#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.

The government's unhealthy plans to limit immigration from Eastern Europe

Immigration minister Mark Harper thinks that limiting access to free healthcare is seen as key to preventing a fresh surge of immigrants when controls are lifted at the end of this year.

It remains unclear how the proposals would work in practice but it is likely NHS staff would be asked to check healthcare entitlements when immigrants first came into contact with the NHS.

This is one of the most stupid ideas I have come across in an age of stupid ideas. Can he really imagine one of our cherished hospitals turning away a sick person of whatever nationality or financial means?
Millions of pounds, in debts incurred by foreign nationals, have already been written off by the NHS.
And he has a bloody cheek putting the responsibility onto our already overworked and underpaid healthcare staff.

No, the real key to limiting immigration from Eastern Europe is simply not to let the buggers in in the first place! A job which should not be given to the UK Border Agency which has so far proved to be utterly feckless, incompetent and not fit for purpose.

It also concerns me that the government might give any credibility at all to Bulgarian Ambassador Konstantin Dimitrov who plays down fears of mass immigration to the UK by pointing to the low levels of migrants to Ireland when that country opened its borders.

But what sensible Bulgarian would voluntarily go to a country which is on the verge of bankruptcy and is riven with terrorism and crime?

More frightening still is that Downing Street says that:

The Government is determined to prevent potential damage to the labour market from a fresh influx of migrants, but acknowledges Britain will have to operate within EU rules on the right to free movement. The Government is also examining the idea of an ad campaign telling potential migrants in Romania and Bulgaria that British streets are not necessarily ‘paved with gold’

Eh! Pardon moi. Might it not be better to say that the streets of Britain ARE MOST DEFINITELY NOT paved with gold rather than 'not necessarily' Or just refer them to any British old age pensioner who would be able to furnish them with the truth of the matter.

The reduction in the net migration figure is nothing to crow about

And once again it proves that I know far more about statistics than the government. which is itself an unreliable piece of information.
But the fact is that the Home Office figures are largely based on the fall in numbers of foreign students applying to UK universitys and colleges.
This completely ignores the fact that those same people would be emigrating again on completion of their studies thus readjusting the figures within a couple of years.
Like everything that comes out of Whitehall these days it's just crap.

And I didn't see any reference to the numbers of illegal immigrants that have slipped through the fingers of the incompetent Border Agency.

If I could afford it I'd bugger off and live with the other ex pats in the Dordogne even though I'm not that fond of the French.

23 years in prison for illegal immigrant

It's interesting to compare what would have happened to this guy if he had entered this country illegally.
The UK Border Agency would have stopped him at Heathrow and released him pending further investigations. He would then have disappeared for 5 years until eventually turning up in a UKBA check on illegal workers at a Balti restaurant in Manchester. He would have been detained until a court released him on the grounds of his human rights to a family life!

Well at least this explains why the UK Border Agency is so bloody useless

It's simply that they cannot afford to send all of the illegal immigrants, overstayers and foreign criminals back because the cost of the privately chartered flights is so expensive!
The theory, as far as it goes, is not bad. Apparently the Agency books charter flights to take bulk numbers of returnees back to their countries of origin. But then they fail to fill all, or even nearly all, of the available seats. It's like the opposite of Easyjet.
According to information released under a Freedom of Information request UKBA has spent £133 million in the last 5 years, which equates to an average or £5000 per person returned.
Eh? £5000! You could very nearly buy them a seat on a Richard Branson flight into space for that. £500 would be more reasonable and even that is a lot for a flight to Eastern Europe which is where most of them go nowadays.
This is what a spokesman for the UK Border Agency says:

It is right that those with no right to be here should go home and these flights still represent a cost effective way of removing in volume.

Yes I daresay it is a cost effective method but the trouble is that you're not removing in bulk are you?
Also:

Some flights are left deliberately unfilled because the UK has arrangements with host countries not to send too many people back in one go.

Why do we have arrangements with the host countries at all? What are they doing for us to deserve any kind of arrangement?
I would load them all up and simply open the door on arrival in Romania, or wherever, and shove them out.
Better still, I would compulsorily load them onto their national airlines without paying for tickets and let them reclaim the cost from their governments.
It is well beyond time that the increasingly feckless UK Border Agency was sorted out.

More nonsense from the feckless Theresa May

She must sort out the UK Border Agency whose innefficiency is allowing the virtual free flow of illegal immigrants and the escape of so many that have been refused asylum or caught working illegally. But doing what she is actually paid to do attracts less press attention, I suppose.