Off Topic Migrant crisis

[TwoWrights]

He didn’t and couldn’t have, because he wasn’t Prime Minister and didn’t have any power to enact, repeal or change Government policy related to Brexit. That’s on successive Tory and subsequently Labour Prime Ministers and no one else. We still haven’t had the Brexit that the British people wanted and voted for.

If Farage gets in and doesn’t give us that Brexit and doesn’t do what he says he’ll do then you and I can and will blame him. But you can’t blame him for something which he opposes but has no power to stop ie. the half-Brexit which Johnson agreed to and no one since has changed back to the full Brexit which the British public were told they’d get.

The question on the ballot paper was,
1, Should we remain a member of the European Union?
2, Should we leave the European Union?

The people got exactly what they voted for, we left. Any suggestion that people wanted this or that from Brexit is just a suggestion.
I voted remain but accepted, and respected, the majority vote and am of the opinion there's no going back.

 

[Ubedizzytoo]

My strong view is he materially affected the vote with blatant and deliberate lies to further his own political standings.

Brexit was always going to be a self-harming situation/outcome for the country. It was not failed delivery as he would have us all believe.

Surely what has transpired since, not least the change in world order orchestrated by his mate Trump has shown this along with the need to reverse the push away from partnering with our allies and neighbours in the EU?

I disagree. It is exactly the way Brexit was delivered which is the problem. The main issue for those who voted to leave was and still is, uncontrolled immigration. Yes there were other reasons, of course, but all the polls suggest that uncontrolled immigration was the main driver of voters who voted leave, which was obviously the majority of those who voted. The subsequent failure to repeal or even consider repealing the Human Rights Act, which is purely UK law (and not the ECHR, which is irrelevant) is why we haven’t controlled immigration. I agree there was always going to be an initial economic deficit, but that was part of the price of regaining, or supposedly regaining control of our borders, which of course has never happened. Had Brexit been implemented by people who actually wanted it and believed in it, I’ve always maintained that it would be at least 10 years before you could judge whether it was a success or not. With the Governments that we have had since the vote, that time period has become endless because we haven’t even tried to implement it in the way the public wanted.

 

[ElfsborgAddick]

Ed Davey is another
Zack Polanski is another
Starmer is a complete ars*hole
The Tories have proven they are complete liars
Who would you vote for if there was an election tomorrow then ?

Their lies are so outrageous as well. So clear and blatant they cannot be misunderstood.

 

[Watameire]

I disagree. It is exactly the way Brexit was delivered which is the problem. The main issue for those who voted to leave was and still is, uncontrolled immigration. Yes there were other reasons, of course, but all the polls suggest that uncontrolled immigration was the main driver of voters who voted leave, which was obviously the majority of those who voted. The subsequent failure to repeal or even consider repealing the Human Rights Act, which is purely UK law (and not the ECHR, which is irrelevant) is why we haven’t controlled immigration. I agree there was always going to be an initial economic deficit, but that was part of the price of regaining, or supposedly regaining control of our borders, which of course has never happened. Had Brexit been implemented by people who actually wanted it and believed in it, I’ve always maintained that it would be at least 10 years before you could judge whether it was a success or not. With the Governments that we have had since the vote, that time period has become endless because we haven’t even tried to implement it in the way the public wanted.

Clearly I don’t agree but I’m interested to hear your reflections on the Trump situ. Do you agree the decision to leave the EU has compounded the challenges we as a nation face as a result of the US now publicly stated foreign policies?

 

[Ubedizzytoo]

The question on the ballot paper was,
1, Should we remain a member of the European Union?
2, Should we leave the European Union?

The people got exactly what they voted for, we left. Any suggestion that people wanted this or that from Brexit is just a suggestion.
I voted remain but accepted, and respected, the majority vote and am of the opinion there's no going back.

I think it’s overly simplifying it to say that people got what they voted for. The decisions made by every single voter (both for and against leaving) encompassed much more than those two simple options. There were reasons behind each person’s vote and the overriding reason for the majority of leave voters was uncontrolled immigration. If subsequent Governments have not controlled immigration (which none of them have done) then you can’t rightly claim that the people got exactly what they voted for. In fact, the way it has been done means that hardly anyone, both for and against leaving, has got what they voted for, which is why it is such a mess. That is down to the failure in Government, not down to the referendum voters, again either for or against leaving.

Technically you are correct of course, but it is far more nuanced than the two simple options you have highlighted, which were the best options to include on a ballot paper, but which don’t come anywhere near being the whole situation.

It’s no different to voting in a GE.

Just because you vote for the party that becomes the Government, it doesn’t mean that if that Government then enacts different laws to what is best for the country or enacts laws that they said they wouldn’t or doesn’t enact laws that they said they would, or lies about taxes etc etc etc, that you got exactly what you voted for.

 

[Ubedizzytoo]

Clearly I don’t agree but I’m interested to hear your reflections on the Trump situ. Do you agree the decision to leave the EU has compounded the challenges we as a nation face as a result of the US now publicly stated foreign policies?

Impossible to say.

Again if we had got the sort of Brexit that the majority wanted then who knows what our relationship with Trump and the US would be like now ? It’s pretty much certain that it would be better than it currently is though (for a start you wouldn’t have a useless Labour Government) so you may have found that the US was prepared to treat us very differently from the EU countries, in a way that it currently isn’t (although we did get lower tariffs of course). At the moment Trump doesn’t see us as much different to the rest of Europe and so he is generally treating us that way and to be fair we haven’t diverged much from the rest of Europe so why would he ?

We’ve never become the country we could have been after Brexit, so it’s hard to judge what would have happened if we had.

 

[TwoWrights]

I think it’s overly simplifying it to say that people got what they voted for. The decisions made by every single voter (both for and against leaving) encompassed much more than those two simple options. There were reasons behind each person’s vote and the overriding reason for the majority of leave voters was uncontrolled immigration. If subsequent Governments have not controlled immigration (which none of them have done) then you can’t rightly claim that the people got exactly what they voted for. In fact, the way it has been done means that hardly anyone, both for and against leaving, has got what they voted for, which is why it is such a mess. That is down to the failure in Government, not down to the referendum voters, again either for or against leaving.

Technically you are correct of course, but it is far more nuanced than the two simple options you have highlighted, which were the best options to include on a ballot paper, but which don’t come anywhere near being the whole situation.

It’s no different to voting in a GE.

Just because you vote for the party that becomes the Government, it doesn’t mean that if that Government then enacts different laws to what is best for the country or enacts laws that they said they wouldn’t or doesn’t enact laws that they said they would, or lies about taxes etc etc etc, that you got exactly what you voted for.

The day after the vote my neighbour said to me 'that's the foreigners going home' , he was half correct, many Polish cleared off.

 

[Ubedizzytoo]

The day after the vote my neighbour said to me 'that's the foreigners going home' , he was half correct, many Polish cleared off.

Why did they ? And is that a good thing or a bad thing, from both a short term and long term perspective ?

 

[TwoWrights]

Why did they ? And is that a good thing or a bad thing, from both a short term and long term perspective ?

Probably many reasons, Poland's standard of living and job prospects seems to have got better, and many of them may not have felt welcome here any longer.They do seem to have a tendency to integrate more than some recent arrivals.
We had a surveyor around the other day, he came from Rumania fifteen years ago, he was raging about immigrants not working and having things handed on a plate. A few of the things he told us about what he'd seen in immigrant households makes it no wonder there's a backlash.

 

[Ubedizzytoo]

Probably many reasons, Poland's standard of living and job prospects seems to have got better, and many of them may not have felt welcome here any longer.They do seem to have a tendency to integrate more than some recent arrivals.
We had a surveyor around the other day, he came from Rumania fifteen years ago, he was raging about immigrants not working and having things handed on a plate. A few of the things he told us about what he'd seen in immigrant households makes it no wonder there's a backlash.

So not necessarily related to Brexit then ? And if they can come and go that easily then they’re not really integrated into this country, just using it for work (which from their perspective is fine) but thus reducing opportunities for British born kids. You may say that British born kids aren’t qualified or want that work, but if we paid them no money to sit on their arses on their consoles then they’d have to train and take those jobs, then we wouldn’t need to import foreign workers, many of whom don’t pay the taxes that they should. Cheap foreign Labour drives down wages in this country and you get a spiral of reduced pay, British workers with more expenses (mortgages, families here to support, not wanting to live in HMO’s, paying full taxes etc) unable to work for that reduced pay and on and on it goes.

 

[lardiman]

Why did they ? And is that a good thing or a bad thing, from both a short term and long term perspective ?

Our head storesman where I work came from Slovakia when the UK was still in the EU.
He has a young family now, bringing them up in West London on his honest earnings. I've never met a harder worker or a more decent bloke. When I retire he may well take over my job as factory manager, and he will be a better one than I've been.

He never wanted to leave, but circumstances after Brexit almost forced him to.
It was then that I began to realise my Pro-Brexit forum rantings utterly failed to recognise the effect it would have on real people. Good, honest and hard working people, including one I am proud to call a colleague and a friend.
We nearly lost him. Which would have really hurt the Company. Much more than all the extra forms and red tape which now stifles our export business with mainland Europe.

If I could live my post-referendum years over again (2016 to 2020) I would never have launched hundreds of polemics against the EU in the politics threads on this forum.
Which would surely have been a good thing, for those fellow members who had to read them.

 

[Ubedizzytoo]

Our head storesman where I work came from Slovakia when the UK was still in the EU.
He has a young family now, bringing them up in West London on his honest earnings. I've never met a harder worker or a more decent bloke. When I retire he may well take over my job as factory manager, and he will be a better one than I've been.

He never wanted to leave, but circumstances after Brexit almost forced him to.
It was then that I began to realise my Pro-Brexit forum rantings utterly failed to recognise the effect it would have on real people. Good, honest and hard working people, including one I am proud to call a colleague and a friend.
We nearly lost him. Which would have really hurt the Company. Much more than all the extra forms and red tape which now stifles our export business with mainland Europe.

If I could live my post-referendum years over again (2016 to 2020) I would never have launched hundreds of polemics against the EU in the politics threads on this forum.
Which would surely have been a good thing, for those fellow members who had to read them.

A bit like the Poles that TW mentioned, what nearly made this chap leave the UK ? Was it Brexit and if so what exactly about Brexit or were there other factors ?

I’m sure you will recognise that he and others as hard working and decent, who fully integrate into our country, have never been the problem in all of this, but you should also recognise that there are hundreds of thousands of others who are not so hard working, don’t integrate or contribute and actually dislike our country and it’s civilised laws.

Don’t beat yourself up over one person who you personally know and is obviously decent and exactly what we need more of, when there are these hundreds of thousands of others who are not. It is impossible to have zero negative effect with decisions of this magnitude but you can’t shy away from them just because a tiny minority might be adversely affected and our failure to deal with uncontrolled immigration since Brexit has had a much, much greater negative effect than losing a relatively small number of decent hard working people. Ultimately he and his family didn’t leave and were not forced to do so by Brexit and have carried on contributing to this country so I’d say that is a success story of Brexit, not a story of failure of Brexit ?

 

[Ponders Revisited]

The vast majority of my London neighbours are migrants from Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. They did everything by the book. They came here legally, worked, paid taxes, obeyed the law, and integrated beautifully. They abhor this current situation and believe enough is enough. Many of these new migrants are the complete opposite to the successes of yesteryear, yet the drawbridge is never raised.

We simply have too many who take too much without ever putting anything back in. Migration should pay for itself, but that is no longer the case. Billions upon billions of pounds are being poured down the drain, never to be seen again. It is madness personified.

 

[lardiman]

There is the world of high Politics, and there is the world I live in every day.

In my world the Company I work for has had it's export business with Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium, France etc. made much more difficult and less profitable by all the extra paperwork and rules which are a direct consequence of Britain leaving the EU.

And what happened to taking back control of our borders?
The biggest Brexit Lie of all.
Who is better off now? Only the rich. Because they never lose. Politicians ask for our trust and betray it every time.

Doesn't matter who we vote for in May or in 2029. Nothing will change. It'll just be more self-serving and passing the blame.
The only real difference between us, the Russians & the Chinese, is that their people know they don't have any political freedom.
We're too stupid even to work that out.

 

[Ubedizzytoo]

There is the world of high Politics, and there is the world I live in every day.

In my world the Company I work for has had it's export business with Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium, France etc. made much more difficult and less profitable by all the extra paperwork and rules which are a direct consequence of Britain leaving the EU.

And what happened to taking back control of our borders?
The biggest Brexit Lie of all.
Who is better off now? Only the rich. Because they never lose. Politicians ask for our trust and betray it every time.

Doesn't matter who we vote for in May or in 2029. Nothing will change. It'll just be more self-serving and passing the blame.
The only real difference between us, the Russians & the Chinese, is that their people know they don't have any political freedom.
We're too stupid even to work that out.

There were always going to be negatives for exporters to Europe due to Brexit. It’s why the BBC constantly wheeled out thus affected company directors during the referendum campaign, bleating and moaning that they wouldn’t make so much profit and they’d have some extra forms to fill in. But that was a price worth paying to gain control of our borders and stop anyone coming to the country who was a danger to its citizens and unless they benefitted the country.

Of course since the vote every Government has betrayed the people and failed to take the simple measures needed to take back that control, starting with immediately repealing the UK’s Human Rights Act, and preventing the boats entering UK waters, as opposed to aiding and abetting illegal entry to the country as we currently do.

It’s a failure of Government, not an inevitable consequence of Brexit, that we now have the disadvantages without the bigger advantages.

You may or may not be correct that it doesn’t matter who we vote for in respect of taking back control of our borders, but there are only two parties even committing to do so, the Tories and Reform. The British public quite rightly don’t trust the Tories so that just leaves Reform, which is why they are top of every poll.

Whether, if elected, they would keep their promise to take back control of our borders remains to be seen, but you can’t tar them with the same brush as Tories or Labour, who have both been in a position to do so but didn’t.

Do I trust Reform to take back control of our borders ? No, because no politician has earned my trust so far.

Are they the only party who is committing to do so, who haven’t already failed to do so in Government ? Yes.

And I’m still interested to know about why your work colleague thought about leaving after Brexit but thankfully decided not to.

 

[lardiman]

And I’m still interested to know about why your work colleague thought about leaving after Brexit but thankfully decided not to.

I've never questioned him in detail about it, but I recall he said there were papers to fill in and questions to answer.
In short, he and his family no longer had the right to remain without satisfying several new conditions.
At one point he considered leaving, as he thought he might eventually be told to go.

I think many decent, hard working EU citizens were made to feel they were no longer welcome in this Country.
For me Brexit was never about expelling people. It was about reclaiming the ability to make domestic tax laws and shape our economy free from the rules of the European Commission.

 

[Watameire]

Brexit most certainly did leave many EU citizens in this country feel very unwanted. Friends, indeed my wife included. It was impossible to defend.

My sister in law for fear of being deported by Farage has just forked out ~£2000 to protect herself by applying for UK citizenship and a passport.

And don’t get me started on all the bloody flags and painting the zebra crossings ..

 

[Watameire]

The citizenship test she sat last week and I kid you not asked what time pub opening hours are.

 

[Watameire]

Bizarrely nothing about her contributions to taxes etc

 

[Ubedizzytoo]

So why is this our fault exactly ?

It happened in FRENCH waters, just off CALAIS and involved an illegal attempt to enter the UK,(which thankfully mostly failed), by foreign criminals who were safe and in a safe, war-free country (FRANCE) before they entered the channel of their own free will in an attempt to unlawfully enter the UK. Nothing to do with us, it’s on the FRENCH for their failure to deal with the situation in FRANCE. How much did this inquiry cost and why are we spending that money on this ?

Thirty deaths in small boat crossing avoidable, inquiry finds

Inquiry chair Sir Ross Cranston said "systemic failures" by authorities had led to the deadliest Channel small boat incident on record.

www.bbc.co.uk