EU to flush your money down your toilet?

[Tim Streater]

What is being objected to most is "ever closer union", and, more particularly, the speed which which this is being pursued by the unelected Commission. If the time scale for that were some hundreds of years, during which time everyone got used to everyone else, that might be a worthy goal. As it is, it's just being thrust down everyone's throat by people who cannot be gotten rid of. And people don't like it, as witnessed by the growth of "anti" parties all across Europe.

People in the richer countries are fed up with bankrolling the poorer ones, and the poorer ones just view the richer ones as a source of free dosh.

We have to walk carefully away, because it will end in tears.

[Java Jive]

[Java Jive]

I can remember it well enough. The Common Market came to be rebadged as the European Union, I didn't and don't see that as a problem or as being misleading.

Margaret Thatcher was simply a Euro-sceptic, like many here. It is interesting that despite this, she didn't take us out of Europe. That suggests to me that she saw that there were good reasons for staying in.

Perhaps those good reasons haven't changed ...

[Java Jive]

[Tim Streater]

Certainly it's misleading. And I'm not interested in arguments along the lines of "well it as all there in the Treaty of Rome, if you'd bothered to read it".

And talking of that, did the ToR mention any timescales? As I posted earlier, if the timescale of "ever closer union" was some hundreds of years, it would make more sense.

And no one has offered a solution to the problem of the apparently fundamental incompatibility between British and Continental legal systems.

If you read her memoirs you'll find that she expresses some regret about the Single European Act which AIUI did more to establish the EU. Especially when she started to discover that pork barrel politics is the norm.

And by the way, you need to understand that EuroSceptics are not against being in Europe. It's *this* Europe, this *corrupt* Europe that

*yet* *again* cannot get its books signed off by the Court of Auditors, this Europe run by unelected bureaucrats along the French model, that we don't like.

Fundamental change is needed in Europe to make it acceptable. And if they're not interested, then we'll be on our way.

As a matter of fact I think an entity the size of Europe (or Russia, China, or the USA, and probably India too) are just too big to be properly governable. They should all be broken up.

[Tim Streater]

No, the tears will be of those who stay in. We'll just make sure that, this time, we have no treaty obligations to the Belgians.

[John Rumm]

I see it as a fundamental shift, and at the root of the current problems.

They haven't - there are good reasons remaining for being "in". However there are also many reasons for being "out". One has to decide which way the balance tips. To my mind the balance is tipping progressively more "out" as time passes.

[John Rumm]

They may well have been. Remember though it was not simply a case of browsing a web page if you wanted to call up the text of the agreement, and read it for yourself.

The population was largely dependant on what the politicians told them, and what was reported in the media.

Interesting interpretation. However I suspect that most objections to the "Human Rights Act" are in fact to the UK act of 1998, and act which makes it illegal for any public body to contravene the ECHR unless explicitly supported by national legislation. Hence all the uses of it by prisoners demanding a vote, or terrorists not wanting to be deported etc.

[John Rumm]

I expect many would actually agree with that, if its an allowable option. However it requires fundamental changes to the nature of the EU as an institution and what membership actually means.

There is no guarantee that that level of change can be negotiated. Hence the option to "stay in carefully" may be denied us, then what?

[Adrian]

Where "interesting" = "accurate".

Umm, yes, isn't that what you're replying to?

It already was, since 1953.

The Convention restricts most articles with... "such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others."

So - just to recap - which of the articles of the convention do you object to?

Oh, and you do know that the only countries in the vaguely-geographical continent which aren't legally bound to the convention are the Vatican, Kazakhstan and Bieloruss, yep?

[Adrian]

The commission might not be directly elected, but each commissioner is appointed by the elected government of a member country.

[John Rumm]

Makes you wonder why the opening text of the 1998 act is "An Act to give further effect to rights and freedoms guaranteed under the European Convention on Human Rights". If we go with your interpretation it would have been a fairly pointless and much shorter document.

You seemed to be talking about ECHR created in the 50's

Its funny, but I don't recall the "right to a family life" and other nebulous concepts being cited in legal cases prior to 1998... why is that?

Could it be that its the 1998 legislation that introduces the facility for a local court to declare that national legislation is "incompatible" with ECHR, and thus open to many further layers of appeal, which may ultimately result in the will of our parliament being disregarded, and more to the point add many years of legal argument and extra cost to a case...

Its a very nice gravy train for those in the legal profession I am sure.

[Tim Streater]

It's still unelected, and the electorate is not in a position to get rid of them. It's the quangocracy writ large.

That is where our system scores: the electorate can get rid of any politician it doesn't like. Oh, I was forgetting: except for MEPs, who are elected using one of the shitty continental systems - the PR list system (which doesn't have by elections).

[Adrian]

In the same way as the cabinet is.

All commissioners have a fixed five year term of office. The electorate is not in a position to get rid of MPs outside of their fixed term, either.

Short of murdering an incumbent, a Westminster by-election is not in the gift of the electorate.

[Tim Streater]

Don't be silly. The cabinet is made up of elected MPs, each of whom may be removed subsequently by the electorate. Except once where Harold Wilson tried to appoint a Trade Union leader to the cabinet, and kicked a superannuated Labour MP upstairs to cause a by-election so his chum could become an MP. IIRC, he didn't do this until it became clear that being a Minister who couldn't report to the HoC didn't look very good.

This is neither here nor there. The commissioners are political has-beens who are appointed by their chums back home. Mandy and the present chairman of the BBC come to mind.

You do come up with some non-sequiturs, don't you.

[Adrian]

At the end of parliament's fixed five-year term. B'sides, the cabinet can

- and often does - contain members of the Lords, too.

I'm not the one who suggested byelections were a way to get shot of MPs.

[Tim Streater]

Not in any significant role, generally. The main posts are always MPs.

And neither am I. I was pointing out that with our MEPs, if one dies/resigns, you don't get a bye-election. What you get is the next one from that party's list. What a stitch up; apparently this is SOP on the Continent.