Are Norway in the EU?
Brexited | the worst threads live the longest
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I think I can safely assume that a lot of leave voters were led to believe that we were completely detaching ourselves from the EU and everything that went along with it.
Agree with this, the leave campaign certainly had a lot to do with immigration and unless I am mistaken a soft brexit means thing stay the same?
Whether we can safely assume or not doesn't matter - there is no legal nor moral requirement for the UK government to have to implement a hard Brexit. Especially when the fact that we cannot end freedom of movement while remaining within the single market was never properly communicated during the referendum anyway. Indeed it's not even being communicated properly now, with May pretty much backing a soft Brexit while still saying we will end freedom of movement.
The eventual result was narrow anyway, and suggests a compromise between both versions of Brexit makes sense. A 52% for Remain wouldn't have given the government a mandate to take us into the Euro and argue for a fully federal US of Europe - similarly a narrow win for the other side shouldn't mean they get anything with no compromises between.
They do, but again this was never communicated. Plenty of politicians suggested we could end freedom of movement while remaining in the single market which is a patent lie.
Similarly, anyone who wants to end freedom of movement has not yet explained how this is viable while respecting the GFA, another issue that was blatantly ignored during the referendum. If no solution can be reached then a hard Brexit can't be implemented on a practical level.
I kid you not but a lot of people I know and work with said they voted leave because and I quote "there are too many foreigners"!
I personally don't care either way. I think Britain will survive well whether we are in or out of the EU. What I dislike is modern British politicians making total mugs of themselves and by extension, Britain. It's properly embarrassing.
I wish they would just be honest for once.
I wish they would just be honest for once.
But if that was the crux on which their campaign was based, then it is pretty poor form!
What the campaign was based on doesn't really matter though. All that's important is the question itself - that's what the government are being expected to adhere to. Immigration was the crux on which it was surrounded but many of the demands and claims made regarding it were flat-out lies - the fact the process is being respected at all on the basis of that is compromise enough.
Yep
It should matter though. If you were sold a story from some insurance salesman or pensions advisor and locked yourself into some long term expensive scheme...only to be told that actually your cover or benefits were completely different to what you expected, you'd be pretty pissed, right?
But it wasn't the Conservatives who were campaigning for Brexit. Labour were staunchly against it, the Conservatives had no idea what they were saying apart from a select few further right leaning members (Boris, Mogg, Gove etc), it was the UKIP reps and the far right that was campaigning for the impossible hard Brexit.
They were campaigning for an outcome which they would have zero input in implementing, and so could spin "Brexit" to be whatever they wanted, knowing they would get zero blame if the government then failed to implement what people expected. This was not a referendum won by a government or party, it was won by a lobby which spun an unrealistic picture of what Brexit would be, because they could, because that t where their job ended, and then all they had to do was sit back and wait to complain about how the government was failing the people.
Guy at my work voted for it because he heard some story about a fisherman having to repackage all his fish because of EU regs. He said he wasn't going to vote right up until happened and that was his reason when I asked why.
This guy is an otherwise intelligent professional.
And why did you vote remain? What do you reply to them with?
"I like foreigners me"
Well that would be an equally nothing retort if it were true.
People voted on feelings, not facts.
They wanted out of the EU and they wanted out of everything without realising what it meant with regards to freedom of movement or anything like that. Especially not the GFA and the Irish border issue. They didn't give a feck about it, they just wanted 'out'.
They never thought about all the legal entanglements and everything we have to respect. Not once. It was just 'feck the EU and feck immigrants' and that was it. Otherwise you wouldn't vote to change everything.
Europe always said they wouldn't do a soft Brexit and they have no incentive to compromise because we're leaving. We just thought we could bluff it.
I'm in spain right now, all the catering jobs are done by Spaniards. In Holland they have only just started employing non dutch speakers in bars and cafs due to chronic shortage of available people. Why are all the catering jobs in the uk done by eastern europeans?
I think millions of people don’t want to be part of a supranational dictatorship they know little about and don’t want to be part of the “ever closer union.” Lots of people want more control over immigration which they probably won’t get yet but leaving the EU in a sensible manner is a starting point.
But the problem is what constitutes a 'sensible manner'. One of the issues has always been the idea that these things can be as easily as some describe. 'sensible manner', 'let's get on with it', 'will of the people' - as if saying these things makes something that is intrinsically and painfully complex somehow more straight forward. Nobody ever seems to give much of a toss about the actual detail. Won't fix anything as straight forward as a chain on a bike by shouting at it and asking why it hates democracy, so why do so many who support Brexit thinks that how this is going to work?
Lack of interest in the detail has always been the problem. How we leave the EU and what kind of relationship we have after is key.
Controlling immigration is easier outside the Schengen area is easier than in it, something we currently have an exemption from that is suddenly now back on the table and possibly to be used as a negotiating tactic by the EU who know how far over a barrel we are and need desperately to avoid going off the edge of an economic cliff that we may have to give up all or part off our own exemption from that agreement all in the name of 'controlling immigration', because people who didn't know what the feck they were talking about said we could and other people who knew even less than they did, believed them.
Is this your opinion of the EU or the reason you think the Leavers voted this.
Dictatorship.? Immigration control the UK dont enforce ?
Something they know little about.?
Yet they voted to leave because they didn't understand what they were voting for.
Exactly my point all along. Ignorance is no excuse.
I think a lot of people don’t know much about it other than seeing the EU has a political end game and will stop at nothing to see it achieved. Every time there’s an issue in Europe the answer is to double down instead of reforming.
Immigration is of no huge concern to me but the power is not in the hands of the British people at present and more is being transferrred to Brussels every year. I also think a lot of remainers mistakenly think Brexit is the end. They see it as an event rather than a process of turning around politics in this country over many years.
The EU is continuously reforming, this idea of doubling down instead of reforming is tedious. Also on immigration the power is in british government not in Brussels.
What is the EU's end game? We still have very powerful institutions in London, Scotland, and Wales who make their own rules.
Don't forget the 28% who didn't even bother to vote. Not voting for a change generally indicates you're content enough with the status quo or completely disinterested. Only the people with stronger feelings about it one way or the other will take the time to vote, and those who want the change will always vote.
Look at the Welsh referendum in the 90s. 50% of the electorate turned out to vote, and the "yes to an Assembly" vote was just over half of those who voted (by the slimmest margin). So basically, only about 25% of Welsh people really wanted an Assembly.
It's amazing how the Tory party is managing to look in chaos but simultaneously is (somewhat) improving it's public image as most of the MPs/people resigning are the genuine scum/shite of the party.
They'll be replaced soon enough though, one thing the Tory party has is a never ending conveyor belt of tossers.
Were you drunk when you posted that? Because you quite literally answered the question yourself already, see the bolded. Spain's economy hasn't been great, and there is a lot of unemployment.
Unemployment Spain 2018: 16.74%
Unemployment UK & the Netherlands 2018: less than 5%
Why would there be a shortage in the UK and the Netherlands? Because they're relatively wealthy countries, catering jobs are often incredibly hard work for minimum wage, and most working people would prefer something better than a catering job and jump on every opportunity to get a better job, or less hard working for the same amount of money, like for example in a call centre. It's the same with the vegetable picking in the greenhouses, it's about the toughest minimum wage job there is, and no one wants to do it.
Now back to Spain's high unemployment numbers, surely it's not difficult to understand why Spanish nationals do want to work the tough catering jobs against a shite salary? Because at least it's better than being unemployed and broke.
https://www.theguardian.com/busines...-chef-shortage-eating-out-under-threat-brexit
"The situation, post-Brexit, will only become more complicated. The British Hospitality Association, with help from accountancy firm KPMG, published a report last year which suggests that the sector is staring into a recruitment black hole without EU nationals to bail them out: by 2029, the industry could have a deficit of more than a million workers. The report recommended that the industry will need to find at least another 60,000 workers per year on top of the 200,000 required “to replace churn and to power growth”."
And there's this. "A recent survey by the Institute of Directors found that 60% of UK employers saw migrant workers as harder working, more reliable and better skilled than natives."
https://www.thecaterer.com/articles/312034/eastern-europeans-fill-uk-hospitality-jobs
Yeah but here's the flipside. When that shortage materialises, maybe the hospitality industry will start having to pay higher salaries instead of pittance which will also increase retention and prevent the "churn" as they describe it. That's a positive for the average person.
When you have uncontrolled migration, due to a union of economies of hugely different scales, you get a large influx of workers across the whole spectrum. Both for employment sectors that need workers, and for sectors that don't. When the worker supply begins to exceed the demand, the salaries stop growing. Because you can always readily replace a departing worker with another one for same or lower salary. It creates a downward pressure on salaries. As logic dictates and also evidenced in Mediterranean economies of large unemployment rates.
For healthy economies though, you end up in a situation where businesses are flourishing because they take advantage of cheaper and readily available labour. The stock exchange is booming , dividends for rich shareholders go up and CEO pay packets rocket upwards. Meanwhile the average worker salary is staying put or even decreasing after adjusting for inflation. Now if the country is also caught up in a financial bind, having to cut back on services & benefits then you have a really nasty effect where the rich start getting much richer while the lower classes bear the brunt in every way possible by both salaries and public services being hit. This an incomplete (admittedly) summation of what has happened in the UK in the last 8 years.
For example I look at my industry which is I.T. and I compare UK salaries to US salaries. The combination of two effects in the US have created a shortage:
a) more expensive education not easily available to all. And..
b) strong restriction on migration
This has resulted in highly increased wages. When I last had a look, the average salary in the States is approximately 70% higher compared to the UK for Software Devs, while living costs are largely the same or comparable. My London-based company has an office in NY and when we talked to recruitment agents there with plans to staff an I.T. department the salary expenditure we were confronted with made us shelve the plans entirely and base everything in London.
Now from my POV I see what is happening in the US I.T. industry as a good thing for the workers. The fact some of these firms struggle to get good workers on the cheap, I would not give two fecks about. Especially when most Western countries have rather low corporate/dividend tax, so it's even better for the country if the revenue is transferred to the employees and taxed heavily rather than reported as company profit or dividends and taxed much less. So long as business growth is not too negatively impacted, the average Joe benefits from a minor shortage.
So yeah, there is a problem with uncontrolled migration (especially for an English speaking country) and I say that as a pro-European and remainer.
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Agree. A mate of mine recently applied at my company as a network security eng. The initial interview ended as soon as salary was discussed. The have now hired someone from south africa rather than someone in NL. ABN bank pay 100k for good network guys currently but i can see that coming down. Palo Alto used to pay 120k but that is around 80 now. Race to the bottom.
How will leaving the EU help to control immigration in anybway not already possible? And what effect will it have on non-EU immigration?
What do you mean? Controlling migration for EU nationals is not a thing, it's not possible at all atm.
There's many ways that it will be possible in afterwards. Like the Canadian system of issuing working visas based on a number of conditions, like professions in big shortage and family status etc.
Non-EU migration will be unaffected I assume.
It's actually possible, the only EU nationals allowed to be in your country are the ones with a job or that are studying, the rest only have 3 months.
Isn't it?
Tell your mate to come to Belgium. According to recent reports we need 16.000 IT'ers extra in 2018. I'm in IT myself, and it's paid very good, including company car, cellphone, laptop, health insurance and about 35 days annual leave. Salaries are going though the roof here. Weird it would be so different in the UK.
Not strictly. They can stay longer than 3 months without a job so long as they can insure themselves and self-finance. And also you can move out of the country and back in, initiating a new 3-month period. So technically that's not even enforceable. I've never heard of an EU national being deported for not finding a job, have you?
Secondly telling people you have 3-months to find a job is not "controlling migration". Even if people were deported after 3 months of not finding jobs (which they are not) the impact on the jobs market would still be very significant, probably (speculation here) equal to not having that restriction at all.
You can come in as an engineer applying for jobs. If you don't find one in 3 months, you get a job in the catering industry to earn an income while you keep applying for engineering jobs. The impact on the job market for engineers is immediately felt.
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It's different because the supply has managed to outstrip the demand. A benefit for business but not workers. I speculate it's in part because English is the second language for everyone, so when high skilled workers from lower income regions of EU seek to migrate.. the UK becomes their most likely choice.
Same was the situation with universities, with UK universities getting the lion's share of foreign students even after introducing fees (compared to EU universities that are largely completely free)
It isn't
Mate of mine, german passport holder, was threatened with deportation from NL when he claimed dole after being made redundant. So where is all this equality? I dont believe that while you have even 1% unemployment there should be any race to the bottom by hiring from abroad.
Yes, thousands of them.
Business are not getting a perfect match for their job opening, they are getting whoever will work for the price, that is usually someone from eastern europe. I'd really like to see me be disproven. Why a lot end up in the uk can only be because of low taxes, salaries in uk are decades behind NL at least.