E.U: Leave or Stay? Your thoughts.

All Im saying is that the parameters that define that control shouldn't be based on poorly thought out ideas such as terrorist needing to hide as refugees in order to get into Europe or wherever.

 

For me if the UK does leave, it's going to be a real pain ordering stuff online from the UK and having to wait for it to be processed by customs (and having to pay the customs duty on it).

Also presumably having to apply for a resident/work permit/visa to stay where I am.

 

Of course, and i think you could find plenty of well thought out reasons for why borders should be controlled, reasons other than the possibilities of terrorists hiding among refugees crossing the borders.

 

As someone who has worked, paid pension, taxes and NI in the UK most of his life, and therefore is economically tied to it in terms of my pension and eligibility for social and health care, my biggest fear is that this country will suffer economically. As you say, that's all it boils down to.

Well, yeah, if you ask what should have been done different in the past, I tell you what should have been done different in the past. As expected, you offer no alternatives except doing more of the same. Because we all know that if you do something and it works out badly, you keep doing more of it in the hope that will correct the situation.

 

That's quite reasonable. I would think Britain will be fine trade-wise without the EU. As myself and Heh- have pointed out it would be a nuisance buying stuff on a consumer level from the UK if you decide to leave. I don't see it affecting business to business transactions that much though. Is there any reason Britain can't negotiate trade treaties with EU member states if it leaves?

 

How many big corporations are in multiple countries? If anything the importance of Ireland and NI increases as possible ways of servicing and operating in and outside Europe

 

It's not as simple as the young woman suggests. The reason why the talented Indian doctor has to go through a complex vetting process while an unskilled Central European labourer doesn't, is because the guy is going to work as a doctor. If the unskilled Central European wanted to work as a qualified craftsman, he'd find he'd have to go through quite some vetting too.

When I came from the Netherlands to work in the UK as a clinical psychologist, I went through a fierce professional scrutiny called the "Statement of Equivalence" which took years. One does not simply walk into the UK skilled labour market...

 

I'm not sure that's the point she's making, if I'm not mistaken the talented Indian doctor could be refused based purely on some arbitrary figure that's been set by our government, No ifs. No buts. Net Migration Will be Tens of Thousands.

If we can't control the free movement of labor into the UK from other EU countries and at the same time want to bring net migration down to the tens of thousands then we have to reduce the numbers of non-EU migrants be they skilled or unskilled, no?

Not that we've even come close to net migration being in the tens of thousands, it hasn't been that low for over two decades. Sauce.

 

You said

My question was that if you though what was done in Afganistan from 2001 was wrong, what should the Western governments have done then given that Al-Queda were established there with the consent of the Taliban in power at the time?

You consider the intervention dicking around, so what course of action did you advocate at the time or now with hindsight? Because just saying this action caused that consequence is pretty trite, if you don't bother to work out what the consequence of an alternative action or inaction might be.

 

actually you can - as a Romanian work colleague of mine has pointed out - before they joined the EU his wife has to jump through the hoops , but since? his countrymen can walk in. Has been since treaty of Lisbon , quite likely after you came to the uk

so it is as simple as that young lady sugegsts

 

Perhaps, but wouldn't Northern Ireland feel the same affects as the rest of Britain as a result of leaving?

 

In 1997 the Taliban were honoured guests of Unocal in Texas as they talked gas pipelines across Afghanistan. Turns out if there's money to be made, people can suddenly be quite amenable to cooperation and adverse to hosting terror groups that are at odds with your business interests.

Money also has a way of softening fundamentalist ideologies that tend to thrive in poverty. Around that time the Taliban had softened their ban on girls' education and were turning a blind eye to the expansion of informal "home schools" in which thousands of girls were being taught in private flats. The medical faculty was about to re-open for women to teach midwives, nurses, and doctors since women patients could not be treated by men. The ban on women working outside the home was also lifted for war widows and other needy women. All these injunctions were originally created by the Mujahideen; the Taliban were actually the moderates.

After 9/11 the Taliban told Bin Laden to leave the country. They were never big friends with him (Bin Laden was friends with his comrades in arms, the Mujahideen, who were at odds with the Taliban). Problem was, the Taliban could not be seen to be ordered about by the West so a lot of diplomatic shuffling ensued. But chances are that within a year they would have found a face-saving way to kick him out, especially where good money making opportunities were at stake. All the West had to do is be a bit patient, take the long view and keep building business with the Taliban, getting involved with rebuilding the country's infrastructure. The locals think you're great, the Taliban mellows out, and you make money to boot! Everybody happy. And it is harder for terrorist cells to hide and operate in a moderate country with good infrastructure and good standards of living because they get no local support; instead they get reported to the authorities (through that brand new communication infrastructure) as trouble makers trying to spoil a good thing going.

Instead the West forced the issue by a lengthy, destructive and eventually, fruitless invasion that is still carrying on today and alienated the population and if anything drove them into the welcoming arms of our fundamentalist enemy.

Just because you don't know what is the best thing to do does not mean that doing anything at all is better than doing nothing. Think Hippocratic oath: 'First, do no harm'. If you don't know for sure that your intervention is going to help, it is better not to do anything lest you make it worse.

So yes, the invasion was dicking about. Instead of building diplomatic relations with the new Taliban government --which had a large support with the local population after all-- on the foundation of shared business interests, therefore making the country an inhospitable environment for Al Qaida in the long term, Afghanistan was turned into a battle zone again, and the locals, very familiar by now with the trope of the jihad against foreign invaders (originally co-constructed by the West), of course reacted in the predictable way.

The invasion was not a mistake; it was a dumb, dumb mistake. It was utterly moronic. It was stupidity of the highest order. Its outcome was eminently predictable by anyone with half a brain, half an insight into the history of Afghanistan, half an ounce of willing to understand the people that we were dealing with. It was arrogant, blind, indefensible stupidity.

I totally agree but there's the elephant in the room, is it? How come with all these unemployed Brits lamenting that they cannot get a job, does any old Central European who barely speaks the language and have no qualifications manage to find employment here?

 

That's a pretty good analysis of the situation, and Boris Johnson (a Tory, no less) actually agrees: he stated that below living wage jobs are actually the tax payer subsidising exploitative business.

Of course forcing people into work does need to, where possible, match people's skills and qualifications to the work. This is where such schemes have fallen apart a bit in the past: people who delivered a valuable skill as volunteers (in effect working for their benefits) were forcibly redeployed in soulless menial paid jobs where their skills were wasted. It has to be done sensibly, and there may be some 'reparenting' involved to help some people get connected with the idea that they are actually capable and empowered.

 

I don't want to sound like a yank but isn't the government forcing people to work communism?

We have what's called a job bridge scheme, where employers give people work for a period of 6 months or a year. The person remains on benefits but with a slight increase. The idea being that the person gains work experience which makes them more employable.

One place I worked would take unemployed but qualified people in on this scheme, usually college graduates that hadn't found work. They would pay absolutely nothing to them for 6 months or possibly a year whilst they did whatever work (they possibly pay the increase over the standard benefit rate I'm not 100% certain). Once the scheme ended they offered them a job as they needed the employee. Rather than simply hiring the person straight off, my employer gets the tax payer to pay these peoples wages whilst they enjoy free labour and an extended trial for of the employee. Its nothing short of exploitative.

Employers with even less scruples would take people on this scheme doing menial jobs like pumping petrol or some other menial unskilled work which doesn't require experience nor does the person getting anything from it. Once the scheme ended they just get some other person in to do the same thing. They get free labour, the government gets to pretend they aren't paying dole for these people everyone's a winner. :/

Government forcing people into private industry results in the exploitation of people and nothing else.

 

It seems like you think there is this massive job shortage in unskilled work that can be filled with people who think they are above this kind of work. No one is saying we can't find road sweepers, we can't find checkout operators, we can't find people to flip burgers. There is more of a shortage in knowledge workers. Even then only in some fields. As an engineer I have job opportunities come at me consistently whilst a business accounts friend of mine struggles to get work locally. When I interact with people that do low end jobs, the majority of the time they aren't immigrants. There's definitely a percentage of them that are from eastern europe, but funnily enough there's a percentage in higher end technical jobs from eastern europe as well.

What's to stop people making themselves less employable at an interview or basically be crap at a job they don't want to do? Business owners can hardly be forced to take on people or retain them for a certain amount of time. You can't punish people who get the sack either, sometimes there are well intentioned morons out there that just need to get fired.

Really what would happen is business would go to government and say look I can take a few people off benefits but I can only afford a wage half of what they would get if they had come to me from industry. Government goes, great IDGAF, we get tax, we're paying less benefits and the unemployment rate goes down.

From what I've been told, communist countries basically had zero unemployment. People would go to some made up job, do nothing more or less and come home again. Everyone was a worker for the government. It doesn't sound too far off what you are proposing. Benefits is definitely an idea that is from the left but its more socialist than communist.

 

I work for Tesco - and the last time we recruited for 10 vacancies , we had nearly 1500 applications . all from locals (and some not so local), and all how you would define as typically english

 

These stories seem fairly common where people are inundated with CVS for these kind of jobs.

 

There's a problem with forcing people to work, as strange as it sounds for capitalism to work you need a certain level of unemployed, all be it at low level, if demand outstrips supply then prices naturally rise, in the case of work the demand is the employer and the supply is the employe.

If we had zero unemployment wages would start to rise, prices would go up to counter the need to pay higher wages and we end up in a viscous circle of uncontrollable inflation.

EDIT: Just done a quick Google and it seems it's called non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment.

 

I think that would only apply where there is naturally low unemployment and businesses were in competition with each other for employees. If it were government mandated employment, businesses would bargain with governments on the wages they pay to employees they are forced or encouraged to take on, thus driving down wages universally. At the end of the day you only have to be slightly better than social welfare or best case scenario offer someone just enough for a living wage..