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@mikey4444
//
Danny...if someone voted Tory last May, how could they not be anything other than right-wingers ?
14:26 Wed 20th Apr 2016
//

I gritted my teeth and voted Tory last May, for the first time since I was 18 and I was impressionable enough then to merely go along with my parents' recommendation (mum convinced me that foreign investors always remove their investments from the UK, every time Labour get into power, so as to make them fail). Independence of mind and straightened circumstances made me vote Labour ever after.

Why did I change? Because Miliband and chums were too pig-headed to promise-match on an EU referendum. What harm could canvassing public opinion, formally, do? Are they legally obliged to follow through on an exit vote? They didn't even address these points (that I could detect).

At least they took an honest position, not promising a referendum, rather than promising it, to retain Eurosceptic Labour voters, like me and publically reneging on it or filibustering it, etc., at a later date.

I accept Farage's main thesis, I just rail against the more outrageous, xenophobic outbursts of some of his followers. I have *learned* so much about the inner workings of the EU, which previously only intruded on our lives in ways fit for parody but, otherwise, filed under "mostly harmless".

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Out, out, out!

Hypo....it appreciate that you have changed your political allegiance and voted Tory last summer, and your reasons for doing it. I don't agree with you although that doesn't really matter.

But if you used to vote Labour and now vote Tory, you can't still be a left-winger can you ?
@dannyk13

//The EEC was a good idea the EU is not.//

Well said. By all means do things which enhance trade. But why should this be extended to governmental powers?

If nothing else, this goes to show what "democracy" is really all about. In the beginning, mere plebs didn't even have the vote. Parliament was all about the aristocracy, settling their differences about the carve-up of British land holdings and, as neuveux-riche merchants started to get in on the act, their actions were seen to need intervention and mediation (skint toffs, cashing in their land), to ensure fairness.

Merchants clash with foreign merchants and talked monarchies, of those times into "patriotic" assertions of national power, to get their way.

The EU was an attempt to settle trade-based disputes and end wars.

Patriotism is how the big guys get the little guys to fight their wars for them.

"Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel"
-Samuel Johnson, 1775
// The EU was an attempt to settle trade-based disputes and end wars. //

thx for your thoughts about Vietnam ..... BUT

EU started as the 1957 Treaty of Rome and THAT grew out of the coal and steel union of France and Germany
Churchill gave many speeches in support of the union in opposition and then in his admin 1952-5 did diddly squat about joining it

[ I only mention this as you almost alone will know where Rome is, what the treaty was and who churchill was and what he did 1940-45 ]
@mikey4444

//But if you used to vote Labour and now vote Tory, you can't still be a left-winger can you ?//

I want to be able to cherry-pick good policies from both camps.

Sadly, this makes me, at best, wishy-washy or (shudder) easily mistaken for Liberal or, at worst, just untrustworthy.

In the meantime, just watch my posts veering from one side to the other.

In a recent post (I forget where), I described the EU as "socialism, redistributing wealth from one geographical area to places too far away for some of us to want to bother visiting".

@Peter

//[ I only mention this as you almost alone will know where Rome is, what the treaty was and who churchill was and what he did 1940-45 ]//

I should have done but, as per other thread, no student of history, I. (/me?)

This is fresh in memory, thanks to "Europe: Them or Us" Ep 1/2, which some will have turned their noses up at because it's presented by (reputedly) "right wing" Nick Robinson.

The utterly scurrilous parliamentary tricks used to achieve our entry into Europe. Currently watching 2/2; Thatcher's realisation of the full horrors and the fallout from that.
Apropos of nuuuthing

"
Afraid of the future
[…]
The future is scary
Yes, it sure is
Well, the puddle is rising
It smells like the ocean
A body of water
To isolate England
"

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/frankzappa/thebluelight.html


We shop at Waitrose, have an upmarket car and we don't go to the cinema, according to the Link that puts us in the Remain Camp.

How WRONG they are!!
Hypo...lol !

Unfortunately we can't pick and choose which bits we like from all the Parties. We can only put a cross in one box !
Hypo....I don't know if you ever visit Wales, but we are one of those
"places too far away for some of us to want to bother visiting".

We have been glad of the aid and assistance that the EU have given, especially in those dark days of the 1980's and 1990's. Without European aid, we would never have survived.
Surely the problem is that none of us know enough to make an informed choice on June 23rd.It really comes down to who you believe more ,either Boris and Brexit or David Cameron and Remain.I am certainly undecided although I am very concerned the Government has failed miserably on its election pledge to control immigration.
That is exactly the problem Grumpy...what we need are hard facts, not rhetoric and emotion.

But I have said this before....any debate about Europe that we have here in Britain soon deteriorates into a discussion about warm beer, cricket and wasn't the Queen Mother wonderful !
“We have been glad of the aid and assistance that the EU have given, especially in those dark days of the 1980's and 1990's. Without European aid, we would never have survived.”

Yes you would, Mikey. The dosh that the UK was paying to the EU then (some of which it got back on the condition it was spent as directed) could (and would) have been spent as the UK government thought fit. The idea that the EU provides “aid” to its member states is not true (certainly not as far as the more prosperous ones are concerned). The “aid” you describe is a refund of some – only some- of the money provided in the first place.

“what we need are hard facts,”

Well here is one indisputable “hard fact”: Jean Monnet, a founding father of the EU, said this, “Europe’s nations should be guided towards the Superstate without their people understanding what is happening”. That is certainly what is happening (and to a degree what has already happened). The referendum campaign is largely smoke and mirrors. “This will go up, that will go down, mortgages will be dearer, the NHS will suffer, the City will go broke, we’ll be flooded with migrants, etc. etc.” Many of these forecasts made by people who cannot accurately forecast what will happen next week now able to tell us what will happen in 2030 and beyond.

The real issue is none of this. The real issue is whether the UK wants to remain an independent sovereign nation or whether it is happy to become completely subsumed into the Superstate that M. Monnet craved. For that is what is on offer; that is the real “unknown” that we’re told we should avoid; the UK’s energy, foreign, domestic, fiscal, tax, health, transport, education and immigration policies all determined elsewhere by unelected Euromaniacs from countries with no interest whatsoever in seeing the UK thrive. Forget Mr Cameron’s “piece of paper” that he returned from Brussels with a few months ago. That will be ripped up (if it still exists) on June 24th if the “Remainers” win. It's nothing to do with warm beer, cricket or even the Queen Mum.
"It's nothing to do with warm beer, cricket or even the Queen Mum"

Yes I know NJ, but all discussions about Europe come down to something similar in the end. We needs facts but all we get are scare stories, which few can prove or disprove either way.

I don't share your confidence in what would have happened had we not had European money. I repeat that its Euros that have kept Welsh heads above the water, not Westminster pounds.
The Swiss are not down at heel nor cap in hand. We should follow their path.

"....Switzerland is neither an EU nor EEA member but is part of the single market - this means Swiss nationals have the same rights to live and work in the UK as other EEA nationals...."

https://www.gov.uk/eu-eea
Mikey, //“Europe’s nations should be guided towards the Superstate without their people understanding what is happening”. //

He means you.
^ ;o)
The EU does not have any money of its own to give to Wales or anybody else, Mikey. All it has is money taken from member nations.

"He means you."

And all the rest of us, naomi. But alas we can't all see it. (Or if we can, we believe that loss of sovereignty is a price worth paying for a few quid of our own money being given back to us with conditions).
@mikey4444

//Hypo....I don't know if you ever visit Wales, but we are one of those
"places too far away for some of us to want to bother visiting". //

I was referring to the the infrastructure our money is, presumably aiding the construction of, in the newly joined, former Soviet bloc states. Making it easier for German trucks to shift consumer goods to those territories. Our manufacturers distribution costs start at 6-700 miles over an above their costs.

We pay in, Germany gains, far more than we do ****unless our manufacturers shift production to Germany or countries further east****.


Likewise, in Jeremy Clarkson's solo series, pre-new-style Top Gear, he complimented Spain's fresh, pothole-free roads… which, he believed, we helped pay for.

I am going to keep repeating these points until someone bothers to refute them, satisfactorily. Our net contribution (it bothers me that kippers etc use the gross figure, to make it seem bigger, which wastes a few minutes in each and every debate show) is going "somewhere" and I want to know where (CERN & ESA are the only things I'm certain of).

I don't need to visit Wales, because I'm in it. Even the Welsh parliament pumps everything into developing Cardiff, so it treats places west of Swansea the same way Westminster treats Wales.

Come and enjoy our perforated road surfaces and mediæval single-track back roads.

Name any organisation you might think would want to HQ here? (hey, reverse commuting, come on down!)

//We have been glad of the aid and assistance that the EU have given, especially in those dark days of the 1980's and 1990's. Without European aid, we would never have survived. //

I have never read such blocks. I live in Wales too mikey (he isn't Welsh btw just a wannabee) You are invariably wrong, but to elect yourself as spokesman for Wales is tantamount to delusion.

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