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Do you disagree that the level of representation we have with our government is really any different from what we have in Europe?
As you have pointed out before, all we have is a choice every 4 years between dishonest power crazy greedy bastards and... well more power crazy greedy bastards. I am not saying I particularly want a federal Europe, I just don't see the difference between that and what we have now.
HEXUS FOLDING TEAM It's EASY
Well, the EU as it stands now isn't necessarily what we'll have in terms of representation if we have a federal Europe. So any comparison needs to be with what a federal Europe would be, not what the EU is now. The EU as an organisation is still evolving. For a start, the likelihood is that a federal Europe would involve a President and a Parliament of some sort. So exactly what's the division of powers going to be?Originally Posted by G4Z
And currently, of course. there's a wide variety of different governmental structures across the EU states. Some are republics with Presidents, some are monarchies with a variety of ways of doing that.
And it isn't just governments. What about judicial systems? We have an adversarial system, with a prosecutor and a defence and a judge that supposed to be impartial keeping order. But some countries have systems that involve investigative judges. And our judges are an important part of the balances against the power of the executive, i.e. the PM and ruling party. How often, recently, have Home Secretary's been embarrassed by the High Court ruling that a Home Sec's actions were illegal .... some as some of their anti-terrorist detentions.
And a fundamental part of that is that judges are appointed not elected, and in the UK at least, short of gross malfeasance, and close to immune from being removed from power. The difficulty of that process makes them very hard to control politically (thank goodness).
These sorts of fundamental structural aspects of the way our system has worked for hundreds of years, and has evolved over hundreds of years, can be very different from how other countries have evolved judicial or policing systems. But an inference of a federal Europe is that either everyone else changes to adopt our system (unlikely), or we change to adopt someone else's (equally unlikely), or heads get put together and everyone changes to adopt some totally new hybrid (or bastard) system.
Adopting a federal system across Europe would be FAR wider than just whether our elected representatives represent us or not, or how well they do it. But even if we limit it to that, what system gets used. Personally, I'm not wildly keen about doing things the Italian way, for instance. And do we use first past the post or PR? Do we have a second chamber, and if so, chosen how? And with what powers?
That's the route a federal Europe is tasking us down. Personally, I'd like to know where the road leads before we've gone so far down it that we only find out where it goes by arriving there, because it'll be too late to turn round by then.
Oh, and some of these issues are partly what the "Constitution" was all about .... preparing the path for these issues to be addressed, and addressing the first of them.
If it doesn't have our monarch on it, i dont wanna know (im a royalist)
Maynard Keynes rightly said "he who controls the currency, controls the country".
I'm against joining the Euro for the simple fact that it would be really bad for the UK economy. Any future interest rates would be set by the European Bank instead of the Bank of England meaning that interest rates would be less likely to be set in our favour, leading to poor control over the economy. Also domestic sales would fall as everyone here would realise how uncompetitive our businesses are and buy more from abroad. Also there would be a number of short term conversion costs etc. for businesses and I don't really see any benefit from doing it other than to increase certainty for businesses trading in Europe (most of which already hedge against any currency fluctuations with things like futures and money markets anyway).
We tried a similar thing with the ERM in the early 90s which was disasterous and caused us to go into a recession. Why don't we learn from history for once and stay away from the Euro?
I think now would be a good time due to the fact that £1 = 1 euro. so prices dont need to change easily.
You always get inflation when you change currency.
Just because its been close to parity isn't going to do much to change this.
Could you survive loosing 10% of your NET income because of inflation? Nope.
Wait until Labour and Inflation are long gone, then re-evaluate.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...ession-banking
just read this article, if he is right then joining the euro might well be inevitable soon.
HEXUS FOLDING TEAM It's EASY
don't be silly he writes for the guardian.
Jokes about news papers for teachers asside, he fails to address the negative consequences of joining the euro.
Also he picks on Barc (which looks like it might make a 50% loss YTD for close today!) without bothering to mention why its so shocking that barcaps in trouble, it was you see one of the better survivors the first time, ignoring the government handouts, instead it swallowed up a whole load of the talent going as others collapsed.
Considering the bloke has an economics degree (no matter how poluted with socology it is) he should be able to do better.
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samcross (21-01-2009)
Well, he may be wrong on the euro being the answer but if he is correct about Barclays requiring a bailout as well.. could spell some real trouble. I wonder why we keep banks around at all, maybe I should move all my money into some sort of responsible co-operative lender (if there are any) or put into gold.
I think if we stay with the pound then some serious inflation is inevitable because there is no way the govt is going to be able to borrow all fo this money from bonds, I don't think it will have an option in the end but to print more money. If we were in the euro, that simply wouldn't be an option and I am interested to know what you think the outcome of that might be and what the drawbacks are?
HEXUS FOLDING TEAM It's EASY
Again barcap really shouldn't need a bailout, it was able to raise enough cash without resorting to the government.
When you look at other banks, take CBK GY, if you look at the holdings, about 22% of that is just ONE Insurance firm.
Look at barcap the biggest holder is of course Qatar, at wait for it, 6.24%.
I doubt they would have to resort to the government just yet. However thats not to say spending brown won't make them an offer they'd be stupid to refuse.
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A very worthy QFT
well.. what harm will it do if we do join in?
Well that depends which school of economics you subscribe to.
If your born up north, and moan about mines, and car production, odds are your are
Keynesian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics
Or you can be a Monetarisim
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetarism
Inflation generally considered to be bad. When changing currency you often suffer inflation, much the same way as shop keeps took the opportunity of Decimilsation to screw people, this compounds it.
Also the germans pretty much run the Euro. They tried in the first world war with guns, in the second world war with tanks, now they just do it with the ECB.
This can have the effect of stopping member states getting the rate cuts they want. If you've had a chancellor of late who loves to spend spend spend, espesually if he can spend without people attributing it as debt (see PPP) then you can get REALLY screwed by this.
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Britain will accept the Euro when the notes have the queens head on one side and a spitfire on the other.
I'd go with that
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