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Ford Mondeo

Listed below are comments made by Ford Mondeo between Monday, 12th October 2009 and Wednesday, 18th November 2009.

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EU jobs race could be marathon 12:33pm on 18 Nov 2009 ChrisArta!

Really you ought to be smarter than this! If a dog barks at you, do you bark back at it? If MAII still peddles that tired old tabloid nonsense about the bananas upon which his EUSSR fables are founded on, why do you bother replying back to him? Like a barking dog the best thing you can do is ignore it and take on the more sensible eurosceptics, many of them who have valid arguments to counter.
EU jobs race could be marathon 2:27pm on 17 Nov 2009 Is someone still reading what MAII writes?

Better still does anyone know if he is as I am beggining to suspect a US teenager?

Is he infact American...I mean he seems to be bluffing real hard these days.
Which names in the EU hat? 7:13pm on 13 Nov 2009 so in cool brushes opinion it is entirely acceptable for british society and institutions to casually refer to germans and italians as krauts and eyeties and futhermore it is in his/her opinion that the british public can deliver a balanced opinion on the advantagesand disadvantages of european intergration with these social attitude prevalent in public discourse? Yes?
Which names in the EU hat? 5:50pm on 13 Nov 2009 @116

Cool Brush Work

"MILD epithet 'kraut' or 'eyetie'"

QED. Says it all really.
Which names in the EU hat? 3:45pm on 13 Nov 2009 Cool Brush

I think you are missing the Point. The British public most definitely have a problem with the European continent and therefore by extension the European Union and the European project due to an erroneous perception that his coloured partly by the British media but also by historical narrative. This manifests itself as fixation that the European Union is some sort of conspiracy by continental powers to somehow "invade Britain" which is at least tiresome and at most deeply offensive to continental Europeans because it implies a kind of innate moral superiority in the British people which no one in Europe really believes in. This perception is partly due to Britain as a Island entity as somewhat detached from the continent and so it’s not that surprising. Another is Britain role in the Second World War, in that it saw itself as a victor. Other nations in Europe had to on the other hand QUESTION deeply the role of the nation-state, as the main political fulcrum in inter-European affairs, in most of their political class came to the conclusion that nation states constantly selfishly pursuing their own national interest at the expense of others on the continent was THE constant problem in European history and that complete sovereignty could not rest with the nation state because the nation state was MORALLY DISCREDITED. Hence the only way forward was to pool national sovereignty into a institution that would reflect emergent European values of solidarity. The Economic stick and carrot of the ECC was the start, as trade and economics affect people indirectly. Wounds after the WWII were still two raw between peoples to persuade them a total pooling of political sovereignty. So it was to be done gradually. But it always had a political component. It was there at the start. Always has. The European project was always a political one as well as a economic one. Something that was never fully explained to the British people by its own politicians and then glossed over during the referendum.

Why?

The simple reason is that British people still have a attitude that stinks when it come to do with anybody on the continent. Now this isn’t a slandering of entire people. Britain has many laudable points. For example Italy’s track record on immigrants and political and public probity not just as a government but as a society is shameful. But slowly but surely its getting better (though not as fast as some would like), but it's a societal problem which everyone knows about including the Italians. The British are wonderfully ( perhaps too much..) tolerant of foreigners and their politicians are but naughty children to the thieving monsters they have on the Bel Paese. Likewise Britain has a proble. And one which many British are unwilling to come to terms with,

Britain problem is with continental Europeans, in a way which is quite at odds with their multiculturalism internally.

It is... and this is no joke… quite culturally acceptable to call a German a 'Kraut. Fact. The Advertising standards agency turned down a complaint about 10 years ago on a advertisement using the word because it termed it a "light heated reference", despite the German embassy stating that it was 'offensive term' to many Germans. I cannot really foresee a sports advertisement that can be entitled "the pakis are coming" in this country any time soon, but insulting Germans is quite acceptable. This permeates all the way through society and informs much of the discourse with anything to do with Europe. On day time TV at the height of the row over Portuguese and Italian workers taking British jobs, a British worker on TV without a hint of irony or even self awareness referred to the Italian workers as 'eyeties'. Now nationalism and stereotypes abound all over the continent, especially in the more sordid nationalistic rags, but, I think you will be hard pressed to find a German newspaper with an advertisement referring to the British as "Insleassen" (Island Monkeys), or even for a German institution to CONDONE it.

I think this is what Jorge was (albeit a bit clumsily) was trying to imply with his drawing parallels with the McPherason report. The British people on the have a TENDANCY …after all it would be unfair to all of them with the same brush, to view continental Europeans in negative stereotypical terms, and that this is reflected in its society and institutions, for example headlines such as "achtung Fritz for you the war is over" on a daily tabloid, or to mocking Europeans in a way though wouldn't be able to mock say a person of Pakistani or Caribbean origin. In of itself this is not a problem, as Germans Italians French etc being former colonial powers cannot really portray themselves as victims, and have thicker skins in any case. The Problem lies in that most of the British public seem to be unaware that this is unacceptable.

When even the Guardian today had Simon Jenkins refer to the European project as, in terms such as 'Napoleonic', also used by the eurosceptic MEP Daniel Hannan, after the boiling rage subsides, I just feel sad, that we cant move beyond the Hitler/waterloo/ Agincourt/kraut/frog of Britain and its redcoats standing up to the dastardly foreigner , and this imagery is constantly used when it comes discussing the European project or the EU, just in the same way as its acceptable to refer to the germans in society as krauts. And that's why Jorge flies off the handle when he hears discourse like that and the name calling begins, because even Britain Institutions still allow the discourse to be couched by Eurosceptics in terms such as Napoleonic or Kraut, something which in mainstream political discourse on the continent is thoroughly unacceptable.
The world remembers the fall of the wall 11:33pm on 09 Nov 2009 SuffolkBoy 2:

"I don't want criminals coming into the UK"

You mean FOREIGN criminals. Good old fashioned British criminals after all are plentiful and of a better stock than those nasty foreigners yes?
President of precisely what? 11:27pm on 19 Oct 2009 ikamaskeip

" Incidentally, Ford Mondeo and your #41.

Still awaiting the relevant example of a UK Advertisement from this decade using the word 'kraut' - - I will make it easier for you - - I will accept an advert as far back as say Maastricht in 1992!?"

No need to go that far...Sorry Ive been out for hours after work coaching some children who have come very close to trying my patience.

Anyway my example comes from 2001

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1617445.stm

Its even more astonishing that it still has not been repealed.
President of precisely what? 5:58pm on 19 Oct 2009 "This EU will end in tears because it is just the most recent version of Augustus Caesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon, Stalin etc. "

those nasty continental europeans again..will they ever learn...perhaps they can set aside their selfish national impulseses to try and dominate each other so that no one nation rules another and realise they share have to sovreignty and power that their lots is a common destiny...

Oh no hang on. Six of them initially figured that out in 1957. England on the other hand is still trying to figure it out. Fed on a diet of Zulu and battle of Britain they still have their backs against the wall a full years after the rest of them ended that nonsense.
President of precisely what? 3:39pm on 19 Oct 2009 Cue more hand wringing about loss of the special relationship with the US and even more tabloid nonsense about hoe the nasty foreigner EU president selling Britain down the drain.

On no hang on the next one will pssibily be a Brit. You know... the spineless lapdog to the US lunacy in illegally invading Iraq, rather than ooo I dont know giving the smackdown on Saudi Arabia where the real fundamentalist nutters came from.

European President? Pah! The man was too cowed to take on Murdoch and his europhobic tabloid attack drones and now, his former party are reaping the fruits of that supine faustian pact that has kept the British public hoodwinked with outright lies and disgusting xenophobia based on events that happened over 50 years ago.

In British advertising its is still ACCEPTABLE to refer to a german as a KRAUT. Thats the measure of the nation's psche when it comes to conntinental europeans.

They cant let this charlatan get the job. The president must be made to disavow their nationality and swear that he will act in EUROPEAN intrests only.

I can only imagine who intrest Blair acts. I cant imagine it was ever Britain's or Europe.
Europe and the UK election 11:44am on 12 Oct 2009 "For if being European means anything at all, it means being capable of, and enamored with, deep reflection, probing thought, soul-searching"

I agree, but it also means not chewing over old history and let by-gones be by-gones.

The EU would never work if people kept bringing up history and never burying the hatchet. The emotional hurt from the second world war was still raw in the 1950's and yet six countrys had the courage to let it all go and forge a common path and destiny toghether, to put aside emotional differences. Its at the heart I think of what one should accept when entering the Union. The problem over turkish membership has to do with this essentially. Each time a decision goes against them they cry out in the defence of 'national honour'. Those days are over.
Each time the British europhobic press has a go at the continentals, there are non too subtle comparisons with WWII and those nasty germans and cowardly french. Those days are over. Now Klaus wants a footnote to the Treaty. What really sticks in the throat is not that he should ask for it in the name of his people-he has a right to, but are that he makes appeals to old grieviences that should have by now been set aside. THOSE DAYS ARE OVER.

Europe has a long and varied history, but too much of it is littered with blood and catastrophe bourne out of our political differences. In order to leave them behind we should gaze to the future horizon togherther and learn from mistakes which were rooted in our past political/national divisions. Mere free trade will not do. Neither will bringing up past hurts.

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