Champinoning the EU

[Suff]

In the way Cameron is doing right now may have a long term and very negative backlash which is currently not being covered in the press. Big surprise there... NOT.

I was reading a Telegraph article on Boris and how the Tories are going to be giving Cameron's deal some schtick over the weekend when I got to the end of the article and found this...

Richard Walton, Scotland Yard's former head of Counter Terrorism command, today rejects claims by the Prime Minister that Britain should stay in the EU on security grounds.

He says that reducing terror plots is "absolutely not" dependent on being a member of the European Union. "So let's not scare the horses with fears about Brexit," he says.

I wonder when it will occur to the establishment that it is actually quite insulting to our Police, Army and Security services, to assume that we cannot control our borders or terrorism without the EU. Reality says that the vast majority of the "terror data" being fed into the EU database is coming form the UK/US alliance and that the rest of the EU is light years behind the UK.

To state that the UK cannot function without the EU, when it is actually the EU relying on the UK is, frankly, mind boggling. It is good that Richard Walton has come out and made clear what Cameron and the IN camp are doing. It is bad that the press are only reporting this in the passing.

Just like the complaint from the senior military commanders who stated that they felt "threatened" if they did not sign the "safer IN" letter.

I read, on a climate change site, the other day... "Never wrestle with a pig. You just get covered in mud and he enjoys it".

There's going to be a whole spate of pig wrestling going on for the next few months....

[Kaz]

Cameron likes wrestling with pigs, I hear

Seriously though, that is insulting... Personally I am veering towards remaining but to suggest our forces couldn't cope is daft!

[Workingman]

..... it is actually quite insulting to our Police, Army and Security services, to assume that we cannot control our borders or terrorism without the EU. Reality says that the vast majority of the "terror data" being fed into the EU database is coming form the UK/US alliance and that the rest of the EU is light years behind the UK.

That has been one of the things from the IN campaign bugging even me.

Specific terror data have been routinely swapped by the West with everyone watching each others' backs. Claiming that would suddenly stop if the UK left the EU is a lie of the first order and possibly criminal. If a member state of the EU had information that there was to be an attack on a UK target it would get passed on, just as we would/do pass on information the other way.

[Suff]

Personally I am veering towards remaining but to suggest our forces couldn't cope is daft!

Pretty much you're going to have to deal with stuff like this then.

The Deutsche Bourse has been trying to merge with the London Stock Exchange for more than a decade now. It kept falling over because the D.Bourse was the junior partner and wanted more say than the LSE wanted to give it. In the interim the D.Bourse has been buying itself bigger and bigger and now is a comparable size to the LSE. Today they are in talks to merge. Of course the LSE, as the senior partner, will hold the new merged headquarters in London.

However, as experience shows, the new company will continue to grow until the LSE component is smaller than the rest. Then, absolutely guaranteed, the HQ will move to Frankfurt. An insignificant, small player, in the world stock and financial markets combined.

Don't believe me? When BAE and EADS announced a merger back in 2009, to make the largest munitions and aerospatial company in the world, there was a big problem. The proposed split was 40% BAE and 60% EADS. Which was actually quite generous given the actual income of BAE, although the BAE ties with the US defence market, backed by EADS, could have given much more than the 40% offered.

So far so good, what's wrong with that? Well EADS is a merger between the French, German and Spanish aerospatial and defence groups including Airbus concerns for all 3. It is currently headquartered in Toulouse, France. Germany and France (as states), have 10.9% ownership each and Spain has 4.1%. The other 74% of the company is in private hands and all of BAE is in private hands.

So what was the problem?

The final structure would have found France and Germany with with 6.6% each and Spain with an insignificant amount. But BAE would own 40%.

As such the HQ structure was decided as a joint HQ with one in the UK and one in Germany.

France took a total strop and got up on their soap box from their 6.6% of the combined new company and simply said that no deal could be made unless the whole company had a third HQ (with all it's costs), in France.

In reality and how every other private company in the world works, the HQ would have moved to the largest single block shareholder, namely BAE and the UK.

This is what we want to tie ourselves to? A rapacious and unending litany of state sponsored purchase of British companies with movement of the control of those companies to France and Germany until the UK owns and controls nothing significant of it's own GDP????

Sorry but I decline. I've been watching this for two decades and the answer is simply this.

Either take the risk and get out or be consumed by the unbalanced, undemocratic and unconscionable EU states and companies.

Is this really what we want? We complain about our power and other utility companies moving into French and German hands (and we're not the only state in the EU which has that problem), but then we say we want to stay in the EU!!!

Either we don't complain or we get out. Because this IS what the EU is ALL ABOUT.

If we vote to stay in the EU this time, knowing what it really is, then we lose our right to complain about what it does. Forever more. This is eyes wide open time. If we choose to listen to the politicians and not go out and read up on what it really is then we have nobody to blame but ourselves.

After all we are Very well aware that the vast majority of our politicians are there to feather their nests and make their own lives as easy as possible at the cost of the people. Why on earth would we believe them about the EU??? Especially when staying in the EU would make their lives massively easier?

[Workingman]

And here are a few more things:

The BBC reports that the G20 leaders think that the UK leaving the EU will be a 'global' shock, but without saying what that shock would be.

However, Sky is saying the Mark Carney of the BoE told the same conference that turmoil in the financial markets and a rush towards negative interest rates would leave the global economy with no growth.

I think I will go with Mr Carney's assessment.

[Suff]

And here are a few more things:

The BBC reports that the G20 leaders think that the UK leaving the EU will be a 'global' shock, but without saying what that shock would be.

However, Sky is saying the Mark Carney of the BoE told the same conference that turmoil in the financial markets and a rush towards negative interest rates would leave the global economy with no growth.

I think I will go with Mr Carney's assessment.

Yeah, I'd love someone to come out and say the shock is the defibrillator and challenge those fear mongers to deny it...

After all it's not as if the EU countries would trade with us if there was a choice to trade elsewhere. By far the vast majority of them would trade elsewhere for our goods and services if they could either get them or get them cheaper elsewhere. The only trade they like doing with us is To us not From us.

Which means that in a Brexit scenario the biggest threat is to their exports to us, not the other way around. We choose to buy their goods but it is absolutely certain that we could choose to buy something else. After all if the BMW that is the preferred vehicle today becomes 20% more expensive tomorrow, it is quite viable that you could go out and buy something else. Like a Lexus or a Jaguar.

On the other hand the high technology products the EU buys from the UK and the high technology services, are either not available or at such a premium at home, that they don't and won't want to stop taking them.

Mud wrestling.... Boris is either going to make himself a pariah or the next leader of the Tories. Time will tell. Cameron has struck water but is still digging for all he's worth. He's never going to strike oil though, just his grave.

[Suff]

I had a read of the G20 article in the Guardian. It seems that the G20 were talking about using all fiscal tools to step up the Global economy. In the light of what they were talking about, which was resuscitating a faltering economy, then, yes, the UK leaving the EU would be a shock. But hardly a serious or harsh one. In fact, for the rest of the world, it would put a $2.6tn economy outside the 10% barrier of the EU and viable for the $46tn other economies to trade with.

Not exactly a disaster is it? Except, possibly, for the EU depending on how belligerent our trade tariffs with them were.

Oh and, yet again, Germany were opposed to using fiscal policy to kickstart the EU economy. After all they are doing rather well on everyone else's misery aren't they??? EU 101.