Keep the minimum wage, Strolls, apply it to British workers and citizens of EU states we invite to come and work here
Off Topic The Politics Thread
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Keep the minimum wage, Strolls, apply it to British workers and citizens of EU states we invite to come and work here
No need to apologise mate. We didn't know, did we?
Saw this on facebook - not confirmed as far as I am aware.
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Bloody hell. It's not as if he kept below the radar is it? I won't be surprised if it comes to light that he was known to the authorities and that they have failed poor Jo Cox.
I know it wasn't personal Col, I just couldn't resist. I didn't mean to disagree. I recognise and understand that stress at local level. My point was it won't go away even if we stop migration entirely, the pressure on services will remain, but that can be tackled with money. The cultural change stuff is not a problem for me but I know it is for many. I would not predict that this could end up with real problems (I don't want to spell it out), but we need to minimise the chances of this even crossing anyone's mind. That means being seen to control immigration, even if this does have a negative economic effect.
Migration is the one issue I think Leave has an obvious win with. But the way that some of the campaign leaders have presented their case is odious, just as bad as the Remain economic scares. It's a manipulation of some very base feelings.
I'm hating what this campaign is doing to us as a country. It's taken a disgusting murder to calm it down a little, but the gloves are off again tomorrow.
That's the official total yet new applications for National Insurance numbers was three times that figure. The truth is the Government haven't a clue what the real number is...
Slightly more than EU ones, I think Goldie's figure is right. Of course we have full control on Non EU migration. Apparently.
Oh yeah, I'm sure that would be easy and cheap for farms to arrange visas for workers at short notice for seasonal crops!! Then once those crops are done, what deport the workers?!?
One of my pastimes is walking in the countryside. Once you get off the beaten track, and start walking on footpaths which cross private land yet are not that close to roads, you get to see some interesting things. Walking in rural Essex, for example, quite close to the M25, I came across several large farms with semi-permanent fixed caravan sites (3-8 vans). Clearly not for leisure use, but to house temporary farm workers and their families. I only came across people in them on one occasion. They didn't look like they were on holiday.
Last night, when the idea that:
- "Leave" might win, but
- Parliament might not just start the leaving process, but put it to a vote within the Commons first, sb_73 said
/quote/
The first thing they would do is look at the result in their own constituency, if it's a resounding 'out' they won't risk their seat at the next election. There may be an astounding number of abstentions in the parliamentary vote though.
/unquote/
I think he's right. Not that they will ignore the result, but if... It's not clear if the result will be announced on a constituency-by-constituency basis, but they'll be listening to the people in their area who are making the most noise and respond accordingly.
Doesn't it make you wonder why we're bothering with a referendum in the first place?
- "Leave" might win, but
- Parliament might not just start the leaving process, but put it to a vote within the Commons first, sb_73 said
/quote/
The first thing they would do is look at the result in their own constituency, if it's a resounding 'out' they won't risk their seat at the next election. There may be an astounding number of abstentions in the parliamentary vote though.
/unquote/
I think he's right. Not that they will ignore the result, but if... It's not clear if the result will be announced on a constituency-by-constituency basis, but they'll be listening to the people in their area who are making the most noise and respond accordingly.
Doesn't it make you wonder why we're bothering with a referendum in the first place?
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On (of all things) a guitarists internet forum, someone posted this. Well worth a read - especially if you no longer think think this referendum is about regime change and not EU membership. It's all news to me as I rarely read the Telegraph.
/starts/
Martin Fletcher, formerly Foreign Editor of the Times and correspondant for for Brussels has an interesting reminder of Boris Johnsons history in the same job (EU correspondent in Brussels):
Appalled as I am at the prospect of my country voting to leave the European Union next week, I am hardly surprised.
For 25 years our press has fed the British public a diet of distorted, mendacious and relentlessly hostile stories about the EU - and the journalist who set the tone was Boris Johnson.
I know this because I was appointed Brussels correspondent of The Times in 1999, a few years after Johnson’s stint there for The Telegraph, and I had to live with the consequences.
Johnson, sacked by The Times in 1988 for fabricating a quote, made his mark in Brussels not through fair and balanced reporting, but through extreme euro-scepticism. He seized every chance to mock or denigrate the EU, filing stories that were undoubtedly colourful but also grotesquely exaggerated or completely untrue.
The Telegraph loved it. So did the Tory Right. Johnson later confessed: “Everything I wrote from Brussels, I found was sort of chucking these rocks over the garden wall and I listened to this amazing crash from the greenhouse next door over in England as everything I wrote from Brussels was having this amazing, explosive effect on the Tory party, and it really gave me this I suppose rather weird sense of power."
Johnson’s reports also had an amazing, explosive effect on the rest of Fleet Street. They were much more fun than the usual dry and rather complex Brussels fare. News editors on other papers, particularly but not exclusively the tabloids, started pressing their own correspondents to match them. By the time I arrived in Brussels, (1999), editors only wanted stories about faceless Brussels eurocrats imposing absurd rules on Britain, or scheming Europeans ganging up on us, or British prime ministers fighting plucky rearguard actions against a hostile continent. Much of Fleet Street seemed unable to view the EU through any other prism. It was the only narrative it was interested in.
Stories that did not bash Brussels, stories that acknowledged the EU’s many achievements, stories that recognised that Britain had many natural allies in Europe and often won important arguments, almost invariably ended up on the spike.
/ends/
/starts/
Martin Fletcher, formerly Foreign Editor of the Times and correspondant for for Brussels has an interesting reminder of Boris Johnsons history in the same job (EU correspondent in Brussels):
Appalled as I am at the prospect of my country voting to leave the European Union next week, I am hardly surprised.
For 25 years our press has fed the British public a diet of distorted, mendacious and relentlessly hostile stories about the EU - and the journalist who set the tone was Boris Johnson.
I know this because I was appointed Brussels correspondent of The Times in 1999, a few years after Johnson’s stint there for The Telegraph, and I had to live with the consequences.
Johnson, sacked by The Times in 1988 for fabricating a quote, made his mark in Brussels not through fair and balanced reporting, but through extreme euro-scepticism. He seized every chance to mock or denigrate the EU, filing stories that were undoubtedly colourful but also grotesquely exaggerated or completely untrue.
The Telegraph loved it. So did the Tory Right. Johnson later confessed: “Everything I wrote from Brussels, I found was sort of chucking these rocks over the garden wall and I listened to this amazing crash from the greenhouse next door over in England as everything I wrote from Brussels was having this amazing, explosive effect on the Tory party, and it really gave me this I suppose rather weird sense of power."
Johnson’s reports also had an amazing, explosive effect on the rest of Fleet Street. They were much more fun than the usual dry and rather complex Brussels fare. News editors on other papers, particularly but not exclusively the tabloids, started pressing their own correspondents to match them. By the time I arrived in Brussels, (1999), editors only wanted stories about faceless Brussels eurocrats imposing absurd rules on Britain, or scheming Europeans ganging up on us, or British prime ministers fighting plucky rearguard actions against a hostile continent. Much of Fleet Street seemed unable to view the EU through any other prism. It was the only narrative it was interested in.
Stories that did not bash Brussels, stories that acknowledged the EU’s many achievements, stories that recognised that Britain had many natural allies in Europe and often won important arguments, almost invariably ended up on the spike.
/ends/
Did he give any examples of the fabricated stories? Like you I rarely refer to the Telegraph.
Back at the bitchfest already. Michael Howard and Shirley Williams, elder statespeople we could fairly expect to be able to see both sides of an issue, on the radio this morning. Both started with the obligatory 'after the terrible events....we have to calm down' then both got rather hysterical, talking over each other, demanding more time to speak etc. To be fair Howard was marginally less hysterical and did make one very clear point (I wonder if this is a Leave strategy or just Howard talking) : there are only 3 facts (as opposed to speculation) that can be claimed, all in the event of leave -
- we will no longer need to pay our membership fees
- we will no longer have an open border to EU migrants
- we will no longer have to factor the European Court of Justice into our decision making
Of course the debate is about whether the consequences of these things would be good or bad. And the answer is 'a bit of both'. But this is a pretty clear and undeniable statement.
If I am offering Leave some positives, I should do the same for Remain. Much has been made of EU regulation. It is true that since 2008 we have voted against, and been out voted, 58 times (on issues that frankly are so technical most of us wouldn't understand or care about them), more than any other country. We have voted in favour of EU legislation over 2,200 times. So for all these laws presumably we would have created the same through Parliament without the EU. France takes a different approach - rather than vote against it abstains when it disagrees and knows it will be outvoted. And it does it much more often, as it is a dirigiste regime, and the EU is a free market one.
There are 3 areas where we would have significant leeway in making changes in terms of law if we leave:
- employment law - we already have the weakest/most 'free market' (depending on your perspective) in the EU
- environmental law - if our beaches are cleaner now than 20 years ago it is entirely due to EU law
- regulation of the financial sector - for those with short memories poor regulation of this charming and life affirming industry was partly responsible for the now 8 years of austerity we have been going through.
I am surprised more has not been made of this.
Finally, would this be a fair characterisation of the way the Leave campaign is now positioning itself?
- anti establishment/ elite
- pro ' working class British'
- anti big business, especially multinationals
- pro 'democracy'
Given the personal backgrounds of most of the leadership of the campaign, this is some trick to pull off.
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This bloke has some interesting points about how we are affected by EU law and how we may have to go about disentangling ourselves from it.
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Nice cut and paste job there, seen this exact wording so many times now. Wouldn't it be wise to check the facts before blindly copying and pasting a diatribe littered with claims not backed with any sources and in many cases just aren't true.