why so afraid to go it alone

thehighground

Seanies32 wrote: »

Oh, I though you said Commissioners or Ministers? had power, now they give him a flea in the ear!

A few demands for him to resign last week because he obviously doesn't think too much of the Lisbon Treaty. Quick reference here.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/breaking-news/ireland/politics/article3811358.ece

Who's we?

The 500m people of the EU.

marco_polo

thehighground wrote: »

Vary but average at about 10%. Some items like coffee & tea have very low tariffs - about 3%. Fish that is in short supply doesn't attract any tariffs.

Source?

My investigations indicated that the average agricultural tarrif is currently about 23%.

Even higher for sensitive products such as dairy. I though we went through all this yesterday.

http://www.un.org/special-rep/ohrlls/Hongkong/News/14%20Nov-1.htm

thehighground

Seanies32 wrote: »

If its cheaper yes! With a world food shortage, price will be king, unless we heavily subsidise our own food!

Sorry, not on the same planet with you on your thinking here.

Thing is you want Ireland to have a premium product.

Ireland has a premium produce - there is no 'want' involved.

What has the famine got to do with it?

Just about how history will generally repeat itself. Westminister (England) made sure the industrialised cities of England got fed (they were after all making money for the English upper classes) to the detriment of Irish people - despite there being plenty of food in Ireland, millions died or had to emigrate. In short, those closest (in distance) to the seat of power will always get preferential treatment. One of the main reasons why Irish people guard their independence.

thehighground

JupiterKid wrote: »

To hear some of the extreme Euroscepticism and views that Ireland should pull out of the EU is very sad. There is obviously a generation of people in this country who have been pampered, spoilt and cosseted and don't remember the times of real hardship back in the 1980s. Ireland has benefited enormously from being part of the EU - this country must come across to our EU neighbours as smug, selfish and spoilt.

Ireland's future outside of the EU would be truly bleak and for all the "neutrality" die hards...we would actually be under even more influence by the USA and its military machine. If Ireland exited the EU, you can wave goodbye to our services sector and high tech manufacturing and hello to the dark 1950s again.

Is that what people like those in Coir want? It's when I see threads like these that I wonder if voting no to Lisbon was such a good idea after all.:(

So, do you have first hand experience of pre-Celtic Tiger?

Scofflaw

thehighground wrote: »

So, do you have first hand experience of pre-Celtic Tiger?

He/she may or may not, but I certainly do, and I would agree whole-heartedly. 'National self-sufficiency' is an unbelievably stupid credo - the only other people I know of who adopted it as we did (and at about the same time) was Turkey, and they're still paying the price.

cordially,
Scofflaw

The Corinthian

thehighground wrote: »

So, do you have first hand experience of pre-Celtic Tiger?

Quite a few of us do, including myself.

We were a basket case economy largely because our economic policy was founded on the very same insular nationalist doctrine that you and other of your views are suggesting will magically work this time round.

thehighground

kevteljeur wrote: »

With all due respect, thehighground, not everyone does; it comes as a shock to most people that manufacturing can relocate so quickly. I believe that Intel can resume manufacturing 18 months after powering down, in a new location. I may stand to be corrected on that one but you certainly won't hear too much about that from the IDA.

To be honest, I thought they would do it in less than 3 months.

That may be so, and China has managed to push up dairy prices massively through some widely misunderstood remarks from their premier; however, the issue here is the price at which those products can be sold, and if a country can supply that demand at a given price, this forces down the price from a country such as Ireland, where farmers aren't accustomed to operating with the same sort of costs as in the Southern hemisphere. Let's face it, our farms are small, and not economically viable in a global context. It's not even debatable.

However, the usable land is still vast, and the water shortages while acute are something that affects the population there directly, since they (mis)use far more water than farming. Australia exports it's own produce, and imports produce from elsewhere. It makes more economic sense for them.

Our farms are very efficient and very productive - Temporate climate, (you need rainfall), very, very good soil. Grass (cheapest food) grows for about 9 months of the year in Ireland. New Zealand would also be very like Ireland - similar climate. You seem also to forget, that Ireland has a very low population density! At the moment 90% of our beef is exported. I would say that it would be similar for dairy produce - not to mention Kerry Foods being a global food company with a couple of plants already in China.

As regards Australia - their biggest markets are - Japan, China, UK & Singapore. By far their biggest export is 'Minerals & Foods'. Food hardly registers - wool is nearly as much - don't confuse rearing sheep for food and rearing them for their wool.

http://www.dfat.gov.au/aib/trade_investment.html

In reference to your remark about South American beef, thehighground, the odds are that you are eating more of it than you may realise. Since it is cheap and plentiful, it is used in many processed meat products, and even in products that claim to be produced within the EU (they don't need to state the source of the raw materials, unfortunately). We should check before making claims about the quality of that meat, however, since minimum standards are applied to suppliers outside the EU.

Well, being familar with the problem, I always check (origin of product has to be given and mostly avoid processed foods anyway).

thehighground

irish_bob wrote: »

someone accused THE HIGH GROUND of being a troll , i dont think he is , i think hes just the quientesential little irelander

From your posting history I note you have a huge amount of respect for Maggie Thatcher & Kevin Myers.

Paddy O'Keefe from the Farmers' Journal seems to have really annoyed you though.

No wonder I'm a 'little irelander' in your eyes.

thehighground

VoidStarNull wrote: »

Didn't traceability have something to do with mad cow disease... i.e. consumers worried about farmers turning their cattle into cannibals... refusing to buy beef... governments stepping in to try to save the industry...

Speaking as a consumer, that's how I remember it.

Indeed you are right - well illustrated by how Foot & Mouth came into Britain - slops* from a plane that came in from SA (Argentina) being fed to pigs!

thehighground

badlyparkedmerc wrote: »

Ok so you clearly just looked at the pictures.. maybe that's the problem with the treaty no pictures in it.

The article was written on Feb 22, 2008 which states clearly

Something wrong with your link.
I remember reading that we would become a net contributor to the EU a few months back. I didn't take too much notice at the time. Here is a reference that mentions that we were meant to become net contributors in 2007.

Ireland is expected to become a net contributor to the EU budget in 2007, the year targeted for Ireland's contribution to aid for developing countries, to reach 0.7% of Gross National Product. The European Commission is proposing to generalise the principle of correcting any Member State’s excessive net budgetary burden- a principle that was acknowledged in 1984, when the UK rebate was introduced. A Generalized Correction Mechanism (GCM) has been proposed, the main characteristics of which are: triggering if net contributions exceed 0.35% of a Member State’s Gross National Income (GNI); contributions above this refunded at a rate of 66%; total refund volume limited to a maximum of € 7.5 billion a year, financed by all Member States based on their relative share of GNI.

http://www.finfacts.ie/comment/irelandeunetreceiptsbenefits.htm

marco_polo

thehighground wrote: »

Something wrong with your link.
I remember reading that we would become a net contributor to the EU a few months back. I didn't take too much notice at the time. Here is a reference that mentions that we were meant to become net contributors in 2007.



http://www.finfacts.ie/comment/irelandeunetreceiptsbenefits.htm

Or could it be that his link written in 2008 is more accurate about your link that was written in 2004 and speculating about 2007?

thehighground wrote: »

As regards Australia - their biggest markets are - Japan, China, UK & Singapore. By far their biggest export is 'Minerals & Foods'. Food hardly registers - wool is nearly as much - don't confuse rearing sheep for food and rearing them for their wool.

So it is quite like Irelands economy then in that respect or have you forgotten the Irish Export statistics that VoidStarNull posted a few pages back already?

irish_bob

thehighground wrote: »

From your posting history I note you have a huge amount of respect for Maggie Thatcher & Kevin Myers.

Paddy O'Keefe from the Farmers' Journal seems to have really annoyed you though.

No wonder I'm a 'little irelander' in your eyes.

not really relevant but since you brought it up , margeret thatcher i believe was a fantastic leader apart from her completly wrongheaded views on northern ireland , kevin myers is a breath of fresh air in todays world of pc fanaticism
as for the less well known paddy o keefe

paddy o keefe is up there with fox news , hes so right wing , he flat out refuses to believe in global warming without providing any proof other than the lame ( plenty of scientists dont believe in it )
paddy o keefe doesnt care how many people you murdered as long as your not left wing , he told bald faced lies in the ifj about a year ago when he wrote a piece on how he had been on a trip to CHILE
he went on to write how chile was the star performer of south america and how this was mostly down to augusto pinochet , he continued on to say that pinochet had to pick up the pieces after the communist allande who murdered thousands
anyone with an ounce of history knows that it was pinochet who commited genocide in chile
had this artilce been wrote in any other paper , o keefe would have been fired
there is right wing and there is paddy o keefe

cabinteelytom

One needs to consider the full universe of choices available to Ireland- do not accept than the only choices are 'stay in the EU under the Lisbon treaty' or 'go back to the hungry 50's.' WE cannot afford blinkered thinking.
We should have more imagination than that; and we must have wily negotiators (well at least the best paid in the EU).
The EU has been good for Ireland. Let's be clear why.

Major reasons were:
A level playing field for international trade with stable rules, which were not immediately changed to our disadvantage, the momment we turned a penny.
Very significant infrastructure investments (bringing the country up to European standards) which just could not be undertaken by an undercapitalised country electorally obliged to subsidise it's unemployed maximally when every election was a buy-your-way-into-office exercise.
Minor reasons were:
The much-overrated direct subsidy to agriculture (which is such a pre-occupation of UK commentators). I contend this was came at a price and had many downsides; encouraging a focus on out-moded agriculture and products instead of new technologies, fostering dependency of a very affluent sector of society on EU policy, and it's distorting effects on value of assetts and the direction of capital investment. (We should instead be concerned at the low rate of indigenous 'knowledege economy' business start-ups in Ireland, when we are now at our economic peak.) I suspect that after the first ten, certainly 20 , years of pump-priming (just getting some trickle down money into the economy) the CAP has worked against our general economic interests.

thehighground

djpbarry wrote: »

US yes. China and Japan not so much. Ireland's top five export partners in 2005 were the US, the UK, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Do you think all trade will just stop if Ireland is kicked out of the EU? Out of interest would Bono move his business back as we probably need the few bob now?

Compared to what? (food production)

Compared to anyone in the world. We're up there with the best.

I wouldn't be relying on the horses to pull us out of a recession (no pun intended).

I would not dismiss the horsebreeding industry in Ireland. It provides thousands of jobs in rural Ireland. Ever hear of Coolmore Stud - well you can get a mare covered down there by Danehill Dancer for €115,000. They have about 30 other stallions in down there and also studs all over the world. Danehill would do two covers a day all year round (moved to SH for their season).

China's running out of land? Really?

Yes, they have had some very draconian laws about trying to reduce the population - one child per family - ever heard of that? Ever wonder why they are bothered with Tibet (don't think there is any oil there) - they've got a great big railway going there now and at least half of Tibet's population are now ethnic Chinese (mostly Han). You probably also know that there have both dessertification & flooding problems as well!

thehighground

djpbarry wrote: »

Why?
What makes you think that the Irish population would be happy to eat exclusively Irish-produced food? What about foods that cannot be produced here (fruit in particular)? Do you think the Irish population will be happy to do without (or pay substantially more)?

So you think that countries like South Africa, Australia, US (Florida for fruit) would sell to us? In fact, do you think Cyprus are going to stop selling us potatoes?

And, eh why substantially more (cost)? Because we are not a member of the EU?

thehighground

marco_polo wrote: »

Or could it be that his link written in 2008 is more accurate about your link that was written in 2004 and speculating about 2007?

The link given on post 466 did not work when I checked. I then did a search and that is what I came up with, and as I said it was something that I had heard that we would be contributors as of 2007 and hadn't taken too much notice at the time because I personally don't have a problem with Ireland paying its way. This is the link from post 466.

http://www.finfacts.ie/missing.html

So it is quite like Irelands economy then in that respect or have you forgotten the Irish Export statistics that VoidStarNull posted a few pages back already?

I've forgotten the point of the post at this stage - if its to confirm that we are not yet net contributors to the EU - I will confirm as far as I know we are not net contributors to the EU. Happy now?

IRLConor

thehighground wrote: »

And, eh why substantially more (cost)? Because we are not a member of the EU?

Substantially more cost because presumably we'd have big fat tariffs on foreign food.

thehighground

Scofflaw wrote: »

He/she may or may not, but I certainly do, and I would agree whole-heartedly. 'National self-sufficiency' is an unbelievably stupid credo - the only other people I know of who adopted it as we did (and at about the same time) was Turkey, and they're still paying the price.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Well, I wonder if we are that much better off now than we are in the '00s than we were in the '80s/'90s from my experience.

I worked for a British owned company in the late '80s/early '90s. It went bust because of the Gulf War. Their was a management buyout, which lead to hard times for a couple of years including about 20 people being made redundant. Interesting thing is that in the mid '90s every one of those 20 people set up their own companies and now those 20 people probably employ about 200+ people. All are very successful.

Secondly, I don't know how anyone can afford a mortgage nowaways and childcare? I'm very glad I got mine when I did in the '80s.

One thing which I would never like to see again is the emigration - a lot of my friends emigrated (mainly to Canada & Australia) back then.

Anyone who worked in the '80s/'90s have any thoughts on this?

Scofflaw, I think you are trying to scaremonger about what being outside the EU means - giving the impression that we are going to revert back to an isolationist Bhutan overnight - 'National self-sufficiency' does not mean that and you know that.

Mise le meas
thehighground

thehighground

IRLConor wrote: »

Substantially more cost because presumably we'd have big fat tariffs on foreign food.

Negotiation IRLConor, negotiation! Irish people have a reputation for being rather good at it. (the EU thinks we bled them dry for goodness sake!)

marco_polo

thehighground wrote: »

The link given on post 466 did not work when I checked. I then did a search and that is what I came up with, and as I said it was something that I had heard that we would be contributors as of 2007 and hadn't taken too much notice at the time because I personally don't have a problem with Ireland paying its way. This is the link from post 466.

http://www.finfacts.ie/missing.html

Fair enough.

I've forgotten the point of the post at this stage - if its to confirm that we are not yet net contributors to the EU - I will confirm as far as I know we are not net contributors to the EU. Happy now?

Sorry should have been clearer, the post refered to showed that Food exports make up a tiny percent of our total exports are well. A similar point to one you made about Australia a few posts ago.

thehighground

sink wrote: »

Please read this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade#Economics_of_free_trade

Sink, you do realise that article has a"

"The neutrality of this article is disputed."

K-9

thehighground wrote: »

Vary but average at about 10%. Some items like coffee & tea have very low tariffs - about 3%. Fish that is in short supply doesn't attract any tariffs.

Eh, we don't have much tea & coffee.

How much are the tariffs for Swiss and Norwegian Agricultural products?

What subsidies do Switzerland and Norway pay their farmers?

thehighground

marco_polo wrote: »

Source?

My investigations indicated that the average agricultural tarrif is currently about 23%.

Even higher for sensitive products such as dairy. I though we went through all this yesterday.

http://www.un.org/special-rep/ohrlls/Hongkong/News/14%20Nov-1.htm

My source was from Trinity:

If account is taken of the preferential tariffs imposed on exports of developing countries, and the lower tariffs negotiated under regional or bilateral trade agreements, the estimated EU average applied tariff is around 10% in agriculture. However, tariffs for some commodities remain very high, especially for those countries that are not eligible for preferences.

http://www.tcd.ie/iiis/policycoherence/index.php/iiis/eu_agricultural_trade_policy/agricultural_protection_measures

K-9

thehighground wrote: »

No - other than that he comes from an industrialised country that needs cheap food he (Mandelson*) is likely to empathise with the 'get rid of tarif' side (and help help Labour back home from more attack from the Eurosceptics).

(context - *Mandelson is negotiating at WTO on behalf of the EU.)

And again, what does it matter?

Go on, tell us again as you said before about what the French think of him!

How do you think Mandelson will get his plans through?

K-9

thehighground wrote: »

Yes, I don't no what the problem is about foot & mouth disease - it won't kill you. But BSE (mad cow disease) does not to mention them being stuffed with Angel dust etc.

You know that, I know that.

But it's cheap. Where will the cheap beef come from for Ireland as our own beef will be a premium product?

marco_polo

thehighground wrote: »

My source was from Trinity:



http://www.tcd.ie/iiis/policycoherence/index.php/iiis/eu_agricultural_trade_policy/agricultural_protection_measures

Estimates of the EU average bound MFN tariff on agricultural imports range between 18% and 28%. This is much higher than the EU's protection of manufactured goods, which averages around 3%. It is also higher than the protection to agriculture in the United States or Canada, albeit lower than in Japan.

Some commodities grown, such as cocoa, coffee, and oilseeds, face very low tariffs. Others, such as sugar, dairy products or beef, face a very high level of protection. Developing countries will seldom be able to export these products to the EU unless they have preferential tariff concessions under a particular regime.

If account is taken of the preferential tariffs imposed on exports of developing countries, and the lower tariffs negotiated under regional or bilateral trade agreements, the estimated EU average applied tariff is around 10% in agriculture.

I don't think we will apply as a developing country. Nice twisting of the figures though you almost had me going for a minute.

K-9

thehighground wrote: »

He has never looked out for Ireland (and I don't particularly want him too,either). But he is a bit mad!

So why the worry about Mandelson?

thehighground wrote:

EDIT: he actually did a great job as Min. for Finanace fighting the EU off about corporate tax rate. Not sure our new Finance Minister would remain as steadfast as Charlie.

Debatable, in many parts yes, in others no. Slightly too Thatcherite for me, which was addressed by budgets after he was gone.

People weren't sure about McCreevy and tax either. Same story here!

thehighground

Seanies32 wrote: »

You know that, I know that.

But it's cheap. Where will the cheap beef come from for Ireland as our own beef will be a premium product?

We can buy it in especially from Brazil for you.

marco_polo wrote: »

I don't think we will apply as a developing country. Nice twisting of the figures though you almost had me going for a minute.

Sorry if for getting you excited there ... note the bolded part ... think we might fit in there!

If account is taken of the preferential tariffs imposed on exports of developing countries, and the lower tariffs negotiated under regional or bilateral trade agreements, the estimated EU average applied tariff is around 10% in agriculture.

By the way, you seem to think it would be a very difficult and antagonistic 'divorce' if Ireland left the EU (we won't be thrown out, because if they did, it would undermine the whole point of the EU in the first place).

So, do you not think the EU would try and be neighbourly, or are you all really scared of the EU?

K-9

thehighground wrote: »

A few demands for him to resign last week because he obviously doesn't think too much of the Lisbon Treaty. Quick reference here.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/breaking-news/ireland/politics/article3811358.ece



The 500m people of the EU.

Agree with his earlier comments. Why would the majority of people spend hours and hours reading the Treaty? It's grand for people who have an interest in politics and the EU!

Btw, like Cowen, he has highly paid and specialised advisers to read the Treaty for him.


WE, 500 MILLION PEOPLE.

You want 500 million people to be able to elect and sack a Commissioner?

The whole point is they are independent of individual countries. They have to be free of political concerns.

You do realise Lisbon made them more accountable and open?

K-9

thehighground wrote: »

We can buy it in especially from Brazil for you.

But you said they have BSE and angeldust. That's why you don't buy it!

What logic is that?