European Union

Don't know if we're quite so high up the pole as we like to think we are and Italy can't afford a point of view

It has gone quiet over there with regards their financial standing thats for sure. Hopefully its going ok

Mayor of Florence (beautiful city, want to take the wife there) to president is a big leap. I must admit to not knowing an awful lot about Italian politics.

For sure the EU is dominated by a narcissistic teutonic woman who will never admit she is wrong about anything as it would undermine her self-esteem; however she is not alone but heads but one of the inner caballe that rule the continent. The others are France, Belgium (with Luxembourg) and Italy - the original founders of the Common Market. But the real power is not vested in the German Chancellor but in the former Prime Minister of a country the size of the city of Bristol, Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the EU Commission; his is the drum beat that everyone - including Merkel - marches.

The EU is faced with a crisis that threatens its very existence but rather than tackle the issue head-on, the Commission, head buried in sand, goes into denial mode. Junker's deputy, the Dutchman Frans Timmermans gave a presentation in mid-January to the EU Commission's Cabinet in whose minutes include: "As far as the crimes in Cologne were concerned, he said that these were a matter of public order and were not related to the refugee crisis". Timmermans did, however, concede that 60% of the migrants amassing in Europe were not refugees fleeing a war situation and therefore not entitled to protection.

During the discussion that followed, Mr Juncker’s team stressed "the importance of the Commission's continuing to play its coordinating role and sounding the voice of reason to defuse tensions and counter populist rhetoric." They called for "the unconditional rejection of false associations between certain criminal acts, such as the attacks on women in Cologne on New Year's Eve, and the mass influx of refugees." Echoes of the German Imam who blamed the young female victims rather than those who confronted, sexually-assaulted and stole valuables from them.

The former Eastern European states are declining to accept and process migrants just as Britain but it is only Britain that is being threatened by changes Juncker is proposing to the Dublin Agreement. Following the Cologne attacks, Robert Fico, the Slovakian prime minister, said he would accept no refugees as they are "impossible to integrate" and have a "different relationship to women".

Juncker presides over a Commission so steeped in corruption that its accountants have refused to issue audit certificates for its books since the 1990s.

Is there not an organisation anywhere in the world that isn't riff with greed and corruption? Its getting to the point where I'm going to sell up and go off grid somewhere in a wood, grow my own carrots, milk a cow and sod everything else!

The E.U hygiene and public health protection rules forbid the milking of cows by the likes of you or me as they would no longer be able to calculate their sterile milk quota totals accurately..Then you have the UK green belt laws and the unavailable permits you will require to live in a woodland.. Pretty sure they have CCTV installed on woodland tree`s now..
Stop dreaming...You need to stay where you are and remain plugged in to Brussels and Westminster!

Your question is a bit like Italian wine...
Complicated.

That had better not be a British cow as you'll have to chuck its milk down the drain to keep the French dairy farmers in business! And those carrots - illegal if they're wonky!

EU regulation states that a carrot is a fruit

Carrot jam anyone

When it was simply a trade bloc - the Common Market - it was a good and worthwhile idea; I voted in favour of remaining back in 1975. But thanks to its federalist ambitions being driven by the Germans, the French, the Belgians and the pocket-handkerchief sized states, it has morphed into an organisation hellbent on micro-managing every aspect of our lives. We Brits fare far worse than other nations - because we are disadvantaged by the EU itself and also by our civil servants and politicians who enforce each new law and directive to the letter, the only nation that does this.

Take the EU Human Rights legislation as an example; it is being applied to situations that it was never designed for. Such as prosecuting members of our armed forces for doing their job - fighting wars and keeping us safe and that's a job that does involve killing the enemy. Two legal firms, Public Interest Lawyers and Leigh Day, have made huge amounts of money - millions of tax-payer Pounds - in fees from pursuing and prosecuting those who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even Taliban terrorists are suing us. There's a suicide bomber demanding the payment of hundreds of thousands because he was captured alive: our brave lads cancelled his appointment with forty virgins and he wants compensation. For the two firms of lawyers, this is a milch cow that keeps on giving. Madness, total and complete madness.

Beach-fishing for Sea Bass is now illegal in Britain; by EU diktat. Yet French and Spanish boats can venture inshore to within yards of our shoreline and take all the Sea Bass they want. Then sell it back to us! And the EU is now to ban teenager paper rounds.

Let's get real here. Juncker and Tusk have already ruled-out Cameron demanding anything that would require treaty change so whatever Cameron comes back from Europe with will simply be a statement of intent, unenforceable in law and thus essentially worthless. It's a fair bet that the pressure for "ever closer political union" will be increased (by Merkel and her useful idiots) should Britain vote to remain. A German-led federation is inescapable and, in the event that Britain votes to leave, its formation will simply be delayed until the British public is coerced into voting correctly.

One of the principal differences between a fruit and a vegetable is that a fruit has already been fertilized and contains seeds. That would make tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins, melons and water melons fruits but carrots, rhubarb and sweet potatoes are vegetables.

Just goes to show that you don't need to be educated to work for the EU dreaming-up stupid laws.

So not a fan then? I must admit I was on the fence about whether the UK should stay or leave the EU but I must admit that due to the abuse of some of the aspects of the present system you've mentioned I see no other way but to leave. Obviously there are good points to being in the EU but I feel an exit would benefit greater at the moment so that we (civil servants, legal firms etc) can get their sensible head on again, stop abusing the system and start back towards implementing laws and legislation that benefit us without taking the p***. Suing Soldiers for doing their jobs and not allowing our own fishermen to fish our waters and heavily subsidising farmers in favour of importing foreign produce seems crazy to me.

So why do the bureaucrats so heavily enforce to the letter EU legislation in the UK when it appears that other countries seem to get away with just paying lip service to certain aspects?

Sod it I'm off to our rice farm in the province then. All I have to worry about the is El Nino, hungry, poverty, disease, Freedom fighters, typhoons..............

and earthquakes.

None of the above in Palawan I`m told.

Not too bad for them in Samar. Got woken up by one in Olongapo last year I think. About 6.2 on the scale centered about 2.5 miles from our house