The EU referendum - IN / OUT or Shake it all about.

[Guest]

The commonly understood definition is without trade tariffs and artificial restrictions.

 

and without subsidies or not?

 

I guess you know why "Free" trade areas as you suggest them don't exist don't you?

 

Would you agree to Free trade with the Chinese?

[bovril]

Do they have to smoke outside?

 

Only Iceland.

[Webbo]

and without subsidies or not?

I guess you know why "Free" trade areas as you suggest them don't exist don't you?

Would you agree to Free trade with the Chinese?

Well China isn't in Europe but as long as they followed the same rules as us then yes. No subsidies, no dumping, a two way free trade agreement is in everyone's interest.

[Guest MattP]

Wow, we might just pull this off.

 

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article4683420.ece

 

The campaign to leave the European Union has been handed its biggest lead after the public rejected David Cameron’s deal on reforms, according to a poll for The Times. The YouGov survey found that 45 per cent of people will vote to leave the EU compared with 36 per cent who want to remain, while 19 per cent do not know or would not vote. Excluding the “don’t knows”, this means 56 per cent want to leave while 44 per cent want to remain. The nine-point lead for the “leave” campaign is up from a four-point gap last week. It is the biggest lead since the referendum wording was announced in the summer. Since then YouGov’s polls have shown the race to be neck and neck. Before that, the biggest lead for “out” — of ten points — was recorded in January 2014. The poll is the first to be conducted after the terms of the draft EU renegotiation were made public

[davieG]

EU referendum: Leaders 'not happy' with UK reform proposals

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-35489335

[Guest]

Well China isn't in Europe but as long as they followed the same rules as us then yes. No subsidies, no dumping, a two way free trade agreement is in everyone's interest.

 

recipe for mass unemployment in England and a complete lack of innovation.

[Webbo]

recipe for mass unemployment in England and a complete lack of innovation.

Why? What does China make that they're not selling to us already?

[bovril]

Wow, we might just pull this off.

 

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article4683420.ece

 

I'm sure the majority will vote out. The outers seem very passionate and determined. I don't know anyone who is passionately pro-EU, just lots of people like me who might be instinctively 'in' but are still pretty undecided.

Whether or not the vote will make a difference is another matter. After all, if voting changed anything they'd ban it.

[Guest MattP]

I'm sure the majority will vote out. The outers seem very passionate and determined. I don't know anyone who is passionately pro-EU, just lots of people like me who might be instinctively 'in' but are still pretty undecided.

Whether or not the vote will make a difference is another matter. After all, if voting changed anything they'd ban it.

 

I would need the opinion polls to have out at 58-60% before I think we will actually vote out.

 

Lots of people will bottle it at the ballot box who were voting "Out" and the Status Quo always seems to get a couple of % points higher than polls have indicated, plus a lot of Conservatives will still follow Cameron when tells them to vote "In".

[Guest]

Why? What does China make that they're not selling to us already?

 

With tariffs.

 

The following is stolen from online to save me wasting hours of my life putting some arguments against Free Trade Areas on here.

 

In Theory I don't disagree with FTA's but in practice they are better for some countries than others and they can be very hurtful to countries who are trying to promote innovative thinking. Obviously they are not good for employees wages either.

 

Arguments for protectionism fall into the economic category (trade hurts the economy) or the moral category (the effects of trade might help the economy, but have ill effects in other areas); a general argument against free trade is that it is colonialism or imperialism in disguise. The moral category is wide, including concerns of destroying infant industries and undermining long-run economic development, income inequality, environmental degradation, supporting child labor and sweatshops, race to the bottom, wage slavery, accentuating poverty in poor countries, harming national defense, and forcing cultural change.^[31]

Economic arguments against free trade criticize the assumptions or conclusions of economic theories. Sociopolitical arguments against free trade cite social and political effects that economic arguments do not capture, such as political stability, national security, human rights and environmental protection.

Free trade is often opposed by domestic industries that would have their profits and market share reduced by lower prices for imported goods.^[32][33] For example, if United States tariffs on imported sugar were reduced, U.S. sugar producers would receive lower prices and profits, while U.S. sugar consumers would spend less for the same amount of sugar because of those same lower prices. The economic theory of David Ricardo holds that consumers would necessarily gain more than producers would lose.^[34][35] Since each of those few domestic sugar producers would lose a lot while each of a great number of consumers would gain only a little, domestic producers are more likely to mobilize against the lifting of tariffs.^[33] More generally, producers often favor domestic subsidies and tariffs on imports in their home countries, while objecting to subsidies and tariffs in their export markets.

Real Wages vs Trade as a Percent of GDP^[36][37]

Socialists frequently oppose free trade on the ground that it allows maximum exploitation ofworkers by capital. For example, Karl Marx wrote in The Communist Manifesto, "The bourgeoisie... has set up that single, unconscionable freedom – free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation." Nonetheless, Marx favored free trade solely^[38] because he felt that it would hasten the social revolution.

"Free trade" is opposed by many anti-globalization groups, based on their assertion that free trade agreements generally do not increase the economic freedom of the poor or the working class, and frequently make them poorer. Where the foreign supplier allows de facto exploitation of labor, domestic free-labor is unfairly forced to compete with the foreign exploited labor, and thus the domestic "working class would gradually be forced down to the level of helotry."^[39] To this extent, free trade is seen as nothing more than an end-run around laws that protect individual liberty, such as the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (outlawing slavery and indentured servitude).

It is important to distinguish between arguments against free trade theory, and free tradeagreements as applied. Some opponents of NAFTA see the agreement as being materially harmful to the common people, but some of the arguments are actually against the particulars of government-managed trade, rather than against free trade per se. For example, it is argued^[40] that it would be wrong to let subsidized corn from the U.S. into Mexico freely under NAFTA at prices well below production cost (dumping) because of its ruinous effects to Mexican farmers. Of course, such subsidies violate free trade theory, so this argument is not actually against the principle of free trade, but rather its selective implementation.

 

[SMX11]

With tariffs.

 

The following is stolen from online to save me wasting hours of my life putting some arguments against Free Trade Areas on here.

 

In Theory I don't disagree with FTA's but in practice they are better for some countries than others and they can be very hurtful to countries who are trying to promote innovative thinking. Obviously they are not good for employees wages either.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DhagKyvDck

[Thracian]

Did he do as I said? Come back wavinga bit of  paper and say he had negotiated a good deal?

 

I rember about a year ago  when he was told we owed the EU money. He went and had a chay, came back and said he had  pursuaded them to repay. What was though was the rebate we would have got anyway. Thats Newspeak for you.

I expect some will still defend this and find an excuse. Don't misunderstand if it was a Labour MP they would have done the same but it would not be defended so rigiourlesslly because Cameron can do no wrong in some peoples eyes.

There's never been a chance Cameron would negotiate anything significant, whatever spin he put on it. The majority of EU nations just wouldn't be willing to move enough. And that's the problem.

It's not the Common Market we were sold by Ted Heath, but a stealthy absorption into the United States of Europe that makes us beholden to other people and to a whole host of things we don't agree with today or won't agree with in the future. The EU doesn't serve us, but its own agenda, well understood by some when initially conceived back in the 40s if memory serves.

The deceit of the British people, and the deliberate reducing of our sovereignty by successive politicians since the EU came about has been a disgrace, just like Blairs deceit of the British people over immigration and Iraq.

We can and should go our own way and, if we did, I wouldn't be surprised if others followed because the EU is a house of overworn cards held up by the mistral winds of unelected empire builders.

We've been a worldwide trading nation for centuries so the notion that we wouldn't have perfectly acceptable trading agreements with others - including China - is nonsense.

And if HKBC moves its HQ to Germany I'm quite sure there'll quickly regret it and others will immediately take their place although, personally, I'd rather China was a close and valued friend than anything less.

But there are many potential allies in the world way beyond the cosied-up dominants of Europe.

Even now France and Germany don't court us but try to bully us, they don't try to ease our problems but consistently make them harder whether in Calais or Brussels.

People talk about the UK losing credibility if we leave the EU but that's exactly what's intended within it. In fact we'll lose our sovereignty completely if some have their way.

What we need is the Vardy spirit of unfailing defiance, together with our own trade agreements with anyone we choose including our Commonwealth connections.

Where trade is concerned, no nation is going to avoid dealing with 70million potential customers, many of them well educated, pioneering types but also provenly strong spenders.

And we won't suddenly be £-shop paupers eitheret. Quite the contrary.

But we'll sure need to make some radical decisions if we're going to benefit from tomorrow's multi-carat potential gold rush, instead of scoring so many own goals courtesy of misguided liberal thinking and theoretical attitudes that just don't weigh-up fairly in real life.

I already consider the UK to be allies of Europe (Turkey isn't in Europe politically) but don't want the EU at any price that's been set so far and wouldn't want federalism at all.

What I would have is re-negotiated EU terms on the basis of our belonging to a common market but with complete and constitutional political and legal independence outside of the trading arena.

There is, of course, no chance the EU will accept those terms. So there's no real option but to accept not-so-creeping federalism or to renegotiate our trading terms from outside.

[Thracian]

Why? What does China make that they're not selling to us already?

Island airstrips?

[Thracian]

With tariffs.

 

The following is stolen from online to save me wasting hours of my life putting some arguments against Free Trade Areas on here.

 

In Theory I don't disagree with FTA's but in practice they are better for some countries than others and they can be very hurtful to countries who are trying to promote innovative thinking. Obviously they are not good for employees wages either.

Marx theory is so provenly and so obviously flawed it's lamentable. Page three of the link offers a good example which concludes that by following his argument the only body allowed to exploit the poor hard-done-by worker is the state."

http://www.citizenhat.org/flawmarxism.pdf

His very concept that the requirement of profit necessarily exploits the worker is rubbish.

In becoming employed the worker gets many things on top of his wages. He gets the benefit of experience, opportunity, education (on the job or by offered opportunity, money in his pocket, the opportunity for overtime in some situations, knowledge, skills, contacts, information and any number of other things). My oldest son got them and went to work as an accounts clerk in Northampton. He learned fast and decided he could do all the things the boss did. His, to Marx "exploiting" boss encouraged him, allowed him time off to study so he qualified as a chartered accountant, ran his own business, now employs some 25 people, offers them shares and partnerships in that business which now turns over quite tidily by any standards. My youngest son was so "exploited" he was taken in as a ground floor chef at one of the finest hotel/restaurants in the country near London, was sponsored by his bosses to complete his qualifications at university, went on to be one of the hotel's leading chefs was given courtesy of almost all the hotel's fabulous facilities including the golf course used for the James Bond film Goldfinger, and has a terrific life.

Marx's free trade argument is flawed too. Let's take the pottery industry cos their's few more working class than tthat.

Cut price Chinese reproductions flooded the market and British-based companies responded by moving their own production facilities abroad.

Ageing factories in the UK closed. There were scenes of dereliction everywhere and tears from people who'd spent their whole lives in the pot banks.

Top British manufacturers started making their product in the Far East with cheap native labour but what happened? First the wage demands of the locals went up and up until manufacturing costs weren't nearly so attractive.

Then folks back home perceived that the quality of the product wasn't so good and refused to buy it.

Result? Some of the British pottery companies were returned home by people like Portmeirion who became the most successful ceramics producer in the UK and they are not the only emerging success. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/interiors/8281433/All-fired-up-the-future-of-pottery.html

Meanwhile the potteries attracted other industries, added tourist attractions ( https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attractions-g186378-Activities-Stoke_on_Trent_Staffordshire_England.html)and other infrastructure so, while ending up with fewer people risking their lungs in the grime and dust of the potbanks of what was a declining industry anyway in some areas, found their future was not so dependent on the swings and roundabouts of just one industry anymore but they also had sources of employment that couldn't be moved away like the magnificent Trentham Gardens shopping village set in the grounds of a stately home and with its own free-range monkey troupe. So people adapted and short-term despair bred new opportunities and many of them. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/interiors/8281433/All-fired-up-the-future-of-pottery.html

Again, relating to pottery, I was associated with three individual potters who learned their trade from the bottom and ended up running their own successful businesses. One was Lise B Moorcroft, daughter of the late, Walter Moorcroft whose father William founded the famous Moorcroft pottery. Lise never worked for Moorcroft but her early designs were marketed by Moorland in Burslem while she also marketed her personally potted pieces from the studio at her parent's house in Trentham. It was dogged work at first with no guaranteed income but she would never have described herself as exploited and quickly became successful through the steady but hardly lucrative patronage of Moorland and others.

Her college friend Sally Tuffin also became a legend with her own business having worked for the Poole Pottery in Dorset and also the then teenaged designer Lorna Bailey who started in a run-down pot bank called the Old Ellgreave Pottery in Burslem, broken windows and all.

All proved that an unheralded start on little or modest income could lead to national and international success and that there was no substitute in the pottery trade for innovative design and quality hand-made products irrespective of cheap imports.

Marx theory was so blinkered as to surely only be based on misplaced envy and a desire for class conflict rather that anything to truly benefit working people because without profit there is no industry and without hard-working workers and employers paying taxes, there would be no sustainable jobs (exploitation) in the state's public sector either.

[Rincewind]

So in short it is Wellens fault?

[davieG]

TTIP trade talks: German judges oppose new investor courts

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35503885

[Guest]

Marx theory is so provenly and so obviously flawed it's lamentable. Page three of the link offers a good example which concludes that by following his argument the only body allowed to exploit the poor hard-done-by worker is the state."

http://www.citizenhat.org/flawmarxism.pdf

His very concept that the requirement of profit necessarily exploits the worker is rubbish.

In becoming employed the worker gets many things on top of his wages. He gets the benefit of experience, opportunity, education (on the job or by offered opportunity, money in his pocket, the opportunity for overtime in some situations, knowledge, skills, contacts, information and any number of other things). My oldest son got them and went to work as an accounts clerk in Northampton. He learned fast and decided he could do all the things the boss did. His, to Marx "exploiting" boss encouraged him, allowed him time off to study so he qualified as a chartered accountant, ran his own business, now employs some 25 people, offers them shares and partnerships in that business which now turns over quite tidily by any standards. My youngest son was so "exploited" he was taken in as a ground floor chef at one of the finest hotel/restaurants in the country near London, was sponsored by his bosses to complete his qualifications at university, went on to be one of the hotel's leading chefs was given courtesy of almost all the hotel's fabulous facilities including the golf course used for the James Bond film Goldfinger, and has a terrific life.

Marx's free trade argument is flawed too. Let's take the pottery industry cos their's few more working class than tthat.

Cut price Chinese reproductions flooded the market and British-based companies responded by moving their own production facilities abroad.

Ageing factories in the UK closed. There were scenes of dereliction everywhere and tears from people who'd spent their whole lives in the pot banks.

Top British manufacturers started making their product in the Far East with cheap native labour but what happened? First the wage demands of the locals went up and up until manufacturing costs weren't nearly so attractive.

Then folks back home perceived that the quality of the product wasn't so good and refused to buy it.

Result? Some of the British pottery companies were returned home by people like Portmeirion who became the most successful ceramics producer in the UK and they are not the only emerging success. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/interiors/8281433/All-fired-up-the-future-of-pottery.html

Meanwhile the potteries attracted other industries, added tourist attractions ( https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attractions-g186378-Activities-Stoke_on_Trent_Staffordshire_England.html)and other infrastructure so, while ending up with fewer people risking their lungs in the grime and dust of the potbanks of what was a declining industry anyway in some areas, found their future was not so dependent on the swings and roundabouts of just one industry anymore but they also had sources of employment that couldn't be moved away like the magnificent Trentham Gardens shopping village set in the grounds of a stately home and with its own free-range monkey troupe. So people adapted and short-term despair bred new opportunities and many of them. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/interiors/8281433/All-fired-up-the-future-of-pottery.html

Again, relating to pottery, I was associated with three individual potters who learned their trade from the bottom and ended up running their own successful businesses. One was Lise B Moorcroft, daughter of the late, Walter Moorcroft whose father William founded the famous Moorcroft pottery. Lise never worked for Moorcroft but her early designs were marketed by Moorland in Burslem while she also marketed her personally potted pieces from the studio at her parent's house in Trentham. It was dogged work at first with no guaranteed income but she would never have described herself as exploited and quickly became successful through the steady but hardly lucrative patronage of Moorland and others.

Her college friend Sally Tuffin also became a legend with her own business having worked for the Poole Pottery in Dorset and also the then teenaged designer Lorna Bailey who started in a run-down pot bank called the Old Ellgreave Pottery in Burslem, broken windows and all.

All proved that an unheralded start on little or modest income could lead to national and international success and that there was no substitute in the pottery trade for innovative design and quality hand-made products irrespective of cheap imports.

Marx theory was so blinkered as to surely only be based on misplaced envy and a desire for class conflict rather that anything to truly benefit working people because without profit there is no industry and without hard-working workers and employers paying taxes, there would be no sustainable jobs (exploitation) in the state's public sector either.

Thrac, you need to hug the modern world and stop making your posts so long.

 

I can never bother to read them, I tried once but fell asleep before I got to the end.

[Thracian]

Thrac, you need to hug the modern world and stop making your posts so long.

 

I can never bother to read them, I tried once but fell asleep before I got to the end.

So presumably you dosed us up on the Marx/Free Trade link

without reading it?

[Guest]

So presumably you dosed us up on the Marx/Free Trade link

without reading it?

 

That's better. No, That was interesting.

[Guest MattP]

Keep the posts as long as you want Thrac, I always enjoy reading them.

Certainly wouldn't want you to dumb them down because some people can't be bothered.

[Guest]

Keep the posts as long as you want Thrac, I always enjoy reading them.

Certainly wouldn't want you to dumb them down because some people can't be bothered.

 

He could be you Dad with his views. 

[Finnaldo]

He could be you Dad with his views. 

 

He wrote an argument and backed it up with a source or examples. You know, the stuff you normally do to make a valid argument in a debate. 

[Foxxed]

It's nothing to do with the war or the empire, it's to do with the fact we can't make our own laws, make our own decisions.

This point is the most interesting to me.

 

The laws from the EU--agreed to by our representatives in the Council, Parliament and through the original treaty negotiation--are indeed binding.

 

And these laws are mainly about trade.

 

Let's say we are no longer bound by the collective agreements in the the EU.

 

What then? Do we say: "No, we're not going to be bound by that laws"?

 

If so, the EU's reponds is this: "Hi there from the largest trading block in the world. We're going to limit your trade with us now. Have a nice day!"

 

I'd rather be inside the EU shaping decisions, rather than outside having to deal with the post fact.

 

We can't elect our own leaders and we can't vote them out either.

 

Do you mean we can't vote out the European Commission? It's chosen by our representatives in the the European Council and European Parliament, and those two institutions have to agree to the Commissions proposals: We elect both of those.

 

Don't like what they're agreeing to? Or who they've elected. Don't vote for them in the national and European elections.

 

Are we privy to those negotiations? Does any party publish their demands in their manifestos?

 

Yes. Look in your national manifesto under 'Europe', and those you vote during the European elections. If they're not being demanding enough, demand your party is so.

 

How often do politicians tell us they'd like to do something but they're not allowed to because of Europe?

 

Politicians looking for a scapegoat shocker.

 

There are people in charge of our lives that we didn't vote in and can't vote out, it stinks.

 

We vote for Westminster. We vote for the European parliament. We voted them in. We can vote them out.

 

I could however forgive that if it actually made us any better off but Europe is going backwards economically and I don't particularly want to be tied to a sinking ship.

 

I fail to see how removing ourselves from the decisions of the world's largest trading block would make us better off.

 

I suspect the EU making trade decisions without our involvement will be economically detrimental to us.

[Webbo]

[Rincewind]

A selfie?