Greece was irresponsibly lent far too much money and they and other countries were locked inside the Euro. They were unable to fiscally respond to the crisis. Euroland is basically designed to benefit Germany, most other countries have been damaged by this financial straightjacket.
Greece and some other countries were allowed - and indeed encouraged to join the EU far earlier than they should have. Even worse the Euro was foisted upon them and that is more responsible even than pure EU membership for their economic woes. Ignoring their own rules to permit entry was tantamount to criminal by the EU. The EU has a huge list of things wrong with it - and the ideal would be that it would change fundamentally - that though is not going to happen anytime soon. I am no apologist for the EU at all and frankly the one large reason I voted Remain is the economicone - for the UK - not for Southern Europe - we were clever enough to stay clear of the Euro and of "ever closer union"
Euroland is a different thing from the EU. and nobody has asked you to join it. Whilst the Euro has been good for German exports in that it is a weaker currency than the Deutschmark was - it was not intended to benefit only Germany, in fact the Southern European countries were much more enthusiastic about it than Germany was. Had there been a referendum at the time Germany would have kept its own currency. I do agree that the introduction of the Euro was a mistake - it was unnecessary, could have been used as a second currency only for international transactions etc. but for a long time it became very successfull and accompanied a very long period of growth in the EU economy. The mistake inherent in it is that in earlier times countries like Italy were able to devalue their own currencies when in difficult circumstances (Italy did it with the Lira on 4 occasions), this is no longer possible. I am for a reformed EU. but have never been a fan of the Euro.
Leo, Italy was one of the founder members of the EU. and has been in it longer than the UK. has. As for Spain, Portugal and Greece - all of those countries had seen Fascist dictatorships just before coming into the EU. the first Greeks in Germany (in the 60s) were refugees. The East European countries had just been left over from the Warsaw pact. None of these countries had received the benefit of the Marshall Plan, which, for strategic reasons was mostly concentrated on northern european stability - and needed a boost to their economies which the EU. initially provided. I believe that the EU. was caught cold by the fall of the Warsaw Pact, and did not know how to respond - in the end it was the best security to build those countries into the same economic system - what was the alternative ?
I know that Italy was one of the original 6 - which is why I did not mention them. I accept that the three you mention had been fascist dictatorships -but none of them were in the Warsaw pact - the fall of the Berlin Wall was followed by the new wave of eastern European membership. The EU should not have allowed any nation that was so dissimilar in economic status to join the EU. They should have been granted associate status and then worked towards full membership over a period of time. Even more damaging was allowing the Euro to be the currency of those countries. The UK was forced out of the ERM in the early 90s despite being far closer to the EEC economic "norm" of the time. If one of the world's leading economies could not cope with the straightjacket of currency conversion how much more obvious did it need to be that the weak southern European countries would be bankrupt by it. I believe the Eurocrats who are blind to ordinary people are responsible for many many errors.
I think the EU is not reformable at present, as Cameron recently exposed the inflexibility on his mission to renegotiate but Brexit may be the shock the EU needs to make some changes in the future. I wish the EU well because it helps the UK trade wise.
Those same Eurocrats have failed to see that in a continent of hugely differing wealth you cannot allow unrestricted free movement of people. If they could have understood that then Brexit would never have been called for
Even if they had allowed us to put some kind of temporary emergency brake in place remain would have probably won. I wonder if they regret their hard line?
I don't think it is about an emergency brake. Nor about the UK. A system is fundamentally flawed if it allows massive movements of people in an uncontrolled fashion. An awful lot of people are genuinely in favour of good controlled migration. That is not what the EU encourages. It encourages poor people to abandon their birthright and culture in order to find a better "economic" life. They get it - but I am not sure they realise some of the things they lose to attain it. There should always have been limits set on how many people could leave a country and how many each country could sensibly absorb. We love our foreign workers -be it only picking fruit (and haivng picked 25 lbs of gooseberries on Saturday I know how backbreaking that work is), or in our NHS - or students or in factories. What we do not accept though is the mess that comes from not having the infrastructure to see hige increases in populations in certain places - schools, hospitals and housing especially. A lot of that is down to our own government incompetence - but whatever the reason it has produced anger.
I wonder just how rational some people are when faced with making choices. A good friend chose to vote leave and when asked why replied, "I thought that with Boris as PM it would bring some colour into our political system." When they found out he had been stabbed in the back, they wished they hadn't voted that way. Quite irrational I know, but this is how some people arrive at decisions.
Leo, movement of people within an economic system is normal. Look at movement from North to South in England in the 80s, didn't Tebbit tell people then to get on their bikes ? There are probably more Geordies, Scousers and Glaswegians living in London than there are Poles. Similar movements have been seen in Italy (south to north) and Germany (east to west), how many Cornish people still live in Cornwall ? In all those cases people have gone from places where there were little prospects to other places where the living standard was higher. This process abates with time. The only way to really tackle this is to raise standards of living in the sending countries/regions. I was privileged to have been in Czechoslovakia just before the country separated - going back to the Czech Republic now it is difficult to imagine the change that has taken place. The same is becoming true in Poland though at a slower rate. I just cannot accept this argument about immigration. Altogether the entire EU. population living in the UK. amounts to only 3.6% of the population - the rate is far higher in most other countries. Germany has 3 times as many Rumanians as Britain does but is not crying about it. The entire east european population in the UK. amounts to no more than about one in every 50 people, yet this is apparently enough to bring down the whole fabric of British society !
Cologne - I do not think you can begin to compare movement within a single country to the EU scale. The divergence of living standards within the UK (or Italy,Germany or any other country for that matter) pale to nothing in comparison to across Europe. The only remote comparison could be made to the populating of the US or Australia - where the indigenous people were simply all but wiped out. I can accept that in perhaps 50 years there would be sufficient homogeneity in Europe to allow free movement - but to allow it from day one - ridiculous and always asking to inflame hatred and resentment. You yourself are fine with it - as it happens so am I - and so it seems are the EU bureaucrats but that cannot be siad for masses of people around Europe. Quoting numbers, percentages and statistics does not get around the folly of ill thought out policies.
As it happens Leo freedom of movement from Rumania and Bulgaria did not begin from day one, but was phased in gradually. Britain is in the position to control immigration by a number of measures well short of withdrawal from the EU. Starting with restricting non EU immigration more effectively. People go to Britain because they think that the chances of picking up casual employment there are easier than in eg. Germany which has a far more effective way of registering numbers etc. In Germany it is absolutely impossible to work without being first registered as living at an address there at the relevent offices, you also need a bank account which can only be opened if you have the first and a valid German health insurance cover. I have been here for 27 years and have only been unemployed for one short period, but it has always been clear that I could not claim until I had been paying into the system for some time. If Britain has been doing things differently then that is their problem and has nothing to do with the EU. If Britain were to make sure that the semi legal employment agencies were controlled more rigorously, and that everyone receives the minimum wage, and some kind of contract then many things would be different. I have actually heard of east european workers in Britain that have been working for such poor wages, have had so much taken away for accomodation etc. (all of which was not clear in their contracts) that they have not been able to afford the fare home.
The one massive difference is that these people have already been planned for on a national scale and their migration is slow and does not have the same social. physical and cultural impacts that uncontrolled economic migration across the EU has had. The EU would not listen that the freedom to live and work wherever someone wanted is causing big problems in this country - perhaps they might listen now. Although I doubt it as this misguided policy is what they will bribe the next set of poor countries to enter with.
But it was only a delay for 2 years, this might be "allowed" again by Brussels when Albania and Serbia join, but it is not with the control of the British government.
Just look at the amount of constituencies which the city has now compared to in the 70s. The exodus from the northern cities was one of the reasons why the traditional football clubs of the north had to change so much in the 90s, to attract different classes of supporters - because their traditional working class support base was disappearing.
