The EU Referendum is nearly upon us.........23rd June.

[Daisyonthegreen]

I have been invited by other posters to start a new EU Referendum Thread as the EU thread "In out shake it all about what to vote in the EU referendum "is now closed.
Anyhow this vote is is pretty crucial for the good of the country and your family.
I make no secret of the fact I feel to vote to Leave is the best option.
On the "In out shake it all about,what to vote in the EU Referendum " Thread I posted many links and gave views on why I feel that way.
I feel we would flourish free of the beaucratic ,undemocratic organisation it has turned into.
A Trading block initially started up with 9 countries in the 1970s has become out of control,mammoth and unwieldy and frankly rather dangerous.
We need to wrest back control of our own country,our borders and our ability to broker our own Trade deals which the EU insists on doing for us.
Plus our own Judicial decisions.
We on leaving would still Trade with the EU,they need us more than we need them actually but the beauty of it we could be free to broker our own deals with the rest of the world on our terms.
In short we would flourish.
We can love/ like Europe but not be in the EU.

our MP's listen to us!

Lighthearted example, but still…

David Cameron getting the agreement about closer political union would be an example.

MEP's don't make laws, they get to vote on them though.

So how does an ordinary person get in touch with the EU politicians who actually make the laws...?

Chalala
So once again, Brexit is being touted as a miracle solution, when really it just replaces a set of problem with another set of different, and possibly worse, problems.

No. It is not touted as a miracle solution. It is likely the case we may be swapping some problems for others. The problem we have now are we are out of control of our destiny. I would rather swap this problem with that of getting our economy running efficiently and putting the "Great" back into Britain. Remaining is removing the "Great" from Britain and in years to come will take the "Britain" out of Britain.

^I rather be poorer and freer.

Well, that's fair enough. I would dispute that you'd be significantly freer after Brexit, but overall if you think that recovering full sovereignty is worth a significant economic recession, then I can't argue with that. (I'm not trying to be sneery here, I actually do think it's fair enough, although I disagree.)^

Extricating ourselves from the clutches of a regime that behaves in a dictatorial fashion I would assert is a move to freedom.

"I would rather swap this problem with that of getting our economy running efficiently and putting the "Great" back into Britain. Remaining is removing the "Great" from Britain and in years to come will take the "Britain" out of Britain."

For one this is utter hyperbole and makes little sense. Yet you and your side offer no economic plan and project fantasy ideas of trade deals that will not occur.

"Extricating ourselves from the clutches of a regime that behaves in a dictatorial fashion "

Ah the democracy argument again, which has been utterly proved wrong by other posters here, the EU is in no way comparable with a dictatorship. Yet more hyperbole, your argument really is clap trap isn't it.

Btw, MEP's can vote on laws, make ammendments to laws, our MPs are on the council of ministers which also gets to do the same. MEPs and the Council of Ministers also get to suggest laws and changes that the commision will the work on, using civil servants from each country and negotiate on. So we can have lots of input, through both your MEP and your local Westminster MEP.

Itinerary if you want to influence EU legislation you have I think 3 options: you can vote to elect a British government that represents your views in the Council, you can contact your local MEP, and you can set up a citizen petition.

The basic problem with your position, though, is that the system is set up this way to maintain some sort of national sovereignty control on EU legislation, through the Council and the Commission it names. If you want a truly democratic system in which European people directly elect all levels of law-makers, then you bypass the sovereign states and create a super-national EU state. Which I don't think is what you would want?

Also, you can certainly argue that the EU system is flawed, but so is the British system, albeit in different ways. In some respects the UK is less democratic than the EU: the House of Lords is seriously undemocratic, and so is FPTP compared to PR.

Funny that, Eels. We want to open up trade links and (controlled) migration to the rest of the world. You Remainers seem to think the world begin and ends in Little Europe.

No Anna we realise that we get a far better deal in trade agreements when we are with Europe than outside it. Look at the Swiss deal with China which gives the Chinese instant access to the Swiss markets, but delays the Swiss ability to start trading in China for years.

Who is China's biggest trading partner? Oh the EU that's right.

Remainers are very aware that the world outside is very big, but within Europe we are better off.

Brexiters base their economic policy on fantasy.

I'm interested in this "rest of the world"

Which are the countries that would be anxious to buy our goods and services, and have the money to pay for them, that we have somehow not noticed? Why are we not already selling to them? Are they not already buying from someone else? Why have they got unsatisfied demand for lawnmowers, tweed jackets, F1 racing cars, Irn-Bru and luxury yachts?

Do you mean Zimbabwe and Bosnia?

"Your lack of self-awareness stuns me."

Oh the irony.

But I'm sure some of the anti-Europeans who keep ranting about the UK being outvoted billions of times will have it. Unless they are just spreading unsupported myths

Well not "billions" obviously, not enough to be concerned.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/eureferendum/12152759/Why-even-David-Cameron-cannot-convince-me-to-vote-to-remain-in-the-EU.html

Lurked and Hover

Lurked writes to me:

^Bronze's constants attempts to appear to be reasonable whilst maintaing a stance which is emotive, illogical, relies on flights of fancy regarding trade, and in certain post verges on xenephobia (nice reference to immigrants opening corner shops there, well done indeed).
Posting about patriotism, when it's actually nationalism.^

I’m patriotic, yes and what is wrong with being a nationalist or is that also not politically correct nowadays?

I have illustrated 2 scenarios using both car hire businesses and corner shops. Pulling the race card suggests you’ve run out of steam and can’t counter my comments with meaningful and logical arguments.

For a country to become wealthier, it needs to import money. How does it do this? It exports goods and services. So my argument that any person working for the UK, be it a native, EU migrant or non EU migrant, unless they end up being responsible for importing money, they are not contributing to making the country richer. All they are doing is shuffling the existing wealth around.

Hover writes to me:

Bronze - have you ever heard of taxes? You know, the money that isn't there in your brown envelope at the end of the week? I presume you think the government has spent it all wisely? Perhaps they could even have applied for grants from the EU! Maybe if some of you hadn't been so incredibly stupid as to elect MEPs who had actually stated that they were going to collect their money but not actually partake in the democratic process, nor fight for our country, we may have been able to negotiate something to benefit us...

Ignoring your sarcasm and insults, let me illustrate a simple situation.

You and 4 friends want to go out for a night out. You each have £100. So between you you have £500. No matter what happens, you can only afford to spend £500 between you.

On the way you meet 5 friends and they invite themselves to come with you. By chance, they have among them another £500. So there are 10 of you with £1000 among you which still leaves £100 each to spend.

However, if your friends have no money but still insist on coming with you, the 10 of you now have only £500 between you. Therefore, the increase in people without the commensurate increase in money has reduced the amount you can now spend per head which is now £50. You’re individually and collectively poorer and not going to have such a good time because now you’ll have to eat in a cheaper restaurant and maybe get the bus home rather than a cab.

Now imagine we double the workforce of our country but none of the workers (whether it be native, EU migrants or non EU migrants; I’m not xenophobic because I’m illustrating that even before we consider uncontrolled immigration, we can get poorer even with static GDP) were responsible for exporting goods and services but merely shuffling round money that is already in the country, on balance, everyone will become poorer by 50%.

So to Hover.

Your point about EU grants is nonsense. The reason is the we send the EU £350m per week and out of that they send us back £240m in “grants”. They are not grants, they are refunds. Calling them grants gives everyone here who does not understand the mechanics a warm feeling we are getting something for nothing. We are not. They are only giving us back our own money and keeping £110m of our money to themselves. So we’re worse off by £110m per week. If we didn’t give them the £110m per week, using the average house price figures, we would be able to build 35,308 new homes per annum (excluding land costs).

You also say the money to pay for the infrastructure of the country will come out of taxes. I’m glad you said that because you’re correct. However, you have overlooked the point that the new labour force did not bring with it money nor did it import money though exports. The Government has to pay for all this infrastructure with taxpayers money. As each taxpayer is poorer because we’re spreading out the existing wealth among twice as many people, the percentage of tax you pay will percentage wise be higher of your now dwindling income. Dwindling income, does that sound familiar?

The Government can’t really increase VAT to 40% (if the EU would allow it to but that is another argument) for fear of electorate unrest and getting voted out next election and it can’t raise tax by 10p in the pound for the same reason. So what does it do, it borrows money. Sound familiar, that £69.5bn deficit we keep hearing about. That’s because the country is getting poorer, having to borrow money to keep the lights on. We won’t feel that in the pocket just yet. That just kicks the can down the road and our children will pick up the tab plus interest. Actually there is something else it can do, it can print money (quantitative easing as they so eloquently describe it). This seems like a great idea however there is a downside which is not so apparent. Printing more money only serves to devalue the money already in circulation which means prices increase. So that doesn’t work. Did the country get any better off after all that money printing (QE) some £275bn. No. All that did was devalue the pound in my pocket and give an advantage to the person that printed the money. And I’m miffed because they didn’t share out the newly printed money; I don’t remember getting my share of that £275bn some £4583 to compensate me for the devaluation of the pound in my pocket. Money printing is wealth transfer by stealth from poor to rich. And isn't the ECB doing that too?

There’s another measure of wealth which is more meaningful than just the GDP and that is gross domestic product (at purchasing power parity) per capita. Sort of the wealth per person of GDP.

Depending on the source, the UK is between 22nd and 30th. Using World Bank actual data, we’re 23rd. So though we are 5th or 6th largest economy, we’re not 5th or 6th when it comes to GDP per person. This means our wealth is spread more thinly per head than the previous 22 nations.

Here are some of the other counties in that table and their rank:

2 Luxembourg
7 Norway
8 Switzerland
11 Ireland
12 Netherlands
13 Austria
14 Germany
16 Denmark
18 Sweden
21 Belgium
23 United Kingdom
28 Italy
31 Spain
38 Portugal
42 Greece
45 Poland
46 Hungry
59 Turkey
68 Bulgaria

In 1973 before we entered the common market, there were only 5 European countries ahead of us. Now there are 10. That means as a population, per capita we are getting poorer than our European neighbours.

Even with our social security system, UK foodbanks are on the increase now at record levels as hunger remains major concern for low income families.

Does that sound like the sort of headline a county with an improving per capita wealth level. Not to me it doesn’t and rising reliance on foodbanks is one of the visible proofs. Million of people in this country cant even feed themselves. What an unmitigated disgrace.

So since we joined the common market in 1973, we’re worse off.

What on earth makes you think that situation will improve any time soon being politically and economically shacked to an economically decaying, indebted union of countries that wants to on board even more poor countries. I wonder why no rich countries are gagging to join.

Less of our exports go to the EU because money is flowing from west to east. The west is borrowing and getting poorer, meanwhile the East is getting richer, stocking up on gold.

Then we hear that Osbourne, who can't even predict next years GDP figures is trying to convince us he can see 14 years in the future and workout our GDP will be 6% less by2030 if we leave the EU. In 14 years time, there just as much chance that our GDP will be 6% more - no can make that call. Specially a bloke who I remember said he was going to balance our books by 2015 and is still digging us further into a debt hole, this year alone to the tune of a whopping 69.5bn. I can't take the guy seriously.

What there is more chance than not of happening if we remain, is that we'll slowly but surely get sucked into deeper political union, our membership fees will increase to pay for the subsidies to the new poorer nations waiting to join. As our population increases at a faster rate than our GDP we'll slide down the per capita wealth league and we won't just be easting cheaper meals and getting the bus home, we'll be walking to the nearest foodbank sitting on the pavement eating a handout meal reminiscing of the good old say when we could afford to get the bus to get a meal out.

This is why I want my country back and I'm voting to leave the EU.

Bronze
Wow I've never seen someone miss a point so badly! Yes ecconomies require exports to put money in but to function money must circulate within that economy and this is generlly achieved by internal consumption. Your example above also discounts that many immigrants work in areas do directly bring in funding from around the globe, take higher education as one example. Your example of the 10 friends above - which I shudder at- misses that the joining five, let's say working in the service sector, provide Labour, creativity and technical support. All ten put ten pounds into a common pot at the start of the evening and hire a minibus to take every one home thus no one gets cold in a taxi que. The guy that lived in the opposite directiont to the rest and would be on his own had they not hired the minubus is less likely to be mugged and doesn't have a larger bill than the rest to pay to get home... there almost as daft as your last point!

I wonder why no rich countries are gagging to join very good point Bronze. All the countries awaiting accession are significantly poorer than us. Await redistribution of wealth (ours).

Anna it's actually a rather poor point, all of the rich European nations, with two exceptions are already in. We have rich nations falling over each other to do deals with the EU though.

I've run out of steach? You and your side have yet to raise any valid points, you wilfully misrepresent figures (not 350 million rebate applies directly) . You pulled a point about immigrants opening corner shops and we're rightly called on it.

Your back of the fag packet arguments crumble when your given any real data, yet you come up with none yourselves. You can't argue economic reasons, Democratic reasons are dubious.

There is a difference between patriotism and nationalism you know.

Anna
The EU is not about redistribution, The concept is that by operating together the potential of the whole becomes greater than the potential of the individual parts. Yes money moves between member states but it is used to provide the structures that we benefit from and to develop capability within each state that we all then benefit from. By your logic taxes in the UK should only be spent in the local borough that the contributor lives in!

Oh and your analogy demonstrates your lack of understanding. Laughable.

Bronze that's an absolutely superb post. Spot on about the wealth per head, we are spreading the money more and more thinly and getting up to our necks in debt as a result. It's the UK's poor who are paying the biggest price, as they see their wages undercut, their place on the council housing list grabbed by an EU family designated as being in greater need, and their housing costs rocketing thanks to huge pressure of numbers. The rich merely marvel at how cheap their cleaner/car valet/plumber/gardener is, and how much their house is worth. Why aren't the Labour party shouting this from the rooftops?

And no surprise that the countries clamouring to join the EU are poor - I don't blame them, it will bring fantastic opportunities for their citizens (while ours have to pay the price).

Unemployment figures are up again - yet the coaches from E Europe continue to arrive.

The wealth is being spread thinner because we are a much more unequal society, we are far more unequal than other European countries and will get worse outside of the EU.

We will pay the price economically for leaving, virtually all of the independent research says so.

EU families don't get preferential treatment or jump housing lists.

But as with many of bronzes arguments they appear reasonable at first but a little scratch of the surface and you realise it's all rubbish.

Bronzed Brilliant post. Thank you. Erudite, concise and thought-provoking. A United States of Europe may be a good idea in principle in the same way that banking is a good idea in principle, but when these good processes lack transparency (exactly why are we having this debate if things are transparent?), then we have problems. The fact that all big banks want us to stay should be a red flag to anybody! Lurked - independent research? Do you mean the organisations which are funded by our government/EU? I remember going to a talk once about the positive effects of nicotine on attention. Funded by BAT. At an RG university. A good one. That kind of independent?

Didn't think PWC, HSBC, ubs the cbi etc were government funded

I did not say that banks are govt. funded. I made two separate but related points. One - it should be obvious that those agencies producing positive figures for remain are also ones that want us to Remain. Conflict of interest? Two - nobody objects, in principle, to certain processes in their pure form, for example, capitalism (increasing your one bag of beans to two), banking (a needed service), an organisation of countries linked by common goals (EU), etc., but once these processes become obscured, moot and less than transparent, due largely (but not entirely) to conflict of interests, then one must question the independence of the issue being proposed.