BREXIT

[Glyn_Wigley]

Ah yes, referendums! Sadly the EU has a tendency to run those until it gets the result it wants. Ask the Danes and the Irish.

Ah yes, referenda! Those things the EU has never held. Not once.

[BobG]

The EU can't run referenda Glyn. It has no constituents to poll. Only nations can do that. And there have been several such - exactly as TRB says.

Cheers

BobG

[BillyStubbsTears]

Bob mate. Read TRB's and Glyn's posts again. I think you've missed the gist.

[The Red Baron]

Interesting.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36441188

The committee chair, Keith Vaz, is a blatant self publicist but is also a Remainer. One would have expected him to blame the Home Office and the fact that he refers to the EU making this process more difficult is telling.

I also think he's right on overall immigration numbers. I would have more respect for the Remain campaign in general and Cameron in particular if they admitted we can't control overall migration levels BUT also said the overall benefits of the EU outweigh any downsides.

Some proper objective evidence to back up such a statement would, of course, be nice but I wouldn't be holding my breath.

[BillyStubbsTears]

TRB

But they can't make that case, because the whole immigration discussion has been made so toxic by the media. Decades of the front pages of the Mail and the Express printing lies and exaggerations. Resulting in the absolute certainty among millions of people that immigrants bring our economic performance down and are all scroungers.

The truth is the absolute opposite of that. But you will not get that message across in the heat of a campaign. Anyone who tries to say anything positive about immigration is immediately a target. Or is disgracefully accused of not being impartial because they receive EU funding (as the Leave campaign has done with the likes of the IFS and NIESR - Neil f**king Hamilton and Nigel f**king Farage, leaders of a party that refuses to publish its funders and may well be taking money from Putin accusing professionals of being bought. Grand, eh?)

So, all the Remain side can do is to try to neutralise the issue. It's not ideal but it IS politics.

[The Red Baron]

I'd argue that the issue of immigration was initially made toxic by the failure of Government in the late 1990s / early 2000s to implement time -honoured controls. They then made matters worse by allowing immigration from EU accession countries (eg Poland) before they were obliged to.

As a result people do not trust mainstream politicians over immigration.

[BillyStubbsTears]

TRB

Look at these poll figures. They are repeated time after time after time in poll after poll

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/81ewaf2bx0/YG%20Trackers-Issues%202-Most-Important-Issues-070115_W.pdf

Look at the numbers from last Sept as an example.

What are the most important issues facing THE COUNTRY?
Immigration 71%

What are the most important issues facing YOU AND YOUR FAMILY?

Immigration: 24%

This is a common theme. People, on the whole, don't think immigration is a massive problem for them personally. But they think it is a massive problem for the country.

There is also a wealth of polling data that shows that the most anti-immigrant opinions are in the areas with fewest immigrants.

Where do you reckon those attitudes come from, if not from a media that fires a relentless barrage of lying or exaggerated immigrant horror stories?

[The Red Baron]

I'm afraid you can make opinion poll data prove just about anything. Just because people do not put Immigration as the number one issue for them doesn't mean they are not concerned about it.

[BillyStubbsTears]

There we go again. Brexit supporter sees evidence he doesn't like and the response is "oh, you can make numbers say what you want."

TRB. I'm surprised at you. It's a plain as day. In that YouGov poll, people were allowed to choose SEVERAL issues that they thought were important. 71% chose immigration as an important issue at national level. Only 24% at personal level. And this facet has been seen for years. It's been studied in detail by political scientists. There is no correlation between people's attitude to immigration and the effect that it has on them personally.

[The Red Baron]

Maybe because when you say what concerns you and yours you identify symptoms. When you say what concerns you nationally you identify what you think are root causes.

In addition, people's perception of immigrants within their immediate community may be more positive than their overall perception that immigration is too high / out of control. That would, for me, be a powerful argument in favour of controlled immigration.

[BillyStubbsTears]

So, let me get this right. People are OK with immigrants that they know. But they still think that immigration is bad overall?

Where do they get their information about what immigration is like outside their own circle of people whom they know?

And why are there so many people who repeat the factually incorrect claim that immigration damages the economy? Where do THEY get that idea from?

[The Red Baron]

You're confusing / conflating two different statements. "Immigration is bad" and "Uncontrolled immigration is bad."

Immigration that is controlled is a good thing IMO. But some time in the last 20 years we as a country lost/ gave up our ability to control it.

[BillyStubbsTears]

And the evidence overwhelmingly shows that the immigration that we currently have is beneficial to our economy. We are NOT inundated by hordes of foreign benefit scroungers. The vast majority of immigrants are fit, healthy and prepared to work damn hard and pay into the system. They pay, on average, more in tax than they take out. They contribute more per head than the "native" population.

But try getting people to believe that. We are a uniquely misinformed people on this issue. We have far more negative views about immigration than many countries that really DO have massive problems with uncontrolled immigration, like Greece and Italy.

Read this and see just how different our judgements are than other countries with equally high or higher migration levels.

https://www.ipsos-mori.com/DownloadPublication/1634_sri-perceptions-and-reality-immigration-report-2013.pdf

If you don;t want to read the whole lot, have a look at the following.

Figure 3.2 on p50
Figure 4.2 on p60
Figure 6.1 on p88
Section 6.3 on p97


(The most depressing fact of the lot in there is that the average figure given my UK respondents when asked how many non-UK born people there are in the UK was 30%. The actual figure is less than 10%. That's the level of ignorance that we are dealing with, fed by the media's obsession to demonise and refusal to educate.)

[BillyStubbsTears]

And whilst we're on the topic of Brexit and media failings...

https://mainlymacro.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/the-media-and-brexit-redux.html

"...to sum up, most people do not think they will be worse off after Brexit, economists (including academics) overwhelmingly do think people will be worse off, and people have a high level of trust in what academics say. I can only think of one plausible explanation that is consistent with these three facts, and that is that people do not know what the overwhelming majority of academic economists think."

[The Red Baron]

It can be portrayed as a failing of the media, but also of the politicians running the campaigns.

I see Remain are at it again today, wheeling out some high-up at J. P. Morgan to warn of the terrible consequences of Brexit (rather than the positive benefits of staying in.) This also ignores the fact that if there's one group less popular with the public than politicians it is bankers.

[BillyStubbsTears]

TRB

I'm not sure I follow your logic here and I suspect that there is a logical fallacy at the core of all the complaints about "Project Fear".

The consequences of leaving are being presented relative to the datum of us staying in. So, if the consequences of leaving are that we have a worse situation, by definition, staying has benefits.


I'd sympathise with the Brexit side if the Remain side were saying, "Oooohhh! Don't really know WHAT might happen if we leave. Best to stay, eh?" But they are not. They are presenting detailed assessments by experts from all walks of life, all of which are giving detailed reasons why leaving is a bad thing.

if leaving is a bad thing, saying that leaving is a bad thing is not avoiding debate. It is central to the debate.

On the Leave side, by comparison, I've heard nothing but "We don't know what the future will hold, so ignore the experts and vote how you feel in your gut." THAT is the very essence of avoiding intelligent debate.

[RedJ]

It's almost as if the Scottish independence referendum is being rerun on a grander scale...

[Filo]

England will vote to leave, the Jocks and Taffs will keep us in

[BillyStubbsTears]

That was kind of what I was thinking. In the Scottish referendum, the No side made clear and detailed arguments about what the economic cost of break-up would be. They attempted to explain the problems that there would be for a small country, without its own currency, with a volatile commodity as one of its main sources of income. The Yes side called that "Project Fear" and said, "It'll be fine. Don't believe the so-called 'experts'. Oil income is fine. Och, anyone who tells you it'll drop below $110 per barrel is awa' wi' the fairies."

The oil price has now been in the range $35-65 for 18 months. The Scottish economy would be utterly crippled if they had gone independent. Things wouldn't have turned out to be just fine is the voters had ignored "Project Fear".

[i_ateallthepies]

It may be nothing more than chance but every single time I've seen the Referendum reported this week when they've asked the man in the street every one has been a Brexiter giving the same ill thought out reasons to vote leave.  Bloody ostriches the lot of em.

I can see nothing but a leave result.

[Bentley Bullet]

I was in a pub in Tory stronghold Pickering last night and ALL the locals present wanted out of the EU.

[BillyStubbsTears]

That's my Room101. A room full of Tory pub bores and nowhere else to go.

[BobG]

Thank you Billy. You are right. Sorry John. Sorry Glyn.

I had a fearsomely depressing conversation last Saturday. A mate. A very clever mate with a decent degree from Cambridge. He's a Tory Councillor in Milton Keynes. But despite that unfortunate fact he does use his brain. Until now. He spent 2 hours trying to persuade me that:

1) Boris Johnson is a man of probity, conviction and steadfast policy
2) Immigration does not bring any benefit to this country
3) We will be better off if we leave the EU.

I'm buggered how anyone (anyone!) can say with conviction that we will be better off. Or indeed, worse off. How the hell do they know??? Are they looking into the future? And my very intelligent mate totally failed to grasp the idea that some people, well, me anyway, are really not interested in being 'better off'. Some people, me, look at slightly bigger issues - like the moves towards consensus and conversation that have done so much to keep the peace in Europe for 70 years. And to cap it all, this mate was moved to exclaim that David Cameron has lost the plot and is a dead man walking. He may be. But for a publicly avowed Conservative to be so disloyal so early strikes me as a scary symbol of the move to the right that this country and this debate are making.

Bob

[Sammy Chung was King]

We need some immigration, what we don't need are criminals that are littering our prisons. We need doctors, nurses, we also need factory workers, we need a wide variety of people coming in, it makes the economy bigger more people earning and paying taxes.
We also get the benefit of learning from other cultures, that's if they mix with us. We also need to deport a lot of people, look at hexthorpe and tell me it is a better place after immigration. You cannot allow areas to be ruined like that, because the government hasn't the guts to deport people.

We need control over stopping those coming in that we don't want in, the sea protection of our country is laughable. The best way is to use the aussie points scheme, people must be of benefit to the country otherwise they don't come in.
We cannot deal with the massive influx of people potentially coming, and not expand services, the tories are cutting services not making them bigger.
I don't personally think either position gives you everything you want. If we leave this government won't put the money into improvements, it will disappear down a hole never to be seen again. I remember in the early nineties saying all these bits and pieces funded by the eu, is just money to get us involved fully with them.
Before this, nothing at all was being invested in improvements to facilities, but the local councils, did proper jobs on the roads, not the half a job efforts done now.
The bins were collected regular, there was less waste lying around encouraging rats. There is no doubt that someof buildings were paid for by the eu, but most of this was money that was just coming back to the original giver.

Like it or not, we don't live in a safe and secure world, when has it ever been?. I  hope that when this government leaves power, because the people are starting to notice that they are using the tactics that got them in power, that the government following, will invest the saved money back into it's own country, and getting it functioning better if leave is the decision.
Leaving isn't isolating the country, it's getting back the freedom to make it's own decisions, and making it a safer place by securing the borders, and by accepting immigration on our terms, if you have the skills you are welcome, if not sorry.
I do believe we should take a small percentage of people in danger who need homes. But i think the priority needs to be first our own people, stop giving billions away, and spend it so that people like ex armed forces people have a home. Invest in making young peoples opportunties better by taking away any debt for university. Invest in sports clubs, technology, invest in what we used to be Great Britain, not everybody else!.

[RedJ]

We already do have control to stop people who we don't want coming in. And the way you say we don't need criminals littering our prisons almost suggests you think the majority of prisoners are foreign.





Not being funny but all you've done is sum up the thread in one post and chuck in a load of cliches and bandwagon jumping. So you've said f**k all, really.

[The Red Baron]

TRB

I'm not sure I follow your logic here and I suspect that there is a logical fallacy at the core of all the complaints about "Project Fear".

The consequences of leaving are being presented relative to the datum of us staying in. So, if the consequences of leaving are that we have a worse situation, by definition, staying has benefits.


I'd sympathise with the Brexit side if the Remain side were saying, "Oooohhh! Don't really know WHAT might happen if we leave. Best to stay, eh?" But they are not. They are presenting detailed assessments by experts from all walks of life, all of which are giving detailed reasons why leaving is a bad thing.

if leaving is a bad thing, saying that leaving is a bad thing is not avoiding debate. It is central to the debate.

On the Leave side, by comparison, I've heard nothing but "We don't know what the future will hold, so ignore the experts and vote how you feel in your gut." THAT is the very essence of avoiding intelligent debate.

This kind of makes my point far better than I was able to:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2016/06/03/remain-is-paying-the-price-for-its-lack-of-ambition/

And before anyone says, "well, the Torygraph would say that" the paper has editorially been sitting on the fence. You could even argue it is trying to be a Candid Friend to the Remain campaign.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Idle nonsense in that article. The worst kind of selective journalism.

It bases its argument on Remain's case being built around lying civil servants and superstars.

What about NATO's heads? What about the heads of the security services? Are they lying civil set ants? We don't know the Telegraph's view because they just ignore them.

What about the IFS? The NIESR? Respected and independent economic forecasters who have given clear warnings of the effects of Leaving, with detailed scenarios. What about the 90% of academic economists who believe that leaving will result in significantly worse performance in the future? The Telegraph's response is that most infantile one: Well the future is unknowable so let's just ignore people who study these things and go with our guy feel eh?

It's like planning for D-Day and saying, "Phew! You can't really predict these things. Experts eh? What do they know? Let's ignore Montgomery and Eisenhower and just do this on a whim of what might make the British people feel better about themselves."

Crap, immature journalism.

[BillyStubbsTears]

I'll give you a positive take though.

We are the luckiest, wealthiest, safest, best educated set of Europeans that have EVER lived on this continent. For 1700 years, competing powers in Europe, us included, have fought, argued, cheated, lied, schemed and hated. We put individual aggrandisement above the collective good and the results were catastrophic in terms of potential wasted and lives wrecked.

Europe is the most wonderful place on Earth. Full of innovation and energy and diversity and resilience. What the EU has done, for all its faults, is to channel those attributes into net positives across the continent. Go back to nation states trying to get one up on their neighbours, and you'll be back into the frictions and fractures that tore Europe apart every generation from the fall of the Roman Empire to the fall of Berlin.

THAT's the big picture that I see. It's a United, strong, collective Europe that I want my grandkids to grow up in. Not the fragmented and bitter one that my grandparents were born into.

That's what the real issue is in a couple of weeks.

[Bentley Bullet]

Because I'm still undecided, and that's putting it mildly considering I haven't got a clue which way to vote, what do you experts on the subject reckon to this analogy i've copied off Facebook?

If you don’t understand what all the fuss is about. Here is the EU put simply.
A son goes to his Dad having saved up some money from his weekend job.
Son “ Dad I’ve saved up £350 pounds to buy the new laptop I need for my college course”
Dad “Well done son, give the money to me and I’ll help you”
Son “Ok now what?”
Dad “I will allow you £185 pounds back less my handling fee of £5 so £180 which you may only spend on a new phone”
Son “But I need a laptop!”
Dad “No, we’ve decided you can only buy a phone and you may only buy a phone from Germany and it must be pink. You must also source the phone within 2 days otherwise I will not release the money”
Son “But it’s my money!”
Dad “I’m afraid you are a member of this family and you must contribute to everyone else’s needs. I will decide how the money is spent”
Son “So what happens to the £165?”
Dad “Well your sister needs a new dress”
Son “She has already had many new dresses”
Dad “We’ve put it to the vote and I’m afraid you’re outvoted”
Son “But I need a laptop to continue my course!”
Dad “My decision is final”
Son “But that’s not fair, will I ever have a say in how my money is spent”
Dad “No, and by the way we’ve got a couple more people moving into your room and you’ll have to pay for their keep”
Son “Well I’m leaving then”
Dad “Don’t be like that lad, we need your money. And if you leave you won’t be able to buy a pink phone from Germany you’ll have to buy one here instead”
Son “I NEED A LAPTOP!”

[Glyn_Wigley]

That's not an analogy in the slightest. It's a piece of propaganda designed to appeal to those who don't want to think to much about reality.