a kick in the balls, on 12 October 2014 - 01:14 PM, said:
So, by extension, as his nationalism isn't anywhere near that of the Balkans, almost a distant universe its so far away - its hardly dangerous is it? I will tell you what IS dangerous though - Ignoring the legitimate concerns of "masses", and branding any debate on uncontrolled mass migration as racism. That really is dangerous, and breeds resentment and extremism. That forces people to the edge, and towards groups like "Britain first" and the "EDL"......because the main political elite refuse to have a sensible debate about it.The BNP would never ever have anywhere near the type of support from ordinary men and women from all sides of the political spectrum. Its utterly ridiculous to suggest it. Lazy political correct "brand them racist to undermine them" nonsense. I thought you had a much better debating style - you disappoint me with that.
Now you'll have to allow me to be disappointed too... You know that nationalism sits on a spectrum and that 'dangerous' isn't a binary concept. Just because Farage isn't about to turn Sheffield into Srebrnica it doesn't mean he's not dangerous. He's dangerously divisive and would be harmful to our economic wellbeing if his views were ever implemented.
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Norway, Iceland, Switzerland among others have close economic ties with the EU, but not so close political ties and govern themselves. They have a 0.5% import/export duty with the EU (which is effectively a free trade agreement) and are doing fine. That is where I want the UK to be.
Norway has huge oil wealth to look after itself and was sensible enough to put in a sovereign wealth fund. Iceland went through a huge recession and the worst bank default in history (relative to the size of its economy). As for Switzerland, I think we're about 75 years too late to grab our share of the nazi gold and I'm not sure I would want to prop up our economy on providing 'discreet' financial services to people of questionable morals.
We're never going to have a meeting of minds on this, but the countries you list are small countries with limited influence - so yes, we could become a small country with a free-trade agreement. I think we overplay our hand internationally partly due to history but also due to our position in the EU. Do you think that France would defend us remaining on the Security Council if we took our European ball home? The USA and EU are currently negotiating a free-trade agreement. Do you think that we'd be in a strong negotiating position if we tried that ourselves? Essentially, I'm comfortable with the idea of European ties, think it brings peace and prosperity, and although it could no doubt be reformed I believe we'd be much worse on the outside.
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Are you really suggesting that a company like BMW or Audi wouldn't trade with the UK because we left the EU, or that our expertise in specialist manufacturing (Rolls Royce Aero Engines for example) would suffer? Would we stop selling goods and services to the EU because we were not politically joined with them? Trade isn't driven by political nonsense from un elected commissions
They wouldn't stop trading but they'd face higher costs in doing so and would pass that on to the customers. I work in a big company and I'd be surprised if more than 5% of the FTSE 100 wanted to leave. Even with a free-trade agreement you'd end up with additional management costs associated with complying with two sets of regulations. Maybe the EU does go beyond its remit from time-to-time (who can forget bendy bananas) but it's also true that sometimes scale matters if you want to do things efficiently and therefore things are better done at the European level. Ie, the freetrade negotiation with the USA, competition law, cooperation on crime, workers' rights, protecting minorities. There are lots of arcane things that the EU does well but silently and yet all we hear about are the missteps.
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Look at the Eurozone now. Southern Europe is in a mess, its a basket case in Greece. Italy is Struggling. Portugal is struggling. France isn't doing well, and now Germany is having a slowdown for second quarter. One size fitas all central economic *ahem* "planning" hasn't worked, and it was obvious it wouldn't 10 years ago. .
For what it's worth, I think the euro has been a mistake. I wouldn't have said that before the crisis by the way but I'm happy to admit being wrong. Having said that, those countries are generally not in a mess wholly or even mainly because of the EU - any country that keeps electing Berlusconi deserves everything it gets, Greece cooked the books, France continues to elect inept governments and the people refuse to work beyond the age of about 45, Germany has stuck too rigidly to the austerity notion that you should run the country's finances like a good housefrau and will end up deflating itself into recession. Back to the euro, I would agree that the path
out of recession would have been different without a single currency, but there are underlying problems in those countries that go beyond simply blaming the EU.
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