Well apparently it’s going to be the end of the world, doom and gloom, an utter disaster for the whole UK as we crash into a medieval horror with dead bodies piled in the streets and the survivors shuffling from place to pace looking for food. Now I’ve always been fond of a good apocalypse, Zombies, Aliens, the odd virus, post nuclear war. As a gamer I’ve wandered through them all and had fun doing so, but that’s in a game, where the destruction of civilisation isn’t that bad as long as you can find plenty of ammo. In the real world however, it’s not so much fun. Look at the north west of England with water you can’t drink and what seems to be a steadily spreading plague of untreatable Gonorrhoea. So since I have been hearing every news program howling about the end of the world, economic crash, the collapse of our society and people turning to cannibalism to survive I was listening and trying to work out what was going on. Fear mongering basically. The official campaign for the EU vote is off and running and this morning we had that paragon of economic prediction, the chancellor, adding his voice to the prophecy of despair. Leaving the EU is going to be our end, experts and advisers have been queuing up to say so and they know what they are talking about, don’t they? In fact as one person said over the weekend, about the only thing we haven’t been warned about as a result of the Brexit campaign winning is an asteroid hitting us and wiping out all life larger than the rodents. Is that what happened to the dinosaurs, did they regret voting to leave as they saw that ball of fire in the sky, coming closer and closer? Now today we have our friend George adding to the worries by throwing numbers in all directions. The British government would lose £36bn in net tax receipts, equivalent to 8p on the basic rate of income tax or 7p on VAT, if the UK leaves the EU. The most likely result is that Britain would be poorer by £4,300 per household. The best result would be a mere £2,600 per household worse off. But that isn’t even the worst case, George’s report concluded that the worst option, a fully independent nation using only World Trade Organisation rules would lead to a £45bn drop in tax receipts, and a 7.5% drop in GDP. Scary stuff, and produced by the Treasury and fully endorsed by our very own chancellor George, so it must be right. But once you look at the small print you see that this is based on a steady fall in trade and GDP over a 14 year period, leading to the results above somewhere around 2030. These are very exact numbers for a time so far ahead we have exactly no idea what is going to change, after all George told us in 2010 that by 2015 the economy would be completely turned around and the deficit would be gone, not long ago he was saying it would be cleared by 2020 but even that involved some very spurious manipulations. How he can endorse something 14 years ahead when he cannot manage five years ahead does rather lead to more than a few questions, which given his achievements and lack thereof with the British economy over the last six years doesn’t inspire confidence. The thing that makes me angry with this is that after months of fear mongering and doom spreading the proper campaign starts and from the first day we are deluged with yet more fear and doom. Spokes oik after spokes oik have been rolled out to wail about how we are all doomed, doomed, if we even think about leaving the EU. Britain will collapse on its own, those European countries that sell us stuff now will stop because we will no longer be part of the EU though I suspect that since we are talking about a shade under £300 BILLION in goods from Europe sold to the UK, that would be a big enough matter to get around any pesky blockages caused by us no longer being in the EU. But it will be the end, Great Britain will be Great no longer and will be a little island on the edge of the prosperous and powerful euro zone. Why, WHY, can’t these idiots actually give us good reasons to stay in Europe, is it so hard to find a good reason? Where are the positive things we gain, where is the good news, where is the attempt to sell staying as a good thing rather than preaching that leaving will be a total disaster. Sooner or later the Brexit people are going to start asking some questions, they are already pointing out the doom and gloom, but they are going to start asking the Stay campaign just exactly what are the reasons to stay. A challenge to Dave and George and the rest to explain what we get out of EU membership that is positive, because everything so far is massively negative. The stay campaign fail time and again to sell STAY as a product, it’s a bit like a double glazing salesman who spends an hour telling you not to buy from the other guy because his windows leak and will fall out in 18 months. Not a word about how their product is good, every word is about how the opposition’s product is crap. It’s a campaign based on unsupportable foundations, because if you can’t say anything good about your cause, how can you expect other people to join you. But no, it’s just a continuation of politics, insult the other team, make people so afraid they will pick the lesser evil. The nasty party’s standard marketing, adopted by Labour as well for these arguments. Is there nothing good to say about staying in the EU? Are the voters of this country so jaded and uninterested that they can only be convinced by the very worse news, is that all we have left these days, holding our noses and picking the least worst option. That’s how our elections seem to be and it’s how the EU vote is going as well. Come on you lot in the Stay campaign, how about some good news, how about regaling us with positives, sing the praises of the EU, sell us on the yes vote. If you can. | |
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