Reply With QuoteWhat? To the frikking Guardian?!!Originally Posted by nickie
Can we track down whoever coined the term "brexit" and vote them off the planet?
What? To the frikking Guardian?!!
We'll call that brexile, amirite???
Brexeunt.
Brexcellent
pancakes for brexfast?
Brittones ite domum. Oh, wait.
Brexactly where do you think you're going, young man?
These puns are brexcruciatingly bad
Only to be BREXPECTED.
And the remain camp has just won it seems. How convenient, just a few days before the vote, just as it was about to lose. Sort of like that other important EU vote in Sweden in 2003...
Now voting Brexit means you're a murderer and a hater of women! On top of being a fascist, racist, nationalist, antisemite, baby killer!
Also "helpful employment legislation that came from the EU" whoever mentioned that in this thread has a bright future as a comedian. Ask the French working class what they think of the wonderful employment legislation currently being imposed by our government and coming straight from the EU labs.
But I wouldn't expect parasites who've never worked a single day in their lives to understand...
Ah, nice to know there's at least one of you guys here. Hi!
That was me. What does the French legislation you refer to have to do with the EU improvements to working life in the UK?
If you think that the UK's lot will be improved by Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage though, I have some magic beans to sell you.
Looks like he's already bought some. And swallowed the lot.
I would imagine they're referring to working time (which you can opt out of so I'm not all that sure how many people it protects), minimum paid holiday (uk minimum is higher than the EU) and maternity pay (the uk again is higher than the EU limit).
It's not hard to find things the EU has imposed minimum levels on that are reasonably sensible and a good thing for most of the people they affect. Compare that sort of thing to CAP, CFP and VAT though.
Perhaps without the UK as a member the EU might actually do something about all the things it needs to change, perhaps they might even decide to do something about Greece.
Outside of the EU perhaps the UK can start treating people and goods based on who and what they are and the benefits they can bring to us rather than something as irrelevant as where they came from.
What do you mean? Are those affected by the EU? I'm trying to become better informed about these things.
And thanks for proving my point. God forbid someone could be against Europe precisely because it's a racist construction with arbitrary frontiers separating whites from the less desirable coloured people (Hint: some of the walls lining those frontiers would make Trump cream his pants), and because it is leading us into an inevitable conflict with a superpower (Hint: Russia is right on our doorstep, it's not in our best interest to antagonize them). But no all that is just too hard to understand for someone like you I guess, too many grey areas.
Yes, the Common Agricultural Policy is what some 35% of EU spending goes on. I'm not sure if CFP is part of that or a separate thing and can't be arsed to look it up. Google will tell you more about it in a far less biased and more informed way than I ever could or would.
It's gone through various reforms over the years to make it less evil but ultimately protectionism is still shit even if you've decided that paying farmers to not grow stuff is less evil than paying them to grow too much then buying it off them and throwing it away or exporting it to other parts of the world so that farmers there are undercut to the point it's uneconomical to grow food.
The EU's fisheries policy has destroyed fishing as in industry in the UK, whether drawing lines in the sea and saying "that's ours you can't fish there" is better or worse than dividing it all up between member states and handing out quotas which they then sell to each other instead of, you know, fishing, I'm not really that sure. It's certainly better for the UK to have control over its own waters but that might not be the best thing for the world as a whole.
Dumping tons of perfectly edible food because you'll be fined so much it wasn't worth the effort of catching it in the first place is a daft idea and in that respect Common Fisheries Policy is bad for fishermen, bad for people who eat fish and bad for fish.
I don't particularly like the EU version of VAT for a bunch of reasons but mostly the restrictions on what can be 0 or reduced rated are a bit shit and the €100,000 registration threshold seriously distorts competition between businesses that are close to that, especially the ones that lie about it.
OK, the fishing thing is trying to ensure that there ARE any goddamn fish left, I know about that one. You're not supposed to dump it, you're not supposed to haul it out of the sea in the first place?
hang on trying to find some data about the north sea in particular, but globally the current amount of fish left is fucking embarrassing. We've massively blown it as a species on that front.
Yeah, here you go: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10096649
Problem with the CFP is it's not properly implemented by us, from the sound of it. I dunno if it IS better for the UK to have control of our own waters, sounds like we've royally fucked ourselves doing so in the past...
Last edited by Vivian; 19th Jun 2016 at 17:04.
I would imagine the EU as a 28-seat tandem. Every country has its own seat on it, knows where to go, and pedals as strong as possible. But, due to the size and power of the passengers, some of them are more useful for their common goal, and some of them are less (no offence). But until the more powerful passengers don't mind to help the less ones, everything is fine, or it's look like.
There are many benefits to travel with such a big team: you'll never be starving or thirsty, because the more rich passengers will surely take care of you. But there will always be some problems, too: if a team member needs to pee/poop/puke, every others have to wait, see and sniff at.
Is there an alternative to that tandem, if some of the passengers would decide to travel on his own? I think so - just look around you: Switzerland, Norway, Iceland - these countries travel to the same destination, but they all have their own bikes. Can Britain travel on its own? I'm sure it can. Countries are just like humans - some of them can be all-sufficient and hospitable at the same time.
Switzerland and Norway have to comply with most of the EU regulations and allow free movement anyway:
https://fullfact.org/europe/eu-facts...claims-norway/
https://fullfact.org/europe/norway-switzerland-eu-laws/
So it's more like ummmmm being towed by the bicycle, maybe, than having your own bike? Or one of those trailer things you put a baby or a dog in.
As I understand it the EU is currently arguing with Switzerland about exactly what free movement means as the swiss version of it is about a million miles from what the EU wants. How that'll end up I've no idea.
As for the fishing, certainly there's much that could be done better and I'd be amazed if there wasn't a lot that's right about the way things are done now but accidentally catching the wrong fish is always going to happen until either people stop fishing completely or fish somehow learn that only one particular species should be in any bit of water at one time or not to swim into the net with the big "NO COD" sign on it. Regardless, eating it is a far better thing to do with it than chucking it over the side.
Your bbc article is ancient, rather out of date and accuses the EU of being a bit shit "But what happens to that advice when it goes up to the Council of Ministers - it's completely mis-managed."
Maybe. But what will stop them if/when they think "kthxbye" to the EU, if the last one signs, say, TTIP or something else that they wouldn't like? Every agreement has part that says something like that, "In case of disagreement..." You know, it's much harder to disagree when you travel on a large tandem.
Yeah the 'oh well it's happened now' argument is always bullshit. If you eat it you'll just keep on catching it, and then there won't be any fish. If you reduce catch regulation, there will not be any fish. In fact, it's quite likely that there just won't be any fish anyway. Industrialised fishing on top of warming, acidification, microplastic pollution and fuck knows what else has knocked fish stocks down by 50% globally. What will UK regulation do about that problem that will be better than the CFP?
Yeah, it is a bit old, find a better article then?
Well, they have to leave. As non-members they don't get much say in what goes on. As an EU member state at least you can pipe up with 'our population think this is bullshit', which is what france did about the TTIP. Unless Norway and Sweden are able to negotiate their own agreements with China and America and Russia and whatnot, they are going to be tied to what the EU does. I think it's better to at least have a say, don't you? Uh, on where the tandem is going to go?
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