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Comment by nickjackson | Hacker News Reader

I've watched about 30 minutes of this, and I am growingly disgusted by the TPP and the US government. I am a brit, and all though we aren't part of the TPP, we are still in the back pocket of the United States.

It's a shame that we rely so heavily on trade with the US, that we feel that we need to look past the so called "lobbying" and corruption in US politics, and implement such overbearing rules on behalf of Hollywood and others.

The stuff about the US putting Canada on "probation" and mandating that every 6 months Canada has to report back to the US "as if it was some kind of naughty student to the teacher" is just ridiculous.

This has to stop.

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Well in the UK and rest of Europe, we will get TTIP which is basically the same as TPP.

There is a 38 degreess page for TTIP [1].

Protesters against TTIP were being labelled as anti-American in the debate in parliament the in December[2], which I find ironic, as the movement against TTIP, TPP etc all started In America.

Another argument used was that nobody had opposed CETA in the same way TTIP so, again must be us being scared of America - I would again put it down to opposition to these treaties starting in America + thi jumpstarting opposition in the UK.

[1] https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/pages/ttip_home

[2] http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmhansrd/c...

Your country happily joined ours to invade Iraq, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian fatalities, but it's "Hollywood lobbying" that's the last straw for you?

Had the UK not signed on to the Bush administration's war, 2003 might have gone differently; Blair's alliance with Bush was a key "legitimizing" force.

My point, relevant to this thread, is that I don't think the UK is somehow coerced by US market power. The UK sees its best interests as mostly aligned with those of the US, which is not surprising when you compare the structure of our respective economies (for instance: London is the other Wall Street).

There are countries in the world with a reasonable claim against market-driven hegemony. The United Kingdom isn't one of them.

The UK and the people of the UK and the government of the UK are different things. The government signed on not the people.

> The government signed on not the people.

The same can be said about many nations. We should all contact our representatives regardless. However, the last time I did this, one of my supposed reps sent me a condescending form letter in response. She wasn't even gracious enough to lie to me and say she valued feedback from her constituents. It came across more like she knew better than I did and that's why she was voting against the interests of the people.

It was the people. They both elected Blair then re-elected him after he started the war. The same happened with Bush in the US. It was unambiguously the American people who wanted it. Maybe not a majority but enough to make their electoral system pick him.

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