Of course I know about No2EU. To be fair there's no way they'd join with UKIP as Farage's lot seem to be made up of xenophobes and people who think the tories aren't right wing enough. Beyond the EU question, UKIP want to erode worker's rights and proliferate the neoliberal agenda - No2EU have polar opposite views on why we should be out of the EU.

However, knowing about the different parties and their stances is entirely different to having a balanced view presented by the media of the pros and cons.

We live in a representative democracy, where you elect an MP and they make decisions on your behalf. You can't just pick and choose the type of democracy you have based upon whether it reflects your views at a particular time.

If you want to argue for some sort of Swiss model of referendums via some sort of democratic petitioning mechanism, I'd probably be all for it, I think generally speaking the public are fairly poorly served by the current system.

But you're not, you're arguing for a brief switch to direct democracy on an issue that matters to you, then a return to representative democracy. Do you want a vote on the renationalisation of the railways, or utilities, or the post office? When was the last time the British public had their democratic say on those issues, eh?

If you're fed up with MPs not voting to leave the EU, vote UKIP in the general election, don't pointlessly "protest" a year before a general election each time and then go back to voting Tory. The reason the issues of immigration and the EU aren't more prominent is that people keep voting for parties who don't really give a toss about those issues.

Last time UKIP's vote was 16.5% and then went straight back to 3.1%, Cameron isn't totally thick and will realise that his supporters don't have the balls to vote UKIP again. And therein lies the basic problem for the referendum-wanting voter. Ultimately, the party most likely to give you a referendum simply won't win a general election. And even the second most likely party probably won't either.

"The fox has his den. The bee has his hive. The stoat, has, uh... his stoat-hole... but only man chooses to make his nest in an investment opportunity.” Stewart Lee

Not in the EU we don't. Not only do you have to vote for a party en bloc regardless of whether you like or dislike a candidate within that party block, your choice of party is then downgraded if that party is too popular. The following is from an electoral commission website:

In a given region the allocated seats are awarded using a quota system. The quota is the total number of votes received by a party or independent candidate divided by the number of seats already gained in that region +1.

The first seat that a party wins goes to the first person on its list, the second seat to the second person, and so on, until the party has either not won any more seats or has run out of names on its list. An independent candidate is treated as though he or she were a party with only one name on its list.

In 2001 when it became known that Osama Bin Laden was an Arsenal fan who had atteneded several games at Highbury, an Arsenal FC spokesman said: "Clearly he wouldn't be welcome at Highbury in the future." I expect they banned him from their on-line forums too (or maybe not).

This is true if the immigrants are creating positions. This is not the case. Unfortunately most, which is what UKIP and plenty of us on here are opposed to, the huge quantity of immigrants, come to the UK taking up jobs that were advertised whether they were here or not. What plenty have done is keeping prices down of a few pence on supermarket fruit and veg and providing cheaper labour in construction because plenty are prepared to share a 1 bed flat between 3 and possibly do that for a few years before going back home with the money. Apart from a few East European deli-markets and a few more fine dining type Indian restaurants, this is pretty much the case.

So they're filling the same positions a Brit would fill and overall paying less tax and NI. If Labour had nudged a few people into job searching as the tories have done and into some of the positions they've filled and clamped down on supermarket-farmer pressure on prices then they would've gone a long way to addressing this.

COYP

Why is everybody so obsessed about the effect on the economy with immigration?

Surely the more worrying aspect is the effect on our infrastructure?

It's bad enough here in Bristol, but in the south east it must be unbearable trying to get places by road or rail, see a doctor, get your child in a local school, buy a house etc etc.