Federal Europe or No Europe?

[Hardy]

Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.

Oh, and if we're in the mode of gratuitous name-calling, I'm implementing austerity measures here at Hardy Enterprises and have moved to a self-service model of pejorative interaction. So please visit an online thesaurus, select an appropriate vulgarity and consider it applied to yourself.

[bennydorano]

The Euro was when this European project "jumped the shark" and in fairness to the Brits they copped it and stayed away from it. The EU as it was pre-Euro was fine and didn't need further integration. The currency will go and we can go back to the EU being a common trading area like it was first intended. We will suffer badly for 12-24 months and then hit another tiger like period of growth which hopefully we can manage this time.

If Tony Blair had've had his way the UK would have been in the Euro and it would now be totally in the shitter as would Europe as a whole as the UK would be too big to save; Gordon Brown put the brakes on UK entry.

[Evil Genius]

Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.

Oh, and if we're in the mode of gratuitous name-calling, I'm implementing austerity measures here at Hardy Enterprises and have moved to a self-service model of pejorative interaction. So please visit an online thesaurus, select an appropriate vulgarity and consider it applied to yourself.

So then, no comment on my (more complete) exposition on why I think ROI has benefited immensely from EU membership?

Nor on my explanation of how I thought NI shared many of the socio-economic and political ills etc of the ROI during the pre-EEC period, too?

I guess they were just too inconvenient in rebutting your prejudicial and offensive preconceptions towards me, so that instead of your addressing them, we just get more of your smokescreen, bluster and bluff.

Well done.

[Hardy]

I did comment. I said all I wanted to say about your first post in my first. I said all that was worth saying about the magnum opus that was your second in my second. And you didn't rebut anything. You attempted to provide an explanation for your original laughable but revealing diatribe that read like a disclaimer from someone who, having asked how often I beat my wife, hastened to add, "not that I've anything against wife-beating, you understand; why, I've been known to take the belt to the little woman on occasion myself".

[fearglasmor]

I would say it is 100% true to say that The Republic of Ireland benefitted from its membership of The EEC.
But what we are now facing is not an Economic Community but a Political Unity and thats a horse of a different kettle.
It is also too simplistic to say that all the beneficial changes in Irish society in the last 40 years are solely due to membership of the EEC.
Many changes would have taken place with or without the EEC.

It seems to me that there are some "Irish" politicians who appear to be in a hurry to replace one political and economic master with another. Maybe its true that there is a trait in some of us that are happier to be ruled than to take responsibility for our own affairs.

There have also been many negative developments in Irish society in the last 40 years. Are these equally the result of EEC membership ?

[Evil Genius]

I did comment. I said all I wanted to say about your first post in my first. I said all that was worth saying about the magnum opus that was your second in my second. And you didn't rebut anything. You attempted to provide an explanation for your original laughable but revealing diatribe that read like a disclaimer from someone who, having asked how often I beat my wife, hastened to add, "not that I've anything against wife-beating, you understand; why, I've been known to take the belt to the little woman on occasion myself".

Nonsense.

It is my opinion (and experience!) that in very many respects, the ROI was socially/culturally/politically regressive, and economically very weak in the period before it joined the EEC. This is a view which may easily be supported by the facts of the time and had someone from the ROI, or a Northern Nationalist, expressed such an opinion, I seriously doubt whether you would have taken them up upon it, never mind rushed to cry "Bigot!".

But since I am one of "Themmuns", you instinctively seized it as "evidence" of some sort of anti-Irish prejudice on my part and proceeded to lambast me for it - ironically from a point of view which purports to disdain stereotyping etc.

Of course when I elaborated further that I apply pretty much identical criticisms towards NI for the period, it should have revealed that my criticisms were not* partisan, parochial or hypocritical etc., Yet still you could not bring yourself to concede that you had originally grossly "jumped the gun" (indeed still cannot).

That says much more about you than it does about me.


* - Rather they stem from my opinion that the whole of Ireland, North and South (or Prod and Taig, if you prefer) was in many regards a pretty sh1tty place back in the "good old days" [sic].

[Evil Genius]

If Tony Blair had've had his way the UK would have been in the Euro and it would now be totally in the shitter as would Europe as a whole as the UK would be too big to save; Gordon Brown put the brakes on UK entry.

Too true.

Mind you, Blair's enthusiasm for the Euro was nothing to do with the prospect of any economic benefit it might bring to the UK and everything to do with the credit he hoped it would bring to him in his ambition to become EU President after he vacated Downing Street.

And whilst Brown may (coincidentally) have been instinctively hostile towards the Euro, I'm sure his opposition to it derived rather less from the harm it might have done to the UK and rather more from the fact it that it would benefit Blair. And Blair would have been an even more formidable opponent to him from Brussels, than he had been from next door in No.11...

[Hardy]

I did comment. I said all I wanted to say about your first post in my first. I said all that was worth saying about the magnum opus that was your second in my second. And you didn't rebut anything. You attempted to provide an explanation for your original laughable but revealing diatribe that read like a disclaimer from someone who, having asked how often I beat my wife, hastened to add, "not that I've anything against wife-beating, you understand; why, I've been known to take the belt to the little woman on occasion myself".

Nonsense.

It is my opinion (and experience!) that in very many respects, the ROI was socially/culturally/politically regressive, and economically very weak in the period before it joined the EEC. This is a view which may easily be supported by the facts of the time and had someone from the ROI, or a Northern Nationalist, expressed such an opinion, I seriously doubt whether you would have taken them up upon it, never mind rushed to cry "Bigot!".

But since I am one of "Themmuns", you instinctively seized it as "evidence" of some sort of anti-Irish prejudice on my part and proceeded to lambast me for it - ironically from a point of view which purports to disdain stereotyping etc.

Of course when I elaborated further that I apply pretty much identical criticisms towards NI for the period, it should have revealed that my criticisms were not* partisan, parochial or hypocritical etc., Yet still you could not bring yourself to concede that you had originally grossly "jumped the gun" (indeed still cannot).

That says much more about you than it does about me.


* - Rather they stem from my opinion that the whole of Ireland, North and South (or Prod and Taig, if you prefer) was in many regards a pretty sh1tty place back in the "good old days" [sic].

There you go again. I objected to your stereotyping of an entire people as backward and homophobic, among other things. When I call you on it, you play the sectarian card and claim that I take you to task because of who you are rather that because of what you said. That is offensive. You can't have forgotten my objection to our own Minister for Justice's insult to my parents' generation for their stance in WWII. We had a discussion on it here.

I reject the suggestion that my parents and grandparents were any more backward, homophobic or fundamentalist than anyone else of their generation in other countries or that they needed the intervention of an enlightened Europe (so enlightened that it had just recently slaughtered its own people in their tens of millions on two separate occasions) to rescue them from their backwardness.

[thejuice]

So, the poll on here is a slight majority against a federal Europe.

That therefore begs the question, what case is being made in Brussels to reflect this demographic? Who is making the case for nationalism in Brussels?  Who do we vote for to represent us in Europe?

Is there a strong case for nationalism in the 21st century and who is making it?

Those who cite globalisation as the end of nationalism need to be aware that globalisation itself is not on a secure footing and the turbulent state of the worlds economies and energy securities does not suggest stable unhindered progress towards an interconnected globe. We might be going global in the long term but the importance of the local on our well being cannot be ignored.

The other aspect to this is people who also suggest that countries are just social constructs that hinder people. And they are correct if you look at it from a late 20th century individualist perspective. But for the factors I mentioned above a return to a more collectivist mindset that existed pre-1940's might re-emerge as the consumerist individualist lifestyle can no longer be supported.