Brexit matters

[RT4038]

and only giving air time to Farage and his ilk allowed to stir resentments among society towards “uncontrolled immigration” to build up ( where is that “ man of the people “ btw ?) .

Are you suggesting that there should be censorship on people whose views you (or the Government?) don't like? 'Air time' gets given to people making news, or what people want to hear. If there was no issue (whether you think it was important or not before 2016 may be because you were not particularly affected?), how could people by stirred into resentments? Ergo, must have been an issue, however hidden. Farage and his entourage had been on the ascendancy long before 2016, and the pro EU faction made a pretty insipid job of trying to convince people how good membership of the EU was, and how it was in the UK best interest to remain.

Lets face it , UK has been duped by the very wealthy groups of people trying to avoid EU regulations in relation to tax heavens .

Quite likely. Always need to look behind the scenes to find where the money is threatened. Of course, you could always look to the motivations behind the EU regulations as well..........

 

[JamesT]

If there is ONLY ONE currency, there is no other currency to devalue against!

Indeed. So the issue becomes global. It’s hard to see all countries becoming equally wealthy soon, so you’ll have some that struggle to complete and no longer have the ability to use currency differences to mitigate. It will all depend on choosing the right rate when converting. As we saw with the UK in the ERM, fixing at the wrong rate can be very damaging. More recently, people complain about how China keeps the Yuan artificially pegged against the dollar to make their exports cheap. It’s been allowed to appreciate somewhat, but if you converted to a single currency at today’s rates that would lock in the in balance.
Although a single currency saves some transactional costs, I believe the studies are mixed on whether that’s an overall benefit to the economy.

 

[class ep-09]

Are you suggesting that there should be censorship on people whose views you (or the Government?) don't like? 'Air time' gets given to people making news, or what people want to hear. If there was no issue (whether you think it was important or not before 2016 may be because you were not particularly affected?), how could people by stirred into resentments? Ergo, must have been an issue, however hidden. Farage and his entourage had been on the ascendancy long before 2016, and the pro EU faction made a pretty insipid job of trying to convince people how good membership of the EU was, and how it was in the UK best interest to remain.


Quite likely. Always need to look behind the scenes to find where the money is threatened. Of course, you could always look to the motivations behind the EU regulations as well..........

I am for censorship for liars and people who know nothing about the subject and are given equal or more air time to the people , who know what they are talking about ( aka “experts “).

Show me two EU regulations that are by latge not beneficial to EU citizens .

I ask for two because I know one of the regulations that you’ll tell me will be FoM .

Guess what, FoM ended for UK citizens not EU citizens .

They still enjoy living , working doing business in 27+ countries , while UK citizens “ enjoy “ getting stamps in to their passports as if they were from a third world country .

 

[Annetts key]

Would it take a long time to introduce a single world wide currency? Of course. Setting the relative level of a single world wide currency against existing currencies would most definitely be a difficult and time consuming task.

And yes, having a single world wide currency would result, if not very carefully done, in problems between richer and poorer areas.

Within a lot of countries this problem between richer and poorer areas already exists. And we would not really want to make it any worse.

In practice, even if all the countries agreed in principle, I don’t think it would be possible to fully implement it in my lifetime.

But our current currency systems, economic systems and financial systems at the moment are not looking very good.

When it comes to people working, you often hear that productivity must be improved. But you don’t often hear the people in power talking about currency systems, economic systems and financial systems that need to be changed in order to improve things for everyone.

Back in time in little old England, at one time local town and city banks used to print their own bank notes (Scotland still does have its own bank notes and many English businesses will accept Scottish bank notes).

As the world becomes a ‘smaller place’ due to technology (both computer/electronic and travel/transport), why would we not change to make life easier for the long term?

With brexit, how much was it related to “how we used to do it”, “how it used to be”, “I don’t like change”? Obviously no one actually knows the answer.

But with new technology and new ideas, such as bitcoin and other digital/virtual currencies, the younger generation may one day, just eclipse traditional currencies that are controlled by countries.

The point is, you can’t live in the past. To me, brexit is going backwards.

I consider myself English, British and European all at once with no preference between them.

I don’t think using marriage as an analogy is particularly good. But I do see it more like a group of people having a disagreement over the use of some common land and then putting up tall fences to split it up into small plots, because of the dislike of other views, and/or in order to ‘control our bit’.

 

[RT4038]

I am for censorship for liars and people who know nothing about the subject and are given equal or more air time to the people , who know what they are talking about ( aka “experts “).

And who would be the arbiter of that?

Whatever, Brexit has happened. There is little point in being bitter, because EU membership is unlikely to be coming back soon, and we have to work with this state of affairs, whether we like it or not.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I find this talk of a single currency and the connotations of only having one worldwide system rather worrying.

Think of any industry - food production, computers, anything: Would you be happy for that industry to be entirely serviced by one monopolistic company? Of course, if you're sensible, you wouldn't because you know that competition is crucial not only for keeping companies on their toes, but also for allowing innovation. With competition and multiple companies competing, there's much more scope for one company to introduce some innovation, and if the innovation turns out to work really well, for everyone else to see it's a good idea and follow suit. (And likewise, if the innovation turns out to be terrible, it only impacts one company, not the entire industry).

Does anyone imagine the same principle doesn't apply to countries? By having many independent countries, each able to control its own currency, decide its own laws, decide for itself how to manage its economy, you have competition and innovation between countries: Different countries will adopt different approaches to the economy, and the most successful policies will tend to get noticed and so gradually spread around the World. That's even how the market economy itself spread: As a few countries (notably, the UK back in the 19th century) adopted it and got rich because it turned out that the market economy was better at creating wealth, other countries realised that was the way to go and so followed.

If you go for one single currency - which will necessarily imply one single economic policy across the World and tend to lead to requiring one single transnational organisation to manage the currency, then you lose all that. You'll end up the world economic system in the hands of one single monopolistic authority. And in the long run, no matter how well meaning that monopolistic authority might be, the consequences will be disastrous for *everyone's* prosperity.

 

[ainsworth74]

I think we're rather getting off-topic here. I'm not aware of any serious proposal for one global currency, trading area nor government. And certainly such a topic isn't really Brexit related!! If anyone does wish to discuss further I'd ask them to take it to a separate thread from this one please

 

[najaB]

If you go for one single currency - which will necessarily imply one single economic policy across the World and tend to lead to requiring one single transnational organisation to manage the currency, then you lose all that. You'll end up the world economic system in the hands of one single monopolistic authority. And in the long run, no matter how well meaning that monopolistic authority might be, the consequences will be disastrous for *everyone's* prosperity.

Probably one for a separate thread, but I find it interesting that you state - as a fact - that a globalised economy will be disastrous for everyone's prosperity. What I think is more likely is that it will be disastrous for our prosperity since it's impossible for everyone in the less-developed world to live a developed-world lifestyle due to the finite resources available.

@ainsworth74 - I hadn't refreshed the page in time to see your post, which may have something to do with the time-travelling nature of this particular browser:

 

[AY1975]

Emigration to the UK was massively skewed though, almost all other member states put restrictions on the new entrants and they couldn't freely move to the majority of the EU.

As the UK decided they didn't want to do this, the of course the UK was going to see larger numbers, this was a UK decision.

Sure, I think you're right that it was a UK decision. But does that matter? In 2016 we were in a position where it was evident that decision had bad ongoing consequences (EU immigrants were coming in numbers that lots of people felt were unsustainable for many local communities in the UK) but EU rules made it impossible for the UK to reduce the continuing large scale immigration from the EU, and negotiations to change the rules/allow the UK some exemption from them had proved fruitless.

Therefore we had a problem that was impossible to resolve other than by leaving the EU. Hence, lots of people voted to leave. The details of who had made the decisions 15 or so years earlier that lead to the problem weren't really important: It was that lots of people now wanted to fix the problem and (correctly) perceived leaving the EU as the way to fix it.

Many people don't realise that being in the EU does NOT mean having to accept completely unrestricted immigration from the rest of the EU: the EU does give its member states the power to deport migrants from other EU countries who stay for longer than 3 months without finding a job or being able to support themselves, but neither the Tories under David Cameron nor Labour before them bothered using those powers.

When central and eastern European countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic joined the EU in 2004, the then Labour government chose to adopt an open door policy towards migrants from those countries because they realised that we had a skills shortage in areas such as the construction industry and the care and hospitality sectors. That might have seemed a good idea at the time, but with hindsight it could and should have been managed better just like it was in most other EU countries.

Being able to allow migrants from those countries to settle in the UK certainly helped many sectors of the economy that are now faced with acute labour shortages now that we have cut ourselves off from the European labour market. It would be unrealistic to expect to completely replace all migrant workers with home-grown talent, especially in areas such as agriculture where farm labourers often have to live on the farms where they work for a number of weeks or months.

 

[Annetts key]

Britain’s birth rate is declining

A decline in birth rates is a cause for celebration – it shows how far we have come

A decline in birth rates is a cause for celebration – it shows how far we have come
We shouldn’t be straining every nerve to promote endless population growth

By Martha Gill

July 7, 2022 7:00 am(Updated 8:03 am)

We are entering an age of demographic anxiety. The latest census for England and Wales, published last week, gave more evidence Britain’s birth rate is declining. The population is still growing, but at a slower and slower rate. Between 2001 and 2011 it grew by 7.1 per cent, but then by only 6.3 per cent between 2011 and 2021. The replacement rate (births per woman versus deaths), is around 2.1.

That is a problem in which the implications are obvious. It means we are looking at a future where the working population increasingly struggles to support the retired one. What to do?

In the past few days all sorts of ideas have been suggested. The odd bonkers idea has been thrown out (a Sunday Times piece suggested we should tax the childless) but most who have written on the subject agree that the real solution to this “crisis” is to make it easier for those who want to be parents: cheaper childcare, equal parental leave, a greater supply of houses, more financial help for the young, free IVF.

The only problem is that they are broadly wrong. While these policy ideas are unequivocally good on their own terms, and would certainly increase human happiness, they won’t do much to reverse the birth rate trend. In places where similar ideas have been tried – at various points in France, Hungary, Italy, South Korea – they have produced what amounts in relative terms to a blip on the radar. Since the 90s, spending on family incentives has soared across OECD countries. Yet birth rates are in long decline.

In fact, birth rates are linked firmly to just one thing: women’s rights. Worldwide, the trend is overwhelmingly clear. The more women are educated, the more enter the workforce, and the more economic power they have, the fewer children are born. (The legalisation of abortion in the US in 1973, for example, sent birth rates plummeting. Now watch as they start to go up again.)

Research has in many places established direct causal links between the two. Yes, there are women in the West who might want more children than they end up having, but the reasons are often complicated. For example, surveys suggest one of the top reasons women remain childless (and their number is increasing all the time) is because they didn’t find the right partner. That’s personal choice, not economic constraint.

In fact, the only way to meaningfully bump up the birth rate would be to roll back women’s rights wholesale. Outlaw abortion, prevent women going to university, push them out of the work force, revoke the vote. Or we could simply accept that the birthrate will remain low, which is broadly a sign of something good. And that we need to address the population problem in another way.

The solution then becomes rather obvious. There are more skilled immigrants that want to enter this country than we are currently allowing in. Balancing our working age population is therefore a matter of adjusting immigrant intake. In terms of strain on state support – the basis for this demographic anxiety in the first place – this is even more efficient than growing our own population, as children, of course, need state support too. (Those who worry we will “run out” of working age immigrants anytime soon should comfort themselves that this won’t happen until the patriarchy is smashed worldwide).

There are other ways to mitigate the population problem. We often forget people are living longer because they are getting fitter and healthier – youth is stretched out, not just the bit of dependency at the very end. Many older people wish to continue to contribute to the economy – through full or part time work, or volunteering. Employers should be encouraged to address their prejudices against hiring older people. We should quell our anxiety about more jobs becoming automated, too. That will only get more useful in years to come.

And we shouldn’t be straining every nerve to promote endless population growth in the first place, especially when it flies in the face of women’s rights and personal choice. Keeping it steady is enough to stave off a crisis. Those who fret about birth rates while worrying about the housing crisis, damage to the environment, and the overwhelm of public services should join the dots.

 

[E27007]

Why exactly is it foolish? It seemed to work completely fine for many decades - until the tories started beating the drum of xenophobia to distract from their toxic legacy of deindustrialisation under Thatcher.

It was foolish that uncontrolled mass immigration in such a short time-frame was permitted, 1) no provision in advance, for the needs of the immigrants, provision of homes, schools, hospitals etc. 2) not selecting immigraant workers according to the needs of our jobmarket immigrants to stack shelves in supermarkets, l/k;@~

Many people don't realise that being in the EU does NOT mean having to accept completely unrestricted immigration from the rest of the EU: the EU does give its member states the power to deport migrants from other EU countries who stay for longer than 3 months without finding a job or being able to support themselves, but neither the Tories under David Cameron nor Labour before them bothered using those powers.

That is true, Holland has a reputation for apllying that rule to deal with the workshy. Stef, my workmate, half-Dutch half-German told me Uk is considedred a soft option and targeted by immigrants, lack of ID cards mean it is easy to "vanish" into cash in hand employment, and still gave access access to welfare system , Stef contrasted UK with Germany, leaving Holland to work in Germany, he had to work for over two years before qualifying for access to German welfare system, in Germany you cannot hide from officialdom, it is compulsory to register yourself with the authorities of your current address of abode and carry ID, fall foul and you are in trouble, and you will be caught!

 

[najaB]

That is true, Holland has a reputation for apllying that rule to deal with the workshy. Stef, my workmate, half-Dutch half-German told me Uk is considedred a soft option and targeted by immigrants, lack of ID cards mean it is easy to "vanish" into cash in hand employment, and still gave access access to welfare system , Stef contrasted UK with Germany, leaving Holland to work in Germany, he had to work for over two years before qualifying for access to German welfare system, in Germany you cannot hide from officialdom, it is compulsory to register yourself with the authorities of your current address of abode and carry ID, fall foul and you are in trouble, and you will be caught!

All of which is down to the UK choosing not to do the things that we were perfectly entitled to do.

Which is the EU's fault, naturally.

 

[RT4038]

All of which is down to the UK choosing not to do the things that we were perfectly entitled to do.

Which is the EU's fault, naturally.

Perfectly entitled, perhaps, but the only way of making it work would be to adopt more mainland European systems controlling the population. Sounds really popular.

 

[class ep-09]

Perfectly entitled, perhaps, but the only way of making it work would be to adopt more mainland European systems controlling the population. Sounds really popular.

Why complaining for the thousands of immigrants vanishing in to thin air then ?

Yeah , I know it is EU fault .

 

[RT4038]

Why complaining for the thousands of immigrants vanishing in to thin air then ?

Yeah , I know it is EU fault .

Who has been complaining about immigrants vanishing into thin air? On the contrary, that was not the problem - they were all too visible, in concentrations, in some parts of the country.

 

[Enthusiast]

I am for censorship for liars and people who know nothing about the subject and are given equal or more air time to the people , who know what they are talking about ( aka “experts “).

Show me two EU regulations that are by latge not beneficial to EU citizens .

...while UK citizens “ enjoy “ getting stamps in to their passports as if they were from a third world country .

Do you mean "third world" or do you really mean "third"?

It would be unrealistic to expect to completely replace all migrant workers with home-grown talent, especially in areas such as agriculture where farm labourers often have to live on the farms where they work for a number of weeks or months.

So how are migrants from across Europe able to live on the farms where they work for a number of weeks or months if necessary, whereas people from other parts of the UK (perhaps a few miles up the road) cannot?

 

[Doppelganger]

Who has been complaining about immigrants vanishing into thin air? On the contrary, that was not the problem - they were all too visible, in concentrations, in some parts of the country.

All too visible?

That just sounds massively racist. What's better for you, out of sight out of mind?

Well, you now have less immigrants to worry about.

 

[AlterEgo]

All too visible?

That just sounds massively racist. What's better for you, out of sight out of mind?

Well, you now have less immigrants to worry about.

There is more immigration now than before Brexit.

 

[deltic]

One of the key drivers behind freedom of movement was a free market aspiration to emulate the US economy. The idea was that people should move from areas performing badly with high levels of unemployment to those where there was a shortage of labour to drive growth in Europe. It worked extremely well leading to large flows of money from west and north to south and eastern Europe. Margaret Thatcher was a key supporter of the idea along with the single market that it was a major part of. Funny how you don't hear Truss and Sunak speaking out in support of this Thatcherite policy..

 

[najaB]

There is more immigration now than before Brexit.

Well that can't be right. Brexit was all about taking control of our borders and controlling immigration and stuff.

 

[birchesgreen]

Well that can't be right. Brexit was all about taking control of our borders and controlling immigration and stuff.

Unfortunately "control" was given to the UK government aka incompetent idiots.

 

[deltic]

Well that can't be right. Brexit was all about taking control of our borders and controlling immigration and stuff.

It was about controlling who comes in. Interesting article from a remainder economist at LSE who said he like many others expected immigration to fall. Instead it has risen but the origin and skills of people entering the country has changed. So fewer less skilled eastern Europeans working in warehousing and food processing factories more skilled IT workers from Asia and Africa. average wages of migrants are now generally higher than the average wage of UK nationals. Attitudes to immigration have also changed to being more positive.

 

[AM9]

It was about controlling who comes in. Interesting article from a remainder economist at LSE who said he like many others expected immigration to fall. Instead it has risen but the origin and skills of people entering the country has changed. So fewer less skilled eastern Europeans working in warehousing and food processing factories more skilled IT workers from Asia and Africa. average wages of migrants are now generally higher than the average wage of UK nationals. Attitudes to immigration have also changed to being more positive.

Will they change again when the realisation is that the indigenous population will get the industry 'fodder' roles in warehousing and foodprocessing now?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Unfortunately "control" was given to the UK government aka incompetent idiots.

What? Incompetent idiots because they grant residency UK visas to those who meet the (already quite onerous) legal requirements for visas?

Immigration from the EU *has* declined as was promised around the time of the referendum from somewhere around 300K net inward migration in 2016 to about 100K today. But that figure has been swamped by large increases in non-EU immigration - which is rather obviously unlikely to be directly impacted by Brexit and so would have happened anyway.

If we had stayed in the EU, then there are two plausible possibilities for what would've happened:

1. EU immigration remaining at pre-Brexit levels (although with a blip during Covid) plus today's actual non-EU immigration levels. That would probably see net annual migration into the UK at something like 600-700K per year, getting on for twice the levels that were causing so much angst to many people pre-2016.
2. EU immigration remaining at pre-Brexit levels, and the Government massively tightens up on non-EU immigration to compensate - which could only mean utterly awful visa restrictions for non-EU people.

I can't see that either scenario would lead to particularly pleasant consequences.

 

[AlterEgo]

Will they change again when the realisation is that the indigenous population will get the industry 'fodder' roles in warehousing and foodprocessing now?

Immigrants are “taking people’s jobs”, are they?

 

[najaB]

So fewer less skilled eastern Europeans working in warehousing and food processing factories more skilled IT workers from Asia and Africa.

Because, of course, there are no skilled IT workers in the EU...

 

[deltic]

Because, of course, there are no skilled IT workers in the EU...

But the system now treats skilled IT workers the same regardless of which country they come from in the world.

 

[AM9]

But the system now treats skilled IT workers the same regardless of which country they come from in the world.

Are skilled IT workers from Russia, Iran or China treated the same as those from any other country?

 

[najaB]

But the system now treats skilled IT workers the same regardless of which country they come from in the world.

But it doesn't.

As an example, nationals of some countries have to provide proof of the ability to speak English (by way of an English test) while others do not.

 

[deltic]

But it doesn't.

As an example, nationals of some countries have to provide proof of the ability to speak English (by way of an English test) while others do not.

As far as I'm aware all workers applying for a visa under the skilled workers scheme need to demonstrate they can speak, read, write and understand English.