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Posts Tagged ‘European Economy’

All Socialists are Pond Life…but so too are their equivalents on the political Right, both are stuck fast in “nostrums and remedies” based upon political dogma from the past that have little to no relevance in today’s world. The biggest problem when faced with the failure, real or apparent of one course of action, is to immediately correct it by steering sharply in the opposite direction which seems to be the reaction of the French people in electing Hollande to the Presidency.

Whilst this is natural, when it comes to nations and economies, perhaps this is not the wisest course of action to take in fact, it is most likely the wrong one and can lead to lots of unintended and nasty consequences.

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Apparently the former ‘Dark Lord’, an European Groupie if ever there was, Peter Mandleson has put forward the idea that we should hold a UK Referendum on an IN or OUT basis. As someone wryly commented, a proposition that only a person no longer seeking elected office could make. Of course it is more likely that as the EU isn’t a burning issue with the British public, his guess is that confronted with a straight choice, they could be easily intimidated by tales of what they might lose by leaving the EU, a very Brussels stance if ever there was.

However and even for those of an “Visceral Anti-EU” posture, the fact that someone like Mandy proposes it, of itself might indicate that there is no need for an “IN/OUT” Referendum because the EU as we currently know it, is unlikely to survive it’s Nemesis the Euro.

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The French have that lovely expression: “Plus ça change plus c’est la même chose”- The more things change, the more they stay the same and I suspect that that is the case with the election of Francois Hollande as the new French President. The truth is that for all the noises and echoes of the election trail, as things currently stand, there is little prospect of significant change.

None of the key elements have changed, the problems are the same and frankly as the UK Coalition Government knows, having power under these circumstances is a bit of a poisoned chalice, being in Opposition is safer. The only problem then of course as in the case of Mr Hollande, is when you stop being the Opposition and are now in power ! Alors ! Merde and other such words…

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For an exercise in soft and weak minded liberalism, it would be hard to beat an editorial in The Independent that prattles on about youth unemployment. Whilst they sketch out some of the issues rather as plotting dots on a chart, they totally fail to join those dots up. The current levels of unemployment are distressing in all sorts of ways but what this Editorial like most politicians seem to miss is the key point about these figures…

This is not the disease, it is just a symptom of the real underlying ailment that is not local but global in nature. If you want to read it yourself, here is the link: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-we-allow-joblessness-to-rise-at-our-peril-7627537.html

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The reality is that to the majority of British people and no doubt like our elections to others, foreign Presidential/Government Elections are interesting but also “rather alien” in their own way too. This is how we mainly view the current French Presidential election from this side of the Channel. Of course this is not totally true for all inhabitants of these isles, we apparently have such a large and mainly young French population that they have their own representation !

As an Englishman I can speculate on who I favour but I don’t have an emotional attachment to any candidate nor a proper understanding of their political parties. Sarkozy seems always mercurial and often odd in his reactions, snubbing Cameron at an EU Summit and yet coming through whole heartedly over the Libya Campaign.

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Although I am sure that something will spark me off again, sooner rather than later, I find our current political scene amazingly flat, totally boring and not worth too much effort to write about. I even feel sorry for the Media struggling to create drama out of very little, Greg’s Pasties and so on, how boring, boring boring.

We have the Local Elections which should see a fairly big swing to Labour. This will not be due to the ‘charms’ of Ed Miliband but rather that the public normally likes to vote against the incumbent party in Government when it comes to the mid term Local Elections. Of course the “buggeration factor” will be what happens to the LibDem vote…

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There is a proposal by a UKIP Peer Lord Pearson of Rannoch to set up a House of Lords Committee to examine the value of the UK belonging to the European Union. It is envisaged that the membership of this committee would be made up of seven people, two “For”, two “Against”, two of no strong view on the matter and, an independent chairman.

The idea would be by diligent examination of the issues, it must be possible to arrive at a firm view, backed with facts that says that it is either “In” or “Against” the UK’s interests to be a member of the European Union. This is a fine ambition I might suggest but there are quite a number of obvious problems with the whole idea…

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I really do find John Rentoul who writes for The Independent, a great read even when I disagree with him and today, fell about laughing with the opening paragraph of his article:

“If we are isolated and we are in the right, then that’s the correct position.” The Prime Minister was emphatic. Just because he had used Britain’s veto, he said, did not mean that he, or the British, were anti-European.” It was apparently what Tony Blair said after using a British Veto in Helsinki back in December 1999.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/john-rentoul/john-rentoul-any-pm-would-have-done-as-cameron-did-6275402.html#disqus_thread

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Whatever else may be said or written, as an Englishman, I am just so ‘stoked’ that for once, a British Prime Minister has returned from an EU Meeeting having made a positive decision and without excuses about why they were mugged by the ‘other big boys’, that is something even the ‘sainted Maggie’ never did. Well done David Cameron, I say.

Well we have the overnight fallout from the EU Conference on Treaty Changes to accommodate the Euro Crisis although these “changes” obviously don’t require a Treaty Change, they are just a further strengthening of the so called stability pact rules that everyone has already disregarded, led by Germany and France in the first place. What a load of bullshit this all was !

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As someone who updates this personal blog fairly frequently and “follows the news”, I can understand to some extent, just how difficult life must be for a professional journalist tasked to deliver “opinion pieces” for the national dailies at set intervals. But all that said, sometimes it might be better to ‘not deliver’ than to deliver half baked tripe as Peter Oborne did today in The Telegraph, check it out for yourself: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100120951/george-osborne-should-be-looking-after-the-purse-strings-not-the-politics/

My ‘objection’ to this piece was nothing to do with whether or not I agreed with the author, it was quite simply down to what in substance was a really stupid stance to take so for me, it was not one to ‘let pass’…as it were.

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