The EU: IN or OUT?

bumpercars99

uk1 wrote: »

Hi,

No one reading your post cannot fail to be sympathetic to your situation. My response was simply a reflection of what seemed to be your opinion that what you wanted was the neogitations concluded. You wanted it done quickly rather than optimally so you could earn again. I don't feel that I in any way misprepresented your post.

The other side of the brexit coin is that a lot of people have suffered as a result of unrestricted emigration, mostly outside of London.

My youngest son left school with pretty much no qualifications but managed to work his way through to become a financial advisor in a bank. When the banking crisis came he went from job to job and as he started each job his department or branch would be closed. It was a terrible time for him.

Then he widened his horizons and would take pretty much any job. Benefits over time were cut. In one day they even cut housing benefit for his age group even though he was in a 12 month lease. JSA isn't enough to keep people going and he has relied heavily on us for support and we are fortunate to be able to help. He takes a sizeable chunk of our income and has done for years, but I don't begrudge him a penny. He may as well have it now rather than when we're gone.

He lives in Southampton. When he first started seeking work, he was often able to get short term work at between £12 and £15 an hour. A few years ago an enormous number of very well educated East-European migrants started to find their way to Southampton and they have increased incredibly every year. The effect of this is that jobs that were available before at the higher rate are now being given to immigrants at basic rates, now "living wage" and he really doesn't get a look in. He also now feels unsafe going out in the evening as there has been an increase in violent crime mostly immigrant on local violent crime.

I'm sure there will be little sympathy for my son or indeed us and the amount it costs us to ensure he has somewhere to live and eats properly.

In leaving the EU, my wife and I will also be paying in terms of the drop in investment value, home values and indeed our only expensive vice - overseas travel.

So I think we are all suffering in our own different ways.


Jeff

I don't actually live in London. Strangely enough, I've lived in Southampton in the past as well although I live in the north west now. I don't really recognise what area you're talking about with your Polish "no-go area"

As I see it, allowing the erosion of British manufacturing, expecting people who've previously had access to skilled secure employment to get by on a zero hours retail job etc. is a failure of government in this country. Laying the blame at the door of immigrants or the EU is just letting those actually responsible off the hook.

I can't understand how leaving the EU could possibly be expected to resolve these issues that have been 40 years in the making.

My desire to get it over with isn't necessarily motivated by my working situation. I want things to settle down. I want to be able to get on the bus without strangers shouting at each other. As far as I can see, this can't happen until we're making proper progress towards this realistic, optimistic vision of post-EU Britain that I hope someone has! I agree that we need to wait until we have a new PM, but beyond this, how much longer do we need to wait before we start working towards something more positive?

uk1

CLAPTON wrote: »

So you are saying that countries with fewer people i.e. less people to pay taxes and spending money, are in general, worse off than larger countries?
so the Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, etc are all better off than the UK, Australia, Canada, NZ, Switzerland, Netherlands etc.

You can do a scatter chart with axis of 'number of people' against per capita GDP to see if you are correct. Whilst some, like USA may support your theory, the majority won't.

Linton somehow or other thought it pertinent and relevant and perhaps thought it made him appear wise to compare the Luddites of exactly 200 years ago to the current situation we are in today in the UK.

The UK has changed in 200 years.

Jeff

uk1

bumpercars99 wrote: »

I don't actually live in London. Strangely enough, I've lived in Southampton in the past as well although I live in the north west now. I don't really recognise what area you're talking about with your Polish "no-go area"

As I see it, allowing the erosion of British manufacturing, expecting people who've previously had access to skilled secure employment to get by on a zero hours retail job etc. is a failure of government in this country. Laying the blame at the door of immigrants or the EU is just letting those actually responsible off the hook.

I can't understand how leaving the EU could possibly be expected to resolve these issues that have been 40 years in the making.

My desire to get it over with isn't necessarily motivated by my working situation. I want things to settle down. I want to be able to get on the bus without strangers shouting at each other. As far as I can see, this can't happen until we're making proper progress towards this realistic, optimistic vision of post-EU Britain that I hope someone has! I agree that we need to wait until we have a new PM, but beyond this, how much longer do we need to wait before we start working towards something more positive?

You still appear to be ignoring that we cannot make mutually beneficial progress until the EU stops it's stance of wishing to set us as an example and ot punish us in order to bully other potential exiters, and instead agrees to the normal EU process of proper positive adult discussions. They appear to have started that process.

For that reason there obviously needs to be a bit of patience.

Jeff

CLAPTON

bumpercars99 wrote: »

As I see it, allowing the erosion of British manufacturing, expecting people who've previously had access to skilled secure employment to get by on a zero hours retail job etc. is a failure of government in this country. Laying the blame at the door of immigrants or the EU is just letting those actually responsible off the hook.

I can't understand how leaving the EU could possibly be expected to resolve these issues that have been 40 years in the making.

you see no connection between zero hours contracts and the plentiful supply of low cost labour ?

Linton

uk1 wrote: »

Linton somehow or other thought it pertinent and relevant and perhaps thought it made him appear wise to compare the Luddites of exactly 200 years ago to the current situation we are in today in the UK.

The UK has changed in 200 years.

Jeff

The industrial revolution changed society fundamentally, making formerly rich workers poor and creating new opportunities for others to become rich. Those such as the craft workers didn't like it and a few reacted violently to prevent the new order. It didn't do them any good.

I believe globalisation coupled with modern communications is having an equivalent effect. The problem we have to solve is how to allow the changes to happen with minimum casualties, not how to stop them.

bumpercars99

CLAPTON wrote: »

you see no connection between zero hours contracts and the plentiful supply of low cost labour ?

I think it's a totally separate issue. Contracts like that don't really work for skilled work as there's a real risk the employer won't be able to find the right people to staff the vacancies at short notice. What I would say is, what has happened to the skilled work in this country. If you don't work a white collar job, what is there to do? My family have all historically been ship builders with a trade. Not much chance of making a living doing something like that now.

My family that have stayed in the area rather than moving on like my parents did are sadly on the dole or have joined the army. I can't really see what opportunities would be available for them locally. Whether there are Polish people doing casual hospitality work is neither here nor there for them.

CLAPTON

bumpercars99 wrote: »

I think it's a totally separate issue. Contracts like that don't really work for skilled work as there's a real risk the employer won't be able to find the right people to staff the vacancies at short notice. What I would say is, what has happened to the skilled work in this country. If you don't work a white collar job, what is there to do? My family have all historically been ship builders with a trade. Not much chance of making a living doing something like that now.

My family that have stayed in the area rather than moving on like my parents did are sadly on the dole or have joined the army. I can't really see what opportunities would be available for them locally. Whether there are Polish people doing casual hospitality work is neither here nor there for them.

if there was a shortage of labour then people would have a choice of employment
people who didn't want zero hours contracts, would be able to find fulltime jobs.
in a labour shortage, wages would be driven up.

there is a huge connection between a plentiful supply of labour and zero hours contract and low wages

uk1

Linton wrote: »

The industrial revolution changed society fundamentally, making formerly rich workers poor and creating new opportunities for others to become rich. Those such as the craft workers didn't like it and a few reacted violently to prevent the new order. It didn't do them any good.

I believe globalisation coupled with modern communications is having an equivalent effect. The problem we have to solve is how to allow the changes to happen with minimum casualties, not how to stop them.

Trying to shoehorn your theories about the industrial revolution of 200 years ago into your theories of todays globalisation hasn't addressed the errors in your post that I answered at length.

How for example does replacing highly paid workers with low paid workers increase tax take without increasing jobs? How does increasing benefit dependency and dependents improve our economics?

I explained at length why you are factually wrong but you ignored it and contintue to repeat your 200 year old theories.

Jeff

BananaRepublic

Linton wrote: »

It seems to me that people haven't understood what globalisation means. If the highly educated Polish workers weren't working for what we consider to be low wages in this country they would be doing it elsewhere. If they worked elsewhere they would not be spending money and paying taxes here and they would not be paid in sterling. The net effect is that there would be less economic activity here with fewer jobs, less money for State Pensions for example, and a greater cost to our balance of payments. It's tough for the people badly affected as was the industrial revolution 200years ago. But as the Luddites found simply saying "no" to the economic realities of technological change doesn't get you very far.

We have degree educated Poles at my workplace doing semi-skilled assembly work on a production line, albeit low volume expensive electronic goods. Many Poles are working in supermarkets and post offices, doing jobs below their education level. You could argue that they are filling low paid jobs to our benefit. And industry will like these people because they are hard working and accept low wages. In truth they are keeping wages down, increasing company profits, and keeping some prices down. Were they not here, we would pay a bit more for many goods. Some goods such as British strawberries might not be viable as Brits will not do the work.

As for them paying pensions, and paying more in tax than they take, that is most probably true. Part of that is that pensions are paid from taxes, rather than being invested. But in 30+ years time these Polese will start to retire and place demands on us all. So, do we import more people to pay the increased number of pensions? It is a Ponzi scheme, and not viable in the long term. As for the cost of Poles, as they age, they will get ill, and put demands on the NHS. A typical person makes the most demands on the NHS in their last 10 years, so they will start to cost a lot in the future.

Young Poles are mostly healthy, and contributing, but looking only at today's figures is misleading.

I'm not picking on Poles, or other East Europeans, the ones I work with are nice, decent people. But I don't think the only arguments for how we live are economic. I voted Leave, not due to immigration, but because I consider the EU to be anti-democratic, and becoming more so with time. Hence I did not vote on economic grounds, but political for want of a better word.

uk1

The problem is that some posting here seem to think rather over simplistically that planned immigration is a component of globalisation denial.

It is instead one of many ways of sensibly optimising globalisation to the benefit of the local population and minimising it's unwanted side effects.

Jeff