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Brexit: give me a positive effect... XV

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Yes, thank you, Steve, I can read and oddly enough I used that extraordinary skill and did so before I posted the link.

Yes, I'm fully aware that there are get-outs. One of the predominant reasons behind our vote to leave the EU was to restore the ability to make our own laws, and to appoint and sanction the people responsible for doing so.

I wouldn't trust the EU with anti-tax avoidance initiatives for one second. The last President of the EU Commission, one Jean-Claude Juncker, spend many years as PM of Luxembourg, where it would not be over-egging it excessively to say that he presided over the creation of an entire economy built on tax avoidance.

Anyway, as I said, a bunny hole beyond which there lies an extensive warren, and I've already been drawn down it.
Appoint and sanctions the people who make our laws? You mean like I do with the House of Lords?
 
The HoL only has the power to debate and draft amend legislation, probably rather less real power than the pretty toothless European Parliament, which is effectively a talking shop with juicy expenses and lunch in nice restaurants in Brussels and Strasbourg.
 
Whilst I'm all for sensible reform of the HoL, and not keen on the way successive governments stuff it with political appointees, I actually believe that the institution serves a good purpose, as there are many knowledgeable people from all walks of life, who sensibly debate proposed legislation, and can act as an additional check and balance on the executive.

I believe that the proposed amendments to the Environment Bill currently going through Parliament came from the HoL, and I think that everybody here would agree that those proposed amendments would have represented an improvement in terms of putting a financial sanction on water companies that permitted sewage runoff into rivers without compelling reason for doing so.
 
I'm not saying it has no function, or that it doesn't occasionally do the right thing, I'm saying that I can't sanction it or vote the Lords out if and when they don't.
 
Well that's fair enough, and could be addressed with reform, something for which there is increasing momentum. But the important point remains that the HoL does not write your laws.

Over in the sun kissed uplands of EUtopia, the European Commission, the EU's executive body, writes legislation, which, following exhaustive debate, amendment and many lunches over at the EP, is passed, and then interpreted and enforced by the ECJ, the judgements of which have primacy over EU member state law. No citizens can vote for the Commissioners, and though the EU's sole nominally democratically elected institution, the EP, both approves and can suspend the Commission, it is generally appointed on the nod. There was a bit of a hiccup with the current bunch of retreads on account of some allegations of corruption, but they got through anyway, including one, the entirely useless Josep Borrell, who had actually picked up a criminal convinction for said (financial, what d'ya know!) corruption, guilty as charged and duly fined, m'lud. The President of the Commission is appointed on the back of some intensive horse-trading, mainly between the French and German governments, which simply ignore objections (as in the case of call me Dave and the absurd Jean-Claude Juncker) of other countries, the current woeful incumbent having been backed by French Emperor Macron.

Where were we. The HoL is appointed but cannot propose or pass laws, which are in the gift of the elected executive, which publishes its planned proposals in the manifesto upon which it is voted into office. Such proposed legislation is subject to rejection or amendment in the HoC or further (proposed) amendment in the HoL, and again to passage or rejection in the HoC. It isn't perfect, but it isn't too bad either, and it is certainly better than the heavily biased and actively undemocratic institutions of the EU.
 
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Nonsense. The only forming the EU does is monodirectional.
Forming?
No, it’s not nonsense. Maastricht was a major reform, one you've been complaining about bitterly for years. Lisbon was a major reform, as was Nice (qualified majority voting). The CAP has been reformed more times than I can remember, almost yearly. Etc. Etc.

Like them or not, these are all reforms. They’re just reforms you don’t like. Not a surprise. You’re a conservative.
 
It's astonishing how far apart we are in our perceptions of the EU.

And of the meanings we choose, for the sake of expedience and bias, to apply to the word 'reform'.
 
It's astonishing how far apart we are in our perceptions of the EU.

And of the meanings we choose, for the sake of expedience and bias, to apply to the word 'reform'.
True, dat.

(Is this the Royal we, or are you generously including me here?)
 
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Appoint and sanctions the people who make our laws? You mean like I do with the House of Lords?
A wonderful example is the Scotland Office- they don’t exactly have a large pool of MPs to appoint from so the Scottish Secretary- a man no one here had heard of and who had only become an MP in 2017- has one of the party’s wealthy donors ( who no one had heard of) given a peerage and appointed minister of state.
Now how can I vote this individual out of office? He’ll be sitting in ermine next to the other one who got his hands on the levers of power in the same manner, elected by no one- Baron Hannan of Lima.
 
A wonderful example is the Scotland Office- they don’t exactly have a large pool of MPs to appoint from so the Scottish Secretary- a man no one here had heard of and who had only become an MP in 2017- has one of the party’s wealthy donors ( who no one had heard of) given a peerage and appointed minister of state.
Now how can I vote this individual out of office? He’ll be sitting in ermine next to the other one who got his hands on the levers of power in the same manner, elected by no one- Baron Hannan of Lima.

Them foreigners, coming over 'ere and pinching all our ermine, eh?

And neither does..or did, the EU..ever. Maybe you missed that.

Blimey, I must have done!
 
EU reform comes up now and again and is something hard remainers really should avoid given the EU actually offers little to no improvement even over the EEC.

It's astonishing how far apart we are in our perceptions of the EU.

And of the meanings we choose, for the sake of expedience and bias, to apply to the word 'reform'.

Forming?
No, it’s not nonsense. Maastricht was a major reform, one you've been complaining about bitterly for years. Lisbon was a major reform, as was Nice (qualified majority voting). The CAP has been reformed more times than I can remember, almost yearly. Etc. Etc.

Like them or not, these are all reforms. They’re just reforms you don’t like. Not a surprise. You’re a conservative.
There is the correct meaning of ‘reform’, then there is some BS meaning used by at least one hard remainer, probably more.

Like it or not, none of those are reforms to anybody familiar with the meaning of the word.

Essential Meaning of reform

1: to improve (someone or something) by removing or correcting faults, problems, etc.

Source ( for anyone in doubt ) : https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/reform


HTH

PS I look forward to you highlighting any typo’s.
 
I must admit that if I found my moral compass aligned with the likes of Farage and the Wetherspoons boss (isn’t hubris a wonderful thing?) I’d have to give myself a good talking to. I wouldn’t be displaying ‘moral foundations’ on the internet.

I missed that yesterday, the old 'fellow travellers' trope that's so favoured of a certain kind of self-righteous EUphile.

I don't suppose there's a single choice, moral or otherwise, that any of us make that doesn't 'align' us with someone or something undesirable. Lots of good people voted for Blair - perhaps you did. That doesn't in itself mean that you agreed to the invasion of Iraq, or somehow bore responsibility for its outcomes. You made a moral judgement, and accepted its potential compromises. Where does this culpability end? Does the fact that you have enjoyed Wagner make you a Jew-hating acolyte of Adolf Hitler, or appreciated Eric Gill's bas-reliefs mean that you think its OK for a man to sleep with his daughter? Does the fact that you once walked down Piccadilly somehow align you with Stalin, Trotsky, Pinochet or Dr.Crippen, ffs?

I could have just left it sitting there, but this sort of desperate nonsense needs calling out.
 
I see ‘Lord’ Frost has modulated his tactics against Brussels from shaking his tiny pink fist (perhaps his target gave up taking his threats seriously some time ago?) to chilling menaces like “getting quite concerned” and “we had not made a great deal of this but patience was running out”.

https://www.theguardian.com/politic...over-science-programme?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

British scientists now thrown onto the bonfire along with exporters and producers so that Johnson can distract with his never ending war with Europe. It’s quite obvious who’s going to run out of economic resources first.
 
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