Brady has claimed that footballers will be put off coming to the UK if they have to have a visa or if we didn't have cheap flights and phone calls to other EU countries. With average wages in the Championship at over £4k a week and an eye-watering £44k a week in the Premiership, cheap flights to Magaluf and mobile roaming charges aren't exactly going to be a deal clincher.
Brady is correct in saying that some clubs - those in the lower leagues primarily - would find it difficult to bring in players from abroad if they had to get visas but it's a non-argument. Most footballing nations are already on the visa exemption list and there are specific visa rules for footballers to ensure only top flight players come here which say that a player must have played for his country in at least 75% of its competitive A team matches of which he was available for selection, during the two years preceding the date of the application and that the player’s country must be at or above 70th place in the official FIFA world rankings when averaged over the two years preceding the date of the application.
It is pure fantasy to suggest that the UK would impose visa restrictions on EU countries when we leave the EU but playing their silly game, what would be the consequences of clubs having to apply for visas? Premiership and Championship clubs they are unlikely to experience any difficulties bringing over the players they want because they're top flight clubs taking top flight players from other top flight clubs. League 1 and League 2 clubs might find it difficult to bring so many foreign players in but that's a positive thing for domestic football. The lower leagues are where we should be incubating home-grown talent, training future premiership and international stars. League 1 and 2 clubs rarely, if ever, compete in international tournaments so there's no need to bring in footballers from around the world to bolster their squad. Anything that forces lower league clubs to invest in home-grown talent is a good thing.
Using football to try and make people scared of leaving the EU is a clever move by the mad cows at the BSE campaign but their dystopian vision of the future is so far fetched that nobody is going to take it seriously. We know that the EU has forced up prices of flights with its "green" taxes, we know that mobile phone companies have passed on the cost of abolishing roaming charges to consumers and we know that we're not going to impose visa restrictions on EU countries when we leave. Their outrageous claims on the number of jobs and amount of investment that would be lost when we leave the EU are based on the ridiculous scenario of the UK ceasing all trade with the EU and similarly their preposterous claims that it would damage football are based on the British government imposing visa restrictions on EU countries when we leave which simply isn't going to happen.
Baroness Brady should stick to her day job advising Lord Sugar which mentally unstable sociopathic Apprentice contestant is least likely to stab their future colleagues with a pair of scissors to get a promotion and leave the politics to sensible people.
The last Land Rover Defender has rolled off the production line in Solihull, marking the end of 67 years of English automotive industry.
Despite being one of the world's best selling 4x4s with more than 2m Defenders sold, Jaguar Land Rover have had to end production thanks to EU regulations on emissions that the Defender would never meet.
It had to be said... because it is true and the evidence has just been laid before us...
Just the other day our MPs were merrily creating new laws/punishments/restrictions to lord over us - in this instance banning 'legal highs' - when all of a sudden, one of them piped up the he enjoyed one particular 'legal high' so asked for it to be excluded from the ban...
The other MP's, recognising one of their own being inconvenienced (and realising it could be them next time) agreed this was very serious and needed addressing - so it has been marked for review.
Did any MP ask the public what legal highs they like/want? -- here is a clue... look at the sales. If the item sells, then it is popular and many people like/want it, if there are no sales then the item is unpopular and doesn't need banning as no one uses it anyway...
But they are MP's and we are plebs - we are here for them to abuse, and they will do so as long as it doesn't inconvenience them...
Does this sound like a baseless rant from some kind of anarchist? Well you might get away with such a dismissal if that were all - but what do we read to day?
Sharia law may stop MPs drinking: Bars will be banned if politicians move to Department of Health - because of secret deal to finance Islamic bond scheme.
MP's were to be moved on a temporary basis while the Palace of Westminster (House of Commons) was being renovated - but it transpires the building they were to move to has a clause in its lease that bans alcohol on the premises.
It is no big news to any of we plebs that a place of work allows no alcohol. But to MP's this is unthinkable - a workplace without a bar to drink at! If you wrote to you MP complaining about a lack of alcohol at work (let alone lack of tax subsidised alcohol) what kind of reply do you think you would receive?
How do MP's imagine the current occupants of this government building get by without alcohol on the premises? Are the MPs outraged? What do you think? I bet they don't give it a thought at all - and if they did would *back* the ban on others having access to alcohol!
But what is worse is that in this particular case it is a government policy that caused the legal ban (rather than just an employment policy based ban) on alcohol... to back a government 'sharia bond' scheme the Department of Health building was leased back on sharia terms... this entire situation is of our MPs making - and when they created this situation do you think they considered for one second the impact it might have on mere plebs? No, plebs do not matter to MP's, they treat and subject us to things that they would not knowingly/willing impose on themselves in a million years.
A UKIP councillor in Norfolk spent so much time on council business that his family reported him missing to the police!
Cllr Denis Crawford spent two days in back to back meetings and hadn't realised he'd missed frantic phone calls from his daughter who was so concerned that she called the police. Cllr Crawford was a little bemused and said that working from 7am to 10pm on council business is normal for him.
Former Labour minister and London mayoral hopeful, David Lammy, on the contribution of Indians to the Second World War on today's Daily Politics ...
A million Indians died fighting for us. They fought for the European Project.
Yes, he actually claimed that a million Indians gave their lives fighting Germany's last European empire so that they could have another go at it. A shameful insult from a revisionist cretin.
The Department for Communities & Local Government issued the Code of Recommended Practice on Local Authority Publicity in 2011 setting out what local authorities can and should do with regard to publicity as well as what they mustn't and shouldn't.
In the code of practice local authorities are reminded that they mustn't campaign at all in the 28 days prior to an election or referendum, should be as objective as possible, should present both positions on contentious matters in a fair manner and should not issue any publicity which seeks to influence voters or supports or opposes a particular option during periods of heightened sensitivity such as during a referendum campaign.
A complaint has been sent to DCLG; you may wish to do the same.
I read today that Leicester City Council has voted to campaign for the "remain" side in the EU referendum. This is clearly in breach of the Code of Recommended Practice on Local Authority Publicity issued in 2011 which says (paraphrasing):
1. Any publicity should be as objective as possible
2. Any publicity should present both positions on contentious matters in a fair manner
3. The local authority should not issue any publicity which seeks to influence voters
4. The local authority should not issue any publicity which supports or opposes a particular option during periods of heightened sensitivity
Please confirm that you will investigate this matter and advise Leicester City Council of its obligations and responsibilities to remain impartial on the subject of the EU referendum as a matter of urgency before any taxpayers' money is spent on the political campaign.
Deputy leader of the Conservative group, Cllr Melanie Whitehand, has made a formal complaint to Woking Borough Council about the behaviour of Cllr Will Forster. She has accused him of making repeated misleading statements for political gain about the Conservatives.
This morning I received a 4 page newspaper in the post from Britain Stronger in Europe (BSE) entitled ‘Europe and You’.
My friends in Essex had received this earlier in the week, with this mornings edition being slightly altered for London.
What hadn’t been altered was the misleading information contained in it’s pages – if you have had this through your letterbox, here are the facts that contradict the stance of the ‘remain’ campaign –
Europe and You – Even the title is misleading. This referendum is about whether we wish to remain part of the European Union (EU), a political union of 28 of the 48 countries in Europe, not the continental land mass that makes up Europe.
The Six key facts you need to know – Let us take these one at a time –
1 – Over 3 million jobs are linked to our trade with the EU. The reality is that approximately 3.4 million people work for companies that trade with other countries that are in the EU – This is around 10% of our workforce. This trade will not disappear if we leave the EU and it is not in the interests of the companies in the EU to stop trading with us. Indeed, far more jobs in other EU countries depend on their trade with the UK than jobs here depend on EU countries. Also bear in mind that our most profitable trade is with countries outside of the EU – By leaving, we can negotiate our own trade deals and increase trade and therefore jobs in growing economies around the world whilst trade on the whole in the EU member states is in decline.It is also worth noting that whilst 10% of our companies deal with the EU, 90% do not but are still bound by the rules and red tape inflicted on them, hampering competitiveness.
2 – Being in the EU means cheaper prices in our shops, saving you on average £450 per year. Ignoring the fact that the source of this is the EU Commission itself (Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas), the disastrous EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) costs billions a year in subsidy paid to inefficient farmers in other EU countries. A combination of quotas, taxes, subsidies and other policies all push up the prices that we pay for food. For example, New Zealand Lamb is 18% more expensive in the UK than the USA due to EU policies.
Research by Ryan Bourne of the IEA (Institute of Economic Affairs), ‘Low pay and the cost of living’, shows that Beef is 36% more expensive, turkey 22% more, lamb 11% more, wheat 15% more, chicken 22% more and potatoes 10% more due to the EU. On average, a family of 2 adults and 2 children would save £45 per month on their food bills if we left the EU. Research by Alan Matthews and Business for Britain backs up this hypothesis.
3 – Independent experts estimate the benefits of being in the EU are worth £3000 per year to the average household. This claim relies on an estimate by the pro EU CBI in 2013. At the time, Channel 4’s fact check said, “This very precise number is not based on any real evidence”. It is also worth noting that the CBI receives a large amount of funding from the EU – they also advised that our country would be massively damaged by not joining the Euro ten years ago when the reality is that the UK is growing at a faster rate than those who did join and many, such as Greece, are now in serious financial difficulty.
4 – We are safer thanks to the European Arrest Warrant (EAW). This is the most outrageous statement of them all. The EAW allows Police from other countries to come to the UK , make a claim against a UK citizen and extradite them for trial without need to provide any evidence whatsoever – a clear breach of the rights laid down for all UK citizens in the Magna Carta 800 years ago. (The assumption of innocence until proven guilty and the right to a trial of your peers). Miscarriages of justice down to the EAW are all too common, as shown in such high profile cases as those of Deborah Darke and Andrew Symeou, accused of a crime he did not commit and left in a Greek jail without trial for a year before the case against him collapsed due to no evidence being forthcoming.
If you want to see the reality of the imposition of EU law over UK law being carried out currently, I would recommend taking 10 minutes to watch this attached video
We can work with other countries through such organisations as Interpol to combat cross border crime – we would also be able to act much more quickly in deporting foreign criminals and terrorists without interference from the European Court of Justice.
5 – 200,000 UK businesses trade with the EU, helping them to create more jobs. No, 200,000 businesses trade with other businesses in the countries that are a part of the EU. This business will not cease when we leave as previously pointed out in the answer to the 3 million jobs fallacy. The big growth areas around the world are actually outside of the EU, countries that we cannot negotiate our own deals with currently to provide the new jobs that we need.
6 – The UK gets £66 million of investment every day from EU countries, creating more jobs and opportunities for UK families. The bulk of that investment comes from trade deals, not from the EU. In 2010 a survey by Ernst & Young on the attractiveness of the UK to foreign investors found that we remained the number one destination for foreign investment because of the City of London and our close corporate links to the US. EU membership did not figure in their table of key investment factors.
Besides, we currently pay in excess of £55 million per day to the EU (Our net contribution last year was over £10 billion) with less than half of that money coming back for projects that the EU tell us we can run.
Is leaving Europe a leap in the dark?
Apart from the once again disingenuous use of ‘Europe’ instead of the EU, no it’s not. Once outside of the EU, we can retake our seat at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and on UNECE – both affect global trade and their decisions are taken at a higher level than the EU. The UK can take back it’s own destiny and not be reliant on unelected EU bureaucrats taking decisions for us, many of which are on behalf of the 28 nations in the EU and not in the British national interest.
We are also part of over 100 other organisations worldwide – indeed, we are one of only a small number of permanent seats on the UN security council, a seat that the EU are looking at with envious eyes. Many far smaller nations than the UK stand on their own and trade worldwide – Switzerland, for example, has a GDP per head of population over 4 times that of the UK. Do they really believe that the sixth largest economy in the world would be taking a ‘leap in to the dark’ by re-engaging with the wider market outside of the European Union?
Mythbusters
The back page makes a number of spurious claims about ‘UKIP propaganda’. Besides the fact that these are patently wrong, the fight to leave the EU is not just about UKIP – This is a cross party issue and there are many in the other political parties who share our wish to Leave. Both the Conservatives and Labour have campaign groups pushing for this result, Conservatives for Britain and Labour Leave. Today also saw the launch of GO (Grassroots Out) which is a platform for all those engaging in the fight to regain our democracy and saw speakers at the launch event from UKIP, Labour, Conservatives and non-aligned campaign groups.
Let’s have a look at these claims with a little help from my UKIP colleague, Roger Helmer MEP – Myth #1: “We pay in money to the EU and get nothing back”. UKIP says no such thing. But we do say that we get only about half back of what we pay in. They give us back a little of our own money, they tell us what to do with it, and then they expect us to be grateful.
Myth #2: “We have to do whatever the EU tells us — they make our laws”. Of course they don’t make all our laws, and we never said they did. But the widely accepted estimate is that they make around 70% of our laws, and in most areas we have no veto. An official German government study said that Brussels makes 80% of their laws. EU Commissioner Viviane Reding has stated that 75% of our laws come from Brussels. Myth #3: “Your family won’t be affected if we leave”. It certainly will be — and in a good way. UKIP wants to leave the EU because it will make us all better off. Currently EU policies are destroying jobs (think steel closures) and compressing wages for working people. Time to break free. Myth #4: “Being in the EU stops us from trading with the rest of the world”. No it doesn’t. But it stops us making our own trade deals, with Commonwealth countries, with China, with the USA. Did you know that small countries like Switzerland and even Iceland have made their own trade deals with China? While we’re in the EU, we can’t, and the EU hasn’t. Myth #5: “Leaving the EU will stop immigration”. No it won’t. We never said it would, and anyway UKIP doesn’t want to “stop immigration”. We just want to get it under control. In the EU, we can’t control the numbers, or our borders, and we are forced to discriminate in favour of unskilled Romanians and against highly qualified people from elsewhere. Myth #6: “The EU has done nothing for London”. No one in UKIP has ever said this. We know that money has come from Brussels to London and some of it has been spent usefully. But it’s not EU money — it’s our money. Every pound we get from Brussels costs the UK economy around £3. So after we leave, we’ll have more money to spend on schools and hospitals and scientific research and the other good things we all want to do.
So, as you can see, the claims of BSE are founded either in ignorance or are wilfully disingenuous. The UK will be far better off with control of our destiny back in the hands of our own democratically elected Parliament – after all, if we don’t like what they are doing we can remove them at the ballot box.(Something we can’t do with the unelected bureaucrats of the EU Commission who set most of our laws and stop us from running our own affairs)
Come the Referendum, vote Leave for a better future for all of the people of the UK
Jeremy Corbyn has told Argentine diplomats that he wants a Northern Ireland-style power sharing deal with Argentina for the Falkland Islands.
Labour Party policy is currently to respect the wishes of the people of the Falklands Islands but Corbyn wants to give the islands to Argentina against the wishes of the islanders.
A referendum held on the islands in 2013 resulted in a 99.8% vote to remain an Overseas Territory of the UK with a 91.94% turnout. Falkland Islanders have made their wishes very clear but Comrade Corbyn isn't interested in democracy.
The Labour Party is already split so many ways they surely can't afford any more division and especially not on something that has already been decided for at least a generation through the ballot box.
Goldman Sachs, one of the big American banks that was involved in the sub-prime mortgage scandal that devastated the US economy, has donated a six-figure sum to the Britain Strong in Europe (BSE) campaign.
It's pretty ironic that the BSE mad cows have spent the last few years attacking banks like Goldman Sachs for their excesses, demonising anyone involved in banking and blaming them for the failings of their economic policies but all is forgiven with a hefty donation to their campaign to keep us in the EU.
The president of the EU Central Bank, Mario Draghi, is one of the tax-dodging bank's former executives and Goldman Sachs has made hundreds of millions out of advising Greece and other bankrupt EU countries how to bail out their banks, steal from their citizens and hide their debts without breaking the rules for staying in the €uro.
Goldman Sachs has no interest in what is good for this country, they are protecting a lucrative revenue stream in advising EU countries how to lie and steal.
Aimed to provide an afternoons interesting listening - to entertain, inform and educate. A bit like BBC Radio 4 but without the relentless left wing spin on everything!
As a segmented podcast you don't have to listen to our whole show in one go or at any particular time - you could spend an afternoon with it - or spread it out over the week - if any bits don't appeal to you simply skip them! and for the bits that particularly appeal you can click trough to the original articles and find out more.
We are on the web at www.radiofreeuk.org, on iTunes and YouTube, Twitter, Google+ and Facebook - we'd particularly like your feedback and comments on our facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/radiofreeuk/)
We host a number of podcasts that we use in the main programme - so you can even subscribe directly to them if you want more of an intense hit rather than our magazine format. Better Off Out, Alans Antics, Jake the Writer and Batsby.
But what we need most is more listeners - the more listeners we have the more contributors we can attract, the more contributor we can attract the more listeners etc... So by sharing and recommending RadioFreeUK.org everyone wins - its a virtuous circle.
This week programme: We kick off with updates on the EU Referendum Campaigns - three of them now - Leave.EU, Vote Leave and Grass Roots Out.
We have a small collection of some particularly relevant speeches made in the EU parliament.
We have items from our regular contributers - the second edition of the new Better Off Out podcast, Godfrey Bloom on a subject that matters to us all - money!, the weeks headlines from Scottie K and a tale from the youth of Jake the writer.
We continue with the next part of our audiobook, and have a wild card an iterm from Tom Woods' very popular US podcast - a very interesting discussion of The Over Population myth, I love the way this is presented with out reams of statistics, but with clear short examples that can be easily understood and can't be contradicted.
In the mix we have other interesting items - often read by Alan Taylor Shearer - thanks Alan! Great work.
And as we always try to do - we finish with a funny from Batsby.
The Conservatives spent a huge amount of money in South Thanet to fight Nigel Farage and ultimately won the election. One of their press officers was in south Thanet full time working on their campaign there and along with other Conservative Party staffers rented rooms for the duration of the campaign in a local hotel.
There is no rule against paying for accommodation but there are rules about how you apportion the costs to election campaigns and this is where the questions are being asked. The Conservatives have apportioned the whole £14,213 bill for hotel accommodation to their national campaign and none of it for the South Thanet campaign but the Electoral Commission's rules say that if staff are working on campaigns in multiple constituencies - as the Conservatives have said - then it has to be split between the campaigns they were working for.
This leaves the Conservatives with a problem because they've already attributed £14,837 to the South Thanet campaign which had a spending limit of £15,016.38. With just £179 to play with, they would need to spread the hotel bill over 80 constituencies to stay within the legal spending limit for South Thanet.
The Electoral Commission makes the rules and the Electoral Commission is responsible for making sure that the rules are followed. If they don't investigate this dubious spending and take action if it turns out to be illegal then there's no point having an Electoral Commission.
UKIP West Midlands MEP, Bill Etheridge, has urged the party to cut all ties with the Christian Soldiers of UKIP group.
Christian Soldiers of UKIP is a fringe group set up by a UKIP member which has caused controversy with inflammatory comments, particularly about gay people which they seem to have a borderline obsession with. One of their supporters wrote them a letter which they published in one of their newsletters last year describing a gay pride march as a "display of wickedness" and a "parade of depravity".
Not only are Christian Soldiers of UKIP bringing the party into disrepute with their offensive behaviour, they misrepresent party policy as well. They don't represent the views of the party or the majority of its membership and they are harming the party's prospects, not improving them.
This isn't about free speech, it's about not tolerating bigotry and homophobia. It's time this divisive group of medieval homophobes were consigned to the history books.
A total of 1,557 foreign criminals have use the EU Human Rights Act to avoid deportation.
The favourite challenge to deportation under the EU Human Rights Act seems to be that deportation would breach their right to a family life. In such cases the fact that they have, in many cases, destroyed another family counts for nothing and as a consequence we have murderers and rapists in this country that should be rotting in a prison cell in their home country, not counting down the days until they're released and start a new life here in the UK.
Over a third of appeals against deportation by foreign criminals using the EU Human Rights Act and other laws have been successful in the last five years, making a mockery of our judicial system.
The EU requires all member states to implement the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law and until we leave the EU we are unable to repeal this criminal's charter and go back to the fundamental human rights built into the English constitution starting from the 1215 Magna Carta.
A bumper show including favourites: Godfrey Bloom, James ‘Jake the Writer’ Clark, Alan Taylor Shearer and Scottie K
And a new addition, the brand new Better Off Out podcast provided by national campaign manager Rupert Matthews.
RadioFreeUK goes from strength to strength with more UK and first to air content than ever. And is now on YouTube! No moving images - just slides and audio, but another community that can now be addressed.
After last weeks technical issues with our IT host, this week we had a ten hour power cut! But we soldiered through and delivered the programme on time.
PROGRAMME
- We kick off with updates on both the EUOut campaigns (or Leave/No/BRexit if you prefer!)
- We have a selection of reviews of the year ahead, including a feature on Rio as it is to host the Olympics this year, by James Clark.
- In our magazine section Godfrey Bloom talks about Militant Islam and Better Off Out give us a whirlwind tour of Accrington and environs highlighting how the EU touches everything, and always for the worse!
- Cologne on New Years eve was a massive warning to citizens of Europe, so we have some items taking a view on what this means to us now.
- Alan Taylor Shearer who does a lot of our reading for us - presents medley of interesting and unusual items from his own podcast 'Alans Antics'
And we finish off (as we always try to) with the humour of Batsby.
NOTE
The referendum could be imminent - our aim is to address audiences that would normally be difficult to reach, to do this we need to spread the word about the station as far and wide (and as loud and frequently) as possible. Content is great - but spreading the word is vital too - please forward and share our links as much as you can!
According to the International Organisation for Migration, just over 1m illegal immigrants came to Europe last year. Of those 1m illegal immigrants, 1.5m went to Germany and 200k went to Sweden. If two countries have taken 170% of the official number of illegal immigrants, either the public are being deliberately misled or those responsible for tracking them are incompetent.
Nigel Farage debated Labour Welsh First Minister, Carwyn Jones, live last night and showed once again why David Cameron is right to be scared to share a platform with him.
All credit to Carwyn Jones for having the balls to face Nigel Farage after seeing how he utterly humiliated the former Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg, last year but when you're trying to defend the indefensible you've already lost.
There were a number of Labour plants in the audience with questions pre-prepared on cards and who had obviously all had media training but they did little to alter the mood. The Welsh, it appears, have had enough of the EU and don't believe the lies peddled by Labour, the Conservatives and Plaid about how Wales couldn't survive without the EU.
The only boos of the night were reserved for the floundering First Minister when he called Nigel Farage a "lapsed Tory" and made the outrageous claim (simultaneously tweeted by Welsh Labour ... not that it was planned, of course) that UKIP wants to abolish workers' rights.
Jones will no doubt be asking questions of his army of propagandists who failed to brief him that Toyota had announced yesterday that they were committed to staying in the UK regardless of how we vote in the EU referendum. He made several references to the "risk" of Toyota leaving pulling out of the UK if we left the EU which must be quite embarrassing.
As you would expect, Nigel Farage wiped the floor with Carwyn Jones. A poll on the WalesOnline website shows that 81% of people think Nigel Farage won the debate and the comments on social media show Nigel Farage was the clear winner. So that's a Lib Dem and Labour leader debated and dispensed with, we just need Cameron to grow a pair and agree to debate Nigel Farage now.
The bulk of the vote.leave campaign originally started out waiting to see what reforms David Cameron would get before deciding if it would support in/out (remain/leave). However, it abandoned this wait and see policy and decide to back Leave.
Looking at its website and policies, it still seems to have substantial designs on reform of the EU as opposed to an exit. For instance on trade it says that the EU should allow non-Eurozone members to negotiate their own trade agreements. Once UK leaves the EU, it is none of our business what the EU allows or denies to its members, Eurozone or not.
Similar traces of reform think (as opposed to leave) are spread across the vote.leave site, calling into question how committed they actually are to leaving rather than reforming the EU.
Personally I did quite a bit of work on the Yes2AV campaign - and although I now believe it was a no-hoper from day one, I was very aware that the lead campaign for 'Yes' did not actually support AV - driven by the Electoral Refrom Society and others they supported STV (single transferable vote) and had attacked AV in the past - an issue that the No campaign highlighted.
I am 100% sure that any lead 'Leave' campaign must be 100% committed to leave - and (in the very worst case) support Leave even if it means working with the EU on 'World Trade Organisation' (WTO) Rules.
WTO option is the very worst case (and not so bad with tariffs limited to a few %) and the UK can certainly do better - but until we have voted out, and started negotiations it is impossible to say exactly how much better, or in what way.
The campaigns Leave.EU and Vote.Leave will only have any mandate for getting an out vote, not for what out looks like - so it seems to me they must be prepared to sell 'leave' on the (potentially) worst terms of WTO. If they wouldn't accept WTO they are not really committed to Leave - just as Yes2AV weren't committed to AV!
There is disquiet among many anti-EU campaigners - especially UKIP supporters.
The Leave.EU campaign (initially launched by UKIP financial backer Aaron Banks) has appointed Dr Richard North as a consultant on what UK's exit from the EU should look like.
Dr North has long promoted an idea of his own devising referred to as Felxcit (or Flexit) and he has acquired a bit of a following over the years as he had promoted the idea - details are available on-line, but broadly it is the 'Norway' option.
Unfortunately he and his supporters have a long track record of criticising and attacking UKIP, its supporters and Nigel Farage.
The contentious issues really boil down to three points:-
1) Payment of EU membership fees
2) Free-movement/Open-borders
3) The supremacy of EU law over UK law.
Flexit/Norway pay the EU fees (approx half of what full membership would entail), they have free-movement/open-borders, and they apply a lot of EU law (about 25% of it).
Looking at Leave.EU's own website they have a poll that lists these as the top issues for supporters of Leave! So the Flexit/Norway option fails to meet the top three aims of the people who want to leave(!)
- Half fees is an improvement
Assuming the EU don't just double the fees before applying the discount!
- Continued free-movement is a complete failure
Especially after the attacks in Germany over New Year - many of the perpetrators will get German passports and be free to move to the UK
- Cutting out 75% of EU law looks significant
Until you consider that just 100 EU Laws cost the UK economy £33bn a year, its not about %ages its about which laws!
So overall Flexit/Norway doesn't address the concerns of the majority of people who have said they want to leave the EU!
Flexit just doesn't look like 'out' at all - is this really support to Leave the EU ?
All four UKIP councillors in Sheffield voted to open up one of the city council's unused buildings to house homeless people. All 80 Labour, Lib Dem and Green councillors voted against it.
Remember when the left used to want to help the worst off in society?
The Tory press are claiming David Cameron is "closing in on a deal" to ban EU immigrants from claiming benefits for 4 years but in fact the complete opposite is the case.
David Cameron started off demanding the right to control immigration from the EU to help bring net immigration into the UK under 100,000 but was told no. Official net immigration last year in excess of 336,000. So instead he demanded the right to prevent EU immigrants from claiming in-work benefits like working tax credit or universal credit for 4 years but he was told no. Now he's planning to change the rules so that nobody can claim benefits until they've had a National Insurance number for four years after the age of 18.
It's easy to see why the Tories would try and claim that as a victory because it stops EU immigrants claiming benefits for four years like Cameron said he would but it changes nothing. The EU's refusal to agree to Cameron's demands has been a refusal to allow EU citizens in the UK to be treated differently to UK citizens, not the principal of preventing them from claiming benefits. If the British government chooses to change the rules to prevent UK citizens from claiming benefits for four years - something that is not within the competence of the EU - then they can have no objection to that being applied to EU immigrants as well because that's treating them the same as UK citizens. It is simply doing exactly as the EU requires, exactly as he has been told by Angela Merkel and a complete and unequivocal capitulation.
UK Citizen
EU Citizen
Current Rules
Over 18 and actively seeking work
Same as UK citizen
New Rules
Over 22, had a National Insurance number for four years and actively seeking work
The fight is said to have broken out after Jin Kalkat refused to deliver leaflets for their chairman, Raj Singh. An as yet unidentified attacked reportedly punched Kalkat three times and put him in a headlock.
Party whips can be quite firm to try and make their elected representatives do as they're told but physical attacks are taking it a bit far!
The British National Party is no longer a registered UK political party after the Electoral Commission struck them off the list.
The BNP has failed to submit the required paperwork or pay the registration fee to maintain its registration so from today, there is no such thing as the British National Party.
At the height of its success in 2009 the BNP had two MEPs elected in the north east of England and Yorkshire & the Humber, a member of the London Assembly, 50 councillors and were the official opposition group on Barking & Dagenham Council. In a little over 6 years they lost all their councillors, their London Assembly member, both their MEPs, their leader openly admitted to being a racist live on TV before resigning and now they've finally ceased to exist.
While it's great news that the BNP may have ceased to exist, the poisonous politics they represented haven't gone away. The footsoldiers of the BNP can be found in the English Democrats, Britain First, the EDL and other far right groups which we must continue to fight both at the ballot box and on the doorstep.
The mad cows at BSE have emailed members of the Economists for Britain group, which is backing the Vote Leave campaign, to ask them if they are "comfortable being associated" with the campaign when Economists for Britain has previously said that it wants fundamental changes to our membership of the EU.
From: Will Cousins
Sent: 06 January 2016
To:
Subject: Economists for Britain
Dear Professor xxxxxx
My name is Will Cousins, and I work in the press office of Britain Stronger In Europe, the main cross-party organisation campaigning to keep Britain in the EU in the forthcoming referendum. I emailed you shortly before Christmas.
You are listed as a supporter of Economists for Britain, part of the Vote Leave campaign which wants Britain to come out of the EU.
I wondered if you were comfortable being associated with that campaign? Economists for Britain describes itself as giving “a voice to Britain’s economists who want to see fundamental changes made to the terms of our EU membership.” If it is your view that the EU requires fundamental change but that the answer is not for Britain to leave, do please get in touch.
Yours sincerely,
Will Cousins
Press Officer, Britain Stronger in Europe
Clearly Economists for Britain are clever enough not to be duped by Cameron's false promises and know that fundamental changes to our member of the EU are never going to happen. It's not as if there aren't some big clues such as every EU leader telling Cameron the answer is no or there being no legal basis for the return of powers from the EU thanks to the ratchet clauses in the Lisbon Treaty.
Any economist that thinks that remaining shackled to the world's fastest-shrinking economic bloc and one of the most over-regulated protectionist political unions needs to reconsider their career choice.
The poll should put paid to the increasingly ridiculous and outdated claim that UKIP is a single issue party when quite clearly it isn't if over a quarter of UKIP voters don't agree with the party on its core policy of leaving the EU. It won't though.
UKIP supporters are still by far the most eurosceptic of any party with 72% saying they would leave the EU. Conservative supporters are next with a measly 55% saying they would leave the EU followed by Labour and Lib Dem voters with fewer than 40% saying they would leave the EU.
Support for leaving the EU is consistent across England but the Scots are firmly in favour of staying in. It never ceases to amaze that support for staying in the EU is so high amongst SNP voters who apparently want to take Scotland out of a union that was conceived for their benefit and in which they have disproportionate influence but want to stay in the European Union that was conceived for France and Germany's benefit and in which they have little to no influence.
The advice has been ridiculed worldwide and has caused outrage in Germany where German citizens are quite understandably unhappy at the suggestion that it is a woman's responsibility to take steps to avoid being raped rather than the illegal immigrants' responsibility not to behave like feral animals.
Angela Merkel has welcomed a million so-called refugees - almost all of which are young, single men and mostly not from Syria - into Germany and there is no hope that they will ever be assimilated into German society. Germany will be changed forever by this influx of mostly Muslim economic illegal immigrants and not for the better.
These illegal immigrants are in an unfamiliar country with a language that is rarely taught outside of Europe, a religion incompatible with their own and a culture and value system that is apparently so alien to their own that they don't realise that robbery, sexual assault and rape are wrong. They aren't going to settle down in German communities and become model German citizens, they are going to settle in the same neighbourhoods and every major town and city in Germany will have a Muslim quarter - just like Paris and Belgium - bringing the same religious and ethnic tensions that have been causing wars in their own countries.
Shi'ites aren't going to stop hating Sunnis and vice versa just because they're now living in Europe. Syrians and Iraqis aren't going to stop hating Kurds and vice versa just because they're now living in Europe. Christian and Muslim Africans aren't going to stop hating each other just because they're now living in Europe. All the hatred and distrust and propensity for violence and misogyny isn't going to be left behind, it's now here in Europe and with a million new people arriving in Germany in just a year on top of those already present it won't take long to get out of control, there are just too many people. And as early as 2020 they could have German passports which will allow them to move freely anywhere in the EU which makes this no longer a German problem but a problem for every country in the EU. Let's hope we're well out of it before then.
The 36 hour a week job involves driving around the Labour mayor, Cllr Lesley Jones and polishing the silver in the mayor's parlour.
Brent Council last year refused to pay for a 97 year old prisoner of war camp survivor to have care in his home because of budgetary restrictions. Good to see they've got their priorities right.
Cllr Tracey Lorde, who is currently serving a 26 month driving ban for driving three times over the legal limit with her children in the car, has been sentenced to 80 hours of unpaid work after being found guilty of assault by beating and criminal damage.
Lorde was elected as a councillor on Poynton Town Council just 7 months ago and in that time has had a conviction for drink driving and now another for assault and criminal damage. Not exactly a pillar of the community!
An Essex Conservative councillor has resigned from his cabinet position after failing to register his interest in a company being awarded a contract by his council.
Cllr Derrick Louis was cabinet member for corporate services at Essex County Council which includes responsibility for procurement. He failed to update his register of interests to include his Chairmanship of Provide CIC which the council has awarded contracts to provide health and social care services.
Cllr Louis says that he has done "nothing dishonest" and is resigning to save embarrassment for the Conservatives Party.
The claim has been dismissed by Channel 4's FactCheck as "not based on any real evidence".
The Remainers have jumped on this mythical £3,000 claim and are using it in their propaganda. The fact that it's entirely made up and has been discredited by the pro-EU Channel 4 hasn't fazed them or the EU-funded CBI who are still quoting the figure today.
Yesterday it was paedophiles and terrorists rejoicing if we leave the EU, today it's EU membership being worth £3,000 per household. Who knows what the Remainers will claim tomorrow if they're scraping the bottom of the barrel already.
Sweden has introduced border controls with Denmark in an attempt to stop illegal immigrants getting into the country.
The Swedes have one of the world's most generous social security systems making it attractive to the hundreds of thousands of illegal economic immigrants traveling from the Middle East, Africa and Asia to take advantage of the welcome given to Syrian refugees.
The new border controls mean that nobody will be able to travel from Denmark to Sweden without producing valid photo ID. Commuters traveling to Sweden by train will be diverted to Copenhagen airport where they will have to go through passport control before catching another train to Sweden.
The Scandinavian countries have historically had very close ties with open borders and other initiatives through the Nordic Council from as early as 1952.
Starmer tries to make political capital out of the terrorist attacks on Belgium made possible by the EU's open borders and immigration policies by claiming that we need to be in the EU to prevent such terrorist attacks happening in the UK. He cites Europol as an example of the kind of cross-border working that we have to be in the EU to benefit from but strangely doesn't mention Interpol which has nothing to do with the EU but performs the same role in almost every country and territory in the world without the need for a political union.
As the EU referendum gets closer and Cameron's renegotiation get weaker the remainers will get more and more desperate and their claims will get even more outrageous. When we get within a few weeks of the referendum you can expect mocked up pictures of Nazis marching in the streets, terrorists bombing schools, boarded up high streets and other imagery to support their scaremongering.
Nigel Farage has told the Daily Mail that his car was sabotaged in October, causing one of the wheels to fall off while he was driving through France.
French mechanics inspected his car and confirmed that the wheel nuts had been deliberately loosened on all four wheels. Farage asked the police not to pursue the matter.
The Electoral Commission felt that the Labour Party's experience and resources meant that it was unacceptable to pay 13 invoices totalling £48k (or 5% of their election spending) late. The law requires all invoices to be paid within 30 days of an election.
The Labour Party are appealing the fine in the county court.
Cllr Simmons appeared before a magistrate at Flintshire Magistrates' Court for the alleged rape of a woman in 1978. He was given conditional bail and his case transferred to Mold Crown Court.
A preliminary hearing at the crown court will be held on January 8th.
Research by the Vote Leave campaign has found that the UK has paid £503,000,000,000 in membership fees to the EU since 1976.
The UK's rapidly increasing EU budget contributions would have paid England's NHS cancer budget 56 times and is one and a half times the £340bn that the United Nations has spent worldwide in the 70 years of its existence.
wonkotsane is an author at Bloggers4UKIP.
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