EU - In or Out + Poll.

[Sable_Jan]

The 'interference' of upholding human rights is a GOOD thing.That kind of interference I like.

We can uphold human rights by ourselves. We don't need to be told how, why & when by some unwieldy conglomerate, con being the operative word in most situations

 

[tim2000s]

Absolutely, they'll be tailored to fit our economy, the size and style of our businesses, demographic, not a "one size fits all"

Hmmm. That really depends on which party is in power once an exit take place...

 

[tim2000s]

We can uphold human rights by ourselves. We don't need to be told how, why & when by some unwieldy conglomerate, con being the operative word in most situations

Interesting you should say this. Why is the European Convention on Human Rights so bad? Especially as it was essentially Churchill's idea at the end of the second world war that the British played a huge part in drafting (notably a Conservative MP who chaired the Council of Ministers) in 1949? And is based on the Magna Carta and 1689 Bill of Rights?

 

[Catlady19]

I have no desire to identify with, or support, the undercurrents of xenophobia, racism, defensiveness and venal self interest that prevail amongst the LEAVE arguments.

Having re-read the posts on the thread, I think it is rather unfair to accuse everyone who has posted for 'Leave' of being racist, corrupt and dishonest just because they have an opposite opinion to you.

 

[Brunneria]

Having re-read the posts on the thread, I think it is rather unfair to accuse everyone who has posted for 'Leave' of being racist, corrupt and dishonest just because they have an opposite opinion to you.

That would be unfair, wouldn't it? Good job I didn't say it.

I said that there were prevailing undercurrents of xenophobia, rascism, defensiveness and venal self interest.

And, for your information, when I started reading this thread I was entirely undecided about STAY or LEAVE.
The LEAVErs posts have convinced me to disagree with them. No way do I want to identify with that kind of thinking.

 

[Catlady19]

I did not say that everyone who has posted for LEAVE is rascist, corrupt or dishonest.

I said that there were prevailing undercurrents of xenophobia, rascism, defensiveness and venal self interest.

And, for your information, when I started reading this thread I was entirely undecided about STAY or LEAVE.
The LEAVErs posts have convinced me to disagree with them.

I am glad you have made a decision. You wrote 'prevailing undercurrents' that means you read it in a certain way. I didn't 'read' them in the same way perhaps. You are still insinuating that you 'read' LEAVE posts to contain racism, prejudice, and 'venal' (ie. corrupt, dishonest, unprincipled) views - I find that rather unfair.

 

[Lynbarn]

If you think Leaving would cause the UK to take responsibility for our own mistakes then you are an incredibly optimistic and dare I say it, naive, person.

Instead of the EU, the trickle down racism that stems from the Leave campaign will become the route of all our ills. Not stuff that the UK does. A classic example is the pressure on health services argument. 14.1 million GP appointments per year are not turned up to in the UK, and our GP numbers are falling as a result of UK Governmental polices, meanwhile, 5.6 million outpatients appointments were missed, and yet we keep hearing that the issues with access to health services are down to growing numbers of immigrants.

Likewise, with regard to social housing, there is a perception that Eastern European immigrants are pushed to the top of the social housing ladder ahead of UK locals. The numbers simply don't bear that out. The reality is that we don't have that much social housing as a result of successive Labour and Conservative policies. But that is our fault and our responsibility. Just shutting out the EU is not going to change the perception that it's immigrants causing the issue, and the leave campaign mantra has, if anything, made that worse.

We're not very good at taking responsibility for our own failings.

I did not mention immigration because I think it is a good thing for this country and everyone including you have just taken the surface figure and jumped to the wrong conclusion, I don't have the exact figures to hand but the last time I asked, I think it was about 1/3 of all immigrants turned out to be full time students at a University or College here in the UK very much a success story in my book, another section which never gets a mention are those migrants who are included in the figures but are passing though to other countries such as American, Canada and Ireland or going the other way to other EU countries from America etc.

You can not just blame migrants for not turning up at GP appointments most of them would not be registered at a GP surgery in the first place, but if they are ill they may well use A&E as a first step.

You said I am naive to think we could do better outside of the EU, to be honest I don't think we can until we get rid of the self self self culture which has built up in so many peoples lives, I suggest you might like to read the following:-

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot

My beef is that we all take the NHS for granted (I did work in it for eleven years) and it could not cope with the pressure on it then. The NHS was not designed to copy with the likes of long term conditions such as Cancer and Diabetes, we have to find another way for this to be funded.

But if you want to go down the American heath care route that's find, stay in the EU and wait for TIPP to take effect as you will then be paying for everything. I have friends in America who are envious of us in the UK and our Heath Service, Diabetes UK is a Charity and it raises funds from the public. If you where in American you would have to pay for the same advice that we get here for free. I have been told that sites like this one have a number of folk in America who regularly look at what we are doing and feel happy that they can access this information.

I am not anti America far from it, but this proposed trade deal between the EU and America in my mind brings the worst out in everyone and that is my reason for wanting to leave before it take effect.

This whole debate is not as simple as some try to make it, you will like some parts of the pro EU campaign and you will also like some parts of the Britexit campaign. Only you will know which bits they are that you like.

The biggest failure of the EU was not a case of becoming more political, but not taking care of different cultural concerns.

 

[Brunneria]

I am glad you have made a decision. You wrote 'prevailing undercurrents' that means you read it in a certain way. I didn't 'read' them in the same way perhaps. You are still insinuating that you 'read' LEAVE posts to contain racism, prejudice, and 'venal' (ie. corrupt, dishonest, unprincipled) views - I find that rather unfair.

I am not insinuating. I am stating. And I was referring to arguments, not posts.

However I am not stating that that ALL the LEAVE posts contain these things.
You are free to find unfairness wherever you like.

I have found unfairness in many posts on this thread - on both sides of the argument - so (if my posts are considered unfair) my posts fit right in.

 

[tim2000s]

You said I am naive to think we could do better outside of the EU, to be honest I don't think we can until we get rid of the self self self culture which has built up in so many peoples lives

As I mentioned earlier Lyn, I didn't state you are naive to think we could do better outside the EU.

I think you are naive to think that people in the UK would stop trying to blame someone else for their ills, and the trickle down racism of the leave campaign leads to blame moving from the EU to immigrants.

I don't know whether we would do better or worse outside the EU. You may believe that we will do better, but I believe we will have short term issues relating to economic downturn and a shrinking economy, especially on the basis of yesterday's market events, where the outcome of the new polls resulted in loss of value of the pound and drops in UK stock values. That's with uncertainty about the vote, not about how we get out if we vote out. The uncertainty gets worse if we vote out.

You can not just blame migrants for not turning up at GP appointments most of them would not be registered at a GP surgery in the first place, but if they are ill they may well use A&E as a first step.

If you read my post, I was commenting that much of the perception for many Leavers is that immigration is the reason for NHS issues and social housing issues, when the reality is that this simply isn't the case.

As it happens, I agree that the reason the NHS suffers the pressures it does are very much in line with your thoughts on the matter. I don't want to go down the US route, and whilst TTIP will make it easier, we are already far further down that route than anyone cares to mention in the UK. TTIP isn't going to change that. All it does is allow US Healthcare companies into the UK as US companies rather than their local UK subsidiaries.

 

[Dodo]

Scaremongering diabetics now! How low are they going to go?

 

[Catlady19]

Look at UK when we originally joined we were hardly rolling in money and jobs, much the same as the other countries, the whole idea was to share and support. The whole system was Europe would work better if it was more like the USA with a federal government and each state runs its own authority. These poorer countries would benefit from skills from other countries to help run them better and become stronger.

Yes, but the EEC was a much different platform than the current EU.

It really hacks me off when we run down people from Poland, Albanian etc, when during WWII they were on the allies side, but we forgot they were our friends we sh*t on them after the war.

Poland and Albania were allies in WWII because they were invaded by Germany and Italy in 1939. Afterwards I think we probably had our own problems to deal with.

After visiting various European countries I'm surprised any one wants to come to this country, it is dirty and chavy and I can see why so many people actually leave.

If you dislike it so much, why do you stay?

 

[Sable_Jan]

Interesting you should say this. Why is the European Convention on Human Rights so bad? Especially as it was essentially Churchill's idea at the end of the second world war that the British played a huge part in drafting (notably a Conservative MP who chaired the Council of Ministers) in 1949? And is based on the Magna Carta and 1689 Bill of Rights?

Not saying there's anything bad about it, just that we can uphold the same principles just as well as an individual country, classing GB as a whole, as we can as a member of the EU

 

[Sable_Jan]

Having re-read the posts on the thread, I think it is rather unfair to accuse everyone who has posted for 'Leave' of being racist, corrupt and dishonest just because they have an opposite opinion to you.

EXACTLY, thanks you

 

[Dillinger]

For what it's worth here’s my thoughts on the EU. At the start of this year I would have voted leave if pushed. Now I feel that to remain is the right decision, indeed the only rational decision.

The EU has many problems, it is horribly bureaucratic, there is a well-established gravy train mentality within the institutions, and I’m far from confident in the competency of the European Court of Justice. But these are peripheral to the intent of the EU; which is harmonising the interests of the 28 member states, of joining together to improve the lives of European citizens. That intent is what we are voting on. The intention is not and never has been to be sclerotic, wasteful or bureaucratic; so to vote out because of those things is not to address the core issue. Those things have to be addressed and have to be improved. Leaving will not do that.

Immigration seems to be the touch stone of the debate as we go into the final week but I’d be surprised if many of my friends were worried about that. There are apparently 3.5million EU immigrants in the UK out of a total population of 65 million. That does not seem unsustainable. Considering a number (possibly the greater number) of those are improving our lives is a great advantage to us and not a burden. You need a plumber right now; who would you prefer an English or a Polish one?

I don't see how sovereignty is such a massive issue either; to say we are forced to accept a foreign power's rule is disingenuous. How worried were you about sovereignty in the late 70's? In the 1980's? Infact ever? No EU member state has a different position to the UK; collective rules apply collectively and it they didn't then nothing would be done. We have however been able to opt out of the large issues; the Euro in particular and the Schengen agreement. So we are not powerless.

The UK’s financial contribution is another issue that could be addressed but in reality it is wholly insignificant to the budget of the UK; since Thatcher’s rebate negotiations the UK has been required to pay significantly less than the 1% of national GDP that member states are normally expected to pay into the EU’s collective budget.

Other member states do receive a larger rebate than the UK and so we could argue for a better position, and the EU desperately needs reform but the consequences of leaving are so tenuous at best and so catastrophic at worst that it cannot make sense to vote leave. Especially if you are doing so because you don’t like David Cameron or you are worried about porous borders (which we don’t have by the way; we are not part of Schengen and have to clasp our passports to our hearts as we make those Calais booze runs).

Compare how the UK was in the early 70’s before we joined the EU, the ‘sick man of Europe’. Perhaps not a wholly fair comparison but it’s the only one we have.

Crucially though is that this isn’t a midterm protest vote scenario; we can’t fix a leave vote in 5 years. This is a one shot issue.

Lastly, if we do leave consider the political pressure on the EU when making trade and other deals with the UK down the line. They absolutely cannot allow the UK’s position to be better than it was under the EU or else that will mean Italy, Spain, Greece and potentially every other member state will want to follow the UK’s lead. So trade deals will be punitive even though the UK is the 5th biggest economy in the world. They have to be or else the EU will come to an end.

Unless you are completely sure that leaving the EU will improve the lives of everyone in the UK then you must vote remain. If you vote leave because of immigration fears or because of the ‘cost’ of EU membership you have been hoodwinked. If you are unsure then you must vote remain, because you do not bet your house on a “I don’t know” position and that is what you are doing if you don’t vote or vote leave without the white-hot conviction of a Boris.

Which brings me to this; if you do vote leave or do not vote you are voting for Prime Minister Johnson and do you want that on your conscience?

Best

Dillinger

 

[tim2000s]

Not saying there's anything bad about it, just that we can uphold the same principles just as well as an individual country, classing GB as a whole, as we can as a member of the EU

The ECHR isn't an EU treaty. We signed up to it in 1949!

 

[Sable_Jan]

I am glad you have made a decision. You wrote 'prevailing undercurrents' that means you read it in a certain way. I didn't 'read' them in the same way perhaps. You are still insinuating that you 'read' LEAVE posts to contain racism, prejudice, and 'venal' (ie. corrupt, dishonest, unprincipled) views - I find that rather unfair.

100% agree with you. You have said just what I was thinking

 

[Catlady19]

Unless you are completely sure that leaving the EU will improve the lives of everyone in the UK then you must vote remain.

How can you guarantee that remaining in the EU will improve the lives of everyone in the UK?

 

[Catlady19]

these are peripheral to the intent of the EU; which is harmonising the interests of the 28 member states, of joining together to improve the lives of European citizens. That intent is what we are voting on. The intention is not and never has been to be sclerotic, wasteful or bureaucratic; so to vote out because of those things is not to address the core issue. Those things have to be addressed and have to be improved. Leaving will not do that.

But the EU knew we were having a referendum and Cameron went to them to discuss our concerns - he came back with next to nothing. It feels as though our issues have been addressed and cannot be improved - so perhaps it is time to leave?

 

[tim2000s]

It feels as though our issues have been addressed and cannot be improved

And I think therein lies the rub. I'm not unhappy with what we have and what came back from that negotiation. So while your issues may not have been addressed, I don't have anything outstanding, and that's why, whatever the result of this vote, there are going to be about 30mn unhappy people.

 

[hankjam]

Absolutely, they'll be tailored to fit our economy, the size and style of our businesses, demographic, not a "one size fits all"

So there will be no London weighting in all the decisions we make in the future... little evidence of that now...