Referendum is a load of crap.!!

[accyman]

if we leave the EU we should have a boarder control half way down the channel tunnel so its easier to send unwanteds back

theres already a space suitable for doing this made when they sent the drills off to the side

just unload the unwanted and put them back on the return train to France without them ever setting foot in to the UK

that will probably sound racist to some but i dont care on single bit because governments consecutive failure upon failure to control the issue has led to many many people been fed up on this topic and no one will believe anything a politician says about the issue because every single one of them that has had the power to do something has only made the issue worse

[yerself]

Here's an article and map from YouGov of the most eurosceptic/europhile areas in the country:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/02/28...c-map-britain/

[Lucysgirl]

After the matter of the auditing of the EU accounts which were not signed off for several years I have a couple or so other concerns on whether or not to stay in the EU.

This website shows that the auditors have been able to sign off the accounts every year since 2007 but there still seems to be some questionable misappropriations of money:- https://fullfact.org/europe/did-audi...ign-eu-budget/

Anyone who has a small business knows how much red tape arrives in the post.

Other black marks against the EU are the interpretations of "free movement" whereby every Tom, Dick and Harry can enter any country with hands outstretched for as many benefits they think are their "human rights". There's nothing more galling than to see a foreigner bring his whole family on a "package holiday" spent in a foreign owned house so that they can register yet another child's birth in order to have larger benefits than that offered in their own country. Frankly I'm sick to death of Eastern European women and other foreigners being housed & given cash with no other visible means of support but making money on the side by fake marriages. The French with African heritage seem to have a penchant for scamming our housing benefits too as can be seen in some documentaries. It's obviously easy to go to various councils, obtain a house, then secretly sublet whilst they actually live in France. Then each month hop over the Channel to collect their rents and benefits. Further, that we have to accept convicted foreign thieves and murderers without a murmer is another bugbear.

The UK isn't the only country to want changes and this has been highlighted with the influx of refugees and igrants, which I think was not only due to Mrs Merkel's invitation but also there was another massive surge from September 2015 onwards when Putin started bombing civilian homes. I don't think he did this solely to assist Hussain, he did it to (1) cause a diversion away from Ukraine, and (2) to disrupt and cause concern to Eastern European countries who hadn't thought that they would have to take in any foreigners never mind tens of thousands as is being requested. For decades, they have had to cope with Soviet beaurocrats on their soil they're not ready to be "multi cultural".
-
EU President, Donald Tusk's letter has addressed my main concerns (bits are copied & pasted below)

commitment to increase efforts to enhance competitiveness. We will regularly assess progress in simplifying legislation and reducing burden on business so that red tape is cut.
recognises that in light of the United Kingdom's special situation under the Treaties, it is not committed to further political integration. It also reinforces respect for subsidiarity, and I propose that the Member States discontinue the consideration of a draft legislative act where a number of national parliaments object to it on the grounds of subsidiarity, unless the concerns raised can be accommodated. The importance of respecting the opt-out regime of Protocols 21 and 22, as well as national security responsibilities is also underlined.
the clarification of the interpretation of current rules, including a draft Commission Declaration on a number of issues relating to better fighting abuse of free movement.
The draft Decision of the Heads notes, in particular, the Commission's intention to propose changes to EU legislation as regards the export of child benefits and the creation of a safeguard mechanism to respond to exceptional situations of inflow of workers from other Member States.
-
If these are met, I'll possiblbly be voting to stay in the EU - unless my offspring's argument can persuade me otherwise :-)

[Margaret Pilkington]

Lucysgirl, if you believe the fairy stories spun by the likes of Donald Tusk then you are either naive or deluded.
Once the referendum result is known, especially if the electorate votes to stay in the EU, all of these reforms will be kicked so far into the long grass it would take an intrepid explorer to find them.
The EU needs us to stay in.
We contribute a large chunk of money to this corrupt organisation.....and our influence( because we are a small country) is negligible.
The EU compromises our security by allowing the free movement of people from the EU (many of those refugees/asylum seekers/migrants whose origins, backgrounds and allegiances are unknown)have been given EU passports which gives them free movement.....and once they get here they are not going to want to leave.

The negotiations by David Cameron were a joke...He asked for very little and got even less....and what he thinks he has achieved will vanish like spring snow because the other members will not support these measures....They are not guaranteed in any way to be binding.

We really do need to leave. We need to be the authors of our own fate....We do not need to be part of the undemocratic EU, where the bureacrats (who are unelected) make the rules, and because they are unelected we cannot get rid of them.

[Lucysgirl]

My reply to Margaret hasn't appeared - apparently I was timed out and now my letter is lost in the ether.

It's teatime but I'll be back :-)

[Margaret Pilkington]

Lucysgirl, I will look forward to that...your posts are always interesting and considered.
However I do not share your optimism of the reform of the EU.
It is never going to happen.....and not only is it not going to happen, whichever way the electorate votes, the other member states will try to find some way to humiliate the UK for trying to seek reforms.

This organisation was sold to the British public as a trading organisation.....not as a political federalist state.
We sell less to the EU than we buy......and yet the bureacrats have been talking of slapping tariffs on any goods which we might want to sell within the EU. Does that not remind you of school yard tactics?

The migrant crisis has been mismanaged by members of the EU.
Letting in people who are economic migrants rather that true refugees is entirely wrong.....and for these people to say where they will go proves that they are NOT refugees.
Our future lies in a different direction.
If we vote to leave, then I feel pretty sure we will be sent away to consider our errant ways, and come back with a better answer.

[accyman]

every single deal cameron makes to keep us in the EU can be turned back after the vote and more than likely will be

there is absolutely nothing preventing any deal been broken once a stay in result is made

[Margaret Pilkington]

Originally Posted by accyman

every single deal cameron makes to keep us in the EU can be turned back after the vote and more than likely will be

there is absolutely nothing preventing any deal been broken once a stay in result is made

Exactly.....and they (the top knobs ) in this bloated corrupt organisation have openly admitted this.
So anyone who votes to stay in is off their onion.
There is no chance that the EU will reform in a way which serves the member countries.
Those at the top of the EU organisation are there not to make our lives better. They are only interested in making their lives better.
Why should we bother electing MP's if all our rules and regulations are coming out of Brussels.
For Goodness sake, it is a poor show when we have to go 'cap in hand' to ask if we can remove the VAT on women's sanitary products.
That is just one example.

[accyman]

if anyone for one second thinks that any Euro MP from another country ever acts on behalf of the UK or for the benefit of the UK they are complete idiots.No other country including the UK will ever act favorably for another country at their expense and will try and shove burden on to each other as long as it is away from themselves

sadly the Labour party is riddled with these idiots and are led by an even larger idiot

If we leave the EU i hope we never get a labour government in power again as they will sign us right back up

if we leave the EU we need another party to compete with tories because the most scary thing at the moment this country faces isnt ISIS its another labour government under corbyn

[Lucysgirl]

Originally Posted by Gordon Booth

The ordinary MPs will have a free vote( although vote No and it won't do their careers any good).

In my heart I would love to leave the EU and go it alone but lets face reality-

On our own the EU would soon freeze our banking system out and wreck it(wouldn't you, they already want to take the business to Germany).
We're in it too deep already, get out and the EU will screw us every which way, to teach us a lesson and to warn any of the other 27 not to get ideas of grandeur. The Yanks have already said if we're out they'll drop us and pal up more with Germany( they know who runs the EU).
Some of the big foreign companies will pull out, it's cheaper to trade within a 27 country block with one set of rules(however complicated)than to trade with them from a single country with a different set of rules.

I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. I'll probably vote to stay in and weep as I do it.

International News yesterday (3/3/2016): Due to bankers not receiving large bonuses and investors losing money, prices of houses in Knightbridge, London have gone down by nearly 5% and Chelsea's by 2%

Europe together with others have successfully managed to remove one of the troughs the pigs ate at.

[Lucysgirl]

Apologies for being late to respond - I've had computer problems.

I have a cloth ear when opponents on any side can only sneeringly parrot the phrase "fear factor tactics" as I want to hear what facts that people wearing red, yellow, blue, etc. rosettes have experience of. I can then surf and do my own research and come to my own conclusions.
About five years ago Cameron said that he thought the next Treaty would take place in 2016 and I mistakenly thought that if he won the election he would hold the Referendum AFTER the Treaty and been negotiated but before it had been signed off. This forthcoming Treaty would include signatories of the usual diehard extreme leftwing socialists aswell as more moderate and new members who could ally themselves to new ideas for the future of the EU.. It's a shame Boris mentioned the notion of voting NO with the expectation of an immediate renegotiation by frightened EU Nations who want us to stay because of the international clout (and money) that we have. I had the same idea but now that the cat is out of the bag the other EU members know they are on firm ground.

(1) The argument that we buy more from the EU nations than we sell to them. I have two answers to this.
(a) We are not self sufficient: For this reason we have always had to import raw materials such as food (grain, etc) as well as wool, cotton, etc. Additionally, now that we have already dug up all of our reserves of iron and high quality coal to keep our iron and steel mills producing we are

(b) A rich man buys more than a poor man, thus as a rich nation we buy more than poor little Belgium, Greece, Italy, etc.
-

(2) The membership of the EU costs a lot of money that we can use on other things. Membership of any club, whether it's a keep fit club or the EU club they all cost entry money. We have to look at what the market & its alternatives have to offer. We know that we could leave the EU and do a deal similar to other nations but we'd still have to pay to be part members and we wouldn't have a say in any of the Treaties. I don't have figures for costs of all the Associations that the UK belongs to, i.e. The EU, the G12, the UN, the WHO, etc. etc.but I should imagine that whatever alternative(s) we put in place of the full EU membership it will still cost eye watering amounts of money and I doubt we would save much in the long run. The EU would probably be a bit like British Telecom when its customers left them in droves. Where once they charged for the landline plus whatever calls were made, they now send a minimum invoice for the landline plus an amount for imaginary "family" calls that never took place..

(3) We don't need the EU and can go it alone and make our own trade deals with other nations. Of course we can, we did it before and we could do it again. We've always had innovative Brits whose products left the shelf as soon as they arrived. However, there's a difference between the costings of what we used to sell and what we sell now. Since WWII the costings of our products and services have risen to include; H&S measures, EEC Standard testing costings, paid tea breaks, maternity pay, etc. I'm asking myself which Nationalities are paid enough to buy what we have to offer? Would the majority of people in countries that do not have these overheads affford to, or be prepared to, pay extra for our products? I can't imagine the majority of the billions of workers around the world that don't get benefits such as the NHS, paid tea breaks, maternity & child benefits being able to afford our high prices. Bryan and I used to export a modest amount of our products around the world (but not inside the EU) - the form filling was horrendous and I know from my son's experience that goods he's bought over the years from Scandinavia, Australia and USA he's had extra banking & exchange rate costs plus he's had to travel to Preston to pay import tax. It will take a few years to negotiate our own trade deals to give our export/importers reasonable import taxes, especially as we already know that the USA protects its own, they even refused entry to tons of emergency goods sent them a few years back.
I'm all ears.
Rena

[Margaret Pilkington]

Rena, it was worth waiting for...and I hope your computer problems stay sorted.

No, we are not self sufficient, but that does not mean we have to go 'cap in hand' to the EU...and yes of course the rich man is always going to buy more than a poor man...but he is always always going to be on the lookout for a competitive price......and I beleive that the EU can prevent us from providing a competitive price by increasing the amount of red tape that businesses have to wade through.
The EU has also been seen to be biased in favour of nations other than the UK when we have been looking to participate in trade deals........Siemens got subsidies that made their rolling stock more competitive than Bombardier which produces similar products in this country(that is only one example...I am sure there are many more).

Now this club we are in.....if it seeks to use such underhand tactics, then we have to ask why we are in it...and whether the benefits are really worth the costs (personally I don't think they are).
I think that there is a general continental dislike of the UK.......I think that they see us as upstarts... the French cherry pick which rules they will follow and which they won't and seem to get away with it...whereas the Brits follow the EU rules to the letter.

As for still having to contribute as being a part member and having no say in what happens...well as far as I can see we have made absolutely NO impact on any of the votes we have made in the past(none of them went in our favour....this is because we are a small country so influence is negligible)...so there will be no change there at all.

Yes, you are right...we can go it alone. No-one says that this is going to be easy, but at least we will not be dictated to by the unelected bureaucrats in Brussels...as to what we can do.....who we can employ, on what terms we can employ.
Maybe we could even have our own bill of rights which will allow us to deport those who come here and commit crimes......other countries within the EU seem to manage to do this but for some reason we can't.

I never wanted to be in the EU.....and this our last chance to determine our own destiny.
The so called 'deal' that our esteemed PM had managed to get out of the snakes in the EU is worth less than a sheet of used Bronco toilet paper.......and believe me whether we vote to stay in or come out....you can guarantee those over on the continent will poo on us from a great height for having the audacity to even think of confronting the sclerotic, bloated, corrupt organisation.

Now, I need to go and have a lie down and let my blood pressure come back down to normal levels...right now it has a yellow duster in its hands and is knocking cobwebs off the ceiling.

[DaveinGermany]

I live in Germany, but I want to see UK leave the EU. I travel back once a year for a couple of weeks to see family & friends, the change in the make up of what was once my "Home" Country disillusions me anew every time & it's getting worse year on year.

I think I can appreciate the change more readily as an occasional visitor than those who live amongst the creeping change day to day. Living amongst it the change doesn't appear so profound, but believe me, my England ceased to exist many years ago due to the insidious EU.

To my mind, out is the only way.

[Margaret Pilkington]

It is also time we took back the control of our borders....to be able to determine who we will allow into our country and who we won't.

Our towns have really changed beyond recognition....and some of them I do not visit anymore because I feel like I am in a foreign land.

I will be voting OUT.......and I do not think there is any kind of argument/discussion which will alter how I feel.
I do not need politicians giving me a load of bullshine.....their prognostications are bogus, because they truly do not know how things will pan out whatever happens after the 23rd of June.
They want us to stay in as this means much less work for them to do.......and less responsibility too.

[Lucysgirl]

Originally Posted by Margaret Pilkington

Lucysgirl,
This organisation was sold to the British public as a trading organisation.....not as a political federalist state.
.

Apologies for overlooking and not answering this point.

I put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the British Press for selling it as "The Common Market", when it wasn't quite the truth.

I don't know about anyone else but from a memoir I read in the 1960s I knew after WWII that the French had peddled the idea of European countries with Iron and Steel industries coming together to form a trading Organisation and I knew we had turned it down. I equated the "Common Market" viz the E.E.C. as just an extension of the Iron and Steel trading bloc whereby countries not having that industry could also trade without borders, e.g. without importation taxes. The phrase "Common Market" does not sound as menacing as the "European Economic Community" which I'm sure would have raised more than a few eyebrows but would have had people questioning the aims and ultimate goal of such a community, especially as it was known at the time that it was fashionable to be a far left Trotskyite in some parts of Europe.

You and Dave in Germany say you don't recognise this country these days - I can say that when Bryan's overseas posting was finished and we came back to England 1970 we couldn't believe the changes made in just a few years away from home. It seemed as if the then government had opened a flood gate & got rid of and replaced all the smiling Gracie Fields/Charlie Chester/George Formby type shop keepers and bus conductors - especially galling was newly installed foreign shop keepers charging an illegal price for a Milk Marketing Board bottle of milk and the foreign conductors not knowing what a bus terminus was.