Reasons to leave the eu

kabayiri

Tbh, when the EU created things like the Single Market, surely they had some idea that production centres would generally move from wealthy (mostly Western) states to the newer EU entrant states, where standard of living is lower.

What I don't quite get is how this sits alongside FOM, which has generally seen the most mobile of workers move in the opposite direction.

What was the longer term plan? Does the EU expect these workers to move back to their origin country, once they become richer?

There are people in the UK who genuinely believe that we do not make anything any more. It's very easy to feed them some negative news snippets and they just accept them.

Good news feed would counter this. What major industry has moved to the UK elsewhere, assisted by the EU? If the UK government could publish this, surely they support the case for Remain?

Thrugelmir

kabayiri wrote: »

What I don't quite get is how this sits alongside FOM, which has generally seen the most mobile of workers move in the opposite direction.

You'd expect them ultimately many to move back home. Having accumulated a pot of capital. Similar to UK expats who return for healthcare reasons or from the Middle East once their employment ceases. Longer term consequences are yet to play out.

Arklight

zarf2007 wrote: »

Just to remind the remainers who think the EU is a utopian paradise:

Cadbury moved factory to Poland 2011 with EUgrant.
Ford Transit moved to Turkey 2013 with EU grant.

Jaguar Land Rover has recently agreed to build a new plant in Slovakia with EU grant, owned by Tata, the same company who have trashed our steel works and emptied the workers pension funds.

Peugeot closed its Ryton (was Rootes Group) plant and moved production to Slovakia with EU grant.

British Army's new Ajax fighting vehicles to be built in SPAIN using SWEDISH steel at the request of the EU to support jobs in Spain with EU grant, rather than Wales.

Dyson gone to Malaysia, with an EU loan.
Crown Closures, Bournemouth (Was METAL BOX), gone to Poland with EU grant, once employed 1,200.
M&S manufacturing gone to far east with EU loan.
Hornby models gone. In fact all toys and models now gone from UK along with the patents all with with EU grants.

Gillette gone to eastern Europe with EU grant.
Texas Instruments Greenock gone to Germany with EU grant.
Indesit at Bodelwyddan Wales gone with EU grant.
Sekisui Alveo said production at its Merthyr Tydfil Industrial Park foam plant will relocate production to Roermond in the Netherlands, with EU funding.

Hoover Merthyr factory moved out of UK to Czech Republic and the Far East by Italian company Candy with EU backing.
ICI integration into Holland’s AkzoNobel with EU bank loan and within days of the merger, several factories in the UK, were closed, eliminating 3,500 jobs

Boots sold to Italians Stefano Pessina who have based their HQ in Switzerland to avoid tax to the tune of £80 million a year, using an EU loan for the purchase.

JDS Uniphase run by two Dutch men, bought up companies in the UK with £20 million in EU 'regeneration' grants, created a pollution nightmare and just closed it all down leaving 1,200 out of work and an environmental clean-up paid for by the UK tax-payer. They also raided the pension fund and drained it dry.

UK airports are owned by a Spanish company.
Scottish Power is owned by a Spanish company.
Most London buses are run by Spanish and German companies.

The Hinkley Point C nuclear power station to be built by French company EDF, part owned by the French government, using cheap Chinese steel that has catastrophically failed in other nuclear installations. Now EDF say the costs will be double or more and it will be very late even if it does come online.

Swindon was once our producer of rail locomotives and rolling stock. Not any more, it's Bombardier in Derby and due to their losses in the aviation market, that could see the end of the British railways manufacturing altogether even though Bombardier had EU grants to keep Derby going which they diverted to their loss-making aviation side in Canada.

39% of British invention patents have been passed to foreign companies, many of them in the EU

The Mini cars that Cameron stood in front of as an example of British engineering, are built by BMW mostly in Holland and Austria. His campaign bus was made in Germany even though we have Plaxton, Optare, Bluebird, Dennis etc., in the UK. The bicycle for the Greens was made in the far east, not by Raleigh UK but then they are probably going to move to the Netherlands too as they have said recently.

Anyone who thinks the EU is good for British industry or any other business simply hasn't paid attention to what has been systematically asset-stripped from the UK. Name me one major technology company still running in the UK and now we don't even teach electronic technology for technicians any more, due to EU regulations.

I haven't detailed our non-existent fishing industry the EU paid to destroy, nor the farmers being paid NOT to produce food they could sell for more than they get paid to do nothing, don't even go there.
I haven't mentioned what it costs us to be asset-stripped like this, nor have I mentioned immigration, nor the risk to our security if control of our armed forces is passed to Brussels or Germany.

Find something that's gone the other way, I've looked and I just can't. If you think the EU is a good idea,
1/ You haven't read the party manifesto of The European Peoples' Party.
2/ You haven't had to deal with EU petty bureaucracy tearing your business down.
3/ You don't think it matters.

OUT OF EUROPE we need to be out of it

Ironically, this is all a legitimate list of grievances, and why many, rather misinformed people, voted for Brexit.

But almost none of it has anything to do with the EU.

Struggling multinational, Kraft, funded it's hostile takeover of Cadbury with a loan from RBS, a failed British state owned bank. It gave meaningless promises to British politicians, and immediately broke them.

The other EU nations wanted to impose tariffs on foreign steel, but they were blocked from doing so by one country. The UK.

The complaining about the airports and power companies being sold: they were sold because the British government privatised them and other countries bought them.

Britain did have tech companies at one point. We had great software companies in the 80's. Thatcher refused to offer any subsidies or state protection like the Canadian, French, and US governments did theirs, and they were all swallowed up by Canadian, French, and US companies.

The Europeans were quite upset when ARM disappeared to the Japanese, because it was the last chance Europe had of fielding a global tech company. But it was unfortunately based in Britain, so was only ever going to be sold off to an American or Asian competitor.

Dyson has never showed a shred of regret over outsourcing manufacturing to Malaysia. If you want to buy British vacuums that are proudly manufactured in Britain, buy a Henry.

I share the OP's pain over all this. I don't understand why he thinks any of it is the fault of the EU.

Incidentally I knew someone who worked for Gillette UK. He said when they shut down his factory they had to go to the headquarters to go over the Polish plans. One of the German factory reps was gloating when they were looking over the plans. The English guy said, "do you see all that spare space on that part of the plans? Our section is being replaced by the other side, so whose do you think is going in there?"

He said the German guy went white as it sunk in. And Germany's production was moved too.

kabayiri

Thrugelmir wrote: »

You'd expect them ultimately many to move back home. Having accumulated a pot of capital. Similar to UK expats who return for healthcare reasons or from the Middle East once their employment ceases. Longer term consequences are yet to play out.

In theory yes, but if they have set down roots it becomes harder.

I guess it is a question of timescales.

It does make Hamish's argument of relying on transient workers to fund our future pension commitments sound a little hollow though.

kabayiri

Arklight wrote: »

Ironically, this is all a legitimate list of grievances, and why many, rather misinformed people, voted for Brexit.
...

What other party-neutral mechanism allowed people to vent their frustrations though?

The timing of the EU referendum was truly shocking. Cameron is supposed to be a marketing type person; he should have really been able to read the mood music.

Brexit was partly a protest vote, true, but as a government you have to be able to counter this by offering a long term vision as to how things will change for the better whilst inside the EU.

Arklight

kabayiri wrote: »

What other party-neutral mechanism allowed people to vent their frustrations though?

The timing of the EU referendum was truly shocking. Cameron is supposed to be a marketing type person; he should have really been able to read the mood music.

Brexit was partly a protest vote, true, but as a government you have to be able to counter this by offering a long term vision as to how things will change for the better whilst inside the EU.

Cameron was led by focus groups and opinion polls, The focus groups and opinion polls said that Remain would win, UKIP would be put to bed, the eurosceptic Right would be crushed and a Cameronian, Lib Dem free Golden Age would begin.

Enterprise_1701C

ManBabyFinder_General wrote: »

If you believed all these vile hate filled gammons they'd also make you believe that the EU forced Cadbury to change their recipe.

Don't be ridiculous, that was down to Mondelez International. Probably just as well that they did, at least I eat far less chocolate now.

The strange thing is that when companies are paid to relocate to other countries by the eu remainers reckon it would have happened anyway, but when companies choose to relocate it HAS to be because of Brexit.

The best reason to leave is that we wish this country to continue existing as a sovereign state rather than being subsumed into the us of e, which would happen after all vetoes are removed within the next two of three years.

andrewf75

zarf2007 wrote: »

Just to remind the remainers who think the EU is a utopian paradise:

That'll be next to no-one then..

Remainers are well aware of the downsides of the EU, they just make the judgment its better to be in than out.

Its the biggest difference between the two sides. Remainers weigh it up and come down on one side, leavers are much more ideological and most don't even weigh it up. (Its a generalisation obviously and I know there are ideological remainers and I know people who consider carefully and come down on the side of leave)

kabayiri

andrewf75 wrote: »

...
Remainers are well aware of the downsides of the EU, they just make the judgment its better to be in than out.
...

You know as well as I that many people tend to the status quo in this type of referendum.

There is normally an inertia against change.

I say 'normally', because it feels like we are no longer in 'normal' times. The Trump election; Brexit; Right of Centre governments in EE states; riots in France; growing Right influence in Germany and Sweden (once model EU states).

Lungboy

Arklight wrote: »

Cameron was led by focus groups and opinion polls, The focus groups and opinion polls said that Remain would win, UKIP would be put to bed, the eurosceptic Right would be crushed and a Cameronian, Lib Dem free Golden Age would begin.

I thought it was more that Cameron was expecting another Coalition with the pro-EU Lib Dems, so offered a referendum apparently safe in the knowledge that he would never have to deliver on it and could pin it on the Lib Dems. Unfortunately for him, the Lib Dem vote collapsed and he won a majority and was forced to hold the referendum he never really wanted.

kabayiri wrote: »

riots in France.

That seems pretty normal to me...