Isn't one of the possible drawbacks to leaving the EEC the fact that historically Britain was a massive force in world terms and other European countries had to sir up shut up and take notice thus benefiting from any type of economic/political and military relationship with Britain.
My thoughts are that this was done 'probably' under duress as most of the last thousand years we've been at war with some point of Europe at one point or another, and no matter how much people would like to think it doesn't matter, it still sticks in the craw of a lot of Europeans.
In recent times the status of Britain in world terms has diminished somewhat and instead of being 'the' world superpower Britain is no where near the force it once was. Even though Britain is still a very powerful force in comparison to many it certainly doesn't 'matter' so much on a global scale.
If Britain comes out of Europe then we risk The other European countries, which i think they would be only to happy to do, just sidelining us and even penalising us with regard to our economics and politics. If this became the case the rest of the world might do the same to some degree or other.
Don't worry whether the UK will be in or out of Europe in five years time. By then Scotland will be in Europe and the UK will have ceased to exist as an entity.
Well according to that Alex Salmond anyway.
in the race to the bottom (devaluation) in order to remain competetive and dilute debt through inflation, a british currency crisis would pre empt any referendum. this could be the game plan particularily as merv the swerve is retiring and his replacement, the ex govenor of the bank of canada and ex goldman sachs director is due to replace him soon. think not about the interests of sterling and more of goldman sachs, the creators of the greek debt crisis, the prime minister of italy, unelected ex goldman sachs, draghi the govenor of the e.c.b. ex goldman sachs and there you have it. no soveregnty and bankers rule in their interests.
a sterling crisis is in the plan. cameron, clegg, miliband balls an all are all just willing stooges.
:laughabove:
And 'subtlety' perhaps :lol2:
I think that DC is showing courage and leadership and he is fundamentally right to say that many of Europe's citizens (if not Politicians) have many of the same frustrations the the UK public has. The Eurozone part of Europe is changing and will have to change even more to sort the currency so it really is an opportunity to make the European Parliamant and National Parliaments have clearly defined roles and to accountable.
Anyone then not wanting to be a part of a sanitised Europe would just be a bit nutty in my opinion.
As for the "cost" of all these Europeans coming in to this country - University College London conducted a study in 2009 (at the height of the recession and the influx). This is an extract:
"The research report – written by Professor Christian Dustmann, Tommaso Frattini and Caroline Halls from the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM) at UCL – provides an analysis of the fiscal contribution of A8 immigrants in the four years after accession. It shows that:
A8 immigrants who arrived after EU enlargement in 2004, and who have at least one year of residence – and are therefore legally eligible to claim benefits – are about 60% less likely than natives to receive state benefits or tax credits, and to live in social housing.
Comparing the net fiscal contribution of A8 immigrants with that of individuals born in the UK, in each fiscal year since enlargement in 2004, A8 immigrants made a positive contribution to public finance.
In the latest fiscal year, 2008/09, A8 immigrants paid 37% more in direct or indirect taxes than was spent on public goods and services which they received. This is even more remarkable because the UK has been running a budget deficit over the last few years."
(‘A8 countries’ – the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Poland.)
Link -
The very, very simple fact of the matter is that "emigration" as a thought process has everything to do with work opportunity. It is only the idle who think that everyone else must also be idle and will uproot from their home country to claim benefits in (for example) Burnley. It doesn't happen like that, people emigrate for opportunity and that is why these migrants bring more revenue than they cost and are far more efficient for UK PLC than the native population.
Little has changed in the last 3 years and so I doubt that these figures have changed very much at all. The story here is that if these migrants were forced to now leave as they would have lost their rights to work there would be a negative financial cost to the UK Treasury.
The native Brits who struggle to leave school with any qualifications are going to be unlikely to be seen filling in the now vacant low paid jobs and so unemployment would stay the same and many companies in the service sector (cleaning contractors, hotels, bars and restuarants) would suffer alarmingly with staff shortages.
All in all a great result if you are the sort of person who likes to blame all their problems on someone else !
Oh the irony of it all.
