[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]Sifu wrote:
[quote]MattyG35 wrote:
[quote]Sifu wrote:
[quote]Bambi wrote:
It’s so fucked in the Eurozone. Even though we don’t have the Euro it’s dragging down our economy (not that we needed any additional help lol). European politicians have dithered about this crisis for the last 3 years and now it’s going to be infinitely worse. [/quote]
The British were sold out by their own politicians when they turned their back on the commonwealth to join the common market. Dumbest move in history. Now they are really going to pay for their stupidity.
[/quote]
Can you elaborate on this? I’m not familiar with the history of what you’re referring to.[/quote]
The British had a choice between greater economic ties with the British commonwealth which is made up of all the former British colonies, ie Canada, India, Australia, New Zealand or to join the common market which was comprised of industrial nations that competed with one another.
The British government decided to tie Britain to old Europe. So the commonwealth countries that relied upon trade with Britain were then shut out of the British market. ie Lamb exports to Britain which were the largest segment of the New Zealand economy ever since the invention of the reefer ship in 1879 were ended in favor of Greek lamb.
Today the combined economy of the commonwealth is bigger than Europe and growing at 7.3 percent a year.
Here is what Daniel Hannan has to say about it. You’ll need to follow the link to see the actual graphs, but here is the bulk of the article.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100163336/look-at-these-graphs-any-possible-argument-for-remaining-in-the-eu-has-been-blown-away/
Why did we join the Common Market in the first place? What was the knock-down argument used by Heath, Jenkins and the rest? Do you remember? The Commonwealth, they told us, was finished. We needed to be part of an alternative market, one that would grow.
At the time, the claim seemed sound enough. Between 1945 and 1973, Western Europe enjoyed spectacular growth, bouncing back from the artificial low of the Second World War. Britain and her Commonwealth, by contrast, were exhausted and indebted. Much of our postwar decline was caused by successive governments eroding their debts through inflation, unaware of, or perhaps untroubled by, the damage they were doing to our national competitiveness and productivity.
We can now see that our timing could hardly have been worse. We joined the EEC in 1973. Europe’s Wirschaftswunder came to an abrupt end with the oil shock of 1974, and never properly got going again. The expansion came instead in the Commonwealth markets from which Britain had just stood aside.
Look at the graphs below, compiled by World Economics. The first two contrast the growth rates of the EU and the Commonwealth since Britain joined in 1973 (in all cases, the UK is excluded from the figures). Ouch. The third and fourth, though, are the real kickers. They contrast the share of world GDP of the Commonwealth with, respectively, the original members of the EEC and the current members of the eurozone:
The Commonwealth’s economy is about to overtake the eurozone’s. According to the IMF, the countries within the single currency will grow at an average of 2.7 per cent over the next five years Ã?¢?? which strikes me as optimistic Ã?¢?? while the Commonwealth surges ahead at 7.3 per cent.
These figures destroy the premise on which we joined. Our trade has been redirected, by government intervention, away from the markets to which we are connected by language and law, habit and sentiment. It never made much sense to join a customs union with similar industrialised economies at the expense of the raw producers of the Commonwealth: the whole point of a market, after all, is to swap on the back of differences. Now, the statistics spell out our choice unambiguously. Our recovery will begin on the day we rejoin the hinterland from which we have been artificially sundered.[/quote]
I dont see why it has to be one or the other.[/quote]
It had to be one or the other because the EU has ways of restricting what comes in from outside the EU. But more than anything else there are sinister forces at work. That’s why Britain is expected to pay a higher price for membership than any other country. Also the eu is run by marxists and communists who demand a command economy.
So the eu has the common agricultural policy, which restricts what British farmers can grow. So for example, even though changes in the climate mean that British vineyards are now producing better grapes for wine production than French vineyards, the British aren’t allowed to produce any more wine because the French have been allocated that market.
The common fisheries policy, forced Britain to scrap most of it’s fishing fleet and allow all the other eu countries to build their own fishing fleets they could send in to rape the British fisheries. Turning the British fisheries into an ecological disaster.