Ummm I don't know enough about it to comment yet

*goes to read The Guardian*

I'm not surprised he put a spin on it - thats his forte after all.

Cameron was in an impossible position. If he had gone along with France and Germany, this would mean that the main treaty would be changed which would then require approval from every single member state. In this country that would mean that he would have to hold a referendum, and the chances of getting a Yes majority to the change is so small that the treaty wouldn't get approved. So the other countries having approved the change would then tell this country to hold another referendum (as happened in Ireland), and would have to keep on holding referendums until a Yes majority was obtained. In the meantime this country's leaders would have been sidelined into campaigning for the referendum rather than trying to sort out the economic mess this country is in.

As it is, he didn't go along. This country will have less say in what goes on in Europe and they will make decisions without regard to what this country wants, so this country will fall further into decline. Eventually, there will be a referendum which will be "we leave the EU altogether" and become a backwater country or "we stay in the EU and become part of The United States of Europe".

I thought this was about Dave from GaGa.

Does this mean we will no longer be expected to pay stupid amounts of money towards the Eurovision Song Contest?

no, and now  we will never win it  ever again!!!

bastards!

anyways there is now a  euro directive phrohibting people having barefeet in public places due to the  spread of the verucca virus.

well i know after all the jockeying for position that went before the the get together, he was left with no choice but to veto, he said he would and gave fair warning that he would.i think he thought the germans would bend a little under  pressure of Mrs Merkels desire to sort out the  fiscal mess, seeing as its her thats going to be paying for it, one can hardly blame her.

seems he was wrong.

There cannot be (nor should there be) any further erosion of our national sovereignty without the people of this country be given a chance to have their say.

They should have concerned themselves more with what they intend to do to finance their pet project (the Euro).  Germany seems very reluctant to allow the ECB to underwrite the mess they have created.

 I don't understand the national sovereignty argument. Maybe someone will explain it one day. It seems that we allow the USA to be hegemonic and inflict their shieght lifestyle on us at the drop of a hat. We also know that they won't allow a United States of Europe.

Are you going to tell us then?

Blimey ! I just imagined  a reply.

I agree with the Veto... 

but he's been like bloody Mutley all day..     "medal... medal... want medal"

Has he stopped telling us all how brave he was to do it yet?

Mutley    yep that's DC 

Totally agree with this. I put it down to people being idiots!

You've got his number Ditty

Personally, I think he did what he did because he was told to by whom ever is pulling his strings.

oh for sure 

then he had to come back & brag about how big, brave & clever he'd been (whilst touching base with someone that had a clue what the hell it was all about to find out what his next move should be)

It wouldn't have come to this if Labour were in power. 

Brown was able to bang heads together internationally at the the very height of the banking crisis for the good of our country.  Blair, for all his numerous faults, also had a strong and influential voice in Europe.  However, all Cameron does is gripe, bitch and grandstand to his xenophobic little England backbenchers. Cameron's laddish Oxbridge debating chamber schoolboy demeanour marks him out as someone to be ignored. 

We don't have a voice in Europe because we have a government that sneers from the sidelines.

Tory MPs are still fighting WWII in their heads, as are their supporters.

The national sovereignty argument is about the right of the right wing plutocrat establishment to pee on our backs and tell us it's raining.

I recall John Major coming back from Europe telling us how lucky we all were that he'd won the UK the freedom of an opt out to allow companies to force British workers to work longer hours and have no paid holidays!  How lucky we were to have nice John Major fighting our corner!

Oh the double-speak of the affluent libertarian right wing!

Good.

can't see that milliband could have done anything  different, howver much he squawks about it now.

Carping from the sidelines hasn't helped anything.  We all know the Tories hate Europe and are still fighting the war. Tories and their supporters need to get over the war!

The fact was Brown and Blair had more influence in Europe than the Tories because they believed that Europe was a union of countries which squabbled but were greater than the sum of their parts whereas the Tories have always seen other European nations as the competition to screw over. Of course Brown and Blair wanted the best for the UK, but never the less, they understood that other nations in Europe weren't there to roll over for the UK's benefit.

Tories believe in a trading block in the sense that they see it as markets for the UK to screw over.  The problem with that position is that obviously other nations might not take kindly to a club member that wants to screw them over.

And that's how it is!

Two widos in charge in Europe.

Time to take a stand.

So did I   

Like several other peeps here: I don't really know enough about it to get into a debate. 

Basically, he ran onto the playing field, told the others playing football that it was his ball and he wasn't playing, then ran off home, leaving his ball on the field.

Har,har well put.

I am pretty rocky on all things political but I am not getting your anti conservative  points there at all

Strikes me that all the time we've been in the EU we've done nothing but bail others out and barely get anything for this country at all. .Look at the state Germany was in when it was first reunited. .they were completely broke and everybody broke their backs to get them on a good financial track again..  and all the other countries that went broke but got bailed out by the 'richer' ones.. or got loads of EU funds to help them ..I recall when my mother was alive travelling to Ireland regularly and there was building going on everywhere and all of it had signs saying paid for by the EU yet they still had to be bailed out ..  the community was just throwing money around left right and centre... all they want to do now is to make sure they can protect our finances by dictating what the financial institutions in this country must do ie have a good bit of capital behind them in case it goes tits up again. .plus have control over how we run our country in the future without being dictated to by others, the majority of which don't follow the rules anyway but expect to sanction us if we break them..

Just my take on it but I may be wrong... as I said am not up with politics and how stuff works. .but I too agree that the first year Hogwarts reject Ed Milliband would have done the same too.. 

as a caveat I should add that I am sick of all the party's now and would probably not vote if there was another election soon.. but felt like having an Olly uneducated waffle anyway..

I tend to agree with you there Olly.  I did support Libdems TBH, but now we have been seriously let down by them, and labour didn't do a brilliant job during the last 10 years, so I don't know WHO to support now.  I am no fan of Cameron's, but I have to admit; he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.  I also think that no matter WHAT Cameron had done, Milliband would have said it was wrong. If he had gone with the other 20-odd leaders, he would have said he was a sheep and was 'selling out.'

LOL, Hogwarts reject!    

I listen to RTE radio a lot and I know that being tied up in the whole Euro mess has done Ireland great harm. Low interest rates fuelled our boom - bust. Now we're paying back our bailout money at appallingly high rates. Future generations will pay for it - thats the worst of it. The banks took a gamble and lost - they should take the repercussions, not ordinary taxpayers.

thing is the veto achieved nothing, the other 26 countries will go ahead  anyways, regardless if  we are with them or not.

the only difference being is that   we will have no input, so that's Dave's' isn't wasn't beneficial to us , so i didn't sign up'

 proved to be a waste of time and effort.

he has gained absolutely nothing apart from irritating  26 other countries, several of whom really do regret that we won't have any input, and who see the UK as  a reign on  Frances united states of europe, passion.

well..    I totally admit that I have little understanding of the pro's & con's of us & Europe.. 

and (and I am about to take the prize for most shallow, politically unaware, FM in this thread)...  my support of Davey boy walking away was based on a vague hope that we might get pesetos & dracma's back..     Cos shopping on holiday was waaaay more fun when we had pesetos & dracmas...   the thrill of converting it into sterling & realising that beautiful, if rather large, donkey in a sombrero was actually only costing 17pence in our money!

That is really really blonde of me innit    I am kinda joking..    kinda not    I have kinda given up on politics..    its just toooooo bloody depressing.      Like others have said..   I have no-one to support..    no-one floating about that I would put my trust in to run this country (though almost anyone would be better than the current one)

I do stand by my comments about Dave going on a Mutley one though    (He's STILL doing it today)

I know they kept going on about us being reliant on trade etc via the EU market but surely now we are at opposite corners wouldn't it be a good time to start looking elsewhere and not being totally reliant on a number of countries which strike me as a tad lacksidasical with their accounting methods.. and frankly don;t appear to give two hoots about any of their fellow Union members only themselves.. bout time we looked elsewhere and expanded more.. we are NOT the United States of Europe just yet are we?

lets use this as a start to get our independence back and work to find business outlets elsewhere. .become more marketable in all aspects of trade..  produce products at reasonable prices not priced out of the market due to costs spiralling over ever increasing wage hoiks for less hours or less pieces made per hr for peace meal work..the Unions have a lot to blame for getting most of our trade products priced out of the market cos of labour costs increasing trade prices.. [ducks from extreme leftie backlash heading her way ]  anything to get away from the outside control inflicted on us by Europe. .gawd I regret as an 18 yr old being allowed to vote the first time was the referendum about joining the 'common market' and I fell for it and voted yes thinking it was right at the time. .look at it now.... hindsight is a wonderful thing.. plus I love the fact Europe is full of so many different cultures they shouldn't try to be ONE cos  they are all so different and should remain so...

I suppose there are loads of sensible arguments that will poo poo my ideas but as I said before am not really a politico or an economist so my ideas are probably a load of crap anyway..

and Yeah Cupcake I can't look at nor hear Milliband without thinking he looks and sounds like a first yr Hogwarts student... I swear there is a figure of Harry potter sitting on his shoulder whenever he appears.. they shoulda got his brother instead he's a tad less cartoon character like

agrees with Ditty ..I miss the Lire, Drachma, Peseta, Escudo's Francs Punts etc..

Good post

trouble is Olly, most of what Dave wanted was to protect the financial sector, which is the biggest financial sector in europe, and at the same time decry protectionism.

it Germnay /France had agreed to it, untold damage would probably have been done to their own finacial sectors, and create a type of cayman islands offshore facility within europe, at least that's what i am understanding from what i've been hearing.

 and its not so straightforward to find other markets as most of them are protectionist.it's an ongoing row we are having with the Chinese.

See I knew there was an argument against my ideas tho I was positing over a bigger picture not the financial sector which this treaty is about 

I think when I heard they didn't want to let us protect our markets in which we wanted to enforce the institutions to have plenty of capital behind them in case of a run on money like what has happened before, and led to the mess we are in now, and cos they didn't want to do that in their financial sectors I thought well done ont he veto, they are being stupid and will cause more problems potentially in the future..

and yeah I figured the Chinese were a problem with trade too.. see if everybody had to look after themselves and stopped sticking their noses in others business maybe a few country's would go down but so what, it's happened before .. South American debt was huge years ago and written off, now look at Brazil they are doing great,  so any that go down now can recover. .maybe they need to go bust to start again ..but in the Union they'll take us all with them or bankrupt the rest while they come out on top.

or am I over simplifying it all as usual?  probably

*Tries to read responses, brain dribbles out of the ear, goes back to making low budget horror film*

Not going down too well is it?     Europe are REALLY pissed off with 'Call me Dave.'

Bullies don't like it when they don't get their own way do they?

LOL true Squiggle.