That's primacy allowed by chosen policy, which can be nullified by a government going along with that being voted out.

Please explain how either the UK electorate or their national representatives can nullify an unwanted EU law directly please, other than leaving?

But primacy all the same. Joining the EU was chosen policy.


By joining the EU we sacrificed sovereignty and gained immense benefits from free trade. Like Marty says, we were a key player and an excellent handbrake on the more madcap ideas. Both parties will be worse off for our departure IMO.

Anyone else watched this? I watched it on 4od this week. Very good way to kill an hour imo.

Can't be spelt out any easier than the above but as per usual you get nothing but crickets itt from the xenophobe.

He's not worth wasting the keystrokes on tbh.

Just had a quick look and there was a 67% majority in favour of joining the EU originally.

Anyone know if there was a certain % needed or was it just 50% +1 vote?

Still can't get my head around why no one is pushing the argument against such a slim majority taking the UK out of Europe and ****ing us all over.

Why wasn't there a requirement for a supermajority?

Parlimentary procedure requires it for various reasons....

Should cover things like brexit ffs.

I'm not bothering because I've yet to hear any decent reply about why it's OK for transitory politicians to hand over major powers to some central body forever without any mechanism to get them back, other than leaving.

That's what I call crickets.

Not worth wasting the keystrokes.

I looked into the 'undemocratic EU' argument a bit. The primary structures and the level of accountability are:

- European Central Bank - unelected (and committed to austerity, naturally)
- European Court of Justice - made up of unelected judges, purpose to ensure individual member states follow EU law
- European Commission - unelected, purpose to propose legislation issue directives etc.. members are nominated by individual countries for fixed terms - so there is a kind of democracy once removed, so is obv less accountable
- European Council - heads of state, who are elected, but not elected to govern Europe - stronger states have more power

- The European Parliament, elected. Has no real power (like British monarchy), cant generate legislation, not a governing body - governing body is the unelected EC

I'm led to believe that various transitory politicians in Scotland and Wales and England and Northern Ireland joined as parts of a thing called the United Kingdom and that these transitory politicians handed over some power to a central government.

This seems to indicate that there is at least some precedence for it.

We have a similar thing over here in 'murica. It has worked out relatively well overall.

So that makes it all ok? lol.

"All ok" seems an unreasonably high bar for anything.

I'll throw it back at you upside-down: Is leaving going to make everything ok?

Long term, absolutely, it will be much better than staying.

It will be a much better trajectory for this country than to be part of the EU whether it succeeds in becoming a USE (and I don't think the UK would ever be part of that - so getting out now is better than getting out much farther down the line) or falls apart. Those are the ultimate finishing points for the EU project, I hope most reasonable people would agree with that.

A little distance from a crash is better than no distance at all.

I was hoping for more of an explanation than a statement of greater catechism.

I was talking more about the general international development budget and why we should e.g. spend it more effectively e.g. providing water to a large number of Africans rather than to a small number of Romanians - I will come back to this later but it's clearly a case where EU considers some places to be the "good" countries to receive aid ahead of others, and perhaps because of our history and present links to the commonwealth we legitimately take a different view.

But, as you say, there is a general problem with donor conferences not getting money to people fast enough and it's one the EU does not solve. Here are the first stats I found:

Progress in disbursing money pledged by donors at the 2016 Syria conference, one year on:
https://2c8kkt1ykog81j8k9p47oglb-wpe...port-TWO-8.pdf
(page 9)

Country - Pledged - Disbursed (US$m)
Germany - 1311.5 1338.7 = 102%
EU - 1000 - 594.9 = 59%
USA - 891 - 1684.2 = 189%
UK - 730.7 - 740.9 = 101%
Japan - 350 - 351 = 100%
Norway - 278.1 - 350.7 = 126%

the full list shows virtually every European country, including the East European ones, having disbursed what they pledged or more, so I'm wondering what problem you think the EU bureaucracy is solving here.

I'm just saying to the poster who is worried about his ability to live abroad after Brexit, that such laws exist and he should still be able to find people who want his skills. Yes, I don't support e.g. the UK deliberately undersizing its medical and nursing training in the knowledge it can just get people from overseas and yes that's partly on ethical grounds, but you're always going to get imbalances and its not a real problem for people to move around a bit as long as the receiving populations don't feel like they are being overrun - people's general instinct is to be welcoming.

Discriminating in favour of people from "good" (by which btw it means "white EU member states") countries is pretty much what immigration policy looks like in any EU member state including in the UK at the moment. We'll be free to change that soon.

That's a common talking point in the press - often in the context of immigration or later retirement. You turn the next page of the magazine and you find another article about how robots/self-driving cars will take our jobs and there will be too many workers and not enough for them to do.

Rep. Ireland doesn't want a hard border, the UK doesn't want a hard border, the only problem is Rep. Ireland's obligations to the EU. That's something they can easily fix by triggering Article 50 themselves. Otherwise they have to live with it.

If you have a democratic election in a devoutly Catholic country the results are going to look very different to what you get in the UK. It isn't less democratic though. This article is really good for getting a wider perspective - views from about 10 politicians/intellectuals from across Europe on what is happening:

https://www.politico.eu/article/pola...a-rule-of-law/

Orban has far better relations with neighbouring countries now than previous Hungarian governments (including his own previous one) have had so I don't understand why he is suddenly a problem now.

I'd say that's fair enough. That's why it was counter productive in the EU referendum to label people considering leaving the EU as racist. The ones who really are don't care about being labelled that way and the ones who aren't didn't like being insulted.

I haven't really been keeping up with the contents of Nicola Sturgeon's head, but she wanted another independence referendum quickly after the EU referendum so Scotland could stay in the EU after 2019. Of course she wanted the border to remain open just as Ireland does and she would have got as far with that in Brussels as Ireland are getting at the moment.

Is it now SNP policy to leave the UK but not join the EU then? Or have they abandoned independence seeing it as not practical unless England and Scotland are both in the EU?

Not that I personally care what they do but all of this is a long way from the project fear thing of "vote remain to stop the UK breaking up".

It's true that this is a goldilocks zone where the market is already buying and selling our currency at a level appropriate for when we are trading globally (they'd be fools to buy a the high price when we're leaving soon), yet we are still in the EU. On the other hand it's an anti-goldilocks zone for inflation, as we are paying EU prices with a weaker currency. The BoE is raising interest rates to offset this to an extent and they'll make moves in the opposite direction (maybe more QE) to prevent deflation when we actually leave.

No part of the above is unexpected and was foreseen ITT.

This raises the question of why before the referendum, Remain economists had models showing unemployment peaking at 6% in 2018 while we were still in the EU.

E.F. Schumacher:
"It is fashionable today to assume that any figures about the future are better than none. To produce figures about the unknown, the current method is to make a guess about something or other - called an assumption - and to derive an estimate from it by subtle calculation. The estimate is then presented as the result of scientific reasoning, something far superior to mere guesswork. This is a pernicious practice which can only lead to the most colossal planning errors, because it offers a bogus answer where, in fact, entrepreneurial judgement is required.

The study here under review employs a vast array of arbitrary assumptions, which are then, as it were, put into a calculating machine to produce a 'scientific' result. It would have been cheaper, and indeed more honest, simply to assume the result."

No it's making fun of the Dunning-Kruger guy who thinks forecasts are not primarily products of the assumptions behind them and are a decent basis to make decisions. Really the 4th pane should show them going through the assumptions and discussing whether each one is valid, examine how the forecast would differ if the assumptions differed and then proceed to making the decision.

(On the leaked report)
It's not an accident, that's the assumption behind the study. Debate why you think that assumption is valid rather than saying "given my assumption that Brexit harms manufacturing is valid, Brexit will harm areas with manufacturing."

Agriculture depends a lot on predicting government policy (e.g. are we initially going to mirror CAP and gradually change stuff or make bigger changes?) and ultimately it depends how British people vote, as it should.

It wasn't until I played "Settlers of Catan" with Americans that I found out why you call it lumber all the time instead of wood. I was like "I've got sheep, who can help me get wood?"

Pretty much all of that would be more likely in the U.S.E. than in the UK.

Perhaps but you can also turn it the other way and say that every person who hates the UK (e.g. marty) voted to remain. These people balance each other out probably and I don't generally like discussing which votes should carry more weight than others.

Manufacturing in UK is already down. More expensive to make cars in the UK due to weaker pound and therefore higher import prices. Beyond the weaker pound, Brexit uncertainty makes it really hard to plan for capacity increases.

But export doesn't go up... because EU (including UK by the way) firms basically shut down investing in more capacity in UK links of the supply chain. Brexit is a serious structural change. I don't think Brexiters understand how much UK manufacturing depends on the EU. Depending on how you count it, 25-35% of UK exports is some variety of intermediate product that dramatically decreases in value to the buyers in the EU if UK fails to retain free movement of goods (which almost inevitably means free movement of people, both out of practical and political necessity.) A huge chunk of that export will die and UK just doesn't have the ability to make up the short fall short or medium term at least, most likely not long term either without some pretty painful structural changes.

This is what you signed up for.

Brexit causing a decline or slow down in manufacturing isn't even conjecture anymore. The data and industry surveys strongly back the narrative that Brexit is hurting the British economy.

Yes lecktor one of the main reasons people voted for Brexit is so we can have more brown immigrants and less white ones.

I can't recall the source, but saw data concerning the trade balance (because I was curious about BoJo's claims about the EU needing the UK more than vice versa due to the trade deficit).
Basically the numbers were:

EU->UK exports = 3% of EU GDP
UK->EU exports = 18% of UK GDP

So while the trade deficits are true, 3% trade can be replaced quite easily (or even ignored), but 18% can't be easily replaced with other trading partners.

Almost spat my coffee out laughing at this

This is just embarrassing. You cannot make any optimal long term decisions without trying to maximise something or other - eg you may be trying to maximise profit over a certain time period, with a certain tolerance of risk etc.

The cartoon suggests that making assumptions are bad, when it's 100% necessary. The model and assumptions selection are crucial too, obviously, but your comments about a "4th pane" makes no sense. The third pane has the guy wanting to talk about the projections (ie model + assumptions + results), and other guy doesn't want to hear any details as assumptions are made and assumptions = bad.

It's just a cartoon that makes people who want to ignore reality feel better.

It's right here itt, I don't vote and won't ever vote for any British institution.

The UK has brought nothing but pain and misery to more people than I care to count, so there is more than just a little bit of justification for my dislike of the UK and it's Anglo centric setup.

The kingdom has never been united btw and won't ever be.

You underestimate how great and influential a catechism can be. Martin Luther proved that, yet again, about 500 years ago. His particular catechism has lost some of its luster since but you can easily just reinvent another one. You know this so cease with blowing little kisses at Diebitter and his bitterness for the EU. The EU catechism is patchy and lacks the empire building that is required to dominant the world and take advantage of the parasites. Putin just laughs at it. As all should.

I had to memorize portions of Luther's Catechism when I was a young lad. It was an excellent thing to do, was very instructive, and I learned an immense amount of valuable information - for example: how to write my own Catechism.

Indeed it has and it needs expanding. The US should make the UK its 51'st State. Follow this with buying the Island of Sicily from Italy to make fifty-two states and a nice even number for the stars and stripes. Most Italians will say good riddance and the wad of cash they receive will go a long way in reducing the Italian government from their debt and bondage to the EU and the German banking menace. That is only the immediate benefits. A whole plethora of other benefits lurk in the background not the least being a whole island in the Mediterranean to militarize. And the UK'ers have an excellent history of being good sea dogs and traders and driving hard bargains. To use an overblown cliché, it would be a win-win for all concerned.

I have, somewhere in the recesses of my mind, the entire Westminster Larger Catechism.

I'm just having fun with a nationalistic apologist.

They already are, effectively, our 51st state. Also, fyp.

Have we left yet?

Best way to check:

Do you still have a job = No.