I have changed my mind - the EU is growing on me.

[TashkentFox]

I'm not sure the analogy works. When were the English ever 'sent home' (away from Britain)? All that happened was that we entered into a political union. In any case, the 'invading barbarians' came to this island over 1000 years ago and I'm not sure we can so easily separate the invaders from the invaded, still less say where they should be sent. If we applied this principle more widely the entire population of Europe would be on the move.

The Angles/Saxons/whatever were never more than a few thousand in number, the vast majority of the people remained of Brythonic/Celtic ethnicity. I am not calling for anyone to be sent home (because the actual distinct groups of people who invaded no longer exist, only the lines they drew on the map remain) just for the scars left on this country by foreign subjegation to be healed, and I believe england to be one of those scars. Presently, the internationalist ruling elite are using this non-entity to undermine the national integrity of the country, they were very deliberate in their establishment of devolved assemblies for Caledonia and Cymru, they did it to divide the people against themselves to prevent us from uniting against our real enemies.

[British Obama]

After being very anti EU for all of my political life and being anti EU for the sake of it, I have recently started to take an unbiased objective look at the EU and the future potential of the Union.

I know the EU has a long way to go before it becomes totally acceptable, I am starting to believe that it can become acceptable. I know there are many examples of ridiculousness and various horror stories but I am starting to see past all that.

Once you start looking at the positives of our membership of the EU then it is inevitable that you will come to see that the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages. Even during the current crisis EU countries are sticking together and helping each other and not just financially. Iceland, a non EU, non Euro nation experienced almost exactly the same situation that the Irish and others face right now. They had no-one to support them, they went bankrupt, defaulting on loans and effectively destroying their economy which they had built on the ephemeral security of the financial bubble that engulfed the globe. Their solution to this disaster for their country, join the EU as full members and join the Euro.

There is not a single country of the EU doing anything to take their country out of the EU nor are any suggesting leaving the Euro. There is just too much security and support from being a member to make being a non member of either constructs an appealing idea. We are all in this together and the best chance we all have of minimising financial disaster is to stick together, help each other and remain in a union and stick with a currency that will, when it survives this current calamity, become a safe haven in which their nations will thrive and prosper and such events as we have seen in recent month will be all but all but impossible to happen again. It was not the EU that caused this crisis and nor was it the Euro. This crisis was caused by bankers, currency speculators and international bond holders (Mostly the bankers again).

If you look at the things the EU does for it's members, again it becomes clear that membership is not only advantageous to the UK but is fundamental to our continued growth and prosperrity. We pay a much smaller percentage of our GDP in contributions than any other EU member state given our shamefull rebate which we take from some of Europes poorest countries. The vast majority of money we do pay in is now spent on job creation, education and R&D, all the things needed to help the UK grow and prosper in the modern interconnected world. Some other advantages of our membership include...........


* 3.5 million jobs in the UK are linked, directly and indirectly, to the export of goods and services to the EU. The estimated employment gains from the single market amount to 1.4% of total employment in the EU – equivalent to 2.75 million jobs.

* 57% of total British trade is with the EU. British companies exported approximately £150 billion worth of goods to the EU27 – 62% of total exports, and a rising figure for nearly every EU nation we do business with.

* With more than 490 million citizens, the EU is the largest multi-lateral trading bloc in the world.

* Economic analysts estimate that the recently agreed Services Directive could be worth approximately £5 billion annually to the UK economy, and could deliver around 600,000 new jobs. Approximately 70% of UK employment is in services.

* British Nationals make 53 million visits to the rest of Europe each year – a 50% rise since 1998.

* 5% - that’s 2.2 million – British Nationals now own property overseas. 4% are elsewhere in Europe.

* Abolition of customs duties already saves British businesses an estimated £135 million a year.

* Each year, well over one million EU citizens of all ages benefit from EU-funded educational, vocational and citizenship-building programmes. The EU funds initiatives in the member states, for educational establishments and for students via a Lifelong Learning Programme. More than €7 billion has been allocated to this programme for 2007-2013.

* The Commission estimates that business and consumers could save up to £19 billion a year from the cost of cross-border transactions once the Payments Service Directive is implemented.

* Full liberalisation of the ‘network’ industries in the EU (eg telecommunications, air travel) could increase prosperity by a further 1.3-1.7% of GDP – up to €95 billion – and increase employment by between 140,000 and 360,000 jobs.

* EU leaders agreed at the 2007 European Spring Council to cut administrative burdens arising from EU legislation by 25% by 2012. This could be worth £150 million in efficiency savings.


If you take these and then look at the more specific things done here in the UK through the regional development funds and through supporting small businesses expand into the European markets you will see that the EU has created nealy 200,000 jobs here in the UK and has helped almost half a million businesses gain access to European markets.


There is, and never has been, a coherent argument for the UK leaving the EU. So much so that that the anti EU p[roponents are reduced to making silly and idiotic statements such as 75% of our laws are made in the EU. The fact that even now after all this time we have been members and all this time UKIP have been on the "inside", they have never yet come up with anything but lies and distortions to support their claims that we would be better off out.

[Little_Englander]

The Angles/Saxons/whatever were never more than a few thousand in number, the vast majority of the people remained of Brythonic/Celtic ethnicity. I am not calling for anyone to be sent home (because the actual distinct groups of people who invaded no longer exist, only the lines they drew on the map remain) just for the scars left on this country by foreign subjegation to be healed, and I believe england to be one of those scars. Presently, the internationalist ruling elite are using this non-entity to undermine the national integrity of the country, they were very deliberate in their establishment of devolved assemblies for Caledonia and Cymru, they did it to divide the people against themselves to prevent us from uniting against our real enemies.

We are aware by now of your opinion as an individual. Why not ask all the English if they want England to be re-instated as a distinct nation with its own parliament? Or does your opinion trump everyone else's, thus rendering a referendum unnecessary?

__________________________________________________ _______________________
The ethnic English do exist: Here is an example;
English girl barred from Government job...because she is wrong kind of white | Mail Online

[TashkentFox]

We are aware by now of your opinion as an individual. Why not ask all the English if they want England to be re-instated as a distinct nation with its own parliament? Or does your opinion trump everyone else's, thus rendering a referendum unnecessary?

Never in a million years would I allow that evil state to return from it's grave to set Briton against Briton once more. The people must be educated with the truth after centuries of lies.

[Steve Morson]

The big one is a joint and unified military. That is not a collection of nations each with their own military offering troops as part of the EU military, Just one military controlled by the EU.

You're taking the p***, right?

[Britannist]

TashkentFox wrote: Britain is an ancient nation with a proud heritage and england is a non-entity created by.....

In English names are given a capital E - and that, of course, applies to the name of our great country - England (as I have mentioned in this thread before you seem quite happy to give capital letters to the names of other lands you have mentioned).

In response to your point (quote above) may I draw your attention to the fact there is no such country as Britain (your word in the quote above)? There are the British Isles - the two largest of which are the islands of Great Britain and Ireland. England was formed as a country within much of the south-central and southern part of the island of Great Britain becoming a united country in AD 927. England takes her name from the Angles, one of the Germanic peoples who came here (and stayed) during the 5th and 6th centuries.

The British nation, referred to by some - including it seems you - as Britain - came into existence as the United Kingdom of Great Britain (UK) on 1.5.1707 (as a result of the Treaty of Union of 22.7.1706). This was, of course, many centuries after England became a country.

Ireland joined the UK in the year 1800 - having already entered into a Union of the Crowns with England and Scotland in the year 1603.

The name of our country is not Britain - it is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: the first part of which before the Act of Union was formed by the merger of the ancient lands of England and Wales centuries before the UK (called Britain by some) came into existence as a political and sovereign entity.

[Britannist]

All that happened was that we entered into a political union.

Exactly. England was formed in AD 927. TashkentFox needs to understand that there was no political entity or nation under one Government called Britain (the word he uses in this thread) at that time. The Romans may have referred to a variation of the name Britain but there was no British nation as a political and sovereign entity at that time. The Romans called France Gaul but there was no unified political entity called Gaul then.

These are the facts which TashkentFox should accept: the nation some called/call Britain - the United Kingdom (UK) - first became a single political and sovereign entity as a result of the Treaty of Union on 22.7.1706 and the subsequent Union of England and Scotland on 1.5.1707.

In other words - TashkentFox must recognise the historical fact that the ancient country of England is many centuries older than the UK (Britain as he calls our Union): and Wales and Scotland are, of course, much older than the UK too.

[TashkentFox]

If that is your opinion I have one question for you, did Germany exist prior to the 1870s?

If your answer is no, then at least you will have remained consistant in your (in my humble opinion incorrect) beliefs, if your answer if yes, then you're a hypocrite and are clearly (knowingly or unknowingly) in league with the forces which seek to destroy the British nation.

You also seem to have trouble distinguishing between the terms 'state' and 'nation', a nation is not a state, but a group of people who share a shared heritage, cultural similarity and/or a common ancestry. A nation creates a state, not the other way around. The thing you call 'England' never had any of those, it was created soley for the purpose of making it psychologically acceptable for the common folk to be forced into wars against their brothers, a 'them and us' mentality, mostly to prevent the people uniting with their fellows and overthrowing their Germanic overlords, as was advocated in the early Welsh political poem Armes Prydein (Prophecy of Britain).

[Rebirth]

Sure, there are possibly one or two things about a united europe that may be appealing to some, but how is a unified military force that is controlled by a handful of unelected fascists a good thing?

[Rebirth]

You also seem to have trouble distinguishing between the terms 'state' and 'nation', a nation is not a state, but a group of people who share a shared heritage, cultural similarity and/or a common ancestry. A nation creates a state, not the other way around. The thing you call 'England' never had any of those, it was created soley for the purpose of making it psychologically acceptable for the common folk to be forced into wars against their brothers, a 'them and us' mentality, mostly to prevent the people uniting with their fellows and overthrowing their Germanic overlords, as was advocated in the early Welsh political poem Armes Prydein (Prophecy of Britain).

Let me guess, you are Welsh with a chip on your shoulder who hates the Germanics and believes England shouldn't exist because of a poem? What you claim could be applied to pretty much every nation on Earth.