Should We Leave the EU?

[yorksrob]

EU membership isn't the only factor, though. Norway has made vast amounts of money for the relatively small population that it has, thanks to it's natural resources and seemingly well-organised government. Perhaps I'm just cynical, but I don't think the UK government is quite so well organised or keen to help the people it claims to represent...

Maybe not the only factor, but the hubris of the EU's single currency project has had a massive negative impact on the economic wellbeing of those countries.

And if Norway's relatively small population has contributed to the individual wealth of it's citizens, why would we want to commit to a principle of unrestricted free movement which is likely to lead to population growth and stretch resources here even further.

 

[NSEFAN]

A lot of the population growth is happening because it has to. Firstly, our aging population needs looking after (both financially and physically), and importing adult workers is cheaper and quicker than home-grown ones, since they will already have been raised and educated elsewhere. Secondly, we have almost systematically allowed a lot of our industries to decline, even though we still require them to function. This means we must look to multinational companies and import more and more in order to keep on running as a functional country. If there wasn't any demand, then EU workers wouldn't be coming here. I believe that the status quo will be broadly allowed to continue regardless of the outcome of the referendum, because despite what Whiney McWhineface writes in his newspaper column, our current situation makes us dependent upon immigration.

So what can we do to change this? Encouraging more people to take up degrees in the subjects we need would be good. Meanwhile the government is making it harder for people to access degrees...

Another option is to simply stop making people live so long without also focussing also on the quality of life, but this is a political and ethical minefield which no sane career politician would set foot upon.

 

[Johnuk123]

I thoroughly believe we wouldn't have to subscribe to the absurd freedom of movement principle. Why is being able to supply unlimited cheap labour to the low-end of the job's market seen as desirable? It suppresses wages and only benefits the rich.

Come on, have some back-bone and not feel like you have be tied to an unaccountable political union to survive. It's absolute nonsense.

We would be unique as nobody has ever left the EU so nobody can possibly predict what will happen, one thing's certain we would be the precursor of more and that is why there is such a concerted effort to keep us in. The constant putting down and belittling of the UK which is now a daily occurence is proving the correct way to go for the Inners as yesterday in one poll they had a lead of 18%.
I don't think for a minute we will vote Out and if by some miracle we do a quick second referendum will reverse it within months.

I believe when this period in history is examined in years to come our continued membership of the EU will be because we've had a massive and very well organised campaign of lies and unbelievable scaremongering.

 

[DarloRich]

because we've had a massive and very well organised campaign of lies and unbelievable scaremongering.

by both sides

 

[yorksrob]

A lot of the population growth is happening because it has to. Firstly, our aging population needs looking after (both financially and physically), and importing adult workers is cheaper and quicker than home-grown ones, since they will already have been raised and educated elsewhere. Secondly, we have almost systematically allowed a lot of our industries to decline, even though we still require them to function. This means we must look to multinational companies and import more and more in order to keep on running as a functional country. If there wasn't any demand, then EU workers wouldn't be coming here. I believe that the status quo will be broadly allowed to continue regardless of the outcome of the referendum, because despite what Whiney McWhineface writes in his newspaper column, our current situation makes us dependent upon immigration.

So what can we do to change this? Encouraging more people to take up degrees in the subjects we need would be good. Meanwhile the government is making it harder for people to access degrees...

Another option is to simply stop making people live so long without also focussing also on the quality of life, but this is a political and ethical minefield which no sane career politician would set foot upon.

I think that relying on population growth to support the previous generation's population growth is tantamount to a pyramid scheme which will have to end sooner rather than later. We will have to find a different way to support our elderly population without relying on more people.

Secondly, the fact that we have allowed our industry to become as run down as it is, and that we are now so dependant on multinational companies is part of the problem and a symptom of the open market ideology espoused by the Establishment including the EU. Large multinational companies tend to be unwieldy and (as recent events have shown) largely unaccountable, which is why I believe the country needs to be more self-sufficient.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

by both sides

Slight correction... There has certainly been much scaremongering, and some predictions that seem to me exaggerated or implausible from both sides. However, the only actual significant outright lies that I've seen from the two campaigns have all come from the 'out' side.

 

[AM9]

I believe when this period in history is examined in years to come our continued membership of the EU will be because we've had a massive and very well organised campaign of lies and unbelievable scaremongering.

Are you implying that the brexit campaign isn't very well organised, and if it is then it would be fairer if the remian campaign was similarly lacking?
The issue over "lies and unbelievable scaremongering" is merely one of persoanl opinion and what the voter wants to hear rather than one of fact. Neither side can claim with any credibility that the other is better or worse at it than themselves.

 

[47802]

All I can do is to implore you to recognise that democracy and the ability to throw out your lawmakers if you don't agree with them is more important than debatable harm to GDP.

Also, why do you think we have to accept free movement of workers for a 'good trade deal' with the EU? Whatever a 'good' trade deal is that is. Very few, if any, countries in the world subscribe to this so why do we, one of the world's largest economies, need to? Is it so good that we should trade our democracy and control of borders to keep it?

Let's for one minute say you're right too, that to have a 'good trade deal' outside of the EU, we'd need to accept freedom of movement, we'd still be in the same position as now but without the massive membership fee and being dictated to on a wide range of matters. Okay, there might still be a fee and we'd have to abide by some directives in exchange for subscribing to freedom of movement but we'd still have a greater degree of independence than before.

This is a worst case scenario too, I thoroughly believe we wouldn't have to subscribe to the absurd freedom of movement principle. Why is being able to supply unlimited cheap labour to the low-end of the job's market seen as desirable? It suppresses wages and only benefits the rich.

Come on, have some back-bone and not feel like you have be tied to an unaccountable political union to survive. It's absolute nonsense.

Well its not a question of backbone as far as I'm concerned for me its about what's best for the UK economically.

On immigration regardless of the EU, as far as I can see with regard to the 2 main parties, Corbyn seems to believe that few if any immigration controls are needed, while the Tories like to talk tough on immigration when it suits them but the reality is usually somewhat different as they know business likes a certain degree of foreign workers, for the skills shortages and the crap jobs that some UK people don't want to do, on the last stats non EU immigration was still higher, so the idea that the immigration situation will vastly improve out of the EU even if we get a deal that doesn't accept automatic freedom of movement seems somewhat laughable to me.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Do they pay as much money as a member state though? And do they have to subscribe to as many agreements and policies as a member state? I severely doubt it.

It's probably not possible to get a meaningful direct comparison with what Norway pays with the net contribution of a member state because each country's circumstances (and therefore contributions) are different. My understanding is that Norway's contributions are in fact substantial, although I haven't been able to find a definitive figure.

As far as regulations are concerned... They don't have to subscribe to as many as a member state, but they still have to subscribe to a lot. And remember, unlike the UK, they get basically no say in what those policies are. link

According to Norway's Foreign Affairs, from 1994 to 2010 Norway acquired 70% of EU directives and 17% of EU regulations.[4] Overall, this means that Norway has implemented about three quarters of EU legislation of all types

However, I doubt a count of regulations is very meaningful either. What those people who complain about the numbers of EU regulations tend to forget is that most regulations are in place for a good reason - for example for safety, consumer protection, or to ensure compatibility between stuff made in different countries. Despite all the scaremongering on the 'Brexit' side about EU regulations, I've never heard anyone put forward a convincing case that not having those regulations would overall be a good thing - since presumably if we didn't have them, in many cases, if we are not to sacrifice safety etc. we'd end up having to go through all the bureaucracy of working out similar regulations ourselves anyway.

Either way, there's no reason why we have to be Norway or Switzerland. We're the fifth largest economy.

From the point of view of the EU, however, we are still relatively small. Our economy is a small fraction of the size of the EU-minus-the-UK's economy. So considering the size of the economy alone would seem to give little reason for the EU to want to give us any preferential treatment over countries like Norway. Of course you're free to hope that we might for some reason get special treatment, but that looks to me rather over-optimistic.

 

[Steveman]

Can the Remainers explain why we should carry on paying untold billions a year to be in a club where we have a £89b a year trade deficit, it tells us what we can grow and where, what fish we can catch and where and just being a member makes the rest of the worlds goods 8% more expensive ?
Because of the "Rotterdam effect" it is impossible to work out actually how much trade we do with the EU but it has to be less than official figures.
It amuses me when the Remainers call money we've already paid into the EU "EU money" we get nothing from the EU whatsoever net not a penny.
If we were outside of it now never in a million years would we apply to join it, the only countries desperate to join are the ones who will be getting more out than they pay in.

Has it occurred to the Remainers that the EU believes we would make a success of once again running our own affairs which would encourage more countries to also leave and that is the main reason they are so keen to keep us in.

All we want to do is leave the political union we'll still be a part of Europe.

 

[NSEFAN]

I think that relying on population growth to support the previous generation's population growth is tantamount to a pyramid scheme which will have to end sooner rather than later. We will have to find a different way to support our elderly population without relying on more people.

I agree that it cannot go on forever. The population will continue to increase until it can no longer be sustained by the resources, where it will level out due to sheer demand on the system. We could have avoided this by having sensible management of the welfare state, but governments are incapable of seeing beyond the next election and so the problem is just allowed to get worse and worse.

Secondly, the fact that we have allowed our industry to become as run down as it is, and that we are now so dependant on multinational companies is part of the problem and a symptom of the open market ideology espoused by the Establishment including the EU. Large multinational companies tend to be unwieldy and (as recent events have shown) largely unaccountable, which is why I believe the country needs to be more self-sufficient.

I actually think that the notion of every nation being self-sufficient is ridiculous, and think that creating specialist centres for particular industries according to local resources is a good thing, provided that the wealth and resources are shared equally amongst our species. The problem is that this requires nations to share fairly, which never happens, so we end up with a massively unequal distribution of wealth. Hence we end up with Norway by sheer luck having more wealth per person than we could ever have here. A far better solution would be take a global view of, "We have X people who need Y resources", but I'm not going to pretend that everyone likes each other enough to even make such a world possible (for now, at least). We instead have to compromise, and try to make our situation less bad by building good relationships with those who can help us. To me, leaving the EU would represent turning our back on all the hard work done to build these relationships, and I don't think the outcome would be very pleasant.

If we want self-sufficiency for the UK, we are going to have to do more than just stop immigration. Even if we had total government control of all resources, we have long passed the point of self-sufficiency: we simply cannot sustain our population and quality of life with the available resources from the UK. If we really did want self-sufficiency, we will have to start making a list of things and people we could do without. We have been there before and that is not a world I want to live in, hence I take the view that greater global sharing of resources is the way forward.

 

[Steveman]

Slight correction... There has certainly been much scaremongering, and some predictions that seem to me exaggerated or implausible from both sides. However, the only actual significant outright lies that I've seen from the two campaigns have all come from the 'out' side.

You're saying that the In campaign has always told the truth ?

 

[TheKnightWho]

Can the Remainers explain why we should carry on paying untold billions a year to be in a club where we have a £89b a year trade deficit, it tells us what we can grow and where, what fish we can catch and where and just being a member makes the rest of the worlds goods 8% more expensive ?
Because of the "Rotterdam effect" it is impossible to work out actually how much trade we do with the EU but it has to be less than official figures.
It amuses me when the Remainers call money we've already paid into the EU "EU money" we get nothing from the EU whatsoever net not a penny.
If we were outside of it now never in a million years would we apply to join it, the only countries desperate to join are the ones who will be getting more out than they pay in.

Has it occurred to the Remainers that the EU believes we would make a success of once again running our own affairs which would encourage more countries to also leave and that is the main reason they are so keen to keep us in.

All we want to do is leave the political union we'll still be a part of Europe.

I've noticed a trend of you just saying statistics are wrong when they don't suit your worldview. It just results in you making arguments that you've set up so they literally can't be argued against because you just say that evidence against you is wrong - it's also completely unscientific because essentially you're just picking and choosing what evidence you want.

In other words - it's literally useless to argue with you because you've set yourself up so it's impossible for you to be convinced you're wrong about this.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

If we want self-sufficiency for the UK, we are going to have to do more than just stop immigration. Even if we had total government control of all resources, we have long passed the point of self-sufficiency: we simply cannot sustain our population and quality of life with the available resources from the UK. If we really did want self-sufficiency, we will have to start making a list of things and people we could do without. We have been there before and that is not a world I want to live in, hence I take the view that greater global sharing of resources is the way forward.

The closest we have been to self-sufficiency in the last century was WW2 (and even then we didn't achieve anything close to it). That resulted in rationing even non-military goods for everyone, because we were restricted on imports etc.

 

[Steveman]

So you're saying the well known and long standing "Rotterdam effect" doesn't mean we sell less to the EU than official figures indicate although it is acknowledged by the EU. I know it isn't huge but it's a fact so it does mean official figures cannot be accurate.Perhaps you should contact the EU and tell them it's a lie, I'm sure they would appreciate your input.

Eurostat website :

Dutch trade flows are over-estimated because of the so-called ‘Rotterdam effect’ (or quasi-transit trade): that is goods bound for other EU countries arrive in Dutch ports and, according to EU rules, are recorded as extra-EU imports by the Netherlands (the country where goods are released for free circulation). This in turn increases the intra-EU flows from the Netherlands to those Member States to which the goods are re-exported. To a lesser extent, Belgian figures are similarly overestimated.

 

[TheKnightWho]

So you're saying the well known and long standing "Rotterdam effect" doesn't mean we sell less to the EU than official figures indicate although it is acknowledged by the EU. I know it isn't huge but it's a fact so it does mean official figures cannot be accurate.Perhaps you should contact the EU and tell them it's a lie, I'm sure they would appreciate your input.

Eurostat website :

The very fact that it has to go through Rotterdam itself demonstrates the importance of the EU as integral to trading with the rest of the world.

This would be the same as underplaying the importance of the Port of Felixstowe because it isn't most goods' final destination.

 

[Steveman]

The very fact that it has to go through Rotterdam itself demonstrates the importance of the EU as integral to trading with the rest of the world.

Brilliant.

 

[TheKnightWho]

Brilliant.

What a non-response. We are literally reliant on another EU member state to do much of our trade with the rest of the world - should we just ignore that?

 

[Steveman]

What a non-response. We are literally reliant on another EU member state to do much of our trade with the rest of the world - should we just ignore that?

Nothing to do with your accusation that although trade through various ports in the EU is for the rest of the world and is not EU trade at all the official figures cannot be wrong although they record that trade as EU trade.
As I have said it's not a big figure but my point was the trade figure is actually less than we're told and you told me I was wrong and I'm not.

 

[TheKnightWho]

Nothing to do with your accusation that although trade through various ports in the EU is for the rest of the world and is not EU trade at all the official figures cannot be wrong although they record that trade as EU trade.
As I have said it's not a big figure but my point was the trade figure is actually less than we're told and you told me I was wrong and I'm not.

Well it is trade, considering it's literally going through another EU member state before it passes through to us.

Call it what you want, but all it does is demonstrate we're reliant on the Netherlands.

 

[yorksrob]

I agree that it cannot go on forever. The population will continue to increase until it can no longer be sustained by the resources, where it will level out due to sheer demand on the system. We could have avoided this by having sensible management of the welfare state, but governments are incapable of seeing beyond the next election and so the problem is just allowed to get worse and worse.

It would take more than tinkering with the welfare state to sort out this conundrum, and that's even if you believe for some reason, that uncontrolled population growth originating from abroad, somehow has more merit than uncontrolled population growth from benefit dependant domestic families.

If you take somewhere like Japan, which currently has a declining population, increasing material wealth and labour saving automation etc should make it possible to divert this increased wealth and saved labour into looking after the increased elderly population, but somehow economies have difficulty with this. I'm not saying I have the answer, just that it is a problem which will need a big shift in the way economies work somehow.

I actually think that the notion of every nation being self-sufficient is ridiculous, and think that creating specialist centres for particular industries according to local resources is a good thing, provided that the wealth and resources are shared equally amongst our species. The problem is that this requires nations to share fairly, which never happens, so we end up with a massively unequal distribution of wealth. Hence we end up with Norway by sheer luck having more wealth per person than we could ever have here. A far better solution would be take a global view of, "We have X people who need Y resources", but I'm not going to pretend that everyone likes each other enough to even make such a world possible (for now, at least). We instead have to compromise, and try to make our situation less bad by building good relationships with those who can help us. To me, leaving the EU would represent turning our back on all the hard work done to build these relationships, and I don't think the outcome would be very pleasant.

If we want self-sufficiency for the UK, we are going to have to do more than just stop immigration. Even if we had total government control of all resources, we have long passed the point of self-sufficiency: we simply cannot sustain our population and quality of life with the available resources from the UK. If we really did want self-sufficiency, we will have to start making a list of things and people we could do without. We have been there before and that is not a world I want to live in, hence I take the view that greater global sharing of resources is the way forward.

I don't think it's possible, nor is it desireable for a country to be entirely self sufficient along North Korean lines for example. Yet to suggest that it's somehow ridiculous to want to be less dependant on other countries, particularly when we have a massive balance of payments deficit dragging down on wealth, seems to be an over-simplistic view of things.

You state, correctly, that we are way beyond the point of being able to sustain our population and quality of life with our own resources, I simply don't see how it can be beneficial to remain beholden to international arrangements that exacerbate that situation, by outsourcing ever greater parts of the economy.

 

[TheKnightWho]

Because you lose economies of scale when you individualise and compartmentalise into single nation-states like you're advocating. It means resources are not spent on what is the most productive, but on making up for vital necessities it would be cheaper to just buy abroad; likewise, our exports suffer because that labour that could have been spent on making something of more monetary value had to be used on making those vital resources instead.

 

[yorksrob]

Because you lose economies of scale when you individualise and compartmentalise into single nation-states like you're advocating. It means resources are not spent on what is the most productive, but on making up for vital necessities it would be cheaper to just buy abroad; likewise, our exports suffer because that labour that could have been spent on making something of more monetary value had to be used on making those vital resources instead.

I see your point, but how likely is it that the wealth generated by these economies of scale is going to be filtered down to people here. On a global scale, freer movement of capital seems to be accompanied by less accountability to the public.

Something seems to have gone wrong with the theory because if we were making so much stuff of high monetary value, we'd be selling it, rather than buying it from abroad. Perhaps we are, but how come we've still got a balance of payment deficit. Where are the profits going ?

 

[TheKnightWho]

I see your point, but how likely is it that the wealth generated by these economies of scale is going to be filtered down to people here. On a global scale, freer movement of capital seems to be accompanied by less accountability to the public.

Something seems to have gone wrong with the theory because if we were making so much stuff of high monetary value, we'd be selling it, rather than buying it from abroad. Perhaps we are, but how come we've still got a balance of payment deficit. Where are the profits going ?

Except Britain does export quite a lot of things... The idea we don't make anything is completely false - what we make has just changed.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/2014_United_Kingdom_Products_Export_Treemap.png

And there is nothing inherently wrong with a balance of payments deficit - much of our GDP is created through good old-fashioned labour.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

You're saying that the In campaign has always told the truth ?

Roughly speaking, yes. I think the In campaign has, on the whole, been relatively truthful, and the Out campaign has not been.

There are a few provisos: Obviously, I cannot personally verify every single statement made by the In campaign, so I can't rule out the possibility that there are lies I haven't noticed - but there certainly don't seem to be any prominent ones. Also, many of the statements made by the In campaign are predictions and estimates rather than verifiable facts - so it's a bit open to interpretation how realistic they are - but on the whole, those predictions seem to have been made by groups with appropriate expertise. I think some of the 'In' campaign predictions about a Brexit are overly pessimistic, and there has been some scaremongering on the 'In' side. But all that is a very far cry from the highly misleading statistics and direct lies (in the sense of: verifiably untrue claims, often repeated even after they have been publically debunked, so the out campaign are unlikely to be unaware of their falsehood) that have to a large extent characterized the Out campaign.

 

[Railops]

labour is rapidly consolidating it's title as the "nasty party" mp Pat Glass saying this to what used to be a labour voter in Derbyshire after he raised concerns about immigration.

“The very first person I come to is a horrible racist. I’m never coming back to wherever this is.”

 

[TheKnightWho]

Do we have an actual quote of what he said? Because if it's literally impossible to ever call anyone racist in this country then that says a lot more about the outrage than it does about Labour.

 

[Johnuk123]

The bloke said a very large Polish family living locally on benefits were "scroungers".

 

[Barn]

Roughly speaking, yes. I think the In campaign has, on the whole, been relatively truthful, and the Out campaign has not been.

As I see it, the main 'dodgy' facts so far have been:

Remain:

• Conflating GDP with household income when talking about costs to families.
• Valuing the benefit of the single market at the total volume of trade to the EU rather than the delta advantage of being within the single market.
• Measuring the total volume of EU-made laws by reference to parliamentary bills, when the whole point of EU-made law is that it does not need implementation through primary legislation.
• Talking about the benefit of immigration generally (especially to the NHS) implying that all immigration would cease upon a Brexit.
• Criticising the use of gross contribution figures but ignoring the fact that we lose the ability to choose how the returned money is applied.

Leave:

• Quoting the gross contribution of £350m per week and ignoring the rebate.

 

[Railops]

As mp Pat Glass has now said she was wrong and apologised she must think her comments were wrong although of course like Brown and Thornberry these "chip on both shoulders" socialists only apologise under pressure.

 

[Johnuk123]

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-netflix-quotas-idUSKCN0YA2FO

The European Commission is planning an overhaul of the European Union's broadcasting rules to bring in EU-wide minimum quotas in a bid to boost the circulation and funding of European films and television shows.
On-demand services will have to ensure they have at least a 20 percent share of European works in their catalog and ensure their "prominence", according to a draft of the proposed Audiovisual Media Services Directive seen by Reuters.
Some critics say EU leaders should let the market ensure good quality content. Daniel Dalton, a member of the European Parliament for Britain's ruling Conservative part, condemned "digital protectionism" that would not foster good film-making:
"The European Commission has yet again failed to understand how the digital world works. Subscription services like Netflix and Amazon should consider only one thing when placing content on their platforms: what their viewers want to watch."

This is exactly the sort of ridiculous meddling that winds people up.