@SirSalty, their impact on parliament isn't something I'm worried about, but their terrible reasons for wanting to leave the EU might persuade a significant proportion of morons to vote to leave the EU in the upcoming referendum.

UKIP is bad, but still better compared to FN...

Very true but they've lost many supporters, contrary to my previous statement UKIP was abousletly crushed in the local elections in the Oldham and Royton area as Labour won with 23,000 compared to UKIP's 8000

I would rank Spain as the 11th most important European state
1-Germany
2-UK
3-France
4-Ukraine
5-Poland
6-Sweden
7-Italy
8-Switzerland
9-Netherlands
10-Austria
11-Spain

1 Germany
2 United Kingdom
3 France
4 Italy
5 Russia
6 Spain
7 Netherlands
8 Switzerland
9 Sweden
10 Poland
11 Belgium
12 Norway
13 Austria

Edited 12/22/2015 01:36:22

What spain has:

Tourism

What catalonya will have if they become independent:

Tourism

What spain will have if catalonya becomes independent:

Tourism

All their income is basically:

Tourism

In other words, they are heavily dependant on other countries having interest in visiting them AND any danage on their neighbors' economy will be trouble for them as they will have no tourists.

Basically, Spain has to grow some goddamn industry. Anti-Austerity is just going to f*ck them even further. Who would want to visit the endebted shithole that is Spain?

Mister Ki - ITALY 7TH??!!!


That's ridiculous.

Everyone should stop the UKIP hate-mongering. Its totally undeserved. They're not xenophobic. They just want lower legal immigration levels. That's called being rational and understanding you can't import billions of poor people onto a small island of a country.

Why would you want lower lethal immigrants? Uk is going to have population issues very soon so they need some pop now

They don't need the pop if all they're importing is low skill immigrants who depend on the government dole. The direction of future economic growth requires high skilled workers in STEM and administration. What european countries such as France and Britain need is to place favored preference status for people with advanced skills in fields where they have a shortage. That's how my father managed to cut the immigration process to the US by half. Even better would be to offer incentives to accelerate the brain drain from other countries. Globalism doesn't mean international competition between countries died. Mercantilism is alive, except governments aren't trying to accumulate wealth...they should be trying to accumulate "invisible assets" such as the best talents in each field. This is how nations become strong and maintain power. The minute top professionals in India, Japan, Korea, China, and the developing world decide to stay in their countries is the minute Europe and America start to decline.

The potential labor shortage you guys are freaking out about can be solved simply with larger quotas for guest worker programs. However, guest workers shouldn't be offered a path to citizenship since they send most of that money back to their native country to help their family anyway. The need for workers shouldn't be made at the expense of people who currently live there.

Edited 12/22/2015 02:48:29

Germany 1st!!! yes masterKL

Do you really believe only tourism supports the whole Spanish economy?

First of all about tourism: Spain is a top tourist destination, and earns bllions of Euros thanks to it, millions of Brits, Germans and Dutch people leave their gloomy and dreary weather and depressing places to discover a great culture (architecture, cuisine, history) and places (amazing national parks, idyllic beaches, etc), Spain is the country that have the most ranked UNESCO world heritage sites inside its territory, that only gives you an idea about why Spain is a top destination.

Now if you know a little bit more about this country you would know there is an industry (sadly for the Spaniards mainly located in the "Separatist" regions such as Basque Country, Galicia and Catalonia, these places are actually economically stronger and richer compared to other European regions, with a way lower unemployment rate 2 times lower than the national average). There is also a huge financial center mainly located in Santander, Bilbao and Barcelona. Santander hosts one of the most important Finance companies such as Banco Santander (largest European bank before 2008 and still the largest bank and insurance ijn the Eurozone) moslty operating in Europe and more of all Latin America. You have also Inditex, world's largest clothing retailer and owns brands like Zara, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Pull and Bear, Oysho, Often and Stradivarius. About industry, the Mondragon Corporation Conglomerate is the biggest worldwide worker cooperative (a growing futuristic and democratic economic model for firms and companies, that was initiated partly in Spain).

In terms of education and university, Spain is the top destination for Erasmus students, for Americans, Erasmus is an European program quite popular, that allows any people from the EU (plus Norway, Turkey, Switzerland, well every European nation excepted Russia I think), to have the opportunity to do an exchange program anywhere in these countries quite easily (Europe is not always bad eh), and Spain is the most chosen destination by European students. Some top universities are also located there, mostly private such as the University of Navarre (ironically created by the Opus Dei) ranked in the first 30 top worlwide universities, and one of the best university in term of medical studies.

Last but not least, Spain had a flourishing and thriving economy before the crisis (annual 3-6% of growth in the 90-2000s), their economy suffered greatly because do not forget that Spain was a third world nation before the 80s (trust me about that since I come from a place near the border, Spain was a real shithole, thanks Franco for that), so their relatively young economy had less tools and ressources against financial turmoils coming from America, and I would say the EU bigger achievement was Spain's successful transformation into a developped nation (alongside Ireland).


And this was only in terms of economy, in terms of history, culture, and cultural influence, the reputation of Spain no longer needs to be demonstrated.

Edited 12/22/2015 10:29:21

Spain is the country that have the most ranked UNESCO world heritage sites inside its territory, that only gives you an idea about why Spain is a top destination.

I don't give a shit about UESCO's opinion. They consider the Dorset coast to be a world heritage site, therefore their opinion is irrelevant.

LOL.

Your entire rebuttal can be summed by F*** UNESCO.

Edited 12/22/2015 15:36:50

@JaiBharat, there isn't much to argue with in the rest of what Kola said.

yeah Clement, I agree with you on that, UNESCO's choice of heritage sites are quite... strange sometimes. I watched a French investigative reportage and documentary about how the UNESCO works from inside: it is mainly International political quarrels, not really about culture, like the last scandal that was somewhere in Russia, a shithole but with some high pressures from the Kremlin they got this site added in the official UNESCO list, the main Russian project was to boost the tourism sector and economy there (not sure it will work anyway even with UNESCO).

My understanding is that it will be hard to form a government after this election - both PP and PSOE lost seats to Podemos, and there's no natural coalition of parties that holds a majority of the seats.

Anyway, as an outsider, I support the spirit of the anti-austerity program of Podemos; if you want to understand my position, you can read some of what Michael Pettis (a Spanish national who is a professor at Beijing University) has written: http://blog.mpettis.com/

Edit: removed some stupid comment

Edited 12/22/2015 22:49:25

1st Question - What is the difference between tiny koala and angry koala?

2nd - After catching up on what actually happened in the Spanish election, this is my 2 cents on the subject: I know based on Spanish constitutional law and normal parliamentary systems of government that the party that got the most number of seats (PP) will have first crack at forming a coalition government. The PP will need 176 seats to form a government. Now I believe that Ciudadanos, as a centrist party, prefers to align itself with PP. That gives them 40+123 = 163. That means they would need 13 more seats. But the big problem is they're basically maxed out with the number of potential allies they can get. The remaining political parties align with the left wing and would probably be unpersuaded to join with the center-right PP. That allows PSOE to form a coalition government...however I don't know how willing Podemos is to join with PSOE.

1st answer: We are different but we are Koalas, one is angry, the other is tiny.

2nd: I'm not sure that Ciudadanos would ally PP I hope,they don't, I personally never liked PP. As for PSOE sadly I think they are not better compared to the French PS.
I would have really hoped to see Podemos first. And tiny koala is right, austerity must end, we must start some Keynesian reforms to relaunch our economy before its too late