Brexit: In or Out

registerme As a leave voter, I fully respect your opinion as a remain voter. However, your post reminds me of almost every post i have read from the remain side, in that the remain side never acknowledge the worries that the leave side have, not once in your whole post (or any other remain post i have read) do you mention the worries that the leave side have about public services, school places, A&E waiting times, loss of sovereignty, loss of law making ability by our own elected govt, border control, property shortages, driven down wages, etc etc. in fact if i was to mention them,(which i now have)   i will probably be labeled a xenophobe or racist or worse. I cannot use long words, 'demagoguery' means nothing to me, i'm working class trash, ask Corbyn.
 
Its coincidental that you should mention the fact that you have 'unfriended' someone due to an unsavory photo, (actually i agree with you) , what would you say to my 77 year old dad, who lost his dad in WW2 and says to me "My dad would be turning in his grave if he could now see how the EU is now influenced by Germany and France" his insinuation is nothing more or less than your ex-friends picture, unsavory or not.

Funnily enough, he never talks of immigration. That's the way my dad expresses it, others feel far more passionate and express it in sometimes unsavory (pictorial) ways, that said, not unsavory to everyone, people are very passionate when it comes to this debate, i'm listening to the debate on BBC now, and it is passionate, to say the least.

There are many millions of people in this country that want to leave the EU simply because they are unhappy about the situations stated above, as for your worry about the country regardless of the outcome, the bitter people will only emerge if we vote leave, i will vote leave, but if the majority vote remain, then i will jump straight on the SS. SM and carry on my life as normal, as i suspect most others will.

As i said in a previous post, i have read some rubbish on this thread, but yours was the first 'good post' that prompted me to expose my view, outside of the petrol pump issue. 

I now fully expect the 'usual's' to have their say, I've had mine, so anyone else's is welcome.

edit.. I'm off now to watch the rest of the debate, and i'll come back later to face the music. 



 

bracknellboy  sorry but .. 'will the Electoral Commission have to employ AC in order to count the votes to 20dp'  ??  sorry its beyond me..

earthbound, thank you for that post. It deserves a decent response, however, I've had a skinful, so it will have to wait until tomorrow.....

So have i, but it didn't stop me.    but i'm from Yorkshire. 

Brackers is referring to AC Assetz Capital where transactions are often displayed to 20 decimal places. MLIA is the manual lending investment account where lenders select which loans to invest in as opposed to QAA quick access account where loan investment is automatic & hidden. 

earthbound , I said I'd come back to it, here I am. I'll try to keep it as brief as possible (ha! I've just re-read it and it turned into a bit of an epic, you might want to make a cup of tea before sitting down to read it), but this means that inevitably I will gloss over and / or omit some things. Apologies in advance - I'll also likely get some things wrong .


Brexit concerns about pressure on services (ie caused by immigration)

Firstly I would acknowledge that in some areas high immigration has caused immense pressure on local services. Secondly I would acknowledge that some immigrant communities have failed to integrate well.

I see this primarily as a failing of successive governments to manage the situation, not even well, but at all. I do not see this as a problem caused by "the immigrants" per se. Governments have also failed to communicate with the public about their failings and what they intend to do about it (no surprise really, I can't think of a government that has ever held their hand up and said "sorry we messed that up"). This has in turn allowed a space to grow in which the prevailing discussion (inflamed by some right wing press) has been allowed to be redirected from "it's our fault" to "it's their fault". Introspection is a much harder sell than pointing the finger at "others".

Add to this fact successive governments' underfunding of the NHS and the education sector - just look at the news this week about the withdrawal of bursaries for student nurses - and you just exacerbate the problem. Compounding all of this are demographics - an ageing population a) earns less and b) needs more in terms of healthcare.

Note that nowhere above do I talk about any of the many benefits of immigration (eg that immigrants make up 10% of the NHS workforce or that they contribute positively to the economy overall etc).


Brexit concerns about loss of sovereignty / law making / democratic deficit

There has been a loss of sovereignty, but this has been surrendered by us rather than having been taken from us. Furthermore all EU member states have similarly surrendered sovereignty. Old Blighty isn't being singled out. It's part and parcel of the formation of a larger community. I have lots of issues with the direction and pace of travel of the EU, but if we are to have any say over it we need to be a part of it. Yes, some of this chafes a bit, but not enough for me to want to leave.

Law making? I think on balance legal changes brought about by membership of the EU have been positive. I also don't have a problem with supra-national legal institutions - checks and balances are, in the main, a good thing.

As for democratic deficit, yes, I think there's a problem here (eg even as a remainer I don't know who my MEP is). But I don't think that the problem is as large as it is made out to be. The European Commission (effectively the EU's civil service) is accountable to the European Parliament (elected by us). Members of the Council of the European Union are appointed by member state governments (elected by us). And finally there's the European Council made up of heads of state (elected by us).

Do I feel as engaged with the above institutions as I do with the UK government? No, I don't. And that is a problem. A problem not helped by the ease with which governments of all stripes and all EU countries point the finger of blame at "the EU", often ducking their own responsibilities in the process. It's also a problem in part brought about by the stodginess and aloofness of some EU actors. But again, to change that we need to be part of it.

Want to talk about democratic deficit?  Let's start with the House of Lords.


Border control

I simply don't see it as a significant issue, we're not part of Schengen. Now you might respond by saying that another EU country could hand out passports willy nilly and as a result we open ourselves to security risk or the potential for increased migration numbers but I have to ask how likely is that, and how material would it be in the scheme of things? Certainly how material would it be when weighed against the benefits of border free travel for 500 million people?


Property shortages

Blaming this on immigration is simply nonsense. The property shortage in this country (which, being a home owner, I benefit from, as I suspect do most forumites) is not a demand problem, it's a supply problem. Again a problem that has been at best ignored and at worst exacerbated (here's looking at you Mr Osbourne) by successive governments. Build. More. Houses. Particularly social housing.


"Driven down wages"

Understand that low wages also mean lower prices for the consumer. It's not a one way bet with only losers involved. The short term answer is to educate and train people to take higher paid more skilled work (and that's right back at our governments - educate our children, do it well). I feel for poorly skilled low paid people. And yet how and why is it that a) we have incredibly low unemployment, b) we need migrant low skilled labour to do work that low skilled British labour won't do and c) that migrant low skilled labour still manages to live and send money home?

More generally this is a problem of globalisation and technology. The EU (and low skilled migrant labour) is just a part of wider trends here.

In the longer term this issue is going to get much, much more difficult. It won't be just, or simply, migration causing the problems, it will be tech / automation / robotics causing the problems as more and more work is capable of being done without human intervention. What started with Taylor's pin factory, was taken further by Ford's assembly line, and perfected by Japanese robots and total quality is going to move into what we now call knowledge work - law, medicine, finance, design etc. All in all something pretty fundamental will need to change in how society operates.


One you didn't mention, the "£350m a week transferred to Brussels"

One, it's £350m gross, about half that net. Two, it's about a £100-£150 per person per year. Three, even gross it amounts to about 0.5% of the country's GDP. Four, I don't have a problem subsidising poorer countries or regions (this is commonly done nationally, why shouldn't it be done internationally - it's exactly the same thinking). Five, I wouldn't trust the Flobberchops Brothers to spend it more wisely than the EU. Six, do you think it would pay for the loss of EU funds that we currently receive AND pay for everything else the Flobberchops Brothers are promising?

Take a step back and look at all of the above and most of it is our problem, more specifically problems caused or not addressed by successive governments (our governments). There are real, serious, cogent criticisms to be made of the EU. Just to list a few examples:-

1. Waste - I understand why having two parliaments, and twice yearly migration from one to the other, was seen as a good idea at the inception of the EU, but is it really necessary now, especially at a cost of 100m Euros a year? Come on....
2. The Euro - I simply don't believe that you can have monetary union without political union. You can't have ever closer union at the same time as jealously guarding your own sovereignty. Be honest about it. Similarly you can't have monetary union without it actually being a monetary union. The lack of accepted supra-nation institutions, the lack of common bond issuance, the lack of common deposit insurance, the lack of funds transfers etc etc etc all add up to something that is basically unsustainable. This is not impossible to resolvable. But again, national governments and the EU need to be honest about it with their populations and accept that making it work will require change and compromise, not all of which will be to everybody's (or countries') benefit.
3. The CAP - it's being reformed, slowly, but still, really?
4. Lack of a common market for services - just get on with it already.
5. Any notion of a "European Army". OK, I get it France, you've never been that keen on NATO or the US have you. But just stop already.
6. Lack of a common European power market.
7. The EU's sclerotic economy.
8, 9, 10....n. I could go on.....

The above are real problems. We're better off being part of the solution, and to do that we need to be part of the club.


To you, your father, and your grandfather, I would say thank you. I respect, appreciate and value the sacrifice your family made. I get to live in a Europe that has been at peace for seventy years, and has seen enormous improvements in prosperity and quality of life, because people like your grandfather stood up when it counted. It's because of them that we can disagree about something like this, and express that disagreement at the ballot box.