Poll: The EU Referendum: How Will You Vote? (April 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: 452 45.0%

  • Leave the European Union

    Votes: 553 55.0%
  • Total voters
    1,005
  • Poll closed .
Status
Not open for further replies.
#FOIA reveals govt’s assessment of #TTIP's corporate courts – “lots of risks and no benefit”

http://bit.ly/1Wlg6lp


The response from BIS was that the only such assessment that had been carried out was a 2013 study commissioned from the London School of Economics that concluded:

There is little reason to think that an EU-US investment chapter will provide the UK with significant economic benefits.
There is little reason to think that an EU-US investment chapter will provide the UK with significant political benefits.
There is some reason to expect an EU-US investment chapter will impose meaningful economic costs on the UK. Based on Canada’s experience under NAFTA, we would expect an EU-US investment chapter to be regularly invoked by US investors against the UK for governmental actions that would normally not be challengeable under UK law.

The response from BIS also revealed that no risk assessment had been carried out for the inclusion of investor protection in CETA – the free trade deal between Canada and EU that is even further down the process of approval than TTIP.

Nick Dearden, the director of Global Justice Now said:

Introducing a system of secret corporate courts under TTIP would be a fundamental shift in trade and legal policies, so it’s staggering that the government is pushing us into it with almost no assessment of what the risks are for our policy makers or the tax payer. What’s even worse is that the one assessment that the government has commissioned shows that there are lots of risks and no benefit. Yet again this toxic trade deal is exposed as being full of harmful consequences for ordinary people, and new powers and privileges for corporate elites.

Court cases brought against governments under investor protection in other trade deals include:

Tobacco giant Philip Morris has sued Australia for introducing plain packaging on cigarettes.
Philip Morris also sued Uruguay for printing a health warning on cigarette packets.
Waste and energy company Veolia sued Egypt for introducing a minimum wage
Argentina was sued for freezing energy prices to protect consumers following the country’s financial collapse.


That's a study from the oft Europhile quoted London School of Economics by the way .... Jack? Moses? Datalol?
They shouldn't have bothered with a FOI request or even the study - Most of the Europhile posters in this thread are happy to give various guarantees that TTIP is safe and a great thing for the UK, they should have just come here for their assurances. :D
 
Last edited:
Heres a few referendum things which are bothering me, I'm sure plenty of remainers will be able to put me right. First of all how much money do we pay to the EU? General concensus is it's £13Bn per annum of which £6Bn comes back for "special projects". So a net £7Bn paid to be part of the EU and the free trade area. Although only 12.5% of businesses trade with the EU, 100% are legislated for by the EU. So I imagine that most of the ones doing the trading are the big businesses. Given this is tax payers money is this not just yet again the tax payer subsidising big business?
 
Mulder said:
Blair on the Euro:
Click to expand...

Tony Blair made a lot of positive noises about Britain joining the Euro but it never passed the Labour government's five economic tests.

Despite what else they've done, you've got to applaud Tony Blair and Gordon Brown for putting evidence before ideology in this instance.
 
b0redj0rd said:
Court cases brought against governments under investor protection in other trade deals include:

Tobacco giant Philip Morris has sued Australia for introducing plain packaging on cigarettes.
Click to expand...

Just a point of order: this wasn't brought under an ISDS arbitration type arrangement and, also, they lost. As a result of this action and others, tobacco was specifically excluded from using the arrangements in the TTP. To my eyes, the very need for this kind of exemption points up the severe issues with this kind of provision.

That's a study from the oft Europhile quoted London School of Economics by the way .... Jack? Moses? Datalol?
Click to expand...

I don't know why you're pointing to me. I've already posted several times in this thread about the problems with TTIP and ISDS in particular. I am strongly opposed to the TTIP as it stands; I just don't think that the potential issues with the TTIP constitute a good enough reason to throw away the EU. In fact, I think we're probably safer in the EU than we would be out of it. I have more faith in the collective of the EU to stand up against corporate interests than I do in the UK government alone. Do you think our current Tory government would blink twice before signing up to ISDS?

Also, it's Mr Jack :D
 
Terminal_Boy said:
Not entirely impartial then.
Click to expand...

So... to your mind the OECD being funded by countries in the EU - and no money at all from the EU itself - makes them "not entirely impartial"? I have to wonder how tenuous a link you think casts shade on an organisation's impartiality.
 
Mr Jack said:
Rolls-Royce, Airbus and Caterpillar join the chorus with a warning that Brexit will increase the engineering skills shortage. I look forward to learning how they are suckling at the EU teat.
Click to expand...

Just quoting from that.

“While the UK could tackle this problem by introducing a fast-track visa process for engineers and technologists, it is unclear how this would sit alongside the tighter border controls anticipated following an exit from the EU”

Isn't that an oxymoron?
 
The OECD failed to anticipate the financial crisis in 2008 and have repeatedly been off the mark on GDP growth forcecasts, they are not an entirely credible source when it comes to economic forecasting.

In fact actually, it's worse than that. They anticipated the risk of property bubbles and talked about it, but then played down that risk in order to go along with the consensus.

The OECD is not objective, it is highly political and basically pushes globalist agendas.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom