I appreciated this documentary. Although it's not argued for from my exact perspective, the points raised were quite accurate. Personally, I detest the European Union for other reasons. The British have, relatively speaking, the best end of the political and economic deal as it is, and by rejecting that monstrous excuse for cooperation, they'd improve on that position a lot more. Unfortunately, discussing that is still the biggest taboo in politics here. My personal dislike for the European Union stems from several perspectives.
Firstly, the labour market. Essentially, we are forced by the European Union and related treaties to accept into our country two kinds of people.
The first: labourers who can be legally paid at Polish levels, meaning Dutch employees are forced out of employment and Polish workers face awful housing conditions, with only employers ultimately benefiting.
The second: victims of human or sex trafficking. We're not allowed to check what's coming into our country.
Secondly, the cultural dimension. Here, we're forced to respect those who genuinely hate us, to offer them proper housing, to offer them welfare, to offer them rights sometimes beyond those of people who do want to belong to our society. To put it bluntly: we're forced to accept almost any Moroccan hick into our country, even if his sole intention is to live in a house paid for by us, with health care paid for by us, while we're reminded it might be his human right to forcibly marry and imprison his cousin while robbing Dutch men and harrassing every woman not wearing a headscarf.
They've even put some legislation in there, and there's a lot of it, that prohibits us from deporting people with dual citizenship to their country of origin after they've committed hideous crimes.
Thirdly, the dimension of political and economic competence. One of the main reasons we've been stuck with destructive right-wing coalitions and mounting left-wing populism is because the European Union's economic, fiscal and monetary policies could be improved by burning the papers containing them, feeding the ashes to the dogs and having psychics analyse the dogs' excrement and draft a new policy out of thin air.
Basically, we might be forced by the European Union to accept fourteen billion in budget cuts, at least eight billion of which can be counted as 'immediately lost due to economic downturn'. Meanwhile, purchasing power is being severely pressured by decreasing or freezing wages and forcedly accepting foreign workers for low-paid positions who are willingly exploited for less than half our minimum wage, and workers forced out of employment turning to populism.
Additionally, everyone who dares call himself a high-ranking eurocrat is an incompetent, overrated yet unskilled excuse for a human being.
The moment you see people like Van Rompuy, secretly and undemocratically elected president of three hundred million people while referendums in several member states to refuse far-reaching European legislation passed with a large majority and were subsequently overruled, you know all hope is lost for these people to even get us out of a mild political crisis.
I'm with the UK on this, and I think most people suffering under that clumsy tool for fiscal conservatism and overregulation are.
23 Apr 2012, 11:43 am
