Thought I'd start a new thread as this is going to be a major talking point this year...have not made up my mind yet...(unlike bucksfizz)....but thinking of voting for an exit as Europe is not doing Britain any good at all it seems....

it would be interesting to know the demographics by age of the unemployed in the eurozone in comparison to uk

The youth under 24's in Greece 48.6%, Spain 46%, Croatia 44.1%..

statista.com/statistics/266228/youth-unemployment-rate-in-eu-countries/

well found gb

the figures are for december '15, but close enough in time
uk is near the best at 13.5%, with nl at 11.2% and germany 7.0%
france is 25.9% and poland 20.5%

.

Do you believe the figures produced by this government and its cohorts?

Unemployment down, Productivity, Deficit, Debt ????

If we were out of EU we could put whatever tariffs we wanted on whatever we wanted to - for god's sake the sooner we are out the better.

One also needs to think -
are we selfish voters - i.e voting for what is good for us as individuals .... or
are we unselfish voters - voting for what is best for the majority

Perhaps we need to sort our own heads out before we try and sort out the EU.
I suspect most of people are what I would call "selfish" voters

Airbus tells staff it makes economic sense to stay in EU . Previously they said they would work in or out of EU , so some pressure starting to be put out there . Of course no mention of any other issues the EU has .

Anyway Haystack I did ask in your circle of friends who will probably be similar to you , are there any of similar thoughts to you as regards wanting out .Pleasy please .

i'm happy to be classed as a selfish voter, and it won't make me change my mind

no one actually knows the long term effects whether we stay in or get out
if we stay in, my own view is that there'll be the slow attrition of taking us ever further towards federal eu and no doubt ultimately sucked into the € whether we like it or not

the unions would probably love it

Typical "selfish" voting being pushed on its staff i.e vote in - it is better for your selfish Airbus jobs

Pity the Port Talbot workers – their country is powerless to help them
Boris Johnson
4 April 2016 • 7:10am

Everyone feels sorry for the 15,000 steelworkers at Port Talbot; everyone in this country will be hoping for a solution that will keep them in work. That is partly because their fate seems so unjust. This disaster isn’t their fault. They don’t have some new strain of the Seventies “British disease”. The plant is not a hotbed of union activity.

"China is not a market economy. It has chosen a dumping strategy that is ravaging European industry. The EU itself risks imploding if Europe persists with the error"
Edouard Martin MEP

On the contrary, these workers have agreed over the past few years to make substantial reductions in jobs and big increases in productivity. They make superb quality steel. They offer it at a reasonable price. It is just that the Wales plant has been overwhelmed by a series of misfortunes over which they – the workers – have absolutely no control; and these misfortunes, moreover, arise in policy areas over which these workers might reasonably expect their elected government to have some control, but which the UK has simply lost; abandoned; surrendered; supinely given up as part of our membership of the EU.

There is the massive global dumping of cheap Chinese steel, subsidised by a Beijing government that is itself alarmed by impending job losses in the sector. Then there are the excessive fuel bills that this country currently imposes on industry. When you are running blast furnaces the cost of energy matters a great deal. A recent report by the Business, Innovation and Skills parliamentary committee said that UK steelmakers were facing energy costs as much as 80 per cent higher than the EU median. Even if that figure is high, there can be no doubt that the UK’s various climate change policies – largely generated by Ed Miliband – have been highly damaging for British manufacturing.

Then, I am afraid, there is Brussels, which is exacerbating both problems. It is one of the features of membership that we must not only accept that about 60 per cent of our legislation – primary and secondary – comes from the EU. We must also accept a fatal loss of flexibility, an inability to take decisions that might be in our national interest – and an inability even to make good our own mistakes.
Sajid Javid meets steel workers in Port Talbot Play! 00:54

Take the glut of Chinese steel. It seems that the EU Commission has been considering a broad range of anti-dumping measures for some time. It is also clear that before Tata took the decision to close Port Talbot, the UK was one of the countries to be lobbying against such tariffs. Some have suggested that this was out of a general desire to suck up to the Chinese; others that it was a principled aversion to tariffs, and recognition that such import duties would hit domestic consumers of steel. Since the Port Talbot crisis blew up, the story seems to have changed. We are now told that the UK does indeed favour anti-dumping measures, though not of the kind that the EU Commission has been proposing.

The result? Probably nothing. Nothing will happen in the near future, if ever, because there is no agreement round the table in Brussels. Even when we want to change tack on tariffs, we can’t – because we have given up control.

Contrast the US, where – wham – they have applied 266 per cent tariffs on dumped Chinese steel. Contrast China itself, which – to add insult to injury – has just slapped 46 per cent duties on steel from Port Talbot. Britain can do nothing to mimic these steps, because we have given up control.

Exactly the same point can be made about energy costs. It is true that much of the burden of these high UK energy bills is self-imposed. There is a sense in which Miliband’s bonkers plan has succeeded. We have certainly cut our CO2 emissions – but only by applying such crippling levies to UK industry that much of this manufacturing has simply gone elsewhere – along with the CO2 production. We may feel virtuous about cutting our CO2, but it is unlikely that the planet notices the difference.

The Conservative Government is sensibly trying to make amends for Miliband’s folly, and to cut the costs of energy for industry – but at every turn we have the problem of the EU, and the objections of Brussels to anything that looks like state aids. Even when we are trying to address our home-grown mistakes, even when we are simply trying to bring down our energy costs so that they are more in line with the rest of the EU, we face the same difficulty: we no longer call the shots, even when thousands of jobs are at stake.

When this referendum campaign began, and I said that the key issue was sovereignty, I remember people giving me pitying looks. No one cares about sovereignty, they said. Well, losing sovereignty is just a fancy way of talking about losing control – and I think people care passionately about it.
Boris Johnson: leaving the EU would be like escaping from jail Play! 01:27

As Michael Howard said yesterday, it is absolutely true that we cannot systematically check to see whether doctors practising in this country can speak good enough English. It is absolutely true, as Priti Patel has pointed out, that uncontrolled immigration from the EU has put a massive strain on the NHS. I spoke to one long-serving Hertfordshire GP who said she had never seen such pressure – and what can we do? Nothing. We can’t take emergency action against dumped Chinese steel, even with British industry on its knees. We can’t cut our own self-imposed energy costs. We can’t set our own language tests for practising doctors. We can’t control our borders.

"It is a fact that at the moment because of EU rules we can't ensure that doctors who want to practice in this country from other EU nations speak English"
Michael Howard

What do we get for this sacrifice of control? Access, supposedly, to the giant EU market. Well, plenty of countries have access to that market. US exports to the EU have been growing faster than ours, and so have Switzerland’s – and both those countries have kept control of their democracies. The EU system is being daily exposed in this debate as an anachronism, and membership is increasingly cumbersome and anti-democratic. Nowhere else are they conducting a giant experiment of trying to fuse so many countries into one.

It is time to ignore the doomsters, get out, go global. It is time to take back control of our country – not to speak of about £10 billion net. We would have more money, and more freedom to rescue the British steel industry – and we might even succeed.

has just slapped 46 per cent duties on steel from Port Talbot
i am certain that is a load of bollocks
this 46% tariff relates to some fairly esoteric steel which i don't think port talbot even makes, and it would seem uk has not exported any such steel to china for at least a year

if boris is going to try to make a point, he would do well to do accurately ..... i therefore wonder what other howlers or bits of "wishful thinking" may also lurk within boris's rant

Don't forget the EU slaps 30% tariffs on steel from China and that was before China set their tariff. The EU tariff applies to all steel, but the Chinese one only applies to what is called electric steel.

Victim
I want to leave the EU and my friends are pretty well evenly spli in and out. Almost all believe that the vote will be to stay in. People en masse don't like change.

cynic the high grade steel that China have slapped a 46% tariff on, maybe dosn't get exported to China, but its their very intention to show in the face of camerons platitudes of being China's friend in the west, that they don't give a toss what cameron believes.

And as to Haystack once again claiming something that isn't true...The EU put a tariff of between 9.5%-13% on Chinese imports...

ft.com/fastft/2016/01/29/eu-imposes-new-tariff-on-chinese-steel-imports/

To say that Haystack and cynic claims to be LEAVERS, they certainly give the impression to the contary..


I've already gave an Opinium poll earlier today, for the Observer that says 43% vote to LEAVE, 39% to remain, I'm getting more confident as independent day gets nearer....

Unfortunately, almost all of the other polls show remain well in the lead.

https://euobserver.com/eu-china/128144

The EU Wednesday officially announced it would impose anti-dumping duties on Chinese and Taiwanese steel imports in Europe.
The EU published in its official journal a list of import duties on stainless steel cold rolled flat products (SSCR) of 24-25 percent for Chinese companies and 10-12 percent for Taiwanese companies.

Part of the problem is that the US is adding a 266% tariff to some steel from China. This causing an even bigger over supply in China, so they are dumping it on the EU etc.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-imposes-266-duty-on-some-chinese-steel-imports-1456878180

Haystack (490) The EU officially announced it would impose anti-dumping duties on Chinese and Taiwanese steel imports in Europe..On Stainless steel cold rolled flat products(SSCR) of 24-25 per cent.

That's in the same vein as the Chinese imposing the 46% tariff on The high grade steel produced in the UK, in that the Chinese don't import if any of that steel..

And its the same with that Stainless steel rolled flat (SSCR), 3.7 million tonnes were produced last year, of which 72% was by European producers...That leaves 28% produced by the rest of the world, So the EU putting that 24-25% tariffs is pretty much immaterial..

But the general iron has a 9.5-13% tariff as stated earlier.

US is imposing 266% duty on some Chinese steel...

Yes they are certainly in a position to take that action to LOOK AFTER THEIR INDUSTRIES...

But the US are quite happy to try and cajole the UK in voting to remain in the eu, maybe its because the US is quite happy to allow europe to get dumped on, without the fear of the UK or any other independent country from imposing the same tariffs as the US..