I can't see them wanting to lose the British marketplace and, of course, raising tariffs would likely cause a retaliatory tariff rise in goods and services coming in. As we import more that we export to the EU, it would surely be economic suicide to them to play too many silly games.

I can't see Aldi and Lidl retreating to mainland Europe.

haha LG I think it's a great poem

Losos have your read about the trade agreement between Europe and America, if we stay in the EU then it would also apply to us. Check out TTIP, actually here's one link but google TTIP and you'll find lots of others

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...u-9779688.html

Thanks, I have heard TTIP mentioned, will read it tomorrow when I'm awake, half asleep now

NO politician of any party is going to tell me which way to vote. Believe it or not I an still capable of making up my own mind.

Hi1cd and thanks for that link, have read it now.

The bottom line as I read it is that if we stay in the EU we will have to accept the TTIP terms & conditions when it is finally agreed (Which I imagine will not be too long from now)

If we vote to leave the EU we will not have to accept the TTIP terms. From that article it seems preferable to me to not have to accept those terms, but as I mentioned above I still expect the European nations to immediately impose large import duties on our goods and services going into the EU. We may not be in the TTIP and can run the NHS as we want, not impose GM foods, prevent multinationals sueing our government etc. but we still need to export goods and services to wherever. We might be able to sell to all sorts of places but Europe is on our doorstep and obviously much easier to do business with.

Yes, I'm confused But thanks again for the link, at least I know what TTIP is all about now

Losos surely if they impose large duties on our goods we can do the same to them?

Yes, of course we can, you are right BUT if I can believe the statistics 50% of our exports go to European countries but each individual country in mainland Europe only exports about 10% to the UK.

So lets do a simple 'what if' scenario:-

We leave the UK, EU impose a 50% tariff so let's say (just as an example) our manufacturers loose 25% of sales.
As you say, we retaliate and apply an import tax on EU goods and being fair minded we keep it to 50% as well and each country looses the same amount of sales i.e. 25%

So Germany looses 25% of 10% (Their exports to UK)
Italy looses 25% of 10%
Holland looses 25% of 10%
and the same for all the individual countries, a loss but hardly catastrophic.

However, the UK will loose 25% of 50% a much bigger number and likely to hit our firms hard, some will be able to pick up orders to compensate from Asia, Middle East etc. but I do worry about the likes of James White Drinks who are a small company doing a lot of exporting to Europe.

OK the above is a gross simplification, the numbers are not precise (far from it) but I hope I've shown that once you get into a trade war and people start imposing import tariffs it can get messy and 'tit for tat' legislation has a habit of upseting people

Like I have said I am not sure how I will vote, or even if I will todle along to the voting station, after all any changes in Britains economy (even if negative) might take a while to show, I might not be around perhaps I'll follow SWMBO's lead and abstain

Lets get the facts right in the first place. When the issue first came up all those years ago and we were asked to vote, what Happened???

Forgotton? well I have not

The vote was more or less even to stay in or out, BUT those that didn't vote were looked at as wanting to join by the government at the time.

So it was an illegal vote and should have been cancelled or rerun. Now look at the mess we are in.

lets hope this time around the decision is only based on those that vote either way and non voters ignored

Probably same thing happen again or they could just take the Irish approach and say "Sorry don't like the result, we'll have another election in a couple of years time"