It isnt only Mr Cameron who is having trouble in his party with gay marriage. German chancellor Mrs Merkel seems to be having similar ructions with her own CDU.

According to Handeslbaltt, there are increasingly hostile noises coming from senior party members. Most voluble of these is Saxony CDU parliamentary leader Steffen Flath, who is also a member of the "conservative network" in the Berlin district.
He is warning against Merkels proposal to grant to full equality to same-sex partnerships. He concedes that the CDU should continue to develop as a peoples party, and take note of social changes. But, he says, "that does not mean that you have to run after every fashion or equal to the general zeitgeist. This is especially true for a conservative party like the CDU".



Read here...

http://www.eureferendum....ogview.aspx?blogno=83659

Our neighbour's daughter is in a Lesbian relationship. She has a son (via IVF) & her partner has a daughter by the same father (also IVF). As the birth cert.'s state "father unknown" these two children could get married legally when they grow up. Society is being distorted, especially if, in the future their mothers were to marry each other. The Law of Unintended Consequences?

A search on: schwarz grün bundestagswahl (schwarz being the CDU and grün being the Greens) reveals extensive speculation (in German) about the chances of a coalition between the two parties as a possible outcome of the German general election this September. I think gay marriage is a big thing with the Greens and CDU agreement to it might be a prerequisite for a coalition.

What follows here is off-topic re gay marriage but is related to the coalition theory:

Green dreams of a coalition with the CDU in the Bundestag may also explain what is happening in Stuttgart.

Baden-Württemberg elected a Green Minister-President (the Greens are the senior partner in a coalition with the SPD) in March 2011 and the city of Stuttgart recently elected a Green mayor after many decades of CDU rule.
Both of these developments were driven by voter discontent with the Stuttgart 21 project to turn the city's terminus station into an underground through station.

The whole Stuttgart 21 (S21) thing is a big real estate deal and was very much a pet project of the CDU (especially the former CDU Minister President of Baden-Württemberg, Günther Oettinger who is now EU Energy Commissioner) with SPD support. Over the last three years, the campaign to stop S21 has uncovered huge failings in the planning and financing of S21. The new station was sold to people as having a greater capacity than the current station - in fact it will be much lower. The fire safety arrangements are hopeless, the geology of Stuttgart makes tunneling risky and expensive etc.

A few weeks ago, Deutsche Bahn finally admitted that S21 would cost 6.8 billion euros rather than 4.5 billion, the latter figure having previously been presented as the absolute break point, above which the project was no longer viable.
Insiders say the true cost is more like 11 billion euros.

S21 therefore looks like an even more expensive disaster than the new Berlin airport, the difference being that the airport is more or less built while S21 has hardly started (no tunnels have yet been dug) and could still be stopped.

Given the Berlin debacle and the upcoming election, you would think Merkel might want to discreetly drop S21.

But no, she has said that the extra 2+ billion euros will be found. According to Deutsche Bahn, some of this will have to come from the Land of Baden-Württemberg and the DB is ready to take them to court to get it. Merkel was given a rough reception on her last visit to Stuttgart (beware, video is quite noisy) and I think she wants to 1: teach them a lesson and 2: show the rest of Germany that "the street" will never prevail (even if it's clear that it was right all along). I think she has also been quoted as saying something like: "how can I tell the Greeks to get tough and ignore street protests if I can't even manage to do that in my own country".

You would think that the Greens (elected on the back of their opposition to S21) would be making the most of this situation to kill off S21 once and for all (by highlighting the technical/safety failings which never get much of an airing in the national German press).
They are making some of the right noises, but it looks as if they are holding back, possibly with an eye to the general election in September.

The Deutsche Bahn Supervisory Board is meant to make a final decision about Stuttgart 21 in the next week or so.
As the government told them last week that they would not have to worry about damages resulting from legal action (brought against them by S21 opponents accusing them of negligence if they allow S21 to go ahead in the face of overwhelming evidence that the whole thing is a massive fraud), it looks as if Merkel will get her way. But she can expect to be plagued by Stuttgart 21 protests throughout the election campaign.

Might not one politely ask however, 'where will it end . . . ?'

Yes, in common with much of the world, we live in a single party state. In our case, slightly finessed by the introduction of Buggins' turn.

At least dictators are honest in their suppression . . .

I have no particular bias either but society hasn't gone it's been pushed.
However, where I do have a problem, In all probability, we won't generate supplimentary certificates to facillitate same sex unions, we'll have to replace them all because they'll not be satisfied with a different style certificate. These documents are very expensive to produce and we'll end up scrapping millions of them.

Yes and therein lies the problem.

'Rights' conferred by man (in the shape of a government) either become the new baseline against which societal/human behaviour is thenceforth measured or else they are used to hold the general population to ransom for fear of having them removed.

the conferring of 'rights' creates an imbalance of power and generally undermines social cohesion, both of which work against any notion we might have of a 'democracy'

I understand the points you make and in some regard I agree with you.

The problem I have has nothing to do with good ideas. We can all come up with, identify or agree with good ideas. The real issue is how do you implement them?

The obvious answer is violent revolution. Unfortunately, the majority of people are naturally quite conservative and moderately libertarian. These are exactly the characteristic of people who do not want to engage in violence or revolutions.

There are political parties and there are movements, many of which have ideals of great merit but unless those ideals can bring change to people's lives then they are almost entirely without meaning other than as food for thought.

I can think of only one revolution that has been 'successful' without violence and that is the 'socialist' / Marxist revolution that the western world has been subjected to since the Second World War.

Rather than violence, this has been achieved by the systematic infiltration of the education system, the BBC and the majority of the media. And yes, political correctness is also a major weapon in this revolution to undermine conservative/libertarian morals, values and culture.

I take your point but do find it quite difficult to think of the industrial revolution as anything but a revolution in name only, in the sense that what happened was indeed revolutionary. In the sense that I understand the nature of revolution its whole purpose is societal change. In my opinion societal change did indeed come about as a result of the industrial revolution but this seems to me a by-product rather than the point.

Interestingly (for me anyway) the nazi revolution was not about society but about race and as far as I can tell, unique in that regard.

I also agree that technological advances drive change but it seems to me that this is only real change when that technology improves productivity (or perhaps creates new markets)

What do I know?

Ah comet and letmethink, thank you for making me think.


comet......


letmethink.....



I can't intimate how much I agree with the both of you but and at last what are we to do?

There has always been an underlying mission but better termed as dominion and to them it is all a big stage act - they think big and long term.

The people who are in charge now are the people who funded most of the wars in the European theatre since Napoleon. They don't trust us, we don't and never will trust them. In 1917, another protagonist joined the act and the elites in the West learned much from that [now] former empire but the elites realised something in a similar format but dressed in the clothes of 'democracy' would provide them with control to carry on making money and with it power = their 'rightful' hegemony.

The statist elite - for want of a better term - because it suited their ideals started with and cleverly infiltrated tertiary academia since [maybe before that] the 1930's. 1972 - it was written although, they wanted us in, in 1956, gave the social engineers the green light and power to go and do - by using the wrecking ball on the history, traditions, institutions and social fabric of the nation - and by all the saints - how they've done it so well.

The nation, that they the Brussels control freaks/elites and indeed our own fifth columnists in big business, the FO and Westminster most feared in EUrope - were the British, Britain had to be cowed and brought to heel.

We are lost my friends.......unless?


What we've got to do here is... ahem make a start - metaphorically speaking - wouldn't it be nice to commence with rubbing out the BBC and then the quangos and 'charities and all of the green environmental activist 'charities'.

David: pick up thy sling.

Edited by user 27 February 2013 00:43:47(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified