Thread: EU Positions Announced

Originally Posted by jagman

Originally Posted by Iolis

Originally Posted by re-stilly

Originally Posted by Iolis

We are MEANT to be a major player but we seem to have very little say in anything that goes on.

.

We have the same votes in the Council as Does France and Germany representing our national interests who decide, for the most part by qualified majority vote. We have delgates within the Commission representing the interests of the Community as a whole. Lastly, we have directly elected members of the European Parliament.

A complete list of them here allows you their biographical details, the parties to which they are alligned in the Parliament, together with a record of their work there.

Great we have elected members of the European Parliment. So did they vote for the current new President and Foreign Minister, was that put to a "vote" of the respective member states populous.

No it was elected behind closed doors with nobody knowing who all the candidates were.

Again, I come back to the point of whether you believe that Ministers are to be subject to appointmnt by universal adult suffrage.

Iff you look at my previous posts and on other threads I have actually gone to some trouble to explain the role and function of this office and why there is no election by universal adult suffrage.

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.

Who is my MEP? There is a whole list of them covering a 'Region' from the Isle of Wight to Oxford, appointed by their party leaders to a 1st class seat on the Euro gravy train. Democratic accountability NIL.

Originally Posted by seaweed

Who is my MEP? There is a whole list of them covering a 'Region' from the Isle of Wight to Oxford, appointed by their party leaders to a 1st class seat on the Euro gravy train. Democratic accountability NIL.

You do not know who your MEP is. You do no know which regions of the United Kingdom are served by its MEPs yet you contend that they lack democratic accountability?

Seek and you shall find:

United Kingdom Office of the European Parliament

Political Parties in the United Kingdom will nominate their candidates to stand for election based on the false premise that there is such a thing as political parties in the European Parliament.

There are not!

They sit and vote in 'groups' in which there is a distinct absence of party politics. They form alliances and they horse trade unlike anything which occurs in our own Parliament.

Party leaders in the UK will attempt to control which of these groups their own UK candidate will align himself to. Thus, David Cameron instructed his Conservative MEPs to break with their traditional allegience because he regarded them as 'too Federalist' for his liking and to align themselves instead with a far-Right Neo-Nazi group in the Parliament!

Of course, other independent candidates stand in the European Elections and it is up to people like you elect them.

It may do no more than release some frustration but what else can we do:


http://www.ukip.org/content/latest-n...endum-petition

Whether the UK is in the EU, or out of the EU, is one thing . . . .

Whether MEPs have any legitimate influence or not . . . .

Whether the EU “deepens� as a federalist “Super State�, or reverts to a mere trade association . . .

At last, there is now someone who is prepared to actually define a limit to the borders of what actually is “Europe� . . . . i.e. the Bosporus !!

Originally Posted by BBC NEWS CHANNEL (Friday 20 November 2009)

Profile: First EU President Herman van Rompuy

. . . has been outspoken in the past in opposition to Turkey joining the EU. He warned it could dilute Europe's Christian heritage.

"Turkey is not a part of Europe and will never be part of Europe," he said as an opposition politician five years ago.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8358504.stm

Originally Posted by Telegraph.co.uk (Friday 20 November 2009)

EU president Herman Van Rompuy opposes Turkey joining.

. . . a hard-line opponent of Turkey's bid to join the European Union because it is an Islamic country . . . Herman Van Rompuy, Belgium's Prime Minister, has in the past spoken out against Turkish EU membership . . .

Speaking five years ago . . . Mr Rompuy . . . argued that Muslim Turkey could not be considered a candidate for EU membership.

"Turkey is not a part of Europe and will never be part of Europe. An expansion of the EU to include Turkey cannot be considered as just another expansion as in the past," he said.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...y-joining.html

Thats what happens when you treat the electorate with contempt. They come back and bite you!

It is curious that UKIP have taken the issue of a referendum over the Treaty of Lisbon and peverted it to something more akin to their own agenda - a referendum on the withdrawal from the EU. Which just goes to show that lying manipulative politicians are not exclusively confined to Parliament any more

It is very easy to be 'anti' in anything. It takes very little intellectual effort to chant your slogans, parrot your friends, close down your reasoning ability and invoke fear of an imaginary loss of something actually gained. Far more difficult and challenging to offer hope for anything, or encouragement, or to actually engage in something constructive that you can shape and influence. Our low grade sub-standard politicians are rather better at achieving the former than they are of acomplishing the latter!

Karl Marx espoused a rising up of the masses in a revolution to overthrow the Bogeoise but was rather less certain in what was to replace it. UKIP appear to suffer rather the same idelogically flawed architechture in their grand plan.

If governments can ignore a million marching people who do not want their country to go to war, it can ignore a million or so signatures on a petition calling for something rather more devastating in its effect.

It simply sends a message to our neighbours just how much a spiteful and hateful people we are and makes dialogue with them rather more tedious than it otherwise might be.

I wont be signing their petition, but I will take them on in argument!

From UKIP’s Website

“The Post Office spent ¬£1 billion on setting up payments for pensions and other benefits which provide sub-postmasters with 12% of their income. Under EU law, this service must now be put out to tender, and the likelihood of losing the contract will mean the closure of another 3,000 branches in 2010.�

Note the superficiality and lack of specificity in relation to the law which UKIP seeks to impeach which usually speaks volumes

Statement in response by the European Commission.

In fact, the Commission in the United Kingdom has that many Euromyths, it has indexed them!

It gets worse. Here we have a juvenile 'rant' which UKIP would argue is as a reasoned submission by a UKIP MEP in the European Parliament, acompanied by further scare stories which purport to be an accurate representation of fact.

Little wonder the presiding speaker sighs and removes his translating earpiece! He is well used to the standard of debate from those who represent the United Kingdom in the Parliament.

An most interesting view, from Belgium, od our new Dear Leader, Mr Rompuy:
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/4181

It gives a bit of background to Belgium as it is now, and particularly how Mr R has come to be placed in such a position of power. I recommend it to you all.

Extract:
"To understand Herman, one must know something about Belgium, a tiny country in Western Europe, and the prototype of the EU. Belgians do not exist as a nation. Belgium is an artificial state, constructed by the international powers in 1830 as a political compromise and experiment. The country consists of 6 million Dutch, living in Flanders, the northern half of the country, and 4 million French, living in Wallonia, the southern half. The Belgian Dutch, called Flemings, would have preferred to stay part of the Netherlands, as they were until 1830, while the Belgian French, called Walloons, would have preferred to join France. Instead, they were forced to live together in one state.

Belgians do not like their state. They despise it. They say it represents nothing. There are no Belgian patriots, because no-one is willing to die for a flag which does not represent anything. Because Belgium represents nothing, multicultural ideologues love Belgium. They say that without patriotism, there would be no wars and the world would be a better place. As John Lennon sang “Imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do, nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too.�

In 1957, Belgian politicians stood at the cradle of the European Union. Their aim was to turn the whole of Europe into a Greater Belgium, so that wars between the nations of Europe would no longer be possible as there would no longer be nations, the latter all having been incorporated into an artificial superstate.

A closer look at Belgium, the laboratory of Europe, shows, however, that the country lacks more than patriotism. It also lacks democracy, respect for the rule of law, and political morality. In 1985, in his book De Afwezige Meerderheid (The Absent Majority) the late Flemish philosopher Lode Claes (1913-1997) argued that without identity and a sense of genuine nationhood, there can also be no democracy and no morality."


And later, regarding the later career of Mr R:

"Herman became the Speaker of the Parliament. In this position he had to prevent Parliament, and the Flemish representatives there, from voting a bill to split BHV. He succeeded in this, by using all kinds of tricks. One day he even had the locks of the plenary meeting room changed so that Parliament could not convene to vote on the issue. On another occasion, he did not show up in his office for a whole week to avoid opening a letter demanding him to table the matter. His tactics worked. In December 2008, when the Belgian Prime Minister had to resign in the wake of a financial scandal, Herman became the new leader of the predominantly French-speaking government which does not represent the majority of Belgium’s ethnic majority group. During the past 11 months, he has skillfully managed to postpone any parliamentary vote on the BHV matter, thereby prolonging a situation which the Supreme Court, responding to Herman's own complaint in 2003, has ruled to be unconstitutional.

Now, Herman has moved on to lead Europe. Like Belgium, the European Union is an undemocratic institution, which needs shrewd leaders who are capable of renouncing everything they once believed in and who know how to impose decisions on the people against the will of the people. Never mind democracy, morality or the rule of law, our betters know what is good for us more than we do. And Herman is now one of our betters. He has come a long way since the days when he was disgusted with Belgian-style politics.

Herman is like Saruman, the wise wizard in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, who went over to the other side. He used to care about the things we cared about. But no longer. He has built himself a high tower from where he rules over all of us."

Thank you Snowy,

An interesting article from the 'objective' and 'unbiased' reporting of the Brussels Journal.

Originally Posted by Iolis

Thank you Snowy,

An interesting article from the 'objective' and 'unbiased' reporting of the Brussels Journal.

Great use of rhetoric there, Mr I - please note that I never said it was 'unbiased', so accusing me of doing so is a tad disengenuous. After all, it does say, on the top of the page: "The voice of Conservatism in Europe" which seems pretty plain to me. Conservatism is not confined to the UK, after all.

As for 'objective' - this is politics, and there is not a lot of objectivity about - especially not as regards Europe. Everyone who tries to say anything anti-EU is instantly labelled as a fascist or little-Englander, just as anyone who raises any questions whatsoever about immigration is instantly tarred as a racist. It's hard to have a decent debate with that as a baseline - but of course debate is what a lot of people are desperate to avoid.

Originally Posted by OldSnowy

It's hard to have a decent debate with that as a baseline.

Impossible, unfortunately. When the EU itself has to update it's website constantly to keep up with all the lies told by the right wing UK press, you know that objectivity is out of the window.

I'm unsure if that's more depressing than the amount of morons who believe all of the lies. So while a proper debate would be great, the prejudiced opinions ingrained through non stop anti EU propaganda sourced (mainly) from an Australian newspaper baron makes it extremely unlikely.

Lies of the right-wing press. Presumably, as opposed to the lies and dissimulation put out by the left-wing press and other media, most often bankrolled by the EU themselves, all in the name of 'getting their message across?' The FT, for example, is a fervent EU supporter - possibly because it sells more copies in Europe than in the UK!

Odd how in the UK this instantly becomes a Left v right argument? 'Progressives' v 'Reactionaries?

Originally Posted by OldSnowy

Presumably, as opposed to the lies and dissimulation put out by the left-wing press and other media, most often bankrolled by the EU themselves, all in the name of 'getting their message across?'

Aye, very true. Thus no chance at all of an unbiased debate.

Originally Posted by OldSnowy

Lies of the right-wing press. Presumably, as opposed to the lies and dissimulation put out by the left-wing press and other media, most often bankrolled by the EU themselves, all in the name of 'getting their message across?' The FT, for example, is a fervent EU supporter - possibly because it sells more copies in Europe than in the UK!

Odd how in the UK this instantly becomes a Left v right argument? 'Progressives' v 'Reactionaries?

It illustrates that it is virtually impossible to read anything objective that does not conflate the distinction between news and views. It is the latter which is dressed up and presented as fact. It is an explanation why opinion is divided to the point where it is almost impossible to reconcile the two ends of the spectrum.

Nespapers exist to manipulate public opinion one way of the other and it is always someone else who stands to benefit from manipulating yours.

Originally Posted by fantassin

We prefer to send Kosovar and afghan refugees to Dover, you seem to take very good care of them !

At least they are better than the French