EU REFERENDUM

It is clear to see you do not have a mind of your own and easily swayed by what you read and see in the news.

Next time you venture out into the real world, open your eyes and take a look around, you may be surprised at what you discover.

Absolutely. Since when have Asda, IBM and BMW been British companies - let alone Top 100 British companies? Asda, which is owned by Walmart, and IBM are American and BMW is German.

And I bet Keith can't name 8 former US Treasury Secretaries or the 300 most prominent historians or any of the former Directors of GCHQ!

On a lighter note, if I may, I heard somebody on the radio today making a rather funny slip-up when he said "Neverendum"

Thats a bit of a leap Timmers on that basis I would be "swayed" by you ......unlikely old chap

After a quick look at article 50 and article 218 it looks like the EU will give the UK a pretty rough time for at least 2 years as an example to other member states and our punishment for leaving..
It really is no wonder that many economists predict some doom and gloom in the short to medium term if you look at the hoops the EU will present us with..
Hopefully,during that time other EU member countries will follow Britain's lead and the domino effect will begin to destroy the evil empire before it has its evil way with our intention to become independent,free nations once again.

“It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.”

Mark Twain

I do not expect to change you to change your mind Keith, its apparent that you are entrenched on the left wing and will only listen to that good old boy JC and his ilk.

I always remember working in Poland a few months before the Polish people were permitted to enter the UK visa free, it appeared to me that everyone I talked to was intending to travel to the UK for work. I knew myself that there would be thousands upon thousands traveling to the UK even though the UK Government at the time said there would only be around 10,000 from Poland coming to the UK for work.

Now there are nearly a million Poles living in the UK, just to make a comparison there are 4500 British people registered as living in Poland (I bet most are qualified teachers) with only one of the 4500 registered as claiming unemployment benefit, I feel there is a little imbalance somewhere

I was commited to Europes Freedoms back in the begining of 1990 when I first lived in Portugal Tim long years before hearing of JC , Supporting social justice is a matter of character rather than any entrenchment I am more of a Green nowadays than a mainsream labour supporter since they spent a fair bit of time trying to be tory light.

The right to have your family with you in the UK was made conditional in 2012 (and had been chipped away at before) and it was only the directives that supported UK nationals who couldnt meet the financial cut off so if you were a mother for example with a British child married to an Australian earning 12000 a year you were stuffed even though this would cost the British economy 10-12000 in benifits,madness that the rest of Europe protected us from, It would have taken me a couple of years to meet the requirements without Europes support so its a no brainer

That was a descision of the British Government democraticaly elected no? You also benifited from being able to as you say work in Poland and who do you think is now paying the pensions/social care of our elderly lol

The point I was trying to make is that the UK Government got it wrong back then regarding the numbers of people who would come to the UK once the borders opened and they certainly have no idea of future numbers now, that is a fact, why should I trust any UK Government on getting immigration down when we all know its impossible to get the numbers down while we remain in the EU.

As I keep saying, the majority of immigrants are not from the EU.

And the ones that are dont make any desisions about how many houses ,schools and hospitals are built Maggy,s raid on our housing stock has directly led to taxpayers funding private landlords and the housing price bubble nothing to do with Europe

If it was wrong then they should all go home and our old folk return to the UK that would help the economy and NHS um not. In the free market pursuit of year on year growth (which will destroy the planet) the global market will without a care in the world reduce production costs to the weakest links and therin lie the seeds of Right wing nationalists with their populist (final) solutions

I thought it was roughly a 50/50 split isn't it?

188,000 to 184,000 but i think the point is that the economy wont allow the government to reduce to the tens of thousands even the part they have total cointrol of , it was always a lie never intended to be enacted as was the referendum

Just how low is Cameron and his friends at the Guardian prepared to sink in an attempt to win the argument by falsely discrediting his opponent Michael Gove? The answer is clearly serpentine.

Michael Gove appeared in a short BBC package with its Political Editor, Laura Kuenssberg, along with his parents. His father had been involved in the Scottish fishing industry and his business had to close as a direct result of the EU's Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). Here is part of that interview.

Yesterday's Guardian published a story written by Severin Carrell, the paper's Scotland editor, under the headline "Michael Gove's father denies his company was destroyed by EU policies" which sought to undermine the claims made earlier in the BBC interview.

The Gove family is said to be furious and say the paper “rang up an elderly man who is very hard of hearing and has serious diabetes and twisted his words”. Despite the Guardian's headline, here is the actual answer 79 year-old Ernest Gove gave to the journalist’s question: "There’s nothing really to go back about anyway because it just was, when Europe went into fishing, the industry more or less collapsed down and I just packed in and got a job with another firm, you know. That was all that was happening."

As the journalist repeatedly tried to get Gove Snr to contradict Michael, Ernest explicitly said: “I’m not going against my son”. And even though the Gove family sends a written statement to the Guardian which said "I don’t know what this reporter is going on about. Everybody in the north-east knows it was Europe that did such damage to the fish trade. The common fisheries policy was a disaster, not just for Aberdeen, but all of Scotland. There wasn’t any future for my business. It closed as a direct result of Europe." it went ahead and published its story anyway.

This was deliberately timed to coincide with Michael Gove's appearance on last night's Question Time as a solo act. Gove's discomfiture was tweaked by what was suspiciously like a planted question and an emotional Michael Gove was forced to restate that his grandfather's and father's fishing business had to close as a direct consequence of the CFP.

Michael Gove and his wife, Sarah Vine, used to be close friends with the Camerons. I doubt they'll be exchanging Christmas Cards this year or having cosy suppers together at Chequers.

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Where are the home grown companies? Shell, BP, Glaxo, BT, HSBC, ICAP, BAE systems, British Airways are all significant listed companies with global presence.

There are also a number of sizeable privately owned companies - such as John Lewis, McLaren,virgin atlantic and swire.
Whilst it could be argued that not many of these could rival say IBM in terms of size, It's not really a fair comparison. You are comparing a company from a superpower of 350m people and a physical size that gives a huge economic advantage. Many american firms have no interest in, and do not need to, look to a global market. The home market is large enough.

However, Britain has a significant global presence in banking and financial services and whilst it could be argued that some foreign banks may choose to move work outside the city, that does not mean that all the jobs in the city are under foreign stewardship or seen as gateway to the European market.

I feel there are advantages to being in the EU. There are economic disadvantages and risks to leaving. There are also benefits to be gained from leaving. It is also impossible to predict the future. As others have said, this is not merely a question of economics. And the fact that it's such a close fought battle means that it's a hard choice for people to make so I wouldn't presume to make snappy judgements based on drugstore economics, hearsay and speculation.

Fact: Just prior to Poles and other EU citizens being allowed to move to the UK to live and work, the then Prime Minister, your friend and mine Tony Blair, stated that the total number of Eastern Europeans that would move to the UK would be 13,000 and no more.

Fact: In round numbers, 5 million people from the EU have moved to the UK since 2004. According to the UN, just 1.2 million UK citizens live elsewhere in the EU.

Fact: We can not reduce or hinder the entry of anyone who claims citizenship of the EU - that will include migrants from African, Syria and elsewhere whilst we remain in the EU.

Yes they can and yes they do! Any EU citizen who moves to the UK is able to register and, other than at this Referendum, they can vote at any local, European or General Election.

Do you think it's only "old folk" who have moved to Europe? You couldn't be more wrong, many move for work reasons.

There's a rather racist undertone to that remark. Just how do you think the NHS coped before the EU permitted it to recruit doctors and nurses from Poland, Latvia, Spain and Portugal? I'll tell you: it recruited English-speaking nurses from India, Ceylon and the Philippines - as well as Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

Europhiles seem to want a situation where only white Europeans may come to work and live in the UK. They will get their wish in the event of a Remain vote being returned as the government, realising immigration was the number 1 factor in this referendum, tackles it by closing the door to non-EU citizens.

For that I thank you. Not.