Perhaps, then, you might want to explain why the EU auditors have refused to sign off EU accounts for the last 18 years in a row! Yet, all carries on as if nothing has happened.



I'll take my chances with people I know can be voted from office should we wish to, thank you.

I know which I feel is the more "toxic sh*thole" between a post-Brexit UK, or a post-Bremain EU

I just hope people vote with their heads and not their hearts. There is plenty enough factual information out there, if people bother to look and read fully. If that is done and people vote with their head, then for me there wil be only one result.

Well said Gotcha....I only ask people THINK about this rather than vote on prejudice and on rhetoric.

Nobody can genuinely say which way will be best for us in the long term (in the short term we will be undoubtedly fukked)....our children will most have to live with the consquences. It is NOT an easy decision...and not a decision most of us should be asked to make.

Interesting thread.

Will respond later with my own views and why I'll be spoiling my ballot paper instead.

Regards,
William Eve (at the cricket utilising YCCC free wifi - you don't get free wifi with a Rhinos membership)

Quote: craigizzard " Germany setting income tax rates for Britain? Fantasist rubbish. Not going to happen. How powerful do you think these mandarins in the EU (who simultaneously are so lazy and incompetent and such a waste of money) even are? How do you think politics actually works? A clue is that it doesn't work like FIFA. It's not an enclosed plutocracy with no checks and balances. It IS a check and balance. '" Not at all. Taxation across the EU has been a core part of the debate since its inception and is still raging, there is a huge amount written about it. [/i So, yes, it is not an unreasonable thing to say that at some point in the future the finance minister of the largest economy in the EU will be setting tax policy for the UK. As for my pension, well after the financial sector has had it's head in the trough a small hit on the financial markets is hardly noticeable www.independent.co.uk/money/pens ... 40986.html. I can guarantee one thing about the markets and the economy, the people making the most noise are the ones who have the most power to make a recession happen. Don't overreact. I'm sick of the campaigning, I was from day 1, but as you know from reading my post I changed my mind about the EU, and I did it for reasons that have nothing to do with supporting any of the political views of Farage or Boris Johnson or keeping foreigners out. The Labour leader looks like he is making a hostage video every time he is interviewed about the EU. I work in East and West Europe, I used to spend 30 weeks plus every year on travelling the continent and I manage French, German and Belgian nationals, I love the place. I just want our politics to be more accountable and more local. Start with exiting the EU then we need a reform of our electoral system which clearly does not represent in any way the wishes of the British people. Multi party politics has arrived and we need to embrace it.

Quote: craigizzard " Germany setting income tax rates for Britain? Fantasist rubbish. Not going to happen. How powerful do you think these mandarins in the EU (who simultaneously are so lazy and incompetent and such a waste of money) even are? How do you think politics actually works? A clue is that it doesn't work like FIFA. It's not an enclosed plutocracy with no checks and balances. It IS a check and balance. '" Not at all. Taxation across the EU has been a core part of the debate since its inception and is still raging, there is a huge amount written about it. [/i So, yes, it is not an unreasonable thing to say that at some point in the future the finance minister of the largest economy in the EU will be setting tax policy for the UK. As for my pension, well after the financial sector has had it's head in the trough a small hit on the financial markets is hardly noticeable www.independent.co.uk/money/pens ... 40986.html. I can guarantee one thing about the markets and the economy, the people making the most noise are the ones who have the most power to make a recession happen. Don't overreact. I'm sick of the campaigning, I was from day 1, but as you know from reading my post I changed my mind about the EU, and I did it for reasons that have nothing to do with supporting any of the political views of Farage or Boris Johnson or keeping foreigners out. The Labour leader looks like he is making a hostage video every time he is interviewed about the EU. I work in East and West Europe, I used to spend 30 weeks plus every year on travelling the continent and I manage French, German and Belgian nationals, I love the place. I just want our politics to be more accountable and more local. Start with exiting the EU then we need a reform of our electoral system which clearly does not represent in any way the wishes of the British people. Multi party politics has arrived and we need to embrace it.

Quotes (just a couple) from Tony Benn.

"My view of the EU has always been not that I am hostile to foreigners but I am in favour of democracy. I think they are building an empire and want us to be part of that empire, and I don't want that."

"When I saw how the European Union was developing, it was very obvious what they had in mind was not democratic. In Britain, you vote for a government so the government has to listen to you, and if you don't like it you can change it."

It is mystifying to me why so many people on the left in Britain are so bent on defending the EU and keeping Britain in it.

"It is, first of all, a simple matter of democracy: why give up your sovereignty and democratic power to the EU and give away the power to change government policy on many substantive issues, when the EU is so clearly anti-democratic?
Secondly, the EU is a neoliberal train wreck: it was designed on economically conservative ideas and the worst neoclassical economics. It was designed to be a monetary union without a powerful central fiscal authority: an unworkable and disastrous idea. The Eurozone has led to catastrophe on the fringes of Europe in Greece, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Portugal and Baltic states. In the larger states like Germany and France the situation is somewhat better, but hardly anything to boast of."

"It seems to me that a genuine leftist or Labour party in Britain should be opposed to the EU, on democratic and economic grounds alone".

To those who think only right wing bigots or idiots think leaving the EU is a good idea.

Time means I'll only address the last paragraph, which is in its way a reasonable point of view. But the larger point is that reasonable points of view on the Leave side have become fatally, totally infected by UKIP, Farage, and all that goes with it.

If you vote leave you're voting for Farage. You're lining yourself up with the far right and voting for his vision of Britain, whether you like it or not.

You're also voting for Boris Johnson, Prime Minister. This doesn't take an expert futurologist to predict. Your 'local accountability' will be governed by a man who was the worst Mayor of London in a field that includes Ken Livingstone. Are you confident that, in power, he'll change the voting to threaten that? Or retrench it.

You're voting for the three most incompetent Tory ministers (IDS, Grayling, Patel) in an an historically low-calibre government, and a fourth (Gove) who's smarter but a dangerous opportunist.

You're voting for the end of the United Kingdom. Again, no crystal ball is required to see another Scottish referendum and a heavy Yes vote to independence.

So you're voting for 50-60 less leftist opposition MPs and Conservative government for, well, for goodness knows how long. A generation? Two? Until there's a big war to sort everything out? And it won't just be *any* Conservative government, it'll be government of the worst of them, it'll be a government that makes Thatcher look like Atlee, in an atmosphere charged with blame, where the EU scapegoat has been lost and will be replaced by...well, you can guess.

.... this is what I mean by been a realist and it will stop me from voting 'out'. It is frightening. The EU is far from perfect but it is better than handing total power to these gobes. There is so much uncertainty in the outcome of this vote...but [iwe can be certain[/i of what you state here if we do vote 'out' .. Rest assured no forthcoming general election will change this because of our voting system and state of the opposition. Without Scotland (a real possibility) it is even more certain.

It is enough on its own for me to vote 'in'

As often in this country it is always a vote for the lesser of two evils. The price of a gloating Cameron and especially Osborne is less worse than seeing Johnson as PM with the other gobes in tow.

Agree with this.

No. I'm voting to leave the EU, I'm not voting to elect anyone. I think I made a strong enough point that I don't share the politics of the idiots lined up to lead the Brexit campaign any more than those who vote to stay would follow tha politics of Osbourne and Cameron. For me one of the few positives of the campaign is that it's clearly obvious that Boris is totally unfit for any office. Win or lose they are finished. If the referendum has neutered Cameron and Osbourne for the rest of the parliament then that's another win.

I believe something needs to change and only a leave vote will do that. As for Scottish independence, last thing on my mind. I didn't get any vote on it last time they had a referendum.

There may well be plenty of factual info out there,but there is a lot of sh?!- too ( both sides) but mainly scare stories from remain and this is the kind of stuff that people will be reading if any!
Unfortunately some people are pretty stupid and beleave just about anything that the British government tells them and I think that they will scare enough people into voting for remain.

They aren't finished though. Too many rich and influential people including the people behind big business and the media will ensure their survival regardless of the vote.

We're not going to agree on this (which is why I didn't want to start it) but it doesn't really matter what you want from your vote or the reasons behind it, what matters is what you get from it, and you won't get what you think.

And I think my more apocalyptic vision of eternal Tory rule augmented by a empowered far right is a lot more likely than any positive localism or more accountable government. (And anyway accountable to who? To the resurgent right of little England?) The 'change' that's motivating you to vote is going to be for the worse. And before anyone says Remain Project Fear just have a look at your golf-club Goebbels spearhead in front of his race-baiting posters. Again *that's* what, that's who you're voting for. It might not have been when this started, but it is now.