With the corporatists' vicegrip over Europe weakening by the day, will the UK's departure be the card that brings the whole deck tumbling down?
Europe is entering a new, more dangerous phase in its development, and with an increasingly weak sense of purpose.
Mr Macron’s one-man political movement, En Marche! is ironically named indeed. The president can be forgiven for feeling a little bewildered as he sits, effectively besieged in the Elysee palace, caricatured by the increasingly militant Gilets Jaunes protesters as if he were some effete Bourbon.
After all, despite his previous adamantine stance, he has caved in to their demands that increases in the duty on diesel and petrol be reversed; he has offered them talks, though with his prime minister Edouard Philippe rather than himself, a move that may presage a certain amount of scapegoating. Mr Macron’s reforms of the French economy have barely registered, and yet the reaction against him has been violent, extreme and seems to have developed an ugly momentum of its own.
For a while, the contrast between a chaotic France and sobersided Germany is enticing. The reality is that both countries suffer from much the same economic and political malaise. Even in Germany, which has enjoyed remarkable export-led success, there is a section of the working class and certain regions that have not fully shared the rising tide of prosperity. In both countries, far-right parties have grown in strength and confidence to a degree that would have been unimaginable even a few years ago, virtually wiping out the socialists and social democrats as a political force. Much the same has happened in Sweden and elsewhere. The prospects for the elections to the European parliament next summer look especially grisly. The EU’s legislature – which has acquired important powers – may soon be transformed into a play pen for fascists, fruitcakes and fantasists, big time.
The Financial Times wrote:One of the most striking developments of the past three decades is how much richer the Republic of Ireland has become compared with the whole of the UK in general and Northern Ireland in particular. Commercially the union has been a calamity for Northern Ireland. Everyone has suffered financially, Catholic and Protestant, nationalist and unionist alike. Although rarely appreciated in the din of local politics and recrimination, as an economic experiment, Partition has been a disaster.
If we go back to Partition in 1921, 80 per cent of the industrial output of the entire island of Ireland came from the six counties that would become Northern Ireland, largely centred on Belfast. This was where all Irish industry was based. Northern Irish entrepreneurs and inventors were at the forefront of industrial innovation. By 1911, Belfast was the biggest city in Ireland and the north-east was by far the richest part of the island.
The collapse of the once-dynamic Northern Irish economy versus that of the Republic is stunning. Having been a fraction of the North’s at independence, the Republic’s industrial output is now far greater than that of Northern Ireland. Exports of goods and services from the Republic are €282.4bn; total exports from the North stand at a paltry €10.1bn. This obviously reflects the investment of multinationals, but it also underscores just how far ahead is the Republic’s industrial base. Producing close to 30 times more exports highlights a vast difference in the globalisation of business. In the Republic, one in six people are foreign-born — higher than the UK. In the North it is fewer than one in 20. According to the most comparable international indicators, income per head is now €22,000 in the once wealthy Northern Ireland and €38,000 in the once impoverished Republic of Ireland.
mrswdk wrote:With the corporatists' vicegrip over Europe weakening by the day, will the UK's departure be the card that brings the whole deck tumbling down?
The EU’s legislature – which has acquired important powers – may soon be transformed into a play pen for fascists, fruitcakes and fantasists, big time.
The ram wrote:The EU has industrialised, demilitarized and in many cases dehumanized the nation's it controls. One nuke on a full European parliament would do the trick, yeah there'd be a lot of civilians killed but they'd mainly be Belgian, so nothing lost, in most cases their already dead.
Really The ram, that's massive overkill. Let's not and say we did and as a result put a permanent concrete cap over the building to prevent the radiation leakage that would have occurred from ground zero. We may need forces to keep the people who would have otherwise been contaminated from escaping before the concrete cap sealed the location forever.
Ignore the fact that inflation is low, wages rising and unemployment at it's lowest since the 70s. This parasite has been trying to cajole scores of big companies to switch from Britain to the Netherlands on a promise of lower taxes. It's the EU that will die without us, their biggest economy Germany is shrinking and that's going to make it impossible for them to continue. Bye bye EU.
The ram wrote:https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/14/dutch-pm-on-brexit-uk-waning-country-too-small-stand-alone-mark-rutte
Ignore the fact that inflation is low, wages rising and unemployment at it's lowest since the 70s. This parasite has been trying to cajole scores of big companies to switch from Britain to the Netherlands on a promise of lower taxes. It's the EU that will die without us, their biggest economy Germany is shrinking and that's going to make it impossible for them to continue. Bye bye EU.
LOL -
Britain is a “waning country” and too small to stand alone on the world stage, the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, has claimed in a withering assessment of the UK’s exit from the EU.
What is Rutte thinking? Australia is 1/3 the population of the UK, with 10 times the territory to control and 130 million Indonesians who have been wanting to invade it since the 1950s, and it somehow has managed to eke along.
Pack Rat wrote:if it quacks like a duck and walk like a duck, it's still fascism
A no-deal Brexit carries "great risks" to medical supplies in the Netherlands and across the EU, the Dutch Federation of Academic Hospitals (NFU) warned Wednesday.
An "emergency law" has been requested to license the use of U.K.-certified medical supplies until the end of 2019, Reuters reports, amid growing concern that hospitals across the EU could be left without sufficient medical supplies if Britain crashes out of the bloc on March 29 with no deal. Medicines and medical goods account for one tenth of Britain's exports to the Netherlands.
The Netherlands has spent the last 80 years educating a generation of sociologists, art historians, and human rights attorneys, and they suddenly have come to realize they don't have anyone who knows how to build the things needed to run a modern civilization. The entire Dutch economy is basically propped-up by sex tourists and the fact Delta Airlines uses AMS as a fuel stop for Americans flying to Italy to eat at the Venice Olive Garden.
Pack Rat wrote:if it quacks like a duck and walk like a duck, it's still fascism
saxitoxin wrote:Oh, this is why Rutte is trying to distract ...
A no-deal Brexit carries "great risks" to medical supplies in the Netherlands and across the EU, the Dutch Federation of Academic Hospitals (NFU) warned Wednesday.
An "emergency law" has been requested to license the use of U.K.-certified medical supplies until the end of 2019, Reuters reports, amid growing concern that hospitals across the EU could be left without sufficient medical supplies if Britain crashes out of the bloc on March 29 with no deal. Medicines and medical goods account for one tenth of Britain's exports to the Netherlands.
saxitoxin wrote:What is Rutte thinking? Australia is 1/3 the population of the UK, with 10 times the territory to control and 130 million Indonesians who have been wanting to invade it since the 1950s, and it somehow has managed to eke along.
You're right. They sold themselves to China, not Indonesia.
saxitoxin wrote:Oh, this is why Rutte is trying to distract ...
A no-deal Brexit carries "great risks" to medical supplies in the Netherlands and across the EU, the Dutch Federation of Academic Hospitals (NFU) warned Wednesday.
An "emergency law" has been requested to license the use of U.K.-certified medical supplies until the end of 2019, Reuters reports, amid growing concern that hospitals across the EU could be left without sufficient medical supplies if Britain crashes out of the bloc on March 29 with no deal. Medicines and medical goods account for one tenth of Britain's exports to the Netherlands.
The Netherlands has spent the last 80 years educating a generation of sociologists, art historians, and human rights attorneys, and they suddenly have come to realize they don't have anyone who knows how to build the things needed to run a modern civilization. The entire Dutch economy is basically propped-up by sex tourists and the fact Delta Airlines uses AMS as a fuel stop for Americans flying to Italy to eat at the Venice Olive Garden.
We have similar problems here in Belgium, though I haven't heard any regarding medicine. Our government apparently assumed there would be at least some Brexit-deal, and therefor didn't start preparing for a hard-brexit soon enough. Though as your article states, this shouldn't pose too much of a problem. The EU simply has to grant some temporary licenses. The UK will likely have to do the same. After all if you look at the ranking of the top 10 drugs and medicine exporting countries in the world:
Seven Remain traitors attempt to undermine will of people by leaving Labour Party one month before Brexit deadline, immediately out selves as despicable self-serving racists:
The seven MPs, who all back a further EU referendum, are not launching a new political party - they will sit in Parliament as the Independent Group.
One of the seven MPs, Angela Smith, has had to apologise after being criticised for a comment about skin colour on BBC Two's Politics Live programme.
In a discussion about race, the MP appeared to say: "It's not just about being black or a funny tinge."
DoomYoshi wrote:You phrased that backwards. It should read China is part of Taiwan. There is only one China and it's legitimate center of power is in Taiwan.
I should note that as of today, I am rescinding my earlier position. Taiwan is the seat of an imposter, illegitimate government.
DoomYoshi wrote:You phrased that backwards. It should read China is part of Taiwan. There is only one China and it's legitimate center of power is in Taiwan.
I should note that as of today, I am rescinding my earlier position. Taiwan is the seat of an imposter, illegitimate government.
Good man. Another OT regular prepared to stand up and say the right thing, not the popular thing.
DoomYoshi wrote:You phrased that backwards. It should read China is part of Taiwan. There is only one China and it's legitimate center of power is in Taiwan.
I should note that as of today, I am rescinding my earlier position. Taiwan is the seat of an imposter, illegitimate government.
Good man. Another OT regular prepared to stand up and say the right thing, not the popular thing.
We should put Mongolia in charge of both. Then they could agree they both dislike something.
At this point I want to make it official. THANK GOD FOR BREXIT!
You see, the current owners of my company want to shut down my location immediately (if not sooner). They want to lift and shift our development boxes to Texas, probably taking months to reassemble everything back together. Fortunately, no one knows how BREXIT and the MiFID regulations are going to play out but everyone assumes that the UK will have their own separate set of MiFID asset reporting fields. So since we have important new fields that are being developed for the next release we get to keep some development and QA boxes until July.
Which is good because these movers look like bulls in a china shop. I've already seen one set of servers for some other project collapse into a pile of junk when the wheeled cart hit a bump moving into the passenger elevator.
It's also good because now that I have been saddled with the development management (wait, I thought you just wanted someone to run the SCRUM meetings) in addition to development support, release schedules now keep me up at night. (Or they would if it wasn't for my "My Pillow" and the way it makes it so much easier to sleep.)
Meanwhile, people all over Europe are growing tired of having their livelihoods dictated by a faceless and uncaring European Commission and are clamoring for their own freedom polls:
The European Union has not learnt the lessons of Brexit and could force Italy to reconsider its membership of the bloc, a senior Italian government adviser has told The Telegraph.
Mr Corrao said the EU was beholden to the markets, big business and financial actors and not to the concerns of citizens, especially not in Italians who, he said, had enough of austerity imposed from Brussels.
So people not looking forward to being killed violently like William Wallace that live on that island? Do you have other plans for when the Queen dies and the economy crashes?
