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

Europe is a subject on which a lot of people have an opinion, yes, but a subject on which few people have a passion. It is the latter that makes people vote.

LOL DJ's right! Can you imagine 'multinationalist fervour'?
Or a 'multinationalist patriot'?

I like the idea of giveaways at the polls. Maybe a tax refund. Or a bottle of ..oops, that's the way they used to do in the good old days but it's now illegal.

~jwf~

Maybe they could try something else not so easily available?
Viagra or cannabis or free whisky.
This whisky or vodka trick is quite common here now. Mainly for buying votes but most of these people would never give their votes otherwise.

Europe is something that I fervently believe is right. Yes, it needs work BUT it is most defiantly a step in the right direction.
If you are a European Love it or Hate it but please do not be Apathetic about it.

go read http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A558966

Duncan, you say that as countries get richer, fewer people vote. That is true, and it is probably a normal effect (if you are *relatively* happier with the government and the laws, you more likely to feel complacent, and therefore less likely to vote).

However, over time, complacency creates a lack of political education and knowledge, and that is a bad thing. If you dumb down the electorate, you give politicians greater latitude to do what they want, (possibly to the extent of repealing some of the checks and balances that make their life a misery), and you make it more likely for people to use other means at their disposal when they want to achieve change.

CR

that is where a strong constitution & Judicary come into play.

testing 123 testing ...

yet again trying to resurrect a dead thread

In the UK there is no constitution and in Ireland the constitution is frequently a hinderance to Europe (rejection of the Nice treaty being a case in point) so I can't really comment on that.

However my trip to France was a good example of what's good about the EU. I got money out of my account here, didn't pay commission and was able to know whether or not I was being overcharged for anything.

the sooner the UK joins the € the better in my humble opinion

Ditto
I'm tired of people complaining about the Euro being a stalking horse for greater unity. I want greater unity somehow combined with greater local accountability eg the EU decides transport policy, but the village gets to decide how to spend the local bus money. Thanx for resurrecting this thread. It's the only bit of politics I really care about

I would like to see the European Union President directly elected by the citizens of the European Union with the President responsible for appointing the commission; I would also like to see the powers of the Council of the European Union transferred to the European Parliament with the exception of constitutional issues.


NB: don't forget the support page A558966

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NO! That's awful - thats so centralist. What we need is a system whereby the village decide they need a bus and the EU pays for it.

Devolve decision making, centralise administration, remove beaurocracy.

People here like to count on that bureaucracy - they hope it'll create new working places.

Here's something I have been grappling with about an increasing EU.

How will industrial disputes be managed in a fully integrated Europe? If teachers in Italy, say, have a problem with policy or pay in their region, would they need to get the assent of their counterparts in Belgium, Germany etc. to get the problem resolved?

It's hypothetical, I know, but it seems to me that dispute resolution (and policy formation) might be a lot more cumbersome in an integrated Europe than it is now.

Not really - at the moment education I the responsibility of regional governments & not the European Union. If this wuz to change & the European Union take over education then teachers would broadly paid the same wherever they were (I assume there would be allowances for those in particularly expensive parts of the union) either way in my opinion no more complicated than now it would be employees in dispute wiv an employer whether that employer is regional government or the European Union makes no difference.
They seem to cope ok in the USA.

In the US, the legal benefits are often with the employer and not with the employee, so I'm not surprised.

I think it would be much more complicated. We have a vastly different history than the US, so comparisons are difficult to make. The problems of European integrations are defined on the euro banknotes, a study in blandness, where even the bridges drawn had to be hypothetical in order not to convey a geographical bias. Any common policy will have to be so watered down as to be almost a step back, than a step forward. And it would take a very long time, and a lot of money to do it, and when it was implemented it would take a lot of money, time and resources to change it afterwards.

In the "flexible employment market" jobs will move from where employee protection is high to where it is low and the only way around this is a common level of employee protection across the whole of Europe.

Can I alert you all to the fact that Ramón de Miguel, Spanish Secretary of State for European Affairs (Spain currently hold the E.U. Presidency) is holding an Internet chat session on “the Future of Europe” on Monday 18 February 2002 – details on the Europa website.

Cloning humans will certainly happen, whatever the law states. Mostly infertile couples who want a baby to have the "genetics" of one of the parents. Cloning used by people like Saddam Hussein to create "doubles" is, for now, pure Science-fiction and likely to remain that way for a long time. I'm kindo confused by the whole "cloning" controversy. The idea of cloning humans being like "playing God" is preposterous. A God could create a human being from nothing just like that. Cloning means doing it with difficulty and working within the mechanics of reproduciton, barely God-like. Also, what "dangerous" thing could it be used to do?

As for the EU, well I'm a sceptic in the true sense of the word (most so-called Euro-sceptics are actually anti-European. Does anyone really believe the likes of John Redwood could every be convinced?). I've seen nothing to convince me that being a member of the Union or joining the single currency will make the UK a better place. I also believe in local government, not centralised government, and a Federal Europe, although federated, will have a powerful central government. Look at the US.

Most pro-european people seem to be pro-europe because they know Tories are anti. I haven't met anyone who's pro-european beliefs tally with any other of their political beliefs.