ON THE EUROPEAN UNION REFERENDUM

By Michael Skywood Clifford

Why we should vote LEAVE at the referendum

The EU is already a failed project, but if we remain in, then over forthcoming decades things will get far worse.

First, let me say, I have never had anything in common with the policies of Farrage, Ian Duncan Smith, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Dr Fox, and other far-right Tories. But now, regarding Europe, I do.

They are absolutely right about the EU, it is not simply a trade organisation; it is a political organisation wearing the sheep's clothing of a trade organisation. There are many successful trade organisations in the world but they do not insist on taking over the sovereignty of its member's nation states and dictating their laws.

To understand the great danger of the EU one needs to see that globalisation has become a charter which is great for the international hyper-wealthy but very bad for the ordinary citizen.

And don't believe nonsense that to solve important green issues we have to join an organisation that will override our politics and laws. We can solve green issues by discussing specifically green issues with other nations as a matter of course.

You will have already seen how Globalisation operates. Within a nation, citizens are taxed and are prosecuted for any crime they commit. But it's different for those who move around the international strata. Here crooks are free to move untaxed wealth all around the world, as there is no world police force or an agreed international judicial system to hold them to account.

The nation state, which captures a strong sense of love-of-homeland and pride in us all (although I am no 'Nationalist') has actually been a mirage for decades, simulated in the mind by cultural and sporting events. Essentially it is cheaper and easier for the world establishment to rule us as a vast economic block. Neither 'small is beautiful or 'localism' (which the Cameron professes to uphold) holds sway for these neo-liberal megalomaniacs.

The EU, in its heyday passed laws for the benefits of the people, such as good employment law and the law of Human Rights. But no longer. It is now run by the rich and the influential for the rich and influential. Once big corporations lobbied the EU to introduce the laws in their favour but now corporate agents actively direct and work from inside the organisation. The lunatics are taking over the asylum.

Globalisation is for the benefit of the world's rich. Mussolini himself defined Fascism as control by corporations. Multi-national corporations now run the world, their GDP often bigger than countries. Like Pacman, they are continually gobbling up acquistitions, the wealth accruing more and more and wealth. They are a snowball rolling down a hill gathering more snow. There is nothing that multi-nationals cannot control or buy up, as no one with any vestige of power is free of their bribes or threats. Companies like Phiip Morris International Inc, Chevron Corp, Morgan Stanley, Haliburton, Monsanto, Occidental Petroleum etc. are gobbling up the world. Corporations have bought up the pavements, the roads, the water, the power grids, our public telephone companies, the shopping centres of your cities. They are buying up everything! For the past 40 years the game of the multi-nationals has been hyper-turbo Monopoly on speed.

It is not difficult for them to get politicians in their pockets, or judiciary in their pay. Anyone who confronts the wants of the multi-national corporation face a juggernaut of the world's most expensive lawyers and will get flattened by them. Most of the world's print and broadcast media are owned by corporations. Their editors are placed because they are well paid cronies who will establish suitable news stories and propaganda. They have contempt for ground floor politics, cleverly allowing the impression of democracy to exist.

To vote remain secures our nation into the hands of the globalists – and it is into this block we become further entrenched if we remain.

You will have witnessed how over the past 30 years the public services of every European nation have been shrunk (sold off to globalists) whittling away at the free public services our families depend upon. As the Neo-Liberal elite get richer and more powerful, ordinary people's options are inversely diminished. Christianity has gone as a state influence to temper the hyper-wealthy; we now live in the world of social Darwinism, and 'it's cool not to care'.

Do not put all your grandchildren's eggs in one basket. Especially when those who carry the basket are unelected by the populace and whom you will be powerless to remove from office.

And remember, if we vote to remain in the EU at the referendum, the NHS will be fattened up with (your) tax payer's money. Then later it will be sold off to the fat rats; much has gone already.

The corporate world does not want any nation state to secede from any of their economic blocks. The southern states of the US wanted to leave the United States of America. Not allowed! Too much money, too much power. This caused the American civil war NOT slavery. You cannot leave your economic block. Not Catalonia Separatists, nor Greece, nor even Scotland. It's easy to join, we'll even have a multi-national bank fiddle the figures, but remember. YOU CAN CHECK OUT BUT YOU CAN NEVER LEAVE.

Making a decision

To vote to 'Remain' or 'Leave' the EU is an utterly massive decision with massive ramifications and unexpected consequences for how our future will turn out. MASSIVE! The media is saying that voting 'Leave' is dangerous, but 'Remaining' is undoubtedly more dangerous because we relinquish our power to distant people giving them control of our steering wheel.

The referendum commissioned by the British Government will be effectively asking if we wish to totally subsume into Europe. The old UK position in regard to Europe – before Cameron mooted a referendum – was probably the best place it could be, neither quite in nor out, nor part of the Euro, but with many voting perks. Everything has now changed, these perks have been given up, so it's if we remain things will be very different.

In the past, the British government has always sat on a fence, neither putting their entire bodies down in Europe or America yet playing both off to our advantage. But stupidly Cameron has changed that – through fear of UKIP stealing Tory votes – and has decided to hold this forthcoming referendum which will change our relationship with both Europe and the USA forever.

My change of opinion on the EU

When I was young I supported the entry into the EEC. Controlled and run by an ethos of Social Democracy, it passed laws that improved the rights of workers and bills like the Human Rights Act. But now it has been taken over by a generation of Neo-Liberals and corporate fat cats. The dream of the EU dream will become a nightmare for the ordinary citizen if we remain.

Europe is undemocratic

The media and politicians sing the praises of our democracy all the time, but what is British democracy?

Our system is a system of representational democracy is astoundingly UNDEMOCRATIC when you realise that each MP voting on bills in the House of Commons represent the decisions for 876,712 British citizens.

However, when we consider European democracy, 750 MEPs represent 503,000,000 citizens which means one MEP represents 670,666 citizens when voting for or against a bill issued from the Commission. Is this democracy? A question asked by UKIP, our largest party in the EU, and which ironically campaigns to leave.  And what percentage of citizens ever actually contact their MEP?

When it comes to democracy look at the EU's history. France, Ireland and Denmark voted against the constitution of the European Union in national referendums. Shock horror! The Eurocrats couldn't allow that to happen! So each country was given another referendum so that they got the right answer (or the maybe the election was rigged).

More recently, Greece voted in a referendum to leave the EU. Did they? The Greek PM was told by the Troika that if they did, they would send the boys round. He capitulated.

So be warned, if you vote for Brexit, they will certainly try to have another referendum so that you get it right the second time around. Or something worse will happen to stop us leaving.

The bureaucrats who can overrule our laws are not elected by our citizens. In the same way our citizens cannot remove them

"If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you,” said Labour's Tony Benn, “you do not live in a democratic system." He was a lifelong opponent of rule from Brussels. He was right.

The EU is a gravy train and its finances are opaque

Consider all the vast amount of money being paid by 28 states going into a central EU hub. For three decades British leaders – on moving on from Downing Street to the rungs of ambition of the EU – have promised to get to the bottom of EU finances. Yet its finances remain as opaque today as they ever. This is an outfit that has not had its accounts properly cleared for 19 years. If they can't organise that what can they organise? 

Is it a surprise that no privileged EU bureaucrat is prepared to tell us the real truth about the gravy train he delightfully sinks his snout in.

Every week the whole EU circus in Brussels, Belgium has to catch a train to Strasbourg in France 200 miles, to vote. This costs £100 million a year. Why? Because the EU consists of several parts that function together. The Commission, where unelected members (chosen by their national governments) sit to create and amend legislation. The European Parliament (which supposed to represent the people). The Council of Ministers which houses all the elected MEPs (which supposed to represent the Government). And the European Court in Strasbourg which passes and amends bills.

The EU has become a byword for institutionalized extravagance, waste and abuse of public money. Eager to create all its own trappings of statehood, the EU has its own self-serving, expensive diplomatic service with offices in Barbados and Papua New Guinea. In fact The EU has 10,000 officials who enjoy a take-home pay higher than a British Prime Minister’s. The EU's vast army of politicos, civil servants, translators and ancillary staff (all on high salaries and no doubt eye-watering expenses) are gobbling up the gravy and don't want us to vote 'Leave' and stop them.

The EU has become a barrel of rotten apples, a tower of Babel, that is so snagged up it struggles to actually pass many laws. Consider the crazy case in 2012. A high-level meeting was held in Brussels, attended by 76 officials as well as the President of the European Parliament, to agree to the name for a corridor in one of its buildings. The meeting failed to reach a decision. The EU is failing to come to any decision on any number of problems today, because 28 nation states can never agree!

Sovereignty and autonomy

But the most important question of all is why we would want to give away our power? Only a war-defeated nation does that, and yet we meekly hand over the control of our country for others to control our laws, finances and decisions.

Giving away one's power is what the elderly do when they are unable to look after themselves. Is this the British Enduring Powers of Folly! Think of the the basic freedoms, the birthright to control their own culture and agenda in the future. Did women win the vote in the 1920s to give it away to the Brussels' bureaucrats in the 2020s?

And to say that nation state governments are really in control is nonsense. Cameron's negotiations with the EU were hopeless. Even his modest requests – pitiful little crumbs – have been rejected. Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, said, "What makes me sad and angry is the undertone of national resentment….” It was "not possible" to change the UK's relationship with the EU, said Schulz, adding that Britain "belongs" to the EU.

Why did we bother to fight WWII? Why are we giving everything away just to get better trade deals! Bonkers.

The globalist elite wants to destroy nation states and rule easier-to-control economic blocks. They will DO anything to get you to vote 'REMAIN'. The politics of fear will increase…

The stink of the main-stream media is humming again, Downing Street and its cronies, the BBC and the newspapers (with a few exceptions) are awash with propaganda from Global capitalists and from Downing Street for you to vote to remain in the European Union. Recently Cameron came out with the ludicrous statement that if we vote to leave World War III will start. If there was even a smidgeon of a chance of that risk why did he agree to a referendum? And is he saying that if we remain then there will never be WWIII? Give the guy another buffoon button.

The EU is like a ponsi scheme, it has to keep attracting new investors to pay out the old ones. And the EU keeps adding more and more countries. Recently the Eurovision Song Contest included Australia. Is that as far as they are heading to keep the money coming in?

Recently on a documentary on BBC1 it showed a clip of Cameron claiming that the Brexiters were missing out on joining a European super state! Well that shows where he's really at. 

The Neo Liberal establishment, from Downing Street to Broadcasting House, will argue for Britain to remain in the EU, that the loss of our national sovereignty, the degrading of our democracy, is a price worth paying because it is good for business. They are wrong. Don't buy into their stinking culture of fear. Throw your arms around the big beautiful world. Don't be a Little European. Be a brave Briton. Vote to leave.

The Euro currency has been a disaster

The EURO was considered to be a disaster and it has proved to be. This was a EU project.

The greatest failure of the EU is its currency, a political construct with no basis in economic reality that carries the seeds of its own destruction. A single currency can never work without a single country.

* Nineteen nations with vastly different attitudes towards work, tax and corruption are locked together in a straitjacket of financial union. But you can't have financial union that works when one country makes Mercedes and another country makes moussaka, when one country pays its taxes and another does not, when one country goes to work for eight hours while another does the lambada on the beach. Where one country has an expensive slap up meal in an expensive restaurant and another country pays for it. This is the sort of thing that creates wars.

Apart from the fact that we’re having to bailout a currency we chose not to join, the EU hobbles far behind other regional economic groupings like Nafta (North American Free Trade Agreement – USA, Canada and Mexico), Mercosur (South America) and Asean (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations – Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, et al). "None of which," noted Boris Johnson, "has these elaborate sovereignty-sharing arrangements, with a peculiar parliament and court and a vast and ever growing corpus of supranational law." These nations trade for their mutual benefit.

They are not bound by the madness of a single currency. They do not have open borders. The case for the UK remaining in the EU will be made by the same people who assured us that Britain should ditch the pound sterling for the euro. They were wrong then. They are wrong now.

(* Thanks to Tony Parsons of the Daily Mirror for info here)

The EU is run by politicians with a strong federalist agenda who wish to see a United states of Europe. If we vote to stay in the EU (whatever pre-arranged agreement Cameron may claimed he has achieved about this) federalism will intensify and speed up after the referendum. The deeper we go inthe harder it will be to ever extricate ourselves. we will be subject to laws of people who are remote, for whom we never voted and whom we will have no control over.

Don't take away your grandchildren's rights to control and run their own affairs in the future?

The aims of the EU is simple, One parliament, one flag, one national anthem, one legal framework, one central bank, one currency and one armed force! We cannot remain without all of this affecting us. Political agendas have a tendency to creep up on us slowly, and creep they will. Boil a frog technique. If we left then the EU would have to change a great deal!

If the EU were so good, why has it utterly failed in bringing economic growth, jobs? The livelihoods of millions, especially in Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal, have been sacrificed on the altar of the federalist creed. Present youth unemployment: Greece 48.9%, Spain 45.3%, Croatia 40.3%, Portugal 30%. Is this a measure of success?

And where is this freedom from wars? We are hearing more about them forming their own military – which is on the forthcoming agenda. Recently the EU were highly involved in creating mayhem in Ukraine, where they were experimenting with flexing their military muscles.

Free trade?

We want the freedom to make stronger trade deals with other nations.

The alternative Trade Mandate web site states, "…the formation of the Eu's trade and investment policy has been widely criticised for a lack of transparency, a severe democratic deficity and rampant corporate bias.  They site the following real problems with the EU. 1. What is EU trade policy and who has a say in it? 2. Strengthening the role of the European and national parliaments. 3. Assuring meaningful civil society. 4. Participation. And last but not least: 5. Preventing corporate capture.

Trade was the first policy area where the European Commission received competence. To this day, compared to the other EU institutions, the formation of the EU’s trade policy is still clearly dominated by the Commission. It is a non-elected body but is, nonetheless, the only EU institution that can initiate trade policy, legislation and negotiations. Neither citizens, nor Parliaments, nor EU governments have this right!

The trade block we joined in the early 1970s which then accounted for 36 percent of world GDP, will account for less than 15 percent in 2020

The EU is in fact a trade area, a cartel which is as much about trade restriction as about free trade. This isn't formalised as such but is done by constraints about healthy & safety and other side line issues but it blocks other countries. Also over the past 40 years the EU has turned the UK into a warehouse for moving corporate goods back and forth to Europe. We can do better than that.

Iceland has done very well on its own. Many of the Nordic countries are very healthy without being in the political EU.

Britain was called 'the sick man of Europe' in the 70s before it joined the EEC, but how much of that was spin by the corporate media of the time to get us to begin to create a world government.

How MacMillan began moves to form a world government

In this article I prioritise our loss of Sovereignty, the obliteration of democracy and the perils of Globalisation as I regard these as the poison of the future.  But there many other reasons for leaving the EU.

For example. We need freedom to restore Britain’s special legal system. We want the freedom to deregulate the EU’s costly mass of laws. We need the freedom to keep our money and use it on things we regard as important. We need the freedom to improve the British economy and generate more jobs. We need the freedom to regenerate Britain’s fisheries. We need the freedom to control our own borders. 

And Migration

Hardly anything so perfectly embodies the achievements of European unification as open borders. Yet those open borders have brought us the squalor of the Jungle camp in Calais and the frontier rioting in Macedonia. The Schengen agreement is a complete mess.

I do not see leaving the EU as a solution to the problem of illegal immigration because people moving to better circumstances will always be a factor, and Britian as an island is a sitting duck for people smuggling. The reason for increased legal immigration is to bring in cheap labour and undercut the wages of the indigenous population – supported by all governments since MacMillan. UKIP would not even stop that.

And red tape

Then there is the red tape of Brussels. Bent bananas and cucumbers etc. are given a lot of publicity elsewhere. Even though at times I agree the bureaucracy is taken to ludicrous extremes, I don't have a big issue with this as regulations benefit the public; health and safety etc, but I know it bugs people.

Green Issues

It is said that we need the EU to come together over green issues. That is nonsense.

The Brexit camp is presented by their opponents as being little Englanders, uncooperative, lonely separatists, unable to get together with European friends and neighbours to thrash out mutual problems. That is nonsense. Community and communication is both good and essential. Getting together to form unions with our European neighbours about global warming and green issues and many other matters is absolutely necessary but in doing so we do not have to be tied to an organisation that takes away our power. This is where the The Green Party's (and the Labour Party's) official line is wrong-headed.

Its nice and cosy to think that joining Europe is the communal, more helpful, more economic and cheaper answer, we will all work together as a happy family. To all get together and be friends seems like the right things to do.

This is naïve. All it would actually mean is that more people will be ruled by fewer people and those fewer rulers will have massively more power. It will create a situation where less people cooperate in fact. It further dilutes democracy. A citizen's actual influence over the cabal at the top will be massively diminished.

And by joining up with the mass we are not being friendly to those we deliberately exclude. 

The NHS in great peril if we stay in

Remaining in the EU will bring about the quick demise of the NHS.

Over the past 30 years we have had 117 massive privatisations in the UK (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_privatizations)  – while the EU sat silently by, saying nothing, washing its hands. Just as it is doing now as British Steel disappears. This will happen to our NHS. It will be  privatised under a trade agreement being negotiated between EU and the USA called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnertship or TTIP. 

Hundreds of papers from the secretive trade talks TTIP have been leaked and obtained by Greenpeace of Netherlands. These leaks includes a US proposal to have a committee with representatives from Washington and Brussels to meet each year to review state-owned enterprises and monopolies which includes the NHS. One section of the papers makes it clear that the EU and America would seek eventually to end all forms of state intervention in competition with private sector. In other words the NHS will be killed off. The Neo-Liberal ideology to sell off all state organisations -leaving only the private sector – will lead to a society where everything is owned by the rich, where fees would be charged to do anything. We would be back in Feudalism, a gloablist Feudalism with a vote that would be utterly useless. There is no global Magna Carta.

David Cameroon stated neither he nor his government would privatise the NHS and that it should remain in the public domain. However – as he likely knows – if we remain in the EU  he will not be able to do a thing about it. The EU are looking to have the TTIP deal signed by the end of 2016.

It is also a fact that by blindly adhering to EU directives, the British government has hindered crucial research in key disease areas. Britain was world leading in these studies but because of the EU, we now lag behind the United States.

Selling off the NHS ould be legally impossible to reverse as corporations would be allowed to sue governments if they failed to follow the TTIP law.

Other deregulations could take place. Chemicals that were previously banned in food could now be legalised. Regulations protect the public.

End game

There is no doubt that within a few weeks before the referendum, the Remain camp will throw out a few nuclear grenades.

Initially, there will be all sorts of financial catastrophe bad news, a declining pound, a run on a bank or banks, tales of monies being moved abroad, stock market slump,etc etc, all these upheavals blamed on the threat of Brexit. This will be orchestrated just before the election to frighten everyone. And this will be coupled with the threat that if we Brexit then Scotland will be forced to leave the British Union.

Conclusion 

Brexit will undoubtedly improve the dodgy and corrupt nature of the EU but I suspect, despite everything written here,  YOU CAN CHECK OUT BUT NEVER LEAVE.

I seriously doubt that we will get another chance to leave after this referendum.

And right at the end of this article I have to say something quite depressing, which relates to my comments about representational democracy and my reference to the right wing Tories in the second paragraph. Is the voter really being asked to chose which of the two tyrannies is the least terrifying?

I am very concerned that whichever argument wins, the ordinary citizen will still be left powerless and bereft of democracy by the winning side of the establishment.