Thread: The U.K and the E.U - In or out?

The 'CAG' or whatever you want to call it as in the common agricultural policy that needs scrapping but obviously the French will never agree to it as they rape the system and are the main beneficiary from it is another reason why Africa is kept in poverty, look into it DrBob it may open your eyes as to the reasons why Africa is kept in poverty. An inward looking EU or an outward looking UK who wants to trade with the world on free terms. But then again in your warped libtard view of the world everyone who wants to escape the EU is a bigoted racist so then again best you don't bother and choose to remain ignorant. Go project fear!!!!

Originally Posted by StevenR

Originally Posted by astasinim

I thought this a rather interesting video. Quite a few facts here from someone who probably knows more about the subject than both sides of the campaign put together.
Im still undecided as which way to vote and want to be as informed as possible before pacing my X

The reason he became a professor in EU studies is because he loves the EU. Nobody who hates it would become a professor in the subject. This makes all EU academics biased towards remaining by default.

Well he did state that at the beginning. Did you watch it?

Originally Posted by longway

^^Once we break free of the EU and ditch the evil froggie metric system and go back to the proper system of imperial weights and measurements; I think we will be 2 bob short of a pound.

Or a peck short of a bushel....people could understand nursery rhymes again...

Originally Posted by Chittychangchang

Originally Posted by Ronin

Originally Posted by Chittychangchang

Eight years of austerity and cuts in the U.K all compounded by lie after lie by bankers, labour, Tories and The defunct Lib/dems.

What has that got to with the EU?

50 million reasons everyday, better of spent at home instead of propping the EU up.

This really is the most garbled post I have seen in a while. The austerity cuts have nothing to do with the EU! By the way the contribution to the EU by Britain equals 0.003% of GDP - look it up!

Originally Posted by Chittychangchang

Originally Posted by panama hat

UK leaves - pound is decimated

Bollocks

Oh yeah? City bets on pound to suffer bigger plunge than 'Black Wednesday' after Brexit vote[at]

Originally Posted by Chittychangchang

If we vote to leave, we will be able to spend the £350 million we send to Brussels every week on our priorities like the NHS, schools, and fundamental science research. Many cuts would be unnecessary if we saved the money wasted on the EU.

There you go again; our government decides how much is spent on the NHS not the EU. By that figure is misleading as it suits the likes of Farage and Johnson. Johnson by the way wants to charge people for staying in hospital.

We end the supremacy of EU law. Countries around the world trade freely and cooperate in a friendly, effective way without making EU law supreme. We too will have a new UK-EU deal based on free trade and friendly cooperation. We will carry on cooperating on all sorts of things such as scientific collaborations.

We regain legal control of things like trade, tax, economic regulation, energy and food bills, migration, crime, and civil liberties. If we vote for the people who make our trade deals and control public services, the results will be better. British voters should be able to change our laws and control our taxes by voting out politicians.

Economics obviously ain't your strong point,nor is English grammar by the look of it.

It's all in here. At last, serious questions asked and rational sensible solutions offered.
So much more compelling than David Cameron's half arsed effort on Question Time where Dimbleby had him for breakfast along with half the audience. ( I notice that when Cameron gets painted into a corner the hard faced aggressive bully immediately manifests itself.)
It's also much more compelling than that half baked effort doing the rounds last week citing all the experts ( like Martin Lewis who did NOT give the Remain campaign a ringing endorsement at all. Not to mention the leader of Sinn Fein...Fook my dog do I need to spell that one out?).
So there it is. My mind was made up a long time ago and this nails it.
If you think it's bullshit, don't tell me just use your vote.
See you all on the other side.



I've kept track of all the info I've learned about the referendum as I've gone & complied a rather long but detailed check list of the arguments to Leave. I was keeping track for myself anyone so i thought rather than let the info sit on my hard drive i might as well put it up so anyone who is interested can give it a look or share it. I appologise for the length but there are a lot of points to cover. If you are already backing either side this might make you think & if you are undecided you may find some of this helpful, it's divided into sections so hopefully it's easy to read about the parts that are most relevant.

ARE THE ECONOMISTS BACKING REMAIN TRULY INDEPENDENT?
The best argument for remain is what the Independent financial organisations that back their argument. The first issue is the claim of independence, here’s a list of these organisations you’ll see the Remain campaign use as independent backers of their message & the list of EU funding they’ve received: (Credit Matt Miller for the stats)
International Monetary Fund (IMF) – €168,138
OECD – €30,523,562
CBI – €1,350,737
NFU – €133,842
IFS – €7,400,974
PwC – €16,304,778
LSE – €18,333,273
Standard & Poor’s – €745,189
TUC – €763,473

I don’t think it’s unfair to unreasonable to believe any organization funded by one side of an argument is going to have a vested interest to pushing an outcome that suits a benefactor.

It’s also worth pointing out these same organization were very keen for us to join the EURO & got that wrong, in fact there was sweeping majority of economists were in favour of us joining the single currency but thankfully we didn’t listen & dodged that bullet! We are told to put faith in these economists ability to accurately predict our future but how can we be so secure in their predictions when not only did they get the EURO wrong, they completely missed the massive worldwide crash in 2008 & some of them predicted that the UK would clear it’s deficit by 2015, when not only did it not get cleared it in fact grew substantially.

WHY ARE THE ECONOMIC MODELS SHOWING LEAVING WILL RESULT IN FAILURE?
The financial models used to predicted financial doomsday are all based on the unrealistic possibility we will leave the EU & take absolutely NO action to set up any new trade deals with any countries & needlessly keep all external tariffs placed on us by the EU. Considering the whole point of leaving the EU is to set up new better trade agreements, it's absolutely ridiculous to think the country won’t take any action & that other countries outside of the EU won’t accept tariff free bi-lateral deals that could save them between 5-20% in tariffs which would result in a boost to both economies.

These Tariffs are generally barriers to trade put in place to ensure that EU countries are encouraged to do business internally rather than look to spend their money with the rest of the world as they increase the cost of goods & services. If we were not part of the EU the idea we would keep these barriers & make it harder for us & the rest of the world to do business defies logic. If we left the EU we would almost certainly be looking to do strike bilateral free trade deals with every country in the world outside of the EU & most countries would welcome this as a way to boost their economy. It’s no wonder the economic models come out so negative given they were asked to calculate what would happen if we walked away from our EU trade deals & replaced it with nothing & maintained all barriers to trade without reason. Models run where we abandon EU tariffs showed a much different story where we will not only survive but do well outside of the EU. Of course those models could also be wrong but they are more likely to be correct as they are based on more realistic real life behavior than those predicting financial meltdown.

WHAT IS THE ACTUAL PREDICTION OF RECESSION?
One document put out by the official UK Treasury recently has been cited by the Remain campaign to back up their claims of a recession. But strangely for all the talk of recession they never actually quote the numbers, there is a reason for this. The UK Treasury actually predicted just a 0.1% loss of national GPB per quarter for 4 quarters, so 0.4% loss of GDP over 12 months, this is the worst case scenario & completely relies on the presumption we take absolutely no action. In the highly unlikely event this happened, this would be the shallowest recession in the last 100 odd years & to put this into perspective the big crash of 2008 was a 7% loss of GDP for 18 months.

Another high profile & seemingly independent voice is Mervyn King who was Governor of the Bank of England between 2003-2013. He doesn’t publically seem to back either side but says that leaving the EU will make minimal difference & that the threat of us leaving is drastically exaggerated. He goes on to say the migration crisis & the EURO-zone financial issues are the much bigger threats & risks to both the UK & EU economies. Both of this will have a bigger impact if we remain.

WHAT TRADE DEALS CURRENTLY IN PLACE?
70% of the UKs GDP is internal, while 30% is overseas trade. Of this 30% only 44% of that is the EU so overall the EU is responsible for just 13% of our overall GDP. Our trade to the EU has declined year on year for the past 10 years & has seen an overall 10% drop over the last 10 years & with the issues with the Eurozone looks unlikely to improve any time soon. If we left the EU our ability to make new trade deals & remove tariffs means we are likely to massively increase our exports & shrink our reliance of the EU market further as we do more business with the rest of the world.

At the moment we can’t do our own trade deals, they have to come via the EU. In principle this isn’t an issue, as the idea is strength in numbers allowing us to negotiate better deals, but the reality is that the EU is not very good at getting trade deals done. The main reason for this is that the EU is negotiating on behalf of 28 countries with 28 different internal economies & 28 agendas. In every potential new trade partnership some countries will benefit & some will suffer if they remove the existing barriers to trade tariffs which will allow their EU neighbors to potentially buy goods from outside the EU for cheaper than they currently produce. This results in countries blocking & delaying the signing of new trade deals to protect themselves even if it hurts the majority of other countries in the EU. Examples of this are the Italians blocked a deal with Australia (to protect their textile trade), Germany don’t want a deal with Japan to protect their card industry, the French stretched out the Canada deal to 9 years to try & protect their farming industry & still don’t want to do a deal to allow African farmers to access their market. A deal with India was also abandoned last March after 9 years of talks without being able to find a deal to suit all parties. This has left us with a situation where out of the top 20 economies in the world besides ourselves 5 of those are in the EU, while 14 are outside. Out of those 14 none EU members we only have free trade deals currently worked out with 5, while we are currently locked out from doing a free trade with the other 9 of the biggest & fastest growing economies in the world. The unavoidable truth is we are subject to 27 other countries best interests & it means we can’t make deals that would help our UK businesses & economy due to the requirements of the EU.

WHAT TRADE DEALS WOULD BE LIKELY IF WE LEFT EU WITH REST OF THE WORLD?
There are 196 countries in the World & only 27 EU members, there are plenty of trade partners out there if we want them, many already trade with us despite tariffs & a few via bilateral agreements made with the EU. The scare mongering claims that we would have no trade partners is not accurate in the least.

If you consider we are the 5th largest economy in the world with a total Gross importing power of close to £500 Billion per year & the net spending power of nearly £200 Billion everyone will want a piece of that money to boost their economies. It is in other countries benefits to do bilateral free trade agreements with us in order to ensure the cost of business is as low as possible to ensure their exports they want to sell to us are the most competitive & value for money to encourage us to buy it from them, & the cost of goods they maybe currently don’t buy from us due to high tariffs is removed meaning our exports will be more cost effective & desirable for them to buy. Other countries will want to do business, Switzerland have already proven this.

The EU does have some bilateral free trade relationships in place with non EU countries like Mexico, Switzerland, Norway & South Korea. Since we already trade with these countries maintaining these relationships shouldn’t be an issue as all those nations will want to continue to trade with us due to our position as the world’s 5th largest economy & a net contributor. Putting up any barriers to trade with us would only negatively affect them so if we left the EU, the chances of us keeping

I think it’s safe to say that during this time making these new trade deals will be our priority & we very will likely be able to maintain the existing 30 tariff free non EU member trade deals (including top 20 economies Mexico, Switzerland, Turkey & South Korea & maybe Canada) without any change, while we will obvious immediately enter negotiations with the EU, & are likely to attempt to try & build new trade deals with China, Japan who were receptive to Switzerland & done within 2 years & then likely try to initiate negotiations with the Common Wealth countries likes of India, Australia & the much more complex USA. I think by the time our EU deals end we would have a very good chance of getting deals sorted for many of them.

If we left the EU we would be in the same position as Switzerland when it comes to free trade deals, in their case they have free trade deals with everyone we do (via partial EU membership we will come back to) but also have China, Japan & Canada all locked in that the EU currently don’t have which results in them exporting 5 times more than us despite being a much smaller country & economy.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE AND WHAT IS LIKELIHOOD TO GET NEW NEW TRADE DEALS?
It is true that EU takes of up to 9 years to get trade deals done but this wouldn’t be the same for us if we only negotiate for ourselves without having to take into accounts the agenda of 27 other countries. Negotiations between 2 countries with 2 agendas who both want to get a deal agreed as opposed to 29 countries with 29 agendas with some countries not wanting a deal will undoubtedly be simpler & quicker. I’ve seen estimates saying trade deals can be done within 2 years if built from scratch. This estimate is based on Switzerland’s (world 19th biggest economy) who had 9 rounds of negotiation with China (2nd biggest economy) between 2011-2013 to get the deal signed. Switzerland also took about 18 months to do a free trade deal with Japan (3rd biggest economy in the world) which saw 8 rounds on negotiations take place between 2007-2008. These 2 trade deals account £10 BILLION worth of exports & £17 Billion of imports per year so they are big boosts for their economy. It’s also worth pointing out China did a free trade deal with tiny Iceland who are the 110th biggest economy in the world that saw trade between the 2 nations increase by 20%, so the UK being the 5th biggest economy in the world would likely be something China & many other countries would want to be in business with.

It is also worth noting there are rules in place that if we decide to leave the EU we will have 2 years to negotiate any new trade deal from the date we active Article 50 & during that time all existing trade deals remain unchanged until we have negotiated new ones to take their place. I think it’s safe to say if we leave making new trade deals will be our priority we will obvious immediately enter negotiations with the EU to make a new trade only deal, we very will likely be able to maintain the existing 30 free trade deals with non EU member we currently have as part of the EU without any change & we will attempt to try & build new deals from scratch with the rest of the world. China & Japan & already proven they were receptive to doing a deal deals within the 2 year window. We would also be incredibly likely try to initiate negotiations with the Common Wealth countries likes of India, Australia & the much more complex USA. Looking at the world market place the EU is important to trade with, but there are a lot of other countries we could also work with who we aren’t able to at the moment who are very likely to be interested.

WHAT WOULD OUR FUTURE TRADE WITH THE EU AS A NON EU MEMBER BE LIKE?
We may want to leave the EU organisation but at the same time we certainly don’t want to turn our back on the countries we currently trade with within the EU. This is possibly the biggest unknown in the argument of exactly what would happen, but I think there is a very good argument that it won’t actually change too much We are the 5th biggest economy in the world, we are a rare net continuator to the EU region. Looking at Aprils trading figures We export in region of £25 Billion in the month & important £41 Billion, giving us a £16 Billion per months net contribution to the world which work out as a £7 Billion net contribution to the EU economy every month not counting any membership fees. Looking at the previous months it appears the important & export slightly goes up & down but the net figure remains largely around the £7 Billion level. So that works out annually it means we sell £132 Billion worth of goods to the EU, & buy £216 Billion, meaning at the end of the day it’s a £84 Billion net annual contribution to the EU. To put it simply the EU is good for UK business but we are much better for their business overall. If we left the EU we certainly wouldn’t want lose the trade we do with them & they wouldn’t want to lose our trade, so we will actively be trying to set up a new bilateral trade agreement to continue our mutually beneficial trading.

The argument that the EU would be willing to cut off their nose to spite their face & completely turn their back on our business & that £216 Billion we buy from them seems quite irrational. I simply don’t think that any economy would be stupid enough to turn their back on that type of money as it would result in crippling their industries, crashing their economy & generally hurt their own citizens for the sake of a grudge. Looking at specifics the UK buys £23 Billion worth of cars a year from the German car manufacturing industry, this is pretty much double the amount their next biggest EU customer buys (France) & is more than the 2 biggest EU customers (France & Italy) spend combined. This is just in one sector in Germany, & is only about 10% of our total EU purchasing, we are also one of the biggest customer for the French farming industry & we overall contribute over £40B a year to the French market so that 2 of the biggest countries & biggest industries in the EU who rely on our purchasing power & without it would be crippled. Would those industries & those countries & the many other like them happily stand by & allow their country to potentially go into recession just to teach us a lesson? Absolutely no chance, they need us & they would be forced to work out some type of deal, so the idea the EU would turn their back on us completely is completely impractical & any threats as much as they may want to carry them out, in the cold light of day would be empty ones. The UK has a surplus with every country in the EU except Cyprus, Greece, Malta & Luxemburg, so it’s absolute fact that without us every country in the already struggling Eurozone economy would be disadvantaged.

Some people say they will not do a trade deal & impose tariffs as punishment of about 3-4%. But the thing is tariffs imposed work both ways & any tariffs applied would likely make the mark up of selling their own goods to the UK higher & potential make the UK do less business as they can better value for money elsewhere. For example if we strike a free trade deal with Japan like Switzerland have & the EU want to impose tariffs; Japanese cars would be 10% cheaper than they currently are while German cars would be in potentially 4% more expensive. So it would means German cars immediately become less value for money as they are 14% dearer than the Japanese counterparts, which inevitably would lead to a drop in market share. The same is true for France with the African farmers who are currently unable to sell at a competitive price to the UK due to extremely high tariffs as high as 19% in some cases. This would be a theme that all EU countries would be competing for business from us with the handicap of EU tariffs against the rest of the world who can offer tariff free agreements. The people in who work in those EU industries would push their governments to do whatever it could to allow trade with the UK to continue to safe guard their livelihoods.

The EU may hate us for it but they can’t escape the fact they will need us if we left the EU & some type of free deal would have to be done to safeguard their own economies. Their posturing at the moment is more trying to feed into the fear & act as a deterrent to leave as they know that us leaving us in our best interests but not theirs. Exactly what a deal between us will be is an interesting question & is a much more accurate debate to have rather than if we won’t get one at all. Obviously the deal we want is the same bilateral Free trade agreement we have now without being an EU member & the EU would want to try & do a deal that makes us to take on some of their laws in exchange for the access to tariff free trading. Let’s look at the options & precedents:

The Switzerland & Norway are not members of the EU but have a trade deal established. Norway contributes £8.5m to the EU per year, while Switzerland annually contribute £450m, the UK currently Contributes £18 Billion Gross, £9 Billion NET. If the UK switched to their deals the fee is expected to drop to between 2b & 5b. As part of this deal Norway & Switzerland have access to all free trade deals the EU members currently have, & as already mentioned have the ability to make trade deals with the large & growing economies in the rest of the world that EU countries can’t do. They have to take on about 10% of the EU laws, while the UK takes on 90-100%. As partial members they have successfully opted out of many laws the EU has tried to impose that the UK has no choice but to adopt as a full member. Freedom of movement is indeed one of the terms both Switzerland & Norway both have to accept as part of their UK deal & although Switzerland is trying to change this, thus far unsuccessfully. Another thing is Norway & Switzerland both have no say at all in shaping any EU laws that may later be applied to them, while the UK has MEPs & should have a say but generally with minimal impact due to the nature of the EU. The Switzerland & Norway models won’t give us exactly what we want but they comes with benefits & drawbacks when compared to our current deal. We cannot rule out moving to one of these but neither is what we want.

Iceland, Turkey & a number of other European but non EU countries currently have trade deals access to the single market without paying a membership fee & accepting all of its rules such as freedom of movement & sovereignty

Another point seldom made is we don’t actually need to be part of the free market to trade with the EU. For example America is our biggest single country of imports yet it is not part of the EU. This option would mean paying tariffs to do trade (3-4% estimated) but it would be entirely possible that we could leave the EU, not get a deal & do business with Tariffs. This is not ideal as things in this scenario would be more expensive to import & export, but there are numerous potential solutions to this; the first would be to strike other trade agreements & get goods cheaper elsewhere from none EU countries. Secondly we could fulfil many of the need internally (EG our farming & fishing industry could start to provide us with what we currently import) which would help create jobs & keep more money in our own economy. Or finally the UK could actually subsidies trade with the EU, as the UK currently spends in the region of £18Billion GROSS a year on the EU (approx. £9 Billion NET) while the estimated cost of the tariffs that saves is just £5.6 Billion. So even in the worst case scenario of not being able to strike any tariff free deal with the EU, we could use the money saved in membership fee to subsidise the cost of business without the risk the loss of any business. I think this is one is very unlikely but it is an option we would have.

If we were net receivers rather than contributors & had a smaller economy without the buying power we have then the situation would be completely different, but in this instance we have an extremely strong position to negotiate from while their position is very weak & weakening with the possibility of another Greece bail out, Italian banks is trouble, the Eurozone financial issues & the fact the Europe is the only continent in the world that is stagnant in growth. Not to mention the governments of the countries in the EU, the people working in those industries won’t care about teaching the UK a lesson at the cost of their own economy. Any financial hardship they try to impose on us will ultimately hit them harder. As if we leave we can get new trade free partnerships to fill the gaps while they simply can’t due to the nature of the EU that currently sees them struggle to make deals for up to 9 years. There are also some things such as their airplane wings for Boeing planes that are only built in this country & exported all over the world as one of our biggest imports, if any tariffs were imposed on us there would be countries who would have to continue to buy some of our top exports out of a lack of other options.

The idea that trading would stop if we left the EU is a complete myth, the idea we couldn’t & wouldn’t cope is incorrect. David Cameron & George Osborne have both said a few months ago that we would be fine outside the EU & spoke at their belief we could do well. Recently they have changed their tune but on an Andrew Neal interview last week George Osborne was forced to sheepishly admit the UK would be ok if we left despite his previous comments to suggest otherwise.

I’ve also heard the argument that we are too small to survive, this is not accurate as tiny Iceland 110th largest economy can strike free trade deals with both the EU & China blows that out of the water when we are the 5th largest economy. And I’ve heard the argument that we couldn’t survive without being directly part of the EU, but 14 of the top 20 economies in the world are not in the EU & they are doing great & seen huge growth over recent years, so again it shows that being outside of the EU is not the death sentence many would have you believe.

WHAT IS THE EU LAW MAKING LIKE HOW DO UNELECTED OFFICIALS INFLUENCE THOSE LAWS?
The UK has had to accept laws that don’t benefit us that we voted against numerous times in recent years due to being outvoted. We are in fact the most outvoted country in the EU being on the losing side of the argument 12% of the time. 12% obviously isn’t too damning a number, but it means we have ended up accepting in the region of 90% of EU Laws over the last 10 years some of which we had very little say in the creating of. The issue with these laws is how they are made, it’s like an upside down version of the House of Lords / House of Commons relationship when it comes to law making.

In the UK we have elected officials in the House of Commons propose & pass potential laws as bills before any unelected officials in the House of Lords reviews & amends them. The HOL is generally unable to prevent bill passing into law, except in certain limited circumstances, it can delay bills & ask for parts to be considered but basically they end up having to accept what comes to them into law. In the EU it’s the opposite way round the unelected commission are the only ones who can propose EU laws & then the elected MEPs get to work on the bill & suggest changes but more often or not get it pushed through. It’s basically the wrong way round as the system is top down rather than bottom up so somewhat anti-democratic. The idea of having the top down system means that the system is rife for corruption.

The EU legislation & Lisbon Treaty means that the EU laws take precedent over our own laws, this means that we have to accept what the EU dictate, we were successfully able to negotiate our way out of about 5-10% of laws in the last decade but the issue is if the EU decide we have to take on something it is happening. The fact that we have unelected officials suggesting these laws & pushing them through & even when voting of the MEPs happens we have 27 other countries not looking out for the UK’s best interest it’s not hard to see how our government has its hands tied in many areas.

The argument for the number of laws made can swing from as high as 75% to as low as 7%, I believe a couple of debates close to one another when arguing the point Clegg said 7%, Cameron said 14% & Farage 75%. The reason the number fluctuates so much is that it depends on how you count the different types of law there is an EU Regulation, that is a law, then there is an EU Directive that sets out rules that countries should pull into their national laws, along with other type of legal precedents & rulings set by the EU. So we may be following EU Regulations that are not written into our laws, so the figure could be twisted to not count all of these laws that we have to follow as they aren’t our laws & say a low. Or you could throw every single thing the EU said in & count them all as our laws & say it’s a very high figure. It seems pretty hard to nail down an exact number, but 59% is often cited as a balanced figure of how many of our Laws come from the EU. Given all the issues of how the laws are made & the nature of the organization they come from it’s not something that inspires me with confidence. I’d much rather we had our own ability to control our laws rather than granting so much power to the EU over us. At the moment we might not think it’s too bad, but if they decide to make changes we are locked into their system & their law will always trump anything we want to do.

HOW WILL UK LAWS BE EFFECTED IF WE LEAVE?
I’ve heard it said that the EU is the only thing protecting us from the evil Torrie’s, & the EU legislation on human, women’s, maternity, holiday, workers’ rights are our only protection. This simply isn’t true as all of those & others are already written into UK law & leaving the EU will not affect any of our documented laws. Many of these laws have been in place long before we were part of the EU & in many cases the UK law is better than the EU minimum we have to provide. Examples of UK law:
- The equal pay act 1970,
- The National Insurance Act 1911 covers Maternity Leave. The EU only guarantees 14 weeks leave with no minimum maternity pay. While the UK grants 52 weeks leave with UK 90% pay for 6 weeks then £140 for 33 weeks.
-The Holiday Pay Act 1938. UK workers have the right to 5.6 weeks of holiday, the EU only provides for 4 weeks of holiday.
- The EU has no minimum wage the UK is one of 18 EU countries that self imposes a minimum wage & the UK has one of the highest minimum wages in the world.
- Sex Discrimination act 1975 & Race Discrimination act of 1965 were put into place here long before the EU bothered to catch up.
- Health & Safety Act 1974 sees us having some of the best working conditions in the world & when you compare those to some other countries in the EU it’s clear that the EU standards are pretty low compared to ours or the countries simply don’t enforce them as strongly as we do.

As hard to believe as it may seem the UK Government offers us better protection than the EU & even if we weren’t in the EU those laws wouldn’t change. The silly idea the Cameron or anyone would be willing & able to push through any amendments that would reduce all workers holiday & maternity pay would likely see a bigger rebellion within the party & an inability to get a majority in order to push it though. The Torrie’s have a tiny majority & at the moment they struggle to get laws pushed through as it is that are a lot less drastic or controversial than changing anyone’s holidays. Not to mention it would be political suicide for any party that attempted pushed it through & the people of the UK would be outraged. Look at the levels of protest that have come from cut effecting doctors & teachers, yet most people generally don’t care much unless it directly effects them. If any government tried to take away their holidays the whole country would be mobilized to protest. I think the notion that those key laws we all like to feel are basic rights are simply not going to change & rightly so. Also if it was likely with all the austerity cuts it already would’ve been attempted to reduce our laws to the EU bare minimums & the Torrie’s haven’t attempted it yet, so I think it’s safe to rule that argument out.

WHAT ABOUT EU CORRUPTION?
The EU is completely infamous for being corrupt our own MEP’s openly address the levels of corruption publically & mention it in session at the EU parliament. The EU’s own reports say that they estimate internal corruption is costing the organization 120 billion Euros a year & that 20-25% of the contract values are lost due to corruption during contract procurements. The EU’s financials accounts haven’t been signed off for 20 years without being caveated & he most recent year saw nearly 1,500 fraud allegations made against the EU. The EU ratified new anti-corruption legislation to tackle the issue yet 8 years after creating the laws they haven’t put them into practice. And corruption in the EU organization remains widespread.

Brussels is home of the second largest lobby industry in the world, only surpassed by Washington DC, & the EU has long been known to have ties to big businesses. There are many issues with the multinational corporations having a strong influence or even write legislation that effect themselves ensuring that protectionism is rife at the consumers or environments expense.

This is just corruption in the EU itself, there are also corruption issues is some of the countries that are part of the organization that currently aren’t being addressed by the EU. According to a European Parliament study corruption throughout Europe is costing almost £800 billion a year with Romania, Bulgaria & Croatia being named as the most corrupt countries in the EU. So we are paying a fortune to be part of a corrupt organization that is overseeing corrupt countries. I don’t think this is a type of organization we want to be paying £9B a year to be part of & trust with a further £9B of our money.

WHAT IS THE EU MEMBERSHIP FEE?
The Remain campaign love to say the 'we send 350m a week to the EU is a lie'. But the only part wrong with the claim is 'send', it should be changed to 'it costs us £350m a week GROSS'. And as far as I’m aware no one has ever claimed it was 350 NET, & like Andrea Leasdom correctly pointed out during one debate if I ask you how much you earn from your job you don't do all the sums to take off national insurance, pension, student loan & tax you just give the Gross figure. The way the Remain campaign are going on would make you think using Gross figures is some type of clever trick when it is a perfectly standard, commonly used & acceptable unit of measurement when quoting expenditure.

It is indeed correct about half of that money is sent to the EU & disappears forever never to be seen again, while the other doesn't actually leave country but is the property of the EU. We have no control over that approx. £9 Billion & have to spend it on whatever the EU tell us to. Some of those EU 'subsidies' are good, but not all, but the remain campaign seem to completely ignore the EU are taking money that was ours in the first place & force us to spend in ways we have no control over then take the credit for it as some kind of act of charity. The Remain camp also refuse to acknowledge many of those subsidies are not legally guaranteed & can be taken away in the future, some even suggest many of them will be removed by 2020. Farmers already say their EU subsidies diminish year on year & when the UK got the grant to make Liverpool capital of culture it means that the UK is probably not going to get another substantial redevelopment grant again for a long time as other countries get the attention. There is no such thing as EU investment it’s just our money being recycled in their name. The EU could easily decide after we potentially stay in our £350m a week Gross goes up & more of the 18b membership fee goes direct to Brussels & less stays in the UK. The Leave campaign have said they pledge to continue with the subsidies paid by the EU if we were to leave, so in theory the Farmers who currently benefit from the EU grants will be much better off as they will get the payments & also have a lot of new potential customers to sell too.

If the leave campaign were really lying & the real gross figure was so much lower you know the Remain campaign would be shouting the real figure from the roof tops, they'd use that 'lie' to prove the campaign is based on a sham. But the fact they aren’t telling us the real figure & proving their claims tells you a lot. All they do is keep saying it's a big lie over & over again but won’t quote an alternative figure or a talk about how the figure breaks down. They are hoping to discredit the leave campaign without facts, proof or alternative information & are hoping you take their word for it & don't check for yourself. Basically it's a pedantic argument, like saying a footballer like Gareth Bale's move to Real Madrid for £80m is a false figure because Madrid only paid £20 mill up front, with the rest in annual installments of £20m over the coming years. Regardless of how the deal is made up, that total sum is the cost of the deal. £350m per week of the UK's budget IS NOT controlled by the UK & is the EU's to do with as it pleases. So I don't think quoting 350m is remotely a lie. Even if you want to be pedantic & say you only care about the NET figure & ignore everything else, it's still in the region of 180m is 100% undeniably sent to the EU every week & that is still a lot of money that could be spent better.

If we pooled the amount we spent on EU membership since the Torrie’s came into power in 2010, it would have been more than enough to clear our whole deficit without a single austerity cut. Of course it's not as simple as that, but it proportionally shows how much money we spend & begs the question we are getting value for money.

WHAT ARE THE EU SPENDING OUR MEMBERSHIP FEE ON?
They pay 10,000 employees more money than we pay our prime minister. They also get on top of their £70-100k wages the following benefits:
Relocation allowance,
Travel allowance,
Family allowance,
Housing allowance,
Family allowance,
Private healthcare allowance,
Private education allowance,
entertainment allowance,
you also get £250 a day for turning up each time you go to session, a further 41k for computers & phones & 225k for staff (which is generally your friends & family). They also gave themselves a special tax rate, they only paid 8% tax

They also waste an estimated 350m a year in moving the whole organisation briefly to Strasbourg from Brussels every few weeks for no real reason. There are numerous documentaries talking about this.

I know we have expense issues & questions of corruption in our political system but it’s obscene in the EU. I think the idea of having 2 levels like we have in the UK can work but what they have in Brussels has no credibility or integrity. I don’t think we want or need them governing us, they don’t care about us only using us to make money & using their control over us to build in protectionism for their big business colleagues.

WHAT IS THE EUS EFFECT ON UK BUSINESS AND WAGES?
We hear that the EU trade is tied up to a number of jobs in the UK, I’ve heard 3million quoted by the remain side & of course we don’t want to lose any jobs. But inevitably some will be lost if we leave the EU, but with the information already discussed about how we will try & strike new trade deals I don’t think it’s unfair to think many of this 3 million jobs will remain unchanged, or slightly modified as we continue trade with the EU as a nonmember & make new trade partners. But we also need to look at the negative impact that the EU has on British jobs & industry, below is a list of EU business moved aboard to prop up the EU’s flagging economy at the UK’s expense. All of these workers at these places were cost jobs by the EU so I don’t know the exact number but I imagine the EU is probably responsible for costing as many job as it has created not to mention taking the money out of our economy. The following companies have seen their UK factories closed & the manufacturing taken abroad with the aid of EU grants, no doubt that it was good for the businesses bottom line but it hurt our economy & workers (Credit Pete Giles for the following stats)
- Cadbury
- Ford Transit
- Jaguar Land Rover
- Peugeot
- British Army's new Ajax vehicle
- Dyson
- Crown Closures
- M&S
- Hornby
- Gillette
- Texas Instruments Greenock
- Indesit
- Sekisui Alveo
- Hoover
- ICI integration
- Boots s
- JDS

The most famous case of a UK industry destroyed by the EU is our finishing industry, when we joined the EU the rights to fish our waters were given to other countries & taken from our local fishermen in an attempt to boost other economies. Now Spanish boats come to the UK, fish on our coasts & sell the fish back to us at a markup while our old fishermen were left unemployed. This effects the UK economy & as well as jobs, & it doesn’t feel remotely right or fair.

It’s also a case that low skilled workers wages are artificially suppressed due to the freedom of movement act & uncontrolled immigration numbers. As one of the best paying countries in the whole world people from the EU countries that have massively lower minimum wages will always be attracted here understandably earn more money than they do at home. The minimum wage in Bulgaria for example is the equivalent to £142 per month. Compared to the £1050.50 per month we get in the UK. This means that Bulgarians have the opportunity to come to the UK no questions asked & receive a wage over 7 times the minimum wage in their country. To put this into perspective it’s like earning £12,606 per year in the United Kingdom, but having the opportunity to freely go to another country to earn £92,023 as a minimum yearly wage doing the same job. I’m not saying immigration is bad or everybody will come here it’s just the circumstances means we have a massive issue with oversupply of low skilled workers, compared to the demand, increasing competition for jobs which drives wages down. Granted there are some jobs that no one wants to do & immigration gratefully fills. But equally there are many British citizens that aren’t academically gifted, aren’t innovators & don’t have much social mobility that find themselves in a situation where they have massive competition for any job they apply from their fellow countrymen & an uncontrolled number of foreign workers who are all happy to work for minimum wage, meaning employers never have to offer any more. Even the Chairman of the Britain Stronger in Europe group said wages would rise outside the EU.

One thing that also isn’t talked about is the £650million in fines paid by the UK to the EU for small or trivial breaches of complex EU legislation that don’t really matter over the past decade reported by UK parliament. Some of these fines are for as daft as things such as failure to fly the EU Flag on EU funded sites on not using the EU on letter heads. In the grand scheme of things this isn’t really a deal breaker but that is the type of silliness that goes on with the EU.

It’s also worth pointing out only 10% of UK companies export but all 90% of them have to follow all EU regulations on top of the standard ones we have. These include the often quoted daft laws like Banana shape & things like this. The fact British businesses have to follow laws without doing business with the EU that causes unnecessary cost & wastage to smaller businesses.

FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT?
It’s naive to think that there aren’t some homophobic & racist people backing the Leave campaign based mostly on the issue of immigration, but unlike some would have you believe not everyone in the Leave campaign is a mindless bigot & I’d suggest those type of people are in the minority & those accusations are thrown around more to discredit the campaign rather than genuine observations. To make it clear no one in their right mind wants to stop immigration all together, it has many positive effects in the UK, but uncontrolled immigration has many negative effects too. It’s not about who is coming from where, what colour, religion or nationality they have as much as it’s about the quantities of additional people entering the country. It’s true many people from the UK move abroad but even after we take those numbers away our NET population increase is like adding a city the size of Newcastle (330,000) every single year. This number has massively risen over the years & shows little sign of slowing down & the prediction is at the rate we are going in ten years it will be like adding a country the size of Iceland to our population (3.3m). The issue of this is that before we add another person to the country right now we already have a shortage of houses, school places, doctors, in some areas a shortage of jobs & the NHS is struggling to cope with demand. The stats suggest we need to build a new house every 7 minutes to keep up, & with the best will in the world any UK government simply wouldn’t be able to do that. We currently don’t have the infrastructure in place to assimilate so many extra people when we are already failing to meet demand with our existing population. Its simple maths, we need to ensure everyone currently living here & everyone who moves here can have the best possible quality of life & we shouldn’t be willing to sacrifice that just to try & squeeze more people in. We need to get on top of the supply demand ratio before it spirals completely out of control & we end up in a terrible position that will be very difficult to fix, we need to be proactive & avoid a crisis rather than knowingly walk into it.

Of those 330,000 immigrants moving to the UK half of this is coming from the other 168 countries in the world which we do have control over but & allow in. If this is this too many & if they are the quality of people coming in adding to our skills & economy is a question for the government, but the other half is coming from the 28 EU members & they can come to the UK no questions asked at a moment’s notice.

We will always need immigration but if we control it we can have all of the benefits without the negative impacts that will affect us all. Controlled immigration would allow us to bring in the best skills from all over the world easier than we currently do as the system is skewed to favour our EU neighbours. It would allow us to only bring in those people we need to do the jobs we have open, which would priorities our own low skilled workers in competitive fields & allow us to fill the industries we have a shortage in. It would allow us to slow the population growth down to a more manageable rate where we can invest in our infrastructure knowing it will actually go some way to closing the gap between supply & demand rather than see the gap increase due to our inability to keep up. No other country in the world except the EU has this idea of Freedom of movement & we don’t say the rest of the countries are racist or unfair for trying to control their boarder to ensure they do what’s best for their country.

Other arguments I’ve heard are the immigrants hold up the NHS & do a great job, no one is questioning anyone’s contribution, & those people will continue to be vital to the NHS, but they are already in place & if required we can bring more people in. But if we only need a few hundred people why do we need to allow unlimited numbers in? Why can’t we just bring people in as & when needed? No one is suggesting anyone currently living in the UK would be deported, it’s already been confirmed anyone already here would be deported so that’s not an issue at all as their rights are protected by the Vienna Convention. The same goes for UK citizens settled in EU countries, they will have the right to remain there, the immigration controls wont effect people who are already in place, only those in the future.

I’ve heard the criticism that the proposed Australian style points system of immigration doesn’t work as their numbers of immigration are so high, but that is only because the Australians are choosing to let those people in. If anything it shows that the system works as Australia have a demand & they are increasing the supply while ensuring the quality is high.

Cameron has claimed that his renegotiations means if people come to the UK without a job & don’t get one within 6 months they have to leave, this is also simply not true the nature of free movement means that is unenforceable.

The EU will certainly want to make any trade deal we do with them contain Freedom of movement, but there are precedents for countries that avoid the freedom of movement in tariff free EU deal. South Korea, Mexico, Turkey, Albania, Macedonia all have free trade deals that doesn't contain freedom of movement, Switzerland have numerous trade deals with other countries that don't include freedom of movement, & even tiny Iceland had a trade agreement with China that also doesn't contain it. Also the UK currently exports many goods to America & other place with without a deal or any freedom of movement. So freedom of movement is a bargaining chip we may have to work with, but it is by no means a certain thing we can’t avoid. Any remain person saying we have any control now or ever will over EU migrant if we stay is bare face lying.

WHAT ARE THE SECURITY RISKS?
I’ve heard people say that if we leave the EU we will be less secure, I don’t believe this is the case, this is supported by former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove who served between 1999-2004. He states that we are the biggest & best intelligence service in the EU & we give much more than we get, the US is our biggest intelligence sharing partner, so the idea that the EU would deliberately end info sharing to us would be more damaging to them than us, so why would they do that? Not to mention the idea of putting lives at risk to try & prove a point to the UK for leaving the EU. Most of the intelligence is shared directly rather than through the EU itself as some type of go between so the EU have very little to do with our intelligence service & leaving the EU would likely have no change on our intelligence sharing relationships. He also goes on to say it will give us 2 big advantages, the ability to deport terrorists easily (remember the fiasco caused by the EU preventing us deporting Abu Hamza?!) & it will allows us to carefully monitor & check who comes into the country that we can’t really do if they have a EU passport, meaning we would be able to block suspicious characters & criminals in a way we currently can’t do. At the moment we have a list of suspects who pose an immediate threat that we have the right to turn away, but because anyone can get onto a plane with no notice our security services have no chance to check into their backgrounds & even if we did we wouldn’t be allowed to deny entry under the current EU legislation
The European Arrest Warrant is another thing that has been pushed as a great thing, as it allows us to supposedly easily deport foreign criminals but in reality it doesn’t work & we continue to house & pay for thousands of criminals we want to deport according to The Home Affairs Select Committee. They recently released a report stating we currently have 10,000 prisoners from the EU costing the UK tax payer £240 million per year. With a further nearly 6,000 people from the EU with past criminal records settled in the UK. There are 2 main issues with sending these prisoners back to their countries, firstly the procedure ‘fundamentally flawed; & secondly some countries simply refuse to take their convicts back.

CAN WE STAY AND CHANGE IT FROM THE INSIDE?
Even the biggest backers of the Remain campaign say the EU frustrates them & they want to see lots of change, then go on to say we need to stay in & change it. The issue with this is we’ve been trying to change the EU for years without success, & when Cameron said ‘we need reforms, I’m going to get them & I won’t take no for an answer’ & threatened as one of the biggest continuators to leave the EU refused to change. We got a couple of minor bits & pieces that aren’t legally binding but not the real important things we wanted despite Cameron’s claims that he got a good deal. If the EU was ever going to reform it would have done during those meetings when we threatened to leave & had the leverage the fact it didn’t have any interest in change under those circumstances shows if we Remain we have no chance of every getting what we want. The writing is painfully on the wall, what we have is what we are going to get, there is no changing it & if we remain the ideas of changing it from the inside are very naive.

HOW WILL THE FINANCIAL TROUBLE IN THE EU IMPACT THE DECISION?
The Eurozone is having many issues, we’ve got massive unemployment in some countries, austerity measures, & another potential bail out coming for Greece, whispers that other countries may require bail outs soon & many countries wanting out of the EU. 60% of people in a recent poll said they wanted to leave the EU & on the back of our referendum lots of other countries such as France are seeing their people ask for their own referendums. I think looking at everything, including the rise in popularity in far right parties in France & Germany shows that the EU is in big trouble. I honestly think the EU could collapse based on the trouble it faces & if it does I believe we will be in a much stronger position if we have already left & began sorting ourselves out rather than being inside when it goes down. It’s also worth pointing out that generally recessions come from large businesses failing & the trickledown effect. The whole world will be effected by recessions regardless of if they are in or out of the EU. For example the American banks had a knock on effect on the EU countries despite the fact they weren’t in the EU, if we remain in the EU & there is a crash we are going to receive no protection from the knock on effects compared to if we leave. Arguably being outside of the EU means that we could strike new trade deals with other countries (like Iceland did with China during the recession fallout) to try & improve the situation in a way no EU country could do.

WILL THE CALAIS ‘JUNGLE’ MOVE TO THE UK?
This is a relatively effective scare tactic threatening that the French would stop trying to control the migrant population in Calais & let them all on the boats over here for us to deal with them. It’s a scary idea in practice but in reality it’s nothing to do with the EU it’s a bi-lateral agreement solely between the UK & France made in 2003 called the Le Touquet agreement allowing British border force officers to carry out passport checks in Calais. There have been people arguing both ways but the French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that France would honor the agreement & cancelling it would ‘not a responsible solution’ going on to say: "It would send a signal to people smugglers & would lead migrants to flow to Calais in far greater numbers. A humanitarian disaster would ensue. It is a foolhardy path, & one the government will not pursue." John Vine, the UK's former chief inspector of borders & immigration also confirmed that EU membership has no connection to the Le Touquet agreement & leaving the EU would have no direct impact on it either way. The truth is that the Le Touquet agreement is between us & France, any decision by France to cancel it would most likely be through a negotiation & I think it is very likely that some type of mutually beneficial agreement could be struck. There is even the chance we could stay in the EU & they could try & cancel it on us. It’s also worth noting France are actually building some form of housing for the migrants there & have already started to clear the ‘Jungle’ so the fact they are spending millions on building for them makes me think they aren’t immediately looking to open the boarders on us. The other thing worth noting is that if the worst case scenario & the boarders were opened we would have the ability to stop people on arrival, contain them & send them back, which at the moment we can’t hold people at boarders, so we would still be trying to battle the issue. The other thing that may come into any agreement is with controlled immigration we could take more of the refugees at the expense of EU labour without our population numbers sky rocketing, I could see France potentially wanting us to take people from Calais over a longer period of time in exchange for controlling the boarders. This is an option that could work all round as we could sensibly control immigration we could factor in granting asylum seekers more comfortably.

WHY DOES THE LEAVE CAMPAIGN NOT HAVE A HARD SET OF POLICIES?
Unfortunately a big issue with this whole campaign from either side is using this as a popularity contest rather than a political debate. The Leave campaign is not an alternative government, in theory if we vote Leave Cameron will remain Prime minister (although I doubt that) & since Cameron is completely biased to the other side Leave campaigners currently can’t promise exact policies only proposals. I can understand this may make some people uneasy, but I believe the case for Leaving is more compelling & if we leave whoever is running the country will have no choice but do take the required action, I can’t see Cameron deliberately allowing the country to nose dive by refusing to negotiate any new trade deals just to spite those that backed Leave. And to be honest I think the chances of it being Cameron in charge after we potentially leave are slim to none with all the in fighting in the Tory party. So voting out will likely give us the benefit of a new leader too! The Leave campaign have made the following pledges but without being in office they are only pledges rather than policies
- All subsidies paid by the EU will continue to be covered by the UK government
- Australian Style point system
- Remove VAT from household bills
- Invest more in the NHS
- Deport foreign criminals
- Make new trade deals

WHAT IS TTIP?
At the heart of the EUs protectionism for big business at is the impending TTIP. If you haven’t heard about TTIP, in brief it’s a trade deal America want to do that will give big business even more rights & removes protections for the environment & people in order to maximise profits & privatization. This is why Obama wants the UK in the EU as he would be able to get the world’s 5th biggest economy in as part of a job lot with Europe where we may resist more or outright refuse the terms if we were on the outside. The specifics of the TTIP would allow businesses the rights to sue governments for loss of earnings, the example I’ve heard which illustrates the problem is the cigarette companies that are currently forced to put health warnings on their packets could sue their national government for loss of earnings caused by people being deterred by the warnings. The TTIP is immoral capitalism to the next level at the expense of everyone, sure it might give us free trade with America, but it’s not a deal worth doing. Another thing that TTIP will do is that it means all government services such as the NHS would become open for privatization, I know Corbyn has been very against this. It staggers me the TTIP actually exists, it gives big business even more power when we should be taking it away. TTIP is very likely to be applied to the EU in the coming years, I think this alone is actually a good reason to get out.

HOW WILL PEACE BE EFFECTED?
People on the remain side have tried to lump NATO & the EU into one organization when they are in fact very different. NATO is an intergovernmental military alliance while the EU is a monetary trade union that has mutated into something else. We are not in any way going to leave NATO, if wars break out they are the organization that will take charge & our relationship to the EU has no bearing on this. Keeping that in mind in makes me even more uncomfortable that the EU want to build their own army, as why do they need one? The fact they believe they do is quite an unsettling proposition & I worry about what the plans are for that & if we remain we will undoubtedly have to join. I hate the idea of sending our troops to war at the best of times, so to send them to fight for the EU is plain wrong to me. The EU army idea was confirmed by European commission president Jean Claude Juncker, the head of the EU recently after many dismissed it as crazy conspiracy theories for a number of years.

WILL SCOTLAND LEAVE THE UK?
This is a much bigger risk for Scotland to leave us now than it was a year ago and it is a much bigger risk than the UK leaving the EU. Last year when the referendum happened they had £10 Billion net loss when oil revenue was £2b selling barrels for £130 each. Since then their oil have dropped just £30 a barrel. Becoming independent back that would have been very difficult but it would have been much easier than it would now. Scotland spend £1400 more per head on public services, & because of their deficit England pays the difference. If they go independent they would have to take massive cuts, raise taxes or stop offering services. Leaving would mean massive austerity cuts & they would have to take a proportional peace of the national debt with them. Their GDP deficit would be so bad there would be a serious question of if they would be allowed to join the EU.

All of the facts & figures I’ve put in here are true to the best of my knowledge, I’ve tried to check into everything the best I can to ensure the info is based on something rather than blind opinion & baseless assumption, although of course due to the nature of predicting the future conjecture will be part of any debate. I am fully aware there are people on either side of the debate who will agree & disagree with lots of stuff I’ve written, So if you don’t want to take my word for anything fair enough, definitely don’t listen to the media headlines alone, try & do your own research, watch & much as you can, read the argument from both sides & question the source of the info. At least if you’ve managed to read all of this you have the benefit of all my research available to you to make an informed decision. The one undeniable fact is no country has left the EU before like we suggest, this means that it isn’t a tried & tested formula, we have to look at the facts & make an educated decision.

But there are a couple of facts that I feel are hard to argue, if we remain in the EU we will almost certainly face these issues:
- Our laws will always give precedent to EU law suggested by officials we didn’t elect
- Our elected government will never be able to make any changes that go against EU law
- The EU will likely always have corruption issues
- The major reforms we want to the EU are unlikely ever happen
- We will never be able to make free trade agreements for ourselves
- We will unlikely to get free trade with many of the world’s leading & growing economies within the EU for a long time if ever
- We will be faced with the prospect of TTIP as part of the EU
- Controlling EU immigration numbers from the EU will never be possible
- Immigration numbers will continue to rise & population increase steeply
- Our minimum wage will always be a massive draw to the rest of the EU
- Our low skilled workers will continue to have their wages suppressed by oversupply of workforce
- The demand for house, doctors, school places will intensify
- There is no guarantee we will continue to receive our subsidies back in the same level
- We will continue to spend £9Billion net per year to the EU this figure will likely rise
- The Eurozone is struggling & our exports to it will likely continue to fall
- the economist saying we will fail (even if you ignore the flaws in their models) have got a lot wrong in the past
- Many of the Economists backing Remain arguably have conflicts of interest to their impartiality
- There is a potential we will have to join an EU army
- If we stay now, the EU will rules us likely for 40+ years (if the EU doesn’t fall apart)
- The EU we voted to join was just a trade organization it has become a lot more than that

And here is the biggest question I have is; why if leaving the EU is such a huge risk have we been given the option to leave at all? If the government ran all the model & sums & saw that all their predictions that make up ‘project fear’ came out as an almost certain disaster why would they risk letting the public make the wrong decision & destroy the country? The fact we’ve got the option shows that leaving the EU is not half the risk that some would have you claim, & to the contrary there is a lot of evidence to suggest we have a very bright future ahead of ourselves

Every success story starts with someone taking that big step, there will always be doubters & those afraid of change, but I don’t think this is a blind leap of faith, I think the facts prove we have more potential as a country that we haven’t realised yet. It’s not a right wing or left wing debate, it’s not racist or xenophobic or multi-cultural & liberal, it’s not a popularity contest or a vote for the next prime minister, it’s not red or blue, this decision is the biggest our country will ever make it will affect us today & our children’s future & we have to get this right.

Originally Posted by DrB0b

^

It's not all in there at all. It's just a lot of unsubstantiated waffle. A mixture of lies, hot air, and downright silliness. A rant, basically. Why is every half-arsed right-winger on this forum suddenly coming out with these ludicrous tub-thumping diatribes, have you all been stricken by a Churchill complex?

Nice edit and pic of Lady Di

Originally Posted by DrB0b

^

It's not all in there at all. It's just a lot of unsubstantiated waffle. A mixture of lies, hot air, and downright silliness. A rant, basically. Why is every half-arsed right-winger on this forum suddenly coming out with these ludicrous tub-thumping diatribes, have you all been stricken by a Churchill complex?

Agreed, he has just posted a pile of crap which is unsubstantiated, incorrect and pure supposition. Nice copy paste though.

Originally Posted by Ronin

Originally Posted by Chittychangchang

Originally Posted by Ronin

Originally Posted by Chittychangchang

Eight years of austerity and cuts in the U.K all compounded by lie after lie by bankers, labour, Tories and The defunct Lib/dems.

What has that got to with the EU?

50 million reasons everyday, better of spent at home instead of propping the EU up.

This really is the most garbled post I have seen in a while. The austerity cuts have nothing to do with the EU! By the way the contribution to the EU by Britain equals 0.003% of GDP - look it up!

Not looking it up, but that sounds wrong or you have a good deal.

Wrong

Originally Posted by helge

Originally Posted by Ronin

Originally Posted by Chittychangchang

Originally Posted by Ronin

Originally Posted by Chittychangchang

Eight years of austerity and cuts in the U.K all compounded by lie after lie by bankers, labour, Tories and The defunct Lib/dems.

What has that got to with the EU?

50 million reasons everyday, better of spent at home instead of propping the EU up.

This really is the most garbled post I have seen in a while. The austerity cuts have nothing to do with the EU! By the way the contribution to the EU by Britain equals 0.003% of GDP - look it up!

Not looking it up, but that sounds wrong or you have a good deal.

Wrong

0.5% of GDP. 26p per day each for visa-free travel, health insurance throughout the EU, a single market for business and the freedom to live, work, and retire in any EU country, not a bad deal. The British are, per head, the 8th largest contributors to the EU budget and get an awful lot back for what they pay. Good to see them living up to their reputation as Kee Niow whiners.

Originally Posted by DrB0b

0.5% of GDP. 26p per day each for visa-free travel, health insurance throughout the EU, a single market for business and the freedom to live, work, and retire in any EU country, not a bad deal. .

So,, how many pence per day to provide these services to your wandering EU compatriots ?

You haven't got the numbers, do you ?

^^ yes we get our plastic beads for £50 million a day, but is an EU without borders, which means in the long term the end of countries in the EU, a price people know they are paying?

Originally Posted by helge

Originally Posted by DrB0b

0.5% of GDP. 26p per day each for visa-free travel, health insurance throughout the EU, a single market for business and the freedom to live, work, and retire in any EU country, not a bad deal. .

So,, how many pence per day to provide these services to your wandering EU compatriots ?

You haven't got the numbers, do you ?

What?

Originally Posted by helge

Wrong

You are but then like so many you would rather rant and believe half-truths than examine the facts!

Brexit polls today show both sides neck and neck after Cox's murder apparently caused a swing towards Remain.

EU referendum: Immigration target 'impossible' in EU, Vote Leave says

David Cameron's "impossible" pledge to reduce net migration to below 100,000 must be abandoned if he wins the referendum, Vote Leave has said.
Gisela Stuart, who chairs the group, said promising to control numbers and then failing to do so was "corrosive" of public trust in politicians.

Ms Stuart said the UK was an "open and tolerant nation" that had been made "better and stronger" by immigration and should be "proud" about helping refugees.

But the Labour MP said the EU's policies were "failing in humanitarian terms".
"The tragic scenes unfolding in the Mediterranean underline how badly the European Union is handling population movements and migration pressures," she said.
"If we are to maintain public confidence in migration and prevent extremists from dominating the debate, it is essential that elected politicians are accountable for decisions about migration."

Gisela Stuart is one of the most prominent Labour figures in the Leave campaign
Ms Stuart said voting to Remain meant there would be "no control" over migration from the EU, "no matter how great the pressure on schools, hospitals and housing becomes or how much wages in our poorest communities are pushed down".

She pointed to the fact that in 2015 net migration - the difference between the number of people coming to the UK for at least a year and those leaving - was 333,000, according to the Office for National Statistics.

That figure was the second highest on record, while the figure for EU-only net migration was 184,000 - equalling a record high.

Ms Stuart said: "It is clear that it will be impossible to reduce net migration below 100,000 if we vote to stay in the EU.

"The prime minister must now make clear that he will abandon this manifesto pledge if he wins the referendum on Thursday. He cannot continue to promise to do something that he knows is impossible.

"Inside the EU we don't control our borders and cannot control the movement of people coming here from the EU."
Ms Stuart said that by leaving the EU the UK would "take back control" and politicians would have to keep their promises on migration.

She said in the past Mr Cameron had ended up dropping promised policies on EU migration - such as EU migrants having to have a job offer to come to in the UK - "because Brussels would not allow them".


EU referendum: Immigration target 'impossible' in EU, Vote Leave says - BBC News

Imagine what a cluster fuck a European army would be! One to rival Nato?

To lighten the mood...

Originally Posted by ENT

Ms Stuart said that by leaving the EU the UK would "take back control"

How? Details?

Ask her.

browsing through newspaper articles over the past few weeks, listening to radio broadcasts and reading the waffle on this thread just confirms to me that there is nobody, absolutely nobody, who can say with any certainty what will happen should england vote to leave the eu.

it is a huge gamble that will be decided on the often ridiculous prejudices and false perceptions of the mostly bone headed, blinkered and poorly informed population of england.

it will be decided on the anticipated price of the two most important things to the english, corn flakes and mobile phones.

may god have mercy on us.

Amen...

3 days to go before UK self fuck,

self fuck you say, whilst you belgian no hopers have been reamed, creamed, steamed and dry cleaned for the benefit of the germans and the french for the past 20 years.

what has the eu done for you? other than fill your squalid slums with an underclass of ungrateful kebab munching ragheads slavering to kill the lot of you.

belgium! pah, its become nothing more than a sub-district of westphalia.