No this is true, but we'll lose harder by leaving. As a fellow northerner and scouser, I'm sure you'll agree that overall EU money has done the world of good. Still, I'd actually quite like to vote to leave, firstly just to see Cameron and Osbourne consigned to the dustbin of history, and then several decades worth of schadenfreude as the Brexiters realise that their resentment and anger, of which much is genuine and understandable, has nothing to do with the EU, which in my opinion has been made a scapegoat for something much worse, namely;

Relentless privatization and asset stripping, spiraling costs of education, poorly thought-through mass immigration, under-investment in infrastructure (outside of London) and the callous abandonment by the Tories of the North by a London-centric political class, along with the failure to address the decades of decline triggered by de-industralisation - throw all that on a trashheap of an economic policy which has dominated since the 1970's by both mainstream right and left political parties, driving inequality to absolutely perverse levels. Not just between the worlds richest and poorest, but between the top 1% and the remaining 99%. Leaving the EU will help not one single bit with this, in fact it will likely make it worse.

I've always been more towards remain, but I've listened to the arguments of the Brexit carefully. In the end, the Brexit argument goes like this;

The Brexit argument attacks the EU but acknowledges none of the benefits. It's campaign has been driven by exaggerations, rhetoric and outright lies. They can criticise ad nausea the faults and shortcomings of the EU but simply have no facts, no clear vision, basically no idea how the UK will be post-Brexit, other than 'it will be great, trust us'.

It's backward and regressive and if we vote Brexit, rather than transforming Britain into some sort of socialist paradise where we are governed by Brits for Brits, we'll see workers rights, human rights and environmental rights stripped away, and those vicious spivs in Westminster having a carte blanche to do whatever the hell they want.

Utter tosh.

If you were to read the most recent postings in the "economic crisis" thread you would see what has been happening with westernised economies over about the past 30 years.
The EU is not responsible for this, but it does support the economic "progress" in its' own manner by the way, for just one instance of how it has turned the screws on the Eurozone member known as Greece.

As for a Brexit strategy, I posted one such document quite a few pages back in here: the Flexit proposal which runs to over 400 pages of what amounts to a statement of "democracy", in short.
In itself, that document originates from the "Harrogate Agenda" - again you could do your own research about that.

I was very pleased, very pleased indeed, to have the recent judgement concerning the Hillsborough 96; IMO, that has been a turning point in this nation - nor does it have anything directly to do with "Left", "Right" or any other political direction. It reflects on the people of this country who are standing up for what is right; we will see more of this when the Chilcot report is published, soon after the June referendum apparently.

To remind you, we change our politicians every 5 years by general election (for sure, we get the politicians that we deserve).
Last night on the BBC Question Time programme, the guy who lost the general election of last year for the labour party, aka Milliband, was soundly trounced by both the other panellists and, especially, by the audience.

Some further recommended reading (from a female blogger who has writtene widely about the law of this country and has no axes to grind because she is dying of cancer):-
In which Ms Raccoon performs a EU turn….

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Dave

Was it Churchill who said democracy is the worst form of government bar all the others?

Trouble is, Westminster is now out of date never mind a comission, parliament with two locations and MEP's with overly diverse aims. We should be using the internet to table motions directly from the electorate and teleconferincing the discussions. The EU version where the Moldovan Peasants Party backs the Spanish Bullfighting party in exchange for their support on extra payments for producers of Moldovan cheese is like going back to bent boroughs and the corn laws.

The Westminster Turkeys don't like the idea of Internet Christmas for some reason. They want us to vote for the perpetual EU February.

Andy

Yes, attributed to Churchill.

Yes again, the likes of Milliband was uncomfortable last night on TV when the audience made it clear that they wanted him to justify his platitudes.
He was way outside his comfort zone of the House of Commons and their stitch ups.

In contrast, David Davis genially spilled some beans about how government actually works behind the scenes*, as did Steve Hilton who is currently an emigre to the USA.

*Note, UK nominees to the EC are definitely not voted in by popular vote; Davis explained the UK process live on TV last night, and named Neil Kinnock in particular as a case study.
In essence, they are place men who have been passed over by the UK political process, as are Tusk and Junker from their respective countries - those "central powers".

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Dave

The 17 May 2016 posting in this blog summarises the Flexit paper, for anyone who can't read 400+ pages.

http://leavetheeuropeanunion.blogspot.co.uk/

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Dave

This Brexit bollox is no different to any other vote or election thingy. Each side spouts it's own tripe and they hope enough people will agree to allow them to get their way. I have heard many 'experts' say it would be a great move and other 'experts' say it would be a bad move.
I suppose it depends on which liar you choose to believe.

Listening to tripe and liars as you put it is a choice we have to help us decide which way to vote or not to vote at all
But if you don't vote then you can not whine when things happen that you don't like

Wayne

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The Balkans
https://new.horizonsunlimited.com/poi_entity/8417

Yip.....and that's why I don't whine about things that happen.
I only whine about the twats who ultimately make the decisions and talk bollox while the public are led a dance akin to the Pied Piper.

Marvelous


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk whilst drinking a cold

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The Balkans
https://new.horizonsunlimited.com/poi_entity/8417

I too grew in in that socialist hell hole of Liverpool and well remember each Fridays announcement of 2,000, 3,000, 3500 job factory closures, the Tate & Lyle’s, Triumph, Cammel Lairds etc., etc., etc.,. I also remember the Militant Tendency years when Oxbridge educated, Guardian columnist Corbanista Owen Jones’ old man was flying around the city with his fellow thugs beating up any trade unionist who stepped out of line. I remember the Objective One years and witnessed first hand the corruption, nepotism and sheer waste of money and the distortions in business and society of the city those years. It will come as no surprise that I have never in my life had a job. The only money I make is what I made for myself. Most of my contemporaries left the city.


It is therefore, a great sadness to me to know that even worse than this is currently being inflicted upon the young people of Spain, of France, of Portugal, of Greece and more besides. It is the EU and its monetary policy that is largely responsible for the destruction of their lives.


It is shocking therefore that the contradiction in your argument is your failure to see that the people behind “remain” and “Project Fear” are precisely those whom you despise – the 1%.


They have the entire media, the entire establishment, every big organisation in the world, all the money, from the banks, from the government, from the EU, from the corporations, they have the televisions, the newspapers, the social media networking sites, the MPs, the foreign Presidents and Prime Ministers, the military, the intelligence services, the 90 yr old veterans, the police, the charities, the stars, celebrities and virtue signallers, the universities and the crooked academics - almost the entire financial, political, media, military/industrial, intelligence agency, cultural, academic and anything-else-you-can-think-of strength against the Brexit campaign.

And they still can't win.

No one has all the answers. However, the answer to our problems, real or otherwise, big or small is not more government, more politicians, more taxes, more regulations. You want your socialist Paradise? Go to Venezuela.


Make no mistake, this is about more than Brexit, this is the 1% against everyone else. This may well be a turning point in the 21st Century, we agree there - the point the people said "No more" to the Elite. Britain was the country to bring democracy to the world, it's fitting that it should be the one to bring it back. Don't pander to the 1%. Vote Leave

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Which is why this thread degenerated once people started posting links to all sorts of tosh written by other people. I'm not really interested what 'experts' have to say, to me it's a simple choice between getting sucked into an increasingly federal European state, or remaining independent. I don't need to read 100-page articles to decide which way I'm going to vote. I'd much rather read simple posts stating simple personal thoughts.

The latest European army move is a great example of ill-thought federalisation. With the exception of France and the UK, most countries' armed forces aren't fit for purpose. The shame of the Dutch army's failure at Srebrenica is a moot example. And one British officer described the Bundeswehr's operations in Afhanistan as "an aggressive camping organisation" rather than an army.

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"For sheer delight there is nothing like altitude; it gives one the thrill of adventure
and enlarges the world in which you live," Irving Mather (1892-1966)

That has been exactly the goal of the abhorrent pacifists during the last decades. There is no surprise that the armies in most European countries became exactly that. If societies chose that path and acted towards achieving it throughout decades the surprise would be if there remained armed forces in most of Europe (not all for there are a few exceptions) worthy of the name.

In the "socialist hell hole" of Liverpool (you just won the hyperbole award, a great achievement in this thread), my dad could buy a house for £7,000 and could pay it off and still support a a family on a factory workers job. Unionized labour may not have been perfect but we're screwed without it. Go speak to my friends who work at one of the largest insurance companies in Liverpool. They've just had their pensions and any redundancy paid slashed in half. Strangely, executive and managerial pay was unaffected.

You talk about 'them' having everyone against Brexit - and yet most of the press in this country is ran by tax evaders, non-doms and an Australian who lives in America, i.e. Desmond, The Barclay Brothers, Murdoch and 'Lord' Rothemere. Their papers have been blaming the EU for just about anything for the past decade. You know why that is? Because someone has to be blamed for the destruction being wrought by the great hoovering up of the wealth and perverse inequality. Blame the immigrants, blame the disabled, blame the poor, blamew the EU, blame anyone but the banks, the politicians, the rich.

For the rest, what are you saying? That they are paid off? It's a big pro-EU conspiracy? Across those groups you described, there would be little consensus over anything, and so if they agree on remaining, maybe they have a point?

But honestly, what's the point talking about this anymore? We're using the EU as a pretext to talk about someone else entirely, no? It's very telling that you finish your argument by telling me to go to Venezuela, not only is that a common logical fallacy (known as the 'false dilemma') used to close down debate when one side runs short on ideas, it's nearly always employed by people who are ideologically blinkered.

I think for me, what pages and pages of this thread proves is the big difference between those who want to remain and those who are undecided, is that they'll generally entertain debate whereas the Brexit crew come across as blinkered and full of bile. In the end, the Brexit campaign will probably be a victim of its own bullshit. One can only hope so.

I largely agree with you but maybe it's worth noting that given the press are 70-80% in favour of Brexit, the argument has not been well presented. Like climate change, which was really 97% of scientific agreement vs 3% present of fringe science being presented as a 50/50 debate, most experts, academics, business owners, and the political establishment, not to mention all of the international community (accept Trump and the petty fascist Marine Le Pen) favour remaining.

Basically, sod the facts - vote with simple prejudices. That's the Brexit crowd down to a tee.

I think everyone's view should be a more wide reaching than just the federalisation issue but even so there is much too much focus on the immediate consequences of a leave vote. The Remain campaign is supported mainly by the financial, political and business establishments all of whom believe they have the right to dictate our lives. The Leave campaign is supported by the massive small business community, maverick politicians who are anti unnecessary bureaucracy (which is what the EU is) and economists who have a bit more vision and can see through the smoke screen being created by the establishment.

All the scaremongering by the establishment is just that. Britain will be much better off being able to make its own rules and trading arrangements. If Britain chooses to stay in the consequences in the long term of the "You dared to question our authority" brigade at the head of the EU will be far worse that any short term inconveniences caused by leaving.

I sincerely hope that the independent nature of the British people comes to the fore on polling day.