Dude... you have never seen snow in your life huh?
I used to live in a place where snow is likely during the winter, and where you must know the freezing point of water in order to drive safely. If the temperature is around 0, then you take it easy when driving as it might get extra slippery from ice and you know that snow is expected.
Also, meteorologists (in Scandinavia at least) tend to label seasons based on the average temperature (including night time) as:
10 C: Summer
Very inconvenient, right?
C is more convenient when talking about weather, whether it is more convenient indoors is another matter, and far less relevant for society than to know when you need to change to winter tires on your car or to plant your crops et.c.
But then again, I am European and have no clue for how the US system works... is it ok if a jury rules on morality and other unrelated issues to the case being handled? That seem somewhat scary to me.
Well firstly, the ITER reactor will be cheaper than ISS. So it is not really that expensive. Secondly, it is 50 years in the future because the lack of public support. The only country that really supports it is the EU and to some extent Japan. The rest of the world is horribly backwards when it comes to fusion research.
Thirdly, many things have not been economically viable for the generation that developed it. Many mathematicians have been funded by the public, only to see the real use of their work some 100 years later.
I would understand you if the reactor was payed by a company, but the governments have a duty to ensure the longterm survivability and progress of humankind. Around 1915 the first ideas of nuclear fission was discovered through public grants, it took until 1951 to develop this into commercial power. Do you think that was a waste of money?
Around 1750, ideas on electricity existed, but it would take until 1880 until real power plants where constructed. Obviously, all that research that was funded by public grants was a complete waste of money and time. I mean, who in 1750 was alive to see the fruits of their investments in 1880. Do you think this was a waste of money?
Nothing of this was economically viable in the short term, but that is where the public comes in. In order to build civilizations, one need a grander picture than short term profits and gains.
The world has been working like this since the invention of the scientific method:
1. Scientists think, and prove things, payed by the public (or in rare cases by some altruistic rich guy), they develop ideas that grow into ideas for applications. 2. Engineers take the science and build real working things (first prototypes, then a demo version and then a real thing) 3. People reap the new possibilities
The fusion research programme is currently in early stage 2. That is, it is no longer about only science, it is about engineering issues (not that there is no longer any science in it, in this case there are some material science issues that need to be solved).
You may think that if you cannot solve a problem or see any use for a technology within your lifetime or that it is useless if any profits are 30 years in the future, that the projects and explorations of those questions should be stopped.
For me, I am glad that our predecessors did not think like this, since we got into the current technological state of our civilization thanks to those people who did not bother whether there would be any economical viability in their research and engineering experiments within their lifetime.
If I ask people in my circles I would argue that 90% feels European first.
Your 0.01 % does not agree with the statistics (and I wonder in what hole you have been hiding for that number).
I have seen statistical data, and the percentage of people who felt only European was around 10% IIRC, then there was a large group who felt both European and $nationality, and a group who only felt $nationality and another who didn't really feel anything.
The Union is not force fed. It has been moving in precisely the direction that was pointed out when the Union was founded.
From the Schuman declaration on the foundation of the Union:
The pooling of coal and steel production should immediately provide for the setting up of common foundations for economic development as a first step in the federation of Europe, and will change the destinies of those regions which have long been devoted to the manufacture of munitions of war, of which they have been the most constant victims.
This was what the Union was founded for, and the states that have joined the Union have had referendas about whether or not to join the organisation whose clear purpose since its foundation was to build a federal Europe.
Now, let us look at some interesting facts:
US: 300 million people China: 1 billion people India: 1 billion people
Fast forward 50 years and see both India and China as modern nations.
Now, do you think that any single European state would have any whatsoever competitive edge over any of those three blocks. Without the Union, the citizens that could would move over to the other places because they could make a better living there (just because the shear size of those economies). We would see brain drain on massive scale in Europe.
So, without doubt, the EU is necessary for the future of the European citizens. Now, we can argue about whether it would be enough with a trade block, but with any such organisation where you have detailed rules comes the issue of accountability of its actions. An organisation of that size needs clear rules, and a way to control it, a way to complain to it, a way to complain when the common rules are not followed et.c. For democratic legitimacy, you also need to have the rule making process be governed by directly elected representatives (now the Council have more power than the EP, and that is a bit scary in my book).
No state or large organisation has ever been founded without a purpose. The US was founded for a reason, the EU was founded in order to guarantee peace on a continent which has been fighting in bloody civil wars for over a thousand years.
The Union is a country in making whether you like it or not, and to be frank, that has never been a secret and the citizens of Europe have voted in referendas about joining this process.
I do not mind. I live in the Netherlands, have been living in the UK and is original from Stockholm and have a Belgian girlfriend.
I call my self European, I am pretty annoyed when people call me Swedish when this is clearly not how I feel. There is nothing more annoying than people calling Europeans by their statehood.
Europe is almost a country (it even has its own entry in the CIA world fact book because it has so many state like properties), and for any person who is not living here the EU is probably indistinguishable from a country, get used to it, this is the state of things right now.
By the way, many people see Europe as a country to some extent. This includes not only a lot of Europeans, it also include a lot of people outside of Europe.
Besides, Frank de Bruin is working for the EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY, not the Belgian space agency, so just what was wrong with saying he is from Europe when he is sent up for European taxpayers money?
"As a software development company, SAP has no other choice than to hold on to their patent portfolio, even if for defense reasons."
Is that why SAP was one of the largest actors in pro software patents campaign in Europe? I'd respect an opinion like the one from Oracle where they stated that they don't like patents, but since they exist they must use them for defensive reasons. SAP on the other hand put huge sums of money into actually trying to legalise software patents in the EU where they are not legal at all.
Don't worry about the neutrinos, I have foreseen this and will start selling a cream that you can smear on your skin. This cream will cancel all the negative effects that you will suffer from the huge amounts of neutrino radiation that will embed the Earth when the star goes supernova.
I happy that it will be sold at only $500 per jar, I would say a cheap price compared to the alternative of being exposed to huge amounts of neutrino radiation. Buy now, while the supplies last, better safe than sorry.
And several of the girls admitted that they had sex with him voluntarily and that they had been pressured by the newspaper (Aftonbladet or Expressen, can't remember which one) to file charges.
The guy has tried to appeal the sentence (he is already out of prison, but he want his name cleared). He basically said that (from my memory): "I know I pressured the girls by false promises and so, and I was a real bastard and an awful person, but I did not commit rape."
The guy was owning a record company, and it was very naive by the court to say what they did, some girls (and guys) would be happy to sleep with someone like that if it can fast forward their career. It is certainly not "PC" to say so, but it is still the fact of things.
1. Bitlayout of records (with a very verbose syntax) 2. Strict types (i.e. integers with ranges) 3. Enumerated types 4. Tasks 5. Bounded arrays 6. Generic programming 7. Modular programming
Point 2 and 5 are solvable by asserts and by using contracts in your code (seriously, the eiffel way of programming with contracts just feels so much more sane in my eyes than the strict types, especially in a systems programming language).
4 is really missing in C as I said. 1 and 3 exists in C. Regarding 6, yes that is a bit of a problem with C, but on the other hand in the projects I was involved, generic functions where banned by higher powers. 7 is also possible in C by adhering to discipline. And in most Ada projects, the government (who usually are the contracting authority) mandates discipline.
Demand change then, but leaving a successful organisation that is the only hope for the future of Europe is hardly productive.
Would you want your municipality to leave the UK because the British parliament have been proven to be corrupted over their ears?
I think that you would demand change and more transparency. The same should logically hold to the EU instead.
I do not like the current management of the Union, but this is no reason to leave. What I demand is more transparency and accountability, more democracy. The Lisbon treaty is a good step since it moves power from the Council to the Parliament, but it is far from perfect, but guess what... neither is the UK or Sweden or [insert member state here].
Progress can only be made by change and evolution of society, not by going back to the dark ages where European brothers and sisters had to go out in battle against each other.
The Union is the most important reason that we have now had peace on the continent for 60 years. That little fact does not have a price-tag, it is invaluable.
The formation of the African Union, Asean and Meroscur only cements the need for Europe to stand together.
Do you really think that the European states could stand by themselves? The EU in total pools together 500 million citizens, giving Europe a competitive edge that allow us to survive as independent people.
Thus, the Union is as necessary as water itself for the future of Europe.
Now, you may argue that a trade block is enough, but that brings in all the issues that the EU is trying to solve, if trade is regulated by the Union, then you must also have some people that are responsible to the citizens of Europe. Otherwise you will have a number of non-elected ministers deciding about everything, this is called confederalism and cannot be seen as being in the interests of the people, as by definitions, a confederal union only cares about the states.
I know a lot of British are complaining that they only joined the EU (or EC/ECSC/whatever it was called then) for the free market. This is complete bullshit, the EU has always been about building a common future for the citizens of Europe and a sort of United States of Europe, this was as clear as water in Schuman's founding speech of the Union. Saying anything else, just suggests ignorance of history. There is nothing in the EU that is close to Soviet Russia, where do you get that idea. You can for example form a party and stand for the EP without being thrown in a Siberian camp. You can also express your opinion and tell the Commission/Council/Parliament to go bugger themselves without fear of being dragged away to a mental institute or a camp in Siberia.
Also, I was never given the opportunity to vote for my municipality or province to leave my state, but I do not recent for that.
I worked with Ada for about two years. It is an awful language. Most of the issues that Ada solves are solvable in C by using assert.
The main problem with the language is that it is to complex and big, this means that it is impossible to keep the language in your head, you have to look-up syntax rules while you are coding, and this even when you have been writing it for several years.
The only nice thing in the language is the concurrency model which actually simplifies the usage of tasks.
That depends, a MEP can have a lot of influence in the questions they are involved in. But, in general they need to belong to a party group for this.
PP has stated that they intend to join either ALDE (the (classic) liberals) or the greens, depending on where they get most in return from.
ALDE is far larger and that group would be a far better target.
In any case, BNP is in general seen as neo-nazis by most people, so they cannot really expect to be accepted in any group, not even the most EU-critical groups would want to be associated with them, so they will remain group-less, which will basically severely limit their contribution and influence.
The BNP is not very likely (by their very nature) to seek to cooperate with other partys either which is PPs goal.
Politics is about making compromises and cooperating with eachothers, so the influence of PP will far outweigh the BNP.
No, the real power lies in the indirectly elected European Council.
The commission simply ensure that the agreed rules are implemented and followed. They in term are appointed and need support from both the Council and the Parliament.
I really dont understand what british people have against the Commission, the work sort of like a government (i.e. they are appointed but requires parliamentary approval).
Instead you should be thinking about the massive over power of the Council. The Council have right to make law, and they are not directly elected, from a democratic point of view this is a far greater problem.
Not that the idea of having an election of the Commission president is unappealing, but doing so disables fundamental parliamentary traditions since the Commission then is no longer responsible to the Parliament. Last EP-elections, the EP made it clear that they decided whether a Commission member was acceptable or not.
The very link you point out also clearly states that:
In addition to its role in approving a new Commission, the European Parliament has the power at any time to force the entire Commission to resign through a vote of no confidence. This requires a vote that makes up at least two-thirds of those voting and a majority of the total membership of the Parliament. While it has never used this power, it threatened to use it against the Commission headed by Jacques Santer in 1999 over allegations of corruption. In response, the Santer Commission resigned en masse of its own accord, the only time a Commission has done so.
It is confusing, since the PP got a virtual seat as well that will be realised when the Lisbon treaty is approved by the Irish.
In the meanwhile, the virtual MEP will have the right to go to the EP and act as an observer. In this case it means being there as a parliamentarian, but without voting rights.
Last time, no. The June-List (who got EP seats) was allowed in the debate on the TV in the EP elections, but in the last riksdag elections they where not (since they did not have seats in the riksdag).
The PP will be seen as established on European level, so the public service TV will allow them in the debate the next EP elections (in 5 years from now), but most likely not for the riksdag election next year.
May I counter: Who the heck cares what a person from [insert US state here (I think of Utah and Nebraska)] votes for? When was the last time you heard of [US-state]-anything? Never?
The point is, no, Sweden is not that well known, but certainly more known than its size suggest, but that I guess that most Americans think of Europe as a big blob (as do I and I am a European), and in this case it is actually correct to do so. The vote was for the European Parliament, not the Swedish riksdag. This means that the weight of it is about the same as if a PP member would be voted in to the US congress.
She is completely right. She cannot ignore the directive.
In the long run, I think that all of this is good, because, finally, people are starting to realise that the EP matters and that debate must be taken on European level.
The commissioners have no power to make decrees in any way (they can regulate certain areas of the internal market, but that is about it). They make sure that decisions taken by the European council and parliament are implemented and followed.
This is pretty much what your local government does. If a municipality refuses to uphold the law that the national parliament made, the governments task is to ensure that it is followed. Usually, they don't involve themselves directly but ask some other branch of the government to look in to the matter.
The Commission is hardly the problem, they are just ensuring that the member states live up to the obligations in the treaties. They do not pass law or directives.
The people behind the laws are the Council and the Parliament. What happened with this law is a bit interesting.
The previous Swedish minister of justice (BodstrÃm) wanted to ensure that this data was stored (he also wanted a number of other big-brotherish laws to be implemented). But, he realised that people use communications systems outside of Sweden, so he went to the Council to do this.
In principle, they masked this as an internal market thing that the Parliament would have a say about (it also contradicted previous internal market directives, so giving the EP the right to co-decide is only appropriate), but when it looked like the EP might say no to the law.
The Council said that if you don't approve this, we will treat it as a police and judicial cooperation issue, where the EP (before Lisbon is ratified anyway) does not have the right to co-decide. This ment that some of the MEPs swayed over to the yes-side and the law was passed, not because they liked the law, but because they would at least have the co-decision right and might sneak in some amendments making the law a bit more sane. MEP Alexander Alvaro was for example opposed to the directive, and even asked to have his name stricken from a EP report on the issue.
You might ask yourself whether these MEPs did the right thing to value co-decision rights over clean and untainted hands (Alvaro certainly did do the right thing in the report); there is an EP election in one week, so I sugest you make your voice heard.
Now, back in Sweden, the previous minister of justice lost his job in the previous election, and the new government did actually not want that law. However, the law had already been approved in the EP and EC, so this means that it must be implemented. Obviously, it has not been a priority during the last year, but in principle the body responsible for formulating the final text going into Swedish law has been trying to make it so lenient that they can while still being in compliance with the directive.
That is a bunch of bullshit, the authority of the EC court is established in EC/EU treaty which is signed and ratified by the EU member states. This ratification make the treaty law in the member states.
A member state cannot just ignore the laws and treaties that they have agreed to follow (by ratifying them), ignoring would mean that the member state is breaking the very fundamentals of a civilized society, the rule of law.
The guy also does not seem to understand the Swedish constitution very well (i.e. he is making a statement about something he does not know anything about). The Swedish constitution clearly stipulates that power may be transfered to the EU in certain areas, such power transferal has for example taken place when Sweden agreed to join the Union and signed the treaty, and thus Sweden has ceded authority in certain matters to the EC court.
So independent on whether you recognise the EU (or EC since the EU does not have legal personality at the moment) as a sovereign entity or not, the Swedish constitution clearly allows for decisions regarding matters like this to be taken in Brussels. And ignoring directives within the areas of the Union's competence would not only be against European law, but also explicitly against the member states national law.
Following a standard template only available as a TeX style sheet. Yeah, they do want PDFs, but your word-generated PDFs would probably not be approved.
I don't have Word for my computer at the University (if I want one, I need to fill in forms and other stuff to get a license). I use TeX for all important papers (by the way, did you know that most conferences (in CS) do not accept stuff in.doc format and require TeX).
Slashdot Mirror
As said in a previous post, you dont get that much snow, right?
Hmm... slashdot ate up my < marks...
Should be:
< 0 C: Winter
> 10 C: Summer
[0, 10]: Spring / Autumn
Dude... you have never seen snow in your life huh?
I used to live in a place where snow is likely during the winter, and where you must know the freezing point of water in order to drive safely. If the temperature is around 0, then you take it easy when driving as it might get extra slippery from ice and you know that snow is expected.
Also, meteorologists (in Scandinavia at least) tend to label seasons based on the average temperature (including night time) as:
10 C: Summer
Very inconvenient, right?
C is more convenient when talking about weather, whether it is more convenient indoors is another matter, and far less relevant for society than to know when you need to change to winter tires on your car or to plant your crops et.c.
Courts should rule on fact, not morality.
But then again, I am European and have no clue for how the US system works... is it ok if a jury rules on morality and other unrelated issues to the case being handled? That seem somewhat scary to me.
Well firstly, the ITER reactor will be cheaper than ISS. So it is not really that expensive. Secondly, it is 50 years in the future because the lack of public support. The only country that really supports it is the EU and to some extent Japan. The rest of the world is horribly backwards when it comes to fusion research.
Thirdly, many things have not been economically viable for the generation that developed it. Many mathematicians have been funded by the public, only to see the real use of their work some 100 years later.
I would understand you if the reactor was payed by a company, but the governments have a duty to ensure the longterm survivability and progress of humankind. Around 1915 the first ideas of nuclear fission was discovered through public grants, it took until 1951 to develop this into commercial power. Do you think that was a waste of money?
Around 1750, ideas on electricity existed, but it would take until 1880 until real power plants where constructed. Obviously, all that research that was funded by public grants was a complete waste of money and time. I mean, who in 1750 was alive to see the fruits of their investments in 1880. Do you think this was a waste of money?
Nothing of this was economically viable in the short term, but that is where the public comes in. In order to build civilizations, one need a grander picture than short term profits and gains.
The world has been working like this since the invention of the scientific method:
1. Scientists think, and prove things, payed by the public (or in rare cases by some altruistic rich guy), they develop ideas that grow into ideas for applications.
2. Engineers take the science and build real working things (first prototypes, then a demo version and then a real thing)
3. People reap the new possibilities
The fusion research programme is currently in early stage 2. That is, it is no longer about only science, it is about engineering issues (not that there is no longer any science in it, in this case there are some material science issues that need to be solved).
You may think that if you cannot solve a problem or see any use for a technology within your lifetime or that it is useless if any profits are 30 years in the future, that the projects and explorations of those questions should be stopped.
For me, I am glad that our predecessors did not think like this, since we got into the current technological state of our civilization thanks to those people who did not bother whether there would be any economical viability in their research and engineering experiments within their lifetime.
If I ask people in my circles I would argue that 90% feels European first.
Your 0.01 % does not agree with the statistics (and I wonder in what hole you have been hiding for that number).
I have seen statistical data, and the percentage of people who felt only European was around 10% IIRC, then there was a large group who felt both European and $nationality, and a group who only felt $nationality and another who didn't really feel anything.
The Union is not force fed. It has been moving in precisely the direction that was pointed out when the Union was founded.
From the Schuman declaration on the foundation of the Union:
The pooling of coal and steel production should immediately provide for the setting up of common foundations for economic development as a first step in the federation of Europe, and will change the destinies of those regions which have long been devoted to the manufacture of munitions of war, of which they have been the most constant victims.
This was what the Union was founded for, and the states that have joined the Union have had referendas about whether or not to join the organisation whose clear purpose since its foundation was to build a federal Europe.
Now, let us look at some interesting facts:
US: 300 million people
China: 1 billion people
India: 1 billion people
Fast forward 50 years and see both India and China as modern nations.
Now, do you think that any single European state would have any whatsoever competitive edge over any of those three blocks. Without the Union, the citizens that could would move over to the other places because they could make a better living there (just because the shear size of those economies). We would see brain drain on massive scale in Europe.
So, without doubt, the EU is necessary for the future of the European citizens. Now, we can argue about whether it would be enough with a trade block, but with any such organisation where you have detailed rules comes the issue of accountability of its actions. An organisation of that size needs clear rules, and a way to control it, a way to complain to it, a way to complain when the common rules are not followed et.c. For democratic legitimacy, you also need to have the rule making process be governed by directly elected representatives (now the Council have more power than the EP, and that is a bit scary in my book).
No state or large organisation has ever been founded without a purpose. The US was founded for a reason, the EU was founded in order to guarantee peace on a continent which has been fighting in bloody civil wars for over a thousand years.
The Union is a country in making whether you like it or not, and to be frank, that has never been a secret and the citizens of Europe have voted in referendas about joining this process.
I do not mind. I live in the Netherlands, have been living in the UK and is original from Stockholm and have a Belgian girlfriend.
I call my self European, I am pretty annoyed when people call me Swedish when this is clearly not how I feel. There is nothing more annoying than people calling Europeans by their statehood.
Europe is almost a country (it even has its own entry in the CIA world fact book because it has so many state like properties), and for any person who is not living here the EU is probably indistinguishable from a country, get used to it, this is the state of things right now.
Proud to be European!
Regards
By the way, many people see Europe as a country to some extent. This includes not only a lot of Europeans, it also include a lot of people outside of Europe.
Besides, Frank de Bruin is working for the EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY, not the Belgian space agency, so just what was wrong with saying he is from Europe when he is sent up for European taxpayers money?
"As a software development company, SAP has no other choice than to hold on to their patent portfolio, even if for defense reasons."
Is that why SAP was one of the largest actors in pro software patents campaign in Europe? I'd respect an opinion like the one from Oracle where they stated that they don't like patents, but since they exist they must use them for defensive reasons. SAP on the other hand put huge sums of money into actually trying to legalise software patents in the EU where they are not legal at all.
Don't worry about the neutrinos, I have foreseen this and will start selling a cream that you can smear on your skin. This cream will cancel all the negative effects that you will suffer from the huge amounts of neutrino radiation that will embed the Earth when the star goes supernova.
I happy that it will be sold at only $500 per jar, I would say a cheap price compared to the alternative of being exposed to huge amounts of neutrino radiation. Buy now, while the supplies last, better safe than sorry.
And several of the girls admitted that they had sex with him voluntarily and that they had been pressured by the newspaper (Aftonbladet or Expressen, can't remember which one) to file charges.
The guy has tried to appeal the sentence (he is already out of prison, but he want his name cleared). He basically said that (from my memory): "I know I pressured the girls by false promises and so, and I was a real bastard and an awful person, but I did not commit rape."
The guy was owning a record company, and it was very naive by the court to say what they did, some girls (and guys) would be happy to sleep with someone like that if it can fast forward their career. It is certainly not "PC" to say so, but it is still the fact of things.
Ada gives you:
1. Bitlayout of records (with a very verbose syntax)
2. Strict types (i.e. integers with ranges)
3. Enumerated types
4. Tasks
5. Bounded arrays
6. Generic programming
7. Modular programming
Point 2 and 5 are solvable by asserts and by using contracts in your code (seriously, the eiffel way of programming with contracts just feels so much more sane in my eyes than the strict types, especially in a systems programming language).
4 is really missing in C as I said. 1 and 3 exists in C. Regarding 6, yes that is a bit of a problem with C, but on the other hand in the projects I was involved, generic functions where banned by higher powers. 7 is also possible in C by adhering to discipline. And in most Ada projects, the government (who usually are the contracting authority) mandates discipline.
So in the end, the reason to use Ada is what?
Demand change then, but leaving a successful organisation that is the only hope for the future of Europe is hardly productive.
Would you want your municipality to leave the UK because the British parliament have been proven to be corrupted over their ears?
I think that you would demand change and more transparency. The same should logically hold to the EU instead.
I do not like the current management of the Union, but this is no reason to leave. What I demand is more transparency and accountability, more democracy. The Lisbon treaty is a good step since it moves power from the Council to the Parliament, but it is far from perfect, but guess what... neither is the UK or Sweden or [insert member state here].
Progress can only be made by change and evolution of society, not by going back to the dark ages where European brothers and sisters had to go out in battle against each other.
The Union is the most important reason that we have now had peace on the continent for 60 years. That little fact does not have a price-tag, it is invaluable.
Another thing is that in a world where you have:
China: 1 billion citizens
India: 1 billion citizens
US: 250 million citizens
The formation of the African Union, Asean and Meroscur only cements the need for Europe to stand together.
Do you really think that the European states could stand by themselves? The EU in total pools together 500 million citizens, giving Europe a competitive edge that allow us to survive as independent people.
Thus, the Union is as necessary as water itself for the future of Europe.
Now, you may argue that a trade block is enough, but that brings in all the issues that the EU is trying to solve, if trade is regulated by the Union, then you must also have some people that are responsible to the citizens of Europe. Otherwise you will have a number of non-elected ministers deciding about everything, this is called confederalism and cannot be seen as being in the interests of the people, as by definitions, a confederal union only cares about the states.
I know a lot of British are complaining that they only joined the EU (or EC/ECSC/whatever it was called then) for the free market. This is complete bullshit, the EU has always been about building a common future for the citizens of Europe and a sort of United States of Europe, this was as clear as water in Schuman's founding speech of the Union. Saying anything else, just suggests ignorance of history. There is nothing in the EU that is close to Soviet Russia, where do you get that idea. You can for example form a party and stand for the EP without being thrown in a Siberian camp. You can also express your opinion and tell the Commission/Council/Parliament to go bugger themselves without fear of being dragged away to a mental institute or a camp in Siberia.
Also, I was never given the opportunity to vote for my municipality or province to leave my state, but I do not recent for that.
I worked with Ada for about two years. It is an awful language. Most of the issues that Ada solves are solvable in C by using assert.
The main problem with the language is that it is to complex and big, this means that it is impossible to keep the language in your head, you have to look-up syntax rules while you are coding, and this even when you have been writing it for several years.
The only nice thing in the language is the concurrency model which actually simplifies the usage of tasks.
That depends, a MEP can have a lot of influence in the questions they are involved in. But, in general they need to belong to a party group for this.
PP has stated that they intend to join either ALDE (the (classic) liberals) or the greens, depending on where they get most in return from.
ALDE is far larger and that group would be a far better target.
In any case, BNP is in general seen as neo-nazis by most people, so they cannot really expect to be accepted in any group, not even the most EU-critical groups would want to be associated with them, so they will remain group-less, which will basically severely limit their contribution and influence.
The BNP is not very likely (by their very nature) to seek to cooperate with other partys either which is PPs goal.
Politics is about making compromises and cooperating with eachothers, so the influence of PP will far outweigh the BNP.
No, the real power lies in the indirectly elected European Council.
The commission simply ensure that the agreed rules are implemented and followed. They in term are appointed and need support from both the Council and the Parliament.
I really dont understand what british people have against the Commission, the work sort of like a government (i.e. they are appointed but requires parliamentary approval).
Instead you should be thinking about the massive over power of the Council. The Council have right to make law, and they are not directly elected, from a democratic point of view this is a far greater problem.
Not that the idea of having an election of the Commission president is unappealing, but doing so disables fundamental parliamentary traditions since the Commission then is no longer responsible to the Parliament. Last EP-elections, the EP made it clear that they decided whether a Commission member was acceptable or not.
The very link you point out also clearly states that:
In addition to its role in approving a new Commission, the European Parliament has the power at any time to force the entire Commission to resign through a vote of no confidence. This requires a vote that makes up at least two-thirds of those voting and a majority of the total membership of the Parliament. While it has never used this power, it threatened to use it against the Commission headed by Jacques Santer in 1999 over allegations of corruption. In response, the Santer Commission resigned en masse of its own accord, the only time a Commission has done so.
It is confusing, since the PP got a virtual seat as well that will be realised when the Lisbon treaty is approved by the Irish.
In the meanwhile, the virtual MEP will have the right to go to the EP and act as an observer. In this case it means being there as a parliamentarian, but without voting rights.
We just have to hope that the Irish vote yes.
Last time, no. The June-List (who got EP seats) was allowed in the debate on the TV in the EP elections, but in the last riksdag elections they where not (since they did not have seats in the riksdag).
The PP will be seen as established on European level, so the public service TV will allow them in the debate the next EP elections (in 5 years from now), but most likely not for the riksdag election next year.
May I counter: Who the heck cares what a person from [insert US state here (I think of Utah and Nebraska)] votes for? When was the last time you heard of [US-state]-anything? Never?
The point is, no, Sweden is not that well known, but certainly more known than its size suggest, but that I guess that most Americans think of Europe as a big blob (as do I and I am a European), and in this case it is actually correct to do so. The vote was for the European Parliament, not the Swedish riksdag. This means that the weight of it is about the same as if a PP member would be voted in to the US congress.
She is completely right. She cannot ignore the directive.
In the long run, I think that all of this is good, because, finally, people are starting to realise that the EP matters and that debate must be taken on European level.
The commissioners have no power to make decrees in any way (they can regulate certain areas of the internal market, but that is about it). They make sure that decisions taken by the European council and parliament are implemented and followed.
This is pretty much what your local government does. If a municipality refuses to uphold the law that the national parliament made, the governments task is to ensure that it is followed. Usually, they don't involve themselves directly but ask some other branch of the government to look in to the matter.
The Commission is hardly the problem, they are just ensuring that the member states live up to the obligations in the treaties. They do not pass law or directives.
The people behind the laws are the Council and the Parliament. What happened with this law is a bit interesting.
The previous Swedish minister of justice (BodstrÃm) wanted to ensure that this data was stored (he also wanted a number of other big-brotherish laws to be implemented). But, he realised that people use communications systems outside of Sweden, so he went to the Council to do this.
In principle, they masked this as an internal market thing that the Parliament would have a say about (it also contradicted previous internal market directives, so giving the EP the right to co-decide is only appropriate), but when it looked like the EP might say no to the law.
The Council said that if you don't approve this, we will treat it as a police and judicial cooperation issue, where the EP (before Lisbon is ratified anyway) does not have the right to co-decide. This ment that some of the MEPs swayed over to the yes-side and the law was passed, not because they liked the law, but because they would at least have the co-decision right and might sneak in some amendments making the law a bit more sane. MEP Alexander Alvaro was for example opposed to the directive, and even asked to have his name stricken from a EP report on the issue.
You might ask yourself whether these MEPs did the right thing to value co-decision rights over clean and untainted hands (Alvaro certainly did do the right thing in the report); there is an EP election in one week, so I sugest you make your voice heard.
Now, back in Sweden, the previous minister of justice lost his job in the previous election, and the new government did actually not want that law. However, the law had already been approved in the EP and EC, so this means that it must be implemented. Obviously, it has not been a priority during the last year, but in principle the body responsible for formulating the final text going into Swedish law has been trying to make it so lenient that they can while still being in compliance with the directive.
That is a bunch of bullshit, the authority of the EC court is established in EC/EU treaty which is signed and ratified by the EU member states. This ratification make the treaty law in the member states.
A member state cannot just ignore the laws and treaties that they have agreed to follow (by ratifying them), ignoring would mean that the member state is breaking the very fundamentals of a civilized society, the rule of law.
The guy also does not seem to understand the Swedish constitution very well (i.e. he is making a statement about something he does not know anything about). The Swedish constitution clearly stipulates that power may be transfered to the EU in certain areas, such power transferal has for example taken place when Sweden agreed to join the Union and signed the treaty, and thus Sweden has ceded authority in certain matters to the EC court.
So independent on whether you recognise the EU (or EC since the EU does not have legal personality at the moment) as a sovereign entity or not, the Swedish constitution clearly allows for decisions regarding matters like this to be taken in Brussels. And ignoring directives within the areas of the Union's competence would not only be against European law, but also explicitly against the member states national law.
Following a standard template only available as a TeX style sheet. Yeah, they do want PDFs, but your word-generated PDFs would probably not be approved.
I don't have Word for my computer at the University (if I want one, I need to fill in forms and other stuff to get a license). I use TeX for all important papers (by the way, did you know that most conferences (in CS) do not accept stuff in .doc format and require TeX).