I guess the most annoying thing about this whole campaign will be the lack of credible, objective information. It's just going to be "my opinion v your opinion", which I guess is fine, but it will get a bit tedious well before the 4 months till polling day....

As far as economist's opinions go about the net effect of leaving on GDP, the 10 or so I've seen range from slightly better (c.+2%) to massively worse (c.-10%).

If there was any tactical voting it would be the opposite of this. ie it only becomes an referendum issue if Scotland votes to stay and the rUK votes to leave. (Although it would be a huge lol at Sturgeon if Scotland as a whole voted out and rUK voted stay in.)

Has anyone here been personally affected by eu regulation?

Any small business owners or grocers?

Would be interesting to hear as ive never been affected other than not having to queue for a visa when in europe.

Obviously free trade macroeconomics etc is great, but i would like to hear of some actual "ihad to sell straight bananas"

Not me but my oldest mate was a butcher and couldn't believe the amount of extra regulation they had to conform to. He felt it was unfair because some other countries probably wouldn't take the H&S regulations so seriously eg over separate areas for cooked and uncooked meats.

some fishermen that want to empty the sea 24/7 are affected by the EU

Oh great so butchers will be able to kill us again with food poisoning if we leave?

Not what I was saying at all.

His point is that they were already taking every precaution necessary, and being well-travelled himself (he had lived in Portugal for some time) he knew that butchers in some other countries eg Spain, Portugal probably wouldn't take much notice of the legislation anyway, so the net result to his shop was a large amount of money spent on refurbishing the place to accommodate changes that were a) unnecessary and b) wouldn't be observed in many other butcher shops across Europe.

What I can't understand in all this is why we don't simply assert that the political and economic landscape has changed since the treaty was signed and we feel that paying benefits to EU migrants is no longer in our best interests.

Pass a law to say that we will no longer do this and stop paying.

What are the rest of the EU nations going to do? Take us to the European court? Good luck with that.

Sovereign nations should and will ultimately do what they want. Treaties, agreements, etc. notwithstanding. Grow a ****ing spine Cameron and just declare unilaterally that - sorry - we no longer wish to be bound by that bit of the treaty, not going to do it anymore, and if you don't like it you can **** off.

Unless the EU are willing to enforce the treaty by force of arms there's not very much they can actually do imo.

You can't be a member of a union bound by treaties and cherry pick which rules you observe and which you ignore.

If you have a serious problem with a rule you can try to renegotiate it or you can leave; there is no other choice.

Tell that to the Schengen countries who just unilaterally re-imposed their border controls.

Well Ok, allowing migrants in to a country is an irreversible procedure, so a temporary change might be necessary during times of huge and sudden influxes to ensure that countries take their fair share and all the migrants dont end up in Scandinavia or in Germany.

It's a different situation to making regular payments to migrants (which by the way they don't receive immediately anyway), and is moot because most migrants have come to the UK to work.

An individual discriminated against would take the UK to the EU court win, be awarded compensation (by a UK court).

In any case a law has to be confirmed as compatible with EU treaties etc before coming to parliament. Obviously it would fail this test.

Sorry was he following proper hygiene procedures or not? If he was, why did he need the "refurbishing"?


btw this isn't a trivial issue

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/154107.stm

Sigh.

His point was that there was already more than adequate precautions in place in his shop (unlike the Scots butcher story you linked to), and going to the nth degree as the legislation stipulates was a) unnecessary and b) going to be widely ignore by many butchers in countries without effective monitoring teams.

I think the argument proposed that we will have a second referendum if we vote leave, after we have re-negotiated from a position of strength is an interesting one.

Of course, the stay camp will argue there will be no second referendum, but should we vote to leave, it's unlikely they will hold this position (and neither will the EU) as both the in campaign and the EU will be negotiating from a position of absolute weakness.

There is no doubt that the UK and the EU are better off together with some kind of formal arrangement, but just as the EU has evolved from the common market, so it might have to devolve if it wants to maintain it's integrity.

I wouldn't put the main campaigners on either side in charge of running a bath.

The other members of the EU seem to have made it pretty clear, France and Belgium in particular, that there is no renegotiation.

Those two member states will probably be in charge of turning the EU lights off after everyone else has left.

Only interesting as a ploy from the out camp, as they try to deceive some voters into believing that "out" only means "maybe out".

Until you realise she has the last laugh by still having reasonable criteria to hold another referendum on the UK

It's always been the case that an out vote will almost certainly result in another referendum after some more 'renegotiation. Makes no difference what people say now.

We're getting into bizarre fantasy territory but that referendum would be hopeless. No-way Scotland votes to be independent outside of the EU while the rest of the UK stays in and that would be the choice offered. In the plausible possible worlds the choice would be a very winnable EU or UK.

Yeah this has become very annoying already. Just trawling out individual businessmen to give a biased account of how amazing/terrible the EU is for their individual businesses and offering completely unverifiable figures on the cost/benefit of the EU to society as a whole. Inevitably, people are just going to listen to the sources which they already are aligned with before the election started.

Yea, as a small business the EU makes it a **** ton easier to export to Europe. I am dreading a leave vote as it could destroy all my current export channels/processes over night. Sure I can rebuild them, but it will be a massive PITA and no doubt cost me monies.

People moan about the bureaucracy of the EU but my personal experience is the very inverse of that. Exporting to countries outside of the EU as a small business is really paper work and regulation detail intensive.

Exporting in the EU in contrast is simplicity itself.