#EUReferendum #VoteLeave My two pennies worth on the EU referendum

For the benefit of anyone who may be influenced by the opinions I express here, I must point out that I am well aware that I will be dead before the worst results of this country leaving or remaining in the EU become apparent. It's a factor which influences my vote in only a minor way but one that is only fair to point out. One further, slightly anarchic, influence is that I would dearly love to see this country's reaction to MPs should they refuse to enact the bills necessary to enable a departure. There is a faction within Westminster which is threatening to do exactly that, believe it or not.

Should it not already be obvious I shall be voting to leave the EU. I voted against joining in the first place and nothing I have seen since has altered my opinion one single iota. It always gave me an uneasy feeling about joining an organisation which was the concept of the pre-war Nazi party. A feeling that Angela Merkel has signally failed to dispel.

I have said elsewhere that I simply do not see the point in forming a small club wherein the benefit lies in exclusivity and then inviting every Tom, Dick and Harry to join as well. Particularly when Tom, Dick and Harry are unwell and wholly unable to pay their way. I am always willing to hear another opinion on this and if anyone can assure me that Albania, Serbia and the other East European proposed entrants will be able to pay the £350 million per week that we pay then I might change my vote. But nobody that I've heard can do that and so those countries and Turkey will be a constant drain on EU resources. There will be bailouts and then refusal to accept the fiscal measures required by the bailouts and then further bailouts to fund the original bailout terms. We've seen it all before with Cyprus and Greece - the figures these countries now owe the EU are astronomical. Anyone with the slightest common sense could have foreseen this happening and surely must question the wisdom of remaining in an organisation run by the kind of people who could not. I have always said that the key factor for assessing the viability of a country is whether it has a sound industrial or commercial base. Granted when Greece was a major shipbuilding country you might have made a case for its membership but it had lost that status to the Pacific rim countries long before joining and Cyprus never had any real economic basis for membership in its entire history. It may grow a decent grape, olive and citrus fruit but this even in conjunction with tourism is hardly a sound commercial justification.

It isn't long ago that Cameron (the lying git) told us that he had obtained an agreement from the EU that we should no longer have to contribute to a bailout fund for any member state if we had vetoed it. Then along came the Greek economic disaster and the next thing is - we are forking out £600 million without the option. Now there are are currently five further countries being talked about as new EU members - Turkey, Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro and Albania - of which four are already economically unsound or in no position to become so. The fifth, Turkey, is an undesirable member for other reasons. So when those four go belly up you can multiply that £600 million by four which is, of course, £2400 million or nearly 2.5 billion squids. Can we afford that kind of outgoing when there will not be any kind of benefit in return? No we cannot, and there is no possible argument about it.

I say there is no argument but I suppose some would say that other East European entrants such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia have not had any kind of disaster but my response to that is that it is only a matter of time. And you can add Portugal, Malta and Poland to the list of possible defaulters while you're about it. Even if I'm wrong we will still have to fork out hundreds of millions in those ludicrous pre-accession assistance agreements and £640 million for Turkey under a recent deal.

In short I think that the economic prognosis for the EU in the coming years is pretty dismal and I haven't even mentioned the flood of immigrants/economic refugees/asylum seekers which will place a further burden on our dwindling national resources.

Yes I know my reasonings are oversimplified and unsophisticated but they really are all I have to go on. Not much less, in fact, than the majority of the other voters have I suspect.

Now we get to my more personal and esoteric reasons for wanting to get out.
The first of these is that I am instinctively repulsed by any cause supported by David Cameron. I think he is a greedy, self-serving mountebank of the very worst kind. He doesn't even have a nodding acquaintanceship with the truth and the further away from his influence the better this country will be. The fact that his cronies who have supported him with the REMAIN faction have been rewarded in the Queen's Birthday honours list makes me feel infinitely depressed. It devalues the awards given to those people who have actually earned them and is an insult to Her Majesty and this country.

The second reason I have for leaving is that most of those I have seen encouraging and supporting the REMAIN side seem to have personal or business reasons for doing so. I mean if you run a business which depends on European co-operation for its day to day running and commercial success then you might well vote to stay within the Union. But don't write articles in the press or appear on television declaring to one and all that staying in the EU is beneficial for everybody else. This country has stagnated industrially since joining. We've lost coal mining, shipbuilding, motor manufacturing and the steel industry. And this wasn't entirely the fault of the trades union or politicians as a substantial portion of the blame must be laid at the doors of feckless 'captains of industry' who put short term profiteering ahead of the best interests of the workers and of the country as a whole. Why should we believe them now?

The next reason for am immediate exit from the EU can be seen on the left. Yes, Neil Kinnock the dismal Labour Party leader who failed twice in succession to be Prime Minister. All the time as Labour leader he was vociferously against EU membership but he changed his tune when he was unaccountably offered a role as an MEP and he and his wife Glenys, who also took a role, have milked the system ever since. Between them they are reckoned to have amassed £250 million in pensions and other benefits mostly funded by us the taxpayer. When Glenys retired as an MEP she was elevated to the House of Lords where she immediately became one of those peers who enter the house by one door claiming their £350 payment, and straight away exit by another door.
I won't bore you with the activities of their son Stephen and his strange marriage to a former Danish MP who fiddled the Danish taxpayer with the same criminally deluded sense of entitlement as her parents-in-law.

Another personal reason can be seen to the left. How Obama had the cheek and audacity to come here 'advising' the British public to vote to remain in the EU is a mystery and source of constant peevishness to me. And then to threaten us with becoming a back number on America's list of trading partners. It is blatantly obvious that his real reason, far from any economic grounds, was to keep us in partnership with the European Defence Force and thus maintaining the power and influence of NATO.

One final point to consider is that George Osborne (a man whom I put in almost the same league of mendaciousness as David Cameron) has said today that in his first budget after a Brexit vote he will put 2p on the income tax and impose austerity spending cuts. I don't know what makes him think he will have the authority to do that after an exit vote. MPs will probably force a vote of 'no confidence' in Cameron which will mean a general election. In any case a true Brit would never give in to that kind of blackmail - we leave that to the French, Spanish and Italians.

Well that's about it really. As I said before, my ashes will have long been blowing in the four winds before the worst effects of a vote either way will become apparent (I hope). But I shall just add that if the country votes to stay within the EU and when people are queueing for basic supplies, having to wait months for a doctor's appointment and having their state pensions unpaid, you won't be able to say no one warned you.