Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

EM is DC's secret weapon :-)

I don't do protest votes ,i think they are stupid and dangerous but i did vote UKIP last week thinking that many others who have just about had enough of immigration would do the same , it turned out i was right.
Plus i think Farage is a decent guy , you can not compare him to the idiots in the BNP.
I for one have had enough of Eastern Europeans flooding in to this country.

jimmy - however, you also need to recognise that, as it stands, eu citizens have a right of entry, just as "we" do in the other direction

where it can be tightened significantly and even within eu law i am sure, is when it comes to claiming assorted benefits and also refusing entry for known criminals
to refuse entry for say bulgarians because their own country's gdp or average wage is too low, probably doesn't stand up, and indeed i am not sure that should be a criterion

Max,

Don't go along with Milliband on all policies, but at least he seems to be thinking rather than shooting his mouth off and bribing the gullible with U-turn or fragmenting policies.

I will wait an see what happens over the next 6-9months, but this lot of tories are an elitist self serving bunch relating back to previous periods in history.

I didn't and don't like Blair, but thought much of what he was saying about the EU was common sense.

Interesting for me, coming back from France through Dunkirk I was amazed at the amount of heavy transport lorries crossing and carrying from the Poland, CZ Germany etc.

If we are outside EU we will have to pay a price!

as a dedicated non-voter fred, why should you care and indeed do you even have a right to care?
an oft repeated statement i know

cynic , i know this is a bit basic but originally the EU was made up of member states that could have a round robin of immigration without tipping the balance , all the Eastern block states came on board later , how many of us will be going to work in Romania or Bulgaria ? compare that to the hundreds of thousands coming here .
Our schools and hospitals and infrastructure can't take it .

you're right insofar as the eu has grown like topsy, but leaving aside all the usual political nonsense, how does one create and then impose sensible rules regarding free movement across borders by member citizens?

And what price might there be to pay for heavy transport lorries coming into the UK, if we leave the EU?

Don't have free movement across borders simples.

Shortie i was in international transport until 10 years ago ,we always paid a lot more to move trucks abroad than they paid here . That is why a lot of UK hauliers started to register UK trucks in the Netherlands .

haulage costs within uk are horrific too as are x-channel rates

please define "no free movement"
visas required?

cynic i must admit i don't have the answers , i can just see (as Blair couldn't) that when you have countries such as the ones we are talking about and the door is open to the land of milk and honey they are going to flood in , its not going to work i suppose i dont believe in the united states of Europe .

Are you implying that there will be some kind of quota or extra charge if we leave the EU to Export goods into the EU?

cynic 27 May 2014 13:50 - 41486 of 41493

as a dedicated non-voter fred, why should you care and indeed do you even have a right to care?
an oft repeated statement i know

--------------

Whether I use "my" rights to vote or not to vote does not diminish my rights and I find it interesting to "try" to "judge" what is going to happen "politically".

But, unlike you I don't have any need to attach myself to the ragtag and bobtail you seem happy to be attached too.

To vote for a grubby crew like the present tory party of motley crew of UKIP has no appeal.

Feel a bit sorry for Clegg. He made a difficult decision and may have got it wrong, but unlike the old etonians does seem to have some principles.

Not sure about labour, but liked the sense of what Milliband is suggesting.

Have feeling his middle game is good and maybe his endgame will be even better.

I will wait and see.

If we left the EU completely, there would be a tarrif barrier for us as there is for goods from outside the EU now.

You imply the tarrif (if any) would be a one way street.

No. But it would be our choice the other way. We might be able to have a free trade agreement with the EU.

Exporting is the problem, importing is easy!

Haystack,

Given that the UK imports more from Germany than it exports to them, I suspect it may well be the EU who are knocking on the UK's door to enter a free trade agreement rather than the other way around, in the event that were to leave the EU.

I'm glad I voted for UKIP in the MEP elections. It has helped to kick off the "earthquake of change".

I do like this Comment from today's Telegraph and agree with what it says in the bit I've bolded below and I would dearly like Cameron to prove he means what he says and set out his agenda for change now:




Britain’s relationship with Europe needs to change. That fact has long been obvious to most people, but the European elections have rammed home its importance. It is not just that Ukip performed so well. It is that the Liberal Democrats did so badly. Faced with a collapse in support since entering the Coalition, Nick Clegg and his team abandoned their traditional local-first campaign strategy and presented themselves as unabashed Europhiles, the defenders and saviours of Britain’s place in the European Union. For their trouble, they were spectacularly thumped.

The Conservative argument, in the wake of their first third-place finish in more than a century, is that they understand this completely: they are, after all, the only party that is both offering a referendum on Europe, and has a chance of bringing it about. That is true – but it is no longer sufficient. Voters need proof not just that David Cameron will offer them a choice, but that he is actively striving to pave the way for it.

What does this mean? Perhaps the greatest problem facing the Tories in winning back voters who have defected to Ukip is an absence of trust. When the Prime Minister says: “Have faith that I will negotiate in Britain’s interests”, many will be sceptical, or even scornful. In particular, the longer he refuses to set out his shopping list, or at least his broad aims, the more the suspicion will grow that what he has in mind is not so much renegotiation as tinkering at the edges.

There is no need, as some have suggested, for Mr Cameron to bring forward his proposed referendum from 2017. It would be actively foolish to put Britain’s membership to a vote before there had been time to negotiate a better deal. But it would be equally misguided to wait until after the general election to begin grappling with the issue in earnest.

By setting the process of negotiation in train now, Mr Cameron will show voters that he is a man who delivers on his promises. There are other advantages. Europe is reeling from elections that showed the established order under threat from all sides. The eurozone crisis, and the subsequent economic stagnation, have shaken many people’s faith in the project. As Boris Johnson wrote yesterday, even Nicolas Sarkozy now sees the virtue in devolving power to nation-states, and restricting the movement of economic migrants. No longer can Mr Cameron, or Britain, be dismissed as isolated and misguided: our calls for change have instead proved prophetic.

In domestic terms, the move would also be to the Tories’ advantage. Ukip can hardly oppose it, given that it pushes Britain towards a referendum. The Lib Dems have lost the moral authority to object, after this weekend’s humiliation. And if Labour refuse to back the Prime Minister, they will be handing him a priceless electoral gift. It will also help the Tories hone their own message on Europe, which at the moment seems to echo Richard Nixon’s on Vietnam. He promised to end the war, but told voters he could not reveal the details of his strategy for fear of tipping his hand. They trusted him then; but Britons will be less willing to endorse Mr Cameron’s blueprint for Brussels without insight as to its detail.

The idea would also address another weakness in the Tories’ European strategy. Voters know they want change – but they are unable to see how politicians can deliver it. Mr Cameron has spoken of curbing benefit tourism, and removing the treaty requirement for “ever closer union”. Both would be welcome – but it is hard to see them resonating in the same way as, for example, limiting immigration from the EU’s poorer members (which is currently impossible). Starting the process now buys Mr Cameron time to make the case in Brussels for more dramatic changes – and to make the link in Britain between EU reform and pound-in-your-pocket politics, such as the money on food bills saved by fixing farming policy, or the lower costs to business brought about by slashing red tape.

Mr Cameron and his fellow European leaders must now begin to chew over the election results, and begin the process of choosing the European Commission’s new bosses. He should make clear that the message sent by voters across the Continent needs to be heard – and acted on. There has never been a better time to shake up Brussels, or a longer list of reasons to try.

I want out of the EU , the deals I want is a free trade agreement and other deals like the control of labour between us and ageement's in tackerling international crime , things like that.