Brexit

abbey road d enfer said:

The restricted concept of Economic Community has shown its limits. Its lack of social unity perpetuates the phenomenon of attraction that leads to the influx of migrants from disadvantaged countries to countries where social policy is developed.
The idea of Union is that the smoothing of differences would diminish the flux inside Europe.
Indeed, it would not diminish the flux of migrants from countries outside the Union, but it is another issue.
According to (questionable) statistics, non-EU immigration in the UK is about 3x that from EU.
To my knowledge Indians, Pakistanese, Bangladeshi do not use the EU as a launching pad to migrate to UK; they probably fly or sail direct or via the Middle East...

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Whether Union is better than Economic Community is not the point. The point is we bought Economic Community and EU bureaucrats have morphed that into Union without our permission. It is not being asked that we object to.

Cheers

Ian

ruffrecords said:

Whether Union is better than Economic Community is not the point. The point is we bought Economic Community and EU bureaucrats have morphed that into Union without our permission. It is not being asked that we object to.

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That is somewhat twisting the truth; the European project has always been the Union, but UK's project was the EC only.
As France and Germany wanted the UK,  the UK has been exempted of a number of points, particularly free circulation, and to my knowledge, this is still in vigour, so you can't say it's been "morphed".

abbey road d enfer said:

That is somewhat twisting the truth; the European project has always been the Union, but UK's project was the EC only.
As France and Germany wanted the UK,  the UK has been exempted of a number of points, particularly free circulation, and to my knowledge, this is still in vigour, so you can't say it's been "morphed".

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I don't think so. Back in the 70s  when I voted in the referendum that got the UK into the Common Market, as it was called then, there was absolutely zero mention about union or free movement. It was solely about trade.  I see no evidence of the UK being exempted from 'free circulation' and as I have pointed out before, there was no such thing in the Treaty of Rome. It was not until Maastricht that union reared its head and you can probably date the start UK public's disillusionment from that date .

Cheers

Ian

ruffrecords said:

I don't think so. Back in the 70s  when I voted in the referendum that got the UK into the Common Market, as it was called then, there was absolutely zero mention about union or free movement.

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I guess you have deliberately been cheated by your representatives, news agencies and governments, because that was there at the beginning.

It was solely about trade.

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It is clear that the UK wanted only that, and the EC had to bend down.

  I see no evidence of the UK being exempted from 'free circulation' and as I have pointed out before, there was no such thing in the Treaty of Rome.

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It was there since 1957; see references to "ever closer union" . It's there, unfortunately in french, but I reckon you could find a proper translation.
https://www.touteleurope.eu/actualite/statut-special-du-royaume-uni-que-contient-l-accord-anti-brexit.html
https://www.lesechos.fr/19/02/2016/lesechos.fr/021706837939_royaume-uni---un-habitue-de-l----union-a-la-carte--.htm

Then, the Wiki link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opt-outs_in_the_European_Union

  It was not until Maastricht that union reared its head and you can probably date the start UK public's disillusionment from that date .

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I agree that Maastricht has been a great mascarade. Not many European citizens enjoy the results, they all feel cheated.

DaveP said:

Merkel letting in 1.5M Muslims just before the referendum was the coup de grace...........................All this translated as loss of sovereignty to the public.

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'Muslim' isn't a race, and neither are all Syrians rabid fundamentalist religious freaks. Syria was and still is a secular run country – the vast majority of Syrian immigrants coming to Europe are secular.

Same for the Iraqi's, Afghans, Egyptians, and everyone else you lot keep trying to paint with one brush. The children of immigrants born in foreign countries are even less likely to be religious, and almost guaranteed to be non-practicing.

Just one of the many disinformation campaigns run by the European right.

rob_gould said:

Umm, my understanding is that new laws are written by civil servants in the European Commission (the unelected bureaurats which I assume you're referring to) but EU laws are actually passed by MEPs, who you, I and every other voting age citizen from every one of the member states has the right to vote in or out every five years. No new EU law is passed by anyone who's unelected.

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The irony is that by their own argument, every British PM is an 'unelected bureaucrat'. Chosen by MP's of the ruling party, and appointed by the Queen.

'Muslim' isn't a race, and neither are all Syrians rabid fundamentalist religious freaks. Syria was and still is a secular run country – the vast majority of Syrian immigrants coming to Europe are secular.

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You are missing the point, I was trying to explain public perceptions which are not altogether rational.  The 1.5M were let in at the height of IS terror, it was an indication to the British public that we had no control over freedom of movement.

DaveP

Banzai said:

the vast majority of Syrian immigrants coming to Europe are secular.

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Strangely enough, the vast majority of Syrian immigrants that came to Belgium on a humanitarian visum are Christian. Not one muslim other religion, or secular, unless they lied. And they've paid handsomely (over a thousand €) to their representative, who was fast-tracking their dossier with our right-wing minister of immigration. Normally, the cost is 35 € and it takes over 6 months. These dossiers were ready in 3 to 4 weeks, "because Christians in Syria are at a high risk", according to the minister.

I know a Christian monk, living in Syria. We correspond via mail. It's dangerous in Damascus. But not because he's a Christian.

The representative is facing jail time for human trafficking.

Of course some of them lied. If all I needed for a visa into Europe was to wear a cross and praise Jesus, you can bet I'd fake it.

Secular societies are abundant in the middle-east. Including in Israel.

The soap continues. Corbyn rejects offer of talks calling it a 'stunt'. Meanwhile some Labour MPs defy him and start talking to the government.

Still playing silly buggers.

Cheers

Ian

There were certainly not many, as the entire operation was run by a Christian organisation in Syria. Meanwhile, a letter from another Syrian organisation has surfaced. It was sent in October last year, to around a thousand representatives and scholars in Belgium, but also in a few neighbouring countries, warning that Syrian Christians were charged 4.000 to 13.000 € to get in. It seems our Belgian embassy in Lebanon was closely involved and that the Syrians came in through Lebanon.

Only one person we know of by now, has informed the police of the trafficking. He's the mayor of the city where the Syrian trafficker is a council member. Obviously, he doesn't belong to the same right-wing party as the state secretary of immigration. Sorry, I referred to him as a minister, but he's only a state secretary.

Funny is that the right-wing state secretary has been calling for a closure of our borders. And of course he denies all knowledge of the letter...

You would think people on all sides (lol) would realize how dangerous this could get quickly :'(
As my old painting teacher said: "If you realize you don´t know what you´re doing, stop doing it immidiatly!"

L´Andratté said:

You would think people on all sides (lol) would realize how dangerous this could get quickly :'(
As my old painting teacher said: "If you realize you don´t know what you´re doing, stop doing it immidiatly!"

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There's a famous saying in France, by Michel Audiard, a brilliant film script writer: "Les cons, çà ose tout, c'est même à cela qu'on les reconnait.
Very hard to translate accurately; anyway it goes somewhat like this: "Twats dare everything, it's even by that you can recognize them"

abbey road d enfer said:

There's a famous saying in France, by Michel Audiard, a brilliant film script writer: "Les cons, çà ose tout, c'est même à cela qu'on les reconnait.
Very hard to translate accurately; anyway it goes somewhat like this: "Twats dare everything, it's even by that you can recognize them"

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J'y trouv' un gout d'pomme ...

Scroll down to clip marked JOE

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6595019/Boreham-Wood-FC-weighs-Brexit-Club-demands-no-deal-bizarre-open-letter.html

DaveP

Must be a new Brexit scriptwriter in town. Prince Philip knocks Brexit off the front page by crashing his Range Rover.

Cheers

Ian

DaveP said:

We have no spare housing in the UK due to immigration

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I have so far resisted getting into this discussion but I'll just post this link in answer to the above

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jan/19/ministers-urged-halt-right-buy-council-homes-rented

I suspect the lack of housing in the UK is due to government intransigence, cheeseparing and lack of investment as well as a political system manipulated by those with vested interests

Nick Froome

pvision said:

I suspect the lack of housing in the UK is due to government intransigence, cheeseparing and lack of investment as well as a political system manipulated by those with vested interests

Nick Froome

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Yep.  That local councils are now renting ex-council houses (which were bought into private ownership under RTB at 30% of their value)  from private landlords at the current market rate is simply extraordinary. 

rob_gould said:

Yep.  That local councils are now renting ex-council houses (which were bought into private ownership under RTB at 30% of their value)  from private landlords at the current market rate is simply extraordinary.

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The RTB was on a sliding scale and applying to the RTB scheme was only possible after having been a Council tennant for several years (something like 5 years; I'm open to correction). Purchase at 30% of market value was only achievable after a higher number of years as a tennant (maybe 10 years). Part of the RTB agreement was that the property could not be sold-on for a period of, IIRC, 3 years. The idea was to favour the existing Council tennants, rather than money-grabbers. As RTB was introduced in the 1980s, the origianal sale/purchase terms have long expired and commercial multi-property owning landlords have, effectively, replaced the former fair-priced multi-property owning landlords...... the Councils  :-\

The renting of former Council properties back to Councils is a classic example of the "Law of Unintended Consequences", however, anyone with even the slightest foresight would have seen this as being inevitable at some point in time once the (former) Council housing stock moved inot private ownership.

Fiasco. You could not script it.

rob_gould said:

Yep.  That local councils are now renting ex-council houses (which were bought into private ownership under RTB at 30% of their value)  from private landlords at the current market rate is simply extraordinary.

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It is easy to quote inflammatory numbers. I bought my very first house under this scheme. Even then I could not have afforded it if I had not given up a secure job to go contracting in order to increase my pay by 50% so I at least qualified for a mortgage on the house. Even then I could not have afforded it unless the I got the 100% mortgage from the council. We had been tenants for about 10 years but only in this house for four. We got zero discount so we paid full market value. My aunt also bought her council house but she had lived in the same house for over 25 years so she got the full discount.

The UK was in a bad state at the time. Many years of Labour government overspending, devaluation of the pound and so many strikes that we were known as the sick man of Europe meant the UK was a depressing place to live. Being able to buy your own home gave huge numbers of people a new lease of life, something worth striving for that it changed the mood of the country.

The only thing that went wrong was the council's failure to use the money from the sales to build new housing stock.

Cheers

Ian