During the recent election the five main groups (Far Left, Centre Left, Centre, Centre Right, Far Right) each picked a candidate for Commission President who campaigned all around Europe. In the event, it was the Centre Right group which got the most votes and the most seats in parliament, so it is their candidate (Juncker) who expects and is expected to get the job. Not unreasonably. If the media are to be believed (always a stretch, I know), David Cameron apparently opposes this, even though he is himself on the Centre Right too. What is not clear is which group's candidate he thinks it ought to be - Centre Left? Far Right? Who knows? It seems he feels under no obligation to respect the outcome of the election, or the wishes of the voters, even when leaders of other countries do. The EU institutions are evidently far too democratic for his liking.
Indeed they are not. Some issues are about fundamental aspects of the constitution, some are about ordinary legislative changes, and some are about executive actions. So issues can be ranked in a hierarchy of significance. Democratic countries with a written constitution (i.e. most of them) always* set a high threshold for constitutional changes, a lower threshold for legislation, and leave all kinds of executive actions to be swept up by general elections. It seems from your posts that in your mind there is a very different hierarchy. Issues which Rupert Murdoch and the proprietors of the Telegraph and the Mail promote in the media they control are the ones which require the highest level of voter participation; other issues, no matter how momentous, can be ignored entirely. * Switzerland is the exception, as usual
All 28 member states signed up to join an "ever closer union" - it's in the treaties - including the UK. So you are simply remarking that France and Germany agree on something which all member states have agreed by definition at the time of their accession. When I said that different groupings in various countries rarely agree on anything, I meant debatable policy issues going forward, obviously - not matters agreed by treaty.
It is pretty clear that at a General Election the voter is assumed to be capable of making up his mind how to cast his vote, and to take into account as many issues as he thinks fit, and to consider their agenda ranking in any order he chooses. It might be just a single issue or a great number, and they might be highly important or the width of the candidate's smile. The whole concept of democracy depends on that assumption - that's my assumption anyway. People have the opportunity to vote for Communists, Nazis, Greens, or Monster Raving Loonies if they like. There is no shortage of fringe candidates. Fortunately in the UK extreme candidates rarely get many votes* and even fewer get elected. I cannot see how that could be a cause for regret. * N Ireland is the main exception.
When somebody just refuses repeatedly to take on board a blindingly obvious, elementary point, even when it has been explained to them again and again in clear and explicit terms, it eventually becomes difficult to find a way of wording a response which doesn't amount implicitly to "You're being dim, please read the posts and start thinking". So I'm very sorry about that.
It would appear that even when I am "simply remarking" on various issues, you are not following what I am saying*. That's fine, there's no requirement for you to be up to speed on every discussion that is taking place - even the discussions you are part of. *You should at this point provide an opinion that what I am saying is in some way unclear. That would seem the best way for you to appear to make up some lost ground.
In order for me to "try harder", I would surely have to be *trying hard* in the first place. Thus far, that hasn't seemed to be necessary.
You seem to be equating the terms Democracy with Parliamentary Democracy. They are not identical systems. The latter is one of my favourite oxymorons, by the way.
You heart-breaker, Pete! Yes, I meant "intimidated". It's one of those words I regularly misspell, usually with hilarious consequences.
FFS Pete, I thought I was patronising and arrogant. Name calling now? Is this the limit of your debating skills? Pete, I'm not being dim, I just see people who think they know what's best for me as... wrong. We don't need people deciding what's in our best interests. We don't need people who have been told that they should govern us since they were at school. We don't really need this political class. I think this is maybe where we differ - I largely do what I want - up to the point where I'm endangering other people. I expect other people to be mature enough to do largely whatever they want up to the same limit. I don't expect other people to be telling me what to do. When they do, I largely tell them where to go. Politely, of course. It's nice to see you back BTW.
I don't think we disagree on much at all! And I'll look out for that book by Hopwood which sounds very interesting. All I'd contend is that the shareholders are the losers in cases like this, and that "overgenerous dividends" are a very rare cause of corporate decline and failure. Bad management can destroy shareholder value though, and Bernard Docker appears to have been a good example in the case of BSA - he was eventually ousted from the board of directors in the 1950s after extravagent expenditure - none of it for the benefit of the shareholders. In a previous era it seems that BSA went through a bad patch in the 1920s (before the great depression though) and paid no dividends at all for several years. A lot of this is lost in the mists of time, and there are probably a lot of reasons that Triumph and Norton declined before they were taken over by BSA and AMC, respectively. BSA and AMC were very different but both demonstrate the folly that damages many large companies when, instead of focussing on successful R&D for the right products, they waste shareholders' money on acquiring other companies, often paying too much for them and then not knowing how to run them. GEC/Marconi was an example - they built up huge amounts of cash (so they did not give it all back to shareholders as dividends) as a successful British company then self-destructed after extravagent acquisition and diversification in the telecomms market.
ah, Pete, now you know that there was promise by the Labour party to have a referendum on constitutional changes in Europe. When the constitution was rejected by France and the Netherlands, much of what was in the constitution was put into the Lisbon treaty and Labour abandoned their promised referendum and signed up. EDIT: in fact, if my memory serves me right, it was suggested that PM Brown was so ashamed of signing the Lisbon treaty, that he was the only leader absent at the official ceremony and signed the next day, over lunch. Here's what Channel 4 news had to say in 2010: "We will put [the EU constitutional Treaty] to the British people in a referendum and campaign whole-heartedly for a ‘Yes’ vote to keep Britain a leading nation in Europe." FactCheck has covered this issue before, and it is not as straightforward as at first it seems. The 'Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe' was signed in October 2004, and it was this treaty to which the Labour manifesto referred. But it was rejected by France and the Netherlands and thus abandoned. So Labour can plausibly claim that they did not break their promise. But a Reform Treaty – also known as the Lisbon Treaty – was created instead, and Gordon Brown signed it in December 2007. The Conservatives and others claim that the Lisbon Treaty is sufficiently similar to the original one as to make no difference. So who is right? The European Union introduced a mandate in the summer of 2007 which said: "The constitutional concept, which consisted in repealing all existing treaties and replacing them by a single text called 'constitution', is abandoned." But a House of Commons research paper states that: "The content of the treaty, though not its structure, is similar in a great many respects to the EU Constitution." Open Europe, a think tank that calls for radical reform of the EU, has calculated that the original Treaty and the Lisbon Treaty are 90 per cent the same. While technically no promise of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty was ever made, it could be argued that the spirit of the manifesto means that Labour should offer a vote on it. But equally it could be argued that with the constitutional implications of the first Treaty removed, the promise has not been broken. So, two points: the Labour party seems to see referenda as a valid measure of the mood of the nation. When they can find a reason not to ask a question that they know an answer to, the Labour party will find any way to do 'what they think is right' for the nation, not what is actually right, or what they promised in their election manifesto. I would not normally point out the bleeding obvious, but at the risk of being called more playground names, if even the Labour Party see the need for a referendum, and promise one under some circumstances, perhaps your view is in a minority. The fact that they promised a referendum, but didn't allow us to have one reflects very badly on the Labour party.
It is worth remembering though that having a majority does not always mean that it is wise to do everything you wanted to, thus ignoring a sizeable minority of the voters. Just look at the disastrous turn of events in Egypt where the Muslim Brotherhood were, just, the majority when electing a president...who then felt he had a mandate. There are similar problems in Turkey too. If some way can be found to install an "alternative" candidate as Commission President it could be the best outcome (as long as it is not Tony Blair!). If we end up with Juncker the Eurosceptic MEPs will certainly be giving some performances in the parliament which will be noticed, which is perhaps what they want.
BTW, I liked this pic from the Channel 4 post: For some reason, I see this as a vault door waiting to close. Never to be opened again.
