Bugger all, but has a lot to do with your previous reply.

Which was itself a reply to twowheels03.

So much noise from you pro-Brexit guys, so little signal.

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Paul "Every county of England, every country of Europe and every (part of every inhabited) continent of the Earth" 94% done! What's left? Central America, East, Central and West Africa, Australia & New Zealand

Who says I'm pro brexit?

As a matter of fact, I'm one that is as yet undecided. I can see good and bad in the union.

I can however make my mind up about a few individuals on here from comments they make and conclusions they draw that they are quite blinkered on both sides of the debate.

Sorry for the mis-identication. I'm undecided myself as I've indicated earlier. I'm pro-Europe but not sure Cameron's deal is good enough.

What I see here though is some good questions being asked and little but rhetoric coming in response.

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Paul "Every county of England, every country of Europe and every (part of every inhabited) continent of the Earth" 94% done! What's left? Central America, East, Central and West Africa, Australia & New Zealand

Pretty much my stand point.

I think we should be taking down borders, not building them. All they cause is bitterness, resentment and miss trust.

I'm also quite alarmed at the rapid rise of far right views. Parts of Europe went down this path less than a century ago, you would think that such atrocities within living memory would serve as a stark reminder of the path that intolerance takes us.

Maybe we are moving to fast towards a more integrated Europe, and people are struggling to cope with it.

However, financial imbalances within the union and some quite large cultural differences must be addressed.

I think the rise of far right views has been caused by the mass migration. The TV cameras might focus on the women and children but the majority of the migrants are young men. It could be they are fleeing call-up in their own country, but it's an imbalance in the host country, especially when some misbehave as they did in Köln.

I can't say that my mind is definitely made up re the referendum, but I'm certainly leaning in a non-nein direction. I would have prefered Cameron to have told the assembled prime ministers that the deal wasn't good enough and for him to have carried the campaign into 2017 which would have really annoyed the French and Germans with their internal elections.

There's no doubt that some in Europe (especially France) would like to move to a more integrated Europe, but the question was never put to the great unwashed British public following Maastricht and Lisbon and the forthcoming referendum will actually be the first chance we get to give an opinion.

A quote from an interesting wikipedia article on the European Constitution, "ICM asked 1,000 voters in the third week of May 2005: “If there were a referendum tomorrow, would you vote for Britain to sign up to the European Constitution or not?”: 57% said no, 24% said yes, and 19% said that they did not know"

One of my best friends in Dutch and as he says, the Netherlands voted "no" in 2006 but the politicians just ignored the result of the referendum.

However... before the UK gets to vote in June there will be a referendum in Netherlands on 6 April asking whether Ukraine should be allowed to join the EU. Opinion polls suggest a "no" vote.

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"For sheer delight there is nothing like altitude; it gives one the thrill of adventure
and enlarges the world in which you live," Irving Mather (1892-1966)

Totally in favour of Ukraine joining the UK, their vodkas lovely and Dynamo in the premiership would be cool.

Why do the cloggies get to decide though? Possibly enough know where Ukraine is to make an informed decision?



Andy

Referenda are a growing fad for we europeans: the Hungarians are also to hold one.
Years ago, Tony Blair said that the British public could not be entrusted with a referendum about EU membership - I guess no one is listening to him nowadays.

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Dave

Regarding the myth of the EU status quo I am going to do some digging around and have a pop at France.
Simply because France lay at the "heart of darkness" in the birth of the current setup, from the coal and steel community to what we have today.

"France, quite rightly looks to its own interests in all things, why shouldn't the UK do the same ?
The EU has put itself at a major disadvantage by creating the Euro which was not properly founded on even the most basic principles of a common currency. Because it wasn't done properly, it has become the engine for all the eurozone's ailments and worse, in the past 5 years, no attempt has been made to sort it out. The consequence is that today you have two choices, break the currency up or become a Federal European State where the nation states as political entities cease to exist.
To do this, you need to ask the voters of each country whether they agree with this, no sign of that happening is there ?
Next year there are elections in both Germany and France which is just one more reason why our PM has caved in with his negotiations.
These could see Merkel removed from office because of her mishandling of the refugee crisis and Marine Pen as the French President. The EU is in a mess of its own making and whether the British stay or leave will have no impact on the consequences of the foolishness of the eurozone leaders which has brought their countries to such a sorry state."
- abstracted from elsewhere with a modicum of additional commentary.

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Dave

What do you have in mind?

Regarding your earlier point related to the bank bail-outs of the last decade: the next banking event of similar nature will be subject to bail-ins.
The legislation for the bail-ins is in place and has had a trial run by the ECB in the case of Cyprus.

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Dave

The bail-ins are a bad joke. A very bad joke indeed.

If a bank goes belly-up it's for its own wrong-doings, that is true and its shareholders are punished by loosing their investment. But there are also and most specifically the supervision authorities who did not do their job and allowed it to happen. The job of a regulatory authority is above and most of all to keep the stability of the system. The public entrusts its money to the banks for reasons of reputation of this or that bank but also because above them exists (or at least it is supposed to exist) a supervision body which guarantees that the bank operates according to regulations and is solvent at all times. If the regulatory body does not do its job correctly then the banks go belly-up and we have a lot of trouble.

Now, the regulatory institutions are government bodies. So, my question is, why should depositors pay for a government body's leniency if not direct incompetence? It's a mistake done by the regulator so the state must pay and be held responsible for the incompetence of one of its bodies. Therefore, if trouble occurs, then, States (this being tax-payers) should pay. Then in the next election maybe the tax payers remember and vote for merit instead of politics.

Some 40 or 50 years ago, even 20 years ago, this thing of the bail-ins would be both an absurd and an outrage. However, in nowadays' Europe, where a tendency to punish wealth is surfacing with a lot of strength along with utter disrespect for money it is considered the new normal to have wealthy people paying for States' wrongdoings.

This is not inocuous, at all. Slowly but steadily money is pouring out of Europe in general (some countries are exceptions) but as more of these crazy ideas against wealth and money are implemented the more the money goes away for greener pastures.

Before the possibility of bail-ins arising there is an increased chance of negative interest rates by the ECB; I think it is the 10th March when Mr Draghi is next scheduled to produce a rabbit from his hat.
i.e. make his next announcement about both interest rates and further QE.

Even at the last G20 conference, I think it was our very own governor of the BoE who commented that the banks are working to a remit wherein they, the central banks, do their bit but the respective governments won't grasp the nettles of their own responsibilities; why would they when, in the case of the UK, you are in govn for 5 years (4 years for the USA).
Nevertheless, Gov Carney did not agree that the banks are "running out of ammunition" even though everyone can see that it is so.
But, every public pronouncement/forecast that Gov Carney has made since he took up office over 2 years ago has turned out to be wrong.

Life is short; live for today is the mantra.

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Dave

There's always nylons, cigarettes and Hershey bars (so long as the EU doesn't ban Imperial sizes).

Andy

Don't know if you're aware of this but this morning, Japan did it again!

Yep, Japan sold a ten-year government bond (JGB) on a negative average yield of -0.024%.

Anyone who bought a wedge of these bonds, and who holds onto them for the entire 10-year term, is absolutely guaranteed to lose money (in nominal terms, at least).

The world really is going crazy!

To which migrants are you talking about Tim? - "Majority of migrants are young men"?