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You forgot at least a couple of big ones e.g. the indefensible calamity that is the destruction of millions of young people's life chances due to the Euro, the

You forgot at least a couple of big ones e.g. the indefensible calamity that is the destruction of millions of young people's life chances due to the Euro, the near-collapse of unity and immediate reversion to national self-interest in the face of a genuine disaster i.e. CV, persistent stagnation and lack of growth, gleeful destruction of the EU's natural environment in stark contrast to political virtue signalling, etc. etc.

dijit 6y ago
This is liable to become a shit slinging fest I imagine, because I believe that while the EU does have issues it is not as bad as we make out and we blind ourselves to the issues we have at home. How about we agree that the UK has done much worse than the EU regarding its governance? (I mean we have: Grenfell, our homeless problem, our funding of NHS, our human rights violations, our de-regulated banking system, our selling of fishing rights to EU companies and then crying foul, our reliance on hand-outs for agriculture, our housing crisis fuelled by foreign "investment", our massive inequality between the north and the south, social mobility being stifled for generations due to Conservative cuts to the poorest areas such as Coventry, our national transport system that costs more than any other EU country and is less reliable- AND london focused for some reason, the house of lords, the russian collusion dossier that Boris will not release, the defence of Dominic Cummings breaking lock-down (I mean, rules for thee but not for me)) I will not begin to defend things like the euro because it's mainly in hindsight that it's a bad idea. But aside from a few very real mis-steps by the EU it's overwhelmingly more democratic, fair and has far /fewer/ issues than the UK Government does. I sincerely believe we needed reforms at home before we looked to the EU.
- mellosouls 6y ago
  Not to point out the obvious, but all of those cases of poor governance have been while the UK has been in the EU (and some Brexiteers would claim that's why we need to be free of it so we can govern things properly - not a claim I am making btw). This is liable to become a shit slinging fest I imagine Agree, so best not to make claims that have immediate counters from those on the other side of the debate. Nobody is necessarily right or wrong here, each side has opinions and ideology.
- nicky0 6y ago
  In what way are EU's institutions remotely democratic? The only one that is actually elected is the EU parliament, which has little actual power and exists only as a (very expensive) fig leaf of democracy. We can argue about how good a job the British government is doing but at least it is directly democratically accountable to the British public.
  - dijit 6y ago
    This is so profoundly stupid of an opinion that I am having difficulty engaging in it properly. Are you aware of the House of Lords? Did you know that the European Commission is elected by our representatives in the EU parliament? Did you know that the speaker of the house in the UK will not have his seat contested? In fact he won’t serve his constituency at all and they will be left without an acting MP of any kind. How democratic is that? Taxation without representation- from the House of Commons no less. You can’t sit there with a straight face and tell me our representative democracy with an unelected (and sometimes hereditary) upper house of peers and enacted through monarchy is /more/ democratic than what is considered the most modern and fair functioning government the world has ever seen. Just because you don’t bother to turn up to vote doesn’t mean it’s not democratic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_legitimacy_of_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_legitimacy_of_the_E...
    - iamstupidsimple 6y ago
      My take on it is this: The more layers removed an average voter is from an election, the more anti-democratic. Voting for MPs who vote for EU parliament representatives who vote for commission members is too far for me. One effect of this: elites always vote for other elites. There have definitely been many MPs who come from a working-class background, but that is impossible in the EU because normal voters aren't able to put those people in power. Basically, if I (or the other common man) do not have a direct vote on someone in power, then we are in an anti-democratic system.
      - dijit 6y ago
        How does that view jive with the fact that Farage is one of the first people elected to the EU parliament but his party has never held a seat in the UK despite having 12.5 of the vote. A democratic system allows proportional representation of views, as it stood if you supported UKIP you were not represented at all in government. (Not saying that I like UKIP. But it’s a failing of our democracy that is notable.)

dijit 6y ago

This is liable to become a shit slinging fest I imagine, because I believe that while the EU does have issues it is not as bad as we make out and we blind ourselves to the issues we have at home. How about we agree that the UK has done much worse than the EU regarding its governance? (I mean we have: Grenfell, our homeless problem, our funding of NHS, our human rights violations, our de-regulated banking system, our selling of fishing rights to EU companies and then crying foul, our reliance on hand-outs for agriculture, our housing crisis fuelled by foreign "investment", our massive inequality between the north and the south, social mobility being stifled for generations due to Conservative cuts to the poorest areas such as Coventry, our national transport system that costs more than any other EU country and is less reliable- AND london focused for some reason, the house of lords, the russian collusion dossier that Boris will not release, the defence of Dominic Cummings breaking lock-down (I mean, rules for thee but not for me)) I will not begin to defend things like the euro because it's mainly in hindsight that it's a bad idea. But aside from a few very real mis-steps by the EU it's overwhelmingly more democratic, fair and has far /fewer/ issues than the UK Government does. I sincerely believe we needed reforms at home before we looked to the EU.

mellosouls 6y ago
Not to point out the obvious, but all of those cases of poor governance have been while the UK has been in the EU (and some Brexiteers would claim that's why we need to be free of it so we can govern things properly - not a claim I am making btw). This is liable to become a shit slinging fest I imagine Agree, so best not to make claims that have immediate counters from those on the other side of the debate. Nobody is necessarily right or wrong here, each side has opinions and ideology.
nicky0 6y ago
In what way are EU's institutions remotely democratic? The only one that is actually elected is the EU parliament, which has little actual power and exists only as a (very expensive) fig leaf of democracy. We can argue about how good a job the British government is doing but at least it is directly democratically accountable to the British public.
- dijit 6y ago
  This is so profoundly stupid of an opinion that I am having difficulty engaging in it properly. Are you aware of the House of Lords? Did you know that the European Commission is elected by our representatives in the EU parliament? Did you know that the speaker of the house in the UK will not have his seat contested? In fact he won’t serve his constituency at all and they will be left without an acting MP of any kind. How democratic is that? Taxation without representation- from the House of Commons no less. You can’t sit there with a straight face and tell me our representative democracy with an unelected (and sometimes hereditary) upper house of peers and enacted through monarchy is /more/ democratic than what is considered the most modern and fair functioning government the world has ever seen. Just because you don’t bother to turn up to vote doesn’t mean it’s not democratic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_legitimacy_of_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_legitimacy_of_the_E...
  - iamstupidsimple 6y ago
    My take on it is this: The more layers removed an average voter is from an election, the more anti-democratic. Voting for MPs who vote for EU parliament representatives who vote for commission members is too far for me. One effect of this: elites always vote for other elites. There have definitely been many MPs who come from a working-class background, but that is impossible in the EU because normal voters aren't able to put those people in power. Basically, if I (or the other common man) do not have a direct vote on someone in power, then we are in an anti-democratic system.
    - dijit 6y ago
      How does that view jive with the fact that Farage is one of the first people elected to the EU parliament but his party has never held a seat in the UK despite having 12.5 of the vote. A democratic system allows proportional representation of views, as it stood if you supported UKIP you were not represented at all in government. (Not saying that I like UKIP. But it’s a failing of our democracy that is notable.)