To ask if you think we will stay or go?

[TheoriginalLEM]

sorry its the EU.

i don't know that much but my gut feeling is we should stay.

however i think we will leave because strength of feeling seems to lay with the leavers wheras i think stayers might beless likely to vote or be in the not that fussed camp.

Bonkers I may be but I still have the right to vote and I don't want to subject my daughter to whimsical economic experiments the purposes of which include advancing Boris' career.

I tend to agree with you too BornFreeButinEUchains

I truly hope we leave but fear we won't. I just hope everyone makes an informed vote and researches the pros and the cons to both sides before making a decision that is important to them. For me, I value my children growing up in a country with the true freedom of democracy.

Was, we'll still need e.g. environmental protection laws and data protection laws if we leave the EU. They won't be an optional extra
No quarrel with that - the vast majority of world Nations outside the EU have these laws too, without needing the EU to frame or agree them. Data protection in Russia is particularly interesting - they have recently made a law that favours their home IT industries by demanding anyone holding data on Russians has to hold the physical data on Russian soil.

lavenderdoilly I didn't say you were bonkers - I said the idea that Brexit=Thatcher is bonkers. Of course I respect your right to vote as you please - but I fail to see that Boris' experiments are a significant degree more or less vicious than Camerons' - I mean it's not as if we're experiencing a golden age or prosperity and freedom just now is it?

Russia can have all the strongman rules it wants but it can't have data from eu countries unless it is on the EU list of ones with adequate information handling laws. So no Russian Googlesque company anytime soon.

Actually, pragmatism tends to rule in these cases - hence a lot of UK data in the US which has very different rules and a vague fudge of an agreement - the US certainly doesn't abide by EU data protection laws, but there's a lot of UK and other EU personal data stored there and subject to US law not ours.

And there are lots of big rows going on right now about eu citizens' data in the us. Facebook is based in Dublin so it can have conversations with EU about it. Would you buy online from a company based outside the EU?

Would you buy online from a company based outside the EU?

I do, and have done regularly for at least 10 years, so far my experience has been better than for EU countries (although to be fair my EU experience hasn't been particularly bad).

Facebook is based in Dublin so it can have conversations with EU about it.
More like Facebook is based in Dublin because Dublin has a low corporate tax regime and a lot of highly skilled well-educated people they can recruit - and a welcome side-effect is an EU presence. Facebook employs people in the UK too.

Ireland is in the EU and yet its corporation tax regime isn't the subject of a Brussels diktat. I wonder how they managed that when all the UK ' S laws are apparently created by Brussels.

All the EU migrants I know personally are hard working tax payers. I feel sorry for the countries that have lost them to us

But, we never needed them in the first place.

Great - a bonus that many ( a great many) are hard working, asset to society but many are not, and we cant choose.

But we did need them because their employers couldn’t recruit UK nationals.

For me, I value my children growing up in a country with the true freedom of democracy

Same here.

Lavender no thats not true at all.

I don't want to subject my daughter to whimsical economic experiments the purposes of which include advancing Boris' career

Its the EU thats the experiment not surviving without it!

we survived without this marriage to the EU financially since time began.

I don't know what Golden Age the Pro - Leave campaigners think we have lost or what golden future they think they can promise us.

But we did need them because their employers couldn’t recruit UK nationals because we pay poorly and don't train anyone, the very Thatcherite attitude that got us to this point. We've managed to rob a lot of the EU of skilled and unskilled workers - what are our young people going to do? They can hardly train to be accountants in Hungary or Poland can they?

But linking it to Thatcher ' s neglect of a generation is bonkers, apparently.

Doesn't existlavender. It's a Mrs Miniver fantasy world they are living in.

we survived without this marriage to the EU financially since time began.

Ahhhh the "In my day we didn't have X, Y or Z and we managed Fine' canard.

Pretty desperate stuff when trotted out about mobile phones, the internet etc. But downright laughable when it comes to the EU referendum.

lavender, the EU states do not harmonise corporation tax rates. That is why the UK can lower its corporation tax and other EU states have higher rates or vice versa. Same with income tax. We can have 45% and Bulgaria a flat rate of 10%.

On imports and exports if you buy from the US on line you often find you have to pay say £20 import duties.

I am pretty sure most of us will vote to stay in the EU and that will be the most sensible decision.

But linking it to Thatcher ' s neglect of a generation is bonkers, apparently. No, what is bonkers is saying Brexit=Thatcherism. In fact Thatcher is largely to blame for where we are now, Brexit would be a step away from the various EU laws she signed us up to as I pointed out upthread.

I thought the Mrs Miniver analogy was just something I saw - bit specialist. Glad to know it ain't just me.

And what worries me is that they are so blinkered by the idea of exited the EU at any cost that they'll reek any type of economic havoc to do i and tell the most shameless lies to achieve it, the 'Turkey is joining the EU' being the most recent example. The immigration from central Europe is a smokescreen, they've been banging this drum since 1992 at least, way before Poland et al joined.

David Cameron has said he wants Turkey to join the EU and he is angry about how long it's taking. Turkey will be offered visa-free access to Schengen in June. Whether you thing that is a good or bad thing - it's hardly "a lie" to suggest Turkey will join.

David Cameron can want what he likes. It doesn't mean it will happen.

His looks like posturing. He knows it will never happen, as well, but probably needs to appear to be supportive. It isn't something UK will decide. Use your head and ask yourself if there is any possibility that not one out of 28 EU member countries (including Cyprus and Greece) will say "No" to Turkey's accession, even assuming it comes to that. I doubt even that very much.

Did you understand what I said re only about 40% of Turks supporting EU membership?

Cameron on Turkey

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-10773007