km/h speedometer

It's a very socialist approach, though,m so you ought to agree with
it, I'd have thought. The assumptions is surely that it's in
everybody's best long-term interests to encourage an open, free,
Europe.

This, in a nutshell, is why Britain is so scared of Europe. They (you)
refuse to accept that rules which don't suit them can just be ignored
with impunity. It's practically a rule in itself.

^^^^^
*best*, is the word you're looking for. Best at using the system to
further their own ends, that is. Britain should be looking at them,
not with anger, but with a view to emulating their approach to
manipulating the rest of the EU to further their own national
interests.

 

Ace says...

Oh agreed I'm all for united Europe. Just not the one we've got at the
moment.

Heh, maybe they should make it a rule and then Brussels can disappear in
a puff of twisted logic.

But we're British. We[1] like rules.

[1] We as a nation not UKRM.

 

So why doesn't the EU get rid of the fucking expensive useless
bollocking wanky pointless rule making apparatus first?

 

Because the fucking expensive useless bollocking wanky pointless
rule making apparatus *is* the EU.

 

No. The EU is in place to open markets and deregulate; "liberalise" in
the new economics speak.

The social chapter was a fleeting redemption and forget the Euro Federal
Super State: it's going to become a Euro Supermarket.

 

Not quite the adjectives I would have chosen but you get the gist of it.
A common market was a good idea. A fascist superstate is not.

 

Aside the fact I suspect you wouldn't know a fascistic state if it poked
you in the eye, you are allowing yourself to be distracted by the
parochial concept of the individual nation state.

The world has changed beyond recognition, in economic terms, during the
last 10 years. The movement of money does not recognise national
borders; capitalism needs cheap resources and markets; it doesn't need
nations.

I'd say within the next 10 years we will witness the collapse of both
resources and, simultaneously, markets. Unless some balance to the
hegemony of the Western financial markets - previously provided by the
Stalinist Soviet bloc - is restored. China?

The outlook is bleak IMO.

 

That makes more sense to me than your doom-and-gloom prognosis.

Especially if it has yellow-tag special offers.

 

I really, really doubt this. If only because:

Every time the doomsayers predict something, it never seems to happen.
The world adapts. As you said, China?

Also - the Commies were predicting the downfall of capitalism for nearly
a century. It didn't happen.

 

It would be a bit extreme to depict collapse as total; to the extent
society becomes "a whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear, where men
feed on men" but definitely the certainties and standards [1] we know now
may be markedly changed.

At the moment the balance has tipped and placed so much power and
influence in the hands of those whose interests are only immediate.

As to the Commies predicting the downfall of capitalism; this in itself
true; it never happened as Marxist economics are supposed applied to be
more productive and create greater wealth which quite obviously they
didn't. That's not to say they were flawed as a mechanism but that's a
different argument...

The point is, Capital's downfall would be against Communism's success but
for Capital to 'continue' succeed or at least for the worst of its
rapacious appetite to be limited - allowing it time to recover and
provide itself sustainable markets - it needs to be regulated and
checked. Checks that were formerly provided by the SU.

What concerns me is the pace of technological, social and economic change
[2] has gone from many life times [3] to a few decades.

China may well provide the checks and balances but it won't be before a
polar shift, collapse?, in our lives in the West; simply as the economics
can't sustain themselves as is.

I can't quite put my finger on the best way of describing how I perceive
the future other than "Not Good".


[1] Living and then moral.
[2] Historically driven by trade and war (which is simply an extension
of 'trade').
[3] Millenia for the Roman Empire; two and half centuries rise and
fall of the British Empire etc.

 

sweller says...

Why do I have this vision of Sweller standing atop of a hill overlooking
the smoking remains of western civilisation shouting "I fucking told you
so" before wheel spinning away Max Max stylee on a old GPZ turbo.

 

I'n an optimist: I believe that, one way or another, we'll muddle
through.

 

snip

I'd say that in 10 yrs time at least one of you will still be posting
on ukrm... It would be ungentlemanly to say who might not...
--
O
1 Black, shortly to undergo extensive surgery.
1 Red, undergoing lightweight surgery. -----
1 Blue, for Power-Ranger baiting. | o |
Numbers ... | o |
Stuff ... | ooo |
Life ... -----