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A monetary union without a fiscal and political union is unsustainable. That it is the direction the EU project is heading in unless, of course, there is a massive backlash at the ballot box. Though at this point I imagine it wouldn't be easy to unravel decades of integration.

As for Fritz, his innate desire to dominate continental Europe is no secret to anyone born in the last 100+ years. Thatcher was right to be skeptical about reunification.

Growing feeling is that the EU is increasingly pointless. Reading today as far as Germany goes, she is now becoming besieged at her southern border with migrants coming up through Austria. Karma for Greece some might say.

Didn't Churchill forsee France and Germany as dominant forces in Europe in the years after the war? Hitler did things the wrong way round. Invading with armies was a bit OTT, should've done it this way.

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Arron Banks has already blown resources on a now obsolete marketing campaign called The Know, although I'm not sure how effective it would have ever been.

This is great news for those of us who want out though. ComRes polling showed that the Yes/Remain lead dropped from 18 points to 10 when the question was changed, so all the more reason to be optimistic.

Any thoughts on the UKIP Out campaign being launched this week? I worry it will be toxic to see UKIP campaigning outside of the context of a cross-party platform including the likes of Hooey and Paterson, and I think it's a shame that Farage has been forced to do this by the cowardly wait-and-see position of the Tory so-called "Eurosceptics". Cameron's renegotation tactic isn't only an ingenious scam to fool voters once the poll comes around, but clearly a ploy to retard the operation of the sceptics in the Tory party while the Europhiles retain a free hand to campaign as soon as they wish.

Erica Ambler wrote:

The question for Britain's EU referendum is to be changed to:

Quote :

“Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”

The responses will now be: “Remain a member of the European Union” or: “Leave the European Union”

Much fairer. As Europe's abandonment of its borders looks more and more idiotic, maybe Britain can re-secure its own at least.

time to shore up the Channel Tunnel.

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He's an old-fashioned style French provocateur in the style of Serge Gainsbourg.

What the EU has done to Greece is something that will be regarded with deep shame in the future.
Just read an article that some Greek women have now resorted to prostituting themselves for amounts as low as 2 euros. So basically they are literally selling their body for a loaf of bread.

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Catalonia will not gain independence. Puigdemont is a lunatic.

This should have never escalated to this point, unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a reasonable person on either side of this mess.

There's a similar separatist movement in Valencia, which it is trendy to support. Those I know who support it are distinctly unhinged.

The one thing they will never separate from is the EU.

It's an odd sort of phoney nationalism that demands secession from a state but also further integration into a supranational bureaucracy.

As with Scotland, it's the Catalan youth who are most fervently in favour of this change-for-change's-sake. Youth are a notoriously stupid subset of the population.

It goes a bit deeper than that and is incredibly pernicious. You wouldn't believe the lengths I had to go to just to get my child into a school that teaches in Castellano rather than Valenciano, but the rest of the world has no idea it's going on outside of Barcelona. There's a strong whiff of 1930s Germany all down the eastern coast of Spain.

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Erica Ambler wrote:

Santa wrote:

There's a strong whiff of 1930s Germany all down the eastern coast of Spain.

There is an inherent contradiction in any independence movement that favours continuing membership of the EU.

I'm not sure that's true. There are obvious benefits to Catalonia being outside of Spain but still inside of the EU.

Courtesy of their economy being stronger than most other Spanish regions and them being a net contributor to the national budget.

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Erica Ambler wrote:

Salomé wrote:

There are obvious benefits to Catalonia being outside of Spain but still inside of the EU.

Self-determination isn't one of them.

If you guys wanted to be ruled by Germany you should have said so in 1939. Saved us all a shitload of trouble.

How did we get all the way back to WW II when the discussion was the benefits for Catalonia of being both inside of the EU and independent of Spain?
This isn't exactly hard to understand.

The same applies to Flanders, which is why the Flemish nationalists have no intention of taking us outside of the EU either if their independence dreams are ever realized.

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It's absolutely nothing to do with self-determination.

When I say 1930s Germany I'm complaining about Puigdemont and the other regionalists, not the Spanish government. I'm talking about the brain washing, the Valencian flags in infant schools, the bending of the law to impose their ridiculous language on parts of the province further south where people don't speak it and never have, the fact that these days only Valencianos can work for public institutions, that sort of thing. The fact that most people here cannot educate their child in the national language, which could be of use to them all their lives and in various parts of the world, and instead are forced to have their children growing up with a language which is only of use to them if they never travel more than about 100 miles from their home during their lifetime. There's no way I was putting up with that shit but I had to jump through some very difficult hoops and pay for the best private schooling to avoid that happening - and even so about a third of my child's lessons are taught in Valenciano . That was the best I could get.

However I wouldn't say it's discrimination exactly, more some very confused elitism. Imagine sitting down for dinner in a nice restaurant with a group of apparently educated, intelligent people, but occasionally as the evening goes on one of them will raise a hand and shout 'Viva Valencia!'. Most of us look at each other in embarrassment, a few slightly odd ones get a bit excited, red in the face and fidgety, and the conversation carries on as if nothing had happened. These people think they're really cool and modern. They're fucking idiots.

Santa wrote:

 It's absolutely nothing to do with self-determination.

When I say 1930s Germany I'm complaining about Puigdemont and the other regionalists, not the Spanish government. I'm talking about the brain washing, the Valencian flags in infant schools, the bending of the law to impose their ridiculous language on parts of the province further south where people don't speak it and never have, the fact that these days only Valencianos can work for public institutions, that sort of thing. The fact that most people here cannot educate their child in the national language, which could be of use to them all their lives and in various parts of the world, and instead are forced to have their children growing up with a language which is only of use to them if they never travel more than about 100 miles from their home during their lifetime. There's no way I was putting up with that shit but I had to jump through some very difficult hoops and pay for the best private schooling to avoid that happening - and even so about a third of my child's lessons are taught in Valenciano   . That was the best I could get.

However I wouldn't say it's discrimination exactly, more some very confused elitism. Imagine sitting down for dinner in a nice restaurant with a group of apparently educated, intelligent people, but occasionally as the evening goes on one of them will raise a hand and shout 'Viva Valencia!'. Most of us look at each other in embarrassment, a few slightly odd ones get a bit excited, red in the face and fidgety, and the conversation carries on as if nothing had happened. These people think they're really cool and modern. They're fucking idiots.

That all sounds very much like Sinn Fein's call for a draconian Irish Language Act in Northern Ireland.

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Minority culture!

It's self-indulgent rubbish. Nothing more.