Took me almost 7 years to get here, but I've just taken what is presumably my final school / University exam ever. That's obviously on the caveat of me being awarded a full scholarship to Harvard or something, but I'm finally done for now. No one cares, I know, but you folks are the online people I'm closest with so I figured I'd just share it anyways. I already have a job ready for me, so that'll be the next big thing next September after I defend my thesis. Cheers.

Yeah, Challenger already made a thread about it.

To be honest, I kind of want to vote Leave just to see the look on that cunt Osborne's face when house prices don't collapse and the world doesn't end.

Have you actually decided which way you're going to vote yet?

You think the UK is going to leave or do you think the parliament is going to do something shady to stay?

It hasn't really been publicized that much, but the outcome of the vote is merely advisory and has no direct effect. As is the case with most countries, referendums in the UK are not legally binding. Of course, simply ignoring a massive victory for either side would probably be practically unworkable for the government, but they are under no obligation to follow the outcome. Either way, the referendum alone does not directly result in a withdrawal from the EU, even if 100% of voters chose Brexit. It's up to the member states of the EU themselves to determine in what way they formally withdraw, so this means that the UK would probably need some parliamentary act.

Quote from: Flee on June 15, 2016, 05:53:40 PM

(think a Commission notification to Portugal for being late in submitting their information on the economics of the olive oil sector)

. . .

Lol, I know it sounds bad, but it isn't always, especially for someone like you. The EU doesn't do that kind of stuff just because, but to create very detailed economic analysis, predictions and impact assessments. I realize that olive oil might not be the most interesting thing imaginable, but I'm expecting you of all people to appreciate the value sound data and economic analysis of things like this can bring. Besides, it's not as if this happens regularly. It's likely part of a schedule / several year cycle set out by a regulation (which is one of those that would not be implemented in the EFTA but still counted among the number of EU rules used in the comparison with Norway).

http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/olive-oil/economic-analysis_en.pdf

Quote from: Flee on June 15, 2016, 09:14:34 AM

still abide by just about every European rule regarding commerce and trade in Europe.

I'll let you revise, but I will say this is false to my knowledge. The "No to EU" Norwegian campaign has pointed out that claims by the British government that Norway must accept and implement 75pc of EU laws are not true; the EEA agreement with Norway has a clause which allows them to refuse the implementation of new EU rules should they so desire, and they claim to have implemented just 10pc of new EU laws over the 2003-2013 period.

If true, I was not aware of that. Looks like I've got some research to do once my exams are over. I was basing myself on the writings of Norway's previous Foreign Policy Minister and, kind of, common sense. It may very well be correct, but I would be surprised if they can just refuse the rules they desire. A core component of the EU free market is common standards. Allowing a country like Norway to just say "nah, thanks for suggesting we abide by these safety rules, product qualities or common standards, but we're just going to decline the offer and keep selling and trading our goods/services on the European market without having to follow these rules other countries must abide by". Unless not implementing those rules would mean that Norway just couldn't play ball in that specific field or had to implement equally adequate bilateral agreements, I find it hard to see how that would work in practice.

But yes, I do need to get back to studying. And I was only joking, obviously. Keep posting all you want, I'll be sure to read it all when I'm done.

It's why I close all your reports without looking at them.

Good post. I'm not denying that some of this research may be flawed, but there does seem to be a pretty overwhelming agreement that it wouldn't be a good choice, economically speaking that is. From what I can tell and read before (some of this might not be entirely accurate as I've been swamped with my exams and haven't had the time to really check up on all of this), the International Monetary Fund, Oxford Economics, European Central Bank, Global Counsel, UK Treasury, British National Institute of Economic and Social Research, Bank of England, OECD, London School of Economics, Royal Economic Society (finding 88% of all British economists supporting Remain), G8, British Institute for Fiscal Studies, World Bank, Peterson Institute for International Economics, Financial Times' analsis (over 75% of economists surveyed believe Brexit would cause harm to the UK's economy), Centre for Economic Performance, Society of Business Economists, The Times (open letter by 200 economists warning about the likely downsides of a Brexit), Confederation of British Industry, along with numerous universities all over the world, many other academics and economists, think tanks, banks / ministers of economics / major companies and most of the major economic magazines (International Business Times, the Economist, Financial Times...) seem to all support the notion that Brexit would almost definitely cause harm to the UK's economy. So far, the only group I've really found who argue the opposite are 8 economists making up the "Economists for Brexit" Group, which I've come to understand has been harshly criticised. And aside from those, there's also a very sizable number of other organizations (Open Europe, for example) coming to more neutral conclusions on how it would probably not be that terribly important either way.

Still, I feel that a ton of this depends on the outcome of the withdrawal negotiations, and that is something which I'd be moderately concerned about. The UK is definitely an asset to the EU, but it is far from critical. And as several other major European members have already implied that there would be consequences if the UK decided to leave now, it's not exactly evident that the UK will just be able to get an equally beneficial deal out of the separation.

So I'd agree with you that it likely won't be extraordinarily good nor bad, but I still think that it's not likely to be the right choice. I stand by what I said some other time, being that the UK voting Remain now would send a clear message that change needs to happen while still having faith in the Union. I think that would be the best outcome for all involved and could prompt reform.

And that is another thing I've wondered. How do you feel about these potential outcomes? I mean, you've listed a number of grievances with the EU. Yet, one of the few likely outcomes of a Brexit would be for the UK to adopt something like the Norway model. The Leave campaign seems to make this out as a perfect solution: getting all the benefits from the EU market but without much of the hassle. However, access to the EEA would still cost the UK a lot in membership fees (relatively speaking, Norway's fees to the EEA are not much lower than what the UK pays for EU membership) and would force the country to still abide by just about every European rule regarding commerce and trade in Europe. Only then, the UK will have no say at all in the legislative process. I believe it was the former Foreign Affairs Minister of Norway who wrote an article about how Norway is essentially under much of the same burdens as any EU country, but doesn't play a role in the way these rules apply to it.

Don't have the time to watch this right now, but isn't the majority opinion that Brexit would likely be bad for both parties involved? From what I've read, a sizable majority of economists, major businesses, banks, governmental institutions, think-tanks, international financial organizations, research institutions and economic magazines seem to support the notion that a Brexit is much more likely to be bad for the UK than it would allow the country to flourish.

I would mention, however, that--AFAIK--the Parliament still does not have legislative initiative.

That is true, but I do think it's justifiable. The Commission is supposed to act in the interests of the Union as a whole, while the other two main institutions are supposed to counter this by presenting national interests and those of the citizens of Europe. You have to understand that the Commission does not just have one Commissioner pick some random topic to legislate. This is a process that takes months and is based on its agenda and work programme (which is partially drafted by the Parliament). The Commission works together with dozens of experts, academics and research institutions in just about all countries of the EU. It conducts social, economic, international relations and environmental impact assessments (which are all published) for the EU as a whole and individual countries. For example, the IT and IP Law Research Center I will be working at has done research for the Commision and evaluated the impact of EU IT legislations for the Belgian legal system and economy, and the exact same things happens in the UK. The Commission then launches public consultations open to every person and business in the EU to give opinions, suggestions and feedback. The lack of legislative initiative for the Parliament is indeed a bit strange, but it does make sense. One of the main criticisms of the EU is that it's sluggish and not always very efficient. Giving the Parliament the power to propose legislation would only make things worse, as all of the above would have to be incorporated in a Parliament of 751 people with vastly different political opinions. Getting them to agree on a proposal would likely be incredibly inefficient and not to the same standards as Commission proposals. So I get the criticism, but I do think it's good for a Union as sizeable as the EU to have legislative initiative reserved for a smaller, more efficient and more capable institution that is then balanced out by other organs in the following stages of the process.

Additionally, the Parliament has a way to initiate legislation in an indirect manner. It can invite the Commission to present proposals of law for areas and issues it deems necessary. While the Commission isn't bound by this invitation, it has to justify a refusal which can in turn be taken to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) by the Parliament to have it evaluated. Finally, the Parliament also plays a significant role in drafting and setting out the Commission's Work Programme which more or less determines its agenda. While this doesn't change anything about who holds the power of initiative, it does mean that the Parliament has a pretty major say in what the Commission will be dealing with. Then there's also the facts that it can force the Commission to resign, hold its members accountable, vet them when they're proposed and are capable of completely blocking or altering (which believe me, it does very often) Commission proposals.

The representatives sit in the Parliament not by country but by ideological blocs.

Correct, but this does not prevent them from working together in Britain's interests. This would probably improve too, if more Britons took the EP elections more seriously.

The ratio of MEPs to Britons is something like one-to-one million.

Yeah, it sits at 1 to 880,000, more or less. However, this isn't necessarily bad. The MEP's for each country match the portion its population makes up in Europe. The UK makes up roughly 12% of the EU's population and in turn provides around 10% of the MEP's. There's a pretty good reason for this too, being the same principle of degressive proportional representation you see in the UK with the representation of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Additionally, while the UK MEP's are reasonably well represented in the general Parliament, the UK has a history to hold a lot of important agenda-setting and other powerful positions such as vice-president, group leaders and chairmen, giving it considerable amounts of power in the European Parliament still. The two links below do a good job at explaining it and are definitely worth a read.

http://www.richardcorbett.org.uk/fair-share-meps/
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2016/feb/04/do-uk-meps-get-key-positions-of-power-in-europe

And, at least according to Daniel Hannan, neither the Parliament nor the Council is permitted to discuss something unless the Commission has expressly called for it to be discussed.

I've never heard anything about that before and I don't really understand what he means by this, but it sounds very incorrect. As I said above, the Parliament can request the Commission to propose legislation on anything it pleases, discusses or drafts in its own committees. It can convene meetings and sessions without the involvement of any other organ, can set its own agenda and make its own rules of procedure. Of course, this doesn't mean it can just choose to ignore Commission proposals and such, but I've never heard of neither the Parliament nor Council being allowed to only discuss what the Commission explicitly allowed. I've done a bit of googling for this and haven't found anything to support that claim, so unless he means something different or I'm just missing something here, I'm gonna rate that one false.

And it doesn't look like the third one can be fixed in any significant way.

True, but I'm not entirely sure if agree that one really needs fixing. I think those two links provide pretty good points to support that Britain is fairly represented in the Parliament and actually has a good amount of power.

And, of course, there are rumblings about the EU keeping plans on hold until after the referendum, lest they swing the decision towards Leave. Most notably, the plans for a European Army, among some other things-

I really don't see that one happening. While I'm sure some want to see a European Army, the logistics and legalities of implementing one are immense. There's only one provision in the EU's founding treaties that would allow for this to happen and it requires the unanymous consent of every single member state to be implemented. Queue another British referendum and an almost guaranteed anti-vote. And that isn't even considering that other countries have already objected to this as well. The EU has zero competence to be involved with national security (it's explicitly excluded from its scope in its founding treaty), so while it isn't unthinkable that it will coordinate more of its military efforts (which have already existed for years, remain under control of the national governments and are just coordinated military actions held by different member states), I can almost guarantee you that an actual EU army is never going to become a reality.

https://fullfact.org/europe/hunt-eu-army/
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/27/is-there-a-secret-plan-to-create-an-eu-army
http://www.politico.eu/article/waging-war-on-the-myth-of-an-eu-army-referendum-britain-brexit-debate/
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36383211

This is not a widespread opinion; the most widespread negative opinion of Juncker is as him being an ineffectual drunkard.

Fair enough, I didn't think that it was. I only mentioned it to illustrate the amount of misinformation I feel exists. I don't concern myself that much with UK politics to begin with and don't know very many Britons, yet I see opinions like that all the time. I have zero issues at all with people like you, who have valid complaints based on facts and who understand the way the EU works and relates to the UK. My gripe is more with the tens of thousands of people who couldn't even tell you the difference between the European Parliament, Commission and Court of Justice, but are hellbent on voting Leave because flyers told them the EU is an undemocratic evil organization regulating whatever it pleases to annihilate British culture. Not that the Remain side doesn't have people who believe that the UK will instantly crash and burn the moment it leaves the Union, but I'm sure you get my point.

Good article. I still stand by what I said some time ago on what I believe would be the best course of action for the US. It's my patented Firearm Legislation and Education Enterprise, or FLEE for short.

1. Research. One of the worst things about this debate is that there's still a lot we don't know, but that we really should've figured out at this point. Interest groups with a clear agenda funding research for the sole purpose of supporting their opinion instead of actually finding facts, academics with a long track record of nearly fraudulent academic activities who are still toted as the head of their movement (looking at you in particular, John Lott and somewhat Gary Kleck) and the continued and unchallenged use of long debunked claims ("millions of lives saved by defensive gun use every year") should really be dealt with. The ban on arguably the most capable institutions in the US to actually research gun violence (CDC and National Institutes of Health) from doing so should be lifted and a strong push should be made to clear the waters and conduct more proper, objective and non-partisan research that can be used as a standard for both sides of the debate.

2. Educate. The people should be better informed about the research described above and the things we do know about gun violence, its causes, cost, consequences and possible measures to address it. Blatant lies and inaccuracies should be addressed and ridiculed in public, and serious conversations and educational programmes must be held to dispell myths and debunk the convenient but foolish one-liners that people use instead of a proper argument on both sides ("if we outlaw guns then only outlaws will have guns", "if guns kill then why doesn't mine grow legs and shoot people", "fully automatic AR assault rifles are an attack on our children").

3. Debate. Proper discussions and debates must be had at a large scale between experts and representatives from all sides. No one-sided spiteful Facebook rants on patriot websites, no "moms against black scary guns" blogs, no videos of people who don't even know half the facts bullying those who know even less being used as an argument. Instead, you need actual public and formal debates involving experts, representatives and politicians based on proper information and research to put everything out in the open and discuss what the problems are and how they can be adequately addressed.

4. Legislate. In my opinion, the best way forward is for America to adopt a Switzerland-style gun control regime. The guns are there now and, being a sturdy non-perishable tool with a very long lifespan, they're there to stay. Gun culture is pretty deeply ingrained in American society, so there's no real imaginable way that this is going to disappear any time soon. So, after admitting that the US policy on firearms most definitely does causes some problems, the only sensible choice is to look at other countries with high rates of civilian firearm ownership and a gun culture of their own, yet with only a fraction of the gun violence the US has. These countries have demonstrated that it is entirely possible to have a gun culture that works and has far less negative side-effects tied to it. This widespread myth that civilian firearm ownership and your typical law-abiding gun owner enjoying his firearms is incompabitle with stricter gun laws has long been debunked. The fact that it is entirely possible for strict Switzerland-style gun laws to co-exist with civilian ownership of firearms must be given more attention and, ultimately and gradually, implemented in the US too.

The problem is, there is no line for those interested in gun control. If we allow one inch to be taken without fighting tooth and nail, we'll lose everything. And I cannot abide that.

As someone interested in gun control, that just isn't true and can be said for just about every argument in any debate. It's just a slippery slope.

Also, the ECJ (European Court of Justice) just confirmed what was already the common case for a while. The UK is well within its rights to restrict welfare and benefits for EU migrants who don't work, which I believe has been something the Leave campaign has been trying to make an issue of. It's also one of many cases illustrating the trend of giving more leeway and discretion to member states, which will hopefully ease some scepticism.

I'm fairly resigned to it at this point.

Likewise. I more or less assumed that the righteous and godly side of Remain would just win, but the sheer amount of populism on both sides of the debate has really disappointed me. Even parts of what Meta just quoted make me facepalm at the populist discourse in it.

Quote from: Flee on June 14, 2016, 11:12:37 AM

On an unrelated note, anyone who wants to see me defend my thesis against the University's cybercrime and data protection panel is more than welcome to come see. It is public, after all.

And travel to the heart of the EU to hear somebody speak frog?

No thank you.

Spoiler

On a serious note, good luck with your defence.

It's all in English, actually. I rarely have to speak French and both the language of my thesis and the oral defense are English. And thanks.