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EU Referendum: The result and aftermath...

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47802

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So on the one hand we allegedly have a massive shortage of workers such that immigration is allegedly vital, yet if we leave the EU there will allegedly be mass unemployment. Doesn't quite square up.

Or to put it bluntly better quality better paying jobs will be reduced, while poorer quality and poorer paying jobs will have to be covered by UK workers or do without. While there still may be shortages in some key skilled areas because there isn't enough British Skilled workers and some moving to better opportunities abroad.

A comment from a friend visiting from Canada recently, some tradespeople very difficult to get in Canada not many Polish Plumbers there.

Of course in reality any deal with the EU will still likely have a certain level of immigration from EU countries, and other non EU countries are already talking about linking trade deals to immigration. So anybody who thinks that there will be hardly immigration after brexit is in cloud cuckoo land which is essentially why I voted to stay in.

Governments never control immigration to the level many of the population want. The Labour party particularly Corbyn don't seem to believe in immigration Controls while the Tories know that a certain level of immigration is required for skills shortages and a good pool of cheap Labour.
 
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Barn

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It really isn't that hard to explain. The EU is one of our largest trading partners, and we currently trade completely freely. If we end up on WTO terms our products get more expensive overnight while the same product produced inside the EU continues to be tariff-free. If I was a manufacturer/service provider I know I would look at relocating.

If that's your mindset you'd have gone already. Tariffs on most manufactured goods are nothing like the differences that already exist in salary and rental costs. In many cases they would already be cancelled out by the correction in the pound.
 
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najaB

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Tariffs on most manufactured goods are nothing like the differences that already exist in salary and rental costs.
Oh, right. Sorry. I forgot that manufacturers are currently flocking to move to the UK from Europe to take advantage of our low costs.
 

Abpj17

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I didn't realise UK citizens will be losing their freedom to travel after Brexit? As it happens, I haven't been outside the UK since 2003, and can't envisage a situation where I may wish to work outside the UK. In any case, if I did there's no guarantee I'd want to work within one of the EU countries. In short, I'm not interested in the additional rights the EU brings me. Furthermore, the disbenefits outweigh these rights.

That's your perspective for your life, but it's not all about you. There are plenty of others who value the freedom to travel (as well as work and study).
 

bramling

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Perhaps quite as many as care that much amongst the 52%? Why should you feel the Remainers are any less strongly committed to their deep involvement with the EU than the Brexiteers are to theirs of Little Englanderism?

Or Little Waleserism or even nearly 40% Little Scotlanderism, the latter being something somewhat overlooked by the likes of Sturgeon?

From personal experience there's a lot less passion on the remain side. My workplace had flyers posted for four separate celebratory garden parties on the weekend after the referendum, and I wouldn't describe my workplace as particularly politically motivated normally. I can't imagine such celebration had remain won. Meanwhile I know a *lot* of people who found their heart was telling them leave, but their head in the end told them status quo was the less risky option. Perhaps if the EU put pragmatism over ideology the EU would be less divisive.
 
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fowler9

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I was pretty confused which way to vote but in the end I voted Remain, if the vote was held again I would vote Leave as all the end of the world predictions haven't materialised.
There may well be difficult times in the years ahead but it's long term that is important and the EU only has one way of solving problems which is more and more EU.

I am actually looking forward to leaving now and to be honest the sooner the better.

Wow, so the end of the world predictions haven't happened before we have left? Can you explain this one to me as no one else seems to be able to. Why would you expect to see car manufacturers etc. leave the UK before they know what the trade deals will be? We are still very much in the EU at the moment and no agreements have been made. It is going to get very real soon.
 

Barn

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Oh, right. Sorry. I forgot that manufacturers are currently flocking to move to the UK from Europe to take advantage of our low costs.

Costs are higher in the UK. My point was that companies base themselves here for reasons other than pure cost and, if they were so cost sensitive, there are plenty of reasons to have relocated to places like Bulgaria already.
 

bramling

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That's your perspective for your life, but it's not all about you. There are plenty of others who value the freedom to travel (as well as work and study).

Not just me, a majority of the UK population (out of those who felt strongly enough to be bothered to vote). That's how democracy works. Evidently plenty of people also don't care about losing these rights, or feel that the benefits that come alongside losing them outweigh the costs. For me the costs of uncontrolled population growth FAR outweigh the benefits of the rights you speak of. All very nice to study in an EU country, but hardly a concern if one can't afford a house in one's chosen location.

A former workplace of mine had something similar when trying to agree on a roster for 11 people. It was like children in a sweetshop who had been given a finite amount of money to spend, but the greedy children wanted every sweet and couldn't prioritise which sweets they wanted most. In the end one has to go with what the majority wants, and in so doing the things that matter most to most people have to be prioritised. Maybe if there are mass job losses associated with Brexit then the majority priorities may change, although I think most Brexit voters fully expected there may be a short-term hit, my entire household (along with about 90% of my current workplace) voted leave, and certainly factored in things like savings as a cushion if needed.

As for freedom to travel, we're hardly likely to lose that.
 
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EM2

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If that's your mindset you'd have gone already. Tariffs on most manufactured goods are nothing like the differences that already exist in salary and rental costs. In many cases they would already be cancelled out by the correction in the pound.
Have a look at post #5936.
A third of European companies expect to cut investment spending due to Brexit uncertainties and a tenth of those with operations in the Britain plan to pull out of the country, a survey of 600 euro zone firms, by Swiss bank UBS, found.

Over half the companies said they did not expect Britain leaving the European Union to change their investment plans, but 24 percent anticipated reducing investment "somewhat", and 8 percent "significantly", the survey, published on Friday, showed.

Thirty-nine percent of those said they would modify their investment plans within 6-12 months, and around 17 percent said they would respond immediately.

Of the firms surveyed, in a range of sizes and sectors chosen to represent the European market, 74 percent have operations in Britain.

Of those, a tenth said they planned to relocate all their capacity away from Britain, while 31 percent said they would remove a large amount. A fifth said they would not relocate any capacity, and 3 percent planned to increase UK operations.

Euro zone countries were the most preferred new destinations for nearly half of respondents, while central and Eastern Europe was preferred by 30 percent.
The survey found uncertainty related to Brexit was top of the companies' worry list. A close second was uncertainty over the new U.S. administration, while only 14 percent were most concerned about the French presidential election.

The survey was conducted between Jan. 10 and Feb. 13.
 

miami

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Not just me, a majority of the UK population (out of those who felt strongly enough to be bothered to vote). That's how democracy works. Evidently plenty of people also don't care about losing these rights, or feel that the benefits that come alongside losing them outweigh the costs. For me the costs of uncontrolled population growth FAR outweigh the benefits of the rights you speak of. All very nice to study in an EU country, but hardly a concern if one can't afford a house in one's chosen location.

If you have work long/hard/smart enough to save up some money, but are now not allowed to live in one's chosen location, what then?

Besides, you're going to be very disapointed. Even setting aside the fact most immigrants come from outside of the EU, and the massive draw that London is to people inside the UK (easy to buy a house in Haltwhistle. Pain to buy one there if you work 50 hours a week in london), you've still got the fact a large number of EU immigrants are the "ones we want", so will still be able to come.

Brexit won't reduce immigration -- according to Vote Leave.

http://metro.co.uk/2016/06/25/brexit-wont-reduce-immigration-explains-vote-leave-campaigner-5966910/
One of the key figures in engineering the Brexit said the number of people coming to Britain will not go down – and said Vote Leave never promised it would.
Daniel Hannan, Conservative, made the admission to BBC Newsnight presenter Evan Davis, who said the free movement of labour was ‘completely at odds with what the public think they’ve just voted for’.

Your version of democracy is two wolfs and a sheep deciding on dinner. That's not a world I like to live in.
 
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bramling

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If you're not allowed to live in one's chosen location.

Besides, you're going to be very disapointed. Even setting aside the fact most immigrants come from outside of the EU, and the massive draw that London is to people inside the UK (easy to buy a house in Haltwhistle. Pain to buy one there if you work 50 hours a week in london), you've still got the fact a large number of EU immigrants are the "ones we want", so will still be able to come.

Brexit won't reduce immigration -- according to Vote Leave.

http://metro.co.uk/2016/06/25/brexit-wont-reduce-immigration-explains-vote-leave-campaigner-5966910/


Your version of democracy is two wolfs and a sheep deciding on dinner. That's not a world I like to live in.

So you don't think over a million people arriving in a few years has had any effect on housing availability and/or prices in the London area? There has been a massive effect, not just in London but increasingly outwards from London. Associated with all this the south east is seeing more commuting and more commuting over longer distances. There are plenty of threads elsewhere on this forum referring to increasingly crowded trains in the south-east. When you find your train to work is becoming unboardable and there are no plans to enhance capacity on your route (save perhaps by removing seats) freedom to study elsewhere is just not such a salient issue by comparison. Haltwhistle's 1tph pacer service may be easy to have capacity added, the south-east is reaching the point where everything is approaching it's realistic limit.

Time will tell if immigration goes down. There's more chance outside the EU than inside, and I'd rather have the policy pragmatically decided by an elected Westminster than ideologically dictated by mostly unelected EU institutions. Ideology normally leads to bad policy.
 

fowler9

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So you don't think over a million people arriving in a few years has had any effect on housing availability and/or prices in the London area? There has been a massive effect, not just in London but increasingly outwards from London. Associated with all this the south east is seeing more commuting and more commuting over longer distances. There are plenty of threads elsewhere on this forum referring to increasingly crowded trains in the south-east. When you find your train to work is becoming unboardable and there are no plans to enhance capacity on your route (save perhaps by removing seats) freedom to study elsewhere is just not such a salient issue by comparison. Haltwhistle's 1tph pacer service may be easy to have capacity added, the south-east is reaching the point where everything is approaching it's realistic limit.

Time will tell if immigration goes down. There's more chance outside the EU than inside, and I'd rather have the policy pragmatically decided by an elected Westminster than ideologically dictated by mostly enelected EU institutions. Ideology normally leads to bad policy.


I hope I am wrong but you watch as absolutely nothing changes for the better after leaving the EU. Our country is run by Neo Liberals who are very similar to those that run the EU but there will be less checks and balances.
 
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fowler9

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Apologies if this offends anyone but if you think that leaving the EU will result in our government having more concern for your own personal interests you are naive at best.
 

bramling

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I hope I am wrong but you watch as absolutely nothing changes for the better after leaving the EU. Our country is run by Neo Liberals who are very similar to those that run the EU but there will be less checks and balances.

You may well be right, all political eras tend to have a shelf-life though, things go stale after a while no matter how well embedded they seem. The centre ground, where the votes naturally lie, is currently sitting a little to the right of where it has been for some time. A political party who correctly identifies this could do very well electorally, and it seems the Conservatives have done that (with a little unexpected help from Mr Farage and Mr Corbyn!).
 

bramling

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Apologies if this offends anyone but if you think that leaving the EU will result in our government having more concern for your own personal interests you are naive at best.

Again you may well be right, however I feel our government has more accountability than the EU. The EU seems more concerned with ideology, dreams and a political integration 'project'. Meanwhile their flagship economic policy has delivered a decade and counting of economic misery to much of Europe- fortunately we chose not to join. Even Sturgeon appears not to want to join the Euro which is a rather interesting position.
 

fowler9

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You may well be right, all political eras tend to have a shelf-life though, things go stale after a while no matter how well embedded they seem. The centre ground, where the votes naturally lie, is currently sitting a little to the right of where it has been for some time. A political party who correctly identifies this could do very well electorally, and it seems the Conservatives have done that (with a little unexpected help from Mr Farage and Mr Corbyn!).

Well we will all get to see how it plays out. Hopefully for the better and that is what I genuinely hope for despite it not being what I voted for. We all have to live and work together hopefully for a long time.
 

bramling

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Well we will all get to see how it plays out. Hopefully for the better and that is what I genuinely hope for despite it not being what I voted for. We all have to live and work together hopefully for a long time.

Agreed. Not long to wait now.

The France election will be an interesting one to watch too. Personally I do not link Trump and Brexit and that a Le-Pen surge naturally follows, but we shall see. Even a strong but non-winning result would be a severe headache for the EU.
 

D365

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Again you may well be right, however I feel our government has more accountability than the EU. The EU seems more concerned with ideology, dreams and a political integration 'project'.

Hmm. Like I really trust our current government to have our best interests at heart :roll:
 

meridian2

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Hmm. Like I really trust our current government to have our best interests at heart :roll:
I don't trust any political class to have the interests of the general public at heart, so the smaller and more readily removable the unit of governance, the quicker they can be sent on their way. Most have one eye set on some sunlit ideological upland, and the other on their pension.
 

miami

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So you don't think over a million people arriving in a few years has had any effect on housing availability and/or prices in the London area? There has been a massive effect, not just in London but increasingly outwards from London. Associated with all this the south east is seeing more commuting and more commuting over longer distances. There are plenty of threads elsewhere on this forum referring to increasingly crowded trains in the south-east. When you find your train to work is becoming unboardable and there are no plans to enhance capacity on your route (save perhaps by removing seats) freedom to study elsewhere is just not such a salient issue by comparison. Haltwhistle's 1tph pacer service may be easy to have capacity added, the south-east is reaching the point where everything is approaching it's realistic limit.

Time will tell if immigration goes down. There's more chance outside the EU than inside, and I'd rather have the policy pragmatically decided by an elected Westminster than ideologically dictated by mostly unelected EU institutions. Ideology normally leads to bad policy.

The source of that increase over the last 10 years is
1) internal migration from other areas of the UK
2) migration from outside the EU - 2m
3) the "right sort" of migration from the EU (nirses, doctors etc) - 500k
4) the "wrong sort" of migration (schrodingders immigrants) - 500k

Vote leave say immigration won't go down. Remain say it will if the economy collapses.

The 2 million non European immigrants arriving over the last 10 years, and the 1 million eu immigrants, have put much more into the system than they've taken out. Why hasn't that money been spent on infrastructure? Where would our public spending be with even less taxation going into the pot?
 

Dave1987

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I see the right wing press are attacking the BBC for not portraying Brexit as a shining beam of light. At least the freedom of the press is one thing that isn't on the attack list for the right wing extremists..... yet.
 

Dave1987

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And as far as getting behind Brexit and supporting May and her Government in 'hard Brexit' that is something I can never do. The EU was created out of a pact that was designed to never let the events of 1938-1945 happen again. It seems the lessons learned then have already been forgotten.
 

gareth950

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You may well be right, all political eras tend to have a shelf-life though, things go stale after a while no matter how well embedded they seem. The centre ground, where the votes naturally lie, is currently sitting a little to the right of where it has been for some time. A political party who correctly identifies this could do very well electorally, and it seems the Conservatives have done that (with a little unexpected help from Mr Farage and Mr Corbyn!).

I'd hardly say the current incarnation of the Conservative party under Theresa May is 'sitting a little to the right of centre'. It's vered off to the extreme right to vacuum up UKIP voters. Do you think gay marriage would be legalised by the current Conservative govt if Cameron hadn't done it? (for example).

All this talk of 'a country that works for everyone' crap coming from May is just empty rhetoric. How is potentially turning the UK into a tax haven off Europe and decimating public services going to help the little people? Anyone remember 'hard-working families'? We haven't heard much about them lately have we?

'A country.........' is just the Tories latest tagline to fool voters.
 
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Barn

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And as far as getting behind Brexit and supporting May and her Government in 'hard Brexit' that is something I can never do. The EU was created out of a pact that was designed to never let the events of 1938-1945 happen again. It seems the lessons learned then have already been forgotten.

Free trade and democracy are two of the greatest antidotes to war. The early predecessors to the EU might have helped with this. I'm not one to suggest that it didn't contribute at all.

Forced political unions are not in the same category. It is hard to claim that relations between, say, Germany and Greece have become more harmonious as the EU has deepened in integration over the last twenty years.
 

Dave1987

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I'd hardly say the current incarnation of the Conservative party under Theresa May is 'sitting a little to the right of centre'. It's vered off to the extreme right to vacuum up UKIP voters. Do you think gay marriage would be legalised by the current Conservative govt if Cameron hadn't done it? (for example).

All this talk of 'a country that works for everyone' crap coming from May is just empty rhetoric. How is potentially turning the UK into a tax haven off Europe and decimating public services going to help the little people? Anyone remember 'hard-working families'? We haven't heard much about them lately have we?

Yup totally agree. Since May took over, her Government has dramatically veered to the right.
 

Senex

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And as far as getting behind Brexit and supporting May and her Government in 'hard Brexit' that is something I can never do.

Me too!

The EU was created out of a pact that was designed to never let the events of 1938-1945 happen again. It seems the lessons learned then have already been forgotten.
And for all its faults -- and I certainly don't deny they are many -- the EU has ensured that they have not happened again and looks set to do so well into the future. It has succeeded brilliantly in keeping France and Germany working together and in bringing the other major states of Europe into the fold, save only for Britain, which has always preferred to be semi-detached and snipe from the sidelines.
 

meridian2

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It has succeeded brilliantly in keeping France and Germany working together and in bringing the other major states of Europe into the fold, save only for Britain, which has always preferred to be semi-detached and snipe from the sidelines.
Franco-German interests have set the EU agenda, undoubtedly. I don't believe stopping Germany taking up arms is sufficient reason for the country dominating Europe. The country has outgrown its old ways or it hasn't. I prefer to believe modern Germany doesn't require an expansionist agenda to maintain the peace.
 
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miami

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Yup totally agree. Since May took over, her Government has dramatically veered to the right.

Absolutely. If we were to use the traditional left-right spectrum in 2015 (So Ed Miliband, David Cameron, Nick Clegg etc), we'd have something like

Code:
greens, pc, snp, labour, libdems, tory, ukip
-----25%---------------------50%------85%---
Here about 50% voted for tory and ukip, and 50% voted for green, snp, labour, libdem, putting the middle ground on the left of the tory party and the right of the lib dems.

Since then we now have a labour of Corbyn, a conservative party of May. Nobody would honestly say that these parties are the same as they were in 2015. Labour has lurched left, Tory lurched right.

If the proportion of left-right thinking hasn't changed much in the last 22 months, that would put the middle ground well in the area vacated by the tories, now occupied by the lib dems.

Code:
greens, pc, snp, labour, libdems, noone, tory, ukip
-----25%---------------------50%--------------85%--


However voting patterns aren't based on a simple left-right basis, or on requiring a majority of the country to support you. If they were, there's no way a party that has lurched to the right would be able to win a new election.

May's conservative party is a long way from Cameron's party. It's dominated by the "Ultras", using football hooligan tactics. Oh for the days of John Major, or David Cameron, or George Osborne, before the *******s took over.
 
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