There is one thing the IFS and I agree about.Ā When we leave we will be able to spend the money we send to the EU and donāt get back on our priorities. That will boost the UK economy by around 0.6% (they say 0.5%). We can hire more doctors and nurses, create more jobs, pay more incomes in the UK. Will the Treasury now admit there will be a boost to our economy when we spend our own money?
On leaving the EU Ā wages should go up a bit for the lower paid. We will be able to take control of our own borders and limit the numbers of people coming in from the rest of the EU to take lower paid jobs. The Chairman of the Remain campaign himself, Lord Rose, has stated wages should go up when we leave and put in a fair and sensible migration policy.
Some on the pro EU side delight in selling the UK short and forecasting a worse outcome for us if we leave. The one thing the forecasts of the Treasury and the other international bodies have in common is they all think that we will better off in five and in fifteen years time if we leave Ā than we are today. They just think we be even better off if we stay in. Those of us on the Leave side think we should be a littleĀ bit better off if we leave than if we stay. After all, we know we can spend our own money on making more people in the UK better offĀ by providing them with decent jobs with better public services.
So the argument is not over whether individuals will still have a job or not. It is not even over whether individuals will get a pay rise or not. The argument is will you get a bigger pay rise under Brexit or by staying in?
If we cut the numbers of potential workers coming here, that will help wages rise. If we create more jobs here by spending our own money on our own priorities that will advance our prosperity.
So why are there several pessimistic forecasts? Some say we will lose out on trade if we leave. I donāt see that happening. The rest of the EU sells us much more than we sell them, so they wonāt want to impose new barriers and tariffs in the way of our trade with them. They have five million jobs on the continent making goods and services for us.
Anyway we and the rest of the EU are members of the World Trade Organisation. Bound by its rules, the rest of the EU would not be able to increase tariffs on most things under WTO controls. It is true the WTO would allow a 10% tariff on cars, but Germany has made very clear thatās the last thing they want given how many VWs, BMWs and Mercedes they sell here.
Out of the EU we will be able to rebuild our fishing industry, We will be able to generate our own power and develop our own energy reserves in ways we wish without having to be part of a common energy policy.
These are Ā of the reasons I am voting to leave. I could not recommend something which I thought would make people here worse off. I also want to restore our democracy and regain the right to make our own laws and set our own taxes. It is time to take back control.
May 26, 2016
As purdah begins who will the posh boys delegate to continue project fear.
I watched Voteleave broadcast and found it disappointing.
Concentrating on the NHS became boring and confusing.
What about having one highlighting the stupid energy policy and reclaiming our fishing rights.
There is so much on the economy but I fear Voteleave have conceded the argument.
What about telling us what will happen if we stay
Sent from Paphos.
May 26, 2016
Are vote leave really all for, voting to leave? I sometimes wonder if they are just another part of Cameron’s blatant propaganda & deceptions?
May 26, 2016
@lifelogic
It makes you wonder.
May 26, 2016
I saw the gathering at the G7 today, but there were nine! Junker and Tusk were there, what country do they represent? Could it be they might give the game away if asked what they were doing there? They looked as welcome as (unflattering comparison ed) When the UK is out of the EU does this mean Junker and Tusk will not be invited? Or if we remain will they replace Cameron etc? What money do they have or rather whose money do they have? This is conditioning to make it look normal for our EU government to represent us. Not elected by us but imposes laws and taxes upon us!
May 26, 2016
(1) The EU is not a country
(2) They are the only ‘country’ with two delegate around the table
(3) They are the only unelected leaders at the G7
How can you have any faith in an organisation that can’t count to 7
May 27, 2016
Lisbon was all about making the EU have the legal status of a country. It was originally the EU constitution. It changed its name to con people what it was truly about.
May 26, 2016
Radio 2 news announced this afternoon the EU navy was helping migrants in the med. What EU navy would that be? Whose ships? Under whose control? JR, Has Cameron given the control of our navy away to Junker? What flag do the ships display? I would be grateful for a reply.
The invasion of immigrants continue with the BBC highlighting this permantly staying, so does the qualification recognise the number is not the full total and is far higher with so called short term stayers as well?
Reply There is an EU naval force in the Med including a UK vessel.
May 27, 2016
So Cameron has given away the control of our navy to the EU. Where was this in your manifesto and why does Cameron, Clegg and others persist in lying there is no EU military? Who controls the EU military? Is it the unelected Italian lady in the EU commission?This is the job of the UN or NATO particularly as we know ISIS is infiltrating these routes with immigrants.
May 26, 2016
JR a complaint is warranted for depicting those of us who are opposed to mass immigration as racist skinheads wearing DMs aggressively pointing a finger at a demure old Indian lady. The problem with the picture of course is that Cameron is discriminating against skilled Indians and other nationalities from the commonwealth coming here in favour of out of work Eastern Europeans whose UK benefit bill has increased by 177 percent under Cameron! So it is false in its depiction of nationalities and racist in its intent against people from the commonwealth countries. The election commission should investigate. Again, we are not racist to want controlled immgration from EU countries. The U.K. Should decide not Junker,Merkel or Tusk who wants freedom of movement of EU criminals, terrorists and out of work vagabonds across the EU.
May 26, 2016
I don’t think waverers will respond to arguments about sovereignty or patriotism, otherwise they wouldn’t be waverers.
They need to be told the very real economic risks of Remain:
– EU tax harmonisation (taxation without representation)
– Basket case economies in the EU
– Declining EU market share
– Energy costs etc
All mentioned on this site but barely heard outside.
May 26, 2016
I would like some EU tax harmonisation with petrol for starters. Then why does my favourite Swedish vodka cost Ā£20 a bottle here and only Ā£9 in a German supermarket what sort of single market is that? Then we could harmonise benefit payments to Polish levels so that our welfare recipients can move elsewhere and get someone else to carry them.
May 26, 2016
Dame Rita
Now that won’t help the Leave campaign, will it !
Under fiscal unification we will be taxed to prop up failing states and foreign pensions. All this crap about “we need the EU young and African young to pay our pensions”
Redistributive tax will see that our pensioners suffer the overcrowding and infrastructure stresses needed to generate the wealth to pay EU pensions and see little of the money for themselves.
May 26, 2016
To paraphrase Orwell’s 1984, “all prices are equal only some are more equal than others”.
May 26, 2016
Indeed plus we will be dragged into:
The EURO bail outs
The common defense policy
The attempts to move the financial sector away from London & the UK through regulation.
The expensive “renewables” lunacy
The open door to millions of low paid (net financial liability) migrants.
The inability to deport anyone regardless of their crimes.
The absurd regulations on kettles, toasters, hair driers and the rest of the scams to help certain vested interests.
May 26, 2016
Talking of which, Spanish banks in deep trouble as is Italy. Add Greece and you certainly do not have safer stronger together you have another death trap dinghy policed by Junker.
May 26, 2016
More needs to be said about the values of having a governance system nimble enough to react to events as required – the EU gets in the way of that
May 26, 2016
You say:- Those of us on the Leave side think we should be a little bit better off if we leave than if we stay. After all, we know we can spend our own money on making more people in the UK better off by providing them with decent jobs with better public services.
Indeed but we could easily be a lot better off. It rather depends on how sensible a government we get post Brexit.
If post the incompetent Cameron & especially incompetent Osborne – you get one that halves energy costs (by cutting out the bonkers renewable religion), has a bonfire of red tape, cuts tax rates and simplifies taxes, sorts out the appalling NHS and the other dreadful “public services”, reduces the size of the state hugely, allows some new runways to be build, builds some new roads, stops blocking the roads, cancels the Swansea lagoon, HS2 and other total insanities, lets wages be determined by free bargaining, let businesses manage their own businesses, simplifies employment laws, keep to (at least) the Ā£1 million IHT each threshold promise, cut stamp duty, relaxes planning, encourages the wealth and hard working to come to the UK and no leave ….. then we could be hugely better off.
I see that the “public service” of HMRC is working efficiently:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/24/32million-people-may-have-paid-the-wrong-tax-after-chaos-at-hmr/
The current tax system is a complete and damaging sick joke, absurdly complex it causes huge damage to the economy. No one even understands it, even the top tax experts and top revenue staff. It is a huge creator of pointless & parasitic jobs. It harms the economy hugely and distracts people from productive activity.
The economically illiterate Osborne makes it far worse by the day. The man must go as soon as possible. Simpler lower taxes are the only way to go post BREXIT.
May 26, 2016
Allister Heath surely has it right in that Brexit will make us richer particularly if we get some good UK government for a change. I still have confidence the voters will come round to Brexit. A better deal will surely follow anyway, so even the remain lot are better voting out. Surely they can work this out?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/05/25/brexit-will-make-us-richer-thats-why-leave-could-still-win/
May 26, 2016
“If we cut the numbers of potential workers coming here, that will help wages rise.” Sorry John I do not believe you. Even if we are outside the EU HMG will continue with the “highly skilled migrant” visa program. If cheap labour is not coming here there is still nothing stopping jobs being exported overseas to places like India. Even state bodies are at it e.g. some parts of the NHS have their typing done there too. While even if there is a tariff to export to the UK, and the sums add up, there will be nothing to stop a business moving to the Eastern parts of the EU. Consider what a British worker is up against, cheaper fuel costs, lower wages and a better educated workforce (check out the UK versus Poland in the literacy/numeracy rankings). Where are you going to go if you want to maximise “shareholder value”?
May 26, 2016
You make some sensible points, but many jobs have to be done in the UK and, as JR says, āIf we cut the numbers of potential workers coming here, that will help wages rise.ā it will. It is simple supply and demand.
These low paid workers are anyway a huge net liability to the treasury as they pay far less taxes than they cost and they over stretch the NHS, housing, schools the police and the rest.
May 26, 2016
LL there are lots of high paid high skilled jobs that are at risk from globalisation. As you probably know from Thomas Friedman’s book, for example, the role of consultant radiographer is probably redundant in the UK. There is nothing to stop the NHS having that job in India. The visa program I referred to earlier is a deliberate threat to anyone in IT. As people have commented here before, many have been humiliated in having to train up their cheaper replacement before being made redundant. There are jobs that will always have to be done in the UK like a bricklayer or fruit picker, but they still offer no protection from an externally sourced alternative.
The biggest threat to jobs here have nothing to do with the EU. The menace comes from technology that allows a MRI scan to be looked at by a doctor on the other side of the world, the free movement of capital and the fall of the Berlin Wall/ Deng Xiao Ping’s reforms which flooded the world with a surplus of skilled labour.
May 27, 2016
Reet
You make some reasonable points, however these are the major job trends that we are seeing the data on at the moment
1) Re shoring, this trend of bringing back overseas jobs is now gathering pace. At the moment mostly call centre, sales, and service jobs ( because customers hate it and make a fuss about it)
2) The bigger trend than above is actually in manufacturing and engineering, these jobs are being brought back because its marginally cheaper now to manufacture here rather than “over there” and ship back especially for smaller companies, plus the rise of 3D printing
Upto 150,000 new UK jobs are being created over the next few years due to reshoring alone
3) However the biggest trend is that 85% of all new job creation is in SME’s of less than 50 employees and they tend to hire local talent and dont have the resources to fix overseas visa’s etc
Corporate IT , the people that have issued the 27,000 visas for overseas IT workers are a tiny tiny fraction of the new technology landscape.
The rise of new owner managed business in tech and digital is huge, its a whole new landscape out there. A lot of UK corporate IT talent has jumped ship and started their own businesses thats why big corporates struggle to fill IT jobs, that and an actual lack of skills considering the UK was one of the last countries to introduce IT onto the schools curriculum
I’m on the board of a a University School of Digital Technology and 92% of our grads are in work within one year of graduating, actually quite a few are in work before they graduate !!
More than 1.5 million workers are employed in UK in digital technology
There are currently 64,000 unfilled digital technology job vacancies
More than 1.1 million digital job vacancies have been advertised in the UK since 2014
98% of Digital companies are SME’s with less than 50 employees
The trends are continued growth, continued job creation and massive skills shortages.
May 26, 2016
I have no problem with immigration. I have a problem with uncontrolled immigration.
If people want to come here and work, contribute and pay their taxes then that’s fine by me. However, they should require a work permit and have a job to come to. try working in the USA without a green card and see how you get on…
May 27, 2016
Indeed and the control needs to rest with a democratically elected government in Westminster.
May 26, 2016
Good morning.
I would like to turn, if I may, our kind hosts question on its head. Why will the EU be better off without the UK ?
Put simply, they will be able to complete the project and fix all the problems with German money.
Win – win.
May 26, 2016
The EU is a complete mess and economic basket case. The UK leaving will perhaps force them to finally address the lunacy that is the EURO project and their over regulation of everything. We will be doing them and ourselves a big favour by leaving now. It is going to have to change rapidly or fall apart.
May 26, 2016
It is very doubtful that the people of Germany have the inclination to take financial responsibility for the EU, whatever Angela Merkel may wish.
Without the UK, thanks to an act of democratic people power they may begin to think more seriously of their own plight and develop an inclination to do something about it. Hopefully, that something will be democratic too, based on our example, and not lead to direct action on the streets. European political reaction has always tended to end up in violence on the streets. I am sure there will be a growing feeling in Europe that if the Brits can show the way, we can follow.
May 26, 2016
There is no doubt being out of the EU will make the UK better off. All the predictions of the stayers factor in no trade agreement if we leave then exaggerate a lot to make them look really bad. We must be better off because the dead hand of Brussels will be lifted apart from the reduced contribution which must enhance our competitiveness. We will not be subject to diktats of Brussels which they use with impunity.
Commissars frequently remind us that if we do not do what they want they will impose it on us anyway. They have the power to over ride democratic decisions because we are not sovereign states any more. The EU has turned into an evil empire which is understandable as if you create a technocracy then you create a dictatorship with all the corruption that goes with it.
May 26, 2016
You can now even get 9:2 odds on a Brexit, so it rather looks as if the lies, propaganda & scares (issued everyday by arms of government, their “friends” and the BBC are working. Surely Brexit has far more chance than this?
Why on earth do the UK voters want the end of democracy and government accountability? To be government by unelected incompetents from Brussels, that they cannot influence nor remove.
True recent UK government under socialist dopes – Heath, Wilson, Major, Bliar, Brown & Cameron/Clegg has been dire. Even under Mrs Thatcher it was far from perfect. But to give up democracy to be serfs of the EU, why?
Why is vote leave failing so badly? Are the voters really such scared & gullible sheep?
May 26, 2016
The bookies were wrong on Trump. The pundits were wrong to say that he has alienated Hispanic voters, check the Nevada primary. If it goes the other way its probably because we have had an Austrian vote
May 26, 2016
Vote leave is failing because, amongst other factors, it has refused to adopt an exit plan. The result has been a train-wreck campaign. Homing in on putative savings from leaving the EU was never going to be a credible strategy ā and less so when the core claim was a clear and demonstrable lie, that we could save Ā£350 million a week.
May 26, 2016
Lifelogic, you have often commented on the odds for Brexit. Have you looked into how accurate the bookies have been for other events, e.g. the last General Election, as a guide to how accurate their Brexit prediction may be?
For what it’s worth, I have yet to see a single Remain poster displayed but have seen plenty of Leave posters (I live in north Essex and work in London).
May 26, 2016
I certainly think that 9:2 are rather good odds for a bet. I put it are more like 2:1.
It is difficult to believe that voters will really want to choose anti-democratic serfdom. Especially after the EU has proved to be such a disaster in so very many ways. Odd are usually rather better than polls.
May 26, 2016
I haven’t seen any either, but have seen lots of Vote Leave posters and car stickers. I’m convinced that the polls are rigged and the bookies’ odds are skewed because I have only come across one Inner so far, and she’s not convinced. All of which means that the Leave campaigns need to focus on ensuring people vote just as much as Remain
I know I would crawl ten miles over broken glass coated in **** to make my mark on the paper – Vote Leave need to ensure everyone who wants out gets to the polling station. After all, these skewed polls can work both ways – reticent Inners may not bother disrupting their day if they think In is going to romp it.
May 26, 2016
I’m afraid the average British voter really is naive and gullible. Sorry to burst your balloon!…
May 27, 2016
They have been designed/educated so to be through post-war social policy which received a step change under Blair.
A century ago the evolutionary biologist,Dr Ray Lankester,whose theories of social degeneration inspired H G Wells depiction of the Eloi in The Time Machine,concluded :”Any new set of conditions which render a species food and safety very easy obtained seem to lead to degeneration”
And so it came to pass.
May 26, 2016
Unfortunately the odds don’t tell us how many bets are placed, only the amount of money wagered. For all we know a few multi-thousand punts on Remain have outweighed a great many widow’s mites on Leave.
Anyway, the bookies are no more infallible than the opinion polls. I don’t forget that before the General Election I got 11-2 against a Tory majority.
My own limited acquaintance in rural Cornwall is heavily pro-Leave. And again and again, as I trawl wearily through the comments on political blogs of all colours, I’m struck by the massive Leave disparity. It may be that Leavers are just very noisy people, like Scot Nats. There again, it may not. But I can’t help feeling there’s something odd going on. My own bet on Leave went on two months ago at 9-4. Lifelogic’s 9-2 looks tempting.
May 27, 2016
I read yesterday that 63% of EU referendum bets have been for Leave but Remain bets are on average for larger amounts. The bookies are setting their so they make their margin whatever the results, classic hedging strategy. Why bets placed on Remain should be so much larger is not something explained other than to suggest a bizarre conspiracy.
May 26, 2016
It is surely worth voting Brexit just to get rid of the dire Osborne and his misguided fiscal lunacy and hugely damaging top down wage controls.
Do UK voters really want no controls at all over our borders, with vast numbers of low paid workers depressing wages and putting huge pressure on our hospitals, housing, schools, police and our generally rather dire public services? Plus augmenting Osborne’s huge deficit even further?
Why do the voters seem to want this?
May 26, 2016
Thanks to the BBC and tax payer propaganda I assume. What other reason?
May 26, 2016
Of course we would be better out of the dreaded eu only the brain washed or fat cats think otherwise, I see Cameron is still upto his tricks
Elderly people would lose their ādignity in retirementā, with the pensions at risk and care workers in short supply if Britain votes to leave the European Union, David Cameron has warned.
The Prime Minister set out his concerns for pensioners if Britons vote to leave the European Union at next month’s in/out European Union referendum in an interview with Saga magazine, published today.
Mr Cameron told the magazine’s elderly readers that āa vote to leave would put your pension and investments at riskā.
How much more of this blatant misleading stuff do we have to put up with, what amazes me is when I watch PMQ how the Tories are backing Cameron, I still believe after the referendum there is going to be a GE with big surprises,
May 26, 2016
I think a leave vote would definitely put Cameron’s pension at risk. Bang would go that nice little EU commissioners job he’s got lined up!
May 26, 2016
Interesting to read that alcohol consumption is on the rise in Scotland, to the equivalent of 20.5 units being sold per adult each week in 2015. Including all the many adults who do not drink at all.
The government guide lines are now 14 units (in their new silly gender neutral way, flying in the face of evidence as usual with these PC over science & reality every time dopes).
Quite a large number drinking two to ten times this guide level then. Is this change due to migration and the changing mix of population perhaps? It perhaps does not bode well for crime levels which have also risen.
May 26, 2016
Dear Dr Redwood and readers,
Another cracking piece. What a shame that Vote Leave haven’t simply published your articles daily in the last six months. As you know, we’ve published some of them. We would have published more but we aim to be non-party political to attract votes from across the spectrum.
Thank you to all readers who have either posted support messages here, or sent us emails. We have news.
The Facts4EU.org website (http://facts4eu.org/index.shtml) is making an ‘Hour of Need’ final appeal for support, to allow us to carry on for the next 4 weeks bringing well-researched and bullet-pointed facts and messages to the 46m eligible voters out there. Crucially, these can be used by local campaigners as well as official spokesperons and MPs.
On Monday we published three pieces rebutting the final Treasury report (“820,000 jobs lost on Brexit”), with our first piece appearing at 6am. By contrast the most recent piece on Vote Leave’s news page was from 3 days before, about tax avoidance.
We can make a difference, but we need the help of all readers. Even if you can’t donate, please send the link http://facts4eu.org/index.shtml to anyone you think might.
This is the Founding-Editor writing. My late Father flew Spitfires in WWII and subsequently jets in the Cold War. I know what he’d say if I didn’t make this final appeal for support. Can you help us make this appeal go viral today? The odds are against a victory on 23rd June but so they were for our forebears, and they didn’t let that defeat them.
If you believe in democracy and making Britain independent and great again, please help us.
May 26, 2016
Be realistic and tell us how much is required.
May 26, 2016
I see the official Leave leaflet does actually say that by leaving the EU we will save Ā£350m per week, enough to ‘hire 600,000 nurses’, (2x as many as we have at the moment). Voters with a modicum of intelligence will realise that this requires: (1) the EU to go on sending us the Ā£4bn rebate though we have left and make no contribution; and (2) all the money currently spent in the UK by the EU on farming subsidies, science grants etc to be stopped and diverted instead to hiring nurses. Who is responsible for this drivel?
Reply Leave uses the gross figure but never denies it is a gross figure. We can indeed hire many more nurses out of the net figure of the money we do not get back.
May 26, 2016
@Richard1 Dan Hannan makes a good point about the gross/nett figure in his debate at Reading Uni. He points out that when we talk about the amount of tax we pay we don’t give the nett figure after deducting the value of public services we receive in return.
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBIIdcUjl90
May 26, 2016
The problem with using a “gross” figure you get in to the realms of having to explain that to people and giving a target for the likes of the BBC to aim at.
Would have been much better to use a figure of the actual amount (gross less rebate) that is sent to the EU and what you could do with that after guaranteeing carrying on the current grants paid by the EU to UK recipients, at least until the end of this Parliament. People don’t really seem to believe that if it was repatriated that it would be used wisely…
The Ā£8-Ā£10 billion that is left over is often called “small beer” but may be we should consider what it could do in the real world i.e. Buckinghamshire are talking about shutting down libraries because they are short of Ā£1 million or how many councils could do with an extra Ā£100,000 or so for social care?
May 26, 2016
“Who is responsible for this drivel?”
It’s not drivel at all. Firstly, our rebate is not set in treaty and although the current mechanism for change has to be agreed unanimously by heads of state, it is presumptious to assume that that mechanism will not be changed. As we are heading towards a United States of Europe with all the trappings of a state in itself, one, however, without any vestige of democratic accountability by design, the UK itself will disappear so how will it retain any unitary fiscal adjustment from the EU; on the contrary, northern provinces of the USE will be taxed higher to subsidise the southern provinces (as far as North Africa and Eastern as far as Turkey) afflicted by the Euro and endemic poverty, and this state will continue until all parts of the USE have been reduced by means of mass movement and mass migration to a uniform level of comparative poverty compared with the world of growth outside.
With regard to spending in the UK by the Brussels regime, as with the Ā£12 billion of taxpayers money sent abroad as foreign aid, it is not necessarily directed in a way which provides commensurate benefits with the expenditure: paying farmers not to produce and subsidising other produce to lock out more efficient foreign suppliers is not the best way of helping farmers or consumers; in addition large sums are simply thrown at assorted organisations in return for banging the EU’s drum and promoting its maladroit policies as their own.
May 27, 2016
It most certainly is drivel, no wonder Leave is under such fire for the quality of its argument. 600,000 extra nurses (which we obviously don’t need) would apparently cost Ā£19bn. But we would not have an extra Ā£19bn if we left the EU, we would have an extra Ā£10bn. Even if we stopped all farming subsidies and science grants etc which currently come from the EU we would have another Ā£14.5bn – not enough for 600,000 extra nurses. That would require a gift from the EU of >Ā£4bn ps to make up the Ā£19bn we would need for the 600,000 extra nurses the Leave campaign think we should hire (that’s a c. 3x increase over now). The point about this absurd discussion is it illustrates he appalling quality of debate. leave has one page to set out their arguments – and there are many good ones – but decides to use this piece of illogical nonsense. It’s quite frustrating to watch, I’m surprised it hasn’t had more publicity from Remain.
Let’s use good arguments!
May 28, 2016
What is certain is that if we remain in the EU, the Brusssels regime will continue to tax us more and more; I’m not talking about the week ot year after June 23rd, I’m talking about the future, a topic that the Remainians refuse to discuss because they either do not know about it or would rather we didn’t. Discussing the EU based solely on the existing arrangements which we we should know are temporary and transitional is what is extremely dishonest.
May 26, 2016
Economics and immigration – in the BBC “reality check” spot on the morning news this morning the reporter refered to the EU being a job reduction machine (David Davis) and the Remain response being that EU immigrants contribute far more than they cost. This position has to be challenged in detail as I very much doubt the smiling Big Issue sellers outside Waitrose contribute anything like what they cost in welfare benefits.
A question would be, how can the remainers claim that EU immigrants contribuite more than they cost if they had no idea of the number of EU immigrants in the UK until the latest official numbers which actually demonstrated that they had been significantly underestimated.
Reply They also fail to include the capital costs of extra schools, surgeries, homes etc as I set out recently on this site.
May 26, 2016
With unfettered immigration you can never plan for the future, you will always be “fire fighting”…
May 26, 2016
The Russians have a strategy called Maskirovka, sort of camouflage plus. This is what the government and their supporters are using over immigration. All the talk is of EU migrants. What about the other half of the problem – non-EU migrants. Strip away the hypocrisy and that is the problem. (words left out ed)This, of course, is something the government could do something about. Why don’t they?
May 27, 2016
Maskivroka – the art of using feints and feigned withdrawals to ambush your enemy,something they learned (after bitter experience)from the Mongols.It’s catching on!
May 26, 2016
Reply to reply
Please do not leave out the more seedy side of life and mention policing, courts and prisons. I think by mentioning them it has a bigger impact than etc. Just a thought!
May 26, 2016
Exactly someone comes to the UK, pays perhaps Ā£3000 PA in tax/NI and demands a home, schooling for his children, health care for him and their elderly parents/wife/children, roads, policing ….
How is that going to work for the treasury and Osborne’s huge deficit?
May 26, 2016
Should we achieve a lower intake of eastern Europeans taking low paid jobs then the shortfall must be made up from the indigenous UK unemployed. They will have to accept that mobility in finding work is essential and they will need to be instilled with the work ethic. All too often we get reports from labour intensive farms that the indigenous Brits have neither the work ethic or the interest when they can sit at home on the dole.
You cannot trust the Treasury or other international bodies and the information they disseminate. First they have very bad track records, won over many years, of very poor forecasting on matters financial. Second, they have a vested interest in keeping us in the EU if only to serve their masters in UK and European government. They are driven by the politics of remain.
You say it is time to take back control, Nigel says he wants our country back. I agree with both of you and when the dust settles I hope you can start agreeing with each other without feeling it somehow dilutes the purity of your political roots.
Reply I do not disagree with Mr Farage on the crucial issue of getting us out of the EU and have not used this site or other platforms to attack him.
May 26, 2016
I just don’t know why there was disagreement in the first place. Given where we are now, wouldn’t it have been better to “fess up” to the party and electorate way back that you disagreed with their thrust? More than a lopsided referendum might then have been promised.
May 26, 2016
The economic case for Brexit is remarkably strong. The leave side has failed to get this across. The BBC is constantly deceiving people with their assumption (in almost every question they pose) that remain is better for the economy – it is not as the excellent Prof Minford points out.
Unless perhaps we get Corbyn and Mr Donnell in charge, but even then we can at least evict them.
Free trade, far cheaper energy, far less red tape, cheaper imports, selective immigration, democracy, more flexibility in tax laws, no absurdly complex vat lunacies, nimble government acting in the UK’s interests for once, Osborne gone, sensible real Tories in charge of the party again …. what is not to like?
May 26, 2016
“The economic case for Brexit is remarkably strong”
Actually I don’t agree with that; I think that over even quite short timescales the economics of Brexit will be rather trivial, more or less neutral with a slight bias to being positive.
The reason I say that is connected with what JR has said above:
“The one thing the forecasts of the Treasury and the other international bodies have in common is they all think that we will better off in five and in fifteen years time if we leave than we are today.”
That’s because they are all making projections of economic growth in the future, which natural growth in or out of the EU will quite quickly will dwarf the effects of Brexit one way or another.
As I’ve tried to emphasise before the long term trend rate for the natural growth of the UK economy is about 2.5% a year, and it has been that going back at least as far as 1956, long before we joined the EEC, and looking at the chart:
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp-growth-annual
it is not possible to detect any significant effect of the UK joining the EEC or the EU creating its Single Market.
Even if the economic effect of Brexit was a one-off gain or loss of 10% of GDP, which would be Ā£180 billion, it would make no noticeable difference by say 2030, by which time GDP would have increased by 40% anyway at the trend rate.
And as for the much more likely much smaller changes, a few percent one way or the other, more likely net positive rather than negative, they must all be put into that perspective of natural economic growth which has nothing to do with our membership of the EU.
I think the constitutional case for Brexit is overwhelming, but the economic case is really pretty trivial one way or the other, and it need not be the focus of attention as it has become.
May 26, 2016
Just to mention that this has been my attitude for maybe twenty years, since I was rather casually reading up about the European Union in Whitaker’s Almanack and my eye lighted upon this sentence:
“The Single Market is expected to result in at least a 5 per cent increase in the collective GDP of EC member states.”
Which really didn’t seem very much to me, especially as I already knew that the UK economy had an average growth rate of 2 or 3 per cent a year, and it instantly reminded me of the story of Esau selling his birthright for a mess of pottage.
And that was long before I found out that the expected 5 per cent increase had not materialised, and it was only about 2 per cent.
Let alone my recent discovery that for the UK it has probably been more like 1%.
May 27, 2016
Do you know where the Chancellor gets his long term pessimistic forecast for Brexit?
– He assumes that if we Remain, the EU will complete its Single Market in services, something that we have been trying without success to make happen ever since Maastricht.
– He assumes that we will impose tariffs on imports from EU-27 countries. Vote Leave has no such proposals.
– He entirely neglects our ability to do trade deals outside Europe.
Nonsense in, nonsense out.
May 26, 2016
I was at some meetings in the City yesterday. The consensus from people whose jobs are dependent on financial planning was that Brexit would have not much financial impact after some short-term volatility was over but that anyway Brexit wasn’t going to happen based on the bookmaker prices which they look at to predict the outcome. Hard to disagree with them on either point.
May 26, 2016
I can’t be bothered to look it up so am not going to quote odds. However, if I remember rightly the bookies didn’t quite get it right on the GE.
May 26, 2016
I read a very interesting article on the “bookmaker odds”, I wonder if they are telling the true story. Or is there some behind the scenes manipulation by powerful vested interests who wish to sway opinion.
May 26, 2016
Of course financial services won’t be much affected. We have the biggest in the world with the best expertise. People will always buy quality and value. Where are the EU going to go for insurance, Greece? One decent disaster claim which LLoyds could cope with would sink the whole of the EU, the state it is in.
The bookies usually are correct and it is hard to disagree, with the case the Leave side are putting up, all complications and arguing over arcane trade deals and the economy and making silly accusations against the IFS, Barack Obama etc. which cuts no ice with anyone, instead of hitting people right between the eyes with a few simple points showing just what it would cost them in cash now and in the future where if we stay in we will be landed with the bill for Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy. That’s why they want us. Theses are not our friends and will do us down at the earliest opportunity as they always do.
Putting that Ā£350 million a week claim on the battle bus was an error as well and I cringe each time I see it on the news – it is so easily knocked down and makes the Leavers look as shifty as Cameron and his lot.Why do they let te Remainers make the pace.?Ignore them and get on with our own good arguments. Time is running out and I fear the worst at the present rate of ‘progress’.
May 26, 2016
PS. I also wanted to say that the Remain argument that 80 percent of our business is Financial Services is another lie when they try to say it is all with the EU. It is about 11 percent with the EU, no more, rather like our exports. The 80 percent is local and worldwide and the Remainers are lying again when they try to say different. Haven’t heard any Leavers say it though.
May 26, 2016
There was a report that bookmaker prices were being influenced by a few very large bets for Remain. Who might have gone to the trouble of arranging this, I wonder.
May 26, 2016
Is it true that the Tobin Tax rears its ugly head again in June ?
May 26, 2016
We would be better off out of the EU because it would free us from being shackled to a sclerotic organisation that takes decades to respond to events , and having a Government responsive to our needs, because if they aren’t we will sack them.
This referendum is about putting in place a system of Governance that will ensure we have a prosperous future, the choice is between a totalitarian bureaucracy that is bedevilled by inertia , or a democracy. The choice we need to make is pretty bloody obvious.
May 26, 2016
I enjoy John’s blog everyday and mainly agree with his views – particularly those on our membership of the EU ; what I do not enjoy are the many responses from some individuals who must sit by their computer all day long .
Most responses are to the point and stick to the subject of the day – others do not ; again I find this irritating . Is it possible for the moderation to do something about this ?
May 26, 2016
I am waiting to see when Chipping Norton takes its fair share
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/673823/Parents-stunned-as-bus-full-of-REFUGEES-arrives-at-school
May 26, 2016
For years most main party MPs and others trotted out the conventional wisdom that it was economically beneficial to be in the EU, while there were dissidents who said we would be Better Off Out, and one reason for believing the latter was the high economic cost of excessive regulation in the EU.
Now that has changed to the Remain side saying that leaving the EU would not be just a bit bad for our economy but totally catastrophic, with the Leave side weakly ceding that ground and acknowledging that it would be very bad for our economy but arguing that it would be a price worth paying.
And somewhere along the way the excessive EU regulation which allegedly was doing so much damage to our economy has disappeared from view; the Treasury view is that there can be no significant economic gains from that source, in fact regulation is beneficial, and that is also going unchallenged by the Leave side.
Until recently Cameron and Osborne themselves made a big deal out of the competitive drag of excessive EU regulations on our economy and that of the EU as a whole; after all his years as Chancellor it is not credible that Osborne believed what he was saying then but his civil servants have now persuaded him otherwise.
I don’t accept the more inflated estimates of how much we would benefit by leaving the EU – my guess is that on balance we might gain Ā£50 billion a year or about 3% of GDP – but I admit to some dismay that prominent figures on the Leave side are not arguing more strongly that we would actually be Better Off Out.
May 26, 2016
This article about how progressives are terrified of change and the power of the people offers, I think, an interesting dimension to the EU question (an provides another very good reason why we need to leave an EU, which is apparently dominated by this mindset):
(link deleted as did not work ed)
“.This is why you shouldnāt take the left appeals to āreforming the EU from withinā seriously. Not only because Cameronās paltry renegotiation revealed an EU incapable of making even minor concessions. Not only because the only salient proposal Varoufakisās Democracy In Europe Movement has managed to come up with is livestreaming council meetings. But because the cowardice of the left in the face of Brexit is bred of the very same fear of an unshackled demos that forged the European Union in the first place. Whether it was the fear of the German public following reunification or the loathing of indignant Eastern European states today, the EU has always legitimised itself using the spectre of what an unleashed demos might do ā or who it might elect ā given half the chance. That same fear grips the left today.
From freedom of speech to economic growth, the left has already jettisoned many of its founding principles. But the Brexit retreat is, in many ways, a more stark betrayal. The modern leftās detachment from the masses, its sneering distaste for our habits and desires, has fostered a profound fear of change itself. Their paranoia about where unleashed public passions might flow has led them to cling to the status quo for dear life. These are progressives terrified of change ā and terrified of us. Faced with the opportunity to demolish an anti-democratic order, they are standing athwart, yelling Stop. History will not be kind to them.”
May 26, 2016
Regardless of how the vote goes can the Conservative Party come to terms and a reconciliation with the (unpleasant ed)tactics used by Cameron to get the results he wants?
May 26, 2016
Yes we will be better off, but I think it might turn out to be we would have been better off. In which case I hope the people with brains are already thinking of what then.
Civil unrest would be useless with a Euro Army. While our troops wouldn’t mow us down others would.
I hope people take the time to read widely and find out what different people have been saying over many years. People who have been ridiculed, vilified or compromised.
May 26, 2016
John,
Reading an artical the other day I see the EU are looking to establish their own National Insurance numbers in their quest to make us all EU-identity-Compliant and so enabling direct taxation. This fills me with horror!
Along with that, I see they discussed “harmonising” Corporation Tax, which I guess means the UK will find it harder to keep big international businesses as the mainland becomes more attractive in terms of location?
Is this not the same reason why in the UK big business tends to cluster around the main transport corridors; not in some far flung coastal town, rural area or indeed an island?
May 26, 2016
Dear Dr Redwood and readers,
I wonder if any of you happened to read the article published on Bloomberg.com
As Dublin-based economist Constantin Gurdgiev put it in a blog post:
Titled: New Deal Aims to Forget Greece, Not Forgive It
Particular this quote from a Dublin based economist Constantin Gurdgiev
“Everyone — from the Greeks to the Eurocrats to the insane-asylum patients — knows that Greece is insolvent and that any deal absent massive upfront commitments to debt writedowns is not sustainable. However, if the IMF joins the group of the reality deniers, then at least pro forma there is a claim of sustainability to be had. Europe is not about achieving real solutions. It is about propping up the PR facade.”
Europe is in for turbulence and there will be calamity. The unemployment rates are 20-25% and that is being generous. Youth unemployment is probably 50% in Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain. The high levels of debt resulting from misspent wealth and poor investment will not be resolved overnight. This is a chronic crisis and it may take decades to resolve, I like many others do not want Britain to be part of the Euro/EU crisis as we didnāt create it and we have no power to influence itās solution. However we will feel the brunt of the problem as the great masses of unemployed seek work and security for themselves and their families in the UK.
May 26, 2016
Counterintuitively, the best thing for democracy in the UK would for a small but sufficient majority of the probable 65% turnout in the Referendum to vote REMAIN and face the consequences.
45%…nearly half our population, insufficiently motivated to “save their own lives” by scrawling “X” on a piece of paper in one box or another with provided paper and pencil or, even delivered by post to their door really do need a Darwinian shock-stimulus to their Dodo acquiescent mentality if they are to survive in anyone’s world. After all, they have had a considerable amount of formal and informal education and training to make sure they have the ability to write “X”.
As for the ones who deliberately write “X” for REMAIN , they should and will receive the appropriate social and individual “electric” shock by consequential experience to later enable them to negotiate through the maze of life wide awake instead of being in a day-to-day comatose easily-led condition.
You cannot build a democracy: it will not work with sheeple. It is painful to recall that our Countrymen and Countrywomen have an ongoing psychological backdrop, a sub-conscious communal memory, of fighting to the death in two world wars for our independence; yet many, too many, at least 45% have brains which are bedbound.
Politics and its entwined human cognition throughout the world however, as Solzhenitsyn pointed out, is life-threateningly slow. Millions of one’s people can die without ever truly being conscious. Killed dead in their sleep.
So, a defeat by the Leave voters will perhaps make them even more vociferous, bring out the conscious in them even more. For the Remain voters, increasing unemployment, marital and relationship breakdown, eviction, overcrowding, poverty will especially in the UK where we have been quite lucky, relatively, with availability of food, provide a necessary but extremely self-inflicted banging of heads together.
Of course there will be terrible internal social violence. Much.This is still the clumsy retarded backward way of Man.
When we eventually regain our independence from the EU, a revolution in our education system needs to start and politics, not just generalities accompanied by mind-numbing stick-diagrams needs to be imprinted. How-to politics not Theoretical learn by rote uselessnesses.
May 26, 2016
The other day, Andrew Neil was interviewing Matt Hancock and Gisela Stewart and she asked Hancock why the OBR didn’t look at the case for leaving and staying and make a balanced case instead of the propaganda lies pouring out of the Treasury, so that voters had a proper view of what is going on. His answer shocked me. He said the OBR is legally unable to check any facts and figures which are not Government policy and as Leave is not government policy they would not be permitted to do it. So how independent is it? Looks like another Cameron/Osborne lackey dressed up as independent, rather like the Bank of England.
May 26, 2016
Do you as I do look people in the eye when you speak with them? If your bosses stand in front of 75 of you and your colleagues, wasting hours of working time speaking of the company’s success, do you as I have done, look them in the eye?
Two of my bosses years ago taught me a lesson. They somehow contrived that I was seated inbetween them, at the front of 75 of my colleagues. Wow. What a lesson and a half…..I found that people…people I knew some higher rank than myself, some lower, males and females of various personalities at all times throughout over 45 minutes of profitless speech….their eyes being lifted in total for all ages must have been, astonishingly, less than 60 seconds with not one more than half a second…all with squinted eye and cocked head.
Have we British got it in us to strike out for Independence from the EU? Well I have. I look at them because I’m interested in them as human beings. Equal. British beings.
This all took place in a Labour Party heartland where perhaps people have had their aspirations diminished and brow-beaten by literally decades of authoritarian abuse.
I noticed too , recently, when watching Mr. Trump’s rallies, when his American audiences big and small were filmed from behind him, that every single one of them not only had their eyes looking at him directly but were seeming glued on him. Even when he looked as he did frequently directly at individuals and spoke and shouted to them they had no fear of shouting back a reply without invitation and without noticeable embarrassment, speaking to him in front of sometimes thousands with a theoretical 300 million American TV viewers able to see them. And they smiled and laughed.
Yes we are British enough to vote Leave the EU but are we American enough to survive on our own as individual creatures? To be or not to be.
May 26, 2016
I am hoping that the Leave side have been keeping their powder dry. With purdah looming, Cameron & Osborne have used most of their ammunition by using all the powers of government at their disposal. I wouldn’t worry too much about the polls – they are closer than you think. I suspect that selective polling has been used to give a bias in favour of remaining…For me, I have already made up my mind, and it is about living in a self-determining democracy (which, incidentally, none of the present political class have served in), sovereignty (leavers need to highlight how much has been given away over the years), accountability of the law-makers and control of our borders. I’m afraid that Cameron’s sham renegotiation was a big joke, and was a great opportunity for him to stamp his foot (assuming he doesn’t have a handbag to swing!) and get some much-needed reform. Because of this, I can’t see myself voting for the Conservatives again, unless you can replace him with a proper Tory. As for all those intending to vote remain – do you realise you are not voting for the status quo?
May 26, 2016
Take back control
Stop the Immigration
Save the Pound.
May 26, 2016
Most of us who want to Leave would settle for a Canada style trade deal with the EU, the best deal that does not require freedom of movement and does not require annual payments to Brussels.
I have downloaded a technical summary of CETA – the Canada Europe Trade Agreement. This was negotiated in 2014 but has not yet been implemented because of slowness by the EU, some Member States still holding out for protectionism. Here is the relevant calculation:
– Our exports of goods to the EU are Ā£148 billion pa (2014 figure)
– Under CETA, 98% of goods exported to the EU will be tariff free (rising to 99%)
– The average tariff on the other 2% cannot possibly be more than 20%
– So the tariffs imposed by the EU on UK exports of goods would be 2% x 20% x Ā£148 billion, = Ā£0.6 billion, which is peanuts in macro-economic terms
Contrary to Treasury assumptions, we have NO proposals to impose tariffs on EU manufacted goods entering the UK. So the net negative balance on UK trade in goods with EU-27 would be Ā£0.6 billion.
Contrast this with our net annual payment of Ā£9 billion to the EU. Then take into account a net increase in fishing revenue of Ā£0.5 billion. We would be well in the black on Brexit. And I haven’t even quantified the benefits of free trade deals that we can strike outside of the EU.
Yet the Treasury and their ‘independent’ (but for the most part partially EU funded) fellow travellers and Remain campaigners continue to forecast doom and gloom after Brexit. They assert that they have won the economic argument. When they are challenged, they do not reason but shout the same whoppers louder and louder.
There are precedents for this sort of behaviour. (Quote left out ed) In more recent times, we have Jean-Claude Juncker: “When it becomes serious you have to lie”. Sources for these quotes are “……….and Daniel Hannan’s ‘Why Vote Leave’.
Now you all know what sort of people we are dealing with. Sorry, Mr Redwood, but if the Conservative Party wants to survive it must cleanse the Aegean stables. There must not a single pro-European left in the cabinet.
May 27, 2016
On Question Time last night, when pressed by Miliband to say what country we would be like if we left the EU – Canada? Albania? Norway? Switzerland? – David Davis gave the correct reply: “We will be like Great Britain”.
From 47:30 in here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07ctqxv/question-time-26052016
and note the response from the audience.
One would think that Norway has always had its present arrangement with the EU rather than it being an arrangement actively devised in 1992, and there is no possibility of inventing any new arrangement for the UK.
Necessity was the mother of invention then, after the Norwegian people had voted against joining the EU, and necessity will still be the mother of invention after the British people have voted to leave the EU.
May 26, 2016
Re yesterday’s IFS report – I knew that poor countries were disadvantaged by trade tariffs, but the graphic 3.1 on page 22 of the IFS report is a real eye-opener.
http://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/8296
If we want to alleviate poverty and stem economic migration, then we need to help people in the third world to help themselves. Agricultural tariffs would be a good place to start.
May 26, 2016
Dunedin, don’t take any IFS report seriously, they are part of the neo-liberal establishment. You will see that the word “borrowing” appears numerous times in its Brexit publication.
IFS does not, or chooses not, for its own income purposes, accept that a sovereign fiat currency issuing government, like the UK, does not have to borrow its own currency from anyone.
The UK government adopted a voluntary “full funding rule” for its budget deficit. Which means it issues debt instruments, principally Guilts and Treasuries, to the value of the difference between its spending and its income. There is no fiscal operational requirement to do this. The government is pretending that its accounts, as the currency ISSUER, are the same as a currency USER; like a household. They are not! The government never runs out of its own money, households do.
It is good that foreigners are prepared to bring there goods and services to the UK, and sell them for a currency they don’t use back home. We get to own them BMWs and Miele appliances, in exchange for a bag of Pounds Sterling. The foreigners either throw those Pounds into the back of a drawer when they go home, like a tourist; or, they buy some Gilts, or a block of flats in Kensington and/or Chelsea. Mostly, you will find they have done the latter.
They will keep doing it as long as the Pound Sterling maintains a reasonable exchange rate to their home currency. But, there comes a point, when those foreign share holders’ of companies selling us them BMWs, start asking questions about the “value” of the companies foreign currency assets.
May 27, 2016
In Venezuela the government can no longer afford to print more money!
May 26, 2016
The banking drama in Spain today illustrates very clearly another reason why we should not be tied to the EU:
http://www.express.co.uk/finance/city/674092/Eurozone-Spain-meltdown-shares-plummet-EU-Spanish-banks
Eurozone RUPTURE: Now SPAIN threatens to tear EU apart as banks LOSE ā¬1.4BILLION in a day.
PANIC over the stability of Spanish banks hit fever pitch today, exposing yet another rupture in the financial system holding the eurozone together.
Banco Popular, one of the Spain’s leading financial firms, caused mayhem after admitting that it needed billions to bolster its balance sheet.
Shocked investors dumped shares in the firm, with the bank stock’s value plunging by 24 per cent this morning, after the cash call and plans to issue another 2 billion shares.
It resulted in ā¬1.4billion being wiped off the value of the bank’s share price.
And the worry spread to other Spanish banks with shares in Caixabank and Banco de Sabadell diving by 3.4 per cent and 4.5 per cent respectively. It comes after the country announced record debt levels, owing its creditors ā¬1.095 trillion.
Spain now owes more money than its entire economy generates in a year.
May 26, 2016
Off-topic:
https://euobserver.com/justice/133554
“Dire pre-trial prison conditions in some EU states”
“Fair Trials International details the abuse and case history of people, some innocent, whose lives have been ruined.”
“Many of the cases are also tied to long outstanding issues over the European Arrest Warrant (EAW).”
Which my MP decided to opt back into, putting all her constituents at risk.
May 26, 2016
The truth is that the Vote Leave leadership is messing the campaign up by refusing to present a relentlessly positive case and restricting it to immigration and how much of our EU budget contribution we might theoretically be able to spend on the NHS. There are so many good arguments being put by yourself and Dan Hannan. Don’t you have any power/influence to get messrs. Elliot and Cummings to change tack?
May 26, 2016
I agree. Leave need to widen the arguments. They’re beginning to sound like Hague’s disastrous general election campaign.
Where’s Farage when you need him?
May 26, 2016
its almost like pyramid buying and selling , but instead of increasing our prosperity we become steadily more devalued and not simply in monetary term:.down in ever decreasing circles.
May 26, 2016
JR, apropos your Guardian article today, I suggest that bar some technical accident we will not have a referendum on the next EU treaty because great care will be taken that none of its provisions apply to the UK. Then Section 4(4)(b) of Hague’s “referendum block” law will kick in to remove the requirement for a referendum in the UK, as for European Council Decision 2011/199/EU of March 25th 2011:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/minister-for-europe-comments-on-first-use-of-the-european-union-act-2011
“Speaking today the Minister for Europe said:
āThis statement is the first stage in the enhanced public and Parliamentary scrutiny of EU Treaty changes introduced under the provisions of the EU Act 2011. As this Treaty change Decision relates to a provision that only applies to euro area Member States, it does not fall within section 4 of the Act and there is no requirement for a referendum.””
May 26, 2016
Channel Five News this afternoon, after giving the migration figures they go to a banana packing warehouse showing loads of EU migrants all working very hard and a manager saying how much better and more reliable they are than UK workers.
All very good but misses the point…
Channel Five should be at the overloaded GP surgery, A&E, local schools etc. that just can’t cope with the influx at this rate.
May 26, 2016
In the run up to the finishing line unless the leave side decides to be really united we will never be first past the post.
We ain’t going to win unless we haul back on all the lies spewing out of CMD and his cohorts mouths.
You, Nigel, IDS all have a story to tell is it impossible for the controllers of Leave have a time out and come up with a real plan for the final quarter?
May 26, 2016
Many lessons from Trump’s success for the political elite here and in Brussels. Perhaps they really are worried and using polls to influence opinion in the Brexit Referendum? Worth reading Breitbart on polling anomalies and using polls to influence opinion.
May 26, 2016
Underhand and unfair manipulation of news and analysis by the Remain Camp and the Government.
Listened to international business analysis programmes on the internet especially during and since the Greek crisis featuring characters I have viewed for some time prior to any mention of the UK Referendum. I know their positions on the EU as a whole; unutterably Eurosceptic, as are all international business personalities and programmes on the grounds the EURO as a currency cannot work because of the dissimilarity of the EU states and the organisation as such is well on the way to “implosion” and that it is only a matter of time before its total disintegration.
Recently though they have rendered virtually cloned phraseology and scripted replies to the validity of the UK leaving the EU with one character particularly sat motionless, staring eyes forward, making no comment whatsoever, in the same manner I once saw when someone from an Eastern Communist Bloc country replied to my question “Do you like the Soviet Union?”
It would appear the Government and its Remain Camp are availing themselves of the little known agreement between international broadcasters and governments; namely, an agreement that broadcasters should not be used purposely or accidentally to undermine the fundamental connectivity between any nation’s broadcasting media and the nation states’ own people.
One can imagine that if every “FACT” broadcast internally by the BBC or internally by a foreign national news service were immediately challenged disabling national and internal”politics”. Of course the odd news item of criticism is ok so long as it has finite ramifications and reaches but a relatively small audience.
Well, it wasn’t meant to change the whole nature of economic analysis from fact to utter fiction as is the case with the Remain campaign’s stance. The international financial community should not be tied to economic stupidities by the Leader of the “Free” World Obama and his boychild von Cameron for the sake of the Remain vote. It is OUR vote not theirs.
This is a total corruption of international law and international broadcasting agreements which presumably were devised to maintain a modicum of peace and respect of one another’s; bodies-politic.
May 26, 2016
Please can we start getting real when we talk about migration. Using a net figure conveniently halves the real figure of immigrants entering the UK. It is around 630,000 in the last year and NI numbers issued would seem to support this.
The fact that retired people, and many well educated people are choosing to leave means that we are exchanging financially self sufficient individuals for job seekers and generally workers at the bottom end of the wage chain. Because they are on the whole young they need support in housing, child education, NHS facilities, and other social services. All so that some in the UK can benefit from cheap but motivated labour that our own unemployed seem incapable of providing.
I have no inherent gripe with immigration to the UK, it has been a beneficial feature for hundreds of years. It is the sheer impact of numbers that many people and our services find it increasingly hard to cope with. Leaving the EU would seem the only practical way of getting a grip on it, so that we only invite in those we really need, plus some genuine asylum seekers who need the UK.
May 26, 2016
Just the debate. Good points from Leave but FAR more passion required, and far more emphasis on sovereignty and control needed. Only Boris, Farage and Kate Hoey can deliver that.
May 26, 2016
Far more fear about the EU please, it is not in a steady state and nor is it the known quantity that the Remainers would suggest.
Will the EU start taxing the City soon after the 23rd ?
May 26, 2016
Time to Call:
Isn’t it about time the Leave Campaign stepped out of the EU Referendum Debate? Public manipulated perception is that there are two legitimate sides to the Argument with a big “A”. But there are not.
The decline of Sterling as outlined by a BoE employee which so wrong-footed the Treasury Committee MP Mr Steve Baker in the Treasury Committee deliberations recently,-that Sterling had in fact declined from February onwards ignored ( “oil price isn’t their remit ” ) the “lockstep” ( Carney Canadian/American term ) relationship of Sterling with the oil price which is in LOCKSTEP and was— with the oil price.
This is a completely bogus debate. A bogus Referendum and it is time the Leave Campaign publicly announced it as null and void.
To have the stereo-typical soundbites of the decline in Sterling from February as outlined in the Treasury Committee reiterated in a CNBC Half Time Report today shows a “Conspiracy Theory” minus “Conspiracy”
Their “Take” or Takeaway” as they are and were fond of putting it was wholly Eurosceptic prior to the last day or so.
This is a UK government manipulated nonsense referendum. It is invalid. The Leave Campaign should formally withdraw and recommend to the public to refrain from voting.
Reply We can win this. Just help us do so.
May 26, 2016
Reply to reply: The pro EU bias has been outrageous.
If the result is Remain (based on this bias) then Britain will have given a full mandate to the EU for everything it wishes to do.
One just hopes that the result is overwhelmingly conclusive.
I am resigned to a Remain result. If so then at least we can’t be blamed for what is bound to follow. I doubt that a Leave result will be accepted by the Left (riots/strikes) or by the mandarins (obstructiveness and sabotage.)
May 27, 2016
I saw JR being interviewed on Sky and at one point the interviewer said “We are impartial”. Phew, what a relief, from watching their News and Press Reviews I had begun to think that they were strongly biased in favour of the Remain side, and it is good to know that is not the case.
May 27, 2016
John,
A recent documentary on TV about getting a council house in London told us that half the homeless people in London are not British citizens.
So unless the UK has radically reduced its home-grown homeless we have managed to double it.