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- A Private Eye
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Re: The United Kingdom General Election, 2nd May 2024
^ I would support that whole heartedly.
Re: The United Kingdom General Election, 2nd May 2024
Someone give julita karma for me.
Re: The United Kingdom General Election, 2nd May 2024
So the EU is finally on the verge of imploding?
Or, now that that pesky contrarian member that always wanted special treatment is leaving the club, maybe the rest of us can start thinking about a truly United Europe that effectively works.
Re: The United Kingdom General Election, 2nd May 2024
Touched upon this elsewhere in this thread & the football thread. I think this is a good example of what we're dealing with. I think this might help explain the situation (while at the same time confusing you even more).
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 … -ebbw-vale
View from Wales: town showered with EU cash votes to leave EU
“What’s the EU ever done for us?” Zak Kelly, 21, asks me this standing next to a brand new complex of buildings and facilities that wouldn’t look out of place in Canary Wharf. It’s not Canary Wharf, though, it’s Ebbw Vale, a former steel town of 18,000 people in the heart of the Welsh valleys, where 62% of the population – the highest proportion in Wales – voted Leave.
To go there – along a new dual carriageway – and stand next to the town’s new sixth form and training college, a glass and steel architectural showpiece next to its new leisure centre, a few hundred yards away from a new train station, is to stare into the abyss of the UK’s failed Remain campaign.
Even Kelly, who has just finished a training session on a brand new football pitch, backtracks slightly after asking that question. “Well, I know … they built all this,” he says, and motions his head at the impressive facilities that are all around us. “But we put in more money than we get out, don’t we?”
We’re standing on the site of the old steelworks, a toxic industrial wasteland left rotting when the plant, once the biggest in Europe, finally closed in 2002. It’s now “The Works” – a flagship £350m regeneration project funded by the EU redevelopment fund and home to the £33.5m Coleg Gwent, where some of the 29,000 Welsh apprenticeships the European Social Fund pays for help young people learn a trade. Add in a new £30m railway line and £80m improvement to the Heads of the Valley road from other pots of EU money, and the town centre has just received £12.2m for various upgrades and improvements.
Ebbw Vale, left devastated when the steelworks closed, has had more European money poured into it than perhaps any other small town in Britain. But according to the figures Kelly heard, “we get out £7m a year from the EU and we put in £19m”. Anyway, he says, “it was time for a change”.
And change is now coming. But what it will mean for an area dependent on inward investment and with the highest unemployment in Wales – nearly 40% of people are either unemployed or not available for work – has yet to be seen. In the local fish and chip shop, Deborah Basini says that she voted Remain. “All my family did. I’m very worried about what’s going to happen to inward investment. I’m 60 – this isn’t going to affect me. It’ll be my grandchildren who are not yet born.” Her customers, however, thought differently. “There was only one word people had on their mind: immigration. They didn’t look at the facts at all.”
Are there any immigrants in Ebbw Vale? “No! Hardly any. And the ones there are are all working, all contributing. It’s just … illogical. I just don’t think people looked at the facts at all.”
It’s a town with almost no immigrants that voted to get the immigrants out. A town that has been showered with EU cash that no longer wants to be part of the EU. A town that holds some of the clues, perhaps, in understanding quite how spectacularly the Remain message failed to land. There’s a sense of injustice that is far greater than the sum of the facts, and the political landscape has fractured and split. Zak Kelly says that many of his friends, in what is Nye Bevan’s old constituency, voted Ukip.
Wales isn’t just a net EU beneficiary, EU capital funding has been an essential part of attracting firms to come here. All around town are signs marked with the EU flag for the Ebbw Vale enterprise zone. The website notes that as an EU tier 1 area, “companies can benefit from the highest level of grant aid in the UK”. Earlier this year the sports car company TVR announced it would build a factory and create 150 jobs there. Will it still come? Will the Circuit of Wales, a multimillion-pound motor racing circuit a private company has been proposing to build on the town’s outskirts creating 6,000 jobs? Will the £1.8bn of EU cash promised to Wales for projects until 2020 still arrive? And what happens after? Will central government really give more money to Ebbw Vale than the EU has?
Even Kelly looks like he could be doubtful on this point. “David Cameron got a good kicking,” he says. So, what about Boris Johnson? Do you want him? “No way. He’s London through and through. He’ll just forget about Wales.”
Or as Michael Sheen, the Welsh-born actor from Port Talbot, tweeted: “Wales votes to trust a new and more rightwing Tory leadership to invest as much money into its poorer areas as EU has been doing.”
“It is what it is,” says Kelly. “We’ll see, won’t we?”
Re: The United Kingdom General Election, 2nd May 2024
James Lofton wrote:STRANGE things can happen in times like this. If the Brits are perceived as weak, Argentina may want to retake those islands. You guys ready to fight a war thousands of miles away you are not currently able to handle?
NOBODY knows the implications of this decision. Many dominoes could fall in the coming years.
We still apparently have the largest military in Europe (a scary thought in itself considering how severely funding has been cut). I doubt there'd be appetite for Falklands 2 but should it be necessary then we answer the call. It's still our people over there, it couldn't be ignored.
Many years ago I read a LOT about this conflict.
Anyways, I am not doubting the quality of your military or claiming you wouldn't answer the call. Clearly you would. You guys do have problems though and the main one is the same problem the Iron Lady had....
Its a conflict that is a logistical nightmare for the Brits and/or EU. It could get ugly very, very quickly. Flagg's been in this thread....if you have the time could you jump in on this subject a bit?
Argentina is also in a different position than they were 30 years ago. They have cozied up to Russia and China this past decade or so and even refuse to acknowledge Taiwan so China will do the same for the Falklands in a crisis. They would also be likely to get more support for their cause now than they did back then.
The US would likely have to remain neutral publicly even though we would provide some support for you, at least intel. Only way to draw the US into a future Brit-Falklands crisis would be if China or Russia got involved.
I'm blabbering now but my main point is that unforseen events can(and will) occur during such times. The global stage is very unpredictable right now.
Funny you should mention that. It was in the news there recently must've been the anniversary or maybe some Argentinian politician brought it up..?? Can't remember the outcome of it all tho..
Putin's loving it.
Been a few years since reading about it. Is that women still their president? Her panties get wet at the thought of retaking them. A few years back I wondered if MI6 might take her out.
Putin's definitely loving it. I would not be surprised if he winds up instigating such a move. While I disagree with certain things he does, I actually like him. He's the smartest person on the world stage at the moment. The world is lucky that the US is a hyper power or this guy would be even more unpredictable.
edit: Mole, I must have missed some of your posts in this thread. You are for this move?
James Lofton wrote:So the EU is finally on the verge of imploding?
Or, now that that pesky contrarian member that always wanted special treatment is leaving the club, maybe the rest of us can start thinking about a truly United Europe that effectively works.
atari.....babydolls came back? When/where?
Re: The United Kingdom General Election, 2nd May 2024
This is going to sound bad.
...but seeing those right wing racist condescending Tories/UKIP/Britain First personalities on my TV with their smug faces almost makes me hope their's a recession just to wipe the smile off their faces.
Cunts.
Re: The United Kingdom General Election, 2nd May 2024
Seriously though, even though I despise the outcome... I did burst into laughter when I seen this reported on ITV news;
https://twitter.com/DavidLammy/status/746728892279431168
He's the first and only MP to do so far.
-edit-
Hope just dropped. Not that the petition would have done anything, but it has numbers like {"name":"Vatican City","code":"VA","signature_count":11878}. People exploiting the system aren't going to help anyone.
- Randall Flagg
- Rep: 139
Re: The United Kingdom General Election, 2nd May 2024
If your country pulls some shit to avoid leaving the EU, you guys can finally stop pretending you have a democracy. Never mind that half of your legislature requires noble "blood". Or that the crown is still sovereign by law.
I didn't like it when 52% of America elected Obama. But that's our system. It just always amazes me how as soon as their beliefs are tested, progressives abandon them. Free speech, it's great until you say something unpopular. Due Process, great until it gets in the way. Democracy, it's fine until you lose. Just come out and say you'd rather be led by some bureaucrat in Brussels who was never voted in than actually have a voice in your country.
And to Lofton's point, the U.K. Leaving the EU does pose some military problems. Most EU countries are in NATO, so it's not as if Britain wouldn't assist in the even shit happened. But the UK was the primary American ally within the EU. I know a lot of EU countries buy American arms, but not everyone. The Continent of Europe can not field a theater defense. Their armies are small, lack seasoning, and the linguistic and logistic differences would make mounting any kind of coordinated movements would be hard. Outside of Germany, there's just not anything there.
Re: The United Kingdom General Election, 2nd May 2024
TheMole wrote:James Lofton wrote:So the EU is finally on the verge of imploding?
Or, now that that pesky contrarian member that always wanted special treatment is leaving the club, maybe the rest of us can start thinking about a truly United Europe that effectively works.
edit: Mole, I must have missed some of your posts in this thread. You are for this move?
Well, no, not exactly, but I always look for the silver lining 
. I'm a big supporter of a more united Europe, and sadly the UK has been the biggest opponent of 'more Europe' these past years. I'd prefer for the UK to be in whole hog, no special rules or exceptions, but if they don't support the idea of a stronger, more united Europe to begin with we might have a better shot at achieving a Europe that actually effectively works.
The EU's biggest problem is that they went for quantity instead of quality. They probably should've worked on deeper integration of a smaller set of nations first, before expanding into Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, Eastern Europe needed the EU (after the wall came down and they got thrown into capitalism as a bunch of small nation states, they needed access to a large market to truly free themselves from mother Russia), and we never really got the option to work out that deeper, better functioning union first.
This is what I wrote a couple of months ago:
I personally believe there's no way in hell that even the biggest European economies (Germany, France, UK, ...) can maintain their current levels if the EU were to seize to exist. There's just no way to compete effectively with the US, China, India, etc... (even Japan) when you don't have the scale the EU currently has.
Furthermore, the formation of the EU over the past few decades has been one of the most important drivers in turning a war-torn Europe from a warfare to a welfare continent. I think the EU definitely deserved the Nobel peace prize it got in 2012.
Now, does the current EU 'democracy' work? Hell no, the entire setup is asinine. We need a single pan-European parliament and senate that is directly elected by the European people. We need a pan-European income and corporate tax system, a pan-European intelligence agency, a pan-European military, pan-European border and customs, etc... Member states should be either fully in, or fully out. None of this UK/Norway bullshit of special cases and special rules.
Of course, the individual states need state rights as well. Things like culture, education, VAT and sales tax, local roads and infrastructure, ... are obviously better managed at the state level.
Unfortunately, I think we might need the EU to collapse before something like that is feasible. Or perhaps the UK leaving, Scotland seceding and joining the EU would provide an less revolutionary path towards a stronger Europe.
I'm truly hoping for the part in bold to happen now...
