The 'No to the EU' campaign Vol 2

[alock]

272BHP said:

What does everyone else see on the ground?

Almost everyone I know wants to leave. There are two exceptions and they are both very outspoken.
One setup a company 10 years ago selling medical products throughout the EU. They don't sell outside the EU.
The other works for an IT company providing services to airports throughout the EU.

I understand both of these people have very specific personal reasons to remain, but that is all it is, a concern that their jobs might under threat. They don't have a greater ideological reason to remain.

[don'tbesilly]

272BHP said:

I am confused by the polls to be honest.

I talk to a broad range of people and I can only think of a couple that actually want to remain in the EU, the vast majority seem to want out and many are quite forthright in their views.

What does everyone else see on the ground?

It is rather strange isn't it.

Like you I know very few people who wish to remain in, and as CB states further on in the thread, comments in the MSM made by readers of what ever paper/publication I am browsing seem resolute in their wish.

The other thing I often find strange is whatever happened to all those thousands of migrants in Calais?

They were there for quite some time, spent weeks and weeks getting there along with the expense of paying the people smugglers, caused untold amounts of inconvenience in their quest to get to the UK and have now decided to return from whence they came.
The media must be quite upset at the outcome as the troubles were reported on a daily basis and now they have nothing to write/talk about.
It's weird how they all decided to leave at the same time too.

Strange.

[loafer123]

don'tbesilly said:

272BHP said:

I am confused by the polls to be honest.

I talk to a broad range of people and I can only think of a couple that actually want to remain in the EU, the vast majority seem to want out and many are quite forthright in their views.

What does everyone else see on the ground?

It is rather strange isn't it.

Like you I know very few people who wish to remain in, and as CB states further on in the thread, comments in the MSM made by readers of what ever paper/publication I am browsing seem resolute in their wish.

The other thing I often find strange is whatever happened to all those thousands of migrants in Calais?

They were there for quite some time, spent weeks and weeks getting there along with the expense of paying the people smugglers, caused untold amounts of inconvenience in their quest to get to the UK and have now decided to return from whence they came.
The media must be quite upset at the outcome as the troubles were reported on a daily basis and now they have nothing to write/talk about.
It's weird how they all decided to leave at the same time too.

Strange.

Odd, isn't it. Maybe they are all still there, but the media aren't mentioning it for some odd reason...?

[GetCarter]

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2016-03/10/ste...

HTH

[///ajd]

AstonZagato said:

TEKNOPUG said:

That being the case, why aren't they already headquartered in Frankfurt? In fact, why aren't all US Investment banks already headquartered in Frankfurt. They wouldn't even need a London office. Frankfurt has all these great things going for it and is never going to be outside of the EU (whilst it exists), so why is everyone of any note already headquartered in London? It can't be because of our EU membership can it, because you've already stated all the benefits of Frankfurt and that's also in the EU. Maybe there are other, more compelling reasons....

Frankfurt isn't dominant because London is currently in the EU. London, as I said in my much earlier post, has innate advantages when on a level playing field. The playing field would be tilted by an out vote - tilted in Frankfurt's favour.

Take the Swiss. They have headquartered their investment bank operations not in Switzerland (they would dearly love to - I worked for a Swiss bank for 8 years and they loathe that London has the upper hand) but inside the EU for the very reasons I outlined. They need senior management for the investment bank inside the EU. If London is not in the EU, then that decision would have to be questioned.

Again, I am voting out but I think it is blind to say that it will have no impact on the financial services industry. I have 30 years of experience in the area - the majority of which has been in senior management or partnership roles.

You make some very compelling points AZ.

I share the concern and one of my drivers is the subsequent relative impact on our economy.

Given it could be argued this cements the financial argument, for what reason are you voting leave?

[Cobalt Blue]

Now the 'independent' Electoral Commission are to leaflet every household, urging them to register to vote. This a few short weeks *after* local elections! http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/14/eu... Low turnout is claimed to favour the leave side.

Is there no end to the duplicity and manipulation of public opinion? How can the coming referendum be regarded as a valid plebiscite given this level of bias and underhand tactics?

[AstonZagato]

davepoth said:

AstonZagato said:

davepoth said:

AstonZagato said:

davepoth said:

AstonZagato said:

Credit Suisse and UBS have headquartered their investment banks in London because they can't do so in Switzerland and be inside the EU. Senior management and compliance need to be located inside the EU.

EU senior management and EU compliance need to be inside the EU, so any banks' EU presence needs to be no more than a branch office if that's what they decide to do.

I wish it were that simple.

So how does it work then? What does a bank whose head office is in (for example) New York do? Move their head office to Europe, or incorporate a division of the company there which has responsibility for just the EU?

I worked for a US Iinvestment bank. They headquartered their European operations in London. 6,000 people. Frankfurt was a satellite office. 200 people. If you are going to move senior management to, say, Frankfurt, why duplicate roles (Head of EU compliance in Frankfurt and Head of European Compliance in London)? You would just move your European Head to Frankfurt.
The head people will want the other senior people close by. The senior people will want their juniors close by. The juniors want to be close to the person who decides their bonus. They then find that the office space costs a fraction of what it does in London. The staff accommodation costs less too so, even after relocation costs, remuneration is lower. London becomes a branch of the Frankfurt office.
Having lived in Frankfurt, I can tell you it works as a city. Traffic flows better than London. The airport is better, closer and easier. The work/life balance is better (if you have a family).

But that's a bit of a different thing, isn't it? You original comment said that a bank's senior management has to be in the EU. The only bit of a bank's senior management that needs to be in the EU is the bit mandated by the EU under the EU rules, and that is the part that deals with trades that take place within the EU. Whether or not they move their HQ or European HQ to the EEA is down to their particular circumstances.

And the only difference in case of Brexit for a bank wanting to do business in Frankfurt is that rather than passporting into the EEA the bank would have its EEA operations regulated by the country it based its operations in rather than by the UK authorities. Now, a lot of those banks have based themselves in the UK for reasons unrelated to passporting (ease of doing business with the US and Asia, regulatory environment, and so forth) so there are a lot of non-EU related reasons for having your international or regional HQ here. Just ask someone like Standard Chartered Bank, who do virtually no business in the EU at all but are still headquartered in London. Or that famous London institution, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.

No. Sorry but I don't think you understand. A US bank currently centres its European operations in London. They regard Europe as one zone. including Switzerland and Norway that are outside of the EU. They have no concept of EU and non-EU in the way they organise their business because their European headquarters is inside the EU and they can deal with the exceptions easily. If you move London outside the EU, that changes.

You are right. Only the bits of the senior management that deal with the EU has to be in the EU. But that is all the senior management - they deal with EU and non-EU. So either you hire another person and split the role, or you move the pan-European Head to Frankfurt (or Paris or Dublin). If you do that, then the centre of gravity shifts and they want to keep an eye on their juniors. Their juniors want to suck up to their bosses. The whole thing shifts.

However much you and I would not like this to be a strong possibility, it is

[///ajd]

Cobalt Blue said:

Now the 'independent' Electoral Commission are to leaflet every household, urging them to register to vote. This a few short weeks *after* local elections! http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/14/eu... Low turnout is claimed to favour the leave side.

Is there no end to the duplicity and manipulation of public opinion? How can the coming referendum be regarded as a valid plebiscite given this level of bias and underhand tactics?

You could also question the validity of an outcome that was helped by apathy.

Like in the scot ref, if this is very close - whilst it may technically be democratically defined - a 51% leave vote is a rather shakey mandate to do something that has no plan and 49% probably consider is rather reckless. The scale of the impact of brexit could be argued to need a much stronger mandate, not a feeble "just edged over the line".

[loafer123]

///ajd said:

Cobalt Blue said:

Now the 'independent' Electoral Commission are to leaflet every household, urging them to register to vote. This a few short weeks *after* local elections! http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/14/eu... Low turnout is claimed to favour the leave side.

Is there no end to the duplicity and manipulation of public opinion? How can the coming referendum be regarded as a valid plebiscite given this level of bias and underhand tactics?

You could also question the validity of an outcome that was helped by apathy.

Like in the scot ref, if this is very close - whilst it may technically be democratically defined - a 51% leave vote is a rather shakey mandate to do something that has no plan and 49% probably consider is rather reckless. The scale of the impact of brexit could be argued to need a much stronger mandate, not a feeble "just edged over the line".

I disagree. All binary referenda are close run things - as you say, look at the Scottish Independence Referendum - if you required, say, a 66% majority, no referendum would change anything as the majority of people may not see democracy work.

I do, however think it is right that as many people as possible be encouraged to vote, even though that may be against the outcome I want...it is democracy.

Edited by loafer123 on Sunday 15th May 13:35

[s2art]

///ajd said:

You could also question the validity of an outcome that was helped by apathy.

Like in the scot ref, if this is very close - whilst it may technically be democratically defined - a 51% leave vote is a rather shakey mandate to do something that has no plan and 49% probably consider is rather reckless. The scale of the impact of brexit could be argued to need a much stronger mandate, not a feeble "just edged over the line".

You could argue on similar lines to any vote. Either we are democratic or we are not. Assigning arbitrary thresholds to a plebiscite forces the question; who sets the threshold?
Why do you state that the scale of the impact of brexit requires an arbitrary threshold. Even Stuart Rose the nominal head of the stay campaign has stated that nothing much changes if there is a leave vote.

[confused_buyer]

don'tbesilly said:

Like you I know very few people who wish to remain in, and as CB states further on in the thread, comments in the MSM made by readers of what ever paper/publication I am browsing seem resolute in their wish.

It probably depends a lot on where you are. I was involved in the local elections a couple of weeks back and was very surprised by the total, overwhelming, "outness" of voters. These, of course, were people bothering to vote at a local so no doubt are 100% to vote at the referendum. I can certainly see why the turnout issue is of such concern for both sides.

It wasn't particularly party bound either - if anything the LibDems and Labour voters were more passionately "out" than the Tories.

This was in mixed rural/suburban Essex - though not one of the strong UKIP areas by any means - the impression given in, say, London may well be very different.

[confused_buyer]

///ajd said:

You could also question the validity of an outcome that was helped by apathy.

Like in the scot ref, if this is very close - whilst it may technically be democratically defined - a 51% leave vote is a rather shakey mandate to do something that has no plan and 49% probably consider is rather reckless. The scale of the impact of brexit could be argued to need a much stronger mandate, not a feeble "just edged over the line".

I think a vote is a vote. It is how we elect MP's, councillors, MSPs, MLAs etc.

It is easy to register to vote in this country and easy to vote. If people exercise their right not to vote then that is as valid as anything else and saying they do not wish to have a say.

I have no sympathy with people who do not vote and moan afterwards.

[AstonZagato]

///ajd said:

You make some very compelling points AZ.

I share the concern and one of my drivers is the subsequent relative impact on our economy.

Given it could be argued this cements the financial argument, for what reason are you voting leave?

The EU is a fundamentally undemocratic, corrupt and pointless organisation. It has consistently lied to its electorates about its goals and ambitions and has no popular mandate for what it does. It has hampered the economies that it is supposed to serve with over-arching and over-blown regulation.

It is in desperate need of reform but the technocrats that run it have no desire to do so nor any real concept of why it needs reform.

A little background.

When I was in Frankfurt I'm the mid 90s, I wrote a paper for my (Swiss) bank on the implications for the Euro for our business.. I correctly stated that the Euro could not work without fiscal transfers (E.g. Greece). Fiscal transfers (explicitly forbidden my the Maastricht treaty) could not happen unless there was fiscal Union. Fiscal Union could only happen with political union. None of those things were in place and none were either being requested or explained. I didn't understand why not. It was so obvious that at some stage a crisis would engulf the eurozone.

Fast forward to the late 00s and the first signs of serious trouble in the eurozone. I heard an interview with Delors. He was asked why he had failed to foresee this problem. He replied that the architects of the Euro knw]ew all along it was doomed to failure. To succeed it would need fiscal and political union. There was no way that they could secure a vote to deliver that. HOwever, if the crisis caused were serious enough, then the populace would want it imposed on them. He smugly smiled and said he thought it was all going rather to plan.

50% youth unemployment in Greece and Spain. A generation blighted. But all worthwhile for his European dream.

Disgusting. I want to be as far form these people as possible.

Economically, I think Non finance thrives outside the eu.

Edited by AstonZagato on Sunday 15th May 14:18

[davepoth]

AstonZagato said:

No. Sorry but I don't think you understand. A US bank currently centres its European operations in London. They regard Europe as one zone. including Switzerland and Norway that are outside of the EU. They have no concept of EU and non-EU in the way they organise their business because their European headquarters is inside the EU and they can deal with the exceptions easily. If you move London outside the EU, that changes.

You are right. Only the bits of the senior management that deal with the EU has to be in the EU. But that is all the senior management - they deal with EU and non-EU. So either you hire another person and split the role, or you move the pan-European Head to Frankfurt (or Paris or Dublin). If you do that, then the centre of gravity shifts and they want to keep an eye on their juniors. Their juniors want to suck up to their bosses. The whole thing shifts.

However much you and I would not like this to be a strong possibility, it is

It depends on whether the UK maintains a critical mass in financial services I imagine, and how much of that is dependent upon EU trade.

I found this paper:

https://www.icaew.com/~/media/corporate/files/tech...

while they didn't come to any conclusion (it depends too much on the settlement in their opinion) there are some interesting takeaways:

only 5% of UK accountancy services revenue comes from the EU
only 16% of insurance premiums on the london market are from the EU
44% of all EUR foreign exchange transactions take place in London, twice as much as in the rest of the EU put together.

I wonder what the EU could do to stop Euros being traded in London?

[mondeoman]

AstonZagato said:

///ajd said:

You make some very compelling points AZ.

I share the concern and one of my drivers is the subsequent relative impact on our economy.

Given it could be argued this cements the financial argument, for what reason are you voting leave?

The EU is a fundamentally undemocratic, corrupt and pointless organisation. It has consistently lied to its electorates about its goals and ambitions and has no popular mandate for what it does. It has hampered the economies that it is supposed to serve with over-arching and over-blown regulation.

It is in desperate need of reform but the technocrats that run it have no desire to do so nor any real concept of why it needs reform.

A little background.

When I was in Frankfurt I'm the mid 90s, I wrote a paper for my (Swiss) bank on the implications for the Euro for our business.. I correctly stated that the Euro could not work without fiscal transfers (E.g. Greece). Fiscal transfers (explicitly forbidden my the Maastricht treaty) could not happen unless there was fiscal Union. Fiscal Union could only happen with political union. None of those things were in place and none were either being requested or explained. I didn't understand why not. It was so obvious that at some stage a crisis would engulf the eurozone.

Fast forward to the late 00s and the first signs of serious trouble in the eurozone. I heard an interview with Delors. He was asked why he had failed to foresee this problem. He replied that the architects of the Euro knw]ew all along it was doomed to failure. To succeed it would need fiscal and political union. There was no way that they could secure a vote to deliver that. HOwever, if the crisis caused were serious enough, then the populace would want it imposed on them. He smugly smiled and said he thought it was all going rather to plan.

50% youth unemployment in Greece and Spain. A generation blighted. But all worthwhile for his European dream.

Disgusting. I want to be as far form these people as possible.

Economically, I think Non finance thrives outside the eu.

Edited by AstonZagato on Sunday 15th May 14:18

Thank you - kinda ties in with my thoughts / feelings.

[JawKnee]

alock said:

Almost everyone I know wants to leave. There are two exceptions and they are both very outspoken.
One setup a company 10 years ago selling medical products throughout the EU. They don't sell outside the EU.
The other works for an IT company providing services to airports throughout the EU.

I understand both of these people have very specific personal reasons to remain, but that is all it is, a concern that their jobs might under threat. They don't have a greater ideological reason to remain.

Yes, the prospect of losing your livelihood is not as great an ideological argument as the UK being able to make its own bendy cucumber laws....

Get a grip.

[s2art]

JawKnee said:

alock said:

Almost everyone I know wants to leave. There are two exceptions and they are both very outspoken.
One setup a company 10 years ago selling medical products throughout the EU. They don't sell outside the EU.
The other works for an IT company providing services to airports throughout the EU.

I understand both of these people have very specific personal reasons to remain, but that is all it is, a concern that their jobs might under threat. They don't have a greater ideological reason to remain.

Yes, the prospect of losing your livelihood is not as great an ideological argument as the UK being able to make its own bendy cucumber laws....

Get a grip.

What is somewhat amusing is that both people think that Brexit will make a difference to their livelihoods. It wont.

[turbobloke]

JawKnee said:

alock said:

Almost everyone I know wants to leave. There are two exceptions and they are both very outspoken.
One setup a company 10 years ago selling medical products throughout the EU. They don't sell outside the EU.
The other works for an IT company providing services to airports throughout the EU.

I understand both of these people have very specific personal reasons to remain, but that is all it is, a concern that their jobs might under threat. They don't have a greater ideological reason to remain.

Yes, the prospect of losing your livelihood is not as great an ideological argument as the UK being able to make its own bendy cucumber laws....

Get a grip.

The Remainians under discussion have already got a grip, on pure self-interest, which is ironically a politician's trait also.

For a once in a lifetime vote such as this they ought to have a grip on the national interest, and if they vote In it might be on the basis that they think it's the better option for UK plc, I disagree strongly but respect such a view.

If people are so insecure then they should have been increasing their employability or making contingency plans for their business well before now.

[anonymous-user]

s2art said:

What is somewhat amusing is that both people think that Brexit will make a difference to their livelihoods. It wont.

This sneering tone of the outers is utterly repellant.
They seem to think no-one should have any concerns at all and that we should just accept it'll be fine because boris/farage etc say it will. If they do have concerns they are to be labelled as cowards or otherwise.

I'm a young mechanical engineer. Patrick minford says that if we left the eu we would eliminate manufacturing. Where does that put me career wise? You want me to vote out and put my entire career, the rest of my life at risk for some uncertainty? That's not cowardice or 'bedwetting'-voting in is the sensible thing for me to do.

[mondeoman]

cookie118 said:

s2art said:

What is somewhat amusing is that both people think that Brexit will make a difference to their livelihoods. It wont.

This sneering tone of the outers is utterly repellant.
They seem to think no-one should have any concerns at all and that we should just accept it'll be fine because boris/farage etc say it will. If they do have concerns they are to be labelled as cowards or otherwise.

I'm a young mechanical engineer. Patrick minford says that if we left the eu we would eliminate manufacturing. Where does that put me career wise? You want me to vote out and put my entire career, the rest of my life at risk for some uncertainty? That's not cowardice or 'bedwetting'-voting in is the sensible thing for me to do.

Where does he say that?