Any Brexiters who have changed your minds....?

[onlyconnect]

If you voted Brexit but would now like to remain, could you call loudly for a second referendum please?
I'm a remainer and see the obvious problems with remainers asking for a second referendum but if former Brexiters were to ask, it would have legitimacy surely.

anonymousobserver

Trump is hardly stable from stablesville is he? he has already said that Europe shouldn't depend on the US, that NATO is obsolete and then rolls back on these statements, who the fuck knows what he would do?
Its is absolutely amazing you put so much faith in Trump, well perhaps not, birds of feather etc, he also lacks a few brain cells too.

The UK is supposedly a democracy, even if it is currently ferrets fighting in a sack, but my passport says Citizen.

The purpose of developing an EU army is obviously to persuade areas to the East of Eastern Europe not to come marching in. With Trump declaring one thing after another the EU members need something a bit more cohesive in terms of defense. The EU already has provision such that if one country it attacked the others should assist, forming an EU wide army just makes this more efficient, plus the possibility of beer drinking in other countries.

when I voted to join the EU it was nothing like it is now.
The fat cats have changed how the EU works, what it is for, who is in it, and who they are going to let join.
The Russians are been threatened by EU take over of their border countries and the French and Germans want an EU army.
Greece is a basket case, and the French are letting illegal immigrants free access to our shores.
The accounts have never been signed off, and where does all of our money go, never been told that.
And if Turkey is allowed to join then you can expect millions of them trying to come here, more strain on our school, NHS, housing, and another culture clash threating our safety.
So no I have not changed my mind.

millions of them I'm not entirely comfortable with phrases like this.

Any leavers going to queue to defend this?

Get you, outside in the garden.... "You work in the public sector, sucking on the teat of the taxpayer, supporting immigrants and hence have a vested interest in continuing with the EU and it's FoM policy." Roll up, roll up!!!, Doctors, teachers, nurses, Police, Firefighters, social workers, care workers (that aren't outsourced to private companies) - outside says you're teatsuckers.

"The Russians are been threatened by EU take over of their border countries "
Would that be Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia who were actually taken over by the USSR deciding not to be vulnerable and alone and throwing their lot in with the EU. Or Poland Hungary Czechia Slovakia Bulgaria etc who were bullied and degraded for a generation by the USSR deciding similarly.
That kind of take over. You know Jack shit if you think those countries were "taken over" by the EU.

Bellini, I think it’s evident that she knows jack shit; every word of the post gives it away. Regurgitated bollocks.

Cornwall is more likely to become a state of the USA than Turkey join the EU, anyone of 27 states can veto it, can't see Poland agreeing can you?

As for French allowing migrants to reach our shores! huh? the UK border is in FRANCE if they snuck through, that's on us! after brexit, i can't see the border remaining in France, meaning we'll stop them here and ask them to report to a Police station in 7 days, if they can even find one thats still open lol!

The Russians are threatened primarily by NATO, which then allows USA troops and weapons on their borders, lets leave NATO too?

Have a quick read of this on EU accounts
fullfact.org/europe/did-auditors-sign-eu-budget/

But yes Greece shouldn't have been allowed to join the euro, whether that caused its demise is another matter, not collecting taxes and a retirement age too low doesn't help, its GDP growth is now higher than UKs.

The French and Germans already have armies (as have all Eu countries). The French, quite rightly want to keep the USA at arms length and use EU sourced equipment rather than be dependent on the USA.
The F35 fighter jets that are used by the British, bought from the USA at IIRC approaching a Billion Pounds a time (happy to be corrected) are NOT ALLOWED to be serviced in the UK but have to go to US air bases in Turkey for the work, because the Americans don't trust the British not to copy their technology. Servicing takes half a day or more (I forget now). The Eurofighter jets are less expensive and can be serviced, even swapping a whole engine, in around an hour anywhere, not just in special service facilities.
Those posters who are expressing thoughtless comments about the many countries in Europe that have suffered brutal occupation need to learn a little respect. The UK fought in WW1 and 2 but was never occupied (except the channel Islands) so have little to no knowledge of the real horrors.

Jason118 - "Europe faces uncertain times with Trumps America"
It's ridiculous, it's not just Europe, it's the whole world, the mans a bigoted arse wipe"

That would be the Trump who has deported far fewer illegals than Obama. Is that the Trump we are talking about?

Peregrina - "Have you namechanged InsideInTheGarden, and you have been posting for years on all manner of topics? Alternatively has your shift just logged on, which is what it sounds like?"

I used to post here years ago but I've forgotten my username and re-registered. I shouldn't have taken the bait but the bollocks being spouted by Remainers on here irked me somewhat. I know - who gives a toss if someone is wrong on the internet? I should know better.

Oh - I'm not Russian if that's what you are alluding to. Mind you my wife (yes I am a man) did spend some time in Belarus back in the early nineties if that counts. Amazing isn't it? People travel outside of the EU. She nearly didn't go as she had to fill in a form and get her passport stamped! Quelle horreur!

OutsideInTheGarden

I pointed out that in the first half of 2018, UK inward FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) was £65 billion (and has been increasing since the referendum), second only to China with 25 or the EU27 nations not even achieving 1/3rd of the UK inward investment, only Holland (£40Bn) and Spain (£30bn) coming anyway near (if you can call ~50-60% near).

Umm, really? FDI continued to be strong after the EU referendum as several megadeals that had been in the pipeline, such as the BG Shell merger, came through and are reflected in the figures.

However, in 2017, the UK was overtaken by Germany as the largest European recipient of FDI, with France also gaining ground. The UK share of EU28 FDI has fallen from some 25 per cent in early 2015 to some 18 per cent in late 2017.

Since the EU referendum, inflows of FDI to the UK have followed a downward trend: the longest continuous decline since the beginning of the data series in 2003.

Our analysis shows that the Brexit vote may have reduced the number of foreign investment projects to the UK by some 16-20 per cent. For services FDI, the gap is even larger: investment may be some 25 per cent lower than if the UK had voted to remain in the EU.

blogs.sussex.ac.uk/uktpo/publications/not-backing-britain-fdi-inflows-since-the-brexit-referendum/#keybp23

An EU army is coming

Creation of an EU army could only happen when the European Council ‘acting unanimously, so decides’, as per TEU. That decision then needs to be ratified by Member States ‘in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements.' For the UK, that would require a referendum, as set out in section 6(2) of the European Union Act 2011.

Given that the UK always said it would veto the idea, the UK leaving the EU could potentially lead to one of Leaver’s own EU Project Fear favourites.

I know you said studied economics @OutsideInTheGarden and that leaving the EU will be great for the economy a whole bunch of Nobel prize winners disagree though as do 9 out of 10 professional economists, I'll go with them rather than you. Obviously I expect you to come back and say they know nothing and you know better.

economistsforremain.org

Nobel prize winning scientists don't like it either.

www.independent.co.uk/news/science/brexit-latest-science-nobel-prize-no-deal-eu-theresa-may-francis-crick-institute-a8596201.html

You also said a while back that if Brexit didn't happen you'd withdraw your consent to be governed, I've asked you three time how you are going to do that, you still haven't answered. Please answer this as it's the most interesting thing you've said.

Outside
{You are almost certainly a troll. Definitely anti-British anyway.}
Wrong on both counts.

OutsideInTheGarden

I know of several young EU national who have come to U.K. to work here specifically so they can join the British army.

I’m calling bollocks on that one. Eligibility of the UK armed forces is governed by the British Nationality Act 1981.

Moussemoose

The EU Parliament can amend laws btw.

Yes, and it can reject them too.

If a legislative proposal is rejected at any stage of the procedure, or the Parliament and Council cannot reach a compromise, the proposal is not adopted and the procedure is ended. A new procedure can start only with a new proposal from the Commission.

Handy graphic explaining the ordinary legislative procedure is here:

www.europarl.europa.eu/external/html/legislativeprocedure/default_en.htm

Buteo - it was not me that spouted that bollocks about EU nationals joining the army. AFAIK only British and Commonwealth citizens can. Oh - Nepalese can too of course.

As for your comment about the European Parliament rejecting laws, well that does happen but the Commission can just repropose the same law and it passes, a la Constitution/Lisbon Treaty. Job done.
You EU supporters are very naive.

Apologies - that was another poster.

but the Commission can just repropose the same law and it passes

Not unless it has been amended sufficiently to gain EP approval.

Can we get a few things straight about the U.K. army and defence matters and expenditure and overseas and domestic recruitment? I once had to look into reservists rights from an hr perspective at work.

1.	As part of austerity there were over 33,000 personnel who were let go. This was part of a huge restructuring achieved through a combination of redundancy, natural wastage and reduced intake. 
2.	The bulk of the reduction was in the Army, which was told to reduce its regular force by nearly 20,000 personnel by 2020. 
3.	There were four tranches of redundancies between 2011 and 2014. 
4.	The big plan called Army 2020 planned to replace the redundant full time forces 30,000 reservists !!But spectacularly failed to recruit anywhere near the amount needed.
5.	In 2018 despite having made the tens of thousands of redundancies in the last decade the UK’s armed forces rules were changed to allow more Overseas citizens who have never lived in this country to join up and make up the current shortfall. You could not make it up- massive redundancies then followed by seeking volunteers and beefed up foreign recruitment!
6.	Defence spending was reduced to 2% of GDP but the Commons Defence Committee said the government should increase defence spending up  to 3% of total GDP.( Ironically that is over 425% more than we spent on EU membership .).

The military cash injection needed now equates to additional funding of around £20 billion a year.

The former head of Joint Forces Command until 2016 said that the defence establishment is “close to breaking” and without more money “will fall over. Gen Sir Richard Barrons said Defence cuts have left the British Army 20 years out of date and unable to deal with the battlefield threat from Russian forces.
The former commander of the UK's Sea Forces also said Britain is in danger of losing its status as a "credible military power". Rear Admiral Alex Burton said years of budget cuts and rising military threats meant the defence budget needed to be increased urgently.

I’m a pacifist and don't get all this military stuff myself -but find it ironic that Leavers despise the 0.7% of GDP on EU membership. Yet want a British army costing 3% of GDP which needs to rise according to the reviled experts!

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/armed-forces-defence-military-uk-russia-fighting-power-a8403386.html

http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN05951/SN05951.pdf

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3139817/Army-fails-attract-30-000-reservists-ministers-wanted-boost-military-amid-huge-cuts-number-time-troops.html

{ allow more Overseas citizens who have never lived in this country to join up and make up the current shortfall}
So as you are saying they would be 'foreigners' and possibly from Europe. That might not be popular with some around here.

Outsideinthegarden is no economist.

For a start, he derided someone for saying that investment was leaving the country using a statistic which showed inward FDI in the first quarter of 2018 ( note not net FDI or FDI credits which would be the true metric of this) he then went on to make a claim that it showed that the UK was a far more attractive place to invest based on the nominal value of this inward FDI flow. However this is incorrect, the value of the Dutch FDI is more than double the UK's as a % of GDP and the Spanish is the same. Per capita the Dutch is also more than double that of the UK.

I'll elaborate further, FDI is also not a good measure of investment because it can include acquisitions of domestic firms by foreign companies, this has increased in the UK with the fall in the £. However using FDI this means that using measure of the viability of a copuntry isn't great, 70% of the UK's net FDI in 2016 was two deals. £79bn take over of London SABMiller ( mainly US operations) by Anheausser- Busch and the take over of a UK chip maker by a Japanese firm. Neither of these resulted in any capital of human capital investment in the UK.

The ONS actually showed that investment fell ( from both national and international firms by 0.7% in the three months to the end of June.
However if you were an economist you'd know that right?

To sum up, using nominal values rather than contextual, whilst making claims about figures that don't stand up to scrutiny is either wilfully disingenuous or suggests that they don't know what they are talking about.

Furthermore they didn't understand about MFN status in EU trade deals, they made a comment about the "extra cost of transporting cars" to the continent, without realizing the technical economies of scale brought by containerisation.

Additionally their claim that the EU is protectionist is deluded, the EU offers the most open market to its members, and protects this from non members, like all trade blocs. The idea that outside the EU is non protectionist is ridculous. The discussion of rolling over trade agreements also shows a vast misunderstanding of international trade as does the point regarding 90% of the economic growth being out of the EU ( doesn't mean we will have anything to trade with these growing countries does it, nor does it mean that being in the EU prevents trade)

Furthermore no real economic argument has been made about brexit, just fallacious attacks littered with appeals to emotion and history. Demonstrating a vast lack of critical thinking.

I could go on, but all in all, if outsideinthegarden studied economics, they did so at the early learning centre.

I voted Leave. I still want to Leave. I do think I was not well-informed about the possibilities despite reading a great deal about it. TBH I did not expect that the vote would be for Leave and I was surprised.

I think the fact that there was such a huge Leave vote is what is most important for us long-term whether we stay in the EU or not. It reflected how disenfranchised many of our communities feel in Britain. That has not been discussed since the vote and there have been no attempts to address it. It won't go away. It's to do with the Lndon-centric view that exists in the country, the north-south divide, poverty, housing, lack of opportunity, fear, having no voice. Yes there will have been the right-wing, 'old school' voters but there were many who are as I described, and still no one is listening to them.

However, back to Brexit. The government and Opposition are in such a mess I don't know what the way forward is. The planning seems to have been dreadful, we have no politicians who can drive this through- the Rees Moggs, Johnsons etc don't have the ideas, support or ability to do it. I am a lifelong Labour voter but have no faith in their ability at the moment.

I hate the EU as an organisation although I love Europe. It is driven by Germany and France and their views. They treat us like poor neighbours, pay scant attention to us, we have no power there. It is hugely wasteful of money and resources and very inefficient in its workings. It is not accountable to us in anyway. I don't want to be part of an organisation that decides so many important things about our country without listening to us or allowing us options. The way people like Macron and Junckers have behaved in these negotiations has convinced me even more of that.

However, I have no answers on the way forward. I have an admiration for the way Teresa May has persisted when no one else has stood beside her or stepped up, but I don't like aspects of her deal.

I sort of think there should be a cross-party government at the moment, that is not party political but simply focussed on the most able people of like mind sorting this out. I know it will never happen.

I don't want to be part of an organisation that decides so many important things about our country without listening to us or allowing us options

Mmmmmm We do seem to have a heck of lot of opt outs and of course Thatchers Rebate.
The UK is an important member of the EU, with a lot of influence, however, as we can see from this brexit fiasco, whether we have always acted in the national interest is another matter but these incompetents will still be in charge of the UK.

btw what important decisions? the ones i want on Education, Transport, Health, affordable or social housing etc we can do all on our very own, with none or little input from the EU.

{I could go on, but all in all, if outsideinthegarden studied economics, they did so at the early learning centre.}
I did economics at the 'looking out of the window most of the time' centre.
Hence leaving it to experts to argue the case. Damn, a bit of a 'Remainer' trait there.