EU membership referendum debate thread

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 21 Oct 2015, 11:07

biffvernon wrote:
johnhemming2 wrote: I then put the video on again and fell asleep mainly to be fair because I am a bit drunk and quite tired.
Maybe if you've sobered up by now, you might care to watch the whole lecture and Q&A session and then make constructive comments.

I rather think that for you to accept the truth of Varoufakis's comments you will first need to alter the political paradigm through which you see the world. The implications of his comments are just too profound for supporters of mainstream politicians.

+1

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 24 Oct 2015, 21:46

EU referendum: Yanis Varoufakis says Britons should vote to stay in union (and he's right) http://gu.com/p/4dthb/stw

(But then he calls himself a Marxist.)

Snail · Post by **Snail** » 24 Oct 2015, 22:10

George Galloway ‏@georgegalloway
I believe in Europe and the Union of its peoples. But I cannot support THIS European Union #Greece #Portugal #coup

raspberry-blower · Post by **raspberry-blower** » 25 Oct 2015, 11:32

AEP: Eurozone crosses Rubicon as Portugal's anti-Euro left banned from power

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote:Greece’s Syriza movement, Europe’s first radical-Left government in Europe since the Second World War, was crushed into submission for daring to confront eurozone ideology. Now the Portuguese Left is running into a variant of the same meat-grinder.

Europe’s socialists face a dilemma. They are at last waking up to the unpleasant truth that monetary union is an authoritarian Right-wing enterprise that has slipped its democratic leash, yet if they act on this insight in any way they risk being prevented from taking power.

Brussels really has created a monster.

This is a very dangerous precedent.

The time for being able to reform the EU from within has passed.
It has become an autocratic nightmare

AutomaticEarth · Post by **AutomaticEarth** » 25 Oct 2015, 14:28

Agree with this - Europe is indeed on a downward spiral:-

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/tele ... dying.html

AutomaticEarth · Post by **AutomaticEarth** » 25 Oct 2015, 14:30

Sorry meant to say the EU was in a downward spiral

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 26 Oct 2015, 12:08

Great interview with Yanis Varoufakis. I bet JohnH won't like it.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europ ... ratise-eur

And in case you missed it, here's his lecture from Portugal. He repeated it in Oxford a couple of days ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQNN9U6 ... youtu.be&a

johnhemming2 · Post by **johnhemming2** » 26 Oct 2015, 14:06

biffvernon wrote:Great interview with Yanis Varoufakis. I bet JohnH won't like it.

If the idea is having pan-European political parties.

a) There is nothing wrong with that.
b) To some extent they already exist.

The problem with the structure within the Eurozone is that there is a democratic disconnect. Hence there is no need for the decisions to be explained through the democratic process because the democratic process does not have enough power.

Power at the end of the day is "hire and fire". It applies to EU commissioners as much as anyone else.

No one has told me what the major revelations are from Varoufakis. I presume there aren't any.

Revealing that the EU is dysfunctional from a democratic perspective is not a "revelation" is has been the case for a long long time.

Little John · Post by **Little John** » 26 Oct 2015, 14:44

It has been the case, however, that open debate of those democratic dysfunctionalities has been significantly and deliberately limited other than on the fringes of the MSM or, at best, at the intellectual level of the red tops, at least in the open.

It is only now that a serious and high level semi-public debate is being had about the underlying structural democratic flaws in the EU. Even then, the UK MSM is still firmly biased to one side of that debate. Though, that bias is weakening under external realpolitik pressure.

johnhemming2 · Post by **johnhemming2** » 26 Oct 2015, 14:50

I think it is more that the people who work in the MSM are bored about this and don't think their readers are interested.

Actually a lot of people are interested. However, they then have to find their own sources of information.

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 26 Oct 2015, 15:47

johnhemming2 wrote: Revealing that the EU is dysfunctional from a democratic perspective is not a "revelation" is has been the case for a long long time.

It is dysfunctional from all perspectives. Decision and policy making is dysfunctional, whether it is regarding the migrant crisis, the monetary union, the fishing industry, the agriculture policy. It's all dysfunctional, as well as bloated and corrupt.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 26 Oct 2015, 19:56

But who actually read the interview?
https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europ ... ratise-eur
It presents some pretty powerful arguments about the UK/EU relationship.

johnhemming2 · Post by **johnhemming2** » 27 Oct 2015, 08:26

It is too long and he normally talks rubbish so I don't want to spend any time on it. Is there anything specifically you think is important?

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 27 Oct 2015, 11:34

Yes. But as I said, you'd need a paradigm shift to understand it, and not being bothered to read it shows the shift hasn't happened yet.

Meanwhile, you might read what James Galbraith and his mate wrote a few months ago: https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europ ... st-austeri

johnhemming2 · Post by **johnhemming2** » 27 Oct 2015, 11:56

I could give you lots of things to read, but I would also be happy to explain what I think is important about it.

I don't mind debating things, but I am not going to waste my time doing critiques of Varoufakis - I note he is having some of his speaker's fees sent to Oman.