Amidst all the claims and counter claims of the two sides, there is one important fact. The UK will be £10 billion a year better off by not having to send that amount to be spent elsewhere in the EU as out net contribution. This will also improve the balance of payments by the same amount, and means a 0.6% of GDP gain or boost to our living standards.
Further gains are possible from changing and improving the regulatory burden which the EU imposes on all our domestic and n on EU trade. Whilst we would still want good quality regulations in various areas, we should be able to reduce the total costs of regulation and improve its effectiveness at the same time.
There should be trade and income gains from negotiating UK free trade agreements with major countries not currently covered by EU agreements, including India, China and the USA.
Above all, we will be spared the wild ride to political union. If we stay in the rest of the EU will expect us to pay more of the bills, as they move towards a benefits and transfer union around the Eurozone. The UK has found it difficult to contain the EU budget. In the next few years they will need to spend more on regional and development policies given the poor state of the least successful parts of the Eurozone, mired in mass unemployment.
Why the UK will be Better Off Out – Attachment: Better-Off-Out (1)
September 25, 2015
I think it’s important to stress there is no status quo here. Voting to stay means further integration voting to leave means being able to make our own decisions.
September 25, 2015
Correct.
September 25, 2015
Indeed, it is ever closed integration in this dreadful, anti-democratic and dangerous project or get out now.
September 25, 2015
There is also the social benefits that leaving EU will bring such as being masters of our own destiny again(do not people cherish freedom so much that they are prepared to fight and die for it if necessary) and actually being able to control how many and which immigrants we allow into the UK(although that does not go too well when Labour are in government at least the Tories try but are thwarted by the left and the EU).
The original reasons that brought the common market and then the EU into existence on the face of it were very appealing. However we now know that in practice those aims are not being realised and the same could have been achieved more efficiently and cost effectively by greater trade and cross border cooperation without the dead weight of the bureaucratic monolith that is the current EU.
September 25, 2015
France signals EU treaty change to avert Brexit, warns on euro survival, there you go people now the start of the EU to give you the earth to keep us in the dreaded EU, DC should call the referendum for next year before the juggernaut of pro EU gets really started
September 25, 2015
Yes, but is it not alarming that in France saying a treaty change is possible to avoid Brexit, they also ask “what is it that Mr C wants, because we don’t know”. Really?
September 26, 2015
The recent French delegation to Britain, including talks at the highest possible political level at Chequers between Cameron and Hollande suggest one thing – total panic in Paris. As so often happens when subject to domestic violence from the Boche, Marianne seeks refuge with an old acquaintance, who she never really liked at school, Britannia. But Britannia is rich and lives in a house well away from the rougher neighbourhoods.
We saw the first renewal of this tendency (1871, 1904, 1914, 1940) when the Sarkozy government proposed a defence treaty with the UK in 2010. Leaks emerged that the UK and France were like-minded European powers with a global foot-print and powerful defence forces, so it was only natural to share resources. All true, of course. But what was the catalyst?
Well the French are in an unenviable position and the balance of power within the EU has been tilting inexorably against France ever since the reunion of Germany in 1989. Thatcher and Mitterand shared a common view of the risks of this development, and they were right. We saw France take a diametrically opposed view to Germany throughout the Greek financial crisis and one suspects that was one catalyst for our current new best friend status. But now the reckless invitation by Merkel for the huddled masses of migrants ed)to make a (one way trip ed)to the EU has presumably caused a total loss of confidence in Berlin within French government circles.etc ed
Falling in line with French foreign policy initiatives has historically proven extremely expensive for us, as the centenary of the Great War should be a reminder. One despairs of Cameron’s historical perspective, but hopes that someone, somewhere will urge caution when the French, of all people, desperately want the UK to stay in the EU. The splendid isolation that will follow getting out is the only policy that makes sense.
We can then negotiate with the French from an even greater position of strength if need be; there is no reason not to.
September 25, 2015
Apparently:
“We shouldn’t turn a treaty change into something traumatic or taboo”.
Seems sensible; given that there have been at least four changes to the EU treaties since the Treaty of Lisbon came into force on December 1st 2009 EU treaty change is obviously not “taboo”, and while one of those changes could be described as radical none could be described as “traumatic”.
September 25, 2015
The EU is dedicated to creating an ever larger union of sovereign states and the experience of those tells us that they rarely work for long and quite often break up very badly indeed. The USA is an exceptional case but even they have experienced serious conflict because of it and there are even some states today believe they would be better out of it.
Even the UK one would think of as a most stable country is having a problem keeping the union together. Scotland of course is the current example but Northern Ireland has had a horrific experience as there are some there who wish to break away and that is still a problem that is almost intractable.
September 25, 2015
The USA is not a union of sovereign states, that was decided by the Civil War.
September 25, 2015
In how many days does the state burn through £10 billion? So in the scheme of things that is peanuts. Being outside the EU does not mean an end to a high spending open door immigration policy, foreign wars and a BS neo-lib agenda. If the economy is “recovering” why are interest rates still as low as they are?
Watching Osborne in China brought back some memories of the fag end of Callaghan’s government. Then it was the equally morally and economically bankrupt Peoples Republic of Poland that HMG was kowtowing to for some orders to keep Swan Hunter’s shipyard from going under.
September 25, 2015
At least Callaghan was trying to keep Briton’s in jobs .
Osborne is trying to award the contracts for the pointless HS2 to Chinese contractors using Chinese labour .
That amounts to handing Labour a victory in the 2020 election but by that time Osborne will be collecting his rewards with a few nice City directorships .
Who would have guessed that HS2 had nothing to do with the rail contract and everything to do with gaining concessions for the City in China ?
September 25, 2015
I hope Georgie has done his due diligence on doing biz with the Chinese. He specifically might want to refer to a European engineering giant. This famous concern was told, after building a train line in China, hand over your IP related to it or you can think again about doing business here anymore. As for drumming up business for the City, why does he not go on a bi-partisan delegation with Corbyn to Venezuela, they like to print as much money as the Chinese too?
September 25, 2015
Indeed freedom and democracy are far more important, priceless even.
September 25, 2015
There are also the indirect costs of the CAP, fisheries and regulatory burden for 92% of our businesses who do no trade at all with the EU. Then we have the direct and in and out of work benefits given away by the Tory Government to foreign workers including child allowances for children living abroad. Then we have the enormous savings of providing public services including health, education and housing to English people. A novel idea. We can make our own laws and not select those who don’t please us. That’s called a sovereign democracy that has been given away in salami slices by lies and stealth. The legacy parties are wholly responsible for our current dire position!
September 25, 2015
Agreed…
But you say “Further gains are possible from changing and improving the regulatory burden which the EU imposes on all our domestic and on EU trade. Whilst we would still want good quality regulations in various areas, we should be able to reduce the total costs of regulation and improve its effectiveness at the same time.”
Don’t forget a lot of this cost comes from our UK civil servants “gold plating” the regulations that are handed down. It will be the same “empire building” civil servants after we leave, so don’t expect much or any saving 🙁
September 25, 2015
If the current civil service and political elite stay in charge after a Brexit, there may be little saving. As an example, they have steered the UK into the most expensive nuclear generation deal on the planet, despite being warned by EU officials and other countries within the EU finding much more economical deals.
We are about to go ahead with the EPR reactor, built by Areva/EDF and originally Siemens at a build cost which has risen over 4x and delays and construction faults since planned. The strike price for electricity is over twice the price agreed for a new VVER 1200 reactor to be built by Finland at Fennovioma.This is based on the Russian design, described as well proven, with western standards for containment and controls. The price includes waste management, production, depreciation and finance.The Finns have had experience with their EPR, which has been delayed from 2009 to 2015 at 3x the original cost, and are now disputing claims for this.
They are not the only EU country to have chosen this alternative. The Germans had ordered and started 8 of them before Mrs Mekel had another of her moments and cancelled them all, some half built. Perhaps we could buy some of the bits at knock down prices. But we all know that our civil servants and politicians will go for the most expensive, even if the cost is going to be more than the same type in France and index linked. All of the above can be seen by googling Nuclear generation Finland and EPR/ World Nuclear Assn and Wiki.
And just in case one cock up wasn’t enough, Oz has just given them another order, to be built by the Chinese at Bradwell. A cost increase from £5.6bn to £24.5bn makes £10bn look paltry.
Then there is the HS2 line to cost far more per mile than the French build them and ……..
September 25, 2015
@Know-Dice.Your second paragraph is spot-on.Furthermore,there needs to be a total clear out of the so-called progressives and internationalists in our key institutions and the neutralisation of the shadow state of Quangos and NGOs that Labour governments have constructed (and Tory governments have not had the courage to dismantle) otherwise getting out of the EU will not have the liberating effect we might wish for.Unfortunately,short of a revolution,I do not see it happening.
September 25, 2015
“But the EU gives us 3 million jobs. It allows us to trade as a single block. We would have to take millions of our pensioners back. It gives us worker’s rights and human rights…”
I think the images of millions of pushy young men making their way here are worth more than a thousand words.
This is what will get your Out vote.
Whatever the benefits of the EU we cannot afford to be in it if that is the price.
PS, Nigel Farage was asked by the BBC this morning “Are you really a credible leader for the Out movement ?”
A bit like “When did you last beat your wife ?” Still nothing about the Ashcroft book on David Cameron from the BBC. Is he a credible leader for the In movement by the BBC’s own criteria ?
September 25, 2015
….and,as usual,questions put to Farage were asked in a self-consciously disapproving tone of voice…..get your hisses and boos ready,children!
Arriving home late yesterday,I also caught part of the BBC’s HARDTalk with Stephen Sackur,who seems to be the BBC’s favourite inquisitor of ‘nasty’ right wing politicians;interviewing the Hungarian Foreign Minister,he really couldn’t accept that a relatively monocultural country would not welcome having a significant muslim community thrust upon it or have the right to decide the matter for itself.Sackur,I find out,has an Iraqi wife.
September 25, 2015
Four excellent and concisely summarised reasons for Brexit, At the same time reversing the democratic deficit which our membership of the EU imposes upon our parliament and people.
It’s difficult to select one priority out of the four you give, but if I had to choose one it would be the return of choice for the UK to trade globally via bi-lateral agreements with other nations, particularly, but not exclusively, with our English-speaking Commonwealth friends. All free from the constraints of an outdated, incompetent, and unnecessary bureaucracy which is the EU.
September 25, 2015
Indeed. The benefits of deregulation could be massive compared to £10Billion providing the then UK government actually carried these through sensibly.
Alastair Heath yesterday and James Dyson today in the Telegraph are quite right on the VW issue. If you design, poorly conceived, and totally artificial tests you are likely to get engineers who design ways of passing them (by getting rid of spare wheel and other weight and with clever software). Often this produces an inferior, less reliable and even less efficient car for use in the real world.
Clearly it seems VW did push the envelope rather too far but it is the politicians, the green priests, the ill conceived regulations, the testers and regulators who are the main culprits.
How on earth could the regulators and testers not have realises what the car companies were doing? It there were decent engineers and scientists in positions of power they would have realised what car companies would do and were doing to beat these tests.
The problem is we have silly rules set by green religion group think and the engineers are trying to jump through silly hoops rather than design for the real world.
September 25, 2015
I see that Tim Farron, in his speech the other day, claimed we have more offshore wind turbines than the rest of the world. He even seemed to like this lunacy for some reason. Perhaps he does not know how expensive, intermittent they are per Mega Watt Hour.
What a moronic waste money, making us all poorer, giving higher taxes and large energy bills and killing jobs all over the place.
Is the government really going ahead with the insane Tidal “Lagoon” at Swansea Bay.
The government clearly has money to burn all over the place, Yet bins are collected only monthly, the NHS is killing thousands, the police rarely investigate most crimes, the education systems is poor.
Why is it that taxes go up and up yet services always deteriorate (and often charge more too)?
September 25, 2015
Still some good news – Drax pulls out of £1bn carbon capture project.
Here again with have ill conceived regulations, forcing a whole industry to do pointless and expensive things, such as burning imported biomass.
How much was wasted on the abandoned project so far?
At least some progress is being made by this government on killing the green monster but it is too little to late.
September 25, 2015
I agree with Heath about 50% of the time but yesterday he totally nailed it .
September 25, 2015
Alastair not Ted!
September 25, 2015
Very well put John. Above all we will once again be in charge of our own destiny and benefit in character from the experience.
September 25, 2015
There have been many reports and documents of one sort or another highlighting the benefits of leaving the EU ; top of the list is Iain Mansfield’s prize winning essay that won the IEA’s Brexit Prize . Mansfield concluded there would be a nett £1.3bn increase in GDP.
Whether it is a £10bn or £1.3bn advantage I don’t care ; regaining sovereignty is the most important issue . Time after time the Brussels bureaucracy has made a mess of things with the knock on effect of hampering and causing havoc in our own lives . I want none of this and I pray for the independence we once had . The UKIP conference is about to commence and will demonstrate to other political groups how unity of purpose works .
September 25, 2015
In your slides you make a strong case, as ever, for leaving the EU, but it perhaps comes across as being for the converted rather than the undecided! May be good to put together a list of the europhile reasons to stay in and address each one with your usual rigour?
In recent days it’s been depressing to hear a number of politicians more or less advocate staying in no matter what. Personally I find this particularly depressing coming from the son of Tony Benn whose views on the EU have turned out so correct. Two ‘themes’ do seem to be emerging though, and both can be readily countered 1) Workers will lose employment rights and 2) Loss of ‘environmental’ protections. Re 1) I don’t think any eurosceptic is suggesting this, and that can be explained 2) – well many points could be raised, not least the fact that environmental protections via the EU = expensive energy which is highly regressive in its impact on the very people the ‘stay in’ MPs purport to represent.
September 25, 2015
3 million jobs – discredited numbers
Kept us safe from war – NATO did this
More Influence – Rubbish 4 nations have just been influenced through QMV
Access to the single market – we buy more from the single market than we sell to it so it will continue
Cheaper telephone calls – Single market will ensure this continues
Workers’ rights – with Corbyn’s labour in opposition workers’ rights are unlikely to be quietly eroded.
Pensioners will be repatriated – there are no plans to repatriate any workers from the UK to Europe it is unlikely that those pensioners paying for their own existence in other countries and contribution are likely to be repatriated
September 25, 2015
I read that now at last we have signs that the get Britain out of the EU fragmented campaign is coordinating. I had thought that my calls for it were lost on the wind. I believe the new banner is to be “Love Europe, Leave the EU.” Within this will be the Democracy Movement, Global Britain, The Bruges Group , UKIP, all coordinated by Arron Banks. As I believe you are heavily into the Bruges Group , congratulations on whatever part you may have played in bringing this about.
Those who would hope to benefit from fragmentation will be disappointed. Equally the media , with especial reference to the BBC will have little justification in trying to ignore such a weighty campaign.
I look forward to the systematic and constant demolition of the house of cards created by those who would wish us to lose our sovereignty to the EU.
September 26, 2015
“Love Europe leave the EU” or “Love Europe lets stop the EU destroying it”, is exactly the way to go.
Having at Italian wife and second home in France I think it sums it all up perfectly.
It is precisely how I and indeed very many Europeans feel. We do not want a command economy run & destroyed by misguided fools in Brussels. Or indeed one from misguided fools in Westminster.
September 25, 2015
Excellent and I hope that (at breakfast, which is imminent) I see your Better Off Out in a few papers. Any reason why no specific mention of regaining our Fisheries and/or removing the burden of the CAP?
September 25, 2015
It’s way more than that so long as you do the right thing.
1. Migrants make a net economic benefit. We’re being pushed that repeatedly by the left.
Now its not the case, as the Cream study points out. They like to claim it backs up their argument, but its not true. See table 5 and add up all the migrant costs.
http://www.cream-migration.org/publ_uploads/CDP_22_13.pdf
It’s almost 100 bn.
So call the left’s bluff. Say migrants can come to the UK and stay subject to one condition.
They pay more in tax than the average government spend. That’s per migrant, not just worker. Turns out that John and co spend 11.5K per person per year. That’s a lot of tax a migrant needs to pay.
If they are on that level of taxation, then they are above welfare thresholds. So no welfare. They have no eligibility for social housing. So that frees up a lot of housing for people who need it.
So call the left’s bluff for economic migrants. Rather uneconomical migrants.
How to implement?
Well the easy start is no welfare. Then you need to increase the threshold over say 3 years. That way as the really uneconomical leave, you can get the native unemployed into any jobs that are freed.
The regulatory burden remains for anyone wanting to trade with the EU. You still need to make your products comply. However, you don’t have to pay for the massive regulations. Let the EU do that and piggy back off the back of it. If you want cheap access, set up a shell company in Ireland and get access that way.
It’s cheaper.
Then you need to get rid of the next layer of politicians. How about the Lords for starters?
Are MPs that incompetent that they need hundreds of people checking what they have done?
September 25, 2015
A very good summary.
It can be added that the EU has made some policy decisions that have turned out to have disastrous consequences. Among them: the euro project (causing high unemployment); the Schengen agreement (out of control migrant crisis); energy policy (electricity supply failure – a risk already realised in Belgium); replacement of elected governments (in Italy and Greece); undemocratic Commission (cannot be booted out of office).
September 25, 2015
Excellent post/presentation. Now is the time for Eurosceptics from all parties and none to put aside any differences they may have had, unite and work together to convince people that voting Out is a vote for prosperity, positivity and a better future.
September 25, 2015
Heard Rory Broomfield? on LBC the other morning, enunciating the out case. His argument was not simply or positively put and paled in charisma when compared to the ‘in’ voice. Thank god a member of the public followed after and very simply and humorously described how the Germans couldn’t afford to ruin our car industry (and associated jobs) because they couldn’t afford to have the same applied to theirs and lose British buyers.
We on this site all know the arguments. I’m not a great fan of Farage, but his talent is speaking simply and with confidence to the wider voting public. People who set up Out organisations and bankroll movements should have the humility and brains to find charismatic speakers who look and talk like the people they seek to persuade. As Clegg found out in his debate with Farage, the Westminster bubble is out of touch. The BBC hated Farage’s exposure of foreign patients freeloading on the NHS and Carswell even apologised for it on Question Time, yet such a small party machine still got 4m votes and polls suggested more people agreed with him know that issue than not.
How about a Campaign called ‘Britain first’ not ‘better off out’ and let’s put these compelling arguments simply and positively. As Dr JR says £10 billion a year is massive; it would effectively be a massive tax cut to every family in this country. It might even mean the 25,000 who die of cold in the UK every year could afford to turn the heating up.
September 25, 2015
I had cause a few years ago to follow in detail day-by-day the negotiations between Canada and the EU regarding trade over a whole menu of specifics and generalities.Long and boring.
Unless like me you find interesting that say four negotiators from either side are haggling like kids about infinite details whilst…away from their free lunches, free accommodations… millions of regular folk as indicated like the wartime song by Gracie Fields “Thing-Ummy-Bob(Thats Going To Win The War)” are living and dying, getting married and divorced, being thrown out of their homes and made unemployed to boot on either side of the pond and are unfortunately unaware of one anothers plight.
Well I heard from Canadian media recently that they can sell a few more particular classes of cars in the UK and Europe now but only a certain number of units per year. Yet the EU website boasts of a “Free Trade Agreement between the EU and Canada.
http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/in-focus/ceta/
One should not fooled by the drowning effect of such a mass of detail. “Free” is a relative term and all is not what it may seem to a tired reader.
You have got to be taken aback when visiting Canada about the number of British people living there, and those whose parents and siblings were and are British; an eerie similarity of culture and attitude albeit with a sharp smack of Americana. But many ifs and buts.It is beyond belief we are not doing much more trade with our ex-colony. That our UK shops are not stocked on every other counter and shelf with goods marked “Made in Canada.” Odd, Odd, Odd.
We will be better off and surely it must be a whole lot easier to speak and trade in the same language to people, our people, in our world, our English language world outside the EU.
Not too many people here, surprisingly, will recognise the name of Mr Stephen Harper ( the Canadian PM ) who a few months ago went all the way to South Korea trying to support his flagging agricultural industry by flogging a few more pieces of chicken and beef joints.
I think we British should stomach largely “British” meat from Canada than from an unmarked country of origin in the EU. We British in the UK and the British in Canada would be richer for it.
September 25, 2015
Every “OUT” campaigner must repeat at every possible opportunity: ” A vote to stay “In” is NOT a vote for the status quo; great and deep chage is coming to the EU however the UK votes.
September 25, 2015
The one thing that the “No” campaign must do (which you, JR, have been articulating so eloquently and so long) is to nail the Big Lie that the Lib Dems, the CBI and others have been chanting as the only reason for staying in: that is, of course, that we will immediately lose all our exports (whether Europe is the final destination or not) to the EU the moment we leave. It needs to be challenged at every opportunity. Any fool can see that with a negative balance of trade, we have by far the stronger negotiating position.
September 25, 2015
A great set of slides, John. One correction – your second last heading reads : “a freer more democratic country”. We do not live in a free country or democracy. All of our local laws need to comply with EU laws. When there is a conflict, the EU law takes precedence. So we are a country under foreign control. Under British law, I believe this is treason.
September 25, 2015
Mr Farage of course is not leading even from UKIP’s perspective any campaign related to “How much richer we would be if we leave the EU.
His speech to UKIP’s conference this morning was lacklustre, lacking characteristic sonorant sounds with strangely novel reminders we are in fact British. We are all aware he was stabbed from all sides by jealous people of declining electorates in his party’s tier below him and by secret treachery by many UKIP branch committees and local “leaders” who try to blame him for their increasingly lack of electoral success.
UKIP needed a proportionately strong and rather autocratic leader because that is what is required for a small up and coming party in terms of its internal politics and in the wider electoral field where we human beings do “follow-me -leader” when traditionalism and frankly tribalism is a decisive holding electoral force. So all must suffer the intelligent and eloquent nicey-nice UKIP leaders-in-waiting. None has charisma. UKIP is for the dustbin. They did it to themselves.
So the battle to leave the EU can only be led by the Conservative Party members who dare to win.
It will be a boon Mr Corbyn is for staying in. Even those who support EU membership will question their own sanity if only for an instant that they have his unquestioning still wet behind the ears backing. Like becoming engaged to the most wonderful girl or boy of your dreams only to find their father goes to sleep hanging upside down in a moorland cave each morning until dusk begins.
September 25, 2015
Leaving the EU would be an investment in our democracy, which would be incalculable in the benefits it would generate.
September 25, 2015
John I was wondering if you have time you reply to Mrs Webb’s comment will the extra money really make a difference?
I will vote out
reply Yes the extra money we keep would be very useful
September 25, 2015
It all good but without reform of political system and way big business works one can only think that it waste of time. All politician talk about how small business and individual is the way to go but little is done. PPI billions wasted with third of the money going offshore. Big business take the bread out the people mouths, they overcharge, monopolize, cheat and terrorize government and the people to get what they want and employ less people and cut pay. Hospital in a mess because PPI and the government dose nothing, the man the tv on Question time last night hit the nail on the head, why did change the you run your hospital, it simple big business hovering up your money for nothing in return and to keep unemployment down all waste because big business taking away the money and the jobs so government has to build offices to put workers into to do nothing.
September 25, 2015
I think that after we have left the EU we could be substantially better off economically, or we could be slightly worse off. Most probably it will be slightly better off, and it is very unlikely that it will be substantially worse off, as the eurofanatics like to claim; on the contrary, the balance of prospective economic advantage is skewed towards exit.
I’m inclined to say that most probably it will only be “slightly” one way or the other, because even the alleged benefits of the Single Market are vastly exaggerated.
As it happens this came my way recently, a speech by EU Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis:
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-15-5687_en.htm
in which this passage caught my eye:
“At the heart of the EU’s success is the promise to promote economic prosperity.
To make Europeans better off through greater integration.
The Single Market has achieved just that.
Between 1992 and 2008, the free movement of people, goods and services helped create almost 3 million new jobs.
These benefits could be doubled if remaining trade barriers were removed, and if the digital single market was boosted.”
I think it’s just coincidence that the 3 million he claims as the number of jobs created through the Single Market across the whole of the EU is the same as that often claimed for the jobs that the UK alone would lose if we left the EU, but taking that claim at face value the point is that in 2008 the total number of people employed across the EU was about 223 million:
https://www.bluenomics.com/data#!data/labour_market/employment/total_number_of_employed_people/1892415090|chart/line&countries=eu
and if 3 million of their jobs were attributable to the Single Market that is only 1.3% of the total, and that marginal increase has been spread over 16 years.
As I’ve said before, the Single Market represents a pathetically small mess of pottage for which our politicians have been all too willing to sell our birthright.
September 25, 2015
Off-topic, I had to laugh when I saw this earlier today:
https://euobserver.com/justice/130422
“The EU naval operation in the Mediterranean Sea is to start capturing smugglers from 7 October, but the big problem has shifted to the Balkan route.”
Apparently the EU foreign minister wants to change the name of the operation from “EUnavfor Med” to “Sophia”, “after a refugee girl born on a German rescue ship”.
September 25, 2015
Please don’t give the NHS more money to waste. You may as well just set fire to the cash. If there is spare money give it to the patients to take elsewhere, especially those most obviously let down by the NHS.
September 25, 2015
The polling figures are now reported as 44% to 37%. In favour of REMAIN unfortunately!
So, it looks like there is everything to play for. There just needs to be a swing of about 4% to tip the scales.
The figures must mean that the ‘don’t knows’ number about 19%. I’d suggest that a significant percentage of that 19%, and possibly the 44% too, are leftish voters who’ve previously been pro-EU in their attitude but have been recently appalled by what they seen happen to Greece at the hands of the Troika. The recent elections there were little more than a farce. No matter who won – nothing much would have changed. The Troika called the shots.
So, if we want the UK out of the EU the key will be to get them to vote LEAVE rather than just go along with their previous inclination.
Look at it from their POV. The LEAVE campaign is very much dominated by their political opponents. They don’t much like you and you don’t much like them.
But you need their votes to win though.
Any suggestions?
September 25, 2015
I see the government is going to force all pupils in England to study maths, English, science, one of history or geography and a modern language at GCSE. A joke of an idea imposed on state schools by politicians who have been through public school. Do I need to list the numbers of people who would not fit that requirement including lots of the head teachers I know, the president of the royal society of chemistry, and lots of others including myself. Languages imposition is just a glass ceiling being imposed on state pupils going to schools where they have no chance of learning languages. If you want to improve language education you need to start teaching it to infants properly, get some kids programmes in foreign languages on kids TV and so on. Geography or History why? This is a badly thought through policy that is not based on any evidence whatsoever. If you want to know how to improve things you should talk to those of us who have been through the state system and worked around the world. Where would all the extra languages, history and geography teachers come from anyway?
I also hear from the web that the “right to buy” policy on housing association homes is being backtracked. Sell them all off. Give housing subsidy to needy people and not those allocated a special house by a lottery who may or may not be needy.
September 25, 2015
OT:
We’ve got Sturgeon banging on about another referendum (although we all know she’s really only interested in Trident).
Now there’s Bennett talking about voting reform even though it was overwhelmingly rejected recently. I presume she wants PR – does she not realise that will massively empower her nemesis, UKIP?
Regardless, I think it’s time the PM made a statement to the effect that referenda can’t just be called over and over just because some people don’t like the result. We’d never have a government if that was the case!
September 25, 2015
14% of German GDP is the estimate today of a leading US Business programme on VWs contribution. A few years ago an estimate , which seems too high to me, was 70% of the Czech Republic’s GDP reliant on VW/Skoda and associated services and exports.
Given that Germany will be able, because of inward migration, to claim some kind of regional “deprived areas” of high unemployment population-welfare-dependence due to its vision that migrants will be effectively only 10% employable within their first year of residence; also, that housing throughout Germany will be catastrophically low claiming yet another EU grant then the UK will be financing Germany and other member states due to Germany’s failed economic imperialism,- for the next 20 years or more if we remain in the EU.
The UKs RELATIVE future prosperity due to an imploding EU and Germany’s Corbynite economy will attract even more migrants to our shores which we will be obliged ( politically if not legally ) to house if not employ. Many will be first, second and third generation German with weak English language skills rendering them only capable of basic labouring duties.
How many street cleaners with German University degrees in Electric Turbine Maintenance and Liberal Studies do we require?
Best out of the EU.
September 25, 2015
We can make our own motorcar enigma software for emissions.
September 25, 2015
Usa folding, as Russia and China take the lead, fed also folding, house speaker Boehner gone after popes visit, the cesspool called congress is sinking, big business support to lower interest rates and do away with cash could be dead in the water.
September 26, 2015
These arguments are well rehearsed and well founded. We Eurosceptics need to add more detail – for example, by looking at the text of the Maastricht, Nice, Amsterdam and Lisbon Treaties and summarising what powers they have in aggregate ceded to the EU, and by emphasising how much the EC Directives that have followed these Treaties have REDUCED the free trade component of the Single Market, first completed on 1st January 1987 when the Single European Act came into force.
Against this background, John Redwood and other Eurosceptic Conservatives have to ask themselves what the PM’s negotiating stance is on:
– Full control of our own borders
– Abolishing the role of the European Courts in enforcing human rights
– Scrapping the Working Time directive
– Regaining full control of social and safety regulations
– Limiting the powers of the European Court to the trade agreement
– Regaining the right to negotiate trade treaties with other countries
– Reform of farming and fisheries policies
I think that John Redwood must conclude that the PM’s renegotiation stance is totally inadequate. What does he propose to do about it? I’ve signed up to Conservatives for Britain but speeches and votes in parliament are needed to force the agenda.
September 26, 2015
I don’t believe we will ever be aloud out of the EU. As it is I have read that treaty change is not possible in the time scale. Therefore we will be going into the referendum on a list of promises from the EU should we stay. Did they not once promise to renegotiate the CAP for giving up our rebate? We gave up the rebate but I don’t recall the renegotiation. Worse still the list of promises will entice those on the fence to stay in the EU. Once the vote is over Britain will be severely punished by the EU for our actions as there will be no going back. I may be wrong. If of course we vote to leave they will just ask us again with a new list of proposals like they did the Irish.
September 29, 2015
The real way to leave always was and still will be to elect a government who pledges to leave the EU. The referendum is a lottery way to leave – we might get lucky. If we don’t get lucky, keep voting UKIP until the day when actual conservatives are leading the Conservative party (however beware of those trying to pass themselves off as the real deal).
September 26, 2015
Observing from sidelines having ‘escaped’ last year to Hong Kong I can only compare an overbearing EU with a genuinely friendly HK – Low taxes, efficient, business friendly and small government, no council tax, no NI.
No health and safety fascists as common sense rules…It’s a bit like living in the UK 50 years ago…I forgot to mention cheap public transport and utilities even though they are privately owned.
If the UK does not leave it’s only got its self to blame
September 27, 2015
It is odd that Dr Redwood fails to mention in his presentation ,in a direct way that while we stay in the Eu our door is open to many millions of people both within and outside of this block. This is a major area of concern and the stay out campaigns trump card. So why the silence or have the left put the topic off the agenda again?
Really if we are afraid to mention immigation the out campaign might aswell pack up and go home now and sit back like good little europeans and obey frau merkels diktats…
Please stop the middle of the road,all things to all men purple conservative nonsense