No.

The British head of state does not hold executive office.

The second sentence contradicts the first one. Weirdly, the poster did not notice this before posting.

And which law would that be?

And why do you think that is? Because I can tell you if you don't know. (He committed no crime under any actually existing jurisdiction.) And, just on a point of order, Germans had better not accuse British prime ministers of war crimes. Germans do do exactly that all the bloody time, of course, usually in regard to Winston Churchill. Rather surprisingly, the popular German Nazi writer Jorg Friedrich is 'still a free man' despite the Bundesrepublik's supposed laws on these matters. Friedrich, in his bestselling book Der Brand (The Fire), claimed that the Second World War was all Churchill's fault for not accepting the Fuhrer's quite reasonable peace terms in 1940. That, of course, is why Friedrich is such a popular writer among Germans, those wonderful people who gave the world the greatest catastrophe since the Black Death and are apparently still all too proud of it.

I come from an RAF Bomber Command family. You will recall what your glorious Third Reich looked like in 1945 after RAF Bomber Command had finished with it. That probably expresses my opinion of Germans attempting to claim moral superiority.

Bagdad fell on April 9th 2003. Bush declared victory on May 1st and said "mission accomplished". Of course after that the insurgence started but the main goal was Saddam and weapons of mass destructions. Blair was reelected in 2005. So its not false in a wider sense.

Lol you realize I wasnt the one who said he wants accountability? I said there is almost none.

And by your argumentation you mean it was unjust to accuse Göring and the rest of the group in Nurnberg:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_principles

I am the last one who accuses the Brits of war crimes with their bombers during WW2. The Germans earned it.

Wow, never thought I'd see gloating over the fire bombing of Germany.

You live and learn.

--

Blair a war mongering bastard, responsible for an untold amount of death. Brits don't want to pay for his sins by accepting the refugees from all over the middle east, surprise surprise.

[citation needed]

Regarding regions seeking independence.

The wealth in southern Germany with its thriving automotive and technological industries is built on decades long tax transfers from North-Rhine Westfalia, a state with once prosperous coal and steel industries. Now that those have withered away the south is asked to transfer back some of their taxes to rebuild the region. Now Bavaria wants to go "I got mine, jack".

How should situations like this be handled when a region is seeking independence?

you'll be shocked when you find out that civil servants write the laws in the uk

anyway, the thread is exactly as boring and useless as the real thing so that's fitting I guess

nitpicking as usual, without really addressing the heart of it. Do you want the EU - whose law framers and filters (cannot be removed by democratic means) in control of your own country, our people of your own country (who you can remove by democratic process) in control of your country.

That's what it boils down to.

Like Churchill I want the UK to be a fundamental part of a democratic Europe based on a model devised by Germany and Britain.

By granting them independence.

I have a question though. Given you people think that nations are a lol concept anyway, why do you think people in Bavaria have a greater degree of obligation to other regions of Germany than they do to other regions of the EU?

Just like that? Will money have to be paid back? Does the minority lose their original citizenship? Will they have to move to keep the rights they are accustomed to?

The greater obligation is grounded in the constitutional framework the German states agreed on and Bavaria had a pivotal role in crafting. Within a nation regions or federal states have certain rights but they come with obligations. If we ever get a United States of Europe that will change. Then Bavaria will be equally obligated to the rest of Europe.

No matter how small a state is it will never be fully homogenous. There will always be a part that is subsidizing another. You can split again and again until everybody is the king of their own castle.

We already had a Germany consisting of over a hundred autonomous states, cities and provinces. A splintered Europe like that is Russia's and China's wet dream and ill-equipped to face the great challenges that lie ahead of us.


(The number I found for supporters of Bavarian independence is 23%. Considering about 1 in 4 humans is a complete moron that sounds about right)

it was the heart of it. the commission is (part of) the eu civil service (and they can be fired). calling them framers and filters isn't different from calling the uk civil service framers and filters.

the power to make decisions lies with the nation states in the council

and the obvious answer is some stuff should be handled on an international level, some stuff on a national level and some on a local level.

any trade deal or international agreement in the future will have some power over people in the uk too

Yep.

Perhaps what we disagree on then is the level of political unit making

Nation seems excellent to me as the fundamental unit for democratic process, law etc, as I remember the outcome of the forced joining of the USSR states and Yugoslavian regions.

Inflation up to 3%, remember those fun times at the top of the thread when Lecktor argued his tits off that a weaker currency does not lead to inflation.

Did you really just compare the EU with the USSR and Yugoslavia?

I'd expand that by also comparing it to China, India, the USA, and any other similar state you'd like to add, arguing that humans are not capable of running an organisation of that size and complexity without an intolerable level of incompetence, corruption and inequality.

When they want ever increasing powers, and we demonstrated we cannot negotiate with them as insiders, 'they've been not too bad so far' is way too naive for me.

you should add germany and italy too. they both unified fairly late

but the eu budget is something like 0.5% of eu economy. it makes no sense to compare it to any of those entities. it's delusional

1) "they" here means the other member countries who you were negotiating with

2) the uk got basically everything it ever wanted up until the point where they wanted to take apart the single market.

Maybe it's currently 0.5%. How can we forecast what it will be in 50 years? That's why it was a mistake for the remain campaign to criticise the lack of a plan for leaving - because the situation under remaining was similarly unknowable.

I couldn't find the exact post you're talking about but I imagine I was arguing that the lower pound will be offset by cheaper imports once we get out of the custom's union, which we're still in now. At the moment we have a currency rate already traded down to the world-market-appropriate level but are not yet accessing the world market freely.

Found this though.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/...d-plant-fifth/

1 - fine, the point would still stand. But to some extent it means a delusional clique of power hungry failed national politicians doing a pet project.

2 - There were no material concessions in Cameron's renegotiation. Are we talking about the same thing?

no, im talking about 40 years of membership. rebate, opt outs, schengen exemption, the single market, limited financial regulation, eu expansion etc. etc.

the uk got basically everything it wanted (and most were decent ideas too) up until the point cameron wanted to dismember the single market

Yes. It's clearly comparable.

I don't believe there is any correlation between size and corruption. I also don't understand why you think there should be.

Also do you think that multi-national companies should be dismantled because "humans are not capable of running an organisation of that size and complexity without an intolerable level of incompetence, corruption and inequality"?

I don't think there is, but I think the impact is worse when there is a single large point of failure instead of variation amongst competing entities.

Also, yes, studies show that most mergers and acquisitions destroy value and that large conglomerates generally have a lower valuation than the sum of their parts for exactly that reason. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conglomerate_discount

Assuming a continent's economy and complexity is larger than a conglomerate, I think we can guess it will be almost impossible to run it well.