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

Well the EU contains citizens speaking a wide variety of languages I fail to see what that has to do with the adoption of the Euro?

As to your comment on countries with bad economies joining I do not feel it is valid, to join a country must meet a strict economic criteria, a criteria that involved a lot of hard work for some nations. If your worried about these nations once they join slipping back into old hobbits, this is not an option as the independent Central European Bank manages the Euro.

Member states of the EU are on approximately the same prosperity level.



[EU support page @ http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A558966 ]

i am not an economist, so i cant answer you. but i dopnt like the sound of it.

but why ? I will be sorry to see the pound go but I also recognize the monetery union is a neccessary step towards a Federal European State.

which is something i do not want. we dont get a good deal as it is.

We pay £7 billion to Eurpoe per year, and get £3 bil in aid
Spaniards pay £ bil and get £6 bil.

theres loads of corruption. why is globalisation good?

I'll anwser in full tomorrow as to why the EU is good (as I got to go to work now) but in the meantime goto http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A558966 and read Winston Churchill's comments on a United Europe & ask yourself why he made them ?

later...got to watch neighbours...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/talking_point/debates/european/newsid_1433000/1433389.stm


go read/discuss

Just for anyone curious whether they should click on the link, it is about whether governments should make voting compulsory. For instance, you can be fined in Belgium for not voting and can eventually lose your right to vote.

In my opinion, *any* attempt to revoke voting privileges is wrong. I don't care whether it is done under the misnomer of a bill which purports to increase voting rates. It has not been proven that such a tactic would actually work.

And it is all too easy to imagine a scenario where fines were levied or voting privileges revoked more often with minorities and the poor. After all, who do you think it is who finds it difficult to get off work long enough to vote? Over a period of a generation, this could mean that the working poor are mostly non-voters the politicians feel fine ignoring.

It might be more useful to pass a law stating that business must let their employees off work to vote, or *they* will be subject to a fine. Or you could try legislation that would make it easier to vote. For instance, you could increase the number of polling places or ensure that they are staffed well enough that people's mustn't wait long in line.

You could also try various legislation to cover issues related to the reasons people don't want to vote. For instance, you could increase penalties for politicians failing ethics standards. You could put tough legal caps on donations and set up an agency to oversee election budgets. You could make lobbying by group entities illegal, so that the only influence politicians get is from citizens.

I could go on. But why? My point is that that legislation like that is a misguided band-aid over a huge gaping whole of a problem. And anyway, it tends towards discrimination against the poor. Who needs it?

I would be interested to hear from any Australians on this, as I believe they are already subject to compulsory voting.

As for mandatory voting in terms of the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland, with the availability of postal voting there is no real technical reason why people can not vote, that only leaves apathy & politics as reasons for not voting. Mandatory voting would force the apathetic to play a role BUT what about those who choose not to vote for political reasons. I believe that if mandatory voting is ever brought in to UK law then ballot papers must have a "non of the above" box for those that wish to abstain.

I agree about the 'None of the above' box, HappyDude. It would be nice if this were added to ballots quite regardless of the compulsory voting laws. As it is, people must either refuse to vote or fill in names of fictional characters if they want to show their dissent. This means the dissenters' opinions aren't really being heard.

I do think that people should stop looking at low voter turnout as a bad thing - it is a sign that politics is the last thing on your mind which means that life is good.

In South Africa turnout is very high because politics is on everybody's mind in the early post-apartheid era. Then, if things get better you will see less of a voter turnout - is that bad?

In the UK turnout is on the decrease because the interest in politics is on the decrease. The battle between right and left has been fougfht and resulted in a kind of tie that everyone is happy with so why perpetuate the battle?

However, the only thing that would work if you are determined to increase voter turnout is to pay people to vote. Or you could give everyone who votes a free entry to a £1million prize draw.

I never yet heard a valid reasion for not including it other than the results might scare the politicians (I mean what if 'non of the above won' ?)

If 'none of the above' won, perhaps this might convince one or more concerned citizens to run next time -- perhaps on very different platforms! It would be an interesting experiment, anyway.

I also agree with Duncan's point. The polls are used more during times of controversy. For instance, I imagine many more Americans would vote if the country were at war and the politicians were trying to decide whether or not to start up the draft again. Those who had been banned from voting by this point under a compulsory voting law might cry bloody murder about it. Just because they were short sighted during peacetime, should their voting rights be removed?

The traditional "none of the above" method is to vote for R.O.N. - reopen nominations, i.e. these candidates are useless, give me different ones.

removal of voting rights as a punishment would be a step in the wrong direction

still I have to ask why is turnout in euro-elections so low?
Europe is an issue that most people have opinions on, and an issue that draws a wide range of opinons. Yet when givern a chance to express those opinions most of the electorate decline the opertunity; why?

Maybe they don't believe their vote has any chance of determining whether the UK will join the European Union.

*waving his little Canadian flag*

Here, employers are 'encouraged' to allow persons to leave work early, or take an extended lunch hour, to exercise their franchise. Some abuse it and just go home after lunch. Voter turnouts here are lower than the US, less than 40%.
'None of the above' (NOTA) would win in a landslide! But give NOTA a face and a voice and he'd do no better than any other 'politician'. Things have been so bad since the recession of the early 90s, no one wants to live with the thought that they actually voted for those b*****ds.
~jwf~

In Soviet Union they used to organize concerts at the voting places and as these times there was no oranges and frankfurters etc sold in the stores, they were sold on the voting places. People crowded behind the doors hours before they were opened. And the attendance was always 99,8%.
Soviet statistics of course. Don't take it serious but it all happened in 1980-ies.

People were just trying to get food! I think you'd have a hard time implementing that in Europe or North America.