Jump to content
  • Sign up for free and receive a month's subscription

    You are viewing this page as a guest. That means you are either a member who has not logged in, or you have not yet registered with us. Signing up for an account only takes a minute and it means you will no longer see this annoying box! It will also allow you to get involved with our friendly(ish!) community and take part in the discussions on our forums. And because we're feeling generous, if you sign up for a free account we will give you a month's free trial access to our subscriber only content with no obligation to commit. Register an account and then send a private message to @dave u and he'll hook you up with a subscription.

Should the UK remain a member of the EU


Anny Road
 Share

  

317 members have voted

  1. 1. Should the UK remain a member of the EU

    • Yes
      259
    • No
      58


Recommended Posts

9 minutes ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

18% of the population are over 65. Their parents - about 2.5% of the population - experienced the war; they didn't. 

 

There's a powerful "Two World Wars and one World Cup" element to the country's collective psyche, but precious little recognition of how terrible war is, why it must be avoided and how important the EU has been in preserving peace.

I agree there's not much recognition of how terrible war is. My mum is of the generation that grew up immediately after the war, but the war was impactful enough on her early life and the messages passed from my nan & grandad she knows it's not something to ignore. But she still voted to leave. She doesn't believe the EU is key in keeping peace and in actual fact believes it's allowed the Germans to back door rule of europe they way they failed with war. It's not a view I subscribe to, but I don't think it's unique and I don't think it's remotely about "two world wars a d one world cup". Part of the reason we are in this mess is ignoring this point of view and generation. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

53 minutes ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

18% of the population are over 65. Their parents - about 2.5% of the population - experienced the war; they didn't. 

 

There's a powerful "Two World Wars and one World Cup" element to the country's collective psyche, but precious little recognition of how terrible war is, why it must be avoided and how important the EU has been in preserving peace.

 

Your last sentence is just conjecture like saying having trident has stopped getting nuked. How many times has norway been invaded?

 

After world war 2 Europe was sick of war. I'd suggest EU expansion onto Russia's borders has made the peace more volatile. Still you carry on with the fairytale.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

27 minutes ago, Gnasher said:

 

Your last sentence is just conjecture like saying having trident has stopped getting nuked. How many times has norway been invaded?

 

After world war 2 Europe was sick of war. I'd suggest EU expansion onto Russia's borders has made the peace more volatile. Still you carry on with the fairytale.

Germany invaded Norway didn’t they?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 hours ago, skend04 said:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/feb/02/labour-slumps-in-polls-as-tories-open-biggest-lead-since-general-election

 

7 point lead.

 

For the Tories.

 

Maybe Labour should try something different than just doing nothing and hoping the proles will get fed up of the Tories.

 


What's a 7 point lead these days anyway? A couple of bad performances and... poof.

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Gnasher said:

 

Your last sentence is just conjecture like saying having trident has stopped getting nuked. How many times has norway been invaded?

 

After world war 2 Europe was sick of war. I'd suggest EU expansion onto Russia's borders has made the peace more volatile. Still you carry on with the fairytale.

This again?

 

Europe was indeed "sick of war" so a generation of political leaders established an organisation specifically designed to prevent wars between Member States.  Since then, plenty of other European countries have gone to war, but no two Member States have fired so much as a single shot at each other. 

 

You'd basically have to be as dense as a Boxing Day turd to convince yourself that that's just coincidence. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

While you're here, Gnash, any chance of letting us know what you're going to say to the couple of million workers whose lives you voted to throw into disarray?

 

I asked you about this a week or two ago, but you've been oddly coy.

Been busy stockpiling 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

While you're here, Gnash, any chance of letting us know what you're going to say to the couple of million workers whose lives you voted to throw into disarray?

 

I asked you about this a week or two ago, but you've been oddly coy.

He didn't vote yet he's here every so often just typing a load of words about how he's given the Tories a black eye. The fucking whopper.

  • Upvote 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

While you're here, Gnash, any chance of letting us know what you're going to say to the couple of million workers whose lives you voted to throw into disarray?

Probably the same response as the leading Brexiteer's have given to the news from Nissan today, silence. Only 1.7 million jobs dependent upon foreign owned companies with significant trade with the EU apparently.

 

Nice to see Liam Fox rowing back on his previous brexit statements, apparently a no deal brexit will be 'survivable' and falling back on WTO rules isn't such a good idea after all.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, clangers said:

Probably the same response as the leading Brexiteer's have given to the news from Nissan today, silence. Only 1.7 million jobs dependent upon foreign owned companies with significant trade with the EU apparently.

 

Nice to see Liam Fox rowing back on his previous brexit statements, apparently a no deal brexit will be 'survivable' and falling back on WTO rules isn't such a good idea after all.

Fox is one thick cunt. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The anti-EU feeling is all Blair's fault for not putting limits on mass migration like everyone else did except Sweden and Ireland.

 

Before that the EU didn't touch people's lives in any tangible way they were able to articulate.

 

Th EU expanded East, partly to hoover up cheap labour and embrace globalisation still further, partly probably at the behest of the yanks to prise them from Russia's sphere of influence.

 

Overnight ten countries of comparable power, wealth and economic status became a two or three tier alliance of 28 where mass migration became a real thing.

 

People didn't like it but were told by their betters they were thick and racist and they should suck it up. It was compounded further by growing resentment over austerity. Cameron opened the government's legs and exposed its balls, and the people who felt that resentment got the chance to kick it in the bollocks. And they took a running kick at that.

 

Lots of people and factors are complicit, but it looks like we're back to calling people racist and thick instead. Could work.

  • Upvote 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Putting limits on migration - in the sense of the fatuous and unachievable target numbers that governments like to pull out of their arses - wouldn't have addressed the problem. 

 

The problem with the EU migration that New Labour oversaw was that they viewed it as an opportunity to bring in exploitable cheap labour to undercut unionised local workers for the benefit of their rich mates. If they'd acted as a Labour Government should - protecting workers' rights, irrespective of where they come from, and making sure everyone gets a fair share of the boost to GDP that EU migrants bring - then the whole conversation about immigration could have been completely different.  It might have made enough of a difference to swing the 51.9/48.1 result the other way and we might not now be faced with this act of national self-harm.

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

Putting limits on migration - in the sense of the fatuous and unachievable target numbers that governments like to pull out of their arses - wouldn't have addressed the problem. 

 

The problem with the EU migration that New Labour oversaw was that they viewed it as an opportunity to bring in exploitable cheap labour to undercut unionised local workers for the benefit of their rich mates. If they'd acted as a Labour Government should - protecting workers' rights, irrespective of where they come from, and making sure everyone gets a fair share of the boost to GDP that EU migrants bring - then the whole conversation about immigration could have been completely different.  It might have made enough of a difference to swing the 51.9/48.1 result the other way and we might not now be faced with this act of national self-harm.

I think it's human nature to feel overawed by rapid change. I've used this example before, but if something happened to Liverpool and five or ten thousand of us got dumped on some poor estates in Newcastle or derby, I'd give it a matter of weeks before there was some kind of conflict or reaction from the locals. It's not about colour or race, it's about rapid change.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

Putting limits on migration - in the sense of the fatuous and unachievable target numbers that governments like to pull out of their arses - wouldn't have addressed the problem. 

 

The problem with the EU migration that New Labour oversaw was that they viewed it as an opportunity to bring in exploitable cheap labour to undercut unionised local workers for the benefit of their rich mates. If they'd acted as a Labour Government should - protecting workers' rights, irrespective of where they come from, and making sure everyone gets a fair share of the boost to GDP that EU migrants bring - then the whole conversation about immigration could have been completely different.  It might have made enough of a difference to swing the 51.9/48.1 result the other way and we might not now be faced with this act of national self-harm.

I don't think that's entirely true is it?

 

Unionisation is going the way of industrialisation, especially in advanced economies.  The increased mechanisation of manufacturing means there is not the apprentice to retirement employment path for 20,000 people in a car plant in Coventry any more.

 

Migration (and EU migration) has got the blame for a lot of that social change, but really it's robots that are to blame.  Plus those people intense industries have moved factories to Asia and elsewhere.

 

The only really sizeable employers, in the UK, are in the public sector these days.  There has definitely been a deliberate process of de-unionising the NHS though, from not training enough nurses and utilising immigrants, but not sure Labour had been taking the lead on that, or that it was Eastern European migrants in the vanguard.

 

Blair was laissez-faire and I he definitely cared more about the global politics than the UK population, but I don't think Labour were particularly focused on undercutting workers. 

Still, those are the reasons why Labour under Corbyn, or anyone else, have found it hard to discuss EU membership, and the various issues people have had with the effect of predominantly eastern european migrant workers.  

 

Also, there are a fair number of thick and racist reasons for the Brexit vote too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

I think it's human nature to feel overawed by rapid change. I've used this example before, but if something happened to Liverpool and five or ten thousand of us got dumped on some poor estates in Newcastle or derby, I'd give it a matter of weeks before there was some kind of conflict or reaction from the locals. It's not about colour or race, it's about rapid change.

Agreed. But people had 10 or 12 years before the Referendum to get used to the idea of jars of shredded cabbage and cans of Tyskie appearing on the supermarket shelves. What they couldn't get used to was being told (truthfully) that immigrants were a benefit to the economy, at the same time that their wages were falling and their services were being cut. Neither the leading  politicians  (of all three parties) nor the media were prepared to tell the truth about why people were suffering, so those who were happy to scapegoat immigrants had free rein.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Honestly, if people still refuse to accept the economic benefits of EU freedom of movement, then I'm not sure what you can put this wilful blindness down to other than some little Englander attitudes.

 

By almost any metric our economy has grown - both in times of prosperity and even austerity - due to this highly mobile low paid workforce. In public services, the field of carers for an ageing population (a population it's worth noting that would be far older without immigrants), the farm hands and fruit pickers etc, they've proved vital.

 

The thing I find strange is that tabloid hate, through the latter half of the twentieth century, had traditionally been aimed at non-EU immigrants. Tales of Shariah law on local councils, streets full of brown people, "You can't even say Merry Christmas anymore". Yet, here on our doorsteps are their wet dream: a cheap workforce who'll fill the need that every such economy like ours has, and they're largely pasty faced white fuckers like me, who tend to be Christian and in the vast majority of traditions and values will easily be assimilated into the absurdly archaic notions of a dominant British culture. And what do they do? Thumb their noses at them too.

 

Not everyone who wanted Brexit is thick and racist. However, on the topic of immigration, if people can't understand the proven economic benefits, then I'm happy to intimate they might be a bit dim. If it's not to do with economics, or culture, then one can only assume it's because they're simply foreign. 

 

I take the point about rapid change, but I think it comes from a place of fear. Nobody seems to mind it when it's the gentrification of inner cities. Inquisitiveness about difference is just as much an element of human nature. Some lost tribes were fascinated by explorers, others shot arrows at them. Now that we've grown up in a world where we can see the consequences of generations of immigrants to our country, we can rationally choose which we want to be.

 

Edit: sorry for the meandering rant.

  • Upvote 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, Babb'sBurstNad said:

Honestly, if people still refuse to accept the economic benefits of EU freedom of movement, then I'm not sure what you can put this wilful blindness down to other than some little Englander attitudes.

 

By almost any metric our economy has grown - both in times of prosperity and even austerity - due to this highly mobile low paid workforce. In public services, the field of carers for an ageing population (a population it's worth noting that would be far older without immigrants), the farm hands and fruit pickers etc, they've proved vital.

 

The thing I find strange is that tabloid hate, through the latter half of the twentieth century, had traditionally been aimed at non-EU immigrants. Tales of Shariah law on local councils, streets full of brown people, "You can't even say Merry Christmas anymore". Yet, here on our doorsteps are their wet dream: a cheap workforce who'll fill the need that every such economy like ours has, and they're largely pasty faced white fuckers like me, who tend to be Christian and in the vast majority of traditions and values will easily be assimilated into the absurdly archaic notions of a dominant British culture. And what do they do? Thumb their noses at them too.

 

Not everyone who wanted Brexit is thick and racist. However, on the topic of immigration, if people can't understand the proven economic benefits, then I'm happy to intimate they might be a bit dim. If it's not to do with economics, or culture, then one can only assume it's because they're simply foreign. 

 

I take the point about rapid change, but I think it comes from a place of fear. Nobody seems to mind it when it's the gentrification of inner cities. Inquisitiveness about difference is just as much an element of human nature. Some lost tribes were fascinated by explorers, others shot arrows at them. Now that we've grown up in a world where we can see the consequences of generations of immigrants to our country, we can rationally choose which we want to be.

 

Edit: sorry for the meandering rant.

Good post.

 

I think Brexit and Trump happened for similar reasons. Mass migration, cheap labour, globalisation were championed by people who stood to benefit from it and didn't suffer from it, but did nothing for the working class, and on two occasions those who'd been told they were surplus to requirements and largely demonized when they tried to kick up a stink about it were given the chance to jab their fingers in the eyes of said people, and did so.

 

If you voted Trump for this reason and saw the likes of George Clooney and Hillary Clinton on Twitter crying the blues you'd consider that a job well done. Likewise, if you voted Brexit and saw Umuna, David Miliband and Nick Clegg doing the same you'd be equally satisfied. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Jose Jones said:

 

Blair was laissez-faire and I he definitely cared more about the global politics than the UK population, but I don't think Labour were particularly focused on undercutting workers. 

Still, those are the reasons why Labour under Corbyn, or anyone else, have found it hard to discuss EU membership, and the various issues people have had with the effect of predominantly eastern european migrant workers.  

 

I was specifically thinking of the "British jobs for British workers" bullshit under Gordon Brown. 

 

The flash point for that was a building site where a unionised workforce, with locally agreed pay and conditions, was elbowed out by a subcontractor who paid the workers - in this instance, workers from Italy  - at a lower rate. While the leaders of the Labour Party and the GMB shamefully followed the lead of the racist right-wing newspapers in focusing on the nationality of the underpaid workers, what they should have done was legislate to ensure that local agreements are honoured. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Section_31 said:

Good post.

 

I think Brexit and Trump happened for similar reasons. Mass migration, cheap labour, globalisation were championed by people stood to benefit from it and didn't suffer from it, and on two occasions those who'd been told they were surplus to requirements and largely demonized when they tried to kick up a stink about it were given the chance to jab their fingers in the eyes of said people, and did so.

 

If you voted Trump for this reason and saw the likes of George Clooney and Hillary Clinton on Twitter crying the blues you'd consider that a job well done. Likewise, if you voted Brexit and saw Umuna, David Miliband and Nick Clegg doing the same you'd be equally satisfied. 

Yeah, a bit of that, from the "traditional" working class Labour or democrat voters who felt disenfranchised.

Plus a load of old, white, selfish racists.

And rich cunts.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

Good post.

 

I think Brexit and Trump happened for similar reasons. Mass migration, cheap labour, globalisation were championed by people stood to benefit from it and didn't suffer from it, and on two occasions those who'd been told they were surplus to requirements and largely demonized when they tried to kick up a stink about it were given the chance to jab their fingers in the eyes of said people, and did so.

 

If you voted Trump for this reason and saw the likes of George Clooney and Hillary Clinton on Twitter crying the blues you'd consider that a job well done. Likewise, if you voted Brexit and saw Umuna, David Miliband and Nick Clegg doing the same you'd be equally satisfied. 

The irony is that both Brexit and the Trump presidency are massively damaging to working class people  - and the promoters of both are, again, the rich cunts who stand to gain at our expense.

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share


×
×
  • Create New...