I know that you're raised in the American educational system where Republic is erroneously equated with a representative democracy, but please educate yourself a bit out of that little box that they put you in. Personally, I live in a constitutional monarchy, and all the stuff you're saying about a 'Republic' holds for my country. My country has a king, but he's been neutered. I share this particular form of government with the UK, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium and Spain, among others. These all are representative democracies, and they protect minority interest, rights and groups through a strong parliamentary tradition. Please explain how these countries are Republics, and the Republic of China is not.

So your president is right, you live in a democracy. A representative democracy with an elected head of state.

Which unelected bureaucrats decide in the EU? You have the council of ministers, who are elected, you have the EU commission, which is probably what you refer to, and then you have the European Parliament, elected, that actually decide what becomes law and what not, and which, incidentally, also needs to approve the EU commission from even being formed. The process of becoming a commisioner is a bit sketchy, but power is limited and checks and balances are in place.

Compare that with the British "democracy". It has a government that is 'selected' to do the job by a party that has typically no more than 30% of the vote of the country but for some reason has the deciding vote. This government of unelected bureaucrats, backed by a minority of the population, is now determined to make a major change in its relation with its neighbours and its economy based on a single opinion poll that they decided to hold. They will ostensibly not go through a parliamentary vote to start this process, side-stepping the legislative body completely and throwing what remained of the British democracy out of the window. And then there's the House of Lords.

The UK has obviously voted against democracy. They will now be ruled by their betters.

How do you suggest the EU would deal with this proactively? Every tax deal that any country makes needs to go through Brussels first to be approved?

Ireland has been warned time and time again that these shenanigans are against existing treaties. That the actual legal proceedings take time is a given and any good lawyer would have known that this is a possible outcome. Apple has good lawyers: they knew this was either illegal or borderline legal according to EU treaties and took their chances.

Apple is not being fined. It was found that Ireland was giving Apple an illegal state subsidy. Apple has to pay it back. Ireland is the one that is possibly facing fines.

Apple has not paid all taxes as per the law in Ireland. They paid taxes according to a special deal with the Irish government. Such a special deal has been found to be equivalent to state aid. This is illegal in the EU. So the deal is null and void. Apple now has to pay all taxes as per the law in Ireland.

Well, they got to tax 2% (instead of their common 10%) on the full Apple profit. As Apple couldn't care less about Ireland, and will move their HQ out of that sorry nation very soon when this goes through, Ireland is going to be out of a sweet few billion of tax money per year.

If it's hot it's hot, if it's cold it's cold. Tides come in, tides go out. Nobody knows why.

I guess it's a unit error. 1800 liters of water is about 475 gallons, so I guess that's what happened here.

How about elderly and disabled people and people afraid of driving being able to get out and go places? Not a social improvement?

That will happen soon. We've got an El Nino remember. 2017 will not be the hottest on record, nor will 2018. And climate idiots will again start to proclaim that the warming has stopped.

Good troll. I didn't get through the entire set of replies, but so far nobody has zoomed in into the fact that temperature is adjusted downward to correct for urban heat islands. Bravo!

Right, so you're saying the best economic decision a country can make is to stop importing stuff, and make consumer and government spend go through the roof. Good luck with that.

Good luck getting a free trade deal with the US without becoming a state.

Because they convinced them that the vote was about immigrants. They clearly wanted the immigrants to leave.

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