EU referendum

EU referendum

  • In

    Votes: 503 47.9%

  • Out

    Votes: 547 52.1%
  • Total voters
    1,050
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IanBishopsHaircut said:
As a remain voter do you really want to be bringing up education?

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/apr/17/england-10000-gap-primary-school-places
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That's not really the quality of education though - it's staffing, and yes it's an issue.
Conversely though, all those teachers who ARE in jobs teaching in schools with sizeable percentage of immigrants - do you think they'll remain in jobs when the numbers go down?
Do you think a UK government will say 'Great, instead of 30 in a class, we can now have 25' or do you think they'll say 'oh, we don't need as many teachers now'.
Worse still, if they're all academies and much more financially driven and responsible for their budgets in their entirety, will the governers keep the surplus teachers on?
 
cibaman said:
The time to press on with the fiscal and political was after the Euro crisis in 2009. Germany and various EU bureaucrats proposed fiscal union but received only lukewarm support for it, not even from France. And, as the Leavers have quite rightly pointed out, Euroscepticism has increased across Europe since then.

My guess is that when the next Euro crisis occurs there will be further calls for fiscal and political union and, again, it just will not happen. Eventually they'll accept reality and start the process of an orderly unravelling of the Euro. By 2030 we'll all have national currencies again.
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What makes you think fiscal and political union won't happen? In that statement you have effectively said that the Eurozone and by extension the eu will continue to stagnate for the next 15 years - how do you propose to kick start growth without fiscal union? Are you going to continue to ask for ever increasing contributions from the larger economies to subsidise the majority of weaker eu members? The ballot box will not allow you to do this, this is the conundrum before us, we are asking national governments to protect our own economic interests like we always have yet paradoxically the very currency that is there to represent the national states bares little or no reflection to the country using it -

An orderly unravelling of the euro will be anything but orderly as we will see the greatest flight of capital to Switzerland in recorded history since the creation of money. What happened in Greece and Cyprus would look like a wet dream compared to the runs on banks we would see in Europe (even in Germany).
 
steviemc said:
I think there's little hope that we'll see serious reform - certainly not serious reform that will benefit the UK. Since the inception of this supposed idealistic union the UK's popularity and swaying power has been in gradual decline. Too many different countries have different ideals and needs to enable serious reform.

Like it or not, we are often the unpopular kid at the party in this club. Despite our supposed economic strength, any chance we may have had of having a large hand in navigating a path for the future of this union was removed a long time ago.
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Sadly, I agree with you. I can't see it changing very easily (if at all). Then it becomes a question of 'can you live with that anyway'? I think I can - for now. I know many can't.
I still firmly believe that for those who can't live with it - withdrawing will still cost us dearly and that price isn't being fully recognised in political debates. I know people want to take control of our own laws (for instance) but if you asked them 'you can have that, but 1 in 30 of you lose your job' - you might get a different response.

The '1 in 30' is just an example!
 
FanchesterCity said:
That's not really the quality of education though - it's staffing, and yes it's an issue.
Conversely though, all those teachers who ARE in jobs teaching in schools with sizeable percentage of immigrants - do you think they'll remain in jobs when the numbers go down?
Do you think a UK government will say 'Great, instead of 30 in a class, we can now have 25' or do you think they'll say 'oh, we don't need as many teachers now'.
Worse still, if they're all academies and much more financially driven and responsible for their budgets in their entirety, will the governers keep the surplus teachers on?
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We literally cannot build enough schools to cope at the moment...and it's only going to get worse...I work in education...I know
 
hgblue said:
Ffs, it's the gross figure, the net figure is the gross figure minus the rebate and the proportion of our contribution that is spent here. If someone asks you what your salary is you tell them the gross figure (eg 50 grand per year). Everybody knows there are deductions and that isn't the actual amount you receive. Do people really not understand this? Personally I prefer to use the net figure because it's a large enough figure to make the point anyway, but remainers complaining about misleading stats after their side used the '3 millions jobs depend on EU membership' and 'each household will be 4300 quid worse off by 2030' lines. Is really a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
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When I watch the Leavers ads (much more entertaining than the Remainers), there seems to be a very clear message that if we weren't paying £350m pw to the EU all of that dosh would be available to invest in new hospitals. Not a net figure, all of it.
 
IanBishopsHaircut said:
We literally cannot build enough schools to cope at the moment...and it's only going to get worse...I work in education...I know
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I don't disagree - I did say it IS a real problem.
But it's also true that a lot of schools have absorbed immigration (to the point where they really can't absorb more as you say). But if there's a swing to reducing those numbers, there will be shrinkage again, and there's no way schools are going to keep all the teachers they took on to cover that expansion. So all that immigration whilst being a pain to deal with, has been dealt with by creating jobs. But you're right, we can't deal with it any more - we're over subscribed.
 
FanchesterCity said:
I don't disagree - I did say it IS a real problem.
But it's also true that a lot of schools have absorbed immigration (to the point where they really can't absorb more as you say). But if there's a swing to reducing those numbers, there will be shrinkage again, and there's no way schools are going to keep all the teachers they took on to cover that expansion. So all that immigration whilst being a pain to deal with, has been dealt with by creating jobs. But you're right, we can't deal with it any more - we're over subscribed.
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Again you're thinking short term...yes it may be that a few jobs may go...but ultimately...would you not prefer a better education for our children with smaller classes and higher standards?

I would choose that all day every day
 
AlgarveBlu said:
What makes you think fiscal and political union won't happen? In that statement you have effectively said that the Eurozone and by extension the eu will continue to stagnate for the next 15 years - how do you propose to kick start growth without fiscal union? Are you going to continue to ask for ever increasing contributions from the larger economies to subsidise the majority of weaker eu members? The ballot box will not allow you to do this, this is the conundrum before us, we are asking national governments to protect our own economic interests like we always have yet paradoxically the very currency that is there to represent the national states bares little or no reflection to the country using it -

An orderly unravelling of the euro will be anything but orderly as we will see the greatest flight of capital to Switzerland in recorded history since the creation of money. What happened in Greece and Cyprus would look like a wet dream compared to the runs on banks we would see in Europe (even in Germany).
Click to expand...

Its just too difficult. The 27 states will never be able to agree on the composition of the necessary institutions and voting procedures to make it a reality. It could only be achieved by a dictatorship.
 
cibaman said:
When I watch the Leavers ads (much more entertaining than the Remainers), there seems to be a very clear message that if we weren't paying £350m pw to the EU all of that dosh would be available to invest in new hospitals. Not a net figure, all of it.
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It's a figure they can't back down from now, it's just become the de facto figure even in the pubs!
I noticed Boris seemed to be adjusting some of his phraseology the other night... instead on 'on the NHS' - he started adding 'or where necesssary' (paraphrased).
Leave campain advertising is always going to be more creative, they've got a fairly blank canvas to paint on - it's the future and it's bright and CAN be something...
The remain campaign has a real uphill battle as the public perception of the EU is at best boring and at worst, incompetent, dictatorial and corrupt. The benefits of the EU however large or small happen intangibly in our daily lives and largely go unnoticed.
 
BigJoe#1 said:
I could be tempted to call you Xenophobe after a comment like that - but that would be extremely judgemental and I wouldn't dream of actually saying it!
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I could be tempted to call you a golfer, since that would have absolutely fuck all to do with anything you've said as well.
 
FanchesterCity said:
SME's free from EU regulation??? lol

If you export to the EU now, you have one set of standards you have to adhere too - make the right product and you can sell to all EU countries.
Let them try selling a product to the USA who will require one set of standards, and China (good luck with that) who'll expect a different set, and Japan who'll expect yet another set.

Selling to disparate nations means more testing, more variations, and more regulations for products. The EU regs ARE a hurdle you have to get past like all other nations, but it's only one set for all 23 nations).
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Like the two pin plug versus the 3 pin plug.
 
kevin horlocks wand said:
Chipmunk is the same person, surely people have worked that out....
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Kevin sherlock wand get's it wrong again.

EDIT, just checking his profile, he joined in 2006 and me in 2008 but in reality we (I?) am one person who had the great foresight to predict this referendum and this heated debate and set up our accounts (sorry, my accounts, I keep forgetting myself) 10 years ago, in readiness.

Er, no.
 
IanBishopsHaircut said:
Again you're thinking short term...yes it may be that a few jobs may go...but ultimately...would you not prefer a better education for our children with smaller classes and higher standards?

I would choose that all day every day
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Everybody would prefer a better education.
Smaller classes don't MAKE a better education (but there's a correlation, of course). A lack of immigrants doesn't MAKE a better education either. It's not the volume of children we're trying to educate, it's the mismatch between number of children and the available resources we have.
I entirely hear what you're saying and yes, we just can't sustain large volumes of immigration without scaling the number of schools and teachers. The 'quality' of education is another matter. I would readily accept that sometimes, in trying to scale up, the quality of education can suffer... rushing through young teachers, cutting corners etc. But the scaling up isn't causal.

The most immediate fix is as clear as day 'limit immigration to numbers we can handle'. I would actually suggest THAT is the short term measure though... turn off the stopcock! The longer term measure is to decide on how much immigration we want / need and implement controls to regulate the flow according to our needs.

The EU won't let us control the flow (for EU citizens, which is a problem) but euqally we've demonstrated that we ourselves aren't competent enough to regulate the flow anyway, because we've failed to do so for the migrants outside of the EU who WHERE under our (lack of) control!
 
I think a lot of the out camp are quite deluded(again so sure like they have a crystal ball and know we will definitely not end up worse off?) and have fooled themselves into believing a fairy-tale ending that was never likely to be. I fully expect we will soon find out if the out vote wins how full of shit some of the statements have been... give it more time they will say... a little more time... then - I'm retired now what you asking me for? At least a lot of them mean well(we all want whats best for the UK at the end of the day we shouldn't lose sight of that and nobody can say for sure what that is despite how some protest that they know it all... you just don't none of us do, there's a large degree of uncertainty) but there's a large proportion of Xenophobes and Racists dare I say it who are voting for the wrong reasons, not saying all Brexit supporters are this way inclined but the BNP and National Front types have been using this as a platform to worm their way into people's thinking IMO, we know automatically which way they are voting and the reason for it.

I quite like hearing what Micheal Moore thought of it, we are an Island but we shouldn't be trying to build up a wall we are part of Europe part of a free world, we shouldn't want to be a little America we'll never compete in that sense IMO. We should want a strong Europe and be part of that(if any countries are pulling more weight though we should be one of them that's quite clear...this is a genuine question is there an equal say or have countries like Germany been given more control?), if it is true they haven't given us due respect or as much of a say as they should have done if they do need us that much... lets ask for that first, lets ask for assurances before we decide to remain and we may just get them. I haven't been watching a lot of it but hasn't it been left to our own politicians to sway the public? Couldn't we have got the EU heads(those are the people who need to do the convincing to us surely?) to have a debate with our politicians if they really need us that much they could have heard what our public thinks needs to change for the majority of us to be happy to remain.
 
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Has anyone considered the option of staying in the EU and implementing illegal (or at least against EU rules) immigration controls? I am not suggesting it per se, but I wonder if it's been considered? The French seem perfectly happy to pick and choose the EU rules they want to adhere to and I am wondering if it would be so dreadful if we did the same? They could fine us of course, but (a) we could say we aren't paying and (b) might it be worth the cost anyway?
 
FanchesterCity said:
The most immediate fix is as clear as day 'limit immigration to numbers we can handle'. I would actually suggest THAT is the short term measure though... turn off the stopcock! The longer term measure is to decide on how much immigration we want / need and implement controls to regulate the flow according to our needs.

The EU won't let us control the flow (for EU citizens, which is a problem) but euqally we've demonstrated that we ourselves aren't competent enough to regulate the flow anyway, because we've failed to do so for the migrants outside of the EU who WHERE under our (lack of) control!
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That's the whole leave point right there

Nobody is saying bring up the drawbridge except the right wing dickheads

All we are saying is...turn down the tap a little...make it harder for people to just come waltzing in...this country was built on immigrants...I'm proud of how multicultural we are...however we are a small country with limited resources and it doesn't matter how many good intentions you have...there's a time where things will reach critical mass...that time is near
 
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