Wes Tender

By buying, presumably you mean accepting, rather than purchasing? I do not purchase either publication, but read the article on Facebook. So you would condemn the article because of who publishes it, rather than what it says, would you? Yes, that's about right for you. I'm sure that Daniel Hannan would ensure that what was published was what he allowed them to report. How about you offering some rebuttal of anything in the article that you believe to be untrue and back it up with evidence to counter it? Or you might debate the elements of the various proposals the EU are going to bring in post-referendum and try to defend them. I would expect that as an MEP, Hannan would know what was forthcoming as legislation and the schedule for when it was due. It really is a bit feeble just rubbishing the source without demonstrating the ability to even comment on the substance of the article.

You haven't commented yet on that link I gave to the EU Bureaucracy Red Tape and how it affects British Businesses. Whilst we're discussing EU Red Tape, it appears that some more of it is headed our way, but they thought it expedient to keep it from our electorate until after the Referendum, in case it aids Brexit. http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/679734/Europe-EU-referendum-10-secrets-bombshells-government-Brexit

Even that harridan lefty old witch Polly Toynbee admits that the immigration issue and the EU's mishandling of it could cause major ructions. Typical of her to bracket everybody together who dares to express concern towards the repercussions of uncontrolled mass immigration as racist or xenophobic.

This would seem to be sufficient chapter and verse, but it is from the Government, so you might think that it isn't credible. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cut-eu-red-tape-report-from-the-business-taskforce/cut-eu-red-tape-report-from-the-business-taskforce

With luck, we will be out of the hole on 23rd June. Cameron and Osborne will probably have killed off their future career prospects with the hole they dug for themselves. Neither of them have much reflected trust following their previous statements from orchestrating Project Fear.

This will be side that's losing the argument, but steadily increasing their support in the polls then. Neil systematically tore apart that Project Fear argument put out by Osborne that every family would be worse off post-Brexit, but go ahead and think that it was a fact if it comforts you.:lol:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQ2n7oMcSi0 Good to be reminded of how our political leaders have fudged their obligations to allow a referendum on these EU Treaties over so many years and how our PM can seem so discontented with the implications of the way the EU was headed all those years ago and yet so happy with how it all is now.

I did state at the outset that article was nearly 8 years old. But as the article says, the EU deliberately make it hard to fact check how many bureaucrats they employ. You can employ semantics if you like to say that the number working "in Brussels" (rather than for the EU) is 32,000, but the figure for EU bureaucrats according to that article was nearly six times higher all those years ago and is no doubt probably higher now. Well done for comparing apples with oranges with your mention of the size of our own Civil Service Bureaucracy. Naturally the Civil Service numbers for a country the size of ours will be higher than that for the EU, which renders any comparison of numbers futile. The EU bureaucrats are mostly confined to administering their own legislation which is not as diverse a sphere as that of our own Civil Service, who have Ministries covering a much wider sphere such as Taxation, Education, Foreign Affairs, Trade, Home Office, Defence, etc. I realise that it would be difficult to find the figures, but as you are more prepared than me to dig to find figures for the UK Civil Service staff numbers, perhaps you might be able to say how many of them are employed because of the additional bureaucracy imposed on us by the EU.

You're obviously not keen on facts either, as what you say is certainly not a fact. As usual, there is the lies, damned lies and statistics aspect to the information regarding the number of bureaucrats employed by the EU. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/2535295/EU-bureaucrats-outnumber-British-army-two-to-one-say-campaigners.html That article is nearly 8 years old and I'd hazard a guess that the number of soldiers has decreased and the number of EU bureaucrats has gone up since then. Of course, even then taking your claim that Leeds City Council employs more people to run it than the EU does is also probably flawed, because the number of employees counted as public sector employees usually includes Teachers, Social Workers and many other jobs other than just the pen-pushers. Sorry that the response I gave is not the one you predicted.

How about starting with the Monty Pythonesque transfer of the whole shooting match from Brussels to Strasbourg each month? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/10565686/The-farce-of-the-EU-travelling-circus.html But it isn't difficult to find other articles discussing it. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/10145791/Historic-EU-budget-cut-fails-to-stop-rising-cost-of-Brussels-bureaucracy.html http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/503266/EU-bureaucrats-gold-plated-pensions-cost-36bn

Did I say that we would dominate World trade? I think that you'll find that we're both an importer and an exporter. How come that we get all this imported food from around the World? Surely it's much more expensive because of the high tariffs placed on food imports http://www.reformthecap.eu/issues/policy-instruments/tariffs Ah, I see, despite the EU tariffs being so high, it is still possible to import food from around the World at lower prices than we can get lots of it from neighbouring countries. Food prices will fall post-Brexit

Poor old us, eh? Not quite as good at this World Trade thing as Iceland, Norway or Switzerland, despite a glorious history of domination of World Trade in the past. The trouble with the EU's trading negotiations with the rest of the World is that they have to consider the wishes and gripes of 28 nations and the conflicts of interest that arise as a consequence. That is why they have been taking so long to finalise deals, like the one with Canada which has taken 8 years. Maybe we'll have an advantage in quickly negotiating deals with those countries that we have had a shared history with and a common cultural and linguistic background, like much of the Commonwealth for example.

It is a report from February. It seems to me that there has been a lot of networking between the Bilderberg elite to get the Fear Campaign up and running as soon as the Referendum was announced. Who have we had so far that is currently attending their beano in Dresden? HSBC, why yes! Airbus? Certainly. The Treasury? Surely not any connection there? Apart from an MP on the House of Commons Treasury Committee. Goldman Sachs? I can't remember whether they were part of Project Fear, but certainly vastly influential on economic matters. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/10/bilderberg-conference-charlie-skelton-blog-academic

Why can't I be serious? We aren't going to stop trading with the EU and we will increase our trade with the rest of the World unhampered by having to be negotiate trade deals with other countries as part of the EU. I did qualify it by saying that it would be in the longer term and perhaps there might be a small reversal in the immediate aftermath of a Brexit whilst the dust settles. And why shouldn't I also believe that the EU is holding us back? What do you think is holding us back?

There isn't any admission from our most ardent Remainian on here that they haven't played their campaign very well. All we have from him are accusations that the Leave campaign is squalid because it concentrates on the electorates' worries that uncontrolled mass immigration from the EU has effected the ability of the UK to maintain the Health Service, the provision of adequate school places and housing. It cannot be countenanced that there is also consideration from the Brexit voters that they believe that economically and financially they will in the longer term be better off outside of the sclerotic EU, and that they will vote for a Brexit because they are acting on behalf of what they consider to be the best interests of their children and grandchildren's futures. No, it's only about immigration, not the restoration of the Sovereignty of our own democratically elected Parliament or the supremacy of our own legal system. I agree, you and I both expected a lot better of them. Our PM and Chancellor of the Exchequer in particular have pursued a squalid campaign and as a consequence are both hugely distrusted by the electorate. This isn't a satisfactory situation post Referendum that either should continue in their current positions if their credibility is so badly damaged.

What is instructive is to read the entire article in the Independent, which goes on to say that Schäuble admits that the implications of a Brexit would be severe, as other member states could very well follow suit, and in my opinion the whole enterprise in its current form would collapse. He talks of the necessity to consider reforms and reductions of bureaucracy should we leave and yet had Brussels had the prescience to have realised the implications of not acceding to the demands that the UK wanted addressed during Cameron's failed negotiations, then it is possible that the referendum would have been far more likely to have resulted in a Remain vote. Now as R Day approaches, panic is setting in and they are showing themselves to be as liable as the Remain leadership to believe that the British people will be cowed into submission by a campaign of fear. They ought to have taken advice from their Ambassador, or Dave over the efficacy of this approach, as it seems to seriously misjudge the British character. We don't take kindly to threats and blackmail and are liable to respond with the two-fingered salute. Our PM has belatedly realised that Campaign Fear is counter-productive, so I don't pay too much attention to Germany's Finance Minister, who is probably likely to be as economical with the truth as our own Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Newsnight was very interesting tonight. Journalists from the Economist and the Times, both gave credence to the way that the campaign seemed to be swinging towards a Brexit. They were baffled about whether two polls which gave Leave a 10% lead could be accurate or not. They then went on to discuss the two sides of the campaign and admitted the possibility that the negative Fear Campaign could be backfiring. Also the possibility that the leaders of the Leave campaign were proving to be toxic, especially Cameron, but also the intervention of Obama. These are very positive signs from a normally pretty biased BBC current affairs programme that there are real concerns amongst the Remain camp that there could develop some momentum to Leave and they seemed to be a bit baffled about how to turn it around. And then just to add a further boost to Brexit, Newsnight reported that it transpires that there might have even been some justification in Farage's concerns that sexual assaults by young immigrant males from the Middle East which had happened in Germany and Sweden, could occur here. He was vilified for suggesting that scenario in the TV debate mid-week, but it seems that the sons of some Syrian refugee families who have been allowed here under special dispensation by the Government, have committed sexual assaults on some 14 year old girls. Oops. In further matters that suggest that there is some desperation from the Remain campaign, there have been incidences where accusations of bias or skullduggery could be levied. A Tory MP, Sarah Wollaston, switches allegiance from the Leave campaign to the Remain side, headline news in the media and the BBC and ITV News. Reports exaggerate her prominence as an MP and there are accusations that the whole thing was planned, that she was a plant in the Leave Camp. Three other MPs announce that they are joining the Brexit camp and hardly a dicky-bird in the media at all. Then there is the incident whereby voters too lazy to register until the 11th hour, find that the website has crashed, so they are given two extra days to do it. Why can't they be given just the couple of hours that the website had been down? Then there is the question of Ballot papers. In Bristol, letters sent to their electorate showed the pencil poised over the Remain Box. Why wasn't it poised over the Leave Box? Also, there have been many reports of Ballot papers having been sent to people who are not registered to vote. How widespread is that?

All of a sudden there appears to be a plethora of talented women politicians who could rise to the very top of British politics. Ruth Davidson is another who has come to prominence during the previous referendum on Scottish Independence and she is one who can hold her own against Sturgeon. Osborne flatteringly tipped her as a future PM. A pity that she isn't pro-Brexit, but a good thing that she wasn't there on the platform rather than Sturgeon. Yes, it was interesting that none of the big guns from Remain were there, but their big guns are Cameron and Osborne, Corbyn or Alan Johnson. I can understand that Cameron and Osborne avoided the Blue on Blue fight, but a bit surprising that neither Corbyn or Johnson were up for it. But as was demonstrated last night by Stuart and Leadsom, in some instances the debate would be better served by somebody lesser known, but really competent. The three Remain ladies came across as being too combative and strident, whereas the two on the Brexit side were calmer, more measured and therefore gave the impression that their views were more reasonable. It hasn't done the Brexit campaign any harm to demonstrate that there are these talented alternatives in their ranks and that they are capable of equally forceful fire-power besides that from the bigger guns.

She came across as very impressive as did Gisela Stuart. Team Leave came across better to the studio and TV audiences because they left out Party politics and spoke well together on the issues, rather than their three opponents, whose Party allegiances were all too obvious, because they spent much of their time indulging themselves in petty political point-scoring. I think that both Andrea and Gisela could be seen as serious prospective leaders of their Parties, or at the very least, candidates for much higher positions than they currently hold. All in all, not a bad night for Brexit, as they also fared quite well on QT. Please can we have much more of Eddie Izzard featuring for Remain? He will do the Brexit vote no end of good. I realise that he is a comedian, but last night he was more of a clown. It must have taken some serious annoyance of the audience to cause them to shout at a speaker to shut up.

I've just been reading about the elite Bilderberg Group who are meeting at the moment. The possibility of a Brexit is on their agenda, as well as how they can derail the Trump Presidency from happening. It's really interesting conjecture looking at the list of names of the attendees that there is a potential background here that many of them are acting in concert together to orchestrate the Fear Campaign against Brexit, given that it was them that originally proposed the whole European political Union project. There seems to be quite a correlation between some of their members and the financial and economic organisations that have been attempting to panic the electorate these past few weeks. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/bilderberg-group-meeting-what-is-it-and-who-is-attending-global-elites-a7069561.html http://journal-neo.org/2016/04/06/bbc-bias-brexit-the-eu-bilderberg-and-global-government/ http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/bilderberg-group-2016-meeting-brits_uk_5756d541e4b0411d4de2019e

We do actually have a choice in who is our local MP if we wish to vote for a person rather than for a party. The EU Commissioners are indeed chosen by the member Governments and many can be classified as failed politicians like Kinnock, for example, who are allowed onto the EU gravy train for past services rendered. Once there, the electorate cannot remove them. Speaking of cost savings, we could also have saved the £9 million or so of taxpayers' money that the Government spent on pro-Remain propaganda. Cameron's position was already weakened before he even called the referendum, because he was adamant just months before it that he would have campaigned to leave if he did not receive the reforms he deemed to be necessary for us to remain. He assured everybody then that the UK could manage perfectly well out of the EU, and now we are on the verge of a calamity if we left.The public aren't stupid and weren't fooled into believing that those reforms were met, and it all looked a bit reminiscent of when Neville Chamberlain returned clutching his piece of paper. His credibility disappeared some time ago. But this referendum should have been held years ago following Maastricht, so any attendant costs pale into insignificance against the importance of the democratic process which has an imperative to allow the electorate a say on such significant changes to our sovereignty.

Those who are ideologically opposed to the EU have their own reasons for being so and perfectly entitled to hold those views. I suspect that most of them will consider the economy as being just one factor amongst many that go towards deciding their stance and although the economic repercussions either way are an important factor, they will weigh everything up and draw their own conclusions. The trouble with the Remain campaign, is that there have been so many lies that have been disproved or accepted as gross exaggerations, that their campaign has become known as "Project Fear." The result has been that firstly much of these stories are either cynically dismissed, or taken with a large pinch of salt, or else it has become increasingly difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff, to recognise what is credible and what is not. The two main protagonists of the Remain campaign who ought to have commanded authority and respect are Cameron and Osborne as our PM and Chancellor of the Exchequer, and yet both are seen to have been very economical with the truth and therefore hugely mistrusted by the electorate.

You assume that Cameron would resign in the event of a Brexit, which given his propensity to lie in order to further his position, is not indicative that he would take a principled stance and resign. But if he did, it would be up to the Conservative Party to elect his successor until the next General Election and that situation would be similar to the one whereby we had Brown foisted on us when Blair left. But at least we still retain enough democracy so that the electorate would have the opportunity to choose the party and therefore the PM, which they are not permitted to do in the case of the EU Commissioners. It is a matter of opinion whether Boris would be better or worse than Corbyn as PM. That would be my nightmare scenario.

Perhaps she ought to leave politics altogether as she seems too naive for it. She doesn't presumably see anything wrong with Osborne or Cameron's lies, some of which I linked to above.

It really was delicious seeing him hung, drawn and quartered by Neil. Where Neil was particularly clever was in laying the trap for Osborne by questioning him on the matter of the Treasury stats that he had massaged into his infamous £4300 that he claimed every family would be worse off by in 2030. Then having had him squirm in his seat attempting to justify the figures, Neil then delivered the coup de grace by switching onto the immigration promises/ambitions of the Conservative manifesto which said that immigration would be reduced to 100,000 per annum and when Osborne tried to bluster his way through that, he was then skewered by Neil's trap that the Treasury figures had been gleaned on the basis of very substantially higher immigration figures during the next 14 years.