This sort of practice by the EU frightens me; where are the checks and balances that prevent abuses of power, as in the case of Hans-Martin Tillack, who was hounded for daring to investigate the EU's hopelessly corrupt financial bodies?


As it's late, and I want some zeds before daylight, I'll continue this post tomorrow. I will say, however, that the page on the EAW is frankly chilling in its use of language.