The UK and the European Union - in or out? (Part 1)

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EUROSCEPTICS & UKIP CANNOT ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS

In the late 1980s the nations of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) began to seriously contemplate joining the EU, there were many reasons for this, but they included the realisation that it was the only way forward for trade and prosperity, in the case of Sweden it was also the fact that several large companies made it clear they would relocate if Sweden stayed outside the EU.

Current EFTA members: Iceland - Lichtenstein - Norway - Switzerland

EFTA members who joined the EU: - Austria - Denmark - Portugal - Sweden - United Kingdom - Finland

In 1994 the European Economic Area was formed (EEA), this was a compromise organisation for those members of EFTA who did not or could not join the European Union, joining the EEA meant access to EU markets, but the deal also meant accepting EU rules, even though these states were not / are not EU members.

THE QUESTION TO THE EUROSCEPTICS IS THIS: After leaving the EU, would the UK be free of all EU rules, regulations, directives and laws?

And the straighforward answer is: NO  and here is why:-

A meat production company in Lincolnshire is close to signing a multi-million pound deal with a European supermarket chain, just before the two managing directors take out their pens to sign the agreement, the boss of the supermarket chain pulls out a list of conditions.

The list of conditions consist of EU rules, unfortunately Britain has left the EU and unless the British meat producer conforms to EU standards the deal cannot go ahead, the rules cover everything from animal welfare, temperature control, employee rights, labeling, weight, moisture content and hygiene.

So no matter what happens in the future, the UK will always have to accept EU laws

Think of Norway as an example of a European nation outside the European Union, Norway is a member of the European Economic Area ( the EEA ), and as such has to accept into law virtualy every EU rule, regulation, directive and law, furthermore Norway has had to sign up to many of the EU treaties.

Norway has no say and no vote on any of the EU legislation which it accepts, and this is exactly how Britain would end up, inside the EU the UK influences legislation, it does have a say, and it does have a vote, unlike Norway.

A FREE TRADE AGREEMENT "JUST LIKE SWITZERLAND" [ Nigel Farage ]

According to UKIP, the future under them would be simple, all we need to do is leave the EU and sign up to a new free trade agreement, and the future would be bright  , but a free trade agreement ?, lets look at that word "agreement", an agreement is not one sided, it is between the parties that make the agreement, and lets face facts here, the EU will call the shots, not Britain.

The European Union is not going to change its rules to cater for a single nation of 60 million, especialy when that nation has left the EU but still wants all the benefits of belonging, namely trade.

I am afraid that under such circumstances, Germany, France, Italy and the rest would say "our way or not at all", the best solution by far is to simply remain within the EU and go forward into the future together.

The desperate danger is that people will see the Referendum as a chance to see off Cameron and let in the even more extreme robbers.

I read an article recently which said that if we leave the EU, footballers who are under the age of 18 will not be able to sign up with Premier League clubs. That might take the gloss of our prestigious club tournament, argued by some to be the envy of the footballing world, but it might have one advantage. The English national football team hasn’t won anything for 50 years, and maybe that’s because too many of our indigenous youngsters are denied the chance of competing at the very highest level. So have I at last found something which might be better if the UK was outside the EU?  

We’ve been told on this thread that the EU has not had its books audited for 20 years, that EU commissioners are “bureaucrats” (and then that “most likely” they are heads of corporations), that UK citizens are not entitled to the same health care as residents of the EU countries they visit, and that we have “open borders”, even though we are not part of the Schengen Agreement. All lies. We’ve been told that it costs the UK £20 billion a year to belong to the EU, that the TTIP won’t happen if we leave, that the Germans want to dominate us and that the past financial irregularities of Christine Lagarde (who is now head of the IMF) are somehow the fault of the EU. All rubbish.

We’ve even been told that with 44% of our exports going to the rest of the EU, but only 10% of exports from the rest of the EU coming here, the EU needs the UK more than we need it. Ask yourself who would get the best terms in the negotiations of a trade deal - the EU, which is the largest trading bloc in the world, or an isolated UK? This matter has cost Cutting Edge a long-term member who didn’t like her posts being challenged, and who even went on Twitter to claim that she had been “censored”. As everything which she posted on this thread is still visible, I think I need say no more.

Those who support Brexit talk of “cutting red tape” and “scrapping EU regulations”, but they don’t tell us what it is they want to scrap. When you look at the line-up of right-wing Tories in the Brexit camp, it’s hard not to make the assumption that they want to destroy what remains of our workplace rights. In fact, Nigel Farage has already suggested that some businesses should not be obliged to give their employees maternity pay, adding that there should no guarantee of equal pay for mothers who return to work.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/11285529/What-woman-could-ever-vote-Ukip.html

The most widely promoted version of the Leave campaign claims that Britain could retain its place in the EU’s free-trade single market while not paying a penny into the EU budget, ending free movement and ignoring EU rules. That’s more rubbish. No other country has that arrangement, and both the French and Germans have made it clear that it wouldn’t be allowed for a post-Brexit UK. Those who want us to leave the EU won’t or can’t spell out what it would mean, yet they expect us to take a leap into the unknown in order to “get back control” and “regain our sovereignty”.

Those are just two of the mindless slogans which recur if you try to engage with Brexit supporters. Do the Tories really need any more control than they have now? I don’t recall the EU stopping them from introducing the bedroom tax, cuts to disability benefits, privatisation by stealth of the NHS, or any of the other vile measures which they’ve inflicted on us during the past six years. As to sovereignty, if we didn’t have any we couldn’t have opted out of Schengen and the Eurozone or even be holding an in/out referendum in June. The political economist Will Hutton has reminded us that “Osborne has exerted sovereign economic power within our EU membership. We do not need to leave it to change policy, nor have Osborne’s choices been constrained by membership. He knows that too. To put so much trade and investment at risk while threatening the capacity of the EU to hold together in order to chase a chimera of absolute sovereignty is folly.”

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/06/george-osborne-right-europe-wrong-economy

Many Brexit supporters talk as if we haven’t been a part of the EU for the last 43 years and overlook the fact that the UK is second only to Germany in terms of holding top-ranking positions in Brussels. An organisation of 28 countries does involve some pooling of sovereignty, but it is simply a myth that leaving the EU would give back sovereignty in a meaningful way.

http://bruegel.org/2016/03/the-uks-sovereignty-myth/

If rational argument was the deciding factor in this referendum, it would already be all over bar the shouting. But as the journalist Owen Jones reminds us, “politics is as much about sentiments and emotions as anything else”. He says that the Tories “excel at distorting perceptions rather than dealing in actual realities”, and there are plenty of Tories and their tabloid chums who have been doing just that about the EU for years.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/10/tories-deceitful-political-sorcery-eu-cameron-magician-labour-must-learn

This catalogue of downright lies, sponsored by newspaper owners who fear EU regulation, would be laughable if it wasn’t for the fact that the gullible have been soaking up the propaganda for years:-

http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/silly-season-top-ten-and-more-of-misleading-eu-media-stories/

A favourite claim of the Brexit camp is that we must leave the EU in order to save the NHS. Wrong again. It’s not the EU that is undermining the NHS, it’s the Tories. Cameron has refused to remove the NHS from the TTIP proposals, and there’s no reason to think that the Tories would do so after Brexit. When you look at some of the statements of leading Leave supporters – “people should have to pay for services so that they value them more” (Boris Johnson), “there’s plenty of room for cuts” (Nigel Farage), “the NHS is a 60-year mistake” (Dan Hannan MEP) -  you can’t have any faith in the NHS being protected in the event of Brexit.

However, Brexit supporters believe that their trump card is immigration. They like to tell us that it is “uncontrolled”, ignoring the fact that the UK is not part of Schengen and that we do have border controls, as the camp at Calais demonstrates. They ignore the fact that the majority of immigrants to the UK come from outside the EU, or that 2.2 million British citizens live in other EU countries. And what would be achieved if we left the EU? Francois Hollande has declared that he will no longer hinder economic migrants who arrive at Calais if Brexit prevails, and why should he prevent anyone from leaving France and at the same time leaving the EU? Those migrants would then be stopped at Dover, and the camps would start to appear in Kent. And as other countries have found out, any subsequent trade deal with the EU would require the free movement of EU citizens.

Let’s face it, there are no sensible or credible reasons for leaving the EU. For the last 43 years, the UK has been a member of what has become the largest free trade area the world has ever seen. In addition it has given us workplace rights, cleaner beaches, cheaper flights and phone calls, along with the right to live, work and obtain healthcare in 27 other countries. According to the CBI and the Treasury, for every £1 we put into the EU, we get almost £10 back through increased trade, investment, jobs, growth and low prices. I also think there’s something remarkable about 28 countries overcoming at least 2,000 years of conflict and realising that if they stop fighting they’ll all be better off. Brexit boils down to nostalgia, xenophobia, exaggerated statistics, tabloid myths, mindless slogans and, to be charitable, misdirected frustration with the neoliberalism of the last 37 years. The case for staying in such an organisation, which provides an outlet for around 44% of our exports, is a no-brainer.

QUOTE: "The case for staying in such an organisation, which provides an outlet for around 44% of our exports, is a no-brainer."

The eager-leavers who like to believe that Europe will continue to demand British goods overlook the fact that in place of a single customer (The EU) our exporters would have to strike 28 separate deals with the individual countries.

Well done, Jeremy Corbyn, for getting off the fence on Europe

Extracts from an article by Polly Toynbee:-

At last, Jeremy Corbyn comes out with a whole speech calling for Labour people to vote in. Good news too that Unison has come out unequivocally and passionately to campaign for in, after a consultation with its 1.3 million mainly female workers. “When the chips are down, and exit is a real possibility” says Unison’s leader, Dave Prentis, public services will be “much better off in than out”. He warns what a Brexit UK government would do to hard-won employment rights: “Unscrupulous employers would have a field day”.

Just look at the outers and shudder at their nasty visions of a little England free of “red tape”, “’elf and safety” regulations, “employment burdens” and “human rights”. But why would the left want to stand shoulder to shoulder with Cameron and Osborne? To suggest that Gove, Boris, IDS, Lawson, Grayling and the rest of that unappealing rogues’ gallery would form an even worse government appears to paint the PM and chancellor as moderates. But they’re not; they are extremist architects of a plan to shrink the state permanently that goes far beyond anything Thatcher dared consider. Why would the left want to do anything to save their skins?

Psephologists warn that if turnout is below 55% – and turnout is a probable 5% higher among leave supporters – than Brexit is a certainty. Fainthearted support among Labour people risks Britain sleepwalking to calamity. Can Labour and the unions shake off apathy and overcome their members’ antipathy to the Tories to get their vote out? The country’s fate rests in Labour’s hands.

For the whole article:-
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/14/jeremy-corbyn-europe-labour-in-campaign-tories

The British sleepwalked into the European Union, I am pleased to say there has been wake up call with this referendum, and will be voting out. No amount of scarmongering is going to change that, the first referendum was for a Union for trade and trade only, not the monster it has turned out to be. Britons are not in charge of their own destiny while remaining in the European Union.

jackthelad wrote:Britons are not in charge of their own destiny while remaining in the European Union.

Nonsense - provide a single piece of jurisprudence to support that.

The UK gets to adapt EU Law - which it participates in (and is very influential in) the formulation of, in its domestic implementation.  All of the case law will tell you that sovereignty is only restricted by agreement, and only in areas of community/ EU Law - Something the UK Supreme Court made pretty clear in the recent HS2 judgement.  You can also read a plethora of German, Polish and French cases all telling you the same thing.  

Of course if the member states want to take that sovereignty back they can do - by leaving.  The very fact they are able to illustrates both that they are sovereign, and that they control their own destiny.

Why the sovereignty argument doesn’t work

From an article by Christopher Grey:-

"As a UK referendum on EU membership gets closer, much is being made by those urging exit of the idea of national sovereignty. Indeed for some Brexiters this is the defining issue. What they mean by sovereignty seems to be that a country can make its own laws and act independently of all other countries. Whether such a situation ever obtained is highly questionable; but it certainly hasn’t obtained for the UK or any other country in recent times.

Like other countries the UK is bound into a web of multiple sovereignty-sharing arrangements regarding trade, defence and security via a multiplicity of bodies including the UN, the WTO, NATO and, yes, the EU. Indeed it is ironic that many Brexiters parade the idea that the UK on Brexit could ‘reclaim’ its seat on the WTO as a triumph of sovereignty (by which they mean that whilst remaining a WTO member the UK has since 1973 been represented in trade talks by the combined EU delegation). It’s an irony because the WTO has over 160 members and yet the Brexiters argue that within the 28 strong EU the UK ‘has no say’.

A similar irony is present in the Brexiters’ idea that the UK could lead a new Commonwealth trade bloc. Apart from the fact that there is no appetite in the Commonwealth for such a bloc, its 53 members are highly unlikely (for obvious historical reasons) to want to be led by Britain! And if sovereignty is the issue, what could matter more than who can direct people in war? Yet Brexiters are quite relaxed about – and mostly in favour of – pooling sovereignty in NATO, which entails British troops being led by foreign generals."

For the whole article:-
http://www.wakeupeurope.eu/why_the_sovereignty_argument_doesn_t_work

jackthelad wrote (on another board):-
I am more concerned with the Labour Parties present leader, a man that can't be true to himself. He has always opposed the Common Market, later becoming the European Union. He voted in the first referendum not to join, and all his political life as argued against it. Now that he is leader of a party that is for the Union he has switched sides. Not all Labour voters are members of the party and didn't vote in the leadership contest.

You didn’t have to have been a member of the Labour Party to have a vote in the leadership election last year.

Way back in 1975, Jeremy Corbyn voted to leave what was then the EEC, which the UK had only joined two years earlier. So did other Labour politicians, such as Neil Kinnock and David Blunkett, who have since changed their minds, because over 40 years have passed and the facts have changed. In particular, since neoliberalism spread like the plague from the 1980s onwards, the EU has provided the best safeguard of what remains of workplace rights. And that is one of the main reasons why people on the left are more likely to support the European project now than they were in the 1970s. We don’t doubt that the EU has many flaws, and Jeremy Corbyn is still only lukewarm in his support for it, but on balance he has decided that we’re better off in than out. As John Maynard Keynes is alleged to have said: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"

I don't think I appreciate being called an idiot, especially by someone who confesses to be half Italian. Plus someone who says what I say is nonsense, who happens to reside in Spain. I suppose they have ulterior motives for the UK to remain in the European Union. I opposed it from the start, I voted no in the first referendum and my feeling to the Union or what ever they call it still remains.
Just one of my reasons is this,
55 occasions British Ministers have said they will object to an EU directive, and on 55 occasions they have been over-ruled."
Another is the Brirish laws passed by a British Goverment have been overruled by Brussels and told we can't do that. We have to obey Brussels, and all the other countries that want to dictate to us.
Sorry folks I ain't a lover of Boris Johnson and Grove, not made my mind up about Farage, but it it appears they as politicians, not just an ordinary voter that have the same opinion has me. My views on the Common Market and now the European have never changed.
Not coming on here to be insulted so I will remove myself back to where a came from.

If the cap fits ....

Nevertheless, the eager-leavers may not see a similarity between their objectives and the state of holy matrimony, but proposing to leave the EU whilst continuing to trade with it looks to me rather like telling your spouse to expect divorce papers, but that you'd like to call back from time to time for a spot of jollies.

I might be being dim, but what does this have to do with the price of pasta?

jackthelad wrote:...especially by someone who confesses to be half Italian...

and as for...

jackthelad wrote:Plus someone who says what I say is nonsense, who happens to reside in Spain. I suppose they have ulterior motives for the UK to remain in the European Union.

We all have our own ulterior motives for what we want - including you JTL - so don't make out that I'm the only one with an ulterior motive - what's yours?  However, I note that you have not actually countered in any way my summing up of 60 years worth of jurisprudence on the topic which disproved the key tenet of your proposition.

"I don't think I appreciate being called an idiot"
I am sorry if I have offended you, you must not take it personally as I believe you are one of many and in my eyes are all idiots .

jackthelad wrote:-
I don't think I appreciate being called an idiot, especially by someone who confesses to be half Italian.

What? So are people who happen to be half Italian less entitled to an opinion than a ‘Little Englander’? You’ve given the game away on the typical motivation of those who support the Brexit cause - xenophobia.

By the way, Nigel Lawson happens to live in France, but he seems to think it’s okay to lecture us on the benefits of leaving the EU. I know people who lost their homes because of the economic incompetence of that git. But then look at who else you’re lining up with - Duncan Smith, Gove, Grayling, Redwood, Lamont, ‘something of the night’ Howard, Boris Johnson (who was pro-EU in February) – more than enough material to make a horror movie.

Not coming on here to be insulted so I will remove myself back to where a came from.

There isn’t one sensible or rational argument for leaving the EU – just hatred of foreigners, nostalgia, pathetic slogans and tabloid lies. You can’t cope with rational arguments, so you're going to run away. Well that's fine, because racism isn’t welcome on this forum. The sad thing is that people like you get to vote, destroying the future prospects of young people who might have to live with the consequences of your stupidity long after both you and I are gone.

Seeing what this Tory government are doing makes me wish Brussels had more control over the laws and rules of the UK.......and that our government suffered more dis-empowerment, neutering, weakening, and overruling by a centralised EU government.

"... I have dual Italian and British nationality..."

Yes, bobby - it's about time Britain got rid of all you foreigners. After all, what have they ever done for us...?

Lord Reed, UKSC wrote:Contrary to the submission made on behalf of the appellants, that question cannot be resolved simply by applying the doctrine developed by the Court of Justice of the supremacy of EU law, since the application of that doctrine in our law itself depends upon the 1972 Act. If there is a conflict between a constitutional principle, such as that embodied in article 9 of the Bill of Rights, and EU law, that conflict has to be resolved by our courts as an issue arising under the constitutional law of the United Kingdom.

R (on the application of HS2 Action Alliance Limited) v The Secretary of State for Transport and another [2014] UKSC 3 para 79

"Yes, bobby - it's about time Britain got rid of all you foreigners. After all, what have they ever done for us...? Very Happy"

Phil Hornby wrote:"... I have dual Italian and British nationality..."

Yes, bobby - it's about time Britain got rid of all you foreigners. After all, what have they ever done for us...?  

Ay. Anglo-Saxons go home!

Racism, usually thought to be illegal, is alive and well in the Right-wing press. The front page headline of today's Sunday Times reads, "Labour London hopeful linked to terrorist" above a story about Sadiq Khan contesting the election for Mayor.

The theme is enlarged upon in the inside pages 18 and 19.

As ‘The Sunday Times’ is behind a paywall, it might be better to read about that nonsense here:-

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/17/zac-goldsmith-gutter-politics-asian-voters-london-mayoral-campaign

Goldsmith spoke in support of Babar Ahmad in a parliamentary meeting in 2012, and he was photographed with Suliman Gani at a Tory Party event last year, so the hypocrisy is quite breathtaking.

https://cuttingedge2.forumotion.co.uk/t1116-would-the-tories-ever-win-if-they-ran-a-clean-campaign-on-a-level-playing-field

Brexit’s happy morons don’t give a damn about the costs of leaving

From an article by Niall Ferguson:-

I read Daniel Hannan’s 'Why Vote Leave' and it surprised me very much. “Nothing will change” in the event of Brexit, according to Hannan. “The short-term effects will be slight.” And: “No jobs will be lost.” This, he explains, is because “on a technical level, most existing structures will almost certainly be left in place”.

The paradox at the heart of the Brexiteers’ case lies here. First, we are told that nothing much will change. But then we are told a great deal will change, because the EU is an undemocratic superstate that is strangling British economic life with regulations. The central claim of 'Why Vote Leave' is that Brexit would liberate Britain from a federalist plot hatched in Brussels, yet leave it free to enjoy “the European free trade zone that stretches from non-EU Iceland to non-EU Turkey”.

Though he does not make clear which model he prefers — Iceland, Norway, Switzerland or Guernsey — Hannan is pulling a fast one whichever it is. Access to the single market is limited for non-EU members unless, like Norway, they accept EU regulations. You cannot have it both ways. Either, as Hannan promises, British bankers, car makers and herbal medicine producers — not to mention “art dealers, cheesemakers, fund managers, trawlermen, steel workers [and] cider producers” — will be freed from EU regulations, in which case British exports to the EU will be reduced, or they will not, in which case all a Brexit vote achieves is to remove the UK entirely from the process whereby those regulations are made.

The whole article might be readable here as it was ‘shared’ by a contributor:-
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/comment/columns/NiallFerguson/article1687917.ece?shareToken=e11d072894f5d298cb016decdfb6a01a

Newspapers seem to occupy that same parallel world which exists only for the filthy rich, but even their independently wealthy proprietors like to see the business generate some income from its cover-price as well as from advertising. The Independent is now only available online, and The Guardian has just increased its cover-price. Meanwhile Mr Murdoch must be tickled to learn that putting the digital Sunday Times behind a pay-wall has had the unexpected bonus of muting criticism.

Where do we even start with Michael Gove’s hypocrisy on scaremongering?

From an article by Owen Jones:-

First, he accuses the remain campaign of treating voters like children, waging a campaign of fear, seeking to leave the electorate “frightened into obedience by conjuring up new bogeymen every night”. Then he warns that Brexit must happen “before it’s too late”, that a vote for remain would mean “voting to be hostages, locked in the back of a car”, before warning of the threat posed by foreigners and criminals.

Who, other than the terminally disingenuous and the chronically mischievous, can convincingly argue that the Vote Leave campaign is doing anything other than infantilising the electorate, of waging a quite frankly sinister campaign of fear? Actually, I’ve overstepped the mark in appropriating Gove’s arguments. Children are often smart, inquisitive, critical, and certainly not gullible. Gove – a man who once argued that all schools should be better than average, which is statistically impossible – and his allies are not treating us as though we are children, but as though we are thick.

Brexit will mean an end to austerity, they argue: the very austerity they have gleefully imposed, not to balance the books but to roll back the state. It will save the NHS, they say, as they castigate the policies of Jeremy Hunt that many of them have voted for. Boris Johnson is among Vote Leave figures who have advocated scrapping an NHS free at the point of use. Brexit will save the steel industry, they argue: the very same people who still swoon over Thatcher and her ideology that laid entire industries to ruin. I suspect their sudden conversion to these causes will not outlive a referendum.

For the whole article:-
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/19/scaremongering-establishment-vote-leave-remain-fear-michael-gove

not treating us as though we are children, but as though we are thick. - a strategy, it has to be said, that has served the Tories rather well over the years - ably backed by the right wing press

Kate Hoey was unable to name one reputable independent study which says that the UK would be better off outside the EU:-


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zu_1gHps92A&feature=youtu.be

Not an impressive performance - and she looks a fairly serious and competent individual

After falling in value against the euro by 12% since November, the pound is currently on the up. Why? Probably because the wheels appear to be coming off the Brexit campaign. We’ve had Farage and Fox attacking Barack Obama for daring to express an opinion, and most spectacularly of all, Boris Johnson calling the US president “a hypocrite”, “ridiculous” and “weird” in an article in ‘The Sun’. He wants to look in the mirror occasionally, or at some of the oddballs (why does Michael Gove spring to mind?) with whom he’s aligned himself after his sudden conversion to the Brexit cause a few weeks ago.

Speaking of Gove, here we have the catalogue of lies which he’s used to build some sort of case for Brexit. Despite the much-repeated claptrap about Britain having no “control” in the EU, since 1999 we have voted ‘yes’ 2,474 times and ‘no’ just 57 times in the EU Council:-

http://infacts.org/porkies-gove-uses-build-brexit-case/

And it’s not just Nick Cohen (see articles on another thread) who is appalled by Boris Johnson’s behaviour. Will Hutton writes of how his “disregard for the truth is evidence of the depths to which Eurosceptics will sink”, adding that “Johnson has built a career out of extravagant use of language with only a tenuous relationship to the truth”. Hutton refers to the Brexit campaign as “the politics of identity where blood, culture, race and ethnicity trump argument and rationality”.

Hutton asks: “Are we so keen to assert an idea of Britishness and so careless about evidence-based argument that we will damage ourselves economically by leaving the EU? Is politics to be framed by unfounded prejudice, funny one-liners and untruths? Do the majority of us want to live in a country constructed by the Eurosceptics and their press?” He concludes that Johnson’s article might be “a watershed moment”. And hopefully that’s why the pound should now carry on rising in value.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/24/boris-johnson-eu-referendum-barack-obama-slur

Postmodernism is now widely recognised as transient nonsense

Oh, I do hope so - it's an approach that has done endless damage

There's another two months still to go of this tomfoolery. No wonder the stock market is stagnating.

But company liquidators are looking cheerful again.

TTIP is a very bad excuse to vote for Brexit

From an article by Nick Dearden:-

"The British government has done everything possible to push the most extreme version of TTIP, just as they’ve fought against pretty much every financial regulation, from bankers' bonuses to a financial transaction tax. While Germany and France were concerned about TTIP’s corporate court system – which allows foreign business to sue governments for ‘unfair’ laws like putting cigarettes in plain packets – the UK secretly wrote to the European Commission president demanding he retain it.

At the heart of TTIP is a radical agenda of deregulation. The ambition is that everything from food standards to financial policies are ‘standardised’ in the US and EU, with big business gaining new powers over the process. This could have been inspired by Cameron’s own programme of stripping away laws that annoy big business, no matter how important they are for people and the environment.

Brexit wouldn’t necessarily stop TTIP, that’s all down to the transition process. At the very least, Britain would need to adopt many of TTIP’s provisions in order to remain in the single market. And every scenario for Brexit is premised on extreme free trade agreements coupled with looser regulation to make us more competitive. ‘Outcompeting’ the EU through lower standards is the strategy. High-profile supporters of Brexit have repeatedly said they believe the UK would be able to realise a more ‘ambitious’ and faster free trade deal if we stood alone. There’s every reason to think that Brexit would turn the UK into a paradise for free market capitalism: a TTIP on steroids."

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/25/ttip-vote-brexit-barack-obama-leave-eu-trade-deal

The analogy of eager-leaver Brexits is with the little boy who ran away from home. But when it got dark, he went back.

What “liberation” from precisely which “red tape”?

Extracts from an article by Michael Emerson:-

Brexiteers are fond of denouncing EU “red tape” from which, they say, the UK should liberate itself. It is true that a large chunk of EU law concerns technical standards for the safety of industrial products, for health and safety at the work place, and food safety. But which red tape? What liberation?

Presumably these undesirable standards are not about wearing hard hats on construction sites, or protection from chain saws cutting off your fingers, or from dangerous chemicals like those which caused the Seveso disaster, or food contaminated by mad cow disease, or untested pharmaceutical products like thalidomide that caused phocomelia?  Or thousands of others.

Do Brexiteers want stricter or less strict safety standards? Or can we make our own standards? We can try that now, but if our own standards are incompatible with EU standards, are we indulging in old-fashioned protection of our producers at home, while cutting them out of export trade? That is a sure recipe for an uncompetitive economy.

We do not need to get bogged down in these questions. The first vice-president of the Commission is Mr Frans Timmermans from the Netherlands, a country which ranks higher than the UK for global competitiveness. He has a mandate to make the procedure for weeding out unnecessary red tape work. And anyone who knows Mr Timmermans knows that he relishes any chance to slash unnecessary red tape when he sees it. The red tape argument for leaving the EU does not hold water.

http://infacts.org/what-liberation-from-precisely-which-red-tape/

If it ain’t broke, don’t Brexit

Whether a member of the EU or not, Britain is a European country, deeply and irrevocably linked to the fortunes of the continent. As annoying as it must be to the Leave campaign, only 21 miles (33km) separate Britain from France (and there is no distance at all between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, or Gibraltar and Spain). From Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam, it is a far shorter train journey to London than to Berlin. Britain is thoroughly, helplessly European, and always has been, since its first prehistoric settlers blundered over the land-bridge from the continent.

Trade with far-off countries is costly, in terms of money and time. A paper published in 2012 found that every day goods are in transit adds a cost equivalent to a tariff of between 0.6% and 2.1%. Countries therefore trade most heavily with close neighbours. Britain sits cheek-by-jowl with big European economies. They were Britain’s dominant trading partners three centuries ago, and they are Britain’s dominant trading partners now, accounting for roughly 50% of its trade, despite the fact that the rest of the world accounts for a much bigger share of global economic activity now than it did in the 18th century.

However close the cultural affinities between Britain and its partners in the Anglosphere, the contribution of their trade to British output is much smaller than the EU’s, as are the contributions of the world’s big emerging economies. A Brexit would not delink Britain’s economy from the rest of Europe; it would merely worsen the terms on which trade is conducted and reduce Britain’s influence in European affairs.

http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21697858-british-economy-would-be-neither-destroyed-nor-unleashed-leaving-eu-if?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/if_it_ain_t_broke_don_t_brexit

BREXIT ROW: Boris Johnson compares 'superstate obsessed' European Union to Hitler.


http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/670421/Brexit-Boris-Johnson-London-Mayor-David-Cameron-Nigel-Farage-Yvette-Cooper-EU

The £350 million lie

The postman has just delivered my copy of the Electoral Commission’s EU Referendum Voting Guide. The middle pages of this eight-page document consist of a statement from each side in the campaign. Apart from the whopping lie that Turkey “is in the process of joining” the EU, and that mindless slogan about “taking back control” (when the Tories already seem to be able to do whatever they like), we are once again treated to the lie that the UK’s membership of the EU costs £350 million a week.

It’s on the side of the Brexit battlebus. Johnson, Gove and Grayling repeat it whenever they can on the TV and radio. Tory MP Christopher Chope said it three times on ‘The Sunday Politics’, even after being challenged over it by another guest on the programme. Clearly the Brexit mob subscribe to the Goebbels mantra that “if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it”.

“Even if we get some of it back, we still have to pay it first” is one standard response from supporters of Leave. But it’s not true. Full Fact is an independent charity and has explained: “In 2015 the UK government paid £13 billion to the EU budget, and EU spending on the UK was £4.5 billion . So the UK’s ‘net contribution’ was estimated at about £8.5 billion .Each year the UK gets an instant discount on its contributions to the EU - the ‘rebate’ - worth almost £5 billion last year. Without it the UK would have been liable for £18 billion in contributions. The UK doesn’t pay or "send to Brussels" this higher figure of £18 billion, or anything equivalent per week or per day. The rebate is applied straight away, so the UK never contributes this much.”

https://fullfact.org/economy/our-eu-membership-fee-55-million/

So the UK’s contribution last year was about £8.5 billion. That would amount to about £163 million a week, not even half of the £350 million which the Brexit liars peddle. When they are caught out, some Brexit supporters reply with: “It’s still too much”. That of course is an entirely separate argument, which is far too simplistic and sees our contribution to the largest free trade area the world have ever seen - just 1.1% of all government expenditure - purely as a cost and not as an investment.

We’re told that this mythical £350 million a week could be used for other things (they ‘spend’ it many times over), but above all that it could be used to increase funding for the NHS. Anyone who believes that the right-wing Tories who would be in full control in the event of Brexit would spend more on the NHS is seriously deluded. For a start, there probably wouldn’t be any extra money at all, and Boris Johnson, who thinks we appreciate services more if we pay for them, and Dan Hannan MEP, who described the NHS as “a 60-year mistake”, are no friends of our health service.

Why say that 75% of all our laws originate from Brussels, when the true figure is no more than 15%? Why claim that the EU accounts haven’t been signed off by auditors for 20 years, when they have for every year since 2007? If you think you have a good case, why is there a need to lie, lie and lie again? I suppose it’s because almost all of those leading the Brexit campaign are Tories or their UKIP cousins, so lying is the modus operandi which they know best.

I can’t see one reason for leaving the EU which stands up to scrutiny, yet this referendum could well be very close. One poll of polls last week suggested 50:50. The danger is that it’s very hard to get people excited about maintaining the status quo, and so it is those who want change - to leave the EU - who may be better motivated. If you don’t want us to leave, please do all you can to spread the word before it’s too late. Post on Twitter or Facebook, draw attention to this site and this thread, maybe contact Stronger In or your local Labour Party or Lib Dems and distribute some leaflets. Above all, please counter the £350 million lie, which the Brexit brigade are determined that people will "eventually come to believe". Goebbels would be proud of them.

I heard some people last week at the cashpoint at ASDA talking about the £350,000,000 that is said to go to the EU - wasn't a particularly illuminating conversation - I think they ended up deciding if it didn't go to the EU they would personally get a share of it - three voters for Brexit - I think that would end up being about 50p per week per voter, or something like that

Jeremy Corbyn turns fire on Conservatives in EU speech

The Conservatives are to blame for Britain's economic difficulties, not the European Union, Jeremy Corbyn has said:-

"Their agenda is to end the working time directive, their agenda is to take away that protection, their agenda is to take away the four weeks holiday we won all across Europe. Their whole concept is of undercut, undercut, undercut. Increase profit at one end, increase misery at the other end. Do we allow xenophobes to take over or do we instead occupy that political and intellectual territory of the idea that you can solve things together? You'd better build those alliances working with people rather than isolating yourselves from them."

http://www.itv.com/news/story/2016-05-14/jeremy-corbyn-turns-fire-on-conservatives-in-eu-speech/

Have you noticed how when asked about continued trade with the EU, in the event of an out vote, they always give the example of Germany wanting to continue selling us BMW cars and France want us to keep taking their Cheeses and Wines....Just the sort of items the ordinary British voter has on their weekly shopping list.............NOT....

Then today boris the clown clearly stated that we are not allowed to buy bananas in bunches of more than 3..............

The principal query I have is to wonder why every spokesperson (without exception) on both sides of the Leave/Remain debate wants to frighten us into agreeing with them.