(June 27, 2016 at 7:47 am)abaris Wrote: You know, when Blair fought claws and teeth to prevent Corbin, I thought he would be an ideal candidate. New labour is just Tory light, as far as I am concerned.

Well, I stand corrected. Not on the new labour part but Corbin actually moving something. Other than in the wrong direction. Speaking as an outsider, so a caveat included.

He showed himself to be another useless politician the moment he became leader of the Labour party and advocated building Trident without the nuclear weapons.

(June 27, 2016 at 8:16 am)abaris Wrote:

(June 27, 2016 at 8:03 am)SofaKingHigh Wrote: Well, I'm a liberal voter here, which after the coalition, means my vote is a waste of time.

Well, we have a liberal party again. The so called Neos, which managed to get a few seats in parliament. They are socially liberal to some extent, but they're leaning to far into the laissez fair capitalism direction for my liking. I would rather call them libertarian instead of liberal.

Well, European liberalism was based off of laissez faire capitalism (there really isn't any other kind) historically. For example Keynes economic ideas went that way until he started running the numbers.

(June 27, 2016 at 8:28 am)Emjay Wrote:

(June 27, 2016 at 6:38 am)Constable Dorfl Wrote: Madog's whole case is an egregiously stupid "I vape therefore the EU is teh evuuuuuuls". Half of what he links to doesn't say what he wants it to say, the other half does, but is bad science. And what he himself says is all too often meaningless jargon.

Well, I'm not particularly interested in the vaping argument because that looks like it's open to interpretation and more to the point it's not immediately relevant, for me, to what's going on right now. But what's much more concerning is the fact that the EU is not bound by the ECHR... that's the main thing I took from madog's posts. And I have since learnt that the EU has been given a 'legal identity' so it could actually be treated like a nation in the sense of being able to join the Council of Europe in its own right and therefore be bound by the ECHR... forming a kind of feedback loop with the Council that created it... but where it is - at the moment... and apparently been putting off joining for 42 years - outside that loop; so you have to have ratified the ECHR to join the Council of Europe, and you have to be a member of the Council of Europe to join the EU but there are 47 members of the Council of Europe and 28 members of the EU so you can be in the Council of Europe without being in the EU. So, outside the loop it means that EU directives that conflict with the ECHR can put Council of Europe members in a lose-lose situation where they can't please both sides and therefore face sanctions from one side or the other.

Whether that's actually happening, and if so on a large enough scale for it to be a serious problem, I have no idea, but the potential is there in principle and that is a concern. So it appears madog's preferred solution is to leave the EU and therefore cut them out of the loop and thus end the conflict of interests - rather than wait for them to accede - while expecting the UK to remain a member of the Council of Europe and thus keep the ECHR. But I fear that leaving the EU will just be one step on the slippery slope towards leaving the Council of Europe and thus becoming completely isolationist. So if the Tories want to leave the Council of Europe, fighting them will be my next priority, if we end up stuck with this decision to leave the EU. But looking at the Council of Europe website, Winston Churchill was one of it's founders so would they want to leave something with such a heritage? I don't know, but I hope madog is right in his optimism (for other reasons) that they wouldn't.

Well the whole EU doesn't follow the ECHR angle doesn't work because the EU's ECJ has upheld the European Convention on Human Rights as a fundamental bedrock of EU law. The EU has to abide by the convention, which is the basis upo which the Court of HR rules on.

@ Squishy

Epistemological is one of my favorite words. Although I prefer phenomenological

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the TTIP here, which is probably what pushed me over the edge, so to speak.

Another example of the totally undemocratic nature of the EU, one of the biggest trade deals the world has seen being negotiated behind closed doors, in secretive locations with next to nothing being reported in the press.

Sounds like conspiracy theory to me...

(June 27, 2016 at 10:02 am)Alasdair Ham Wrote: Sounds like conspiracy theory to me...

Really?

Google is your friend mate.

(June 27, 2016 at 10:01 am)SofaKingHigh Wrote: I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the TTIP here, which is probably what pushed me over the edge, so to speak.

Another example of the totally undemocratic nature of the EU, one of the biggest trade deals the world has seen being negotiated behind closed doors, in secretive locations with next to nothing being reported in the press.

TTIP was the only thing that made me consider voting leave.

(June 27, 2016 at 10:13 am)Mathilda Wrote:

(June 27, 2016 at 10:01 am)SofaKingHigh Wrote: I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the TTIP here, which is probably what pushed me over the edge, so to speak.

Another example of the totally undemocratic nature of the EU, one of the biggest trade deals the world has seen being negotiated behind closed doors, in secretive locations with next to nothing being reported in the press.

TTIP was the only thing that made me consider voting leave.

It's scary shit, ISDS is cynically anti-democratic, allowing corporations to shape policies in sovereign governments, let alone the fact that if it went through, the NHS probably wouldn't have lasted a decade.

(June 27, 2016 at 9:51 am)Constable Dorfl Wrote: Well, European liberalism was based off of laissez faire capitalism (there really isn't any other kind) historically. For example Keynes economic ideas went that way until he started running the numbers.

Yeah, I know that. But based on what the german FDP stood for before going all out on neo liberalism and based on what our late Liberal Forum stood for, they were most of all social liberals. Meaning gay marriage, privacy rights, the lot. Heck, the late Guido Westerwelle, former leader of the FDP, apart from being a neoliberal too, was the first openly gay minister of foreign affairs - ever, to my knowledge.

So there are parts I subscribe to. But not enough to subsrcibe to buy the whole package, since, like any force running unchecked, unchained capitalism isn't a good thing.