Whitewave : "I meant that the Brexit team are being shortsighted.. To concentrate on immigration, seems very short term when Everyone agrees including the Brexiters that if the vote is no the immediate effect will be a slow down in the economy."
It's VERY insulting to suggest that people wanting out of the EU are only concerned with immigration. Most of my life I have earned a crust by working with families newly arrived in the UK....a career that stretched over 30 years. I worked in multicultural inner cities, with some of the nicest people I could ever wish to meet. However, I want us to LEAVE the EU.
As for the economy, I wonder how many people saw this reply by an economist in the QT audience. In a matter of years we'll save TRILLIONS of pounds if we leave the EU and be able to pay off the national debt.
www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/question-time-envelope-brexit_uk_57194d29e4b077f671e79829
He said “I did some maths on the back of an envelope as well. I should say I’m an economist and a financial adviser. And I took the £10 billion of net savings we would make if we left Europe and I multiplied these by 14, which is the number of years up to 2030.
“I then used the economic credit multiplier, because of course you have the benefit of spending that money, the taxes raised on it, some economic growth and so on. And do you know the figure I came up with?
“The figure I came up with was £1.5 trillion, which means if we leave the EU we’ll be able to fund and repay the national debt by the time 2030 comes.”
Sounds good to me.
Staying in the EU is like throwing money at a drain. I firmly believe we'll be able to help poorer nations much more effectively from outside the EU. Poorer people of eastern Europe will flock to places like the UK where the standard of living is so much better, and who can blame them? However, unless vast amounts of money are spent on roads, houses, railways, transport, hospitals, schools, social agencies and all other services we enjoy here - and how likely is that to happen - then many, many people are going to notice how all the things we take for granted in the UK have changed, beyond recognition. Do we REALLY want everything we value to become stretched to breaking point? Who actually wins if that happens...and it will if immigration is unchecked and if movement around Europe expands.
Extreme right wing groups are springing up all over Europe and that is a frightening thought. Why is it happening? I don't want my children's children to grow up in a world full of hatred, fear, mistrust and violence, but I can only see that problem escalating if the EU continues to become the creator of problems but also attempts to be the sponge trying to absorb them too.
We have to get OUT.
