I think our countryside is absolutely stunning.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.
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.
I never said everyone would come to the UK, enough people would though to cause chaos and it’s naive to think otherwise.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.
Indeed.All the more reason to protect what we have left.
“Far Right Conservative Nationalistic” doesn’t make any sense.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.
As I’ve said, I’m not blaming immigrants themselves, I would move to the UK if I was from a poorer part of the world, it’s not their fault and I treat immigrants with welcoming respect.1.2% well 1.4% is owned by the royal estate 30% is private pand owned by traditional aristocray
So 32% as I stated.
Again the laziness of the arguement over schools and infrustructure, is not the fault on those coming here working hard and paying their taxes as citizens, it is the fault of gevernment not investing and building more schools, hpuses, hospitals etc to manage the needs of the population we have.
And nice that you turned your original comment about US losing out on our countryside to you now being concerned abput the fluffy bunnys qnd grose on private land that get shot for sport anyway..
I never said fell the forests, fill in the lochs and lakes and build on the penines, I said there are landed estates going to waste which if build on would not effect the countryside or enviroment
A great example would be the beckhams 1500 arcw cotsworld estate, which is mainly a grass garden, you could flatten that fucker and build a modern housing estate on it, and piss him off in the process.
Bingo“Far Right Conservative Nationalistic” doesn’t make any sense.
They're all completely different political ideologies.
Far Right assumes Facism which has nothing to do with Conservatism as much as Liberalism has nothing to do with Communism. Nationalistic can be both far right and far left.
You misunderstand my position. I'm not a little Englander Brexiteer. If there had been an option on the referendum ballot paper to leave the EU but remain in the single market, that's what I'd have happily voted for. I'm also not in favour of closing our borders completely. Had we done that a century or so ago, my mother might well have been shot or gassed by the Nazis in Eastern Europe as a young child. So I believe we should be generous in taking in genuine refugees.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.
“Far Right Conservative Nationalistic” doesn’t make any sense.
They're all completely different political ideologies.
Far Right assumes Facism which has nothing to do with Conservatism as much as Liberalism has nothing to do with Communism. Nationalistic can be both far right and far left.
I never said everyone would come to the UK, enough people would though to cause chaos and it’s naive to think otherwise.
Having freedom of movement within the UK, which is one state of 4 former states, that all have practically economic, cultural and historical connection, that was one country before the enlightenment and before average people travelled globally, being a nation for 3 centuries, isn’t the same as opening up our borders to any and all areas of the planet today, even if gradually.
We’ve already seen people risking their lives to get to the UK, travelling half way around the world to do so. If you think that giving the world an automatic settled status, just as long as they can afford the flight, and we wouldn’t be overwhelmed, well then that’s your imagination letting you down.
Agree that Margaret Thatcher was one of the main architects of the single market and probably did more than anyone pushing for it in the late 80s.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.
But take Libya as an example of where they’re coming from; the EU has been criticised by other NATO countries in their lack of action when it comes to stabilising Libya. It seems Turkey are putting greater plans in action to help the plight of Libya when it’s the EU where these refugees are [eventually] coming to.The amount of people risking their lives to get to the UK is small. You only have to look at the numbers in Turkey, Greece, Italy to realise that. Germany took in a million refugees, how many flocked to come here versus those that stayed once they had been integrated?
We are not going to be ‘overwhelmed’ any more than we were ’overwhelmed‘ when part of the EU, hysterical fear of it happening yes, but in reality no.
The immigration debate on here is totally pointless, the open border advocates are saying the same things that get rejected by the electorate time and again. Those ideas are now dead, there will be an Australian style immigration system based on skills, applied to the whole world, which is
acceptable to the vast majority.
When you think of the amount of brownfield sites, derelict sites that could be renovated and built upon, but developers won't because of the costs, it renders the whole argument of developing on greenbelt land morally redundant, doesn't it.Indeed.
There are ways to help overcrowding in cities by building up. And I don’t mean tower blocks, but more common sense put into the structure of neighbourhoods. Townhouses and other larger buildings with access to different parts of each as flats and houses, and encourage public transport to thrive so people feel less need to have cars and use space better for where people can reside when building homes rather than having ‘driveways and space cars up the sides of roads’ in mind when building.
I would also be in favour of some outspreading of new towns into non-urban areas but I’d also make it so that for every hectare of land taken for housing, wild areas (like forests which make up just 12% of Britain, where in some countries it’s five times that, no wonder we have issues with asthma and COPD) of the same size have to be created.
Then you look at a change in the way agriculture is operated to make way for this. Don’t just keep farming going the way it’s been managed for centuries, take it into 21st Century thinking. Which we wouldn’t have been able to under the EU because the EU pays farmers based on how much land they farm rather than the production efficiencies on what they farm.
I can’t see us rejoining. What I can see is a direction of travel, towards rejoining the single market.Agree that Margaret Thatcher was one of the main architects of the single market and probably did more than anyone pushing for it in the late 80s.
Makes me laugh that the ERG have now been saying that Thatcher would have been all for Brexit when she did so much to push for the opposite.
Whilst the EU are for ever closer integration, that was only really possible within the Eurozone for the reasons you’ve stated so we’ve now got ourselves in a position that we’re actually more likely to be involved in that in the long run if Brexit goes badly.
You’ve just argued my point for me. If millions are willing to travel in danger to Europe, without a visa, what would happen if it wasn’t dangerous to do so, and you could live where ever you wanted at the drop of a hat?The amount of people risking their lives to get to the UK is small. You only have to look at the numbers in Turkey, Greece, Italy to realise that. Germany took in a million refugees, how many flocked to come here versus those that stayed once they had been integrated?
We are not going to be ‘overwhelmed’ any more than we were ’overwhelmed‘ when part of the EU, hysterical fear of it happening yes, but in reality no.
It’s what some people on the left call everyone to the right of Tony Blair.Far right doesn't necessaraly mean facist and never has, this is a common misconception in recent times that has seen the term wrongly used for many far right right groups and also exploited by them.
What about the point that the EU, as a whole, skews it’s immigration system in favour of those earning above £20,000, coming into the EU from elsewhere?I am not advocating open borders, I am saying the line we are overcrowded is a lie.
Also that the immigration system now amd the one coming in is skewed to ignore those who can pay the most to come in and not based on anything but the governmentlining certain pockets, I know this from experience.
I will wait to see if US hedge funders and russuan oligarch are denied visa if they are not coming in to contribute.