This ruling might tip it for Brexit....
not quite that clear though...the rich and the young want to stay, the old and the poor want to leave. Scotland really wants to stay, everywhere else wants to leave. One might even suggest that if Scotland had gone independent, then the remainder of the UK would be strongly in favor of the BREXIT...so you could have the odd situation of the UK leaving and Scotland remaining in that scenario.
It is interesting that a group of white folks could figure out so many different ways to disagree about the same stuff despite living in close proximity to each other for generations, but we saw that when this country started and people from different backgrounds immediately moved into separate neighborhoods so they didn't have to live next to the Ities and the drunken Irishmen. Essentially, they just wanted to move to an Italy that wasn't in Italy and had different politics. Same as it ever was...
qaz, the foremost significance of Brexit is that other EU nations will do the same. Many Europeans very much resent having EU officials is Brussels dictate policy to them - quotas of migrants they must accept, welfare policies for foreign residents, environmental issues, etc. If Brexit happens, Nexit is a done deal and the EU Balkan countries probably not far behind. We may see the EU disbanding entirely.
The only way to stop the migrant lunacy is to disband the EU.
Not sure why you think the EU is a good thing. Historically strong nations have in essence given up their sovereignty in favor of a social experiment in which the rights of the individual and the rights of countries are being increasingly trampled upon by bureaucrats in Brussels. I am glad the Brits are looking at doing this and wish Germany would do the same. Germans I know are sick of being the EU's "bank of last resort" and of bailing out financially irresponsible countries like Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. All the while being flooded with millions of immigrants whom most of the natives don't want in their country to start with.
You need to study your history if you don't understand the reasonable motivations behind why the Europeans might want something like the EU given literally centuries of almost constant warring between them. And your last sentence is silliness...what does that even mean, to be like the EU?
Of the two "good" reasons listed - 1) Actually makes it easier for criminals and terrorists to move around the EU and to avoid being caught. Case in point - the terrorists who attacked Paris used the "very easy travel" to escape to Belgium before the French even knew they were gone. They avoided detection in some cases for weeks. 2) Since WW II, has Germany threatened war with France? Has France threatened war with Great Britain? Has any major Western European country threatened another major Western European country since the end of WW II? I can't think of any. Europe was already working more closely together before the EU actually formally came into existence. For instance, the formation of EADS, which became Airbus.
Again, has any Western European nation threatened another since the end of WW II? Not that I can think of.
There have been no hot wars in Western Europe since WWII due to NATO, not the EU. We had a Cold War. The great and common threat of the Soviet Union overshadowed any local infighting.
Aren't NATO and the EU essentially part and parcel of the same thing? They aren't the same thing but a large subset of countries are the same.
Dichotomy? I just happened to post a negative thing and a positive thing. You've read more into what I said than what I actually said.
Timeline is different as are functions. NATO includes the US and Canada, is concerned with defense only and pretty much became a hollow shell of itself after the wall came down in 1989(?). The EU came about 1999-2003 and is all about economics, common currency, unrestricted travel and lots of stuff about residency, immigration, social policy, etc. To my knowledge, EU has no imvolvement with military matters.
So the "freedom" of traveling between sovereign nations is on par with freedoms listed in the US bill of rights? holy smokes dude.
The issue I have is not your view, it is your rationale. You cited a very small portion of history which has been relatively peaceful between countries with long histories of ideological and armed conflict on one hand, but then cited one or two attacks over the course decades where people have carried out an attack in one country, then fled to another country within the EU. In both cases, scanty evidence is cited to prove your point. So no, "dichotomy" is not the right word. Sorry. Poorly formed arguments.
I said in Western Europe not far Eastern Europe. Could Putin start a war? Sure. Germany? Not likely. France? Not Likely.
The EU's Schengen Area (free travel zone, first map below) really isn't like traveling between states in the US. Not all EU countries participate, notably UK and Ireland do not, and not all of them use the Euro as currency. And with regard to the migrant crisis, not all of them are on board with the policy of throwing the doors open and letting them all in, nor with the quota policy for distributing migrants.
Let's hope this holds up. Careful, some on here will try to besmirch your source.
Actually, I wouldn't blame them. Seems like these polls tend to get findings that reflect the political posture of their sponsor.
The "Leavers" make a strong case. In 2015, the UK paid $18.5 billion into the EU and received $6.4 billion in EU spending. Much of that money goes to bailing out loser countries like Greece, which would be OK if problems were resolved but obviously the money is squandered and they want more handouts the next year. There is much concern immigration, especially with the EU policy of throwing the doors open to migrants from the Mideast and North Africa.
Economics are certainly an important issue here, but it is also about maintaining sovereignty. Individual countries are losing the ability to self-govern to bureaucrats in Brussels. The people in these countries don't like it. The bureaucrats have agendae that are anathema to the will of the people oftentimes.
Scotland is going to leave the UK now, and there is talk of NI unifying with Ireland and even Wales going independent. I suspect it's just going to be England 10 years from now, and just England is not all that more important economically-speaking if at all then France and certainly well less so than Germany. They may gain their "independence" but they are going to lose quite a bit more IMO.
Brexit and Dexit and Nexit and Swexit and....
