Now the talking's over ....

[Workingman]

My two are in Jen's age group and they are both for remaining in, as am I.

What worries me about the polls, even though they are neck-and-neck, is their demographic breakdown. We get things like 64% of 18 - 29 yr-olds are for remaining while a similar figure is given for those over 60 who will vote to leave. The problem there is that the over 60s are more likely to vote than the younger electorate and so the overall figures are skewed somewhat.

From what I read the Leave campaign is ahead, and by some way.

[Suff]

In the middle of travel hell. Someone please beat me with a large stick if I ever try to fly sleasyjet on a bank holiday from Paris....

I'll put in my twopenneth worth when I get out of trains blocked by srcurity alertd and crowds of screaming hyper children standing in perpetual queues as the flight gets later and later. ...

[Aggers]

All I can say is that I will vote for getting out.

If the result is to stay in, so be it.

I'm too old to bother much how our this once-great country continues downhill,
and I'm sick-to-death of the calibre of most of today's politicians.

[medsec222]

I will be voting with my heart and will vote Out. I want my freedom and if Out is the price, it is worth paying.

[Suff]

So the waiting is over, the “negotiation” has become a rout.

For the better part of 900 years England and, latterly, Great Britain, has made its way in the world. In the last 45 years or so we have successively tied ourselves to Europe. Initially by a trading agreement and in successive decades by treaties which gradually enshrine the EU superstate. So much to they believe their own balloon juice; that they believe that the UK would never leave no matter what they decide or no matter how much they damage our economy or destroy our culture or our society.

So I ask myself what really is the consequences?

They talk about Security. Great, right, let’s analyse that. The EU has an army. Didn’t know that? It was enshrined in the Lisbon treaty. The UK is 50% of the active combat forces of that Army, France is the other 50%. Then there is NATO. It is actually NATO which really ensures the security of the EU and the UK. That Organisation which the UK forms a VERY substantial part…

In short, if the UK leaves the EU, the security of the EU is diminished by 50% and the security of the UK remains totally unchanged.

Lies on top of lies on top of lies…. I hate it.

Now let’s look at the economic argument.

The UK is the second largest economy in the EU and is the fifth largest economy in the world. I find it fundamentally impossible to believe that people can believe that New Zealand (economy about the size of Scotland or less), is obviously able to live, trade and operate on the international stage, but the UK, for some mysterious and unknowable reason, is both unable to do this and will suffer catastrophic consequences by doing so.

Reality: Some of the inwards investment will flow out of the country. But the EU goods flow into the UK exceeds the UK exports to the EU. If the EU wants to keep those imports they will have to be reasonable in access to their markets. Also much of the routing of goods which have chosen the UK as their base have done that because of the more flexible market in the UK and our much more international approach to people. After all go looking for a council form in France written in anything other than French, you will look long and hard but not find.

The EU cannot just cut the UK off. It will hurt them a lot more than it will hurt us, overall. The UK is growing, the EU is not, the EU cannot hamper a large proportion of its export market for spite.
In short the economic consequences are Bullsh1t. It won’t be easy and we will take a hit in the short term. But the UK was built on speculation and risk, not on risk free drudgery which reduces our markets and visibility on the world stage through EU legal suffocation.

I see no long term risk to the UK out of the EU. Short term, no question, long term? I see the future as very good indeed.


Finally the influence in the world. I was absolutely enraged to see the IN campaign going on about losing our permanent seat on the UN security council if we left the EU and Scotland seceded.

Reality check. The EU is a country. The EU has two seats. ONE must GO. If Scotland Secedes, rUK remains with all the nuclear arsenal and 85% of the economy. Nobody in their right mind is going to try and take a permanent seat on the UN security council from the third largest nuclear power in the world.

Let me repeat that… NOBODY.


I expect the whole thing will be a 3 ring circus. However we have Boris and Gove and some Labour guys alongside Farage and UKIP. That might change the game a little.

But, in the end, it will be the sheeple that decide and they won’t risk their holidays in the sun for cheap….. Instead they’ll sell their country down the river to the EU hierarchy…

If I was not so jaded I’d be enveloped in grief…. Today I’m just “whatever”…. Because I’ll have little say in this and I’m just a passenger. It will be what it will be. I, unlike the majority of the UK, am country agile, speak more than two languages to varying degrees and have a clear view of what I might be going to.

I note, just as an aside, that all the countries I, personally not Mrs S, would love to live have extremely restrictive entry barriers and citizen barriers…..

Worth a though.

[Workingman]

The EU has a Common Defence and Security Policy, but it does not have an army. All of the armed forces of member states of the EU take part in the CDSP. Article 42 of the Treaty on European Union allows for closer integration but it has never been achieved thanks to the UK.

The EU also has ready-state battlegroups, also made up of the armed forces of member states. These are to be ready for action in 5 - 10 days. There are 18 in all and all made up from forces from member states. Only the first, in Jan 2005, was a France/UK split. The UK also had its own battlegroup in 2008. Apart from those two instances the UK has not taken part, all the others have been multi-national efforts from EU and some non-EU but Nato states. Two groups always remain on standby with a rolling programme of participating members. With the agreement of all 28 national leaders in the European Council they can all be called upon.

An EU army, navy and air force are a long way of, if ever. It doesn't even have a collective border force FCOL.

[Suff]

I lost my reply I was writing on my phone which is probably better as it gave me a chance to refresh my memory of the article 42 of the Lisbon Treaty wiki page whilst in Kentucky Fried Chuckup (family joke).....

I note that whilst they have "battle groups", there are only two "member states" in the EU with a fully functioning military force which is both capable of strike action and deployable to carry out such strike actions. That force is designated under the Lisbon Treaty as CJEF and comprises British and French forces. It is the only fully functioning force the EU has and although it has not been deployed into a conflict, it would be the only one deployed to fight. The rest of the useless wannabees are doing stuff like providing support and logistics to the French bombing in Syria.... Noble. Very Noble. Remember that only the UK was allowed to be deployable into combat in Afghanistan. All the rest of the EU "forces" for want of a better word, were there as nothing more than glorified traffic officers with guns..

The rest of the battle groups are nothing but paper. I'm sure you've seen the Dutch and Belgian troops training as I have. Joke would be far too charitable. Ditto Italy. Spain has no really credible force. In fact it is only the permanent members of the UN security council who have the deployable strike forces in sufficient size to actually present a military force.

The mainland European nations under the cloak of NATO have enjoyed trade and peace at the expense of those NATO nations who maintain a credible military force. Only keeping enough military for nominal membership of NATO, much as the members of the former warsaw pact were kept with small military organisations, capable of being called up to feed the cannons but not capable of challenging the mailed fist of the Russian bear.

So, in the end, it comes down to what I'm talking about. They may have a "defence force", which those countries who don't really intend to staff it like to call an army, on paper. But the reality is that the military might of the EU is Britain and France.

So, as I said, if Britain were to leave, the EU would lose 50% of it's deployable strike force and the UK would lose nothing. Not One Single Thing.

Well, actually, it would lose something. It would lose a very expensive and draining commitment to contributing the strike forces to 26 nations who don't bring their own to the table. I call that a ++

So what did I say that is wrong? This is the whole thing about the EU. It's a huge bundle of BS written down on paper with a few very hard working "states" making it actually happen. The rest are playing games, talking big and making the best of it.

Why on earth would the UK, a proud, versatile and extremely powerful nation on this earth feel that it had to bow down to that???

[Workingman]

No, there are not only two countries with fully functioning military forces in the EU, most have them, even though they might not be as effective or as powerful as ours. As of today they are not unified, but as a collective they are very powerful. We and France have the biggest and most powerful forces, but others do contribute to our strength..

CJEF has sod all to do with the EU 'Army'. It is envisaged as a joint EU, UN and Nato force for early deployment up to and including combat. It is not an EU army. As for 'wannbees', somebody has to support it, i.e. be part of it. Those include Belgium, Croatia, Poland, Slovakia....

If we left the EU and it was invaded, say, would we stand by and let it happen? Would there be a Channel curtain? 'In' or 'Out' the answer is No! We might not be 'European' for some of you, but when push comes to shove we sure are European, and proud to be.

Why on earth would the UK, a proud, versatile and extremely powerful nation on this earth feel that it had to bow down to that???

Nor sure, maybe the Scots can tell us.

[Suff]

No, there are not only two countries with fully functioning military forces in the EU, most have them, even though they might not be as effective or as powerful as ours.

Actually apart from France, Germany and Italy, the rest sit somewhere behind Mexico and most of the German and Italian estimates are based on expenditure. Given that where the UK refurbishes both ships and tanks and planes, Germany just junks them and buys new one's, that is hardly a viable comparison. In terms of ability to execute a military campaign, Germany is considered somewhere below a banana republic....

I was talking fully functioning and I meant it. The only countries with combined strike forces are the UK and France. The UK is considered to be the more competent force, by a small margin, but the French force is twice the size. France is rabidly for the EU force because they want to downsize by 50%.

CJEF has sod all to do with the EU 'Army'. It is envisaged as a joint EU, UN and Nato force for early deployment up to and including combat.

Nevertheless it remains the only strike force the EU has.

If we left the EU and it was invaded, say, would we stand by and let it happen?

Of course we would not. However it would not be because someone told us to, it would be because it was in our own best interests to have that buffer of dead French, Germans, Belgians and Dutch before the antagonists reached our shores and don't let anyone tell you otherwise because that is the short, hard, brutal truth of it.

Why on earth would the UK, a proud, versatile and extremely powerful nation on this earth feel that it had to bow down to that???

Nor sure, maybe the Scots can tell us.

The situations are neither comparable nor like in any way. Scotland was joined to England by a Monarch who united the absolute rulership of the countries, over 300 years ago. In those 300 years, the civil services of the UK has become almost one and the countries work together to reach goals. Yes the English are, mainly, dismissive and the Scots have their backs up. But when the chips are down we are all British and don't let anyone else say otherwise.

This is not the same with the EU and won't be the same in 300 years time. Whereas one Monarch and a bunch of lords joined two nation states together to forge a stronger and richer nation, the EU is being patched together for selfish self interest in a web of lies where the nation already exists but everyone is lying to everyone about it, both internally and externally.

this is neither healthy nor fostering a spirit of EU ness. In fact when the French rejected the Constitution the most vocal thing said was "We are French NOT Europeans".....

Nuff said.

All this "disaster if we leave" stuff is nothing more than FUD. Yes the UK "could" forge a better existence in the EU. But the rest of the EU would have to let us. Out of the EU we can forge a much better life and the EU can go do exactly what it wants and if it wants it's trade inbalance to continue flowing over the border then it can start sucking up... Both the US and China will happily supply us with what the EU supplies us for less and if we lower our own trade barriers to the US and China and, perhaps the commonwealth, the world we join will be 5 times the size of the world we are leaving.

This is not a case of casting ourselves on the world as beggars begging for a crust. This is a case of going boldly out in a world that wants to trade with us and work with us. We are far more popular on the world stage than the EU, much as Scots are more popular in the world than the English (as a general rule).

Boris is 100% right and Cameron is selling the same old FUD. It's Corbyn I truly hate on this. Decades a committed "outer" and when the chips are down he's right there in the thick of the politics with his brown tongue hanging out..... Needless to say, Corbyn is having an easy ride as the self interested fight amongst each other to stick the knife in the Tories and Cameron and Boris....

[Workingman]

Actually apart from France, Germany and Italy, the rest sit somewhere behind Mexico and most of the German and Italian estimates are based on expenditure. Given that where the UK refurbishes both ships and tanks and planes, Germany just junks them and buys new one's, that is hardly a viable comparison. In terms of ability to execute a military campaign, Germany is considered somewhere below a banana republic....

I was talking fully functioning and I meant it. The only countries with combined strike forces are the UK and France. The UK is considered to be the more competent force, by a small margin, but the French force is twice the size. France is rabidly for the EU force because they want to downsize by 50%.

Let us have a look at some figures from Wiki and CIA Factbook regarding the above.

French service personnel, 242,000 inc reserve's but sans the 85,000 Gendarmerie. Expenditure $51bn.

UK service personnel, 232,000 inc reserves. Expenditure $69bn.

Short figures (personnel) for: Germany 191,000, Italy 185,000 & Spain 124,000

EU service personnel sans UK and France, 1,000,000. Expenditure $92bn.

EU front line equipment, in total: 546 ships, 2,448 aircraft & 7,695 battle tanks.

They hardly make out that the EU's force is France and the UK with the rest far behind. France and the UK are nearly equal in size and make up only 1/3 of the total EU force. Some EU countries might not have much in the way of Navies: Andorra, Austria, Czech Rep, Luxembourg, Hungary, San Marino and Slovakia, but then they are landlocked. Yes, a few of the countries, because of their size, would have problems taking on Bolivia, but when they all join together...........? Should anywhere else decide to take on the EU they would be facing a big hitter - very big.

Let us say that place might be Russia, and let us look at their forces.

Russia Service personnel, 1,000,000 (inc conscripts) inc reserves. Expenditure $85bn.

Russian front line equipment in total: 312 ships, 3,000 aircraft & 5,100 battle tanks.

A fairly equal fight, on the face of it. However, Russia would have to weaken its territory in other, hostile, places. The only ace Russia thinks it holds is in its numbers of strategic nukes. Unfortunately for them the UK and France have more than enough to wipe Russia off the map, as they could to the EU, both sides know it - stalemate.

I would also like to come back to this:

Workingman wrote:

Suff wrote:
Why on earth would the UK, a proud, versatile and extremely powerful nation on this earth feel that it had to bow down to that???

Nor sure, maybe the Scots can tell us.

Your original, to which my question applies was this:

So, as I said, if Britain were to leave, the EU would lose 50% of it's deployable strike force and the UK would lose nothing. Not One Single Thing.

Well, actually, it would lose something. It would lose a very expensive and draining commitment to contributing the strike forces to 26 nations who don't bring their own to the table. I call that a ++

So what did I say that is wrong? This is the whole thing about the EU. It's a huge bundle of BS written down on paper with a few very hard working "states" making it actually happen. The rest are playing games, talking big and making the best of it.

Why on earth would the UK, a proud, versatile and extremely powerful nation on this earth feel that it had to bow down to that???

Forget the first two paragraphs, what I was alluding to is that the UK is one of those 'few very hard working "states"' trying to make things better and drag those poorer states along. If the UK opts out and Scotland then seceded or got independence it would become one of the rest 'playing games' as you call it. Scotland would be happy to hang on to the apron strings of the larger economies. It might gain independence from the hated English, but it would then be dependent on the EU - some 'independence' that is given your arguments against the EU.