Brexit - the UK referendum on EU membership

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Brexit - the UK referendum on EU membership

Postby semper occultus » Thu Jan 21, 2016 1:50 pm

Goldman Sachs backs pro-EU campaign with 'six figure donation'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35366994

20 January 2016

Investment bank Goldman Sachs has reportedly given a "six figure" donation to the campaign to keep the UK in the European Union.

The US bank is said to have backed Britain Stronger In Europe, a cross-party group leading the In campaign.

Britain Stronger In Europe said it would not confirm the donation which Sky News said was a "substantial" sum.

It comes as David Cameron prepares to tell business to "make the case" for the staying in a "reformed EU".

In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday, Mr Cameron will say the "voice of business" must be heard in the run-up to the referendum on the UK's membership of EU - which will take place before the end of 2017.

"If you agree with me about the changes I am arguing for in Europe… if you want a more competitive Europe, where the single market is completed, where there are more trade deals and fewer regulations… join me in making that case," he will say.

The exact timing of the referendum will hinge on the outcome of Mr Cameron's current renegotiation talks, due to come to a head at a summit of European leaders next month.

Goldman Sachs, which employs 6,000 people in the UK, has not commented on the donation. Although the sum being mooted is relatively small, the move would be symbolic and illustrative of the City's concerns about the implications of the UK leaving the EU.

A spokesman for Britain Stronger In Europe, which is chaired by ex-Marks & Spencer boss Lord Rose, told the BBC: "We are not going to comment on individual donations to the campaign at this stage.

"We will in time declare all our donations in line with standard electoral commission rules once we are the designated campaign. We are raising money from individuals and businesses in the UK from all walks of life. We believe that Britain is Stronger, safer and better off in Europe."

Leave.eu, one of the groups campaign for EU exit, dismissed Goldman Sachs' involvement.

Its founder, UKIP donor Arron Banks, tweeted: "No surprise to those of us who have said all along EU referendum will be a campaign of British people against the establishment of international bankers, multinational corporate tax dodgers and out-of-touch politicians."

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said the referendum date would only be decided once the UK has a deal on a renegotiated membership, amid speculation that an agreement next month would open the door for a vote in June.

Speaking in Edinburgh on Wednesday, he said: "If we get a deal, a June vote would be a possibility in terms of the timescales of the Referendum Act but that will only be decided once we've got a deal."

Meanwhile, Eurosceptic Labour MPs launched their own campaign to leave the EU, called Labour Leave, backed by the businessman John Mills.
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Re: Brexit - the UK referendum on EU membership

Postby semper occultus » Tue Feb 23, 2016 11:03 am

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Re: Brexit - the UK referendum on EU membership

Postby semper occultus » Mon Nov 07, 2016 2:36 pm

French support for the EU project is crumbling on the Left and Right

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 25 AUGUST 2016 • 12:43PM

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/08/24/french-support-for-the-eu-project-is-crumbling-on-the-left-and-r/

The drama of Brexit may soon be matched or eclipsed by crystallizing events in France, where the Long Slump is at last taking its political toll.

A democracy can endure deflation policies for only so long. The attrition has wasted the French centre-right and the centre-left by turns, and now threatens the Fifth Republic itself.

The maturing crisis has echoes of 1936, when the French people tired of 'deflation decrees' and turned to the once unthinkable Front Populaire, smashing what remained of the Gold Standard.

Former Gaulliste president Nicolas Sarkozy has caught the headlines this week, launching a come-back bid with a package of hard-Right policies unseen in a western European democracy in modern times.

But the uproar on the Left is just as revealing. Arnaud Montebourg, the enfant terrible of the Socialist movement, has launched his own bid for the Socialist Party with a critique of such ferocity that it bears examination.

The former economy minister says France voted for a left-wing French manifesto four years ago and ended up with a "right-wing German policy regime". This is objectively true. The vote was meaningless.

"I believe that we have reached the end of road for the European Union, and that France no longer has any interest in it. The EU has left us mired in crisis long after the rest of the world has moved on," he said.

Mr Montebourg stops short of 'Frexit' but calls for the unilateral suspension of EU labour laws. "As far as I am concerned, the current treaties have elapsed.

I will be inspired by the General de Gaulle's policy of the 'empty chair', a strike against the EU. I am not in favour of a French Brexit, but we can longer accept a Europe like that," he said.

In other words, he wishes to leave from within - as Poland, and Hungary are doing - without actually triggering any legal or technical clause.

Mr Montebourg is unlikely to progress far but his indictment of president François Hollande is devastating.

The party leadership was warned repeatedly and emphatically that contractionary policies would inevitably lead to another million jobless but the economic was swept aside.

"They never budged from their Catechism and their false certitudes," he said.

The Socialists have paid a high price for this blind arrogance. They won just 15pc of voters classified as workers in the most recent local elections. Marine Le Pen's Front National won 55pc, and is now indisputably the voice of 'France d'en bas'.

Even those of us who always argued that EMU is dysfunctional were shocked by the policy errors five years ago, when a double-barrelled blast monetary and fiscal contraction sent the prostrate eurozone economy crashing back into a double-dip recession.

As one Nobel prize economist tells me, historians will "tar and feather" those at the European Central Bank who raised interest rates twice in 2011.

This was compounded by a fiscal squeeze that went far beyond any known therapeutic dose - imposed by a German finance ministry in thrall to pre-modern ideology, and slavishly followed by everybody else.

France could perhaps have mobilized a quorum of EU states to block this folly, but neither Mr Sarkozy and Mr Hollande were willing to confront Berlin. Both clung religiously to the Franco-German partnership, or at least to its totemic illusion.

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The result was a lost decade - worse in aggregate than in the 1930s - and levels of labour hysteresis that will lower the eurozone's growth 'speed limit' for years to come.

We will never know whether mass youth unemployment in the North African quarters of France's cities played a role in the jihadi metastisis of the last year, but it was surely one of the ingredients.

Fiscal austerity is at last over, but the French economy is not yet strong enough to overcome social pathologies tormenting the country. Growth fell back to zero in the second quarter. Great political damage has in any case been done already.

Needless to say, France has a host of home-grown economic woes that have nothing to do with the EU. The social model is funded by punitive taxes on employing labour, creating one of the worst 'tax wedges' in the world.

A quarter of French aged 60-64 are in work – compared with 40pc for the OECD average – due to early retirement incentives. The state consumes 56pc of GDP, a Nordic level without Nordic labour flexibility.

There are 360 separate taxes, some predating the revolution. Trade unions have a legal lockhold on companies with over 50 employees, yet command 7pc of membership. "It is an inferno that sadly lacks the poetry of Dante," says Prof Brigitte Granville, a french economist at Queen Mary University London.

Hard reforms were put off by leaders of all parties. They coasted through the boom years of the euro, and now it is too late. France is trapped within the straight-jacket of monetary union.

The International Monetary Fund's health check in June said the 'real effective exchange rate' is up to 9pc overvalued. It is roughly 16pc overvalued against Germany.

The only practical way France can claw back competitiveness is through deeper deflation than in the rest of the eurozone, but this would prolong the slump and play havoc with nominal GDP and debt dynamics. It would be self-defeating.

There is no realistic possibility of genuine fiscal reflation in the eurozone, let alone a Keynesian New Deal. Mr Montebourg is right is concluding that France will remain paralyzed until it takes back its sovereign instruments.

Mr Sarkozy skirts this elemental issue. His shock manifesto demands the end of EU legal primacy over French law and a repeal of the Lisbon Treaty, the same treaty that he rammed through the French parliament by party whip after it had it had already been rejected by French voters in a referendum - in its earlier guise as the European Constitution.

But his ardour is reserved for culture wars and a "drastic reduction" in the numbers of foreigners. He vows to place Islam under state control in France, with imams reporting to the interior ministry. "We are at war against an enemy that knows no limits," he said.

His open appeal to "French identity" is aimed directly at the Front National, and that in itself tells us much about the bombed-out political landscape left by years of depression.

Marine Le Pen is ahead of him in the polls, drawing steady support near 30pc with a heady brew of Leftwing economics and Rightwing nationalism - straight out of the 1930s. She promised to "end the nightmare of the European Union" and this too tells as much about the populist calculus.

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A Pew survey of Europe in June found that 61pc of French voters have an “unfavourable” view of the EU, higher than in Britain. These sorts of polls keep cropping up in France. They are invariably dismissed as rogue findings.

Professor Thomas Guénolé from 'Sciences Po' in Paris warns against wishful thinking. "Incredible as it may seem, a referendum on 'Frexit' would probably be lost by the European side. As in the UK, 'leave' would win," he said.

"Brexit changes the situation profoundly. The advocates of the European construction have got into the habit of defending Europe with catastrophist arguments, that it will provoke fresh wars or lead to economic collapse. But Britain is now quitting, and quite evidently this will not lead to an economic cataclysm, or to a major geo-political crisis," he told Le Figaro.

François Heisbourg, chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Paris and a pillar of the French establishment, published a prophetic book three years ago entitled 'The End of the European Dream'.

He argued that the "euro cancer" must be cut out to save what can be saved of the European project, warning that current course of perpetual crises will end in a "nervous breakdown".

"The dream has given way to nightmare. We are not going to avoid it by denying the reality, and God knows denial has been the operating mode of those in charge of EU institutions for a long time."

Mr Heisbourg was ignored. Events are playing out exactly as he feared.



http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?p=617603#p617603
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Re: Brexit - the UK referendum on EU membership

Postby semper occultus » Wed Dec 07, 2016 3:51 pm

......France and Italy are ticking financial and social time-bombs slowly counting down to some form of detonation - they won't be able to "Greece" these countries even if they wanted to....and when they blow they'll take the whole stinking blocked sewer in Brussels with them.....

Public Opinion: In January 2016, Cevipof, a think tank of the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po), released its seventh Barometer of Political Trust, a poll published annually to measure the values of democracy in the country, and based on interviews with 2074 people:

What is your current state of mind? Listlessness 31%, Gloom 29%, Mistrust 28%, Fear: 10%
Do you trust government? Not much 58%, not at all 32%
Do you trust lawmakers? Not much 39%, not at all 16%%
Do you trust the president? Not much 32%; not at all 38%
Do politicians care about what the people think? Not much 42%, not at all 46%
How democracy is working in France? Not well 43%, not well at all 24%
Do you trust political parties? Not much 47%, not at all 40%
Do you trust the media? Not much 48% not at all 27 %
What do you feel about politics? Distrust 39%; disgust 33%, boredom 8%
What do you feel about politicians? Disappointment 54%; disgust 20%
Corruption of politicians? Yes 76%
Too many migrants? Yes, plus tend to agree: 65%
Islam is a threat? Yes, plus tend to agree: 58%
Proud to be French? Yes 79%


France: Decomposing in Front of Our Eyes

by Yves Mamou
December 7, 2016 at 5:00 am

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9174 ... ecomposing

Four officers were injured (two badly burned) when around 15 "youths" (Muslim gang-members) swarmed their cars and hurled rocks and firebombs at them. Police were aggrieved when the minister of interior called the attackers "little wild ones." Police and opposition politicians replied that the attackers were not "little wild ones but criminals who attacked police to kill."

Two students at a vocational training school in Calais attacked a teacher, and one fractured the teacher's jaw and several teeth -- because the teacher had asked one of the students to get back to work.

"This is a warning. These young people did not attack the school by chance; they wanted to attack the institution, to attack the State." — Yacine, 21, a student at the University of Paris II.

The riot, which lasted for four nights, broke out after the arrest of a driver who did not stop when asked to by a policeman.

This revolt of one pillar of French society, the police, was the biggest that ever happened in modern France. Yet, virtually no one in France's mainstream media covered the event.

"Everything that represents state institutions (...) is now subjected to violence based on essentially sectarian and sometimes ethnic excesses, fueled by an incredible hatred of our country. We must be blind or unconscious not to feel concern for national cohesion". — Thibaud de Montbrial, lawyer and expert on terrorism.

France will elect a new president in May 2017. Politicians are already campaigning and debating about deficits, welfare recipients, GDP growth, and so on, but they look like puppets disconnected from the real country.

What is reality in France today?

Violence. It is spreading. Not just terrorist attacks; pure gang violence. It instills a growing feeling of insecurity in hospitals, at schools, in the streets -- even in the police. The media does not dare to say that this violence is coming mainly from Muslim gangs -- "youths," as they call the in the French media, to avoid naming who they are. A climate of civil war, however, is spreading visibly in the police, schools, hospitals and politics.

The Police

The most jolting evidence of this malaise was to see more than 500 French police officers demonstrating with police cars and motorcycles on the night of October 17, without the backing of labor unions, without authorization, on the Champs Elysées in Paris. According to the daily, Le Figaro, "the Interior Ministry was in panic," frightened by a possible coup: "Police blocked access to the Avenue Marigny, which runs beside the Presidential Palace and overlooks the Place Beauvau."

On October 18, when Jean-Marc Falcone, director-general of National Police, met the leaders of the protest, he was surrounded by hundreds of police officers urging him to resign.

The main cause of their anger seems primarily the violence often directed against police, and terrorist attacks. On the terrorist level, two policemen were stabbed to death in Magnanville in June 2016 by a Muslim extremist, Larossi Aballa. This spring, more than 300 police officers and gendarmes were injured by demonstrators. In May, police unions demonstrated in the streets of Paris to protest "anti-police hatred."

This autumn, the last straw was an attack on a police patrol in the Paris suburb of Viry-Châtillon. Four officers were injured when a group of around 15 "youths" (Muslim gang-members) swarmed their cars in the town and hurled rocks and firebombs at them. Two policemen were badly burned; one had to be placed in an induced coma. The same scenario took place a few days later: a police patrol was ambushed in another no-go zone in the "sensitive" area of Val-Fourré.

Image
Four police officers were recently injured (two badly burned) when a group of around 15 "youths" (Muslim gang-members) swarmed their cars and hurled rocks and firebombs at them, in the Paris suburb of Viry-Châtillon. (Image source: Line Press video screenshot)

Police were also aggrieved by Bernard Cazeneuve, the minister of interior, who called the attackers "sauvageons" ("little wild ones"). Police and opposition politicians replied that the attackers were not "little wild ones but criminals who attacked police to kill."

"Police are seen as an occupying force," declared Patrice Ribeiro of the Synergie Officiers police commanders' union. "It is not surprising that violence is spiking."

On October 18, Le Figaro launched an online poll online with one question: "Do you approve the protest by policemen?" Ninety percent of the 50,000 respondents answered "yes."

Since then, police demonstrations have spread to other cities. More than a month after the start of the discontent, police officers were still protesting in every big city. On November 24, two hundred police officers demonstrated in Paris between Place de la Concorde and the Arc de Triomphe, to express their "anger." Police in civilian clothes, some wearing orange armbands, some hidden under a scarf or hood, supported by citizens, gathered in the evening at the Place de la Concorde, before walking the length of the Champs Elysée up to the Arc de Triomphe, where they formed a human chain around the monument and sang La Marseillaise (France's national anthem).

This revolt of one pillar of French society, the police, was the biggest that ever happened in modern France. Yet, virtually no one in France's mainstream media covered the event.

Schools

Tremblay-en-France (Seine-Saint-Denis close to Paris): The headmaster of the Hélène-Boucher training school was attacked on October 17 by several individuals outside the school. Some "youths" were attacking the building with firebombs, and when the headmaster tried to calm the situation, one of the "youths" answered with blows. Fifty unidentified people were involved in the incident. This was the third episode of violence to occur in the vicinity. Four days earlier, two vehicles were torched.

One month later, the daily Le Monde held a meeting with several students, The goal of this meeting was to try to understand the cause of the violence in in Tremblay. Yacine, 21, a student at the University of Paris II, said: "This is a warning. These young people did not attack the school by chance; they wanted to attack the institution, to attack the State."

Argenteuil (Val d'Oise, suburb of Paris): A teacher at the Paul Langevin primary school, was beaten up in the street, on October 17, while leading children back to school from tennis courts a kilometer from the school. After hearing the teacher raise his voice at a child, two young men stopped their car, told the teacher he was a "racist" and beat him in front of the children. According to Le Parisien, one of the attackers justified his actions by accusing the professor of "racism". "You are not the master," said the man. "The only Master is Allah".

Colomiers (Toulouse, south of France). A physical-education teacher was assaulted by a student on October 17, when the teacher tried to stop the student from leaving the school through a prohibited exit.

Calais (Pas-de-Calais): Two students at a vocational training school in Calais attacked a teacher, and one fractured the teacher's jaw and several teeth on October 14, according the local paper, Nord-Littoral. The students attacked the electrical engineering teacher because he had asked one of the students to get back to work.

Saint-Denis (Seine Saint-Denis, suburb of Paris): On October 13, a school headmaster and his deputy were beaten by a vocational student who had been reprimanded for arriving late.

Strasbourg: A mathematics teacher was brutally attacked on October 17 at the Orbelin school. The headmaster of the institution told France Bleu that a "youth," who is not a student at the school, had beaten the teacher. This was not the first time that the "youth" had entered the building. Earlier, when the teacher asked him to leave his class, the "youth" delivered several blows to the teacher's face before fleeing.

All these attackers were not terrorists, but like Islamic terrorists, they apparently wanted to destroy "attack the institution, to attack the State."

Hospitals

On October 16, fifteen individuals accompanying a patient sowed terror in the emergency department of Gustave Dron Hospital in Tourcoing, according to La Voix du Nord. A doctor was severely beaten; another pulled by the hair. Doctors and nurses told the newspaper they were still in shock. Said a nurse:

"Ten people forced their way into the heart of the ER. The doctors asked them to leave... When everything stopped, I realized that the ER was ravaged, patients terrorized, relatives of patients crying."

The attackers were from the district of La Bourgogne, an area essentially populated with North African immigrants. Three people were arrested.

In the same area of La Bourgogne, there was a riot on October 4. Fourteen cars were burned and 12 people arrested. The riot, which lasted for four nights, broke out after the arrest of a driver who did not stop when asked to by a policeman.

Politics

On October 14, Nadine Morano, deputy of the opposition party Les Républicains, tried physically to prevent an Algerian businessman, Rachid Nekkaz, from entering the Center of Public Finance of Toul, in the east of France. Nekkaz is known for paying fines of Muslim women arrested because they were wearing a burqa in public, banned by law since October 2010. Police came to protect the right of Mr. Nekkaz to pay the fine. An amendment to the finance law is currently under discussion to block and punish practices, like those of Nekkaz, that circumvent the law.

President François Hollande is currently under fire after the publication of a book, A President Should Not Say That... In it, he is reported to have said, "France has a problem with Islam," and "there are too many migrants in France" -- remarks Hollande claims he never made. Another quote in the book that Hollande denies saying:

"We cannot continue to have migrants who arrive without control, in the context of the attacks... The secession of territories (no go zones)? How can we avoid a partition? Because it is still what is going to happen."

President Hollande spends his time apologizing for things he never said, but should have said because they are true.

French People

French Chinese: The French Chinese live in the same suburbs as Muslims and are attacked and harassed, to the general indifference of police.

As crime against community members has spiraled, about 50,000 ethnic Chinese staged a protest march in Paris on September 4, after the fatal mugging of a Chinese tailor.

The protesters, all of them wearing white T-shirts reading "Security for All" and waving French flags, rallied at the Place de la République. They had organized the demonstration by themselves and were not supported by the traditional "human rights" groups, which prefer to help Muslim migrants.

Public Opinion: In January 2016, Cevipof, a think tank of the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po), released its seventh Barometer of Political Trust, a poll published annually to measure the values of democracy in the country, and based on interviews with 2074 people:

What is your current state of mind? Listlessness 31%, Gloom 29%, Mistrust 28%, Fear: 10%
Do you trust government? Not much 58%, not at all 32%
Do you trust lawmakers? Not much 39%, not at all 16%%
Do you trust the president? Not much 32%; not at all 38%
Do politicians care about what the people think? Not much 42%, not at all 46%
How democracy is working in France? Not well 43%, not well at all 24%
Do you trust political parties? Not much 47%, not at all 40%
Do you trust the media? Not much 48% not at all 27 %
What do you feel about politics? Distrust 39%; disgust 33%, boredom 8%
What do you feel about politicians? Disappointment 54%; disgust 20%
Corruption of politicians? Yes 76%
Too many migrants? Yes, plus tend to agree: 65%
Islam is a threat? Yes, plus tend to agree: 58%
Proud to be French? Yes 79%
What this poll shows is the gap between people and politicians has never been so vast.

Thibaud de Montbrial, lawyer and expert on terrorism, declared on October 19 to Le Figaro:

The term "dislocation" of French society seems appropriate. Violence against police, hospitals, attacks that multiply against schools and teachers... are attacks against pillars of the ruling domain. In other words, everything that represents state institutions (...) is now subjected to violence based on essentially sectarian and sometimes ethnic excesses, fueled by an incredible hatred of our country. We must be blind or unconscious not to feel concern for national cohesion."

Yves Mamou, based in France, worked for two decades as a journalist for Le Monde.
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Re: Brexit - the UK referendum on EU membership

Postby American Dream » Wed Dec 07, 2016 4:42 pm

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Re: Brexit - the UK referendum on EU membership

Postby RocketMan » Tue Jan 24, 2017 5:45 am

The UK supreme court just ruled 8 to 3 that Brexit requires an act of parliament. So I guess Brexit actually became less inevitable...?
-I don't like hoodlums.
-That's just a word, Marlowe. We have that kind of world. Two wars gave it to us and we are going to keep it.
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