OP
OP
Find me a reliable source, not a newspaper etc, and I'll read it.
Currently reading:
Leave or stay? EU impact on UK motoring
Find me a reliable source, not a newspaper etc, and I'll read it.
You mean its not true if its in the newspaper, I'm devastated. I will have to rethink my whole life now 
We've just had this debate in our house. Parents and I, despite being very similar by all accounts are likely voting different ways.
I wish there were facts, presented as facts. Now - I don't mean, "we spend x amount on this and get bugger all back". What I mean is "We spend x amount. We receive y amount in rebates." That way people could look, make choices based on proper information.
I'm struggling to trust much of what I read online now.
I wish there were facts, presented as facts. Now - I don't mean, "we spend x amount on this and get bugger all back". What I mean is "We spend x amount. We receive y amount in rebates." That way people could look, make choices based on proper information.
I'm struggling to trust much of what I read online now.
- Joined
- Apr 8, 2004
- Messages
- 25,221
- Points
- 3,599
The monetary reasons are just 1 piece of the puzzle. If the government wasn't so busy being so biased towards "remain" maybe we'd get the information we need to make an informed decision.
Instead people are left not knowing what to do or think as they're getting deafened from both sides, usually with biased facts taken out of context.
I've done my own informal reading looking at a number of sources (none of them press, news sites) and Out is the right decision for me. If I were suddenly to acquire a vast fortune I maybe voting remain.
The thing that pisses me off the most is at Election time Cameron stated that he'd "cut immigration to ten's of thousands by 2016", now he's turned full circle trying to state that lack of immigration (once we left the EU) would make our economy collapse. It's either one or the other Cameron, don't be so two faced!!
Instead people are left not knowing what to do or think as they're getting deafened from both sides, usually with biased facts taken out of context.
I've done my own informal reading looking at a number of sources (none of them press, news sites) and Out is the right decision for me. If I were suddenly to acquire a vast fortune I maybe voting remain.
The thing that pisses me off the most is at Election time Cameron stated that he'd "cut immigration to ten's of thousands by 2016", now he's turned full circle trying to state that lack of immigration (once we left the EU) would make our economy collapse. It's either one or the other Cameron, don't be so two faced!!
I cant find anyone who seems to be voting to stay in, but they are mostly using immigration as the reason, which is a bit of a short sighted view on the whole package. I know the rest of the Europeans I have spoken too want us to stay and think its pretty selfish to leave and think we are living in the past and we are not an empire anymore. So I told them that makes me more determined to vote out and they can shove there opinions up there ass.
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2014
- Messages
- 4,579
- Points
- 753
I'm voting out. I just don't see anything good about us staying in tbh.
Too little, too late.
My eldest decided he wanted to go into farming, he went to college, did his time & came away with some good results, even headhunted to go back & teach the next generation!
He spent a few years working for various farmers, awful pay & long hours - and often dangerous working conditions.
He also tried to get a tenancy on a council farm, he almost got it but was pipped at the last moment by a large consortium who absorbed the land into their portfolio. interestingly, HS2 will plough straight through that farm which has lay unused/untouched ever since!
This is a council who claims it is proud of our agricultural heritage & who claim (on their website) that they have a number of tenant farms to encourage the next generation blah blah blah.
Most of the guys my son went to college with have abandoned the farming dream, even some who are farmers sons are no longer following in the family tradition.
According to the figures he was given, agriculture is simply not sustainable & at the time, we were importing to top up what we produced - I suspect that the amount of grain we import will only grow as more and more of green land is given over to housing & fancy train tracks! I know of two local farms lost to housing & three more lost to HS2!
impact on motoring? Well, it always seems to be a case of do as we say... Insist on HGVs being speed limited, heck, even my old bus was limited to 62mph & yet I lost count of the number of foreign plated HGVs that would come zooming past me on the motorway.
We often have a French market come to town, local traders get really het up about it - they seem to have a different set of rules when it comes to selling foodstuffs.
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Ok, look, I'm sorry alright? It was all my fault, I voted to join in 1975. But, I had an excuse.
That was that there was almost everything in favour and almost nothing against. The implications of joining were simple.
They were the free movement of goods and services across internal borders; an end to huge queues of trucks and tourists with caravans and grumpy kids waiting for hours to get into, or out of a country. This also meant the end of import duty from within the EEC. This was good news for FIAT, Renault and their ilk but bad news for BL. Every one of their model range was now under attack from continental rivals that were now, if not cheaper, then at least the same price as the domestic models. It was also good news for GM and Ford as this allowed the Cortina to be built in Belgium and the Cavalier to be made in Germany.
It was also bad news for domestic truck makers as they've all either gone to the wall or been taken over. Rolls Royce and Bentley are now in the hands of European companies but, conversely, JLR is of course owned by an Indian firm.
On a more prosaic level, when I decide to drive from the UK through France to Italy I'll only have to buy one lot of foreign currency, but that won't change whether we're in or out.
What I don't like is the fact that we give the EU several billion pounds and the give us around 40% back. All this costs huge amounts of money, so why not just give them the nett amount. There must be, at a guess, several thousand EU buraurats who just take money out, then give it back again.
One of the things we are up against is the countries that don't follow the rules. For instance, over a decade ago there was a ruling that member states had to open up their energy markets to European competition. We complied, which give us the likes of eon (German) and EdF (French) who have bought into ours, yet British companies have tried, and failed, to buy into the French energy market, mainly because that company is part owned by the French Government and they have a law that says a foreign company can't buy parts of the government.
There are also those who waste the money they're given on "vanity projects" such as those discovered by Top Gear (yes I know it's not exactly Newsnight) when they found the highway that just ended in the middle of nowhere, the housing developments that nobody bought because of the recession and the airport with no flights, for the same reason.
Then there were fishing quotas, some of which were given to landlocked countries such as Austria and I believe extra quotas were given to Spain for Andorra.
Overall, vehicles have become safer because of the EU, although most of the improvements would have happened even without it, but spray suppression on HGVs is worse and crash helmet testing is less rigorous.
Some countries are also very chauvinistic, I'm thinking of France here as when things were getting tight at home they decided that the Peugeot factory in Coventry should be closed and production shifted to France.
The thought of an EU army frankly scares the living crap out of me if I'm honest.
"Ze EU has announced that it is declaring war on (insert country here) and as a result, the British Army and RAF will provide the spearhead with infantry, artillery and tanks and aircraft. Ze Germans vill provide the transport to get everything up to within 50 kms of ze front line and ze French vill provide the catering. Ze Italians vill all go for lunch and the Dutch vill let us know vat zay vill do ven zey vake up from their post joint sleep. Also, in ze interest of furzer European integration unt harmony, ze British vill use German tanks, French aircraft unt Italian automatic veapons.....vich zay vill get round to making after their month long summer break. All zis can be bought by ze British by them giving up zeir ridiculous EU rebate. Zis is ze end of ze news. Ve vill now all go for lunch and ze British can get on viz ze var."
That was that there was almost everything in favour and almost nothing against. The implications of joining were simple.
They were the free movement of goods and services across internal borders; an end to huge queues of trucks and tourists with caravans and grumpy kids waiting for hours to get into, or out of a country. This also meant the end of import duty from within the EEC. This was good news for FIAT, Renault and their ilk but bad news for BL. Every one of their model range was now under attack from continental rivals that were now, if not cheaper, then at least the same price as the domestic models. It was also good news for GM and Ford as this allowed the Cortina to be built in Belgium and the Cavalier to be made in Germany.
It was also bad news for domestic truck makers as they've all either gone to the wall or been taken over. Rolls Royce and Bentley are now in the hands of European companies but, conversely, JLR is of course owned by an Indian firm.
On a more prosaic level, when I decide to drive from the UK through France to Italy I'll only have to buy one lot of foreign currency, but that won't change whether we're in or out.
What I don't like is the fact that we give the EU several billion pounds and the give us around 40% back. All this costs huge amounts of money, so why not just give them the nett amount. There must be, at a guess, several thousand EU buraurats who just take money out, then give it back again.
One of the things we are up against is the countries that don't follow the rules. For instance, over a decade ago there was a ruling that member states had to open up their energy markets to European competition. We complied, which give us the likes of eon (German) and EdF (French) who have bought into ours, yet British companies have tried, and failed, to buy into the French energy market, mainly because that company is part owned by the French Government and they have a law that says a foreign company can't buy parts of the government.
There are also those who waste the money they're given on "vanity projects" such as those discovered by Top Gear (yes I know it's not exactly Newsnight) when they found the highway that just ended in the middle of nowhere, the housing developments that nobody bought because of the recession and the airport with no flights, for the same reason.
Then there were fishing quotas, some of which were given to landlocked countries such as Austria and I believe extra quotas were given to Spain for Andorra.
Overall, vehicles have become safer because of the EU, although most of the improvements would have happened even without it, but spray suppression on HGVs is worse and crash helmet testing is less rigorous.
Some countries are also very chauvinistic, I'm thinking of France here as when things were getting tight at home they decided that the Peugeot factory in Coventry should be closed and production shifted to France.
The thought of an EU army frankly scares the living crap out of me if I'm honest.
"Ze EU has announced that it is declaring war on (insert country here) and as a result, the British Army and RAF will provide the spearhead with infantry, artillery and tanks and aircraft. Ze Germans vill provide the transport to get everything up to within 50 kms of ze front line and ze French vill provide the catering. Ze Italians vill all go for lunch and the Dutch vill let us know vat zay vill do ven zey vake up from their post joint sleep. Also, in ze interest of furzer European integration unt harmony, ze British vill use German tanks, French aircraft unt Italian automatic veapons.....vich zay vill get round to making after their month long summer break. All zis can be bought by ze British by them giving up zeir ridiculous EU rebate. Zis is ze end of ze news. Ve vill now all go for lunch and ze British can get on viz ze var."
The latter part of the above post was, of course, a joke.............at least I think it was.
And definitely not the Daily Mail or Daily Excess. Their front pages are almost exclusively made up of: Miracle cure for Diabetes; Miracle cure for cancer; Middle class house price bonanza; Miracle cure for Diabetes (again); Miracle cure for cancer (again); Middle class house price crash; Miracle cure for Dementia.
I'm half expecting them to suggest we invade Egypt in order to claim back the Suez Canal next.
