Current Affairs EU In or Out

[bring the ghost on]

We can all speculate until the cows come home about everything. Hey, don't you know that Everton are going to win the Premiership, the FA Cup & the Leagus Cup next season? That's what it looks like to me. And therein is your flawed logic. Right there...

Good Lord, you are annoying.

 

[Frank Gallagher]

I don't have to get over anything, because either in or out the working class will get shafted- as they have been done by Duncan Smith, Gove and Johnson. Seeing what they said about the EU - Gove, 'job destroyer' - why aren't they telling the British people when, and how they will start the process of leaving by invoking Article 50. Or put a Bill before parliament against the European Communities Act 1972 . It is so easy to do the leave thing, but I wonder why they seem so reluctant?

its literally hours after the vote. weve got 2 years to get ready before we leave. we dont have to leave the minute the vote landed. im sure britain will take as much time out of the 2 years that we might need to make the exit work for us as best we can.

people need to chill out. yes we are leaving. get over it.

 

[degsy]

What about this talk Re. N. I. leaving and joining the Republic then - is it a go-er.

 

[Tubey]

They well they won't be guaranteed membership of EU if they choose to leave the UK. Already several members of the lovely club in Brussels have said so. She knows she has no chance of vetoing a perfectly legitimate vote and this pathetic tantrum hasn't helped her credibility one bit. Scotland had an independence vote a little over a year ago and she lost. Lots of people knew it was a massive mistake joining the Common market and have waited over fourty years for their second chance. Get to the back of the Que Scotland, you had your chance and you blew it.

I think you're trying to convince yourself of that more than anything mate, to be honest!

The difference between "not guaranteed" and "no" chance of EU membership would be enough really.

 

[Harryflashman]

Exactly. I'd get one if I could. It's basically an insurance policy at this point.

It's something I'd always considered doing and members of my family have already done . I'd say I'm almost certain to get one now just as you say as an insurance policy . I certainly celebrated that goal then , perhaps even a little more than the goal against Italy . I feel it's the least I can do .

What about this talk Re. N. I. leaving and joining the Republic then - is it a go-er.

I don't think anybody knows but the issue of border control is going to cause major issues & may well push matters .

 

[Gwladysstreetlad]

Wishful thinking. They'd get independence by a landslide in a new referendum.

You're forgetting it'd be a vote not just for leaving England, but to join the EU. It's a no brainer for them.

But they have zero guarantee that they will be admitted into the EU. So the SNP are asking the Scottish people to walk away from one union with no guarantee of admittance to the other they want to join! Spain among others would veto the he'll out of them!

 

[bring the ghost on]

I now see her as using her position to get what she wants...
Disgraceful...

The result gives the SNP a mandate to request a further referendum. They voted to remain, England voted to stay. That is a material change of circumstances from the last referendum, so I'm not sure why you find it ao disgraceful.

 

[Tubey]

But they have zero guarantee that they will be admitted into the EU. So the SNP are asking the Scottish people to walk away from one union with no guarantee of admittance to the other they want to join! Spain among others would veto the he'll out of them!

Again though, if they stayed after Brexit, they'd have no chance of Europe. And no independence.

Just look at it from their point of view - what would they actually be voting for if they stayed? The answer is "England". I don't think that's anywhere near enough to convince them. In fact, I'd be more shocked than by the Brexit if they didn't vote for independence.

Also, Europe in my view would welcome them with open arms - bringing in another member would send the sign the EU is still very much alive.

 

[Harryflashman]

Again though, if they stayed after Brexit, they'd have no chance of Europe. And no independence.

Just look at it from their point of view - what would they actually be voting for if they stayed? The answer is "England". I don't think that's anywhere near enough to convince them. In fact, I'd be more shocked than by the Brexit if they didn't vote for independence.

Also, Europe in my view would welcome them with open arms - bringing in another member would send the sign the EU is still very much alive.

I think if they'd gone last referendum then the EU would never have had them in but now I think it's a real possibility , the only fly in the ointment is those nation like Spain worried about Catalonia .

 

[davmaher]

But they have zero guarantee that they will be admitted into the EU. So the SNP are asking the Scottish people to walk away from one union with no guarantee of admittance to the other they want to join! Spain among others would veto the he'll out of them!

Sturgeon is not stupid. She has already said that she will seek meetings with EU representatives to find out how sympathetic they would be to a Scottish application for EU membership if they were independent from the UK. If she gets an answer that gives them a green light for a deal close to the one we have had up to now then she would call for a referendum for independence with a very strong hand to play. There is no way on earth that Scotland would walk away from the UK without knowing that EU membership was a given.

 

[Tubey]

I think if they'd gone last referendum then the EU would never have had them in but now I think it's a real possibility , the only fly in the ointment is those nation like Spain worried about Catalonia .

They would have let them in last time, just not as quickly and with more stringent rules.

Spain will bow to the needs of the EU on this issue. The caveat will be only nations who secede democratically with the full consent of both nations will be eligible for entry to the EU - and Spain will never give that to Catalonia, whereas England would have to with Scotland.

 

[Gwladysstreetlad]

I think you're trying to convince yourself of that more than anything mate, to be honest!

The difference between "not guaranteed" and "no" chance of EU membership would be enough really.

I think the SNP and their snide leader are trying to put the fear of God into everyone about a second Scottish referendum when she has no legal and basis to ask for one! If she truly wants Scottish independence she should call for UK wide referendum as I suspect it would result, would see a landslide result for Scotland to leave because this whole loveless marriage arrangement between us and the Scotst has become rather tiresome.

 

[Mikey_Fitzgerald]

 

[Gwladysstreetlad]

Sturgeon is not stupid. She has already said that she will seek meetings with EU representatives to find out how sympathetic they would be to a Scottish application for EU membership if they were independent from the UK. If she gets an answer that gives them a green light for a deal close to the one we have had up to now then she would call for a referendum for independence with a very strong hand to play. There is no way on earth that Scotland would walk away from the UK without knowing that EU membership was a given.

She can "seek meetings" from now until the crack of doom but she won't get in. The Spanish among others are terrified by the idea of them joining the EU because of the implications and what it would mean to them and the potential break up of Spain. they won't want to give the Catalan's any hope it could work for them. Many other countries including Italy would do likewise for similar reasons. No Sturgeon isn't stupid she knows that this pathetic referendum shout is just another scare tactic to make people who voted out question themselves.

 

[Brennan]

This is an example of why the public were misled and the vote was not 'democratic'. You cannot have a democracy where the people are lied to and make a vote under false pretences.

“What’s the EU ever done for us?” Zak Kelly, 21, asks me this standing next to a brand new complex of buildings and facilities that wouldn’t look out of place in Canary Wharf. It’s not Canary Wharf, though, it’s Ebbw Vale, a former steel town of 18,000 people in the heart of the Welsh valleys, where 62% of the population – the highest proportion in Wales – voted Leave.

To go there – along a new dual carriageway – and stand next to the town’s new sixth form and training college, a glass and steel architectural showpiece next to its new leisure centre, a few hundred yards away from a new train station, is to stare into the abyss of the UK’s failed Remain campaign.

Even Kelly, who has just finished a training session on a brand new football pitch, backtracks slightly after asking that question. “Well, I know … they built all this,” he says, and motions his head at the impressive facilities that are all around us. “But we put in more money than we get out, don’t we?”

We’re standing on the site of the old steelworks, a toxic industrial wasteland left rotting when the plant, once the biggest in Europe, finally closed in 2002. It’s now “The Works” – a flagship £350m regeneration project funded by the EU redevelopment fund and home to the £33.5m Coleg Gwent, where some of the 29,000 Welsh apprenticeships the European Social Fund pays for help young people learn a trade. Add in a new £30m railway line and £80m improvement to the Heads of the Valley road from other pots of EU money, and the town centre has just received £12.2m for various upgrades and improvements.

Ebbw Vale, left devastated when the steelworks closed, has had more European money poured into it than perhaps any other small town in Britain. But according to the figures Kelly heard, “we get out £7m a year from the EU and we put in £19m”. Anyway, he says, “it was time for a change”.

And change is now coming. But what it will mean for an area dependent on inward investment and with the highest unemployment in Wales – nearly 40% of people are either unemployed or not available for work – has yet to be seen. In the local fish and chip shop, Deborah Basini says that she voted Remain. “All my family did. I’m very worried about what’s going to happen to inward investment. I’m 60 – this isn’t going to affect me. It’ll be my grandchildren who are not yet born.” Her customers, however, thought differently. “There was only one word people had on their mind: immigration. They didn’t look at the facts at all.”

Are there any immigrants in Ebbw Vale? “No! Hardly any. And the ones there are are all working, all contributing. It’s just … illogical. I just don’t think people looked at the facts at all.”

It’s a town with almost no immigrants that voted to get the immigrants out. A town that has been showered with EU cash that no longer wants to be part of the EU. A town that holds some of the clues, perhaps, in understanding quite how spectacularly the Remain message failed to land. There’s a sense of injustice that is far greater than the sum of the facts, and the political landscape has fractured and split. Zak Kelly says that many of his friends, in what is Nye Bevan’s old constituency, voted Ukip.

Wales isn’t just a net EU beneficiary, EU capital funding has been an essential part of attracting firms to come here. All around town are signs marked with the EU flag for the Ebbw Vale enterprise zone. The website notes that as an EU tier 1 area, “companies can benefit from the highest level of grant aid in the UK”. Earlier this year the sports car company TVR announced it would build a factory and create 150 jobs there. Will it still come? Will the Circuit of Wales, a multimillion-pound motor racing circuit a private company has been proposing to build on the town’s outskirts creating 6,000 jobs? Will the £1.8bn of EU cash promised to Wales for projects until 2020 still arrive? And what happens after? Will central government really give more money to Ebbw Vale than the EU has?

Even Kelly looks like he could be doubtful on this point. “David Cameron got a good kicking,” he says. So, what about Boris Johnson? Do you want him? “No way. He’s London through and through. He’ll just forget about Wales.”

Or as Michael Sheen, the Welsh-born actor from Port Talbot, tweeted: “Wales votes to trust a new and more rightwing Tory leadership to invest as much money into its poorer areas as EU has been doing.”

“It is what it is,” says Kelly. “We’ll see, won’t we?”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...wered-eu-cash-votes-leave-ebbw-vale?CMP=fb_gu