I was cringing at his attacks on Nigel Farage. He's well meaning but definitely not someone the Remain campaign want as a figurehead.

Well, the old chestnut about unelected is not as clear as that, is it?
We don't directly elect the parliamentary committees in the UK that put forward ideas for legislation, and parliament doesn't accept all their recommendations.

Similarly, whilst we don't elect the European Commissioners that propose European legislation, we DO elect (or we bloody well should) the MEP's that vote on whether or not it is adopted.

If you want to demonise this as "unelected faceless Eurocrats", go ahead, but it isn't "the truth".

If you have the time this talk is worth a listen :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKaPeWoS7PQ

it covers varied topics but he makes some very interesting observations from his first hand experience of how the EU is run at the top level. Hint: it has absolutely nothing to do with democracy.

<edit> And this one too , by the same guy, covers much of the same ground but has interesting extra details:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md6_WfF9Ky0

you may prefer that one as it's hosted by The Guardian.

Let's face it, he should know...

Please don't think that I'm an apologist for the way that the EU is run; I'm not and I wish very much that it was different. Greece (and other countries) have been treated in a way that gives shabby a bad name.

However, my point here is simply that "giving away our rights and powers to unelected Brussels bureaucrats" is a tired, inaccurate mantra that doesn't help the intelligent people Edinburgh mentioned to make an informed decision.

It's a thin line between most points of view well summed-up by Dryden


Great wits are to madness near allied
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.

Indeed, or, as Spinal Tap similarly has it: "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever"

Oh I forgot, flares have gone out of fashion !

After quite a bit of thought and discussion with MrsC, I believe the UK will vote to leave the EU. It's not what I would choose, though I'm not wholly convinced by either argument. I just think that enough people from across the spectrum of the UK public believe in the "take back control" rhetoric. Somewhat fearfully, I'm preparing for what life is going to be like.

There's a worse (as defined by me) scenario in the possibility of the hoi polloi voting out but it being overturned anyway.

That could sour my view of the point of democracy for life.

If I was a betting man & forced to choose what the outcome would be at the moment, I would say we would stay, the scare mongering on the British public is pretty robust to say the least. Then again if the polls are to be believed between the young wanting to stay & the older voters wanting to leave it's obviously down to who will actually be bothered to vote.

In all honesty it's not an easy shout.

Agreed. I think it'll be a re-run of the Scottish referendum... close, but the vote for change will falter on the day and the status quo will prevail.

Now that the "secret" of the proposed European army is out, how are the Russians going to perceive this I wonder.

The last time the latter advanced a king's (nuclear) pawn to Cuba 4 was thanks to Harry S Truman stirring up a shedload of trouble (not forgetting introducing the infamous Senator McCarthy) by his initiation of the nuclear arms race, culminating in their positioning in Turkey pointing roughly north-east.....

I've voted out.

I wasn't sure at first and seeing nothing to persuade me otherwise, I'm out. All the tv debates, etc.,have all come too late for us postal voters and my vote has been cast.

I'm the opposite of what you're thinking though Jim, I think the voting will be close, but I think the UK will end up voting for a remain, as people are too scared to think about what would/could happen if we leave and people worry about change.

I'm poll clerk on referendum day and we're expecting a high turn out, so I don't think I'll get as many coffees and ecig breaks as I'm used to this time lol

Fortunately Anita is German so I will have right of abode in Germany, should the separatists prevail, as I fear they will.

The demagogues have been banging on as if it were 1930, harking back to past glories and misquoting statistics and recycling myths.

Never mind, there will be lots of room in the hospitals because there won't be any of those nasty immigrant chappies blocking the beds... or changing the sheets, cooking the food, nursing, doctoring, surgerying, ambulance driving, manning the pharmacy, doing the management tasks...

And of *course* we will be able to manage trading on exactly the same terms as Norway or Switzerland, only without that bothersome payment to the EU or allowing freedom of movement, right? In spite of every EU country telling us that this is not the case.

And the pound will rise on a huge surge of renewed optimism, despite every financial body in the world advising us that this won't happen (looked at the pound's value in the last few days? Rising madly, in a downwards sort of way.)

I didn't have much use for worker rights, either; I won't miss not being allowed to work more than 48 hours a week, or having a minimum of four weeks paid holiday, or the right to join a union and not be discriminated against because of my age or gender or religion or sexual tastes or colour or...

Yes, I'm really looking forwards to living in a country where trade will be restrained by border tariffs, where I need a visa, customs check, and passport whenever I want to travel more than a thousand kilometers. Where standards in everything from the voltage things work at to the size of connectors to the size of containers to the labelling requirements of food are *different*, just because they can be.

Still, probably they'll hold a memorial service as we slowly sink below the waves, and put a plaque on one of the few remaining islands between the Atlantic and the North Sea.

"Here lie the remnants of the once-great British Empire, whose parents made the mistake of imagining it was the 18th Century and that the world rotated around them. RIP."

Neil you are so negative man! chill

Could be right but may give the kids in schools some hope that there could be a future for them so making it worth trying!
There are so many connotations that could be positive or negative and the country will only be as Great as the people in it make it!
So whatever the outcome lets be positive!

Who knows who cares it will be what it will be

Did i not read yesterday that the EU accounts for all of 6% of all exports ? How will we cope ? Looking on the bright side if we do leave, no new hospitals,schools,doctors surgeries, prisons or houses will need to be built to accomodate 300,000 plus newcomers to the country each year. [ 300,000 is the population of coventry ...nearly ]. The UK managed quite welll for years with a population of 56 million [ 200,000 born each year with 200,000 dying each year ] kept that number regular. Now the number is anywhere between 59-62 million depending on who you believe and rising. Do we need this influx, if we cut benefits and got the great unwashed out of their pits every day, there would be no need for cheap foreign labour as we have an abundance of it and save money at the same time !

Glenn, I am quite busy, so I haven't got time to go through all your assertions. However, I think increased life expectancy will have had some effect on your "stable" figure for population. Possibly precisely negated by falling birth-rate, but that would be a happy coincidence.

I think one of my greatest fears it that this kind of simplistic "common sense" is what people genuinely expect (and want) from Britain leaving the EU.

An increase in average age-of-death from around seventy to eighty will equate to a population increase of 12%, along with a commensurate increase in the facilities required to look after we oldies.

Yep, with Laura being an intensive care trained nurse we are giving serious consideration to effing off if a post Brexit Britain isn't as fantastic as the leave campaign claim it will be.

It does concern me that an incredibly complex question is being put to the people to answer. The vast majority have no understanding of the question. I'm all for having referenda on simple (values and beliefs) questions and elections based upon your value system - but this is so much more complex.

The idea that coming out of Europe will stop immigration and that will mean we all have well-paid jobs is so simplistic. The truth is more likely that exit will mean less jobs for "Brits".

Historically, the more open and collaborative the markets are, the more wealth is created. There's been a really thought-provoking study done on secretive terrorist groups: of the educated members of these groups, 45% are engineers. They were postulating that these engineers were disillusioned by not having the life opportunities their training should allow. It's also fair to say that open and developed trading nations tend not to fight each other. We should be knocking down more barriers not building new ones.

I'm sure like others who stay in a decent postcode area, up here things jolly along & migrants don't venture this far & life generally looks after itself, will have an effect on which way one votes. I'm not a negative person & look at my glass in front of me as half full....

Obviously we really don't know for sure what would happen if we left, but the stay camp Are really laying things on thick, some things being said are just short of Britain imploding in on itself. I was a bit surprised when Cameron changed the rules on registering & added extra time. No matter why, that's just not right. He just reeks of desperation. We must look a right laughing stock across the world.

Mrs MRS was saying that Ks are nearly as frequent as the Ms in her Hghland school register (K being the beginning of common Polish names and, obviously Ms for Mc and Mac). The thing is, we need migrant workers up here.

Aye Richard I know what you mean, I certainly don't want to sound racist, we have an influx of some white migrants, we don't tend to get the same numbers as down south & the extremist types & undesirables. Poles have been a part of this area for many,many years, as have been in other parts of the Country.

Agreed.

The referendum is an attempt, by the very people who were elected to govern the country, to escape responsibility for answering a complex problem created by a vociferous group of fantasists who believe that the clock should be reset to a simpler time when Britain thought it could stand on its own.

Those days are well and truly over. Like it or not Britain is located on the eastern side of the Atlantic and we are a European country.

I am old enough to remember times when Britain did go it alone.

1 or a maximum of 2 weeks paid holiday a year.

Virtually no contractual rights for employees.

Government controls on how much money could be taken out of the country by holidaymakers (£20 pa).

Interrogations by customs officers about whether the watch on ones wrist and the camera in ones bag had been purchased abroad once you returned.

Reams of documents to be filled in if you were importing or exporting goods.

Being stuck for hours and interrogated at border crossings if driving a commercial vehicle.

Finally, lets have major European wars every 20 years or so, as was the expectation up to the late 1960s.

I don't want to go back to those days, but then I am old enough to remember them.

If you did read UK exports to the EU were 6% of our total , it must have been in crayon on a UKIP toilet wall. It's at 44% or more. And there are far more non EU migrants to the UK than there are EU .... now. Because Brexit will mean around 2 million Brits being forced back to the UK, unemployed and homeless. Also, the UK population was not stable at around 59 million at all. It has been rising steadily since 1900 at a fairly even average rate.
What Brexit will do is ENSURE low wages, as we then have to rely on unskilled labour from people who have never worked. Or rather, what you have described is actually forced labour, or slavery as it is normally called! Because EU migrants are not low paid labour, the EU has ensured equality of wages. EU migrants are doing our jobs, not taking them. The Leave camp want to get rid of the "red tape" of minimum wage, employment rights, anti discrimination laws, holiday entitlement and pay, working hours restrictions that EU laws have created. Curse those faceless evil EU bureaucrats!

There are elements of those points that I do remember but it is completely wrong to suggest that leaving the EU would mean going back to that. The world has moved on, and in many cases dragged the EU along with it. Just taking the trade point the changes made by the WTO have made significant differences to the tariffs and paperwork required. In almost any context it is now much less than it was - and this is nothing to do with the EU.

But - in a nutshell - this is the point.

Both sides are using figures and data and presenting them - with varying degrees of justification - as facts, or as pointers to what mighta/coulda/shoulda happened.

We simply do not know what will happen and whose guesses will be closest to the truth.

My concern - as someone unconvinced by either side - is not what decision people make, but that they don't make it based on completely erroneous arguments and beliefs.
That's why I'm concerned about Glenn's assertions above - immigration may be a big issue for him, but the linking of a swingeing cut in immigration and the UK voting to leave the EU is specious.

I think we can all agree Jim that we really don't know for sure how things will work out if we leave the EU. What's coming over & over again in my travels & what I'm hearing/reading in the media is how individuals are saying/guessing, but still believe, by either staying or leaving the EU will affect their wee part of Britain.

That's just human nature for you.

Just for the record "if" we left, even at an educated guess, I can't see the country going into freefall & go to rack & ruin, as some have suggested in great detail.