General Chat

Today I received the government booklet - never opened it - it is now in an envelope with a letter to our PM and I will not begrudge the postage.

Do they think we are nincompoops or sheep? Yes we voted in the seventies but it was for Free Trade: not to be ruled by a money gobbling state. The financial reports have not been audited for is it 9 or 10 years now.

As for the move every few weeks - what a waste of time and money.

I will cease now and hope that more of the population return the booklets to No.10.

Chris

haven't had mine yet - but I also intend sending it back to DC asking him why he didn't spend that enormous amount of money on saving TaTa in Port Talbot

If the publics money has been used to send out Stay propaganda, then the same amount of public money should be used to send out Leave propaganda.

The size (& cost?) could have been halved by doing away with the pretty pictures. Deffinately not a level playing field.

Apparently the enormous amount of money would have kept Tata going for another two weeks. A really enormous amount of money could have been saved by not havng a referendum.

Why not read the leaflet? Are you afraid that it might convert you.

Where does the idea that the EU accounts are not audited come from? That must be the silliest argument of the Brexit group.

Isn't it that they have been audited, but that there were so many inconsistencies, they weren't 'signed off'?

The booklet is from the "Government" , but several Members of the Cabinet are members of the OUT campaign so how can the booklet be from the Government?

No Det, they have been signed off. This article explains the confusion:
http://www.britishinfluence.org/it_s_the_british_media_that_needs_auditing

Interesting reading - thank you Kense. It just goes to show how much our perception is influenced by the media.

I am sending mine back and my mum is sending hers to

Five ( not six ) ministers have been granted a temporary opt out from the usual requirement of "collective responsibility" for matters to do with the EU referendum, nothing else.

It remains government policy that the UK should remain within the EU. Accordingly the government is perfectly free to issue whatever statements and public information it deems fit. I have my booklet and think it fairly sums ups the pros and cons in as pithy a way as possible.

Those who are in favour of "brexit" seem to think that they should be afforded some sort of equality with the government. They are living in la la land. Government policy is just that. The brexit ministers already enjoy unprecedented freedom to remain in government whilst campaigning against it.

The funding is trivial and in any case goes some way to leveling up the huge sums being spent by brexit funders ( mostly hedge fund managers heavily into offshore banking ) and the Daily Wail, Daily Blue and the DX.

There is not much point in subsidising smoke stack industries which have no future in the UK. Classic blast furnace steel production is one of them. Whatever happens at Port Talbot the days of the blast furnace are numbered. The only realistic large scale plan for the plant involves replacing the classic blast furnace with electric arc furnaces fed with scrap metal rather than iron ore. The govt seems to be coming around to supporting this with serious funding - a helluva lot more than the petty cash used for the referendum leaflet. Why conflate two utterly different issues?

fwiw deeper ( high cost ) polling and focus groups ( expensive ) suggest that the outcome will be a "remain" vote whatever the tiny straw polls carried out may suggest. This may be one reason why the brexiters are getting so het up. Focus groups point to a few interesting issues:

a. There is next to no support for the UK for joining the €uro
b. Immigration is a big issue BUT if the coming three months does not see a repeat of summer 2015 it will not be a huge referendum decider
c. Sovereignty as an issue comes a very poor second to economic prosperity - the willingness of brexiters to take risks and suffer even temporarily is not widely shared
45% of UK exports go to the EU but only 8% of EU (non UK) exports go to the UK. Brexiters should be less insouciant.
d. so far brexiters have not been able to come up with a solid answer to the question "so we leave, then what?".
(c) and (d) were the main issues in 1975.

British electorates are averse to risk and the unknown. That is one reason why the sitting government tends to win general elections. The two recent referenda in the UK - prop. voting and Scottish independence - both went with the status quo.

The £ has suffered a steep fall against both the €uro and $US in the last two months while corporate investment and recruitment are at a standstill. Chill winds are blowing already ... it is hardly likely that this won't be noticed.

I have absolutely no need to qualify my decision to vote OUT.

When my leaflet arrives it will be returned using the well advertised FREEPOST address and the government can choke itself. (BTW I am a Tory...lolol).

They have not played fair by pre-empting the 'start date' for communications and it's backfiring.

Interestingly, OH - not both of us - received a personally addressed leaflet in todays post. It's been produced on behalf of 'Stronger in'.
The 'facts' are culled from
HM Treasury
HMRC
ONS
London School of Economics' Centre for Econimic Performance (x2)

Assuming a high turn out, Rollo could well be correct that a major influence will be the fear of the unknown.
Although there are advantages of remaining in the EU, one of the things that irritates me is how our Civil Servants apply all EU legislation rather than first considering if it is in 'The UK's best interest' to do so.
Most people- the vaste majority - who are unlikely to want to work or live in other EU countries, would consider themselves British (or compenent parts) rather than European. There is a fear of loss of identity.

i wrote a nice little message on mine
telling Dodgy Dave them to shove the EU
Where the sun don't shine
and wipe his butt with this leaflet when he had finished

and posted it back ;-) ;-)

"one of the things that irritates me is how our Civil Servants apply all EU legislation rather than first considering if it is in 'The UK's best interest' to do so."

This completely fails to understand how EU legis. is made. The legis. is debated and drafted by the member states in the first instance. The Brits are extremely good at proposing legislation and following it through on both large and small matters. Taking three large matters the creation of the single market, massive reforms to CAP, massive reforms to the fisheries policy have all been led by the UK.

The treaties do not allow member states to pick and choose which Euro legislation they adopt only to decide how to translate euro regs into national law. If the UK civil service chooses to gild the lilly or even add stuff that was never in the EU regs (common) that is hardly the fault of Brussels.

The referendum is not about the right to live and work outside of the UK. There has been a large scale each way movement of people for a thousand years and a brexit would make little difference to that whatever Nigel Farraj thinks.

It is primarily about Europe as a political entity ( The Treaty of Rome was never a purely trade treaty however it was sold in the UK) and whether a group of nations with a common history and democratic principles would do better as a bloc then as pre ww2 style individual nations.

Secondly it is about whether trade and services is easier under a common set of rules with no internal tariffs is better than W.T.O rules plus a dozen or so bilateral treaties.

Like it or not the world is divided up into a few blocs - USA, Russia and China come to mind. There is nothing about Russia or China which gives much reason for trust. If all else fails NATO is supposed to step up to the plate but a strong political unity stops events getting out of hand. Russia's near war in the Ukraine and current tactics in the Baltic show what can happen. The USA is moving a crack army brigade back to Europe. Washington has made it very clear that it would not be doing so without the EU framework.

So far India, China, the USA have all made it crystal clear that they would not be interested in negotiating a bi lateral trade treaty with the UK. It is either vanilla WTO or EU. Take yer pick.

Given that the brexit movement depends on funding from such charmers as hedge fund managers, overseas tax avoidance specialists, property fund managers and those who seek to make pots of money out of the dismemberment of the BBC and the NHS it is something of a wonder how many idiots listen to their lies.

Post referendum Brave Dave plans to deal with the Tory "grass roots" constituency parties by cutting off their political balls. About time too.

The EU imposed a particular legislation which the UK must conform with. One has cost farmers upwards of £100k each.

This legislation will likely be overturned this year because those trading in poorer EU countries cannot afford to implement the new safeguards.

The farmers in the UK have already either completed or forked out a substantial part of the costs, they will not be compensated for trying to comply when the rest of the EU didn't bother. Fair? NO!

This idiot uses their deductive skills to determine the pros and cons.

Supercrutch as with most brexiters is decidedly woolly ( sorry Errol ) when it comes to being specific about sources. Baaa.

Anyway here is an excellent summary of the situation from the Welsh farming union:
https://www.nfu-cymru.org.uk/eu-referendum/

Wales as a unit costs the Treasury money, a lot of it. Very few Welshmen vote Tory. Much as I love Welsh lamb the sad fact is that hill farming anywhere in the UK loses money. The subsidy supports a way of life and he environment which would look nothing like the same without the farmers. I do have an interest - my 2nd cousin is a shepherd in the Lake District.

The Tories have been mostly hostile to any kind of agricultural control or subsidy. The current hot issue is the control of bee harming insecticides.

If brexit occurs it is unlikely that current subsidies and tariffs would be maintained. Instead there would be unlimited import of Argentine beef, NZ Lamb and so on and a lot of unemlpyed hill farmers. Their chief allies in opposing the EU environmental directives are the quasi democratic states of E Europe who are screaming that they cannot afford what they signed up to. All this despite receiving trillions of ER structural funds. Oddly enough they can whizz up a razor wire border fence in no time and are even cuddling up to Mr Putin (Hungary).

God help Wales if brexit should occur and we end up with a laissez faire govt under Boris Johnson. Maybe he would look for a buyer.

I very rarely agree with Cameron on anything. EU membership is the exception. OTOH whether his motives are pure and unsullied I doubt.

Given Welsh history it may be of interest that the largest coal mining firm in the world, Peabody, has filed for bankruptcy.

I can be specific about sources as my family member is in charge of making sure the legislation is implemented.

Woolly I am not, so don't be so damn insulting.

If you can then why don't you?
You could even read the piece from the Welsh Farmers union.
Wildy unimpressed. :-0

Perhaps, Rollo, you could explain exactly what "massive reforms" there have been to the CAP and CFP.

I am going to cut out the middle man.........

And just wipe my butt on mine!

:-D