Poll: The EU Referendum: How Will You Vote? (March 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: 400 43.3%

  • Leave the European Union

    Votes: 523 56.7%
  • Total voters
    923
  • Poll closed .
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Efour said:
So why don't British EU reps instead of trying to veto nearly everything, instead, come up with some proper leading ideas and show some of this amazing British spirit and character that everyone seems to get from being born in a particular place and eating fish fingers and meat pies.
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Because all the so-called Europsceptics among them are busy stuffing their faces in the Brussells gravy train. Just look at Farage, for example. Not only does he suck down more than £200,000 in salary and expenses every year, but he added insult to injury by hiring his wife and mistress as 'staff.'

All this from a man who claims to oppose EU bureaucracy and waste.
 
I see Merkel has changed her tune now.

"Merkel has demanded that migrants arriving in Greece via Turkey must use the registration centres there rather than attempt to travel through the Balkans and register in Germany, the opposite of the German policy in September where migrants were waved through in the hundreds of thousands to be registered in places like Munich or Berlin."

In other words "sod the lot of you"

"“There just isn’t the right for a refugee to say I want to go to that particular country and seek EU asylum,” Merkel told press after a meeting with Croatia’s Prime Minister Tihomir Orešković"

Us in the UK have been saying that from the start.
 
This argument is beginning to sound like "left wing" vs "right wing".

Much like the left think of the right, the remain camp think that the outers are motivated only by malice, bigotry and selfishness. Demonstrating a general inability to accept that people might have principled reasons at odds with their own.

I for instance am not scared, uninformed and I'm not motivated by race hate, I just think the EU tries and fails to do to much. I also think it will continue to try and fail to do more and do not want to live in that post democratic technocrat run kind of country. I accept however that outers will be smeared until the referendum is long past.
 
Might not be directly related to this thread but a bit more fuel to the fire (and I think EHIC wouldn't exist if we exited)
According to sky Link "it has emerged that the UK pays more than £670m to EU countries for Brits' healthcare abroad, while claiming back less than £50m from the EU, even though there are significantly more EU citizens in the UK than UK citizens in the EU."

The real cost is thought to be a billion pounds a year.

This is probably explained by the shoddy management of the NHS and the government in failing to claim these costs. Another potential reason for some of the discrepancy could be a lot of OAP ex pats (so higher health costs) but this is rebuked in the article.
It would appear that the system isn't fair and some countries charge for A&E and some don't.

I'm sure some of this unclaimed money could be used to facilitate a better deal for the junior docters as well
 
oneilldo said:
Might not be directly related to this thread but a bit more fuel to the fire
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Its a valid point, but to me it highlights how utterly useless the NHS is being managed when it comes to the matter. Healthcare is very expensive and i don't think most Brits appreciate that until they have a medical experience in another country.

The NHS needs reforming somehow but i dont think its an leaving the EU issue.
Maybe they need to hire some better debt collectors. :p
 
Burnsy2023 said:
Err, don't be silly.

I expect that freedom of movement was likely to be high on the EU agenda to pass before anything else could be negotiated. Switzerland wouldn't have been able to make any progress on any other issue until this was resolved.
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datalol-jack said:
The level of access they wanted required free movement as one of the conditions. They agreed by signing the relevant bi-lateral agreement. As was said before, the EU offers tiered access to the common market based on a set of predefined freedoms and conditions, if you don't like one tier you pick another; but what you do sign binds you to conform by the relevant EU treaties and international law derived from them. You also pay a contribution to the EU proportionate to the level of your participation, even if you're on the fringes of the project, as some countries chose to be.

What's so hard to grasp?
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I grasped it the first time scorza laid it out exactly like that, they chose to agree to free movement in exchange for the free market, it was Burnsy's reply that confused me.....

scorza said:
Switzerland is a sovereign nation and have made their own trading arrangements with the EU, but what is right for Switzerland may not necessarily be right for us.

Burnsy2023 said:
You're assuming they had a choice.
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If they signed up to it then they had a choice, unless it was at gun point or something.
 
onelido, a recent Radio 4 programme (I forget which) suggested that because some countries in the EU charge their citizens for healthcare people from those countris come to the UK to get EHIC cards and then return to their home country and use them to get free healthcare bypassing their own countries provision at our expense. Without naming countries it was suggested 200,000 more cards had been issued than members of that country resident in the UK. The country was a recent EU member.

We are a bit of a soft touch and our honest implementation of EU rules means we're taken advantage of. We would certainly put in reciporcal arrangements for a post EU relationship so it's not like anyone could claim a definite net saving but it is illustrative of the ill thought out nature of the EU.
 
scorza said:
A lot of the stay campaign arguments seem to be about working together as nations for the betterment of mankind, and I agree that working together is important and the right way forward. However working together under threat, like the one issued by the French minister today, isn't working together at all and counter-productive, it just causes bitterness and resentment.
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My feelings exactly. It's like "I love you so much. I can't live without you. Please don't leave me... but if you do, I'm going to throw all your stuff in the garden and set fire to it, also going to put your dog in a sack of rocks and throw it in the canal."
 
Freakbro said:
That's a good thing then?
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IF she backs it up with more than just more words. Perhaps.
The current "Migrant Crisis" is pretty much entirely her doing. I wonder if she consulted the rest of Europe before inviting everyone who wants to come to Europe regardless of country* to hop on a boat and get here for a free house and new life.

*Yes I realise it was only certain countries e.g. Syria (and possibly Afghanistan, or was that us?)... but all someone has to do in practice is arrive with no ID and claim that they're Syrian but lost their papers.
 
Freakbro said:
That's a good thing then?
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It's the right decision ... about 18 months too late unfortunately. I'm afraid that this sort of flip-flopping just gives the impression of a leader who is failing in their duty of crisis management. There's still no overall plan for how to stop this.

Edit: to add to this, I get the impression the people in charge in Brussels are all probably very intellectual, probably lawyers, very successful bureaucrats, but they have little or no experience on actually governing a small European country - never mind the whole of Europe!
 
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