Talking Politics

[Brendan]

Non-regulation of commercial practices will just make it easier for businesses to exploit vulnerable people. This will see the rich get richer and the poor poorer.

With that kind of situation how can you guarantee equal access to education and healthcare unless the state provides it?

As for defence, I am of the opinion that if the UK showed less aggression it wouldn?t have to waste so much money on defence.

[SeanMacGabhann]

Having seen some of the considered, balanced posts on here it's hard to add anything

???? - when you (and you're far from alone) constantly talk of "hugely inneficient largely publicly funded public sector bodies" there really isn't anything that can be said back to that. Like the Irish in the recent referendum, a hotch-potch of various negative, paranoid emotions (even with SOME basis in truth) will always defeat reason. It's almost like the old dark-ages withcurning rationale:

"She's a with - drown her! If she survives she's a witch and we'll burn her. If she drowns.. well maybe she wasn't "

Is there a country ANYWHERE which has a super efficent apparatus (be it government, dictatorial or *shudder* private-run) which you aspire to?

[Brendan]

Let me just add that I am not defending the current system. I just feel that an equal education for all children regardless of background and equal access to healthcare are the fundamental building blocks for a fair society.

The only way I can logically see this happening is by

1 ? Regulating the economy so that there is very little wealth gap between the richest and the poorest. Then let the providers of healthcare and education compete with each other. (I can?t nor would I want to see this happening)

2 ? Have a free and open economy where people can pursue wealth uninhibited but provide all contributors to that economy with decent healthcare and their children with an equal education. I think this is doable but in the UK will probably involve starting from scratch again. And it will piss off both the, ?I deserve to be privileged because I was born privileged.? and the, ?I deserve not to have to work because it?s my right? sides of society.

[????]

Brendan I agree with 2)

Sean, read my post again. You have a habiit of not really presenting an argument but *sighing and talking about 'reason' wheras what you often present is sentiment, the text book view that the 'left' or 'liberal' view is somehow above argument and intrinsically 'right' and somehow oposing opinions are not worth debate. Seriously, you talk a lot of sentiment and not much argument.

[SeanMacGabhann]

???? - if that is true it may be because having posted a lot of argument only to have it ignored, one tires. I would further argue that your viewpoint is a baseless in it's argument as mine and rooted in a different form of "sentiment"

To take my last question to you... society has evolved for millenia. People on different sides of the argument have had their time. And yet government of substantial size exists everywhere. If your argument is so good, where is the evidence?

[SeanMacGabhann]

TO go back and answer a couple of more points.. If I sound like I don't welcome debate then that is simply untrue. To again use the Irish referendum I think it's good that at least one country had the ability to showcase argument and debate around an important treaty.

The fact that the Irish blew it by voting against said referendum because of anti-government sentiment, because Irish mammies "didn't want there good looking boys conscripted to a European army" Quote

and a whole stew of other reasons (also including, yes, a resentment and being "expected" to vote "yes") is neither left wing, right wing or anything else. It is what it is..

Furthermore don't accuse me of not making an argument when the core of your argument is small, efficient government is best, and then not provide any solid example. The case is yours to make, not the other way around.

All that said, I am prone to sentiment. This is not something I would accuse, say, Huguenot, of and yet his long and lengthy argument has not drawn any response from you. Far easier to do the predictable "Seany Sean Sean, dear wee Seany" patronising thing.

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

One thing I would like to say about unregulated markets after my visit to Jamaica last month where big corporations pretty much have a free hand to do whatever they like.

My BF's mum's electricity bill was $8000 Jamaican dollars for 18 days which is about ?60 and she has two rooms with a light bulb, one tv, two fans, a fridge. a hi-fi and no other electrical items at all.

She took the wiring out of all but two of the rooms to try to keep the electricity costs down.

It gets dark at about 6:30pm so if you have no light your day is pretty much over.

In Jamaica the average wage is about ?27 per week.

There are advertising hoardings up all over Jamaica with a cute looking kid saying, "Mummy, if it's wrong to steal, why do we steal electricity?"

At ?60 for 18 days, tell me who the thief is please!

[Marmora Man]

Sean MacG mentioned the Irish Referendum. Having voted NO what are the logical nest steps?

Ask the Irish to answer the question again?

Ditch the current ratification process?

Review and revise the Lisbon Treaty ?

Allow more countries to hold referenda?

Allow a fast stream / slow stream EU?

I have my own thoughts but throw this out for consultation.

[Brendan]

SeanMacGabhann Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> and a whole stew of other reasons (also including,

> yes, a resentment and being "expected" to vote

> "yes") is neither left wing, right wing or

> anything else. It is what it is..

I think the term you are looking for there is petulism (sic). ;-)

[SeanMacGabhann]

score, team Brendan!

Marmora Man - of the 5 options you presented, #3 comes closest. In fact the other 4 would be non-starters in my book. If #1 happened I'd almost be tempted to vote no myself

I don't think it does politicians any harm to have to get out and explain themselves more readily. But I'm of the firm belief the EU project should go ahead. Sometimes I think I'm living in South Dakota in the late 19th century, with all around me hellbent on saying no to the union

[????]

Sean - the EU project 'may' be right, but the politicians and bueracrats(sp0 who run it have not yet made a convinvcing case and presented communicated this properly and then when the 'people' reject it have tried to get it in through the back door. Again, in the 21st century we have to try and have ongoing dialogue far too many politicains (especially many on the continent) are still stuck in this 'we are the political elite we know what's best trust us' view of the world....a hangover from post 1945 consensus (largely mildley socialist) politics. It's crap today - a prime exaample being GD himself his "I feel your pain" shite...'trust me, i know best"...no wonder we haven't engagement. The US constitution is one of thye most straightforward and understandable piece of political 'paper' (sorry I can't think of a better word with a hangover)..the EU constitution is 500+ pages......madness.

[spadetownboy]

i,ll tell you what will happen, exactly what happened the last time the irish voted no. the yesmen will shake up and wake up and realise that yet again a yes vote was not a formality, they will get their act in gear and be a bit more proactive in actually encouraging people to vote yes, and hold another ref early next year.

[Huguenot]

When Will Hutton trousers the free market in favour of governemnt intervention, you know something's going wrong. I'd have to say that he knows a damn sight more than all of us!

[Marmora Man]

EU:

The Irish NO vote gives EU politicians an opportunty and challenge. The oportunity is to explain the rationale for increased integration and growing oversight by an unelected bureaucracy (you'll note my scepticism). The challenge is to win that argument - they haven't, so far, managed to do so with me.

For my part I can see the argument for a larger / more co-ordinated voice in the world - the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. This could work well for trade, possibly for international diplomacy and defence. Doing this by treaty makes sense and is analogous to NATO, SEATO, NAFTA, EFTA and other groupings of interested parties.

The wider, less publically acknowledged, objective of creating a new United States of Europe is less acceptable to me. Particularly as it is currently formulated with no democratic accountability. The comparison of the EU with the USA as two "countries" is false analogy - Europe dos not share a common language or a common heritage that can be bought into. The US is a relatively loose federal grouping with significant local accountability and tradition. The EU project (Sean MacG's phrase) seems to be pursuing a centralist, directive policy intent on submerging indvidualism at country, county, town and village level to some, supposedly, higher objective of a common Europe.

Summary - an extended Common Market of interested countries bound together by common interest / economics - YES.

United States of Europe - NO. (PS: Please don't quote Churchill on this).

In time it is entirely possible that European countries will gradually align an eventually become one larger entity but this change must follow people's gradually changing wishes and not be driven by policians aspirations. Everyone can discuss and argue for change - but forcing it through wholesale seldom works.

[citizenED]

Why big Government? Because some apparatus is required to iron out the "natural" inequalitis that we have inherited. It's really all about the children. I might agree that when it comes to adults we could be free to compete in a necessarily regulated "free" marketplace - but only if we all get to be adults on a relatively even footing. As it is things are so skewed that the idea we have a free market is frankly laughable. We have a stratified market. The whole issue of Human Rights beloved of Europe is the philosophical basis behind the growth of Government. Thank god it is on the agenda. It is not fair that some people are born priveleged and others not.

[Huguenot]

The problem with referenda is that they are manifestly not democratic. Their dependence on Yes/No answers makes them subordinate to the black & white politics of fear, rather than the grey areas of complex interrelated challenges which contribute to social progression.

Before you suggest that this makes me a dictator, I'd point out that the biggest historical users of the plebiscites were tyrannies - Hitler, Mussonlini, Napoleon and Pinochet in the modern era. It was rumoured that 90% of the German inmates of concentration camps had actually voted for withdrawal from the Geneva convention on the basis of German sovereignty, without realising that they had also given the state a mandate for the Final Solution.

In Ireland the no campaign was lead by Declan Ganley, an unelected businessman on the basis of loss of sovereignty, high taxation and legalisation of abortion. This is neither democracy, nor honest. It is however nicely black & white, and that wins referenda.

I'm sure Ganley is no idiot. One possible outcome of this decision is that Ireland withdraws from the EU and all the economic support that it offers, leaving Ireland once more to become the European backwater it was, with high unemployment and corrupt leadership. These leaders are no doubt sponsored by the cash rich monopolies favoured by big business.

Handing power from the people, to Ganley.

Referenda - Democracy? Don't make me laugh.

[Huguenot]

James Madison on government vs. referendum...

"...an institution may be sometimes necessary as a defense to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions.... ...there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion [Capital punishment??] or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men [Ganley?], may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn.

"In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the misguided career and to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind?

"What bitter anguish would not the people of Athens have often escaped if their government had contained so provident a safeguard against the tyranny of their own passions? Popular liberty might then have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens the hemlock on one day and statues on the next."