Voting TaKtiX

Interesting…:

“Switzerland is not EU member but it has close relations with the union,” the Swiss minister said. “We have decided to make a contribution to level economic and social differences between the new and the old EU states and to allocate 1 billion Swiss francs for the purpose,” she added.

A non EU state thinks it’s a good idea to give money to Eastern reconstruction and catch up? Works with the EU Commission to set up a special fund? I have no idea what to make of this one.

I was going to write up my reasons for wanting a Europe of some form exist. My reasons for wanting Britain to be a significant, constructive part of the reform process. As I started, I got a comment notification. John’s pretty much done it for me:

In a century’s time the world’s big powers are likely to be huge states like the US, China and India. Britain alone will have little economic or political clout in a world that works on that scale - how could it? Keeping all national sovereignty at Westminster will count for little the UK is too feeble to do anything with that sovereignty.

By pooling sovereignty in certain areas - particularly economically - with our allies, we could make ourselves stronger: we won’t always get our way, but when we do it’ll count for more.
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I had one of those rare moments yesterday. I was sat in a friends shop chatting and listening to the radio news. A familiar voice came on, and I found myself agreeing with every word. Then I realised it was Blair. The great shame of the UK electoral system is it denies the UKIP tendency seats at Westminster, letting Blair off the hook when it comes to genuinely putting the case within Parliament. The Tories aren’t in favour of withdrawal, even with Cameron, and none of the other parties really challenge him. Hearing him ripping into Farage was brilliant. It’s just such a damn shame that Blair gave up on Europe so early in his term (you know, back when he was popular and some of us believed in him?).
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This is what I get for not clicking on the profiles of everyone that posts comments here. Random chance, was looking at one of my older posts and saw some comments from ‘Chris’, so I click his profile. Torquay it says. That’s where I live. There’s another political blogger in this little backwater. I look at his front page, he’s coherent and argues his cases with research and examples. I think I disagree with him on virtually everything except books (I prefer Pattern Recognition to Neuromancer if we’re talking Gibson), but he has but up a nice riposte to my and Paul’s posts on Demos a few posts down. I’ll try to write up a decent reply to him, and finish of my response to Martin’s article (Martin, never meant that to be the only post on your list, just the first). Oh, and reply to some of Ken’s comments; incidentally, have now, finally, added Ken to the blogroll, apologies for not doing so sooner Ken, especially given the contributions you’ve made here, thought out comments that I disagree with fundamentally are always welcome. I’ll be reorganisng the blogroll when I’ve got time, it’s got a bit big and clunky; I need a ‘friends and allies’ and a ‘favoured enemies’ section at the top.

In the meantime, I have another post to write on the story of the day, then I need to sleep, my downstairs neighbour had a party last night, and I got about 3 hours sleep, eyes not staying open. Chris? Where’s your local, might as well meet for a drink…

In the principles I set out when we started the blog, I said we’d mostly talk about 3 things; the authoritarian takeover, constitutional reform and Britain’s place in the world. While we’ve mostly got sidetrcked by the first one and the abuses the current govt is creating, the other two are still important. So, given that DK has put up a pretty good post on his objections to the EU, I thought I’d try to at least answer some of his points (in my cold addled state).

The problem I have doing so is that normally, when addressing the anti-EU brigade, you’re normally dealing with a small minded nationalist island stater, frequently with little England tendencies, who really hasn’t thought through their position beyond that of disliking johnny foreigner. DK isn’t an island stater, his position, shared with “I’ve got a book out me” Worstall, isn’t that Britain should leave the EU. It’s that the EU is a bad idea, that it should cease to exist at all, that all nations within it should break it up themselves. That’s a position I fundamentally disagree with, but it’s at least a position I can respect and understand; it’s not based on bigotry, nationalism or narrow self interest, it’s an economic perspective with a libertarian market driven bent.
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