Germany Puts Forward End Of British Pound -- UK Goes Crazy:

Keep the Aspidistra Flying is one of my favorite books. I just started Down and Out as a result of the quote given.

 

I an not a bigot. What's that in your eye? 'Europe' is capitalist, yes - but at least it is under some sort of control, unlike the mess occuring in this insane Americanised dump.

 

I don't know where you got those supposive data from, but this is ridiculous.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EU_net_budget_2007-2013_per_capita.png
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...EU_for_budget_period_2007-2013_-_vertical.png

As I mentioned your political attitude, I am suprised to hear that I was wrong.

France was and will always be politically the primus inter pares in the European Union, not economically, but politically. There is nothing that will change this fact.

This occurs to you a little late I think. It is France which determines the velocity of European integration and it will be France to trigger a Europe of zwo velocities or not. It has nothing to do with the UK overplayed its hands, it was exactly what France managed under De Gaulle, a quite intelligent move.

Germany accepted the role for the reasons of complete isolation after WWII, for the knowledge that French has a tradition of being globally present and for the knowledge that its own leadership position is unacceptable for many European countries like Italy, the UK or Poland because with its larger population it outweights many other countries with ambitions, who want to find an equilibrium. The English media is a good example though a bit more extreme than others, nevertheless, I found some remarks like Europe speaks German again improper at least, which triggered this wave of Germanophobia.

Despite of that all it accepted the role with the knowledge that it is in its own interest to have such an equilibrium, although under French political leadership.

It is in any case justified, not to join, I think we all agree we don't wish an empire as the Soviet Union. Forced marriage is a big contemporary issue and condemned.

Hmmm, as I told you, in the concrete case there might have been a mistake from Camerons side, but in general the mechanism works that way usually most often.

 

Janpor wrote :-
.. "rating agencies" -- already shot themselves in the foot with a bazooka in 2007-2008 when all of their AAA-products went bust. So the first question arises: what the hell do they know?

Secondly, the first sovereign credit downgrading in this entire saga happened on Greece, so not on the USA as you claim


IMHO
You come across as someone who watches the "right" serious TV programmes and reads a so called "serious " paper .
And I am sure you believe what you write .
But it veers toward the bunkum end of sponsored news for the PC part of the working class . It is bland , censored nonsense .
I am not going to lead you through the garden of self correction , or offer to mentor you for a twenty year penitence programme .
But I will point you north by your long nose . I will commend you to the subject of Rating Agencies and their complete transformation after the 07/08 debacle when it was clear they were too afraid of the truth because sponsorship ( money) would dry up .
They then did a near about turn , because it was seen by everybody that they were not independent .
Since then , and because of people in Weiss Research Institute , for example , they have cleaned up their act .
However this week I believe they have been bought off by the Fed who have asked for a delay before they consider down rating many Banks and the US from triple A..
But now they are less corrupt than ever before and this should be applauded , even though it is reasonable to ask why there ever was a time when that clearly was not the case .
Long term US Bonds are already junk and when that is also true of short term bonds , the country will sink .
Some time in the second half of next year is my guess .

And stop prattling on about Greece being this and that and the US being quite different .
The US has been bankrupt since at least 2007 . Do you not understand what this word means ?

 

Your bigotry must be a matter of opinion. And that's the point ... it isn't an insane Americanised dump at all. If it's an insane dump, it's an insane Europeanised dump. It is a slavish devotion to EU rules that dictates how this country is run.

It was for example, the EU which gave permission for the government to bail out the banks with our cash. That's right - the British government needs the permission of the European Commission to aid state industries, but they refuse permission for it to aid our manufacturing industry, but they give permission to bail out banks. And under a capitalist system, the banks would never have been bailed out at all, they'd have been left to fail. The EU is the very worst of both socialism and capitalism and its "controls" are crap, and even worse, not have any democratic controls worth a (*)(*)(*)(*), citizens can do nothing about it but take direct action. The future will not be a peaceful one if the EU continues as it is and it shows no signs of changing for the better.

 

The class-war government pretends,for reasons connected with the interests of the City, that it has no voice in the EU, which is a lie. It obeys the US in every particular, always, as we all know. Like 'Israel' it is peculiarly useful as providing soldiers for imperialist operations which can be presented as 'independent' if things go wrong, as you know, whereas the EU has been brilliantly successful in curing the war-obsession of the states that have joined in the territory it covers. It would, in my opinion, be a desperate mistake to be thrown out because of the silly posturing of the Etonian servants of the City and the squalid papers that talk its drivel for it.

 

So the fact that we can only aid our own industries if the European Commission agrees is a lie? That we can only trade with countries outside the EU if the EU sanctions any trade deals, is a lie? That we must apply the EU's costly bureaucratic single market rules to 100% of our businesses, small and large, even though only a minority of those businesses actually trade in Europe, and that's a lie? Once a power has been ceded to the EU, "our" voice is puny and can be easily overridden under qualified majority voting rules, and our governments have been ceding these powers, bit by bit, since 1972. Is that a lie too? All this suits the Etonians and the City. Whether the Transaction Tax will be too much for them remains to be seen.

Your view that the UK obeys the US is in no way based in fact. Quite simply we are not bound to obey the US in any way, whereas we are bound to obey the EU not least in adhering to its evolving Common Foreign and Security policy. Our armed forces are being absorbed under an EU command structure now.

How sure are you that the EU will not have its own war-obsessions in the future? Remember that the EU is not a democracy and states which are not democracies do not have a good record in peaceful relations with their neighbours. Europeans themselves do not have a good record in the peace stakes. We can only hope that European leaders (including our own) have learned from the mistakes of the past.

 

As you know, the class-war government doesn't give a twopenny about British industry: it longs to be Switzerland and make cuckoo-clocks at best. The EU prevents none of its members from trading with anyone, as you know. The UK is expected, like other states, to abide by its treaty obligations, as you know. Thank God the power to bully and cheat working people has been taken away from the class-warriors: long may it remain so, and may that prohibition be greatly extended. As you know, it is nonsense to say 'our' armed forces are being taken over: the EU has a very healthy dislike of the Pongoes and their jackboots, for obvious reasons. Yes, I am quite sure the EU will not be able to play noble war codswallop: too many of its people have suffered from it. You are just making noises, I'm afraid. I don't like the City or their cruddy propagandists, and I think you should give them up: they have nothing to offer decent people.

 

What I know, is that you need to learn more about the EU. A LOT MORE.

 

I'll live, Tamora. I know as much as I need to know the class-warriors are telling their usual lies.

 

No one who's involved with policy making is interested in the class war any more. Listen to what Bob Crow's lot has to say on the subject of EU militarisation. As I'm sure you know, he's no friend of the Tories and he's as far removed from any Etonian as it's possible to be.

The Lisbon Treaty certainly gives plenty of scope for conflict. Put bluntly, it develops an armed wing for the EU, complete with its own military-industrial complex, which will fight resource wars in the interests of the biggest European military powers, namely Britain, France and Germany ...
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NO2EU - The Lisbon Treaty further militarises the EU
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NO2EU is a good source of information, and better than any of the press or any of the other mainstream news organisations.

 

Everyone who is rich is, as always TOTALLY devoted to the class war, as you know: the poor - frightened by the boss-control of the Noise Machine - have to pretend, like mediaeval peasants. I don't think we are going to agree, Tamora. Have the last word and let's leave it.

 

You have no idea what I know unless I tell you, and for the record I am not in the slightest bit rich. Both the left, the right, the rich and the poor, and anyone who is a libertarian has good reasons to oppose the EU.

I'll let NO2EU have the last word ...

"The social dumping of exploited foreign workers in Britain is being carried out under EU rules demanding the “free movement of capital, goods, services and labour” within the EU. Successive EU Directives and European Court of Justice decisions have also been used to attack trade union collective bargaining, the right to strike and workers’ pay and conditions."
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You're free to leave the debate of course, but I was quite enjoying it.

 

Says it all .
In a dream world .
I expect that type of thing from young , earnest kids still studying and still carrying huge chips of anger around with them for , no doubt , unpleasant personal and family past matters .
Get out more , Iolo .
It's nowhere near perfect and it is full of mistakes and sometimes abuses .
But it is nothing like you imagine .

 

So...nothing there then.

I'm not defending the credit agencies. I'm laughing at your abusrd notion that they represent some absurd angloo-saxon plot to bring down the Euro.

Of course "mass hysteria" is a matter of opinion. Only a mindset with a deeply authoritarian outlook could confuse opinion with fact in this way.

Of course that authoritarianism isn't a new thing. People unsure of their ideas have always blamed the "press" for the unpopularity of their ideas. This is elitist stuff...whether its the right in the US blaming the "mainstream media", the Left in the UK, blaming the "Tory press", nationalist thugs in Russia condemning the "Western media", or you here, dismissing everything that is currently written in the English language. This is a clear mark of an elitist and authoritarian mindset, and when you look at the elitist cartel you are defending, who can be surprised?

Because all your posts are full of superficial pontificating and conspiracy theories. Being granular, as I am here, is a way of cutting the crap and getting to the core of the subject. You don't want to go there.

So...nothing there either, apart from the excellent English, bravo!

Of course this "fear" that you talk about is so much of a secret, that it can be found nowhere in the dastardly "anglo-saxon" press. This is grabage as is your wonderfully simplistic drivel about US postwar dominance. Is your worldview so vulgarized that it just exists on the exhaust fumes of anti-American abuse?

Because the deeply intolerant and fascist instincts of Vichy France were never really confronted by the French people.

My criticism is not to be tritely summarized as an almighty conspiracy of the English speaking peoples.

If you say so. Of course any request to actually explain what you are talking about is met with dsidain and derision...so much that it is clear that far from "taking you back to the classroom", we are taking you out of your comfort zone by asking you to explain what you mean. I know in your world these glib slanders are self-evident truths, but in my liberal world we look for rationalism, logic, argument and evidence to support our conclusions.

You've lost me.

A realization that politicans do not want to test at the ballot box. the only realization we see is the familiar site of anti-German xenophobia now raising its head as french chauvinists realize that this is a German led initiative, to be completed on German terms, and to the benefit of Germany...given that it has all the money. Even Sarkozy couldn't help casting WW1 and WW2 as continuations of the Franco-German war in 1870 - what a disgrace, but there you go. Or is this only reported in the "anglo-saxon press"?

You see you are prepared to do this without reforming european institutions and seeking the consent of the European people. I am not. I am in favour of a United States of europe, but I am bitterly opposed to Franco-German elitism.

There is always a choice. Germany pays up and then the EU has to seriously start to sort itself out.

That's funny. "Eventually". For the third biggest economy in the EU. Maybe your posts on American subjects should be posted to the bit of the forum where you will be answered "eventually" and all those arguments about America's business being our business because they dominate the world...well they don't apply to you any more because clearly you are not a hypocrite janpor...

You seem to want to wish away the EU, of which the UK is a member, probably becaese you do not value the immense ebenfits of free trade that this gives and are quite comfortable at a French-German bloc that is much smaller and has tariiffs against those who won't join the Euro. Of course siuch protectionism will lead to economic contraction across Europe.

 

So as Germany becomes more and more isolated in Europe, are the anti-anglo-saxon brigade still trying to blame Britain for the Eurozone's ills?

The broad causes of this crisis are deficits caused by nations like Greece with moribund protected civil services, self employed people who don't pay taxes and a political class that has lied, lied and lied again about the state of their public finances.

And yet somehow to the economic ostriches who cluster around the French Left, this is Britain and even the USA's fault. More and more it is becoming clear that this crisis is caused by the irreconcilable differences of two apparent allies: on the one hand the spendthrift nations of southern Europe, stuck in immature political cultures with populist governments from Left and Right who eschew truth for power, and on the other hand Germany, a fiscally disciplined social democracy whose postwar embrace of austerity has brought them prosperity based on sound finance, but now requires Eurozone markets to fund its onward economic dominance on the back of Mediterranean poverty and political corruption. Suddenly the tea party is over. Germany now wants to extract political domination of Europe from this crisis. Stubbornly they refuse to acknowledge that their prosperity has come from being at thye centre of a Eurozone that they dominate. It's like California or Texas denying that their economic prosperity owed anything to their membership of a United States. What was a Grand Alliance is now the Ant and the Grasshopper.

British conservatives are wrong to resist integration into Europe. Europe needs to be a federal political union to compete in tomorrow's world, with a slowly declining USA and a rising Asia. But all Europe's politicians lack honesty and most are nothing more than tricksters. Quite simply now Germany has to pay, by loosening the fiscal straitjacket they are imposing on Europe. There needs to be Obama (and Bush) style quantatitive easing and Eurobonds which will share the Eurozone's debt burden. Germany has benefited from the profligacy of its southern neighbours. Now its time to pay.

After this we need to develop proper democratic institutions - instead of these bureaucrat gravy trains that we now have in the EU. We need a fully democratic federal Europe, along the lines of the political model in the USA. If the people of Europe are too immature and nationalist (the same thing) to grasp that, then let Europe return to nations states and disappear into irrelevance as the twenty first century brings a New Economic Age of Asian dominance to the world. This would be a shame, but you reap what you sow. European influence is needed in the world, especially one where America threatens to close in on itself as well.

 

well clearly any "anti anglo saxon brigade" will only be blaming England not the British if there are such people, though come to think of it, it generally is so.

 

British eurosceptics (and few of them are in the Conservative Party) are entirely right to oppose political union when it is being directed by the European Union. There is no other form on offer from anyone else.

The idea that Europe will somehow become democratic, and modelled on the US or any other country, is just too far-fetched to consider. It won't happen because a) bureaucrats and politicians don't want it, and b) because with close to half a billion people living in culturally and economically diverse member states, democracy would be far too unwieldy - nothing would ever be decided. It would take many decades of free movement of people to come close to addressing that problem! No doubt it will happen eventually, but it will only work with the informed acceptance of the people, not the deceit of (in the UK at least) our politicians.

It seems Germany's politicians are resisting a greater share of the burden because German voters want them to. Who can blame them? The euro's political supporters told us the euro would bring stability and prosperity, when it's actually brought debt and hardship.

I'm not immature and there is nothing wrong with wanting what is best for the country in which I live. I don't believe European integration which amounts to giving the EU greater powers, is it.

 

There was a program on the background to the Euro, last week I think. The idea behind it of course was to create unity to prevent another war and the main interested parties were Germany and France. Because of fears from France about a growing dominance of Germany after she became united, it was pushed through neglecting safeguards. Blind eyes were given to certain countries economic weaknesses. France felt that the Euro would hold everything together and stop Germany rising to dominance. The irony is that it itself has allowed Germany to become dominant.

As you probably know there is talk of creating two branches of the Euro. Earlier this week a German bank made suggestions for an alternative Greek Euro which could be the beginning of it. http://euobserver.com/19/116325

Like most people I have not educated myself properly on the EU. It seemed to work better when it was smaller. I like the ideas of community and safeguards against war. I have always liked the human rights and feel the EU in general has been a positive influence. Till now, I have seen it as a safeguard on the UK from moving too far to the right...but I am not sure how strong that safeguard is at the moment as a lot of Europe is tottering on moving to the right.

To survive and go forward it will need to become much more democratic. I think it is something still to work for but it certainly needs to change. I think Europe will always have distinct countries and see no reason why that should be a problem. The EU has not stopped countries having their individuality.

We all need to become more knowledgeable and active.

 

To understand my point you would have to understand what the French mean when they talk about les anglo-saxons. They are not thinking about the Auld Alliance. They are thinking specifically about stock market capitalism led by Britain and the USA. If anything "les anglo-saxons" are more the Americans than the Brits and so the literal meaning of the phrase is less relevant. But it is what they mean.

 

I didn't say you were immature. But you are completely wrong about the Euroes impact on Germany. It has brought it new markets and economic growth. which is why it has to pay. The break up the Eurozone would be disastrous for Germany. What isolationists have to understand is that growth requires new markets. This needs the world to open up. As the world closes down, economic growth shrinks. The current crisis is not caused by a single currency. It is caused by a lack of financial discipline and a lack of political union. The best model for all European prosperity is a political Europe centred on UK-France-Germany. Other countries could be admitted when they were mature enough not to vote for idiots like Berlusconi, a rightwinger who has brought Italy to bankruptcy.

There is a simple choice. A United States of Europe or political and economic irrelevance in the world (with the possible exception of germany which may survive as a medium-sized power). I live in China. I can still retire to the British Isles and if it is in the economic doldrums it will be cheaper to do so. There will be lots of poor people who can be as proud as they like of their britishness and I will actually be able to afford to pay them to do my cleaning or gardening, so impoversihed will they be if Britain leaves the EU. As China and India rise they will do so in a world which is shaped by the soft power of powerful democracies, in the shape of the EU or the USA, or they will allow the tyrants who currently run them to create a world of Asian imperial domination. Unless the EU develops into a democratic political union, Europe is finished in the long run. The fact that it is run by bureaucrats who don't want to change this way, doesn't change that.

Most Europeans do actually understand that the EU is necessary for their continued prosperity. Britain led the development of the free world based on free trade and global finance. To hide behind borders will just lead to those countries declining. China and India are two countries that make up half the world. They woill not make this mistake.

 

There's a lot of truth in that. Jean Monnet, one of the EU’s “founding fathers” was promoting the idea of political integration at the end of the first world war. The war had a huge effect on European political thinking, perhaps especially in France and Germany after the battle of Verdun. (In the 1984 European leaders established a European security identity with an official ceremony there at which Mitterand and Kohl reaffirmed their alliance on which they thought European construction should be centred and so started the gradual harmonisation of defence policies . Margaret Thatcher was opposed though her successors were not. European politicians also looked to the growing dominance of the US and wanted to replicate it, blinding themselves to their fundamental differences. But, various figures have wanted to unite Europe long before Monnet!

That’s true too.

Yes, that has to be a step in the right direction.

I see the EU as being the very worst of both the both socialist and capitalist systems. In a democracy both sides keep a check on the others worst excesses and that just isn’t happening in area where the EU controls policies and that’s most policies now. That’s why mainstream parties and their puppet politicians are losing support; they’ve moved to what they love to call the “centre ground” to comply with these common policies..

Our human rights have never been so threatened since the Blair government incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights into British law. I had never felt my rights were under threat before that. The Common Justice policy does absolutely **** all for human rights.

Moot point, I think. It isn’t going to become more democratic. The signatories of the Treaty of Rome declared they were “determined to lay the foundations of an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe” and that was supposed to come about, somehow, by their governments ceding power, piece by piece, to self-serving and corrupt EU institutions which are anti-democratic by design, the most powerful of which we have no means to vote out of office. With one set of laws for all and the free movement of goods, services and people, how can countries possibly retain their individuality in the long term?

No, that won’t do. It might spoil the politicians fun.

 

Ah, some of my favourite myths fostered by integrationists in one place. I’m surprised you didn’t mention the “xenophobia” and “racism” and “America’s poodle/5lst state” arguments and you could have thrown in the “empire” and “Europe won’t trade with us” ones for good measure.

I’m a British (small ‘c’ conservative) who not only opposes further European integration but wants the integration which has taken place so far reversed to the point where we retain our independence in areas crucial to our prosperity. No eurosceptic wants “isolation”; nor would we be isolated. So, am I immature in your view?

How am I wrong about the euros effect on Germany? That Germany has benefitted from the euro is not in dispute, but the belief that a set of countries as diverse as the Eurozone members are can live with one shared currency has brought debt that German taxpayers are expected to foot the biggest part of the bill for. Why should they when we were all told it would bring stability and prosperity? To say they should have to pay seems to me to show enormous disrespect for the democratic will of the German people, yet at the same time you want Europe to develop a democracy of its own? What if the people of Europe just don’t want political union at the price to be extracted? Is democracy not so good in that case?

I’m not especially proud of my Britishness, but I’ll take government by the British for the British over the alternative on offer every time, and the only choice is not as you suggest; countries large and small prosper as independent countries. Britain will remain in the economic doldrums for as long as it allows its economy to be run for the benefit of a political project which drove economic good sense over the edge of a cliff. The EU and its supporters are running a huge confidence trick. And Europe has no choice but to use soft democracy as it has no forces of its own to speak of, though it is working on that. Would you trust a Europe with powerful forces? Its member states do not have a good track record, being that they have been at the centre of two world wars.

Continental Europeans are welcome to the EU if that’s really what they want. I’ll take good government every single time, and it won’t come from the EU. And our continued prosperity? Don’t make laugh! The EU does nothing but impose costs and bureaucratic rules and regulations and restrictions on freedoms that our own pro-EU politicians appear happy to go along with, and for that we pay several billion pounds every day! In no way does our prosperity depend on the EU.

I am in favour of co-operation with other countries in Europe to our mutual benefit. The EU however dresses coercion up as co-operation.

 

Dear Heroclitus,...

I don't really understand why you put forward the notion that Germany is some how isolated in the scope of European affairs...

 

Well obviously not enough "myths" - you have to deliberately misrepresent what I am saying by adding stuff that I haven't said. Why would you do that? Some Europhobes are xenophobic, and many are racist, but the fact that some opponents of Europe are brain-dead morons does not justify being in the EU. As to the 51st State, where do I say anything that implies those who oppose Europe want to be part of NAFTA? If there is some argument to suggest that leaving Europe would lead to greater trade with the USA and that this would benefit Britain further then it is not for me to refute it until it is made. Have you made it? Empire? What are you talking about? Your opening line here is nothing more than a cheap sneer isn't it. My argument clearly didn't include any of the mths so you had to throw some in.

In fact, my argument is not particularly dependent on UK membership. Britain is a world economic power, albeit a rapidly declining one that is over dependent on Financial Services, and obviously because of that will bring some strength to the EU by participating in it. But my argument is not so parochial. What's needed is a strong EU. This is needed for the development of the world. Britain being in or out of that EU is a detail. But if you want to talk about that detail then look at how a Eurosceptic Cameron thoroughly understands the dangers of an EU crisis - because he understand the interconnectedness of the world's economies. But the poor guy is told to shove off by the Europeans because the UK isn't in the Eurozone. That is disingenuous by the Europeans as Britain is an EU member and the fact that the Eurozone's house is on fire is of legitimate interest to the UK. It is also of interest to China, the USA and India, all of whose economies are suffering due to the economic mismanagement of the Eurozone by the EU. There is no hiding place. The question is whether you want to be part of a bloc with influence or on the periphery hoping someone else will bail you out.

I'm not sure if you have a problem with your computer and reading the posts that I am making. I never called you immature. When you suggested that I did, as you quote, I stated clearly that I was not accusing you of being immature. I referred to the political culture of southern European states that elected populist leaders who would not take economically tough decisions. It seems though that despite this you are determined to insist that I said something that I didn't and base your comments on that. I can't help you with that.

I do think that a UK outside the EU would be significantly more isolated. The UK already has a problem in that it is over dependent on financial services. What would prevent a Franco-German alliance moving influence towards Frankfurt and Paris? But that is not the kernel of my argument. The main argument I am making is that the world needs a strong EU. There needs to be a counterbalance to the yuan and the dollar. There needs to be soft power emanating from a strong Europe. A fragmented Europe, part from Germany, will slide into irrelevance and be sidelined from decisions in the WTO and other important forums.

If you benefit from something you have to ensure that it will be sustained. This is the simplest logic. There is no moral argument that Germany should pay. It is an argument that is purely about self interest. The break up of the Euroe will kill German growth. As to the will of the German people I don't know what fantasy world you are preventing here. The German people voted specifically for an opening up of the European market, not because they "were told something" but because they made that judgement. You are accusing me of having no respect for democracy and yet the whole tenor of your language is that people are morons who vote a certain way because they are duped into a point of view by undisclosed persons who set out to misled them. German voters understand the benefits of austerity more than most and they understand the necessity for constantly developing and growing markets if they are to deliver economy growth. There will be some who take the simplistic isolationist view "why should I pay for it" because they can't quite grasp the economics. But most will be trying to balance a strong belief in fiscal discipline with the understanding that half of the EU going bankrupt doesn't help anyone.

Britain is run for the benefit of the EU? Is that what you are saying? It might say that in the Daily Mail as a means of selling papers to British nationalists but it isn't something that is discussed by anyone who makes any serious decisions about where to invest, where to base their European headquarters, where to buy from etc.. Britain, by the new world (that is China and Russia) is seen as a good place to put corrupt money (the only reason house prices go up in London) and a good place to educate your kids. But there are plenty of xenophobes who want to even stop that happening by stopping so many Chinese from studying at British universities by imposing harsher immigration controls. Britain has a the Stock Exchange and that's about it. It has no manufacturing any more (unlike Germany) and very little innovation aside from complex financial derivatives. It has a certain soft power that derives from its democratic heritage. As to the rest of this you seem to be putting even more words in my mouth, suggesting that I want Europe to have military power. Read again. i want Europe to have soft power. This will only happen with a strong EU to represent Europe as China becomes a global hyper power to rival America. European nations, fragmented, will count for very little. The world will be a Pacific dominated world unless the EU learns to get its act together.

What is asserted with no evidence is dismissed as easily. The facts are that Britain is interlocked with Europe. Only retailers, who buy from the Far East and who do very little for European manufacturing, want Britain to be isolated and out of the EU. Britain out of the EU would stagnate. The City would be marginalized. The US would move even more of their European headquarters to the Netherlands. I live in China and am relatively indifferent to that. As ye sow, so shall ye reap. I would prefer a strong EU from as many countries who would make it up. I am arguing for a strong EU not particularly British membership, although I think this would be advantageous to it. A strong EU will act as a strong democratic counterweight to Asian authoritarianism. It's not that we can't have nations. It's just that growth requires free trade. Free trade isn't just a matter of reducing tariffs. It is also about level economic playing fields. How can a country that imposes s]health and safety costs on its industries compete with one that doesn't. The answer is that it imposes tariffs. The alternative to such protectionism is political integration, mainly around the sort of thing that decent people have a consensus about (minimum wages, obligations on employers to provide safe working), but that many British Conservatives oppose. Britain can try and compete with China on cheap wages by further deregulating labour markets (the kind of reason that British Conservatives want to leave the EU) but by the time they do that they will find that China is emulating a high quality, high investment model along the lines of a German led EU.

Examples of coercion are?

Europe needs reform. It is easy to criticize it. Explaining how Britain will disregard EU regulations and survive in a global marketplace, or be bound to them without having any say in them, is harder and never done by Eurosceptics.