Nigel Farage MEP

dlouth15 wrote: »

Remember that when you're dealing with percentages you have to be careful about talking about proportional increases in those percentages. It is a common enough trap to fall in to.

Unemployment increasing by a factor of three by going, for example, from 1% to 3% does not reflect the economic damage that would be the case if unemployment went from 5% to 15%. Both have increased by a factor of three but in the latter case the economic damage is much greater.

I'd agree with that, but it's not really what the discussion was about. The point that they followed the same trajectories, and that in terms of their own norms, the changes were pretty much the same for both, is relevant to the question of how each polity dealt with the crisis. There wasn't a magical track which Iceland was on that Ireland wasn't - the tools used in the crisis were different, but the outcomes seem to be very similar, and neither of us are out of the woods yet. However, Ireland has remained throughout an open economy whereas Iceland has not - and I think it's not really possible to over-emphasise the negative impact Icelandic-style capital controls and economic closure for several years (most of a decade) would have had on our multinational sector.

GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote:

Could that be used to support the contention that the euro, and EU membership, are essentially irrelevant to our fortunes?

I'm not saying that one comparison between two countries is especially meaningful. But is it fair to say that Ireland isn't shown to be doing remarkably better, over a time period that seems to go back to 2000?

I do sometimes wonder, I admit, if much of the gain and pain ascribed to the euro is ascribed simply because it's the most obvious change and a dominant motif in many political narratives. But then I tend to suspect economics of being more impressed by correlation than capable of identifying causation.

cordially,
Scofflaw

GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote: »

And, as far as that article is concerned, it's hard to disagree with the sentiment in the line

"The European parliament is the most powerless parliament in the world."

That view is years out of date.

There are over 6,500 organisations registered on the official register of lobbyists for the European Parliament. These range from NGOs, special interest groups such as consumers, farmers etc through to major MNCs. They would not be spending large sums of their money if they regarded the European Parliament as being powerless.

GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote: »

We don't elect the key decision makers in the EU.

We directly elect MEPs who together with the Council of Ministers are the primary decision makers in the EU.

Our Ministerial representatives are there only so long as the Dáil democratically supports them doing so (a de facto indirect election).

The Taoiseach, as with Ministers, requires the democratic support of the Dáil to represent us.

The Commissioners must gain and maintain the support of a democratic majority of MEPs (and must do this on an individual basis unlike our Ministers before taking office).

Which other key decision makers do you believe we should be electing either directly or indirectly? Or do you just disagree with the concept of representative democracy?

GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote: »

Just an interesting little article, in the context of this threadIt's worth noting that there is a strand of Eurosceptic opinion out there. And, as far as that article is concerned, it's hard to disagree with the sentiment in the lineWe don't elect the key decision makers in the EU. We get to elect a few tribunes. The process makes us their supplicants, even if that's a seamless transition from our domestic political culture.

Not really, because the claim that the EP is the most powerless parliament in the world is only accurate at all in the rather tight limits on what it votes on - but those limits are there because the EU doesn't have anything like the full range of powers that its member states have. The EP doesn't get to vote on stuff like criminal law because the EU has no powers there. Where the EU has powers the EP is powerful.

Within that straitjacket, I wouldn't consider the EP as powerless in practice as, say, the Dáil. The government doesn't lose votes in the Dáil - the Commission and the Council lose votes in the EP.

An example of the EP's powers within the EU structure, and somewhere where the EU has powers, is ACTA, or, similarly, TTIP. The Parliament voted ACTA down - would the Dáil have done the same, in response to the same public opposition?

Even the potential power of the Parliament changes things - with TTIP, if the Parliament didn't have a vote, I doubt the Commission would have stalled talks on the investor-state dispute resolution mechanism and opened it to public consultation.

The problem is more that the Parliament doesn't vote on the same issues that national politicians get elected on - water charges, austerity, fiscal, economic, and social policy - precisely because those are things voters really care about, and are therefore retained in national hands.

cordially,
Scofflaw

GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote: »

I did say "sentiment" for a reason as, indeed, "most powerless parliament in the world" is an overstatement. And, absolutely, our own parliament is just a mechanism for electing a Government. Beyond that, it's frequently just a rubber stamp parliament. Our TDs act as if they were tribunes, even if they are meant to be legislators.

Hardly as tribunes, I think, given that tribunes were specifically intended as a check on the powers of the government, and that's the function the Dáil most noticeably doesn't perform. They do act as legislators, although only in the role of lobby fodder.

GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote: »

However, the reason I posted was because I saw a billboard on a bus this morning, exhorting me to vote in the EP with some slogan like "choose the decision makers in Europe". What, I thought, I'm going to get to vote for the German Chancellor?

There's certainly an element of over-promising there. The EP does make a hell of a lot of decisions, and is only now beginning to grow into the shoes Lisbon gave it, but the entire EU has been sidelined during the crisis, and the powerful member states have been the dominant players.

GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote: »

Sure, the Parliament has a role, and there are checks and balances in the Council that are meant to protect small countries. But I've no picture or feeling that I'm choosing the leaders who will decide the strategic direction that Europe will take. And the campaigns of most of the candidates are based around supplication. Its all "Doing a Deal on the Debt and Getting Jobs All Across the Constituency." The only candidate I've seen making any effort to engage with the job as being more than supplication is Ming Flanagan. (And I'm not especially agreeing with Ming - although, as will be clear from my posts here, I don't automatically dismiss someone just because they say they are Eurosceptic.)

Now, yes, it's not a national parliament and, yes, one of the reasons its a slightly strange beast is precisely because national governments don't want concede power. But even those reasons give some kind of basis for a Eurosceptic view; why is it so utterly mad to want to take some powers back from the centre, if Governments are reluctant to part with more powers?

Because the two points are unrelated? That national politicians want to take back powers from the EU doesn't tell you anything about whether it's a good idea for them to do so, any more than our government stripping powers from local government and taking it into their own hands tells you that centralisation is a good idea.

The EU stands for a particular vision of Europe, one of openness, cooperation, and trust between European nations and between Europeans. It's an imperfectly realised vision, obviously, but that's the basic thrust of it. That's something that's visible even in gibes about Germany dominating the EU, which is only a gibe because it doesn't match the vision.

But openness, cooperation and trust aren't easy or natural things between nations or peoples - the history of the world is not one of neighbours coexisting in cooperative and trustful amity. It's traditionally possible not just to make people distrust foreigners, but to be willing to hate them and kill them. Being cooperative, open, and trusting isn't easy, it's hard. Staying the course requires discipline, it means constantly playing by the rules. So when politicians call for repatriation of powers, that's usually the easy road - they're saying "let's be selfish in our decision-making" or, more usually at the moment, "let's close our borders to foreigners". Fundamentally they're saying "this is hard work, let's opt out".

Sure, you can claim justification on the grounds that "cooperative decision making doesn't always produce optimal results", or "[someone else] has undue influence" - but selfish decision-making doesn't always produce optimal results either (and war is the ultimate sub-optimal result), and insularity doesn't actually preclude influence. The ultimate justification is really that turning your back on openness, cooperation and trust requires no enlargement of the spirit to contain and consider the well-being of others, and many people find that emotionally appealing. Nigel Farage is the mate who urges you to say "ah feck it" and have another beer rather than going home to your wife and all the complexities of married existence. It's the siren call of selfishness, and it's pretty alluring, but the long-term results are generally fairly bitter.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw wrote: »

Mm, no. You're attempting to sneak round the point I was illustrating by bringing in a separate point. The impact of a 10% rise in unemployment may be larger in absolute terms, but the impact isn't the same as the response.

If Ireland has a higher rate of unemployment in ordinary times than Iceland, as it does (we've never had 2% unemployment), then there's no reason to assume that the absolute size of changes in the two systems in a crisis is going to be identical, and rather more reason to expect the size of change to be characteristic of the system. Percentages express that better, and make it easier to see the trend, which is similar for both countries through the crisis. The systems respond to the crisis in similar ways and at similar times, so the claim that Iceland and Ireland are chalk and cheese is hard to sustain.

cordially,
Scofflaw

I think the point I was trying to make is that although the percentages are the same, the meaning of those percentages is different. It takes a greater economic shock (relative to the size of the economy) to treble unemployment from 5% to 15% than it does from 1% to 3%. In addition, the toll on the workforce is greater in the former case. More people as a percentage of the workforce have lost their jobs. I'm leaving out things like emigration, retirement and so forth here for the sake of simplicity.

A better comparison would be the impact on employment as a percentage of the workforce (or the population) in the respective countries. This would be a valid comparison. Then you could go on to discuss the various factors that brought about this impact.

I hear he's funded by the Russians.

AlekSmart wrote: »

Who is funded by the Russians.....Paul Murphy ?...or is there any comparison that can be made ?

Who's Paul Murphy? Nasty Niggel of course, UKIP. All part of a campaign to destabilise Europe and fuel the propaganda machine. Fund fringe political groups then turn up with the cameras for the action and broadcast it all on state media as evidence to the Russian people of the rise of Neo-Nazi fascism and dissent in a crumbling EU.

AlekSmart wrote: »

Who is funded by the Russians.....Paul Murphy ?...or is there any comparison that can be made ?

The reference is to this:

LISBON, Portugal — Vladimir Putin's propaganda machine may relentlessly denounce Ukraine's authorities as fascists and xenophobes, but elsewhere in Europe the Russian leader is energetically courting far-right politicians as allies in his confrontation with Western governments.

"You can see that the National Front is viewed very favorably in Russia,” says Ludovic de Danne, foreign affairs spokesman for radical-right French party. “We are more than tolerated, we are seen as a friend."

...

The National Front is just one of several radical right parties across Europe providing vocal support for Putin's position in Ukraine, even as Western governments accuse the Russian leader of dragging the continent into its worst crisis since the fall of the Iron Curtain.

...

Dutch Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders has echoed the Kremlin's line, saying Ukraine's pro-Western government is run by "National-Socialists, Jew-haters and other anti-democrats." In a speech last month to parliament, he blamed "shameless Europhiles with their dreams of empire" for prompting the crisis.

...

"During the Cold War, the Soviet Union sponsored communist parties, far-left parties around Europe which basically did the bidding of Moscow and tried to spread certain types of propaganda," says Mitchell Orenstein, political science department chair at Boston's Northeastern University. "Russia today is using a lot of the old Soviet techniques, but this time is finding the far right a better partner than the far left."

Many on Europe's radical right admire Putin's strongman image. Nigel Farage, leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, last week said Putin was the world leader he most admired. "Compared with the kids who run foreign policy in this country, I've more respect for him than our lot."

Russian media have widely reported his comment that the EU has "blood on its hands" by meddling in Ukraine.

Although Farage has sought to distance his party from some far-right counterparts in continental Europe, UKIP shares their views on rolling back European integration, halting immigration and opposing gay marriage.

http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-ames-europes-far-right-is-embracing-putin-2014-4

I very very much doubt Farage is funded by Putin, though. The Brits would take a very dim view of that.

cordially,
Scofflaw

GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote: »

But, sure, one man's pragmatism is another man's ideology.

Not really in the case of nationalism. There's nothing "pragmatic" about the nation-state as a demos.

GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote: »

What I'd expect is different folk will gain and lose from decisions being taken at different levels. If it wasn't for the damn EU, Ming would be able to burn turf until there wasn't any left. I'd expect that UKIP supporters are folk who feel the EU similarly obstructs them. The Irish middle class, perhaps strangely, has typically been in favour of the EU as it imposes a legislative agenda that would never get through the political system.

Quite a large chunk of our regulation (including, as I think we've touched on before, our financial services regulation) comes from Europe. You'd look in vain in the Central Bank Acts for the kind of detailed requirements imposed on Irish banks by the various regulatory Directives developed to support the 1992 Single Market, and later measures.

I wouldn't rush to put a value judgment on it. After all, Marxists would probably see the Single Market as an initiative that put the interests of European capitalists ahead of the interest of working people.

Probably.

GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote: »

I'm afraid my knowledge of history is awful. I take it the 105 Irish seats in the House of Commons didn't amount to a hill of beans, and no party elected in Ireland could ever have aspired to hold the balance of power or have any influence on events. Our eleven seats in the European Parliament, on the other hand, mean that the EU is a truly integrated union.

The existence of those seats, which never formed a completely united bloc, although it did hold the balance of power in, for example, 1858 (as I think you know!), is exactly the kind of thing I'm referring to in the second part of "the UK had more or less institutionalised Ireland as a colony, despite its theoretical status as part of the Union". For a start, they were hardly meaningful before the parliamentary reforms that abolished the rotten boroughs, and the Catholic Relief Act which allowed Catholics to stand. More importantly, perhaps, they could only have a hope of holding the balance of power when united round the single topic of home rule - their weight was not sufficient to counteract centuries of Irish economic repression in favour of the mainland.

It's a bit like saying that surely since it's possible for, say, Dáil seats in the West to hold the balance of power, Western TDs should be able to counter-balance the weight of Dublin in development policy. It don't work that way in reality!

The EP is rather a different beast in any case - it's not a full-scope Parliament, because the EU doesn't pretend to be a fully integrated union (not by a long chalk), and in particular is not a policy setter but a policy modifier in an EU which doesn't itself have a free policy hand. Policy which specifically disadvantages Ireland isn't something the EU is legally allowed to create. Ming can't cut certain bogs, and his Polish equivalent can't either - if Ming is serious about getting protection for sites of scientific interest repealed, he'll need to link up with like-minded parochial vandals from around the EU.

GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote: »

I'm afraid that seems to assume so much.

I'm afraid that appears to be a rather sonorous phrase without much obvious meaning.

cordially,
Scofflaw

My reasons for supporting Ukip stemmed from liberal ideas such as lower taxes, a smaller state, freedom of the individual, local referenda, and an immigration policy that offered fair and equal opportunities for everyone.

Hmm. Nationalist libertarianism?

cordially,
Scofflaw

GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote: »

I dunno. Someone could think the concept of nationality is pants, but pragmatically accept that people do actually think of themselves as "Irish" or "Italian" or whatever, and similarly pragmatically feel that a state will work more effectively where people have a delusion that they share some common national identity.

Well, no, because I would accept that pragmatically, but would accept equally pragmatically that despite that, some decisions are better made at supra-national levels. When you find someone who cannot accept that decisions are ever better made at a supra-national level, that's ideology not pragmatism.

GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote: »

I'd actually say that Western TDs have been quite successful in bending development policy in their favour. But perhaps the more pertinent point is, again, to draw attention to the relevance of the identity that mobilises people. The question is whether Western TDs feel they are better off forming their own State, or working with the rest of Ireland. There's no automatic answer as to whats the right level for common action - I think this is just the same point again.

And one I agree with. Different levels for different decisions.

GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote: »

Indeed, but isn't the point that within Ireland bog-cutters are more likely to find themselves in the political mainstream.

I don't doubt (well, I know from reading around, but don't want to go hunting down links) that there are equivalents of Ming all over the EU. Some may even have a problem with not being able to cut scientifically interesting bogs.

GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote: »

Have you been reading my posts out loud? Do they really sound that good?

More seriously, check back on the comment I was responding to. I really think it makes a huge leap, and amounts to wishful thinking the way you've put it.

Heh. In other words, it sounds like it's expressing some forceful truth, but is actually just reflecting an opinion.

Is it always possible to trust? Yes, it is. As I said, it takes more or less work, but, well, you can build a bond of trust between a human being and a lion, so the claim that there are situations where you can't do it between humans is prima facie rather incredible. In general, claiming there are situations when one cannot build trust really only means that the person making the statement can't envisage it - and argument from personal incredulity is very weak.

cordially,
Scofflaw