Give it 20 years and all the men here will have to have stupid looking beards without a moustach, all the women here will be dressed like Darth Vader and Bacon Butties will be a thing of the past, not to mention Beer and the likes, all thanks to Angular Meerkill! I don't think every idea to come out of the "Fatherland" has been a good one. You only need to look on Youtube to see what's coming.
The steelworkers on Teesside have been kept in work up to now by Thai investment and exporting to China to feed it's excess demand. Without export demand, it would never have re-opened after it closed last time. Headlines don't tell the whole story.
Cameron's bind is that there is a significant number within his cabinet and on the back benches that are known Euroskeptics...his position as leader is questionable if he were to 'lose', as would George Osborne's role as PM in waiting. Division over Europe has been a thorn in the side of the conservatives for decades. Aside from all the nonsense spouted over the implications of a Brexit, the plain truth is nobody actually knows...for a politician to admit this publically would be anathema... If you cast your mind back to the run up to the last general election, in those constituencies where UKIP appeared to be running a close second to the conservatives, the prospective tory candidates were advised to run a more right-wing campaign, to 'win back' potential defectors...It's a tried and tested ploy: find a scapegoat with little or no power to fight back, (single parents, immigrants, people without jobs, people without homes, travellers, the overweight, 'outsiders', foreigners, muslims, jews, blacks, {insert your own minority group here} and apportion blame for societies ills on said group...it's a simple smoke and mirrors means to deflect attention from the real reasons for a society's problems, incompetent governance, inappropriate policies, lack of foresight, and short-termism, commensurate with an unrepresentative electoral system. You'd do well to read Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle" but I've provided a great link here, that put's it across far better than I ever could...
Has anybody mentioned the original idea behind the 'European experiment'? The notion that greater integration, migration and trade would help stop the countries of Europe kicking the sh1te out of each other every few decades. If it all collapses, which it might if we leave, who's to say we won't all go back to that?
I can't see it happening in my lifetime tbh...what concerns me is the rhetoric used by those seeking to leave the EU, that Britain was some kind of Utopia before we joined...social history tells a different story
I honestly don't know half enough about what the deep and real repercussions/benefits of either course of action will be. And I suspect neither do most politicians - or voters, come to that. So I'm going to read everything I can about it and listen to people running businesses (who are probably the ones who know more than anyone) and try and make my mind up by June 23. And I'll try and quell the urge to simply run screaming from any place Farage, Gove and that idiot Boris Johnson might gather. What's the collective noun for that lot?
Boris can see a huge opportunity for himself,by being controversial he immediately shoots into the headlines
From the General Election threads last year, this place has a pretty big Labour majority. The Labour party wants IN and political sentiment in the EU over the years has generally been to the Left of what is happening in the UK, so you would think Lefties would be keen on an IN vote. Apparently not.
Kitty Jones' blog made a very interesting read, it also led me to to many other interesting pages from other political commentators but I'm still left with my original problem. I know how unfair social conditions are for many people in Britain nowadays. Hopefully I'm clever enough to think for myself and not be suckered into granfalloonery despite a dearth of informed and unbiased information but that still leaves me thinking....and now what? There doesn't seem to be any way I can affect the situation, for example I believe the TTIP agreement is a very bad idea but I doubt the government will even ask my opinion. Incidentally as TTIP is a EU/US agreement not being in the EU might mean it won't apply to us which may help our society keep whatever fairness it still has left.
But if we weren't in the eu could our government have given aid to our steel industry to help it survive China's dumping policy? I bet a labour government would have done. Let's face it, the tories kept the banks going at rather more cost than that of saving a steelworks!
So for anyone who has'nt voted yet and wants to vote, Your vote is secret, Barny or anyone else cannot see your vote, I have asked the Mods and they and I have no idea what he was on about, Your VOTE is PRIVATE