EU stay or go ? | Page 63 | Vital Football

EU stay or go ?

EU migrants mainly came in cos of Blair and Brown lol ??

I think being in the EU Single-Market and with it free movement probably had a tad to do with it, and those pesky E.Europeans having a mind of their own and deciding (by themselves) to up sticks to dear ole Blighty.

youre right on Employment changes coming tho'. there will be progressively less jobs in the future added to the fact that healthcare potential will rise and human-longevity with it.

the ONLY way for such a model to be sustained is by giving the Unemployed and Low-paid as well as the Pensionable a system whereby top-ups to their purchasing-power is handed out by way of Universal-Credits - money for doing nothing (cos the machines will be doing it for us). any other alternative will lead to genocide or an apocolypse.

the EU will lead this revolutionary new socio-economic system, with other Economic-blocks following (as per usual).
 
Plenty O'Tool - 18/12/2017 12:54

EU migrants mainly came in cos of Blair and Brown lol ??

I think being in the EU Single-Market and with it free movement probably had a tad to do with it, and those pesky E.Europeans having a mind of their own and deciding (by themselves) to up sticks to dear ole Blighty.

youre right on Employment changes coming tho'. there will be progressively less jobs in the future added to the fact that healthcare potential will rise and human-longevity with it.

the ONLY way for such a model to be sustained is by giving the Unemployed and Low-paid as well as the Pensionable a system whereby top-ups to their purchasing-power is handed out by way of Universal-Credits - money for doing nothing (cos the machines will be doing it for us). any other alternative will lead to genocide or an apocolypse.

the EU will lead this revolutionary new socio-economic system, with other Economic-blocks following (as per usual).

IF they'd brought in the transitional controls that we were entitled to bring in - we would have had 5 years of controlling migration. That is a very simple easy to understand fact; Blair and Brown didn't and choose to ignore them as they both woefully underestimated (by around 5 million) the inwards migration from Europe during that peri0d, another simple basic fact.

I just pissed myself laughing, the EU won't and never will lead socioeconomic change, the thought that they are capable of thinking as a free capitalist market will have to is utterly comical and you can't be taken seriously, just look at their track record of protectionism!! LOL!
 
Spursex - 18/12/2017 19:29

I just pissed myself laughing, the EU won't and never will lead socioeconomic change, the thought that they are capable of thinking as a free capitalist market will have to is utterly comical and you can't be taken seriously, just look at their track record of protectionism!! LOL!

Please explain why protectionism (moderated) is such a bad thing in the face of countries with almost limitless cheap labour and little-to-no employment law (China/India/similar)?

(That wasn't a hostile question, i'm curious about your reasoning, considering your stance on uncontrolled immigration)
 
ahx00 - 19/12/2017 16:20

Spursex - 18/12/2017 19:29

I just pissed myself laughing, the EU won't and never will lead socioeconomic change, the thought that they are capable of thinking as a free capitalist market will have to is utterly comical and you can't be taken seriously, just look at their track record of protectionism!! LOL!

Please explain why protectionism (moderated) is such a bad thing in the face of countries with almost limitless cheap labour and little-to-no employment law (China/India/similar)?

(That wasn't a hostile question, i'm curious about your reasoning, considering your stance on uncontrolled immigration)

Most trade agreements contain some form of moderated protectionism including NAFTA.
 
ahx00 - 19/12/2017 16:20

Spursex - 18/12/2017 19:29

I just pissed myself laughing, the EU won't and never will lead socioeconomic change, the thought that they are capable of thinking as a free capitalist market will have to is utterly comical and you can't be taken seriously, just look at their track record of protectionism!! LOL!

Please explain why protectionism (moderated) is such a bad thing in the face of countries with almost limitless cheap labour and little-to-no employment law (China/India/similar)?

(That wasn't a hostile question, i'm curious about your reasoning, considering your stance on uncontrolled immigration)

Sorry Ahx, missed this. Firstly, uncontrolled migration is only an issue if you have not invested and prepared your key services and essential assets first - the effects can be disastrous, just today a key years long report in the making (which I have to say has just made me laugh too) has concluded that the evidence on it's effect on the standard, quality and availability of housing has been nothing short of disastrous. Homes headed by those from abroad now account for 80% of the growth of the private rented sector, one third of the whole of the uk's private sector, up from below a fifth in 2000, the numbers on council/housing associations although not as easy to confirm suggest even bigger disparities - in short the relationship between mass uncontrolled migration and the housing crisis is crystal clear - yet another consequence of Blair, Brown's and Mandelson's stupidity. It could have been oh so different if we'd prepared and invested properly and built our public services up ready to cope with this incredible demand - but we didn't, in fact we did exactly the opposite, I've mentioned that the Health trust I sat on as an advisor was simply over-whelmed, and it still hasn't recovered; every year we'd be told to plan to cope with X increase in demand, when in reality it was 10x and huge further massive expenditure on our costliest medical services. By industry standards within any industry it would and should have been recognised as a disaster waiting to happen - which of course it was.

So, in short, the simple basic concept of detailing, preparing and investing ahead of a national project (which it was even if the public/voters weren't informed of what Labour had planned and were doing by stealth for much of it) is why I was and still am totally against uncontrolled migration - the net benefit to those who already lived here is hard to find anywhere; all public services are worse and performing below par or worse, infrastructure is close to collapse despite it's best efforts (i.e. a 10 fold increase that was unplanned in train use) - I could go on and on, but the bottom line is that the evidence for cause and effect is self-evident, even if for the left examining it is met with a barrage of cliches and economic nonsense.

I honestly believe, as do many academics and deep thinkers and long term planners/futurologists that I've discussed/shared notes on about this matter that this country may not fully recover infrastructure and service wise for another 40-50 years, just as now we will not pay off our growing debt until 2060 (something that labour used to absolutely scoff at - although now the left wing Public finance institute have also agreed - and if Corbyn gets in, it will grow to almost unmanageable levels and may never be repaid!).

But now that I've put my position on uncontrolled migration into context you only have to examine the historic impact of protectionism to see it's effects; more latterly and in recent decades the EU's rush to impose social controls on business and protections has led the EU into become on of the most UN-competitive regions on the Planet; you don't beat 'cheap' goods or 'cheap' labour' by putting up barriers to business - it's never worked and never will; you compete by producing better goods, better services and generating a more highly educated workforce that has a 'premium' demand, much as we have done in Financial services, Bio-research, pharmaceuticals, software, AI, Robotics and a host of key niche industrial processes and sectors.

Eventually as countries like China/India and anywhere else on the sub-continent catch up, local living standards rise (as they have); and all the short-cuts to competition begin to be eroded (for example they are all now being in costly environmental controls that were scoffed at just a decade ago or so).

Singapore has no employment law worth mentioning, yet it has one of the fastest growing most vibrant economies on the Earth, free people from the shackles of 'protectionism' and they'll be productive and get smarter and better - do what the EU has always done and you get what the EU now has; mass higher unemployment of the young (I'm amazed that in so many of these countries we haven't see mass civil unrest as generations have been written off to poverty and living on the drug of benefits). I don't need to convinced you, only one economy in Europe apart from the UK has no fallen into this EU mandated trap - and that's because the Euro was and still is a mechanism that forces huge inflows of cash into them, and that's Germany.

Protectionism is a false God that preaches safety, but ultimately enslaves people and creates social ruptures that may never be repaired - just look at France, despite it recognising that it has to finally do things differently - it got brave in a vote, but is now ripping itself apart with Union and communist and left wing resistance to all and any reforms that he and his government are trying to bring in.

He maybe pro-EU, but he and his party are now realizing that the underpinning EU social protectionist legal framework is making the reforms necessary impossible.

Sooner or late the mass unemployed in these countries will want someone to blame - who do you think it will be and how will it end for them?

No, protectionism has never worked, and never will.
 
It's worth following the WTO arguments on protectionism, but for 'soundbite' understanding there are some great intelligent bloggers that build a good case;

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2012/08/whats-so-bad-about-protectionism/

and even the Guardian chips in !

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jul/15/whats-the-problem-with-protectionism

Bottom line is this: the moment you think you can protect jobs by raising social costs and barriers, the faster you put yourself into an noncompetitive position and unemployment rises and remains stubbornly high as capital and investment floods away to less restrictive markets and regions - which is what has happened to the EU - and they still refuse to acknowledge to the ultimate social damage it has caused, and still is.
 
As you might guess, I like this article in today telegraph, alot...



'Singapore in the Atlantic' is a splendid model for Brexit

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Singapore Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

20 December 2017 • 12:40pm

518
Swimming in high-style above Singapore's financial district

If you consider it daunting to wrench a divided nation from its economic moorings and launch into the unknown, remember what Singapore had to face when it was born in trauma at the height of the Cold War.

Founding premier Lee Kuan Yew literally broke into tears as he explained to a medley of distraught peoples - Hokkien Chinese, Malay, Tamils, and Eurasians - that all attempts to keep the island-entrepot in the Malaysian federation had collapsed.

His foes had warned during months of bitter wrangling that Singapore would have to accept subordinate terms imposed by Kuala Lumpur or else lose the Malaysian rubber trade and access to its core Peninsular markets. It would be reduced to a "tropical slum"; it was even threatened with loss of its fresh water supplies from the mainland in one infamous warning.

"The idea that a small island city-state of two million people with no hinterland could survive in what was then a difficult and troubled region - the 'Balkans of Asia' - seemed manifestly absurd," said Kishore Mahbubani, the dean of Lee Kuan Yew University.

This is not the place to rehearse the causes of that complex crisis in 1965. Suffice to say that the Malaysian leader - the Tunku - in the end thought it preferable to "amputate the gangrenous limb" in order to preserve ethnic Malay dominance, rather than having to share a federation with the Straits Chinese.

Lee Kuan Yew had to assuage aggrieved Malays, recently embroiled in deadly sectarian riots and prime candidates for irredentist resistance. Many thought him a crypto-Communist, sympathetic to the Maoist Revolution that was so stirring the passions of the Chinese diaspora.

Westerners feared he would draw Singapore into the Sino-Soviet orbit. The British High Commissioner of the day more shrewdly thought him a "crypto-anti-Communist", as he most certainly proved to be. But defeating Communist subversion was no easy task either.
Singapore
Lee Kuan Yew and his wife Choo were both Cambridge graduates. They married secretly in England. He admired the British but was not a colonial nostalgic Credit: Straits Times

"It is nothing short of a man-made miracle that Singapore has enjoyed fifty years of continuous peace and prosperity. Its society might easily have been torn apart by ethnic strife," said Professor Mahbubani. This is the fate that befell the small multiracial states of Guyana, Cyprus, and Sri Lanka when the British Empire withdrew.

As we all know today, Singapore is a Wirtschaftswunder. It is at peace with itself and its neighbours, with perhaps the best-educated teenagers on the planet, and very rich. Its leaders defied the import substitution orthodoxies of the post-colonial 'Bandung Generation', which failed to varying degrees almost everywhere. It pioneered the free trade strategy that catapulted the country from Third World to First World.

When foes of Brexit deride the notion of a "Singapore on the Thames" they typically equate such a strategy with hyper-deregulation, a low-tax race to the bottom; or perhaps some sort of free marketry run amok, with over-reliance on finance. But that is to do this disciplined, cohesive, and essentially Confucian-Socialist nation a disservice on several levels. It is also ill-informed.

"Singapore continues to maintain regulatory and supervisory standards that are among the highest in the world," states the International Monetary Fund in its latest Article IV report. Corporation tax is light at 17pc - where Britain is already heading - but not super-low like Ireland or the Baltics.

Rolls-Royce builds Trent engines for the Airbus A380 and Boeing's Dreamliner at the old RAF fields at Seletar. Keppel has grown from the Royal Navy yard to become the world's biggest producer of drilling rigs for oil and gas. Manufacturing makes up 22pc of GDP, comparable to Germany or Japan. "And we want to keep it that way," said Chng Kai Fong, the Trinity College, Cambridge, alumnus in charge of economic planning.

The ruling party clamped down on mass immigration after an election upset in 2011, a protest of sorts by Singaporeans feeling the crush on scarce resources. The island's new 'labour-lean' model offers a template for what Britain may face as it curbs inflows of unskilled migrants after Brexit.
Singapore
Rolls-Royce builds Trent engines in Singapore. Contrary to myth, the county's manufacturing sector equals Germany and Japan as a share of GDP. Credit: Rolls-Royce

The IMF says the manufacturing sector has shed workers for ten consecutive quarters, and productivity is recovering briskly after a period of stagnation. "Tighter limits on foreign workers have led to a permanent increase in real wages relative to the cost of capital," it said.

This refutes academic claims in the UK - already under fire for lack of rigor - that low-skilled immigration does not compress the real wages of British indigenous workers. The IMF says firms in Singapore are being forced to boost investment in labour-saving equipment, leading to "higher optimum capital intensity levels".

Policy-makers in Singapore have concluded that labour-intensive growth may have been a trap, raising the risk that they would miss a crucial jump at the development frontier. This is revealing: if you make such claim in the British debate, you are accused of Brexit delusion - or worse - by free movement ideologues.

The architect of Singapore's post-independence economy, Goh Keng Swee, studied Japan's Meiji Restoration in the 19th Century. He targeted strategic sectors in an East Asian form of hybrid dirigisme with market signals, whether precision engineering or seizing on Singapore's nodal position in the Malacca Strait to control shipping. Laissez-faire it is not. "The government takes an equity stake to de-risk projects and show it is in the game," said Mr Chng.

The UK cannot copy the model but a country like ours living chronically beyond its means - with a current account deficit near 6pc of GDP, and a household savings rate at post-War lows - should certainly heed the message posted in giant letters at schools: "no one owes Singapore a living".

Behind the soft images of the shopping malls, is a hard machine, a ruthless process of meritocratic selection, all held together by a communitarian eco-system.

The basics of life are cheap. My plate of rice, beef, and Asian spinach today cost £2.40 from the food stall of a 'hawker centre', the gathering spot of Singapore neighbourhoods. Prices are capped by fiat. The produce is imported tariff-free from wherever it is cheapest, often Australia. There are no EU 'Corn Laws' here.

The metro (MRT) is automated, without human drivers, and costs a trivial sum, while cars are ferociously discouraged. Road certificates cost around £25,000 for ten years. New issuance is to be frozen. The aim is to halve car ownership per household from 40pc to 20pc.

The government owns most of the land. It builds the leafy mid-rise blocks that house 80pc of the resident population, mixing small and big flats together and carefully managing racial quotas - 74pc Chinese, 13pc Malay, 9pc Indian, etc - to prevent ghettoes. Cultural balance is handled with enormous care. There is none of the liberal carelessness - bordering on anthropological nihilism - that has led to Europe's unassimilated banlieues.

The state sells property on a lottery basis, with the highest numbers getting first choices for their bracket. Prices average £62,000 for a two-room flat, £104,000 for three rooms, £160,000 for four rooms, and so on. If you buy directly from the government, you cannot sell for five years.
Singapore
Public housing is pleasant, cheap, and home to 80pc of Singapore residents. Young couples buy from the state Credit: redwire

This system has prevented a housing shortage in a city with a population density that is 60pc higher than in London, keeping prices well within the range of young couples. Counter-cyclical tools, such as adjustable loan-to-value caps (currently 80pc) and variable stamp duty, are used aggressively to prevent booms.

Prices have been falling gently since 2013. The aim is to stop them rising, unlike the deranged British practice of trying to push them higher with incentives. "The Chinese are studying our model very long and hard," said Khoo Teng Chye, Singapore’s urban planning guru. Perhaps the Tories should do the same.

Citizens are docked 20pc of their income at source for the Central Providential Fund, matched by an equal contribution from employers. Young couples - singles forbidden, mind you - can draw on their named account as the fund for mortgages.

This system creates a colossal pool of national savings for investment. It is a key reason - indirectly - why Singapore runs a current account surplus of 19pc of GDP, and why it has amassed Norway-sized external assets through its sovereign wealth funds Temasek and GIC even though it has no oil.

The level of compulsion is not for the Anglo-Saxon psyche. There is a dark side to Singapore's hierachies, a tier system of differing rights for citizens, permanent residents, and lesser pass-holders. Maids from the poor-abroad, Myanmar or the Philippines, are deported within days if found to be pregnant in routine health screening.

Yet there are potent lessons in this success story that Jeremy Corbyn might usefully study for his own dirigiste drive, if he can overcome his affinity for ruinous Bolivarian caudillos.

Prof Mahbubani says Singapore achieves the extraordinary feat of tapping into four major "civilisational streams" - Chinese, Indian, Islamic, and Western - without conflict and to multiplying economic effect.

That perhaps is the best guidance as Brexit looms. Let Britain be a world nation, more at home with rising Asia and its peoples, and a little freer from the clammy embrace of that defensive white cartel we call the European Union. 'Singapore in the Atlantic' is not a bad rallying cry at all.
 
Yes we are gonna spend £490 million on changing the colour of our passports ...FFS that money could help the NHS, Homeless...what are these idiots thinking of? :11:
 
We are not spending 490 m to change the colour. It's an 11.5 year contract to produce our passports. Misinformation.Fake news. Political scaremongering. I didn't believe it when I read it, it didn't add up.
 
If 500,000 people buy passports each year due to renewal or residency at 100 quid each that's 50 million quid a year. × 11.5 is 575 million. I am saying IF ......the 490 could add up if my figures are close. I ain't got a clue how many will buy or how much they are or will be in future.

I would not give the Germans the contract though....WHY ?
 
Since a lot has happened since the vote, how about we state how we started off thinking vs what we think now?

I was originally very pro-remain. 100%. I didn't think it would be an absolute disaster, but I thought it was a stupid idea - especially after years of austerity in the name of getting the economy in shape.

Now, i'm still very pro-remain. 95%. I'm less inclined to call leave-voters nasty things, but it's clear that the vote has been hi-jacked by people who deserve to be called nasty things. It's a colossally bad idea handled by colossally inept people, who seem to think the narrow margin of the vote is an unequivocal mandate for leaving on the hardest possible terms.
 
What are those hardest possible terms ? I doubt much will change after all the negotiations are finished.

The EU could be in such a bad way by then we could be pleased to be out.

My motives for leaving were not financial in the short term although that could prove to be a long term benefit .

 
The 'no deal' cut and run. I thought that was fairly obvious, considering the extensive discussion about it.

People are holding up America as a potential new close trading partner. Wonderful, yes, if anyone other than a bully businessman was in charge, who has a proven record of being terrible at it anyway. It's not just the pure trade stuff that bothers me, anyway. If there's 'no deal', everything has to be renegotiated, including all the data export/data protection deals that allow companies to work across multiple countries.
 
ahx00 - 31/12/2017 11:48

The 'no deal' cut and run. I thought that was fairly obvious, considering the extensive discussion about it.

People are holding up America as a potential new close trading partner. Wonderful, yes, if anyone other than a bully businessman was in charge, who has a proven record of being terrible at it anyway. It's not just the pure trade stuff that bothers me, anyway. If there's 'no deal', everything has to be renegotiated, including all the data export/data protection deals that allow companies to work across multiple countries.

Trump is temporary. Well at least no more than 8 years.