shinymcshine wrote:EU money supports some of the worst off areas in the UK, places which I'm pretty sure the Tories wouldn't give a sh*t about funding themselves hence they'd lose out big time.
Where do you think the EU gets it's money from?
Quite why anyone would want to continue under the present terms to be a member of such an undemocratic, corrupt self serving organisation that cannot solve any of the really important issues like immigration, Greece, imbalance between it's northern and southern economies, its ongoing recession and decline.
Those that wish to remain in the EU are bombarding us with scare stories of what may happen if we leave but fail to acknowledge the equally scary reality of what will happen if we stay in. To argue that by staying in we can influence decision making has been shown to be a nonsense by history and latterly the PM's 9 month campaign to win his promised reforms. Faced with the really serious prospect that the EU could lose their 2nd largest banker you would have expected some real progress of very minor reforms if they valued the UK position.
The reality is we have no real influence now and we will have even less if we vote to remain in as we have blown our last chance of real reforms. Belgium & France have issued an ultimatum that is to be included in any agreement made this week which states that this is our last chance at winning any reforms so it will be a take it or leave it agreement with no future chance for change or future referendums.
The decision to remain in or to leave should not be just about the four small beer areas of the PM's negotiations. The big decision is do we want to become just a region in a German run federal state or do we wish to remain an independent self governing nation like Canada or Australia.
There will be pluses and minuses which ever way we vote but as one of the worlds largest economies (and one of the fastest growing) we will survive outside the EU very well and will continue to trade with the EU as they need to export to us even more than we need to sell to them. I would prefer to leave the EU and even continue to pay a tarriff for the benefit of trading with the EU and lose the pretence of any inside influence in return for a return of key sovereign powers to our elected parliament.