TorquayFans.com | Torquay United Fans Forum

Bob cubed's post above is probably the best post there has been on this forum about the referendum. Well done sir.

Bob, Bob, Bob, I love reading your comments; they either amuse me because they’re usually total bollocks, or irritate me with their errors and (obviously sincere) misrepresentations and your inability to move beyond your ideological mindset which causes you to either deny the existence of evidence or to myopically miss all the signs (as you declared on another thread, 'it’s what I believe’). I try not to waste too much time on your posts since most neutral readers will see through your blustering vociferations, but occasionally a response is required.

You will have gathered that my health has improved a little, so I intend to post detailed answers, when time and energy permit, to recent flawed and spurious comments by posters on this and other threads.

In the meantime, I shall comment on your last post:

Regarding an EU army, I don’t think Forever is saying that we are imminently about to be attacked or invaded. The Remain campaign has the monopoly on really scary scare tactics and truly groundless predictions. But I absolutely (and amazingly!) agree with your comment that we also have our own domestic threat to the NHS, and even if we do leave the EU (please, God) we still have that particular battle to be fought. I also agree with your comment regarding the direction in which the EU and UK politics have moved. There is too much neo-liberalism, and political correctness is now forced upon us in a rigid and oppressive way with no room for consideration of circumstances or context. One gets the impression that the totalitarian thought police are indeed on their way.

But your penultimate paragraph is totally wrong. The EU was always a project for political union, based (as feminism is) on a false premise. And the EU (like feminism, about which more in another thread) has since its inception sought to impose its nefarious and detrimental aims slowly and insidiously, drip by drip, deceiving the mass of people into thinking that nothing is afoot.

As for democracy, it has moved with the times. In a modern democracy, people have a vote, and the majority vote wins, which is not to say that the concerns of minorities can be ignored. Compromise must be found in politics, diplomacy, and co-operation between nation states. And for those to thrive, political union between nation states is irrelevant and unnecessary. There may be other compelling reasons for political unions in particular situations, but those put forward for the EU are fallacious and disingenuous. Not even on the grounds of free trade; half of Australia's trade is with Japan and China (Australia and China actually signed a free trade deal in 2014) yet nobody is suggesting that those countries form a political union!

In two weeks time, people will be divided? That’s modern democracy, not perfect, but the best we can devise. Voters will be disenfranchised? That’s total bollocks.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... greed.html
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/germany-pushes ... my-1557866
http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/ ... ty-Juncker
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... tates.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... ation.html

Independence from EU hindrance : EU rope around the neck of the British people. Self governance is the only way out of EU imposition. In fact this encumbrance is a result of individuals abdicating responsibility to an outer authority, that is passed further and further away until it completes the circle and find its crept up behind and stabbed you in the back.

BobBobBob wrote: I love how you went on about scare tactics and groundless predictions, and then wrote that without any irony. Those aren't even half truths! The UK has an opt-out from the Euro and an EU army sounds like an amusing fiction I will cast my vote to Remain in the hope that future British generations will recall the spirit of those in the 1950s and resolve to rebuild a fair Europe for everyone.

Your post was indeed very well written, I respect your opinion as I do all, and it is your right to vote which way you choose, I've been anti-EU for very, very long time, I see as my job to post my beliefs and opinions in an attempt to help those undecided to vote leave, personally not that bothered if I fail, at least I tried, and if I can get 1-2 to agree with me then job done in my view.

Yes I'm well aware we have an opt out of the Euro, NOW, but, and I am fully aware it was written in 2014, that Telegraph article I linked, and we're talking about a very well respected broadsheet here, should be read by all, are you saying that's total nonsense what's written with in ?

The formation of an EU army is written in the Lisbon treaty, so believe what you like. Being honest the very formation of an EU army in itself does not bother me one bit, no we're not about to end up in any war, the point is, a formation of such an army is yet more erosion of our national sovereignty, yet more loss of control, of our own country's ability to control our own affairs, and govern ourselves.

Yes our NHS is facing many external pressures, people our living longer, uncontrolled immigration, financial and political, the point is do we want to add more pressure by handing control to unelected EU commissioners and the USA via T-T-I-P, if we're happy with that then fine.

This notion that we can some how reform the EU from within, is totally deluded, that's not groundless, we only have to look at Cameron's sham negotiations, where he got literally nothing, and what we've not figured out yet, is what was agreed is NOT legally binding, it still requires treaty change.

Any reform requires ALL 28 member states to agree, we have to remember that many of these states are a lot smaller, and get back in rebates than they put in, unlike the UK who put in £176 million week more than it get back, not groundless, look at the office for national statistic figures, that's Fact.

The point is a lot of these smaller member states will NOT want to upset the status quo and vote for reform, when they gain so much from the EU, unlike the UK.

forevertufc wrote:Odd's, laugh out loud indeed, Leicester City were 5000-1 to win the premier league. Odds are based on opinions as to what's might happen, not on FACT.

You do realise how Betfair formulate odds? I wasn't quoting a national bookmakers odds, I was quoting a person to person gambling site's odds, a site whereby the users can influence the outcome of the result. If people are offering long odds on Exit they are hardly going to be then going down the polling stations to cost themselves money. That is why the odds on the site speak volumes.

I merely hope that the majority is as strong as Betfair suggests as it will put this to bed. The very cost of this referendum which only came about because Cameron messed his pants about the Farage threat, which in turn only came about because of the Daily Fail tells me that the Nazis in charge of that paper have a lot to answer for

KeithMalone wrote:..a site whereby the users can influence the outcome of the result.

They surely don't bribe jockeys or nobble horses, do they..??

KeithMalone wrote:That is why the odds on the site speak volumes.

Er, not really. No more than the poll on this thread is indicative of the national referendum result, coming from such a small sample of voters. And it's not just a random sample; they're all bloody gamblers.. :-|

KeithMalone wrote:I merely hope that the majority is as strong as Betfair suggests as it will put this to bed.

It suggests, more than anything else, that a small and peculiar subset of voters are foolish enough to gamble more money than they know what to do with, and so quite possibly foolish enough to back the wrong horse..

KeithMalone wrote: You do realise how Betfair formulate odds?

To be honest, I don't bet, nor do I really follow betting and odds. However it's still based in on peoples opinions, I support the leave campaign, if I was a betting man my money would be on remain to win.

But it is NOT going to be that clear cut, there will be obvious regional variances in the polls, city's will tend to be more for remain, rural areas more for leave, in my opinion, the latest average of polls, puts remain on 51% leave 49%, remain were 69-31 % ahead at one point, the gap is closing by the day.

However the reason why I think remain will win, is the British public by and large have got no bottle, the remain campaign are winning the battle of the scaremongering, which both sides are guilty, and peoples fear of how things will pan out afterwards will make them cave in, and vote remain.

It will be a massive mistake, the British public have been warned. We'll have to lie in bed the majority are going to make for us.

Not sure that I agree with your third paragraph, Forever. Interesting poll here:
http://www.opinion.co.uk/article.php?s= ... -june-2016
It would be wrong to rely upon one single poll, of course, but this does seem to be part of a trend now. Although it reports the economy is the biggest issue, this doesn't accord with my own findings, which are that immigration is the biggest issue for voters. This is the issue to which Remain campaigners have no real answer, and will probably be their undoing. The Remain camp is probably getting desperate now, and one wonders what weapons they have left in their arsenal. They will have been hoping the late registrations of electors will boost the Remain vote, but this is by no means guaranteed. The electorate has hardly been heeding their economic arguments and the Leave campaign appears to have won the immigration case. I've a feeling that Leave will also win on the questions of sovereignty and democracy. So the Remainians will have to resort to desperate measures; the Prime Minister declaring a state of emergency, perhaps, or the Leavers being falsely accused of racism and misogyny, anything to reverse that swing..??

PhilGull wrote:Both the innies and outies are full of lies and half-truths.
At the moment I am undecided how to vote but at the end of the day I don't see it making a massive difference to my life or to the lives of those around me. We will still be kept just happy enough to keep plodding along, paying our taxes, keeping the rich rich and the poor poor.

It's quite simple really. this EU one state government is non elected. it rules over us and there is nothing we can do about it. do you want your life determined by a lot of people who have no concept what your life entails (sounds like our own government) but they are in it for life and even if they make a complete mess of it they still get their bonus and job while you pay the price for it.
Or would you like to have a vote in who is in power over you. and if you don't like it you can vote for the other side.
As I have put so often.
I vote in this country for who i want to see in power. I may not like who gets in but at least some of the time i have a say.
If i vote and my party does not get in then at least i have had a chance to vote.
If I vote and my party wins then I get who I want
it doesn't matter too much to me if whoever gets in makes a hash of it (lately most of them have)
at least i have had a say.
No one from Europe asks me to vote on anything. they have only dictated we did t ask them to. we didn't get a chance to. do i want that. do you want that. ?

In response to forevertufc, the only things I said were groundless were your comments about the euro and the army. Here's the thing, you admit further in your post that any reform requires ALL 28 members to agree. If the UK really doesn't want the euro or the army it can just vote to disagree. Problem solved!

It is specious to say that we put £176 million a week more into the EU than we get back because money doesn't work like that and we do get stuff that you can't put a simple value on from the EU. For examples:

- the EU spends money on collaborative science research that benefits us. E.g. cancer research, improvements to recycled water, renewable plastics, sustainable concrete, flood defences, alternatives to insulin in the treatment of diabetes, measures to stop radioactive criminality, combating antibiotic resistance, HIV vaccines, satellite earth monitoring for farmers and forest managers, and so on and so on and so on. I suppose we could try doing that by ourselves, but it would be a lot more expensive so you can say goodbye to all that money and more!

- Money also gets spent on transportation links within EU countries, making sure those links are reliable so we can efficiently get our exports out to them and our imports back to us. Nothing happens in a vacuum!

- Having our currency flow into overseas accounts helps to stabilise the pound against the euro. Currency stability is rather important. It's very likely that a portion of that money would be absorbed by shocks to the pound. It's not a coincidence that the pound has been hammered in the last few months.

- Money spent in places like Poland and Romania to reduce poverty or improve social conditions over there would benefit us because it would reduce the numbers of people who wish to leave those countries for a life in the UK.

- We have absolutely no idea of how much the money we spend on the EU effects aggregate demand in the UK but it's definitely higher than zero.

£176 million a week is cheap.

I don't get this unelected thing. As I understand it there are three parts to the EU. The directly elected MEPs. The Council Of Ministers (I think) comprising the head of each nation (Cameron, Merkel, etc) and then there is the other group who are appointed by one of the first two.
My question is, how is this any different to the UK having a directly elected House Of Commons and then an appointed (now - it used to be hereditary) House Of Lords and a hereditary Monarch.
Is the EU model really any worse than what we will be left with if we leave?

That's the gist of it.

- We vote our MPs
- We vote our MEPs
- Our MPs form a national parliament
- Our national parliament elects a Prime Minister
- Our MEPs vote for EU legislation
- Our MEPs vote for the European Commision and its President
- Our National Parliament votes for Council of Ministers and European Court of Justice
- Our Prime Minister votes for the President of the European Council

The EU has as much of a democratic mandate as David Cameron and the Conservative Party has.

BobBobBob wrote:That's the gist of it.

- Our MEPs vote for EU legislation
- Our MEPs vote for the European Commision and its President
- Our National Parliament votes for Council of Ministers and European Court of Justice
- Our Prime Minister votes for the President of the European Council

The EU has as much of a democratic mandate as David Cameron and the Conservative Party has.

Nonsense;

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/ ... ons-speech

Feel free one and all to read the rest of it

Now on the Commission president, from the outset I’ve been clear where I stand on this issue. I firmly believe in the principle that the European Council should be the one to propose the candidate. And if you believe in a principle you should stand up for it. That is why I stood firm in my opposition today. I believe that by working together we could have found an alternative candidate who commanded the support of every member state, so that we could have agreed together on the best way forward. That has been the practice the EU has followed on every single occasion until today. And I think it’s a serious mistake that other leaders decided to abandon that approach today. It’s why I insisted that the European Council took a vote. If the European Council, the elected heads of government, are going to allow the European Parliament to choose the next president of the European Commission in this way I wanted it on the record that Britain opposed that.

The Council nominated to vote Jean-Claude Juncker as the next president of the European Commission. Britain and Hungary opposed. We must accept the result and Britain will now work with the Commission president, as we always do, to secure our national interest. But let me be absolutely clear, this is a bad day for Europe. It risks undermining the position of national governments. It risks undermining the power of national parliaments and it hands new power to the European Parliament. It is therefore important that the European Council has agreed today to review what has happened and to consider how we handle the appointment of the next Commission president next time around.



As for the rest of it can you, or anyone else name the 5 EU presidents ? or who appointed them ? can you or anyone else name me a single EU commissioner appointed that's was voted for by a British MEP ?

forevertufc wrote: Nonsense;

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/ ... ons-speech

Feel free one and all to read the rest of it

Now on the Commission president, from the outset I’ve been clear where I stand on this issue. I firmly believe in the principle that the European Council should be the one to propose the candidate. And if you believe in a principle you should stand up for it. That is why I stood firm in my opposition today. I believe that by working together we could have found an alternative candidate who commanded the support of every member state, so that we could have agreed together on the best way forward. That has been the practice the EU has followed on every single occasion until today. And I think it’s a serious mistake that other leaders decided to abandon that approach today. It’s why I insisted that the European Council took a vote. If the European Council, the elected heads of government, are going to allow the European Parliament to choose the next president of the European Commission in this way I wanted it on the record that Britain opposed that.

The Council nominated to vote Jean-Claude Juncker as the next president of the European Commission. Britain and Hungary opposed. We must accept the result and Britain will now work with the Commission president, as we always do, to secure our national interest. But let me be absolutely clear, this is a bad day for Europe. It risks undermining the position of national governments. It risks undermining the power of national parliaments and it hands new power to the European Parliament. It is therefore important that the European Council has agreed today to review what has happened and to consider how we handle the appointment of the next Commission president next time around.



As for the rest of it can you, or anyone else name the 5 EU presidents ? or who appointed them ? can you or anyone else name me a single EU commissioner appointed that's was voted for by a British MEP ?

And therein lies the nub of the problem. We just don't care, it just doesn't matter to our daily lives.

The EU not only fails as a democratic construct, it is also demonstrably and quite distinctly anti-democratic. Read on:

A lack of democracy – the so-called democratic deficit – is perhaps something that can be fixed, or at least partially improved. But there is no cure for something which is inherently anti-democratic, short of changing it beyond recognition.

And the factor which makes the EU anti-democratic is the European Commission and its "right of initiative", the fact that it has the monopoly power to propose new legislation.

This has two-closely linked effects. Firstly and obviously, this means that no law (or legislative initiative) can be pursued without the approval and direct participation of the Commission. It cannot be forced to act, and it is accountable to no one if it chooses to refuse action.

The allied issue is one of removal or amendment of existing laws. The point here is that, in order to do either, another law must be proposed – it takes a law to remove or amend an existing law. With its right of initiative, only the Commission can decide on whether that will happen. No matter how bad or unpopular a law might be, if the Commission digs in its heels, it stays.

This right of initiative is not accidental. This was deliberately introduced by the architect of the Union, Jean Monnet, as a means of making it politician-proof. He intended that powers should be vested exclusively in its "Platonic guardians", rendering them totally immune to the vagaries of democracy.

To understand this is to appreciate that the institution is beyond change. To have the Commission set up in any different way would so fundamentally change the nature and dynamics of the European Union that it would no longer be the same organisation.

Thus the EU is an anti-democratic construct. It was designed to be anti-democratic and cannot function in any other way and still be the EU. It could possibly become a democratic organisation but, if it did, it would no longer be the European Union.

Previous posters may have the beginnings of an argument for reforming the British political system, but not for maintaining the status quo in the EU.