For me the money we spend on the EU, which equates to about a cup of coffee a week each, is more than worth it to encourage and nurture democracy and human rights, provide our businesses with a single market of 500,000 people to sell their goods to and help tackle huge global challenges like crime and climate change.

A vote to Leave would signal to the world that we had swallowed the xenophobic, isolationist ideas of the Brexiteers and I really don’t want that for my country. Nor do I want the sort of racism that has become part of their campaign to become part of our culture again. Their lies (the arrow from Turkey to Scotland suggesting all 76 million Turks would be heading here soon) have sown the seeds of hatred and we can’t tolerate that.

Funnily enough, the EU stands up for the ordinary person, which is probably why so many of the rich elitists don’t like it – we have better rights as workers and consumers because of it.

I hope that you will vote to Remain today too. Let’s not hand our country over to people who seek to blame others for our problems rather than try to solve them. That would be the worst outcome of a Leave vote.

Paul Walter

I voted “remain” three weeks ago by post. As Liberal I feel all the outward-looking, caring/sharing stuff. But I voted motivated by one simple thing: jobs. I’m old enough to remember when we were not in the Common Market, when news broadcasts obsessed about monthly import/export figures because they were so pivotal. I remember recessions. I remember the days of Margaret Thatcher when you’d turn on the news to hear of another 1,000 redudancies here and 2,000 staff lay-offs somewhere else.

I always come back to the simple example of the car industry. I remember studying geography at O’ level and how primary/secondary/tertiary industries stack up. You have to have primary/secondary industries such as manufacturing to drive the economy. Britain was a basket case for car manufacture in the 70s/80s but now, thanks to foreign investment – yes foreign investment – Honda, Toyota, Ford etc – we have been booming in the car industry. But future investment decisions by car manufacturers, if we leave, are likely to focus on the remaining EU. Car manufacturers (and other foreign investors) will look to move capacity from the UK to the remaining EU. Of course they will. Why wait ten years for trade agreements and go through customs paperwork up to your ears (based in Britain) when you can do it simply in the remaining EU?

I’m not concerned about myself if we vote to “leave”. But, I fear for many, many good honest hard-working people who will be hit by a recession if we leave. It simply isn’t worth taking the chance.

On this Scribd link, you can see a letter Ford sent to their UK employees about the EU referendum. Everyone should read it. That’s the real world, folks!

Mary Reid

Photo by John Tindall

Well, this is my polling station at Devon Way in Chessington, which is flooded after a spectacular storm last night. I woke in the middle of the night after a very loud thunderclap, shouting ‘Stop it!’ – not sure whether I was dreaming of the Referendum. It also left us with a tree on its side in the garden. I’ll be relieved when today is over.

The polling station issue actually made the national news! – my son told me it even featured in Northern Ireland. Voting has been transferred to the Hook Centre but I’m worried that people may not bother to vote if they turn up to Devon Way by foot.

Good thing then that I voted by post ages ago. I voted for Remain, and the most important reason for me was not the economy, and certainly had nothing at all to do with immigration, but was because we have enjoyed peace in Europe for the whole of my lifetime. I was born a couple of weeks after VE Day, and then lived my teenage years with the belief, shared by most of my contemporaries, that we would not see 30 because of the threats of nuclear warfare. But here we are 70 years later in a Europe that is at peace.

I am proud that the UK was a key partner in the post war European project, in its various guises, including the European Convention on Human Rights. We wanted structures for Europe that would make it impossible for member states – many of whom have longstanding historical emnities – to go to war against each other. And it has worked.