Before you vote.. please check whether your perceptions are in line with the figures (following the ipsos poll...)

[nearlyhellokitty]

The EU referendum is such a critical decision... but seems that there are massive misperceptions.
www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3742/The-Perils-of-Perception-and-the-EU.aspx

No not at all.

Its just easy to try and pretend its not the case.

You do not have to be remain or become remain to see that poll has value.

Its about trying to assess the quality of information you have been given and then make decisions from that. What is more damaging to this country than the result of the election is the whipping up of beliefs which are nonsense and harmful.

Red I suppose anyone would take your view "What is more damaging to this country than the result of the election is the whipping up of beliefs which are nonsense and harmful" if you simply couldn't understand that immigration has in many areas had a detrimental effect.

I do appreciate those who are in favour of it and have been lucky enough to escape its worse pressures, would speak like you.But as that guy next to Baroness Kennedy said yesterday on A Marr, if people suddenly start to kick up about something it would behove those in power to just - listen. Try and empathise.

Yes I do find it distasteful when people like Frank Field, Labour MP are trying to speak out for the really poor of the UK, Frank Field believes immigration has made the situation worse for the poor in his constituency and yet, apparently, according to some posters, he is a mad rabid, immigration hater? Who probably gleans all his knowledge not from his own constituents, but from the Daily Mail?

Frank Field may be a lovely man, but he is being blinkered when it comes to what will happen in the next recession once we have left the EU

I would suspect he has taken all of that into account and he still thinks we should leave actually.

I would give him more credit than that.

step the argument here is whether leaving or staying benefits the poor more. It's not distasteful to disagree that leaving will help and to in fact say that it could be much much worse for the poor than staying. It's also based on the economic picture. You might disagree about the impact but don't characterise remain as ignoring the poor.

But Frank Field, however honourable he might be, and however much research he might have done to reach his conclusions, is just one man. He's not some kind of visionary guru. There are plenty of equally honourable people, not all of whom work for the EU, who have reached different conclusions. Plenty of people with economic backgrounds feel that it will be worse for the poor of this country if we leave the UK. So we have to try to weigh up all the evidence.

I admit that when I see that I don't agree with the majority of the loudest pro-Leavers on any other policy or ideological belief (Gove, Johnson, Farage as frontrunners) it acts as a useful shorthand for me. So I can see why a decent chap like Frank Field who genuinely cares about social welfare would make you think.

People are extrapolating from their own experiences. This may give incorrect perceptions of the national figures, but national figures homogenise the data. I worked on two schools, 10 miles apart. The school in the area of high deprivation had 23% EAL, mostly EU, students. The leafy lane school had less than 5%.

The issue with leaving the EU is it will be worse for everybody not just the poor:
The rich will lose huge amounts on the stockmarket
Wages will go down so even though house prices go down even fewer UK people will be able to afford them. Rich Saudis and Russians will be able to snap up even more
I am very concerned about what Russia will do so we could end up with East Europeans coming in as refugees
We will have to make do with shoddy and dangerous goods without European safeguards
Less workers rights e.g. working much longer hours
Big companies e.g. google being able to to get away with even more as there is noone to stand up to them

The poor are doing badly because of the policies of the conservative government:
Loss of social housing and bedroom tax
Loss of tax credits
Local authorities not allowed to build new schools
Underfunding of the health service

Frank Field speaking for the poor? Do you know anything at ALL about him?

Frank Field doesn't actually believe in the welfare state, and thinks it should be replaced by private insurance companies. I've had the "pleasure" of following his behaviour for years.

He was one of the architects of the welfare restructuring which has harmed the disabled so much, and of Universal Credit which is going to make things much worse, with its complete dependence on real-time reporting by employers (UC will vary wildly each fortnight if the employer makes even the smallest error or delay in filing) and the application of the same treadmill regimes and sanctions to people IN low-paid work as to people out of work.

He now makes his living whining about the impact his own policies are having on the poor: all other people's fault for doing it badly, you understand.

Typical Field-ism.

Here he is in 2012 saying welfare shouldn't be based on need but should be closely tied to insurance contributions: www.wirralglobe.co.uk/news/9987797.Welfare_based_on_need_should_be_scrapped___Frank_Field/

And here's what actually happened on his watch: National Insurance contribution-based ESA (Incapacity Benefit as was) was capped at 1 year for all but the most seriously disabled. Someone who becomes permanently disabled after 30 years' work is thrown into the means-tested ESA system at the end of a year, and if their partner's income reaches the designated survival level for a couple, will receive nothing. Not only are the now poor and dependent on someone else despite having personally paid NI, but if they do qualify to receive a penny under means-tested ESA (which is anyway capped lower than contribution-based) they have to attend "back to work" courses even where there is no prospect of them ever being well enough to work.

So a closer tie to insurance contributions - unless you've made lots of contributions, in which case no tie to contributions. Jolly good.