In fact the Balkan wars of 1912 did set up WW1 precisely because the great powers had discredited their ability to settle things by negotiation by their sabre rattling.

Anyone who says we “failed to intervene” in Yugoslavia has a clear dissociation with reality. We intervened, deliberately & continuously, to support Nazis our government knew to be committed to racial genocide (though I agree our media managed to hide those facts). We did this because of German desires when Germany was seen to bethe de facto leader of the EU. Britain went along with this because we got an opt out from the Euro. Ashdown & most of the “Liberal Democrat Party” supported genocide because because they considered a the genocide of a few hundred thousand Yugoslavs a fair price to pay for EU unity. Having paid it once they would clearly do so again hence the EU must be considered a threat to peace.

My other reason for opposing is the undisputed fact that the EU bureaucracy is strangling us economically.

Eitherv would be more than enough reason to quit.

If you mean by saying the EU is to blame that we are each guilty as individuals of failing to engage fully enough in the political processes which could prevent the tragedy of such conflicts, then of course you are right. If, however, you wish to blame an institution for human behaviour then you are sadly mistaken.

It’s funny how one side criticises EU forces for failing to intervene by sitting idly on the sidelines and another accuses it of exacerbating if not causing the situation with its intervention, while both conclude this provides evidence that the events could be tolerated – rididulous!

The deliberate overthrowing of the rule of law by the EU & NATO has made the world & Europe a much more dangerous place. To give supporters of genocide more power never enhances peace.

I’m not enthusiastic for a super-state, but I am enthusiastic about avoiding a new round of conflict which sees life and property destroyed in the same manner as was the case in each phase of history.

|I would say, however, that if that is your degree of enthuciasm for a super state I can see why relying on winning a democratic mandate for such wastefulness is not on the cards.

Magna Carta was the fourth general restatement of principles by which the monarch agreed to be bound and followed a good century and a half of conquest. The Bill of Rights was an equally significant legal statute which mostly ended the religious wars.

So by comparison another 10 years wasting anything under 50% of our combined wealth on the process would amount to a significant improvement, but then liberals are always drwoned out when someone storms in shouting “who’s up for a fight”.

Or we could spend another 10 years & blow 4.05 trillion, sitting around waiting for the obvious to be noticed.

To state that the EU has no mandated government and is therefore impossible to influence; to state that the EU suffers from a lack of accountability because the systems of governance aren’t properly formalised is to call for either dissolution of the whole structure or the introduction of proper and properly agreed regulation of relations – which is exactly what the Lisbon treaty tries to do (not well enough, but still).

The EU certainly does have an effective layer of governmental oversight, which is entirely right and proper for the areas of common and mutual interest. What it doesn’t do is ‘hide under the guise of not being one’ – it is prevented from fulfilling the proper function it is designed for by the short-sighted and selfish political agendas of that political wing within constituent members.

Complaining about the size of government (whether at the UK or EU level) is no argument against it, but altogether arguing against government at that level is to argue for war in the hope of conquest: simply put, we live in an interdependent world and our relations must be regulated in an open manner to prevent any unsettling imbalance or distortion of our peaceful normalcy.

There are however two highly valid arguments against the Libon Treaty – which are 1)it doesn’t do what it sets out to do, and 2)it doesn’t do what we want it to do. That the treaty has been written in such a way as to make it unreadable means it is impossible be exactly sure what our politicians have been up to, but then we all know the established duopoly are a bunch of lying liars, don’t we?

So why don’t you come clean about whether you are for a peaceful and prosperous integrated Europe or not.

Dane Clouston, I am also highly sceptical about the methods indulged in by the EU and I think there already is space in our party for people who wish to offer constructive criticism and try to help clean it up.

But I am surprised that ‘Mouse’ did not include the CAP in the list of EU problems.

Why should we allow Brussels to force us to tax ordinary people so that the Duke of Westminster can receive £330,000, each and every year, and the Duke of Cornwall £500.000, each and every year, for the privilege of owning land that they have inherited TAX FREE thanks to all the scandalously unfair Inheritance Tax exemptions for agricultural, as well as business and shareholding, assets and lifetime capital gifts for the wealthy while homeowners pay 40% on anything above £300,000. Tony Greaves says that I am obsessed by the CAP – a typical way of not countering a valid and important argument. On the other hand I would accept the description of being obsessed with the taboo subject of the need for the judicious redistribution of gifted and inherited capital wealth in each new generation (see http://www.universal-inheritance.org).

The EU Liberal Democrat faithful must eventually realise that the EU does not suit us. We are being governed badly because of it, in many different ways, from post office closures to excessive rates of immigration which suit the owners of capital but not those whose unskilled labour is thereby undercut.

The longer the Liberal Democrats are seen as EU-fanatics the more they will go into long term decline.

There is an EU-sceptic Liberal Party (www.liberal.org.uk). The Liberal Democrats ought to become EU-sceptic, merge again with the Liberal Party – or at least allow Liberal EU-sceptics to feel welcome within the Liberal Democrats – which we have not been – and help form a government to take us out of full membership of the EU and into an European Economic Area with Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, and any other country that feels the same way, hopefully including Turkey in due course, thereby solving the problem that the French and Germans (and the Vatican, for goodness sake!) will not let secular but Islamic Turkey in as full members.

To me it is sickening that the Liberal Democrats who call themselves Liberals are accomplices in the anti-democratic and deceitful process of promising a referendum on the EU Constitution and then denying one on the Lisbon Treaty.

It seems that Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats collectively are no longer to be trusted, any more than Gordon Brown’s New Labour. They must have a change of heart on the EU. It does not look as if Nick Clegg is man enough to lead such a change of heart.

So down the DimLibs will go! Unless they snap out of it! Stop being hyptotised by the EU! Leave full membership of the EU, which we can still do, since Parliament cannot bind its successors. To pretend that we could only leave the EU if we ratify the Lisbon Treaty is more deceitful nonsense.

There is most certainly a dialog between the people and politicians in the UK. In its crudest form it is called focus-group politics where the policies are directly drawn from what is popular with the electorate. But there are many other examples, and combined they mean that the electorate can and do affect both government policies and those of the opposition parties. There is simply no equivalent mechanism at the EU level.

You are completely kidding yourself if you think that the EU has no direction. Of course you are strictly speaking correct when you say there is no European government, but you are also being highly disingenous. There is a de facto government which was to be institutionalised under the (rejected) constitution. However, the Lisbon treaty and the Constitution are functionally equivalent; so we have a government, it is just called something slightly different (officially it remains just a large NGO which implements a series of treaties …).

So we have an effective layer of government which hides under the guise of not being one, and which has minimal dialog with the demos. You yourself say that the only way of changing policy at the EU level is to vote in a different national government, but I am afraid this simply isn’t good enough. Once you get 27 Heads of Government in a room then all sorts of horse trading can take place if you have a system that has no culture of, and no need to, take account of public opinion.

You were the one who started making party political points (for, I presume, partisan reasons). I merely pointed out that your analysis of the democratic deficits in EU and the UK is profoundly wrong, and I stand by that statement.

Your premises are simply bogus, and your conclusions are based on bad comparisons which are fundamentally contradictory.

It is not easy to get rid of a government in the UK, however much resentment and division it creates, nor is it easy to influence party direction (even if you are on your party’s frontbench – just ask David Davis).

There is no mechanism to force a change of direction at European level because Europe has no direction. There is no European government except the national governments which comprise the membership – so if you want to change European emphasis you do it through national elections.

In other words, PT, conservatives are not being open about how they would use their influence or they don’t understand the method for doing so – neither of which makes a case to vote conservative, but both of which makes our case to vote for us.

In the situation where the official opposition is complicit with national political establishments in avoiding transparency and accountability for fear their parties may not truly represent the democratic aspiration it is hardly a surprise that ‘no decision’ is the outcome of any referenda.

I’m happy to continue any discussion with you because you seem entirely reasonable, so I have some hope that you will eventually see the logic of your complaints as the same as the grounds for LibDem policies.

Maybe think of it another way. If as an EU citizen you are favourably inclined towards the EU as a concept but think that the institutions need improving in fundamental ways, then what routes are available for you to make your feelings felt? None at all.

And this is where Orangepan is profoundly wrong. In the UK, it is really quite easy to get rid of a government and to get a political party to reconsider its position, and for the balance of power within a party to be shaped by external events. There is no similar mechanism to effect a change of direction at the European level. Thus, on the odd occasion where they are given the chance, people give the EU as hard a kicking as possible in the hope that they’ll get the message, but clearly it hasn’t got through yet.

That wasn’t my point. My point was that those things that were reformed by the Lisbon Treaty weren’t among those, witch needed to be reformed. Read what I write, and don’t put words to my mouth.

Yeah, right.

I was a clear result in that it was a clear ‘No, but Yes, but No’ vote. And I’m sure if there had been a DK option then this would have gained 75% of the votes.

It is also particularly amusing that the Conservatives are complaining about Brussels elitism and the democratic deficit in the same week as they are engaged in the exact same practises at Westminster level – should we ask how many conservative backbenchers are happy to be bounced into opposing 42 days without charge and how many are happy to see the option put to the people even in a single constituency?

Conservatives – can we have some consistency please?

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2007/RES1017B-1.gif

So the sales pitch is inventing stuff not in the treaty? Sure, it’ll give it a good spin, but it’s not making stuff up, or indeed lying about the contents of the treaty. You’re suggesting it is.

So the treaty either leaves economic policy to be decided, in which case it’s not doing enough to improve growth, or it’s doing too much. Brilliant, something to complain about either way.

The term I used for the summary was “sales pitch” rather than lying. There is a difference.

“Should the treaty be assigning personal and business tax rates, areas for industrial parks, residential areas, and trade policy for the next century?”

No – that is rather the point. If regulation is already costing us £405 billion a year we should have less of it rather than more.

Of course, many factors effect growth rates, but I thought I’d join in stripping out any relevant influences and ask a highly biased question myself.