Anyone for a Brexit ?

holwellcourtfarm · Jan 31, 2016

I'm tempted to vote "out" as I can't see why we would stay part of a union that has failed to EVER get its accounts audited! I'm not convinced either way yet though. I think we would survive either in or out but the nature of that survival would differ.

FWIW I think DC has been negotiating on the wrong basis anyway. We Brits always gold plate any rules we are presented with. I believe that our price for staying should simply be strict and severe action taken against states breaking rules they voted for. That would stop the southern EU countries (Greece, Italy, Spain etc) voting in laws and policies that adversely affect us all with no intention of abiding by them. Perhaps then there would be more sense in the rules voted in.

Even the Germans broke the rules on Euro membership for a few years! It would certainly scare the sh1t out of the French!

Goweresque · Jan 31, 2016

Brisel said:
We'll still be paying into Brussels for the privilege of trading across the Channel, as per the Norwegian way. No funds will be coming our way from this.

There's no such thing as a free market. Outside the EU we will be at the mercy of the Precautionary Principle applied to us to protect internal EU markets unless we can negotiate something decent with them to keep access (which will cost us).

We aren't Norway. Or Switzerland. We are the 5th biggest economy in the world. A huge market for German, French and Italian goods. We would have a very good negotiating hand - I can't see BMW and VW and Siemens and Renault and Fiat sitting back and letting their politicians negotiate away one of the only growing markets in Europe. Europe exports more to us than we export to them - the balance is in our favour. There are no rules as to what deal we can get, it would be all down to our negotiating. We need to have a bit of faith in ourselves for once instead of constantly downplaying our strength.

The EU will threaten all manner of retaliation if the UK votes to leave, but if we do they'll fold, because their position is weak. They need our trade more than we need theirs.

And if there are prepared to cut their noses off to spite their faces, are these really the sort of people we want to be involved with anyway? Who wants friends who are nice as long as you do what they say but cut up nasty if you don't?

Hilly · Jan 31, 2016

david said:
Do you really think the EU cared if UK decide to exit ?

Oh yes, i think they will be shitting themselves ! i reckon if we leave it will implode.

turbo · Jan 31, 2016

We have border control s now,just our political establishment won't in force it.

Brisel · Jan 31, 2016

turbo said:
We have border control s now,just our political establishment won't in force it.

Helped by the little stretch of water around us.

Hilly · Jan 31, 2016

Brisel said:
Helped by the little stretch of water around us.

SAVED our skins in the 40`s.

bobk · Jan 31, 2016

Brisel said:
Helped by the little stretch of water around us.

And a few '000 americans.

Hilly · Jan 31, 2016

bobk said:
And a few '000 americans.

Who would have watched us go down if not for Japan making a mistake.

RobFZS · Jan 31, 2016

turbo said:
We have border control s now,just our political establishment won't in force it.

Not really, anyone out of the 500 million people in the eu can come here if they show their passports, there is nothing stopping them, nothing call me dave can do about it

Hilly · Jan 31, 2016

RobFZS said:
Not really, anyone out of the 500 million people in the eu can come here if they show their passports, there is nothing stopping them, nothing call me dave can do about it

Aye the torys have disappointed me greatly, i held my judgement while clueless clegg was hanging on call me daves shirt tails but there is no improvement with a majority so UKIP for me now.

bobk · Jan 31, 2016

Hilly said:
Aye the torys have disappointed me greatly, i held my judgement while clueless clegg was hanging on call me daves shirt tails but there is no improvement with a majority so UKIP for me now.

I think it's fair to say agriculture ALWAYS performs badly under a tory govt.

Hilly · Jan 31, 2016

bobk said:
I think it's fair to say agriculture ALWAYS performs badly under a tory govt.

I was thinking about everything not just agriculture.

Storeman · Jan 31, 2016

Hilly said:
Aye the torys have disappointed me greatly, i held my judgement while clueless clegg was hanging on call me daves shirt tails but there is no improvement with a majority so UKIP for me now.

Yes, that's pretty much how I feel.
I think the problem is that David Cameron is not a true tory. He is actually a hand-wringing liberal.

Chrisw · Jan 31, 2016

Chameli

The Ruminant said:
No-one has mentioned the enduring peace we have seen in Europe for the last 70 years which is down, largely, to the Treaty of Paris, Treaty of Rome, EEC and now the EU. Why are we all focused so much on the economic impact whilst ignoring the social impact?

I'd rather be poor and alive, than rich and dead (or worse, rich and watching my children go to war)

That's why, instinctively, I'm against a Brexit. I want to stay, but in a hugely reformed EU

This gives me a dilemma when I vote. If we vote to stay in, we are giving a green light to the EU leaders to continue down the path they've chosen, which will be a disaster. Ergo, I should vote, along with everyone else, to leave. This will strengthen the UK's negotiating stance and allow change to be forced through. We could then have a second vote to see if we're happy with the new-look EU.

The latter approach, though, depends on the EU wanting us to stay and so acceding to our demands. This is a high risk strategy too. Supposing they don't want us to stay enough to allow reform? We're then out of the EU and this could easily trigger its collapse (other nations - mainly the net contributors to the EU's finances - equally unhappy, decide they too want to reform or leave and so, like a pack of cards, the whole project collapses).

The outcome of a collapse of the EU? A race to the bottom of competing states trying to reestablish their country and currencies, increasing antagonism, aggression, skirmishes......

So, yes or no?

Peace in Europe is down to NATO, not the EU, and the pm has clearly said more than once that we will have one referendum only, if we vote to leave we leave, no renegotiation and another vote.
I would be very much in favour of a trading block which is what the country thought it was voting for in 73, not political union and dictatorship.

JP1 · Jan 31, 2016

Walterp said:
30th January 2016

A quick read of Aneurin Bevan's career may epitomise what was wrong with pre War Britain (he was one of 10 kids, only six of whom lived to adulthood, worked in the pit from age 13, became a union official etc).

So it's no surprise, really, that we had a Labour landslide in 1945. Nye then influenced economic policy (harking back, of course, to Lloyd George's broken pledges about 'homes fit for heroes') so that - although we had a NHS - we also had poor economic policies.

The classic example is the decision to devote very scarce resources to building new local authority houses across Britain, from cities to tiny villages, but to neglect industrial development. Next time you see a small ex-local authority close of houses in a farming village, think of Nye.

We then had 'stop go' economic policies all through these times, until in the 1960's we had 'go go' policies (chancers like Michael Heseltine making money thru' inflation, rather than innovation) resulting in the the shambles of the 1970's.

By 1972 we were desperate to join the EEC.

No political party gained any credit during this period, all proved hopeless at managing the UK economy properly. The nearest to anyone gaining any respect was Farmer Jim, who recognised what had to be done but lacked the constituency to do it. (Plenty of youngish farmers, not all of whom are called Jim, will know how that feels).

Nothing has changed - the only politicians with any decent ideas are sidelined and marginalised so much that, in my opinion, decent thinkers will in future avoid politics as a career. Leaving it to, of course, careerists.

Heseltine got up and got it. Famously described by the late Alan Clark as having to buy his own furniture at least he made his own wealth

You neglect the biggest downfall of our recent economic history - incompetent management with no track record of backing good industrial design even when plenty existed (we got BL instead ) and union intransigence Inc secondary picketing and lightening strikes . I blame both

In this Country we still think an engineer fixes your washing machine and we have 10x the number of accountants as Germany

caveman · Jan 31, 2016

The Ruminant said:
No-one has mentioned the enduring peace we have seen in Europe for the last 70 years which is down, largely, to the Treaty of Paris, Treaty of Rome, EEC and now the EU. Why are we all focused so much on the economic impact whilst ignoring the social impact?

I'd rather be poor and alive, than rich and dead (or worse, rich and watching my children go to war)

That's why, instinctively, I'm against a Brexit. I want to stay, but in a hugely reformed EU

This gives me a dilemma when I vote. If we vote to stay in, we are giving a green light to the EU leaders to continue down the path they've chosen, which will be a disaster. Ergo, I should vote, along with everyone else, to leave. This will strengthen the UK's negotiating stance and allow change to be forced through. We could then have a second vote to see if we're happy with the new-look EU.

The latter approach, though, depends on the EU wanting us to stay and so acceding to our demands. This is a high risk strategy too. Supposing they don't want us to stay enough to allow reform? We're then out of the EU and this could easily trigger its collapse (other nations - mainly the net contributors to the EU's finances - equally unhappy, decide they too want to reform or leave and so, like a pack of cards, the whole project collapses).

The outcome of a collapse of the EU? A race to the bottom of competing states trying to reestablish their country and currencies, increasing antagonism, aggression, skirmishes......

So, yes or no?

You do realise that the Europeans used the Crimea as a stick to poke Putin with?
All they want now is a European army to take him on with and try and smash the Ruskies.
There is millennia of bad blood between the Ruskie race and the rest of Europe, especially the Germanic race, and scores need to be settled from thousands of years ago.
Dismantle the whole shebang before we end up with the real war to end all wars.

Farfrae · Jan 31, 2016

Time for some data I think

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/01/graphics-britain-s-referendum-eu-membership

http://www.res.org.uk/details/media...SHIP-OF-THE-EUROPEAN-UNION-New-estimates.html

Goweresque · Jan 31, 2016

JP1 said:
Heseltine got up and got it. Famously described by the late Alan Clark as having to buy his own furniture at least he made his own wealth

You neglect the biggest downfall of our recent economic history - incompetent management with no track record of backing good industrial design even when plenty existed (we got BL instead ) and union intransigence Inc secondary picketing and lightening strikes . I blame both

In this Country we still think an engineer fixes your washing machine and we have 10x the number of accountants as Germany

Personally I put it down to having won the war. Everyone (bosses and workforce) thought they'd therefore earned the right to take it easy and live on their laurels. And for a while they could, because the opposition was literally in ruins. Once they rose from the ashes, stronger than ever, they ate us for breakfast. The attitude was 'We won the war, who are these Japanese fellas to tell us how to make motorbikes? My grandfather invented the motorbike dontcha know.' That sort of thinking.

It didn't help that the State nationalised so much of the economy and promptly starved it of investment, because they were busy building the NHS and the welfare state. There was also the psychological hangovers from Empire - a generation who thought they were born to rule the world, and therefore were unable to fully appreciate the loss of Empire and the implications for Britain's role in the world, and were unable to conceive of a strategy for Britain that was more economic and less geo-political.

We're still doing it today - getting involved in all manner of military adventures around the world, splashing Foreign Aid around, acting as if we were still a Big Cheese, when we're more of a Dairy Lee Triangle. We'd be far better off just having a military capable of defending ourselves, and concentrating on making money and let everyone else play World Policeman if they want to, while selling them truncheons to use, and providing a safe haven for their swag.

caveman · Jan 31, 2016

Dairy Lee Triangle. Love it!
Quote of the year so far!!

Muck Spreader · Jan 31, 2016

Goweresque said:
We aren't Norway. Or Switzerland. We are the 5th biggest economy in the world. A huge market for German, French and Italian goods. We would have a very good negotiating hand - I can't see BMW and VW and Siemens and Renault and Fiat sitting back and letting their politicians negotiate away one of the only growing markets in Europe. Europe exports more to us than we export to them - the balance is in our favour. There are no rules as to what deal we can get, it would be all down to our negotiating. We need to have a bit of faith in ourselves for once instead of constantly downplaying our strength.

The EU will threaten all manner of retaliation if the UK votes to leave, but if we do they'll fold, because their position is weak. They need our trade more than we need theirs.

And if there are prepared to cut their noses off to spite their faces, are these really the sort of people we want to be involved with anyway? Who wants friends who are nice as long as you do what they say but cut up nasty if you don't?

I don't see it as anything to brag about that we don't produce anything anymore. Living on the need to constantly remortgage our housing stock as a way of financing the countries future can only end in one way.

Anyone for a Brexit ?

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

0 %

Up to 25%

25-50%

50-75%

75-100%

100% I’ve had enough of farming!

Share this page