I am an unrepentant enthusiast for the European Union, indeed a European Federalist. I think the freedoms of movement of people and goods within the EU are the most profound political achievement of my lifetime, and have made the world a very much better place.
I am therefore flabbergasted by the group of unpleasant elitist bastards who apparently will lead the pro-EU campaign for the referendum. How could anybody wishing to win a vote believe that a Board including Peter Mandelson and Danny Alexander is going to help? While the appointment of Lord Rose seems to confirm belief in the “Michelle Mone theory”, that selling knickers grants universal expertise.
Most egregious of all, the Executive Director is Will Straw, whose main qualification is that his father is a war criminal. Founder of the rabid anti-Corbyn website Left Foot Forward and every bit as Atlanticist as Liam Fox, Will Straw is as insanely pro-United States hegemony and as ultra-Zionist as only an extreme Blairite can be. He really is a deeply unappealing figure.
I have no doubt they will be flooded with corporate money. But what I want to know is this. If this referendum is supposed to be a democratic exercise, where every citizen is equal, what grants this self-serving sample of the metropolitan elite the right to nominate themselves as the In campaign? I don’t see how any decent person can have anything to do with them. Having had a lot of respect for Caroline Lucas, I must say if she really is going to work alongside Will Straw then my respect for her is going to plummet.
Saint Fred wrote, “Would the retard pretending to be me kindly fuck off and die.”
It might have been someone else simply calling themselves Fred who hasn’t posted before, and is unaware of your hallowed presence, you belligerent twat.
“Nevermind, you appear not to know that the TPP and TTIP are two different things.”
Are they though?
“Is it a symbol for internationalism and cooperation, or a anti-democratic project to enshrine corporatism in the law? ”
It is an iron fist in a silk glove: the gossamer silk glove being the “internationalism” the iron fist being government by irresponsible, unelected tools of corporatism. “Co-operation” sounds lovely too until it resolves itself into a troika riding roughshod over dozens national and regional contracts to care for the vulnerable.
As to RoS’s faith that Holyrood will protect Scots interests within the EU, that’s worthy of an Edinburgh Festival comic theme: Scotland will free itself from Westminster just as Westminster becomes irrelevant. In terms of foreign policy, defence, economic and social policy it is close to being so already. Westminster’s role is to ratify what its masters in Washington desire. Independence makes sense only outside of the EU, NATO and the IMF.
“Surprised you’re happy to go along with a cheap gotcha operation like that, RoS, regardless of what you think of him or Straw senior.”
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Not often you’re surprised Glenn, a caution from the police, is still a caution, if it had been Joe Bloggs son he’d have been nicked.
As for nudge nudge wink wink, I’ll remind you buying drugs even if you are Jack Straws son, is illegal, and if caught it would be Judge Judge, Clink Clink.
“It might have been someone else simply calling themselves Fred who hasn’t posted before, and is unaware of your hallowed presence, you belligerent twat.”
Or it might have been you Jackboot Glenn.
All rights reserved! The final leaked TPP text is all that we feared
The leaked chapter of the Trans Pacific Partnership chapter on intellectual property represents a wholesale attack on internet freedom, investigative journalism, and the wider creative commons, writes Jeremy Malcolm. While massively advancing corporate financial interests in binding clauses, the parts that purport to protect information users are soft guidelines that cannot be enforced.
/..
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2985821/all_rights_reserved_the_final_leaked_tpp_text_is_all_that_we_feared.html
Greece should have gone bankrupt. Private banks recklessly lent to Greece knowing that Greece could never repay the loans. Corrupt politicians and the private banks are to blame. And the EU for allowing Greece stay in the EZ and adopt the Euro when it was known that Greece’s economy was in bad shape as far back as 2003.
The private banks were bailed out and the Greek people are being collectively punished by the EU. Pure evil.
RoS: “Not often you’re surprised Glenn, a caution from the police, is still a caution, if it had been Joe Bloggs son he’d have been nicked.
As for nudge nudge wink wink, I’ll remind you buying drugs even if you are Jack Straws son, is illegal, and if caught it would be Judge Judge, Clink Clink.”
So there we have it! Law & Order hawk RoS thinks being busted for a bit of “puff” while 17 years old disqualifies you from public activity, for the rest of your life. A very liberal outlook indeed!
Would you like to see hanging brought back too?
And FYI, Joe Bloggs is unlikely to have marched his hapless son down to the nick to make a confession, because he was craven enough to want to make a good impression in the papers.
Phillippe de Villiers on EU corruption (french)
Some hundreds of MEPs, 30,000 lobbyists.
Mary
What do you think of the EU? Would you like to see the UK stay in or leave?
These questions are very much on topic and it would be interesting of you could bring yourself to answer them.
You’d almost be forgiven for thinking that winning, & staying in the EU, isn’t on their agenda.
If we left the EU where would all the cheap labour come from to clean our schools and hospitals ?
Where would we get waitresses and waiters for our restaurants ?
What about cheap taxis ? builders etc. etc.
Not to mention doctors,dentists,masseuse,postman etc.
Last but not least…. what would happen to HOUSE PRICES if there was less immigration ?
RobG
I hope we could also agree that an awful amount of tosh is being talked on here about the EU?
And there are those – vociferous on subjects further away (eg Israel/Palestine) – who are keeping a very low profile on the EU on here so far.
How could anyone not love the EU, with its anthem, Ode to Joy by Beethoven.
Other encouraging factors include the freedom of movement, just how many British citizens make a living in Europe.
Then there’s Shengen, where the freedom of movement applies not only to people but goods, services and capital.
Then there’s the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, to safeguard, human dignity, freedom, democracy and equality. When you realise all this and much more administered across 28 states you realise that the EU is a remarkable organization.
Finally there has been relative peace in Europe since the end of WWII, surely the setting up of the EU, has played a major role in that. Without the EU, things in Europe could’ve been significantly different when it comes to warring nations within Europe.
Last but by no means least the USA looks in on the EU with jealous eyes with regards to trade oh how the Americans would love to gatecrash with their TTIP. I fear they may get their way.
Leaving EU Is A ‘Leap In The Dark’, Warns Rose
The ex-M&S boss tells Sky News he will campaign for Britain to stay in the EU – even if the PM fails to get a better deal.
http://news.sky.com/story/1567723/leaving-eu-is-a-leap-in-the-dark-warns-rose
15:04, UK,
Monday 12 October 2015
I totally agree with every word Craig.
Lord Rose of Monewden’s register of interests
Category 1: Directorships
Ocado Group plc (on-line grocery)
Fat Face Limited (fashion retail)
Oasis Healthcare Group Limited (dental healthcare)
RM2 International (Luxembourg) (palet manufacturers)
Woolworths Holdings South Africa (retail)
Majid Al Futtaim (food retail board)
Fulton Management (Member’s own private management company which organises and receives payment for Member’s speaking engagements etc)
Category 2: Remunerated employment, office, profession etc.
Senior Adviser, HSBC European (banking)
Member, Bridgepoint Capital Advisory Board (general advisory work)
Adviser, Aldo Shoes (Canada) (retail advice)
Member, Li & Fung Advisory Board (family office)
Category 4: Shareholdings (b)
Ocado Group plc (on-line grocery)
Fat Face Limited (fashion retail)
A Levy & Son t/a Blue Inc (fashion retailers)
The Hut Group (retail)
Monitise (mobile money)
Eredene Capital plc (investor in Indian infrastructure)
Select Property (property investment specialist)
Category 10: Non-financial interests (a)
Director, No Exclusions Limited (insurance)
Director, Soak & Sleep Holdings Limited (on-line bedding)
Director, Coco di Mama (fast food retailed)
Director, Dressipi t/a Stylemania Ltd (on-line fashion retail)
Chairman, The Healing Foundation (medical charity)
Category 10: Non-financial interests (c)
Trustee, Royal Academy of Arts
http://www.parliament.uk/biographies/lords/lord-rose-of-monewden/4326
The SA Woolworths is very much like Marks and Spencer.
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His interest in Bridgepoint, along with Alan Milburn and Lord Patten and three others, includes investment in healthcare companies who supply OUR NHS such as Tunstall who manufacture hospital beds.
Bridgepoint is a private equity outfit.
http://www.bridgepoint.eu/en/what-we-do/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgepoint_Capital
Healthcare
http://www.bridgepoint.eu/en/investment-portfolio/?articles_divisions=&articles_sectors=1207&articles_locations=&articles_sort_results=asc
Mary
Do stop focussing on personalities like Stuart Rose and do us the favour of addressing the wider question by giving us your valuable opinion on:
should the UK stay in or leave?
Fred: Earnings from speculation, gambling, bets on outcomes of referenda, that isn’t in any way ‘productive’, far from it. I’d ban all gambling, from bookmakers, to the pools, the stock markets, and the lottery.
I’m voting ‘No’, ‘Non’, ‘get the fuck out of it’, my mind is set I see no reason to change it, every day events add to that conviction and the grisly crew fronting the stay-in, the wallow in our current predicament faction, is all every one needs to tell there is a great wrong afoot. No-one has given a credible reason to remain in, no-one can, even Craig with all his eloquence signally fails to do so in the above lack-lustre effort, or previously. I don’t see how that is incompatible with or will handicap an independent Scotland, if the suggestion is that we will be even more vulnerable, subject to the predations, the menace of RUK, then that reflects badly on RUK, it doesn’t make the EU any shining light, it’s still a sucking great black hole. I can remember a time and I’m not Father Time, but a relative spring chicken, when everything seemed to be made in some part of Britain, from the cars on the streets, to the tools in our hands, goods from elsewhere didn’t even need to identify where they were from, they were simply marked or stamped ‘FOREIGN’, as a gentle rebuke to the purchaser and end user, and there was nothing wrong with that. The EU, its progenitors, the EEC, the Coal and Steel Union, were about creation of gargantuan monopolies. There have been no end of wars, all the same since ww2 was wound up, countries can still co-operate and fraternise, I don’t beleive the myth that Europeans without some tight restraint are ready to fall on one another in a struggle to the death, it’s poppycock. Some will talk of isolationism and trot out the absurdity that protectionism, that strong national economies, citing the 1930s, will lead to conflict, ignoring tens of other more relevant and powerful causes, the EU is itself by definition protectionist, raising barriers to the rest of the world, that, due to its size and power, is infinitely more dangerous. In the real world if you have needs and wants and someone has those raw materials or finished goods you want, mutually beneficial reciprocal trade will take place, always has, always will.
It is not a choice between the EU or the abyss, it is a failure of imagination to suggest that many alternative workable configurations than this ailing 20thC recreation of the many tentacled Holy Roman Empire cannot be implemented in its place. Take what is good about the EU monstrosity, if anything such can be identified, and dump the rest down a hole with a great heave and hearty cheer. I can think of nothing that would unite Europe more certainly than coming together as one to slay such a beast. We want a Europe run for and by its peoples, not by and for the world’s banksters and corporations.
Mary
You see, your listing of Mr Rose’s business interests could give the casual reader the impression that you think the EU is just a big capitalist, globalising plot and that the UK should have nothing to do with it.
Is that what you think?
Israel has wormed its way into the EU, UEFA and Eurovision.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93European_Union_relations
There is even an European Friends of Israel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Friends_of_Israel
Their board
http://www.efi-eu.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&layout=item&id=304&Itemid=146#.VhvtZPKFPSc
So there we have it! Law & Order hawk RoS thinks being busted for a bit of “puff” while 17 years old disqualifies you from public activity, for the rest of your life. A very liberal outlook indeed!
Would you like to see hanging brought back too?
And FYI, Joe Bloggs is unlikely to have marched his hapless son down to the nick to make a confession, because he was craven enough to want to make a good impression in the papers.”
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Yes quite, one wonders if Jack Straw, would’ve marched his son down to the police station if the press hadn’t been informed, I very much doubt it.
Law and order hawk, by the sounds of that remark Glenn you might indulge in what you colloquially call “puff” yourself, not that I judging you.
Glenn says would you like to see hanging brought back too…..no Glenn I wouldn’t.
I’m rather surprised at your sympathy for Jack Straws son, how many sons did Jack Straw condemn to death by voting for the war in Iraq, any sympathy for them Glenn? should we march Jack down to the nearest police station?
“As to RoS’s faith that Holyrood will protect Scots interests within the EU, that’s worthy of an Edinburgh Festival comic theme:”
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Not so Bevin, currently Richard Lochhead SNP Cabinet Minister for Rural Affairs, has no voice in the EU, and has to sit behind, a Westminster appointed delegate, often with minimal experience, who discusses with other EU delegates, British (which includes Scottish) affairs.
Independence at the very least will give Scotland an independent voice within the EU.
Mind, look who’s lined up, on the other side. Fradge the master criminal who has been embezzling £Millions from the EU for years, protected by the Tory Grandees. Funded by tax evading non Doms, who own the Britsh Press.
The EU has good social and employment Laws. Maternity/Paternity leave and limited working hours. Limited emission targets and Grants for Renewables and regeneration etc. Human rights Laws. The UK makes the lowest contribution (pro rata) and gets it back. It is a small contribution to make for the benefits.
Germany pays the most (80Million pop) – €25Billion. France (70Million pop) and Italy pay €20Bilion (each) Britain pays €15Billion = £12Billion gets it back in CAP payments (£6Billion) Grants and shared Defence costs. Borrowing naval carriers from the French.
RoS: You seem to be rather confused. I don’t like Straw junior at all, he seems a detestable little oik. What makes you think otherwise? Suppose Mother Sturgeon had been caught with some cannabis, would you call for her banning from public life? Or Corbyn, or anyone else that you like?
I’m pointing out your hypocrisy in wanting draconian measures applied for very minor offences, but only to people that you don’t like.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/mar/13/scottish-party-leaders-past-drug-use-cannabis
The knickers sales director, come EU yes man has let the cat out of the bag, EU costs every man, woman and child £391. This line is more for the no campaign, which probably will take it and rubbish it and then inflate it. so much for yes.
Has monarchy trickled down to the rest of the tossers with their noses in the trough? How the hell/Why the hell has this Will character got the job in the yes campaign?
The SNP has selected Lloyd Quinan, the man who believes not being a Nationalist makes you a bad parent, as a candidate in next year’s election. These are the people who are passing legislation to put their named persons in charge of our children.
Norway 5Million people raises £87Billion in taxes (investment of Oil Fund no illegal wars & Trident)
UK 62Million people raises £466Billion (borrows and spends £90Billion more)
Scotland raises £54Billion gets £50Billion back but could raise £10Billion more. i.e. a tax on ‘loss leading’ cheap alcohol. Cut Trident/illegal wars. No tax evasion. Cut Oil sector tax (55%) as price falls, losing thousands of jobs and importing more Oil & Gas, putting up balance of trade deficit.
There have always been named people in charge of chuildren. Legislation reduces it to one and speeds up cooperation in any crisis.
“RoS: You seem to be rather confused. I don’t like Straw junior at all, he seems a detestable little oik. What makes you think otherwise? Suppose Mother Sturgeon had been caught with some cannabis, would you call for her banning from public life? Or Corbyn, or anyone else that you like?”
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Of course if you’re in the public eye, and hold a responsible position you should act accordingly SNP, the Pope, or whoever else you care to mention, being the leader of any particular organisation doesn’t make you exempt now does it.
I understand your defending your “puff” Glenn, that’s fair enough. As for confused, you clearly didn’t state your position on Will Straw, did you now, infact you prceeded to call the girl a slapper, and used the words in fairness, when addressing Will Straw, so you can’t even get that right.
So we’ve established from Glenns comments, he likes his “puff” he also maybe likes Will Straw but can’t be sure.
We’ve also established that Glenn likes the Socratic approach answering a question with a question, see previous comment no questions answered.
“There have always been named people in charge of chuildren. Legislation reduces it to one and speeds up cooperation in any crisis.”
And ensures that children are raised nationalist.