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Dec 2015
3:24pm, 10 Dec 2015
7,405 posts
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rf_fozzy
Chris - I don't disagree with your arguments by the way, I just look at it and say, do we really want to have to suffer the shittiness to prove a point. Most people can look at the situation and see that, for all its many, many faults, we're better off in the EU and trying to reform it.
And by reform it, I mean properly - not the stuff Cameron is bleating about to try placate Eurosceptics and the UKIPpers. The real stuff- the accountability, the technocracy, the transparency of EU finances, TTIP and scrapping it etc - that's the stuff that needs reforming.
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Dec 2015
3:25pm, 10 Dec 2015
5,539 posts
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God Rest Ye Merry Jambomen
As long as you make that research Open Access Fozzy  Ha ha - - sorry, work hat on there for a moment. I do agree though, working with OA shows me how much is spent on research in this country and that we do benefit a lot by it.
Anyway, I am marginally in via the good old 'Gut Instinct', but I really need to sit and listen to the cases on both sides before I actually have to choose as I don't properly know enough about either.
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Dec 2015
3:27pm, 10 Dec 2015
20,048 posts
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McGoohan
TMW - you're talking about the woman I love!
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Dec 2015
3:31pm, 10 Dec 2015
8,295 posts
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Chrisull
Yes - I'm not an ardent "outer", and I was until Greece happened a definite "in", but the financial "waterboarding" was terrible, at the EU's behest and completely un-necessary and hasn't fixed the underlying long term problems.
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Dec 2015
3:56pm, 10 Dec 2015
7,406 posts
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rf_fozzy
Jambomo - I'm all for Open Access! I try do it for all my research output (which reminds me that I need to do it for some of my old papers). Worked on a big Wellcome Trust grant, so that was all open access! Currently trying to get a follow-on grant to that work, which I think will be very exciting and potentially very big impact for an ageing population. Hoping to submit it to ARUK in the New Year.
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Dec 2015
4:09pm, 10 Dec 2015
19 posts
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premierfella
Marginally "out".
Currently there is an argument that we have either the best of both worlds or the worst of both worlds (opt outs, being outside the Euro area are the most obvious examples). As a result, the UK position on issues within the EC is often easily dismissed ("oh, forget about Cameron/Brown/Blair/whoever, that's just the UK moaning from the sidelines again" sort of thing).
Cameron's reform wins will be no such thing - trying to get other members to agree to change fundamental rules of the club is a waste of energy and just isolates the UK further. Yes, our EC partners would very much like us to stay in (for various reasons, depending on the country in question), but any significant concessions Cameron went away with would either be open to erosion over time (the EC is very good at chipping away at things when it wants to in ingenious ways!) or will enshrine us as the outsider within - do we really want to be one of those, or would the UK simply be better off as an outside trading partner that EC members don't have to treat as the annoying granddad who is never happy with anything?
There is also the strong possibility that if there were an Out vote (which no doubt would be a fairly narrow one), and given how long the process to extract the UK from the EC would take, the old chestnut of a do-over would spring up (i.e. the UK votes out, politicians at home and abroad panic, urgent discussions are held and we end up with a second referendum on slightly different terms).
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Dec 2015
4:43pm, 10 Dec 2015
2,268 posts
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TnoP
A million % out. Those who claim that it would cut off our biggest trading market are scaremongering. If we have a good product, at the right price, other countries will buy it, regardless of whether we are in some bloated, unregulated club. There are European countries not in the EU who do just fine thank you and we can be one of them. What gives Brussels the right to tell me what to do? Run, run like the wind.....
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Dec 2015
5:32pm, 10 Dec 2015
10,585 posts
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Girlie
Definitely out. Switzerland is surrounded by the EU countries, but is a thriving country with good trade links.
My reasons are the same as the other out voters - this country was asked if we wanted to join a Common Market for trade back in 1972 not what it has now become.
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Dec 2015
5:33pm, 10 Dec 2015
11,987 posts
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ChrisHB
Will they still buy it if there are trade barriers, such as import duty? if we make things to a UK spec rather than an EU spec?
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Dec 2015
5:44pm, 10 Dec 2015
7,057 posts
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simbil
I did a bit of research on that ChrisHB, and it seems to be an EU principle not to have barriers to trade so I don't think the UK would be 'punished' if it left with import duty or the like.
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