Some of the great moments of history sneak up on businesspeople. Two years ago, Britain looked to be Europe's most economically rational country; now its companies seem to be rolling from one economic earthquake to another, with Brexit looking increasingly likely to be followed by the election of a near-Marxist prime minister, Jeremy Corbyn.
Looking back, two things stand out. First, there were some deep underlying "irrational" causes that business ignored, such as the pent-up anger against immigration and globalization. Second, there was a string of short-term political decisions that proved to be miscalculations. For decades, for example, attacking the European Union was a "free hit" for British politicians. If David Cameron had it to do over again, would he really have made the referendum on whether to stay in it a simple majority vote (or indeed called a vote at all)? Does Angela Merkel now regret giving Cameron so few concessions before the Brexit vote? Would the moderate Labour members of Parliament who helped Corbyn get on their party's leadership ballot in the name of political diversity really do that again?
Now, another rupture may be sneaking up on Europe, driven by a similar mixture of pent-up anger and short-term political maneuvering. This one is between the old West European democratic core of the EU, led by Merkel and increasingly by Emmanuel Macron, who are keen to integrate the euro zone, and the populist authoritarians of Eastern Europe, who dislike Brussels. This time the arguments are ones about political freedom and national sovereignty.
Eastern Europe's gripes are nothing a little anschluss couldn't cure.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @02:16AM (20 children)
It has a toothless parliament elected by the people, but actual power is held in the hands of the member countries' governments via the European Commission.
The European Commission is where all kinds of stupidity is thought up, forcing national parliaments to turn its effluent into national law.
Politically, it is a dumping ground for failed / retired politicians at the national level.
The EU has brought great benefits to Europeans, but it is in desperate need of reform, but that won't happen naturally, as member governments like the way things are set up to rule past the people.
A democratic EU would be a good arrangement for the regionalist movements the people are increasingly demanding, IMHO.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @02:52AM
... at least not without pouring tons of resources into forcing people to submit. Even if you can get people to submit, the solution you achieve will only be transient, because our universe demands that environmental conditions change, often in unforeseen ways.
As with any complex system, a stable structure to the organization of society must emerge organically through the process of evolution by variation and selection, a process that takes its most civil form as voluntary exchange within a market of ideas (and of services).
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Arik on Friday October 06 2017, @03:08AM (15 children)
What benefits, specifically?
Most if not everything it's done that's beneficial was already done or could have been done in the old Common Market system without creating a superfluous bureaucracy to invent work for themselves, and without the surrender of sovereignty demanded by the Junker in Brussels.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Friday October 06 2017, @04:09AM (14 children)
The old Common Market system didn't have a unified currency, and free trade and movement of labor between member states. That's probably done a lot of quantifiable good for the EU states' economies overall, though some nations have surely benefited more than others.
They should probably move to a two-tier currency system, with HighEuros being the stronger and LowEuros being the weaker, so that countries like Greece can adopt the weaker currency and avoid some of the problems they've been having with sharing the same currency as Germany. But that would complicate things internally a lot with trade so it might not be feasible.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @07:41AM
The whole issue with the Euro is that the EU was so eager to expand it allowed countries to enter that weren't up to the task. Also, EU countries more or less have to compete (loss of Greece is the profit for Germany). The whole Greece situation was the EU punishing them while recovering the losses that banks made by paying them public EU money. There are other solutions to the EU problems, but so far the only ones you hear are "moar market (protection)" (see your quote above). The inhabitants of the EU are screaming for these other solutions, but the EU does not listen... take this too long and you see the things we see in UK and now in Spain (although the Spain situation is a more internal struggle).
(Score: 3, Informative) by Aiwendil on Friday October 06 2017, @10:41AM (12 children)
Great, let me travel from here in sweden to meet some friends in the uk, on the way I might stop by some friends in denmark and the netherlands. What you nean I meed four currencies and a passport for that? And what do you mean I now need to carry an id-card at all times while being in denmark. And what do you mean I'm only allowed to stay in the netherlanda for a couple of months per stretch..
Compare that to visiting non-eu member iceland with a stopover in non-eu norway as a swede. Three currencies, no passport needed, and I can stay in either country indefinitely. However since they joined the schengen I need to carry an id-card at all times (didn't before) (funnily enough, I can get a new id issued in any nordic country [or its embassies across the globe]).
Let's just say that the "freedom" in EU is for vacation and seasonal workers, and downright restrictive compared to what we are used to in the nordic countries.
Btw, also - take a look at sweden (eu, non-euro), iceland (non-eu, non-euro) and finland (eu, euro) in terms of how well they deal with (and dealt with) the latest economic snafu.
With the possible exception of Denmark the nordic countries would have been a lot better off in a nordic union (and the nordic countries would probably have started to introduce a unified currency by now if finland hadn't joined the euro [discussion was started])
(Score: 3, Insightful) by choose another one on Friday October 06 2017, @11:14AM (11 children)
UK is similar - back in the days of the common market we used to be able to travel through most of europe (this side of iron curtain obviously) with only a British Visitors Passport, which you could pick up while-you-wait at any local post office for a fiver.
Now, post Schengen, we have to have a full passport, at much greater expense and hassle, for any EU travel. Oddly, those from the EU _don't_ need a full passport to come to the UK, it's only a requirement for us to go there...
Maybe it was better before, maybe it wasn't, maybe we gained more than we lost, but it sure as hell is not better in every way now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @11:57AM (10 children)
UK citizens don't need passports to travel to EU countries.
Any member of an EU country may travel through any other EU country using only their national ID (which is indeed required).
(Score: 2) by rleigh on Friday October 06 2017, @06:03PM
There is no UK ID card (thankfully). That's why you need a passport to travel out of the UK.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Saturday October 07 2017, @11:18AM
Oops, yeah. However you still have a border checks.
Always forget that it is EEA tgat regulates passports and Schengen that regulates border checks.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Saturday October 07 2017, @04:20PM (7 children)
> UK citizens don't need passports to travel to EU countries.
Really? What do we use then?
> Any member of an EU country may travel through any other EU country using only their national ID
Except for UK citizens, who (other than Gibraltar residents) have _no_ "national ID" _other_ than a passport.
Driving licence is not allowed under the rules, the old British Visitors Passport is also not allowed (which was why it was discontinued).
The EU rules were created knowing that they would exclude all UK forms of ID except a full passport.
Of course it is a level playing field, everyone is allowed to play with expensive golden balls or cheap white ones, UK citizens can't get white ones but that's ok, same rules for everyone...
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday October 10 2017, @04:40PM (6 children)
So the rules are that you can use either a passport, or a national ID, and you're complaining because UK doesn't have a national ID so you're forced to use a passport? Isn't that your own dumb fault for not having a national ID like everyone else? Do you think you should get some kind of special privileges just because you're from the UK or something?
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Wednesday October 11 2017, @09:27AM (5 children)
But the UK _did_ have an alternative national ID - the British Visitors Passport.
The EU rules were written to block that but to allow other European non-passport IDs.
The British visitors passport was killed as a result.
Yes, the UK could change and do everything the European way rather than the way we have done it for decades but the perception is that the "harmonisation" is all one way - the imposition of the european way (and the costs of changing) on the UK - and that is dangerous, it could lead to things like disillusionment with the EU and possibly people voting to leave it. Oh wait, it already did, QED.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday October 11 2017, @03:19PM (4 children)
Harmonization is necessary if you're going to be part of a union; you can't have everyone doing everything differently, it's just too inefficient. If every EU nation wanted to do things differently, it'd be a complete mess.
If the Brits don't want to get with the program and do things the way the rest of the union does, that's fine, they can leave. It won't be good for their economy though, but that's OK, if they want to have a crappy economy that's their right. Independence has its ups and downs: you get to do everything in your weird, quirky way without having to adopt someone else's way of doing things, but you miss out on the economic benefits of being in a union.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Friday October 13 2017, @09:36AM (3 children)
You have just neatly illustrated the problem: instead of harmonisation being about compromise, about evaluating the various systems and settling on the best one or meeting in the middle or agreeing to stay different, or choosing one country's system for some things and another country's for other, your attitude is "the brits should be the ones to change or should get out".
Well, fine, that's what we're doing. We may miss out on some economic benefits but we get to keep, for instance, the NHS, and I can no-longer survive without it so I am happy with that.
I'd be happier if I had the option of living in France (have family there, speak the language, sort of), but the French rules require residents to have health insurance, which I cannot get (insurance market has a blanket ban on people with my condition). The French state health system would take me regardless my condition, but only after a 3month wait (with PUMA - used to be 5yrs to wait under CMU, doesn't matter, I can't survive 3 months without health care and I can't get insurance to cover the gap). So France will have to stay somewhere I visit with EHIC card or travel insurance (which I can still get), but even the EU freedom-of-movement doesn't let me live there. Of course if you are coming to the UK from EU you can (if you do it right) declare yourself ordinarily resident and access the NHS for free from the day you arrive, but that's a weird quirky British way of implementing freedom-of-movement, obviously...
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday October 13 2017, @03:06PM (2 children)
You have just neatly illustrated the problem: instead of harmonisation being about compromise, about evaluating the various systems and settling on the best one or meeting in the middle or agreeing to stay different, or choosing one country's system for some things and another country's for other, your attitude is "the brits should be the ones to change or should get out".
What the hell are you talking about? Presumably, they already *did* compromise, and settle on the best system or meet in the middle. The Brits are the ones who are mad because their crappy system wasn't good enough, and because everyone else didn't want to make an exception for them.
We may miss out on some economic benefits but we get to keep, for instance, the NHS
How the hell would staying in the EU take away your NHS? And with a wrecked economy (what does Britain still make again? Nothing?), how do you expect to pay for NHS? The only reason Britain still has any economic power is because it's a financial center, but that's going to wane after they leave the EU.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Saturday October 14 2017, @11:17AM (1 child)
You already answered that question - the NHS is unique in Europe, it is in fact Europe's largest employer. It is a different system from the rest of Europe (but better, despite it's many faults, from my point of view), from your point of view it is a "crappy system that wasn't good enough" (_because_ it is different, and British).
The NHS would inevitably be killed by EU harmonization in one way or another because (in your words): "The Brits are the ones who are mad because their crappy system wasn't good enough, and because everyone else didn't want to make an exception for them." Notably TTIP (for one threat, and yes it's dead now but may be because of the brexit vote) had exceptions to protect the European-style state health care systems, but none for the NHS.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday October 14 2017, @04:49PM
Ok, now you're not making any sense at all. I'm not even a European, and I still know that healthcare systems are NOT homogenized across EU countries. The UK's is very different from Germany's, which is very different from France's, which is very different from Belgium's, etc. They're all entirely separate entities. I've never read of any attempt to create a homogeneous pan-EU healthcare system. What we were talking about before is ID cards, which is absolutely an issue the EU has every right to regulate and homogenize across the EU, if you want to be able to travel between EU member nations without a passport. Asking border guards to know about dozens of different ID cards and totally different rules for each one is simply stupid and absurd, and it's unfair because that means you're proposing that different countries' citizens get different rights in other nations. Healthcare isn't like that; there's little reason to homogenize it unless you're going to turn the whole EU into a big federal nation, which isn't going to happen in our lifetime.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @05:19AM
well yes, fuck the European Comission but they push a corporate/banker agenda into laws so that's where the stupidity really comes from
(Score: 5, Informative) by bolek_b on Friday October 06 2017, @09:37AM (1 child)
I wonder why the parent was modded "Troll" when all it does is state the facts. Phrase "democratic deficit" is being mentioned even in official circles. In recent years we could witness a lot of examples where rules and laws were violated (or their violation had been overlooked) by EU. To name one, during the migration crisis, the Dublin Regulation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Regulation [wikipedia.org]) was simply ignored.
I live in Czech Republic and we as a nation are quite sensitive to control from bigger powers. Hundreds of years as a part of Austrian-Hungary Empire, then "democratically" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Agreement [wikipedia.org]) conceded to Hitler, and almost immediately after the end of WWII we fell into Soviet-led bloc called "Warsaw Pact". These lessons are the reason why ordinary Czechs view many geopolitical events with a lot of scepticism. And I must say that the EU does gradually show more and more signs of non-democratic entity. For example, a stock answer for many questions is "More of Europe, more integration". Or a vote regarding firearms directive earlier this year: I was watching live broadcast and I almost threw up; no discussion allowed, no proposals of amendment allowed, just "raise your hands, ok, pass", done in 5 minutes.
Bringing a palestinian terrorist as a VIP speaker into European Parliament just couple of days ago is another insult, resulting in even Czech proponents of EU starting to question what is going on.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @04:42PM
they are NWO scum. that is what is going on. only the stupidest of fucks would believe a bunch of un-elected leeches could save them.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Sulla on Friday October 06 2017, @02:19AM (7 children)
Maybe if the EU leadership had left things as a trade union with a common market and not tried to make a fourth reich. EU pushing one leader (junkers), an EU joint military, required military actions based on simple majority (instead of unanimous), refugee quotas, and leaders suggesting individual nations have no real culture. The southern states tried to break away for less. The US was an easier melding pot due to everyone being anglo-german with a pretty similar culture (rejecting Europe), the EU is an amalgamation of distinct cultures that have had issues with one another for two thousand years.
A trade union is good, but I think it is too early for a US style super country.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 5, Insightful) by aim on Friday October 06 2017, @09:44AM (6 children)
The trade union thing is a very english view of Europe.
For the (at least the western) continentals, the EU is foremost a political union designed to prevent any more wars, based on the experiences of the world wars which saw widespread destruction and death all across the continent (and islands).
Pretty much everything e.g. Jean-Claude Juncker says or does stems from that premise, it's most important to stay in discussions than to utterly alienate people that don't share the fundamental values (e.g. "conflict" with the eastern states, situation with Turkey). A JCJ has pretty direct memories of the horrors of WW2 - his home country was occupied during the war, his family and general entourage certainly had many stories to tell from wartime (I've had such testimonies from my own parents and grandparents), which explains much of his motivations.
Younger people especially are rather more disconnected from what they only know from history books or from "far away"... and don't realize how quickly such circumstances could come about also in Europe - see the current situation in Catalonia, which could easily deteriorate.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @10:24AM
"To prevent the kind of wars fought when Germany previously attempted to exert dominion over Europe, we will create a political union allowing Germany to exert dominion over Europe".
We're well aware of the motivations of the original European federalists. They would surely have been entirely opposed to creating a corpocracy [wikipedia.org] with public calls for formation of an army and lebensraum.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday October 06 2017, @02:18PM (3 children)
I am glad that in trying to keep the EU from acting like occupation Germany he is supporting the Spanish police beating people for doing something "illegal".
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 3, Informative) by aim on Friday October 06 2017, @02:37PM (2 children)
You're very mistaken there. He certainly officially said the EU considers the referendum as illegal, but he also sent a very thinly veiled message to Madrid telling them that the violence was unacceptable. That message may have been too subtle for many, but plain to anyone with a notion of diplomacy. I noted no later than today that apologies were extended to the Catalans regarding that violence (whatever that's worth...).
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Sulla on Friday October 06 2017, @07:32PM (1 child)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-04/eu-defends-spain-s-right-to-use-proportionate-force [bloomberg.com]
I really love the idea of "proportionate use of force", really a shame that all these Catalans choose to hold illegal ideas and votes and protested peacefully. Did not realize that beating people was proportionate to peacefully protesting. Guess its just because I don't understand Democracy.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by aim on Monday October 09 2017, @08:05AM
Are you misunderstanding that phrase on purpose, i.e. trolling? That's the very critic right there - the violence was disproportionate, this was the very message sent to Madrid, and most probably the reason for those apologies.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Saturday October 07 2017, @11:38AM
Over here (sweden) EU was promoted as a trade and travel union when try tried to make us join.
And the goal of EU wasn't to prevent war, that was the goal of the European Coal and Steel Community (expired in 2002) [wikipedia.org]
Quite frankly EU (post Maastricht) is just weird and aims to become a super-state.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday October 06 2017, @02:21AM
Germany sees Lebensraum!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Interesting) by KiloByte on Friday October 06 2017, @02:57AM (4 children)
Poland and Turkey can't really be called democracies at the moment, and to a lesser extent Hungary as well.
Both are suffering from a nasty semi-legal takeover. In Poland for example, the ruling party does tricks like: the Constitutional Tribunal would be able to stop them. So... they make an obviously illegal change to the Tribunal's membership and rules. That change is obviously immediately declared as unconstitutional. Such rulings are effective from the moment of being published in the Bill Journal; the Prime Minister handles such publishing. Except, there's no time limit to do so. Thus, the publication of the ruling is pending for two years already, yet the unconstitutional bill remains in effect.
Then, having got rid of that pesky Constitution thingy, they take over the police, public prosecutors, judges, etc, using the same kind of tricks.
The party is strongly national socialist -- but not in the caricature sense of "nazi" popular as an insult these days: their rhetoric is all about "the nation", "patriotism", reusing symbols from the past (ignoring objections of still living people who belonged to formations the party takes symbols from). They also do some extreme socialism: "banks bad", "debt collectors bad", "companies bad", "any economic initiative bad". They give handouts to their voting segments, carefully making sure no one uses such a handout to lift themselves up: to get "500+", if you earn even a penny above the threshold, you don't get 499 but 0 -- which led to many people requesting their employers to reduce their wages. The handouts are also immune to debt collection: their voters consider this protection from eeeevil banks, while the result is that a beneficient of the handout in question won't get a business loan.
These handouts have taken basically every source of income the government could get. Thus, they've taken on debts (ignoring constitutional limits), did a change to VAT that caused returns to be processed with several months delay, liquidated retirement funds, and raided every reserve they could get their hands on. Thus, the handouts won't last, but the plan is to drag this out until the next election. By then, any legal avenues for dislodging the Party will be effectively closed.
And they're raising a paramilitary army, that most experts declare to be completely useless against an external threat (even such as Russian "green men"), but with training that fits just perfectly pacifying their own population in case of protests.
Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @03:41AM (3 children)
A country can recover from all the bad things you listed.
A country can not recover from taking in hordes of people who despise western civilization. The ruling party is at least blocking mass immigration, so there is still hope for the future.
The ruling party thus deserves to rule, at least until a better one comes along.
(Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Friday October 06 2017, @05:43AM (1 child)
At the moment is is predominantly those governments that dismantle Western civilization, under the disguise of protecting it.
And more than 99% of the refugees don't despise Western civilization. It's just that the politicians like to generalize from the minority that does, because the resulting FUD helps them.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @02:37PM
The countries you mentioned have only recently threw off the shackles of oppression and are expressing sovereignty, why would they want to immediately jump back into a pool with people far away from them telling them what to do?
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Friday October 06 2017, @02:59PM
Most of those people, if they despised western civilization, they would have just stayed at home. It would have been much easier.
If you'd rather risk your and your family's life than stay in an islamo-fascist warzone, then there are (in general) reasons for that; i.e. maybe the risks for your family are a bit larger than your neighbours, because you're educated, or of the wrong tribe, or don't like your daughters wearing a tent outdoors, etc.
If you'd rather live in central Sweden with its 6 months winter, where in the midwinter it is night at 15:00 and -20°C, than in sunny Eritrea or Herat or Homs, then it is probably not because you despise western civilization so much (unless, of course, you're some kind of masochist).
You can't stop people at a border, if they'd rather DIE than stay on their side. Cf. die Mauer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @02:58AM (3 children)
would you kindly innovate up a 4th box on the left hand side
that lists the tags used in stories on the frontpage.
by clicking that tag, one could remove stories with that tag from what's listed on the page.
if logged-in users could permanently block getting exposed to stories by tag also, that would be great!
also, please make that work via a bookmarkable url as well
tyvvm!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday October 06 2017, @03:11AM (2 children)
Nexus preferences are here: https://soylentnews.org/my/homepage [soylentnews.org]
You can either collapse or entirely remove stories based on nexus (Breaking News, Community Reviews, Meta, Politics).
No such options for the anti-login crowd AFAIK.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @12:32PM (1 child)
> No such options for the anti-login crowd AFAIK.
I know. tastes bad,right? A little innovation like a '-politics' in the url would fix that. that'd be a technical matter which could be understood as having inherent merit, i'd render it so that you '[+-=]section' would work so as to be 'fair to the system' while adding an infinite scroll for mobile.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday October 06 2017, @04:32PM
That sounds like a better solution than JavaScript + a cookie. I'll make a feature request for it later.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @03:00AM (7 children)
Companies are moving their legal bases out of Catalonia, including big ones, like a couple of banks, laCaixa and Sabadell. Other companies are selecting different places for operations, Citroen is going to use Valencia as exportation harbour for their Zaragoza made car (Opel plant, GM sold the German company to the French recently), not Barcelona as it seems to be the original plan. A couple of cruise routes dropped Barcelona stop and other tourism related things are expect to go down too. American Airlines has some routes on halt for some days. All this means regional taxes are lost, operational income is lost, support jobs are at risk.
JxSi politicians seem to be thinking twice now that their bluff failed and looking for a new plan, while CUP ones keep on going rabbies mad as before (they said no more deals with the above banks, for example). FC Barcelona now proposed themselves as negotiators, after years of shouting for independence. Mossos, the local police, is starting to have members talking about ambiguous or clearly illegal orders from some bosses.
So far they are not getting their independence, but they sure are getting a nasty bill.
UK should just cancel Brexit too, companies are doing similar things. The major parties are like a bunch of jokers, meat version of Spitting Image. EU seems to be looking for someone to hang from the city walls as example, so there will be no nice deals for any that leaves. Thus, everyone, stop going away, and fight from inside to fix migration, sovereignty and any other problem. Otherwise it will be death outside as world pariah, or inside as populism food.
Sorry, I forgot politicians never care about their country, and less so about the population. Please keep on with the path to self destruction.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @03:09AM (6 children)
If you lot had any sense, you would have handled it with some nuance and intelligence that it wouldn't come to what it is today. In fact, prior to the crackdown, less than half of the Catalan electorate would have voted to secede. Now you gave the hardliners all the excuse, and lost the sympathy of the others in Catalonia.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @04:04AM (5 children)
The rumor is separatists were trolling for a martyr. All they got was some "batoning", same thing than UK miners or French farmers got in the past. No more no less that what takes place in Western countries, so nobody gaves any credit to "holier than you" claims. Mossos loved "batonning" their own with the 15M movement displays, but for some of those they are heroes now.
And the huge numbers of "injuried", around 800, seem to be the total number of medical assistances for the Sunday: asthma, indigestion, bee stings, blood clots, etc including the smaller number of police targets. Vote % added to above 100. Separatists fucked up too, now they look like a bunch of liars that have no plan for the future and no brain to forecast the obvious path companies are taking. They even keep negating separation means total split, and insist they will keep whatever they want, like EU membership.
Counterexample: Scotland, they checked and followed all the laws for their referendum, with proper majority levels and at least a vague idea of what would happen (out of UK = out of EU, thus remain won).
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday October 06 2017, @04:15AM (1 child)
out of UK = out of EU, thus remain won
This policy by the EU is stupid. Now the UK is probably going to leave the union, and that means the entire UK will be out of the EU. If the EU didn't have this idiotic policy, Scotland might have seceded, but it'd now be a stalwart member of the EU, and Brexit wouldn't be quite so bad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @05:32AM
Brexit isn't bad. Parts are, but the good outweighs the bad. The UK is non-Euro, Five Eyes, and Commonwealth. Having that in the EU was a huge conflict of interest that blocked the EU from becoming a proper nation.
Scotland belongs with the UK. The truly tragic part of Brexit is that Ireland also belongs with the UK. Stupid historical reasons are at fault. Ireland is now an English-speaking country; they really ought to be unified with the UK.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @04:36AM
Your mentality has lead to this lose-lose situation. Now, even if Catalonia remains within Spain, they would be even more of a fifth column. Nice going, Spain, simply brilliant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @06:24AM (1 child)
I got another rumor for you, Hillary Clinton has a 98% chance of winning the Presidency.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Friday October 06 2017, @06:37AM
That is consistent with what happened. Without sufficiently many repetitions of the election, we cannot say whether it is true or false.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Friday October 06 2017, @03:06AM (18 children)
Catalonia moves to declare independence from Spain on Monday [reuters.com]
Spanish court blocks Catalan parliament from declaring independence [theguardian.com]
However some of the Catalan politicians are wary of moving forward and are hoping that the EU can broker some kind of mediation:
Catalan Separatists Tap Brakes as Banks Consider Departure [bloomberg.com]
Banks moving their HQ is a way for them to stay in the EU which Catalonia would no longer be in if it declared independence.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @03:46AM (16 children)
Splitting off from Spain should not mean splitting off from the EU.
If the EU is to really succeed, many of the existing parts need to split. The parts ought to be similar in size.
The USA has long had similar troubles, though without some of the extra legacy tension that the EU has. For example, California ought to be 10 states.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday October 06 2017, @03:55AM (15 children)
I think we'll see Puerto Rican AND D.C. statehood before we see Calexit or California split into 3-10 pieces.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Friday October 06 2017, @04:24AM (14 children)
DC has no business being a state. It's way too small. It's not even a true city: it's only a tiny portion of the overall metro area. DC should simply retrocede (?) back to Maryland, just like Alexandria did with Virginia years ago, if they really want proper Congressional representation so bad.
It'd be much better really for DC, northern VA, and most of central MD (including Baltimore) to unify into a single state, then let eastern shore MD join with Delaware (and also eastern shore VA) into a "Delmarva" state, and let far-western MD counties merge with West Virginia. Then we'd still have 50 states, Delaware wouldn't be so puny, the barely-populated Delmarva peninsula wouldn't be idiotically divided among 3 states, the far-west Marylanders wouldn't have to complain about Baltimore any more, the DCers wouldn't have to complain about "taxation without representation" any more, and DC-area residents wouldn't constantly be driving between 3 states (/district). And maybe the Metro would work better too; it's a disaster. Unfortunately, redrawing state borders like this seems to be politically impossible.
As for California, they should split up into two states, north and south. They're too big. We can get back to an even 50 states by breaking up Wyoming and giving the pieces to surrounding states. Or by forcing Rhode Island to merge with one of its neighbors.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday October 06 2017, @05:41AM (13 children)
DC doesn't have Senate seats so its absorption can't be traded for a new Democrat state like Puerto Rico.
Dissolution of California just seem impossible. A vocal minority want it, and it has a high chance of creating more Dem Senate seats. It's a non-starter.
Wyoming is Republican. If it was absorbed the Republicans would lose Senate seats.
You're right, we're stuck with the 50 we have.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @07:35AM
Take the UK as the extra 3-4, then you'll have room for more.
They already bend in whatever position the US masters ask them to anyway.
Keep Assange in check? Not a problem, we just need to waste 4-6 policemen-worth of salary for as long as needed. Spare change, sir, spare change.
More surveillance? Sure, sir, right away.
No more encryption in messaging apps? Right you are, sir, we'll make it illegal just as soon as we finish Brexiting.
BTW, sir, so that you know: we are following your approach and we're dismantling our NHS... waste of taxes they are, can't support them and the MI5 and 6 in the same time, we needed to make a choice. It's called "living within our means", of course.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @08:27AM (2 children)
Suppose you put California's coastal counties in one state, and then made separate states out of all the non-coastal counties. That would be a huge number of republican senators. Most of California is actually republican. The coast controls everything due to population density. The non-coast is pissed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @01:03PM (1 child)
So the dirt gets to vote? I thought it was people who voted.
Such nonsense! You think that largely uninhabited areas should have MORE say than the ones where the people live?
Your argument is typical Republican claptrap, a loser's argument to find some way to be in the right.
California is OVERWHELMINGLY (almost comically) Democratic, and there is no argument that can credibly say otherwise.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @05:22PM
Everybody sometimes goes to a city, but many city people never leave. City people seldom have much empathy for the non-city people.
Without "the dirt" getting a vote, power snowballs. City cost-of-living and other misery rises as the entire population crams into the cities. Cities already have network advantages that encourage growth. You end up with lots of homeless people, and lots of people with multi-hour commutes, because non-city living becomes unviable.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 06 2017, @09:06AM (7 children)
Maybe they need a compromise where each new state has to come in with another on the other side of the political divide, as in, one red and one blue. Dividing California in half would do that, with the red half balancing the blue Puerto Rico.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @01:06PM (3 children)
Sacrificing one of the largest states and probably the one with the biggest economy to allow in a tiny speck of a ruined island as a state makes NO SENSE AT ALL.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday October 06 2017, @04:31PM (1 child)
If you let Puerto Rico get too ruined, the 3.4 million AMERICAN CITIZENS within will flood into the mainland, maybe change a couple states to Democrat. No amount of chucked paper towels can stop it.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @06:55PM
Most Puerto Ricans already live in the mainland U.S.
Leaving Puerto Rico is nothing new.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DECbot on Friday October 06 2017, @04:33PM
If we're granting statehood to incompetently managed, corrupt islands, Puerto Rico should be inducted with Guam as the 51st and 52nd states.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday October 06 2017, @05:38PM (2 children)
What are you talking about? North/south, there's no "red half" of California, they're both blue, with LA/SanDiego in the south and SanFran/BayArea in the north. You'd have to do some kind of east-west divide, but that would look ridiculous; the two states would be impossibly long and narrow, and the eastern side wouldn't have much population, mainly just Sacramento, and possibly Fresno depending on where the line is.
I say we break Texas in half, along with California. That should solve this problem.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 06 2017, @06:12PM (1 child)
The Bay Area is the middle. The northern half would start north of there. People have proposed it as the "State of Jefferson [wikipedia.org]." Culturally, though, it would work better to separate the coast from San Diego to the Bay Area from the rest of the state. The Central Valley, north, and east of the Sierras are all quite red.
Dividing Texas doesn't make much sense, though. Once you pop Austin out of the middle you've broken the blue out from the red.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday October 06 2017, @09:25PM
The far north area I don't think has enough population to be a viable state. It's too rural. There's not even any real cities up there. If they're unhappy, what they should be lobbying for is seceding from California and joining Oregon. That's sorta what the "Jefferson" proposed state in your link does, by taking some parts of Oregon. That's not a terrible idea; the rest of OR could merge with WA.
Dividing Texas makes sense from the standpoint of making the US states more equal in population. I don't know where you'd divide it, perhaps north-south, with the Amarillo part merged with OK, and maybe splitting off the far-west part with El Paso and merging that with NM. It'd probably also make sense to break off the far-east part and merge that with LA.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday October 06 2017, @05:41PM
Break Texas in half, split up New York state, and split up Illinois and Wisconsin (merge Chicago and Milwaukee together too). Merge Rhode Island with Mass.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @04:40AM
That would be future-CYA, the fact is that as next tax cycle hits, Catalonia is not seeing the money they are granted by the regional laws, other regions will. And the goverment announced an express law that will allow faster HQ changes for anyone that wants to do so. Catalonia GDP is going to get a serious bite, and their credit rating sucked but was recently lowered. They stay afloat with money from central gov now.
It's not just banks (the 2 that announced changes have around 75% of Catalonia), a dental supplies company is moving to their Zaragoza offices, a telecom and a genetics co are moving to Madrid. Catalana Occidente, big insurance company, is ready to take action if they need. And in past years, the number has been around 2500.
http://www.huffingtonpost.es/2017/10/05/fuga-de-empresas-en-cataluna-quien-pierde-y-quien-gana_a_23233770/ [huffingtonpost.es]
http://www.huffingtonpost.es/2017/10/04/josep-bou-mas-de-2-500-empresas-han-dejado-cataluna-por-el-proces_a_23232459/ [huffingtonpost.es]
Reading the second link, I learned Catalans started a boicot... against other Catalans. Spanish labelled products are "forbidden". Catalonian products, not Spanish products, just because they select the "wrong" language for the texts. They want to separate, and the tones sounds that they will get rid of anyone else that is not with them. Insanity.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @10:09AM (4 children)
Jeremy Corbyn is not a "near-Marxist". This is hyperbole and scaremongering used by an establishment that are desperate to discredit him because they can't bare to accept anything that might impact their bottom line.
He has some moderately left wing policies that are all carefully costed and to fund them we're only talking about very slight increments in tax for the richest and for corporation tax that if put in place wouldn't create a situation much different to Britain under some right wing governments of the recent past.
The reality is that over the past 30 years Britain has been dragged further and further to the right to the extent that social benefits, health care and public transport are pretty much broken and getting progressively worse. There are politicians now who call themselves "centrists" who by the standards of a few decades ago would be considered very right wing. If I had to adopt a label, I would consider myself slightly right wing, but policy needs to be elastic and respond to the climate, not just eternally the same until the country reaches some kind of singularity. The country needs a moderate leftie to drag things back to some level of sanity. Otherwise there'll be no effective working class or middle class, just the 1%ers and the serfs. Serfs is probably inaccurate. Serfs have jobs.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @10:58AM (3 children)
Last I checked welfare is capped around the national average wage while many people with dependants earn below this. Every privatisation of a nationalised service is an admission that the state is incapable of doing its job yet some people still insist that "more government" is the answer. If you want to claim the NHS is underfunded, first explain why a health service needs hundreds of "diversity directors"!
Funny... I'm a left leaning centrist who thinks Corbyn and his cronies are socio-economic illiterates.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @11:16AM (2 children)
Yeh, that's an upper limit. The real problem is people who should be receiving benefits are receiving none at all, in countless cases driving them to suicide or crime which destabilizes society for everyone. There are many severely disabled people also being denied benefits due to unrealistic assessments of their ability to do useful work.
In the case of the main line British trains, just about anything would be an improvement on the current system! And I remember British Rail.
Yeah, the NHS is woefully ineffiicent, but successive governments have been intentionally fucking it up to justify privatisation. I don't know about you, but I think it's a service worth having.
Each to their own. The current alternatives aren't looking too rosy though. More like steaming piles of horse shit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @12:25PM (1 child)
Unfortunately the opposite is also true. The DWP "disability assessments" are like something out of a dystopian fiction, these assessments should only be performed by a qualified GP.
Pipe down citizen; Our wonderful privatised yet subsidised mass transit system is being run this way in order to provide you with a higher quality of service. The worst of both worlds is the best of all worlds -- buy our inflation-linked day saver ticket today!
I think the standards and service are excellent but the waiting times are not. Why cosmetic breast enlargement is available on a public service that keeps working, tax paying adults waiting 6 months for things such as hip surgery or hernia repair is beyond me.
I don't entirely disagree but can you imagine the capital flight that would have followed Corbyn successfully seizing properties from foreign investors to rehouse Grenfell survivors? A stupidity that could have only been matched had the Tories proposed offsetting the withdrawal of the winter fuel allowance by setting impoverished pensioners on fire! Not that it would surprise me if that idea made their next manifesto.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @05:28PM
This is not something for a doctor to do.
Some cases can be handled by anybody with a checklist. Missing limbs and eyes would count.
Most cases need investigators to watch the person. If they go rock climbing, they are not disabled.
(Score: 4, Informative) by bradley13 on Friday October 06 2017, @10:40AM (7 children)
The problems with the EU go deeper than that. But they are simply the well-known problems of any large government: larger governments are more remote governments, and are no longer responsive to the actual needs and wishes of their citizens.
Sure, the EU Commission regularly makes pretty horrible proposals. It's entirely clear that the members of the commission are completely owned by existing governmental and corporate interests. The Parliament, for its part, does actually do a reasonable job of representing the population, and has acted to reign in the commission.
But the biggest problem is remoteness. Most of the EU government is the faceless bureaucracy.As with bureaucrats everywhere, the individuals become impressed with their own importance, want to build their little empires, and create masses upon masses of senseless regulations, which have the force of law throughout the EU.
Just as one egregious example: There is an EU regulation concerning cucumbers:. They must have certain dimensions, and there is a strict limit on their curvature. I suppose that the intent of this regulation is to make the cucumbers more uniform, so that they can be more easily transported. But WTF is the government doing, mucking about here? Let the suppliers, the truckers and the grocery stores work it out. And maybe some stores will want the crooked cucumbers, because they can get the at a discount?
Of course, it's purely coincidental that regulations like this favor the big producers, who have ways of making their pleasure tangible to politicians and regulatory agencies. Ahem, /sarc
When you get governments reigning over hundreds of millions of people, they become so remote, so uncontrollable, that there's really no chance of influencing them any more. Smaller governments, closer to the people, are a lot better in this regard.
The best thing that could happen to the EU? Eliminate it, and go back to the common market. Go farther: break up the big countries into loose confederations of smaller regions. Go Catalonia! Go Scotland! Go Texas! Smaller governments work better. At least, if they don't, you know where the politicians live...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @01:09PM
You can go too small.
I would explain why (defense, natural resources, foreign policy), but it would be wasted on you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @01:31PM (3 children)
No, there isn't. There was one, but it was removed almost a decade ago. Indeed, its introduction pre-dates the EU. Its removal was in EU times, though.
So your argument against the EU is based on a former regulation that was introduced before the EU existed, and that was removed by the EU. Great argument.
Sure. Except that it was exactly those who back then asked the EC (not the EU, which didn't yet exist) to introduce that regulation.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @01:57PM (2 children)
I believe that was what is commonly called an example. If you don't like it, there are many other examples from which one can construct an argument.
What are your views on protectionist policies such as import duties on processed coffee intended to protect German food processing? [capx.co] What about the incandescent lightbulb ban which was in service to German and Dutch lightbulb manufacturers with patents on CFLs? CFL bulbs use mercury in the ballasts and were not outright banned under ROHS [europa.eu] despite environmental risk that does not exist with (oxidising) leaded solder and components that were banned for containing only trace amounts of heavy metals. The page I linked should simply state that CFL bulb manufacturers still have patents and are able to lobby the commission while smaller companies are not. At least that would be honest eh?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @06:59PM (1 child)
Get up to speed, my right wing brainwashed friend.
CFLs *were* the incandescent replacement technology, but they were replaced years ago by *LED* which has no mercury.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @07:42PM
Left wing. Initial halogen replacements, early adopter of LED's and no CFL's ever. Modern LED's even replaced GaAs with GaN and the lead isn't a problem but don't tell the EU commission.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @07:38PM (1 child)
Yet the Republic of Texas approached the United States asking to be admitted into the Union.
THEY didn't want to remain independent. Ponder why the Texans might have wanted this.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by DECbot on Friday October 06 2017, @08:32PM
To have a bigger stick to keep Mexico out.
The joke is now on them... Federal regulations now encourages Mexicans to live in Texas and Texas is helpless to stop it.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 08 2017, @07:25AM
is more united than ever under commander Trumpo...