UK forum members, BREXIT?

[tggzzz]

The problem arises when we have groups of people who remain isolated and expect to continue in the ways of their own country even if these are incompatible with those of the country they are in.

Well, we certainly did that in the British Empire. On purpose. Because we had won God's lottery by merely by being born British.

Doesn't make it right or justifiable, of course, but realising that should temper our attitudes.

[Simon]

Well like I said I'm no economist but to me if pound equals a pound it's not exactly a different currency it's more of a local movement to promote shopping and dealing with in the local area. The euro is something totally different. The euro unites different countries of different economic strengths and it did so overnight. The some reason the strength of a currency is linked to the strength of its government so how can you have a coherent single currency when the collective of nations that back it have a constantly shifting economic power between them? I'm not saying a unique currency is a bad thing it actually bloodily helpful but given that the strength of the currency is linked to the government that backs it the euro will only truly work and not be a problem when you do have a United States of Europe which we don't at the moment. If we all grew up and our politicians also grew up and we decided as a people not just as governments that we all wanted to live by the same laws and do things the same way then a common currency would make sense. As things stand it seems to either benefit certain people and disadvantaged others or just create a general shambles.

You're struggling towards answering "what's the right size of a currency", and are almost there. Unfortunately the answer will have consequences you haven't anticipated if this happens: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/10/brexit-vote-paves-way-for-federal-union-says-all-party-group

As I've already said I don't know. All I do know is that when a small group of people got a bit too overly enthusiastic about making a massive step in uniting many European countries of different economic and political stability is with the euro things started to go very wrong for some of those countries. If we have to start looking at unified currency why don't countries buddy up say France and Germany both adopt one of their currencies Italy and Spain could buddy up their economies are both Shiite and maybe Portugal could join. After a few years if this has worked then the subgroups can look at joining into a larger group. Or maybe it should be Portugal and Greece on their own unless Portugal has improved over the last decade and a half. When I went to school I was taught that Spain had half the economy of Italy and Portugal had half again. I honestly don't know the answer to the question and I said that already. All I know is that the attempt that has been made is kiboshung things for people and there is a reason why.

I once listened to a programme about the creation of the euro and they had on one of the technical people who devised how we euro would work from a technical point of view. They designed the euro system which included safeguards. They presented the overall system to the politicians who being politicians and not understanding sod all about system engineering decided they didn't like safeguards because they were inconvenient but they wanted all the other good stuff. So they stripped out the safeguards that prevented countries who were not up to it from joining you know the ones like Greece, and in fact Italy should have been in there as well. And then they allowed all of these countries are technically should not have been allowed but for the fact they tore up the rules before they were even implemented on the understanding they pay in to a pot of money presumably some sort of insurance scheme well we all know how well that worked out.

When I lived in Italy and we had the lira the exchange rate between lira and pounds would vary from 2500 lira to 3200 lira within a matter of weeks you call that a stable economy and political system that can lock its exchange rate to every other country in Europe for evermore? To be honest even though I was only a teenager I knew there would be problems. I grandfather who lived in Italy having married and Italian lady he met in the Second World War as he had retired there after they had lived their working life in England used to pretty much gamble on the exchange rate. He would look at the news and see what crap was going on in politics and then estimate the exchange rate which would follow right after the news if it was bad he'd hold out for a week if it was good be straight down the bank next day and instead of drawing out one months pension from England the draw 2 months worth.

[Simon]

Of course if you wish every major town in the UK can have its own pound if it's locked to the overall British pounds what difference does it actually make it's just a means for a local area to devalue itself internally if it wants to to make it easier for people to spend money locally. Of course this works if the town can provide everything it needs otherwise we are into the situation where it's having to manage an exchange rate with imports and exports to the country it is part of.

Without being knowledgeable if you want an answer from me the minimum area that can have its own currency is an area that can be mostly self-sufficient.

[tggzzz]

Without being knowledgeable if you want an answer from me the minimum area that can have its own currency is an area that can be mostly self-sufficient.

Well, that rules out the UK/sterling in all important respects.

We are self-sufficient very little, and are becoming ever less self sufficient. That's most evident with the two things that can and do cause riots in the street: food and energy.

The only countries that I might consider self-sufficient are stone-age agricultural economies or North Korea.

[Simon]

Without being knowledgeable if you want an answer from me the minimum area that can have its own currency is an area that can be mostly self-sufficient.

Well, that rules out the UK/sterling in all important respects.

We are self-sufficient very little, and are becoming ever less self sufficient. That's most evident with the two things that can and do cause riots in the street: food and energy.

The only countries that I might consider self-sufficient are stone-age agricultural economies or North Korea.

Yes that is true we are not very self-sufficient if Felixstowe Port stopped operating our supermarkets would be empty in 3 days but then on the other hand I don't know how much we export. If we assume that an area with its own currency is going to export well as import I would guess that ideally the area with its own currency needs to have equal amounts of import and export although I'm going to guess that is not the case for the UK anyway. We could of course just go back to trading in gold that's what they did in the early days. Gold was gold gold had a value in itself our money is actually totally and utterly worthless. Any currency is only worth the amount people are willing to believe in it.

[vodka]

As I've already said I don't know. All I do know is that when a small group of people got a bit too overly enthusiastic about making a massive step in uniting many European countries of different economic and political stability is with the euro things started to. If we have to start looking at unified currency why don't countries buddy up say France and Germany both adopt one of their currencies Italy and Spain could buddy up their economies are both Shiite and maybe Portugal could join. After a few years if this has worked then the subgroups can look at joining into a larger group. Or maybe it should be Portugal and Greece on their own unless Portugal has improved over the last decade and a half. When I went to school I was taught that Spain had half the economy of Italy and Portugal had half again. I honestly don't know the answer to the question and I said that already. All I know is that the attempt that has been made is kiboshung things for people and there is a reason why.

go very wrong for some of those countries

But the blame are the countries and not of the Euro.

don't countries buddy up say France and Germany both adopt one of their currencies Italy and Spain could buddy up their economies are both Shiite and maybe Portugal could join

Fantastic solution , you create 2 currency and automatly you devalue the new currency Italy-spain versus franco-germany.

Furthermore ,when we always have negociated with the italians, finally  they always go to their ball(as the cats), therefore they aren't a fiable partner.

Now , an alliance France and Spanish would put to Germany to think. It would be the worse nightmare for the germanies.
 

[Simon]

I was not talking about alliances but about joining together economically equivalent countries. You response pretty much explains the failures of the euro.

[vodka]

You response pretty much explains the failures of the euro.

The first problem of the euro is that anybody were interested a only taxation for all the europe. Especially the germans with  the objective of make and unmake their graft.

Second , it hasn't sense that the france and germany have the same currency, less when the France have the same symptom that Spanish and Italians(Excesive debt and Bank crisis)

[Simon]

Well I wasn't aware france and germany are so different but i was just giving examples. Or does it turn out that non ofthe EU is fit for the euro anymore ?

[apis]

We call them nazis because they are nazis. That's what the Danish don't understand about the Swedish radical right. 30 years ago SD was openly nazi sympatisers. Denmark is a bit naive in this regard. Look at what happened in Norway. The extreme right is de facto a bigger threat than isis in Scandinavia, but it get less attention.

You seriously compare the current crop of far right organisations to the Nazis?

I was talking about SD primarily, they used to call themselves nazis some 30 years ago, now they claim they have changed. If you look at all of the radical right in Sweden most of them would not call themselves nazis today, they invent a new ideology every odd week. I believe the technically correct term for all of them is fascist.

Edit: here is a picture of SD's youth organisation SDU, that SD decided to disown relatively recently, guess why:



Let me translate that sign for you: "with the people, for the fatherland". /Edit.

What you have is no different to any other country in Europe, everyone has a standing population of say 20% of voters who are essentially xenophobic.
Britain has about 25%, with about 0.1% that you could describe as far right, and of that maybe a few hundred actual neo nazis who like to pose in front of flags or whatever.
France has consistently always had a larger xenophobic voter base, but still only around 30%

I don't doubt things are different in Britain, all Eurpoean countries have their own history and their own flavor of right wing extremism. Very few are openly fascist here as well, but the history of SD is well established and the people involved in that party are who they are. Those who vote for SD are not all nazis of course. They are mainly xenophobic older men in the country who find the authoritarian anti-establishment rhetoric appealing.

The groups you imagine are "Nazis" are little more than pressure groups wishing for less immigration and a return to something like the 1950's in terms of values.
That's it - No death camps, no invasions, no master race, no marching in formation.

You're speaking to a member of the master race, I'm not so easily fooled.

But then calling the working class "racist" and "nazi" has always been a more efficient way of censoring debate, than calling someone "anti-cultural".

SD is not a working class party, although they also have support from parts of the working class.

"The extreme right is de facto a bigger threat than ISIS in Scandinavia"

Err, what do you imagine the extreme right are going to do? Wear horned helmets in public and pillage the local supermarket?

You have not heard of the bombing and massacre in Norway 5 years ago by a right wing extremist? it is de facto the worst terrorist attack in Scandinavia. In Sweden the only terrorist attacks have been committed by the radical right. There was a failed attempt by an Islamist suicide bomber (who was radicalized in Luton, England) a while ago, but he only succeeded with killing himself.

This is what the ISIS supporters in Sweden are already doing to you:
https://swedenreport.org/2014/10/29/swedish-police-55-official-no-go-zones/

Prisoners in your own country, what a joke.

As that blogger admits in the beginning there are no no-go-zones, it's what the opinion piece/editorial he linked to calls them. There have been some problem with organized crime by some sort of Assyrian/Syriac mafia. It had nothing to do with ISIS nor Islam (actually the syrian-ortodox church was involved somehow, I don't know the details though).

By ignoring the problem, Sweden is naively contributing at least another 300 ISIS terrorists to the world
http://www.sakerhetspolisen.se/download/18.4f0385ee143058a61a89f3/1392294843261/Reportonviolence-promotingIslamistextremisminSweden.pdf

Right, the page you link to are hosted by the Swedish secret service, I'm pretty sure they keep tabs on those particular 300 ISIS sympathizers, so don't worry.

You know, the fault lies with the US and UK invasion of Iraq. That is what caused the current chaos in the middle east. That is what is causing refugees seek safe harbor in Europe. If you look at where the refugees in Europe come from (besides Afghanistan), it is Iraq, Syria and Eastern Africa, all regions that collapsed after the Iraq disaster the UK helped create. ISIS was created and led by former Iraqi secret service personnel, that is why they have been so successful in taking over parts of Syria.

Sweden have only done what every country in the world promised they would, we have granted asylum to people fleeing from war zones.

Problem is that Sweden alone (and Germany, etc) cannot, by themselves, accommodate all refugees that enter into EU. The EU asylum seekers need to be distributed fairly and evenly among all the member states, if EU did that there would be no refugee crisis in Europe. Of course, the UK opposed that idea.

So please stop complaining about Sweden (and the rest of Europe) who are trying to deal, as humanely as possible, with the humanitarian disaster that the UK caused by invading Iraq in 2003.

Here's some reading for you:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36721645
http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/

[amiq]

A follow up to the previous video I posted of Professor Michael Dougan.

[XynxNet]

I was not talking about alliances but about joining together economically equivalent countries. You response pretty much explains the failures of the euro.

They don't have to be equal, but there has to be a mechanism to boost the weaker economy. That's partly missing at the moment or does not work very well towards the benefit of the weaker european economies.

A successfull example can be found in germany. Bavaria went from on of our poorest states to one of our most sucessfull ones. It took 30 years, a lot of monetary transfers from other states and some smart decisions from it's local government. It's great for bavaria but it's also great for the other german states because bavaria invested in "new" industries. So today they help those states which are struggling due to the decline of mining and steel industries and which are the ones who payed for bavarias economic rise.

[doobedoobedo]

A follow up to the previous video I posted of Professor Michael Dougan.

News at 11 - Man funded by EU is Pro EU!

http://eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=86112

[rstofer]

I was not talking about alliances but about joining together economically equivalent countries. You response pretty much explains the failures of the euro.

They don't have to be equal, but there has to be a mechanism to boost the weaker economy. That's partly missing at the moment or does not work very well towards the benefit of the weaker european economies.

How do you do that?  You have an industrial powerhouse like Germany and, on the other side, Greece.  How can the economy of Greece ever approach that of Germany.

Yet Greece can't devalue their currency to make their exports attractive because they are locked into the same Euro that Germany uses.

Of the 28 countries in the EU, how many are realistically equivalent to Germany?



A successfull example can be found in germany. Bavaria went from on of our poorest states to one of our most sucessfull ones. It took 30 years, a lot of monetary transfers from other states and some smart decisions from it's local government. It's great for bavaria but it's also great for the other german states because bavaria invested in "new" industries. So today they help those states which are struggling due to the decline of mining and steel industries and which are the ones who payed for bavarias economic rise.
[/quote]

[Tepe]

Problem is that Sweden alone (and Germany, etc) cannot, by themselves, accommodate all refugees that enter into EU.

That is not the problem. The problem is that certain other members of Schengen did not fulfill their obligations in regard to protecting the outer borders and to add insult to injury, they simply turned a blind eye to the fact that legions of illegal immigrants were transiting through their countries en route to Germany and Scandinavia where milk and honey are supposed to be flowing.

The EU asylum seekers need to be distributed fairly and evenly among all the member states, if EU did that there would be no refugee crisis in Europe. Of course, the UK opposed that idea.

Lots of countries oppose that idea and it wouldn't work anyway. Remember, free movement across borders.

[zapta]

They are mainly xenophobic older men in the country who find the authoritarian anti-establishment rhetoric appealing.

I noticed that xenophiles are ad hominem trigger happy with xenorealistics. It leave no room for an honest discussion. Or maybe this is the reason why. In this case it's compounded with a sexists and agist tone.

[Corporate666]

If you look at the longest lived "divisions" (countries), they work because they are geographically, culturally, socially and economically the same.  When two areas that aren't the same join, they always ultimately split up.

Example? Isolationist countries have always ended up poor and technologically backwards. China seems to be doing great and has a very heterogeneous makeup.

Isolationist is not the opposite of united, so your statement above has no bearing on what you said earlier.  Previously, you said larger unions lead to more stability and less war, which is provably false.  Many of the wars which have been fought in the history of the world were about people who wanted out of unions.  And no empire has stood the test of time throughout the history of the world - ever. 

Nobody could rationally argue that the countries which currently make up the EU are close enough geographically, culturally, socially and economically that they will stand the test of time.

Evidently lots of people could, can and do. Besides, the cultural and social differences of the EU (and nation states in general) were artificially engineered during the 19th century. What about the US, all those geographically, culturally, socially and economically different states seems to get along just fine.
[/quote]

Who is arguing that the EU will stand the test of time?  Can yo provide a link to a source?  I haven't heard anyone making a rational and reasoned argument that there is anything about the EU that indicates it will continue to exist in 1,000 years - I'd like to see your source, however.  We do have thousands of years of history that is littered with empires and unions that all fell apart, 100% of the time.  We also have individual nations that have lasted for thousands of years.  So the data suggests that empires don't work, but sufficiently discrete nations can and do work. 

As for the USA, if you are suggesting that the different states are analogous to European countries, then you don't know much about the USA or Europe.  There is no reasonable comparison between US states and European nations - I mean, language alone proves the comparison patently untrue.  Add in social, economic and political differences and it just drives the point home.   And even then, the USA will not likely stand the test of time.  Neither will most of the nations that currently exist on this earth.  The EU most definitely won't.  I doubt it will even survive my lifetime.  I'm older than the EU and it's already falling apart.

[tggzzz]

I was not talking about alliances but about joining together economically equivalent countries. You response pretty much explains the failures of the euro.

That same argument could be applied to the pound and the economically very different parts of the UK. Do you propose splitting sterling on those grounds? If not, why not?

Consider, for example, Merthyr Tydfil and London, which have less in common than Germany and Greece. The only reason people move to Merthyr is that a flat costs £60k vs £470k in London! And nobody has a holiday in Merthyr, unlike Greece.

[Corporate666]

Police corpses in other countries manage to deal with erratic behaviour during traffic controls without the shooting.

All of this doesn't *have* to happen.

I have a friend who is a police officer in Belgium.  I am not sure how many people are killed by police each year in Belgium, but it isn't zero.  He told me about an old guy he had to shoot because the guy was angry about being evicted and was waving a gun around and wouldn't put it down.  The USA has a population more than 30 times that of Belgium, and about 1,000 people are killed by police each year - which is the equivalent of about 30 people being killed by police in Belgium.

I travel extensively in Europe, and if you watch the news there, you would think that cops are killing 10% of the population each year.  The world is obsessed with the USA, and the US media gets obsessed with various topics.  Currently, one of the hot topics if blacks being killed by police.  So it's all over the news here, which means it's all over the news in most of the rest of the world.  And most people don't bother to delve deeper into issues, they just read the headline and take it as fact (I am not saying you, I am just saying in general).  I have a Polish friend who is coming to the USA with her mom and her mom is terrified of being killed by police, shot by a terrorist, eaten by an alligator or arrested for something she didn't know was illegal.  That's just not the reality of life in the USA.

As for people getting shot in traffic incidents, guns are legal in the USA and widely available.  There are no police in the entire world that "deal with" perps with guns in any manner other than guns.  It's just that in many other countries, guns aren't as widely available.  As such, police tactics include tactics to address that.  I have been pulled over several times.  The police officer stands behind me, just behind the B-pillar of my car.  They put their overhead forward white lights on and light up your car.  They have their hand on top of their gun (while it is holstered) when they come to your car.  And if you are not a complete idiot, they are generally polite and respectful, and unless you were doing something really stupid, they tell you why they stopped you and you go on your way.  In every police shooting video I've seen, the person pulled over *isn't* polite or respectful, and their behavior is erratic and threatening.  That immediately puts a cop on edge and will get his gun drawn.  Normal, rational people don't do things like get out of their car and try to run when pulled over.  Nor do they run from the police, or refuse to follow police instructions.  Doing that stuff is like playing with high voltage - it's a recipe for disaster.  And in *most* cases, the cops get it right.  Rarely, they get it wrong - and are almost always prosecuted when they break the law.

The media is all about eyeballs, though, so things get blown out of proportion and hyped beyond reason.  One example is black being shot by police.  More whites are shot by police, by a 2-3 times multiple than blacks.  Yes, blacks make up 15% of the population but 25% of those killed by police, but a vast majority of the violent crime committed in the USA is also by blacks, so they have a much higher rate of interaction with police than others.  If you normalize for the number of interactions with police and likelihood to wind up shot, white people have a much higher likelihood of being killed by police than a black person does. 

But to listen to the news, cops shoot first when it's a black suspect and whites are treated with kid-gloves.  It would be funny to observe how the media paints this stuff if it wasn't such a serious subject.

[Corporate666]

How do you do that?  You have an industrial powerhouse like Germany and, on the other side, Greece.  How can the economy of Greece ever approach that of Germany.

Yet Greece can't devalue their currency to make their exports attractive because they are locked into the same Euro that Germany uses.

Of the 28 countries in the EU, how many are realistically equivalent to Germany?

This is one of the reasons the EU can't last.  The countries are too economically disparate.  Germany benefits because they are essentially working with a devalued currency which helps them immensely (as an export nation) - and Greece is forced to operate in the same economic sphere.

The problem never got solved during the Greek financial crisis.  It never got solved for the rest of the PIIGS either.  The can just got kicked down the road a little bit, and now the Greeks are unhappy with the outcome and the Germans are unhappy with the outcome.  If one looks at the Greek budget, their budget deficit is right in line with where it's been in the last 20 years.  Spending to GDP is larger than it's ever been with the exception of 2013, debt to GDP is virtually identical to the highest it has ever been.  They are suffering huge unemployment, deflation, GDP contraction and more.

If you look at all EU nations, the "rich" ones like France, Germany, Belgium and the UK - they are all suffering low growth compared to the USA and China.  And the poorer ones (Poland, Hungary, Romania, Croatia) are suffering deflation - which is death to an economy. Greece is just the worst-off, but they aren't the only ones doing badly.


All of this will eventually come to a head.  It's not doing any favors to the Greeks or Germans, and the whole EU is underperforming compared to the USA/China (their big competitors). 

Hopefully is falls apart peacefully - because things could go sideways real bad real quick.

[Tepe]

I am not sure how many people are killed by police each year in Belgium, but it isn't zero.  He told me about an old guy he had to shoot because the guy was angry about being evicted and was waving a gun around and wouldn't put it down.  The USA has a population more than 30 times that of Belgium, and about 1,000 people are killed by police each year - which is the equivalent of about 30 people being killed by police in Belgium.

I don't know the figures for Belgium but I do have data from a Danish report and from 1985 till 2002 Danish police shot 12 people dead:

Year	Shot dead
1985	0
1986	3
1987	1
1988	0
1989	0
1990	0
1991	1
1992	0
1993	1
1994	0
1995	0
1996	1
1997	0
1998	0
1999	0
2000	0
2001	3
2002	2

That's 0.67 people a year. The population of the US is 57 times that of Denmark so that would make it equivalent to the police in the USA shooting 38 people dead every year.

[jancumps]

Similar here, with practically 0 for traffic related incidents.
The stats will go up for us with the cells of Paris and Brussels baddies that have been rolled up.

[Kjelt]

The world is obsessed with the USA, and the US media gets obsessed with various topics. 
As for people getting shot in traffic incidents, guns are legal in the USA and widely available. 

One sentence as if that is ok. You and your country are in denial, the USA related death by firearms for countries is top 10 in the world, you are in the same league as Panama, Urugay and the likes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
You think that is overreacting? The response to 911 was overreacting by a huge scale, only 3500 deaths and the whole country has changed to intolerate, frightened and paranoid people, unfortunately.
Do the math and see how many people are killed by your own people each year and compare that to terrorist death related incidents, now what should have higher priority hmmmmm

[apis]

Problem is that Sweden alone (and Germany, etc) cannot, by themselves, accommodate all refugees that enter into EU.

That is not the problem. The problem is that certain other members of Schengen did not fulfill their obligations in regard to protecting the outer borders and to add insult to injury, they simply turned a blind eye to the fact that legions of illegal immigrants were transiting through their countries en route to Germany and Scandinavia where milk and honey are supposed to be flowing.

You can not legally deny someone who wants to apply for asylum. Once they arrive in EU you need handle their request for asylum. You can of course try to strike a deal with countries outside of EU (Turkey) but that is a different problem.

The refugees come in via Greece, Italy and Hungary. Those countries cannot accommodate all asylum applicants by themselves any more than Sweden or Germany can (it's not like Greece can afford to), so they let those who wish continue on their own up north to apply for asylum in the country of their choosing. That doesn't work either since all the refugees choose to go to Germany and Sweden apparently. So there need to be a system that relocates the asylum applicants evenly and fairly among the eu-member states.


Asylum applicants in 2015

The EU asylum seekers need to be distributed fairly and evenly among all the member states, if EU did that there would be no refugee crisis in Europe. Of course, the UK opposed that idea.

Lots of countries oppose that idea and it wouldn't work anyway. Remember, free movement across borders.

Green - yes, red - no, yellow - opt-out.

I think you overestimate peoples desire to come to Sweden and Germany. Once people settle down and get comfortable in one country; learn the language, get friends and hopefully work they will not just pick up their bags and move again.

[Tepe]

You can not legally deny someone who wants to apply for asylum. Once they arrive in EU you need handle their request for asylum.

It is the job of the country where they arrive first, for example Greece, to sort that out. They didn't. Instead they just lat the pass through in violation of the Schengen agreement.  Greece (to stay with our example) should have rejected everybody whose asylum applications are groundless as well as anybody who doesn't apply for asylum.

You can of course try to strike a deal with countries outside of EU (Turkey) but that is a different problem.

Yes, we have outsourced the machine gunning at the border to Turkey.

I think you overestimate peoples desire to come to Sweden and Germany.

Have a look at the maps you posted. They speak for themselves.

One reason to head straight for Sweden is the outrageously liberal family reunion rules you have saddled yourself with.