Stephen Booth

With respect, I disagree with some of what has been posted on here. I think various assumptions need to be examined: ----

(1) Protectionism is a bad thing / We need to (or even MUST) participate in a global economy.
Our lifestyles would be different if we did not participate as much in the global economy, because we would not have access to various types of consumer goods which are produced abroad. Provided we could have access to the appropriate raw materials, we could manufacture our own goods here. A reduction in the amount of goods being consumed might even be a good thing. As would a reduction in transportation.

(2) if we withdraw from the Global economy it will be painful.
This may be so, assuming (1) above, the love of the consumer goods manufactured abroad, but in my submission here, we need to be weaned off them, anyway.

(3) Similar to (2) If we withdraw from the EU this will be painful.
Our continued involvement is destroying Britain. We have no choice but to leave the EU, if we are to continue to exist. Some of the pain the pro-globalisation / pro-EU posters describe on here as attributable under (3) is really answered under (2). The EU is a manifestation of globalisation.

(4) If Britain withdrew from the EU then foreign investors would withdraw from Britain.
We do not need fairweather friends like these. These people are part of the problem for Britain. If they want to go then let them.

(5) Similar to (4) International Standards are a covert form of protectionism and British manufacturers (if any are left) have to conform to them.
Standards are a double edged weapon. If foreign markets exclude British goods under the guise of 'standards' then let British Standards be applied to foreign companies wishing to import to the UK.
[The example of the EU removal of lead from solder, which allows tin to form microscopic threads which short out electronic equipment is one of the examples of the total stupidity of EU so-called 'standards'. Remember the building that collapsed at the Paris airport? etc etc etc]

(6) People here seem to have a pessimism about the capacity of Britain to feed herself, re-establish a manufacturing base capable of meeting our own needs.
I think we are quite capable of doing this, if we have to. We are resourceful, inventive, flexible, capable. Free people from bureaucratic limitations and they will flourish.

(7) If we stopped paying into the EU, then the EU payments to Britain would stop, and this would be a bad thing.
This is a one way street in the wrong direction. If we took the money we pay into the EU, and used this to pay ourselves for things, we would benefit. I suggest we take all the money currently being wasted on the EU, and pump this into our armed forces.

(8) Gross assumption at the head of this thread - the recession / economic downturn is harming Britain more than it is harming Europe. We will be forced to adopt the Euro.
The truth is the opposite of this, in my view. Club Med will drag down the Germans and Scandinavian countries. How much will the high value of the Euro cut its capacity to sell its goods? Britain will be less affected.

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Britain Out of Europe Now !

Baron von Lotsov

I could do it in one bullet point: The truth.

Some people are far from aware of what the EU is doing to the UK. It's refreshing to see other people getting to grips with the problem though.

What do you have to say about the £167 billion in quango expenditure? Do you think all of this helps our economy? Would you actually pay for these quangos if they were offered to you as a product you could go to the shops and buy?

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"A government big enough to supply you with everything you need, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have..."

The Bear

It’s not the consumer goods upon which we depend, it’s the essentials of life that we have to import from overseas. With our population at an unknown level but well above 60 million there is simply no way that we could produce the food that the nation now needs especially with oil at around $130 plus per barrel.

Remember, it takes around 15 barrels of oil to deliver a cow to market.

We can’t withdraw from the global market as we need the essentials of life and so we can’t withdraw from the global economy if for no other reason than the need to imnport the essentials of life.

We now can not withdraw from the EU since we are in such terrible trouble with the level of debt that we have taken on both in the public and the private sector we now need to get absolutely embedded with the EU and especially the ECB.

Can’t be done. These investors are actually the owners in most cases and where they are not the owners they are the mortgage holders. Loose them and we loose the ability to buy on the global market, loose that and starve.

Like they will care. The difficulty we face is continuing to import in the face of rising debt.

There’s a much more serious issue that tin migration, it’s gold migration on fine detail circuitry PCA’s.

The removal of lead from the environment is a price well worth paying and it is to the shame of the British government it needed to be made to do what it should have done years ago.

Propose a business plan that shows how this might be done. Then propose how it might be funded taking account of our financial position.

We are investing in the development of the United States of Europe which is the right thing to do and provides us witn the strength of belonging to a power bloc. On our own we can not survive, especially with the population of these small grossly overpopulated islands.

As for our armed services, we should be looking forward to being a part of the USE armed services. Having our own in any form beyond the equivalent of a National Guard for internal security and community service is outdated, useless, and a thing to be put behind us along with our Empire and especially the useless Commonwealth.

The Euro will fall to some extent, (the US dollar hasn't even started to see its decline) but unless we join with the Euro, and soon, the pound will go into free fall.

Britain is bankrupt.

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I am an old man. I have eaten much salt.

youcanhandlethetruth

Yep accoring to Bear nothing can be done without handing over all power over to federalized bureaucracies which drain Britain's resources.

When Bear says "Britain is bankrupt" and "unless we join with the Euro, and soon, the pound will go into free fall." he fails to mention that it is the plan to collapse Britain's financial economy as a way of pushing for Britain to be part of the European superstate (as well as allowing the banks to consolidate all the assets attributed with a financial collapse)

Exactly the same as in America right now with the federal reserve weakening the dollar for a coming collapse by design.

Bear wants Britain to be bankrupt, because that way he gets to see more bureacracy to "save us" from the engineered crisis.

Has Bear "loost" it again ? Or is it just a mental "bloc" ?

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Before tyranny and television, "conspiracy theorists" never existed.

cointelpro/halfwits: Akria,Clippo,Besoeker,Bear,Eurosceptic Antlantacist,MikeUK

Wowbanger TIP

Problem is Bear that you gotta have the Green if ya wanna be a player.

We haven't got the Green, all we have is a bloated surplus deindustrialized population.

When reality bites, which can not be far off now, we will be revealed as what we are, broke chancers practicing an enormous confidence trick on the productive peoples and nations of the world.

And when they cut us out of the dollar = oil = goods loop we are going to about as globalized as Chad is now.

Don't believe me?

Remember 70s? Strikes, hyper inflation, the IMF, riots, social collapse and, if some rumors are to be believed, Lord Mountbatten rattling the sabre represented by the Parachute regiment along the railings of Downing Street while Wilson kept a revolver loaded with a single bullet in his desk drawer.

And what happened next?

Thats right, the black gold started flowing out of the icy North Sea and are credit was once again accepted with a smile in the global bazaar.

Problem is North Sea oil production peaked way back in 99'.

Between 2004 and 06 it fell by 25%

We now are a net importer of petroleum products.

And its looking very like we are picking up where we left off back in 79'. Except that fact that we have used the intervening 20 years to carefully rig our society so that it is optimally placed to explode in the most spectacular fashion conceivable.

Oh and if some of the estimates around Saudi production are anything like right our friends are going to be right next to us in the toilet bowl of history and there will be no-one off which to beg the meanest charity imaginable.

We will see then what the "new world order" is worth, personally I'm not relying on Chinese made Airbuses delivering thousands of tons of aid while the Oriental version of Bob Geldof demands his countrymen "Give us the F&*(king money, NOW!". If you are I fear your going to be sadly disappointed.

The Bear

OK, let’s, get to the beef in the burger.

OK, YCHT, To start with what plan to "collapse Britain’s financial economy", and by who?

Unless you mean by the former USSR funded left wing activists of the past Old Labour governments, now that I would buy, or the US strategy to break up the Empire as a price for aid in WW2, a little known but nonetheless recorded fact.

The impression that a whole lot of people have is that the EU is hell bent on “draining Britain’s resources”.

Although we are a net contributor to the EU at present we most certainly are not alone in that and if the market that is opened up to us as a result of being an EU state is factored in, and I don’t mean simply the EU, I mean markets that we access because of EU influence and investments on the real bottom line we gain by our membership.

It’s also worth just considering for a moment that we are not the biggest contributor to the EU though from some of the hysteria around that is the impression that many people have. Above us are Germany, France, and Italy with German contributions being damm near double those that we make.

At this point, YCHT, let me give you a little “pressie”. (you may know about this, you may not) and suggest you visit

Reporters sans frontières - Annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index - 2006

and check out where Britain stands on press freedom and consequentially press manipulation.

I suspect that if the press were not being manipulated to the extent that it is the understanding of just what a hell of a mess Britain actually is in, and what the EU really is all about and it being far more than the straightness of bananas, it would make more than a few people far less sceptical about the EU and a damm sight more sceptical about our government.

The reasons that we are where we are today are principally Brown running a “borrow and inflate the GDP” economy together with big business creaming their share of the action from the economic activity, an activity that Brown has inflated with such disastrous results.

Not by design on this occasion, by sheer incompetence and throwing good money after bad, not to mention paying the price to buy friends and influence by a policy that I strongly suspect was driven by big business and greed.

One thing as regards the US that must not be ignored is that they at least have massive natural resources. We don’t.

No, I hate to see Britain bankrupt, I am mortified at how our arrogant incompetent politicians have screwed the nation in a way that was hidden by the bustle of a hugely inflated economy and the economic activity that resulted being mistaken for economic health.

As regards the EU, up to ten years ago I would have done just about anything to help get us the hell out of Europe, and up to about ten years ago it would have been viable.

Very painful, socially difficult, but still viable. Just.

About ten years ago it ceased to be. Since then the urgency to get fully stuck in has increased and my concern is that this shower of bloody fools may have left it too late and that the next government may not dare go for full entry ASAP. It’s not a cure all / fix all solution, all it will achieve is reducing the impact on Britain of what is coming down the track for all of us as the global economy reshapes itself.

I don’t think either. I think it ‘s just that I see a bigger picture, a picture that I don’t like but that not liking will not change it by one iota.

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I am an old man. I have eaten much salt.

Earthling

Wrong. We pay more into the EU than we get back.
We would have more money if we left the EU. That is a fact.

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youcanhandlethetruth

"Not by design on this occasion, by sheer incompetence and throwing good money after bad, not to mention paying the price to buy friends and influence by a policy that I strongly suspect was driven by big business and greed."

Except for when you say "sheer incompetence" - these people like Bernanke are not incompetent or they would be sacked.

It is the policy of the U.S government not to budget - they are spending a fortune on the war and have a huge trade deficit.

But it is also true that the fed and Bernnanke act in the interests of the banks and corporations, not what is best for the US economy.

if not, why is Bernanke attending the Bilderberg conference along with David Rockefeller and all ?

There are many more reasons to back up this assertion like Greenspam slagging off the dollar.

The biggest one though is the fact that they are already printing the Amero as a new currency for the North American Union(NAU) when the dollar collapses - how do you explain that one Bear if they weren't planning for the dollar collapse and replacement ?

Have a good look at prominent people that have called for the abolision of the fed and you'll understand why decisions get made.....

Not incompetence but U.S policy.

As for Britain I suspect the plan is exactly the same to force us into the Euro.

__________________
Before tyranny and television, "conspiracy theorists" never existed.

cointelpro/halfwits: Akria,Clippo,Besoeker,Bear,Eurosceptic Antlantacist,MikeUK

The Bear

I’m no fan of the US or its government.

I was aware of the discussions about the creation of a North American version of The Euro (the Amero) but from what I’ve seen and heard it’s closer to being a NAFTA version of the ECU at this stage, with the equivalent of the Euro coming later.

The only thing is ….. the effect of the oil shock and the shift in global wealth have not yet been factored in.

I would not be in the least bit surprised if the US border wall between the US and Mexico gets completed, several meters higher than presently planned, electrified, and with armed guards ever few meters …… by the Mexicans.

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I am an old man. I have eaten much salt.

youcanhandlethetruth

I don't like to admit it but your last comment was amusing.

Not that it's any laughing matter.

The US border wall is a nice piece of propaganda - actually they're waving them in as much as possible and millions of Mexicans are now in America.
Los Angeles = the new Mexico.

I don't blame the Mexicans at all, but it makes a mockery of America's supposed high security measures and "homeland security" in face of the (phoney) war on terror.

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Before tyranny and television, "conspiracy theorists" never existed.

cointelpro/halfwits: Akria,Clippo,Besoeker,Bear,Eurosceptic Antlantacist,MikeUK