That's the net migration figure. Roughly half of which is migration from outside the EU.

Britains population is growing by roughly the same amount (1/3rd million) through the birth rate.

If we left the EU and stopped ALL immigration from EU nations (which is unlikely) then we'd only stop roughly 160/170k net immigrants and only deal with roughly a quarter of the problem.

I'd far rather we build alliances in the EU to put restrictions on those countries that shouldn't have been allowed in with full EU membership. Plenty of other countries struggle with this issue and it's better to be in there to solve it rather than leave and not be able to do anything about it, as Norway are finding now.

I would have really liked to amend the title of this thread, with an added addendum of a vote thing. Unfortunately I didn’t have the will to figure it out.

I digress, how come neither side haven’t wheeled out a famous celebrity or two?

Personally it wouldn’t matter who came on the telly, nobody could sway my vote, but I’m sure there’s millions of low intelligence voters who could still be persuaded by a celebrity endorsement.

Here’s a few who could pull some in.

1 – The Queen (I know, but what do you do

)

2 - Jeremy Kyle (If they can be @rsed to get off the sofa)

3 – Simon Cowell (See above)

4 – Michael Parkinson (Another one for the oldies, but more “Northern”)

Please feel free to add.

Before I go, I must harp back to the oldies, I’m talking eighty plus. Do they really deserve a vote, or is it one last “#uck You” from a generation of global conflict?

If we're taking the word "vote" to mean any kind of substantive process then the people who voted in the Nazis were the 1% - banking elites, industrial conglomerates - plus outside finance (mainly from the US & UK) - who sought first to protect their assets from the very real threat of appropriation by the Left (as happened in Russia on Herbert Hoover's watch) and then finally to enrich themselves by smashing labour unions, conscripting forced labour etc.

The media would have us believe the Nazis were swept into power by the popular vote when this couldn't be further from the truth. In reality they (just) managed to squeeze a toe-hold in elections and then expertly employed the Four Bs (Bullets, Blackmail, Bribery & Broads) to consolidate their position.

But NONE of this would have been possible without huge financial injections by Henry Ford, JP Morgan, Du Pont, I.G. Farben etc.

Whilst I applaud your willingness to embrace the word "negotiation" I'm afraid you are just a bit too late. It's a bit like stopping to reconsider whether it's a good idea to purchase an ocean liner after the champagne bottle has been broken on its bow, the blocks have been kicked out and it's rumbling down the ramp.

Part of the problem is the [ilanguage of the debate[/i itself (as defined by the media) which sets limits on its scope.

"Brexit" sounds so ... [iinnocuous[/i. But then I guess it needs to be because "Brescape" ... or plain old "RUN!" might just give the game away.

When will people finally wake up and realise that there's a WAR coming? And when it does do you seriously think people are going to care one way or another about "negotiation"?

Where is the anti-capitalist, socialist revolutionary that is Russell Brand? Maybe he's too busy decorating his Henley mansion so he can move in a few families of Syrian refugees?

I usually take what you say with a pinch of salt but I'm with you on this. It's coming.

These guys have been gearing up for some heavy duty chaos and destruction in the Middle East ever since 9/11. You can hardly sail a dozen miles anywhere in the Mediterranean without seeing serious amounts of military hardware.

We've got special forces embedded from Greece & Cyprus, through Turkey, Lebanon and right back across almost to the North West coast of Africa. The US AFRICOM budget is through the roof.

The entire region is on the verge of exploding. All it'll take is some "terrorist outrage" to emerge and they'll drop the hammer.

When that happens the "Migrant Crisis" you think we are suffering now will seem trivial.

Major wars are always preceded by a noticeable inertia which history teaches us is the devil's work to stop.

What happened to nuclear deterrent or mutually assured destruction?

It still holds. This is the paradox because whilst the traditional concept of warfare (carried out between states and practised by standing armies ) died at Hiroshima - the doctrine of "counter-insurgency warfare" (where instead of targeting soldiers you murder civilians) took over.

If there's ONE statistic everyone should know about wars it is the civilian body count.

Prior to WWI it was almost non-existent. Then, in that conflict, it jumped to around 10-15% with poison gas, artillery barrages etc.. By the time WWII arrived with area bombing and such it was up at around 30%. When Vietnam arrived counter-insurgency warfare was being rolled out on a massive scale. There the civilian body count was up at around 70% (and probably higher given that we don't know the full figures of people massacred by US death squads under the rubric of "The Phoenix Program"icon_wink.gif.

Today the civilian death toll in wars is around 95%. Now, the military can talk all they like about "precision munitions", "smart bombs" and such. Accident or design - the result is the same: genocide.

A good documentary worth watching which highlights this very point is Jeremy Scahill's [url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2532528/Dirty Wars[/url. Primarily it's about US extra-judicial assassination programs (drone strikes) but at the very end they explicitly admit that the US (and other NATO nations) have run "thousands" of missions involving special forces "kill teams" who basically fly into villages in places such as Afghanistan and wipe out the population.

Now, you can make a case for hitting what are known as "High Value Targets" - genuine troublemakers. But that wouldn't amount to much more than a few dozen missions.

It's little wonder the US has so many issues with gun violence. How do you rehabilitate someone who has spent two or three tours as part of a death squad? The answer is - you can't.

Can somebody please sort this out , this is a thread supposedly about Britains referendum on Eu membership , not loony tunes mark2

I'm probably going to vote to remain, but it's the lesser of two evils. I despise the EU for the deeply corrupt and unaccountable empire project it is, but this is a Faustian pact we have no way of escaping now. The calculated and shamelessly explicit corruption of "ever wider and deeper union" hooked us in a long time ago, the big irony is that as one of the few big net financial contributors to the project it effectively bribed our elites with our own money whilst taking even more of our money to bribe others!

We seriously need to bring migration back to more sensible levels, we need some immigrants for sure, but we need to treat economic migration as the cold, hard economic calculation it's supposed to be, the open door might get you a cheap cleaning lady or shop worker but the pressures on housing, education and healthcare are far more costly. Does a Greek barista bring the same benefit as an Indian nurse? I don't think so.

Dave was stupid to promise a deal he couldn't deliver and he made himself look idiotic by coming back with a pile of poo and telling everyone how well he'd done polishing it. The reality is that the EU project has hooked in loads of other countries too (with bribes we subsidised) and their economies are royally screwed by a dysfunctional momentary union, which means that exporting their unemployed to work as low skilled labour in the UK is a godsend whether it's remittances or UK Welfare benefits sent home or even just getting them off their own Welfare. But open door is not sustainable and you cannot run economic policy as if it were a charity with a bag of free money!

For someone voting remain you make a good argument to leave

, this might be our last chance

Hate to break it to you bruv but nukes have never been a deterrent.

So what do we make of this? www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/n ... -1-7967886

So what do we make of this? www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/n ... -1-7967886

Quote ="King Street Cat"So what do we make of this? www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/n ... -1-7967886'" He's a white Englishman so of course he's just 'a loner' and 'mentally ill' rather than an ideologically motivated terrorist.

Quote ="King Street Cat"So what do we make of this? www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/n ... -1-7967886'" He's a white Englishman so of course he's just 'a loner' and 'mentally ill' rather than an ideologically motivated terrorist.

I have tried to hold back for a short while, as a sign of respect.

If it turns out Mair has shouted “Britain First” that could be a game changer.

Any half intelligent person would be reviled by this act & if it transpires Mair has some affiliation to this organisation, well the majority of “don’t knows” could well have been swayed.

Than a small part of me relapses into Mugwump mode!

What if the powers that be, not the politicians, the higher powers, decided that things don’t seem to be going their way? So they resort to Plan B.

What a sad day for Britain and what tragedy for her young children, husband and family.

I fear what transpired today is a result of months and months of misguided rhetoric aimed at immigrants and refugees and also the the stoking of nationalism.

We have opened Pandora's box and as a result we have given our species's innate prejudices (tribalism, jingoism, racism, etc) a platform. Black day for British society and British politics.

If those are your reasons to remain I'd like to see your reasons for not leaving!

UKIP doing their best impersonation of the Nazi Party:

I have to agree - this happened 10 minutes from my house and in an area I know very well; it's genuinely shocking and deeply sad.

Much will be made of the mental illness, wrong time wrong place angle; but the increasingly nationalistic tone of the Leave campaign has given people with extreme views a convenient peg on which to hang their prejudices.

This referendum has become the most sordid, dishonest and divisive political exercise in a generation; campaigners from both sides should hang their heads.

The way the "wider and deeper EU" methodology worked, and it's an incredibly successful methodology from the viewpoint of the project itself, means it is too late to extract ourselves now. Our economic and political infrastructure is too deeply linked to the EU, we cannot simply get out of jail free. The Brexiteers do not have any plan that can actually extricate us without massive damage being done, and many of our "EU partners" see us as a convenient cash cow and won't happily let us disconnect from the gravy train. We need to stick it out, the project is already overstretched and reform cannot be delayed indefinitely. We may never get the ideal EU for the UK, but the current one has too many other problems to hold out on reform forever.

Another who has sought to make political capital out of a horrible crime. You should be ashamed of your vile post.

Yeah, how dare someone politicize a politically motivated assassination?

People like you are absolute bottom feeders. Get a grip.

Quote ="headhunter"Yeah, how dare someone politicize a politically motivated assassination? People like you are absolute bottom feeders. Get a grip.'" There are no depths some in the remain 'campaign' won't sink to win the referendum, especially as they are actually losing the argument. Look at this guy: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-e ... m-36567469 The World's fifth largest economy would suddenly become 'like Guernsey' (whatever that means) just because we vote to leave your undemocratic, wasteful, corrupt, horrible club. Scaremongering crap of the highest order.

Quote ="headhunter"Yeah, how dare someone politicize a politically motivated assassination? People like you are absolute bottom feeders. Get a grip.'" There are no depths some in the remain 'campaign' won't sink to win the referendum, especially as they are actually losing the argument. Look at this guy: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-e ... m-36567469 The World's fifth largest economy would suddenly become 'like Guernsey' (whatever that means) just because we vote to leave your undemocratic, wasteful, corrupt, horrible club. Scaremongering crap of the highest order.