Right now, indifferent. If we rely on our politicians to make up our mind, I fear that there are going to be some very angry people when they find out they've been lied to.
As usual our "politicians" are simply bickering and engaging in "ya-boo my dad's better than your dad" arguments with no facts or substance, and others simply seem to have no clue what they are talking about
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Yeah I read that too about the legislative process and it turned out to be rubbish. It refers to the way MEPs vote on legislation written by an un-elected EU civil servants, just like our MPs vote on legislation written by the un-elected British civil service. In either case, policy is still directed by elected politicians and voted on by them before being enacted.
Makes for an eye-catching headline though, for those needing a reason to justify their bizarre hatred of the nice 'Belgians and Luxemburgers' who pass legislation to ensure we have equal pay (well almost), proper paid leave, increased consumer rights, and relatively clean air - policy successes none of which our own government was in any great rush to pass without EU influence.
I've just spent a fortnight staying with one of those "un-elected bureaucrats" in Brussels. She's a UK citizen, speaks French and Chinese exceedingly fluently, and recently spent a week in China with her boss - an Italian ex-MEP - and a bunch of Brits, Germans, and Dutch whose backgrounds are also in national politics and civil service. It's really not the case that a bunch of "un-elected Belgians and Luxemburgers" are doing the work that in this country originates with the Civil Service. The secretariat aren't political appointees per se, but you don't really want an MEP to spend all his or her time researching, writing, and revising reports on the impact of crime on wildlife in each of the EU countries, and then arranging for translation into all the relevant languages.
(I went to the European Parliament while I was there, and spent quite a lot of time reading the titles of the various research papers that are available. Most of them are extraordinarily dull - useful in the scheme of things, but dull. You really do want civil
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Living in a rural area supported by CAP money, and myself working in a building funded by EU rural development grants, I tend to wonder how much my local area is likely to benefit by leaving the EU. Are we really supposed to trust that the UK government, and especially the Tories, will replace any of that? Particularly the funds which support environmental objectives. It often feels like the EU looks out for my area far more than the politicians in London, so I'd take any number of the fabled 'Belgians and Luxemburgers' over the likes of Liz Truss.
EU Subsidies are one thing that I thought would get mentioned, given that many British farmers survive off them, but not ONCE have I heard them on the news coverage.
Instead, it's all economic figures from both sides, that are skewed to suit whichever argument it is backing. If the plan is to turn people off the referendum, it's working.
Sadly, I think that if Remain continue down the path and don't mention the good things that the EU brings to the UK, the 'Little Englanders/no darkies in my village' lot that Farage stirs up will win as they are providing plenty of bad things to the press about it.
Personally, I want to remain. We need EU Subsidies as mentioned above, we'll need immigration when Jeremy Hunt pisses off all our Junior Doctors and they go abroad and the money that does go to Europe now, do we really trust the Tories to siphon it all into building new schools and the NHS? Really..?
I guess nobody in the UK really like agricultural subsidies as we have a smaller agricultural subsidy than the rest of Eueope(we industrialised first) and this is part of the reason why we are a net contributor to the EU.
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Makes for an eye-catching headline though, for those needing a reason to justify their bizarre hatred of the nice 'Belgians and Luxemburgers' who pass legislation to ensure we have equal pay (well almost), proper paid leave, increased consumer rights, and relatively clean air - policy successes none of which our own government was in any great rush to pass without EU influence.
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(I went to the European Parliament while I was there, and spent quite a lot of time reading the titles of the various research papers that are available. Most of them are extraordinarily dull - useful in the scheme of things, but dull. You really do want civil ( ... )
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It often feels like the EU looks out for my area far more than the politicians in London, so I'd take any number of the fabled 'Belgians and Luxemburgers' over the likes of Liz Truss.
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Instead, it's all economic figures from both sides, that are skewed to suit whichever argument it is backing. If the plan is to turn people off the referendum, it's working.
Sadly, I think that if Remain continue down the path and don't mention the good things that the EU brings to the UK, the 'Little Englanders/no darkies in my village' lot that Farage stirs up will win as they are providing plenty of bad things to the press about it.
Personally, I want to remain. We need EU Subsidies as mentioned above, we'll need immigration when Jeremy Hunt pisses off all our Junior Doctors and they go abroad and the money that does go to Europe now, do we really trust the Tories to siphon it all into building new schools and the NHS? Really..?
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But, I'd still say, it's better to be debating the reality, like these, than both sides producing fantastical scare stories to put us off the other.
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