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Bryan Burk
: To Boldly Serve - How 'Star Trek' Aligned With Post-9/11 Vets
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Ed Miliband
: A Distant and Distracted Cameron Cannot Tackle Tax Avoidance
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Chrissie Hynde
: Don't Get Me Wrong: I Won't Stand For Cruelty to Geese
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Andy Burnham
: Jeremy Hunt Is Playing a Dangerous Game
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Alistair Darling
: Salmond's Default Position Bankrupts His Credibility
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If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
The heads of government cannot keep giving the EU more and more tasks to perform and, at the same time, cut its budget; that is simply asking the impossible. Put simply, an ambitious EU needs an ambitious budget.
Britain's membership of the EU is up for discussion - and it's liable to be a wretchedly stupid discussion.
Investors and business leaders - on whom the country's economic recovery depends, can no longer be certain of the UK's liberty and protection under the law. At the very time other crisis economies are cutting costs and increasing certainty, business in the UK will have to contend not just with statutory rules and the costs they impose on employers. They will also face the consequences of pressure-group politics, in which politicians abandon the labour market to the unpredictable operations of twilight law.
The risk for the coalition in Downing Street of embracing this British isolationist sentiment is that it does not embody a rational movement, but a spasm.
The speed at which the two former adversaries agreed on a coalition, as well as the multitude of compromises that they made, bodes well for political stability.
IMF economists have finally acknowledged what politicians have long denied. They have shown that austerity policies implemented by politicians and demanded by financial markets are severely damaging to what economists define as 'growth'. Ultimately, argues the IMF, these policies are self-defeating. As most thinking people now recognise, rather than repairing the broken and bankrupt economies of the world, austerity is making matters worse.
We got into this mess through financial engineering and manipulation for individual profit. Maybe it's time we considered some more manipulation, this time for the benefit of everyone and not a greedy few.
Setting a budget is a difficult exercise at the best of times. Even when money is plentiful, it is never unlimited, so tough choices have to be made. Now imagine 27 countries, all with their own of difficulties and preferences, having to decide about billions of euros for a seven-year period in the midst of the biggest economic crisis since the great depression.
The Security Council is the most prestigious of the UN's organs, charged with upholding the core value of the charter ("to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war"), yet clearly its current form is beyond broken, its composition a farce.
Whilst those harmed by Greece's actions must have some channel of recompense, by refusing to accept a denizen's right to determine their own governance the European community are engaging in a form of authoritarian economic imperialism.
By dressing up as Nazis, Greek protestors showed that, under pressure, states within the European Union revert back to suspicion and resentment of each other and historical grievances come to the surface.
With the current crisis, it is easy to forget how successful the EU has been in creating wealth and jobs for its member states. That is why countries have always been keen to join and why, even now, several are in the waiting room.
Only buffoonery, folks. Yet, the disturbing, crude impression that the Spanish government falls to pieces while the economy of the country reaches its last legs is growing plausible as the month goes by.
Today an armed conflict between Germany and France is unthinkable. For this achievement alone the EU deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
Polls continue to show that voters prefer Mr Cameron as prime minister to Mr Miliband, but that they prefer Labour over the Conservatives. That might well change before the next election in 2015, but there is little to suggest that Mr Cameron's grand vision will be sufficient to persuade more voters to back his party.
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