Be Excellent To Each Other

I found out just now, tremendously upsetting news.

Even if you don't agree with his politics (which I don't) there can be little doubt that he was one of the most eloquent and perceptive political figures in the post war period.

I thought he was a tv character



Shows how much I know.

I would humbly suggest that Tony Benn deserves more than to be a footnote at the base of this thread.

Tru dat

Do we actually have any mods?

I was shockingly ousted by those vituperative rapscallions TheVision and Grim...

You're admin, so you can do that anyway.

I do hope you're not calling me a fascist, you pathetic cunt.

Wind it in.

Pretty sure the reference was to the unpleasant parts of the right wing media, not anyone here.

Who though Russ?
Accusing people of being fascists with no grounds whatsoever is beyond trolling. You can hardly blame people for taking gross exception to it; 'uncalled for' doesn't really cover it.

Banning offence IMO.

I interpreted it as certain elements of the Left, who make more fascist-like pronouncements than the right these days.

That wasn't how it read to me; the guy pretty much trolls/has digs every other post?

Fair enough APOD, I hope you're right, in which case I withdraw the comment. However, context and posting history make for much ambiguity.

Call me old fashioned here but my grandad died horribly at the hands of these 'people'.

Oh, don't be so hysterical. There's much worse insults thrown around here ("pathetic cunt" is a good example) and there's zero chance anyone would get banned over it. The fact that you've managed to convince yourself you're the subject of the remark with very little evidence of that isn't helping you case much.

Beexers?

Oh, and while I'm posting, for as short a period of time as that may be - I'm personally pro-europe but in response to Mr Chris and why Europe is a good thing, I did like this Blog post

Call me hysterical all you like, I don't give a toss. Seriously.

Besides which, your own response:



So, y'know etc.

Ha!

Huh?

I thought you've always been able to ban people?

I very much doubt he is.

For a start I believe he isn't able to see anything you've written.

There are other reasons too.

Indeed not. The EU parliament acts entirely in its self-interest, passing legislation to grant it ever greater powers while implementing financial policies that won't affect any of its parliament members because the overpaid, expenses-diddling cretins pay no tax.

While our own parliament is a box of bollocks, it's not *quite* as piss taking as the EU.

I'm not ready to commit to how I'd vote on a proposed 2017 in/out referendum, but I'll be giving the matter some serious beard-stroking come the time.

Fair enough mate. (I know he has me on ignore, he reminds me of it almost daily)
Sorry if I over-reacted, but it's a sore, sore point.

Also, I don't read this forum enough any more to know who alleged trolls are, or why everyone seems to have everyone on ignore thesedays. But suffice to say 'talking' to mouth-frothing logic-impervious cybernats on reddit has greatly increased my threshold for disagreeable comments in recent times. If anyone were to call me a cunt/fascist/whinger I'd take that as a relative compliment

Yeah, those bastards, passing laws that help make employment protections, the environment, consumer protection etc etc etc much better than it would be if left to our idiotic national governments.

Whilst there's certainly an element of self-interested troughs in snouts, that's, again, not remotely different to our national government.

want a man hug??

Yes please

Ukip MEPs are the worst. They take the salaries and expense accounts, then don't vote and bang on about how we need to leave the EU. How does this best serve our interests? I just don't understand how anyone can think having anti-Europe MEPs is not a gigantic waste of everybody's time.

I see it as entirely self-interest that seeks to brainlessly harmonise distinctly different economies in the name of the batshit Euro project, which itself has only been held up for the last several years by pure delusion and the miserable suffering of countries unable to set their own interest rates.

I don't think I'd ever vote UKIP, although only because I believe my varied political interests are better served elsewhere. Having that said I think their existence and the undeniable support they receive serve a very useful function in being able to highlight the concerns people do have over europe. You couldn't look to your own major parties to do that for you, because they either agree with them but haven't the balls to say so, or just flat out think the EU is great. The Tories seem positively conflicted about it, while Labour are fundamentally non-commital.

Worth noting that UKIP's European affiliation for their MEPs is the EFD group, consisting entirely of unambiguously far-right parties - the co-president of that group actually praised Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Breivik as a defender of western civilisation!

I'm sure MrChris has grumbled at me before for saying this, but I still regard Daniel Hannan as one of the most straight-speaking MEPs I've ever observed in the parliament. He comes over as a EU-reformist rather than a seperatist, and his comments to parliament often speak of policy failures vs. how it could have been done properly.

The fact he's a Tory is even more confusing. He's the least obviously Tory tory I've seen.

I don't put much stock in EU political 'groups'. They're extremely loose coalitions that change about frequently, and so naturally they're packed full of entirely disparate and dischordant politics.

I've always, perhaps erroneously, assumed that a core of UKIP members are just some racist bastards who use Euro-scepticism as the only acceptable outlet for their beliefs.

Here's the nub of the matter. You can only reform the EU from inside it, being a constructive part of it. By leaving, we would no longer be able to enjoy the trade deals we have as a matter of course - we would need to negotiate with each member state individually. I don't think it would be feasible to be able to pick and choose what we'd want to keep; the rest of the EU wouldn't allow this. Look at Scotland and the pound - we'd have a similar situation.

That's not true at all. The fringe right-wing and anti-EU groups usually collapse after the end of each parliamentary term (the EFD will almost break up after the election in May, as did as EDD, Ind/Dem and UEN did in the past) but the largest group are all very stable and are definitely cohesive, particularly the big 3 (EPP, PES, Liberals). As someone who's been to PES activist events, they're certainly not a flaky, disparate organisation.

I think if you were Eurosceptic and examine the UKIP manifesto, you'd probably find a lot you'd agree with and you wouldn't see anything overtly racist about their stated aims.

But it'd also point out that they're still a comparatively small party who don't field a candidate in every constituency. When you're small and questing about for support, you will inevitably pick up the odd religious nutbar or racist-shitbag, who themselves may be confused about the 'secret' intent of the party they think they're supporting.

Shrug. The questionable supporters of UKIP are heavily publicised which seems to be used as a smear against the intentions of the whole party, but frankly I've seen an equal number of heavily bigoted Labour/Tories come to light over the years, and nobody tries to insinutate any of the individuals are representative of the party politics.



Indeed, and I'd agree with that to some extent, although I think it's a bit erroneous to say it's an equivalent situation which is certainly what the SNP would have you believe. In Europe though we're a big player even if you hate us, we have a power of veto, we're a permanent member of the Security Council, and you can't ignore us. We probably have the power to renegotiate the inexorable march towards integrated globalism in our favour if we've the balls to speak up.

Losing Scotland would hurt the UK on this platform, but it would hurt Scotland even more to become an independent, powerless, tiny nobody, rather than part of a big-hitting somebody.

I wouldn't say that. The Tories left the EPP. I'm reminded of this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C85gUYpG_54

Actually, I'd recommend that entire blog to Cavey. I find myself in agreement with about 90% of the subject matter, if not to a similar extent with the some of the comment makers 'style'. However, one or two of the regular commentators I have actually thought are him.

No, not me mate. Beex is pretty much the only place I post, apart from geeky car/bike forums (and very rarely over at Stu C's blog).
I'll take a look later.

edit - are you that blog's author? Blimey, if so, nicely done.

The Tories were never in the European People's Party - they joined the EPP's parliamentary group in 1992 after the Tory-led European Democratic Group folded into the EPP group, thereafter known as the EPP-ED until 2009, but never the EPP political party. Most of the former EDG members quickly integrated into the EPP, the Portuguese CDS-PP, Spanish People's Party, etc, as the EPP opened itself up to secular conservative parties. By the end, only the Tories, Ulster Unionists and Czech Civic Democrats hadn't joined the EPP (party), and the Tories almost certainly would've been admitted without trouble seeing how much the EPP (group) went out of its way to accommodate the Tories.

I wouldn't be entirely surprised if the Tories in the future re-integrate into the EPP, in the longer term a decade or more away, seeing as the Tories' small ECR group may have an uncertain future ahead of it, and with the EPP having become a catch-all centre-right grouping since 1999, even allowing the French Gaullists (UMP) on board these days.

God no. I only started reading it because of our mutual hatred of Richard Murphy though.

Ah right, sorry (in fact you actually say so in your OP... it's been a long night and I am firing on about 1 cylinder at the moment)

Agree with you. I think this counter-pragmatic meddling on the part of the EU is the type of thing that tends to get people's backs up, and with good reason; I wish they'd stick to their macroeconomic mandate and leave this to sovereign, elected governments.

I'm completely ambivalent towards the EU, neither a -sceptic or a -phile.

On the one hand, it seems obvious to me that the EU is fundamentally required, and UK's membership pretty much a given. We delude ourselves if we think that we don't have to be part of this economic bloc and pay our dues accordingly, both capital and political. But of course, that's not to say that we shouldn't fight vociferously and selfishly - just as per any other Member State (and especially as one of the few net contributors) - to minimise both, and shape what the EU is, and is to become. (Don't want to bring politics into it unduly, but it is empirically clear that Labour cannot be trusted to do this even remotely, and as for the Liberals, slavishly accepting whatever crap Brussels throws at us is their entire, self-stated modus operandi).

On the other hand, the Euro project is a ludicrous folly that even people like me said from the outset would be an entirely predictable, total disaster. Why can't we have freedom of movement/labour, a free market, some common social, environmental and employment laws but NOT the ridiculous Euro?

I used to think that the Euro's reason for existence was to provide a weak currency for German manufacturing exports, and still think that's a big part of it. As I say, long term stability of any currency union has been shown to be impossible by history time and again, without political union.

What we are seeing, though, is de facto political union through the back door, with the imposition of 'technocrat', effectively imposed governments on the increasing numbers of EU Euro States bankrupted by the Euro/inability to control interest rates and/or print money in extremis. In effect, normal democratic process, however inept and ineffective in many cases (e.g. Italy), is being bypassed by virtue of 'bailouts'.

There is a serious democratic deficit and, to people like me at least, all very worrying. I think Gordon Brown was the worst PM we've had for 100 years, but the one thing I'll bless his cotton socks for was his keeping the UK out of the Euro, even as Blair and many, many others in Labour were desperate to get us in there. Things have been bad for sure (but rapidly improving with 3% growth this year and UK economy back to 2008 size); can you imagine what things would've been like...

I feel less obligated to post when Cavey more-effectively states my thoughts for me

Remember, much-hated Thatcher's downfall was largely due to her unwillingness to commit to a timetable for joining the Euro. Yet another thing nobody thanks her for in retrospect.

Decided to do a little digging when I was told "it was me". Ie I'm the problem on this forum.


This thread (of which I wasn't part of the discussion) illustrates "it isn't me." which was from last year.

Conclusion: It's some of you.

Rats_in_a_sack.gif

Imagine that eh?

Ps: Are 5000 of DavPaz's posts "Sigh" ?

Somehow I forgot Bob Crow had died, so when this appeared back at the top of the forums it was as if he'd just died. Again.

I mean, I remember now, but it had completely vanished from my accessible memory before it was jogged.

When the actual implicit question was, "Who's fault is it that you specifically act like a patronising arse around here?" then no, I'm afraid the answer still is and always will be 'you'. You're not the problem with the forum, you're the problem with you. And pointing at other people acting like fannies has no impact on that whatsoever.

Get a hobby, man.

I'm glad my 'block early and often' tactic is so successful. I only ever see half of the arguments on here.

I understand why this forum took the zero-touch moderating stance, but sadly it means good people have chosen to leave because we refuse to clear out the bad apples (except one high-profile exception).

We didn't / don't do that at all. People contact the mods about anything, we act. No contact, no action.