Posts Tagged ‘referendum’

Remain campaign nonsense

Thursday, June 9th, 2016 | Religion & Politics

stronger-in

When the EU referendum arrives, I will be voting to remain. I want to see an open, inclusive country that plays its part in the global community and helps lead the world forward at the head of the world’s largest and most powerful union.

However, I have been disappointed about the amount of bullshit being put out by the remain campaign. Tim Farron’s case for voting for the country we want is drowned out by the scare tactics being constantly pumped out by the remain-Conversatives. I want to challenge some of these.

£4,300 a year worse off

George Osborne made the claim that families would be £4,300 worse off. This is obviously is not true. Could you find £4,300 spare in your household? Most people couldn’t. Certainly someone earning £12,000 a year on minimum wage couldn’t. Many people live below though: working part time, being unable to find a job, being on long-term sick or retirees living on a pension.

I earn in the 90th percentile, so I could afford it. However, I couldn’t afford to subsidise it for the other nine people who earn less than me. There simply isn’t that much money going spare in the UK. It would be impossible for Brexit to cost households that much.

On the BBC Fact Check they explain he is actually talking about GPD, and not actual cost to families. However, it was explicitly not reported that way.

Nobody would sign trade agreements with us

US President Barack Obama claimed Britain would be at the back of the queue for a trade agreement if we left Europe. This could be true, but I very, very much doubt it. The UK is the United States’s 7th largest trading partner, second in Europe. If we left, having no trade agreement hurts them. Are we expected to believe they would cut off their nose? In reality, we’re likely to be first in the queue, being the most valuable trading partner now without a trade agreement.

Europe will send all the British expats back

Britain doesn’t have more people living abroad than any other country, but we do have a substantial population (somewhere around 1.2 million) of expats living in other EU countries.

However, it is unlikely that Brexit would mean much. Unlike Eastern European countries that are pumping out the cheap labour some people in the UK object to, British expats tend to be high-skilled workers or wealthy retirees. They also mostly live in Western European countries such as Spain and Ireland who most likely would continue to enjoy a good relationship with us.

Democracy in action

Friday, November 7th, 2008 | Religion & Politics

Last night was the union council meeting to look at what motions should make it to the referendum or not. Myself, Norm, Nicola, Moz and Gijsbert turned up to support motion 4 and while it’s probably a good job we did, it didn’t do us much good.

I have written a more in depth article for Leeds Student (and anyone else who wants to run it) which we’ll be sending in along with all our other articles in the hope some of it will make it to the next issue, but I will briefly summarise things here.

First of all, amendment 4 passed which removed “this union resolves” part 1, which was to stop stocking Halal and Kosher meat. From a motion to remove Halal and Kosher meat from the union. There is no way that is constitutional! The union council rules state they cannot pass amendments that “significantly alter the nature of the motion.” How could you ever, ever come up with a less appropriate amendment? How could you change it’s nature any more than that?

The amount of open descrimination against the atheist community was also quite clear. It didn’t seem to matter how many times union council members had gone on and on about how this is about whether motions should go forward to referendum, not about the politics of each issue, union council members repeatedly voiced their own opinions and yet hardly any of them mentioned the core issue here – animal welfare.

Finally it would seem important in what is aiming to be a democractic process that union council members are free to vote how they wish. It is interesting then that when Barry abstained from voting on the motion (not even voted for it but simply abstained) he was ridiculed by the chair and asked to give reasons for his decisions.

All of this amounts to showing the clear descrimination that goes on, on campus against the atheist community.