Political relations between UK-EU

[Vic]

Do you really want our beautiful countryside to be gone for ever?

By and large, new immigrants aren't buying big houses being built on greenfield sites. But rich foreigners buying property for investment are distorting the housing market in London.

It's not immigrants who have not built the million homes with planning consent that haven't been built since 2010. It is private firms who want more profit that haven't built them.

Edit: actually, if they had been built, it would probably have been a lot of immigrants doing the actual building...

 

[Ban-jani]

By and large, new immigrants aren't buying big houses being built on greenfield sites. But rich foreigners buying property for investment are distorting the housing market in London.

It's not immigrants who have not built the million homes with planning consent that haven't been built since 2010. It is private firms who want more profit that haven't built them.

I’m not blaming immigrants for anything, I’m purely talking the problem we’d arrive at if we continued with freedom of movement.

We can cope currently but to continue with net 500,000 people per year and in the future the country looks completely different.

Nearly everything must be brownfield imo, moving forward and to do so, we need a more sensible immigration policy, which it looks like we now have.

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

Never understood how europe can decide have a single currency and then an inbalance on pay for people of the same skillset across the federation, once a centralised bank and currency was in place then the countries should have become economically balanced.

This is the fundamental problem with the Euro. You simply cannot have an effective single currency across countries where there are fundamental economic differences. It defies the laws of economics.

Prior to the Euro, those countries had the twin methods of interest rates and exchange rates to address imbalances. They could change either of these to make the country more attractive to inward investment or discourage outward flows. Now the countries in the Eurozone, like Greece, can't do that because they're tied in to the ECB via the Euro.

The Euro suits countries with net export surpluses over countries that, say, rely on tourism (where exchange rates are hugely important). Now, which country has large trade surpluses?

The Euro is the equivalent of a doctor telling every patient to take 2 Paracetamol 3 times a day, irrespective of their symptoms. It might help some who have aches & pains but won't help someone with a more serious condition.

 

[Vic]

There are a whole range of prevailing conditions that will lead to the 'bubbling issues' to become 'boiling over crises'

It is not simply 'all working well in 30 countries'

Europe in crisis....

UK - crisis, what crisis? Debt, housing, health, care, poverty. At least they are our own sovereign crises.

 

[Ifwecouldjust.......]

There are a whole range of prevailing conditions that will lead to the 'bubbling issues' to become 'boiling over crises'

It is not simply 'all working well in 30 countries'

Its only 'bubbling ' in countries with far right Conservative Nationalistic governments tho isn't it? (notice a trend there).

I admire Bobs courage in asking the question of ''Whats your longer term strategic view of our relationship with the Eu' because where we are right now is that 50% of the UK are very unhappy about being out and there are already ''Rejoin'' groups popping up on social media platforms, some of them are quite vociferous.

Probably a similar amount also believe that our current state is built on shifting sands.... those sands being the Lies of the leave campaigners, the involvement of Cambridge Analytica, Banks , Farage et al and their Russian funding, .... the discontent will become more vocal when the promises made are broken (they are already) , the sunny uplands don't appear and the Union fragments.

Every little inconvenience , Everything that goes wrong from now on in will be placed at the door of Brexit and those that facilitated it.

The Tories will be too busy trying to sandbag the floodwaters to actually achieve anything other than maintain the status quo (all they do anyway) and line their own pockets.

 

[urban genie]

It is very much crowded, unless we want to spend a fortune on ruining the countryside.

Which still wouldn’t solve infrastructure problems, all that would do is solve the housing crisis.

Not sure what the monarchy has to do with it.

Rather than doing all that, wouldn’t it make sense to have a sensible points based system like NZ, AUS, Canada have, reduce numbers but continue to allow those we need to come?

Because you tried using our countryside being lost as a reason why we cannot build when in reality 32% of the country is owned by the morachy and landed gentry with no access to the public so there is a solution build in the grouse shooting land or the maybe one of the several estates the Duke of Buccleuch has when one is enough for anyone.

As for infrastructure, well it was all sold off for profit by governments past and will take more than stopping people comimg in a functioning one again.

Back to the point, saying the country is crowded is a lazy and uniformed trope peddled for years that is blatenly untrue.

But youll will disagree and reply I expect and contunue a conversation neither of us will agree upon.

Also I never said don't have an imigration system and just let anyone come, but as someone with experience of the nonsnese we have when it comes to visa and leave to remain the system as is beimg run by government is not fit for purpose and neither will be whatever they put into place.

 

[Ban-jani]

Its only 'bubbling ' in countries with far right Conservative Nationalistic governments tho isn't it? (notice a trend there).

I admire Bobs courage in asking the question of ''Whats your longer term strategic view of our relationship with the Eu' because where we are right now is that 50% of the UK are very unhappy about being out and there are already ''Rejoin'' groups popping up on social media platforms, some of them are quite vociferous.

Probably a similar amount also believe that our current state is built on shifting sands.... those sands being the Lies of the leave campaigners, the involvement of Cambridge Analytica, Banks , Farage et al and their Russian funding, .... the discontent will become more vocal when the promises made are broken (they are already) , the sunny uplands don't appear and the Union fragments.

Every little inconvenience , Everything that goes wrong from now on in will be placed at the door of Brexit and those that facilitated it.

The Tories will be too busy trying to sandbag the floodwaters to actually achieve anything other than maintain the status quo (all they do anyway) and line their own pockets.

Being a conservative isn’t being far right.

It’s like saying being a social democrat is far left, it isn’t.

The two nations in Europe that went proper fascist in the 20th century, Italy and then more so Germany... some of the biggest enemies of those governments were traditional conservatives.

Conservatism says nothing about ethno-politics, the far right is all about it.

 

[west didsblue]

This is the fundamental problem with the Euro. You simply cannot have an effective single currency across countries where there are fundamental economic differences. It defies the laws of economics.

Prior to the Euro, those countries had the twin methods of interest rates and exchange rates to address imbalances. They could change either of these to make the country more attractive to inward investment or discourage outward flows. Now the countries in the Eurozone, like Greece, can't do that because they're tied in to the ECB via the Euro.

The Euro suits countries with net export surpluses over countries that, say, rely on tourism (where exchange rates are hugely important). Now, which country has large trade surpluses?

Fully agree with your comments about the Euro. I’ve always called it a flawed concept and the fact we weren’t part of it put us in a really good position when we were part of the EU. We only had minimal exposure to any Eurozone crises. In fact the only bailout we were involved in was the Irish one and that was a relatively small amount that’s been paid back. We had the best of both worlds with our Single Market access but outside the Eurozone. It concerns me that if we ultimately end up rejoining it might well be a condition of entry, which would ironically lead us to the closer integration that staying a member outside the Eurozone would have avoided.

 

[Ifwecouldjust.......]

Being a conservative isn’t being far right.

It’s like saying being a social democrat is far left, it isn’t.

The two nations in Europe that went proper fascist in the 20th century, Italy and then more so Germany... some of the biggest enemies of those governments were traditional conservatives.

Conservatism says nothing about ethno-politics, the far right is all about it.

Priti Patel , & Windrush holding on line 1

 

[Deleted member 77198]

This implies that the brightest and best are obliged to stay in Bulgaria. Why? It’s a country not a prison camp. If someone wants to make a life in another country than why make that difficult?

Why are we limiting opportunities for people based on an accident of birth? Born in UK, worlds your oyster, born in Bulgaria, your uncle’s pig farm needs you.

Sounds harsh to me :)

But that will ruin the Bulgarian economy in the long run. They estimate that 23% of Bulgarians will leave Bulgaria in the coming decades. So for the benefit of a few select countries that the EU wants to see prosper, there will be a plight of economic downturns in places like Bulgaria.

Then what happens if there are economic troubles that are out of control of the few select countries that plunge them into economic downturns? The smaller countries of the EU will never be able to contribute to a wider upturn. And the EU will suffer.

It’s the same kind of thinking that Thatcher had with centralising the economy around the City and taking industry away from the North and places like Cornwall. Whenever the City struggles, industry heartlands can no longer pull Britain out of decline.

 

[Ban-jani]

Because you tried using our countryside being lost as a reason why we cannot build when in reality 32% of the country is owned by the morachy and landed gentry with no access to the public so there is a solution build in the grouse shooting land or the maybe one of the several estates the Duke of Buccleuch has when one is enough for anyone.

As for infrastructure, well it was all sold off for profit by governments past and will take more thqn stopping people comimg in a functioning one again.

Back to the point, sayingthe country is crowded is a lazy and uniformed trope peddled for tears that is blatenly untrue.

But youll agree will disagree and reply I expect and contunue a conversation neither of us will agree upon.

Also I never said don't have an imigration system and just let anyone come, but as someone with experience of the nonsnese we have when it comes to visa and leave to remain the system as is beimg run by government is not fit for purpose and neither will be whatever they put into place.

I don’t care who owns the countryside, the environment should be taken care of and wildlife should have somewhere to live. We should be planting trees on this land, not digging it up and whacking concrete on it.

Not sure where you’ve got 32% from, the Guardian says it’s 1.2% in England.

I don’t care what’s happened in the past, I care about the future and how it affects my life in the here and now.

It really isn’t a lazy argument nor is it a trope, these are real people’s lives, that cannot get places at schools, roads congested, trains overran with commuters, doctors waiting lists, noise pollution, light pollution, general pollution, housing crisis.

You can argue the government has failed in these areas but chucking more of the taxpayers money at these issues, whilst contributing to it by having half a million added to the population nearly every year, is lunacy.

We still need immigrants to keep the economy going, there are skills gaps and at no point would I entertain the imbeciles on the fringe right that say we need it down to near zero. But let’s bring it down to stop infrastructure strain and let’s keep it to specific people we need, without discriminating on the grounds of where they come from.

In this Brexit mess, the immigration policy they’ve put together is just about the best thing they’ve done, in a sea of shit.

 

[blueman061246]

We had major problems getting out with a deal, which in the end was far from what people voted for . Everyone is feeling a sense of relief but I foresee major strife, especially from the French and reckon it will not be long before the French fishermen blockade the ports and the farmers blockading the roads and there is not much Brussels will do about it now we are out, they did nothing to sort these problems when we were in. Think if these problems arise , we need to calculate the losses and deduct it from our 39 billion we will sometime pay them

 

[Ban-jani]

Priti Patel , & Windrush holding on line 1

Priti Patel wasn’t Home Secretary at the time of the scandal and isn’t far right and you know full well that Windrush wasn’t a calculated scheme to remove black people from society.

It was one of the biggest disgraces in a long time but it was down to sheer incompetence over anything else.

 

[Vic]

I’m not blaming immigrants for anything, I’m purely talking the problem we’d arrive at if we continued with freedom of movement.

We can cope currently but to continue with net 500,000 people per year and in the future the country looks completely different.

Nearly everything must be brownfield imo, moving forward and to do so, we need a more sensible immigration policy, which it looks like we now have.

Which bits of brownfield near you haven't been built on? Every former factory near us is now housing.

 

[Deleted member 77198]

Do you really want our beautiful countryside to be gone for ever?

Our countryside is green, but that doesn’t mean it’s beautiful. Most (70% in England) of our countryside is controlled farmland, not wild unspoilt rolling fields and forests. We have a pitiful amount of forested and other wild areas compared to other countries. Farming took away our beautiful countryside centuries ago.

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

Fully agree with your comments about the Euro. I’ve always called it a flawed concept and the fact we weren’t part of it put us in a really good position when we were part of the EU. We only had minimal exposure to any Eurozone crises. In fact the only bailout we were involved in was the Irish one and that was a relatively small amount that’s been paid back. We had the best of both worlds with our Single Market access but outside the Eurozone. It concerns me that if we ultimately end up rejoining it might well be a condition of entry, which would ironically lead us to the closer integration that staying a member outside the Eurozone would have avoided.

I find myself in bed with Margaret Thatcher (politically speaking of course) on this. She was very convinced about the benefits of the single market and Britain did as much as anyone, probably more than anyone, to bring it about. But she drew the line at political & monetary integration. And now it's all part of the same package.

I've always thought that as the EU moves towards greater political integration, we would be cast further & further adrift, to the point where we'd either have to be fully in or completely out. We've just got there a bit quicker.

 

[Metal Biker]

Our countryside is green, but that doesn’t mean it’s beautiful. Most (70% in England) of our countryside is controlled farmland, not wild unspoilt rolling fields and forests. We have a pitiful amount of forested and other wild areas compared to other countries. Farming took away our beautiful countryside centuries ago.

All the more reason to protect what we have left.

 

[Ban-jani]

Which bits of brownfield near you haven't been built on? Every former factory near us is now housing.

Around the corner there’s a derelict pub, that was big, that had a huge car park. It’s boarded up now.

You could easily get dozens of flats or possibly 3/4 houses on that land.

Just down from me, another derelict pub, with an even bigger car park, it was a hotel as well. Again, maybe a hundred flats on that land or even 10 houses down there.

This is just within a 2 minute drive of my house in either direction.

I live in a pretty rural area and it’s a big town.

 

[Deleted member 77198]

Europe in crisis....

UK - crisis, what crisis? Debt, housing, health, care, poverty. At least they are our own sovereign crises.

Which we can now change to suit us, rather than change to suit the EU whether it suits us or not, or not even be allowed to change because it doesn’t suit the EU.

 

[BobKowalski]

Imagine if that was implemented globally and what Britain as a small island would look like.

It’s crackers Bob and thankfully it’s never going to be done.

There appears to be a conceit that everyone would flock to the UK. They wouldn’t. Your imagination can only see chaos, but that is just a failure of imagination, just as @Prestwich_Blue could only see failure in European countries coming together, or having a common currency, the failure is the inability to see it working and placing no value on it working, which is why Brexiteers like PB place no value in their right to freedom of movement or in schemes like Erasmus.

We have freedom of movement in our own Union. There is FoM in Europe, between Australia and NZ. There is the African AfCFTA with the aim of creating a Single Market with FoM. You start with blocs, neighbouring countries coming together, eradicating barriers with immigration rules applying to countries outside the bloc or with other blocs.

The next step would be formalising between blocs and so on, but Migration is often local or based on similar cultural values, language etc, South American players preferring Spain as a destination for example, familiarity of culture, language and so on.