If I do a fisk job of InFacts, the leading europhile propaganda outfit, I should be able to come to the defence of leading voices within the Leave campaign but I can't in that Infacts are saying much the same things I am - that eurosceptics don't know what they are talking about.
That is not to say that the Hugo Dixon, Sam Ashworth Hayes and the rest of that malign bunch aren't lying bastards - but the scale of the task is massive when there is no support coming from the Leave campaign - a campaign that undermines just about everything we do - and frankly even our own readers have started to piss me off.
I have people asking me technical questions from GMO's, phosphates in food right through to standards on electrical equipment. All of which misses the point. The fact is that most technical standards are not made by the EU and the EU increasingly adopts regulations from elsewhere - often from institutions that very much are the law by way of being embodied in various WTO agreements.
In this I am no expert but if you are even aware that such exists then you are in the 0.25% of the electorate who have a clue how any of it works. Understanding the rest is between you and Google. Flexcit is your starting point, the rest is really up to you. And none of this is the real point either. It's not about how things are, it's about where they are going.
We get europhiles blethering on about EU free trade deals creating a fast free trade area - but this isn't true. EU bloc deals are less about creating a global free trade region as preventing one. By extending its non tariff barriers to encompass Canada, New Zealand, Vietnam and the likes they are further garden-walling trade to the exclusion of all others, while in truth the substance of these trade agreements are nothing even approaching free trade.
What we should have is a global treaty on standards whereby compliance to standards, along with a network of independent, mutual inspection systems means that any body can opt in if they so chose without having to enter long and protracted talks with the EU. The EU system is one whereby nations effectively must seek permission to export to anywhere within its sphere of control.
What we have seen from trends in global trade is that global alliances and institutions are the driver of regulatory convergence through a profit motive where the EU's influence is broadly viewed as malign. Europhiles are entirely oblivious to this realm of trade and persist in pushing the notion that the EU alpha and omega of regulation and free trade. They're wrong. It is the living opposite.
In short nobody's vote will be shifted on the basis of whether marketing standards for cabbages are made in Brussels or Geneva. Yes it's interesting, and were we not up against a deadline we could have fun with such investigations - and we will have all the time in the world to thoroughly explore such issues after the referendum but for now it comes down to one basic point.
As much as big bloc deals are becoming redundant and secondary in importance, deals between massive corporate non-state actors are the real engine of convergence, far beyond the reach of anybody who holds elected office.
The fact is that nowhere in this do we, the British people, have the right to say no. As much as the EU is forced by circumstances to drop some of its own standards, most of what MEPs end up voting on is already decided and their amendments are wholesale rejected. The people of Europe have no real say. We are all passengers.
The europhile argument is that it is the EU that gives us clout, but everything is lost the morass of bureaucracy and nobody really knows how it all works and who is responsible for what. By the time we have identified the problem, the obstacles to a solution are too many - not least when we must go via the EU middleman to sort it out. What we need is multilateralism and an independent emergency brake on laws and standards we don't want - and the EU will never allow that.
We can't afford to turn into regulation trainspotters, as enthralling though that may be. Ultimately we have a crisis of democracy on our hands in that the juggernaut of globalisation is eradicating any kind of democracy and the EU is a wholly useless defence mechanisms because of its scale, remoteness and glacial response time.
This whole notion that it gives the EU gives us clout is laughable. What more clout do you want than sovereign people saying no? For sure opting out has consequences and always a price tag - but it should be up to us to decide if the trade off is worth it - not some faceless functionary in the EU commission - or Westminster for that matter.
I write from the perspective that elected representatives should be our line of defence between us and government but we are in a perverse situation where our MPs and MEPs think they are government and it is their role to tell us what to do - even though they are not even close to being in charge. And like children we roll over and acquiesce to their idiotic agendas.
Somewhere along the line we have distorted the relationship whereby we look to such people as leaders rather than servants. That is why this referendum is so perverse in that for reasons that escape me, people put stock in the words of these dickheads who know fuck all about nine tenths of anything.
We have people on our own side sucking up to the likes of Boris Johnson and Douglas Carswell when by all rights we should despise these people for being part of the problem. They are no better than the scumbag europhile politicians. The whole point of Brexit is not just to ditch the wastrels in the European Parliament but also to snatch the power back off the Westminster vermin as well.
This is also, as Eureferendum points out, the reason we shouldn't be nice to these people. They are the enemy and these are the people pissing away a real chance of democracy.
I have people asking me technical questions from GMO's, phosphates in food right through to standards on electrical equipment. All of which misses the point. The fact is that most technical standards are not made by the EU and the EU increasingly adopts regulations from elsewhere - often from institutions that very much are the law by way of being embodied in various WTO agreements.
In this I am no expert but if you are even aware that such exists then you are in the 0.25% of the electorate who have a clue how any of it works. Understanding the rest is between you and Google. Flexcit is your starting point, the rest is really up to you. And none of this is the real point either. It's not about how things are, it's about where they are going.
We get europhiles blethering on about EU free trade deals creating a fast free trade area - but this isn't true. EU bloc deals are less about creating a global free trade region as preventing one. By extending its non tariff barriers to encompass Canada, New Zealand, Vietnam and the likes they are further garden-walling trade to the exclusion of all others, while in truth the substance of these trade agreements are nothing even approaching free trade.
What we should have is a global treaty on standards whereby compliance to standards, along with a network of independent, mutual inspection systems means that any body can opt in if they so chose without having to enter long and protracted talks with the EU. The EU system is one whereby nations effectively must seek permission to export to anywhere within its sphere of control.
What we have seen from trends in global trade is that global alliances and institutions are the driver of regulatory convergence through a profit motive where the EU's influence is broadly viewed as malign. Europhiles are entirely oblivious to this realm of trade and persist in pushing the notion that the EU alpha and omega of regulation and free trade. They're wrong. It is the living opposite.
In short nobody's vote will be shifted on the basis of whether marketing standards for cabbages are made in Brussels or Geneva. Yes it's interesting, and were we not up against a deadline we could have fun with such investigations - and we will have all the time in the world to thoroughly explore such issues after the referendum but for now it comes down to one basic point.
As much as big bloc deals are becoming redundant and secondary in importance, deals between massive corporate non-state actors are the real engine of convergence, far beyond the reach of anybody who holds elected office.
The fact is that nowhere in this do we, the British people, have the right to say no. As much as the EU is forced by circumstances to drop some of its own standards, most of what MEPs end up voting on is already decided and their amendments are wholesale rejected. The people of Europe have no real say. We are all passengers.
The europhile argument is that it is the EU that gives us clout, but everything is lost the morass of bureaucracy and nobody really knows how it all works and who is responsible for what. By the time we have identified the problem, the obstacles to a solution are too many - not least when we must go via the EU middleman to sort it out. What we need is multilateralism and an independent emergency brake on laws and standards we don't want - and the EU will never allow that.
We can't afford to turn into regulation trainspotters, as enthralling though that may be. Ultimately we have a crisis of democracy on our hands in that the juggernaut of globalisation is eradicating any kind of democracy and the EU is a wholly useless defence mechanisms because of its scale, remoteness and glacial response time.
This whole notion that it gives the EU gives us clout is laughable. What more clout do you want than sovereign people saying no? For sure opting out has consequences and always a price tag - but it should be up to us to decide if the trade off is worth it - not some faceless functionary in the EU commission - or Westminster for that matter.
I write from the perspective that elected representatives should be our line of defence between us and government but we are in a perverse situation where our MPs and MEPs think they are government and it is their role to tell us what to do - even though they are not even close to being in charge. And like children we roll over and acquiesce to their idiotic agendas.
Somewhere along the line we have distorted the relationship whereby we look to such people as leaders rather than servants. That is why this referendum is so perverse in that for reasons that escape me, people put stock in the words of these dickheads who know fuck all about nine tenths of anything.
We have people on our own side sucking up to the likes of Boris Johnson and Douglas Carswell when by all rights we should despise these people for being part of the problem. They are no better than the scumbag europhile politicians. The whole point of Brexit is not just to ditch the wastrels in the European Parliament but also to snatch the power back off the Westminster vermin as well.
This is also, as Eureferendum points out, the reason we shouldn't be nice to these people. They are the enemy and these are the people pissing away a real chance of democracy.
We should be ripping holes in their worthless ideas rather than rolling out the red carpet for them. We don't want Boris Johnson, Duncan Smith, Grayling or Gove. We don't want Galloway or Farage either. We want rid of the whole lot of them and Brexit is our catalyst to do exactly that. So start fighting like you mean it. And no, I won't prepare a factsheet on Norway payments to the EU. You know where the data is. Do it your fucking self.
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