h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Who the hell mentioned bendy bananas? Except the Sun, of course. They always mention ing bendy bananas.

>>Apart from the difficulty it would represent with regard to the flooding of UK markets with cheap European agricultural produce

Isn't that what you want? The UK imports far more food than it produces. So surely it is a good thing if you can suddenly buy cheap food from Europe rather than having to import it from Australia and New Zealand.

Yes I was wondering that.

...with reference to the bendy bananas posting...

Gnomon - no, I'd like to see a sensible attempt made to keep British agriculture alive and healthy.

The immediate post-war conditions that led to the widespread import of Lamb and Beef from OZ and NZ has now largely disappeared.

The British Rural economy is in absolutely dire straits, due mostly to the increase in 'mass farming techniques used by supermarkets and their inability to compete in European markets due to the lack of subsidies available from the UK government and the downright belligerence of European farmers - I still remember very well the sight of French 'farmers' setting light to trucks conatining live animals from the UK.

Sorry, I wasn't aware that the UK had an agriculture sector. I thought your forte was manufacturing.

Counts to ten very, very slowly...

Seriously, if I'd made that remark about any other country on the planet, Gnomon, I'd have been hualed over the coals and rightly so - it's the sort of comment that really puts people's backs up.

Although I do think it's indicative of how well the fox hunting morons have subverted the Countryside Alliance that all the other issues it was supposed to stand for have been totally forgotten.

"bendy bananas" weren't mentioned per se - but straight cucumbers were, in post 7, and I extrapolated.

So there

I think you just looped your own argument there, Blues. Earlier on you were complaining about '[not being able to see] a reason why we should subsidise basically crap farming methods used by the French', and yet you later suggest that the EU should not be reduced to a simple trading bloc as it will allow cheap European imports of food. The whole point of the Common Agricultural Policy is that it subsidises 'weekend' smallholdings in continental Europe to the detriment of large-scale agribusiness. British farming methods are amongst the most efficient in Europe, and if all trading restrictions and subsidies were removed in the EU, then it would most likely be continental farmers who suffered, not British ones. This is one of the reasons why the French voted 'non'. Their fear of the 'Anglo-Saxon' economic model is based on the fact that their farmers, amongst other sectors, receive subsidies that allow them to stay in business. If these subsidies were removed then the results would be devatating to French agriculture and society.

It is somewhat bizarre that the new constitution of a body originally conceived to allow free trade between neighbouring states has been voted down by the citizens of one of its founding members because it might threaten to do exactly that.

I think it also reveals the difficulty (or perhaps futility) of trying to find a political document (as opposed to an economic one) that will unite the whole of Europe when of the three nations that have voted in a referendum so far, Spain has voted yes, whilst France and The Netherlands have both voted no, but for completely opposite reasons.

All 25 member nations have to approve the treaty for it to become a binding document, but since the population of two nations have refused to do so and a third and possibly forth (Britain and Ireland) will also vote no, I think it's fairly safe to say that the constitution is now dead, in its current form at least.

Despite this, the sky has resolutely refused to fall in.

>>Seriously, if I'd made that remark about any other country on the planet, Gnomon, I'd have been hualed over the coals and rightly so - it's the sort of comment that really puts people's backs up.

I didn't make the remark to annoy you, BluesShark, I made it because I thought it was true. At a guess, I would have thought that agriculture accounted for about 1% of the UK's production and is therefore a very minor part of what you would want out of the EU. Britain is famous as the first great manufacturing country in the world. Didn't you invent industry? From your reaction, I take it that I am completely off the mark here.

We don't have a manufacturing industery either anymore!

I have no idea, but the gap is between what you (Gnomon) think we (the British) as opposed to what I (BluesShark) would *like* to see from the EU.

I'd like to see a little more restraint of trade, a little more centtralised interference in the rapid taking over of the world by Tesco's and a few other bits and bobs.

I don't suppose that is anything like what the UK WANTS FROM THE eu...

I believe that in the UK, as in many European countries, agriculture is economically (relatively) insignificant. The impact on minority groups and the landscape is significant however.

It is that 'relative insignificance' that has allowed successive UK governments (including and even before Thatcher's, for all that she is lauded in the Shires) to completely ignore the rural economy, resulting in the present near disaster that is Rural Afairs in the UK.

Yeap, i agree with you!

Nationmaster dot com is the placce to get that sort of info!

Contribution of agriculture to the GDP:

Ireland - 5%
New Member States like Hungary and Poland - 4%
France - 3%
USA - 2%
UK - 1.4%

Which is a very interesting hill of beans.

I suggest you ask someone who is involved in producing that 1.4% how much of their income depends on its production.

I'm guessing the average answer might be close to 100%...

Oui, i think its not just about farming, i'm after what you want out of the EU, looking at the French and the Dutch non votes the size of the turn out, makes me wonder if were looking to retain our culture?

For me personally, culture isn't really something I associate with the EU. Sure culture will change with more integration, but there are so many more effects on it. The overall picture of globalisation is much more important in my view. I don't think it's necessarily bad for culture to change, it's constantly evolving anyway. And culture is such a fleeting thing, you can't really regulate it.
Some people seem to be apprehensive about it though.