I am an unrepentant enthusiast for the European Union, indeed a European Federalist. I think the freedoms of movement of people and goods within the EU are the most profound political achievement of my lifetime, and have made the world a very much better place.
I am therefore flabbergasted by the group of unpleasant elitist bastards who apparently will lead the pro-EU campaign for the referendum. How could anybody wishing to win a vote believe that a Board including Peter Mandelson and Danny Alexander is going to help? While the appointment of Lord Rose seems to confirm belief in the “Michelle Mone theory”, that selling knickers grants universal expertise.
Most egregious of all, the Executive Director is Will Straw, whose main qualification is that his father is a war criminal. Founder of the rabid anti-Corbyn website Left Foot Forward and every bit as Atlanticist as Liam Fox, Will Straw is as insanely pro-United States hegemony and as ultra-Zionist as only an extreme Blairite can be. He really is a deeply unappealing figure.
I have no doubt they will be flooded with corporate money. But what I want to know is this. If this referendum is supposed to be a democratic exercise, where every citizen is equal, what grants this self-serving sample of the metropolitan elite the right to nominate themselves as the In campaign? I don’t see how any decent person can have anything to do with them. Having had a lot of respect for Caroline Lucas, I must say if she really is going to work alongside Will Straw then my respect for her is going to plummet.
It’s a no-win situation. Either we get global corporatism with an assured market nearby (though promoting US interests there) or we get global corporatism as the 51st State of the US. Or China. It’s hard to feel strongly one way or the other. As Nevermind mentioned, feeling strongly about it for two years is just going to be impossible.
I think it was a mistake to have a referendum at all. Cameron should have left the issue in doubt in order to leverage what concessions he could from Germany, and at the end of the negotiation process held a snap referendum. To predetermine the issue is just stupid.
The presence of Mandelson in any context other than hanging from a hook in an abattoir is obscene – still, there is no shortage of shits on the other side, and that’s what political balance is all about.
On balance, I’d want out, if any realistic plans appeared to exist for a state run for the benefit of its citizens* rather than global bankers, but they don’t, so no further comment.
*the ones already here, speaking the local language and not sending their wages home to Poland, for choice.
PS While my position as a British nationalist* of sorts is wildly at odds with the concept of a homogenised Europe, unlike Craig’s Scottish nationalism-within-Europe, I am all for an effective European military alliance to replace NATO. So far, despite all the alleged benefits of economic union, this concept is still dead in the water. Indeed, a coherent military organisation might be more effective (given the way the world actually works) in promoting the economies of the participating countries than a vast, expensive and invariably restrictive supranational trade bureaucracy.
…discuss…
*did I say a bad word there? Amazing how Scottish nationalism invokes doughty fowk defendin’ their we bit heather fae the Sassenach foe, while British/English nationalism only says BNP, innit?
“PS While my position as a British nationalist* of sorts is wildly at odds with the concept of a homogenised Europe, unlike Craig’s Scottish nationalism-within-Europe, I am all for an effective European military alliance to replace NATO.”
Well said Ba’al, NATO is obsolete and Europe needs to wake up to the fact that one day they will either bee in bonds to the US for their military affairs, just as our ‘lease’ Trident museums piece’ or we will have mustered our own forces into a peace and defense force. Europe should/could become the balance to the two principled players, dare I leave China out of the picture with is wildly Eurocentric. China is on a curve to massive environmental destruction due to becoming the production center for the worlds consumer goods, their gizmotronics.
As yet we do not even know whether NI, Scotland Wales and England will all have to show majorities in a vote for an executive decision to happen, as yet we do not know whether this will be via a fair proportional vote or FPTP.
Correction to data on UK contribution to the EU budget (9.38pm):
GDP-based contribution – 14,524
VAT-based contribution – 2,932
Total UK assessment – 17,456
Minus UK rebate – 6,066
Minus general rebate – 41
Actual UK contribution – 11,349
All figures in million euros for 2014. (My sums didn’t add up at 9.38pm).
http://ec.europa.eu/budget/index_en.cfm
The total UK assessment represents 12% of total EU revenues in 2014, third behind Germany (18%) and France (14%). The actual UK contribution represents 8% of EU revenues, just behind Italy (10%).
BNP and SNP are poles apart. Exact opposite.
Westminste has illegally and secretly taken Scottish resources for years. Used the Official Secrets Act to cover their crimes. Most of them should be put in jail. They sanction and kill and main, vulnerable people the world over.
Ooh Ba’al, you’re a naughty lizard (but your reptilian paws have made me laugh this morning, so you are mostly forgiven). Regarding “nationalist”, the word is rather confusing, because people mean different things by it – context is everything.
Are there nationalists in Scotland who are part of the hard/fascist right? I expect so. Are there good British nationalists in the vein of Orwell’s socialist patriotism? Sure.
But… the practical shape of political nationalism in Scotland is – or has become – peaceful agitation towards independence via the ballot box, and in England it takes the shape of the BNP and the NF. UKIP originally had Left support before it attracted racists in large numbers, and even the founder of the EDL quit after seeing how far right his organisation drifted.
The solution is obvious: we need to grow lots more heather in England, since it clearly has a calming effect.
Macky’s comment at 10.24 last night reminds me that the Dutch Safety Board is due to report today. It will not however apportion any blame. That will be the job of a government-funded criminal investigation based on the Lockerbie model.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/611672/MH17-Ukraine-flight-Dutch-Safety-Board-Kuala-Lumpur-Amsterdam
Thanks for that, Jon. Someone understands me!
🙂
The EU isn’t what we signed up for.The changes have been made without the will of the people. The people do not have the power to change the leaders of this organisation.The organisation has been corrupt from the beginning and is becoming increasingly so.
It’s become a giant fire sale as nation after nation in the EU sell of the family silver.It’s become racist to complain about immigration.There are former villages on the outskirts of London doubling in size as gentrification in London continues unabated as well as the steady stream of immigrants from the wars we start and impoverished European nations lumbering an already overloaded NHS and education system with more people than were ever dreamed of or planned for.
Lets get rid of flags and borders and all live happily ever after. But who just bought up the country?Instead of a flag we’ll have a Logo, and it will be their security and not our police that read out the laws.TTIP is being muscled in through our unelected EU.Corporation’s will end up running things,and at some point we’ll turn around and ask,why did the army not protect us?
How come the banks take our money without our permissions?
So Britain should vote themselves out.You can’t change this f***ing monster. You need to kill it!
8.4Bn Euros go on this, this year*:
http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2006/october/tradoc_130376.pdf
Note the basic philosophy: protecting national trade = bad, globalisation = doubleplusgood. We’re selling Europe, not the UK’s specific needs and (ideally) capabilities. That is, the UK is still in competition with Germany when the orders come in, so what’s the point of not selling the UK by itself?
Note also that 77% of total EU GDP consists of services. That is, Europe is in exactly the same bind as the UK as regards actual production. Turning that behemoth round is going to take a lot longer than pulling the UK out and retooling for innovative manufacture.
*Source:
http://ec.europa.eu/budget/annual/index_en.cfm?year=2015
“Macky’s comment at 10.24 last night reminds me that the Dutch Safety Board is due to report today. It will not however apportion any blame. That will be the job of a government-funded criminal investigation based on the Lockerbie model.”
I think it became obvious what happened as soon as it could be proved that a Ukrainian BUK missile unit had defected to the rebel side in June.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2014/07/air-disaster/#comment-467752
I have no doubt that the Dutch report will say that MH17 was shot down with a BUK missile fired from rebel held territory because it is obvious that is what happened and has been all along.
Most Eurozone countries do not have UK debt or balance of payments deficit. The Eurozone has to keep a standard debt ratio. Many of the wealthiest countries in the world are in Europe. The more equal, fairest countries in the world are the most successful and the happiest.
Germany is in surplus and trades all over th Middle East. Construction project, cars etc. Even the Middle Eastern countries have to develop their economies. Germany/EU countries trade and give aid they do not illegally invade. After 11WW Germany/Japan were not allowed to re-arm but invested in their economy. They did not have the equivalent of a £40Billion Defence (attack) bill a year. The equivalent of £2400Billion.
But it is perfectly natural. The EU is an elitist project. No doubt, it would have been possible to form a democratic EU, but it was not the way it was. We have to live with the “real existing” EU, in the same way the east Europans were living with “real existing” socialism, which was perhaps not the one they had dreamt of.
And, to repeat, the real existing EU is elitist. I use to say it is a union of the governments against their employers, i.e. us, the electorate, which they use to impose laws that had been impossible to impose if they had faced their electorates alone.
The most glaring example is of course the so called austerity they have now imposed for some twenty years, to keep unemployment up and salaries down.
Germany is in surplus and trades all over th Middle East. Construction project, cars etc.
That’s Germany, not the EU.
Germany/EU countries trade and give aid they do not illegally invade.
Didn’t know we’d left already.
After 11WW Germany/Japan were not allowed to re-arm but invested in their economy. They did not have the equivalent of a £40Billion Defence (attack) bill a year. The equivalent of £2400Billion.
Wasn’t quite as simple as that, though, was it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan
Details of the roots of Europe’s remodelling along the US-preferred lines. Not that Europe had any sensible alternative.
And Japan? Japan’s manufacturing boom, based on innovation and research, powered its postwar recovery. Undoubtedly during that phase the same innovative approach could have supported a profitable arms industry too. This has now stalled, as China managed to undercut it on consumer goods and competing vehicle manufacturers adopted Japanese methods. Interesting article on Japan’s current stagnant state:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/11/opinion/paul-krugman-japans-economy-crippled-by-caution.html?_r=0
Which is not that far away from being Europe’s, if you take away QE from the European picture.
Most egregious of all, the Executive Director is Will Straw, whose main qualification is that his father is a war criminal. Founder of the rabid anti-Corbyn website Left Foot Forward and every bit as Atlanticist as Liam Fox, Will Straw is as insanely pro-United States hegemony and as ultra-Zionist as only an extreme Blairite can be. He really is a deeply unappealing figure.
Reminding myself of the Marshall Plan’s role in reconstructing Europe prompted the thought that the EU is pretty well the realisation of an American project, so finding Atlanticists inclined to with it is not as surprising as it might seem at first sight. It also fits the globalist picture in that it blurs and hopes to abolish national borders and distinctions. Finding a nationalist subscribing to the EU is perhaps more remarkable?
Will Straw (Oxford, PPE, SPAD, unelected) is yet another political wannabe on the make. His presence on any body attracting headlines is a logical career move, and his rapid flexure between founding ‘Left Foot Forward’ and becoming a pale pink Tory is no doubt the product of advice from his slippery father.
For whom he is also a proxy soldier. Jack Straw has his own reasons for remaining in his natural habitat, under the radar, on this one:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11473577/Jack-Straw-rebuffed-by-European-Commission-in-lobbying-attempt.html
….Atlanticists inclined to stay with it….
Apologies.
The downing of the MH17 is already being linked to Putin’s intervention in Syria before the report is even published.
I’m slightly surprised no one has picked up on Lysias’ point about the elite opinion in the US, namely that they want us in. They have been in favour of the UK joining Europe since the fifties, and were able, despite their initial scepticism, to persuade most Labour ‘Atlanticists’ of the benefits of membership (Gaitskell and Crosland excepted). This wing of the Labour Party (now represented by the likes of Will Straw), in conjuction with pro business Tories, have always been the bedrock of pro EU opinion here. The ‘European project’ has never been short of money, or diplomatic encouragement from across the pond, and in recent decades has found new allies in the Greens, who were ‘turned’ in the 90s into a pro EU fraction, and effectively play the role of corralling what Orwell dismissed as sandal wearing crank elements (then personified in his mind by the ILP) into supporting the European project- despite the fact that the project is at its root big business friendly. (As a sop to green sensitivities the EU agrees to subsidise green energy initiatives). Those Greens (like the Danish Green Party) who have their doubts about the beneficience of the EU are however cast into the outer darkness-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Green_Party
Craig will have to get used to the fact that the big battalions who he opposed in the Scottish independence campaign are on his side in this campaign, and he should make holding his nose his default position between now and referendum day.
href=”http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/10/13/uk-britain-hatecrime-idUKKCN0S714K20151013″>Britain sees large rise in hate crimes, mainly racist incidents
The article waxes lyrical about hate crimes and contends that the rise in the figures are mainly due to more victims coming froward (note this is to down play the rise) and finally in the penultimate paragraph (by now most readers have clicked and left for the next story) finally the mystery of who is subject to the hate crimes is revealed!
Bully fro him, although Theresa of terse has lent her contribution to fanning the hatred some more just in case there was no enough hate crimes getting committed, but that is another story.
Who will be the first to mention and publish the rivers of blood speech, next?
Now who is looking askance at his allies?
Hypocrite.
Yippee now we have yet another anniversary of yet another battle form next year. Battle of Jutland commemorations announced for next year in Orkney
Mr. Jones will be the guest of honour to remind us all that battle of Omdurman as yet is not being commemorated and ought to be, because the German’s don’t like it up them you know!
Is this a leg up to commemoration industry on the QT?
Will there be a ceiling to these martial anniversaries and commemoration? Or are we going to end up commemorating one anniversary in the morning and another in the afternoon going back as far as beating the Spaniards in some obscure battle?
We are not ALL in it together.
SIX MILLION workers below Living Wage – making mockery of Tory claim they will ‘make work pay’
13 Oct 2015
The proportion of employees falling short of the recommended hourly rate, currently £7.85, rose to 23% last year
Worse for those working outside London and the SE.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/money/personal-finance/six-million-workers-below-living-6621204
Since 1 October Israel has killed 24 Palestinians and injured at least 1,300.
This is a list of the names and ages of those killed. Note how many are children.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CREEQ8aU8AARNWC.jpg
The pathetic beebeecee is busy sowing memes as it goes along, the latest “contribution” is;
Is social media driving Israel-Palestinian violence?
Note it is not the occupation or the oppression and humiliation of the Palestinians, who are now getting banned from Jerusalem, not bad for people without lands kicking the butt of the landlords taking their homes and shops, not content with that, now they are kicking out the people with the land out of the city altogether!
Of course beebeecee sensibility is to ponder;
although is the spirit of not remaining totally one sided, there is this tight lip admission;
Note the “apparent revenge”
The question I should like to ask is; why in the hell is the propaganda tax not billed to zionistani public relations, after all they are the stake holders and getting defended so well by this august organ? (note orifices are also classed as organs)
O/T and a little like a cup of tea in between reports, a picture of the Antarctic landmass and the ice that is currently holding the massive inland glaciers back, but it is melting.
http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/bild-1057517-892074.html
Re: The IDF’s violence and harassment of Palestinian young people. It is a new generation, not one of the people on Mary’s list was over 30 years old, who are now questioning and challenging the powers that control their future at home. They are challenging the stealing of land, oil and gas from those who legitimately own it, they challenge the ‘laws of the fascist apes’ they are held under.
I’m appalled that Will Straw is following the slime trail his father so profusely exudes.
A thought on Julian Assange loosing his expensive security. He is now more threatened for it,imho, the City of London is crawling with spooks and mercenaries of all sorts, not to speak of the crooks inhabiting penthouses who had their operations exposed by Wikileaks. Hallo Mr. Usmanov.
Off course it is now possible for the Swedish prosecutor to walk in and out of the embassy incognito, regardless of the dozens of CCTV cameras spiking the place, should he dare to do so.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/12/politics/syria-rebel-groups-ammunition-50-tons/
U.S. military cargo planes gave 50 tons of ammunition to rebel groups overnight in northern Syria, using an air drop of 112 pallets as the first step in the Obama Administration’s urgent effort to find new ways to support those groups.
Details of the air mission over Syria were confirmed by a U.S. official not authorized to speak publicly because the details have not yet been formally announced.
C-17s, accompanied by fighter escort aircraft, dropped small arms ammunition and other items like hand grenades in Hasakah province in northern Syria to a coalition of rebels groups vetted by the US, known as the Syrian Arab Coalition.
All pallets successfully were recovered by friendly forces, a U.S. official said.”
Thanks be to Allah the ‘friendlies’ have a friend.
The EU supports the poorer member States. The large richer countries support the poorer. A redistribution. The majority of States agree with that proposition. Only a minority, the Elitists (tax evaders) in the UK want out. Other countries are waiting to join.
Tax evading (foreign) non Doms own the Britsh Press. Telegraph, Times, Sun, Mail and Express. They make vast profits in the UK with other business interests.
Excellent historical perspective on the national players vying for Syrian victory.
http://www.voltairenet.org/article189006.html
The US are supplying the weapons and the Russians are doing the bombing. Turn about. Do these morons ever learn. Innocent people are being massecured. .
Where’s the Chilcot verdict?