261–270 of 649 posts
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This has been the longest period of Peace in Western Europe in history by a massive margin. That's evidence. Non top tier countries used to fight all the time in Europe before.
No, that's correlation, not evidence. :)
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Can you point to any case where the UK could not make a law that it wanted to because of "having to wait for Brussels"?
> where the UK could not make a law that it wanted to because of "having to wait for Brussels"? "Having to wait" not as in actually waiting (e.g. as if Brussels would somehow slow down the pace of law-making in the UK) but in the sense UK will have to be handed down to adopt and enforce EU laws. So, wanting to make a law about X, in the sense that UK citizens see it and to their interests? Tough luck, unless it match…
The UK not being able to make its own laws (as your original comment implied), seems to me to be a quite different thing to having to adopt EU directives (as you are now talking about), and I feel like it's exactly this kind of confusion (deliberate or otherwise) over the years that has contributed to the atmosphere that lead to Brexit.
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But the EU does have a directly elected parliament? So where's the lack of democracy in the EU?
The eu's Parliament has de facto no power and all of the authority rests with the European commission, which is an unelected entity.
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These are pretty much the same forecasts Switzerland and Norway were supposed to face when they rejected to join the EU... people losing jobs, Swiss Franc falling, export collapsing, etc... well, it went a little bit in a different way. OFC leaving is totally a different thing from not being in at all, but still... there are going to be pro and cons, but the economy will adapt as happened in Switzerland and Norway. S…
What? Norway is a member of the EEA and Switzerland has bilateral agreements that come to the same thing. Nothing changed for them they just don't get a say in the rules.
Are British HN'ers taking any mitigating steps due to this whole situation? I'm currently in the process of incorporating in the Netherlands, and it turns out setting up a Ltd is a lot more expensive over there than in the UK. I just don't feel that the UK will make good use of my tax receipts any more, so I'm almost obligated to take my work elsewhere.
If you live and work in the UK, you are tax domiciled here, irregardless of where you incoperate.
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Right, this is why there have never been empires, kings, large nations or organized groups that have subsumed smaller groups around them, the United States, Great Britain itself, or any organization of peoples greater than just one lone man standing in a field bellowing 'ME!' at the emptiness.
"Independence" it's not about some lone man bellowing "ME". It's about like-minded people sharing a common culture (as developed historically up to some point), over a hodge podge of states being united by sheer power or top-down dictum. Empires and kings ruled thanks to tons of bloodshed and continued vigilance and stomping of revolts. The "Great Britain" itself is a bad example -- it lost colony after colony due to…
But it's that "some point" that makes everything wishy washy. If I'm in favour of Scottish independence I cite common Scottish culture. If I'm in favour of the UK I cite the hundreds of years of shared culture. If I'm in favour of the EU I cite decades of shared culture. None of these are wrong, despite being in clear disagreement with each other.
It's just an excuse for people to cite the opinion they already had and make it sound historically relevant. (and of course, has been the reasoning behind anti immigrant sentiment since time immaterial)
Are British HN'ers taking any mitigating steps due to this whole situation? I'm currently in the process of incorporating in the Netherlands, and it turns out setting up a Ltd is a lot more expensive over there than in the UK. I just don't feel that the UK will make good use of my tax receipts any more, so I'm almost obligated to take my work elsewhere.
If you live and work in the UK, you are tax domiciled here, irregardless of where you incoperate.
Mind, your company has to be paying a pretty low corporate rate for this to make a difference (like if it's incorporated in the Channel Isles).
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But the EU does have a directly elected parliament? So where's the lack of democracy in the EU?
The eu's Parliament has de facto no power and all of the authority rests with the European commission, which is an unelected entity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the EU does have a directly elected parliament? So where's the lack of democracy in the EU?
The eu's Parliament has de facto no power and all of the authority rests with the European commission, which is an unelected entity.
>Selecting the team
>The president-elect selects potential Vice-Presidents and Commissioners based on suggestions from EU countries. The list of nominees has to be approved by all EU heads of state or government, meeting in the European Council.
>Each nominee must appear before the parliamentary committee with responsibility for his or her proposed portfolio. Committee members then vote on the nominee’s suitability for the position. Once the 27 nominees have been endorsed, Parliament as a whole votes whether or not to approve the entire team. Following Parliament's vote, the Commissioners are appointed by the European Council. Accountability
>The European Commission is held democratically accountable by the European Parliament, which has the right to approve and dismiss the entire political leadership of the Commission.
>The European Commission is also accountable for putting the EU budget into practice. Every year, the Parliament chooses to give (or not) its blessing to the European Commission on the way it has managed the EU budget. This process is called the discharge. The Parliament bases its decision on several reports from the European Court of Auditors and from the European Commission, including the annual management and performance report for the EU budget.
https://ec.europa.eu/info/about-european-union/organisationa...
My theory on brexit has been for a long time now that, after entangling the EU with the Euro, and globalization actually hurting the first-world EU, the UK is simply attempting to isolate it's vulnerabilities to the coming impacts of globalization. If my theory is true, it means essentially that brexit is designed not to create wealth in the UK, but to make the losses less than the rest of the world by comparison. Wi…
The simpler explanation is that David Cameron's gamble to silence the more extreme side of his party (and UKIP) failed. His (or his pollsters) incompetence led to this, helped along by protest votes and online Russian campaigns.
A less charitable explanation is that certain Tory elites took advantage of the narrow majority to preserve power in their hands - there are a number of disagreements with the ECHR.