David Cameron to promise Britons straight choice on EU exit

Last chance to free yourselves, Brits. Don't screw it up. Cut bait on the EU before it drags you down into the Southern Europe debt abyss.

The only people that should be paying for Greeks to retire at 50 is the Greeks.

 

Cameron said that he is not an isolationist but he wants a better deal for Britain and to keep Britain in the EU, Brussels would have to give Britain much leeway in governing the country without Eurocrats' meddling and there is a plan to confer Britain with second-class membership, allowing it to remain in the eurozone while repatriating powers to London such as immigration controls. Getting Britain out of the EU entirely is not in the national interests of Britain but a new settlement with the EU, which may require treaty changes, could be negotiated to appease eurosceptics at home and Cameron promised an in-out referendum after the next general election as anticipated.

 

You don't have any clue about what happen to Greece you also don't know anything about our retirement system... for example pensions , medicare and welfare in general are NOT paid by the government .
Next time try not to have an opinion about things you ignore !


On topic Cameron promise to have a referendum between 2015 and 2018 , elections are in 2015 and there is no way he can win them , this is cheap European politricks at their worst.

 

Cameron speech: France offers 'red carpet' to UK firms: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21161842

The French foreign minister says France will welcome any businesses that leave the UK, should the country exit the European Union.

 

Lol, lol, lol. There's no chance whatsoever of Cameron winning the next election and he knows it. The Tories are a poisonous brand who appeal to nobody. As a fully paid up member of the liberal establishment and an internationalist, I think this is a cheap tactic from Mr. Cameron to take away votes from UKIP. Beware anybody who thinks this man is sincere.

 

[video=youtube;8Ls60Wbq_dk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ls60Wbq_dk[/video]

 

Which only serves to demonstrate how much you know about the debt crisis. It was caused by the US (banks and regulators) and regardless of EU membership, global banks owe each other money, the USA is not in the EU, but your banks have lent EU banks money and are therefore exposed.

 

I wouldn't be sure of that at all. Actually, I suspect it's quite likely that the tories will win, unfortunately. They are 'tainted', but I reckon Labour are still more or less unelectable at the moment under Ed Miliband, even though they are doing well in the mid-term polls - once they start trying to come out with some substance to their policies, rather than just opposition for opposition's sake as they have been doing (with only relatively moderate success, considering), I think they are very likely to fall apart into in-fighting again (not to mention the elecorate remembering who got us into this mess in the first place!). The Lib Dems will probably take a bit of a hit, and that could well leave the tories with an overall majority, especially since Cameron's just very effectively headed off the other potentially serious threat from UKIP (and in that sense, this was quite a clever move).

He's also put the EU in a difficult position that might give him some room for manoeuvre - allow us to do some re-negotiation, or our people will decide to leave altogether. As much as some of them moan about the UK's attitude, I really don't think they want that to happen.

What doesn't seem to be mentioned in the 'free choice' referendum is that there is to be no option to vote for 'head towards ever greater integration as the EU federalists want' or whatever. Realistically, though, I doubt there would be many people in the UK selecting such an option anyway.

 

Yeah, I said last night that it's only there fore people to register their "out" opinion.

I read some interesting stuff recently:

1. For the first time the UK has superceded France and Germany's largest trading partner.
2. Merkels response to Cameron was pragmatic and she's open to negotiation, as she recognises that not all member states want full integration.
3. The EU's founding principle is someting like "ever increasing union", which kind of explains why the EU tends to head towards Federalism on an ongoing basis.

In terms of point 3, I've always said that my main issue with the EU is the lack of end point to integration, and the lack of agreement between member states of what the end point is. As far as I can see, not many countries want a fully federal EU, but we seem to sleep walk in that direction.

 

Exactly. The EU Commission at the centre is heavily populated with fundamental ideological federalists (and there's alot of them in the parliament, too), and they are driving things in that direction as quickly as they can in the hope that everyone will just go along with it. I guess it's time someone made some kind of stand about that, so that the debate can be properly conducted in public as to what shape the EU should take in future.

Personally I suspect is that we will end up with a 2-tier system within the EU, with one group in a more-or-less complete federal union (probably dominated by Germany, and including most of the 'new' EU countries), and another group (including the UK, but with several others, who might have to drop out of the Euro as a result, because that won't really work effectively for the long term without the full banking/economic union) as some kind of 'associate members', including the full free trade, some of the free movement of people stuff (but with increased local controls), and alot of the human rights stuff, and so on, but outside of the full federal political and banking union. There just isn't any uniform opinion across the continent of how the EU should be, and the whole of the EU will never agree on the direction for it. The debate needs to be had openly everywhere between the people, politicians and the non-elected officials who have been driving things, and hopefully this will be the start of it.

Apart from anything else, the Eurozone has no choice but to integrate more economically if the currency is going to survive/thrive, and I think it's clear that the UK will now never join the Euro or accept that kind of banking union. That situation has to be addressed somehow eventually, and it can't be virtually ignored and glossed over for much longer.

 

Cameron needs to explain what he will do if he can't get the renegotiation he's talking about. Last time we had a referendum on the 'European' question (in 1975), the voters were told that our terms had been improved. They had not, but voters trusted the then political establishment, but we've learned and won't be so easily fooled next time. We want a lot more than cosmetic changes. Cameron has done nothing to earn my vote.

I can't see why 26 members states would allow one member state to pick and choose; that's why renegotiation is a non-starter.

 

This kind of all-encompassing pragmatism, of self-containment that wants panoramic view and means of intervention into every detail, this silly dignity of the self-determination 'principle' is typical of England and is what keeps you people stuck in the same cycle of historic thinking. How the (*)(*)(*)(*) in the world can you predict (let alone engineer) future events like you guys want, that are to occur in a large space (the EU) anytime in a time frame of years and decades?? When you create something like the Steel and Coal Community it's a start, a broad concept, a broad attempt at something, on which you build, adapt, learn, discover what layers you could add, and you don't create it because you know the final outcome, otherwise you go for building that outcome straight and direct. You can't engineer history, you can't make artificial history and even if you do it you severely artificialize your own life. What you can do is steer a bit in a kind of general direction. That kind of prefabricated destiny might be possible within the boundaries of an island like Britain that didn't very often have to tick and think in respect to terrestrial invasions and was free to think and marvel at its own thoughts in a time when building a military landing vessel to invade it was more expensive than building a medieval village. Therefore a consciousness of scrutiny of every square foot of that island might have developed over centuries. Britain is a kind of Truman Show where things are 'directed' from their inception to their conclusion under the all-seeing eye of the English people, where all things are watched over 24/7 (it's impossible to set foot in Britain and not be recorded on CCTV - they say that living some months there makes a recording of you that exceeds the length of all the episodes of several long running television series like Seinfield, Sex and the City etc combined).

The English are severely disturbed by uncertainty and resent spontaneity and limit situations when you have to make one decisive move. That applies to the attitude towards the EU and the way in which it evolves. Unfortunately or rather fortunately for them, the world does work that way. 600, 500, 300 years ago you could afford to build your own world but now, the present one forces you to be an active part of it, not just tradewise cause that's been for thousands of years.

Very unusual for a European nation, like George Orwell remarks, the English have a crowd way of thinking rather than a more individual one. They think like one and one thinks like all. Sometimes it truly freaks out how much they like to be identical to one another and act as a mass, a kind of communist instinct that claims itself to be equality in a free civilized world but molds into a freaking-out egalitarianism. Even houses on a long street look the same. If you are at the end of one of these streets looking down the road you can't tell whether your right hand side is not the left hand side of you standing at the other end of the street looking in your direction. Quantum multiexistence or just a very inspired way of doing architecture.

So take it easy. The EU works the natural way it's supposed to, just like pieces of the world have always evolved and unexpectedly changed their nature. Even if the original purpose for it was just some free trade that doesn't mean it has to stay that way if history comes up with new series of surprises.

You're a nice fully thinking guy but you got this one wrong like we all do sometimes. There is no disagreement between member states but between your Tories together with your UKIP and the pro-Europeans which are the majority in Europe. People in Europe are not ready and have not prepared for this transformation indeed. Very true. But they are fully open to it as a possibility and a necessity. Most of them. They have not prepared for the crisis either. To you they obliviously do seem to be sleepwalking in this direction unwillingly because it has a lot of political gravitational pull. But they are not. That's because they already started taking this very likely possibility for granted (long before the euroskeptic Brits woke up on this scale to wonder what's their role in the EU) and they - the member states- find it as a surplus of wasted time to think and talk about it. They don't because there is a mutual, tacit agreement and lessening regarding this between nearly all states of Europe: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden. Many in Britain seem to have not realized this. Not yet. Of course all these countries have factions of euroskeptics but I wonder whether there is a single one in which they have a party like UKIP that exists and breaths for the sole purpose of a break-up with the EU and campaigns against the EU as a means to appeal to their voters.

 

I suspect part of the thinking is that now the cat is out of the bag and the fundamental federalists have been challenged on the headlong driving of their agenda from within the EU organisation itself, some of the other member states might start to come out of the woodwork and discuss some of the issues that they are not entirely happy with too.

 

That is, of course, entirely untrue, and completely ridiculous. Really....seriously.....any kind of misplaced belief in this kind of idiocy will not help with understanding the realities of the world and the various political opinions and viewpoints of the UK. The fact that most of the people of the UK have formed an opinion against EU federalism cannot be seen in terms of the people 'just being weird' - it just means that there are political and physical factors, and cultural issues, that are different from those places that do favour EU federalism. People don't just form different political views because they are 'not normal', and prevailing views in some countries that differ from others are not formed because they just have some kind of controlled borg-like mass-identity - that is simply a nonsensical view with no basis whatsoever in truth.

There are significant differences between the UK experience and most other places in Europe - for example, as much as the UK is itself a multi-national entity (and that in itself has an effect on the views of many about how well multi-national institutions work when run from the centre!), and a set of nations formed by waves of immigration and so on, as an island it has never had the experience of 'flexible borders' (moving regularly according to wars, negotiations, etc. ,etc.) with places outside itself. Unlike in other EU countries, when you get close to a border of the UK you don't get into an area that is half-way between one country and the next in culture, language, and so on - you just get to the sea! I suspect that actually makes a very big difference it terms of the mindset of how close other countries 'seem', and how much cultural and political ideas become uniform across regions that straddle formal international borders.

But that's just it - it isn't 'evolving', it is being pushed in one particular direction, partly by a hardcore group of fundamentalists at the centre who, funnily enough, are also the group who would benefit hugely in terms of their personal power over virtually an entire continent. While the UKIP line of pulling out altogether is certainly not a majority one even in the UK, most people in the UK don't want to be part of Barroso's personal 'federal' empire either. The EU should evolve - if that means that some countries decide effectively on a merger, so be it - that's up to them. Not every country is going to join that, though - the UK certainly never will (and I suspect it won't be the only one).

There is a real problem of a difference of opinion here, and a real chance to create a form of EU that actually works for everyone (perhaps with a 2-tier system) rather than tries to force one member (or more) and its people into a situation where they are simply not prepared to go. The current blinkered course is only going to result in friction that doesn't need to exist at all, and something needs to change to allow the EU to work.

Let's not forget that the EU doesn't actually want the UK to leave - it is one of the biggest net contributors to the EU budget. Other members have to recognise that the UK will never be in the Eurozone, and will never accept full banking union, and will never want to be a part of a full federal union. It doesn't make sense to the people of the UK to have the UK within such a creature - a free trade organisation with common market laws and close cooperation on many issues across borders does make sense to most people, though, and that is what they want the EU to be (or at least what they want the UK's relationship with the EU to be - what the rest of the EU decides to do is obviously up to them).

 

In reality, 26 member states don't have to agree. Germany has to agree and being as the UK is their largest trading partner, I'd say there's a strong chance Cameron might succeed.

The downfall of a referendum is that it will be determined not by facts and figures and logic and reasoning, but by The Sun, The Mail and The Mirror. This is a reality and one which the UK should be wary of.

 

This is why I don't ever read your posts. My mum would say of this "When you've finished, you've said nothing".

Why do you make every single post as long, drawn out and not understandable as the EU constitution?

I'm guessing you must work for the EU, if you do not, you have all the qualifications to do so it seems.

 

I reckon that too. Sweden is also EU-careful, the Irish showed this during the constitution referendum, so did the Dutch.

 

You've already got Puerto Rico, Altkampfer. Give you England, if you must have somewhere to strut in, but the rest of us prefer eating.

 

A sample of what I'm talking about. This 'I stick my head in the sand' and 'it's not there'. The error code and you quickly wrap yourself hermetic and unplug the connection then play in the always sunshine image world of your own desktop, that's the attitude. Brick up the windows to the dark rainy outside world and paint some happy colorful things on the inside.

This was not addressed to you in particular. You don't have to be my listener in order for the longness to make sense in other brains.

Hard to understand? Don't know... Maybe I knows more english than you or just speak too much American?

 

Wait a minute I have a post you didn't respond to in the United States of Europe thread. A large one directly for you in reply to what you had said earlier that is pending your reply. You owe me a big reply to that one and I will only respond to this or any further posts you address me when you deal with that one.

 

Oh stop flattering me

 

There's no chance Cameron will succeed. Even Cameron doesn't want to succeed. That's why he's had to be dragged squealing this far under threat of the rise of UKIP. 26 member states do have to agree because any concessions require treaty changes. Germany could certainly try to strong arm or bribe the other member states, but I wouldn't want to be a part of a union that uses tactics like that anyway.

All of which supported one or other of the mainstream parties, together with The Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian, The Independent and of course the BBC. As you say, not logic and reasoning. You can see it reflected in public opinion now, which is why we desperately need a fully informed public debate.

Fortunately, we are not reliant on mainstream sources as the public was in the 1975 referendum when the country voted to 'stay in' after a hugely biased campaign. Any future referendum campaign would be no less biased, so it's hardly surprising therefore that politicians wish to control the internet helping to stifle the 'out' campaign.

 

Why the majority cannot understand this simple fact I cannot understand. Do we now have an entire generation that takes things literally and cannot realize that duplicitous men like Cameron do not change. It's not that hard to see that the Tories are unelectable and that any promise of a referendum will therefore never materialize. Cameron himself has stated repeatedly that he does not want Britain to leave the EU. This is just typical Tory hot air, fooling people into believing that change is possible (as they promised with immigration) when the reality is that the EU is a political collective that will never give up any power that it has taken. Even if the Tories won the next election (yeah, right), any referendum would be preceded by the biggest propaganda campaign in British history, with the BBC and the majority of the media peddling untold scare stories of what would happen if we left the Collective. In a worse case scenario where the public dared to use a bit of common sense and vote us out of the Fourth Reich then we would simply have a situation like Ireland (Lisbon Referendum) where the Collective simply carry on holding referendums until they get the "right" result (there is also evidence of massive vote rigging in the second referendum). Conclusion: The only way anybody leaves the EU is when the European banking system collapses and we have a state of anarchy. The EU establishment have invested decades in this neo-Soviet project and will NEVER let their respective populations out of the straight-jacket by democratic means.

 

The scare tactics have already started, from Russian Oliogarcts (sp?), to Starbucks and the banks... why the hell would anyone trust this list of criminals is beyond me.

A referendum would be a disaster! Interest groups using the media, the media abusing their readership. You might as well flip coins for elections.

 

What about a more limited form of EU membership for the UK ? Is that possible?