How will you vote in the EU referendum?

No one can possibly know all they are voting for, In or Out. And never will.

Why?

Voting out

I was in the Sixth Form in 1973, when the UK joined the Common Market. We covered the issue very extensively in General Studies. It was very clear then that it was intended to be more than a free trade area. Most of us were very excited about it, because we looked forward to closer co-operation and a better understanding of our European neighbours. This was the era of 'peace' and 'ban the bomb'. When we got a choice in 1975 whether to stay in, I voted decisively to stay.

I despair when I read that people thought they were only voting for a free trade area. It makes me think that people don't know what they're voting for and I'm beginning to think that a referendum is dangerous without full knowledge.

I forget how easy it is to find information these days. TV or the Daily Mirror were my sources of information back then.

In 1978 when I was leaving school, I went for an interview to join the Civil Service. In preparation for the interview, my Mum said I might be asked about the EEC and told me about the butter mountain so I could give an example. I hadn't even heard of a butter mountain, but sure enough I was asked about the EEC and got the job.

Actually, I am not sure when I became aware of the EEC. I don't remember it ever being mentioned at school. I'll have to think about it.

Ten years older than you. I had a vote, but I cannot really remember how much was reported about it. We did not watch much television in those days. Must have had one, but only for a couple of years, and it was black and white.
At the time we were just about to move to a new city, so would have been busy finding out about houses, etc.
In fact when Wilson set out his reasons for joining my eldest son was a few months old, we lived in a house with one electric point and a cold tap, so politics was not on my mind.
Things must have taken a lot longer to happen then. Modern communications makes things so much more immediate and hurried.
I know I voted to be in because I always thought that Europe was important to the UK, as did my husband. It was after that move that we became involved in politics.

That's a shocker dj!

How many posters have said on this thread alone they only voted for a free trade area?

How can people have forgotten that information, especially if it was reported in the Daily Mail and the Sun?

I was too young back then to remember how information about was presented/reported before the referendum, but I will bookmark that link.

www.richardcorbett.org.uk/we-thought-we-were-only-joining-a-free-trade-zone/

This is an interesting one, for those who thought it was just about trade.
It never was.
Just look at the evidence on here.

If they have any left after the government's finished.
I am convinced the EU referendum is a trojan horse. We are looking the wrong way while they dismantle the welfare state over the next few months, while feeding all this stuff to the papers.

I was watching the police review today on parliament tv. Theresa May is going to change the way she pays for the police, taking money away from the urban police and giving it to her mates in the urban districts.
I wonder what they will do to Durham. It was the only police force in the country to be graded outstanding. However, Durham is a combined authority which includes urban and rural.
She complained that Labour councils were not spending enough on their police, ignoring the fact that her government is taking money away from Labour councils.

Isn't Jeremy Hunt in the Brexit camp? As Health Minister he's never going to support more money going into the NHS, quite the opposite.

In fact if we vote to leave the EU, by the time the parting of the ways actually happens, most of us will be dead and the NHS won't exist in any form we would recognise.

Thank you durhamjen that was well worth reading and like a breath of fresh air.

I thought last week when Minister Gove said his ministers were always telling him the EU rules were upsetting his plans. BUT he never said what he was planning to do. Probably cut worker rights?

www.richardcorbett.org.uk/category/mythbusters/

A Labour MEP, so I'm sure some of you will want to read it just to disagree with him.
Or me.

Brexit have sent round leaflets asking people whether they want their money spent on the NHS or the EU.
Nobody involved in Brexit is known for supporting more money being spent on the NHS as far as I am aware, so the lies are starting already.

theconversation.com/how-would-post-brexit-trade-deals-actually-work-55168

A link for you to read, grannyactivist, to show what could happen after Brexit, if you can be bothered to read it.
Written by this man, who seems to have a lot of qualifications in the area, although I am sure some will disagree.

theconversation.com/profiles/christopher-grey-194344

And meanwhile daphnedil UKIP Wales are squabbling about assembly candidates while other parties have their campaigns underway.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-35634483
Remember cash-for-questions Hamilton? He's in the middle of the row and, it seems, using the word cancer as a metaphor in a rather peculiar way.
Greetings grannyactivist hope you get better soon and have an interesting time weighing up the pros and cons.

daphnedill

Thank you for your acknowledgement in your post 05.57.

So, here I am in bed battling illness (mostly by sleeping a lot ) and I decide to have a little think about the European Referendum. I have now read all thirty pages (takes a bow) of this discussion, although to have followed all the links would have taken an extra week so I admit I haven't done that.

It seems that a majority of people have already made up their minds and that those who haven't are searching for impartial facts or advice to clarify the issues. I am one of the latter; although my gut reaction is to stay in I think the decision is important enough to take the time to examine carefully the views put forward by both sides with as open a mind as possible.

But first I'll have another nap.

Mamie, I agree. 'And then what?'

Douglas Carswell and Nigel Farage want completely different things. Farage wants to return to 1950; Carswell wants to introduce a 2015 society with a flexible workforce (ie no labour protection and high immigration) and a hi-tech society.

They're all hoping for a share of the spoils, but have no coherent idea how anything better can be achieved.

No, I'm not dismissing it. The national debt is over £1 trillion and rising. I was putting £500 billion over 40 years in context. There is absolutely no guarantee (in fact, it seems unlikely) that the UK would 'save' from leaving the EU, because there would be an affect on the other costs. It's very possible that the national debt would have been higher without the EU. The cost to Norway per capita is about two thirds that of the UK, but it has no control over the rules.

Instability is one of the reasons it would be foolish to cut ourselves off. The world (outside the EU) is unstable. Russia is likely to be a threat, China has been shown to cause a ripple effect economically, there's no hope of a solution in the Middle East for the foreseeable future - and we haven't even started on India, which will no doubt become more influential. We're far stronger as part of a trading bloc.

Europe is now much more stable than it was for most of the twentieth century and the EU has had a part to play in that. The UK doesn't belong to the Eurozone or Schengen, so we are protected from much of the instability.

Markets being unsettled always happens. Nothing new.
bureaucratic - swap one sort for another, but might not be so long term

Someone upthread mentioned peace. That is the main reason I have swung towards out. We now seem so much more unstable in Europe than we were 20 years ago.

I had no idea £500 billion was half the national debt. Wow. And you dismiss that figure. Wow. Glad you are not in charge of the country's economy.

It seems to me that the people wanting out need to ask themselves the fundamental questions necessary for any project, "What will success look like and how will we know?".
I can't see how the aftermath could be anything other than long, messy, bureaucratic and unsettling for the markets. And then what?

Why 'presumably'? You don't know that any more than anyone else. It's wishful thinking.

The BREXITERs are encouraging the HennyPenny syndrome eg. IDS's paranoia about terrorism.

Westminster has underfunded Cornwall for years. If the county loses EU funding, there is absolutely no guarantee that any savings (IF there are any) would be spent there.

£500 billion is less than half the current national debt - a drop in the ocean over 40 years - and that's not taking into account the financial benefits to business from being a member of the EU.

BREXITers have had a couple of decades to think these issues through, but they haven't. They have absolutely no idea what the alternative might be.

Presumably they will feel that they get a lot more than they get now.

Well yes, the top of the article says, "the sky won't fall in" but the bottom says this...
"Any workable application of a Brexit vote would end up looking like a partial reconstruction of EU membership. Then each segment of the coalition for leave would feel betrayed, one by one. The Tory libertarians would complain that not enough regulation had been scrapped; the hard left would find corporate capitalism still rampant; Ukip nativists would see no sudden restoration of ethnic homogeneity to the streets. The disparate pot of resentments, heated and stirred through the long campaign against “Europe”, would break and its contents flow into other political vessels and causes.
That is the tragedy of this referendum. So much is at stake. A European alliance, decades in the making, could be undermined with no obvious economic or political benefits in exchange. And no option on the ballot paper can satisfy all the people for whom the whole destructive campaign has been arranged. The leavers may get what they vote for and still never get what they want."