European Union vs. British Union

BetterLisbon

One thing that really struck me throughout the Lisbon rerun campaign was how many on the yes side would wrap the tricolour around themselves and appeal to anti-british sentiment especially when Nigel Farage paid us a visit. Yet the arguments being offered by europhiles are the arguments for british rule. For example:

Social progress:
The ban on divorce and contraception would never have happened under the british union. In fact plenty of "good laws" would have been forced on us.

Infrastructure:
The british would have built us lots of great roads if we had stayed in the UK.

Punching above our weight:
We had 80 seats in the house of commons which would quite often be the balance of power and in the parliament of a permanent member of the UN security council.

Farm subsidies:
UK farmers used to get good subsidies. If we hadnt left the UK so would our famers.

Limit the power of our gombeens:
We may well have had an irish assembly but it would have been kept in check by westminster.

Net beneficiary of the budget:
We would have received net transfers of billions down the years from London.

In fact virtually all the pro-EU arguments could have been made 100 years ago to stay in the UK.

mike65

Self-determination?*

also discussed here




* I do realise that has been increasingly bargained away within the EU

danbohan

BetterLisbon wrote: »

One thing that really struck me throughout the Lisbon rerun campaign was how many on the yes side would wrap the tricolour around themselves and appeal to anti-british sentiment especially when Nigel Farage paid us a visit. Yet the arguments being offered by europhiles are the arguments for british rule. For example:

Social progress:
The ban on divorce and contraception would never have happened under the british union. In fact plenty of "good laws" would have been forced on us.

Infrastructure:
The british would have built us lots of great roads if we had stayed in the UK.

Punching above our weight:
We had 80 seats in the house of commons which would quite often be the balance of power and in the parliament of a permanent member of the UN security council.

Farm subsidies:
UK farmers used to get good subsidies. If we hadnt left the UK so would our famers.

Limit the power of our gombeens:
We may well have had an irish assembly but it would have been kept in check by westminster.

Net beneficiary of the budget:
We would have received net transfers of billions down the years from London.

In fact virtually all the pro-EU arguments could have been made 100 years ago to stay in the UK.

1,maybe , divorce in northern ireland is on a different basis than england and wales
2, have you ever driven on the roads of rural tyrone or fermanagh ?

3 , or you would have the same equal rights as Catholics in northern ireland pre 1969

4 ever looked at the standard of farm buildings in England , that will tell you how much subsides were / are available

5 we had plenty of gombeens as mp before independence , and i think the mother of parliaments has as many gombeens or whatever the british term is as we have

6 , yea , we really really benefited from their generosity in the previous 800 years!

bonkey

mike65 wrote: »

Self-determination?*

* I do realise that has been increasingly bargained away within the EU

Self-determination includes the right and freedom to choose to give authority to others.

We have, of course, also kept the right to re-assert our authority should we choose....a fact that BetterLisbon must be aware of, given that it has been the entire premise of more than one thread recently.

These are things we never had under British rule.

BetterLisbon

danbohan wrote: »

1,maybe , divorce in northern ireland is on a different basis than england and wales
2, have you ever driven on the roads of rural tyrone or fermanagh ?

3 , or you would have the same equal rights as Catholics in northern ireland pre 1969

4 ever looked at the standard of farm buildings in England , that will tell you how much subsides were / are available

5 we had plenty of gombeens as mp before independence , and i think the mother of parliaments has as many gombeens or whatever the british term is as we have

6 , yea , we really really benefited from their generosity in the previous 800 years!

1- True but the divorce ban would never have happened and neither would other "bad irish laws". So if "good laws" justify EU rule why not british rule?
2- True but northern roads were a hell of a lot better than ours. If building good roads justifies EU rule why not british rule?
3- Address the point we did punch above our weight in the british union. If its good enough to punch above our weight in the EU why not in the british union. (The carry on of stormont could not have happened if we stayed in the british union).
4- British farmers got very good subsidies before the UK entered the EEC.
5- Yes but didnt westminster limit the power of our gombeens just as the EU does.
6- Address the point we were net beneficiaries of the UK budget and would have been had we stayed in the UK.

So in short all the pro union arguments are the same.

BetterLisbon

bonkey wrote: »

Self-determination includes the right and freedom to choose to give authority to others.

We have, of course, also kept the right to re-assert our authority should we choose....a fact that BetterLisbon must be aware of, given that it has been the entire premise of more than one thread recently.

These are things we never had under British rule.

Well we did exit the british union legally so we were able to reassert our authority. Dont forget we entered the british union voluntarily aswell.
So compare with the EU: We entered voluntarily and can legally leave. The only difference is that legally leaving the EU does not (yet?) have to be negotiated although an unnegotiated withdrawal is impractical.

seamus

BetterLisbon wrote: »

Social progress:
The ban on divorce and contraception would never have happened under the british union. In fact plenty of "good laws" would have been forced on us.

Think about why we have divorce and contraception laws at all though - because of Catholicism. If we'd stayed in the Union, the overwhelming majority of Irish would have been considered second-class citizens on the basis of religion. Northern Ireland is a good example of what happened to Catholics in the Protestant UK. I'm less religious than most, but my ancestors weren't. Most of us would have grown up as working class poor Irish catholics in the UK.

Infrastructure:The british would have built us lots of great roads if we had stayed in the UK.

Not really guaranteed. Our population density is around 25% that of the UK, which means that a road is cheaper to build in the UK, as a % of GDP.

Punching above our weight:
We had 80 seats in the house of commons which would quite often be the balance of power and in the parliament of a permanent member of the UN security council.

Since all we have is "gombeens" by your own admission, I can't see how giving us more power than we're due can possibly be a good thing.

Farm subsidies:
UK farmers used to get good subsidies. If we hadnt left the UK so would our famers.

Our farmers are extremely well looked after.

Limit the power of our gombeens:
We may well have had an irish assembly but it would have been kept in check by westminster.

And there are no "gombeens" in westminster?

In fact virtually all the pro-EU arguments could have been made 100 years ago to stay in the UK.

With the obvious exception that we would be subject to an Irish apartheid as laws were passed to limit how much wealth or power an Irish Catholic could hold.

You also must accept that there's temperance in diversity. If the UK makes the rules, then we are subject to those rules, even if they don't suit us. The same situation can plausibly exist in the EU, but by virtue of there being so many varied nation states, the reality is that the rules will generally do their best to suit everyone as much as is possible.

K-9

BetterLisbon wrote: »

1- True but the divorce ban would never have happened and neither would other "bad irish laws". So if "good laws" justify EU rule why not british rule?
2- True but northern roads were a hell of a lot better than ours. If building good roads justifies EU rule why not british rule?
3- Address the point we did punch above our weight in the british union. If its good enough to punch above our weight in the EU why not in the british union. (The carry on of stormont could not have happened if we stayed in the british union).
4- British farmers got very good subsidies before the UK entered the EEC.
5- Yes but didnt westminster limit the power of our gombeens just as the EU does.
6- Address the point we were net beneficiaries of the UK budget and would have been had we stayed in the UK.

So in short all the pro union arguments are the same.

Just on Stormont, it could well still have happened. Craig et al were opposed to Home Rule as well. Chances are that we would have ended up with Stormont anyway.

molloyjh

So is the point of this thread that we should not be an independant country? Or is it that the EU is a bad thing? What?

I'm sure if you had made that very argument to many Irish people 100 years ago you would have received an "interesting" response. It's good to see that you're willing to ignore so much relevant information regarding how Irish people were treated back then, and how the Irish culture was treated, just to try and make some sort of argument, the point of which is abysmally unclear. :rolleyes:

BetterLisbon

molloyjh wrote: »

So is the point of this thread that we should not be an independant country? Or is it that the EU is a bad thing? What?

I'm sure if you had made that very argument to many Irish people 100 years ago you would have received an "interesting" response. It's good to see that you're willing to ignore so much relevant information regarding how Irish people were treated back then, and how the Irish culture was treated, just to try and make some sort of argument, the point of which is abysmally unclear. :rolleyes:

The point is that every argument made for the EU is the same as an argument for the UK. If we werent treated so badly would you advocate the UK?

Scofflaw

BetterLisbon wrote: »

The point is that every argument made for the EU is the same as an argument for the UK. If we werent treated so badly would you advocate the UK?

I think people are disagreeing with the claim that "every argument made for the EU is the same as an argument for the UK". No doubt this is because they are blinkered europhiles? So many things seem to be, after all.

amused,
Scofflaw

seamus

BetterLisbon wrote: »

The point is that every argument made for the EU is the same as an argument for the UK.

But every argument *against* the EU isn't the same as the arguments *against* the UK.

For example, think of the banking crisis. Would you prefer to be part of the EU or part of a non-EU affiliated UK?

If we werent treated so badly would you advocate the UK?

If Hitler hadn't been such a bastard would you have preferred the Germans to win the war?
It's an irrelevant question.

molloyjh

BetterLisbon wrote: »

The point is that every argument made for the EU is the same as an argument for the UK. If we werent treated so badly would you advocate the UK?

Every argument? Really? Can you provide proof that we would have gotten the level of investment from a British Government that we did from the EU? Can you provide proof that we would have had easy and free access to over a market of over 5 billion if we were part of the Commonwealth? Can you provide proof that the British Government would have allowed us to reduce our rate of Corporate Tax to the point it is at now so that we could attract foreign investment with the lure of said market and CT rate?

And had we remained within the UK wouldn't we now still be in the EU anyway? Only with no control over our destiny and role within it!?

This is all just waffle and it ignores all the reasons against being a part of the UK, such as they were 100 years ago and are now. If this is the heady heights you're arguments reach you really are in a spot of bother.

BetterLisbon

molloyjh wrote: »

Every argument? Really? Can you provide proof that we would have gotten the level of investment from a British Government that we did from the EU? Can you provide proof that we would have had easy and free access to over a market of over 5 billion if we were part of the Commonwealth? Can you provide proof that the British Government would have allowed us to reduce our rate of Corporate Tax to the point it is at now so that we could attract foreign investment with the lure of said market and CT rate?

And had we remained within the UK wouldn't we now still be in the EU anyway? Only with no control over our destiny and role within it!?

This is all just waffle and it ignores all the reasons against being a part of the UK, such as they were 100 years ago and are now. If this is the heady heights you're arguments reach you really are in a spot of bother.

We may in fact have got a lot more investment as we would have been net beneficiaries of the UK budget. Look at the billions pumped into the north.
The commonwealth would have given us trade links, the exact figure i cant give you.
There would have been a common UK FDI policy that we would have benefitted from as regions of the UK have.
But we would "punch above our weight" in westminster, and that would give us "influence" over the UK position in EU negotiations.
So on balance the pro-Union arguments are the same: Net beneficiary of the budget and "punching above our weight".

dogbert27

One thing that really struck me throughout the Lisbon rerun campaign was why didn't we think of officially becoming the 51st state of the union before we got suckered into the EU. :rolleyes:

molloyjh

BetterLisbon wrote: »

We may in fact have got a lot more investment as we would have been net beneficiaries of the UK budget. Look at the billions pumped into the north.
The commonwealth would have given us trade links, the exact figure i cant give you.
There would have been a common UK FDI policy that we would have benefitted from as regions of the UK have.
But we would "punch above our weight" in westminster, and that would give us "influence" over the UK position in EU negotiations.
So on balance the pro-Union arguments are the same: Net beneficiary of the budget and "punching above our weight".

No they are not. By your own admission you don't know what kind of investment Ireland would have gotten. You don't know what kind of market we would have access to. We would have input into the UK position in the EU as opposed to complete control over our own input (which is vastly, and very obviously, different).

You're still ignoring the history of the last 100 years and the fact that the world then what it is now. What would have happened in those 100 years to this country do you think? In the latter part of the 19th century and nearly half of the 20th century when nationalism was sweeping through all of Europe what exactly would have happened here?

At the end of the day you have your blinkers on to the very limited number of points you want to make and are gleefully ignoring huge amounts of relevant information. And even at that you are not all that informed, by your own admission, about the few points you are actually bothering to look at. By all means keep digging, but you're not fooling anyone but yourself.

BlitzKrieg

so we are swapping out the constant harpering that the EU could take us to war with the idea of the UK taking us to multiple wars over the last century...


and while yes I expect someone to roll out the dangers of lisbon on our neutrality etc etc. please refrain from doing so because unless you can pull out of your ass a war that the EU took us into since joining then its an irrelevent argument in comparing it to the possiblity of an ireland under the UK.

Also how would the troubles played out with an ireland under the UK?

BetterLisbon

Still no-one addresses the point that the arguments offered for concedeing sovereignty in the EU are: Net beneficiaries of the community budget and the undoing of socially regressive laws. Staying in the UK would have delivered both so i stand by my assertion that the pro-union arguments are the same.

BlitzKrieg

you just love to pick and choose dont you.

We'll take all the good things of the UK but we'll ignore the bad things because we didnt have to deal with them and in your your increasingly more and more fantastical mind we have somehow been able to jump pass all the crap that happened in the last 100 years and ended up under British rule under a (possible) hung parliment in 2010.

I also find it funny that your website makes a big deal about the issue of irish neutrality and the EU and yet dont touch it at all here.

edit: lets not forget we'd also be a nuclear power under uk rule...

View

BetterLisbon wrote: »

Yet the arguments being offered by europhiles are the arguments for british rule. For example:

Social progress:
The ban on divorce and contraception would never have happened under the british union. In fact plenty of "good laws" would have been forced on us.

You seem to be confusing the EU with the Council of Europe. The ECHR - the court of the Council of Europe - did hand down judgments on the bans on contraception and (I believe) divorce. The ECJ - the court of the EU - did not hand judgments on these topics.

It is a pity that you don't appear able to distinguish between the two institutions.

BetterLisbon

View wrote: »

You seem to be confusing the EU with the Council of Europe. The ECHR - the court of the Council of Europe - did hand down judgments on the bans on contraception and (I believe) divorce. The ECJ - the court of the EU - did not hand judgments on these topics.

It is a pity that you don't appear able to distinguish between the two institutions.

No i am not i am well aware that ther norris case was before the ECHR not the ECJ. Which strengthens my point that the dismantling of socially regressive legislation did not necessarily come about due to our EU membership.

marco_polo

BetterLisbon wrote: »

No i am not i am well aware that ther norris case was before the ECHR not the ECJ. Which strengthens my point that the dismantling of socially regressive legislation did not necessarily come about due to our EU membership.

All that successfully demonstrates is that one specific piece of socially regressive legislation, incidently in an area in which the EU has no competency, was not dismantled as a direct result of our EU membership.

molloyjh

BetterLisbon wrote: »

No i am not i am well aware that ther norris case was before the ECHR not the ECJ. Which strengthens my point that the dismantling of socially regressive legislation did not necessarily come about due to our EU membership.

Has anyone ever said that without EU membership we wouldn't have gone down that road at all? I certainly haven't seen anyone say that. If they have then they are talking out their pie hole!

thebman

One of the best things about being in the EU as a citizen is the ability to move between so many countries with so varied cultures (yet reasonably similar at the same time) and history without any restrictions and without even having to change currency much of the time.

BetterLisbon

thebman wrote: »

One of the best things about being in the EU as a citizen is the ability to move between so many countries with so varied cultures (yet reasonably similar at the same time) and history without any restrictions and without even having to change currency much of the time.

None of which requires EU membership. Have a chat with a norwegian.

thebman

BetterLisbon wrote: »

None of which requires EU membership. Have a chat with a norwegian.

Didn't know Norway was in the Euro.

BetterLisbon

thebman wrote: »

Didn't know Norway was in the Euro.

Well my main point was that the citizens of the EFTA countries have all the benefits of EU citizens that you have trumpeted. The euro is generally accepted in shops in Norway.

thebman

BetterLisbon wrote: »

Well my main point was that the citizens of the EFTA countries have all the benefits of EU citizens that you have trumpeted. The euro is generally accepted in shops in Norway.

They may accept it, I'd still have to pay for the item and the conversion costs for the shop making it needlessly more expensive for me to go to Norway. I'd also have to do conversion anytime I went to buy anything so its nowhere near the same thing.

If I am going on holidays, I would choose another Euro country over a non-Euro country because its easier and cheaper.

dogbert27

BetterLisbon: Have you been to Norway or Sweden and tried to pay with euro?

It's a pain. They won't accept coins even though you have the right amount of money converted.

They will accept your euro note put will only give you change in krona or kroner.

A disadvantage of not being in the EU for a Norwegian citizen compared to a Finnish citizen is (and this is based on knowing a Norwegian and a Finn who attended a University here) that the Norwegian had to pay full fees of 12,000 euro a year while the Finn only had to pay the registration fee of a few hundred euro.

Likewise if I went to Finland I wouldn't have to pay full fees but if I went to Norway I would.

BetterLisbon

dogbert27 wrote: »

BetterLisbon: Have you been to Norway or Sweden and tried to pay with euro?

It's a pain. They won't accept coins even though you have the right amount of money converted.

They will accept your euro note put will only give you change in krona or kroner.

A disadvantage of not being in the EU for a Norwegian citizen compared to a Finnish citizen is (and this is based on knowing a Norwegian and a Finn who attended a University here) that the Norwegian had to pay full fees of 12,000 euro a year while the Finn only had to pay the registration fee of a few hundred euro.

Likewise if I went to Finland I wouldn't have to pay full fees but if I went to Norway I would.

Credit cards and ATM cards prove handy. As for erasmus i believe we should pull out of it, it costs us a fortune to treat EU students as "domestic" students. Our universities are starved of cash at the minute.

dogbert27

BetterLisbon wrote: »

Credit cards and ATM cards prove handy. As for erasmus i believe we should pull out of it, it costs us a fortune to treat EU students as "domestic" students. Our universities are starved of cash at the minute.

Are you realistically saying that you will buy a bottle of water with your credit card and pay 10-16% interest on that payment. :rolleyes: Oh wait, I'm going to guess that you are responsible with your finances and you will have your credit card paid back before the interest can be charged.

Erasmus is a 2 way street you know. Irish students get treated as "domestic" students abroad. Are you really saying that this is a bad thing?

SkepticOne

dogbert27 wrote: »

Are you realistically saying that you will buy a bottle of water with your credit card and pay 10-16% interest on that payment. :rolleyes: Oh wait, I'm going to guess that you are responsible with your finances and you will have your credit card paid back before the interest can be charged.

Fairly obvious he meant using the credit card as a means of extracting local currency from the ATM as with a standard ATM card and paying for goods and services and not as a means of borrowing.

dogbert27

SkepticOne wrote: »

Fairly obvious he meant using the credit card as a means of extracting local currency from the ATM as with a standard ATM card and paying for goods and services and not as a means of borrowing.

Even if you put money on your credit card to use you still pay cash advance fees everytime you withdraw money from the ATM machine.

SkepticOne

dogbert27 wrote: »

Even if you put money on your credit card to use you still pay cash advance fees everytime you withdraw money from the ATM machine.

You can load it up with cash in advance of your trip. Works out much the same as physically changing money. There are still fees but they are manageable. I think the point is that these days a lot of the inconvenience of dealing with multiple currencies is gone. It is nice to be able to use the Euro in several countries when travelling abroad, however if a country is good value then the fact that it uses a different currency would not be a huge issue.

dogbert27

SkepticOne wrote: »

however if a country is good value then the fact that it uses a different currency would not be a huge issue.

Good and fair point.

ballsymchugh

BetterLisbon wrote: »

We may in fact have got a lot more investment as we would have been net beneficiaries of the UK budget. Look at the billions pumped into the north.
The commonwealth would have given us trade links, the exact figure i cant give you.
There would have been a common UK FDI policy that we would have benefitted from as regions of the UK have.
But we would "punch above our weight" in westminster, and that would give us "influence" over the UK position in EU negotiations.
So on balance the pro-Union arguments are the same: Net beneficiary of the budget and "punching above our weight".

the billions were pumped into the north to try and make up for where stormont of the 60's failed half the population. there's a disproportionally high amount of public sector workers in the north because private enterprise/FDI was feck all.

and have you never heard of the north west of england that got sweet FA from westminister while the south east flourished? the west of ireland got more out of the EU than some parts of the UK ever got from their own government.

oppenheimer1

BetterLisbon wrote: »

One thing that really struck me throughout the Lisbon rerun campaign was how many on the yes side would wrap the tricolour around themselves and appeal to anti-british sentiment especially when Nigel Farage paid us a visit. Yet the arguments being offered by europhiles are the arguments for british rule. For example:

Social progress:
The ban on divorce and contraception would never have happened under the british union. In fact plenty of "good laws" would have been forced on us.

Infrastructure:
The british would have built us lots of great roads if we had stayed in the UK.

Punching above our weight:
We had 80 seats in the house of commons which would quite often be the balance of power and in the parliament of a permanent member of the UN security council.

Farm subsidies:
UK farmers used to get good subsidies. If we hadnt left the UK so would our famers.

Limit the power of our gombeens:
We may well have had an irish assembly but it would have been kept in check by westminster.

Net beneficiary of the budget:
We would have received net transfers of billions down the years from London.

In fact virtually all the pro-EU arguments could have been made 100 years ago to stay in the UK.

Interestingly you are forgetting the most significant event in European history in the last 100 years. Had we been in the UK at the time it is more likely the Germans would have invaded. The Irish coast is much harder to protect and the British army would have been spread more thinly. A fallen Ireland could have turned the entire course of the war in Europe.

Ireland outside of the UK at the time proved vital to the UKs ability to keep the Germans out of mainland Britain.

jacaranda

oppenheimer1 wrote: »

Interestingly you are forgetting the most significant event in European history in the last 100 years. Had we been in the UK at the time it is more likely the Germans would have invaded. The Irish coast is much harder to protect and the British army would have been spread more thinly. A fallen Ireland could have turned the entire course of the war in Europe.

Ireland outside of the UK at the time proved vital to the UKs ability to keep the Germans out of mainland Britain.

And if I was 6 inches taller I'd be 6 foot 4. And if my aunt was a man she'd be my uncle. The world is full of coulda woulda shuolda, and I can't see how speculating about past events that didn't happen is helpful.

molloyjh

jacaranda wrote: »

And if I was 6 inches taller I'd be 6 foot 4. And if my aunt was a man she'd be my uncle. The world is full of coulda woulda shuolda, and I can't see how speculating about past events that didn't happen is helpful.

Is it me or is this thread not all about past events, i.e. leaving the UK and joining the EU? Although relevant facts do seem to be getting in the way of BLs point so maybe we should just ignore them eh?

BlitzKrieg

jacaranda wrote: »

And if I was 6 inches taller I'd be 6 foot 4. And if my aunt was a man she'd be my uncle. The world is full of coulda woulda shuolda, and I can't see how speculating about past events that didn't happen is helpful.

and this isnt being said about the whole premise of eu vs british union because???


I'm pretty sure we cant apply for british union membership now so if we want to talk the advantages of a current british membership we must take in everything that is included with it for the last 80 years at least as possible issues because of our *supposed* membership.