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View Poll Results: Should Britain leave the E.U. ?
Yes 109 50.00%
No 46 21.10%
No.. But things MUST change 38 17.43%
I don't care 14 6.42%
Undecided 11 5.05%
Voters: 218. This poll is closed

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Old 4 May 2016
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Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: UK
Posts: 4,343
Democratic deficiency is with us now, today

Quote:
Originally Posted by ridetheworld View Post
Well we agree on that my friend, but seems to me a collective voice in the form of the EU is better to oppose the TTIP than a disorganized one. Germany and France are already turning against it. Over 3,000,000 signatories against it and a 150,000 written complaints to the EU commission from EU citizens. Together we stand, divided we fall etc.
And there we differ: you have an amazing level of faith in the European Commission, flying in the face of all available evidence concerning how they operate.
It's called "Real Politics".
Just today, the EC has announced that Turkey will get it's visa free access to Europe irrespective of how Turkey has not done what they committed to under an earlier "agreement" that was brokered by just one nation, Germany.
Just watch the nations succomb to "he who pays the piper calls the tune".

For further reading, this is from yesterday, posted elsewhere and purloined by me for the sake of this discourse:-
"Thank you for your Blog. I did a similar thing and you can find my essays at http://www.partismfoundation.org/wp-...16-24-4-16.pdf
Whilst the Treasury’s EU Impact Analysis Report is nothing like as bad as Dave’s Dodgy Dossier which has come through everyone front door, it hasvery clearly been written to an agenda, as you say mixing apples and pears to make the points the Government wants to make. Thankfully the various Fact Checker websites (BBC, Channel 4, Telegraph etc.) appear to have done a reasonable job in pointing out the immediate errors and flaws. However, there is one major problem with the Treasury document which appears to have been missed by most commentators.
It is perfectly fair to say that, on average and when taken as a whole, immigrants contribute in taxes as much as they enjoy in public services. In fact, some calculations show that they contribute slightly more. But all these figures are based upon current account.
The argument that immigrants are social security scroungers is not only untrue but repugnant. There is the whole debate about immigrant remittances to their families overseas and the effect this has on the UK economy but that is another debate completely.
What is missing from the Treasury’s calculations and assessment is the capital cost of dealing with immigration. This is the cost of providing housing, schools, hospitals, water, sewage treatment, roads, and transport to name but a few. Each year the UK has to build public infrastructure equivalent to the size of the city of Leicester to cater for inward immigration.
If you assume the capital cost at £75,000 per person (£300,000 for a family of four), then the state has to borrow £22.5 billion to provide infrastructure for 300,000 new people arriving in the UK, and will have to do this each and every year that we are a member of the EU and have to abide by the principle of free movement of labour.
The interest on this £22.5bn is £562.5 million per year (assuming an interest rate of 2.5% – which is the long term average of UK interest rates). Using the same 26.7 million households as the Treasury, then this means that the interest cost is just a mere £21.00 per household per year. But this has to be paid every year. If you gross up these £21 per household per year for the same15 years as the Treasury has done, then the total interest cost per household is £2,840 which is about just under 70% of the £4,200 cost the Treasury estimates we are all going to be poorer in 15 years’ time if we Brexit. However, our National Debt will be £337.5bn higher, an increase of 21.6% above £1.56 trillion the UK is borrowing today.
If the EU had supported its free movement of labour policy with a fund which allowed for money to follow people, so as to pay for the infrastructure, as so many people have argued, then I for one would find it much harder to argue to leave the EU, for the only issue then outstanding would be the democratic deficit. But, there would be no democratic deficit if the EU listened and acted with appropriate policies on the genuine concerns of the peoples of this Island. Instead, continuously over the last 10 years the EU commission has refused to entertain such an idea.
It is worth comparing this idea of a Free Movement of Labour Structure Fund to the Common Agricultural Policy which takes 39% of its budget yet this sector accounts for only 1.5% of the EU’s GDP, and it only employs 5.4% of the total population; or to the Common Fisheries Policy which has killed off the UK fishing fleet whilst its CFP Fund goes to subsidising the fishing fleets of Spain etc.
The repugnant and illegal deal brokered by Angela Merkel, Jean-Claude Jancker, President of the EU Commission and Turkish President Erdogan for the repatriation of refugees from the EU back to Turkey highlights the democratic deficit. There is logic to Jancker and Erdogan being in the negotiations but why is Merkel representing the whole of the EU? Where is her democratic authority to represent 504 million people? She had none, but these people have just spent €6 billion of your and my money and struck a fundamentally illegal deal.
As I say in my essay on ‘The European Union, the refugee crises and Turkey’, this deal reminded me of the dreadful trade of human cargo of Nazi Germany and the railway sidings of Birkenau death camp.
At the end of the Second World War, the UK repatriated thousands of Poles back to Poland, at the insistence of Stalin, for them to meet dreadful deaths in his Gulag’s. It appears that those who lead the EU have learned nothing from our very recent history. Who is making sure that the EU is not repatriating any Iraqi Kurds because their chances in Erdogan’s Turkey are pretty damn slim? It makes me so damn angry.
This year the UK is going to be fined by the EU Commission €400m for breaching air quality laws. Laws which the UK can’t possible meet because we are such a densely populated country with a high proportion of diesel engine cars. These have a much higher poisonous nitrous-oxide and particulate output than a petrol car. It is estimated that around 40,000 people die each year in this country from bad air quality. We have to remember is the was the EU’s obsession for lower CO² output which caused them to promote diesel engines above petrol. What we know also know is that it the EU Comitology committee (See democratic deficit video at https://youtu.be/wPP1k8mNSYs), which is responsible for setting car standards, came under intense lobbying pressure from the car industry to set emission testing standards which were nothing like what happens when a car is driven. The discovery of VW’s emission testing defeat devise is only a small part of a scandal which goes to the heart of the EU.
One of the most frightening aspect of the EU is its determination to have its own military. How can this be a good idea, especially when it will be reporting to a bunch of unelected oligarchs? Do we really want to put our children and grandchildren at risk of being called up to fight in such an army? It is one throw from the EU becoming a military dictatorship like Egypt, Greece, Burma (now called Myanmar). Welcome back Napoleon!
Since time immemorial, people have been prepared to sacrifice democracy for economic gain. It is what brought Stalin to power in Russia and Hitler to power in Germany. It was what allowed Putin to remain in power in Russia whilst he seized back dictatorial type powers and took control of its media. It is why the UK was prepared to cede sovereignty to the EU in 1972. This is all well and good until things go wrong, as they did with Hitler, Stalin, Putin and now in the EU, when the peoples find out that they cannot remove from power those that are doing them harm.
Except now in the UK when we have once in a life time opportunity.
I hope our country is wise enough not to take the 30 pieces of silver offer by our High Priests"
__________________
Dave
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