quote:
Originally posted by Epona:
Hi Yorick, good thread.
Although Scholarcs talks about anti-American sentiment, there is a split in England about our involvement in Europe. Some of that is due to those who think England should be able to stand alone (they forget that the Empire is gone, poor things). Other business interests are much more in favour of throwing their lot in with the US, hence their anti-Europe stance. They live in the modern world enough to realise that the British economy cannot stand alone in the Global Village (especially since most of our industry has been decimated over the last 20 years), but want to go 'Anglica' as Yorick says.
The media is used to try to whip up people's fears about going into Europe by telling us we will be ruled from Brussels, we will all have to speak German, and the Queen's Head will no longer be on our currency, but there is an agenda behind this - we have to go one way or the other and throw our lot in with Europe or America.
Personally, I am very dubious about both. This is not because I am under any delusion about the strength of the British economy, but simply because the agenda is set by big business - who at the end of the day will make sure that whatever happens works in their favour. And that usually means shitting on the rest of the population.
The only thing that i want for the British is that they would make up their minds on the European union. I'm not saying love it or leave it, but you can't be part of something like this and still expect that everything has to be in your best interest. Sometimes you need to make sacrifices in one department to get something better in the next. But when something happens and the Brits aren't OK with it, they halt the entire process and on other things (most recently the war on terrorism), they failed to make their involvement known to the union and when they did it was only after they already were involved. The decent thing to do is to at least tell the union that the US asked them and that they will agree. They could still make that dicision on their own but then their 'partners' would have known and maybe help them in some way.