EU REFERENDUM

Detention for you then young man.

Do make sure the handcuffs are fur-trimmed, there's a good fellow.

I do wonder about you at times!!
Anyway..Dont worry about the comfy handcuffs..The E.U have produced about 728 health,safety and comfort directives for their use,design and manufacture.
The 1000`s of regulations implemented by the European Commission's own Scientific Committee on fur have banned its use specifically on handcuffs.. I think unless you would pay a huge unacceptable tariff...Forget it!!!

There you go you see, another reason to leave the EU: its banned fur trimmed handcuffs!

The true cost of the EU on British jobs:

• £130 million - The value of fish dumped annually under the EU's Common Fisheries Policy. The Common Fisheries Policy costs Britain more than £3.7 billion per year caused through the EU depriving the UK of its fishing grounds.
• Dr Lee Rotherham: 'The EU's Common Fisheries Policy has cost British coastal communities 115,000 jobs'. In 1970 there were 21,443 fishermen in the UK, by 2012 that figure had been cut back to just 12,445 because of the EU's CFP.
• The Royal Mail is now sold because of EU Postal Directive 2008/6/EC.
• Before the UK entered the EEC/EU, unemployment stood at 2.6% - it is now 5.4%.
• Europhiles say we must stay in the EU to save jobs. But we have seen thousands of jobs go in Fishing, Ford, Steel etc whilst being in EU?
• The high energy costs of EU environmental legislation have closed down the UK's aluminium smelters and is threatening the cement industry.
• Ford Transit factory in Southampton closed down causing job losses because Ford moved to (non EU) Turkey with the help of £80m EU funding.
• In 2007 the Peugeot factory in Ryton, Coventry closed down (2,300 job losses) and moved to Slovakia with the help of £78m EU funding.
• Jaguar Land Rover stops making its Defender in the UK because of EU laws on fuel emissions. It is now set to be built abroad outside the EU.
• In 2010, RBS (British taxpayer owned) lent money to Kraft to buy Cadbury's who then moved the jobs out of the UK to Poland.
• Tate & Lyle Sugars London says its production has fallen due to the EU's regulation which favours beet sugar rather than cane sugar.
• Britain's remaining ferry service to Scandinavia (DFDS Harwich to Esbjerg) ended in 2014 after 140 years service because of an EU Directive.
• The EU's Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive has caused 25% of our Hedge Fund Industry to leave London to Switzerland/Singapore.
• The Michelin tyre factory in Ballymena, County Antrim, is to close in 2018 with the loss of 860 jobs due to high EU energy costs.
• '3000 police cars foreign made'. Police say they are powerless to offer contracts to British car factories because of EU procurement rules.
• Lincolnshire Council refused to give a tax break to Tata Steel saying a discount on their business rates would be illegal under EU law.
• Tata Steel cuts 720 jobs blaming 'cripplingly high electricity costs' caused by EU Green Taxes. (Guardian, 16/07/2015)
• Obama is trying to stop Brexit because it means the UK won't be involved in TTIP.
• The EU's Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) will see the privatisation of the NHS.
• TTIP will bring European disintegration, unemployment and instability. (Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University)
• TTIP will lead to the direct loss of over 680,000 jobs in the EU. (Report commissioned by the EU from the CEPR in London)
• €114 million is spent every year to move the EU Parliament between Brussels and Strasbourg every month. (The European Court of Auditors)
• Want to help the poor in developing countries? Scrap the EU's Common Agricultural Policy.
• The EU imposes heavy taxes on imports from Africa stopping African countries trading their way out of poverty.
• Britain handed control of British food regulation to the EU - Regulation (EC) 178/2002.
• By allowing a open door to thousands of unskilled EU migrants we are now forced to turn away skilled migrants from other parts of the world.
• Housing is affected by mass immigration since an increase in demand without a increase in supply will drive up both rents and house prices.

Other factoids:

• Only 14.7% of economists oppose Brexit. The Britain Stronger in Europe campaign made a big play out of “nine out of ten economists” apparently warning against Brexit this week. The figure was based on a self-selecting Ipsos MORI survey of economists from the Royal Economic Society and the Society of Business Economists. But BSE had some fun with the figures… The survey was sent out to 3,818 economists. Only 639 (or 16.7%) replied, of which 561 said Brexit would be bad for the economy. That’s just 14.7% of the total number of economists contacted. So rather than nine out of ten economists warning against Brexit, it was actually closer one in seven. Not that you’d know that from their cheeky statistics trickery…
• The Department of Business has estimated that it will cost the UK £22bn to meet the EU's 2020 energy targets.
• If the UK fails to recycle 50 per cent of household waste by 2020 it could face fines from Brussels in excess of £500,000 a day.
• Energy prices in the EU increased by 40% from 2006 to 2014.
• EU renewable energy rules will double electricity bills by 2020.
• The 100 most costly EU Directives will cumulatively cost the UK a staggering £184 billion by 2020. (Open Europe).
• The EU landed Britain with a £15m fine because it ruled that the UK did not charge enough duty on shipments of garlic from China.
• Britain will pay £100 million a year more to the European budget over the next five years. (Telegraph: 03/12/2014)
• The UK contributes €570k to the EU's border agency (Frontex) despite not being a member of the Schengen Area.
• 'EU fines UK £642m for poor accounting'. While the European Court of Auditors has failed to give the EU a clean bill of health for 19 years.

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Ros Altman is an unelected government minister - she is a member of the House of Lords. She tweeted this yesterday:

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true. but she also apologized and was forced to clarify. Probably just as well..

"Just want to apologise if my tweet on MPs came over badly. Of course MPs there to serve the people. That's what democracy all about"

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/ros-altman-brexit-mps_uk_575a9232e4b00691936563b9

I'll make it plain in case of any doubt: I've always believed our future is infinitely likely to be a better one as a leading force within the EU rather than leaving, isolating ourselves and sitting on the sidelines.

Letting our biggest trading partner make the rules that we will have to follow, with no say, makes no sense to me. Trying to be as objective and rational as I can (and none of us can really be) it also seems to me that by far the strongest body of evidence available to us supports such a view.

In fact I am rather passionate about it as many will know, and I've spoken with a lot of people about why they want to vote out and its nearly always on some emotional issue like migrants with, as they often admit, no real understanding of the bigger and probably far more important issues on which our futures could well much more critically depend. When we then chat in some detail there are typically one of two reactions - I'm not interested, don't care, that's the only thing that matters to me, end of discussion. I ought to respect that view of course; at least it's a simple approach to what is certainly a complex situation. I can understand it even if it seems a bit closed minded

As has been said, this is not a mid term protest vote against Cameron. This is really serious.

However, I've also had lots of feedback from people after a few minutes of chat about some of these wider issues, saying they had not seen things that way and that it was at least sensible to reconsider. Some people say this leaves them more confused than ever because they've heard so many stories which sort of persuade them in their hearts that maybe we should leave, but which their mind is still questioning!

Although I know many probably won't read all of this, since it is rather long , I also know there are lots of thoughtful people out there who are genuinely still seeking balanced viewpoints.

I thought it worthwhile putting down some of the points which people have said made them think more widely.

So, on trade, it seems to me we should ask ourselves "why on earth would the rest of Europe gives us a 'sweetheart' deal as we are promised by Brexit because we are 'different' to other countries not in the EU, being such a large economy". Really? - it seems rather presumptive and not a bit arrogant maybe? No other country has even done such a deal and on the reaction so far from our current EU partners on a possible exit the opposite is more likely. Only 2 countries of the 27 have a positive trade surplus with us; we are far more reliant on exports to the EU than they are on imports to us, so it is surely far more likely they will give us a hard time.

Their motivation will surely be not to encourage any other EU member to try the same thing, in particular, because of real fears this may precipitate a EU collapse. Many may say, "Good thing too", but let's just think about that for a moment.

This is exactly what our enemies in ISIS and Russia are working for, they desperately want to see a fragmented Europe, torn apart by bickering so they can pursue their territorial agendas less hindered by a united EU which is not doing a bad job of at least attempting to limit their aggression.

Do we really want to risk the huge,and potentially dire, security consequences of that for ourselves and the world, because we want that nebulous thing called 'control'. It's debatable whether any such control would actually be effective anyway - as someone sagely said, 'the sovereignty ship sailed years ago' - but even if it were, we are surely not going to very popular causing so much unknown risk for everyone? Sure, no one knows for certain how the EU will react, but isn't an adverse one far more probable?

Added to that, everyone agrees that we will have a period of financial upheaval for at least a couple of years or so. So, let's just think about that - the world is already in a parlous state financially, but if we vote out because we think it is far more important we do our own thing, we are effectively saying we don't really care about you lot and that we are adding to that suffering, and yet we still think everyone will say it's OK UK, we understand, and we will still give you lots of favourable trade deals?

Surely, as a leading world economy we should not be abrogating our leadership responsibilities in this way and it is certainly not the way to make friends and influence people - are other countries really likely not to hold that against us, wouldn't they have some justification to actually give us a hard time, not a favourable one? It seems at least quite likely, arguably even inevitable?

Then there is the extraordinary achievement of being one of 28 countries proving that the original founding vision of what is now the EU that a peaceful Europe, unprecedented for centuries, can be built, and how successfully we have done that together, being probably the most powerful reason of all for staying in. How can anything be more important to us ordinary people than the sustained peace that the EU has unquestionably given us for over 60 years?

People then say, maybe, but we don't want countries like Turkey and Albania also coming in with all their problems - but on this peace principle at least we should surely consider that yes, we certainly do! All the Balkan countries that used to squabble so dreadfully have reformed into stable democratic countries in the EU now maturely sharing their sovereignty because their people see the advantages of peace and trade!

Surely if we can get countries like Turkey to reform in the same way, as they will have to if they are ever allowed to join the EU, is something we should all be working for together, rather than take notice of the pessimistic warnings of the out campaign who take the current situation with Turkey - who are not in the EU or anywhere near it - to warn us of the consequences, is to totally miss the real point of what could be gained and how we could contribute substantially to that gain for us, Europe and the rest of the world if we stay in!

So for the debate to become more about emotional topics like migration, which is of course a big and important topic (even though exit campaigners are shamefully misleading us about it anyway), but which are in no way the real long term strategic reasons on which we should be considering our vote, is pretty scary. What's worse, the evidence strongly suggests that even when we do get 'control' if we leave, which in theory we will of course, the numbers will not be significantly different anyway (Australia which has the much vaunted Brexit campaign's point system actually have had more immigrants as a result).

Then we should consider that the growing and huge body of professional input from all quarters such as economists, NHS chiefs, business leaders, security chiefs, other heads of states - these are not all 'enemies' of ours threatening us as many seem to think, but most simply want us to do the right thing - overwhelmingly of the opinion that an exit vote would be bad for us, Europe and the rest of the world, is one we also surely ignore at our peril.

Instead we have people saying they want out on the back of speeches from proven misleading figures (and widely strongly condemned at that) from leading exit campaigners like Gove and Johnson deliberately skewing facts, but who many believe and listen to because they repeat back to us the things we want to hear and which support our existing opinions. Although these are often built on real personal experience of course, they are also nearly always just anecdotal and wrong; not actually reflective of the real facts of the overall situation. We should surely instead question their reasons for telling us this stuff?

It's a well known human trait, it's happening with Trump in the US for the same reason, he gets away with clearly outrageous unsubstantiated claims because he knows it chimes with people's fears and concerns. Many of us will vote on such appeals, but if there is one thing I feel, based on months of research, much of which challenged my own opinions in comparing common perceptions to the real facts, it is that what we should all strongly avoid when voting is taking any notice of such anecdotal input whatsoever, because it's almost certainly wrong!

We get it with benefit fraud for example, we know someone - we all do - who is fiddling so they are all at it! Total nonsense, the vast majority desperately need it and justify it. And yet when an irresponsible newspaper picks up on the rare example, then we all get outraged, just as they know we will and want to be, never mind the logic of what we know in our hearts must be the real facts.

Then we get stories like that of a Rumanian immigrant, a known criminal as it happens, raping a British woman which is then picked up to imply that not only all Rumanians, but all immigrants are not to be trusted, to fuel our indignation, It's of course an appalling crime that is rightly condemned, and should be reported, but not in unfair and misleading isolation, ignoring the fact that sadly many more women are also raped by people they know who have been born in the UK. . These isolated incidents will always happen despite all safeguards, but let's not for goodness sake be allowed to escalate them above reason to make us think it is somehow specific to a group of people we want to find reasons to condemn to support our existing prejudices (or believe the papers or politicians who are playing on them!).

It's something international bodies like the UN know is a real problem, how to somehow demonstrate to people that their passionately held and genuinely believed views are nevertheless typically quite wrong on the overall facts of the matter, So take no notice whatsoever on any stories of this sort in papers, from your friends, or on FB, Well meaning, but not the right reason to vote on an issue so critical to all our futures.

It's sadly what many politicians do, listen to what people say they want even if the facts show they are not the best things to do, because votes matter more to them than integrity (Boris is a case in point); and it's the relative few who have the integrity to be honest and say you know what, that would not be right.

So it is refreshing to hear what seems a genuine change of mind on the basis of the evidence - in this case from the vast majority of all professionals on all sides of the NHS who say that to stay in the EU is much more in NHS future interest than to leave - from a senior government Minister.

It takes courage and integrity to be prepared to take the virulent condemnation of your former colleagues on the other side of the argument to admit to a change of opinion based on the weight of objective evidence it is not reasonable to ignore.

I'm not saying everyone should change their minds - not very likely in many cases for sure, lol - but if you are still considering, as I know many are, then all I can urge is that you look above the anecdotes and emotional appeals to form your decision on the more objective criteria which are the ones that will ultimately have the biggest impact on our future lives. Thanks for reading and hope it was worth it?

Not for me, sorry to say.

Good news this week:
JCB chairman Lord Bamford has written to his company's 6,500 employees in the UK to explain why he favours a vote to leave the European Union.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-36485985

Well structured, very bland, and I agree with very little of it.

Are these your opinions, did you write this yourself, seems more like a biased EU press release?

I would advise you to ignore it Andrew.

btw, if not your words a link to the source would be very informative.

That Andrew is one of the best, informative, level headed responses about the EU I've read. Excellent

He and his company are fortunatly a global business Mike and his personal wealth makes him free to do what he likes unlike most of us

Good that he looks after his employees.

EU Referendum: Massive swing to Brexit – with just 13 days to go (The Independent):

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...oris-johnson-nigel-farage-david-a7075131.html

We could do with you on the telly Mark, one of the live debates up against the misinformed Andrew, I know who I'd put my money on to come out on top and its not the old sea dog

Sorry Andrew, only pulling your leg