With just over a week to go til the EU referendum I’m so worried about some of the stuff spouted by the ‘leave’ campaign that I feel compelled to write about it….
I’m voting ‘remain’ but I’m not particularly pro-remain just so anti-the-leave campaign for the reasons below that are used by them and their supporters….
‘I’m worried about immigration. I’m voting leave so that we can control our borders, build an Australian-style points system etc etc’
I’m generally pro-immigration. I see a NHS that wouldn’t survive without immigration because we don’t train enough doctors and nurses. I work for a company that has a French CEO, in a marketing department where at least 10% are ‘immigrants’ (3x Irish, 1xGreek, 1xCypriot, 1xGerman).. All were the best people for those roles. I live in a city (Cardiff) that was at its most prosperous when immigrants (many Somalians) were working on our docks… The biggest docks in the world at the time!
Still, I get it that some people worry about losing our Britishness or whatever…
But here’s what I’m really confused about. Most of our immigrants come from outside of the EU whether they be Pakistani doctors, Australian bar staff or South American footballers… And we already have control over that… It’s nothing to do with the EU!?? So that points system, we have the power to do that already!
Most of the EU immigrants (just 5% of our population by the way) work here and pay into our economy since the recent change that they can’t claim benefits without working here first.
Which then leaves illegal immigrants and refugees. Personally I think every country should be obliged to take in refugees who are fleeing war (especially when we are the ones bombing them!) but the UK takes a very small number so I don’t think this is a game-changer for deciding on what to vote.
Illegal immigrants and controlling our borders… Personally I think we’d do better at this staying in the EU sharing resources and police intelligence, unless we were to invest heavily in this area.
So what is it about immigrants that you want to escape… Is it their ‘drain on NHS and schools‘? This brings me to my next point…
‘We can invest the money saved into the NHS (education, arts, defence, security etc)’
The Vote leave campaign have been told numerous times not to use the ‘we would save £350m a week’ message as its untrue and numerous studies show that the money that comes in more than makes up for the money going out.
So how much do we spend on the EU? Just 2% of our overall budget! So if you’re worried about the other 98%…. The NHS, education, pensions, benefits, defence etc then vote based on that in the general election!
The NHS is not on its’ arse because it’s over-run by immigrants, it’s on its’ arse because Britain voted for the Tories and their cost-cutting plan instead of the more left-wing parties who invest in public services.
Net migration is about 300k a year… Do you really think that a 0.4% increase in population (70 million) can stretch public services to breaking point?!
One of the things that has wound me up most about the ‘vote leave’ campaign is that they have NO PLAN!!! Who will run the country with David Cameron having to step down as he promised he would…. Boris Johnson? Ian Duncan Smith? George Osborne? I’m sure they would have different ideas on how to spend the ‘money saved’ but nowhere have I seen what those different scenarios would look like!
Or are you hoping Nigel Farage would be in charge? Well he’s not even an MP so it’s impossible! So despite being an MEP who’s encouraging us all to leave, he will have NO POWER to make any decisions on what happens if we do leave!!
So, so far we have a leave campaign that:
- Has no proper plan of what happens after
- Promises the earth on what money could be invested in… Despite the lack of plan and relatively small amount of money that won’t stretch very far
- Promises things that can already be done in the UK and aren’t EU responsibility (immigration from outside the EU)
There are 2 other claims I hear that also piss me off….
‘We’ll no longer be controlled by a group of unelected people’
Ummm we vote for MEP’s that represent our needs in the European Union. (Nigel Farage is one of them!) They vote for the leader/commissioner…. Ok the European Comission above the EU seems to be a bit like our House of Lords but let’s sort our own mess out before worrying about the EC??
The EU is all democratic in the same way our British MPs represent everyone from rural mid Wales to affluent parts of the South East and deprived inner cities.
So from now on just take an interest in the European elections and vote!
And don’t forget that we already have control over some of they key things that matter… The taxes we pay, pensions and benefits, the NHS and education system…
‘Let’s make Britain Great again’
Britain was at its ‘greatest’ when it invaded half the world. I don’t think we’re planning to do that again (she hopes!)
We were also ‘great’ when we were manufacturing everything… But now we live in a globalised world where it’s cheaper for us to get our steel imported from China than to make it ourselves, we import lamb from New Zealand cheaper than we pay our British farmers for it.
So how are we going to be ‘Great’ again? Stop importing everything? Re-open all the coal mines? Sounds unrealistic to me, we’re always going to need to import and in doing so I’d rather have the negotiation power of 28 nations behind me rather than one little island!
I’m left decided that I’m voting ‘remain’ next week…
- The vote leave campaign is non-sensical, poorly thought out and has given me no assurance that we will be better off outside the EU… There is no plan!!
- I’m not a gambler… our economy is doing well, we live in peace… I don’t want to rock the boat
- I think there are many ways we’d be worse off outside the EU eg what if the 2 million British pensioners living in Spain have to move back? They will put a bigger strain on our NHS than any threat of immigration growth.
- Coming from mid Wales originally, my home county (Ceredigion) and the South Wales valleys are classed as some of the poorest parts of Europe and have benefitted hugely from EU funding and projects. Again, in the absence of any plan, I haven’t seen any assurances that Wales would get any additional money from the UK govt to make up for the £20Billion shortfall that’s already been allocated to Wales from the EU by 2020.
- I feel like I’ve benefited from improved workers rights (hours worked, holiday rights etc) and maternity rights that were all improved under the EU. With the right-wing Tories/UKIP in charge I fear that these rights would be eroded over time
What do you think? What will you be voting? I would genuinely love to hear from you 🙂
Further reading:
Independent article about a recent poll, stats and myths: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum-british-public-wrong-about-nearly-everything-survey-shows-a7074311.htm
Impartial website full of facts: https://fullfact.org
Other parenting blogs about it:
http://www.beingtillysmummy.co.uk/2016/06/why-i-am-voting-to-stay-in-eu.html?m=1
http://www.fraunaish.co.uk/eu-referendum-eu-citizen/
http://thefamilytreasures.com/2016/04/15/how-the-brexit-would-affect-our-family/
http://www.anniebobs.com/eu-referendum-remain-leave/
Linked up with #KCACOLS
yummyblogger.com 
I totally agree – the benefits we get vastly outweigh what we put in, especially in Wales. Just because an independent UK could put money into infrastructure and development outside the London commuter belt, it doesn’t follow that it actually would. And it really gets me when people say we need to save our sovereignty from ‘Brussels bureaucrats’, when we still allow an unelected House of Lords to veto our own democratically elected politicians! x
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Totes agree Jess, thanks for calling by and leaving a comment 🙂 x
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Im a UK citizen living in Ireland, so I wont be voting but I think voting to stay in is the only option really. What will be gained by leaving? Like you said, this is not clear,. at all. Its hard to see the Brexit campaign as much more than a reactionary right wing way of thinking to be honest. Interesting post, its easy to avoid these things and not get involved but we all should! #KCACOLS
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Thank you! I agree… V reactionary and right wing… Why didn’t we see all this passion at the general election?!
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If you are registered to vote in the UK, you can nominate someone to vote on your behalf as a proxy. It’s too late to register now, though.
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I agree with lots of what your saying.. I’ve been going back and forth with this with the husband, and although I think he is voting to leave.. I’m still not sure… Ive watched the programmes on tv, read the articles, and if I’m honest I can see good and bad reason on both sides, there are ‘some’ compelling arguments to leave.. hmmm Im not sure! I guess we’ll see lol 😉 #kcacols
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I hope you make the right decision 😉 xx
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I think you’ve made some great points here. I feel so strongly that if anyone I know has something to say about it I can back up their misinformation with facts, but still they won’t listen…Britain will be great again, we won’t be dictated to by European dickheads, it’s all such BS I wish it would all go away now and what will be will be. Can you believe my cousin ended her last argument with me with the line ‘well our nan would want out” I loved my nan but she died over 20 years ago and things have changed a fair bit since then, I’m thinking of my kids not my dead loved ones. My dad fought in the second world war, and he fought for freedom, but I don’t think we’ve given up our freedom just created a Union…it’s in the name! Sorry, for going on, but it’s nice to find someone like minded x
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I agree… It’s nice to find other like-minded people and agree with everything you said!! Let’s keep trying to change people’s minds…. Good luck and thanks for leaving a comment xx
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I came across this post on Twitter. I’m very undecided. I’m lost in a sea of propaganda and don’t know what to believe!
What you have written seems to make sense so could sway me that way?
I’m so scared I could get it wrong!
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I hope I’ve swayed you in the right way 🙂 there is such a sea of propaganda and noise… I’ve just tried to cut through that… Question everything you hear! It’s a big decision! Xx
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Oh Hells you write so beautifully.
I shall be voting to remain in the EU, and you basically illustrated just about every reason why (and done it far eloquently than I could ever manage as well). I genuinely don’t need to add anything more.
Bravo ma’am, bravo!
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Thank you 🙂 keep spreading the word!
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I agree, I will be voting to stay in!
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Ok…here’s the thing. The latest Migration Watch (an independent body) report forecasts a rise in the population of the UK to 80 million within 30 years. Their “cautious” estimate – not factoring in any change to Turkey’s accession plans – is for net migration to be 265,000 per year (it was 333,000 in 2015).
Yummy Mummy believes that this isn’t a problem. Given that this increase is pretty much equivalent to a new London appearing on the landscape I would suggest that the impact on the infrastructure of this country would be incredible. We had a pre-existing housing problem and that can only worsen, with obvious effects on both house prices and rents. We are already suffering from longer GP waiting lists and the NHS is under pressure from greater demands (even leaving aside the issue of health tourism whereby the residency requirement for EU is 1 day…24 hours). I note that pre- and ante- natal services have been amongst the hardest hit. Please don’t forget that the health budget has been ringfenced by the government to try to fend off the “Toxic Tories” jibes.
Given the fact that we are a small island, with resources like land under incredible pressure already (we are not self sufficient in food production even now!), I’d ask you to look ahead and engage your heads as well as your hearts and make a decision that benefits all the people of this country.
One final point. Yummy Mummy (I’m not having a go here, I thought it was a very well written piece) seems to have a bee in her bonnet that EU immigration is “only” on a par with non-EU. Again leaving aside the future trends which I believe will continue to widen on that front, here are a couple of statistics;
EU population 508,000 (2015, Wiki)
World population 7,4000,000 (2016, Wiki)
And EU immigration is greater already.
Thanks and best regards,
Paul (@ThanGhengisKhan)
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Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment… I don’t think we’ll ever agree on immigration… Like I said I’m pro-immigration in that it helps us grow our economy… Arguably it’s one of the factors that helped us get out of recession?
If the world population is going to grow I think it’s unrealistic to think we can shut our borders and maintain our population numbers…. That just means other economies will be able to grow quicker than ours? We are a small island indeed but only a tiny proportion (6%??) is built on… We have plenty of space for growth as we’ve been doing for years!
Re: NHS, the budget might be ring fenced but I don’t think it was high enough in the first place… In real terms I think their budget was cut quite a bit when the Tories came back in
Finally, I know Migration Watch claim to be independent but I think it’s widely known they’re not as they offer opinions, start petitions etc.
Thanks again, it’s good chatting with you 🙂
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Thanks for your reply also. Incidentally, for me the referendum in not about immigration, it’s about UK sovereignty and the ability to choose to make the decisions that we – through our democratically elected government – believe to be right. Immigration is merely the best example that shows how impossible this is within an EU context. But I was basically replying to your blog piece. I am not anti-immigration, I am anti-uncontrolled immigration.
Your response was interesting in that you believe in a correlation between a growing population and an improving economic performance. Well, the economy may well get bigger (leading to bigger payments to the EU, because it is based on the relative overall economic performances of the nation states), as indeed it has since the recession;
2008: 2793 billion US dollars
2014: 2988 billion US dollars
This led to all those newspaper headlines that we had recovered to pre recession level economic performance. And indeed we had; look at the figures. But guess what – the population had increased. The GDP figure per capita, the true indicator of OUR wealth on average has still not recovered;
2008: 41104 US dollars
2014: 40967 US dollars (I used tradingeconomics.com for the figures)
So, as we welcomed in millions via net migration over the period, increasing the size of our economy (and increasing the size of our bill to the EU)…we as individuals were still poorer. It’s no great surprise when you consider the impact that the influx had on wages.
I’m afraid you’ve fallen for the Gordon Brown snake oil formula there (to be fair, I have NEVER heard this argument articulated anywhere) in his claims for “x successive quarters of economic growth”. So the arguments over immigration are not simple, they involve more than the economy, and those of us looking to regain some control over it generally do have our rational reasons for doing so beyond the reflex accusations of racism that come our way.
You don’t need to reply, yummyblogger, I know you have more important things on your mind (good luck, there!). Good talking to you,
Paul
PS the figure in my first post on EU population should have obviously read 508 million (although only about 450 million ex UK)
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I voting to remain too. The leave campaign is thinly veiled racism at it’s worse, scaremongering at it’s best. #kcacols
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I agree! Xx
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Going by things I have read either way I absolutely agree with you I am voting ‘in’ most of our problems I personally think come from the Tories and dread to think what would happen if we leave the EU #kcacols
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Glad to hear it xx
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#VoteRemain here too! I’m so sick of the immigration argument. People just hear the word immigration and are convinced without actually looking into and thinking about it properly! #KCACOLS
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That’s what I think too Emilie xx
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Really interesting to hear everyone’s views on this, both in your post and in the comments. Very interested to see the outcome.
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