Third time lucky, for Germany?

[VetLegion]

Yep. We can leech some structural funds for a year or two and what then?

How do you even get out of EU? Not really possible.

[Hauldren Collider]

The EU should either federate US-style or just be a giant free trade agreement. I still have difficulty making heads or tails of how the political process in Brussels actually works. As far as I can tell, y'all have an absurdly large legislature that speaks dozens of different languages and then a less transparent and smaller version of our Senate that seems to make all of the decisions, and a President who nobody knows or cares about and doesn't do anything.

[giblets]

The EU should either federate US-style or just be a giant free trade agreement. I still have difficulty making heads or tails of how the political process in Brussels actually works. As far as I can tell, y'all have an absurdly large legislature that speaks dozens of different languages and then a less transparent and smaller version of our Senate that seems to make all of the decisions, and a President who nobody knows or cares about and doesn't do anything.

Thank you for spelling y'all correctly.

[C0ckney]

Hurrah, an interesting thread!

QFT.

Nigel Farage FTW

i don't want the UK to leave the EU and i wouldn't vote for UKIP, but there's something strangely likeable about them. they don't seem like a real political party, more like a bunch of old duffers who dabble in politics on the side.

In a couple of months I get to vote whether to enter EU or not, and I will vote NO.
Unfortunately Croats are not very smart, they see that EU countries are rich
and they mix up correlation and causation, thinking that they are rich because
they are in EU, thus, enter EU we must.

at least you'll be getting a vote. but if you enter don't expect anymore anytime soon.

for me it's not about in or out. it's about the direction that the EU is taking and the chance for the people to have a say about it. when the constitution was rejected by france and holland, the correct response would have been for politicians to go away and come up with something different and then give the people (and i mean all the people in the EU) a chance to express their view. instead they changed the name and basically said "it's not very important of course, and if you don't like it, well, **** you, you're having it anyway". it would disgrace a banana republic.

[Hauldren Collider]

By the way, the European Charter of Rights or whatever it is you call your bill of rights is the most disgustingly pathetic political document I've ever seen. It's about as far from the American innovation of limiting government as you can get--it actually assigns responsibilities on the government that explicitly increase its authority. Atrocious.

[Hauldren Collider]

Also, if the UK wanted to leave the EU, who would honestly stop them? Or Germany or France? The little guys couldn't leave but I can hardly imagine the Europeans who need our help to bomb backwaters like Libya would have the balls to enforce the Lisbon Treaty militarily if the UK just decided to say "**** it".

[giblets]

Also, if the UK wanted to leave the EU, who would honestly stop them? Or Germany or France? The little guys couldn't leave but I can hardly imagine the Europeans who need our help to bomb backwaters like Libya would have the balls to enforce the Lisbon Treaty militarily if the UK just decided to say "**** it".

Why wouldn't the smaller states be able to leave?

Withdrawal from the European Union is a right of European Union (EU) member states under TEU Article 50: "Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_from_the_European_Union

[Hauldren Collider]

Huh, I was under the impression that you couldn't leave. Nevermind...

So now my question is why hasn't Britain left yet? I still can't quite figure out what they gain from being part of it. They aren't on the Euro.

[giblets]

I'm pretty sure they had a referendum on leaving once, and they voted to stay by a pretty solid majority. But that was a while ago.

[VetLegion]

We see how leaving EU is working out for Greece.

[Barnabas]

Greece needs to leave the Euro, not to love the EU.

If you don't have your own currency, and share that of a much more developed, productive and populated country like Germany, you end up with an overvalued currency that makes you uncompetitive.


That, or Merkel should become dictator of Greece and cut their wages until thgey become competitive again, and re structure their debt

[Egbert]

Is Agent Sox retarded, or just somebody's DL?

I think Agent Sox is a DL. But who is running this DL?

[Whoha]

The Boer war CCs were hardly the same as Nazi death camps though, and the US ran CCs for Japanese, didn't they?

Also it was France who were keenest to punish Germany at Versailles.

Half of boer children died in those camps, these were the inspiration for where the nazi concentration camps came from. The internment camps by contrast saw their populations grow because we weren't aiming for the whole industrial genocide motif. Once the British public learned what was being done they slammed the breaks on this policy, but it was too late. As for Versailles regardless of who was keenest the empire pushed for and got war reparations rather than backing off.

[Zoetstofzoetje]

us never ran any jap camps (other than after the war to dismantle them and help the occupants), and hitler was inspired by not only the english´s boer cc but also the turkish´ armenian genocide.

[Agent Sox]

Braindead, are you saying you think someone is "running" me, like with mind control or something? Haha, I have thought about that before, trust me. Part of me thinks I have these crazy ideas because it's time for the world to know the truth. But I know that's thinking the whole world is about me and that's a symptom, so I try not to think that way too often.