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

[Hades]

There's nothing wrong with immigration, but let's take advantage of our desirability and select the best and brightest. We’re choosers, yet have the immigration policy of beggers.

Agreed. If the UK were a company then it's equivalent to being able to review someone's CV, interview them and hire the best candidate. Open borders is the equivalent of a company needing someone for a role and just letting the first person in the door have it. In fact it's worse than that as it's the equivalent of the company needing someone for a role, opening their door and having no option but to employ as many random people as just happens to walk through the door.

No-one would argue that is good business practice so why is it somehow good for a country instead?

Clearly many people want to come here. Let's use that to our advantage and choose the best people for the benefit of all.

EDIT: For the record I married a non-EU immigrant.

 

[platypus]

There's nothing wrong with immigration, but let's take advantage of our desirability and select the best and brightest. We’re choosers, yet have the immigration policy of beggers.

Agreed. If the UK were a company then it's equivalent to being able to review someone's CV, interview them and hire the best candidate. Open borders is the equivalent of a company needing someone for a role and just letting the first person in the door have it. In fact it's worse than that as it's the equivalent of the company needing someone for a role, opening their door and having no option but to employ as many random people as just happens to walk through the door.

No-one would argue that is good business practice so why is it somehow good for a country instead?

The trouble is there is absolutely nothing to say that post EU, we would have a points based immigration system.

 

[enigma27]

Still Leave

 

[RaohNS]

Still Leave.

Did anyone see the guy on QT?

£1.5tr he reckoned could be saved and generated with that money in 14years.

Even if he is 50% right. Well Leave is looking better all the time.

I am currently embroiled in a social experiment and may report back some time this week in response to previous statements/questions

 

[bayo000]

There's nothing wrong with immigration, but let's take advantage of our desirability and select the best and brightest. We’re choosers, yet have the immigration policy of beggers.

But will they want to come? Would you move to country that based (partially anyway) leaving EU on stopping immigration? It sends out a message that foreigners are not welcome.

 

[Adnams Drinker]

OUT, without hesitation - not a shred of doubt. And I cannot wait to see this hateful project collapse under the weight of its own bureaucracy - even Donald Tusk has now said they've gone too far, too fast ...

 

[RaohNS]

I don't normally like Frankie Boyle, but that description of Osbourne is brilliant:

It was the reference to Camerons dad that made me Lol

 

[Trifid]

How can Boris and Gove pledge something over which they'll have no control?

Leave have no plan. Leave states a plan. Leave can't set a plan because they have no power. Do you see the problem here?

 

[RaohNS]

Out winning 2:1... Still that has been overturned before by the tyranny we are trying to expunge from our lives

 

[Chris Wilson]

The trouble is there is absolutely nothing to say that post EU, we would have a points based immigration system.

But it is set in stone that if we remain in the EU we will *NOT* have such control...

 

[Mr Jack]

Clearly many people want to come here. Let's use that to our advantage and choose the best people for the benefit of all.

Even if we were to grant your argument, why would we want to deny every British citizen the enormous freedom we currently enjoy to live and work anywhere in the EU? Surely, you'd need a really big reason to deny us that, wouldn't you?

But as it is, EU migrants have lower unemployment rates than British citizens in the UK, and have no detrimental on wages for British citizens in the UK, nor unemployment for British citizens in the UK, while being big net contribution to the exchequer. So where is the big problem you think needs solving that is worth such a huge loss?

I also think it's pretty dubious to assume you can get "the best" people by central government planning of immigration or even that getting "the best" makes sense - people working in construction or fruit picking are contributing just as much as highly skilled engineers. I think we'd find that the government was slow to respond to the needs of employment and frequently damaged UK businesses by wrongly judging which immigrants to accept or refuse*. And I think we'd also find that plenty of "the best" people would look at the difficulty, hassle, and insecurity of going to the UK and take jobs in Germany, France or Denmark (etc.) instead.

* - In fact, judging by the dire state of our non-EU immigration controls I think it's very unlikely indeed that our government would get this right.

 

[Skunkworks]

But will they want to come? Would you move to country that based (partially anyway) leaving EU on stopping immigration? It sends out a message that foreigners are not welcome.

Sounds like an odd conclusion.

 

[Narj]

Well it's interesting when your employer reassures you that Brexit is already planned for and will be managed if it happens. No "advice" on how to vote which is refreshing.

 

[Conscript]

OUT, without hesitation - not a shred of doubt.

Can I ask, why not?

I've always leaned towards remain, but I've tried to be as open as possible to all arguments to the contrary. But the simple fact is, I haven't seen a coherent argument that conclusively proves to me that we would be better off leaving the union, or which has to stood up to reasoned criticism.

There's a guy on my Facebook list who is continually sharing Leave.EU propaganda posts. I try not to get involved in political discourse on Facebook (what's the point?), but a couple of times I've taken him to task and pointed out that the figures being presented were misleading or false, which I'd managed to discover with just a few minutes on Google. Yet he brushed it off and continues to post similar stuff - I cannot understand how some people can fail to be so critical of the information they are sharing. That, surely, should be enough to sew some seed of enormous doubt into some of the claims being made?

My point being, assuming you are remaining critical, what sources/arguments have you read/studied that leave you with no doubt whatsoever that voting leave is the best option?

A genuine question, I'm not trying to antagonise you or anyone. Sad that I have to clarify that, but these threads appear to degenerate quickly into pointless bickering and ridiculous name calling.

 

[Chris Wilson]

But will they want to come? Would you move to country that based (partially anyway) leaving EU on stopping immigration? It sends out a message that foreigners are not welcome.

They'll come all right, by any means they can find. What we need is a way to stop the undesirable ones. They are encamped in Calais, making constant illegal attempts to breach border control, they care not if they are wanted or not, many smell money, criminal activity with little redress, and an easy life at our expense.

 

[platypus]

They'll come all right, by any means they can find. What we need is a way to stop the undesirable ones. They are encamped in Calais, making constant illegal attempts to breach border control, they care not if they are wanted or not, many smell money, criminal activity with little redress, and an easy life at our expense.

And I still haven't seen a credible plan for what will happen when France stop making an effort to prevent these people coming here illegally, when they are no longer obliged too.

 

[subbytna]

Still out

 

[shiver]

In

 

[FutileBreadMachine]

What is your basis for this claim? Consider this graph of PPP GDP per capita for three eurozone and three non-eurozone Eastern European countries:

(from here.


While inflation has fallen in Slovenia and Slovakia and remained similar to historical levels in Estonia since they joined the Euro.

It looks to me like the three Eurozone countries are doing just fine in comparison to the non-Eurozone countries and I don't see any dips associated with their ascension to the Euro (only Slovenia shows a following dip but that associates with the global recession and doesn't seem worse in Slovenia than other countries).

My wife is Latvian, we have Ukrainian and Polish friends and I have a Slovakian friend, so I have perspectives from member and non-member countries. The only benefit for the member countries is they are able to come here. My wife's hometown is completely devoid of young people now, they'e all abandoned the country, mostly for the UK. There are no jobs there and everyday shopping costs the same as here but they are not earning UK wages. Even when I went there years ago it was bleak as hell, roads in the middle of town left unfinished and some of her friends don't even have running water since the council ran out of money to finish running the pipes all the way to them (and this is in the city).

Apparently Ukraine is actually benefiting from not being a member since now there is a lot of outsourcing moving there rather than India, and they can pay an IT person there £1K/Month and the cost of living is so cheap he will have £800 left over every month. My Slovakian mate earns 4x the money here as a developer and is actually playing the system pretending his wife is here so that she will soon get indefinite leave to remain even though she still lives in Slovakia...his 3 brothers have moved here too to find work. There is absolutely no reason for them to stay in their hopeless countries when it's so easy to just move here.

 

[John40]

nope, but it is certainly possible that in the event of an out vote there would be some noise made either publicly or privately re: further concessions - however the idea of having a second referendum is dubious

In the event of a Leave vote which is very very unlikely a second referendum is a sure-fire certainty given Cameron's pledge not to take us out of the EU.