Quick Poll: EU stay or leave?

[BlueSmarties76]

Would you vote to stay or leave the EU?

Quick poll.

PS. I just read that the UNELECTED EU President, Jean Claude Junker gets a basic salary of £245,000 + expenses and will get a £50k + per year pension. Nice work if you can get it eh. No corruption to see here.

I do wish we had a proper poll form like other forums...

Counting up it appears the majority want to leave..., but that may be simply not ounting very well.

Stay.

Leaving would be madness.

But why would it be madness? Aren't the British the hardest working in the EU anyway? Doing the longest hours etc, I don't see why we couldn't make it alone. I have a few very pro stay friends, their facebooks are full of 'reasons' which seem to say nothing. Just..."we're better off in" and so on.

Why would leaving be madness? We are the EU's biggest market...they want us....I want to control our borders and sovereignty. I think the EU is becoming more and more unstable as the migrant crisis overwhelms it - let's see how they cope in April when the weather improves. The only reason (some) business leaders are speaking out about this is because they are worried the steady stream of low skilled labour will dry up that is propping up the profitability of their companies.

If we leave we will negotiate trade deals and carry on again.....

Vote out.

Leave.

I vote to leave the EU. The SNP is now all talk re: leaving the UK since the collapse of oil prices. They would be in dire financial straits if they had left. If the Majority of the U.K. Voted to leave the EU and they wanted a referendum to leave the UK let them finance it themselves.

I think if you work in a pan european business like my Dh you say stay in. It keeps the status quo for business.

But looking at the lack of democratic accountability in the EU and having to live with the actions of individual EU states (Germany being the most powerful) that business argument pales tbh.

Also the plan will be for ever greater political integration and I do not believe that to be in the interests of most British people. (Sorry DH!)

Yesterday on R4 Today, I was listening to the Chief Exec of Diagio, (the multinational drinks outfit). He says we should stay part of Europe because it is good for Diagio... I am not convinced he was putting the benefit of Europe for the likes of you and me above his own needs.

Another reason to vote out..

I quite agree that all these big business talking heads aren't concerned with Britain - only their businesses. Goldman Sachs? Please. They're an American bank. Diageo? Any other big business you can name? The same.

Britain is big enough, hard-working enough and resourceful enough to make it on its own. Scotland? No. Too small. And if they vote to leave the UK if we leave the EU more fool them. They'll swap being ruled from Westminster (where they have elected MPs), to being rules from Brussels (from where they'll be ruled by unelected bureaucrats that won't give a toss what a small country of just 6m people thinks).

Its not always better to maintain the status quo. Europe is a basket case. Britain would be much better off out of it, making her own decisions, controlling her own borders, with her sovereignty intact. I can't wait to vote 'leave'.

Karen Brady has said leaving the EU will be bad for football - WHY? (and do we actually acre about that?!) No one explains WHY it will be bad - with facts, figures and evidence (and when they do throw numbers around they are not cited or attributed to independent research) ... the truth is no-one knows. On both sides. So a major feature of this referendum will be fear - don't change the status quo because we don't know what the future will hold.

As I've already said I will be voting to leave the sinking ship EU.

Bad for clubs taking on EU member players perhaps.

Lol.. Staying is best for Football. in the same way Seth Blatter was good for football I presume.

Stay

Stay.

How do people think the vote will go? I think it might be 'leave'? But I'm basing that on my rural backwater local area.

I think it depends a great deal on what benefits DC is able to claw back from Europe. If he can come back with significant improvements on our current deal then I think quite a lot of people will decide to stick with the devil they know. If not, then I think there is a reasonable chance that we'll end up leaving.

The timing of the vote will also be crucial. Migration is the big issue and if we have another year like last year with hundreds of thousands pouring unchecked across the borders into Europe then I think the British people will vote to leave. So if we have a vote in June and the migrant crisis is in full spate again by then (which it probably will be unless the useless EU can do something to stop it), then good luck to the 'stay' campaign. DC is wily though. So far he's made it very clear that he wants us to stay in and so unless that changes he'll time the vote to be most favourable to that outcome.

Just wondering how people think the UK survived BEFORE they ever got closer ties with the EU? Hundreds and hundreds of years of being 100% fine.

There are commentators out there who think our exit would be a disaster not for us but for the EU. We are a power house, we do have presence on the world stage, we lend so much to the EU by our presence.

Commentators think without us, the EU would find it harder to negotiate, in diplomatic matters or elsewhere without us.

Its tedious all this - we need the EU, whilst I am sure there are a few benefits, there are also many negatives.

Compared however to many other smaller countries we actually have enormous presence in the world.

We managed to cope without closer alliance, for hundred and hundreds and hundreds of years. Our short alliance has been disastrous and unless your a big business owner, the EU has been awful for the UK.

I cant wait to sign out.

Amen.

'Powerhouse', 'enormous presence'.

Thanks for that, it's given me a chuckle.

We send £55 million every day to be a member of the EU . That would do a lot to improve our NHS and schools .

Put that £55m a day into building a road network that is for for purpose would give the whole economy a huge boost. Making possible trade that is presently impossible, giving access to work for people who live in remote and difficult places like the Isle of Sheppy, Lowestoft would take people off benefits ... and suddenly we wouldhave lots more money to spend on the NHS.

But I do dream..

The problem for the 'out' campaign is that people really need to know what they're voting for. With 'stay', people are pretty clear on what that will mean (or they should be once DC has completed his negotiations with the EU), but what will leaving actually mean for:

• the UK economy;
• EU citizens residing in the UK;
• UK citizens residing in the EU;
• people's jobs if they work for companies based in the EU, etc?

Those things will presumably only be decided by negotiations that will have to take place AFTER the vote, IF we vote to leave. So I think 'out' is at a huge disadvantage, because all those unknowns could, very reasonably, put people off voting 'out'.

There appears to be an assumption which I have seen on various threads on Brexit that those voting to Stay have all thoughtfully expressed clear reasons whereas the Out voters just have some vague and woolly thinking on the subject. That's incorrect in my opinion.

I will vote Out and have decided to do so after doing a fair bit of reading on the subject - it hasn't just been plucked out of thin air. If you would like to know why, read on.

1. the EU is a financial drain on the UK economy.

1. the EU is run by the undemocratic, unelected and unaccountable.

1. the UK should have full control of its borders.

1. the UK could continue to trade with the EU the same as Norway and Switzerland, both of which are thriving. In addition, more than 90 % of the UK's economy is outside the EU but is still burdened with EU trade rules.

1. the UK would claim back its territorial fishing waters and not be subjected to EU quotas.

1. The US will believe the UK to be less useful to them if outside the EU. I've always thought the 'special relationship' to be a tad one-sided so that will be no bad thing.

There are others but I think the boredom threshhold has probably been reached.

Now, of course, anyone is welcome to argue against/ignore the above but I just wanted to balance the argument a bit.

100% agree RortyCrankle

And if the UK can limit immigration, we can address the oversupply of cheap labour and the resultant undersupply of housing and public services.

Even if the UK doesn't end up being forced to take hundreds of thousands of ME/NA migrants, the EU can't stop them (so it appears). Once they're EU citizens they can come here anyway.