I find this depressing, for not being able to object to this, just like millions of other people Europe wide.
I know about TTIP Dom, Sean made it a clear point on here long ago, he was quite worried about it and he was the first person to ever bring it to my attention. However what kind of standards do we actually want in trade and if the EU post brexit ratifies it then what are we actually going to be able to do about it? Our politicians seem to support it anyway.
Why is it that they never seem to obey the will or wishes of their constituents..?? Why isn't there a mechanism to remove them immediately for failing their duties..?? Following party lines is one thing, but defying and insulting your voters intelligence is quite another.
I am pretty confident that Andrew "borrowed" that lengthy pro-EU missive he posted yesterday; I really doubt he's the patronising originator of those words and, having been his house guest for 3 weeks, I know Andrew to be anything but patronising. Nevertheless the post makes a very good case for our remaining in what we use to call the Common Market but whose title was the European Economic Community. Nations that trade together are far less likely to go to war with one another but, as France has demonstrated, being a member of such a bloc apparently doesn't preclude you from trading and supporting the enemies of another member state. That aside, the European trading bloc has helped nations to co-exist peacefully and for a long time. I voted in favour of the Common Market in the 1975 Referendum. The entire case for remaining in Europe, as given by Cameron, Osborne and the rest of the Remain campaign team - and Andrew's post - is one of trade, of economics. It is actually one of capitalist supremacy over popular democracy and it is as if any of the other issues in this debate simply don't exist or are deemed to be unimportant by the political and capitalist elite. Do you really imagine that Bosch, BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen, Spanish fishermen or fruit growers, French farmers and wine industry - and many others - won't put pressure on their national trade ministers to strike a tariff-free trade deal with post-Brexit Britain? Of course they will and they would be stupid not to. Obama's threat of putting Britain at the back of the trade deal negotiating queue was exposed for the blustering lie it truly was within a day or so of him making it. So will any similar threat from the EU be found to be empty. I've said it before: the choice we are about to make is who do we want to make the laws that govern us. Do we want those laws to be made by those we directly elect or by some faceless bureaucrat born and living outside our shores whom we neither elect nor can dismiss? Everything stems from that binary choice. Remainers characterise this campaign as "Europeans versus Little Englanders" but they couldn't be more wrong. Freed from our EU shackles, the UK can strike trade deals with Commonwealth countries and the rest of the world - we can, if we wish, import coconuts, pineapples and mangoes from the Philippines. Right now we can't, we are prevented from making our own trade deals. Europeans have an inwards-facing, myopic view whereas post-Brexit Britain would have an outwards-facing, world view. Unemployment has risen as a direct consequence of our membership, up from around 2% to just over 5% - but that pales into insignificance when compared with southern Europe - Greece, Italy and Spain and the newer entrant countries. Because the EU exists for the benefit of capitalists and multinationals rather than for its peoples, it has deliberately depressed wages and encouraged those from poor countries to move to the wealthier northern European economies where they are employed for far less money that would be paid to a local. In a outburst of extreme cynicism, it has gone far further than anyone imagined it could by "inviting" migrants from Africa to come to Europe. Merkel and her five Presidents are directly responsible for the migrant problem. If the EU signs and ratifies the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the US, then not only will all our public services - health, education and so on - be "up for grabs" to taken-over by American companies - but unemployment will rise across Europe. And those American companies will be able to sue our governments if they do anything which might threaten their profits - like imposing taxes or enforcing (European) health and safety requirements, for example. Europe will effectively be asset-stripped and become a vassal state whilst we pay for the privilege. TTIP provisions are not reciprocal. Obama's recent unwelcome intervention where he called on us to vote to remain in the EU is specifically because he wants TTIP to be signed by the end of his Presidency and our NHS is the big prize demanded by his and Hillary's backers in Washington. TTIP without Britain being included is not an option. Look what has happened to our democracy since that last Referendum in 1975 - we, the electorate, have been specifically excluded from all the decision-making until Cameron gave us this Referendum (but that was only only to alleviate an internal loyalty issue within the Tory party). France, Holland, Ireland and Denmark are among the countries that have asked their electorates to vote on the important treaties. Successive British governments have resolutely refused, patronisingly excusing themselves by claiming that the issues were far too complicated to be put to the British people. Are our MPs somehow more intelligent than anyone else, are the French, Dutch, Irish and Danes better able to understand. Thatcher, Major and Blair all signed EU Treaties without seeking specific approval from their masters, the British electorate. And since 1975, we have lost a veto, which Blair gave away immediately upon coming to power in 1997, our voice has diminished and now all decisions are made by qualified majority votes. But there is some hope. Although Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell have betrayed their well-established Euroscepticism, others in their party have not. Dennis Skinner and John Mann are two of those who've recently declared they'll be voting to leave. None of Labour's campaigning leaflets mention immigration and Frank Field, a leading Leave campaigner, has warned that the Labour Partyfaces losing a further million supporters to Ukip over its stance towards the EU and its failure to acknowledge the "immigration issue". But then there's Neil and Glenys Kinnock who, together, have pocketed around £10 million of the European gravy train following their Damascene conversions from Europhobes to Europhiles in the early 1990s. Not bad for a former left-wing leader of the Labour Party who was a leading campaigner to take Britain out of 'Europe' forty-odd years ago and his school teacher wife. He believed then that it threatened British jobs and industry; now, he is vigorously promoting the opposite view. Of course the fact that he, his wife and his daughter-in-law have all received high salaries, generous expenses and will get excellent indexed-linked pensions from Brussels has absolutely nothing to do with it ..... right!!
Telling quotes by Sir James Dyson: "When the Remain campaign tells us no one will trade with us if we leave the EU, sorry, it’s absolute cobblers. Our trade imbalance with Europe is running at nine billion a month and rising. If this trend continues, that is £100bn a year." Dyson sits on several European committees. "And we’ve never once during 25 years ever got any clause or measure that we wanted into a European directive. Never once have we been able to block the slightest thing." He added: "These sessions are dominated by very large companies who agree on their approach before the meeting and so vote together as a bloc. And that’s why we never get anywhere. We think that’s anti-competitive practice and we would love to prove it but…" "We will create more wealth and more jobs by being outside the EU than we will within it and we will be in control of our destiny. And control, I think, is the most important thing in life and business." "The last thing I would ever want to do is to put myself in somebody else’s hands. So for me the risk is in putting ourselves in the hands of Europe. Not just the other countries, but the Brussels bureaucrats. What I simply can’t understand is why anyone would want to put themselves under their control."
EU Referendum: Massive swing to Brexit – with just 12 days to go Exclusive: polling carried out for ‘The Independent’ shows that 55 per cent of UK voters intend to vote for Britain to leave the EU in the 23 June referendum http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...oris-johnson-nigel-farage-david-a7075131.html
It all seems to be getting a little desperate now for the Remain campaign, one thing I have noticed over the weeks is that the Tory Remain campaign does not seem to work too good under pressure compared with Boris, Gove who are always good under fire. The Remain side is now saying that payments into the NHS and pension pot may be effected if we leave the EU, my first thought was that staying in the EU guarantees absolutely nothing either, especially under a Tory Government.
Well, well, well, the things that go on out of public gaze. According to The Sunday Tines a secret plan to open Britain's borders to 1.5 million Turks was revealed today after British diplomats said the move would act as a "symbolic gesture to Turkey". Senior diplomats advised ministers that the EU's proposals to grant visa-free travel to Turkey's 75 million population in the borderless Schengen zone could lead to the UK giving the same status to 1.5 million "special passport holders'". Furthermore, EU officials have also quietly delayed the publication of of documents on the visa-free deal with Turkey until after June 23 to avoid deterring British voters from staying in the EU, according to reports.
Lets say Exit wins, there's gonna be bloodshed in the government. Cameron says he won't resign whatever the outcome. So what happens if his hand is forced? Who will take over? Gove the incompetent or Boris the Clown? Somehow I could live with Boris being PM, but for sure there will be outright civil war within the Tory party. Remember they (and UKIP) have been chomping at the leash for this referendum for many years, now they have their wish, how they react when it goes their way? Will it be the night of the long knives? Will we have a 'New vs Old' like Labour is now? Without sounding OTT, an exit vote will lead to massive political instability in this country, both on left and right on the political spectrum. And whats more scary, there's no effective opposition to temper this government should exit happen. An exit vote can only lead to an orgy of right-wingers seeking revenge on all and sundry and taking this country back many years. Not a pretty sight, and one I hope never happens.
Complete tosh! That is precisely what Labour and the union barons want you to think - and none of them speak for the working man. No matter which side wins, we lose. The increasingly bitter Cameron-sanctioned blue-on-blue personal attacks will cause resentments that wil last a long, long time. It is very likely that the party will split with the Remainoids being a centrist Europhile party more akin to the former SDP than the Conservative Party and the Leavers may well form a right of centre Eurosceptic party. Neither will have a majority to govern on its own and, given the sheer hatred thst divides them, a coalition seems unlikely. Your next government - and it could come as soon as October - will be formed by Mr Jeremy Corbyn and his happy band of reactionary Trots. And may God help us all.
In reply to Rob's post. above Cameron has shown himself to be a blatent dictatorial liar, he is acting against the best interests of the UK, and has destroyed his party in the process, he gives priority instead to his role as an EU "manager", hoping for promotion within the EU "elite". Cameron needs to go, Brexit or not. As you observe, Boris is the best option, accused of being a clown (and many other things) by his detractors, but what is wrong with that? So what is the "effective opposition" to temper the strengthened undemocratic "EU overlords" should remain happen? That is the real issue to consider, not good for the UK. How will a remain vote go down with the general public after all the obvious government lies and cheating that has gone on? btw, is an orgy of "right wingers", any worse than an orgy of "left wingers"?
New politics will evolve in the UK after Brexit but the UK in our own hands is much better than a future under a EU dictatorship where we are impotent in the decision making process, IMO, Rob.
It frightened me to read that , JC as Prime minister, what a mess we'd be in then, I just cannot take anything serious that he says or does, he's a dick if there every was one
Dunno, an orgy of left wingers would be great. Imagine, we will all have affordable housing, there will more justice and equality for all, councils will be able to offer things like weekly bin collections and libraries. Do we have all that now? No. So I say bring on Jez. Meanwhile, back in reality....theres a small matter of whether we belong in Europe to clear up.
"Bring on Jez" eh; okay, your choice. But before you enshrine that thought as a cross on the ballot paper, do bear in mind what happened to the last EU country that elected a hard-left government. That would be Greece and Syriza won the last General Election on pretty much the same anti-austerity package that Jez favours. Unfortunately for the Greeks, their government was coerced into adopting the austerity programme demanded of it by the Commission. Juncker has already sent out the warning that countries that elect far-left or far-right governments will lose their decision-making and voting privileges, grants and other undefined sanctions may be applied. See - we can't even elect the government we want!
