chris20085

The main thing which causes this is globalisation making it so small local companies can't compete against big multinationals, allowing monopolies to form due to lack of competition and manipulate prices/wages and to some extent, economies. The way I see it, the problem isn't really competition, it's lack of it.

Although I disagree with the way China is run, why exactly?

You serious? Yes they are ( or used to be, however the Current New labour has seemed to have forgotten that) New Labour :thumbdown: Old Labour :thumbup: New Labour can hardly be described as "socialist".

The US is very different to Europe - the US doesn't want a nanny state.

You serious?

greed.

Alex Jones on gun control: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=4I7s_Y-SNDY

The question is who decides if the 12 month rule applies to the EU treaties? The European Council? The European Comission? Ofcourse the conservatives + liberal democrats won't mention it - The conservative party being anti-EU is one of the most common pieces of disinformation, they where the party which joined into the EEC and signed 2 of the treaties which gave deeper integration inside. David Cameron knows full well the treaty will be ratified fully before the next election and is pretending to oppose it for political gain, the tories promise to do something minor with the EU just before nearly every election (e.g Cameron promising to leave EPP - which was a lie). UKIP is a honey trap to neutralise anti-EU activists.

We should remove all the troops as soon as possible, if we stay in it'll just turn into a decades-long guerilla war with troops being picked off one by one. History shows (America in Vietnam, USSR in Afghanistan are two examples) that an outside force cannot create long-term stability in a country. If we stay in, more and more lives (not to mention money) will be wasted. The reason for being there is because of national interests (oil/strategic location), not to stop the violence which is happening there.

Since when? Since the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.

oops accidently clicked a new post

I am also disgusted by this, but the real threat to democracy isn't the EU, it's globalisation.

In reply to the "it doesn't affect sovereignity" argument which has being used on this topic, under international law the only way to get out of an international treaty is with another one. In other words, at this current time, even if a member state wanted to leave the EU, unless the EU let them leave, they would be trapped inside, just like Hungary was trapped inside the Warsaw Pact in 1956. - so yeah, combine that with the fact that EU law is supreme to national law and it does affect sovereignity. The Lisbon treaty includes a withdrawal mechanism though - article 50, under my interpetation, means that unless the member state and the European council agree together to extend the period, if a request to leave is sent in then it's possible to withdraw 2 years later. Anyway there will probably be more votes till the answer is "yes", just like with the treaty of Nice. The referendum is pointless anyway because of the disinformation from both sides of the campaign meaning people don't know what they are voting for, although a lot of the politicians probably don't know either.