European Union in or out

Yes of course it was done to prevent Tory backbenchers revolting. Pity the rest if us have to suffer!
The Labour Party are out campaigning to Remain. Our MEP is visiting on Friday and there is a BUS going round the country. I could post lots of links if you would like Nellie Labour is in favour of the EU because it protects workers rights and supports the economy in deprived areas. A strong group of labour MEPs can join with other leftish MEPs in EU and have a beneficial effect on these areas and others. The EU is seen as a socialist plot by some powerful people in business. That's why they are donating money to the Leave campaign.
But perhaps Labour politicians are not engaging in newsworthy stunts and outrageous pronouncements like those from other camps. Many Labour politicians are also campaigning under the Stronger In banner.

I agree * Nellie* - it is far to important an issue to be voting on so quickly. I think the promise of a referendum was made when Cameron thought he had no chance of actually winning the election but thought it would be another coalition. Then of course he had to go with it.
We do know that the Brexit camp are giving false figures - that is a fact but unfortunately some people will look no further than the headlines and believe them. The fact that so many institutions have come out saying we will be worse off really is food for thought. Paul Johnson of the IFS was on Today this morning saying how they had looked across a who raft of these studies and taken the median line to come out with their report - which again says that the UK would go into an immediate recession. They cannot all be wrong even if some have probably exaggerated a bit. The Brexit campaign can only shout rubbish and lies and give no other reasonable reply.

I agree nellie it was only done to appease the potential Ukkipers in the Tory party. A hugely expensive exercise.

If, as we are now being led to believe, leaving the EU would cause financial armageddon, for the life of me I cannot even begin to understand why we are having this referendum in the first place! Surely it's much to serious a matter to be put into the hands of a population, the majority of which haven't got the first idea of the implications of what they're being asked to do!! Turkeys voting for Christmas?! The government on both sides are sounding more hysterical every day, the labour party?!! Well, who are they?!! In their paranoid attempt not to side with the government, they are not uttering a peep! Apart from a conversion by their leader, on a par with St Paul on the road to Damascus, we've heard so little from this party as to wonder if they are still in existence!! The whole thing on all sides is a complete charade, a circus which I finally can't be bothered with any more. People must do what they want to do and the sooner this absurd expensive idiotic exercise which should never have started in the first place is over, the better.

The IMF gets its funding from the entire world.

Btw... This is certainly about more than the economy!

The IMF is not that impartial it gets hundreds of thousands from Brussels.

It has always seemed an imbalance to me that the US seems to be able to insist on extradition , and I share your resistance to deportation in the instances you mention.

Rosesarered - do scare tactics include independent announcements by the OECD, IMF, Bank of England etc etc, all of whom seem to agree that an exit would harm the UK economy?

A nil nil draw then?

Alea one of the things that the PM has recently renegotiated relates to your area of concern. So it should be easier to extradite in future. I think the problem has arisen in the past when we want to deport to countries with very poor human rights, which creates an ethical dilemma for UK courts. There have been quite a few cases where there has been resistance to deporting people for trial in the USA for instance - a hacker with Asperger's, a middle aged businessman accused of aiding terrorism by selling arms-related equipment to Iran. I think it is tricky for the UK justice system to negotiate its way through this moral maze, whether we are in EU or not.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19957138
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Tappin
Info on the negotiated deal:
fullfact.org/europe/explaining-eu-deal-deporting-eu-immigrants/
If we left EU, some politicians would also like to back pedal on human rights in the UK. Gove was going to draft some new human rights legislation for the UK after the election but nothing has emerged as yet. Not as easy as it sounded perhaps.

So do the scare tactics from Vote Leave.

Good posts day6 Anya and niggly and you are right about long held views ( from some politicians) being overturned in a few weeks ( for 'party unity').The scare tactics from the Remain campaigners get more crazy every day.

Whereas in the UK we are unable to deport convicted criminals who are foreign nationals because it somehow breaches their human rights(European Convention on Human Rights) Hmm.

Those people who think we should have an immigration system similar to Australia's should read this.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-36369416

It's not all one way.

Good for France, by the way.

Just been watching the papers on news24. One of them said about the news that France are taking Google to court for billions of tax. It was then said that Google and Apple do not seem to have any problems trading with the EU even though they are not members.
My thought on that was that we do not know how long it took for the trade agreements to be put in place. Anyway, they both have offices in Ireland, which has lower tax rates than anywhere else in the EU, but they still take their profits offshore.

As far as I have understood if we still wish to have free trade with the EU in event of Brexit we would still need to pay more or less the same fees to the Eu as we do now but presumably would not be entitled to any rebates. If this is the case then we would not have any money to use for the NHS, farmers etc etc. in fact we would have less money to spend in the country.
if we did not go for free trade with EU then we would be paying import/export tariffs on anything crossing borders and everything would cost more. The figures just do not add up.
I know that Gove says we will get free trade agreements with the EU without being a member but that is not what the French, Germans etc are saying - they say if you want the benefits you pay the fees.

The Leave campaign are implying that if we left we would be millions of pounds in hand and this would be used to support the NHS. In this article from The Independent some of the serious flaws in this misleading pitch are outlined.
The claim should also be of concern to other groups that might think they are going to get this money allocated to them, e.g. farmers who would lose all their subsidy money, Welsh people and those living in other areas that benefit from regional funding.
www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-s-most-prominent-health-expert-has-come-out-against-vote-leave-s-nhs-leaflet-and-so-should-a7043681.html

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2016/05/23/self-inflicted-harm/

Are Osborne and Cameron going to implode? As said in this article, Cameron didn't need to inflict this harm on his party.

ukhumanrightsblog.com/2016/05/23/ca-says-ex-pats-cannot-say-yes-or-no-to-brexit/

For expats who were hoping for a change to the voting system.

Just heard that the independent won in Austria, the ex-green party member, beating the far right.
Hurray!

No jess. I meant the patients' names, appearing on the overhead 'who's turn now' board.

Jing I presume you mean the GPs did not have UK names? That is certainly the case in some areas I know... (actually all the ones I have had experience of in the last 10 years - M.Keynes, Walsall, Solihull and even N Wales.) We live in a multiethnic society and the NHS is heavily reliant on immigrants - and, increasingly the children of immigrants who have entered medical careers.
EU migrants are overwhelmingly working age workers who make few demands on the NHS and the majority come without families as well - so a much lower demand on schools than a random sample of UK born workers.

Exactly- Leicester hospitals and NHS would just stop overnight!

Ugandan Asians arrived at the same time as we did (from Staffs) in 1975- after being thrown out by Idi Amin - very succesful business people and professionals with tons of experience and a huge asset to the city.

JBF, in our surgery the only non-English sounding names I see are the Doctors.

It obviously depends on where you live, i'm sure in parts Leicester where my daughter lives that some surgery's will have a large non English sounding clientèle, but they have been here for many years and are not EU migrants, many would have come from Uganda and have UK passports.