I reproduce a blog posting from Welsh Ramblings:
Gordon Brown on the role of Britain
on Wednesday, 3 March 2010According to the UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown during a visit to Wales for the Labour Conference, Britain remains a worthwhile union for us to be a part of, because:
“I think everybody knows that Wales, like Scotland, is stronger within the Union, and the strength of Great Britain and the United Kingdom is important to developing the modern economy and international relations that we need.
“We’re able, through Britain’s leading role in the world, to influence the events in international development, in climate change, in economic restructuring."
Britain's role in "leading the world" arguably either does nothing for Wales, or does things that are deeply unpopular and alien to the values held by most people in Wales.
In international development, perhaps Brown means the UK's success in channeling more than £50m per year in arms (as far as we know) to the human rights-loving government of Uganda? There was principled outrage at the fact that the Welsh Government granted £50,000 to a coffee farming co-operative in Uganda at a time when the country's government was considering a bill that would confer the death penalty on homosexuals- but the British Government gives alot more than that, and not to co-ops but directly to their government and military.
On climate change, Brown might be promoting Britain's participation in refusing to confront neo-liberalism and rampant capitalism at the failed Copenhagen summit?
And on economic restructuring Brown is possibly promoting the spectacle of British MEPs trooping through the European Parliament to vote for the marketisation and full privatisation of postal services with only Jill Evans and a handful of others putting up resistance?
Ramblings for one would not mind Wales losing that kind of "influence". It's a poisonous kind of influence that ends up with Welsh men and women dying to protect a fraudulently elected group of warlords in Afghanistan. An independent Wales could opt out of imperialism entirely and play a more concilatory and less hated role in world events.
Couldn't have said it better!
“I think everybody knows that Wales, like Scotland, is stronger within the Union, and the strength of Great Britain and the United Kingdom is important to developing the modern economy and international relations that we need.
“We’re able, through Britain’s leading role in the world, to influence the events in international development, in climate change, in economic restructuring."
Britain's role in "leading the world" arguably either does nothing for Wales, or does things that are deeply unpopular and alien to the values held by most people in Wales.
In international development, perhaps Brown means the UK's success in channeling more than £50m per year in arms (as far as we know) to the human rights-loving government of Uganda? There was principled outrage at the fact that the Welsh Government granted £50,000 to a coffee farming co-operative in Uganda at a time when the country's government was considering a bill that would confer the death penalty on homosexuals- but the British Government gives alot more than that, and not to co-ops but directly to their government and military.
On climate change, Brown might be promoting Britain's participation in refusing to confront neo-liberalism and rampant capitalism at the failed Copenhagen summit?
And on economic restructuring Brown is possibly promoting the spectacle of British MEPs trooping through the European Parliament to vote for the marketisation and full privatisation of postal services with only Jill Evans and a handful of others putting up resistance?
Ramblings for one would not mind Wales losing that kind of "influence". It's a poisonous kind of influence that ends up with Welsh men and women dying to protect a fraudulently elected group of warlords in Afghanistan. An independent Wales could opt out of imperialism entirely and play a more concilatory and less hated role in world events.
Couldn't have said it better!
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