BREXIT - Is This Really Still Rumbling On? 😴
Comments
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FT is running a daily Brexit Briefing which I think is outside their paywall (??) https://next.ft.com/content/32499058-48 ... ab0a67014c
If not it links to a couple of interesting articles which are free to access:
Spectator's bio of Theresa May http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/07/cl ... it/product
Centre for European Reform's analysis of some of the Brexiter claims https://www.cer.org.uk/insights/long-da ... it/product
I would say it's a fairly rigorous debunking (including supporting figures) but I dare say Brexit fans will pick holes regardless.0 -
PBlakeney wrote:
I hope not as she was buried 20 years ago.Surrey Commuter wrote:This is economics!!!! The person wiping your granny's ars* is an East European and the person paying taxes to keep her in the home is also East European.
That is the situation outlined. What is the solution?
I have outlined above how you can reduce costs but real solutions require more effort.
One would be to encourage people to have more kids. You could literally bribe them by increasing child benefit. or you can make it easier/cheaper for mothers to return to work by making childcare tax deductible or state run childcare - this is what France do. This will take 20 years for the benefits to kick in and will have massive set-up costs. We should have done this 30 years ago but now you would have to chop other budgets to pay for it so realistically will not happen.
The another option is to encourage the right sort of economic migration. The UK did this very successfully for a couple of decades but populist politicians conflated this with the problems caused by a global financial crisis and now we need a new plan.
Another solution would be to change cultural attitudes. In the UK we have a strong sense of entitlement so claim everything we can from the Govt. Think C2W, millionaire pensioners collecting their winter fuel allowance or billionaire landowners collecting every subsidy they can. In Japan they have a culture of taking from the State "what you need" not "what you can"
What would I do? Make all pensioner benefits taxable, put pensioners on same tax rates as the rest of us. Replace the triple lock with a CPI designed to reflect what pensioners spend their money on. Make it easier for Mums to return to work by having heavily subsidised state run childcare. The biggest help will be economic growth and economic migration so I would not leave the EU.
I know people will compare me to Robert Mugabe but my background is as an economist and this is all mainstream stuff and why it is called the dismal science.0 -
TheBigBean wrote:Surrey Commuter wrote:The problem is twofold, the first is that people are living longer and the second is that for the last 40 years people have been having fewer children. This is a factor across the developed world and is why some countries have generous incentives to have more kids. We, like the Germans, went for the migration route (think Blair and new EU countries). Migrants are great because you do not have to pay to educate them and they tend to leave before retirement. This means that overall they tend to be net contributors to society.
Now let's assume that the leaders of Brexit are not terminally stupid and they they are opportunistic liars. This means that they know all of the above and why even Farage has backtracked on immigration.
This is economics!!!! The person wiping your granny's ars* is an East European and the person paying taxes to keep her in the home is also East European.
You are presenting opinion as fact there. I think most economists agree that highly skilled migrants are a benefit to the economy. It is less clear what the impact of unskilled migrants is. For example, taking a random Google choice
http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.u ... mmigrationUK studies find that immigration has small impact on average wages but more significant impacts along the wage distribution: low-waged workers lose while medium and high-paid workers gain
But we are discussing the problems of an ageing society with close to full employment. I acknowledge that in other scenarios things could be different.
I am not going to read that link as I am aware of that organisation. Unless you believe in eugenics then I would think twice about aligning yourself with them. Their main man is prof David Coleman - as always Google is your friend.0 -
Surrey Commuter wrote:What would I do? Make all pensioner benefits taxable, put pensioners on same tax rates as the rest of us. Replace the triple lock with a CPI designed to reflect what pensioners spend their money on. Make it easier for Mums to return to work by having heavily subsidised state run childcare. The biggest help will be economic growth and economic migration so I would not leave the EU.
I agree that the triple lock is overly generous (and above inflation pension rises is clearly not sustainable forever, especially if we keep reducing the proportion in work). However with pensioners being an increasingly large part of the population and disproportionately more likely to vote I don't see the government stopping pandering to pensioners. We need to try and get younger generations more involved in order to do anything about this and get a bit more balance, at the moment we have a self-perpetuating cycle where politicians see no need to focus on getting young people to support them, so young people don't engage, which just supports the politicians view that they don't need to target young people. The Lib Dems tried it (re: tuition fees), got a load of support in 2010 and then didn't deliver, which doesn't help. Hopefully the EU referendum has made people a bit more politically engaged in general.
Japan are/have been experimenting with getting more women into work by similar measures and have found very slow uptake. While I agree with the principle of the matter (we should minimise the barriers preventing women from returning to work so far as practically possible) I don't think it will be a quick enough solution.
I would add education there as it is surely the only way to replace any loss of skilled migrant workers. But again not a quick fix, and not cheap.0 -
bobmcstuff wrote:FT is running a daily Brexit Briefing which I think is outside their paywall (??) https://next.ft.com/content/32499058-48 ... ab0a67014c
If not it links to a couple of interesting articles which are free to access:
Spectator's bio of Theresa May http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/07/cl ... it/product
Centre for European Reform's analysis of some of the Brexiter claims https://www.cer.org.uk/insights/long-da ... it/product
I would say it's a fairly rigorous debunking (including supporting figures) but I dare say Brexit fans will pick holes regardless.
That last link is great - should be worth 10 mins of anybody's time0 -
ugo.santalucia wrote:Surrey Commuter wrote:On the other side of the coin why don't we all try and be more positive
Is there any reason to be positive?
For at least 90% of the population, no.
SteveO in a slightly abrasive manner makes a valid point on a personal level. Most of us can not change the direction of travel of our employer but we can control our own. That could mean changing industry, skill set, location or not taking on new borrowing0 -
Surrey Commuter wrote:ugo.santalucia wrote:Surrey Commuter wrote:On the other side of the coin why don't we all try and be more positive
Is there any reason to be positive?
For at least 90% of the population, no.
SteveO in a slightly abrasive manner makes a valid point on a personal level. Most of us can not change the direction of travel of our employer but we can control our own. That could mean changing industry, skill set, location or not taking on new borrowing
Brexit is like someone has just pis-sed in your beer and you have no way to order another one... drink it or leave itleft the forum March 20230 -
bobmcstuff wrote:Surrey Commuter wrote:What would I do? Make all pensioner benefits taxable, put pensioners on same tax rates as the rest of us. Replace the triple lock with a CPI designed to reflect what pensioners spend their money on. Make it easier for Mums to return to work by having heavily subsidised state run childcare. The biggest help will be economic growth and economic migration so I would not leave the EU.
I agree that the triple lock is overly generous (and above inflation pension rises is clearly not sustainable forever, especially if we keep reducing the proportion in work). However with pensioners being an increasingly large part of the population and disproportionately more likely to vote I don't see the government stopping pandering to pensioners. We need to try and get younger generations more involved in order to do anything about this and get a bit more balance, at the moment we have a self-perpetuating cycle where politicians see no need to focus on getting young people to support them, so young people don't engage, which just supports the politicians view that they don't need to target young people. The Lib Dems tried it (re: tuition fees), got a load of support in 2010 and then didn't deliver, which doesn't help. Hopefully the EU referendum has made people a bit more politically engaged in general.
Japan are/have been experimenting with getting more women into work by similar measures and have found very slow uptake. While I agree with the principle of the matter (we should minimise the barriers preventing women from returning to work so far as practically possible) I don't think it will be a quick enough solution.
I would add education there as it is surely the only way to replace any loss of skilled migrant workers. But again not a quick fix, and not cheap.
I was being purely theoretical. You have introduced the problem of politics to the situation. At that point all the problems are long-term and the pain short-term so they will continue to do next to nothing.
My own prediction is that local taxes will go through the roof to pay for public sector defined benefit pensions. At that point the millennials will realise they are being fucked from both ends.0 -
ugo.santalucia wrote:Surrey Commuter wrote:ugo.santalucia wrote:Surrey Commuter wrote:On the other side of the coin why don't we all try and be more positive
Is there any reason to be positive?
For at least 90% of the population, no.
SteveO in a slightly abrasive manner makes a valid point on a personal level. Most of us can not change the direction of travel of our employer but we can control our own. That could mean changing industry, skill set, location or not taking on new borrowing
Brexit is like someone has just pis-sed in your beer and you have no way to order another one... drink it or leave it
Or a third of the people in your street wanted to have a big fire to get rid of some unsightly undergrowth. A third of you warned it would almost certainly severely damage everybody's house. The other third could not be bothered to do anything. Now the fire is raging out of control and the clowns are dancing around cheering because they have got rid of the undergrowth.0 -
ugo.santalucia wrote:Surrey Commuter wrote:On the other side of the coin why don't we all try and be more positive
Is there any reason to be positive?
Try these:
1 - In my working life, I've been through Black Wednesday and not joining the Euro. Both of those events brought forth predictions of disaster and ruin. Neither turned out too badly for the UK, and in the case of the Euro, it's pretty clear that not joining wasn't just manageable but the best option by some distance. There are a lot of resourceful, dynamic, intelligent people in the UK, who will continue to run successful businesses, adapting to whatever conditions are. Leaving the EU won't change this. There will be winners and losers, but there are every day following every change to the world, large or small.
2 - Likewise, Norway was apparently doomed when the folk there voted not to join the EU, but they seem to be muddling through or better.
3 - The EU is actually pretty crap at dealing with crises: they're still f*cking around with sticking-plaster solutions and criminally high levels of unemployment 8 years after the financial crisis of 2008 whilst every other major economy has largely dealt with it (albeit with remaining structural economic issue). Even our fairly incompetent politicians of both major parties managed to oversee the UK's emergence from the crisis. We really don't want to be beholden to these incompetents!
4 - The campaign and immediate aftermath rhetoric is being toned down. For example, Siemens recently "clarified" its comments about investment in the UK and confirmed it has not changed its plan. Even Martin Schultz, President of the European Parliament has been quite conciliatory this week. He and Juncker were almost delerious with delight and telling the UK to shut the door on the way out on 24th June. I assume he has been lent on by Merkel and told to stop being such a tw*t as a sensible compromise has to be reached (*). (An acrimonious UK departure would b*gger the UK, but would also b*gger the EU as a loss of business confidence there could tip the dodgy Eurozone banks - including most of Italy's - over the edge.)
(*) This won't be the land of milk and honey prophesied by Johnson, but trade-wise, it will not look much different to what we have now.
5 - Farage serves no purpose and will presumably get limited airtime from now on.
6 - Johnson is a busted flush and can stick to presenting Have I Got News For You rather than a*sing around in politics.
I voted to remain, but the majority voted to leave, and that's what going to happen. (Apparently more people voted to leave the EU than have ever voted for anything or anyone in any UK-wide election, and such a mandate cannot realistically be ignored.) I'm a glass half full type of guy and if everyone knuckles down, accepts that things are different now and makes the best of life as it now is then things will work out fine, albeit with a lot of bumps in the road in the short term. (I don't think even Johnson claimed that there would be no short term adverse impacts.)0 -
Surrey Commuter wrote:Or a third of the people in your street wanted to have a big fire to get rid of some unsightly undergrowth. A third of you warned it would almost certainly severely damage everybody's house. The other third could not be bothered to do anything. Now the fire is raging out of control and the clowns are dancing around cheering because they have got rid of the undergrowth.
That's a bit elaborate... I think my metaphor is more understandable at a brexit level...
left the forum March 20230 -
ugo.santalucia wrote:Surrey Commuter wrote:Migrants are great because you do not have to pay to educate them and they tend to leave before retirement. This means that overall they tend to be net contributors to society.
.
The other day the gas engineer came to service the boiler... we had a chat and he turns out to be Romanian... he moved here before Romania was part of the EU... now he is a UK citizen. He has a degree in Nuclear Engineering and when he moved, he didn't know that in the UK an engineer is someone who fixes the lift or the boiler, but there is more money doing that than working for EDF as a nuclear engineer...
Britain in a nutshell
Well EDF is a French company. Also, it's to he guy's credit that he was prepared to re train for a productive role. He could presumably have gone into simething like teaching in higher education and not had to work as hard for his crust.
The downside of his decision is that he doesn't get time to post online during the working day, criticizing the country he's chosen to live in. Presumably he's happy enough with his lot not to feel such a need anyway. Successful people tend not to be malcontents, good luck to him I say, we need more like him.
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See my comments in red.Surrey Commuter wrote:PBlakeney wrote:
I hope not as she was buried 20 years ago.Surrey Commuter wrote:This is economics!!!! The person wiping your granny's ars* is an East European and the person paying taxes to keep her in the home is also East European.
That is the situation outlined. What is the solution?
I have outlined above how you can reduce costs but real solutions require more effort.
True
One would be to encourage people to have more kids. You could literally bribe them by increasing child benefit. or you can make it easier/cheaper for mothers to return to work by making childcare tax deductible or state run childcare - this is what France do. This will take 20 years for the benefits to kick in and will have massive set-up costs. We should have done this 30 years ago but now you would have to chop other budgets to pay for it so realistically will not happen.
Kicking the can down the road. More pensioners then.
The another option is to encourage the right sort of economic migration. The UK did this very successfully for a couple of decades but populist politicians conflated this with the problems caused by a global financial crisis and now we need a new plan.Kicking the can down the road. More pensioners then.
Another solution would be to change cultural attitudes. In the UK we have a strong sense of entitlement so claim everything we can from the Govt. Think C2W, millionaire pensioners collecting their winter fuel allowance or billionaire landowners collecting every subsidy they can. In Japan they have a culture of taking from the State "what you need" not "what you can". Fair point but I'd guess most pensioners do not earn enough to be paying tax in the first place.
What would I do? Make all pensioner benefits taxable, put pensioners on same tax rates as the rest of us. They already are AFAIK. Replace the triple lock with a CPI designed to reflect what pensioners spend their money on. £6k will barely cover basic living costs. Make it easier for Mums to return to work by having heavily subsidised state run childcare. The biggest help will be economic growth and economic migration so I would not leave the EU. How will this affect youth unemployment?
I know people will compare me to Robert Mugabe but my background is as an economist and this is all mainstream stuff and why it is called the dismal science.The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
Wallace and Gromit wrote:ugo.santalucia wrote:Surrey Commuter wrote:On the other side of the coin why don't we all try and be more positive
Is there any reason to be positive?
Try these:
1 - In my working life, I've been through Black Wednesday and not joining the Euro. Both of those events brought forth predictions of disaster and ruin. Neither turned out too badly for the UK, and in the case of the Euro, it's pretty clear that not joining wasn't just manageable but the best option by some distance. There are a lot of resourceful, dynamic, intelligent people in the UK, who will continue to run successful businesses, adapting to whatever conditions are. Leaving the EU won't change this. There will be winners and losers, but there are every day following every change to the world, large or small.
2 - Likewise, Norway was apparently doomed when the folk there voted not to join the EU, but they seem to be muddling through or better.
3 - The EU is actually pretty crap at dealing with crises: they're still f*cking around with sticking-plaster solutions and criminally high levels of unemployment 8 years after the financial crisis of 2008 whilst every other major economy has largely dealt with it (albeit with remaining structural economic issue). Even our fairly incompetent politicians of both major parties managed to oversee the UK's emergence from the crisis. We really don't want to be beholden to these incompetents!
4 - The campaign and immediate aftermath rhetoric is being toned down. For example, Siemens recently "clarified" its comments about investment in the UK and confirmed it has not changed its plan. Even Martin Schultz, President of the European Parliament has been quite conciliatory this week. He and Juncker were almost delerious with delight and telling the UK to shut the door on the way out on 24th June. I assume he has been lent on by Merkel and told to stop being such a tw*t as a sensible compromise has to be reached (*). (An acrimonious UK departure would b*gger the UK, but would also b*gger the EU as a loss of business confidence there could tip the dodgy Eurozone banks - including most of Italy's - over the edge.)
(*) This won't be the land of milk and honey prophesied by Johnson, but trade-wise, it will not look much different to what we have now.
5 - Farage serves no purpose and will presumably get limited airtime from now on.
6 - Johnson is a busted flush and can stick to presenting Have I Got News For You rather than a*sing around in politics.
I voted to remain, but the majority voted to leave, and that's what going to happen. (Apparently more people voted to leave the EU than have ever voted for anything or anyone in any UK-wide election, and such a mandate cannot realistically be ignored.) I'm a glass half full type of guy and if everyone knuckles down, accepts that things are different now and makes the best of life as it now is then things will work out fine, albeit with a lot of bumps in the road in the short term. (I don't think even Johnson claimed that there would be no short term adverse impacts.)
dont see anything to be particularly positive about, from the loss of NHS workers to a slow down or even recession, individuals losing jobs etc completely unnecessarily is a waste - but for me the biggest negative is our rep abroad, viewed from europe or USA, we are seen as xenophobic and tiny minded.
Of course we ll muddle on but your assertion about Norway is completely wrong, Norway is extremely rich in natural resources but has still in effect signed up to the EU, it also has plenty to trade with, we do not.
Another way to look at the vote might be to say 46m electorate, 16m voted IN 17m OUT, so just over a 1/3rd, voted OUT, how is that overwhelming ? or (as i heard this morning) THE UK voted OUT???? no, it did not.
the 16m IN' ers also represent a huge number of people but their views are rubbished and they have to go along with a course of action that many do not hold with at all,
as one very keen OUT er said me "we should never have had this vote, we dont know enough about the EU to make a decision"0 -
Surrey Commuter wrote:TheBigBean wrote:Surrey Commuter wrote:The problem is twofold, the first is that people are living longer and the second is that for the last 40 years people have been having fewer children. This is a factor across the developed world and is why some countries have generous incentives to have more kids. We, like the Germans, went for the migration route (think Blair and new EU countries). Migrants are great because you do not have to pay to educate them and they tend to leave before retirement. This means that overall they tend to be net contributors to society.
Now let's assume that the leaders of Brexit are not terminally stupid and they they are opportunistic liars. This means that they know all of the above and why even Farage has backtracked on immigration.
This is economics!!!! The person wiping your granny's ars* is an East European and the person paying taxes to keep her in the home is also East European.
You are presenting opinion as fact there. I think most economists agree that highly skilled migrants are a benefit to the economy. It is less clear what the impact of unskilled migrants is. For example, taking a random Google choice
http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.u ... mmigrationUK studies find that immigration has small impact on average wages but more significant impacts along the wage distribution: low-waged workers lose while medium and high-paid workers gain
But we are discussing the problems of an ageing society with close to full employment. I acknowledge that in other scenarios things could be different.
I am not going to read that link as I am aware of that organisation. Unless you believe in eugenics then I would think twice about aligning yourself with them. Their main man is prof David Coleman - as always Google is your friend.
It wasn't a recommendation, it was an article picked at random. The point being the subject is contentious and should be presented as such.
I'd be quite interested in a government study into long term demographic changes as a result of an ageing population and immigration, but sadly the debate seldom gets beyond populist rhetoric.0 -
Lookyhere wrote:dont see anything to be particularly positive about, from the loss of NHS workers to a slow down or even recession, individuals losing jobs etc completely unnecessarily is a waste - but for me the biggest negative is our rep abroad, viewed from europe or USA, we are seen as xenophobic and tiny minded.
Of course we ll muddle on but your assertion about Norway is completely wrong, Norway is extremely rich in natural resources but has still in effect signed up to the EU, it also has plenty to trade with, we do not.
Another way to look at the vote might be to say 46m electorate, 16m voted IN 17m OUT, so just over a 1/3rd, voted OUT, how is that overwhelming ? or (as i heard this morning) THE UK voted OUT???? no, it did not.
the 16m IN' ers also represent a huge number of people but their views are rubbished and they have to go along with a course of action that many do not hold with at all,
as one very keen OUT er said me "we should never have had this vote, we dont know enough about the EU to make a decision"
How are we going to lose NHS workers? This is a possible outcome before any exit negotiations have formally begun, just as the UK adopting a relationship with the rest of the world akin to North Korea's is. But it doesn't seem very likely does it? Project Fear didn't work during the campaign, so it's probably best canned now, unless you're intent on making yourself miserable.
I wouldn't worry about the USA view. Trump will win just under or just over half the votes in their upcoming Presidential election. Glass houses and stones etc.
Just over 1/3 of those eligible to vote voted to leave. Whilst this is not an absolute majority, there are more leave voters than remain voters. So if the UK did not vote to leave, what did it vote for? This isn't a rhetorical question - You're saying the UK didn't vote to leave and I am genuinely interested to know what you think the UK did vote for! (33 million folk voted, so there was clearly a vote for something.)
Re Norway, you miss my point. I'm not saying they are like the UK economically or their relationship with the EU is like the UK's will be. I'm saying that the predictions of doom when they voted not to join the EU did not come true. Far from it, in fact. Ditto Black Wednesday and not joining the Euro for the UK.0 -
Lookyhere wrote:as one very keen OUT er said me "we should never have had this vote, we don't know enough about the EU to make a decision"
I wouldn't disagree with this, but it was in the Tory election manifesto, and they won the election, so there was certainly a mandate for it.0 -
TheBigBean wrote:Surrey Commuter wrote:TheBigBean wrote:Surrey Commuter wrote:The problem is twofold, the first is that people are living longer and the second is that for the last 40 years people have been having fewer children. This is a factor across the developed world and is why some countries have generous incentives to have more kids. We, like the Germans, went for the migration route (think Blair and new EU countries). Migrants are great because you do not have to pay to educate them and they tend to leave before retirement. This means that overall they tend to be net contributors to society.
Now let's assume that the leaders of Brexit are not terminally stupid and they they are opportunistic liars. This means that they know all of the above and why even Farage has backtracked on immigration.
This is economics!!!! The person wiping your granny's ars* is an East European and the person paying taxes to keep her in the home is also East European.
You are presenting opinion as fact there. I think most economists agree that highly skilled migrants are a benefit to the economy. It is less clear what the impact of unskilled migrants is. For example, taking a random Google choice
http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.u ... mmigrationUK studies find that immigration has small impact on average wages but more significant impacts along the wage distribution: low-waged workers lose while medium and high-paid workers gain
But we are discussing the problems of an ageing society with close to full employment. I acknowledge that in other scenarios things could be different.
I am not going to read that link as I am aware of that organisation. Unless you believe in eugenics then I would think twice about aligning yourself with them. Their main man is prof David Coleman - as always Google is your friend.
It wasn't a recommendation, it was an article picked at random. The point being the subject is contentious and should be presented as such.
I'd be quite interested in a government study into long term demographic changes as a result of an ageing population and immigration, but sadly the debate seldom gets beyond populist rhetoric.
Economics is not a science so there is always room for debate. Most agree that economic migration is a good thing for the recipient country. I stand by my stance that Coleman has some very disagreeable opinions about race and no organisation fronted by him should be quoted on immigration.
Look at it as too different studies. There are plenty of studies on the demographic time bomb that has already hit us. Then there are a lot of theories on how to deal with it. You can increase the size of your current workforce, more mums back to work and motivate the feckless. You can make your workforce more productive (difficult) or you can import labour.0 -
Wallace and Gromit wrote:How are we going to lose NHS workers? This is a possible outcome before any exit negotiations have formally begun, just as the UK adopting a relationship with the rest of the world akin to North Korea's is. But it doesn't seem very likely does it? Project Fear didn't work during the campaign, so it's probably best canned now, unless you're intent on making yourself miserable.
As I've said a couple of times on the thread, I have a friend who is from the Czech Republic and is a nurse. 4 of the nurses on her ward have quit and are returning home because of the anti-immigrant atmosphere generated by by the referendum. She is thinking of leaving herself. That's 4 nurses (possibly soon to be 5) on 1 ward in 1 hospital. What will the numbers be like across the country? Ask yourself whether you would feel more or less welcome in Britain as a result of what's happened in the last 6 months if you were an immigrant. Now imagine what it's going to be like over the next couple of years the government placates the leavers by pretending to oppose freedom of movement for EU workers, which will be instantly rejected by Eastern European countries if we are to have access to the single market.
If the government had the courage just to come out and admit that we need to have a Norway-style arrangement and that they're very sorry to all the leave voters, but Johnson, Gove, Farage et al. span you a load of lies about controlled immigration from the EU, then things might calm down quickly. Unfortunately, I don't think that's going to happen, because if they do back down over freedom of movement without seeming to put up a fight, they'll have this country's gutter press all over them.0 -
finchy wrote:What will the numbers be like across the country?
I'd expect not many folk will give up well paying jobs to return to their home country and a much lower paying job just because there are a few isolated incidents of racist/xenophobic tw*ts doing their stuff.
The active nature of the likes of Griffin and Farage in the UK over the last 10-15 years has hardly been a secret and this hasn't stopped folk coming. I don't think the view of the UK as a whole towards immigrants has changed much recently; what has changed is that the establishment (politicians, serious press and BBC) have finally had it brought to their attention that it is a genuine concern to a lot of people, rather than being a fringe/extremist view.0 -
finchy wrote:...a Norway-style arrangement...
I think something like this is the likely outcome. However, the UK should go into the negotiations asking for access to single market and control over immigration. There's no point giving ground before you start negotiating, and as no country has ever left the EU before, who knows what kind of dog's breakfast of a compromise might be cooked up? I think we can kiss goodbye to the rebate though!0 -
Wallace and Gromit wrote:
I'd expect not many folk will give up well paying jobs to return to their home country and a much lower paying job just because there are a few isolated incidents of racist/xenophobic tw*ts doing their stuff.finchy wrote:What will the numbers be like across the country?
Like I say, 4 nurses on 1 ward in 1 hospital. I doubt very much that this ward is a massive anomaly. And it isn't just a few isolated events perpetrated by racists that is the concern to them. It's the general feeling in the country. My wife is an immigrant, so we have lots of friends from Eastern Europe, and they've all said the same thing - that they suddenly feel like the British people hate them. You probably don't notice things like this, but I do. When I take my kids to the park and immigrant parents stop talking to their own children because of the dirty looks they get, for example. It's all those tiny little things that add up, not just a tiny minority of extremists.
Also, many of the Eastern European countries have rapidly growing economies now. They're still not close to the west, on the whole, but they're not exactly starving, either. The increased feeling of xenophobia might just be enough to push NHS workers to return home, or not to come here in the first place.0 -
Wallace and Gromit wrote:finchy wrote:...a Norway-style arrangement...
I think something like this is the likely outcome. However, the UK should go into the negotiations asking for access to single market and control over immigration. There's no point giving ground before you start negotiating, and as no country has ever left the EU before, who knows what kind of dog's breakfast of a compromise might be cooked up? I think we can kiss goodbye to the rebate though!
From my perspective, that's absolutely the worst thing they can do. It's not going to happen. The Eastern European countries would be insane to let richer countries cream off their most highly qualified workers, so why just ratchet up the public racism for no good reason?0 -
finchy wrote:Wallace and Gromit wrote:finchy wrote:...a Norway-style arrangement...
I think something like this is the likely outcome. However, the UK should go into the negotiations asking for access to single market and control over immigration. There's no point giving ground before you start negotiating, and as no country has ever left the EU before, who knows what kind of dog's breakfast of a compromise might be cooked up? I think we can kiss goodbye to the rebate though!
From my perspective, that's absolutely the worst thing they can do. It's not going to happen. The Eastern European countries would be insane to let richer countries cream off their most highly qualified workers, so why just ratchet up the public racism for no good reason?
If you had a system where any country could limit EU migration each year to X% of the population, but didn't have the ability to discriminate i.e. first come first served, then everyone other than the idealists would be happy depending on the size of X.0 -
TheBigBean wrote:finchy wrote:Wallace and Gromit wrote:finchy wrote:...a Norway-style arrangement...
I think something like this is the likely outcome. However, the UK should go into the negotiations asking for access to single market and control over immigration. There's no point giving ground before you start negotiating, and as no country has ever left the EU before, who knows what kind of dog's breakfast of a compromise might be cooked up? I think we can kiss goodbye to the rebate though!
From my perspective, that's absolutely the worst thing they can do. It's not going to happen. The Eastern European countries would be insane to let richer countries cream off their most highly qualified workers, so why just ratchet up the public racism for no good reason?
If you had a system where any country could limit EU migration each year to X% of the population, but didn't have the ability to discriminate i.e. first come first served, then everyone other than the idealists would be happy depending on the size of X.
Everybody except the employers that need to get in some skilled labour and can't do it because the annual quota was filled up months ago.0 -
It would mean that most experienced hires took place in the first part of the year, but hiring is a pretty slow process any way, so I think they would survive.0
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finchy wrote:...they suddenly feel like the British people hate them.
Jeez...
I can understand your friends' concerns. I have my own, working in financial services, but don't you think that suddenly feeling the British people hate them is just a teeny bit OTT?
I'm sure that if immigrants were getting dirty looks in the park (and I'm still far from convinced that this was widespread) in the immediate aftermath of the referendum then feelings collectively will soon return to the usual, remarkably tolerant nature that prevail in the UK.
I could be wrong and if the NHS finds itself staffless in the near future then I will recalibrate my "world view".0 -
finchy wrote:Wallace and Gromit wrote:finchy wrote:...a Norway-style arrangement...
I think something like this is the likely outcome. However, the UK should go into the negotiations asking for access to single market and control over immigration. There's no point giving ground before you start negotiating, and as no country has ever left the EU before, who knows what kind of dog's breakfast of a compromise might be cooked up? I think we can kiss goodbye to the rebate though!
From my perspective, that's absolutely the worst thing they can do. It's not going to happen. The Eastern European countries would be insane to let richer countries cream off their most highly qualified workers, so why just ratchet up the public racism for no good reason?
We'll be negotiating against the French and they have the best diplomats. So we need to adopt the best negotiating tactics, which includes making a very aggressive, but not totally off the wall, opening bid. The negotiated outcome will be less favourable than what we ask for initially, so why open the bidding at a low level?
Besides, asking for controls on immigration isn't racist; it's what pretty much every non-EU country does. The tendency to label any questioning of unrestricted EU immigration as racism is one of the reasons why the vote was to leave - those who had concerns weren't listened to (or at worst, were called racists) so they voted to leave as the only way of being listened to.
Besides, the Eastern European countries are massive net beneficiaries of the EU, so they ultimately will be forced to do whatever Germany thinks is best for them.0 -
Wallace and Gromit wrote:finchy wrote:...they suddenly feel like the British people hate them.
Jeez...
I can understand your friends' concerns. I have my own, working in financial services, but don't you think that suddenly feeling the British people hate them is just a teeny bit OTT?
Depends where you live and what you're exposed to. Ever lived in a foreign country? It's easy to feel like you're despised when you get a steady drip-drip-drip of abuse and negative comments.Wallace and Gromit wrote:I'm sure that if immigrants were getting dirty looks in the park (and I'm still far from convinced that this was widespread) in the immediate aftermath of the referendum then feelings collectively will soon return to the usual, remarkably tolerant nature that prevail in the UK.
This was before the referendum campaign even began. It's getting worse now.Wallace and Gromit wrote:I could be wrong and if the NHS finds itself staffless in the near future then I will recalibrate my "world view".
It won't find itself staffless, but there is a danger that it will lose large numbers of workers, and we really can't afford that.0 -
Wallace and Gromit wrote:finchy wrote:Wallace and Gromit wrote:finchy wrote:...a Norway-style arrangement...
I think something like this is the likely outcome. However, the UK should go into the negotiations asking for access to single market and control over immigration. There's no point giving ground before you start negotiating, and as no country has ever left the EU before, who knows what kind of dog's breakfast of a compromise might be cooked up? I think we can kiss goodbye to the rebate though!
From my perspective, that's absolutely the worst thing they can do. It's not going to happen. The Eastern European countries would be insane to let richer countries cream off their most highly qualified workers, so why just ratchet up the public racism for no good reason?
We'll be negotiating against the French and they have the best diplomats. So we need to adopt the best negotiating tactics, which includes making a very aggressive, but not totally off the wall, opening bid. The negotiated outcome will be less favourable than what we ask for initially, so why open the bidding at a low level?
Besides, asking for controls on immigration isn't racist; it's what pretty much every non-EU country does. The tendency to label any questioning of unrestricted EU immigration as racism is one of the reasons why the vote was to leave - those who had concerns weren't listened to (or at worst, were called racists) so they voted to leave as the only way of being listened to.
Besides, the Eastern European countries are massive net beneficiaries of the EU, so they ultimately will be forced to do whatever Germany thinks is best for them.
A deal has to be negotiated that is acceptable to all 27 member states. The Eastern European member states aren't going to vote to lose their most highly-qualified workers but not their manual workers. No chance whatsoever. If you think they're in any mood to be pushed around by Germany at the moment, you really don't understand the politics of that region. Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia all have populist leaders and governing parties, and they're mad at Germany over refugees (massive hypocrisy on their part, but still...). They will not vote against their national interests on German orders.
Like I say, my concern is that the government will make a big fuss about controlled immigration (playing to the gallery), get absolutely nowhere, and there'll be a big anti-immigrant backlash in this country. Can you not understand why I've got very strong feelings about this possibility?0
