Click here for Arsenal FC news and reports

Page 6 of 8 FirstFirst ... 45678 LastLast
Results 51 to 60 of 73

Thread: I always thought the Speaker's role was simply that of a chairman of the

  1. #51
    Quote Originally Posted by Ash View Post
    globalist technocracy v democratic sovereignty.
    Will you and Berni shut the fúck with the technocracy or at least define what one is .. I thang ya

  2. #52
    Quote Originally Posted by Herbert Augustus Chapman View Post
    Will you and Berni shut the fúck with the technocracy or at least define what one is .. I thang ya
    Rule by 'expert'.


  3. #53
    Quote Originally Posted by Ash View Post
    When you said you were a globalist. One follows the other like night follows day. Globalism is a paradise for predatory capital, seeking the lowest costs anywhere in the world. For workers, this means a race for the bottom, where the person that will do the job for the lowest wage, for the longest hours, and in the worst conditions .... "wins".



    Civil servants, aka the permanent government, cannot be accountable unless you elect them. I'd like to see both parties blown up (not literally) and replaced by parties representing the new divide - globalist technocracy v democratic sovereignty.
    When I said I'm a globalist I meant that I consider us all human beings and want us to live as one united people. I intended no implication about the nature of the capitalist system in a globalised world.

    I just want us all to live together peacefully. Nationalism is therefore the antithesis of my beliefs.

    You could have them acountable to various committees. I'm not gonna get into practical policy proposals. It was more a humourous thought experiment based on the fact that the autocratic Tibet-invading scum have done better than my democratic lads in the last 25 years and the fact that both front benches in the UK are full of donkeys.

  4. #54
    Quote Originally Posted by Ash View Post
    Just because some EU members are not in the EZ doesn't make the EZ irrelevant to the EU. It is intrinsic to the trajectory of the project. When a country cannot set its interest rates or float its currency it cannot adapt to the market and will suffer. Therefore the EZ, a core aspect of the EU has failed. You know this, I believe.

    Where did I say it was fine for May to keep taking her bill back? You've put the cart before the horse by saying that a second referendum makes the EU look like May. Other way round, chronologically. The fact that national governments regularly support the EU over the wishes of their own people points to the corruption and failure to represent of the political class as a whole. This will change.

    The ruling elite will never reform unless they are forced.
    But they always do this with the support of the democratically elected domestic govt of the country being forced to vote again.

    I don't like it, and it's far from perfect. But like the UK parliament in the C18th, it's heading in the right direction.

    I'm sure it will get there eventually, and will do so quicker and more easily with UK involvement.

    The EZ will have to change. I don't know in which direction, but it isn't my problem. I was happy with us outside the EZ, outside Schengen and with a rebate.

    I also think it will be much easier in the coming decade. The continent won't be dominated by Merkell trying to atone for past crimes. The new leader will have to watch her right flank for the AfD. The rise of populism will keep the federalists in check.

    In short, that fückwitted cünt Cameron called the vote at precisely the wrong time - after a banking collapse saw the bankers get off scott free and the public hit with years of austerity, and with Merkel acting like the Holy Roman Emperor and calling every swarthy type near the Med to come and live among us.

    If he'd held his nerve for a decade, then things would have gradually come to refrom in our direction during the 2020s.

    Though obviously, all the above is just my supposition and has no inherent validity. And, barring some heroic 2nd vote, it will all be hypothetical.

  5. #55
    Quote Originally Posted by Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult View Post
    When I said I'm a globalist I meant that I consider us all human beings and want us to live as one united people. I intended no implication about the nature of the capitalist system in a globalised world.

    I just want us all to live together peacefully. Nationalism is therefore the antithesis of my beliefs.
    I'm all for peace too, and I've no truck with those who blather about "frogs" and "wops". How can we be united though with people who have opposing values. Better to draw a line in the sand and say for example "ok, on this side we do it our way, and on that side you do it yours.

    You could have them acountable to various committees. I'm not gonna get into practical policy proposals. It was more a humourous thought experiment based on the fact that the autocratic Tibet-invading scum have done better than my democratic lads in the last 25 years and the fact that both front benches in the UK are full of donkeys.
    I see, and who are the the committees accountable to? More committees? All the way up the supreme emperor?

    As a wise man once said (paraphrasing) "If you have power there are three questions I have for you. How did you get it? In whose interests do you wield it? and How do we get rid of you?"

    There's a word for a supra-national entity with little or no democracy: Empire. The same wise man also said "As a government minister being summoned to Brussels was like being dragged to Rome in chains".

  6. #56
    Quote Originally Posted by Burney View Post
    Horseshít. By abdicating responsibility for vast swathes of our legislative processes to an unelected foreign bureaucracy, we have degraded the quality and ability of our parliamentarians to the point where they are unable to legislate effectively, display a truly pathetic grasp of policy detail and have lost all respect for their offices and for their democratic responsibilities, traditions, precedents and duties.

    Parliament has, by inches, been separated from the people to such an extent that there is now a vast and unbridgeable gulf between them. We consequently have parliamentarians whose first loyalty is not to this country but to Brussels and a speaker who has now chosen to breach the single most important aspect of his role - impartiality - in order to aid the cause of a hostile foreign power against an elected and Royally-appointed government.

    And this is not a Tory problem. This is a democracy problem - a voter problem. The fact that people can spout the former without realising the latter is rather at the heart of the matter.
    The distortion field is strong in this one.

  7. #57
    Quote Originally Posted by Ash View Post
    I'm all for peace too, and I've no truck with those who blather about "frogs" and "wops". How can we be united though with people who have opposing values. Better to draw a line in the sand and say for example "ok, on this side we do it our way, and on that side you do it yours.



    I see, and who are the the committees accountable to? More committees? All the way up the supreme emperor?

    As a wise man once said (paraphrasing) "If you have power there are three questions I have for you. How did you get it? In whose interests do you wield it? and How do we get rid of you?"

    There's a word for a supra-national entity with little or no democracy: Empire. The same wise man also said "As a government minister being summoned to Brussels was like being dragged to Rome in chains".
    Just to reiterate, I have no answers. I'm a historian who doesn't have to worry about the real world too much, so it's mostly just a thought experiment looking in units of centuries.

    But I do know, that just like most people will have coffee coloured skin in a millennium, and many will speak English to a converstational level*, the C19th concept of a modern nation state will give way to continental blocs and eventually, assuming we don't destroy our species, global govt with subsidiarity.

    And as such, the EU is a step towards the future and Brexit is retrograde.

    This is why I support it, not because it means I can doss round Europe more. When I said globalist, it meant I looked at a species, not national level. And this integration during the next millennium will be the best thing that has ever happened to humanity.

    In 25 years, I've seen several hundred million Indians move from what we'd have considered penury to a comfortable, consumerist, middle class life.

    And we need continental (i.e. EU etc) blocs to stop the tech giants and other monoploy capitalists taking the pîss. And eventually global govt to stop tax havens.

    "This world was made a common treasury for everyone to share."

    *The difference in the numbers of yoots wot speak English in France now compared to 25 years ago. Half the signs are in Franglais or pure English, all the tech terms are English. Half the internet is in English and many of the youtube vids the kids watch are too.

    As such, we're creating a global culture. Give it a century and you'll see the west having an overarching intl culture.

    And then your ghost will remember that rock and roll music was the start, but Teknivals was the first in Europe where our music could be understood by all nationalities.

  8. #58
    Quote Originally Posted by Burney View Post
    Horseshít. By abdicating responsibility for vast swathes of our legislative processes to an unelected foreign bureaucracy, we have degraded the quality and ability of our parliamentarians to the point where they are unable to legislate effectively, display a truly pathetic grasp of policy detail and have lost all respect for their offices and for their democratic responsibilities, traditions, precedents and duties.

    Parliament has, by inches, been separated from the people to such an extent that there is now a vast and unbridgeable gulf between them. We consequently have parliamentarians whose first loyalty is not to this country but to Brussels and a speaker who has now chosen to breach the single most important aspect of his role - impartiality - in order to aid the cause of a hostile foreign power against an elected and Royally-appointed government.

    And this is not a Tory problem. This is a democracy problem - a voter problem. The fact that people can spout the former without realising the latter is rather at the heart of the matter.

    Well, you haven't lost your sense of humour, b.
    "Scoring a goal is better than sex" - Whoever said that was sticking it to the wrong woman

  9. #59
    With this sort, it's nothing to do with being taken seriously; it's enough that you take them at all, give them and their thoughts the time of day. For them, that's a huge win.

    I don't suppose you've had too much experience of this but, no; they're like children or neglected, ignored hounds. They will do and say whatever gets them attention. And it makes no difference whether it's good attention or bad. The attention itself is all that mattress. #DaddyIssues



    Quote Originally Posted by Ash View Post
    So there we have it. You support the EU because you openly despise democracy and wish to be ruled by technocrats and giant capitalist corporations.

    Yet you hang around with yellow vests, boast of decades of selfish nihilism and pretend to be a rebel.

    Why would anyone take you seriously?
    "Plenty of strikers can score goals," he said, gesturing to the famous old stands casting shadows around us.

    "But a lot have found it difficult wearing the number 9 shirt for The Arsenal."

  10. #60
    Quote Originally Posted by Ash View Post
    No, the popular votes that went against the EU were overturned by the executive, not by elected representatives. Your county is not a political entity, but if you mean your constituency then it's a straw man anyway. When unelected commissioners over-rule referendum results that is pretty much as undemocratic as it gets, and no amount of sophistry will change that.
    I'd have to understand the specifics of how the executive overturned the popular votes; I'm willing to bet it is more complicated then you are suggesting.

    BTW, the article below suggests that your portrayal of the lack of democracy within the EU is superficial, and with all due respect mate, I'm inclined to believe the chap who wrote it. It has never made sense to me that the EU countries would accept an EU that was as undemocratic as you and Burney portray it to be, and the article below makes it clear that it is not.

    A popular claim by many supporters of the Leave campaign is that the EU is run by ‘unelected bureaucrats’. How much truth is there behind that claim?

    This claim mainly refers to the EU Commission: the EU’s executive body. It is true that the Commission President and the individual Commissioners are not directly elected by the peoples of Europe. So, in that sense, we cannot “throw the scoundrels out”. It is also true that under the provisions of the EU treaty, the Commission has the sole right to propose EU legislation, which, if passed, is then binding on all the EU member states and the citizens of these member states.

    But, that’s not the end of the story. First, the Commission’s power to propose legislation is much weaker than it at first seems. The Commission can only propose laws in those areas where the EU governments have unanimously agreed to allow it to do under the EU treaty. Put another way, the Commission can only propose EU laws in areas where the UK government and the House of Commons has allowed it to do so.


    Jean-Claude Juncker. Credits: Friends of Europe.

    Also, ‘proposing’ is not the same as ‘deciding’. A Commission proposal only becomes law if it is approved by both a qualified-majority in the EU Council (unanimity in many sensitive areas) and a simple majority in the European Parliament. In practice this means that after the amendments adopted by the governments and the MEPs, the legislation usually looks very different to what the Commission originally proposed. In this sense, the Commission is much weaker than it was in the 1980s, when it was harder to amend its proposals in the Council and when the European Parliament did not have amendment and veto power.

    Part of the misunderstanding about the power of the Commission perhaps stems from a comparison with the British system of government. Unlike the British government, which commands a majority in the House of Commons, the Commission does not command an in-built majority in the EU Council or the European Parliament, and so has to build a coalition issue-by-issue. This puts the Commission in a much weaker position in the EU system than the British government in the UK system.

    Second, the Commission President and the Commissioners are indirectly elected. Under Article 17 of the EU treaty, as amended by the Lisbon Treaty, the Commission President is formally proposed by the European Council (the 28 heads of government of the EU member states), by a qualified-majority vote, and is then ‘elected’ by a majority vote in the European Parliament. In an effort to inject a bit more democracy into this process, the main European party families proposed rival candidates for the Commission President before the 2014 European Parliament elections. Then, after the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) won the most seats in the new Parliament, the European Council agreed to propose the EPP’s candidate: Jean-Claude Juncker.

    The problem in Britain, though, is that this new way of ‘electing’ the Commission President did not feel very democratic. None of the main British parties are in the EPP (the Conservatives left the EPP in 2009), and so British voters were not able to vote for Juncker (although they could vote against him). There was also very little media coverage in the UK of the campaigns between the various candidates for the Commission President, so few British people understand how the process worked (unlike in some other member states). But, we can hardly blame the EU for the Conservatives leaving the EPP or for our media failing to cover the Commission President election campaign!

    Then, once the Commission President is chosen, each EU member state nominates a Commissioner, and each Commissioner is then subject to a hearing in one of the committees of the European Parliament (modelled on US Senate hearings of US Presidential nominees to the US cabinet). If a committee issues a ‘negative opinion’ the candidate is usually withdrawn by the government concerned. After the hearings, the team of 28 is then subject to an up/down ‘investiture vote’ by a simple majority of the MEPs.

    Finally, once invested, the Commission as a whole can be removed by a two-thirds ‘censure vote’ in the European Parliament. This has never happened before, but in 1999 the Santer Commission resigned before a censure vote was due to be taken which they were likely to lose. So, yes, the Commission is not directly elected. But it is not strictly true to say that it is ‘unelected’ or unaccountable.

    And, in many ways, the way the Commission is now chosen is similar to the way the UK government is formed. Neither the British Prime Minister nor the British cabinet are ‘directly elected’. Formally, in House of Commons elections, we do not vote on the choice for the Prime Minister, but rather vote for individual MPs from different parties. Then, by convention, the Queen chooses the leader of the largest party in the House of Commons to form a government. This is rather like the European Council choosing the candidate of the political group with the most seats in the European Parliament to become the Commission President.

    Then, after the Prime Minister is chosen, he or she is free to choose his or her cabinet ministers. There are no hearings of individual ministerial nominees before committees of the House of Commons, and there is no formal investiture vote in the government as a whole. From this perspective, the Commissioners and the Commission are more scrutinised and more accountable than British cabinet ministers.

    So, it is easy to claim that the EU is run by ‘unelected bureaucrats’, but the reality is quite a long way from that. Although, having said that, I would be one of the first to acknowledge that the EU does not feel as democratic as it could or should be – as I have spent much of my academic career writing about this issue. But, this is perhaps more to do with the stage of development of the EU than because of the procedures that are now in place for choosing and removing the Commission, which are far more ‘democratic’ than they were 5 or 10 years ago.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •