The European Union

What makes you think anybody considers us a major power or that we would be able to trade better outside of the EU. We aren't a huge nation and we aren't one of the big powerhouses in the world, so we wouldn't have much of a say in many of the deals that we would do anyway.

There are lots of different options to take if we did end up leaving the EU. To be honest it's not as simple as an 'in or out' vote. I'd be interested to know what people who are 'out' minded would like to see happen if we did leave.

Just to add I don't think the EU is fantastic and there's certainly a lot that can happen to improve but I think we're better off in (for now) and trying to reform (yeah pftt with UKIP MEP's) the EU than just abandoning it. Certainly if other countries not in it are by any way to go.

P.S France view as as a hugely important cog in countering Germany.

Moist_Von_Lipwig wrote:

seadog wrote:

It is so corrupt yet our  civil service bow to and enforce every tiny detail of shite they produce.
I think we would survive outside.

They don't have to though. The EU is not always to blame!

Believe it or not, a lot of German's have the same reservations as many in the UK. They would never leave though. Just put pressure on the German politicians and change it from within.

I am with you on that Moist, we or rather our law makers insist on the letter of the EU law, the french don't give a fook.

For feck's sake our bananas are as feckin bent as anybody else's. The reason we don't see much funny-shaped fruit and veg in our shops is because shoppers won't buy it, so agri-business has produced stuff genetically engineered into oblivion: this is feckin market forces in action not EU meddling.

We need fewer boundaries and obstacles not more. Not just in Europe but everywhere. It's a global world now whether you like it or not. Borders are increasingly irrelevant. Look at Ebola in West Africa - it is a global threat (exactly why we need international aid by the way - problems "there" (wherever that may be) all too easily end up here unless we are proactive). Anyway it is more or less impossible to enforce border controls anyway. The WORLD WIDE WEB means that information and ideas cannot be contained and the 11000 miles of coastline we have has encouraged smuggling since time began - are we so feckin dense now that we don't even know anything about our own local, cultural heritage?

We haven't ever been been truly independent and we haven't even tried to be and we have never wanted to be and besides what does "we" mean in this context?

How far back are we going to turn the clock: Wessex, Mercia, Anglia, Northumberland, Kent, Essex, Sussex and Cumberland (which ought to be Welsh anyway)? Long live the English Heptarchy! Sod the Welsh and let the Scots reform their Auld Alliance with the French. As for the irish...

Why does being in the EU stop us from trading elsewhere? Never understood that one at all. Trade with the Commonwealth or the BRICs or wherever AS WELL AS not instead of the EU. A radical idea, I realise, but not one that ever seems to occur to some.

Without the European courts who will protect us from the nutjobs in Westminster? The HoL? Just more party robots for the best part and many of them only turn up to get their expenses.

Should we leave NATO, too? After all we have no real say at all in that other than "Yes Uncle Sam", do we?

Get real. Alliances are formed in the first place for a reason - mutual interest.

If there is corruption then squash it, confront it, deal with it but don't for a moment think that a quasi-fascistic government will make a difference because all it will want is more, even more so, of the same and when it all goes to rats and we go crawling back broke, humiliated and begging to be let back in let's see how much influence we have then.

Without immigrants there wouldn't be a human population here at all for starters: we are all immigrants if you go back far enough. Immigration is both the saviour and the very foundation of this country. It also provides lots and lots of lovely nett income for the Treasury. Without immigration not only would commerce, industry, education, the NHS and other services collapse completely, the country woud be be left with an increasingly geriatric population and our taxes would go through the roof too. Does anybody seriously want any of that for this country?

Lord Tisdale wrote:

Josh Pope wrote:

The first thing you have to remember with regards to trade outside of the EU is that we are not considered a major world power by some of the largest countries. Take China for example, their president on his last visit to the UK told Cameron to remember that China does not consider the UK a major player on it's own. The USA has an economy what, 7 times the size of us? China 5?

When we negotiate with places like America, China and Japan then we do so as part of the world's largest trade bloc which accounts for roughly 20% of world GDP. These places have to take Brussels seriously as a trade partner. If we were on our own, then the balance of power would be very different, we could even be bullied into deals, in particular from the US.

If we want to trade with the EU then we'll have to abide by their rules. Which means we wont improve our trading and we'll get no say in how it happens. If we want to ship goods to the EU then we have to abide by EU restrictions without the opportunity to change them. Take UKIP's MEP's, happy to suck up their wages and expenses but when was the last time you saw any of them debating for the country? They don't attend, so what's the point? How does that, in any way, help anyone?

Brussels certainly has too much say in what we do, but there are ways of decentralising power away from it. Changing treaties so Brussels has less power in certain areas is certainly an option. What you have to remember with this is that we are not the only ones who are dissatisfied with the centralised control.

There's a lot of good within the EU remember. The first of note is the single market, which enables British businesses access to the entire EU with its 500 million consumers. Free trade is one of the most powerful ways of boosting wealth. Exports to the single market help support 4.2 million jobs, 3.1 million directly and 1.1 million indirectly. It would be foolish indeed to compromise access to this market.

Finally, and with regards to the car industry.. If the UK no longer had access to the single market and merely relied on its WTO membership then the industry WOULD be exposed. The EU imposes a 10% tariff on imported cars and a 5% tax in imported components. If our industry had to pay that sort of tax, it would be hard-pressed to compete. Seeing as the automotive industry was responsible for £61b of turnover and 720,000 jobs in 2013, and 77% of the vehicles made being exported, it would be disastrous if the car manufacturers moved part or even all of their production into the EU.

We would lose jobs. That's not debatable.

We're better off staying in and helping to reform than leaving as billy big bollocks and try to do it all on our own.

Jesus wept, do you work for the EU or are you just terminally fooking stupid?

I have seldom ever read so much utter bollocks, your basic premise that leaving the EU would mean losing access to the market, FFS man we import nearly 2 billion quids worth of gear from the EU than they buy from us.......EVERY FOOKING WEEK!

They can't afford a trade war with us, besides which it would break WTO rules.

You are exactly the sort of clueless fooking idiot who appears to dim people to have a clue so they believe you, FFS man have a little pride in yourself and stop propagating such drivel.

And the first thing you actually have to consider about trade outside the EU is that we have a surplus in it rather than the huge fooking deficit we run with the EU.

We get no tangible benefits from being in the EU, fook wits like you just think we do because you have sucked hard on the EU propaganda dick.

Everything would be cheaper if we were out, food would 30% cheaper as would energy prices, £20 billion it is going to cost us next year just to be a member................................

I give up.

Must get you a spot on Question Time next to Farage and Brand!

New directive from Brussels......Number Ten Billion and twenty seven (I made that bit up) filter coffee machines must now switch off after five minutes of percolation to stop electricity being wasted.

The European Commission claimed that it's new rules, intended to help tackle climate change by cutting Europe's energy usage

The new rules mean that espresso machines must also power down after 30 minutes and functions keeping the cup warm will end after 60 minutes.

The new rules are part of EU's Ecodesign initiative, which has already seen the most powerful vacuum cleaners and traditional light bulbs banned.

These new rules came into force yesterday....and also cover devices such as routers,modems,smart televisions and printers which should be able to switch automatically into a low-power standby mode if no task is performed.

What is next..... high powered tooth brushes.......lower spin speeds on your washing machines......ALL car engines to automatically turn off when in a queue.....my son-in-laws Volvo already does that.....but isn't there a waste of energy when it restarts ?

Please someone save us from big brother otherwise known as the EU.........maybe there is a place for UKIP getting us out of this strangle hold of officialdom.

zyph wrote:

New directive from Brussels......Number Ten Billion and twenty seven (I made that bit up)  filter coffee machines must now switch off after five minutes of percolation to stop electricity being wasted.

The European Commission claimed that it's new rules, intended to help tackle climate change by cutting Europe's energy usage

The new rules mean that espresso machines must also power down after 30 minutes and functions keeping the cup warm will end after 60 minutes.

The new rules are part of EU's Ecodesign initiative, which has already seen the most powerful vacuum cleaners and traditional light bulbs banned.

These new rules came into force yesterday....and also cover devices such as routers,modems,smart televisions and printers which should be able to switch automatically into a low-power standby mode if no task is performed.

What is next..... high powered tooth brushes.......lower spin speeds on your washing machines......ALL car engines to automatically turn off when in a queue.....my son-in-laws Volvo already does that.....but isn't there a waste of energy when it restarts ?

Please someone save us from big brother otherwise known as the EU.........maybe there is a place for UKIP getting us out of this strangle hold of officialdom.

What is wrong with that?

Almost anything is better than another European war.

The ten billion and twenty seven bit was just a guess.....the rest is just another tightening notch on your freedom to breath and have any opinion on how you live your own life.

Who are the biggest wasters in the EU......the vastly over paid commisioners who go around at our expense in Jets and limousines....spending money as if it is going out of fashion.

zyph wrote:

The ten billion and twenty seven bit was just a guess.....the rest is just another tightening notch on your freedom to breath and have any opinion on how you live your own life.

Who are the biggest wasters in the EU......the vastly over paid commisioners who go around at our expense in Jets and limousines....spending money as if it is going out of fashion.

Freedom to breath/have any opinion on how you live your own life - just because an electrical appliance uses less power when not being used? Really?

Your second point I agree with. The best way to tackle this would be from within. Put pressure on your MEP. I wonder though if all the anti EU MEPs or any MEP for that matter (happily climbing aboard the gravy train) would be willing to fight this at their own expense.


The EU is not all bad. There are a number of questions which need answering though. For example, where does all the money go?
What do MEPs actually do?

Let's look at a couple of other EU law/directive examples: The working time directive, the smoking ban. Good ideas or not?

As an aside, how many people on here actually know the name/party of their MEP?

Electrical Appliances are the tip of the iceberg.........every part of our life is touched by EU laws.........stifling.

The fact that fat cats are taking the piss angers me a lot less than the fact that ordinary people protect their right to do it, you are the biggest cnuts of all.

zyph wrote:

Electrical Appliances are the tip of the iceberg.........every part of our life is touched by EU laws.........stifling.

Any examples?

Straight bananas and prawn cocktail crisps.*


LOL.



*In case you wondered neither of these so-called Euroscandals ever happened.

Iggy wrote:

The fact that fat cats are taking the piss angers me a lot less than the fact that ordinary people protect their right to do it, you are the biggest cnuts of all.

So pressure must be put on the politicians (national and euro). They are the ones that are taking the piss!

Leaving the EU won't stop the fat cats from doing what they do!

The independent House of Commons Library has worked out that in the UK only 6.8% of laws and 14.1% of statutory instruments come from the EU. UKIP's 75% claim is horseshit.

Those continent-wide laws are worthwhile: having a Europe-wide regulatory body massively cuts red tape for exporters (50% of our exports go to the EU). Imagine being a company that wants to export to all the EU member states. Would you rather have to register your trademark in all 28 member states, or do it just the once for the whole of the EU?

Moist_Von_Lipwig wrote:

Iggy wrote:

The fact that fat cats are taking the piss angers me a lot less than the fact that ordinary people protect their right to do it, you are the biggest cnuts of all.

So pressure must be put on the politicians (national and euro). They are the ones that are taking the piss!

Leaving the EU won't stop the fat cats from doing what they do!

Of course they will, remove the fat cats from their theatre of operations and they would have no one to bill.
£20 billion for membership next year and the gov are wondering how to cut £14 billion from services, not rocket science shorely?

Iggy wrote:

Moist_Von_Lipwig wrote:

Iggy wrote:

The fact that fat cats are taking the piss angers me a lot less than the fact that ordinary people protect their right to do it, you are the biggest cnuts of all.

So pressure must be put on the politicians (national and euro). They are the ones that are taking the piss!

Leaving the EU won't stop the fat cats from doing what they do!

Of course they will, remove the fat cats from their theatre of operations and they would have no one to bill.
£20 billion for membership next year and the gov are wondering how to cut £14 billion from services, not rocket science shorely?

Ah, Farage's figure...........

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Iggy wrote:

Moist_Von_Lipwig wrote:

Iggy wrote:

The fact that fat cats are taking the piss angers me a lot less than the fact that ordinary people protect their right to do it, you are the biggest cnuts of all.

So pressure must be put on the politicians (national and euro). They are the ones that are taking the piss!

Leaving the EU won't stop the fat cats from doing what they do!

Of course they will, remove the fat cats from their theatre of operations and they would have no one to bill.
£20 billion for membership next year and the gov are wondering how to cut £14 billion from services, not rocket science shorely?

You actually believe the cuts are being made to balance the budget, do you?

Have a word with yourself.

The "balancing the budget" rhetoric is an excuse to justify the destruction of the welfare state and its sale to their buddies who cannot bung money fast into Tory party coffers (c.f. the NHS) so that they can feast on the carrion left behind.

Whether or not we get value from our payments to the EU is one thing but conflating that with the cuts is yet more irrelevant, dangerous horseshit of the highest order.

Just ask yourself this: Since when has actioning the core Tory belief of cutting public spending ever been a "tough decision" for them? It's why they exist; there is nothing tough about it (other than not being too publicly gleeful as it happens). Believe it all if you like but it really is horseshit - and deep down you know full well that that is the truth.

Josh Pope wrote:

Oh dear. Someone has a different view of thins and it really brings out the complete dimwit in you. You haven't even countered any of it you've just dismissed it as drivel.

At least make a decent contribution ffs

No dumb ass, you didn't make a contribution, all you rid was regurgitate all the pro EU propaganda you have been fed by the meeja.

Everything in you post was speculation dressed up as fact, you have even hung on to Cleggy's jobs figures which were slapped down by Nigey at the time only for the publisher of the study to come out and state that Clegg had misinterpreted his work, the study did say that 3 million plus jobs were directly related to EU trade, but it went on to say that there was nothing to suggest that these jobs or the EU trade would be jeopardised by our leaving, people with a modicum of intelligence realise this.

Corporate Britain loves the EU because it gives them so many advantages over SMEs, trouble is that Big Business makes more money by reducing their costs, ie, sacking people or introducing zero hours contracts and the like, SMEs on the other hand need expansion so tend to employ more people. Big Business doesn't pay anything like the level of tax that SMEs do, everything about the EU stunts real, sustainable growth, it is all about uniformity and central control, the very mirror image of the USSR and even you dim feckers know what happened to them.

Trade doesn't depend upon how somebody sees a nation in a worldwide context nor how much pressure can be brought to bear politically, it depends upon whether you can make or do something that somebody else wants at a price they will pay, not being in the EU isn't an encumbrance to that, surely even a dim fecker like you can see that the EU is in decline, the Euro is a failed project which has cost all but the Krauts and their buddies and that without the UK hoovering up all their young unemployed the EU would probably be ablaze by now.

£13 billion this year, possibly £18-20 billion next, all to subsidise the farming of things which can all be bought elsewhere at a cheaper price and to keep thousands upon thousands of bureaucrats in a manner to which we should all like to become accustomed.

The only definites to coming out are huge savings in the costs of membership, food and energy when we drop all the EU requirements and the reduction of costs to business when we drop all the stupid rules. Nothing else is set in stone, there may be a reduction in the level of trade, but that would most likely bring a very necessary drop in the massive balance of trade deficit we have been running for decades, that's a very good thing. A huge major benefit of Brexit would be that we should then be able to reduce the level of benefits payable to foreigners, if we did lose some jobs then at least we should no longer have to pay benefits to people who had not contributed, ps. I would be all for doing that with dumb ass lazy Brits as well, there are people who need and deserve support, there are also many who do not and who just play the system for all they can get.

I wish some posters on here could just politely present their counter opinion without resorting to abuse all of the time. A far better and reaching debate would be had by all, I'm sure.

" A huge major benefit of Brexit would be that we should then be able to reduce the level of benefits payable to foreigners."

How would you define "foreigners"?

How huge do you think that benefit might be?

My guess is that it is very, very small indeed. In fact so small as to be negligible.

What it does, however, is set a precedent that only those who pay in should get anything out meaning that, say, young people, women staying at home to raise kids, people too incapacitated through disability to work etc can be denied benefits too.

And then everybody else.

Anybody would think that we are a poor country unable to afford a tiny amount of benefit but we aren't. We are one of the richest countries in the world. It's beyond ridiculous.

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

You actually believe the cuts are being made to balance the budget, do you?

Have a word with yourself.

I think you may need to have a word with yourself if you think cuts are actually being made anywhere in the public sector.

The amount spent in the PS went up last year and the year before that and the year before that, it will go up this year, the next and the year after that. It goes up every year.

All your lefty rhetoric might carry a little more weight if any remotely lefty administration had ever turned in a balanced budget, cookies for breakfast, lunch, dinner, tea and supper are very nice, just as long as some other fecker is paying the bill.

The PS is hugely wasteful and the elephant in the room of unfunded PS pensions edges ever closer, burying your head in the sand and hoping summat'll turn up will just make things worse when the poo does finally hit the fan.

No I don't believe that privatising all public services is a good idea, but whether it would be any worse or more expensive in the long term than the hideously inefficient system we have been living with for all of my lifetime is open to conjecture. What we need are services run efficiently and effectively for the benefit of the public not the people who jump on the gravy train, tell me that you don't know at least one ex public servant who retired on a healthy pension in their 50s only to play on for 20, 30, 40years sucking on the working man's teet?

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

How would you define "foreigners"?

It's quite funny over here when I speak to Germans and they complain about too many "foreigners".

When I point out to them that I'm a "foreigner" I'm told, "Oh, we don't mean you"!!