I just don't 'get' the whole EU thing, I'm afraid.
Europe is full to overflowing with people who HATE each other, and others who at best distrust and dislike. The idea we can have some sort of central control for the common good baffles me. Many of the unified parts of Europe have broken up. Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the USSR. Scots hate the English. Basques and Portugese hate the Spanish. Bavarians see themselves as a separate country. Cyprus. Northern Ireland. France. Scandanavia.
How will a Norwegian EMP have a constructive opinion on farming in Scicily?
Sorry for the spelling, rant over.
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TheSundaeLunch I'm a fucking shrub, alright?, Tue 2 Jun 2009, 18:01,
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Europe: constantly at war 500bc-1945ad
EU: Never had a war in 50 years and no real chance of one.
That's reason enough, I'd say.
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Zuowan, Tue 2 Jun 2009, 18:23,
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Fair point
although the region has had plenty of violence, usually Nationalistic based.
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TheSundaeLunch I'm a fucking shrub, alright?, Tue 2 Jun 2009, 18:28,
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(Not that anyone will read this now anyway) but that's exactly why the EU was set up!
My mum started to do a PhD on the EU in the 70s when the people who'd originally set it up were still around and she recorded hours of interviews with the surviving ones. They'd set the wheels in motion immediately after the second world war because they realised that normal 'treaties' between countries were useless and easily broken, and we'd got into two devastating wars despite the political system being set up to prevent such things happening.
The unstated aim of the creation of the EU was to link all the countries of Europe in fairly mundane, petty, economic ways to do with trade and regulation so that in the future it would not be economically viable to go to war with each other, because we'd rely on each other for so many different things. In many ways it was a surreptitious bypassing of normal politics which is messy and quite often ineffective.
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Hampster Squared has stuff at www.tilla.co.uk, Tue 2 Jun 2009, 21:16,
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I don't think that's entirely true about everyone hating everyone
I would say that usually (at least inside the EU) it's a very loud minority stirring up.
When push comes to shove I don't think most Bavarians would really see a point in becoming truly independent (German individual states have far more freedoms than counties do remember!). Yes, there are armed groups in corsica, yes the SNP is worryingly powerful and yes the IRA exists, but if we're talking about splitting up one country after another then what's the point of countries at all?
Just because some loudmouthed buggers shout slogans against people from somewhere else doesn't mean those who don't give a fuck agree. Because they don't really give a fuck.
Also, I think there should be some sort of counterweight to the whole china/USA/Russia thing. A european block that has at least a semblence of unity and common policy in some areas (ie embargoes, common import tax etc etc) makes more sense to me than loads of relatively small (if rich) countries that can easily be defeated one by one.
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morrybyte made a subtle namechange at, Tue 2 Jun 2009, 20:06,
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