At the risk of opening a can of worms!

If we wake up on Friday morning and the nation has decided (incorrectly in my opinion), that we are better off out of Europe will this have any impact on the approach taken by the RFL.

For example we keep getting told by the 'leave' lot that leaving would make us stronger and mean we can set up trading arrangements with the important countries of the world (America and China). If this is the case and we leave the EU will this mean a strategic shift by the RFL to try to bring a US side or Chinese side into the Super league. In a few years time we might be playing against the Washington weasels or the Beijing beavers! Might be quite interesting that.

if the outcome is remain then at least all the dragons players won't spend half their training times filling out visas. I assume this might actually be the case as they would effectively be earning money undertaking their employment at least some of the time in the uk. Hate to think what a headache it is going to be for all the premiership football players from Europe who suddenly have to prove under a points based entry system that they are able to come here to work.

Leaving the EU will not see a US or Chinese team in super league. It will cause a recession and hurt clubs financially due to supporters reduced spending power. That's about the only impact it will have I believe.

Now we've got a political debate on here. This should be good!

Like any business, the cost of Rugby League clubs overheads will increase. Whether it's through rising utility bills or buying merchandise from overseas with a weakened pound or the hundred other things a Brexit decision will impact. And if the clubs try to pass the costs on to the supporters with increased prices, they'll find that these supporters are in less secure employment with, after inflation, less spending power.

This will apply to the players as well, where in an inflationary environment a 1.8million cap will be worth a lot less next year than this. Top players will be harder to attract and retain, especially considering weakened currency set against Australia.

And forget about capital projects like the South Stand being delivered on budget, as the money set aside for it is worth less than is was while material costs simultaneously increase.

And this at a time when many clubs - not Leeds, but many clubs - are struggling financially. I can see several going out of business, just as in every other sector.

There will be a short term blip if we vote to come out until everything settles and a clearer position becomes evident.

The idea that we will not be able to trade with the EU without the EU adding tariffs is nonsense. The EU sells more into the UK than we sell in to the EU so it is in the interest to do a deal with us.

Who is to say in the longer term the currency will not strengthen. Without the UK's financial input the Eurozone looks a much poorer place and it very likely the Euro will weaken or even disappear - the Germans can only prop up the rest of Europe for so long.

One thing is certain if we vote to stay in - which I expect - the deal with the EU will worsen, the leaders in Europe know they have you by the short and curlys and we will be even more impotent than we already are.

Given the David Cameron thought 36% of the vote on a turnout of 66% (so 26% of the eligible electorate) was a "massive mandate from the British people" to do whatever the f*** he wanted, what do you think will be his reaction to winning a referendum on EU membership? If we vote to stay in the EU it will be the green light for the social engineers running "experiment Europe" to steam ahead with any and all bonkers ideas. Amongst them will be full tax integration, so prepare to have rates of personal income tax set by the Germans via Brussels.
I'm out, the EU was an idea that created a single trading market and gave us long term, sustainable peace in Western Europe, but we were ass raped by the French when they "allowed" us to join and it has long since been taken over by the social scientists who are playing some gigantic board game. It's run like FIFA, these guys appear out of nowhere to run a continent. I still remember when a still mildly socialist Labour Party had leave the common market in it's manifesto.

Yes, I hate the fact that the Brexit "team" are the biggest bunch of morons that politics has ever inflicted on us, and that a large proportion of UKIP supported are just racist scumbags, but they are opposed by the representatives of corporations and bankers who don't want to get off the EU gravy train.
Nothing in this campaign has even hinted of an exciting future for us in the EU. We are an inventive, smart and hard working island of people, there has to be something better. My personal philosophy is that if there is a decision like this to be made I'll go for change. It's not always worked 100% but over my lifetime I'm glad I tried things. I wouldn't have the family or the job I have.

I can see why people want to stay in, 6 months ago I would have been the same, but after the week long 3 ring circus of Cameron's re-negotiations (all pre agreed anyway) I'd just had enough of all this. What a huge waste of time, money and energy to accomplish nothing. But that's the EU, a giant, taxpayer funded puppet show for the Prols.

Will it affect RL? Don't be daft.

DHM expressed it all very well.....and I want to follow him despite my same huge reservations about the personal company I will be keeping and 'supporting' in a Brexit vote. However I will be voting "in" for no other reasons than I am genuinely fearful of our future otherwise despite the Brexit claims the UK can again be the country it once was. The Brexit claims are no more than bravado and an appeal to the patriotic if not jingoistic nature of many. I have lived around the world and I am not at all patriotic or jingoistic so I need more than that.

What sort of UK/EU relationship will it be after divorcing (key word) the EU? On BBC QT there was a loud cheer for the response it will be a "British model". Not good enough!!!. If it becomes an EEA rules model then a lot of Brexit voters are going to be hugely angry because of Free Movement still being a condition of this model. (Let's face it a lot of votes will be purely on the basis of 'immigration' and promised reductions. Many will consider nothing else when casting their vote). If not EEA then what? WTO rules? All the economic benefits of free trade access gone for what alternative benefit exactly? Anything else is going to take a hell of a lot of negotiations far beyond the suggested Brexit timetable.

What sort of trade deals will be have with the rest of the world after Brexit? Again the answers seem devoid of any real substance. Can anybody tell me which countries are queueing up or knocking down our door to offer the UK the much more favourable deals Brexit says we can get ...if only we were to leave the EU with free market access? Maybe just maybe the UK is presently the 5th largest economy at least partly because of the access to the Free Market?

A favourite Brexit claim is that the German will still want to sell their BMWs/Mercs etc so it is their interest to do a deal. It won't be up to just the Germans though, but the whole remaining EU, admittedly under German pressure. Politically (what most seems to forget) the EU cannot afford to give the UK what it wants ...unless it wants to willingly sign its own death warrant - with other member states demanding the same, led by The Netherlands.

Politics is a dirty business. The EU will need to punish a member state for leaving otherwise there is a real danger the whole edifice will come crashing down. It might do so either way of course....with all the ecomomic devastation that will result. In or out of the EU we will not escape that devastation. Why make it more likely by voting to leave?

As for democracy....pfft! Under FPTP we are doomed to these right wing Tories having outright power for decades with just 27% of the vote, unless Labour takes Scotland back from SNP (unlikely...and definitely never of course when Scotland leaves the union with a Brexit victory). House of Lords anyone? At least we have PR with the MEP vote. It's a red herring though. People use this argument as an excuse really. It does all boil down to immigration versus ecomomics. In many ways Osborne has done more for the 'leave' campaign with his latest desperate threats and Farage the opposite with his latest poster (at least you would hope so).

And finally I actually love the concept of Free Movement: it does work both ways lest we forget (and many do). I had plans to retire to Cyprus with its cheap property and wonderful climate without the sacrifice of having to learn a new language. B'stards.

Ultimately this has all been brought about by power hungry right wing Tories (UKIP are the same people with more right wing tendencies of course) all jostling for power. Power (sovereignity is just a euphemism) to better lord it over us. There are no winners in this apart from these pillocks. Whatever happens their lives will not be affected. As normal we ordinary folk will bear the costs.

You are all deluded if you think a vote leave majority means that we will exit the EU. This will not be allowed to happen. All it will do is strengthen our hand (slightly) in further negotiations.

It seems to me that neither side can prove the financial benefits or dangers one way or the other. Both votes are a leap in the dark really.
Ask yourself the question, would you really want to join the EU now?

Germany tried to rule Europe in 1939 and failed. This is a different route to the same end.

Can it be right that our supreme court can be over ruled by some un-elected faceless civil servants in Brussels, I think not.

It's time to grasp the nettle and stand on our own feet....TAKE BACK CONTROL.

I think you're normally one of the saner posters on here, but that first paragraph is so bananas I don't even know where to start. And if I did start it wouldn't make any difference because views have become so entrenched that no amount of facts, evidence and analysis are going to make the slightest bit of difference. Which is why, whatever the result, the country will be significantly worse for even having this stupid Farage-appeasing referendum in the first place.

Rather than Merkel ruling over us than Cameron or worse, Johnson.

. ..

As for joining the EU now...that's not the position we're in is it?. We are proposing a divorce with all that a (bitter wide reaching) divorce will entail.

As for your supreme court quote....hmmm....anybody wish to correct him?

Yep! The usual bravado and soundbites from the Brexiters. Take back control from whom? Can you tell me which countries are dictating to us exactly, as opposed to us being (rightly or wrongly) in a democracy where decisions are shared or made on majority vote?

Another one that doesn't actually bother to read any facts or consider the realities, but instead hears only what he wants to hear.

Politicians and right wing tory press not daft: they know exactly which buttons to press. Referendums are never a good idea

That probably applies to many people on BOTH sides and not only on this vote but any political vote.

No please, "start". Ot are you one of the "entrenched" who just resorts to calling opionions you don't like "bananas"?

Oh I agree....most people will be coming at this from an entrenched position one way or the other. As with people who are devout followers of any religion they have a starting point which means they only hear what they want to hear and any challenge will be dismissed or moulded into something acceptable to that pre-conceived idea.

Referendums (and indeed any political votes by the ill educated; misinformed; prejudiced; well meaning, but still stupid and easiy manipulated by more clever politicians) are never a good thing. I sound conceited I know...and have been accused thus....but democracy IMO is overated and damaging.

Much better to have a 'benevolent dictatorship' where long term decisions can be made for the good of all without fear of losing seats. Utopia maybe; EU possibly

NO, I'm just bored of all the headbanging deaf-eared e that's been banded around on Facebook and find no positive time/benefit/frustration correlation with arguing the case.

However the idea that Cameron is somehow going to take a narrow, even a convincing, remain vote as a green light to become some sort of demented dictator is bizarre. What would happen to Cameron after remain? He'll be hamstrung by his own MPs and resign within a couple of years, as has been made completely clear throughout. What would happen if Johnson and Give think they have a mandate - a mandate I might add achieved thanks to the input of the hard right? THAT'S the unknown, not the Cameron bit.

Germany setting income tax rates for Britain? Fantasist . Not going to happen. How powerful do you think these mandarins in the EU (who simultaneously are so lazy and incompetent and such a waste of money) even are? How do you think politics actually works? A clue is that it doesn't work like FIFA. It's not an enclosed plutocracy with no checks and balances. It IS a check and balance.

That's the start. The economic argument would take me a while longer, but for a simplified preview look at how the pound performed and how much money was wiped off pensions -YOUR pension - when a poll put remain ahead. And that was just a poll, that was just the possibility of exit. I've worked in financial services for 20 years and can guarantee you that there would be an INSTANT recession from the knock-on effect of the leave vote. You might not like how much the faceless movement of money shapes things, but it does shape things - in the UK, in the US, in the EU, in, out, whichever. The referendum isn't going to change that, but it'll certainly inspire it, and I've never known more scared money in the City than I see now, including after Lehmann Brothers. This will knock down to business, to manufacturing, to the back office, to service industries, to house prices, to everything. It's a spiral. And it's a spiral decided on by people who clearly don't know what they're fuccing doing and treat 'expert' as a dirty word.

So that's the start of the economic argument, but only the start. But by all means throw your hat in the ring with Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Britain First and all of their supporters who'll be voting Leave on Thursday to get a few steps closer to the country that they all want. It'll be a toxic shthole, but if you're so keen on it go ahead.

Perhaps, then, you might want to explain why the EU auditors have refused to sign off EU accounts for the last 18 years in a row! Yet, all carries on as if nothing has happened.



I'll take my chances with people I know can be voted from office should we wish to, thank you.

I know which I feel is the more "toxic sh*thole" between a post-Brexit UK, or a post-Bremain EU

I just hope people vote with their heads and not their hearts. There is plenty enough factual information out there, if people bother to look and read fully. If that is done and people vote with their head, then for me there wil be only one result.

Well said Gotcha....I only ask people THINK about this rather than vote on prejudice and on rhetoric.

Nobody can genuinely say which way will be best for us in the long term (in the short term we will be undoubtedly fukked)....our children will most have to live with the consquences. It is NOT an easy decision...and not a decision most of us should be asked to make.

Interesting thread.

Will respond later with my own views and why I'll be spoiling my ballot paper instead.

Regards,
William Eve (at the cricket utilising YCCC free wifi - you don't get free wifi with a Rhinos membership)

Quote ="craigizzard" Germany setting income tax rates for Britain? Fantasist rubbish. Not going to happen. How powerful do you think these mandarins in the EU (who simultaneously are so lazy and incompetent and such a waste of money) even are? How do you think politics actually works? A clue is that it doesn't work like FIFA. It's not an enclosed plutocracy with no checks and balances. It IS a check and balance. '" Not at all. Taxation across the EU has been a core part of the debate since its inception and is still raging, there is a huge amount written about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Sch%C3%A4uble have a look at the German finance ministers Wiki entry and other articles written about his views on tax harmonization. Yes, there is some obvious need to tackle tax evasion but Schaube is talked about in an article in the Economist about his views on harmonization being effectively forced onto member countries. www.economist.com/node/21555916 [i"For people like Germany's finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, the single currency was always a leg on the journey towards a fully integrated Europe. In exchange for paying up, they want to harmonise taxes and centralise political power with, say, an elected European Commission and new powers for the European Parliament. Voters will be scared into grudging acquiescence precisely because a euro collapse is so terrifying. In time, the new institutions will gain legitimacy because they will work and Europeans will begin to feel prosperous again" [/i So, yes, it is not an unreasonable thing to say that at some point in the future the finance minister of the largest economy in the EU will be setting tax policy for the UK. As for my pension, well after the financial sector has had it's head in the trough a small hit on the financial markets is hardly noticeable www.independent.co.uk/money/pens ... 40986.html. I can guarantee one thing about the markets and the economy, the people making the most noise are the ones who have the most power to make a recession happen. Don't overreact. I'm sick of the campaigning, I was from day 1, but as you know from reading my post I changed my mind about the EU, and I did it for reasons that have nothing to do with supporting any of the political views of Farage or Boris Johnson or keeping foreigners out. The Labour leader looks like he is making a hostage video every time he is interviewed about the EU. I work in East and West Europe, I used to spend 30 weeks plus every year on travelling the continent and I manage French, German and Belgian nationals, I love the place. I just want our politics to be more accountable and more local. Start with exiting the EU then we need a reform of our electoral system which clearly does not represent in any way the wishes of the British people. Multi party politics has arrived and we need to embrace it.

Quote ="craigizzard" Germany setting income tax rates for Britain? Fantasist rubbish. Not going to happen. How powerful do you think these mandarins in the EU (who simultaneously are so lazy and incompetent and such a waste of money) even are? How do you think politics actually works? A clue is that it doesn't work like FIFA. It's not an enclosed plutocracy with no checks and balances. It IS a check and balance. '" Not at all. Taxation across the EU has been a core part of the debate since its inception and is still raging, there is a huge amount written about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Sch%C3%A4uble have a look at the German finance ministers Wiki entry and other articles written about his views on tax harmonization. Yes, there is some obvious need to tackle tax evasion but Schaube is talked about in an article in the Economist about his views on harmonization being effectively forced onto member countries. www.economist.com/node/21555916 [i"For people like Germany's finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, the single currency was always a leg on the journey towards a fully integrated Europe. In exchange for paying up, they want to harmonise taxes and centralise political power with, say, an elected European Commission and new powers for the European Parliament. Voters will be scared into grudging acquiescence precisely because a euro collapse is so terrifying. In time, the new institutions will gain legitimacy because they will work and Europeans will begin to feel prosperous again" [/i So, yes, it is not an unreasonable thing to say that at some point in the future the finance minister of the largest economy in the EU will be setting tax policy for the UK. As for my pension, well after the financial sector has had it's head in the trough a small hit on the financial markets is hardly noticeable www.independent.co.uk/money/pens ... 40986.html. I can guarantee one thing about the markets and the economy, the people making the most noise are the ones who have the most power to make a recession happen. Don't overreact. I'm sick of the campaigning, I was from day 1, but as you know from reading my post I changed my mind about the EU, and I did it for reasons that have nothing to do with supporting any of the political views of Farage or Boris Johnson or keeping foreigners out. The Labour leader looks like he is making a hostage video every time he is interviewed about the EU. I work in East and West Europe, I used to spend 30 weeks plus every year on travelling the continent and I manage French, German and Belgian nationals, I love the place. I just want our politics to be more accountable and more local. Start with exiting the EU then we need a reform of our electoral system which clearly does not represent in any way the wishes of the British people. Multi party politics has arrived and we need to embrace it.

Quotes (just a couple) from Tony Benn.

"My view of the EU has always been not that I am hostile to foreigners but I am in favour of democracy. I think they are building an empire and want us to be part of that empire, and I don't want that."

"When I saw how the European Union was developing, it was very obvious what they had in mind was not democratic. In Britain, you vote for a government so the government has to listen to you, and if you don't like it you can change it."

It is mystifying to me why so many people on the left in Britain are so bent on defending the EU and keeping Britain in it.

"It is, first of all, a simple matter of democracy: why give up your sovereignty and democratic power to the EU and give away the power to change government policy on many substantive issues, when the EU is so clearly anti-democratic?
Secondly, the EU is a neoliberal train wreck: it was designed on economically conservative ideas and the worst neoclassical economics. It was designed to be a monetary union without a powerful central fiscal authority: an unworkable and disastrous idea. The Eurozone has led to catastrophe on the fringes of Europe in Greece, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Portugal and Baltic states. In the larger states like Germany and France the situation is somewhat better, but hardly anything to boast of."

"It seems to me that a genuine leftist or Labour party in Britain should be opposed to the EU, on democratic and economic grounds alone".

To those who think only right wing bigots or idiots think leaving the EU is a good idea.

Time means I'll only address the last paragraph, which is in its way a reasonable point of view. But the larger point is that reasonable points of view on the Leave side have become fatally, totally infected by UKIP, Farage, and all that goes with it.

If you vote leave you're voting for Farage. You're lining yourself up with the far right and voting for his vision of Britain, whether you like it or not.

You're also voting for Boris Johnson, Prime Minister. This doesn't take an expert futurologist to predict. Your 'local accountability' will be governed by a man who was the worst Mayor of London in a field that includes Ken Livingstone. Are you confident that, in power, he'll change the voting to threaten that? Or retrench it.

You're voting for the three most incompetent Tory ministers (IDS, Grayling, Patel) in an an historically low-calibre government, and a fourth (Gove) who's smarter but a dangerous opportunist.

You're voting for the end of the United Kingdom. Again, no crystal ball is required to see another Scottish referendum and a heavy Yes vote to independence.

So you're voting for 50-60 less leftist opposition MPs and Conservative government for, well, for goodness knows how long. A generation? Two? Until there's a big war to sort everything out? And it won't just be *any* Conservative government, it'll be government of the worst of them, it'll be a government that makes Thatcher look like Atlee, in an atmosphere charged with blame, where the EU scapegoat has been lost and will be replaced by...well, you can guess.

Benn isn't a right-wing bigot. I'm less sure that Benn, Skinner, Corbyn (in his heart) and others on the reflexively anti-European left aren't in your other category. And if you think Benn's position was inspired by democracy rather than residual Cold War positioning, well...

Mr Skinner too is against the EU.

As I stated previously I wish I wasn't potentially in the same camp as the "right wing bigots" who would have us leave the EU for all the wrong (shameful) reasons ....I would have still been more inclined to vote 'out' (I detest the term 'Brexit' with all its right wing connotations) but for being a genuinely scared realist about the dirty world of politics.. The political and economic fall out will be huge (political maybe more so than economic) despite the reassuring words that negotiations will be civil and ordered (fat chance).
Bravado about how great the UK is will not be much comfort with loss of jobs, much increased inflation, flight of investment from the UK and many years of uncertainty and bitter protracted negotiations. To top it all we would have to suffer a cabinet of Johnson, Gove, IDS, May and very possibly Farage FFS at least until the next election...when they are still likely to be voted in again because of our UN-democratic voting system/the demise of Labour, specifically in Scotland.

.... this is what I mean by been a realist and it will stop me from voting 'out'. It is frightening. The EU is far from perfect but it is better than handing total power to these gobes. There is so much uncertainty in the outcome of this vote...but [iwe can be certain[/i of what you state here if we do vote 'out' .. Rest assured no forthcoming general election will change this because of our voting system and state of the opposition. Without Scotland (a real possibility) it is even more certain.

It is enough on its own for me to vote 'in'

As often in this country it is always a vote for the lesser of two evils. The price of a gloating Cameron and especially Osborne is less worse than seeing Johnson as PM with the other gobes in tow.