Something For The Weekend

For those so inclined, the entire film can be downloaded here.

This one’s going to make me angry, isn’t it?
It does have some lighter, wryly comic moments. For instance, the number of EU regulations – 31 – regarding toothbrushes; or the 454 laws regarding towels. All of which have a cost attached. But let’s just say you may want a tall drink to hand to steady your nerves. The bare facts are in themselves quite staggering – and of course largely unknown by the electorate.
[ Edited. ]

Excellent.
The economic arguments on both sides of this EU debate seem to have at least one foot in the realm of the imaginary.
But on questions of sovereignty and democracy, I think the argument is much clearer. The clear stated aim of the EU is political union, the current (slightly mad) plans for a euro army (repeatedly stated by Jean-Claude Juncker, by German ministers, and by the head of the largest party in the european parliament) can only necessitate political union – and the same is true of the already failed Eurozone project, behind which there is still enormous political will in Brussels.
By continuing with the EU, we are therefore giving up a stable form of government (that has evolved slowly for some time) in favour of a political experiment being conducted with the lives of 100 million + people. Hardly a sensible idea
The idea that we would have influence within the EU seems, on recent form, fanciful. EU leaders take credit for post-war European peace, as though NATO & cold-war fear of Soviet Russia had no influence whatsoever in international affairs.
The Remain camp’s arguments are the usual stuff about “xenophobia” and “right-wing bile” – which no doubt includes Gisela Stuart, George Galloway, Frank Field and the late Tony Benn (all very eurosceptic)
We must leave.

The Remain capaign also has some compelling arguments, as expounded in this report from a not-actually-real West Midlands news programme.

or the 454 laws regarding towels.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Roll on June 23rd.

“Do we want to be governed by an organization which we don’t understand, run by people we don’t know and haven’t elected, who have the power to impose on us laws that we haven’t debated and have little or no chance of blocking or repealing?”
That.

Holy crap, I’m only part way in and see why Obama is so enamored of the EU he threatened Brits about exiting it.
He has been working 7 years on fundamentally transforming American government to be just as bloated, dictatorial, non-transparent and unaccountable as the EU.

“I also liked the acknowledgement that the EU project isn’t just, as it were, accidentally undemocratic, but is actively anti-democratic.”
Indeed; but then Voltaire and Diderot thought that “Reason” (capitalised, of course) in government could only ever be achieved in and by a benevolent despotism – such as the EU is. Democracy, even in the 18th century British form (as in Locke, Smith and Hume), gave too much power to the rabble in the opinion of those elevated Frenchmen, the Philosophes.
The EU/EEC was a Franco-German ramp: it is now a German empire in the making.
Vote OUT!

For instance, the number of EU regulations – 31 – regarding toothbrushes; or the 454 laws regarding towels.
Every time I think the regulatory state here could not be any worse, I peer across the pond and realize it’s not that bad. Then I realize that this is what the unelected army of 3-Letter Acronym state and federal regulatory agencies have planned for us. Our petty fascist bureaucrats gaze wistfully at the EU, with both admiration and envy.

And question one tittle of their regulatory meddling and be shouted down as being in favor of poisoned water and people DYING IN THE STREETS!!
But who will make sure OUR TOWELS ARE SAFE?!

I think we should all take a moment to consider the horror of insufficiently regulated towels.
[clasps hands] Will no one think of the children?

“Liberty is the ability to say ‘no’ and make it stick.” — RAH

Well I think there is still insufficient towel regulation.
Only the other day I found, to my horror, a towel I bought recently was only about 8 inches square.
Totally inadequate for drying myself down following my bath.

About to head out for a big family lunch, but before I do I thought I’d share this:

Marx and Engels, eh? How very jolly.

I like how David made sure to include Jonny Taylor’s comment in his screen capture.

Spiny,
“And certainly insufficient defense against the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast.”
One doesn’t like to boast about such things.

“You heartless beasts may mock but literally millions died every year from towel-related incidents before EU regulations saved us……”
Towels?…..heck, just look at all the coffee-machine massacres before the swaddling comfort of our overlords…
Besides, I think you exaggerate.

The EU/EEC was a Franco-German ramp: it is now a German empire in the making.
I think “caliphate” rather than “empire” might be the more accurate term.

PS. Snorty scoff….

Hey how did we remove governments pre-democracy?
Wonder if that’s how it will be for the post-democratic EU(SSR) politburo.

Yet more on the bastard love-child of Kafka and Hegel that is the EU – I’m embarrassed to admit that I had no idea this was happening, but I’ve just discovered from a BBC Newsnight report from John Sweeney that:

”Each month, the entire European Parliament moves from Brussels to Strasbourg – is here [in Strasbourg] for a week – and then moves all the way back to Brussels in boxes like this [Sweeney is pointing to a huge black coffin-like crate of the kind normally used by Rolling Stones roadies when they’re on tour].
“And people will say ‘It’s a fantastic waste – of time and money.
“The Strasbourg shuffle costs the European tax payer £130,000,000 a year. The Euro MPs have voted against the move, but they’re blocked by a French veto, hardwired into the rulebook of the EU.”

Sweeney then tracks down a French MEP to defend this absolutely disgusting waste of time and money. The MEP, Edouard Martin of Parti Socialiste, France, responds:

”If there is a price to pay for democracy 30 cents, per person, per year – it’s not a lot to pay. It’s not even the price of a cup of coffee.”

I feel positively sick after seeing that report and especially after that response – what kind of an utterly contemptuous buffoon dismisses something that is an utter waste of time and money on the grounds that it’s only a small amount of money that is being wasted on such a completely senseless move as the Strasbourg shuffle?
I love Europe and I have a lot of close friends here in the UK who are from other EU countries – from Spain, from Poland, from Germany and from Greece – and I’m genuinely concerned about what might happen to their status and how that might affect their livelihoods (and their lives) if there’s a Brexit, and primarily for that reason I’ve been hedging toward the In campaign.
But this shit?
Shifting a pointless parliament every month for a week for no reason whatsoever?
This shit is just insupportable.

This shit is just insupportable.
As so much of it is. And the contemptuous buffoons you mention are unlikely to be shamed out of their habits and vanity. They will only alter their behaviour, their conceits, when forcibly obliged to do so.

Do you base your vote on what it has been and still is or what it could be in the future?
Given the EU’s institutional, structural opportunities for the contemptuous buffoonery you mention, which it rewards handsomely, and given that those opportunities are growing in number and are hardly incidental or matters of mere accident, and given the implications for unmanageable immigration and welfare use, it’s hard to be optimistic, or to hold out much hope that a system so corrupt and inclined to further corruption, and so profoundly anti-democratic, will somehow spontaneously change for the better. I expect it to continue as it is, only more so, until it collapses.
Silk purse, sow’s ear.

‘Incredible,’ I thought, ‘This must be that almost mythical 1 in 44 we hear about.’
Bigfoot!