O/T In or out

[howmanynames2pick]

A copy and paste statement.
If any or all are wrong please correct.
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You guys want some facts?........free of all the b##lshit? These are true, actual, no nonsense, straight up facts.

So you think the EU is good for British jobs then....? 😡

"OK,.. here's a short list of financial and industrial FUBARs from the EU.......

Cadbury moved factory to Poland 2011 with EU grant.
Ford Transit moved to Turkey 2013 with EU grant.
Jaguar Land Rover has recently agreed to build a new plant in Slovakia with EU grant, owned by Tata, the same company who have trashed our steel works and emptied the workers pension funds.
Peugeot closed its Ryton (was Rootes Group) plant and moved production to Slovakia with EU grant.
British Army's new Ajax fighting vehicles to be built in SPAIN using SWEDISH steel at the request of the EU to support jobs in Spain with EU grant, rather than Wales.
Dyson gone to Malaysia, with an EU loan.
Crown Closures, Bournemouth (Was METAL BOX), gone to Poland with EU grant, once employed 1,200.
M&S manufacturing gone to far east with EU loan.
Hornby models gone. In fact all toys and models now gone from UK along with the patents all with with EU grants.
Gillette gone to eastern Europe with EU grant.
Texas Instruments Greenock gone to Germany with EU grant.
Indesit at Bodelwyddan Wales gone with EU grant.
Sekisui Alveo said production at its Merthyr Tydfil Industrial Park foam plant will relocate production to Roermond in the Netherlands, with EU funding.
Hoover Merthyr factory moved out of UK to Czech Republic and the Far East by Italian company Candy with EU backing.
ICI integration into Holland’s AkzoNobel with EU bank loan and within days of the merger, several factories in the UK, were closed, eliminating 3,500 jobs
Boots sold to Italians Stefano Pessina who have based their HQ in Switzerland to avoid tax to the tune of £80 million a year, using an EU loan for the purchase.
JDS Uniphase run by two Dutch men, bought up companies in the UK with £20 million in EU 'regeneration' grants, created a pollution nightmare and just closed it all down leaving 1,200 out of work and an environmental clean-up paid for by the UK tax-payer. They also raided the pension fund and drained it dry.
UK airports are owned by a Spanish company.
Scottish Power is owned by a Spanish company.
Most London buses are run by Spanish and German companies.
The Hinkley Point C nuclear power station to be built by French company EDF, part owned by the French government, using cheap Chinese steel that has catastrophically failed in other nuclear installations. Now EDF say the costs will be double or more and it will be very late even if it does come online.
Swindon was once our producer of rail locomotives and rolling stock. Not any more, it's Bombardier in Derby and due to their losses in the aviation market, that could see the end of the British railways manufacturing altogether even though Bombardier had EU grants to keep Derby going which they diverted to their loss-making aviation side in Canada.
39% of British invention patents have been passed to foreign companies, many of them in the EU
The Mini cars that Cameron stood in front of as an example of British engineering, are built by BMW mostly in Holland and Austria. His campaign bus was made in Germany even though we have Plaxton, Optare, Bluebird, Dennis etc., in the UK. The bicycle for the Greens was made in the far east, not by Raleigh UK but then they are probably going to move to the Netherlands too as they have said recently.

Anyone who thinks the EU is good for British industry or any other business simply hasn't paid attention to what has been systematically asset-stripped from the UK. Name me one major technology company still running in the UK, I used to contract out to many, then the work just dried up as they were sold off to companies from France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, etc., and now we don't even teach electronic technology for technicians any more, due to EU regulations.

I haven't detailed our non-existent fishing industry the EU paid to destroy, nor the farmers being paid NOT to produce food they could sell for more than they get paid to do nothing, don't even go there.
I haven't mentioned what it costs us to be asset-stripped like this, nor have I mentioned immigration, nor the risk to our security if control of our armed forces is passed to Brussels or Germany.

Find something that's gone the other way, I've looked and I just can't. If you think the EU is a good idea,
1/ You haven't read the party manifesto of The European Peoples' Party.
2/ You haven't had to deal with EU petty bureaucracy tearing your business down.
3/ You don't care."

[Maxross]

Hi there Max Ross
I did say I stand to be corrected.
You have questioned me (fair enough ) but haven't corrected me.
The Staples example is a snapshot really.
They have a largely immigrant based workforce based in their own "village" a win win for them.
We are at present allowing enough people in per year to repopulate a city the size of Newcastle.
Will our infrastructure  accommodate this?
The Quadrant development was being objected to on similar arguments.  500 new homes ...poss got a chance but 1000's?
There is a lot of talk of whether Turkey will enter...up to a point they already have.  Weren't they given eu passports in exchange for taking in "refugees"?
I'm not Dr Dolittle but on immigration it's worth speaking to a red squirrel

Hi there Howmanynames2pick 

The burden is not on me to disprove your conjecture, but on you to provide proof to back it up.  Until you can provide some facts to back up the claim it will remain just that, a claim.  Once we've established the facts, then we can debate the rights or wrongs of that particular case.

You do bring up some other interesting points.  "Is our infrastructure strong enough to sustain this?".  No, of course it's not, that's why it makes absolutely no sense at all to have been making huge cuts to public services across the board for the past 6 years.  The state we find ourselves in is more to do with chronic underinvestment by a tory government than it is to do with immigration.  Immigration will without doubt exacerbate that issue but why the free pass for Austerity?  The warnings were loud and clear at the time but they ploughed on regardless.  Many of you here talk about being able to hold our own sovereign government to account for poor decisions, yet many of you seem reluctant to do so.

You can argue the rights and wrongs of immigration but the economic arguments are generally pretty strong.  We live in an a country with an ageing population.  That's a well known fact.  It's also well understood that pensions and care for our elderly is paid for via tax receipts from the working population.  If you have an increasing demographic of elderly people those costs are going to increase and you therefore need to increase the number of tax payers.  One of the quickest and easiest ways to do that is to increase immigration of working aged individuals.  I don't have the figures to hand, but there are plenty of them out there that show that economically at least, immigrants bring in more than they take out.  Socially there is a cost and that can be seen acutely in places like Boston.  Those social divisions are brought into even sharper focus when we have underinvestment in public services.

[Maxross]

A copy and paste statement.
If any or all are wrong please correct.
--------------------------------------------------------------

You guys want some facts?........free of all the b##lshit? These are true, actual, no nonsense, straight up facts.

So you think the EU is good for British jobs then....? 😡

"OK,.. here's a short list of financial and industrial FUBARs from the EU.......

Cadbury moved factory to Poland 2011 with EU grant.
Ford Transit moved to Turkey 2013 with EU grant.
Jaguar Land Rover has recently agreed to build a new plant in Slovakia with EU grant, owned by Tata, the same company who have trashed our steel works and emptied the workers pension funds.
Peugeot closed its Ryton (was Rootes Group) plant and moved production to Slovakia with EU grant.
British Army's new Ajax fighting vehicles to be built in SPAIN using SWEDISH steel at the request of the EU to support jobs in Spain with EU grant, rather than Wales.
Dyson gone to Malaysia, with an EU loan.
Crown Closures, Bournemouth (Was METAL BOX), gone to Poland with EU grant, once employed 1,200.
M&S manufacturing gone to far east with EU loan.
Hornby models gone. In fact all toys and models now gone from UK along with the patents all with with EU grants.
Gillette gone to eastern Europe with EU grant.
Texas Instruments Greenock gone to Germany with EU grant.
Indesit at Bodelwyddan Wales gone with EU grant.
Sekisui Alveo said production at its Merthyr Tydfil Industrial Park foam plant will relocate production to Roermond in the Netherlands, with EU funding.
Hoover Merthyr factory moved out of UK to Czech Republic and the Far East by Italian company Candy with EU backing.
ICI integration into Holland’s AkzoNobel with EU bank loan and within days of the merger, several factories in the UK, were closed, eliminating 3,500 jobs
Boots sold to Italians Stefano Pessina who have based their HQ in Switzerland to avoid tax to the tune of £80 million a year, using an EU loan for the purchase.
JDS Uniphase run by two Dutch men, bought up companies in the UK with £20 million in EU 'regeneration' grants, created a pollution nightmare and just closed it all down leaving 1,200 out of work and an environmental clean-up paid for by the UK tax-payer. They also raided the pension fund and drained it dry.
UK airports are owned by a Spanish company.
Scottish Power is owned by a Spanish company.
Most London buses are run by Spanish and German companies.
The Hinkley Point C nuclear power station to be built by French company EDF, part owned by the French government, using cheap Chinese steel that has catastrophically failed in other nuclear installations. Now EDF say the costs will be double or more and it will be very late even if it does come online.
Swindon was once our producer of rail locomotives and rolling stock. Not any more, it's Bombardier in Derby and due to their losses in the aviation market, that could see the end of the British railways manufacturing altogether even though Bombardier had EU grants to keep Derby going which they diverted to their loss-making aviation side in Canada.
39% of British invention patents have been passed to foreign companies, many of them in the EU
The Mini cars that Cameron stood in front of as an example of British engineering, are built by BMW mostly in Holland and Austria. His campaign bus was made in Germany even though we have Plaxton, Optare, Bluebird, Dennis etc., in the UK. The bicycle for the Greens was made in the far east, not by Raleigh UK but then they are probably going to move to the Netherlands too as they have said recently.

Anyone who thinks the EU is good for British industry or any other business simply hasn't paid attention to what has been systematically asset-stripped from the UK. Name me one major technology company still running in the UK, I used to contract out to many, then the work just dried up as they were sold off to companies from France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, etc., and now we don't even teach electronic technology for technicians any more, due to EU regulations.

I haven't detailed our non-existent fishing industry the EU paid to destroy, nor the farmers being paid NOT to produce food they could sell for more than they get paid to do nothing, don't even go there.
I haven't mentioned what it costs us to be asset-stripped like this, nor have I mentioned immigration, nor the risk to our security if control of our armed forces is passed to Brussels or Germany.

Find something that's gone the other way, I've looked and I just can't. If you think the EU is a good idea,
1/ You haven't read the party manifesto of The European Peoples' Party.
2/ You haven't had to deal with EU petty bureaucracy tearing your business down.
3/ You don't care."

Firstly, this doesn't start well with the usual emotional claptrap attached and no sources provided for any of the claims.  It also ends by informing me that if I don't agree, then I "don't care".  I'd like to point out though, a fact is generally a piece of information backed up by evidence, not some angry guy bashing his keyboard shouting "You guys want some facts?........free of all the b##lshit? These are true, actual, no nonsense, straight up facts".  I've often gone to the extent of going through every single claim on a case by case basis and found many claims to be found wanting, on this occasion, I can't really be arsed right now.  I've dropped in a few examples where the writer might have got his "facts" muddled though...

A lot of the "facts" thrown in there are decisions made by the U.K. government such as the Hinckley Point power station, which was widely seen as a sweetener deal Osborne did with the Chinese. In fact the general trend in Europe is to get rid of nuclear energy entirely.   

The privatisation of our bus services, airports and tendering them to foreign owners was all carried out by our own government.  As a great example of that, parts of our rail network are owned by state owned transport providers from the likes of Germany, France and Italy. 

If you read carefully through and analyse each claim it is quickly apparent that the writer has muddled EU and UK policy quite badly.  For example, how did the EU convince David Cameron to purchase a German made bus rather than a British one??

There's always been a rail plant at Derby, manufacturing trains, it was sold off to Bombardier in 1989 by the Tory's and we stopped making our own trains as part of a process of privatisations.  It's nothing to do with the EU.

To me, this is the last kind of poorly researched nonsense that you should be looking at if you want to get out of the EU.  There are strong arguments for Out, this in it's present format, isn't one of them.

[howmanynames2pick]

Interesting and erudite answers there Maxross..
This is why making a balanced decision is so difficult.
There are things we think we know and some we presume.

The things I believe I know are
We have 3 huge buildings in Brussels (parliament, court and commission)
Some elected some not making rules on our behalf
I voted to go into a common market of 7 or 9 nations.
For the most part we were pretty much on par wealth wise. Now we are subsidising some nations.
We now have nations that are bankrupt....
I did not envisage the leviathan it has become.
I did not foresee entering effectively a Federal State of Europe.
Most of manufacturing has now gone....I am not saying this is all the EU fault. Some lays at misgovernment, mismanagement and inflexible unions.
We pay out more than we get back?
Can that be right?
Also we only get back what they agree to give us!
It's madness.
We all applauded when USSR broke up and now we are being led down a United States of Europe


We must take control of our laws etc.
(I'm self employed and committees and petty rules grind my gears )

[Maxross]

Interesting and erudite answers there Maxross..
This is why making a balanced decision is so difficult.
There are things we think we know and some we presume.

The things I believe I know are
We have 3 huge buildings in Brussels (parliament, court and commission)
Some elected some not making rules on our behalf
I voted to go into a common market of 7 or 9 nations.
For the most part we were pretty much on par wealth wise. Now we are subsidising some nations.
We now have nations that are bankrupt....
I did not envisage the leviathan it has become.
I did not foresee entering effectively a Federal State of Europe.
Most of manufacturing has now gone....I am not saying this is all the EU fault. Some lays at misgovernment, mismanagement and inflexible unions.
We pay out more than we get back?
Can that be right?
Also we only get back what they agree to give us!
It's madness.
We all applauded when USSR broke up and now we are being led down a United States of Europe


We must take control of our laws etc.
(I'm self employed and committees and petty rules grind my gears )

Absolutely it's a tough decision.  That's why I think we have to make a determined effort to educate ourselves and not simply believe all we are told by Politicians, the Press and chain mail style posts on Facebook.  I'm personally feeling no hostility to anyone on here, I'm enjoying hearing your views and learning.  I think most U.K. citizens are hard working individuals like you and me who just want the best for themselves and their family's.  There is a bewildering amount of information being thrown at people and many simply don't know what to think. 

What we all need to remember though is that there are an awful lot of vested interests out there on both sides who don't necessarily have our best interests at heart.  That's why it's vital to consume our news from a wide variety of sources and try to stick to what we know to be fact.  It becomes much easier to discern what is fact and fiction and who is trying to mislead us when we have a decent understanding of the facts.  That doesn't even just apply to the EU referendum, it's just good practice.

The EU is not perfect, not by a long way and Democracy is it's Achilles heal.  We live in a different world to the one we did 50 years ago though and we have to accept that the world is a smaller place thanks to technology, travel etc and integration and trade between nations is a fact of life.  We cannot simply isolate ourselves and bury our heads in the sand pretending it's not happening.  Does that mean we accept the lack of democracy at the heart of the EU?  Absolutely not, I believe in order to make an integrated Europe a better place we have to stay and fight and mould it into what we want it to be.  I hear a lot about defeatism, but to me its defeatist to say as big a player as the UK cannot force change as part of the EU.  Of course we can. Defeatism for me is if we give up.

[green hats mate]

As mentioned by most voters the advice given by "experts" is contradictory .
Examining what the politicians tell us is easier .
For starters we know  Dave,s "no ifs , no buts, pledge on immigration  is in tatters .
Dave after a recent spell of ignoring the subject , but it back on his agenda in a recent interview .
When mentioning the various benefit cuts to immigrants he described them for what they are ,   PROPOSIALS .
Now the reason some Tory MP,s are shy of backing  Cameron is because they know after 5years  of DWP so called benefit reforms overseen by the government and IDS the system  created is in utter chaos causing hardship to the vulnerable .   They fear that the DWP  would not be fit to deliver further complex changes .

More tellingly many fear these Proposals will not be implemented as we fear Dave,s will be  stitched up by the EU .

[howmanynames2pick]

A heated debate without getting heated
Dyson and Joe Bamford say out
Sugar and Branson say in
Half of them are wrong......

The whole idea of the EU is a good one...however it's got out of hand.
One the "big houses" packs up and travels to Strasbourg once a month for a vote...waste of time and money (the Paxo tv show)

As you rightly say vested interests are a major stumbling block.
I've tried to work out the ones with guys mentioned earlier....not plainly evident

Trying to change from within is virtually impossible.
Vested interests and corruption being major stumbling blocks.

[Adam]

It strikes me that Brexiteers are willfully ignorant to the options that face us following a Leave vote. If we want to control migration - rightly or wrongly probably the number one concern of Leave votes - we will not have anything like access to the single market on the terms we do now. That would be somewhere between very bad and catastrophic for the economy. It'll mean something between tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of jobs being lost. Just look at what has happened to indicators of business confidence and investment in 2016 at the mere possibility of an exit.

Who will it be who loses their jobs? It certainly won't be people like Boris Johnson and Michael Gove - recessions don't hit Westminster. Could that be why they're so carefree about the prospect of exit? Could it also be one of the reasons why pensioners - whose incomes are not linked to economic performance in the way those of working age people are - are more prone to voting for leave?

[Ed Kandi]

Remain are resorting to ever more desperate tactics, wheeling out Gordon Brown hot on the heels of Blair and Major.
They keep banging on about tackling climate change together in the EU but far from producing cheap electricity, the EU has done the opposite with some of the highest costs worldwide as they are relying on expensive renewables.

Even the EU’s former commissioner for industry, Antonio Tajani has said that EU energy prices are creating an industrial massacre in industries, such as aluminium and steel.  Some of the large energy intensive industries have moved away from the EU to countries with cheaper energy prices, but unfortunately these countries have far less stringent emission regulations so the net global effect is to actually increase emissions...its all OK though because Remainians are only concerned with the EU, which they think exists in its own private ecosystem  :dan

[Ed Kandi]

Migration Watch are saying that, if we stay in the EU, immigration to the UK is likely to stay at around 250 000 a year for the next 20 years, not sure if they've included the Turkish contingent that Cameron appears to be working so hard for. 
Obviously there is no empirical evidence to base any of this on, its only Migration Watch after all and they are probably funded by the Brexiteers  :dan

[Ed Kandi]

Good to see Her Majesty the Queen enjoying her birthday celebrations yesterday with the good old Union Jack everywhere.
No sign of the blue flag with the gold stars, if there were any there I expect she had them all removed.   

[Ed Kandi]

On access to the single market - there are certain safeguards built into the EEA  Agreement which make it clear that, in the event of a Brexit, we can negotiate a bespoke deal for the UK during the two years it takes to withdraw from the EU. There are transitional protocols already in place in the Agreement for FoM (Switzerland and Liechtenstein), and there is no reason why the UK cannot negotiate its own transitional protocols invoking some of the existing safeguards.
The EU countries are not just going to stop trading with us on the 24th if we vote for a Brexit.  They are already trading with many countries outside of the EEA and we will join that list.
The balance of trade with the EU is in our favour to the tune of around 60 billion, so any tariffs that might apply will not adversely affect trade. According to some economists we would introduce similar tariffs on EU imports to this country, trade being a two way deal  8)

[Adam]

On access to the single market - there are certain safeguards built into the EEA  Agreement which make it clear that, in the event of a Brexit, we can negotiate a bespoke deal for the UK during the two years it takes to withdraw from the EU. There are transitional protocols already in place in the Agreement for FoM (Switzerland and Liechtenstein), and there is no reason why the UK cannot negotiate its own transitional protocols invoking some of the existing safeguards.
The EU countries are not just going to stop trading with us on the 24th if we vote for a Brexit.  They are already trading with many countries outside of the EEA and we will join that list.
The balance of trade with the EU is in our favour to the tune of around 60 billion, so any tariffs that might apply will not adversely affect trade. According to some economists we would introduce similar tariffs on EU imports to this country, trade being a two way deal  8)

But this is simply not the correct way of looking at it. Yes, we import a bit more form the rest of the EU than we export to it - so the absolute figures are roughly in balance. But our GDP is (relatively) small compared to the rest of the EU summed together, ergo this trade is a much higher proportion of - and more important to - our national income than that of the EU.

This is explained here.

Incidentally, being able to impose tariffs ourselves is not a good thing - it would just make goods more expensive here.

[Ed Kandi]

Its simply not the way someone who wishes to remain in the EU would look at it, but it is the way it looks if you wish to leave and you read the EEA Agreement.
There are currently 49 separate Protocols covering everything from transitional periods in FoM, safeguard mechanisms, abolition of technical barriers, and the development of cooperation etc...the EEA is open to negotiation, and with the UK being the fifth largest economy in the world we are in a strong position to negotiate.
We import far more than we export, and that further strengthens the UK's position.
Just as the obvious example, if Germany and France stopped selling cars in the UK it would cause serious problems to their economies, so that's not going to happen no matter what Cameron and Osborne would have us believe. 
The EU countries are concerned about a possible Brexit but, if it were to happen, they would be even more concerned about losing the UK market completely.

We need to start trading globally rather than just with the EU.  Cameron stated that the Chinese visit last year heralded a new golden era of trade that was vital for our economy.  If the EU was working so well the Chinese deal wouldn't be quite so 'vital' but the only country with a slower economic growth rate is Antarctica,  the Eurozone is about to implode, and the EU just has no way of dealing with the migrant crisis.

Cameron's attempt to renegotiate our position was a complete farce, all he got was the square root of zero.  The EU doesn't do change, your local MEP will confirm that   

 

[Adam]

Its simply not the way someone who wishes to remain in the EU would look at it, but it is the way it looks if you wish to leave and you read the EEA Agreement.
There are currently 49 separate Protocols covering everything from transitional periods in FoM, safeguard mechanisms, abolition of technical barriers, and the development of cooperation etc...the EEA is open to negotiation, and with the UK being the fifth largest economy in the world we are in a strong position to negotiate.
We import far more than we export, and that further strengthens the UK's position.
Just as the obvious example, if Germany and France stopped selling cars in the UK it would cause serious problems to their economies, so that's not going to happen no matter what Cameron and Osborne would have us believe. 
The EU countries are concerned about a possible Brexit but, if it were to happen, they would be even more concerned about losing the UK market completely.

We need to start trading globally rather than just with the EU.  Cameron stated that the Chinese visit last year heralded a new golden era of trade that was vital for our economy.  If the EU was working so well the Chinese deal wouldn't be quite so 'vital' but the only country with a slower economic growth rate is Antarctica,  the Eurozone is about to implode, and the EU just has no way of dealing with the migrant crisis.

Cameron's attempt to renegotiate our position was a complete farce, all he got was the square root of zero.  The EU doesn't do change, your local MEP will confirm that   

No, it wouldn't. Exports to the UK are 7% of German's total and less than that for France. Only for those superpowers Ireland and Cyprus are we more than 10% of total exports. The EU is over 40% of our exports.

The correct measure is the relative importance of that trade to your economy, not the level of it; for the same reason that if I win £1,000 it helps me a lot more than it would Richard Branson.