Your views on the UK's membership of the EU

[swee'pea99]

Big fan of the EU, glad the UK's part of it, always wondered whether the whole Euro project might be a step too far. Have to say it's increasingly looking that way. How can a country with 2% growth and another with -2% have the same base rate? Makes no sense to me.

 

[Globalti]

Having lived and worked in Spain and having Greek customers I can tell you with certainty that business and public life in both countries are as corrupt as hell. A Greek bloke told me yesterday that most of Greece's wealth is in the hands of eight very rich men; the Greek government has asked them to stump up just ten percent of their loot, which will be enough to solve all Greece's problems. They have refused, saying they don't want to open their books up to scrutiny.

Against that kind of scenario, what hope is there of relatively well regulated countries like the UK and Scandinavia cooperating in a common market?

 

[threebikesmcginty]

Why on earth is this in the cafe?

I'm starting a 'What's Your Favourite Scooby-Doo Episode'? in P 'n' L.

 

[Fab Foodie]

Why on earth is this in the cafe?

Dunno, is it a big deal?

 

[Fnaar]

But we can't summarily execute this thread and drag it through the streets to "Current Affairs & Debates"... we have to keep it alive and give it a fair trial first.

[edit: damn, I thought this was the Gaddafi thread]

 

[accountantpete]

Why on earth is this in the cafe?

I can see Mort's point - he has a very firm opinion as to what constitutes entertainment in the cafe and this sort of post stops all that.

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

But we can't summarily execute this thread and drag it through the streets to "Current Affairs & Debates"... we have to keep it alive and give it a fair trial first.

[edit: damn, I thought this was the Gaddafi thread]

Being half Swiss and half a Celtic mixed salad, I'm what I think of as an european - I'll leave the capital E for the big European power brokers currently holding the continent to ransom. Methinks the French are trying to punch above their weight and will have to stand down confronted with an implacable Germany. The French just need a face-saving way of packaging defeat as a victory to their public.

 

[Fab Foodie]

But we can't summarily execute this thread and drag it through the streets to "Current Affairs & Debates"... we have to keep it alive and give it a fair trial first.

[edit: damn, I thought this was the Gaddafi thread]

I'm thinking if more despotic threads met their end being dragged through the forum to a slow death in 'Current affairs ...' instead of escaping to a safe area like 'Know-how' for the rest or their years, or alternatively a show-trial and cosy imprisonment in a locked thread, we'd have less Gadaffi threads not more in this world.

 

[Archie_tect]

Well I'm going out.... I may be some time.

 

[Archie_tect]

....I'd maybe give that 5 minutes if I were you.

 

[Headgardener]

What ever happened to the European Common Market that we as a nation were sold by Ted Heath's Government back in '73? I wasn't old enough to vote otherwise I would have voted no. Come to think of it did we have a referendum I can't remember as I was only 13?

 

[diapason]

Yes, there was a referendum, but it was 'sold' as a trading agreement between the sovereign states, not, as it is now becoming, a Fourth German Reich.

 

[Archie_tect]

For you Tommy...

My memories of the 70s?

The world is a very different place now to 1973... when the Eastern Block was a distant place but not a financial burden. We still had manufacturing and the energy crisis was just starting to make it's mark as coal stocks declined before North Sea Oil had begun flowing - when Made in China still meant shoddy, cheap plastic toys. When Datsun and Toyota were still fledgling car manufacturers with poor quality products.

Because France and Germany had vetoed Britain's entry into the Common Market, it became an aspiration rather than a practical advantage.