How do you get an EU Passport? I have never seen one, I have always had a UK Passport. Do you not have a NZ Passport?
Yeah true...... and/but do we not need to work with these countries.... not continue to use them as our own cheap farms, factories etc? Trouble is we need a collaborative approach and all the govts and big corps want to increase profits... Funnily enough I just saw this article too from Mark Carney: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/may/27/capitalism-critique-bank-of-england-carney?CMP=fb_gu
Good article and hopefully there will be measures to curb the excesses of the city wide-boys and coin eyed fu**ers. Difficult to see how we can work with these countries without causing the issues - for example, I really try to keep the number of "food-miles" I contribute to as low as possible. So I try to stick to local and seasonal produce as much as possible - so I do not buy Asparagus unless it is in season and as local as possible. But this means I am not supporting African and other farmers...so how do we work with them to not produce cash-crops for export and to produce for local consumption?
M Yorkie is hot on this.. she doesn't want to buy imported foods.... and I think it helps the farmers over there if we do. I am not sure if there is an answer at the level of the shopper. Clearly the rich countries need to invest in the development of sustainable non-polluting fuels and the like.
Mrs L tries to buy "home" food and gets annoyed when we are only offered for example tomatoes from Spain or Netherlands as they are mass produced - and cheap. Large supermarkets should be forced to offer a full range of British produce to give consumers a choice. When we buy imported goods she tries to at the very least buy fair trade produce to try to reduce exploitation. That sounds easier than it is. Is Nuclear (handled correctly) in that category? Are winds farms good - or an awful eye-sore and potentially harmful to your health? HOw desirable are massive solar farms? Is wave energy ever to be viable? Should energy prices rise to avoid fracking and the like? That debate will probably create enough heat to fuel at least a couple of hospitals
Big big subject... big issues... ... and of course the corruption in developing countries fuelled by multi-national corps... means so much resource goes into the pockets of the fat cats...
A couple of unrelated observations; perhaps naive perhaps not. 1. Is the rise of the anti-EU political parties across Europe; and I don't mean the real crackpot groups, but those with a chance of being elected UKIP, FN and their ilk, a seeming lurch politically to the extremes or is it a protest vote? I see the vote as more of a protest than anything else. The EU is a good idea, but it has gone too far in its own desire to become some sort of federal state. As a trading block it would function very well with common trade, customs practices. 2. The rise of the anti-EU political groups will just make the EU stronger. The majority pro-EU groupings will unite more readily to make their own positions stronger. 3. Why has the EU never looked to China for a "good" business practice? If you wish to sell produce in our area either you pay prohibitive import duties or you set up a subsidiary that is 51% locally owned and completely locally staffed. My employer has an operation in China and they were forced to go down this route.
With regards to No.2 Brag, there are currently seven political groups within the EU. The right wing FN etc have never been able to find enough 'friends' to help them form a group and it seems unlikely that they will now. It is when you see the size of trade that countries such as China, India and the US have, you realise that it is the home market population as well as exports that make their economies grow. For that reason having the EU as a home market can only be good for the UK.
w_y, have a look at either the cover of your passport or inside it - it is a British passport, but refers to the EU. This is another thing that the CI have had to adopt - my passport says on the front "European Union" on one line, then the next 2 lines are "British Islands" and "Bailiwick of Jersey" and as I mention above, the Channel Islands are not part of the EU.
Grief - I might scream if I hear the term "fat cats" once more. So so easy to use a cheap term of abuse rather than make an argument. It is like homophobia, sexism and racism - stick a label on so we can all agree to hate it - who on Earth would support nasty fat cats putting energy in their own pockets?
No abuse intended... perhaps I should have said the rulers, ruling families, cabals, fixers, militia leaders, cliques and factions
I think the argument is that local leaders in developing countries have a tendency to be corrupt and some multi-nationals exploit this to corrupt them further to the detriment of the local population. That can be through poor working conditions i.e. the sweat shops churning out cheap clothes, revenues salted away in Swiss bank accounts instead of being used to improve their own countries, factories with poor safety records etc. etc.
... and of course bankers. Don't mean to offend you Yorkie - you are possibly one of the few people on here I do not irritate the life out of. However I really meant that I disagree with lumping people together in order to make a point. Fat cats just happens to be one of the more usual epithets given by socialists in particular to label and denigrate. Is it justified though to attack those others you have now named. I am sure that many of them are perfectly decent respectable people like you, but who happen to be part of a ruling elite. If you don't like that then go for communism and see how that works for you - but beware as most states that have tried it fall into the same have/have not problem. Our own Royal Family are said to have enormous wealth - but what does it consist of - land inherited and handed down from Norman times, buildings on that land - constructed by ordinary working folk who will have earned well to build them; pretty coloured gem stones that do not feed anyone and are only said to be worth anything because other fools are beguiled by rubies, sapphires etc - they have no intrinsic value so let the "wealthy" have them - it is no skin off your nose or food off your table. There is a nasty jealousy of people who have money and wealth in this country. We hate bankers who may work hard for all we know and most of the time do good jobs - but all we remember is their failures. What about the teachers who fail their children - do we hold them up to public scrutiny and hatred? If you shared out the "useable" goods (real food, not caviare and champagne ) owned by all these "fat cats and the like" across the 7 billion non "fat cats" it would not make 1% of difference to their lives. Let's confiscate all land in this country worth more than £250,000 (whoops there goes most of our houses) - an enormous amount to anyone outside of the elite westerners - and give that land to starving Africans - how much better off would they be - not one iota. Oh - and now try to get agreement to give anything to anyone outside the UK - a report this morning said that 30% of people in Britain label THEMSELVES as racist - I bet if you had polled their neighbours that figure would more than double. No wonder UKIP do so well. There is not a lot wrong with our society - for the west. Compare our living conditions with those of a 100 years ago and you will find we are immeasurably better off - child poverty in the UK - it is a joke - defined by socialists as children living in families with income below a certain percentage of the average. How stupid is that? You could double everbody's wealth and still the same percentage would be "in poverty". I am rambling - this subject is too huge
and there lies the rub - local leaders = the population at large - power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. We are all only fallible human beings and we all are subject to temptation and dishonesty. Have none of you had work done "for cash" etc etc. People are not "nice" - mankind is an aggressive self centred animal - the only thing that prevents the law of the jungle is civilisation - trying to replace rule of might with rule of law. It only partially works and no system will ever eliminate it. All you can hope is that there are enough good souled people who try to help others - forget what the rich have got and try to do what is within your own power to do to help others.
Whilst I agree with most of your ramblings (your description) Lenny - the issue we were discussing was the developing world and how could we make a more positive contribution to improve the lot of some desperately poor people. But you make some good points to discuss and debate. Regarding the Royal Family, I don't have much time for them. Paying big money for the likes for Prince Andrew to fly around playing golf does not seem to be good value. Then there is that huge hypocrite Prince Charles - through the Duchy of Cornwall he owns huge tracts of land that he uses to fund his tax free income from the Duchy. Some of this hardly lines up with his green image - just outside Milton Keynes his land is being used for huge distribution warehouses. He is earning rent on these and pays not one penny in tax. I really do not care that a wealthy German family play at being rulers of our country, but they should pay the tax they owe - I have to!
Sorry w-y but as with your Green Party comment I think you have the facts wrong. The Royal family were exempt from tax until the 1970's but elected to become taxable like any others. Prince Charles pays tax - I used to have his tax files in my office in Somerset House
As Nigel Farage rightly pointed out if the UK did leave the EU then trading would still continue because our market is so important to Germany's exports. You can still be 'pro europe' without being controlled by these dodgy unelected eurocrats. Have any of the EU financial accounts ever been safe enough to sign off?
Just looked up my own question, the answer is no. 19 years in succession of levels of fraud and error too great to be able to represent an accurate spend of our money. If it were any other organisation they would end up in jail.
