GB EU Refferendum June 2016 - Should the GB stay or exit the European Union? BRexit

But they can and do individually decide that...

Surely though, it must be allowed to discuss the issue on the EU level? It cannot be wrong to suggest that others may perhaps need to re-examine their abilities / capabilities on a wide range of subjects, surely? Just as some nations can harp on about a lack of defence spending, or lack of co-operation on law enforcement?

Is that not part and parcel of what all Parliaments do? Debate and haggle? Pressure and connive?

 

Not the EU, its like signing up with the devil, once your signature is dry there is no going back. Hence live with it or leave. You will have noted even the Germans are getting fed up with their Nationalists doing very well in recent elections. Brian

 

This is all dangerous ground as the people who donlt like the EU really really hate it, while those who think its been broadly a good thing don;lt put its as high on the ;list of priorities compared to cost of housing, education the health service etc.

Anthony Hilton wroite a very perceptive piece in the Evening Standard today entitled "Brexit is driven by the old British love of complaining"
http://www.standard.co.uk/business/anthony-hilton-brexit-is-driven-by-the-old-british-love-of-complaining-a3206191.html
There is something in this. The EU is the things that its easy to have a good moan about now that we live in a classless society. The unions cannot possibly be blamed for anything and even the most unreconstructed bigot knows that it is no longer acceptable to blame <insert minority of choice here>

On the QT the EU has been a remarkable success;-

#1 There has not been an old fashioned European war for 70 years (*). - a first in two millennium. The world isn't a less violent place, Nor have the problems posed by having clumps of people with a naitona, religious or cultural identity scattered around rather than in clearly defined birders. Granting common rights to live and work has defused some of the more explosive nationalist made it far easier for, say Slavs and Germans to co-exist or Basques to endure France and Spain. What is the Irish question if it does not matter for practical purposes whether you are an Irish or UK citizens have the same rights. An American politician contrasted modern America with old fashioned Europe. He had this the wrong way round. It is the US which was built 300 years ago as a nation state.. The EU is a very modern attempt to solve the problem of multiple nationalities in the same continent. Thus far, and despite all the dire warnings countries still want to join it.

#2 From a personal perspective I am deligthed my children have the right to l;ive and work elsewhere in Europe. Now it is impossibl;e for my children to buy a house in the city they were born, It is a good thing they have the freedom to move to berlin or anywhere else.

#3 the Single market has brought down the price of beer and wine,. cars TVs and all sorts. As a serviceman in Germany in 1980 I bought a right hand drive VW Golf car tax free in Germany. I wonder it for a year in Germany and two years in the UK and sole the three year old car for more than I paid. Over 50% of the UK price of a car used to be made up of import duties and price hikce that could be added becuase it was to be sold in Britain. Even in 1980 you coudl dave 10% of the cost of a car by ordering it in Belgium and pauying the duty and going through the hassle of importing it.

But then that would spoil the fun of a really good moan...

* Defining "Europe" as members of the EU. I know the Volga rises in Europe

 

How many migrants went to New Zealand in 2015?
Easy to talk without the walk, on a far away island...no disrespect GS.
Migrants swarm trucks trying to enter the Chunnel. NZ has no idea of the problems...Canada has had it fairly good. We just flew in 25,000.
Curious as to why NZ can't also fly in at least 25,000. It is a lot warmer there, surely migrants would love to settle in such an accepting environ.

 

Other than the stooshie in Yugoslavia 20 odd years ago, you mean. Oh, and the Chechen civil war, the current fracas in the Ukraine, the Hungarian Uprising, the Prague Spring, the Romanian Revolution...

 

There should be no partnerships with out deeds of agreement... The EU is just this business oriented thing, and until the people of GB switch from being loyal subjects of Her Majesty to loyal citizens of the EU pledging to the ring of stars, there will never be independence for EU, not while there's monarchies, republics and city states that come first.
I say, every member should have an exit strategy in place.

 

I now realise, that every member does have the right to hold a referendum...

But I think it's petty that in place of an exit strategy set out, there's just scare mongering from our partners/neighbours.

 

But then again, what if on the flipside...

If GB involvement in the EU has in effect turned the EU into a 'mini America' like a United States of sorts on our doorstep and this is probably real reparations to GB after WWII then, I think we'd be stupid to leave and... It's a really good deal for GB and/plus, Volkswagens and stuff... Pretty much just around the corner there in Germany, so, it's like a USA on this side of the Atlantic... I'm not going to lie. GB has NUFF LOVE and respect for USA... They stood up to the crown and won and gave the British Empire a run for it's money for the longest time ever... Anyway... I think, IF - I were PM Margret Thatcher, and, this were the 1980s, and somebody asked me to help fund a single currency, I'd be like; HELL YEAH!

(You've got to remember, Pre euro exchange rates were... 500 Lira to £8.00, right... I mean, srsly... Right now, the euro has a much less confusing exchange rate with the pound) -

if that same somebody asked me, should GB join the single currency?
No...
GB still wants to be.
We want borders when you come, I know, I've flew back to the UK and took a ferry, so borders at Gatwick, Heathrow, Calais; (those are the ones that I've used) it matters not... Enter UK, go through UK border... right...
So why would we want to join the single currency?
We'd fund it, for all you guys, because lord knows... Pre euro exchange rates to the pound were wacky, so we get to, have, in effect,. this whole other mass of production that we also get to trade with that, once you go to, has no borders and one currency.

So..

Why would GB ever leave?
And... If I am right, and this is what's really going on, do you think it matters what we vote, the referendum'll be rigged in all likelihood.

 

New York reminded you of London?...Whats the highest building in London? And how many do they have??

As for the question...it depends...Some are correct in that a Union makes the sum of the parts stronger, but what about the stronger pieces VS the smaller/weaker ones?
We have Queensland and Western Australia constantly threatening to break off and become a separate country because they are sick of subsidising the smaller states and territories...Is it fair on them? Maybe it is in the long run, especially if the s..t hits the fan...
Some companies create smaller subsideries to limit damage to the principle company...Sometimes those smaller companies can keep another parent company afloat if they have diversified sufficiently...
Britain has HAD a union to bolster her and in times of need, help to protect her...When the Queen dies (no more than 10 years away) Australia will vote to become a republic, and another pillar is pulled from the empire...So who will help to protect Britain financially and in times of war?
One thing Australia has learned and learned quickly - Get some mates! Keep your friends close and your enemies closer...join everybody and everything...
A bloke doesn't go up to a group of blokes and fights them...he looks for someone walking alone...
Don't walk alone Britain...

 

I've worked in The Shard.



That's in London.

That's also in Southwark (neighbouring borough)... and.. Is the tallest in the EU at 75 stories...


NYC's taller, and based on limestone, not clay (like London)...
Geology...

New York City cured my home sickness... Right from the start I saw a huge ad' for Apple, it was this Winston Churchill picture saying Think Different or something as the taxi boat pulled into Battery Park, then it just felt like London to me, only in America, and then walking to the Subway passed a British Pub, a HSBC Bank and saw stuff, a lot of stuff, from home. Was funky, I did not expect that.
I love London though.
Went to Amsterdam, saw a lot of the same stuff for sale, to a point where that felt a lot like home to me, even more home to me than other cities in the UK!

 

Seriously?!? "No disrespect", but WTF has New Zealand got to do with Brexit?!?

No disrespect, but why do you have your head stuck up where the sun doesn't shine?

 

Haha...Poppy...you think NZ is warmer?
And its slowly sinking into the ocean with the amount of earthquakes it gets...and she has about, what? 4-6 million people in the whole joint...25k is a huge intake infrastructure wise...And by the by NZ just recently put its hand up to take some refugees that Australia wouldn't take...BUT we saw that as a back door for the people smugglers so we didn't let them have them...

 

Your response supports rather than refutes my point.



None of those countries were part of the EU,


I did mention the following in the footnote.

There has also been a war between fellow NATO members Greece and Turkey in 1974. There has never been a war between EU members.

A|rticle 3 of the current treaty states that the "Union's aim is to promote peace, its values and the well-being of its peoples." http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.C_.2012.326.01.0001.01.ENG&toc=OJ:C:2012:326:FULL

The proposals for the predecessor European Coal and Steel Community included the phrase to "make war between France and Germany unthinkable and materially impossible" http://europa.eu/about-eu/basic-information/symbols/europe-day/schuman-declaration/index_en.htm

 

..what? you obviously haven't spent any time around any French citizens recently. The Euro is decried by everyone you talk to and prices are sky high. There was a time when Brits crossed the Channel in huge numbers to shop and buy beer and fags etc; that doesn't happen any more....its only the relative 'strength' of the pound that keeps the prices of European imports 'down'. The 300K+ French people living and working in London tells it own story. Elsewhere the French are currently trying to reform their labour laws to try and make some impact on their double-digit unemployment rate- even minor tinkering far short of the kind carried out in the UK a decade go provokes nation wide strikes ..there's possibly something to be said for leaving a 'union' with countries like that..

 

We don't flock across to the channel to buy beer and wine, because the single market has now brought prices down in the UK, including an alignment in taxation. If we left they would creep up again. One medical study came up with a figure of C £9bn in savings. EU membership is good for beer and wine drinkers!

So what if 300k French live in London. About the same number of Brits live in France! There are about 2 million Britis who live and work in Europe.

Furthermore many of the export/import arguments are clouded by accounting tricks. If we believe Amazon's accounts, Britain imports billions of pounds of goods from the Netherlands. According to Vodaphone we get our telephone calls from Luxembourg and Google and Facebook Ireland export billions of Euros of advertising services to the UK.

One of the things I dislike most about the arguments put forwards for Brixit is the touch of arrogance, hypocrisy and sheer rudeness, The English pride themselves on being a fair minded and polite people. Yet Brexit has given licence to bang on about johnny foreigner as iif they were cartoon characters and not friends, customers, suppliers and co-workers.

At the centre of the fairy tale is the idea that we can subjugate Frenchmen, Italians and Spaniards who want to live in Britain to the petty and punitive immigration restrictions we reserve for the outside world, without any effect on the 2 million Britons who might want to work in Europe or retire somewhere warm,

It also seems an amazing legacy of the World Wars to deliberately reject the ideals, symbols and institutions that the rest of the warring European states believe has made Europe a better place

 

No, you're trying to have your cake and eat it. The EU isn't the sum total of Europe, just like COMECON wasn't.
Second link doesn't work.
That first link you posted was to a document from 2007; the original Treaty of Rome makes no mention of a common currency etc-
http://ec.europa.eu/archives/emu_history/documents/treaties/rometreaty2.pdf

 

We don't "flock across the Channel" because the majority of us don't live in the Home Counties, where access to the Continent is easy.

And you just undermined your own argument by arrogantly assuming that everyone opposed to the EU is a "Little Englander". I'm not English, and the only folk around here spouting about the EU are the usual SNP sheep and kiddy-on "socialists" that have never done a day's work in their lives but can still find money to get to every protest march under the sun.

 

These were all not in the EU

 

This map says otherwise. Maybe not an 'overwhelming' majority though!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_England

 

If the UK leaves the EU the Scots (by hook or by crook) are going to leave the UK. I am 100% certain that is what will happen if the little Englanders get their way. Will you be moving south? Best do it now before the stringent border controls kick in!