Vote Remain

I’m not joking. If you don’t, tiny-minded parochial xenophobes will vote ‘leave’ and we’ll be out of the EU after the next 2 years of all the umming, arring, writing, rewriting, arguing, debating, negotiating but giving in - ALL AT COST TO THE UK TAXPAYER - as we try to work out how to keep trading with Europe.

Get it into your heads, people. THE EU REFERENDUM HAS NO IMPACT ON IMMIGRATION. It doesn’t matter what you vote on 23rd June, the number of immigrants coming into the country will not reduce - not in a year, not in 2 years, not in 10. Voting ‘leave’ will not change the number of immigrants coming into the country. A good job, too, because after we’ve paid out welfare to these people, we still make a profit of £20 billion a year in PAYE tax, NI and other fiscal by-products out of them.

However, all this might increase the number of emigrés. Who are they? They’re the ‘ex-pats’ who leave the UK to live overseas. They’re literally immigrants of another country. That’s how it works. So when people bitch and moan about immigrants coming over here, not learning enough English, and (1) taking all our jobs whilst (2) taking all our welfare benefits (a neat trick, considering), remember that’s exactly what English people do when they move to Spain, or Italy, or France, or Dubai, or Canada, or the USA. I know, because I’ve seen it. I’ve done it. I’ve lived as an ex-pat for over a decade (except I went to their university to learn the language). And when I came back to the UK, I found it in this piss-poor state: full of selfish, xenophobic arseholes.

Only 7% of UK laws are actually influenced or controlled by the EU. So if we leave, we’ll actually have to pay for UK politicians to try and scrape together their own versions. We don’t even have our own Human Rights Act. Yes, you read that right. We basically nicked the European Convention on Human Rights, spelt a few words differently, and called it a UK law in as late as the year 2000. Yes, 2000. The European Convention on Human Rights was originally made up in 1950. Hmm.

Do you really want people like David Cameron making actual laws? Do you want the bunch of self-serving spongers in the House of Lords and Commons debating the meanings of these laws for the next 10 years? After all, there’s no pressure to actually bring any new laws to replace the EU ones we already had into being. I mean, you do the job quickly and you don’t have anything else to do for the next few years, right?

Maybe they could spend it digging the NHS out of the hole that leaving Europe would case. 33,000 European midwives alone would be put in a really bad situation. Either they leave the UK, and we lose all those necessary and SKILLED carers (because let’s face it, it’s not like we’re short of carers in the UK… OH WAIT), or they stay and have to work under UK legislation that isn’t even in place yet. Maternity rights and protected payments? EU law. Working hours capped to 48 a week? EU law. The fact that your Amazon parcel and your vegetables have no import tax? EU law. But no, feel free to throw that all away. Feel free to cut us off. After all, every man is an island, and doesn’t need help from anyone. Screw the UK farmers who can no longer freely trade with Europe. Screw the people who want to buy imported goods in supermarkets, shops, stores, and online without paying horrendous import fees. Screw being part of something bigger, part of something that aids neighbouring countries and makes pan-world laws like those on pollution, or terrorism. Screw it.


I mean, we pay £50 million a day to the EU, and what for? Well, after you’ve taken off the rebates we get from the EU, it’s actually £14 million a day. Oh, and we get £66 million a day in investment from the EU. But never mind all that - what about these pesky immigrants?

We’ve had more immigrants from non-EU countries in the past 40 years than from the EU. I know - crazy, right? But how come everyone here seems to be Polish now? Fuck off. 0.29% of the UK is from the EU. Yes, you read that right. Not even a third of a percent. But again, this has nothing to do with leaving the EU. We will still have immigrants, and we will still let them in. Because our politicians, rightly or wrongly, do nothing to strengthen our actual immigration laws. And these are the same politicians who will have to negotiate a new agreement to trade within EU regulations. Good fucking luck.

I’m voting to stay, for all the reasons above and for the fact that I work in Payroll, and I see people’s payslips every day. I also sit in the HR office, so I listen to how people are protected by procedure and laws that we wouldn’t have if we weren’t in the EU. I also hear people talk about how they need to stay in the EU or they lose their jobs as translators for France, or sales admin for Germany, or their supply lines from China. Yes, China. Leaving the EU doesn’t just harm trade within the EU, it also jeopardises trade deals with other countries - because we’re no longer bound by EU regulations, which means other countries have no idea how we’re regulated.

Frankly, neither do we.

One thing’s for damn sure: we’re never going to reach a United Federation of Planets like this. And that makes me want to become an ex-pat again. Preferably of another planet.