Wikipedia, history of Liverpool, demographic. The average number of people leaving the City was 12,000 per year during the eighties, which gives us 120,000 - in other words a fifth. 15% of the land area was also derelict. I have not checked but I imagine that the figures are even more extreme for a town like Barnsley - most notably the figure is higher than for Crakow in Poland !
The government immigration minister, James Brokenshire, has said it would be unwise to provide EU nationals with guaranteed UK status without a deal for UK citizens living and working abroad. This seems a sensible stance for the UK to take.
It's a stance which she is not really able to give because 'acquired rights' for migrants are set out in some treaties of international law - depending on length of residence.
It's a difficult one SH. Because negotiations would be held with the EU. and not with the individual countries making it up. There are no official standards regarding eg. length of residence before a person can become naturalized which are relevent for the whole EU. also the question of voting rights (in Euro and local elections) is different in different countries. Some countries have more of their nationals in the UK. than the other way around eg. Poland, with some countries it is the reverse eg. Spain. This negotiation may be difficult because it would need the cooperation of the whole of the EU. and negotiations with individual countries would be outside of the framework of Article 50. Germany alone would agree to this because there are only 140,000 of us here, nearly all of working age and mostly bilingual - similarly the German population in the UK. is around 270,000 and is similarly productive. Whether it would work with countries where there is a strong inbalance I don't know.
You see I don't view this from a UK perspective. However as you raise it with a degree of criticism of the UK I will first make an observation or two. The EU insists you treat immigrants according to the rules you apply to your own citizens - so your argument is that due to those EU rules we have to change how we give beneifts etc to indigenous citizens in order to prevent immigrants taking advntage of that. Well I object to that argument. I see nothing wrong in having different rules according to where you were born and brought up - after all somebody born here may not have paid in to the system but their parents have. Newcomers have paid nothing and yet the EU says they should be treated the same. I do not care what Germany or France does but why do we need to change what we do to come into line with a rule that is not necessary. Semi-legal employment agencies - yes - ok - control them if you can.Oh and get Italy to cut the size of their black economy too - see any pigs flying past? To get to my concerns - it is fundamentally daft to build a society that encourages mass movement. I am not talking UK only so please do not quote the UK as the problem. You imply your agreement to the difficutlies of mass movement by quoting examples of the Thatcher era. Europe should have built a Union that encouraged countries coming together over a period of time. One or two years; three or four years - these are not the point. We should like to see Greece becoming richer, and Bulgaira and Romania and so on. The idea of free movement of people should be a long term aim. In the meantime people should move when there are job opportunities and when they are "invited" to another country. The country accepting them should be ready to house them and school their children and share the beneifts of their society. If they are not ready then the process by definition is too speedy. The EU has a large budget and should look to improve the prospects in the poorest countries faster than in the richest - which would mean a lot of French farmers not doing quite so well. If the EU were perceived by its citizens in all countries as being a caring, listening organisation with increased welfare across the continent as its goal it would not have the mass resentment it now has across the EU as a whole.
I think Leo that you are falling into the trap, as many others do, of seeing Brussels as being an alien force to the people of Europe. Laws are not made 'by' Brussels they are made 'in' Brussels by the representatives of the various nations who are there ie. the people we voted for. 90% of all laws made in the European Parliament were voted for by the British MEPs sitting there - that is a higher ratio than nearly all other countries. One of the biggest problems the EU. parliament has is that it has no direct media communication with the people - in the way that national governments do through national newspapers etc. so negative stories such as regulations about bananas etc. (of which the British press has been full of for about the last 30 years) get no instant corrective - this was exactly the same during the referendum campaigns. The lack of knowledge about the EU. is astonishing. By the way, I agree with you about the instant access of Rumanian and Bulgarian workers to free mobility - it should have been phased over a longer period (partly because if those countries empty then it also has a negative affect on them).
A couple of points to make about this. 1. We need all the immigrants that have come over (the ones that work), and we are going to need many more in the near future. They prop up our economy and make a net contribution to it, money that Gideon would rather spent on tax cuts for the rich rather than improving the country's infrastructure. 2. I only know the benefit rules of France but I'm guessing it's the same in most EU countries. To get benefits you need to have worked for 90 days (including weekends), and once this threshold is hit you're entitled to quite generous benefits. The aim? Ensuring people have to work when they leave school rather than following the Brexit-voter lifestyle of instant benefits at 16 and then propped up for life on a miserable income, often resorting to having herds of ugly children. In France your benefits only last for a certain amount of time depending on your past employment, which then forces to you work. We should have changed the benefits rule a long time ago in this country, giving more to people if they lose their job/their contract finishes, rather than giving a pathetic flat rate to everyone. I spent a few months on the dole when I finished Uni 5 or 6 years ago and vowed to never do it again.
No Cologne - as somebody who did PPE I am pretty well read on constitutions. I am not referring though to the nuts and bolts of processes. It is clear that for whatever reason - the fact that 28 ministers do not make a cohesive body; that the MEPs are remote from their electorate or that the Commission - like the British Civil Service wield a power out of all proportion to their nominal power. Yes Minister was so accurate. I am commenting on what I see on TV -and that is dangerous as it could be misleading. However what I see are millions of ordinary good people across the EU being unhappy with migration. They are not racist but boy do racist elements like Marine Le Penn know how to manipulate them. The EU should be a massively good force leading ultimately to a European Union where people can move freely everywhere - but not immediately and because their own corner is impoverished
1 Yes - migrants are needed and generally make a fantastically positive contribution to our society. I would not phrase it that they prop up our economy but rather believe they enliven and improve it - as well as our multicultural society. Without descending into party politics I do beleive that building houses and schools should be a massive priority withor without immigration. 2 I bow to your knowledge of theFrench system - and it sounds good and sensible - but it is not what we have and rightly or wrongly but that is not an EU issue but one that the British government should have been able to determine itself. Unfortunately you have to get people to be able to disentangle that in the face of media lies and propaganda with its own agenda.
Leo, referring you to Toby's last post on unemployment benefits in France. In Germany the situation with unemployment benefits is as follows. The minimum qualifying period is to have worked legally for 12 months - and this is for Germans and Foreigners alike. Then they receive Unemployment Benefit 1 which is paid as a percentage of previous earnings for between 90 and 360 days (depending on how long you have worked) - this is 60% of previous earnings (or 67% with children). After this they move on to Unemployment Benefit 2 which is a subsistence allowance. If Britain is paying people upon arrival then it is doing it unilaterally. There is no such thing as a job seekers allowance in Germany - a person who is unemployed in their own country can claim for 3 months in Germany but this is reimbersed by the sending country. If Britain operated the same system then it could make a difference to the numbers coming. The other factor to consider is that Britain has vast differences in wealth (the distribution of wealth is more unequal there than in other western countries) with a large so called 'underclass' (not a nice word but I can't think of another). The EU. is not responsible for the crass divisions in British society which cause those lower down the scale to see immigrants as a threat and as competition.
A bit of common sense from William Hague today. It is strange to have to point this out even after the referendum, but it is evidently necessary. At the weekend, tens of thousands of people demonstrated in London against the referendum result. Many more seem to think it will never be implemented. Some think a general election will overturn it. And Tony Blair has implied that if the country changes its mind we can stay in the EU after all. As one who argued for the Remain side I hate to disillusion all these people, but there is no point living in a state of denial. On a high turnout, in a democratic society, the electorate voted to Leave. There is not going to be a sudden general election – the Conservatives want boundary changes before the next election, and Her Majesty’s Opposition is in the worst shape to face the country of any opposition since Burke and Fox split over the French Revolution in 1794. The idea that we can keep having referendums to see if voters have changed their minds is unrealistic, to say the least. They might very well change their minds from month to month, or year to year, as good or bad news comes in. They might, for instance, be pleased they’re leaving the EU in 2017, regret it in 2019 and be thrilled they’re doing so by 2021. That doesn’t mean we can change our national direction every two years as sentiment ebbs and flows. Within the Conservative Party, the result of June 23 is accepted as settling the issue, albeit not the considerable question of how to implement it. It is inconceivable that the next leader and Prime Minister can now lead the party in any other direction than one of carrying out the mandate to leave.
There was never going to be a massive outflow from the UK, more of a steady trickle as witnessed here. http://www.bbc.com/news/business-36708844 Uncertainty will continue and investment money that the country desperately needs is put at risk.
I've just seen that because of the devaluation of the pound the UK. economy has slipped down to 6th place in the World behind........France. Where is SH. !!!
Yes, but you failed to mention that the population started to decline in the 1930's and that the decline is attributable to local resettlement with corresponding increases in populations in surrounding towns such as Kirby. The population reduction is not attributable to economic migration.
You're nitpicking W_Y. Liverpool's population peaked at 846,101 in the 1931 census and is now 466,400. Kirkby has a population of 42,744. Altogether nearly 6 million British people live outside of Britain - with many millions more being of British descent - remember the song dead end street by the Kinks. Nearly every family in the 70s had a member that had emigrated, or knew some one that had. All of them were looking for a better future somewhere else - how can we now complain when others come to us ?
I do not deny that some population loss is due to urban depopulation - Liverpool in particular had a sanitary problem in the 1930s. There were regular outbreaks of Typhoid and smallpox at that time - but I am referring to the 1980s, a time of closing industries. Of course urban depopulation is another theme - this is why you now hear more cockney accents in Essex than in London (and the same phenomena occurs to a lesser extent in the North of England). The English have become a very mobile people, in all directions, look at our locations on this board - not many of us live in Watford. But this movement leaves a vacuum behind it - altogether around 4 million have left London since I was born, to be replaced by immigrants. Without them it would be a ghost town ! This is a different theme from economic migration which is the general drift from north to south, and emigration from the UK. (not all of which can be attributed to people retiring abroad). Why are you, and others, so reluctant to admit that economic migration is a phenomenon which the English have also been heavily involved with. Go to a couple of the British or Irish pubs in Hamburg or Amsterdam and listen to the accents of the people there - they are not from Chobham or Tunbridge Wells but rather Mancunian, Scouse, Geordie etc. Why is it ok. for the British to get on their bikes in search of a better future but not the Poles or Rumanians ?
That was a part of the referendum campaign that intrigued me - apparently saying our country can thrive better in the EU is "running the country down" but suggesting we can thrive better by returning to the past is not. I did not hear one person on either side run the country down - all I heard was differing views on how it would fare better in the future as part of a single market of 500 million people or by new trade deals with other countries. Both are valid opinions but neither is "running the country down" Leave have adopted one of the aspects of political debate that frustrates me -sound bite repetition - pick a catch phrase and repeat it. Others were "take back control" and "give us back our democracy" not to mention their out and out lies like "we send £350m per week to the EU"
