jont- wrote:Gareth wrote:What is your position if the reports of the move to a
European super-state [thenews.pl, source is 'TVP Info' Polish news website] prove to be well founded?
Given it only seems to have been proposed on the back of us voting to leave the EU, I'm not sure how helpful it is as a question.
This has been raised previously, before the referendum, but it seemed pertinent that the particular article referred to a statement by a member of the Polish government and citing a specific document being discussed, rather than merely rumour.
jont- wrote:I don't know about a fully unified tax system
Seems like a logical step to and a requirement for fiscal union, which seems inevitable if the Euro currency is ever going to work.
jont- wrote:I'd certainly like to see the removal of the ability of firms like google, amazon etc to fiddle their corporation tax to the lowest rate country and instead contribute their fair share.
That's a world issue rather than specifically a European issue, and will probably need international action in the wider sense.
jont- wrote:Unified armies? Well if that stopped our vanity trident replacement project, I'm sure we could think of lots of more useful things to do with the money.
My impression was that the UK voting to leave is what allowed this to go ahead. I can't see that Europe would give up nuclear weapons held by France. If the UK was part of an EU with a unified military, then maybe Trident wouldn't be replaced, but I'd lay odds that the money saved would be redistributed to poorer countries in the EU rather than being used to spend more to help parts of the UK. You see, it wouldn't be
our money, it'd be
theirs.
jont- wrote:But I come back to an earlier point made - given country boundaries are pretty much entirely artificial constructs, why do people feel the UK is the /right/ size to represent/govern them?
It isn't so much a matter of size but of shared culture. This is also the reason for
devolution within the UK - effectively recognition that smaller shared cultures exist within the larger whole. There is some history of this in these islands, with Ireland having home rule then becoming an independent country - and today the shared history is recognised by Irish nationals being
allowed to vote in UK elections. While the UK is moving in the direction of devolving power closer to the people, the EU is moving to centralise power.
there is only the road, nothing but the road ...