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If you regard Cameron, Osborne or Johnson as "ourselves" then I feel sorry for you and your breathtaking naivety.
Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
Effects for Me & my Monkey YouTube channel Facebook Fretboard's "resident pedal supremo" - mgaw
Britain will be better off out of sickly Europe
Britain wants to leave. That’s the country’s bedrock view. If people think their incomes will be unaffected by Brexit the Out campaign commands a 9 per cent lead, according to research by Professor Philip Cowley in association with YouGov. People want control of immigration, their taxes spent on the NHS rather than rich French farmers, and less meddling from Brussels. But looking at the polls, they are hesitating because they understandably worry about their jobs and pay.
Cowley’s research also found that Remain opens up a 19 per cent lead if voters believe they’ll be £500 better off staying in. This kind of research explains why David Cameron has threatened recession and higher food prices but also why the Vote Leave campaign ignores voters’ economic fears at its peril. While there are diehards on both sides, the floating voters who at their core want to leave are focused on their wallets and aren’t getting enough reassurance from the Brexit campaign. That may change after today because Vote Leave is finally set to enter the economic fray.
Up to now the Brexit battle has been David versus not just Goliath but an army of Goliaths. The PM has been using thousands of civil servants and Foreign Office diplomats, in liaison with scores of international bureaucrats, to concoct his blood-curdling warnings, but purdah has now arrived. Sir Jeremy Heywood, the cabinet secretary, is now required by law to stop Whitehall aiding the Remain camp.
Now that the battleground should be evened up, people need to hear the economic benefits of leaving and risks of remaining. Brexiteers could repeat the three killer questions posed by Andrew Lilico of the Europe Economics consultancy: If the EU is so good for growth, why has the US grown 6 per cent faster than the EU over the past decade? If it’s so good for jobs, why is Spanish unemployment at 21 per cent? If it’s so good for trade, why are deals with Japan, the US and Canada at risk of breaking down?
If we stay we will be chaining ourselves to the world’s slowest growing continent (except Antarctica). We risk losing our rebate and paying more money into the EU budget as punishment for threatening to “desert”, to quote the childish, menacing language of Jean-Claude Juncker, one of the EU’s many unelected male chiefs. And you don’t need to believe Turkey will join the EU to think immigration might skyrocket. When the world falls into recession hundreds of thousands from poorer EU nations may seek work in Britain, just at the moment that our own workers are most at risk of losing their jobs.
In terms of a positive economic case for leaving, let’s have a five-point pledge card of the kind Tony Blair and John Prescott once brandished, but this time with substance.
Pledge One: A new Office of Free Trade at the heart of government, charged with negotiating trade arrangements with growing economies. Rather than being at the back of any queue, Britain should be able to secure trade deals more quickly because we won’t be at the mercy of a veto from France or any of the slowest members of the 28-nation EU convoy.
Pledge Two: Use £1 billion of our contribution to the EU to set up a world-beating export support service. David Davis MP has talked of “an 0800 number where a small manufacturer in Lancashire can call Shanghai, Mumbai or Sao Paulo, and find out in English how to negotiate the import regulations, find a freight forwarder or hire a warehouse”.
Pledge Three: Allow sterling to fall a bit. Britain boomed after leaving the ERM in 1992 and a more competitive pound could provide what economists call an economic stabiliser.
Pledge Four: Invite Britain’s employers (large and small) to help draw up an intelligent immigration policy with the twin aims of a substantial reduction in the number of low-skilled immigrants from Europe but with more room for economy-boosting engineers from India, doctors from Australia or postgrad students from Canada.
Pledge Five: Build alliances with Volkswagen (which sold 223,784 cars in the UK last year); Audi (166,709); Mercedes (145,254), BMW (167,391); Italian fashion giants; the French wine industry; Spanish hoteliers and so on. They can’t afford to lose British customers. Make them our allies in renegotiating our relationship with the EU.
And, finally, Vote Leave must take the gloves off. On Monday the Tory minister Chris Grayling paid tribute to George Osborne’s economic management before criticising the chancellor’s scaremongering. Observing intra-Tory party courtesies won’t win a referendum that is much more important for Britain’s future than any general election. The PM certainly thinks so. On Peston on Sunday he all but admitted that he’d rather have a Labour government inside the EU than a Conservative government outside it.
Unleash David Davis, Nigel Farage, Gisela Stuart or anyone willing to go toe-to-toe with Mr Osborne. Every voter should be reminded that this chancellor and PM have failed to get rid of the deficit, failed to cut spending fairly and, irresponsibly, have failed to prepare a contingency plan to help the economy prosper in the event of Brexit. Because it can with a plan. The EU is stagnating because it is fundamentally dysfunctional. Twenty-eight members cannot agree how to solve the Eurozone crisis or how to respond to the continent’s other challenges. Let’s unchain ourselves from the sinking EU economy because we’re better off out.
Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
He also cites the unemployment levels in Spain - but there is no comparison to be made as to what they would be, without the EU. He also doens't talk about unemployment rates in other parts of the EU by comparison - our own VERY low rate for example.
Like so much of this whole thing - the points made are thin, and unbalanced.
Feckin frustrating.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
The amount of control that the UK and UK voters has over its own affairs as part of the EU is huge in comparison to the amount of control that Scottish voters have over their own affairs as part of the UK.
Yet apparently Scotland voting for self determination was a dreadful idea whereas the UK giving up a really tiny set of powers in comparison is completely unconscionable. It's bizarre.
In other words, Scotland voted to *continue* to cede sovereignty.....
Honestly, I have no concept of how people can think that telling Scotland that ceding sovereignty was OK because "blah" but that the UK should have it at all costs isn't hypocrisy.
The point about the referenda is that Scotland gives up far more control to the UK than the UK does to the EU, so it's hypocritical to insist that Scotland is better off in the UK but the UK would be better off out of the EU.
This is also why the opposite is not as true and why Scots will almost certainly want to leave the UK and rejoin the EU in the event of a Leave vote.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
We can generate our own lekky, brew our own beer, grow our own food. We control one major port and several lesser ones. Our borders are mainly marked by rivers so by control of the bridges we can control access.
Seriously: If you value it, take/fetch it yourself
The amount of control that the UK and UK voters has over its own affairs as part of the EU is huge in comparison to the amount of control that Scottish voters have over their own affairs as part of the UK.
Yet apparently Scotland voting for self determination was a dreadful idea whereas the UK giving up a really tiny set of powers in comparison is completely unconscionable. It's bizarre.
Well, firstly towns and countys aren't countries, but more importantly I'm not a believer in sovereignty at all costs.
I want Scotland in the UK and the UK in the EU. I'm pointing out the hypocrisy of those who used one argument 18 months ago and are now arguing from the other side of a weaker version of that argument.