woody2 Posted September 28, 2018 Share Posted September 28, 2018 12 hours ago, P.K. said: We are about to become the first country in history to impose economic sanctions on ourselves. And still they bleat about ‘control’..... yet not one report shows a drop in gdp...... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barrie Stevens Posted September 28, 2018 Share Posted September 28, 2018 1 hour ago, woody2 said: so are some now elected? the pm is an elected mp.... unlike the eu dictators...... The Prime Minister is not elected end of. Being an elected MP is a mere distraction. This non elected PM can use the powers of the Royal Prerogative and likewise rope the Sovereign into sanctioning Orders in Council...None of the latter are democratic. They are powerful instruments of governance in the hands of one not chosen by the electorate. As I say, the UK taught the EU how to do it....Or did it first! Also in terms of our constitution the Queen can appoint anyone to be her Prime Minister whether from the House of Lords or from the House of Commons or indeed from neither. This is unlikely as by convention the Prime Minister must on the face of it anyway have the confidence of the House of Commons. The last PM to run the show from the Lords was Lord Salisbury (1902) and the last peer to be made Prime Minister was Lord Home (1963-64) who then gave up his peerage and became Alec Douglas-Home. The Isle of Man had a similar situation when Don Gelling a former Chief Minister was again made Chief Minister when a member of the Legislative Council the Island's version of the House of Lords. This is when Richard Corkill decided to resign rather then be forced out by the Lord Chanellor. The UK looks democratic but the old ways and means are still there. It has been said and not in jest that the UK is a Republic masquerading as a Monarchy and that the USA is a Monarchy masquerading as a Republic. The President's powers in some ways emulate those of a monarch and the PM's powers emulate those of a non-elected President. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woody2 Posted September 28, 2018 Share Posted September 28, 2018 2 hours ago, Barrie Stevens said: The Prime Minister is not elected end of. Being an elected MP is a mere distraction. This non elected PM can use the powers of the Royal Prerogative and likewise rope the Sovereign into sanctioning Orders in Council...None of the latter are democratic. They are powerful instruments of governance in the hands of one not chosen by the electorate. As I say, the UK taught the EU how to do it....Or did it first! Also in terms of our constitution the Queen can appoint anyone to be her Prime Minister whether from the House of Lords or from the House of Commons or indeed from neither. This is unlikely as by convention the Prime Minister must on the face of it anyway have the confidence of the House of Commons. The last PM to run the show from the Lords was Lord Salisbury (1902) and the last peer to be made Prime Minister was Lord Home (1963-64) who then gave up his peerage and became Alec Douglas-Home. The Isle of Man had a similar situation when Don Gelling a former Chief Minister was again made Chief Minister when a member of the Legislative Council the Island's version of the House of Lords. This is when Richard Corkill decided to resign rather then be forced out by the Lord Chanellor. The UK looks democratic but the old ways and means are still there. It has been said and not in jest that the UK is a Republic masquerading as a Monarchy and that the USA is a Monarchy masquerading as a Republic. The President's powers in some ways emulate those of a monarch and the PM's powers emulate those of a non-elected President. whoosh...... the pm is an mp- the eu dictators are not mep's..... that's the difference.... tusk wouldn't even get on a parish council in poland..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ballaughbiker Posted September 28, 2018 Share Posted September 28, 2018 Perhaps the GDP over the 2 - 5 years after leaving might be more relevant. The present benefit of a low £ (itself a dubious benefit) AND being in a customs union and single market is set to end. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
P.K. Posted September 28, 2018 Share Posted September 28, 2018 (edited) 56 minutes ago, ballaughbiker said: Perhaps the GDP over the 2 - 5 years after leaving might be more relevant. The present benefit of a low £ (itself a dubious benefit) AND being in a customs union and single market is set to end. Yes. It might be more than a little relevant depending on if there's a deal. What is telling is that since the referendum the £ to € has gone from 1.30 to 1.12. So much for GDP.... How folks didn't realise we had the best of all worlds in EU membership and keeping the £ beggars belief! But hey. Think Blue Ration Books. We'll get Blue Ration Books....! The more we get into the truth of what brexit actually involves the more the brexiteers' Unicorn comes across as a tired whitewashed old donkey with a dildo on it's head.... Edited September 28, 2018 by P.K. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barrie Stevens Posted September 28, 2018 Share Posted September 28, 2018 1 hour ago, woody2 said: whoosh...... the pm is an mp- the eu dictators are not mep's..... that's the difference.... tusk wouldn't even get on a parish council in poland..... That is an over simplification I post a link to explain how things are done...Personally I feel Britain would not sit well in a federal EU but then we have (Had) the option of staying out of that but who knows what a younger generation(s) may think?.... The Common Market and then the EU came to be formed and adapted very much under British influence and (We) rather than (They) are responsible for a great deal of what went on and how the EU evolved. I post a link....(Not for you W2 but for others who may yet retain an open mind)… Personally I think that having come so far we might just as well get on with it and leave come hell or high water' whatever happens it happens 'cos it surely will not be happy home if we opt to drop the lot and slink back home like a naughty doggy who jumped the fence, ran loose all day only returned at feeding time. The link is worth a visit. https://fullfact.org/europe/how-eu-works-who-runs-eu/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
P.K. Posted September 28, 2018 Share Posted September 28, 2018 1 hour ago, woody2 said: whoosh...... the pm is an mp- the eu dictators are not mep's..... that's the difference.... tusk wouldn't even get on a parish council in poland..... Tusk was Prime Minister of Poland from 2007 to 2014. Juncker was PM of Luxembourg and one of the longest serving democratically elected leaders in the EU. Barnier has held several Ministerial positions in the French Government until stepping down after being democratically elected as an MEP in 2009. Says everything you need to know about #WoodyFacts.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ballaughbiker Posted September 30, 2018 Share Posted September 30, 2018 Quote Says everything you need to know about #WoodyFacts.... #woodyfacts generously sprinkled with emotional 'poisoning the well' terms like 'eu dictators' FWIW, if I could turn the clock back to 1973, I wouldn't vote to join, however now we are a member, leaving in the manner we are is crazy. Of course Lord Haw-Haw who is on LBC now has equated the effect of crashing out with going back to some apparently utopian 1973 scenario. He was 9 then and probably doesn't really remember the early 70s. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barrie Stevens Posted September 30, 2018 Share Posted September 30, 2018 We were not given the chance to vote on joining the EEC/Common Market by 1973. In 1975 we had a referendum to stay in or leave. The sentiment was that we/most did not like the feeling of being told what's what etc but it cost a bomb to get in after earlier refusal so it would cost us a bomb to leave. This seems still to be the case today. As regards the EU well PM John Major forced the Maastricht Treaty of 1993 through Parliament under cover of making it vote of confidence. There was no referendum on this treaty which created the EU and laid plans for a US of Europe or federal EU aping the USA. The IOM signed the Maastricht Treaty. We then dug ourselves deep into the EU and having had a big hand in creating the structure we apparently voted to leave our creation in 2016. Most people have no idea of what was done in their name from 1993 onwards or how deeply enmeshed we are within the EU. Now they or some are realising just how complex it is. Personally I think it is all too late and we are demanding the impossible and that the only simple way out is to crash out and to hell with it! But a lot of people me included will suffer because it will be like an amputation. As the saying goes never go back it will never be the same. The UK will always be regarded with suspicion. I recall de Gaulle when President of France vetoing UK entry to the Common Market as we would never accept it and would in the end wreck it. Seems he had some prescience. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
La Colombe Posted September 30, 2018 Share Posted September 30, 2018 Patrick Kielty having an entertaining pop at Boris Johnson here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ballaughbiker Posted September 30, 2018 Share Posted September 30, 2018 (edited) Quote We were not given the chance to vote on joining the EEC/Common Market by 1973. Correct, the vote on it was 1975, thanks for the emendation. However Lord haw Haw constantly refers back to 1973 Common Market usually saying something wide ranging and purposefully unspecific like "we managed perfectly well before 1973 so we will again". This of course entirely ignores a lot but especially: 1) How knackered the country was then following Wilson and Callaghan. 2) How the far east manufacturing has since increased. 3) How our manufacturing has considerably decreased. 4) How technology has changed just about everything but especially the highly mobile service sector. 5) How regulation has changed with the now vital common standards. 6) How we have benefited from the customs union and single market without the complete monetary union of the € etc etc "Never go back", seems very apposite but was not a good time at all anyway. Haw Haw's self appointed job is to whip up peoples anger to simplistically blame just one aspect we can now supposedly 'escape from' with the suggestion that all be resolved if we do escape. It won't. That said, we seem to have sleep walked into greater union since Maastrict but the idea 'they' are now just being awkward to stop us leaving conveniently forgets they are applying the agreements we helped construct. It's a effing mess and I think the best way would be to extricate ourselves over, say, a decade rather than crash out or suffer a bad deal. Those (perhaps a minority of brexiters) who charmingly want 'the swamp draining' (not my words) won't have that though. Perhaps if we had rigidly applied the EU rules on movement of labour like another country I hide in does, we wouldn't have such a complication. That is *our* fault, not the EU's. One thing seems to be clearer by the day is that we have all been misled by various protagonists. Those ideological dogmatists who refuse to accept this only have the option of digging their heels in deeper (or admit we have been misled) at our collective risk. I'm off as soon as but if this gamble goes horribly wrong, my son's generation (he's 30 ish) and younger who can't so easily escape will cop for it the most. Edited September 30, 2018 by ballaughbiker speling Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barrie Stevens Posted September 30, 2018 Share Posted September 30, 2018 We certainly did not manage very well before 1973. We took about 20 years to dismantle an Empire from about 1946 onwards and then had no real role in the world although we did hold the line on many trouble spots which had in any case been linked to Empire or caused by Empire. Hard to believe that India went independent from Britain only about 71 years ago. We had well nigh wrapped up markets when we held overseas territories and even after they became independent we would give them preference agreements and also overseas aid so that they could continue to buy our goods and machinery etc. By the late 60s and in particular 1966 Britain with Lord (Dennis) Healey as Defence Minister declared an end to Britain East of Suez and that we were no longer the world`s policeman. This threw the full pressure on the USA. I can recall in the 1960s the teachers at school telling us Britain was going to join the Common Market so get ready by learning French (Now it is Mandarin!) We were borrowing heavily from USA and the IMF and losing markets. British goods were badly made and the factories out of date. The unions ran the country. We had a three day week at one time. Fact is our Empire protection/trade racket had come apart and we needed to get in somewhere for mutual protection hence joining the Common Market. It was even suggested that the UK became a territory of the USA! Special dispensations for a period were secured for New Zealand exports and also special arrangements for the Isle of Man (Protocol 3) But we went in because the outside world was cold and lonely and we were not the great power anymore. No we did not manage well up to 1973. We once had the world`s biggest merchant fleet but by 1992 I think there was one British deep sea tramp company still going. By the way, as at present the Royal Navy has three patrol boats to police the fisheries, migration, drugs and etc. Three or four are new ones are due but last I heard the older three were to be sold. The Navy used to have 17 such patrol boats. I just think without the EU or some close relationship the UK will be seen as a minnow...But We might just as well crash out and take our chances as I think we are not going to get anything...As I recall when the PM wrote the Article 50 letter for Brussels she stated that we knew the Single Market and Customs union were paramount and that there could be no cherry picking...So here we are trying to cherry pick and demand that which the EU dare not give for its own sake. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doc.fixit Posted September 30, 2018 Share Posted September 30, 2018 (edited) ...........the UK armed forces should concentrate on defence only, they should not interfere or try and direct or try and change other countries............... Edited September 30, 2018 by doc.fixit Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
P.K. Posted September 30, 2018 Share Posted September 30, 2018 4 hours ago, doc.fixit said: ...........the UK armed forces should concentrate on defence only, they should not interfere or try and direct or try and change other countries............... The UK armed forces do what their political masters tell them to do. Hence "War is the continuation of politics by other means...." - Clausewitz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woody2 Posted October 1, 2018 Share Posted October 1, 2018 On 9/28/2018 at 2:06 PM, ballaughbiker said: Perhaps the GDP over the 2 - 5 years after leaving might be more relevant. The present benefit of a low £ (itself a dubious benefit) AND being in a customs union and single market is set to end. that's what i was referring to..... still they can't tell us what it will be next month yet can tell us in 10 years time...... #fakenews On 9/28/2018 at 3:17 PM, P.K. said: Tusk was Prime Minister of Poland from 2007 to 2014. Juncker was PM of Luxembourg and one of the longest serving democratically elected leaders in the EU. Barnier has held several Ministerial positions in the French Government until stepping down after being democratically elected as an MEP in 2009. Says everything you need to know about #WoodyFacts.... past jobs have nothing to do with the unelected jobs they have now.... barmy isn't even one of them...... #thicko Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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