The EU: IN or OUT?

aspiration_2

bowlhead99 wrote: »

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So, we have that system to allow selective immigration for people from far away, but we have an open door policy for our neighbours which was one of the prices "paid" for shared access to the wide European market which takes a monster amount of our exports and provides us with lots of products that we like, under common regulations and quality standards.

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You hit the nail on the head on this point only. Large mass Immigration of unskilled low paid Eastern Europeans is a "PRICE PAID" for shared access to the wide European market. True. But some of us are not prepared to accept this. I'd rather have a bit less wealth than crowded schools etc. What is happening is mass immigration hidden under work migration. The workers do not go to another country with large debts after their work finishes here. Coalition of in-equal countries cannot work. We should be able to decide citizens which country need a work-visa to enter UK. I would like to see older European countries given exemptions. After all millions of US citizens visit us every year.

There will be some problems soon after BREXIT but our skilled and experienced Osborne+Cameron team should be able to handle that. I for one will not hold them responsible for the short term problems as I believe in the long term things will be better.

bigadaj

In terms of recruitment there's also the issue of diversity which comes into play.

A couple of years ago I worked with a polish guy, who had recently got married, he had been in the uk for a few years and she had recently arrived.

His wife had applied for a role with a quango, and progressed to a second interview partially on the basis of diversity, ie not being British. A few days later I asked him how things had gone, after a few directed expletives at the quango, he complained that they had appointed someone from Africa, as that was more diverse.

Malthusian

maxie014 wrote: »

The uk to the eu is like an old loaded uncle you cant stand! you hate him but have to keep in with him for all the handouts,inheritance and benefits,you cant quite bring yourself to have nothing to do with him just slowly try and bleed him dry!

Other way round, surely, we are the old loaded uncle that the EU can't stand.

Based on a) the way the cash flows and b) the articles by Remainders along the lines of "Everyone hates Britain, there's no way they'll want to deal with us if we leave the EU, it's amazing the Europeans put up with our horrible little country at all".

(There is genuinely an article on the Guardian's Komment Macht Frei today titled "If Britain leaves the EU it will be the most hated country in the world." Really? More than North Korea? More than Israel? More than the US? No, I haven't read it.)

Dird

bowlhead99 wrote: »

Such "floods" are presumably not without "controls". The controls are put in place by the HR departments of the schools and NHS to ensure the workers are of sufficient quality.

You misunderstood my flooding point. I meant people flooding into starbucks/Tesco type jobs with the NHS/school flooding being to GP waiting times and the battle for school places (300k net/year = birmingham/3 years = equivalent of 300 primary schools & 100 high schools required).

If you're a skilled doctor or a good teacher then come right in; everyone knows 90% of secondary teachers just made their way into the profession for lack of a better option/lack of talent for the better option so we could improve massively there by importing quality teachers

bowlhead99

OK, so maybe the problem with getting skilled doctors or good teachers is that we don't give them attractive pay or workloads - if they were improved, more demand for teaching/doctoring positions should materialise from UK and around the EU. A simplification, of course.

The problem of people with low incomes wanting their kids educated and healed by schools and hospitals while they're not earning loads and not paying loads of tax, is a problem that would be eased if we hadn't agreed to let people come in the country to work at something "menial" like Starbucks or Tesco. That's something we could probably see as a burden, if we were more capitalist than socialist/communist minded.

But if we were that way inclined, we could take it to extremes and say why let anyone in the UK with a Starbucks job - first or fifth or fiftieth generation European immigrant - have free education for their kids. After all, it's us high rate taxpayers that are paying for it in the end, as the coffeeshop and restaurant workers and shelf stackers are not earning enough to pay for it, right? And yet we don't say that.

If I can go to Europe and get a job in a bar there and get local services from paying some moderate amount of income tax, it's fair that someone from Europe can come here and do same. The attitude to NOT kick him out because "he's only good for bar work" is a promise we made to better allow freedom of goods, services and people across the continent in pursuit of common growth and overall wealth and opportunities.

Our problem is really just that the UK is a very attractive place to be, because we have a good standard of living and a massive proportion of Europeans have ours as their second or third language, so there is lots of demand to come here. How do we address that?

One option is go isolationist and build a wall and a strict visa scheme so we can keep our riches inside, like Trump would suggest. That's like the village NIMBY who, EU or not, won't have a new housing development near them because it will spoil a bit of greenery; and he already has a nice valuable house so doesn't need a new development; and it will lose value if everyone that wants somewhere to live can get one near his village; and there will be kids running around who might make a noise or commit petty crimes.

Some will say it's his right not to share what he earned or built. Others would say that's mean, how dare he sit there with his relative wealth that he got thanks to the infrastructure and wealth of our entire country and yet he won't help build, or even tolerate, a block of flats for those further down the ladder of success.

I live in London. I am fortunate to get paid a lot, but pay a lot of tax. Much of it goes to people in "the regions"of the UK. Some goes to Europe of which some goes to European projects in "the regions" of Europe and some comes back here going to projects either in our capital or, mostly, in our regions. Loads of our regions get money redistributed out of Europe and out of London, whether they notice it or not.

So, should London cut off the deprived bits of the UK just because they're poor, or don't have great employment prospects, and because they would make my city more congested if they came here for work? A forcible exit of bits of Scotland or Wales from the UK because we would have more for ourselves if we didn't fund their welfare? People would be up in arms.

But somehow it's fine for someone in those poorer areas to say they want to keep taking London's money... because they had the good fortune to be born in the UK, so a slice of the pie is theirs by right, and the Londoners only have wealth because of being lucky to be the focal point of a big economy... but they don't want in turn to pass any money over to Spain or Poland or let the Poles or Spaniards come and visit to try and find a job.

The Spanish and the Poles would probably think that UK is fortunate to be one of the key focal points of a wealthy European economy and they would quite like to go there and have a crack at getting a job. Just like someone in Blackpool might like to go to London or Manchester and have a crack at getting a job.

Similarly most of Europe doesn't think it's unfair that UK and Germany and France and Italy are net contributors, because they're wealthy. Just like someone in Blackpool doesn't think it's unfair that wealthy Londoners and Mancunians are net contributors, because they have more income and assets than people in Blackpool or Burnley or whatever.

Seems that pulling up the drawbridge is a bit of double standards IMHO.

Scarpacci

bowlhead99 wrote: »

If I can go to Europe and get a job in a bar there and get local services from paying some moderate amount of income tax, it's fair that someone from Europe can come here and do same. The attitude to NOT kick him out because "he's only good for bar work" is a promise we made to better allow freedom of goods, services and people across the continent in pursuit of common growth and overall wealth and opportunities.

Our problem is really just that the UK is a very attractive place to be, because we have a good standard of living and a massive proportion of Europeans have ours as their second or third language, so there is lots of demand to come here. How do we address that?

Just focusing on this part of your post, I don't agree this is actually fair in practice today. Were the EU just a club of the developed countries who have broadly similar levels of wealth and infrastructure, I think this would work out roughly fair. Even allowing for differences in wealth between a country like Greece, for example, and, say, Sweden, it's not hugely unequal.

The problem with the EU is that it contains very divergent economies which means the opportunities for some, namely the poorer countries, is larger than for the developed. There's very little financial incentive for somebody from the UK, or Germany, to go do that low paid work in Romania or Bulgaria. There's much incentive for somebody from Eastern Europe to come here to do minimum wage work. So while it's fair if you view EU citizens simply as individual units of "Low Wage Earners with Access to Public Services" where it doesn't matter in which country any particular unit finds itself, it's completely unfair when you factor the difference in pull factors which means there's many times more Polish people working in Britain for minimum wage than there are Britons doing the same in Poland. The costs fall on Britain, the benefits flow to Poland. This is arguably intentional and not unlike the national wealth redistribution you describe between Manchester and Blackpool, but I'm not sure it's something many Britons did or would knowingly sign up for.

How do we address the attractiveness of Britain to other countries? If we had a time machine we might go back and try block accession of very poor countries. I doubt we could have prevented the political will to expand Europe. The EU has a naturally expansionist agenda and is run by people with a view to empire building, so I doubt we could have achieved it even if we weren't on the side of expansion. So, again, it seems like being outside the EU is the only option.

Dird

It's how every single nation in the world works outside of the EU (except the corrupt countries where officials just keep most the wealth for themselves). No country grows every sector in every part of the country evenly so you naturally have leeway.

As Buffett would say we won the lottery by being born in this country. Sucks for the Spanish college drop out or the Greek with a PhD but no English competency in his field of expertise. But similarly there is probably 100 million Africans that would love to come and work here or in France if they had the opportunity. Working the fields, Tesco, Starbucks, it doesn't matter to them. But it would be crazy to let in 100 million people from Africa just because they got the short straw of life.

A line has to be drawn. While your preferred lines seem to be at Greece/Bulgaria (and at some point in the future, Turkey), my preferred lines are the coast.

bowlhead99 wrote: »

If I can go to Europe and get a job in a bar there and get local services from paying some moderate amount of income tax, it's fair that someone from Europe can come here and do same

My point is you shouldn't be able to. You improve a society through selective immigration, not by welcoming the Bulgarian equivalent of Jeremy Kyle contestants.

Vote Leave - add more quota for Asian ladies

Scarpacci wrote: »

Even allowing for differences in wealth between a country like Greece, for example, and, say, Sweden, it's not hugely unequal.

Swedes are richer than us. Greeks are poorer than Poles

Edit: @bowlhead99 - also comparing Midlands vs London and UK vs Poland is hugely different. While London pays more you have ridiculousness like people paying £10 for a sandwich on The Apprentice. £40k in the Midlands is probably similar to £70k in London which is why I wouldn't work there for less than £400/day and also why you can find people moving out of London, taking a pay cut but not impacting their ability to save or spending habits (just the sandwich costs £3 instead). On the other hand the only people you have going to work in Poland are Poles returning home or hippie English teachers with their TEFL qualifications

masonic

I_Love_comps wrote: »

My question why close the poll on here voting is not until Thursday?

Perhaps someone in the forum team read about people not wanting us to be open to the poles any more and misinterpreted it

... or maybe, just maybe, the OP set the end date.

Dird

Having said all this I really want to watch a YouTube video on Polish phrases and go up the local Polish store as there's a pretty blonde working there :-o

bowlhead99

Scarpacci wrote: »

How do we address the attractiveness of Britain to other countries? If we had a time machine we might go back and try block accession of very poor countries. I doubt we could have prevented the political will to expand Europe. The EU has a naturally expansionist agenda and is run by people with a view to empire building, so I doubt we could have achieved it even if we weren't on the side of expansion. So, again, it seems like being outside the EU is the only option.

You are right that being the rich guy in the room is fine when you're only the richest by a bit and nobody really needs to sponge off you and if you lend them fifty quid sometime they might lend you twenty some other time, and we're all pals. At that dinner party, you can trade good stories, eat fine food, and get introduced to other people's friends - together, you can come up with plans, schemes and agreements to further your career or business ambitions.

It would be quite different being the rich guy at the homeless shelter Christmas party. If you don't get lucky and hook up with the attractive philanthropist in the corner, there's not much to keep you there after the welcome drinks.

By reluctantly handing out a few tenners on the night, you might get some of the real poor ones to volunteer to come round and wash your Bentley for a pound an hour because a pound means the world to them and you get your dirty work done for cheap. But it will start to get expensive if when they come round you feel morally obligated to have someone make them a cup of tea, and positively uncomfortable when one of them asks to sleep on your sofa for the night.

The situation we find ourselves in is that we went to the middle class dinner party and then everyone started to invite their poorer mates the next year. As more people got invited, our favourite background music only came on every twelfth song instead of every fifth.

And next year they all decide to invite more people who like that terrible music and who happen to be really really poor, but we didn't say no because we wanted a favour from the guy writing the invites so we let it slide. But after we were so nice to the first lot of paupers, they aren't going to veto their neighbours being invited next year. Sooner or later we'll have a homeless guy washing our car for scraps and blagging a night on our sofa.

So now we've decided as one of the founders of the annual dinner party which was getting progressively worse, we're going to give it all up and have dinner on our own next year with a different group of friends.

The only problem with that, is that the caterers aren't free because they're all trying to swing a deal with the big party we just left, it has some poor people at it but between them they can negotiate great rates per head, and great service, because they have so much to offer.

So we cater our own party, which is a lot of work with no caterers, and everyone takes 7 years to accept the invites because they want to see who else is offering what and whether anyone's going to turn up to ours.