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Should Britain leave the E.U. ??? Should Britain leave the E.U. ???
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Photo by Marc Gibaud, Clouds on Tres Cerros and Mount Fitzroy, Argentinian Patagonia

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Photo by Marc Gibaud,
Clouds on Tres Cerros and
Mount Fitzroy, Argentinian Patagonia



View Poll Results: Should Britain leave the E.U. ?
Yes 109 50.00%
No 46 21.10%
No.. But things MUST change 38 17.43%
I don't care 14 6.42%
Undecided 11 5.05%
Voters: 218. This poll is closed

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Old 7 Jun 2016
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Representative democracy in action, again.
Pro-EU MPs could stage guerrilla campaign to reverse Brexit decision | Politics | The Guardian

The article is an interesting reflection on representative democracy and what it might mean to our elected representatives - by no means is it the first time that UK MPs have stated that they are not elected to represent those who elected them.

The article is about one day old and has over 7000 comments attached at the end.
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Old 7 Jun 2016
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The vision of the EU, for the EU
I was struck by a recent news item concerning the island of Puerto Rico (a USA territory) and how it is getting on with it's economy.


A couple of sample articles from the internet illustrate the current problems of Puerto Rico (PR), although the news item that caught my eye was more related to the preponderance of USA companies that have their businesses registered in States such as Delaware which is reported to be an “internal” tax haven* within north America.
Op-Ed: Puerto Rico’s Crisis Should Matter to Connecticut’s Residents | ctlatinonews.com


Puerto Rico's poor economy could lead to Connecticut influx


What struck me are the similarities between the individual US States, their relationships with the federal government and the situation between the EU and it's current 28 members.
Fundamentally, Germany does not want to carry the debts of the southern European countries, such as Greece, any more than the central government of the USA, which does have a common currency, wants to bail out Puerto Rico.


The first link above gives these as some of the issues current in PR:-
“The reasons behind the island’s current economic woes are complex, with blame to go around: poor budget practices, federal funding shortfalls, predatory lending by financial institutions, the Great Recession, demographic changes draining the tax base, and the complicated and oft unjust relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico, to count just a few.”
At least some of these are analogous with the situation in the EU.


It was reported somewhere or other, but I lost the reference, that the German balance of payments (something that is rarely mentioned in the UK nowadays) is as much in the black as the combined balance of payment accounts of all the other 27 members are in the red.
Basically, this is because the introduction of the Euro gave the German industrial effort a massive boost via the intrinsic currency deflation this achieved compared with the earlier use of the Deutschmark.
Meanwhile, the German banks lent money to countries such as Greece to rebuild, for instance, their military hardware including new Leopard tanks and new submarines, all built in Germany.
Now, Greece cannot pay the loans back and so the banks are recompensed by means of ECB funds – the vast majority of recent funding for Greece did not go to that country but to the creditor banks.
This is basically what happens when you run out of other people's money.


Perhaps the USA will learn a trick or two from the example of northern/southern Europe although it does seem that they aim to kick the can along the road some way by invoking bankruptcy protection for PR.


The future for the EU can be seen in the contrast between the poor and rich States of the USA; the solution is freedom of movement of populations to go to where the work is, combined with single, consistent levels of taxation, a common currency and standardised laws to enable this to occur.
As each new country is assimilated into this new order, then new ones can be found looking toward the east and to the south, into Africa (Morocco has a long-standing application to join the EU).

*In Europe, the equivalent to Delaware are Andorra, Luxembourg, Ireland and a few others for either personal or corporate tax affairs.
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