Poll: The EU Referendum: How Will You Vote? (May 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: 522 41.6%
  • Leave the European Union

    Votes: 733 58.4%

  • Total voters
    1,255
  • Poll closed .
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Soldato
Joined
28 Jan 2008
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6,070
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Manchester
Which democracy do you mean? Having head of state that no body ellects or prime minister that also is not ellected by people or do you mean House of Lords that once again people have no choice of voting in.
Or perhaps you mean the democracy where having 1.5 million votes get you 56 seats in parliament and 3.8 million (more than double) votes gets you a grand total of 1 seat in the same parliament?
 
Soldato
Joined
10 Oct 2004
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3,921
Location
Bucks
You can flail about all you like.

Your argument that exiting the EU would result in more sovereign decisions, whilst still magically staying within as much of the common market as possible, big savings, lower prices and matched funding here for everything that'd be affected is bogus. It has always been bogus, unfunded and ethereal.

Which is why you're rightly accused of being a rogue and a gambler. Deal me in on your special deal, whenever Govey publishes one for you that is.:rolleyes:

:o

So you've switched from CAP, to sovereignty, to "special deals", to again calling anyone who wants to leave "rogue?" Not sure i'm the one "flailing about" here.

Your point about agriculture only making up less than 2% of EU output is right (see, I give you credit where it's due ;)) but of course you don't dispute the fact that 40% of the EU budget is spent on it because that's true.

40% of the entire EU budget, or about €55,000,000,000, being spent on a sector that represents less than 2% of EU output? And what do we get from that massive spend; higher food prices, hurting farmers in the developing world, rewarding larger (mainly French) farms, associated environment problems etc. The "Criticisms" section of the CAP entry on wikipedia is almost a novel in itself. Even our very own farming minister wants to leave, and believes money we currently send into the CAP and don't get back could be better spent on promoting improved wildlife habitats and higher animal welfare standards.

Yeah, now I can see why you want to move the debate along. :o

Funny how a lot of your defense is based around ridiculing a "special" post brexit deal that doesn't even exist yet and has a pre-determined 2 year negotiating window. And you flame the leave camp for making predictions out into the future.

The US has 20 bilateral trade deals, Switzerland has 26, Japan has 24, China has 23, Australia has 19, New Zealand has 17. The list goes on and on for countries all over the world. But for someone to suggest the UK could negotiate its own deals? Out of the question! How dare you! That's the EU's job!
 
Associate
Joined
8 May 2011
Posts
499
Location
UK
I have noticed in these polls that the outers take a huge early lead and the remain percentage slowly comes back. It reaffirms my belief that the majority of remainers are not passionate/or cannot be bothered, this makes me hopeful that this will play out in the actual referendum and the exit vote will win.
 
Soldato
Joined
12 Sep 2012
Posts
11,696
Location
Surrey
Anyone who votes to stay in is a traitor to this country & should be punished for being so.

Vote OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!

Can't tell if serious because there have been serious posts on the same level on the last thread. My reply to these were:

I'm not English, possess the right to vote and will be voting out. Have a nice day frothing at the mouth :)
 
Man of Honour
Joined
27 Sep 2004
Posts
25,821
Location
Glasgow
Your point about agriculture only making up less than 2% of EU output is right (see, I give you credit where it's due ;)) but of course you don't dispute the fact that 40% of the EU budget is spent on it because that's true.

40% of the entire EU budget, or about €55,000,000,000, being spent on a sector that represents less than 2% of EU output? And what do we get from that massive spend; higher food prices, hurting farmers in the developing world, rewarding larger (mainly French) farms, associated environment problems etc. The "Criticisms" section of the CAP entry on wikipedia is almost a novel in itself. Even our very own farming minister wants to leave, and believes money we currently send into the CAP and don't get back could be better spent on promoting improved wildlife habitats and higher animal welfare standards.

Pardon what might be questions that have already been covered in previous posts or threads but when you say 2% of EU output I assume you're talking about GDP for the whole of Europe? If so then €55,000,000,000 to support a €286,000,000,000 contribution from agriculture out of total GDP of €14,300,000,000,000 (2014 figures from Wikipedia) is perhaps slightly less of a headline. Or to look at it another way the subsidies are around 20% (rounded up from 19.23%) of the amount contributed by agriculture to the EU's GDP or if you prefer the subsidies are <0.5% (0.38%) of the total GDP of the EU if I'm working out the percentages correctly.

I don't know enough about the whys and wherefores of the arguments for or against the CAP and don't intend to get involved but presenting raw figures (particularly percentages) without analysis of what it does can be somewhat tricky for people to follow. Just for the sake of amusement any argument that CAP is a waste of money if it takes up 40% of the EU's total budget might equally be presented as an argument that the rest of the EU spending is tremendously good value for money if it helps contribute so much more to the economy. That would then be a discussion about how best to reform CAP and get all EU spending to the level of the most efficient.

However that, in itself, is also somewhat simplistic because it would discount that there may be many reasons you would want/need to invest in something which doesn't give the highest returns e.g. a need to produce food (relatively) locally, an industry where prices and profit margins are not as high as some others doesn't mean it isn't vital, an aim to keep employment up in certain areas etc etc. CAP may or may not be terrible according to objective or subjective measures but it does seem as if there's probably a bit of context missing when purely examining figures.

Funny how a lot of your defense is based around ridiculing a "special" post brexit deal that doesn't even exist yet and has a pre-determined 2 year negotiating window. And you flame the leave camp for making predictions out into the future.

The US has 20 bilateral trade deals, Switzerland has 26, Japan has 24, China has 23, Australia has 19, New Zealand has 17. The list goes on and on for countries all over the world. But for someone to suggest the UK could negotiate its own deals? Out of the question! How dare you! That's the EU's job!

I don't think that people are typically suggesting that the UK couldn't negotiate its own deals, if I'm reading it correctly it is that people aren't convinced that the UK will be able to get either deals that are at least on parity or better than what is currently available. Again I don't know whether it is or isn't plausible that in a post EU exit scenario that the UK would be able to negotiate great deals but if you'll excuse what might be a great deal of understatement it does seem to be a bit of a punt into the unknown.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
17 Oct 2002
Posts
159,947
I don't think that people are typically suggesting that the UK couldn't negotiate its own deals

I don't know why the Brexit side keeps inventing this concept that the 'In' side believe we couldn't negotiate trade deals. Of course we could - a UK outside of the EU can and will negotiate trade deals with our trading partners. It is nonsense to suggest anyone with half a brain would think we couldn't.

But the point is that these trade deals would be inferior to membership of the single market and would introduce additional costs - not because the EU would want to spite us, not because we are 'small fish' or whatever, but simply because thats how trade deals work. Nobody else in the world has what we have in the single market.
 
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