A maildrop is hitting doormats this week branded “official information about the referendum on 23 June”. Those who turn the page to find the Vote Leave logo might wonder if the document really is telling us “the facts” about the EU. Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, it strays far from reality.
“Immigrants… have an impact on public services”
Yes – a positive one. Migrants, who are mostly young, use the NHS less than the ageing native population. They also pay into welfare and staff the health service. They are a boon, not a burden. Likewise, Brexit could make the schools crisis worse, not better.
“The EU is expanding to include: Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Turkey”
The UK has a veto on all new members, so they won’t join unless we want them to. The prime minister has said that membership for Turkey, by far the most populous of the five countries, is “not remotely on the cards”. Nor, as the picture on the reverse implies, are Syria and Iraq “set to join the EU”.
“The EU has taken control over more and more areas such as our borders.”
Because the UK isn’t in the Schengen Area, we have control of our borders. Muddling free movement of people with a lack of border control is one of the Leave camp’s favourite ploys.
“The need to prop up the euro means that more and more powers will be taken by the EU”
Any measures would apply only to the euro zone and won’t drag the UK into a superstate. UK law protects us against new Brussels power grabs. We’d need another referendum before we could agree to any further transfer of power.
“The EU costs us at least £350 million a week”
No it does not. This figure has been described as “clearly absurd” by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and “misleading” by the chair of the UK statistics authority.
“You don’t have to be a member of the EU to trade with it”
No, but it helps. A lot. Studies by the London School of Economics and HM Treasury among others agree leaving the EU’s single market would mean less trade and a corresponding decline in our economy.
“Some big banks and multinationals think the EU is in their interests. Small and medium-sized businesses think differently”
The Confederation of British Industry found 80% of its members think EU membership is best for their business, and more members of the Federation of Small Businesses support staying in the EU than leaving. The overwhelming majority of British innovators also want us to remain.
Edited by Alan Wheatley
There are so many half truths bandied about by those who ant to leave and I am surprise so many people believe them. This country has done well in EU. It’s about time the little Englanders started to look outwards and appreciate how much good has been done.
How to stop immigration from the EU in UK being part of the EU? Simple: UK has to stop growing! Has to stop creating more and more job places that need to be filled to push this expansion and that cannot be filled by the limited number of UK people (albeit some hundreds of thousands of them are unemployed but several reasons unable to take those jobs even if available to them. This happened also in the 2000’s when migration figures were much lower, job opportunities much higher but, paradically even UK unemployment figures were higher than now)! Uk basically just has to grind to a halt!! In this way the migration flux will stop or even revert. And if somebody will moan: the EU migrants lower our wages, well, no one is stopping the UK to implement legislations (similar to those in effect in Germany) obliging employers to a set of obligatory requirements in salaries (no undercutting), plus no one is stopping the UK govt to make mandatory to advertise job places in UK before than abroad.
How to stop immigration from the EU in UK being part of the EU? Simple: UK has to stop growing! Has to stop creating more and more job places that need to be filled to push this expansion and that cannot be filled by the limited number of UK people (albeit some hundreds of thousands of them are unemployed but for several reasons unable to take those jobs even if available to them. This happened also in the 2000’s – the boon time era before the crash – when migration figures were much lower, job opportunities much higher but, paradoxically even UK unemployment figures were higher than now)! Uk basically just has to grind to a halt!! In this way the migration flux will stop or even revert. And if somebody will moan: the EU migrants lower our wages, well, no one is stopping the UK to implement legislations (similar to those in effect in Germany) obliging employers to a set of obligatory requirements in salaries (no undercutting), plus no one is stopping the UK govt to make mandatory to advertise job places in UK before than abroad.
Think you are distorting the argument a tad. I think I spot something worthy of being an In’s Sin! You say;-
Nor, as the picture on the reverse implies, are Syria and Iraq “set to join the EU”
Please, I challenge you to show me ANYONE on the Leave side who has said or implied Syria and Iraq are joining? The thing is nobody has said it and the graphic as shown lists the countries that ARE being considered – it may of course take some time such as for Turkey but fact is they ARE under consideration. The graphic just highlights that IF the EU extended to Turkey at some point in the future, it would then share a border with what is currently a very unstable region and likely will be for some years to come.
I personally think you are distorting some of the issues here such as the ‘claim’ that Syria and Iraq are somehow suggested by Leave as ‘set to join the EU’ as you put it. When in actual fact no such claim has been made by anybody in the Leave campaign.
It does not take long, when you resume campaigning, after the pause out of respect for the death of Jo Cox, for the bitterness of your response to vote leave to be influenced by their extremism.
EU migrants use the NHS less than the ageing native population eh? Prove it with current facts – not those you used on 12.04.16. Remain is a competition is it in which the “ageing native population”, you insolent monkeys, consisting of those who have paid 41 years’ contributions, eat up the resources created by immigrants? Remind me who created and built the NHS. It was not the people now arriving in the UK to profit from it either by using it or working in it. They have contributed nothing to the PFI costs and the earlier public taxes used to fund all the hospitals that are now used.
You have made the claim about the NHS. Fact check it. Tell me how many of the “ageing native population” are in hospital. Do not just tell me how many EU migrants are having babies in hospital but also how you propose to provide GPs, housing and school places for those babies. Any blade of grass foolish enough to poke itself above ground will soon be covered by a housing estate.
There are no circumstances in which the EU migrants will ever pay in more than they take out unless they remain here for two or three generations and do not return to their own countries if the economic circumstances improve.
There was no NHS when my parents and grandparents were born. So in 1950, two years after they created it for me, I was the first NHS baby born into our family at which time my parents and grandparents were paying tax. To whom are the parents and grandparents of EU migrants paying tax? Not our NHS.
I have gone on to pay 41 years’ contributions and, notwithstanding being retired, part I assume of the “ageing native population, you insolent monkeys, I am not in hospital and see a doctor a couple of times a year.
There is a case to be made for remain but not by insulting me and the contribution my grandparents and parents made in two world wars and thereafter by creating the NHS.