E.U: Leave or Stay? Your thoughts.

Yeah I mixed up miles and kilometres damn metric system!

 

Back on topic(ish): we have already established that both the Remain and Leave camp are very much in favour of a deregulated TTIP agreement which leaves the NHS wide open to privatisation.

We also know that it was the UK that blocked EU attempts to impose tariffs on cheap Chinese steel threatening the local steel industry.

If the UK Brexits, be prepared for the government to sell the UK down the river in its independent free trade negotiations with the US and China.

 

We don't need to wait for news on Brexit for that. It'll happen regardless.

 

True, dat. It will just happen more quickly, without all that EU bureaucracy to slow things down.

 

When given the option most prefer a quick death...

 

In fairness, it does seem like 90% of the UK population lives in 50% of the space. Also it's not like house prices are universally overinflated here, but London throws everything out of whack. You can get a 50-60sqm city centre apartment for £150k up here, but try and find something similar near where my parents live, miles from any real convenience, and you're looking at double that.

Not saying we don't have problems, just don't think it's a completely fair comparison.

 

It's actually more crowded than that... 12.5% of the population live in <1% of the space [London], 82% of the UK population live in ~2.5% of the space [anything classed as 'urban']...

It's surprising how far out most people's estimates are when asked how much of the UK has actually been built on...

I appreciate a lot of the land that hasn't been built on is that way for a reason but when it comes to people start spouting 'Britain is full/overcrowded...' it really, really isn't... it just feels it...

 

Surely, that's true of most countries?

Six years ago, I moved from a very nice three bed semi with a garage and ample parking for several cars in a quiet cul de sac, to a two bed semi with coin toss on-street parking.

Because the three bed was in a mining village in South Yorkshire the ceiling value for my house was ~ £85k, compared to the two bed at around £150K in the south. It'd probably be at least twice as much again anywhere in the London area.

 

For anyone considering a vote, please consider an hour of your time to watch this excellent documentary:



Anyone who considers themselves democratic should definitely watch it (from the leave or stay camp).

 

Given the content of the first 8 seconds is "They're coming to take our freedoms!!1 *epic music in background*", it doesn't really give the impression of an unbiased, balanced source of information TBH. It's hard to not become very skeptical when the opening is crammed full of emotionally manipulative language (including some classic propaganda techniques to build an "Us vs. Them" narrative, like casting the audience as the oppressed and the opponent as the oppressors and the old "we, the people"-trick, as if speaking for everyone including the viewer).

I'll watch it in the weekend though. Maybe the good bits come later.


Here's an interesting perspective, especially for the leave side:

You can surely not accuse this guy of being some EU shill, given he's an outspoken critic of the EU as it is now (and here he explains in great detail why).
Some short bits (~3 minutes, 1 minute) relevant to the discussion starting at 42:58 and 22:08.

 

^^^ I'd also listen to 1:01:00 where he talks about what would happen in case of a breakup of the EU and the Euro.

 

impartial decision/Guardian

pick one.

 

Or we could just judge each argument on its own merit: facts, logic, rationale.

Let's examine the messages, not shoot the messengers.

 

I understand you might have some preconceptions about the talk if you generally don't agree with the Guardian's political viewpoints I guess, but I urge you (and everyone who considers voting Leave) to listen anyway, or at least to the bits I and Nexxo indicated, and to carefully consider what he says. Varoufakis is a respected economist, who shares a lot of the concerns the Out side has about the EU, yet he says it would be a mistake for the UK to leave. If you want to make an informed decision, these are exactly the viewpoints you need to know about.

 

The act of leaving would not make you many friends that would want to deal with someone that will bail and not try to fix the problem. You would be showing to the world that you are not trustworthy.

 

He sure knows a lot about hats

 

This is all dramatic BS. Let's examine why people really want to vote for a Brexit:

"It will give us control back over our borders". You never lost control; you're not in Schengen. But be prepared for that refugee camp in Calais to move to Dover as after a Brexit, the EU will consider it your problem rather than our problem.

"It will stop immigration". It won't. 50% of immigrants are non-EU and they pour in all the same. Blame your economy which relies on a flexible, cheap workforce supply. Nothing will change.

"It will stop overcrowding of our schools and overburdening of our NHS". Nope. That is not the result of immigration but of the government's progressive radical cuts in education and health service funding. Why do you think it's so keen on independent (= self-funding) schools? You know, some of which were found to teach extremist views? Why do you think that for the first time in the history of the NHS all hospital trusts were in deficit last year? Even the ones that had been consistently in the black for all the years before? Because NHS budget was slashed by 20% last year, that's why. Let that sink in: 20%.

"We'll save membership fees!". Not if you want to be part of the EEA or EFTA.

"We'll have control over how we spend our own money!". Like your government has control over 98.8% of its budget now, you mean? And how is its public spending strategy working out for you, by the way?

"We'll have sovereignty". Only 13% of UK laws are influenced by EU law, and then only on issues that concern the UK relationship with the EU. Many of those regulations are "gold-plated", i.e. added to by the UK itself. They also concern things like worker rights, human rights, consumer protection and environmental protection. You decide if that's a good thing to hang on to. While you vote for the next overpriviliged public schoolboy to rule over you.

"It will cut red tape". If you want to continue exporting to the EU, your products will still have to comply with EU regulations. Nothing will change. So, do you want input into those rules or not?

"It will stop TTIP". The UK is the main country in the EU pushing hard for TTIP --and for the most extreme version of it. TTIP is going to happen.

"We will be able to negotiate better trade deals with other countries ourselves". Nope; you'll go from being part of the largest economic block in the world to the fifth largest economy. You won't necessary get worse deals, but not better ones either. But there will be less consumer and worker protection.

"it will only be a short period of hardship for rewards later". Nope; it will mean unravelling 40 years of legal and trading rules, laws, frameworks and replacing them with something else. This will keep a large part of the government busy for the next decade. That's going to cost.

"But the EU will implode! It's better to be out of it". In a global economy THERE IS NO OUT. When banks collapsed in the US we felt it around the whole world. If the EU collapses, we WILL feel it here, badly, whether the UK is in or out. It will make no difference; the UK won't be safe. It is actually better to stay in and work hard to prevent it.

"The EU prevented war? Ridiculous!". Compare the 1929 Wall Street collapse with the 2008 one. The only reason the latter didn't turn into a Great Depression is that unlike in 1929, countries were able to act together to prevent a world financial collapse. This was mainly possible because of the EU. But if the EU falls, there will be economic collapse, massive inflation, a lot of unhappy unemployed people and the rise of nationalism we already see now. It will be Europe 1939 all over again. And we know how that turned out. The horrors of WWI still being fresh in people's minds, another war was seen as pretty unlikely then, also. Until it happened.

 

I had a look at this when Walle posted it. The bias in it is hilarious. Not that everything in it is invalid.

You'll get 13% more sovereignty?

My question to you is, hypothetically, what do you do if the EU moves towards a political structure that you disagree with? Say they basically turn Europe into a republican America, politically speaking. No priority on social issues, remove public health care, letting businesses do what they want / reduction of worker rights / reduction of consumer rights, policies that favour further wealth shift to the rich etc. You might say that sort of stuff is already happening in Britain, but you and your fellow countrymen can at least vote the government out. Can you do that with the EU if they go down a path that is contrary to your own?

 

The problem you're having is that you're thinking in 20th century, democratic terms. We live in the 21st century - an oligarchy. Don't believe me? Just ask the academics, many political commentators, or the last leader of the free world before neoliberalism took hold.

When was the last time you considered you smart phone was likely made under near suicide-inducing conditions? Through technological inflation it's a tool essential to modern democracy, but it's built in an effective communist state - and guess who's getting the absolute best deal by playing everyone off each other in an alegal space?

The reason I asked you when the last time you may have remembered the likely specifics of it's manufacture is because the global interplay between democracy and capitalism is beyond anyone's cognition - So informed citizenry is a myth, unless we give everyone access to the same computing power as the people who do this for a living (and they think what they're doing is benign, because guess what it happens beyond...?)

All thing's considered, such as the fact that the UK is "republican america" influence in the EU, it's probably best to hold on to a politically diverse institution, whose values were established before neoliberalism shifted our norms, rather than be an uninformed lemming confidently marching towards The Cliffs of Machiavelli.

 

When has there ever not been an oligarchy?

The last time I considered the manufacturing conditions of my phone was within the last two years.

The nature of capitalism is that for someone to gain another has to loose out. In this case I get reasonably priced electronics whilst someone else has to work in slave like conditions to make it for such a price. I don't see how that's relevant to what I've said though.

Who is the "everyone" that we must give the same computing power to? Who are the people that we are giving everyone the same computing power as? What do the people who's computing power everyone must equal, do? Who are the "they" and what is it that "they" think is benign? Where is this "beyond". I have no idea what happens beyond I don't know where this beyond is. What on earth are you talking about?

Whilst you say its better to hold on to a politically diverse institution, I'm saying that it may not always be that way and ask what does one do when that diversity dies off and aligns contrary to your own political views. The EU is hardly that politically diverse is it?