Poll: The EU Referendum: How Will You Vote? (June Poll)

Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?

  • Remain a member of the European Union

    Votes: 794 45.1%
  • Leave the European Union

    Votes: 965 54.9%

  • Total voters
    1,759
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Soldato
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a vote to reduce the pay of British workers;
Or increase the wages of those who need it most in the UK? Along with potentially lower rent prices?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/new...ent-of-a-Brexit-head-of-in-campaign-says.html

more inward looking Britain

I feel as though the EU is very inward looking and the UK is more outward towards the whole world. I would hope in the event of leaving the EU we can do so even more.


that has turned its back on it's nearest neighbours and closest allies

No one wants to completely turn our backs on the EU, just not be married to it.
 
Soldato
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That's one MEP for every 840,000 UK inhabitants. How come Luxembourg gets 1 MEP for every 77,000 of its inhabitants? Fair and representative?

It's quite common in democratic systems for representation to be by region rather than pure population numbers. It's how it works in the UK for example with each constituency having one representative. That said, MEPs are elected by proportional representation rather than First Past The Post so it's more representative of the actual voting than our UK MP system.
 
Soldato
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Criminal - how can I remove these MEPs at the next European election? Oh wait that's right, I probably can't because no doubt they are at the top of their party's list of candidates.

Why don't you just vote for a different party if you want to have a chance at removing them? :confused:
 
Associate
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It's really simple, build more.

Build more houses, schools, hospitals, GP surgeries

Say we build 300,000 more properties plus other infrastructure enhancements to accommodate the EU people flow.

Say 150,000 earn a chunk of money over here then go back to their homeland to be with their families and friends a few years later. Now we are stuck with over supply of housing stock which will then make property drop significantly and ultimately people will be stuck in negative equity. This is a very simplified snapshot but extrapolate that for say 5-10 years net migration and if the answer was to just 'build' to accommodate we would end up in trouble.
 
Soldato
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Or we could just Leave the EU, make our country even greater and just have a bit of control over the numbers of people coming to live and work here. Pragmatism over hysteria for me every day of the week.



That's the idea :D

I firmly believe a Leave vote, followed by a Boris government will be disastrous for this country (unless you happen to be a chum of Boris from the old Eton days, then everything will be spiffing won't it chap?)

The idea that EU migration is the root cause of what it's been blamed for is laughable.

I'd strongly recommend a read of this. Written by Simon Tilford at CER (who want a reformed EU)
http://www.cer.org.uk/sites/default/files/bulletin_105_st_article1.pdf
 
Soldato
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If we sent MEPs who actually turned up maybe we'd get listened to more.

We actually had MEPs who drafted bills and then didn't turn up to vote for them

Not to mention ones that stand up in parliament to sing the Dad's Army song about Hitler or declare that nobody had ever heard of someone (turned out he was Prime Minister of Belgium if you actually pay attention to European politics).
 
Soldato
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Say we build 300,000 more properties plus other infrastructure enhancements to accommodate the EU people flow.

Say 150,000 earn a chunk of money over here then go back to their homeland to be with their families and friends a few years later. Now we are stuck with over supply of housing stock which will then make property drop significantly and ultimately people will be stuck in negative equity. This is a very simplified snapshot but extrapolate that for say 5-10 years net migration and if the answer was to just 'build' to accommodate we would end up in trouble.

You haven't thought that through.

"Net immigration" means people, overall, are coming in. That's not likely to change, so there's not likely to be a glut of housing soon.

You can't be worried about the effects of net immigration and net emigration at the same time! :p
 
Caporegime
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It's quite common in democratic systems for representation to be by region rather than pure population numbers. It's how it works in the UK for example with each constituency having one representative. That said, MEPs are elected by proportional representation rather than First Past The Post so it's more representative of the actual voting than our UK MP system.

Yeah but we don't have one constituency with 800k voters in it, and another with 70k in it. I know our constituency sizes aren't equal - Scotland for example gets better representation than England, but not to that scale. The European Parliament on the other hand has been deliberately designed to under-represent voters from larger nations like the UK.

Good thing about FPTP is that we choose our MP - and can get rid of him if we don't like him (don't believe me? ask Ed Balls). Wouldn't be able to do that under PR.
 
Associate
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You haven't thought that through.

"Net immigration" means people, overall, are coming in. That's not likely to change, so there's not likely to be a glut of housing soon.

You can't be worried about the effects of net immigration and net emigration at the same time! :p

lol yeah I see your point and the flaw in my comment. I was more thinking that in say 5-10 (maybe 15-20) years immigration could reduce and at the same time people could end up going back and we could be left with a **** load of empty houses.
 
Soldato
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Say we build 300,000 more properties plus other infrastructure enhancements to accommodate the EU people flow.

Say 150,000 earn a chunk of money over here then go back to their homeland to be with their families and friends a few years later. Now we are stuck with over supply of housing stock which will then make property drop significantly and ultimately people will be stuck in negative equity. This is a very simplified snapshot but extrapolate that for say 5-10 years net migration and if the answer was to just 'build' to accommodate we would end up in trouble.

Wouldn't that mean that house prices and rent costs would come down because of this? Thought that what people want to ;)
 
Soldato
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The more I hear about this referendum the more I am convinced that it is fundamentally flawed. Having a simple Remain/Leave question choice may look good, but no one taking part knows what voting to Leave will actually mean. If you tried to present a business plan at any sort of competently run company that the existing business model and trading agreements should be scrapped now so you can negotiate something different in the future, without any guarantees or indeed a clear plan as to what the future would look like, you would not be taken seriously.

There may be people that vote to remain but would have voted to leave if there was a realistic and achievable plan as to what this would mean. And there will certainly be people that vote Leave and (if they win) then find their view of what this should mean is not what happens.

As has previously been commented, this situation is the result of UKIP putting the wind up the Conservatives and David Cameron agreeing to the ballot as he thought there was no chance of a leave vote.
 
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Soldato
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Sorry but that is drivel. Have you seen the Commons debate a bill? It is usually 2/3 empty and then when the division comes MP's scurry in from the Bar and Coffee rooms (or maybe their office) and then file through the lobby their whips tell them to go into.

I've been to the House of Commons a few times, and watch PMQ's fairly often. Here is a (fairly lengthy) list of times the Government of the day has been defeated in the Commons. It may not always be full, but anything important (like PMQ's) and MPs are regularly having to sit on the floor as it's so packed.

Remember the Government defeat on the Syrian war in 2013? That's the power of the House of Commons at work. The European Parliament by comparison is feeble.

Stephen Crabb the DWP minister voted to cut ESA by £30 a week for WRAG group claimants. When he defended it in his local paper he got the whole concept and legal status of the WRAG group wrong. The minister didn't even understand the legislation he voted on! That is the reality of the working of the HofC.

An anecdote about Stephen Crabb getting something wrong = what, the HoC is broken? OK......

You complain that people wouldn't know the differences between the presidents but how many UK voters can name all the cabinet? or explain what each department is responsible for? or name their local councillor? or their Police Commissioner? these are all elected positions so does the fact that the average UK voter could not name all the permanent heads of the various government departments mean the UK Government is entirely undemocratic? Do you know who the Cabinet secretary is? When did you elect him to his position? when did Parliament elect him? or even ratify him?

Name ALL of the cabinet? I was talking about the difference between the Council and the Commission, you've raised the bar quite a bit!

I would hope most people in the UK could name their own member of Parliament. 66% of UK citizens voted in the 2015 General Election, 35.6% of people in the UK voted for an MEP in the last MEP elections in 2014. That's a big difference.

You can try and use extreme examples to prove your point (Police Commissioners, really?) but you can't deny people generally don't understand the EU, how it works, they don't engage with it, and that generally it operates in a secret, behind closed door manner, just how they like it.

And as has been pointed out, just like the EU discriminates in favour of EU migrants over those from the rest of the world, representation in the Parliament is a joke, we have 1 MEP for every 840,000 people, Luxembourg has 1 MEP for every 77,000. So effectively every Luxembourg citizen has over 10x the representation in the Parliament, nice.

Actually very few places have full separation of powers and the UK definitely does not. The PM is head of the Executive and a member of the Legislature as are all ministers some of the executive come from the House of Lords so they are members of the executive and legislature but wholly unelected. Until quite recently the Lord Chancellor was a member of and head of the Judiciary and in the executive and in the Legislature.

We have 22 Cabinet ministers, every single one of them is an elected MP bar one (here). The one exception is the Lord Privy Seal, which is a historic tradition, and the use of a privy seal has been obsolete for centuries. So stop trying to conflate the argument, our executive has been duly elected and are accountable to Parliament, the same cannot be said for the European Commission.

Oh yes the UK would never sign an extradition treaty with a non EU nation that didn't protect its citizens. Might want to have a look at this one:

UK - US Extradition Treaty 2003.

So what's your point? If you're criticizing the UK-US Extradition treaty (which for the record I think has major issues) then why are you happy to stand up for the European Arrest Warrant which carries many of the same criticisms?
 
Caporegime
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Why don't you just vote for a different party if you want to have a chance at removing them? :confused:

Parliament is very similar when you get politicians such as Boris Johnson being put up in Tory safe seats so they're a shoe in for an election.

It'd take a swing of some 6,000 votes to get rid of Boris in Uxbridge. I estimate you'd need to get about 3,000,000 UKIP voters to switch to someone else to get rid of Farage. Big names can be removed under our system - just ask Michael Portillo or Ed Balls.

Edit: my bad - it's more like ~600,000 UKIP voters in the South East to get rid of Farage.
 
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