Europe --- In or Out

[ewerk 26853]

21 minutes ago, Christmas Tree said:

The immigration issue was never an issue to me but there's a hell of a lot of people whose jobs are being taken away / undercut due to cheap labour.

 

Take A & P on the Tyne. Where once your average joe was employed, work is now put out to the lowest bidder. That bidder employs a load of poles on reduced wages and sticks a load of them in a 3 bed semi.

 

A & P save money, the contractor gets rich and average Joe is fucked.

 

Nowt wrong with immigration but it shouldn't be used as a way to a couple of people richer and a workforce unemployed / poorer.

 

Surely that's the Tory dream?

[Tom 13915]

Brexit for workers rights  

[Christmas Tree 4005]

1 hour ago, ewerk said:

 

Surely that's the Tory dream?

 

It was Labours dream which is why they allowed it with no controls. However at the end of the day it's not good regardless of political alliances.

 

Whoever runs the country, a sensible immigration policy that puts the country's needs first is what is required. 

[PaddockLad 14925]

1 hour ago, Christmas Tree said:

The immigration issue was never an issue to me but there's a hell of a lot of people whose jobs are being taken away / undercut due to cheap labour.

 

Take A & P on the Tyne. Where once your average joe was employed, work is now put out to the lowest bidder. That bidder employs a load of poles on reduced wages and sticks a load of them in a 3 bed semi.

 

A & P save money, the contractor gets rich and average Joe is fucked.

 

Nowt wrong with immigration but it shouldn't be used as a way to a couple of people richer and a workforce unemployed / poorer.

 

So who have been winning these A & P contracts of which you speak?...

[ewerk 26853]

46 minutes ago, Christmas Tree said:

 

It was Labours dream which is why they allowed it with no controls. However at the end of the day it's not good regardless of political alliances.

 

Whoever runs the country, a sensible immigration policy that puts the country's needs first is what is required. 

 

To the detriment of everything else?

[Christmas Tree 4005]

38 minutes ago, ewerk said:

 

To the detriment of everything else?

 

Theres bound to be some problems while issues are ironed out, but a UK with a free trade agreement with Europe, our own free trade deals with whoever we want and a sensible immigration policy controlled by the people we elect doesn't seem to outrageous to me. It's what most country's in the world consider normal.

[Meenzer 14143]

Most countries in the world are poorer than us.

 

[ewerk 26853]

1 hour ago, Christmas Tree said:

 

Theres bound to be some problems while issues are ironed out, but a UK with a free trade agreement with Europe, our own free trade deals with whoever we want and a sensible immigration policy controlled by the people we elect doesn't seem to outrageous to me. It's what most country's in the world consider normal.

 

And yet 13 of the world's top 18 countries by GDP per capita allow free movement of EU citizens. 

[Meenzer 14143]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/sep/08/nigel-farage-backs-far-right-afd-for-historic-german-election-success

 

I'm pretty sure Farage wasn't overly keen when Obama had his say on the referendum...

[PaddockLad 14925]

Frankie Boyle...

 

When I was a kid, Bank Holiday schedules leant heavily on the disaster movie. While today’s children snuggle up in front of stories of talking animals and plucky mermaids, we were left to make sense of hordes of screaming people being boiled alive or crushed by masonry as a result of arrogant cruise liner Captains and careless architects. And these were not like today’s disaster movies. It wasn’t an excuse for CGI tsunamis and meteor strikes, and we weren’t really hoping that the people would all survive. Indeed, the appeal was sort of that a group of people with pronounced character flaws would get the brutal death they so richly deserved, and the viewing experience was largely one of speculating about the order. 

Which brings us to Brexit. Who could be a more fitting choice to pilot this listing ship into shark infested waters than Theresa May? The Tories say “no deal” is better than a “bad deal”, and perhaps the same is also true of prime ministers.  Aloof, vindictive, having lost the support of her crew and passengers, she’ll be gone by the first ad break.  David Davis, a Chief Negotiator who looks like he’d end up paying full price on a DFS sofa, is another classic piece of casting; exactly the sort of scoffing, joshing presence that we can tolerate in a storyline because his awfulness makes it all the sweeter when steam from a burst pipe blasts him screaming into his constituent molecules. 

And then there’s the passengers. I think there’s a mistaken belief that Brexit supporters are naive and have been totally misled. To engage with them, it’s important to understand that they are reasonably clear about what they want, and what getting it might entail. In some ways, austerity may have trained people for Brexit. Hard to threaten people with low growth  when that’s all they can remember.  I think most Brexit voters understand that it will make travel much harder and don’t care. Just a casual observation based on the few Brexit voters I’ve met, but generally it seems like their xenophobia is stronger than their desire to trace Lord Byron’s footsteps to the Temple of Poseidon. We won’t get free healthcare in Europe. I imagine Bulgarian families are rejoicing that they can take their children to A&E without having to shield them from a scouser getting a stranger’s tongue piercing removed from their foreskin. 

Brexit has managed to get immigration down and exports up, admittedly by making the pound worthless. Unemployment is falling, as the amount of vacancies for hate crime advisors soar. Immigration was always going to go down after a Brexit vote: in much the same way that if you wanted to have fewer visitors you’d fill your front lawn with gnomes holding union jacks and a frothing bulldog. Perhaps this is a natural endpoint of individualism. With a philosophy where people are told that is their sense of self that is important, why wouldn’t they distrust experts, why wouldn’t they look inside themselves for guidance?  When we look inside ourselves we tend to find not ideologies, but neuroses. Many people in Britain lately seem to have looked into their hearts and found little more than a dislike of hearing a conversation in another language, a hatred of women, and a gnawing fear that they’re being taken for a mug.

Do you remember during the Edward Snowden revelations when the Head of the Cabinet Office went round to the Guardian’s offices and wanted them to smash their hard drives with a hammer? Because he didn’t really understand what data was. Similarly, we might not have a modern understanding of what sovereignty is. Perhaps a modern concept of sovereignty might involve owning the property in your capital city, or your own railway system. At the moment Britain is in a strange position where we seem to be sanguine about foreigners owning our infrastructure, we just don’t want them picking our fruit. 

The EU is flawed and problematic, and all those other words we use when we can’t be bothered explaining what is wrong. For a start, it’s deeply racist, and pretty much stops where the tan line becomes permanent. In fact, even that observation rests on the racist idea that EU countries are white monocultures. Fretting about our freedom of movement while thousands of people drown in the Mediterranean is racist. The rise of Brexit sentiment isn’t the rise of racism: to me it seems to be the swapping of a patrician, structural racism for a more volatile and demotic one. The pre-structural racism of a hideous new society. 
Of course, disaster movies were also marked out by moments of unexpected nobility, and sacrifice. So maybe this isn’t a very good metaphor after all. Maybe Brexit is just a little scene in a totally different disaster movie. It suppose it might be more like a brief cutaway to someone angrily trying to fish something out of a toaster with a knife, just before they disappear in the incendiary light of a nuclear explosion.

[Renton 18063]

Could NI scupper hard Brexit? I can't see how you can square the circle. If we leave the customs union, we MUST have a hard border. But such a border in NI would be a logistical nightmare, would plunge NI into perma-recession, and almost certainly lead to sectarian violence and militarization. It's also deeply undemocratic considering NI voted against Brexit. Also would effectively mean the UK government would break the Good Friday agreement.  In short, it's an impossible scenario.

 

The only thing that would work imo would be to give NI special status, and have the hard border on the Irish sea. But this would split NI from the UK which the unionists wouldn't accept. And the Tories need the DUP in order to get anything done. 

 

Thoughts?

[ewerk 26853]

United Ireland.

 

It's a clusterfuck and like so many Brexit issues, the British government genuinely have no idea how to solve it and are relying on the EU to come up with a solution.

[Renton 18063]

50 minutes ago, ewerk said:

United Ireland.

 

It's a clusterfuck and like so many Brexit issues, the British government genuinely have no idea how to solve it and are relying on the EU to come up with a solution.

No way a united Ireland will happen either, although if that was the end result of the flat earthers chumming up with the Tories it would be hilarious. 

 

It's almost as if there wasn't a plan.....

 

The brexiters made this clusterfuck so it's about time they faced up to the consequences imo. Be interesting to hear how CT would solve the problem. Oh, and Gibraltar too. And the democratic deficit of Scotland. 

[NJS 4016]

1 hour ago, Renton said:

The brexiters made this clusterfuck so it's about time they faced up to the consequences imo. Be interesting to hear how CT would solve the problem. Oh, and Gibraltar too. And the democratic deficit of Scotland. 

 

 

"Get on with it" seems to be the general response.

 

A Dutch lass at work has just gotten her UK citizenship and a Polish lass is in the middle of applying - it would be nice id the brexiters would acknowledge how much they've scared and fucked over thousands of decent people.

[Rayvin 4971]

I'm still surprised that so many of them are prepared to stay here to be perfectly honest.

 

I have one guy at work who has gotten citizenship in the past month too. He s Greek though so I kind of understand it from his point of view. Between a rock and a hard place.

[Dr Gloom 20176]

"cracking"

 

 

[Alex 30820]

On 09/09/2017 at 9:55 AM, Renton said:

No way a united Ireland will happen either, although if that was the end result of the flat earthers chumming up with the Tories it would be hilarious. 

 

It's almost as if there wasn't a plan.....

 

The brexiters made this clusterfuck so it's about time they faced up to the consequences imo. Be interesting to hear how CT would solve the problem. Oh, and Gibraltar too. And the democratic deficit of Scotland. 

Aye, if it wasn't so serious it would be funny how all the cunts that delivered it have either washed their hands of it or have come up with no solution beyond blaming Europe for being inflexible.

And, re: the bit in bold, no - it fucking wouldn't

Edited September 11, 2017 by Alex

[Dr Gloom 20176]

yes, you're being more than generous suggesting it'd be interesting. 

[Rayvin 4971]

1 hour ago, Dr Gloom said:

"cracking"

 

 

 

The company I work for is an exporter... Fuck.

[Meenzer 14143]

This is exactly the problem with letting something like this go to a referendum in the first place. The benefits of the EU are mostly technical and unsexy, making them hard to sell to the masses. The arguments for leaving are brash, broad-strokes statements that can't be contradicted in similarly simplistic terms. So guess what happens?

 

Meanwhile, the willy-waving and fanny-flailing continues.

 

 

[Christmas Tree 4005]

1 hour ago, Rayvin said:

 

The company I work for is an exporter... Fuck.

 

No need to worry, the likes of BMW and Audi don't fancy that carry on either.

[TheGingerQuiff 2412]

BAU because BMW and VW said

[Renton 18063]

14 minutes ago, Christmas Tree said:

 

No need to worry, the likes of BMW and Audi don't fancy that carry on either.

 

Aye, cos it's that simple. All the German car manufacturers have already stated their priorities are the EU market, not the UK market. Meanwhile, tariffs and non tariff barriers will increase the cost of a luxury car, but won't deter those select few that can afford them even after the crash of the pound. These barriers will play absolute havoc on our own supply chains though.

 

Anyway, it's not up to German manufacturers to decide any of this. It's up to the 27 EU countries who will now be our direct competitors. We're fucked.

 

 

[Renton 18063]

8 minutes ago, TheGingerQuiff said:

BAU because BMW and VW said

They didn't though. 

[Christmas Tree 4005]

13 minutes ago, Renton said:

They didn't though. 

 

They actually did