I actually understand all the nuts in Europe monaing about the EU taking away their governments powers, because that's actually happening (although there are no rights taken away, as much as rights being divereted upwards to the EU), but all the batshit right-wingers that belief the UN is somehow taking away their rights, tha fuk do u life?
@Adey: Or in other words, the myth of the EU destroying single countries traditions has taken full effect in the United Kingdom.
As for the other point, there is no clear defintion of what socialism is. Ask people that call themselves socialists, for example a social democrat and a communists. The social democrat will argue that communism isn't really socialism, because people's freedoms are taken away, while the communist will argue that social democracy is capitalism and even worse than libertarianism because it keeps the proletariat believing anybody actually gives a shit about them. Turn that up to eleven for all the subcurrents and you arrive at a socialist meeting.
So if there definition of Socialism is "any system in which the government spends money on anything other than police, military, judicial system, firemen and all the the beaurocratic needs involved in providing these", that's their definiton. But under that definition socialism is the only solution that would make sense. Or alternatively, you just start reading "socialism" as "non-economic-libertarian + non-social-conservative", because that's their real definition. "Socialist" is a synonym for them for "person that does not agree with us".
As for the different words of those Islands westwards of Scandinavia, I've learned:
Great Britain = England, Wales, Scotland
Ireland = Republic of Ireland + Northern Ireland
United Kingdom = England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland
Britain = Great Britain, Ireland, Isle of Man
