(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.

Because it's so obvious. I'm against it too, many of our politicians oppose it. But that's not turning me into anti EU, for reasons I gave in my own thread "Why I'm a European". It rather compells me to fight against it from within than taking the sideline and suffer all the consequences without my country having any say at all.

And again, intrumentalised by all the nationalists across the board for all the wrong reasons.

(June 27, 2016 at 10:21 am)abaris 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.

Because it's so obvious. I'm against it too, many of our politicians oppose it. But that's not turning me into anti EU, for reasons I gave in my own thread "Why I'm a European". It rather compells me to fight against it from within than taking the sideline and suffer all the consequences without my country having any say at all.

That is your opinion, and you're entitled to it.  TTIP didn't turn me anti-EU either, it was one of the many things that in the end made me want to vote to leave.

I'm not American, or in America, that doesn't make me anti-American.

(June 27, 2016 at 10:21 am)abaris 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.

Because it's so obvious. I'm against it too, many of our politicians oppose it. But that's not turning me into anti EU, for reasons I gave in my own thread "Why I'm a European". It rather compells me to fight against it from within than taking the sideline and suffer all the consequences without my country having any say at all.

And again, intrumentalised by all the nationalists across the board for all the wrong reasons.

Abaris, are you seriously going to blame Nationalists for every point you disagree with?

TTIP has not been reported here once in the debate, not by nationalist, socialists, nudists, or any other "ists" for that matter.  

You have to go hunting for that information, which is a big part of the problem.

(June 27, 2016 at 9:55 am)Constable Dorfl Wrote:

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

Well I'm only just learning about this stuff now, and I have a ways to go, but as I understand it from madog the EU uses the ECHR as guidelines rather than being actually bound by it, and they use a different thing called 'Fundamental Rights' which is not quite the same.

(June 27, 2016 at 10:28 am)SofaKingHigh Wrote: Abaris, are you seriously going to blame Nationalists for every point you disagree with?

I blame them for instrumentalising every fear and every concern any given population may have. That's what I blame them for. They're not creating the problem or point. But they're cashing in on it in a dishonest way. Since, as I said before, they don't have anything beyond fear and concern to sustain themselves.

(June 27, 2016 at 10:04 am)SofaKingHigh Wrote:

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

Really?

Google is your friend mate.

I did Google it. One of the reasons listed bad about it was GMOs...

(June 27, 2016 at 10:33 am)Alasdair Ham Wrote:

(June 27, 2016 at 10:04 am)SofaKingHigh Wrote: Really?

Google is your friend mate.

I did Google it. One of the reasons listed bad about it was GMOs...

There are quite a few unpalatable things about it mate.

(June 27, 2016 at 10:32 am)abaris Wrote:

(June 27, 2016 at 10:28 am)SofaKingHigh Wrote: Abaris, are you seriously going to blame Nationalists for every point you disagree with?

I blame them for instrumentalising every fear and every concern any given population may have. That's what I blame them for. They're not creating the problem or point. But they're cashing in on it in a dishonest way. Since, as I said before, they don't have anything beyond fear and concern to sustain themselves.

You know, in this instance, over here, in the UK, the Remain side were by far the worst in terms of propagating fear, it goes both ways.  Pandering to the lowest common denominator.

Reading up on it it looks like this anti-TTIP stuff is anti-American paranoia. It looks like it's a fear that we're becoming Americanized. Pretty sure that's gonna happen eventually anyway. I doubt that leaving the EU will make our NHS more under threat.

And the stuff about Anti GMOS.... Anti-GMO stuff is pseduoscience anyway. It's not like I agree with all EU policies it's just that the EU is obviously an overall good thing.

(June 27, 2016 at 10:41 am)SofaKingHigh Wrote:

(June 27, 2016 at 10:33 am)Alasdair Ham Wrote: I did Google it. One of the reasons listed bad about it was GMOs...

There are quite a few unpalatable things about it mate.

Well that's certainly not one of them. GMOs aren't harmful.