I am staggered at the cruelty of people… .

Given the state of play this morning be prepared for a lot more cruelty over the next 5 years by the hard of thinking.

Im going to shake it all about.. then probably go in

In but not because I’m a massive fan of the current EU; I just think it’s better than nothing.

But this thread already shows lots of why it could go the other way- people won’t vote on the realities, they’ll vote on the perceptions. For every pound in your pocket there’ll be a madeup story about bananas or human rights.

So I’m not going to even guess on the outcome.

Out. I will choose.

The concept of bureaucracy should have a limit in reality of life.

🙄

In but not because I’m a massive fan of the current EU; I just think it’s better than nothing.

Me neither but I don’t think we can reform it (best option) and we would not end up with nothing, we’d get a trade agreement.

You want to reform bureaucracy? 😆

The only way to “reform” bureaucracy is to break it and start again.

Bureaucracy is a monster that will eat everyone alive without even having to try …

Norway is not a part of the EU.

Norway has to pay an awful lot to the EU to sell their stuff there. They have to pay towards and follow all the EU safety mandates, their design requirements, the lot. And they have no say in them either, since they are not EU members.

That’s what will happen if we leave. We’ll get a very frosty reception from France/Germany for a generation or so and then we’ll still have to give over a wodge of cash every so often to sell our goods there. Highly unlikely to be free trade between us, even if it is the other EU countries just giving us the snub.

For that reason, I’m ‘in’.

In but not because I’m a massive fan of the current EU; I just think it’s better than nothing.

But this thread already shows lots of why it could go the other way- people won’t vote on the realities, they’ll vote on the perceptions. For every pound in your pocket there’ll be a madeup story about bananas or human rights.

So I’m not going to even guess on the outcome.

THis once the RW propaganda machines goes into full whirl [ its only been at about 5 with a drip drip since 1987 ] anything could happen

Think it will be very difficult for the Tories to manage it as well within the party as it is a real schism in their ranks.

I think I fear a 2 year thread more than the outcome though 😕

I do think the notion we can get divorced and stop paying and yet still have free access to the house [ free trade/market ] is beyond naive and is just preposterous.

The tactic here will be to “do a Scotland”, in opinion polls results the EU must believe we are going to leave, then they will deliver change. Then we can vote to stay in which is what we always wanted.

In, but will it be an in/out question?

To be honest I’d rather give my vote to an expert of my choosing otherwise my vote will be to maintain the status quo because it doesn’t seem to work too badly. The situation is so damn complicated that “keep out johnnie foreigner”, “I like going to France on holiday”, “I bought a bike from Canyon” are going to be what decides the result when it in reality there is a complicated legal and economical argument that will be too hard to understand without some serious studying.

AdamW – Member

Norway is not a part of the EU.

Norway has to pay an awful lot to the EU to sell their stuff there. They have to pay towards and follow all the EU safety mandates, their design requirements, the lot. And they have no say in them either, since they are not EU members.

That’s what will happen if we leave. We’ll get a very frosty reception from France/Germany for a generation or so and then we’ll still have to give over a wodge of cash every so often to sell our goods there. Highly unlikely to be free trade between us, even if it is the other EU countries just giving us the snub.

For that reason, I’m ‘in’.

What a rubbish thing to say … why does EU market needs to be dominated by France/Germany? Are you so weak as to think that they have the rights to be dictating market terms?

Essentially they are merely using the so called EU rules to strengthen their competitive stance artificially.

Is this democratic? Are they trying to monopolise the market for their own good?

If there is no EU you will still be trading and in fact might save you a lot …

FFS! Talking about having no balls. (not that Balls … )

@kona if what you say is true then you can win that argument during the referendum, up till now there have been far too many examples which show otherwise.

The ECHR was established by the Council of Europe, which is a separate and larger organisation than the EU. Membership of the CoE is not the subject of a referendum.

If you’ve ever tried to export dairy produce perishable goods outside the EU you’ll realise how much of a pain and how costly it can be particularly if customs decide to hold onto it for a few weeks (i.e. having to condemn the shipment). So in a purely selfish vote for not having my job affected: IN .

BenjiM – Member

If you’ve ever tried to export dairy produce perishable goods outside the EU …

Can’t you not export non-perishable ones then? Dairy milk powder?

@mintimperial – they would be trade agreements, Germans still want to sell us cars etc

You know nothing about my business. I work in a very specific bit of pharmaceuticals. Trade agreements simply wouldn’t cut it. If we left the EU, my current business would be finished, you can take my word for it, I know my industry and my job.

The ECHR was established by the Council of Europe, which is a separate and larger organisation than the EU.

The UK under actually took the lead in it as well

Over 100 parliamentarians from the twelve member states of the Council of Europe gathered in Strasbourg in the summer of 1949 for the first ever meeting of the Council’s Consultative Assembly to draft a “charter of human rights” and to establish a court to enforce it. British MP and lawyer Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, the Chair of the Assembly’s Committee on Legal and Administrative Questions, was one of its leading members and guided the drafting of the Convention

TBH its **** embarrassing we cannot adhere to internationally recognised standards and our response to this is to leave and make up our own rules.

Its the response of dictators and pariah states not a member of the International community and permanent member of the Security Council.

Shameful

We leave the EU you can kiss the dairy industry goodbye.

Will we carry on subsidising our farms, not to the same extent which means a couple of things, huge price rise of home grown food to cover cost of production, most small medium sized dairy units would go bust with out the subsidy.

Why is it that so many farmers support UKIP and leaving the EU? There’s signs plastered all over the countryside every time there’s an election. Don’t they get a lot of EU subsidies?

UKIP have suggested that we can still pay farmers with the money we don’t give to EU once we opt out.

Personally, I haven’t heard a convincing argument about why we should leave.

mintimperial – Member

@mintimperial – they would be trade agreements, Germans still want to sell us cars etc

You know nothing about my business. I work in a very specific bit of pharmaceuticals. Trade agreements simply wouldn’t cut it. If we left the EU, my current business would be finished, you can take my word for it, I know my industry and my job. [/quote]

Do you rely on funding for pharmaceuticals research work?

The idea of bureaucracy is out of control in Brussels is an absolute falacy!!

The EU has a tiny amount compared to many UK departments and other member states bureaucratic machines.

I am well and truly IN.

So much rubbish flouted around in the papers about the EU. Yes many of our laws start in Brussels, but the majority of these are to get the rest of the EU in line with everyone else, and our laws are already in line and in many cases way ahead of the ones passed. The impact of these laws is actually very little, the level of Europeanisation is slight.

In.
We would be mad to leave.

I would vote in.

Let us never forget they paid for a big chunk of Bike Park Wales too!

And a lot more in Wales beside. The amount of funding parts of Wales and other rural areas get from the EU would never be matched by a UK government.

@chewkw – you going to tell Norway it’s all hunky-dorey and they can do whatever they want then or shall I? Lucky they have all that oil money.

Oh yes, we can grow ‘balls’ as you say and dictate the terms. Good luck with that one. Germany want to keep us in the EU but not at any cost and they are very powerful within it.

If we leave the EU it won’t be a bed of roses and people skipping through the streets. We’ll be outside the decision-making and the rest of the EU, which has generally seen the UK as a pain in the rear, will turn the knife.

Although I predict that when the referendum is done there will be a hell of a lot of jingoism about WW2.

In like Flynn.

I’d rather I have to fill out a form to do a poo than live in the toilet.

EU Human Rights act not fit for purpose, we are unable to deport criminals

I’m prepared to be corrected, but as I understand it, it is the European Human rights act and is nothing to do with the EU.

Myth one: the court is another “European” institution interfering with the UK’s sovereignty
Sixty years since the UK signed up to the European convention on human rights, most people still have no idea what it is. It has nothing to do with the EU. It is not a vehicle of European integration. It is a human rights treaty that the UK and other European countries spearheaded after the second world war, in an attempt to prevent the kind of atrocities that happened during the war ever being repeated in Europe. One of the things that makes the convention more effective than other international treaties is the fact that it has a court. Without one, the rights it sets out would be aspirational, rather than legally binding protection for people in European countries. The UK exercised its sovereignty by becoming party to the convention in the first place, and deciding that the court should have the power to deliver rulings which UK governments would respect.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/feb/07/european-court-human-rights-prisoners

I think I heard on the radio that the European court only overturns a fraction of a % of British rulings. It’s just there have been one or two that the have caught the media’s eye.

Out.

I’m sure by the time the actual referendum came along, we’ll all know every tiny reason as why we should or shouldn’t stay in the EU. I’m extremely bored in advance. 🙁

I’d be very concerned about losing half our Ryder Cup team (if we left)….wouldn’t want the Yanks to start winning it again!

mrwhyte – Member

The idea of bureaucracy is out of control in Brussels is an absolute falacy!!

If you can feel it then we are all doomed as I can see them coming … 🙄 Nobody says it will be bed of roses. There will be a period of adjustment and perhaps for the good like someone kicking people off their comfortable sofas. The problem is it is difficult to kick people off their sofas because they have had it too good for too long. They are now accustomed to rely on the bureaucratic machine to feed them.

Outside of decision making process? How much better or worst can that be if you stay out? You can spew large quantities of negative comments but the fact is you don’t exactly know as you can only make the assumption. The UK has a huge population and any multinational will want that chunk of market whether they like it or not. To say over night demise of an economy ya right … there might be adjustments but I seriously doubt we cannot cope. We did and we shall again. At the moment we are not taking the lead but being towed by EU like water buffalo to the padi field.

Just like Labour assuming Ed Milliband to be the next PM but got a bloody thumbing in reality.

AdamW – Member

@chewkw – you going to tell Norway it’s all hunky-dorey and they can do whatever they want then or shall I? Lucky they have all that oil money.

It’s not hunky-dorey for them because they have been bullied indirectly by EU. The EU gang-bang them because this monster EU uses the membership rules to punish others but Norway don’t know that or perhaps just hang on to whatever they can. If there is no EU wouldn’t you say they are better off?

It does not affect me directly whether we are in or out but the reality is that championing a mega bureaucratic structure is like trying to stop a run away train … 😯 or trying to go for slow self strangulation.

edit: I have a feeling that most will vote IN because they are afraid of the unknown. I vote OUT simply because of the unknown as I don’t like what is known at the moment.

@TheBrick – my understanding its a condition of membership to sign up, I could be wrong as there was talk of exited in and reverting to a UK Human Rights Act written in much the same way but with key differences inc the fact our courts could not be over-ruled

Out

@ernie, interesting. Why ?

And a lot more in Wales beside. The amount of funding parts of Wales and other rural areas get from the EU would never be matched by a UK government.

@ferrals my gut feel is that the UK government lobbies to get money back from the EU as we pay so much in. I think Wales could well get similar development grants/investment.

@ernie, interesting. Why ?

What’s interesting about a left-winger being opposed to the EU ? 🙂

Besides, you already knew of my opposition to the EU as I distinctly remember you telling me that I should vote UKIP as it was the only party committed to EU withdrawal. You seemed surprised when I said I’d rather vote Tory than UKIP.

My opposition to the EU is based on a whole number of issues including the fact that the EU is specifically designed to completely neutralise the wishes of the electorate if they are deemed to be unacceptable to a bunch of unelected bureaucrats. You either believe in democracy or you don’t, I do.

The entire structure of the EU is fundamentally undemocratic, it is carefully designed to be like that to overcome the shackles placed on industrialists, bankers, and the like, with the introduction of universal suffrage a hundred years ago.

The EU is an aggressive and expansionist entity, neocolonialist and exclusive in character, it is motivated by securing markets and accumulating wealth.

I want a society where the people have political and economic power. A society where the nation’s wealth belongs to the nation. The EU is designed to stop that being achieved. It dictates what is allowed and what is not allowed, irrespective of the wishes of the electorate in the member states. I want less centralised power not more. I want autonomous people living in cooperation, not subjugation.

imho. hth.

Is that you Ernie?

I thought I was the only one in the village that want out. 😆

Not living there but I would vote IN and I hope when I return to the UK at some point it will be part of the EU.

It’s done more for the UK than not being in, being out but relying on the EU for trade etc. is just back to being tied to the rules but not having a say. We also need to have full involvement.

Not sure it’s a EU myth or not but when the EU standard for fire extinguishers made them all red with a label on for type the Brits went mad as we had such a great system for marking them in different colours. Turns out the UK reps didn’t bother turning up to the meetings.

UKIP’s non attendance is a crime, and the hands off complain about everything participate in nothing approach is the cause of most of the UK’s issues.

The entire structure of the EU is fundamentally undemocratic, it is carefully designed to be like that to overcome the shackles placed on industrialists, bankers, and the like, with the introduction of universal suffrage a hundred years ago.

Is this not principally true of pretty much every political system, whether it purports to be democratic or no? Our own offers the illusion of democracy by allowing us to vote every four years in an election largely fought over trinkets such as the nhs with no real options for change presented (one reason for keeping fptp and offering the alternative vote [a worse alternative than fptp imo] rather than pr when they gave us the choice). government exists to govern you can’t actually do that democratically once your population exceeds a very small limit as the debate never ends. largely we feel government exists to make us richer and more comfortable it provides the illusion of the first by significantly improving the lot of the few and letting the rest of us glory in our increasing supply of smaller crumbs under the table, the second is done by allowing us to hand back more of our crumbs in return for ever shinier trinkets, some such as fridges or clean water do improve our lot, most don’t.

The Norway comparison is a little unfair of reasonably accurate as we’re a significantly bigger market than Norway and the point of [government] is to make money, you can’t do that without market but just because I feel we’d have a better time of it than Norway doesn’t mean I don’t think we’d have a similarly bad one.

The Germans and the French rule by default, largely because they set it up way back when as a trade agreement on coal between the two of them, it’s evolved with them at the helm and that’s where they want to stay. When it became more they (maybe just De Gaulle) didn’t want us, because we’re “not much any more” or rather more to the point because letting us into the centre of Europe early on may have seen us become rather much again and nobody really fancied reducing their own share of power.

the Greek exit as pointed out won’t happen, it would be genuinely bad for the euro and too many pockets, as it is its brought the euro down which when most of your importing is done from inside the EU doesn’t effect you over much but strengthens your exports outside of the EU so it’s win win. It’ll drag on for years and not be resolved, if it were going to happen it would have done the instant varoufakis was elected.

We don’t have the luxury of being in the euro and the financial protection that offers so a UK exit would be much easier. Politically we are seen to make a lot of trouble, and are generally not over popular with the euros for it, we stamp and shout because we pay our money and every time we get our way it inclines others to do the same. We are the equivalent of the kid at the back of class who does no work and acts up but gets all the attention, we think our attending [payment] is enough to justify our getting what we want, frankly the rest who do participate would largely be better off without us there.

As for an out vote in RoUK helping an in-voting Scotland separate and remain in the EU don’t hold your breath. We’ll be pushed out of the door before we can grab our hat, I wouldn’t be entirely surprised to see our EU membership revoked somewhere between the announcing of the result and DC’s speech.

The best way to put off separatist movements in RoEU would be to make it as painful as possible for us to leave, stick it to us very much as badly and quickly as possible and let us serve an example, a bit like a figurative head on a pike. You won’t be negotiating keeping the uk’s seat at the table from the inside whilst we make a graceful exit you’ll be asking to go back in having been thrown down the hill and your being closely linked to the UK will be seen as some sort of political leprosy.

The last thing the EU wants is bifurcated states, too many have troubles of their own, add to that allowing you [us] to leave the EU then decide it was a bad idea and you’ve two very strong reasons the EU won’t want you back.

Can’t you not export non-perishable ones then? Dairy milk powder?

I missed out a “/” between Dairy Produce and Perishable goods. Milk powder is still perishable, just has a longer shelf life due to the low moisture.

@mintimperial, understood although I do believe EU specific businesses would be quite rare, could be mistaken.

@ernie, thanks for the post and reminding me of that exchange, I do remember now.

@danger I agree with a lob of what you e posted but specifically on the euro it most certainly does not offer a county like the UK protection. The euro is a club with fairly lose rules (ie ones which are not respected) and its to the benefit of the weaker members who gain credibility, implicit support and lower interest rates from the stronger members. The UK would be a stronger member.

Junker has made conciliatory noises and says he looks forward to Cameron’s proposals. Hollande has been a bit more feisty saying the UK has to respect the EU’s procedures

On the referendum I think the biggest question is what will the question actually be. I also strongly suspect (fear) the referendum will not be binding like the Scottish one was. Cameron will seek wiggle room to fudge it if it’s 49/51 for example

Junker has made conciliatory noises and says he looks forward to Cameron’s proposals.

He is a diplomat he does not mean he will actually consider them for example the free movement of people is sacrosanct to the EU and they have said this numerous times. Dave will expect movement on this – it wont happen.

Dave, despite being viewed as Prime ministerial, has a pretty poor track record in Europe [ as does GO who got nothing with the bill] and his negotiations will achieve little more than window dressing and spin.

I think the leave camp economic claims are also going to be interesting – yes lest leave they will have to trade with us , nothing will change but we save money…trust us they cannot afford to lose us etc.

@ Ernie – an interesting post and that is the most credible thing I have ever read on why we should leave. Thanks

If I lived in the UK i would vote OUT

absolutely no question

I reckon this will give UKIP a real boost they will be leading the out campaign, in a referendum that will stimulate UK politics. Just like the SNP they could gain a lot of party support and that support will come from Labour.

The SNP and labour are on the left and share the same view on the EU

UKIP are right wing and the child of Thatcher they have next to nothing in common with Labour – wont happen to anything like the scale that you saw in Scotland

IMHO more likely that firmly anti EU Tories leave as Dave will campaign to stay .