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Daniel Hannan Crushes The Euro-Enthusiasts' Contempt For The Masses
Authored by Daniel Hannan, originally posted at The Telegraph,
How do you get a poll to register a large majority in favour of EU membership? Easy. Confine your survey to quangocrats, charity heads, civil servants, CEOs of multi-national corporations and the like. The pro-EU lobby group, British Influence, has been trying to get people excited about its poll of “leading figures” – that is, 700 bien pensant metropolitans of whom, sure enough, 69 per cent want to stay in the EU. Indeed, the only surprise is that, of a demographic specifically selected for pro-Brussels bias, 31 per cent don't agree.
Not that I blame British Influence: when every poll of the general population shows an anti-EU majority, you have to clutch at whatever support you can find. Nor am I saying that all, or even most, of the people surveyed are beneficiaries of the Brussels racket. They don’t have to be. When enough NGOs get money from the Commission, even those that don’t tend to be inflected by the Euro-enthusiasm of their peers. When a large number multinationals and megabanks have invested in lobbying to get rules that suit them, other corporates get carried along by the groupthink.
Let’s run over some of the other things that all these “leading figures” have favoured over the years, shall we? State planning, prices and incomes policies, the SDP, the ERM. Almost without exception, the “leading figures” trotted out by British Influence to argue for the EU were, a decade ago, making precisely the same arguments about joining the euro: we’ll lose influence, overseas investment will dry up, blah blah fishcakes. If they were forecasters in the private sector, they’d have been sacked long ago. But because they represent the goody-goody consensus, they can always be sure of a sympathetic hearing from the BBC.
For as long as I can remember, the European debate has involved an element of snobbery. Supporters of the project are not so much pro-EU as anti-Eurosceptic, seeing themselves as defenders of moderate, decent, civilised values against Blimps, oiks and football hooligans. I’ve lost count of how many people in Brussels have said to me, “You know, Hannan, you’re very broadminded for a Eurosceptic”. They mean to be nice, but they reveal their narcissism.
Well, let me be broadminded now. It may be true that the Eurosceptic movement has more than its share of eccentrics. You know what? The same is true of every movement that takes on the orthodoxy. You can’t read history without being struck by how many oddballs and misfits were attracted, in the early stages, to the campaign against slavery, say, or the campaign for a universal franchise. Any movement that challenges the status quo will attract, as well as principled reformers, people who are simply grumpy about life in general. But this doesn’t make them wrong.
The Chartists and the Suffragettes were attacked by their opponents in exactly the same terms as Ukip today: as a bunch of mavericks and obsessives. When the vote was extended to all adults, the moderate men, the sensible men, the men of bottom and judgment, suddenly remembered that they had favoured the idea all along. The same will happen with Brexit. Just watch.
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Obviously the pigs are not going to be happy at the thought of the trough being taken away.
Now my twin turbo is stuck in the mud.
Contempt for the masses is not, in any way, restricted to Europe!
The old royalty had it, the new royalty does too.
Can WE join too?
We want to play!
It's a good thing our "civil servants" are nothing like Europe's. They are dedicated to serving the American public, and have nothing but our best interests at heart.
They truly are our employees.
LOL. Thanks for the breakfast laugh.
(EUROCRAT) : What do you mean its not working - looks like its going really well from where I am sitting. Let them eat cake...
Nobody has printed less money then the Euro zone. Its not even close.
Yet the Eurozone gets no respect for this on ZeroHedge
Shame on Zerohedge for this.
Nobody has printed less money then the Euro zone
Did you factor in the massive amount of money donated to EU by the American tax payer via the Fed?
The one trillion FX-swap myth? It has been wound down, as reported in ZH, too. and it was done to help PDs, anyway, imho
net, europe has been a net contributor to all things US since WW2, as junior partners often have to. Ask Canadians, same story
fact is, he is right, and ZH prefers the truthiness of "all CBs are..."
this article is from a UKIP leader & Telegraph editor who just starts the new BreXit campaign
I wish the movement succeds, the UK simply does not fit in the team, imho
four freedoms: of trade, movement of capital, goods and people: the EU
too many Britons want only three out of four. sorry, it's either one set of rules for everybody or none. a confederation has an exit door, take it
we won't let you make a Mexican Border across the Continent, we just had an Iron Curtain, and it was enough for a long while
I predict there will be NO vote by Brits to "leave" the EU, just to have a few powers returned.
And that is exactly the stitch-up that Cameron is steadily working on - as I also predicted - since he first announced "renegotiations" with the EU, to keep the noise down over here.
But if we were ever to leave the EU, it would not in any way reduce the masses of people flooding into the UK from Europe. Ohhh nooo. The NEW immigrants would be from the ranks of other EU countries who want OUT of it and (wrongly) see Britain as a safer place than a Brussels fascist dictatorship.
"I wish the movement succeds, the UK simply does not fit in the team, imho"
You some kind of sucka fool french bastard? You French fools lost us America and gave us the mess of US as is today. You sound like total transient, doesnt give a shit about any culture apart from detsroying to create the bland, homgenous wasteland that Europe must become. Fine to mix up normal people with gypsies and ultrapoor without fixing situation in their sorce country, no let it become cozier for the small elites left back home who send us their dregs of society. Your analogis are rediculous and you generally suck of some bitter asshole. One does not need the "EU state" for Free trade, movement of captal, good or people; all those can happen perfectly efficiently without supreme centralisation, in fact he opposte is true as the steadily approaching chaoes is proving.
It's like this. There's a ruling class, comprised of bankers, politicians, academics, corporate titans, actors and actresses, and the media.
Then there's us.
And the ruling class despises us, and the threat we represent to their cozy little world of privelege and self-regard.
I keep returning to the notion that this will only be resolved with gallows on The Mall.
Small wonder that street protestors in the Ukraine want a piece of the action!
Ummm. Hold on a sec...
There's a ruling class, comprised of bankers, politicians, academics, corporate titans, actors and actresses, and the media.
Don't forget all those people are just puppets of the current ruling Elite. The ruling Elite are Luciferian and are selected from various ruling families, the Rothschild's and Warburgs being some of the families.
Yes you are correct, they and their lackey's do despise us.
Just make sure the gallows get the right people and not just their puppets.
Notice how in the Eurozone, as oppsoed to the USA or Japan, there is no central bank controled government bond markets ?
Greece's bonds went into a bear market , they let them crash.
Spitzer, I was expecting you noticing how undervalued French and Italian stocks are...
We wish.
The neo-gallows are for sheeple.
Blimps, oiks and football hooligans do not understand the political capital invested in Europe. They vastly underestimate what the Euro means for the Europeans, for the Euro area.
Are you out of </sarc> tags?
The EU now has minority support. Brussels delegates may soon be majority anti EU, like Britain will have a majority of ministers in Brussels anti EU. This reflects people's votes. The EU is pure evil. Economically it is corporate fascism and a dictatorship of corporate power. BUT, here is the real strange thing about the EU, socially it is 100% communist to the core. So people get fucked in two ways. Complete corporate police state fascism for the economic sector, and in social policies , like open borders, it is 100% pure communist. This gives the European people the worst of Hitler and Stalin. In the UK, the EU acts like the Supreme Soviet and demands the total destruction of British culture, history, society and even the Ango Saxon and Celtic races. Open borders to the middle East and Africa and Asia flood all of Europe with people who don't even like native Europeans. They come for economci hand outs or to comepte at the bottom end of the wage scales. This leaves the bottom half of EU society unemployed or in a race to the bottom at unskilled jobs.
If the people do not rise and destroy the EU then Europe and it's people are finished. They will be a vast thrid world slum like India only with a mixed race population. This will cause terrible social tensions.
Frankly the EU is part of the NATO miltiary Industrial Spy complex. It exists to ensure corporate power and to further the NATO drive to the east. War drums beat for war on Russia and later for war on China. It is no surprise that the Russian Ministry of Defense sent a christmas card to NATO showing Santa and Mrs. Santa standing with commanders in front of one of Russia stratigic Nuclear Missiles. Russia is now spending big on new fleet ballistic missle subs, on rail mounted moblie intercontinental missiles, on truck mounted ICBMS and other new and smaller nukes. Why! Ask NATO who now thinks they can conquer Ukraine. Granted the very west of Ukraine wants into NATO, but the East does not. Civil war could result. This would be a fine trigger for direct USA and Russian conflict.
"Open borders to the middle East and Africa and Asia flood all of Europe with people who don't even like native Europeans." the EU? BULLSHIT. And I don't use this word often
"In the UK, the EU acts like the Supreme Soviet and demands the total destruction of British culture, history, society and even the Ango Saxon and Celtic races."
How? By allowing millions of Pakistani and other ex-British Empire subjects to become... British citizens?
You don't have a clue where British law ends and EU law begins, eh?
Bully for Hannan! Once you've impoverished the "blimps and oiks" there's no one left but the well-heeled snotties. Beware, snotties.
"It's not the people who vote that count. It's the people who count the votes." (Joseph Stalin)
Caucescu and Fidel Castro know that all too well. Apparently the EU commission is learning fast. If you had asked the Aristocracy in France about the state of Affairs in 1788, everything was fine.
Didn't Castro always win with 110% of the vote?
93.5% (of the .00000015% population sample, handpicked at my club)...
*percentage error +-90%
I had the pleasure on Christmas eve morning of hearing an interview on WMAL with Daniel Hannan talking about his book "Inventing Freedom". I spent much of the rest of the quit day listening to a Kings College performance of Handel's Messiah, quietly mourning Western Civilization's and Britain's decline.
Yes. It's all one can do. It's sad when a great ship goes down.
Dan Hannan's comments really allude to this:
By Dan's judgement I must be an eccentric or misfit or whatever. So be it.
I have been arguing for years that the British "system" of government is now way beyond any more tweaking, repairing or plugging holes. And you cannot negotiate with those who live well by sucking on its teet and defrauding their way through life.
It can only be torn down and rebuilt with new foundations based upon a strong written constitution and bill of rights. How long it will take for the comatose masses to wake up and see what slaves they have allowed themselves to become is anybody's guess.