So what do we do? Leave and pretend there is more than 30 miles of water between us and France? Europe's fate will surely have of a massive impact on the UK regardless of whether we call ourselves part of it or not. No man is an island, even when that man is, err, a country that is an island...

Anyhoo. Maybe London will hold a referendum on whether it wants to be part of the UnUnited Kingdom.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the referendum is not legally binding, is it?

So what happens if the plebs vote in favor of Brexit?

Brussels dispatches men in finely-tailored suits to London, with goodies in their suitcases. Politicians become supremely motivated to convince the plebs of the wrongness of their views -- or they take their continental brethren as an example and just ignore the plebs altogether.

Jokes aside, it might very well be a vote to leave a sinking ship.

Anyone here really think the EU can survive the groupthink-induced fixation on austerity? Anyone seen the economics data coming from Italy lately? Greece? Spain? France? Anyone think Italy can be in a single currency with Germany under German control? Anyone think the EU can survive the fall of the Euro or the departure of significant member countries?

The way I see it, the EU cannot survive economic orthodoxy. Greece is dying, Italy is bleeding from every orifice. Even as a strong supporter of a unified Europe, including Russia(!), I cannot support the EU in its current form -- it's rotten to the core and dominated by groupthink.

And with all that in mind, the fact still remains that the EU kept the Tories somewhat in check in many regards. What a disheartening situation...

@gorillaman

"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others."

I still just don't think at a fraction of 11% it's worth worrying about. Certainly not enough to actually alter social law. You look at France (also at 11% immigrant) and if anything there's been overreaction with the bans on face covering.

I'm sure the UK could do more to encourage assimilation. A basic part of that would simply be making a better effort of pushing migrants into training / jobs if they're not immediately able to, which forces you to adapt to the country's culture and mores. Settling migrants in poor areas with often high existing unemployment rates is a terrible way to integrate migrants and also naturally stirs up hate among the local population.

Groups of migrants will tend to congregate when they arrive but even if some of these initially end up on welfare, there's always a strong financial incentive to become employed which will force them to integrate. Meanwhile, we know that even if the migrants are religious, their children and further descendants are much less likely to be.

That is so fricking awesome, but not at all surprising. Irish sports fans are the best in the world. (I might be biased, but that is an objective fact)
http://www.sportsjoe.ie/football/irish-supporters-in-france-are-being-praised-to-the-skies-by-impressed-locals/82336

Some even more shocking footage
https://www.facebook.com/www.JOE.co.uk/videos/688688267961909/

'Allo 'Allo is an epic British sitcom set in occupied France - here's the first episode - well worth watching: https://youtu.be/4smE5Ee7h3E

Edit: Posted. http://videosift.com/video/Allo-Allo-Leftenant-Gruber

I thought he missed the point that it's in the best interests of those at the top for the bottom to be higher. They don't want to be carjacked, robbed, kidnapped, etc by people who have no other option to survive, so it behooves them to pay workers enough that that is not the foreseeable outcome.

Also, he forgot to mention the late 1700's uprising/revolution in France where the working class DID rise up and attack the upper class violently, killing many. THAT is some history that needs to be mentioned time and time again, both as a warning if "fairness" isn't returned to the system at least enough to allow full time workers to survive without resorting to crime or working tirelessly over 100 hours per week, and as a reminder of what has worked to solve that inequality problem in the past.
It wouldn't take too many 1%ers being murdered in front of their families and force fed to them before things changed....hopefully for the better, but certainly change of some kind would happen. I hope it doesn't come to that....unless there's no other option, then a few 1%ers murdered is much better than thousands of poor starving or otherwise being indigent to death.

*Best thing about being French is you get to yell...

VIVE LA FRANCE

If you pause the video @9s in, you'll see a footnote, that says this car is only valid for the Indian market. It also says that this model is made in India (the law in India makes importing cars super-expensive, so any car maker that wants to sell there has to put a factory there). Renault has much higher EU safety regulations for the cars that it builds in France and Romania.
There are some cars sold in India (Tata Nano for example) where the seatbelts are even optional.
I think the reasoning is that it's marginally safer than transporting your family on a motorcycle, which is common.
Also, random cattle crossing the street have the right-of-way, even on highways.

I was, to my infinite surprise, real.
Guinness just certified it.


"Franky Zapata, the French jet ski champion who invented the Flyboard Air, has set a new Guinness World Record for the farthest hoverboard flight. Zapata achieved the feat Saturday morning off the coast of Sausset-les-Pins in the south of France, riding his Flyboard Air hoverboard for a distance of more than 2,252 meters (7,388) feet). That far surpasses the previous record of 275.9 meters (905 feet, 2 inches), set last year by Canadian inventor Catalin Alexandru Duru."

http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/30/11535778/franky-zapata-guinness-world-record-hoverboard-flyboard-air

Not even that. She just has to say two words: "Paris? France?"

Boom shakalaka.

3:00 "do you think this conversation is happening in any other country?"

FFS, does anyone really think that the US has a monopoly on political conversation?

The same conversation (well, a less retarded version of it anyway) is happening in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. And that's just in English. There are political debates in Germany, France, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Portugal. Hell, I bet no talks about anything ELSE in Greece!

Hooray for France!

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/04/french-law-forbids-food-waste-by-supermarkets

@newtboy
If it was about safety, they would have illegally immigrated to the multiple neighboring countries

Right, as if you don't know how well fleeing from Germany to neighbours like Poland or France or Italy would have worked out for them... Seriously?

If the Syrians all went to Belgium, installed their own laws and government supplanting the local Belgians', made the Belgians non-citizens, took their lands and properties, pushed them into one small corner ghetto, then complained about how bad the Belgians are...

Are you suggesting that Jews did all this prior to the outbreak of civil war in Palestine? That doesn't reflect reality in any way shape or form.

it was close to 5% before the invasion.

When do you count Jewish immigration to Palestine as becoming an invasion? Palestine was already 8% Jewish by demographics in 1890. That's enough time for almost a 3rd generation to be born by 1940. Slowest, invasion, ever.

The leap was from 1930-1940, with an additional 450k Jewish Palestinians. In that same time the Arab population grew by 420k, so I guess they were both invading???

The alliance of Arab nations that fought them was much SMALLER militarily, you know this.

Right, Israel's initial standing army was 10k, matching Egypt's 10k. But Egypt wasn't the only one in the alliance of course, Jordan had that many as well. Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the remaining alliance members represented another 10k together too. Sure, in hindsight we know they don't jointly commit their entire forces to the task an outnumber the Jewish military 3 to 1. I'm not quite sure how the Jewish people planning a defense were supposed to anticipate that and 'hold back' accordingly.

Honestly, I just can not comprehend what you expect Jewish people fleeing Europe to have done instead. Fleeing to other parts of Europe still left them in Nazi controlled territory and on a train back to Poland. Standing to fight in other European countries meant getting shot at, defeated, and then on a train to Poland. Crossing the ocean was a far sight harder than going to the middle east. Of all the middle east countries, Palestine was the most promising so I find it hard to fault the folks leaving Europe and setting up shop there. Once arrived there, I again find it hard to condemn them for demanding fair treatment and being willing to fight for it.

I said those illegally invading in the 30's had little to flee (unless you are saying they had a time machine and KNEW what was coming).

Mein Kampf was first published in 1925, it had sold nearly a quarter million copies by 1933 when Hitler took power. How could they ever have seen anything bad coming their way I wonder...

Italy:
Renzi is creating the conditons for a new bubble? Through deficit spending on... what? Unless they start building highways in the middle of nowhere like they did in Spain, I don't see any form of bubble coming out of deficit spending in Italy. The country's been in a major recession for quite some time now, with no light at the end of the tunnel and a massive shortfall in private spending. But meaningful deficit spending requires Renzi to tell Germany and the Eurogroup to pound sand -- not sure his balls have descended far enough for that just yet.

Referendum in Switzerland:
"Vollgeld". That's the German term for what the initiators of this referendum are aiming for: 100% reserve banking. It's monetarism in disguise, and they are adament to not be called monetarists. But that's what it is. Pure old-fashioned monetarism. Even if you don't give a jar of cold piss about all these fancy economic terms and theories, let me ask you this: the currency you use is quite an important part of all your daily life, isn't it? So why would anyone in his or her right mind remove it entirely from democratic control (even constitutionally)?
If you want to get into the economic nightmares of it, here are a few bullet points:
- no Overt Monetary Financing (printing money for deficit spending) means no lender of last resort and complete dependence on the market, S&P can tell you to fuck off and die as they did with PIIGS
- notion that the "right amount of money in circulation" will enable the market to keep itself in balance -- as if that ever worked
- notion that a bunch of technocrats can empirically determine this very amount in regular intervalls
- central bank is supposed to maintain price stability, nothing else -- single mandate, works beautifully for the ECB, at least if you like 25% unemployment
- concept is founded in the notion that the financial economy is the source of (almost) all problems of the "real" economy, thereby completely ignoring the fact that decades of wage suppression have simply killed widescale purchasing power of the masses, aka demand

Visegrad nations:
From a German perspective, they are walking on thin ice as it is. The conflict with Russia never had much support of the public to begin with, but even the establishment is becoming more divided on this issue. Given the authoritarian policies put in place in Poland recently and the utter refusal to take in their share of refugees, support might fade even more. If the Visegrad governments then decide to push for further conflict with Russia, Brussels and Berlin might tell them, very discreetly, to pipe the fuck down.

Turkey:
Wildcard. He mentioned how they will mess with Syria, the Kurds and Russia, but forgot to mention the conflict between Turkey and the EU. As of now, it seems as if Brussels is ready to pay Ankara in hard cash if they keep refugees away from Greece. Very similar to the deal with Morocco vis-a-vis the Spanish enclave. As long as they die out of sight, all is good for Brussels.

I would add France as a point of interest:
They recently announced that the state of emergency will be extended until ISIS is beaten. In other words, it'll be permanent, just like the Patriot Act in the US. A lof of attention has been given to the authoritarian shift of politics in Poland, all the while ignoring the equally disturbing shift in France. Those emergency measures basically suspend the rule of law in favour of a covert police state. Add the economic situation (abysmal), the Socialist President who avoids socialist policies, and the still ongoing rise of Front National... well, you get the picture.

Regarding the EU, I'll say this: between the refugee crisis (border controls, domestic problems, etc) and the economic crisis, they finally managed to convince me that this whole thing might come apart at the seams after all. Not this year, though, even if the Brits decide to distance themselves from this rotten creation.

Neither.
Perhaps YOU didn't watch the video, or do you just refuse to acknowledge the facts that the Jewish population was quite small, and was treated fairly under 'Palestinian rule' (whether under the Ottomans, Brittan, or France)?
They didn't fight until AFTER Zionisation....or invasion. They declared war because the Jews in droves illegally immigrated there and TOOK/STOLE the land by force and asserted political and military control, and instantly started expanding their control to their neighbors and expelling or disenfranchising non Jews.
Yes, it's absolutely the Jew's fault for stealing other people's land. Yes, it's the Brit's and French's fault for not enforcing the legal immigration plans that were set up and for allowing all the insane illegal immigration/invasion, then later their and the USA's fault for supporting the invaders politically, militarily, and financially.
They absolutely should have KEPT them in Germany/Europe and taken state land and given it to the Jews to form their own state...not allowed them to relocate and take an innocent party's property because they want it. Before the Jewish invasion, the Jews in Palestine were treated just fine...not so with the Palestinians after the invasion.