Although if we weren't so obsessed with binary politics and full YES or full NO and we had a "copy Norway" option I'd have been tempted to go for that.
Anyway, on the UK's relationship with the EU
Haters
27 minutes ago
Thursday, 23 June 2016
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I don't think I will vote. I weighed up the pros and cons and they seem to cancel themselves out to me.
As a tenant, I think the best hope of getting better tenancy rights is to stay in the EU (because German tenants in particular have much better tenancy rights). On the other hand, outside the EU would be easier to control immigration which reduces pressure on housing. But then leaving the EU means employers wouldn't get cheaper labour so the price of everything would go up.
My thinking just goes in circles on it.
With respect I think you've got that wrong. The 'copy Norway' would be one of the options once the government had the mandate to negotiate the exit. The EU needs us more than we need it. (OK, that point is debatable). But the prerequisite was to give whoever was doing that negotiating the mandate. By voting remain you reinforce the status quo and if remain wins it will be taken by the EU as mandate to do whatever they want. We will have even less power than we do now.
There is no problem in having a continual flow of immigrants who are able to make a positive contribution to this country and many have done so. My concern is the number of illegal immigrants who we can't send back, who demand housing, schooling for their children, benefits and that we adjust our cultural heritage to fit in with theirs. The area of the country in which I live is one where house prices are slightly higher than the national average. Many local people can't afford to buy and so rent. A lot of those local people are on the waiting list for social housing (we used to call them council houses). They suddenly found that they were pushed down the waiting list to allow people from the Indian sub continent to take precedence. Despite complaints, this was in the interest of diversity (allegedly). Then Joanna Lumley forced the Government to allow thousands of Nepalese, ex Gurkhas, to live in this country if they wished to come. No problem with that in principle, but they found when they arrived with their families, parents and grandparents, that the Army pensions they received, which would allow them a comfortable life in Nepal, buys them 3/4 of nothing in the areas of the UK they wish to live in. So, they go on the waiting list for social housing and the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis complain that they have been pushed down the housing waiting list. Finally, along comes thousands of Syrians, Egyptians, Somalis, Ethiopians and people from Central Africa who make their way through numerous safe countries and end up in the UK, where they claim asylum. Having done that, they become eligible for housing and benefits plus schooling for their children and free health care. Now it is the turn of the Nepalese, many who served this country with distinction and bravery, to learn that they are no longer at the head of the housing lists. Meanwhile, the local people, who grew up and worked in this area, are stuck at the bottom of a long waiting list for social housing which is getting longer by the day.
@PS
So you've got to build more social housing.
DBCR. Yes, but. There is a lead time to building any housing including council housing. The problem is not the housing, it's the inability to control our borders. A lot of what PS discusses would not have happened had we proper immigration policy that could be effectively policed. (Alright La Lumley did add to the problem.)
"DBCR. Yes, but. There is a lead time to building any housing including council housing"
Where there's a will, there's a way. Our problem is that there isn't a will.
IMHO, the immigration "problem" is the Brexiteers' very own Big Fat Lie. However, as BFLs go, it certainly seems to have gone very well indeed, compared to all the BFLs wheeled out by Project Fear.
There's something ironic about the elderly baby boomers trying to restrict immigration when it is only through immigration that we can avert the demographic timebomb and have enough people actually working to pay their pensions. There is no other way round it, apart from going back in time twenty years and getting people to have more productive sex.
B. Generally. Yes. What leave were saying was that you cannot manage immigration without border control. True.
Yes, there's gonna be issues with pensions and benefits.
Oooo I am up or more sex - or I would be were I 20 years younger...
We won't touch immigration. As if the Tory party would offend their biggest patrons, big business. We might eventually impact the numbers by running the economy into the ground. That should work. Albeit the equivalent of throwing a wrench at the car engine.
P156. Don't follow you.
L. For instance. Given the economic climate of the last few years...growing employment etc, some positive gdp growth the Tory brexiters would have presided over much the same net migration as Cameron,Osborne did. Maybe a few less Rumanians and a few more from elsewhere but essentially no change. Obviously if Boris manages to tank the economy in the mean time, net migration might well fall considerably, all things being equal.
p156, I agree with you, but for different reasons. Immigration is a subject where its downside is much exaggerated and its upside deliberately ignored, both for political reasons. Xenophobia and scapegoating are very effective tools to get people voting the way you want them to, which is why they are employed again and again.
Agree with that.I just wonder who the millions of brexiters who have convinced themselves they'll get lower net migration now we are out will turn to, when they realise that freedom of movement for EU labour won't make it to the menu...as Daniel Hannan pretty much admitted on yesterdays Newsnight.
p156, or when they realise that the UK govt is every bit as capable of wasting the money that the EU currently wastes on our behalf.
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