Friday, March 23, 2007

50 Reasons to Love & Hate the EU

As Tony Blair goes to Berlin this weekend to sign away even more of our sovereignty to celebrate 50 years of the EU, Trixy comes up with 50 reasons why the EU has been a bad thing HERE. She responds to the Independent's 50 reasons to love the EU HERE. I'll leave you to judge which list I most agreed with...

Donal Blaney has critiqued the Independent's list HERE.

UPDATE: An Englishman's Castle is creating a 50 Reasons to Love America list HERE but needs your help.

UPDATE: Someone has suggested I should start a 50 Reasons to Love France list. I think they may have been joking!

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Iain, I think you are being a little harsh - many of the Indy's points are clearly tongue-in-cheek. Since many are not related to EU membership [I don't recall Mrs T being told to privatise BT by the Frogs].

Although the 'ending war' one is, I'm afraid, outside my humour comfort zone given what has happened in the Balkans..

Anonymous said...

I agree with many of Trixy's points and all of them are entertaining.

What she seems to be implying is that some of the things like 'democratic deficit' or the 'secrecy' of the EU Commission is evidence of a lack of organisation and planning in doing things for the benefit of citizens.

I would argue that the secrecy and anti-democratic principles are VITAL to the project, as they would never have got their grand vision and ideas agreed to if there had been democracy and transparency.

The very fact that they have been able to eliminate opposition and dissent and a power of veto over the ever greater powers they are taking from nations is evidence of SUCCESS in their aims. It is that which they always wanted from day 1.

And both Tories and Labour have been complicit in it, if not by design, through 'sins of omission'.

Anonymous said...

I think Tony Blair has gone to Berlin to find out whether he is to be selected the unelected, imperially appointed president-for-life. If not selected, I am confident that he will not be leaving Downing St any time soon.

Anonymous said...

Another good fisk of the Indie's list on Scott Burgess's Blog, here at http://tinyurl.com/2qduq3 .

I must admit I have contributed to the fisk in the comments section, but there is a lot there.

Anonymous said...

I could not find one point out of their list that has justified the many billions of tax payers money paid out over the years.If it is tongue in cheek,I'm to find this funny? Does anyone know of a Norwegian daily with a list on the front page declaring,'Fifty good reasons why we did not join the EU.'? Oh, what might have been!

Anonymous said...

Verity, Or if not President of the EU, which may be for Merkel, then its new Foreign Secretary (very much his kind of guy).

Anonymous said...

Even the noted Adam Smith Institute (home of the arch free-trade theorists) has been less than enthusiastic about the EU. This is even though the EU was meant to promote free-trade.

Ted Heath - you sold us down the river, just for the price of a yacht.

Anonymous said...

Ya know, I've just read the "50 reasons to love the EU" and out of the 50, I'd say 20-25 are directly attributable to the EU and are good, another ten or so have absolutely nothing to do with the EU as such (ex. peace in Europe was helpded by the EU, no doubt, but was the result of the US and the COld War with the USSR; and Europe's multilingualism really means everybody in the continent is learning English, and that is for market reasons to which the EU contributes but did not cause). Another ten or so are repeptitions of points previously made, just refining previously stated points. A few are just mean snipes at the average Briton by what can only be a stereotypical wine-and-cheese chatterer, with lip curled up and moral superiority towering. And a few are pure ideological points, added into the list like point 42 Europe a a counterweight to the US?? The last politicians to speak in such terms were Gerhard Schroeder (a Russian-paid whore) and Jacques Chirac (who is such an embarassment in France his own political party turned against him).

Anonymous said...

I tink Verity @ 10.42 should go and lie down in a darkened room for a while.

Anonymous said...

Iain, you really believed that bizarre and garbled News of the World scare article about the 50-page Berlin Declaration a few weeks ago, didn't you?

Shame on you.

Anonymous said...

Here's what I added to An Englishman's Castle's list of reasons to love America:

Brie melts
Cole Porter
P J O'Rourke (again!)
Conservative talk radio
The US Military
Cold beer
California wines
Elvis
Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Ella Fitzgerald
"We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal ..."
Manhattan
Texas

Anonymous said...

Hoorah! 50 years of the EU!'Tumbleweeds roll in the streets,cute small furry creatures curl up and die,and a baleful red glow issues from the bowels of Mordor.'

Anonymous said...

What these leftwing EU supporting idealogues tend to ignore is the fact that there is no guarantee that a federal Europe could not fall into the hands of a rightwing, fascist,neo-con junta in the not too distant future.Come to think of it,America is a country of immigrants,run by rightwing neo-cons.If that's what you want!

Anonymous said...

"An Englishman's Castle is creating a 50 Reasons to Love America list HERE but needs your help."

Nuff said ;-)

To be honest, I do love America, it's just Bush and his cronies I can't stand.

Anonymous said...

I like Mr Bush. I like Dick Cheyney. I like Condoleezza Rice. I like John Bolton.

I loathe Hillary, John Kerry, Obama, Ted Kennedy, Al Bore and the entire boxed set of them.