EU referendum

[Monkfish]

Regardless...the remain always asks for 'facts' well there they are in black and white

Without going through and checking is it facts? Or an opinion piece from one of the UK's most radical publications?

 

[Monkfish]

Without going through and checking is it facts? Or an opinion piece from one of the UK's most radical publications?

quick glance, seemed pretty factual but without any context ie bankrupt economies etc etc

 

[Busmo Funbag]

I'm not saying immigration is not an issue...it clearly is...an open door policy is ridiculous...even more so on an island...regardless of whether we leave or remain it needs to be addressed at some point...however...to a more educated voter it's a much bigger picture

I don't think thoughtful, informed voters are the issue whichever way they vote. I am sure there are lots of reasonable, intelligent voters who are voting out and I am sure they have solid arguments. What I will say though is that all the people I know who I generally consider to be (how do I put this nicely) relatively thick are voting out and all have stated "immigration" as their reason for doing so. When I have tried to have a meaningful conversation with any of them about the wider debate on the EU of even a meaningful debate on immigration for that matter, none of them are remotely interested in any bigger picture. I find the whole thing so alarming, we are making a huge decision and it is going to be the fucking legions of morons who essentially have the casting vote.

 

[Robanompivenov]

There is alot of narrow minded people mate.....In my opinion, the "leave" people are winning the argument so far because they using peoples.... passion, Pride and emotion to fuel their argument...This country would stop without an economy but no one will get passionate about trade tariffs, export and import figures......but things like immigration will get people fired up and thats why they are winning votes......any risk to the economy then turns into a side issue that the leaves feel we can deal with later.....

Exactly, they're preying on immigration as an arguement because it is such an emotive one for so many people. It brings the whole Remain or Leave debate into the gutter most of the time and for a lot of people it's the only issue they reference when voicing their view on Brexit. The amount of arguments I've had with colleagues voicing one, uber narrow minded view is quite depressing.

 

[IanBishopsHaircut]

Without going through and checking is it facts? Or an opinion piece from one of the UK's most radical publications?

Check those facts...I already have...or do you not want to because you can't see the wood for the trees...it's funny an opinion...seems a lot of people have made up their mind without even researching the pros and cons...it's more 'Well all my friends on facebook are voting X so it must be the right decision'

We need out of the EU...it is damaging to our country...just like the Euro would have been had we signed up...people need to wake up

 

[IanBishopsHaircut]

I don't think thoughtful, informed voters are the issue whichever way they vote. I am sure there are lots of reasonable, intelligent voters who are voting out and I am sure they have solid arguments. What I will say though is that all the people I know who I generally consider to be (how do I put this nicely) relatively thick are voting out and all have stated "immigration" as their reason for doing so. When I have tried to have a meaningful conversation with any of them about the wider debate on the EU of even a meaningful debate on immigration for that matter, none of them are remotely interested in any bigger picture. I find the whole thing so alarming, we are making a huge decision and it is going to be the fucking legions of morons who essentially have the casting vote.

Busmo...the vast majority of our country are morons...staying in or leaving...that fact still remains...it's up to the intelligent minority to make sure we make a decision that will benefit us all...knuckle draggers included

 

[Monkfish]

Check those facts...I already have...or do you not want to because you can't see the wood for the trees...it's funny an opinion...seems a lot of people have made up their mind without even researching the pros and cons...it's more 'Well all my friends on facebook are voting X so it must be the right decision'

We need out of the EU...it is damaging to our country...just like the Euro would have been had we signed up...people need to wake up

I assume you missed my last post before this! I am guessing as you post a Morning Star article you are not a natural Tory voter? My best guess is that if we do leave the EU its pretty much the end of the left, in fact I would expect the current Tory position to become the left of centre, I assume you see a different future?

 

[MillionMilesAway]

Exactly, they're preying on immigration as an arguement because it is such an emotive one for so many people. It brings the whole Remain or Leave debate into the gutter most of the time and for a lot of people it's the only issue they reference when voicing their view on Brexit. The amount of arguments I've had with colleagues voicing one, uber narrow minded view is quite depressing.

You mean it's Johnson and Farage, two multimillionaire chancer politicians with no strong stance. Four years ago Johnson was proEurope, wasn't he?

 

[IanBishopsHaircut]

I assume you missed my last post before this! I am guessing as you post a Morning Star article you are not a natural Tory voter? My best guess is that if we do leave the EU its pretty much the end of the left, in fact I would expect the current Tory position to become the left of centre, I assume you see a different future?

I'm a staunch unionist and have voted Labour all my life...I don't see it as the end at all...Leaving the EU will mean the government will have sole responsibility for their actions...If they fuck up...which they undoubtedly will...and are...there is nobody to blame but themselves...I'm not thinking short term here...I'm thinking long term...to say 'the end of the left' is a myth...all empires fall...as City fans we should all know that...

 

[IanBishopsHaircut]

You mean it's Johnson and Farage, two multimillionaire chancer politicians with no strong stance. Four years ago Johnson was proEurope, wasn't he?

Yet Cameron and Tony Blair are acceptable?

 

[MillionMilesAway]

Yet Cameron and Tony Blair are acceptable?

Well done. Where did I say that? Argued like Johnson or Farage would have done, by creating their own target to attack.

 

[EalingBlue2]

If left/labour voters had all the information in front of them...they would ALL vote leave

People think that a vote for leave is a vote for the right...which despite the idiots Farage & Boris...is not even remotely the case

THE EU is not defending workers’ rights as the Remainiacs never cease to claim.

In fact the EU is directly behind the huge assault on wages, pensions, collective bargaining and other workers’ rights across the EU, including the current battle going on in France.

Moreover it is being done in contravention of its own treaties in a typically bureaucratic and Byzantine way.

Officially, the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU, Article 153.5), explicitly states that the EU has no competences in the area of wage policy.

Yet this has not prevented EU institutions such as the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB) or even the European Council from demanding wage “moderation” across the EU.

The Broad Economic Policy Guidelines (BEPG), regularly produced by the Commission since 1993, always included demands for wage “moderation.”

However a new system of European economic governance began to emerge in 2010 with the adoption of the controversial, neoliberal Europe 2020 strategy, which included a yearly cycle of EU economic policy co-ordination.

This explicitly includes wage policy which is considered the most important adjustment variable for promoting “competitiveness.”

The legal basis for this new form of “authoritarian neoliberalism” as it has been called comprises above all the Euro Plus Pact adopted on the initiative of Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy in March 2011.

As a result, while EU competence over wage policy is still expressly forbidden, with the Euro Plus Pact wage policy intervention at EU level is now mystically allowed.

Now the EU issues annual policy recommendations for all member states which must then be transformed into national “reform programmes” whose effectiveness will again be assessed by the EU.

The annual economic co-ordination cycle was further developed in 2011 with the adoption of a package of five Regulations and one Directive.

The so-called “six-pack” contains two new major instruments in order to intensify economic policy co-ordination: one is the establishment of a new system of surveillance and the second is the introduction of fines on those countries that fail to comply.

The 2013 Treaty for Stability, Co-ordination and Governance (TSCG) further reinforced mechanisms to enable the EU to “co-ordinate and monitor the economic and budgetary policies of the member states.”

Each February the Commission publishes detailed reports on each country and their “progress.” This year’s report pointed out an “excessive” imbalance — too much public expenditure and a lack of competitiveness.

However, it recorded “substantial progress in the matter of reducing the cost of labour and retirement pension reform.”

On April 13, the French government adopted its EU National Programme of Reform (NPR) and acquiesced to EU demands for “giving more latitude to companies, to adapt wages and working hours to their economic situation” — ie huge changes to French employment law.

It is this that French workers are fighting against.

The scope for EU attacks on wages and collective bargaining expanded most rapidly in those crisis-hit countries which rely on “bailouts” from the EU and/or the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

In exchange for bailouts, these countries had to introduce “reforms” laid down either in so-called memorandums of understanding with the Troika of EU, European Central Bank (ECB) and IMF in the case of Greece, Ireland and Portugal, or in “stand-by arrangements” with the IMF, in the case of Hungary, Latvia and Romania.

These policy measures comprised attacks on wages, social services and public ownership and far-reaching labour market “reforms” including the abolition of systems of collective bargaining.

There is a simple reason for this — where there is no collective bargaining there is a decline in wages.

For the hard-line German member of the ECB Executive Board Joerg Asmussen, labour market “reforms” such as removing collective rights are even “the key if a country wishes to remain within the euro.”

As a result attacks on workers at national level are being driven by a new EU interventionism in an unprecedented way.

For example prior to the 2008 crisis, Romania had a legal system that supported dialogue between trade unions, employers and the government, resulting in widespread collective bargaining at all levels.

By 2011, at the behest of the EU, the government had scrapped all collective agreements and changed, without parliamentary debate, the main labour laws, making it impossible to have cross-sectoral collective agreements.

The recession was thus exploited by the EU and a compliant government in Bucharest as a pretext to rip the guts out of the existing industrial relations system and lower labour costs.

Even the EU-funded European Trade Union Confederation general secretary Bernadette Segol identified two fronts where collective bargaining is coming under attack: the decentralisation of bargaining and allowing employers to ignore trade union bodies in favour of non-union bodies.

Addressing the theme of Social Europe, she points out that “policies that are being implemented are attacking industrial relations systems, putting pressure on wages, weakening public services and weakening social protection.

“These are the core aspects of the social model,” confirming the view of many observers that the model is now dead — if indeed it was ever alive at all.

What is going against these is a simple economic reality.

Our government and economic model is based on a world where people work on average 18-65 and die around 70-75 in many cases people died before 65 and worked before 17 and on a world where most things couldn't be cured. Peoples whole expectation about what to expect from the government and what to expect in old age is based on this. Now people are expecting the don't have to work till 21 or more , still hope to retire at 65 but may well live beyond 100, they won't only live 30 years more but during that time will have more treatment and more expensive treatment .

This has been held together by a Ponzi scheme, as long as there is some economic growth, as long as immigration keeps going up and bringing in younger tax payers and as long as we can kick the can down the road till the next election everyone thinks all is ok. This demographic bomb is like the Ponzi scheme that was mortgage backed securities x 10 and no one wants to admit it.

The only answer is to either make very hard calls, compulsorily double pension contributions in business and increase taxes so that people are forced to significantly cut their disposable income and give some chance that the future doesn't mean total bankruptcy or keep hoping immigration will keep things going another 5 years but remembering that proportions have to stay the same so the number goes up and up and up.

The rights solution if they can no longer use immigration is no doubt to just let the poor die when they get to old age like happens in much of the world, the lefts answer will have to be higher tax and creating a true social contract but that may not work due to people leaving the country.

This is without the pension liabilities for government workers etc.

So what do our politicians do, they do what has always worked, let's blame the French and the Germans, lets kid the population, lets pretend their is an easy answer and let's fuck this country over permanently because we will still be alright and we're old enough that the problem of a bankrupt Britain can be someone else's.

So much hypocrisy on this right and left, when the only solution is to cast the poor adrift, an historic world changing technological breakthrough for energy or we all contribute much more or genuine revolution.

All the rest is shit sent to confuse people and get the population arguing about nothing just so no one has to confront reality

 

[Monkfish]

I'm a staunch unionist and have voted Labour all my life...I don't see it as the end at all...Leaving the EU will mean the government will have sole responsibility for their actions...If they fuck up...which they undoubtedly will...and are...there is nobody to blame but themselves...I'm not thinking short term here...I'm thinking long term...to say 'the end of the left' is a myth...all empires fall...as City fans we should all know that...

Then I think your making an awful mistake. Of course I am not saying its the end of the left, just that there will be such a surge to the right that the current Tory position will become the new left

 

[EalingBlue2]

M

I agree mate.....a couple of elderly people I know, were talking about the vote yesterday and the only reason they gave for wanting to leave was immigration....nothing else mattered...found this really interesting and shows some of the votes will be a "Generation thing"....as most of those elderly people were very comfortable financially and dont have a mortgage, debts or a job as they were retired, I guess the impact of leaving would alot less for them, so immigration is the "only" thing that mattered....again...trying to keep my opinion out of these comments and just passing on what I what they said...

Which sums up the world today people are more than happy to fuck the economy, the countryside , the planet as long as it is their kids not them who have to deal with it. Baby boomer generation has taken centuries of wealth from the world and will leave Gen Y and the millennialist the prospect of working till 85

 

[EalingBlue2]

I'm a staunch unionist and have voted Labour all my life...I don't see it as the end at all...Leaving the EU will mean the government will have sole responsibility for their actions...If they fuck up...which they undoubtedly will...and are...there is nobody to blame but themselves...I'm not thinking short term here...I'm thinking long term...to say 'the end of the left' is a myth...all empires fall...as City fans we should all know that...

If we fuck up the EU and cause it to collapse it will be irrelevant, the hit that could cause could put the global economy back more than 08 did and with nothing on the balance sheet austerity will be the only thing that keeps the government going and not a policy choice

 

[The Doctor]

I agree mate....I've already stopped posting most of the reports I find because I know most have already formed an opinion and they feel everything else must be a lie....but as you say, I guess this thread/debate is good for those that still dont know...

Not only formed an opinion but already voted due to pending holiday....... Don't really understand why I still watch the debates..... But hey ho the football is now here!

 

[cibaman]

If the weight of bets was 75% leave then leave would be 1/3 or similar and remain would be 5/2 it's as simple as that - the bookies model wins because they broadly shape the market based on £ and that gives the odds, occasionally wild differences between bookies are accounted for but its a no lose game.

It is possible 75% of bets placed are on leave but only about 20% of £ placed is on leave and that could be because the average remain bet is approx 15X the size of the average out bet. Reflecting professional money vs the man on the street

The bookies are also factoring in the "Don't knows". Most of the headline polling figures exclude "Don't knows". The bookies will know that historically "Don't knows" end up voting heavily for the status quo. So punters are betting on "Leave" because they think they're getting very generous odds when in fact the headline polls are misleading.

 

[IanBishopsHaircut]

Then I think your making an awful mistake. Of course I am not saying its the end of the left, just that there will be such a surge to the right that the current Tory position will become the new left

The EU has always been Anti Union Mr Fish...I was always going to vote out...it's a capitalist boys club who favours the employer rather than the employee...if you want to stand up for workers rights you can only vote leave...socialist worker says the same

Vote to Exit Left

https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/42232/Fight+to+exit+left+after+vote+on+EU+is+called

 

[Pino]

Another point on the uselessness of the Brexit campaign and my cynical mind thinks ‘by design’.

Why aren’t the Brexit campaigners mentioning this:

http://johnhelmer.net/?p=15803

Is it possible that the Politicians on both sides and especially the Brexiteers arn’t aware that the sanctions against Russia are deemed illegal by the European Court?

How much money has been lost?

It will be a pretty close vote, possibly “massaged” by the postal element, maybe from certain Labour inner city areas with traditional third world voting systems. But anyway within 1% or 2% either way. But don’t expect a clean vote.

If it is “leave” we can expect years of procrastination and back sliding.

If it is “remain” we can expect smug triumphalism followed by a crisis (next two years) as the EU implodes via a new and possibly more dangerous recession than 2008. Another vote? Depends…

For me there is only one issue, which is can we remove the people who are making our laws? Everything flows from that one single issue.

If we can’t then we are living in a dictatorship and are no better than N.Korea, China etc, is that what we are really prepared to live under?

 

[cibaman]

I agree mate.....a couple of elderly people I know, were talking about the vote yesterday and the only reason they gave for wanting to leave was immigration....nothing else mattered...found this really interesting and shows some of the votes will be a "Generation thing"....as most of those elderly people were very comfortable financially and dont have a mortgage, debts or a job as they were retired, I guess the impact of leaving would alot less for them, so immigration is the "only" thing that mattered....again...trying to keep my opinion out of these comments and just passing on what I what they said...

In defense of us old fogies, there is also a bigger "disillusionment" factor among the older generation. Many will have voted to join in 1976 and have since seen the Common Market turn into something completely different to what was promised. Whereas for younger voters their opinions are less likely to be tainted by the experience of the past 40 years, are likely to be more idealistic.