David Craig, on February 27th, 2016(Weekend blog) Lets take a look at some of the big companies who claim that leaving the EU would put British jobs at risk:
Shell, they moved most their staff to Holland and are about to decimate BG (British Gas) in Reading with the loss of thousands of UK jobs as Shell tries to cut administration costs after taking over BG. Then there’s Ford: Ford don’t make cars here anymore as it was more attractive to move production to Germany and Eastern Europe – thousands more British jobs lost. Moreover, Big Pharma companies like GSK and Astra Zeneca have moved most of their research out of the UK to places like Sweden and Pfizer closed down their huge UK research operation at Sandwich (the one that thankfully discovered Viagra) with the loss of 2,400 highly-skilled, well-paid British jobs and is now in the process of closing its Cambridge research operation – more lost British jobs.
And let’s look at a couple of Britain’s heavy industries: our last aluminium plant closed a few years ago because of Britain’s high energy costs and because the EU did nothing to stop China and Russia dumping aluminium in European markets at below the cost of production. Then there’s our steel industry – almost completely destroyed with the loss of thousands of British jobs and communities wrecked because the EU didn’t take action against China dumping their excess steel in European markets at below production cost.
Then we have the HP Sauce workers in Birmingham whose jobs went to Belgium or Holland. A product made in Britain for over 100 years saved by being in the EU?
Rowntrees of York, another British institution, sold to the Americans and with much of its production moved (I think) to Belgium or Poland. Engineering jobs in the Midlands and elsewhere gone to India, China and Vietnam.
All our power companies in the hands of the French, Germans and Spanish. The irony here is that the steel industry is bemoaning the cost of fuel when the foreign owners of our power companies have the power to raise prices for our industry and make excessive profits out of British pensioners so they can give their own pensioners and industry cheap electricity and gas thus making their products cheaper at our expense. All done by being in the EU.
The farce of the EU is that its primary beneficiaries are the political and corporate elites, yet the average worker is hammered here by cheap foreign labour. Meanwhile the majority of people running small and medium-sized businesses, who are the ‘backbone’ of the country, are also screwed.
We have our citizens made redundant who have mortgages and other financial commitments acquired when in work now having to compete against Eastern Europeans who have no similar financial commitments. They are content to live six in one room of a slum bedsit and work for the minimum wage or less. Well done EU
Big companies love the EU. If Europe was still 28 separate countries, that would make influencing government policy complicated for large companies. But by having the EU, large companies can use the 25,000 highly-paid lobbyists they have in Brussels to bribe EU politicians and eurocrats to ensure that EU regulations suit them and make operating a business much more costly for their smaller competitors. If we assume it costs about £250,000 a year to keep a lobbyist in Brussels, then our major companies may be paying about £6.2 billion a year influencing EU policy in their favour.
Our major companies claim Brexit will harm British jobs. This is a lie!
But here’s some advice for the Remain campaign from that great PR-man Joseph Goebbels “the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly…..it must confine itself to few points and repeat them over and over”
Perhaps PR-man Goebbels is PR-man David Cameron’s hero as Dave seems to be following Goebbels’ advice with his ‘Project Fear’.
And here’s some more advice for the Remain campaign by someone else who wanted a united Europe (under German rule as usual, of course) Adolf Hitler “make a lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe you”.
The truth is that Britain leaving the EU will actually lead to a renaissance of British entrepreneurship, business and trade and the creation of thousands of new jobs.
There are just a few British jobs that will be lost if we leave the EU – there will be a lot of UK civil servants and MEPs who will no longer required.
And hopefully Angela Merkel’s glove puppet, PR-man Dave Cameron, will also be out of work along with his Europhiliac chum George Osborne.
Category: 
Excellent piece David.
Who would vote for this on 23rd June, HA..
,,,,,,
The economy of the European Union is a constipated, sclerotic, malfunctioning entity that only registered real economic growth of 0.2% in the recent quarter—assuming you can credit their numbers at all. The continent is a giant monument to socialism, where everyone believes they can live at the expense of everyone else. As a result, the average European sees his government as a magic cornucopia, a source of unlimited wealth. When something goes wrong, Europeans look to their governments to “do something.” With this in mind, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi made the front pages by saying he is “ready to act” with a “whole menu of monetary policy instruments.”
This is central banker speak for “I’m willing to print an incredible amount of money in my attempt to keep my job and stimulate the economy by making people think they’re richer than they really are.”
Draghi’s money printing is a disastrously misguided attempt at creating prosperity. It will create bubbles, and cause people and companies to do all manner of things they’d never consider without the false economic signals he will send. If printing money were the path to prosperity, Zimbabwe and Venezuela would be the richest countries on earth instead of economic basket cases.
Traders who take positions based on the words of a central banker are naïve, and just asking for losses. Not only does the ECB believe printing money is a good thing, but they’re forced to do more, to keep the system from collapsing. This will send the value of the euro much lower; the currency will accelerate its descent toward its intrinsic value, namely zero.
The euro is a sure bet to join the ranks of many hundreds of defunct paper currencies. Not one currency in today’s world is backed by a commodity (like gold); they’re backed only by confidence (which can vanish like a pile of feathers in a hurricane). And, of course, the ability of governments to steal from the people. But the euro doesn’t even have that going for it. The European Union doesn’t have the power to tax. Right now, the Eurocrats in Brussels really only have the power to regulate. I’ve long said, “While the U.S. dollar is an ‘IOU nothing,’ the euro is a ‘who owes you nothing.’”
The EU itself is a completely artificial and dysfunctional union. The Swedes are very different from the Sicilians, and the Portuguese very different from the Austrians. These people have little in common besides a history of fighting with each other. Force them together into a phony union and they’ll become mutually resentful, the way the Germans and the Greeks now are. The EU was put together partly to avoid future wars, but it may turn out to be a war incubator.
The European Union itself makes no real sense. Its sole good aspect, the abolition of internal barriers to the free passage of goods and people, could have been had simply by dropping barriers. Setting up another huge, costly bureaucracy in Brussels was idiocy.
Incidentally, people think of these countries—Italy, France, Germany and so on—as though they are fixtures in the cosmos. But they aren’t. In their current forms, they’re all newcomers on the stage of history.
The average person doesn’t realize that the country we know as Italy today was only created in 1861, a consolidation of many completely independent and very different entities that had been separate states since the collapse of the Roman Empire. Germany was only unified in 1871, out of scores of principalities, dukedoms, baronies and whatnot. Both unifications were very bad ideas; World Wars I and II are just at the head of a long list of reasons why that’s true. Even today, there are separatist movements in big Western European countries, like the Basques and Catalans in Spain, and the Scots in the United Kingdom, who wish it weren’t quite so united. There are many others.
Centripetal force will eventually tear it apart, with the EU as a whole disintegrating long before its individual parts—France, Italy, Germany the U.K., etc.—fall apart. The colors of the map are always running.
The European continent reminds me of that poorly managed cruise ship that sank off the coast of Italy in 2012. It is dying financially, with all the debt bankrupting governments, businesses and individuals. It is sinking economically, weighted down with stifling regulations and taxes. It is being strangled demographically, with birth rates far below replacement. Except among African and Muslim immigrants, who are not integrating. And now, millions of migrants, who seem to expect free food, shelter, clothing and money to hang around coffee houses all day to complain. Europe has long been a hotbed of religious, ethnic and race wars—quite frankly, I see the next one building up right now.
So, I think the euro will reach its intrinsic value long before the dollar does. The euro, in anything like its present form, will likely cease to exist within a decade, and probably far sooner. If I had a lot of my wealth in euros, I would get it out ASAP. As it is, I’m short the euro, mainly via selling naked calls.
My favorite alternative for protecting wealth, of course, is precious metals: gold and silver. Draghi, who deserves the same fate meted out to Mussolini, is acting in a completely predictable manner. If you’re not out of the euro yet, get out as soon as possible.
Editor’s Note: In truth, central bankers are the primary cause of most of the harmful distortions in the economy.
Think unlimited money printing, interest rate manipulation, the boom/bust cycle, propping up “too big to fail” institutions with bailout funds, the War on Cash, cronyism in the financial industry and negative interest rates…just to name a few.
Central bankers are the biggest threat to your financial well-being. Period.
They are playing with fire and inviting a currency catastrophe.
Most people have no idea what really happens when a currency collapses, let alone how to prepare…
http://news.goldseek.com/DougCasey/1456500813.php
Unfortunately, I fear the vast majority of the great British public will not give a flying f%*k about what happens provided they are kept suitably docile with KFC, “Strikly coom dansin” & consumer shite.