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Say Yes 2 Europe
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EUFacts: £350 million per week
Thanks to Paula Kirby, a member of one of the SY2E Remain in the EU groups
1. £350 million per week
We do not send £350m per week to the EU. Repeat: NOT. This has been pointed out to the Brexit campaign over and over again, but they continue to peddle the lie. Don’t take it from me.
This is the UK Statistics Authority : http://www.strongerin.co.uk/uk_statistics_authority_disappo…
Repeating the lie over and over again is just scaremongering.
Thoughts on Britain and the EU
Thanks to Chris Radford a member of the Say Yes 2 Europe – Remain in the EU alliance.
The more I see, read and hear about the vote on Britain’s continued membership of the EU the more convinced I am that the bulk of the UK citizens and even the media don’t understand it. The BBC constantly talks of the UK relationship with Europe, our ‘relationship’ is that we are full members of the EU with all the rights and benefits that come with that together with some problems.
But the idea that Europe tells us what we can and cannot do in our own country is incorrect, we can and do make our own laws that affect the country, only the laws coming from Brussels which have been passed in the EU parliament pertain to us and all other members, it is often ignored that we do have MEPs in Europe who look after our interests and the EU parliament is probably more democratic than that of the UK as it isn’t driven by just three main parties.
That aside, no one seems to want to tell the population what the real effects of a Brexit would be, for my part I think it would be catastrophic from a political and financial standpoint.
Politically we would no longer have a say about what goes on in Europe, we would be isolated from its main stream politics and be unable to bring any pressure to bear on political decisions made which might be detrimental to the UK.
Financially it would be catastrophic, how many jobs depend on our close ties with Europe, the Airbus project could move away from us, the automobile industry could be wooed away to EU countries and the City of London’s financial grip on a large part of World financial transactions could quickly be lost to Paris and Berlin. HSBC have for the moment decided to stay in the UK, who knows how quickly this might change, Goldman Sachs have certainly cast doubt on the ability of the UK to maintain its current financial situation if it leaves the EU.
Other opinions expect a huge decline in the housing market in the UK and financial damage so severe as to produce a slump in the UK which could take ten years to recover from if ever. Credit Suisse predict a 1 to 2% drop in GDP and a 26% drop in stock market values in London and the Swiss know their money markets.
Now is not the time to be leaving the EU just because we are being caught up in a false flag waving wave of misplaced patriotism promoted by nationalist organisations.
Britain does have a place in Europe and the World, if we leave Europe that place in the World will be severely damaged, it’s time to forget our past glories, we can no longer send in gunships to sort things out, but must ensure that our place in the World is secured for the future generations, now is not the time to go it alone in a world in which we have fewer friends and well wishers than we think we have.
The USA won’t bail us out, by urging us to stay in Europe they have intimated as much.
The Commonwealth moved away from us years ago, some of them even have an economy greater than ours so they won’t care.
We must stay in Europe, to ensure our future prosperity and standard of living.
Posted in reflections
Tagged reflections
I’ve been getting increasingly frustrated with the Brexiteers
By Jonathan Hesford a member of one of the SY2E – Remain in the EU groups.
I’ve been getting increasingly frustrated with the Brexiteers. They want to trade in the lifestyles and the prosperity of all of us who work in or with other countries in the EU for a slim chance of winning in an independent but isolated Britain.
Why can’t they grasp how great an advantage and opportunity it offers? Probably because they have no experience of it.
I’m a product of the EU.
My father came from a poor council estate in Barnsley. He started with nothing other than his determination and his brains.
He was an engineer working for a steel company with factories throughout Europe. Though born in Birmingham, I spend my infanthood in Germany and my early childhood in Spain because my dad learnt the languages and had the skills to take us there. That foundation made me a European. I’ve always felt culturally and socially part of Europe.
The IT company I joined after university was part French. The American bank I worked for in London was there because Britain gave them an English-speaking base in Europe. We merged with Italian, French, German and Spanish banks.
When I decided to change career to winemaking I was able to choose France as my base because it was so easy.
So I’m a person who has grown up European and taken advantage of what the EU offers. I can understand why someone who has never taken that opportunity, who begrudges those who have, who dislikes those who have come to the UK to work and enjoy the rights and lifestyle that he takes for granted feels pissed off.
If my dad had stayed in his council estate, never studied at night-school to learn French, Spanish or German and never taken the risk of moving abroad in the 1960s, he would probably be voting to leave now too.
This referendum should not be about bitterness or regret of not having taken advantage of the wonderful opportunity of EU. It should be about the determination to do so more.
Posted in brexit, personal account
Tagged brexit, personal account
A union in Europe: a patriotic view
By Carol Weitz a member of one of the SY2E – Remain in the EU groups.
My father didn’t come home from the Navy until I was two. His elder brother was decorated with the Distinguished Flying Cross, and later awarded the OBE, the youngest, Harold became a family icon. I can remember ‘The War’ as a regular point of reference in the adults’ conversations throughout my childhood.
Grandfather was a self-made man, semi-orphaned, started with nothing. He travelled. He bought cotton in Egypt and machines in Germany, mills in Lancashire and built a concern. Son Harold worked in Düsseldorf and Brussels for a Manchester textile firm. He spoke fluent German and had good friends abroad.
Then one such friend, a doctor, ‘disappeared’. Harold sent home a copy of ‘Mein Kampf’. Then he returned and volunteered in the Duke of Lancaster’s own Yeomanry.
War broke out. Harold took a commission, joined the Infantry, First Battalion, The Loyal Regiment. All three brothers volunteered, Air Force, Navy, Army. The women volunteered on the home front as nurse, ambulance driver, continued teaching, researched in textiles to produce parachute silk and one was a W.R.E.N.
By 1943 Harold Kenneth Clapperton was lying in a war grave in North Africa, aged 23.
‘Never again’ we said. Bridges were built to bring war-torn Europe closer together. At school we were not taught about ‘The War’. A paperback with photos of heaps of rotting bodies of deportees to the death camps, the Fascists’ ultimate solution to rid their countries of unwanted ethnic elements and others, were passed around the locker area. At home no questions were asked and nothing explained. I was quietly programmed for peace.
It was to preserve peace regained that the European Union was conceived. The idea of a united Europe is at least 500 years old as an antidote to warring national states, in spite of their occasional creative flowering . Until today, war between countries within the EU had become unimaginable. Now there are dangerous signs that we have not learnt our lesson yet : Flag-waving rhetoric, distorted history, individuals seeking power, narcissists centre stage, poisonous, lying press, and the odd rumour of a puppeteer.
It’s always ‘somebody else’s fault’. People, made susceptible by hard times, injustice, and fear, follow their leader , shouting for a scapegoat.
We have a crisis now that we can’t run away from. Desperate people will continue to head for this landmass Europe and its little islands, including the British Isles. There is DAESH, both out there and among us, notably in England too, bent on destroying our whole culture. There are already violent border incidents in the very heart of Europe, and ugly, violent mobs on our streets.
What we need is cohesion and reinforced peace-building , concerted efforts to avoid conflict, mediation at home and abroad, both within the EU and in countries aspiring to membership. A gargantuan task, and the potential dangers are even greater than ‘last time’.
At 15 my Hamburg pen-friend pointed to gaping holes, neatly tidied bombsites.
In 1973 my Uncle George, Bomber Command , looked at his little niece, and wept: ‘How many babies like Hedda did I kill?!’ She has a German father.
I crossed the Channel at 21 seemingly in the name of peace. My parents set aside their pain and their lost years and encouraged me. They embraced the old enemy in friendship.
I have spent my life in four EU countries , taking up opportunities to move, study and work , teaching our language and literature, and have inadvertently been an example of our appetite for tea … and for tolerance, free spirit, and fair play. There have always been Britons with open hearts and minds like mine, enterprising like my grandfather, adventurous like my ancestors.
Who called me ‘traitor’?
Our parents lived, fought , and died to put an end to the destructive power of a few ‘charismatic ‘, deranged individuals with their pseudo science about ‘pure race’ and warped rendering of ‘history’ past and future.
Already ancient Rome recognized that the traitor is the one that ‘appeals to the baseness in the hearts of all men. He rots the souls of a nation.’ (Cicero).
Posted in personal account
Tagged personal account
Is 1966 where the leavers are trying to take us back to?
By Jason Hunter a member of one of the SY2E – Remain in the EU groups.
Things were so great before the EU that the UK should not only leave the EU but also abandon the Internet, mobile phones and email access for just the United Kingdom. Yes the rest of the world has moved on, but Britain was great before all that … we don’t need all that new fangled rubbish in the 21st century right?
England even won a World Cup in 1966 before the EU, maybe we could win it again if we leave? And think how great it was when we could buy a pint of beer for 9p.
Of course the average salary back then was £20 a week too. How wonderful WAS that?
Some things need to be dealt with at a local council level, like pot holes in your street and rubbish collection, some things at a regional level like a bypass around a village, some at a national level like health or education …. and by the same token, the world has learned a lot over the last 40 years or so about things such as climate change and action for the environment and tackling tax avoidance in individual nations by multi-national corporations…. things that can only be tackled by working closely with our nearest neighbours.
Go back to the 1960s/70s? No ta. I’m all good with the rest of the planet in the 21st century.
Posted in reflections
Tagged reflections
So far it’s Remain that has made its case and it’s Leave that’s just offered empty promises
By Paula Kirby a member of one of the SY2E – Remain in the EU groups.
This is a very slightly edited version of something I posted on a friend’s FB page yesterday in response to one of his friends, who had accused the Remain campaign failing to make a positive case for staying in the EU.
Please feel free to share if you would like to.
No, [name redacted]. We know what we have from EU membership and the benefits it gives our country. It’s the Brexiters who want to pull the plug on all that and gamble it all on the roll of an enormous dice, so it’s about time they started telling us exactly how they intend to make good the losses we’d incur through Brexit. No more waving their hands around and saying “Oooh, it’ll all come out in the wash” and “We’ll be able to keep all the bits we like, and dump the bits we don’t” and “We’re British, don’t you know”.
Facts. Specifics. Plans. How exactly do they propose to ensure that a post-Brexit UK would thrive? They might like to start by telling us how exactly they would go about recreating trade agreements with countless different countries, and how they would ensure that those negotiations would be concluded speedily despite experienced negotiators pointing out that they almost always take several (7, 8, 9, 10) years to achieve, and the countries concerned telling us that concluding a trade deal with the UK alone would be low priority for them.
And how about telling us how they would persuade countries like Japan to go on investing here, when those countries have made it very clear that their interest in the UK would be greatly diminished if it were no longer a springboard to the rest of the EU.
They might also like to tell us how they would go about persuading every single other EU member country to give us the generous exit terms Brexiters are claiming would be ours for the asking – when those member countries have every incentive to make the process as difficult and unsatisfactory (from our point of view) as possible, for fear that other countries might want to follow suit.
Remember that EU deals of this kind need to be unanimous. Remember, too, that France has already said it would veto such a deal. And don’t give me that nonsense about them needing us more than we need them. The proportion of EU trade with the UK is absolutely dwarfed by the proportion of our trade with the EU.
And once the Brexiters have done that, they can move on and tell us exactly how they plan to address and overcome the concerns of university chancellors, who have seen their universities thrive as a result of EU membership and its associated freedom of movement, mechanisms for facilitating collaboration, and funding. Or the concerns of diplomats. And economists. And business leaders. And environmentalists. And scientists. Specifics, please.
Why do you suppose all those experts, from so many fields, are so alarmed at the prospect of Brexit? How exactly do the Brexiters propose to persuade them? (Clue: “Oh, you’re just being negative” isn’t going to cut it. When are the Brexiters going to start setting out in detail why all those specialists have got it so wrong?)
And how much government and civil service time would be spent post-Brexit scrummaging around trying to recreate WHAT WE ALREADY HAVE, and why is that a good use of their time, given that there’s a country to be run and an economy to be grown and education to improve and a health service to fund and a pensions crisis to resolve and climate change to be countered?
And how do you suppose other countries will be spending the years and years we would be distracted in this way? Are they going to politely wait for us to resume business as usual, or are they going to be forging ahead while we’re desperately trying to rebuild what we have foolishly torn down? We all know the answer to that one.
It’s not the Remain camp that’s lacking positivity. Remain are very clear about the huge number of ways we all benefit from our membership. The Leave camp doesn’t have a clue how it would resolve matters following Brexit (or perhaps it does, and knows it would be unacceptably painful – there has to be some reason why they have so far failed to get down to any specifics whatsoever).
They are advocating the Father Christmas scenario – we’re going to get nice things by some kind of magic, and it’s not going to cost us a penny or hurt in the least! But as all grown-ups know, there’s no Father Christmas. There are no free gifts, no magic wands, no flying reindeer.
When the Leave camp has something more concrete than wishful thinking; when it can demonstrate why its analyses and predictions are more reliable and credible than those of the vast majority of experts in every affected field, THEN it might be worth listening to.
But I’m not holding my breath. So far it’s Remain that has made its case and Leave that’s just offered empty promises based on myths, lies, and hollow, highly dubious nationalism. Brexiters are asking us to gamble our future on 23 June, and I simply do not believe we Brits are reckless and foolhardy enough to fall for it on the day.
Posted in brexit, reflections
Tagged brexit, reflections



