E.U: Leave or Stay? Your thoughts.

Someone probably utter the fateful words... the words certain to doom any project...

'How hard can it be?'

 

Plan:

1. Eat cake.
2. Have ca-- hey, where did the cake go?

 

Here. Hold my beer.

 

Well, looks like Switzerland gave in on free movement to stay in the single market. And that is a country in comfortable budget surplus, with a strong manufacturing export base and a bilateral trade deal with China already in its pocket...

 

They ignored the result of the referendum - this wont get very far with the referendum happy swiss

 

Which begs the question why have it in the first place?

 

There is of course already a new referendum in the works:

https://auns.ch/auns-lanciert-kuendigungs-initiative/

Sorry, its in german, but the short version of it is essentially that they want to ask for freedom of movement agreement with the EU to be cancelled completely.

However the consequence if people would vote in favour of it and it would actually be implemented it would inevitably mean cancelling all agreements they have with the EU due to the guillotine clause which kills all agreements if one is cancelled).

 

I think it was proposed by a single party, although I'm not sure how much influence minority parties have when it comes to the Swiss parliament.

This says the following...

So i guess they held it because they got the 50k signatures.

 

In theory however they are also required to evaluate if it could actually be implemented without causing major problems (conflicts with existing laws and so on) before the referendum is allowed to go ahead.

 

I'm little worried how much brexit will affect the possibilities of working and living in the UK for someone like me (and by this I mean non UK national). I visited London in November 2015 and thought it would be nice to live and work in the UK at some time in my life.

I visited Edinburgh this November and although I have not followed the latest news regarding brexit, the thing that really hit me was how much the exchange rate of pound sterling had sunk when comparing to 2015 when I had previously visited and used the currency.

Just some random ramblings from me, I do not want to take too much sides when talking about British politics since I'm not a citizen and have never lived there. But if there would be a vote if Finland should either leave or stay, I would vote for staying in the EU.

 

I think that in the end, no matter how much Theresa May promises to cut immigration, the UK economy will continue to rely on immigrants to bring the qualifications that ever increasing university fees are putting financially out of reach of the locals, and to bring the unskilled hard labour that the locals cannot be asked to do.

Brexit won't change anything. It is a pretend solution to the problems of a disenfranchised poor held up to them by a capitalist elite. While the Daily Outrage readers are persecuting EU immigrants they are not asking for affordable education or employee rights, or what the **** is happening to their NHS. But hey, they aren't dumb and they knew what they were voting for, honest!

 

I've been watching the to and fro in this thread for a while now, and thought I'd chip in with (hopefully) my only post.

So, let's get the ugly out the way first - I supported Brexit Britain leaving the EU. Note I said 'supported' not 'voted' because quite frankly I've lost all faith in our leading 'class', who seem to have their own set of rules compared to us mere plebs and seem to be more concerned with making this strange resource called 'money', which doesn't actually do anything apart from get collected by people who already have enough of it and don't seem to want to share.

Why did I support leaving the EU? It came down to these main reasons- the last one accounts for about 1% of my logic, so don't think it's a massive influence.

1) There was no reliable information from either side. Anyone who says anything differently is (in my most humble opinion) showing a bias towards their own choice. Based on this, I had to choose another method of making the decision.

2) The most comparable recent example I had to work with was the Scottish referendum. Now, in my opinion, I knew the Scottish were never going to leave - as far as I was concerned, they wanted to just stamp their feet and make a noise until they were noticed and we told them they were very special. When Scotland didn't leave, they lost respect in my eyes because they didn't go through with it.

3) Hence, IN MY MOST HUMBLE OPINION, the only choice was to go through with 'Leave' to show the fact that we could do it, that we were willing to cut off our nose to spite our face. To vote 'Stay' would have left us in a position of weakness that would've allowed the European Commission to then walk all over us.

4) The 'Stay' campaigners really had an air of 'if you decide to vote Leave, you're an ignorant mouth breathing racist who doesn't deserve the right to vote'. Well, that's a pleasant attitude. In the paraphrased words of the fictional journalist Jonathan Pie, when has insulting people ever made them come around to your way of thinking? I know people up here in the Midlands who are some of the nicest, hard working and most tolerant folk I have ever met, yet they voted Leave and would happily accept that someone else would vote Stay. Who the hell is anyone to judge them?

Ultimately, I wish the referendum had never come to be so that things could have carried on as normal. Having spent a fair amount of my life in academia, I know leaving the EU is certainly going to hurt all kinds of research. And for the record, Farage is a slimy little ****. Mind you, most politicians are nowadays.

Now to wait for the inevitable clever picking apart of my logic. Still, doesn't matter. All this arguing doesn't get away from the fact that the whole world is probably heading for a recession that'll make 2008 look like a slight trip. Time to stock up on emergency supplies, because this world is heading towards collapse. And when things truly start to fall apart, I'll be there, laughing at it all.

Edit: apologies, I meant 'Commission', not 'Council'

 

How much does a degree cost. The max you would pay here is €3000 per year. Over four years that's a good whack of money but there is financial assistance for low income families as well.

 

Here it's £9250 per year [for new starters in 2017]... EU students pay the same as UK students, International [non-EU] students it varies by course iirc but picking a course at random, BSc Pharmacology would set you back £17,935/yr [for 3 years]. And that doesn't cover living expenses or other costs, that's just tuition fees.

 

Wow. That is fairly expensive. Ah well at least its not American rates.

 

And there are plans to raise it to £12000,-- per year (yes, really). So let's do the maths: a first degree will set you back £36000,-- (excluding living expenses). Nursing bursaries have just been cut, so: nurses, midwives, physics, OTs will all start with a debt around £50000,-- --if they live frugally.

A second degree will cost another £36000,--. Clinical psychologists get some pay during the placement part of their training, but this is also about to be scrapped. So by the time you come out a bona fide clinical psychologist or medical doctor or anything else that requires two degrees, you're £72000,-- in hock. Add living expenses, and you're looking at around £100000,--. Pharmacists are slightly better off --their training takes four years, so they may get away with £68000,-- or so.

NHS salaries keep getting cut ("rebanded" as they call it) and our salaries don't rise in line with inflation or salaries in the private sector (1% per year compared to 2.6% in the private sector). House prices in Britain also keep going up (my home, a modest three-bedroom terrace in a OK neighbourhood in Birmingham but by no means in what is considered a "posh" area, went up £8000,-- in value in just the last month), so the newly fledged clinician is faced with the cost of: 1. Getting a car, 2. Saving a house deposit as fast as possible and 3. Servicing a study debt that is the size of what used to be a starter home mortgage not so long ago.

University degrees are becoming unaffordable luxuries to anyone who does not have a wealthy family to sponsor them, and nobody will study for professions that will not guarantee them a fat salary pronto for their pains. This is bad. On Radio 4 a middle class father of by no means a destitute household, related how his son with seven A-levels (all A grades), had been offered a place at Oxford, and they cannot afford to send him. He had to have a difficult conversation with him about looking for a job instead. Expect to see some serious shortages in key professions coming up.

Recently a matron was complaining that she has eight nursing vacancies for a single ward that she has nor been able to fill this year. Nobody has been applying. More concerning for the hospital, Irish nurses are actively leaving for jobs at home, and they all mention Brexit as the reason. Almost a third of the doctors are EU immigrants. If they go, the hospital is screwed.

 

And project reality makes a visit to the UK fishing industry.

 

masters don't cost the same as undergraduate degree's - also, pretty much ALL universities have a finance assistance programme in place. For example - Brighton uni `compact plus` gives at £1000 a year , more if you earnings are under £16000

 

Ooh, a 10% discount! Big whoop! Come on. The most generous grant is around £5161,-- (Wales) and that barely covers a year's living expenses. Then there are bursaries ranging from £500,-- to £5000,--. That still leaves you with a debt of £26000,-- plus three years living expenses.

 

as for nursing - this years clearing was the first time, since UCAS came into being, that nursing and midwifery courses had not been filled from applications