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.

stilllovingmysleep. You questioned Donna about "safety". Have you not heard of taharrush, have you not heard of the general non-status of women in many of the countries from which the migrants came from but are now EU citizens? Are you aware of the almost red alert that Europe and GB are on with respect to terrorists (who are now EU citizens) but are so hostile to the European countries that gave them shelter, that they want to usurp and change the way of life?

Are you actually able to think further than cheap Europe flights? Those cheap flights will sooner or later become expensive because extra security checks will have to be brought in. Hopping on a flight from LHR to Belgium will not be such a carefree activity.

As itinerary says "We can't undo EU legislation, as it can only be repealed by the EU. Why should the EU have permanent supremacy over UK law? "

Centralised control above the heads of sovereign nations is what this is about.

The aim is to weaken independent sovereign nations and make them part of a supranational union. National identity and independence needs to be weakened in the process too. It is a longterm process.

lljkk "Referendum is not nearly upon us. It's ruddy 2+ months away."

That IS being nearly upon us, dear. Nine weeks is not a long time.

The Govt's Referendum booklet. Under "What happens if we leave?" it says:

No other country has managed to secure significant access to the Single Market without having to:

• follow EU rules over which they have no real say,
• accept EU citizens living and working in their county.

If any of you have sat in on a business negotiation, or at least been on the fringes of one, you will know that every negotiation is a fresh opportunity. Just because no other country has ever been successful in rejecting certain clauses does not mean it can never happen! It would take a Queen's Counsel who specialises in International & EU Law with a fierce constitution and big cojones to negotiate, assuming that our govt did not sabotage.

It may well mean that UK will have to 'give up' something in order to be able to sometimes reject EU people living-working-claiming in our country.

At the time Norway signed its trade agreement with the EU, it had a burgeoning oil & gas industry, it was (is) very socialist and I think its birth rate was low too. So it had no objection to the free travel of EU citizens clause. But I suspect they never seriously envisaged the numbers that would appear on the doorstep of Europe.

threedays "So roughly half of our net immigration is from outside the EU - but we can control this. The EU half is beyond control. 180,000 is roughly the population of Aberdeen. "

Exactly. And with TTIP a 'free movement' clause may be written into the deal between EU and USA. Though I suspect if it is, it will probably be one way, i.e. Americans into Europe, because there is a great deal of unemployment in parts of America. So who knows, if they can afford the airfare, it's a possibility.

"I accept that if we vote to leave the EU there will be a short to medium term recession" This may or may not happen - no one knows.

Except most economic sources say that an exit from the EU would most likely cause a recession. The Economist, PWC, HSBC etc all have researched it and come up with the result in a recession and in the long term would be adverse for the UK economy.

"However, using data available, the EU block of countries are a shrinking economic block. "

Which is to fundamentally misunderstand the "data" the EU economy hasn't shrunk This isn't to sayit's larger than it was in 1980 in current prices and in constant prices. Europe's smaller share of world output is because of the rise of other economies especially the BRICS countries.

My question is why would we want to get into even closer political union with a failing block of countries? Trade with them, yes. Controlled by them, no."

But we have a larger wieghting on our vote at the EU than many of these small countries. As said before in EU votes the UK is on the winning side 90% of the time. . Also Cameron won an agreement that we would not have to be involved in ever closer political union.

The points about immigration, sigh, again to have to say that economically immigrants from the EU are net fiscal contributors, which means that they pay more in taxes than they take out in services. Even if you sent all EU immigrants home the pressure on services would not be reduced greatly because most are young and don't have kids so therefore don't use most services. The migration bounce factor also comes into play here because most go home, for example immigration from the EU8 countries this year was about 74,000 but a net migration factor of about 45, 000 which means about 30,000 people went home.

Three: Your point about "unskilled" labour is understandable, you say about driving down wages for British workers. But 65% of the EU 14 workers that are graduates and about 25% of those who come from the EU 8. So the level of "unskilled workers" is relatively small when you consider that 1.4 million immigrants are from EU8 countries, so around a million workers are going to be considered to be "unskilled" but then we have to take into account all the plumbers, brick layers etc that are from these countries so then you get an even smaller amount. As a % of the workforce their influence is very small.

Which brings us to the house price situation. There are about 3 million EU immigrants in the UK, so about 4 % of the population, again they aren't the driving factor determining house prices. The number of new homes needed each year has been about 250,000 for a few decades, but we have consistently built less than that, a chronic shortage of housing in the areas in which there is demand is driving the house price rise, along with the availbility of cheap credit.

Bronze's health tourism point is fallacious too because the nbumber of people who come to the country aiming to take advantage of free healthcare is ridiculously small.

I understand people's concerns for the future, but you really have to think that if you are backing brexit then you are contributing to making the future worse. If we negotiate an EEA style trade deal then we will be like Norway, still paying for the EU and following regulations, with the four freedoms still in place. If we don't have a deal like that it is likely that UK firms would struggle to compete with EU ones in terms of trade because we will have tariffs and quotas of what we can supply, we would not be included in EU trade deals and having to negotiate our own with a much weaker position of negotiation. We might be the "5th" ( 6th actually) biggest economy in the world but France and Germany and the 5th and 4th, California alone is the 8th. The size of the economy doesn't give you an advantage, the amount of trade you do with others does. Outside the EU this would be diminished, especially in our services indusrty. Car companies for now have said that they would stay ( bit 88% say staying in the EU is important) , but if tariffs are placed on British made products in future that might not be the case.

I'm not going to tell you that you are wrong, I understand that people are concerned about the EU, but hopefully some of the things I've pointed out will help allay them.

Immigration from the EU is the reason why we are having a referendum, its been the political hot topic since Blair.

There is simply NO WAY we would accept free movement of people and certainly not on the scale we have seen, in any Brexit deal.

Norway and the other countries were not in the pitiful state we are currently in, when they signed freedom of movement deals.

Pitiful state, ie, maternity wards closed on a frequent basis due to volume of users, children not able to access primary school places, and so on.

You can't blame the result of wilfully underfunding of the NHS and subsequent pressure on services on immigrants. That's shortsighted. And if you believe the situation will get any better for these services if immigration is reduced, you're naive.

The points about immigration, sigh, again to have to say that economically immigrants from the EU are net fiscal contributors, which means that they pay more in taxes than they take out in services

It doesn't matter how much they pay in taxes, when taxes take a long time to filter into the system to then create the hundreds of new schools we need to build, teachers to train, midwives to recruit the mass expansion of maternity wards, and all the other services, immigrants need to use, that are not there.

What happens to the people in the mean time, while we are waiting?

People suffer.

And its totally un necessary there was never any need for anyone to suffer in the UK for the sake of allowing mass immigration.

Bronze's health tourism point is fallacious too because the nbumber of people who come to the country aiming to take advantage of free healthcare is ridiculously smal

depends on what you classify as small Lurked.

Surely when it comes to the NHS every single penny counts.

You do realise babies, women are dying because they are steered from life saving C sections, to other birth methods to save money?

I sense a very cavalier attitude to what quality of life is worth and life itself.

Widow, the NHS is always struggling, it always has and it probably always will.

That's reality, it was struggling pre blairs decision. How did that help?

How did it help an under funded - over used health care system to then allow millions more people to suddenly use it?

Midwives - shortage - lets allow open immigration and give them more pregnant women?

"There is simply NO WAY we would accept free movement of people and certainly not on the scale we have seen, in any Brexit deal. "

Maybe not, but a failure to accept the 4 freedoms in a trade deal would lead to detrimental terms for the UK.

Your point about services is fallacious and I've covered that before. I

Lurked, any quick google shows hospitals shutting doors,and immigration is sighted as a reason but as I have covered before your simply not interested.

Most EU leavers I have spoken too are happy to accept some losses for other tremendous gains.

Step into the light.

More than one study has shown that if EU immigrants were to go home the pressure on services would not be less because the level of funding would go down because of a lower tax take.

Your appeal to emotion about babies and women is rather cringe worthy. The NHS is not suffering because it has too many people coming for health tourism nor is it suffering because of immigration. It is suffering because of funding cuts, because of cuts to local councils social care meaning beds are taken up.

Lets go back to the figures AGAIN, there are about 1.4 million people here from the EU 8 countries, 2% of the population. The majority of whom are young adults who do not use services.

Stop the scaremongering.

The NHS & Schools are hugely underfunded, because of the decisions of this government, to cut back taxation & to cut down on spending too. Nothing at all to do with immigration.

immigrants from the EU are net fiscal contributors, which means that they pay more in taxes than they take out in services.

Many manually skilled EU people work 'off the cards' and live frugally in shared houses for a number of years. It is only when, say, an EU person decides to settle down and have children, that they will become visible again by getting a PAYE job. This is because it brings them benefits in the way of paternal/maternal leave, child benefit, working tax credits, and applying successfully for council accommodation.

It is only the blue-collar workers and above who can be said to be net contributors to GB.

That's fine, but show me the evidence for the hoardes of these manually skilled labourers doing this and then settling down to have kids etc. Got to be a very small % , its not like ALL labourers are doing this, it has to be a rather small % of workers doing that over all too.

You can't blame the result of wilfully underfunding of the NHS and subsequent pressure on services on immigrants. That's shortsighted. And if you believe the situation will get any better for these services if immigration is reduced, you're naive.

The current situation in the NHS is entirely due to a large increase in population too quickly giving no time for infrastructure to be enlarged.

Lurcio. Most labourers of all nationalities tend to work off the cards. Those coming in from EU countries come here to work in order to get as much money together as possible. They are not interested and do not want deductions from their wages made until it becomes financially advantageous to them.

CuttheWaffle, what on earth are you talking about?! The UK has always had migration, in all times and ages & will always have migration, as all major economies. The NHS has been hugely underfunded for a number of years now, very openly stated by the Tory governments.

"The current situation in the NHS is entirely due to a large increase in population too quickly giving no time for infrastructure to be enlarged."

Eu immigration makes up 4.6 % of the population, EU8 which is your "massive" influx immigration is 2%, so has the ascention of these countries to the EU caused a massive influx, no? How do we know, because the data shows it.

Now lets repeat the facts, the majority of EU immigrants are young adults who do not have families and do not use services. So your "population grew too fast" is total bunkum.

Stilllovingmysleep -The NHS & Schools are hugely underfunded, because of the decisions of this government,

What a daft statement. Every govt has a budget to work with. And some of the reasons why budgets are not stretching to give us a good service that you would expect from a modern European country is because we have to accommodate too many people coming into GB. A couple arrive in GB and have 2 or 3 children quickly. That is a huge growth already and will take the resources of antenatal appts, maternity services, post-natal services. Four years down the line a kindergarten place will be sought, then primary school, GP appts for a family of 5.

Young EU people move to GB not just for jobs, but to have their children safely. Poles and Baltics back home have to pay at point of service.

Why do you think that most of us have to wait 5 months for a hospital appt, for example? The tight budget has been imposed on us because of the big increase in population which is not matched by tax revenue. I analyse DH figures all day. Wake up.

There has been plenty of time. Doctors have been warning for years and years that there was a crisis building up due to many baby boomers retiring/population ageing/population increase, and that we needed to recruit. They haven't been listened to. What's been lacking is not time, it's political will.

Cutthewaffle enough already with your xenophobia. I am one of the immigrants you talk about. I had my DS here, he goes to school here, I and my DH work and contribute here for many years. How dare you talk in this disparaging way of your fellow citizens and ultimately of me and my DS. There are many British people in my country of origin and I never once thought to think of them as 'taking my space'. In fact, I always thought that they were honouring my country by choosing to live there.

Budgets don't fall out of the sky; they are politic decisions: taxation in this country is scandalously low, particularly corporation tax. A lot could be done to fund services better.

Big increase in population? 3%?

There is simply NO WAY we would accept free movement of people and certainly not on the scale we have seen, in any Brexit deal.

With my cynical hat on, I'm not so sure. We know that all of Labour and most of the Tories think that EU immigration in exchange for free trade with the EU is a good deal. The Brexit campaign have conspicuously not stated they would leave the EEA, why not? And Boris himself had a long history of praising the economic benefits of immigration, before changing his tune because he wants to be PM.

I very strongly suspect that if Brexit wins, the new Tory government will stab its supporters in the back by making some trade-for-immigration deal with the EU, possibly even just staying in the EEA.