General Chat

"The key points of the deal are:

An "emergency brake" on migrants' in-work benefits for four years when there are "exceptional" levels of migration. The UK will be able to operate the brake for seven years

Child benefit for the children of EU migrants living overseas will now be paid at a rate based on the cost of living in their home country - applicable immediately for new arrivals and from 2020 for the 34,000 existing claimants

The amending of EU treaties to state explicitly that references to the requirement to seek ever-closer union "do not apply to the United Kingdom", meaning Britain "can never be forced into political integration"

The ability for the UK to enact "an emergency safeguard" to protect the City of London, to stop UK firms being forced to relocate into Europe and to ensure British businesses do not face "discrimination" for being outside the eurozone

The prime minster had to make concessions to get a deal with the leaders of the 27 other EU members.

Mr Cameron had originally wanted a complete ban on migrants sending child benefit abroad but had to compromise after some eastern European states rejected that and also insisted that existing claimants should continue to receive the full payment.
On how long the UK would be able to have a four-year curb on in-work benefits for new arrivals, Mr Cameron had to give way on hopes of it being in place for 13 years, settling for seven instead."

KenSE - where's the pros/cons BBC link? Was going to read that later. Did you decide it had a bias?

"occasionally" "1964"?.."if necessary Granted a Peerage" ( to give them status?)

That may be so but, unlike the EU Commission, the majority of Cabinet members are elected by the populous, then appointed by the PM

Det, the same could be said for members of the Cabinet.

From Wiki
"Occasionally cabinet members are selected from outside the Houses of Parliament and if necessary granted a peerage. Harold Wilson appointed Frank Cousins and Patrick Gordon Walker to the 1964 cabinet despite their not being MPs at the time. "

Well Mayfield the bit of paper could be handy in the Privy ;-) ;-) :-D :-D. About the only use it will have :-|

Well he is back waving a piece of paper after talks with the German Chancellor! :-D

When it comes down to it, I suspect the result will be to stay in. Like the Scottish Referendum, no one really knows what an 'Out' vote would mean. Many of those who choose to vote, or choose to vote No will be those swayed by the current micro issues of Benefits/Migration.

EDIT – that didn’t come out right.

Fence-sitters who choose to vote Out will be swayed by the micro issues.
Fence-sitters who choose to vote In would be concerned with the un-known macro consequences of leaving the EU.

'always keep-a hold of nurse - for fear of finding something worse!
.............
Fence-sitters like me would really like an impartial list of reasons to stay in v reasons to come out.

Rollo, absolutely well-said.

JIT production has been used for decades by car manufacturers such as Nissan in NE England. Nissan also has a plant in Spain so while the UK plant is extremely efficient we, in England, could see the loss of thousands of jobs in and around vehicle and its ancillary production sector if import tax was payable to Europe. How many car manufacturing plants do we have in the UK whose parent plants are in Europe? Nobody in his/her right mind would think of leaving car production in England if he/she had a plant in Germany or France for instance.

Rollo, I also have in mind the London Stock Exchange. If the vote was a negative one, how long would it be before the majority (if not all) of the LSE's operations would shift to Frankfurt? It has been no secret that the shift to Germany has been mooted over the last couple of decades.

I agree with you over the migrant question too. For those for whom England and the English is be-all and end-all, it may be wise to remember that people come in all shapes, sizes and colours but a good example for those whose wish it is to leave Europe because of the migrant situation, may I remind them of at least one of the people from past history whom many seem to admire and glorify did not have an English-born mother.

If one views the drain on England's purse bad now because of migrants, how much worse it could become when financial and industrial production migrates to Europe and England's unemployment figures and, therefore, our financial obligations rise astronomically. Fewer workers, higher taxes to cover costs incurred due to a negative vote. It would be ironic to see a rise in living conditions in Europe and a fall in England because we let more manufacturing slip through our fingers and head to another continent of which we had no part (eg shipbuilding to Asia).

... so it's 'In' for me every time. There's too much to lose by voting negatively.

Arent the individual UK cabinet members/Prime minister sitting MPs? The Commissioners haven't been elected by anyone. They could be anyone from the local Street Cleaner, the retired CEO of M&S to the Prime Ministers/elected Head of States sister-in-law's nephew's neighbour.

From the website
http://ec.europa.eu/about/index_en.htm

A new team of 28 Commissioners (one from each EU Member State) is appointed every five years.

The candidate for President of the Commission is proposed to the European Parliament by the European Council that decides by qualified majority and taking into account the elections to the European Parliament.

The Commission President is then ELECTED by the European Parliament by a majority of its component members (which corresponds to at least 376 out of 751 votes).

Following this ELECTION, the President-elect selects the 27 other members of the Commission, on the basis of the suggestions made by Member States. The final list of Commissioners-designate has then to be agreed between the President-elect and the Council. The Commission as a whole needs the Parliament's consent. Prior to this, Commissioners-designate are assessed by the European Parliament committees.

-------------

True the individual commissioners are not directly elected by the electorate of the country they represent but they are picked by the head of government of that state.

On that basis you could say that the cabinet is unelected and we have had unelected prime ministers (Douglas-Hume, Callaghan and Brown).

:-) @ Rollo for the succinct summary,

:-| @ Rollo because I am now going to have Middle of the Road's entire repertoire buzzing round my head all night :-)

Where’s your mama gone? (Where’s your mama gone?)
Little baby Don (Little Baby Don)
Where’s your mama gone? (Where’s your mama gone?)
Far, far away

Where’s your papa gone? (Where’s your papa gone?)
Little baby Don (Little baby Don)
Where’s your papa gone? (Where’s your papa gone?)
Far, far away
Far, far away

Last night, I heard my mama singing a song
Ooh-We, Chirpy, Chirpy, Cheep, Cheep
Woke up this morning and my mama was gone
Ooh-We, Chirpy, Chirpy, Cheep, Cheep
Chirpy, Chirpy, Cheep, Cheep, Chirp

Where’s your mama gone? (Where’s your mama gone?)
Little baby Don (Little Baby Don)
Where’s your mama gone? (Where’s your mama gone?)
Far, far away

Where’s your papa gone? (Where’s your papa gone?)
Little baby Don (Little baby Don)
Where’s your papa gone? (Where’s your papa gone?)
Far, far away
Far, far away

who the fk is going to hitch their star to a bunch of airheads and chancers such as George Galloway, Kate Hoey, Michael Gove, IDS, Carswell, Nigel Farage and the grey financiers funding the various out movements and UKIP. They don't give a ts about democracy being rather more inclined to authoritarian fascist government. The EU thwarts their dreams all along the line. That is primarily what it was set up for not as a trading bloc that came later.

"This machine kills fascists"

Cameron never wanted any sort of referendum. Churchill called them a device of dictators while Margaret Thatcher was also strongly opposed on the grounds that a referendum was for the rabble who could not get their argument through the House of Commons in a normal way. She wasn't soft on the EU.

The world's oldest true democracy, the USA, has managed 200 years without any referendum.

Cameron ha scored a Bismark level hit through his removal of the City of London from envious fingers of Paris and Frankfurt. Long after the immigration nonsense has been forgotten London and the UK will be taking benefit from that especially with the UK remaining within the EU.

All the huffing and puffing about immigration is a nonsense, the "outs" are at least right about that. The amount of money spent on child benefit to Poles with parents working in the UK is miniscule. Unfair for sure but it is not an issue demanding a full on conference.

Most of the EU citizens working in the UK don't claim any benefits at all - the 350 000 French for instance have a median income of around £ 70 k!

A country where so many of the natives are semi-skilled at best and dislike hard, dirty work is bound to import labour for its farms, to drive buses, build Crossway and on the other hand skilled technicians, engineers, financial geeks and health professionals. These people will keep on flooding into London and Berlin because that is where the action is in today's Europe. Stopping that would be to emulate King Canute.

Outside of the EU the UK would have to submit to free movement in any case as Norway and Switzerland have discovered as part of the bill for access to the single market (invented by M Thatcher). They also have to pay around 80% of the fees of a full member and abide by all of the rules without any input whatsoever. Is this what the "outs" mean by seizing our own destiny?

A modern BMW has 30-40% parts made in the UK - the renaissance of car making in the UK has also brought skilled component mfg back to live - good jobs, good money. Without the just-in-time conveyor only possible within the EU the UK would lose this sort of thing very quickly.

Winding the clock back to some far off time when Rosy Scenario held sway is not going to happen.

I voted in the 1975 referendum. For months before the vote the "nos" held a lead of > 20%. On polling day it disappeared like the morning mist and the "yes" side won with a 20% majority.

The same will happen this time and for the same reason. The "out " camp simply cannot come up with a feasible plan for what they would do once out. Rhetoric and claiming that the EU will come begging simply don't cut it.

cheep cheep

I would elect to stay in for various reasons.

I rather like the idea of going to a European country for holiday (or business) without having to fork out for visas for countries I need to travel to.

I would not like our manufacturers to have to pay duties to be able to export their goods to Europe. They may decide to shift manufacturing to a member country, leaving more out of work here, something we, in this country, have come to dread. We lose manufacturing at our peril. The clothes industry is a prime example. For a long time we have had extremely cheap clothing in our store at the expense of the poor in other countries. Now there is a move to abolish what almost amounts to slave labour in those countries, and rightly so, what do you think our clothes will cost ten years down the line? We have all but lost the machinery for manufacturing clothes and our dependency on other countries for providing clothing is not to be proud of. In the same way, not only could we lose the ability to manufacture other things, such as cars for example, we could lose the equipment necessary in order to do so and who would risk starting up such an enterprise from scratch?

Other reasons include the fact that we have more clout being part of a group, in the same way that the Asia-Pacific region has, rather than one small nation taking on the big boys.

What we don't have is people willing to pay a fair price for their milk, or their eggs etc, we buy huge quantities of tat from China, electronics from the east, clothes from India etc ( you only have to look at Primark and how busy it always is to know that what people want is NOT 'British made ' it is 'CHEAP' !) . We don't want to pay twice as much for goods made here, and we don't want to work for a few quid an hour in a sweatshop so that clothes can still be made here in the mills of Bradford or Manchester at a comparable price.

Does anyone honestly think that Europe owns us? more likely to be the Chinese who are going to build HS2 and the next nuclear power station. Coming out of Europe won't see a return to some laa laa land of full productivity and milk and honey for all.

I'm not saying we should stay in or come out...just that either way it's not going to be like waving a magic wand and all the problems will just disappear.

The European Commission doesn't appear to be elected.

The European Commission consists of 28 members, one from each EU country.

....as from 1 November 2014, the Commission is to be made up of a number of members corresponding to two-thirds of the number of EU countries....

....EU countries so that each one of them would continue to be entitled to *nominate* a member of the Commission.....
22 May 2013 (Decision 2013/272/EU).

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/summary/glossary/commission_composition.html

Before we joined
we where getting very cheep Lamb from New Zealand
we had free trade with many Countries
Since we joined Food prices went up over night

I thought when we joined if a tin of peas cost 25p in England( an example )
they would cost the same in every EEC country ect
this was not the case :-( :-(

Also our farmers are going out of Business
and companies are shutting down
Because we no longer have the ability to grow or make
the goods we need
Yet the other counties such as France and Germany have flourished
as the German steel industry Has :-( :-(
Even ot Ports except one are owned by the French :-(

I never wanted in so I definitely want out

From the conception of the ECC, Edit - EEC - it seems that other countries 'opted out' of things they didn't consider worth. Our Civil Servants told us we should follow them.

The rules aren't being imposed on us - that's what we're being told.
One example - Cameron says the increase in pension age was imposed by the EU.
It wasn't.
It may have been a suggestion, but it wasn't imposed, as is evident as both France and Germany have 'opted out'.
His other 'reason' is the increase in people living longer - but since 2012, the number of elderly people (especially women) dying has increased year on year. Last year the number of deaths was about the same as it was after WWII.

Is it? Well, how about that then. Not something that's widely publicised, it it? :-S