EU - I'm in a quandary

Thanks all for your comments and links.
I'm done with hand-wringing and breast beating and what if's. I've decided to, or at least am well on the way in trying to, embrace my uncertainty about the future.

Now all I need is to receive my postal vote form, so that I can put all my angst to good use by putting an X in a little box.

Just off to nip over to the Remain thread...

Good point JessM, Nigel Farage has always looked after his own interest at the expense of the UK.

Not in Farage's interest to make the EU better is it. When there are fishermen voting UKIP.

www.greenpeace.org.uk/media/press-releases/farage%E2%80%99s-voting-record-fishing-%E2%80%98makes-mockery%E2%80%99-new-election-poster-20150408

UKIP has done nothing for the British fishing industry. Their voting poster in Grimsby stated that the fishing industry had been 'gutted by the EU'. It's actually been gutted by UKIP.

Are the expenses paid in a brown envelope? ;-)

Good post Daphnedill There used to be a big herring fishery in Liverpool Bay/ No Wales. There are fish traps that used to catch them by the ton in the last century. There is now no breeding population. Local fishermen catch whelks that they export to Korea.
Australia, these days, welcomes in quite a lot of Asian (Indian and Chinese) immigrants to fill the gaps in their economy.
Farage and the other UKIP MEPs are a disgrace. Their lack of participation reduces our impact in Europe. The head of Welsh UKIP has recently been elected to the Welsh Assembly and is now collecting 2 salaries plus expenses.

For those of you who don't know about it Futurelearn.com, a free online site, is running a course starting on 13th June called 'Towards Brexit - the UK's EU Referendum'. It is run by the University of Edinburgh and lasts three weeks. The final week is looking at what happens next as a result of the vote.

British laws DON'T get referred to Brussels to be overturned by faceless bureaucrats.

British fishermen are losing their jobs, because they've been overfishing for years. If quotas had been put in place earlier, there would be more fish in the sea.

In any case, the UK had a representative on the European Fisheries Committee, who could have made a case for British fishermen. Unfortunately, the representative was Nigel Farage, who didn't bother turning up for meetings. Over the three years that he was a member of the European Parliament Fisheries Committee, he attended one out of 42 meetings.

Luckylegs can you give us one definite benefit to leaving the EU?
Nothing is certain if we leave. This cutting the number of migrants sounds possibly a good thing but we need to look at how many skilled people from outside UK we need to keep businesses and the NHS etc going and well staffed. That will be the place to start not just having a number which could leave us short of labour.
Priti Patel has already said that should we leave there will be what effectively is free movement of people from the Indian sub continent. Is that a better form of immigration than free movement of people from the EU? Only since she made the statement have they started to talk about the same sort of system as Australia. If we are to have immigration from anywhere surely it is better to have it with an area that UK citizens may wish to go and live also - the EU is a place like that - many other places in the world are not places British people would wish to live.
There have been claims made on both sides of this argument but the Brexit camp cannot really give us any idea of what will happen if we leave - it will be against what Parliament wants - so where do we start with a Govt who actually believes in what the country is doing? Do we start with another General Election so we can fill the Houses of Parliament with Brexiters? The EU will dictate to us the terms of our exit - the UK will have no say in this whatsoever. Do you really think they will be kind and helpful to us when our exit will cause them problems too? All this business of wanting our goods will soon disappear - the EU car companies producing cars in the EU will soon fill the gap of those made in UK which will become too expensive - as the UK now makes very few cars we will pay more for cars that are imported.
Can anyone here who is so sure that all the forecasts of jobs and services leaving the UK and a recession causing job losses are all just scaremongering please give us a solid reason as to why you think all these people are in effect lying - what is in it for them? I am not talking about Cameron or the Remain camp but monetary organisations and Banks etc.
That is an honest question as I really would like to understand what your thinking is.

As if see it, Spain, Italy and Greece are broke with high unemployment, we bring the money to the table which should be for us.. Our fishermen are losing jobs because of fishing quotas. I want a say in running my country, if we pass a law for it be adhered to, not referred to Brussels to be overturned by a lot of faceless overpaid beurocrats. Kinnock and his cronies have all endured their families very good jobs in Strasbourg, meanwhile our own children struggle to find places to rent never mind buy. This is a chance to get our country back. I listened to all the debates to stay in and was appalled at Harriet Harmans lack of knowledge, didnt know who ran the show over there, last night Hilary Benn was caught like a rabbit in the headlights unable to answer a question at his interview. Name me one person who has put a good case without unsubstantiated claims. Don't think you can find one. The letter we all received about voting was just about staying in it was not a balanced document, with facts that would enable anyone to make a decision.

I don't think the intention is to swap EU immigrants for non-EU immigrants. There have been various promises to bring the total immigration figure to 100,000 or below, which will still mean reducing the number of non-EU immigrants.

Nobody has a crystal ball, but I agree with you that on balance, the UK economy would be likely to go into terminal decline. All empires go through a cycle and the UK is already showing signs of decline. I suspect that future historians will be writing essays on the decline of Britain and leaving the EU will be a nail in the coffin.

There will still be immigration post EU. Most of the immigration is non EU at the moment. Voting out is basically a vote to let in fewer europeans and more from other countries. Unless of course there is a huge recession, the economy slumps and the essential jobs filled by immigrants disappear. This could also happen, given that our economy is teetering just above on the brink of recession and we have a huge and growing national debt. Another dip, combined with foreign investors closing down their businesses here could just put the UK economy into a terminal decline. We don't have a divine right to be a relative rich country.

John Major certainly wouldn't trust Johnson and Gove. He said on Andrew Marr:

“The NHS is about as safe with them as a pet hamster would be with a hungry python.”

www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/05/john-major-nhs-risk-brexit-pythons-johnson-and-gove

Martin Lewis personally is going to vote stay in:

blog.moneysavingexpert.com/2016/06/05/how-to-vote-in-the-eu-referendum/

There must be quite a few households like yours, Humbert. However, if you do not vote it will look as if you do not care about it, and that's not true, is it? Cancelling each others vote out does not matter as long as you vote.

you must vote Humbert ......... vote Leave!

I heard Martin Lewis on Radio 4 today and he gave a very simple summary.
If you are worried about immigration and sovereignty - vote out.
If you are worried about the economy - vote in.

My daughter has suggested considering who is leading the campaigns on each side. Do you trust Cameron and Corbyn or Johnson, Gove and Farage?

My husband and I are on opposite sides. Is it worth us be voting at all?

Just when we thought...
In this interesting article there is a discussion about what parliament might or might not do in a post-leave-vote situation. There is about a 4:1 majority in the house in favour of Remain. Parliament could determine what kind of exit it was - a la Norway (single market, still paying in, still allowing free movement of Labour) or what?
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36457120

Martin Lewis has written a blog:

blog.moneysavingexpert.com/2016/06/05/how-to-vote-in-the-eu-referendum/

Is this not a time for head over heart ffinochio? Lots of facts about. What are people saying where you live?

A tough question, and one I can't answer rationally just yet.

I'm struggling to marry intellect with emotion, to find an autonomous route that I'm comfortable with.

I won't abstain, but find the dichotomy of the Referendum vote infuriating, and makes me terribly bolshy. Better wait for that to pass!

Thanks for asking * Jess*

Which issues are causing you to waver ffinnochi ?

Thanks for the info. dj

ukandeu.ac.uk/about-us/

This website is about as informative and non-partisan as you could get. Lots of information, mostly from universities.

Bump.

Still wavering.