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June 26, 2005
Europe: modernize or die
Britain will gain the presidency of the EU in the near future. Tony Blair is using this platform to demand that the European Union. The time has come for fundamental change.
Modernise or die is the message from New Labour to Europe: the European Social Model has failed with 20 million unemployed; policies that maintain old jobs and do not create new ones; large subsidies (£3.5 billion) from the European Common Agricultural Policy doled out to agribusiness behind the tariff walls of Europe.
Tony Blair is the new strongman of Europe:
Will Tony Blair, as the new strong man, confront George Bush at next month's G8 Summit in Gleneagles over global warming? The US Administration continues to undermine the science of climate change; its opposition to stabilising greenhouse gas emissions has hardened; and it has little commitment to limit the pumping out of fossil fuel emissions. The Bush administration still refuses to admit, in public, that global warming is caused by human activity.
Australia has no national emission cutback plan and it is doing very little to examine alternative energy sources and ways to improve energy efficiency. What is increasingly being presented by the nuclear power advocates is the "killer argument" that there is no alternative to nuclear power as a sustainable response to the looming scarcities of oil.
Interestingly, the Liberal Party is slowly becoming the party of nuclear power and the uranium industry.
What is ignored by the "killer" argument is that nuclear power is expensive; that without a hefty government subsidy it offers little potenttial for profit; that it leaks low-level carcinogenic waste into the air and water; and that it seldom meets the high-level of treatment and storage for the high-level radioactive waste it produces. Few of the advocates of the "killer" argument talk about this.
The Liberal party is going to lumbered with an dead weight.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at June 26, 2005 01:29 PM
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Comments
I have only one question: are the people of the EU happy though, forget unemployment, do they have the necessary services and infrastructure to keep them happy?
Posted by: Vee at June 26, 2005 05:50 PM
Vee,
From what I can make out Blair is calling for changes that would foster growth and create jobs in the countries where unemployment is high in the context of the global economy.
His argument is that Europe cannot afford to stagnate; it cannot afford to neglect science and technology, research and development; it must change in response to changes in the wider world. It must modernise ...a bit like Australia really.
On the other hand, Blair has not shown a significant engagement with Europe. Britain is, in effect, outside the euro, Tony Blair renounced the referendum that would have offered it to the British, and he renounced the referendum on the constitution. So Britain is anything but engaged on these two matters.
Britain keeps its distance from Europe when it suits them and only it gets involved when it is in their interest to do so.
Posted by: Gary Sauer-Thompson at June 27, 2005 08:31 AM