In, I guess

[steepholm]

At the beginning of the EU campaign I started a "bullshit arguments" tag, with the thought that I might highlight any particularly tendentious, emotive or illogical tactics used by either side. I haven't kept it up, though, because it would have meant transcribing pretty much every news bulletin in its entirety.

I was, and am, far from enamoured of the EU, and was genuinely on the fence at the start. However, I will now almost certainly vote to stay in, because no even vaguely acceptable alternative is available. To vote to leave has become synonymous with a vote against immigration, against workers' and environmental protections, and for economic neo-liberalism. It's very clear that all these - laced with coded and not-so-coded racism - are what we'd get in the event of an Out vote.

It absolutely didn't have to be that way: there are other models that an independent Britain might have followed, but at this time there is no group both willing and able to bring them to existence, or even to talk about them as a possibility. So, the choice is: EU, warts and all; or else a UK stripped of everything that's actually valuable and worth having about the EU. It's not really a choice, is it?

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

After yesterday's view of what it'll be like under the fascists, I think a few people might be changing their views slightly. :o(

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

That certainly crystallised a tendency that had been increasingly apparent for a while. In fact, if it's not too tasteless to think in these terms, I suspect it may turn out to have won the vote for Remain. At the very least, the pause in campaigning must have lost the Leave group much of their momentum.

[ron-broxted.livejournal.com]

Cue conspiracy theorists with "Cox set up by MI5". If you have a good job, vote remain, if not Vote Leave. The EU began as a dream, now it is a nightmare, merely another rich men's club. Cox murder merely brings us nearer to the End Game.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I don't understand why you think the poor will be better off out of Europe. Perhaps you could provide links to some forecasts of how jobs will increase and wages will rise if we leave? All the forecasts I've seen have indicated that the economy will be hammered and take years to recover -- if it ever does! Remember the rich always do best whatever system is in place, but if you're poor now, you'll be even poorer if the economy collapses.

Voting Leave puts us totally at the mercy of the Neoliberal free-marketeers. This Tory government has been trying to privatise education and the NHS, along with prisons and other institutions that absolutely should not be run for the profit motive. That means your and my taxes going to line multi-billionaire's pockets, should the Tories keep on as they are doing.

At the moment, the EU and its more socialist tendencies protects us somewhat. Leaving the EU would leave the Tories free to plunder all Britain's resources and use it to line their own pockets. Each school forcibly privatised into an academy means taking public assets that once belonged to local people and handing then over to big business. If you think that the EU is a nightmare, fair enough. I don't because I have benefited and will continue to benefit from the regional funding they give Wales as a deprived economic area. I totally agree that EU is far from perfect. What human institution is? But it's clearly better than the utter nightmare of leaving.

[ron-broxted.livejournal.com]

No links, all I know is it cannot get worse for the poor. Civil Contingencies Act 2006, if we stay plod can get assistance from 28 other states, if we leave it is a different story!

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

all I know is it cannot get worse for the poor

It could always be worse and it will be if the economy takes a nose-dive when the multi-national businesses that want to have an HQ in the EU pull out of the UK and move to France, Belgium or Germany, taking their jobs with them. Perhaps you see a future for the UK as a larger version of the Isle of Man or Jersey? Perhaps we could become a tax haven where rich foreigners swan around enjoying themselves while the poor natives can't find work except in the service industries serving the rich.

As steepholm says above, the pro-leave people haven't been able to put forward a positive and successful view of what they want the EU to become. You don't seem to be able to do it either.

[ron-broxted.livejournal.com]

Millions are like me, fed up of coming second in their own country. Brexit. Vote Leave.

[joyeuce]

To what or whom do you feel you are coming second? If you're talking about feeling like a second class citizen at times, I get that; I'm not rich and I'm a stay at home mother. But I don't see how leaving the EU would change the idea of a two (or more) tier society that many of those in power seem to want.

[ron-broxted.livejournal.com]

Second to Polacks who can't/won't speak English and Romanian gypsies.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Coming second to whom? The multi-billionaires buying up all the new-build luxury apartments in London aren't European. They're Russians and Chinese. Leaving the EU won't make a scrap of difference to the upward pressure on house prices caused by this sort of property speculation.

If you mean immigrants, as I said before, less than half of our immigrants currently come from the EU. The majority (51%) come from non-EU countries. So if the government can't or won't stop non-EU immigration while we're in the EU, why should they stop it if we left? If businesses want cheap labour and native British people won't work for those wages, they'll import workers either legally or illegally. You're living in dreamland if you think that leaving the EU will magically stop foreigners coming here to work.

As for me, I'm voting remain because we in Wales do well out of the EU because it funds various important projects that we desperately need. I don't trust the Westminster government to replace that funding because they didn't care about the regions before we entered the EU and they don't need our votes in order to get elected, so they don't need to keep us happy. As far as Westminster is concerned, the regions don't exist.

I suspect your slogan is, "I want my country back." Though where you think it's gone or who stole it, I don't know. Wales was stolen by force (the castles are still there) and then the country's resources were plundered to make a few people very rich. In the 1980s, Thatcher screwed the miners and devastated the South Wales valleys by following free market principles. (It was cheaper to import Australian coal (note that Australia is not an EU country!) than to mine it here in Britain.) Finally, the life is coming back into South Wales. Railways and stations have reopened allowing people to travel to where the jobs are. Who paid for those projects? Why, the "evil" EU of course, along with the devolved Welsh assembly. So I'll be voting remain for good sound economic reasons.

[ron-broxted.livejournal.com]

I don't live in the West End. I understand Wales wanting in (plus Scotland, a second referendum on way, I supported Yes last time). I am not a UKIPper, only agree with zero immigration. Make it too hot for Polacks to stay.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

All the Poles I've met have been pretty pleasant people, many with excellent English and (for what's it's worth) a willingness to work. Some I count as my friends. Why would I want them to go back to Poland? Perhaps it's to make room for the influx of elderly British emigrants who'll be returning from retirement Spain and France to clog up the NHS wards once those governments decide to make it "too hot" for the British immigrants to stay?

(By the way, please don't use terms such as 'Polack' on this blog.)

[ron-broxted.livejournal.com]

I have been thinking of the nature of prejudice (before I logged on). I have some Polish pals, they speak fluent English and wash. Down at the DSS it is another story, Stanislaus gets to the head of the housing queue and has interpreters on £200 per hour. The million or so English in Spain are scum, they refuse to learn Spanish and want a mini Hackney replicated, only with sunshine and "no darkies". Polack is merely Ashkenazim Yiddish for Polish. Wladislaw usually refers to Jews as "Korva zydowa" (fucking yids) and the whole EU referendum was caused by Blair/Brown and their contempt of the white working class.

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

Yiddish is the language of the Ashkenazi, so no need to specify. You're mistaken about "Polack." You can look that up on Wikipedia. It is considered a derogatory slur in the US and the UK.

[ron-broxted.livejournal.com]

Yes there is, Eastern or Western Yiddische. I never hear the P WORD over here in Britain, Irish in America use it. Wiki is not much of a citation.

[ron-broxted.livejournal.com]

Don't be too sure, we Vote Leave are a tenacious lot.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

I'll take the warts and all.

[heliopausa.livejournal.com]

These are sad and perplexing times. Not the first, I know. I hope it goes well for your country, and for the EU as a whole.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thank you.