Time we withdrew from The European Union

Zena,

I think you'll probably find that he's much older than that and goes by the name 'Boblet' most of the time.
I am well aware of what this imbocile is implying and if they feel better because they called me a nonce then so be it! It's a sure sign that somebody is beaten when they resort to insults!

Not sure where you are coming from Feddie, but I hide behind nothing.

Freddie i love you.....will you marry me? we can hold hands and peddle around on a tandem together.

BTW Zena who rattled your kennel?

Zena,

I think you'll probably find that he's much older than that and goes by the name 'Boblet' most of the time.
I am well aware of what this imbocile is implying and if they feel better because they called me a nonce then so be it! It's a sure sign that somebody is beaten when they resort to insults!

Nick NIck..

Just how old are you -10?
13 maybe. Surely no older than that to make such a stupid and juvenile comment.

Isn't it a shame that "Get a Life" is too short a post to be accepted.

Hello Freddie how did the holiday to Vietnam go? btw Fred E has missed you lots bet he will be delighted to see you back, just be gentle with him for a while though cus hes still gutted over Westlife splitting up :(

There was an interesting perspective on this last night on the radio. It appear that despite all the cuts in spending in Greece they are still planning to operate under a deficit. They are still spending more than they generate. The question was asked what would happen if Greece was to default? well it has! It now only has to pay back 50% of it's borrowings. However you look at it that is a default. So even if the EU cleared all of the debts within Greece so it could start with a zero balance on a new dawn, it would be back in debt after only a single day!
The view of the analyst was that before the end of 2013 Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain will have withdrawn from the Euro.
Say what you will about Blair and his cronies (and I am not a fan) they were absolutely right to not take us into this ill fated plan. You simply cannot expect such a diverse range of economies and cultures to operate successfully under one system. This is the very reason that the West African nations abandoned their proposed single currency and it is incredible that they could see the problems with it when the so called 'developed' world could not.

Boblet, your response to MikeP's post is infantile at its best. He has made a legitimate point - the so-called 'solution' may provide some short-term respite but that is all. It will depend on a lot of other factors to fix the debt crisis at a more fundamental level - hopefully one which will trigger a referendum in this country, although I suspect that even that will end up as some sort of 'fudge' that will not give us the option that many of us want i.e. to get out of the EU!

The Leaders of Europe have let its citizens down. Why have they chosen to ignore the solution? When will they learn to consult mikep? He has an answer to all our problems at the WG. Angela Merkel should consult him on European fiscal matters & indeed everything else (other than turnips) mikep would have saved the day. Europe needs mikep bless him.

The 'solution' that they have reached consists in simple terms of recycling debt by 'recapitalising' the banks which carry the bad debts, which is what caused the problem in the first place.

Whilst I accept that there is no solution, I think children in Kindergarten could do better than this in being creative.

The Common Agricultural Policy, takes up about a third of the EU budget but payments are increasingly being made in secret to protect recipient's "privacy".

Interesting site that includes details of earlier payments to "impoverished" farmers like Prince Charles:

http://farmsubsidy.org/lists/33/prince-charless-farm-subsidies/


The court of auditors refused to sign off the EU accounts for 16 years in a row and found discrepancies in 90% of the EU budget.

Forgive my naiveté, but if this were a private company wouldn't people be facing charges?

I'm reminded of the Randy Newman song, "It's a jungle out there":


It's a jungle out there
Disorder and confusion everywhere
No one seems to care
Well I do
HEY, WHO'S IN CHARGE HERE?

I don't understand the Euro, though I do try, and don't really understand any of this, but I find it all very worrying. I'm folding up the newspaper, turning off the pc and not putting the television back on . It's a gin and tonic and an escapist novel for me tonight.

I feel as if we are anchored to a massive sinking ship; I might feel better if I thought any of the crew knew what they were doing.

Good article from the Telegraph which pretty much reiterates the point I made earlier :


Euro armageddon is approaching, but it's too boring and complicated to explain

The European debt crisis, in Lego

With the European financial crisis, with every day that passes, it gets messier, more complicated, and, frankly, more boring. Instead of coming together to a logical conclusion, new subplots break out daily. Previously, it was relatively easy to explain: Greece is bankrupt and we don't know what to do about it. But then we bailed Greece out and it's still not over. Now it's something along the lines of: Greece is bankrupt, but then French and German banks own Greek debt, so they might be bankrupt too. Then Italy has lots of its own debt, which Germany would like it to pay off, just in case that markets start worrying that Italy is bankrupt too.

And that's before we even get into the the proposed solution (mostly it seems to be that Germany should throw money at everything, which the Germans understandably aren't too keen on). How big does the bailout fund need to be? Who pays for it? Who do we (well, the Germans) bail out: the Greeks, or the banks? Should the European Central Bank be allowed to buy government bonds? No one is sure of any of this. Not even the people whose job it is to understand it. Is it any surprise that one JP Morgan analyst got so frustrated he tried to explain it all with Lego?

The problem is that this applies to our politicians too. This afternoon, the leaders of 27 European countries will get together in a big room in Brussels, and they are expected to agree on a solution to a crisis so complicated that we don't even know who we can't agree to bail out any more. The coffee will taste bitter and they won't have slept much. Each has a different electorate, different newspaper headlines to wake up to and different political allies at home to appease. Few are economics specialists, or have the time to research this properly: they are all dependent on advisers, each of whom will say different, confusing things.

Unfortunately, we cannot expect successful solutions from a meeting like that. We will have a day of frantic speculation, reporting and comment today, and in all likelihood, tomorrow, everyone will emerge even more exhausted and no closer to agreeing on anything. The best we can hope for is enough to delay armageddon for a few more months. That will at least give us time to build more fall-out shelters.

"I have to admit to having very little genuine knowledge about the EU."

That would qualify you to be a politician and to work for it, the only difference between you and them being that they don't admit to not knowing anything about it, whereas you are honest enough to do so. Honest and politican do not go together.

From the idea of a trading block it has become a multiheaded monster created by politicians for their own purposes, and which nobody can understand or control. What is going on today today is abundant proof of that, and the whole thing is about to blow apart, or be kept going by papering over the cracks, at enormous cost, until the next debt default.

The problem is the Euro, rather than the EU itself, although both were clearly doomed to failure.

I have to admit to having very little genuine knowledge about the EU. I have tried to read up on it a bit but "authorities" seem to have such differing views.

I was once very slightly pro Europe, but that was when it was primarily a trading block. Now, it is getting too big, too powerful, is under very few democratic controls and that we would be better off out of it. I feel that it has been a huge source of back door immigration, not so much from citizens of the EU but from those from outside Europe who have the right to live in those countries and, therefore, have a right to move here too.

So what do other readers think about continuing or withdrawing. I am interested in posts from people who know more about the subject than I do.

WW1 1914/18 The Germans lost. WW2 1939/1945 The Germans lost.
EEC/EU 1958/2011 The Germans have finally conquered Europe.

Do you mean go back to pre Thatcher days Nat.Ant. It was far from perfect but respect & honesty were still in evidence. The multicultural society foisted upon us by recent governments seems to be nurturing all the worst aspects of immigrant society. They do not have the benefit of the example set by a proper British society, destroyed by Thatcher for her own selfish gains.

I am neither a Europhile nor a Eurosceptic - but somewhere in between. I fully accept that Britain's isolation from the EU could be strategically dangerous, after all we no longer 'rule the waves', but the bureaucracy, corruption and the waste of our money by bureaucrats in Brussels over shadows one of the main advantages for remaining in a 'not so' united union of 27 member states.

www.icitizens.co.uk

The European Union should have been a commonwealth for all EU citizens, a boon to us all. Instead it promotes high taxes like VAT. Unemployment as it is easier for jobs to flee their home base and set up in a cheaper economy under EU regulations. The EU does not seem to protect its own citizens economically well. The EU should be about free health care for all in all countries of the EU. The EU should be about a sharing the wealth of all nations in the EU. The EU is about huge shopping malls, riches for the very few. The EU is not proper socialism as it ought to be.

I was conned into voting for a COMMON MARKET, if only I knew then what I know now.