Royal Mail in EU referendum

cpsteve · Post by **cpsteve** » 31 May 2016, 22:06

Its 2/7 we stay and just over 3/1 we leave. Most of the elderly people I speak to are outers and they make up a big percentage of the voting population so it might be worth a punt.

NWpostie · Post by **NWpostie** » 01 Jun 2016, 10:37

Not only that, many who spoke to who was around before we joined have said everything was fine before we joined, I would imagine it would be the same afterward.

I watched the EU leave or stay documentary last night with Laura Kuenssberg, very interesting points of views, one hoverspeed company said they lost £50,000 deal with a Brazilian business man because they didn't have a free trading association with Brazil, the manager said that as independent country we can do that in our own right without the EU doing it for us.

fishtank · Post by **fishtank** » 01 Jun 2016, 16:25

The reason it's difficult to export to Brazil is that it protects its internal market using high import taxes and duties, if the combined muscle and buying power of the EU can't get it to lower its duties why would the UK on its own be able to? We have to get real with our expectations as far as making individual trade agreements, not only would it take a very long time, every country would want the best deal for themselves.

NWpostie · Post by **NWpostie** » 01 Jun 2016, 17:29

Of course we all want the best deals, it's a matter of finding what suits and the middle ground, one country is more flexible than a trading bloc with 28 conflicting interests.

Brazil doesn't have a massive manufacturing base otherwise that business man wouldn't have come to UK looking for a deal.

Another point I like to raise the EU unemployment is twice that of the UK, Economy in shambles, ECB is hostage to events overtaking them. E111 cards are no longer honoured especially Spain were even Sanitarios are refusing them and demand you pay upfront even the Spaniards are victims.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/ ... -Card.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I think we will do alright out of the EU.

Tman · Post by **Tman** » 01 Jun 2016, 18:28

As regards the Brazil thing, there was a business man from the Midlands on TV at the end of last year, and he wanted to export whatever it was his engineering business produced to China. Fifty nine times he applied to the EU for an export license to export there, and fifty nine times his application was rejected.
Clearly either it would someone else's (in the EU) toes he would be stepping on, or some devious little clerk somewhere was on the back-hander train, either way , so much for free trade alliances.
Then again, how naïve would anyone have to be to think that twenty eight disparate countries all with their own hopes and agendas could ever work in harmony in business without either force or favours?

fishtank · Post by **fishtank** » 01 Jun 2016, 19:34

Wouldn't it be those exact same (28-1) disparate countries with their own agendas that we would have to deal with post Brexit?
If some Brussels eurocrat is being bribed into holding up an export license now think what his motivation will be once we're on the outside.

Or are you one of these delusional fools that thinks we can do without the EU as a trading partner?

NWpostie · Post by **NWpostie** » 01 Jun 2016, 20:36

fishtank wrote:Wouldn't it be those exact same (28-1) disparate countries with their own agendas that we would have to deal with post Brexit?
If some Brussels eurocrat is being bribed into holding up an export license now think what his motivation will be once we're on the outside.

Or are you one of these delusional fools that thinks we can do without the EU as a trading partner?

44% and declining

https://fullfact.org/europe/do-half-uks ... go-europe/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

With globalisation and containerisation I would imagine the world would be more important than Europe.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35521559" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

fishtank · Post by **fishtank** » 01 Jun 2016, 21:04

And the point is what?
That 44% is not a big number?
It's a f***ing huge number....

Post by **dvbuk55** » 01 Jun 2016, 21:11

Is anyone delusional enough to believe that the sky is falling according to the henny penny bremain brigade or that the EU won't trade with a brexited UK? It's in their interest to continue trading as they do now, who else will buy their goods and they wouldn't be any quicker in negotiating new trade deals than a brexited Uk. In fact given the number of snouts in the trough it would be a very long drawn out business to get 27 countries to agree.

NWpostie · Post by **NWpostie** » 01 Jun 2016, 21:16

Especially when the Euro zone is in need of jobs and extra money which can come from countries buying from them.

Post by **dvbuk55** » 01 Jun 2016, 21:23

NWpostie wrote:Especially when the Euro zone is in need of jobs and extra money which can come from countries buying from them.

Makes you wonder who'll be putting in the extra moolah when we pull out. I mean who, apart from the Fatherland, is going to be able to stick their hand in their lederhosen - I can imagine some squeaking but it won't just be the leather keks

Tman · Post by **Tman** » 01 Jun 2016, 22:33

Or are you one of these delusional fools that thinks we can do without the EU as a trading partner?

No, but why would that be the case anyway?
Every second car is feckin' Audi now, the shops are full of French cheese and wine, Italian fridges..the list goes on.
Are you one of those deluded fools who believe the main EU exporters will be so p*ssed off with us for leaving that they'll refuse to sell us their produce? Really?

Danelectro · Post by **Danelectro** » 02 Jun 2016, 02:27

fishtank wrote:Wouldn't it be those exact same (28-1) disparate countries with their own agendas that we would have to deal with post Brexit?
If some Brussels eurocrat is being bribed into holding up an export license now think what his motivation will be once we're on the outside.

Or are you one of these delusional fools that thinks we can do without the EU as a trading partner?

I'm fine with Norway's access agreement for now but that would be decided at a General Election.Doing a deal with a country that has a trade surplus with you is not a disadvantage though I take your point that other factors and risks will come in to play but I'm more interested in the two democratic structures I'm being asked to choose between.

Corbyn,Sturgeon and others within the remain camp who want a Social Europe should set out clearly what they mean by that so we can then judge if they are achievable and worth our vote.Criticism of the direction of the EU is common among left and centre left parties in Holland,Spain and the Nordic countries but here there has been no proper media coverage from that perspective- meanwhile the TUC make announcements that workers will be £38 a week worse off by 2030.

At the moment hard right governments have been elected in Poland and Hungary,Geert Wilders is soaring in the polls in the Netherlands,a Fascist was nearly president of Austria and the Socialist group in the EU Parliament includes the President of France who is currently using the military to force through more EU backed reforms. So finding allies for a Social Europe in the EU parliament is not exactly quids in.

Tman · Post by **Tman** » 02 Jun 2016, 08:26

fishtank wrote: If some Brussels eurocrat is being bribed into holding up an export license now think what his motivation will be once we're on the outside.

Which rather misses the point that we're supposed to be in a mutually-beneficial trading bloc, and working for the "good" of all. If we left the EU, that Brussels eurocrat would have no say in who we do or don't trade with, and at least we then would know just where we stand.
If you think the Germans or French have ever or would ever cut us some slack then clearly you've been taken in by the lofty (but totally unrealistic and unworkable) aims of the EU project...rather like those dorks in the CWU hierarchy, who also don't seem to know enough about people or organisations to know that life just ain't like that.

Danelectro · Post by **Danelectro** » 03 Jun 2016, 07:03

The ‘Another Europe’ Brigade Are on the Wrong Side of History

Paul Embery
Regional Secretary (London), Fire Brigades Union

The upbeat atmosphere at the weekend’s ‘Another Europe is Possible’ conference in central London belied the campaign message, which must rank among the most cynical and defeatist ever. A collection of Left politicians, activists and academics came together to tell us that, yes, the EU is dreadful; yes, it is a vehicle for neoliberalism and privatisation; yes, it is fundamentally undemocratic; yes, it has caused immense suffering - but at the same time British workers aren’t capable of building a better society outside of it. We would all be lambs to the slaughter of a post-Brexit Boris Johnson government apparently. Never mind that we could turf out that government at the ballot box in a way that we could never do with the EU commission. No, British workers couldn’t be trusted to do the right thing. So strip away the radical rhetoric, and you end up with a strategy that offers little more than: ‘Better the devil you know’.

Oh, but they did agree a declaration calling on ‘people across the UK to rise up’ and ‘change Europe’. They recognise that the EU is not fit for purpose and - a novel one, this - they want to reform it. That’s right: those same workers incapable of resisting Boris Johnson are called upon to be in the vanguard of a campaign to transform an institution that has long proved utterly impervious to any serious reform. As strategies go, it isn’t the most consistent.

The irony is that the Another Europe gang is stuffed with people who throughout their lives have supported every other instance of workers throwing off undemocratic power. Wherever on the globe workers have organised to demand greater democratic freedoms, those packed into the weekend’s conference have expressed their solidarity in a heartbeat. There were never caveats about not knowing what the alternative might look like, no warnings about Right-wing politicians lurking around the corner, no concern that workers might be biting off more than they could chew. All that mattered is that workers were engaged in a democratic struggle to wrest power from the unelected and unaccountable, and they knew which side they were on.

Yet when it happens in their own back yard, their revolutionary spirit suddenly deserts them. They become hesitant and pessimistic. This can only mean one of two things: either their support for all those other campaigns was completely phoney, or they really do hold British workers in such contempt in believing that we are somehow different and less capable of taking advantage of greater democracy.

Speaker after speaker at the conference rose to say how this must not be a referendum focused on the issue of immigration - then proceeded to dedicate an enormous chunk of their speech to the issue of immigration. So we heard the predictable stout defence of the EU’s policy of open borders and a liberal sprinkling of the usual trite slogans such as ‘Immigrants are not to blame’. Such statements sound wonderfully progressive but, in the end, miss the point spectacularly. No-one outside the ranks of Britain First argues that immigrants are personally to blame for such things as the pressure on public services and wages caused through open borders. Of course we must place responsibility at the door of bad governments and unscrupulous employers. But for anyone claiming to speak for working people to stubbornly ignore the negative consequences for working-class communities of EU-driven mass migration, or to seek to deflect legitimate debate about it by trotting out the same old unresponsive platitudes, is inexcusable.

No civilised society should permit personal attacks on immigrants, and those of us on the Left must be at the forefront of any campaign to integrate and organise migrant workers. But neither must immigration as a topic be off-limits. Much as the likes of those fronting Another Europe may wish it were not so, soaring levels of immigration remain a concern for millions of working-class people, not through some innate racism, not even because they are anti-immigration, but simply because they have ordinary aspirations to live in stable communities that aren’t subjected to sudden social and economic disruption through unsustainable surges in the population. These people are not uneducated bigots, and they won’t be bought off by tired slogans or a worldview which tries to convince them that it’s really all about class and their anxieties are misplaced. And why should they be? They aren’t suffering from ‘false consciousness’; they’re just, well, normal.

All of this would be obvious, of course, to a Wolverhampton factory worker or a Tilbury docker or someone toiling in a call centre in Glasgow with a family and mortgage to pay. Ordinary working-class people, in other words. But these sorts of people aren’t part of the milieu of the sophisticates leading Another Europe and never will be. They are patronised, but not really welcomed. They certainly didn’t feature heavily at the weekend’s conference.

In the end, there’s something distasteful about members of the liberal intelligentsia pontificating in a Bloomsbury university about how there must be no compromise with the working-class over open borders, when they show no willingness to understand the impact of such a policy on the lives of those they claim to speak for.

And to do so in the knowledge that their strategy of sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting ‘La-la-la’ has for years now led to the haemorrhaging of working-class support from the Left, often to the benefit of Ukip, suggests they are more interested in maintaining ideological purity than finding real solutions to tough questions.

So no doubt those at the Another Europe conference came away feeling good about themselves, in spite of the essential pessimism of their message. And no doubt they continue to believe they are serving the interests of working people by fighting for a remain vote. In reality, they are driving a further wedge between the Left and the millions for whom the EU’s contempt for democracy and enthusiasm for austerity and open borders are compelling reasons to leave.