Why do you have to have democracy to be sure? All I see in the many peaceful and moderately successful democracies around this world are petty bickering parties that niggle away at each other to gain a slight lead and win their next 5 years unpicking any progress the previous mob made. The global political pole is lurching more rightwards every year and yet the two or three party democratic system in most countries simply dance happily around the maypole whilst workers rights continue to diminish, the gap between the richest and poorest continues to grow and big business prospers.
I've lived and worked for much of my career in Hong Kong, Singapore and India and can assure you that the dictatorship and the satellite state to the communist party were both far easier to work in, do business in and live and raise children in than the worlds largest democracy but having returned to the UK I'd have to put our political system at the bottom of the list due to the sheer corrupt, lying, incompetence they manage to display on a daily basis and their complete contempt for the people who elect them.
It makes no difference who you vote for given the farcical political dance I described in response to your first point. What is needed is stronger worker representation that prevents employers instigating unfair working practices, that would require a strong, union backed left wing party and the chances of one of them ever rising again in the UK are up there with Shergar winning next years Grand National. We killed our own unions decades ago and our right wing governement (even under Blair and Brown) don't give a damn about workers rights, the only thing that has helped slow the erosion of rights is the unionized voices from Europe and their EU legislation but we've just cast that aside.
Blair is just a traitor. He fooled me to with his moderate left wing talks and is now collecting his bribe speaching and advising the people he worked for all along. But still one election result can change policies .
Any proof or facts about the bungs and bribes big business uses to sway the EU? We've seen plenty on how our own politicians can been bribed, bought and bunged and know it goes on at National levels in other countries with the likes of Berlusconi, but I can't think I've ever seen that sort of scandal within the EU parliament.
If it's in the EU it's not likely to become a scandal. But there's a pattern of bowing to the big corporations. You might want to read about the weird things happening around the assesment of the dangers of Round-Up and the refusal to prohibit it. A simular thing happened to the poisonous coatings of tin cans for food, so the French decided to forbid it themselves to protect the French. We have Dieselgate of course, those cars were supposed to meet EU-standards, and those standards turned out be wrong also. Maybe it's got something to do with the industry offering a 20-25% discount on a new car to everybody who works for the EU. It's not forbidden to give gifts to EU representatives. Just a few examples, and there are a lot more that you wouldn't be able to find if they were working in the interest of the citizens of the EU.
If you're in the eurozone it's even worse, basically the EU is just handing out tax payers money and pension savings to banks and others in the financial industry. Not just the bailouts, and not the normal general creation of money, but the Greece deal was another bailout masked as support for Greece, which democracy was ignored completely, and there's the QE, which amounts to 3800 euro's per citizen of the eurozone that is handed out to the banks.
Any examples of powers taken away from elected officials and handed to unelected ones?
That's what the Lisbon treaty was about.
It's a phrase I keep hearing bandied around but I've seen no examples of cases where it is true. Yes there are unelected Technocrats in and around Brussels but I see nothing wrong with asking an expert to do a relevant job, I have much greater difficulty when I look at UK politics and see people with no experience in a field appointed to oversee it, I'd far rather the Surgeon General or head of the Royal College of Nursing had some say on the running of the NHS rather than letting a complete and utter Hunt of a career politician from Charterhouse and Oxford screw over our medical system.
It has nothing to with technocrats, the problem is that those technocrats work isn't the responsability om someone we can vote out. The EU doesn't have a democracy in place, it looks like one superficially because we have elections, but it isn't. The Lisbon treaty was the latest transition of power from the national governments to the EU, and therefore from democracies to a executives without democratic control. It's contents were rejected by both the French and the Dutch in their referenda, but that couldn't stop the EU of course.
Did you miss recent events where our elected government ignored EU regulations on allowing the import of cheap Chinese steel and instead conspired with the Chinese to allow them to get around the EU tariff system by alloying a small part of Boron and Copper into the steel so that it was no longer plain steel, despite the potentially catastrophic failures you can get in structural steel welds if there are greater than 5ppm Boron. Our last steel mills close, 3 towns devastated and 90,000 people out of work but let it never be said our politicians can't cut a deal with the Chinese when they want to, I just have to question who it benefits?
Actually, I almost completely missed that.
If I've not made it clear enough, I believe many more of our politicians are corrupt, incompetent or both than their EU counterparts so have no faith that any trade negotiations we undertake will be anything other than a complete clusterfeck that sees the common man worse off yet again whilst the politicans and their pals profit.
It's an international trend that politicians are managing expectations of the people within the margins set by corporations intrests. That this is also the case for former well run democracies like the ones in Germany, France, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands has a lot to do with the EU. First because national politicians can't do much in economic policy because of the EU, but the EU is the bribing kind itself. They not only give money to parties, if a PM or a minister is obedient in negotiations with the EU, he or his party friends have a chance of beeing promoted to a much better job for the EU.
Not sure what you are talking about there at all. I don't believe the EU were in any way impinging on my democratic rights, my only problem with our political establishment is that the politicians in the UK are now so poor or corrupt that there's no real alternative left to vote for. This whole referendum was only a political game to ensure Cameron kept UKIP at bay and appeased the right wing of his own party, they stupidly never expected to lose and have now left us in a complete mess and with no plans in sight we could spend a number of years in this state of limbo before things change, quite possibly for the worse.
No, of course it was a political game too, but there was already the issue of popular support. And not just in the UK, the EU is the most important governing body when it comes to economic matters, so it should have popular support. As removing barriers has so much intrinsic advantages to all, they really had to mess it up bad to have less than 70% support in any member state, but they have it in all of them.
I had democratic rights within the EU, I elected my local MEP on the basis of his personal manifesto within Europe and trust he would do as good a job for me in Brussels as my local MP does in Westminster although I've not much faith in either direction really.
There's not much of a good job for him to do in Brussels. He and his collegues lack the power.
I personally sit in a number of CEN committees related to my specialist area of the Enigneering industry that sets the rules that ensures our infrastructure is safe and efficient. My voice within that democracy is in danger of being removed along with my European Citizenship, my democratic rights are in danger of being taken away by this ridiculous referendum and I will fight for any last hope we may have to preserve them. I was the first English graduate in Civil Engineering from Grenoble University as part of the ERASMUS scheme where I gained the specialisations that have guided my career, a career that has taken me to over 60 countries working for German, French and English multinationals but this stupid vote has meant that my grandchildren are unlikely to be offered the educational opportunity I had and would probably struggle to win a position with Vinci or Bouygues over a similarly qualified EU citizen.
The EU propaganda starts at schools and goes on throug university, and the Erasmus program is part of it. I'm not against exchange students, but a lot of it has no scientific or educational merit and for the universities, their national students and the national taxpayers who pay for it, it has mainly disadvantages. One's personal development doesn't justifie that. It's a program that could have done with a bit of critical thinking, like how this is beneficial for the society which pays for it. It was benificial for the EU's self promotion, and when it comes to that there's always money available.
If there are bogey men in this we need look no further than Murdoch, Viscount Rothmere, Nigel Farage, Ian Duncan Smith, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove.