EU - In or Out? The big vote 23rd June 2016

News and current events
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Originally posted by @BTripz

Brexit would hurt the poor the most, George Osborne claims

“We would not all be in this together if we left the EU. The richest in our country would go on being rich, it would be the poorest - the people whose jobs depend on the car plants, whose jobs depend on the steel-making factories and the like - who would be hit if we left the European Union,” he said.

“They are the people whose incomes would go down, whose house prices would fall, whose job prospects will weaken. They are the people who always suffer when the country takes an economic wrong term.”

Sounds much like he’s got Brexit confused with vote Conservative Party to me :lou_facepalm_2:

Putting aside that George Osborne being genuinely concerned with the plight of the poor is one of the more ludicrous notions I have come across recently, aren’t Transits now made outside of the EU, in Turkey?

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Originally posted by @Goatboy

Putting aside that George Osborne being genuinely concerned with the plight of the poor is one of the more ludicrous notions I have come across recently, aren’t Transits now made outside of the EU, in Turkey?

You forgot the C word when mentioning a Tory MP? And yes they are, since 2013!

The final Ford Transit has rolled off the production line at Ford’s factory in Southampton. The Swaythling plant’s closure was announced last October, alongside plans to shift production of the iconic van to Turkey, where costs are “significantly lower” than in the UK, according to Ford.

26 Jul 2013

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Originally posted by @Goatboy

Putting aside that George Osborne being genuinely concerned with the plight of the poor is one of the more ludicrous notions I have come across recently, aren’t Transits now made outside of the EU, in Turkey?

The old Ford plant on Wide Lane is gone, yes. My uncle worked there for thirty years, and as you say, the vehicles are now made outside of the EU. Doesn’t seem to have bothered Ford too much, but it has cost a lot of jobs both inside Ford and at the firms that supplied them.

And you’re right. Osborne doesn’t give a fuck about the poor except on polling day, and even then, not that much.

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Fuck voting ‘out’ then! We wouldn’t want to be sitting outside the EU being all competitive would we?

Cunts.

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That will be the Transit plant in Turkey that is EU funded

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FFS.

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The notion that you have to be in the EU to do business with the EU is one of the biggest myths going. The major client I work for isn’t opening up new facilities in the EU. They’re all in the Far East, for precisely the same low cost reasons that Ford took its business to Turkey.

Now I’ve got little desire to see us become the low-wage economy of Europe and join the race to the bottom with countries that have zero employment rights and/or infrastructure problems that we wouldn’t even imagine ( true story; one of our places requires that you are accompanied by bodyguards from airport to facility ).

That said, neither do I believe that we’re a nation incapable of standing on our own. Some might argue that membership of the EU has actually prevented us from doing that. Regardless, I cannot be scared by predictions of “what might be”, especially from the pro side, as they’ve no idea what’ll happen either.

I’m sure a Brexit has the potential to be a disaster, just as it has the potential to be a catalyst for more self-reliance, more internal trade and more focus on the people that are already here.

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Bazza has been saying this for years, people are seeing it now for what it is, the peole who want out aren’t rabid haters of Europe or Europeans.

We want fairness and transparency, we have never got that from the EU where the French and Germans rule the roost and we get stitched up, they are desperate we don’t leave as they want to continue to screw us over.

Never forget this so called movement of capital and labour (an EU advantage?) works both ways and they can just as easily (Fords) go when its cheaper elsewhere.

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The Farmer Union have thrown their weight behind the Remain campaign. Can’t think why. Something to do with 50% of their income coming from CAP.

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Yeah, agircultural industry would be fucked if we left. That’s a fact, why would farmers vote to fuck themselves to keep Brexit happy?

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Owen Jones on the hypocrisy of the Out campaign

My word, Michael Gove, you have some front.

First, he accuses the remain campaign of treating voters like children, waging a campaign of fear, seeking to leave the electorate “frightened into obedience by conjuring up new bogeymen every night”. Then he goes on national radio to warn Brexit must happen “before it’s too late”, that a vote for remain would mean “voting to be hostages, locked in the back of a car” before warning of the threat posed by foreigners and criminals.

Call it what you want. Chutzpah, shamelessness, brazen hypocrisy, an attempt to put satirists out of business because reality is too absurd to be mocked. Last month Gove’s Vote Leave campaign released a list of murders and rapes committed by EU nationals. Who, other than the terminally disingenuous and the chronically mischievous, can convincingly argue that the Vote Leave campaign is doing anything other than infantilising the electorate, of waging a quite frankly sinister campaign of fear?

Actually, I’ve overstepped the mark in appropriating Gove’s arguments. Children are often smart, inquisitive, critical, and certainly not gullible. Gove – a man who once argued that all schools should be better than average, which is statistically impossible – and his allies are not treating us as though we are children, but as though we are thick.

Brexit will mean an end to austerity, they argue: the very austerity they have gleefully imposed as a means to an end, not to balance the books but rather to roll back the state. It will save the NHS, they say, as they castigate the policies of Jeremy Hunt that many of them have championed and indeed voted for. Boris Johnson is among leading Vote Leave figures who have advocated scrapping a NHS free at the point of use. Brexit will save the steel industry, they argue: the very same people who still swoon over Thatcher and her ideology that laid entire industries – and the communities they supported – to ruin. They have as much interest in industrial strategy as I do in dancing the fandango naked down Whitehall. Let’s just say I suspect their sudden conversion to the causes of anti-austerity, the NHS and industrial salvation will not outlive a referendum.

Are the Cameron and Osborne remainers themselves waging a campaign based on fear? Yes, but a campaign of fear was waged to prevent Scotland from voting against independence. I didn’t support independence, but still objected to the fear campaign on a point of principle. Did they? No – they were waging it. Similarly, when an outlandish campaign of scaremongering was directed towards Labour in the run-up to the general election, did they object? No, again, they were waging it. And now, again, they are conducting another campaign of fear, including deploying the threat of raping and murdering foreigners. If only there were as many English words for hypocrisy as Eskimo words for snow, then I might be able to accurately sum up the brazen shamelessness of this bunch of shysters.

In February, I wrote that the issue isn’t whether the Tories teeter on the brink of civil war, but how civil that war will be. I’m not sure I predicted the brutality that was to come. How the Tories are supposed to get back into bed with each other post-referendum remains to be seen.

But for those of us who want to change the European Union into a democratic Europe run in the interests of working people, we have no dog in this pathetic fight. Let them shred each other to pieces and trash each other’s reputations and throw around fear and hysteria. Let’s stick with those – like Britain’s Another Europe Is Possible and Yanis Varoufakis’s Democracy in Europe Movement – who have a positive, compelling vision. Let them have their race to the bottom in fearmongering, and opt for hope instead.

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Formatting of that has gone all weird, and frankly I can’t be arsed to fix it.

Like I’ve said. This whole ‘debate’ is a fucking train wreck. Both sides pretty much consist of throwing as much shit at the other and seeing what sticks. I hate it.

Either way, can’t wait til it’s over. Still undecided if I want to find out the result whilst at Glasto, finding out we have left and leaving Glasto to come back to reality of Brexit & Boris as PM will be enough to make me suicidal.

I’m still really concerned that there isn’t much of a clear vision of what ‘Out’ would actually look like. It differs depending on who is talking, or what week it is. We are being promised things that seem to have little founding, or no precedent.

I know I’m one of the few round here that actually bother speaking from a pro-remain viewpoint (which, apparently makes my views on everything else invalid) - but I feel it is legitimate to want to know what we are looking at if we leave.

It’s all well and good saying we can trade with other people (we can do that fucking now anyway), but what will these deals be? How do we expect to be able to get deals as good we do now when offering a market of 500m, compared to a market of 70m?

What will happen to our farmers?

What will happen with movement of people? I love being able to move freely around Europe, and work wherever I want. What would be the alternative.

There are still so many unanswered questions. That I really can’t see answers to, and things that are only going to leave tangled messes for years, which will most likely only hurt people on the street .

I get that inertia is not a reason to stick. I don’t doubt that we probably could make a go on our own as an independent nation. I absolutely believe that the EU is far from perfect, I can understand some people’s frustrations with part of it. I honestly can.

But, voting to leave is a huge decision. The majority of arguments for leaving so far are just nonsense. It’s all well and good people saying I live in a fanciful, utopian world that thinks nations are ultimately arbitary lines drawn on a map - harking back to middle ages and warring kings and tribes or that we would be better off working as huans trying to solve our problems collectively, instead of kicking the can around saying “well it’s not our countries problem, you solve it”.

Equally, it’s fanciful to suggest that simply voting to leave is going to solve any issues in this country we currently face. “We no longer have to succumb to EU regulations”, “We can end austerity if we leave” (coming from UKIP and Tories, you know this is 100% truthful) etc etc etc, it’s all just bluster. There’s so little about what will actually happen if we do leave.

I guess, a reason for this is that people actually do not know. As I have said multiple times - the entire debate is toxic. The remain campaign are far from angels, or innocent of everything I’ve said above. It’s not as if I like being on the same side of a debate as David Pigfucker & Giddy Cantcount - but leaving is without doubt, in my mind at least, a massive fucking gamble. A huge leap into the unknown, with infinite questions left unanswered about what the future may hold.

Also, as in the poster that has been doing the round on social media. I don’t want to be left alone on a tiny island with the fucking Tories.

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Given that the subsidies these farmers receive are part of the income that reduces the net UK spend on the EU, we could extend similar subsidies to the farmers, however target it more effectively. Maybe avoid handing it out to the rich

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Fuck sakes, KRG. Kudos for putting in the effort, but Maastricht (and the Single Market) was signed in 1991. It’s not some covenant laid down by the creator.

Project Fear has done its job! :lou_sunglasses:

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Maybe going back further, but the same is true of nation states.

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I don’t know KRG, sometimes I think you see the world through rose tinted glasses (and that’s not an insult). Yes we should all be lovey dovey and have no borders and let people travel where they want when they want but, unfortunately, human nature does not make it so and I don’t think it will ever be so.

If you take it down to it’s base level lets take your home as an example. Would you just let anyone walk into your house and do what they want, eat your food, have a shower, sleep in your bed?

Yeah we’ve moved on from the feudal system but we still have a national identity and it is that that makes us want to control our own fiefdom. Maybe it’s wrong however, if free movement was allowed, people would all settle where the best resources were and the people that were there first would be most upset.

I know you say you like being able to work where you want at any time but would leaving the EU really stop that? You might have to go through a bit more red tape but it would still be acheivable. You are lucky that you work for a multinational company and I guess that would mean you could still go abroad to work for them if so desired. Don’t forget free movement is only really a recent thing and Europe functioned well enough before open borders.

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Voting to leave is a big decision, but life is full of big decisions that could all go horribly tits up. I actually read Gove’s statement, and while it was Michael Gove and you have to take that into account, he did go one better than yourself when dismissing the arguments of those he disagrees with, probably doing his best work on the “revenge” thing that a lot of Remainers seem to be worried about.

I can’t believe it’s even being used as a plus point for Remain. If this were not a union of nations, and were instead a family, then certain politicians on both sides of the Channel are essentially threatening us with disownment and abandonment if we fancy doing our own thing. That would be correctly described as an abuse of a relationship in a family, so I don’t know why it’s suddenly so acceptable when 65 million are given the same stern words.

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We haven’t farmed for years, lets get that straight right away.

Movement of people, people have always been allowed to move around, skilled labour will always be needed everywhere.

Your argument is weak.

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Originally posted by @KRG

Originally posted by @CB-Saint

The Farmer Union have thrown their weight behind the Remain campaign. Can’t think why. Something to do with 50% of their income coming from CAP.

Yeah, agircultural industry would be fucked if we left. That’s a fact, why would farmers vote to fuck themselves to keep Brexit happy?

All the farmers down this way seem desparate to sell of land (green belt) for housing. Heard at a parish council meeting last night that the local Tory council have bought two farms near J11 of the M20 and plan to put 15,000 houses on them. A local field just over 5 acres was up for £60k but was bought for £100k and went straight back on the market priced at £200k! The only reason anyone would pay that price is to build more houses.