Yes - though they don't put it that way, obviously. All the tories, all the Liberals and most of the Labour Party manifestly dream of nothing else. They even talk American in anticipation, with idiot metaphors from baseball they don't understand. Obviously the choice is Europe where we belong or becoming a run-down hole owned by the Yanks, as you know. There aren't any other choices.Originally Posted by tamora
Gobeithiaw y ddaw ydd wyf.
Guru
Yabba yabba yeah. Still, I suppose I do a bit of that...so where are you taking us?
I would expect nothing else. Agreeing that there's a problem and wanting to do something about it - ie reforming EU institutions - are however, two different things. It's still interesting to reflect that though the UK opts out occasionally, when it opt in it has the highest percentage of compliance with EU rules of any major EU country.
You see it is only in France that people are not embarassed to speak such paranoid, delusional drivel. Of course in the 1930's French chauvinism blamed all this garbage on Jews. Now it's "les anglo-saxons". The first credit downgrade was not on Europe, but on the USA. Why would the conspirators shoot themselves in the foot first? Ah, I suppose it's because they are so dastardly deceitful.
Your problem here is with global capitalism. Interest rates rise because of the risk of default. This is caused by a monetary union which prevents highly indebted countries from floating their currencies, when such a currency would devalue against, say the deutschmark, for example. First it penalizes those countries with a high deficit - hardly the responsibility of "les anglo-saxons" - and then it will penalize all Euro currencies, unless the leading country, Germany, agrees to stand behind the currency and the deficits of those people in the zone. This is how the system works, and how France and Germany have always understood the system to work. It has nothing to do with English devils trying to cripple France. The Euro would not be in trouble if it was a country; but, thanks to German resistance in this case, it refuses to behave as a country and guarantee all the deficits, as a country would. So the markets, quite rightly and understandably, see inherent weakness in the Euro as a result.
Your view is typical of modern leftism. There is first an intellectual laziness that easily analyzes everything as a plot. Such vulgarity is not actually very French, who used to be rigorous here, but their approach has atrophied now so we get this nonsensical mush, just as we get it on the English Left. People would rather respond with emotional garbage, blaming it on "neo-liberal conspiracies", as you do, than properly analyze the real nature of the crisis. This then naturally extends - in France, and NOT in Germany - to an illiberal statism that panders to chauvinism and protectionism, and is deeply anti-democratic. Look how the French were in a tizzy about the prospect of Polish plumbers a few years ago and how much they hate the principle of the free movement of labour in Europe (including the way they persecute Rroma, truly in their scumbage Vichy-loving collaborating Jew killer tradition - yes my emotions run pretty deep on this and my hatred of nationalism is uncomromising). They French HATE free trade and the necessary financial system that brings. There is still a French alliance between socialism and fascism (remember how the French still vote Nazi in their millions) which panders to xenophobia and protectionism. Two speed Europe is no more than modern protectionism, extending French influence through the bureaucratic system of the EU - entirely anti-democratic in their nature - to enforce a Franco-German chauvinism and protect the isolationist Gauls from too many Macdos opening up and their whole way of life and long lunch breaks being forsaken by yeilding to anglo-saxon barbarism.
You are blaming it all on neoliberal anglo-saxon globalization. It's the familiar argument of the leftists and easily concurred with by the neo-fascist. So it goes down well in France.
No, I haven't noticed any war. I have noticed that Germany's understandable - and almost certainly this is a negotiating position - refusal to stand behind the deficit countries, is undermining confidence in the whole currency. Why wouldn't it? Why shouldn't it? There 'aint no such thing as a free lunch janpor.
My imagination, the anglo-saxon press conspiracy - all in my mind? The German British alliance is called the EU. It is also a French-British alliance. Your ludicrous attempt to isolate the UK is just not the real position of France or Germany. All countries join with different ones from time to time on different issues. You know this is what I am saying but you choose to distort and deceive with this bollocks. Germany doesn't want the French protectionist agenda.
"If you say so" drivel. Clearly the strong anti-globalization agenda you push here is a drive for increased proetctionism from a smaller bloc within Europe that can be dominated by France and Germany. Otherwise you would agree with me that further integration of any countries, should only happen after a full overhaul of the corrupt and bloated bureacracies that currently run Europe. Before any further union there needs to be signficant institutional reform and change needs to happen with the consent of the European people. Now is not the time. Now is the time to fix the crisis.
You ignore my strong argument that the least approrpiate time for constitutional change is in the middle of a crisis. This is how tyrants manipulate events. Without a full overhaul of European Institutions, no further integration should take place. On the other hand, Germany will have to pay up eventually. Merkel will have to defy her people or watch the whole house come tumbling down - and this is entirely due to the fact that you cannot have a single currency with proper political control, but that the latter was not conceived of or implemented properly by France or Germany before this started.
This is a priceless insult, and already dealt with extensively. You put yourself in a difficult position here. Suffice it to say that I am very disappointed that you won't be participating in any debates about the USA any more, because - unless you are a hypocrite - you clearly believe yourself to have "no business to interfere" in that debate, not being a US citizen.
I wonder that you come here at all then and don't confine yourself to subjects nearer to home, where you can argue with people whose main source of information is not "the global anglo-saxon" press. But my position - I repeat it as you ignore it, preferring the sneer of "mind your own business" to real debate - is simply that Britain is in the EU, is a major trading partner of the Eurozone, is interconnected with the Eurozone, and will be damaged by the collapse of the Euro, and so has every right to "interfere". When your neighbour's house is on fire, it's your business. If you are honest, you will agree with this position. Why is American chauvinism so ugly, but French chauvinism acceptable?
If you were less willing to just jump to paranoid conclusions you may make more sense. Stock market capitalism is stronger in "anglo-saxon" countries for many reasons. The main reason is that it was the UK and the USA that were at the centre of the Industrial Revolution, and stock market capitalism was its engine. The whole subject is massive, historical and involves a lot of nuance - which defies your simplistic vulgarity here. I think that regulation does need to be strengthened, but to imagine that London's dominance of the financial markets is anything other than a two hundred year old phenomenon, is just crazy.
Last edited by Heroclitus; Nov 30 2011 at 07:49 PM.
Plus on aime quelqu'un, moins il faut qu'on le flatte:
À rien pardonner le pur amour éclate. Moliere
I think the term "classical liberal" is also equally applicable. I don't really care very much what I'm called. I'm much more interested in having people thinking about the ideas, rather than the person. Milton Friedman
Die Sonne scheint noch. Es lebe die Freiheit!
Guru
A "two speed" Europe is an act of protectionism by weakening the free trade zone that currently exists in the EU. Additionally, because it is not to be based on a fundamental democratization of EU institutions, it will by its nature be an elitist bureaucracy driven by technocrats who "know best", over the heads of the European people.
So it is a solution which is highly reactionary, that will weaken Europe economically through protectionism, and that will set back the cause of a democratic, United States of Europe, for decades.
I am quite clear that your position is music to the ears of Daily Mail readers and Little Englanders who will use this to forward the cause of British isolationism and be able to characterize this new bloc as a Statist, illiberal, undemocratic oligarchy. It's not surprising to see this unholy alliance of nationalists, chauvinists and anti-globalization economic illiterates, coming together to promote this tyranny over the heads of, and despite the wishes of, the European people.
Last edited by Heroclitus; Nov 30 2011 at 07:50 PM.
Plus on aime quelqu'un, moins il faut qu'on le flatte:
À rien pardonner le pur amour éclate. Moliere
I think the term "classical liberal" is also equally applicable. I don't really care very much what I'm called. I'm much more interested in having people thinking about the ideas, rather than the person. Milton Friedman
Die Sonne scheint noch. Es lebe die Freiheit!
Guru
Very honourable of you, Hero, to make it sounds as if Anglophobia in Europe was due to too much French influence. I wish it were true, but in fact I think you just brought it upon yourselves. Keep it up
Last edited by Paris; Dec 01 2011 at 01:06 AM.
Guru
I don't think there is much anglophobia in "Europe". I have traveled and worked a lot in Europe and have friends all over. I only ever found this animosity to les anglo-saxons in France. Maybe it exists in Belgium a bit too, but I never noticed it much in Germany or the Netherlands. In Italy England is admired. Dutch people are anglophilic. Polish and Czech people are pleased we are not Germans (we look a bit the same). Scandanavians share our views on Europe...Very honourable of you, Hero, to make it sounds as if Anglophobia in Europe was due to too much French influence. I wish it were true, but in fact I think you just brought it upon yourselves. Keep it up
So I think that anglophobia -if we want to make a big thing of such a lighthearted term - is only a French phenomenon (with plenty of exceptions even in France)...and that would be due to the French I suppose. This is pretty disappointing given that we have been pretty useful allies with the French in two world wars, and that the Battle of Waterloo was a long time ago.
Even the most vehement French anglophobe reacts warmly to an attempt by a brave rosbif to speak French and offer a clearly articulated appreciation of French cuisine and wine. After a good meal, with a good cheese trolley and a fine Bordeaux, we're all friends again anyway.
Last edited by Heroclitus; Dec 01 2011 at 02:08 AM.
Plus on aime quelqu'un, moins il faut qu'on le flatte:
À rien pardonner le pur amour éclate. Moliere
I think the term "classical liberal" is also equally applicable. I don't really care very much what I'm called. I'm much more interested in having people thinking about the ideas, rather than the person. Milton Friedman
Die Sonne scheint noch. Es lebe die Freiheit!
Sr. Correspondent
You're being absurd. If the Tories, Labour and the "Liberals" wanted us to be an American colony they would not be hell bent on EU membership. And why do we belong in Europe, other than in a geographical sense?
Guru
Oh, it is only in France, then? Please, tell us what sort of abuse you have been subjected to, by the French, as an Englishman.. Mind you, try to find something which you had not provoked first,, I'm dying to know, Hero!
Sr. Correspondent
I've been to Paris several times and I've always been treated with friendship and courtesy by almost everyone I've met (apart from waiters who seem to think they doing their customers a favour when serving them!).
Guru
True. Parisian waiters are the worst I have ever come across. Orwell summed it up nicely when, in Down and Out in Paris and London, he wrote:
And that is why waiters are seldom Socialists, tamoraThe waiter's outlook is quite different. He too is proud in a way of his skill, but his skill is chiefly in being servile. His work gives him the mentality, not of a workman, but of a snob. He lives perpetually in sight of rich people, stands at their tables, listens to their conversation, sucks up to them with smiles and discreet little jokes. He has the pleasure of spending money by proxy. Moreover, there is always the chance that he may become rich himself, for, though most waiters die poor, they have long runs of luck occasionally. At some cafes on the Grand Boulevard there is so much money to be made that the waiters actually pay the PATRON for their employment. The result is that between constantly seeing money, and hoping to get it, the waiter comes to identify himself to some extent with his employers. He will take pains to serve a meal in style, because he feels that he is participating in the meal himself.
I remember Valenti telling me of some banquet at Nice at which he had once served, and of how it cost two hundred thousand francs and was talked of for months afterwards. 'It was splendid, MON P'TIT, MAIS MAGNIFIQUE! Jesus Christ! The champagne, the silver, the orchids--I have never seen anything like them, and I have seen some things. Ah, it was glorious!'
'But,' I said, 'you were only there to wait?'
'Oh, of course. But still, it was splendid.'
The moral is, never be sorry for a waiter. Sometimes when you sit in a restaurant, still stuffing yourself half an hour after closing time, you feel that the tired waiter at your side must surely be despising you. But he is not. He is not thinking as he looks at you, 'What an overfed lout'; he is thinking, 'One day, when I have saved enough money, I shall be able to imitate that man.' He is ministering to a kind of pleasure he thoroughly understands and admires. And that is why waiters are seldom Socialists, have no effective trade union, and will work twelve hours a day--they work fifteen hours, seven days a week, in many cafes. They are snobs, and they find the servile nature of their work rather congenial.
Last edited by Paris; Dec 01 2011 at 03:26 AM.
Sr. Correspondent
For which smaller nations are you talking? For Slovenia, compared to Greece a relatively very poor country, which should now pay for the most rich 2000 Greece families in the future not to pay taxes as they did not in the past? Beside the fact that you are demanding more casino mentality in Europe (sorry, but what we do now is exactly this; due to losses on the table we increase and increase the sum for the hope to win back), what's your personal drive??
Your comments I read here are oftentimes typically leftist, but what you protect here as an order and try it to mask behind Germany/France paranoia is a plutocratic order in which now the tax payers all over the Euro zone should intervene if otherwise reforms needed that would tax Greece's richest families, who don't like to pay taxes. It's not the only topic I could go on with the financial transaction tax which the UK don't want, we could go on here.
I mean, it's a matter of the UK what policy it wants, it's not me to evaluate this, but I ask myself how this plutocratic order the UK stands for fit to the rest of your comments on this board. Or are you economically not convinced of left positions?
PS: If there will be a Europe of two velocities will be decided in Paris and you can be assured that Germany will most likely follow Paris.
Last edited by Glücksritter; Dec 01 2011 at 04:58 AM.
Rather dead than red!
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