An EU What!!!

[threegee]

Last year Herr Juncker (the guy who refuses to discuss what his father-in-law did in the war) called for an EU Army so's he could have a pop at Vladimir.  Our politicos assured us that no such force was being contemplated and that the UK would resist any such calls (yes, we have so much of that mythical influence stuff in Brussels).  But, um... hang on, what's this?

Mali hotel attack: Gunmen 'storm EU military training base in Bamako'

So, there are six hundred besieged EU military personnel in Mali?  Well, Herr Junker better send some more then; a thousand. maybe two thousand!  But, hang on again, the EU doesn't have an army, how could this even be possible?  In the wonderfully democratic EU our representatives must have had a vote on this, no?!  Our own PM was stymied in his military ambitions quite recently by democratic process, so how could something like this be being done in our name, and without our knowledge?

A cynic might claim that this is the usual salami-slicing EU commission tactics at work here, and before we know it we'll be considered to have agreed to a military force - one only answerable to Brussels - on British soil.  But, sleep soundly in your beds my friends as there's no way we could unwittingly be dragged into a nuclear war with Russia over matters (like Ukraine) which are none of our concern.  That's because no government of ours would allow Herr Juncker control of OUR nuclear weapons - would they?!   I'm sure we have Dave's cast iron promise on this one too, call-me-Dave's not at all like that other lying PM we had:

 

Quote

EDWARD HEATH

The Public Face

EEC is only a COMMON MARKET: “There are some in this country who fear that going into Europe we shall in some way sacrifice independence and sovereignty. These fears, I need hardly say, are completely unjustified.

-- Edward  Heath, 1972

The Truth as Known to Whitehall in 1972

....anonymous civil servants to write a detailed briefing on the sovereignty issue. This confidential document was never published and, for the last thirty years has lain in an FCO file, guarded by official secrecy. Only under the thirty year rule was it finally released and its contents laid bare.

The document is massively important for many reasons, not least because it demonstrates that the FCO had a very clear idea of the repercussions of joining the “Community”, as it put it. It knew that it would involve a major loss of sovereignty and, in due course, an end to parliamentary democracy. Despite knowing this, it offered the advice that HMG and “all political parties” should not “exacerbate public concern by attributing unpopular measures or unfavourable economic developments to the remote and unmanageable workings of the Community”.

"remote and unmanageable workings of the Community" - whatever could those anonymous civil servants have meant all those years ago?

[mercuryg]

What does what his father in law did in the war have to with anything? He has no responsibility for the actions of his father in law?

Edited March 23, 2016 by mercuryg

[threegee]

6 hours ago, mercuryg said:

What does what his father in law did in the war have to with anything? He has no responsibility for the actions of his father in law?

A good question. Try though we may we are all part of our history.  I will avoid quoting the Bible, but we are all part of our genetic and cultural make-up.  To deny this is to deny our very existence.

Juncker needs to fully fess up to the deeds of his forebears and associates not try to conceal them. I'm not talking about the current fad for apologising, grovelling, rewriting history, and reparations/restitution as evidenced in the current Cambridge student lunacy. I'm talking about simple intellectual honesty, and placing things in historic context.  If Junker won't acknowledge his Nazi heritage then he's not a rounded human, and can't be trusted in any position of power.

[mercuryg]

"Try though we may we are all part of our history"

But it's not his history, is it? The man you refer to is not even related, except by marriage.How can his father in law have any impact on his genetic and cultural make up?

[Maggie/915]

We really need to :-

'Unite against Hate'

I am reminded here about some of the old Banners now on display at Woodhorn.

I think one was 'Unity is Strength'

[Canny lass]

We certainly do need to, Maggie. I can understand hate for people who commit acts of violence/terror but it's beyond comprehension - for the majority of people - how that hate can be transferred to innocent people simply because they have the same religion.I believe It's all down to ignorance and laziness - ignorance because they are too lazy to make the effort to find out what Islamism is about. They are ignorant of the fact that it is a divided religion, where the greater majority are peace loving individuals and a small fraction are extremely fundamental in their views of how the Koran should be interpreted. Among the latter mentioned minority we find that SOME - but by no means all - are terrorists.

Edited March 23, 2016 by Canny lass

[threegee]

3 hours ago, mercuryg said:

"Try though we may we are all part of our history"

But it's not his history, is it? The man you refer to is not even related, except by marriage.How can his father in law have any impact on his genetic and cultural make up?

The marriage was a personal choice, and we tend to group with like-minded people, but actually you entirely miss the point.  I'm not saying he is necessarily tainted by his relations, I'm saying that his refusal to come clean on the matter raises very serious issues.  This is a man who is bidding to control the armed forces of a newly created superstate, not someone who is applying for a licence to run a hot dog stand!

The rest of this discussion is starting to sound like Mr Corbyn wanting to have a cup of tea with Islamic State to sort out the tiny few misunderstandings.  Always amazing how the bleeding heart left is so ready to label and condemn ideologies that they don't accept should have any place in the world, but so ready to make excuses for fashion-of-the-decade ones.  We are seeing this moral wrong-headedness today in an underlying anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.

CL, the Quaran is entirely incompatible with the modern world - end of!  Saying that it is a matter of shade or interpretation is hokum.  It's not a story book from a bygone age to be interpreted to provide moral guidance like The Bible, it's a manual for life and it does not accept that there can be any other view.  It repeatedly urges followers to violence to enforce this.  That there are two sects that are slaughtering each other - to most reasonable people - would tend to show the inherent intolerance, and not offer a good Muslim bad Muslim dichotomy.

[mercuryg]

but your point is not enhanced at all by bringing his father in law into it, which you don't seem to get. Further, closing sentences with 'end of' isn't big, or clever (especially when you then follow those words with many more); presuming you know everything and the rest of us need to be taught is irritating, at the very least.

Edited March 23, 2016 by mercuryg

[threegee]

My point is made by saying that he won't mention his father-in-law.  Please tell me how I'm meant to put that argument without mention of said father-in-law, and why I'd need to obfuscate anyway?

There are many skeleton's in Juckner's cupboard, but I'm not going to repeat them here as if you are interested enough you can research them for yourself.  He's an archetypal eurocrat who couldn't run a successful whelk stall, and matters don't end there, yet he wants to tell us how to run our country.

Yes, I find your frequent pernicktyness irritating too, happy?  No one forces you to debate here, but when you lapse into personal attacks - as you so often do - then it tends to indicate that you've lost the argument.  This is sad because you do sometimes make a good on-topic point, and your contributions are valued.

[mercuryg]

Thanks Threegee; my problem is not with you, and I'm not sure where I'm being any more personal than you are, but with the way your posts repeatedly take the stance that you, and only you, know anything about what you're on about. I find it condescending, and unnecessary; of course, a lot of that is the way in which the written word can come across - I'm sure you're a great bloke. See above - you do it again "There are many skeleton's in Juckner's cupboard, but I'm not going to repeat them here as if you are interested enough you can research them for yourself. " How do you know I haven't (I have!) and that other's haven't? I have many pet hates re: phrases - 'End off' is one (because it never, ever is); 'Do the math" is another forget creeping islamisation, rampant Americanisation is far worse) and, when at the bar, 'Can I get a...' makes me want to kill people (see previous comment re: USA). I still don't see what his pa in law has to do with  it, but hey!

[threegee]

Oh, I think they are!  There's a lot of "Ad Hominen" stuff going the rounds at the moment because the Remain side have very transparent arguments.  We don't have a resident troll here, so it's a bit disappointing to find that you aren't actually one.

Being the world language has its price, but we've always been proud of raiding other languages; so why is a tiny bit of help from our transatlantic cousins that bad?  Maybe you should start your own thread on this?  I don't like certain Victorianisms, but maybe that's because they are German.

The "end of" was a logical end of, not a grammatical or textual one, and certainly not an attempt to shut down debate.  It would have taken a whole sentence to convey another way, and I'm a lazy typist.  Sorry if this upset you.

[mercuryg]

"Being the world language has its price"

This is an interesting point; is it really the 'world language'? I mean, I know it's accepted in many ways as the language of business (although, I might add, not to the extent it once was) but when Mandarin Chinese and Spanish are spoken by more people, can we still claim to be the language rulers of the world? I do quite a lot of work for one of the biggest providers of translation services in the world; they tell me that, more and more, the rising economies are providing documents in their native language, and that Spanish is rapidly becoming a strong business language also. I wonder where we'll be in twenty years time? Oh, I forgot, we'll all be speaking Muslimish.

"We don't have a resident troll here, so it's a bit disappointing to find that you aren't actually one."

 

Great comment.

 

[threegee]

On 3/24/2016 at 08:53, mercuryg said:

...I wonder where we'll be in twenty years time? Oh, I forgot, we'll all be speaking Muslimish.

No, the Sharia courts will be conducted in English.  Islam has always been very "progressive" turning the clock back to the middle ages.  Notice that even in France the slogans are in English.  And... your time horizon may only be twenty years but theirs is far longer.

What exactly don't you understand about what they are telling you very clearly?  Oh, I know, it's only a tiny minority of extremists.

Quote

Some 23% told ICM they would like there to be areas of Britain where Sharia law is introduced instead of laws laid down by Parliament. Not long ago, you would have dismissed that scenario as fantastical, but given that our government has allowed 85 Islamic courts to operate across the UK we can rule nothing out.

The prospect of “a country within a country”, of zones where gay people are outlawed, adulterers stoned, women treated as children and little boys tell a primary school headmistress to cover her head “because only slags don’t covers their heads” needs to be resisted with every fibre of our national being. If we have any moral fibre left after thirty years of multiculturalism.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2016/04/12/why-the-icm-poll-of-british-muslims-shows-we-need-to-defend-our/

 

[mercuryg]

OK, so in twenty years we will all be tried in Sharia courts, will we? As for 'what I don't understand', no, I understand, I simply don't think they're right. After all, not everything a politician tells you is right, is it? 

[Canny lass]

We've had a 'Sharia court' in England as long as I can remember. In my younger days it was called Marriage Guidance Council. You know the place where would-be divorcees were sent to try and come to some agreement about who gets what. It's no different today.

[Tonyp]

Nobody is telling me what would benifit bedlington if we weren't in the eu could somebody please explain without silly quotes from other people

[threegee]

1 hour ago, Tonyp said:

Nobody is telling me what would benifit bedlington if we weren't in the eu could somebody please explain without silly quotes from other people

Quotes from significant others aren't "silly" Tony; amongst other things they are an acknowledgement that other people may have lived longer and seen further than yourself.

Back on the original subject:

Maybe you should take a quiet visit to our war memorial and do a little contemplation?  Something you might wish to contemplate on is exactly why the people honoured thereon gave their tomorrow for our today.  I'd suggest that they did it to preserve our democracy and our way of life, and as a by-product to liberate the rest of Europe from an expansionist German superstate. Our generation (1950's - 1980's) would have done the same thing had Soviet expansionism gone as far as it might have, had we not had nuclear weapons and been a founding member of NATO.

Today the world is different, but not as different as many would have you believe.  The Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of it's own communist dogma, but Germany is on the rise for a third time.  Russia is not a threat to us, yet our leaders want to act like it was; German domination is again threatening the whole of Europe, yet our leaders want to pretend it is our closest ally.  Germany (the nation which gets the minutiae incredibly right, but the major things of history so tragically wrong) - is attempting to ... well ...

Quote

“The most puzzling development in politics during the last decade is the apparent determination of Western European leaders to re-create the Soviet Union in Western Europe.” ― Mikhail Gorbachev

If we cozy up to Germany we will become a hostage to German expansionism - which is the subject of this thread.  To learn from history (and to avoid any more names on our war memorial) we need to maintain our independence, and not sell-out to any single world power block.  We've done this very successfully thought history, and we can continue to do this.  What's more we can set an example of proud independence to other nations, and right now our very good buddies the Dutch are positively willing us to provide the lead to prove their own political elites entirely wrong.  Make no mistake, if we vote leave the EU will be forced to reform into what it was originally sold to everyone as: a Common Market.  It's the nightmare scenario for the elites, but the start of liberation of the ordinary European citizen!

That's the big point of this thread, but there are a dozen or more less important reasons why our town will be better off out. And there are absolutely no sane reasons for us to continue to support this entirely political project dressed up as an economic alliance.

[mercuryg]

Why not answer Tony's question?

[threegee]

3 hours ago, mercuryg said:

Why not answer Tony's question?

Because it's off topic, and Tony only has to look at other threads to get his answers.  I answered within the context of the heading (see my final paragraph) sorry that this didn't suit you.

Why not start your own thread and ask "what would benifit bedlington if we weren't in the eu" or similar?  That would indicate that you are genuinely interested, are prepared to engage in genuine discussion, have your own opinions tested, and aren't simply trolling.

[mercuryg]

He asked a valid question: what is the benefit to  Bedlington? Far from trolling, I'm inviting you, the one who is clearly more educated and in tune with the subject, to give him an answer. Why not? I don't have it, you're the man. 

[threegee]

It is an EU army that could bring about war

Quote

....

Those who argue that the UK could veto an EU army, or that the UK would simply not participate, are naive or disingenuous. The Machiavellian EU bureaucracy knows better than to take this project forward under a mechanism that could be derailed. No matter what politicians say now, it is certain that British Armed Forces would become part of an EU army. Mr Cameron’s dire warnings of war if we leave reinforce that.

It is increasingly clear that the leaders of all main parties believe staying inside the EU is the only way for Britain to prosper. If the benefits of economic, political and legal union are so great, then it must follow, to politicians who argue that Britain can never again fight alone, that military union has the same advantages.

It will be denied that our forces will be handed over to the Brussels high command. But remember it was never explained to the British people that our Parliament would be subordinated to a union that today hands down over half our laws,  regulates our day-to-day activities, and can override the highest courts in the land.

-- Col Richard Kemp is a former Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan

 

[mercuryg]

Right; so we're going to be one big European army? Seriously, you think the rest of Europe is suddenly going to join up together? Really? I mean, really? No, I don't think so. 

Edited May 11, 2016 by mercuryg

[threegee]

We are going to be dragged into a war with Putin's Russia by Germany or worse.  It's not a question of "joining up"; it's a question of naked German expansionism, as it has been throughout history.  You are starting to sound like one of those host of deluded fools in 1939 - the ones who mocked those who accurately predicted where appeasement was leading us.  The EU is nothing but a modern expression of German expansionism.  Listen to the wiser voices like David Owen - once a convinced EUphile, and now warning of the perils of becoming enmeshed in "The European Project".

The real force that has kept the peace is NATO and the EU has been a disaster wherever and whenever it has had any involvement.  At best the EU is a dilution and a distraction, at worst it's a threat to world peace.  Either way we need to distance ourself from Juncker's military ambitions. Once our referendum is out of the way he'll be ramping up the pressure for his EU army.  He wants his hands on our nukes, and fools like Cameron will go along with this.  It will be done in the usual undemocratic salami-slicing way that the EU always does things that are strongly opposed, but they always get the result they seek.

[mercuryg]

"You are starting to sound like one of those host of deluded fools in 1939"

 

Not really; this 2016, the past was a very different place.

[threegee]

3 hours ago, mercuryg said:

Not really; this 2016, the past was a very different place.

That's pretty much what those deluded fools said in 1939, and why these men had the sense to partition Germany to stop it happening all over again.  Tell me exactly how long Germany has been "unified" and which group of people allowed this to happen?

There's a standing joke on the stock market that runs down the generations: wet-behind-the-ears people who claim this time it will all be different!