The EU deal

[dholliday]

@rascal

In here mate.

Hi mate, can you add a poll to this? Rascal's thread had a poll...would be interesting to see the consensus.

 

[rascal]

do you want the EU govern the rules of your life or would you rather your country does that?




ah, i see. That's this political tribalism I was talking about...let it go. Vote for what you feel is right for the long-term future of your country.

I can't, that's the thing. I would rather we sat this one out tbh.

 

[Muggins]

In = A vote for camoron & gidiot.

Out = A vote for boris, dummkopf-schmitt, farage & grayling.

Tough call.

All sounds a bit silly to me.

 

[Muggins]

do you want the EU govern the rules of your life or would you rather your country does that?

I don't know mate, sounds awfully difficult to decide. Both sides put up arguments that no doubt benefit them and I don't know what to believe. I don't know what's good information and bad.

How can I make a good judgement?

I'm far from an expert and I think politics is a very complicated thing to understand.

 

[dholliday]

I can't, that's the thing. I would rather we sat this one out tbh.

sitting it out means the others vote and you don't...

 

[daylightrobber]

Vote for what you feel is right for the long-term future of your country.

Or be positive and have an outward looking approach.

 

[Whistlin' Dixie]

do you want the EU bureaucrats govern the rules of your life or would you rather the elitist political and affluent classes from your country does that? And either way you lose if you're not one of them

Fixed.

 

[rascal]

sitting it out means the others vote and you don't...

People should be free to vote how they see fit. I find the campaign by Labour to be rather disconcerting as it is not in our best interests.

 

[dholliday]

Or be positive and have an outward looking approach.

if this is how you judge the wellbeing of your country then of course, vote with that in mind.

Fixed.

You're letting yourself be blinded by political tribalism. If your country is in charge, you can change the government every 4 years. If the EU is in charge, it won't really matter who is in national power.

People should be free to vote how they see fit. I find the campaign by Labour to be rather disconcerting as it is not in our best interests.

What is in our best interests?

 

[rascal]

if this is how you judge the wellbeing of your country then of course, vote with that in mind.




You're letting yourself be blinded by political tribalism. If your country is in charge, you can change the government every 4 years. If the EU is in charge, it won't really matter who is in national power.




What is in our best interests?

As a party, getting involved in someone else's battle.

 

[daylightrobber]

We have had our own program, the re-nationalisation of the Railways Blocked by EU, the aim of bringing back in house privatised sections of the NHS blocked by the EU, support for the steel industry blocked by the EU.

A couple of points. The EU isn't and cannot block nationalisation of the railways. It's a myth. As for the blocking of support for the steel industry, it was the Tories pressurised the EU to take that stance.

 

[SNova]

The EU will eventually collapse just as the USSR did and I do not want Great Britain to go down with it.

The objective of the EU is a United States of Europe, with one Army, one flag, one anthem. Whilst I wish Europe all the best, I want to live in a free independent country that can cooperate with our allies and trade globally.

 

[Whistlin' Dixie]

You're letting yourself be blinded by political tribalism.

Hardly. Not on this issue.

If your country is in charge, you can change the government every 4 years.

If...IF they're not rigging elections by fiddling expenses or postal ballots. Whatever way the vote goes, it's essentially more of the same, isn't it?

Dictated to by unelected bureaucrats, or dictated to by those who rig elections?

Hobson's choice.

 

[rascal]

A couple of points. The EU isn't and cannot block nationalisation of the railways. It's a myth. As for the blocking of support for the steel industry, it was the Tories pressurised the EU to take that stance.

Looks like I was wrong on that one.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

do you want the EU govern the rules of your life or would you rather your country does that?

I honestly don't think it's that at all, at least not for me. We have a world where Trump may well become president of the most influential democracy in the world. Various countries throughout Europe are either teetering towards populism or are actually embracing it, whether that's Austria lurching right this week, or the Greeks threatening to go even more leftwards as talk of Grexit rears its head again.

In other words, if a nation as large and influential as Britain says it wants to go towards a world of independence and isolation, we may have America thinking the same, and a whole load of European nations buoyed by this and doing likewise. It sounds terrible, but there is a real possibility that it could happen.

As regular readers of politico threads on here will no doubt testify, I'm a small government guy, so am in no way keen on being governed from another country, but the prospect of Europe breaking apart amidst an increasingly isolationist world scares me. We can only improve the lives of people in a relatively stable environment, and us leaving the EU would do nothing at all to create such a stable environment, especially as statistically we're due another recession soon.

This hasn't been mentioned much in the debate, but Cameron raised it as a concern this week, and it's heartening to see it being raised.

The other thing that I think supports the EU is the increasingly global nature of life. People move freely around the world, we trade freely around the world, we consume information freely around the world (mostly). I suspect we would all say that's a beautiful thing, but to enable that we need globally agreed standards and agreements. The Internet, for instance, thrives because it uses a globally recognised standard. Driverless cars are likely to require similar standards, as might things like genetic data. So the idea that if we leave the EU we'll be absolved from any kind of global rules or regulation seems rather naive to me.

For me, those are good enough reasons without trying the fools errand of trying to provide a monetary figure that says how much we gain/lose by being a member. When you simplify things like that, you usually get it wrong. Dangerous ground.