Can someone explain what benefit we get for abandoning freedom of movement for Brits., much high insurance costs of visiting EU countries, higher food price in the UK among many negatives, UK motor manufacturing reduced etc
Simple we stop allowing in low value immigrants. I am entirely unphased by the number or nationality but its a simple fact that immigrants that are not net contributors to the treasury means that the public service pie has to stretch further without additional money. Explain to me why a minimum wage barista of any nationality is worth having as an immigrant
Wouldn't it be simpler to let the free market decide that?
Absolutely.
No Universal Credit or other wage related welfare for non-citizens and an annual NHS subscription fee. If they still want to come then welcome with open arms, if they only want to come for welfare then no thanks.
Nobody in their right mind would come here for welfare. Living on welfare in 2020 Britain is utter shite.
Only someone very entitled and sheltered from a global perspective could say that.
If you think life is so shite in Britain why not try moving to eg Romania and working a minimum wage job there with whatever welfare they'll supply you with and see how much your life improves by?
The idea that welfare in the UK is bad compared to the rest of Europe is clearly from someone who has never lived outside the UK.
I am sure that the idea that there are places in Eastern Europe poorer than the UK is of huge comfort to the thousands dependent on food banks this Christmas.
No one in the UK, a rich nation, should be dependent on a food bank. It’s Dickensian.
Google:
"Does Europe have food banks? In the EU, almost 19 million people, or six per cent of the Union's population, currently turn to food banks. With about 3.6 million people served, France's food banks are the second in coverage worldwide and the largest in Europe (19 per cent of the EU total)."
You clearly need to get out more
What is going on in the EU is irrelevant. In a wealthy civilised society we should not need food banks. We didn’t need the before, we don’t have to rely on them now. No amount of whaterboutery changes that. If we can afford moonshots, we can afford to feed people.
You referenced Eastern Europe but your straw man turned out to be French - tres jolie! I hadn't realised you were so hostile to our friends in the EU - no doubt you're pleased at the way things are going.
Eh? I didn’t reference Romania. I was responding to another comment much as you are. But note you dodge the core issue.
Hungary is in eastern Europe - as is Romania - you really need to get out more
Again, clearly no problem with the core issue that thousands in the UK cannot afford the bare essentials in life and when hard times come they have to go begging for food.
A situation for which successive Conservative Governments are largely to blame.The incompetence and carelessness of Cameron and Osborne started it.
I simply don’t understand why it doesn’t bother some people that their countrymen and women cannot afford food and have to beg for handouts, especially when it would easily and pretty cheaply ended by changes in policy.
Would you like to know how many people come to food banks because they put all their money for that month on the 3.30 at Doncaster and the horse came last?
I don’t have a figure, but if anecdotal experience is anything to go by it’s a lot. You can’t legislate for that sort of stupidity. It’s up there with LuckyGuy1983’s ardent and totally false belief that the Titanic was really the Olympic.
Your steering a bit too close to Victorian arguments for the undeserving poor. Even people who make mistakes need to eat, we all need to eat. Mistakes are irrelevant to that fact. I don’t see why we have to force people to beg for handouts, which may or not be there. I would favour a system that guarantees a good meal, makes everyone contribute and protects the dignity of people receiving help.
Ummm...yes, that was sort of my point. Because people make mistakes they will always need help. Therefore, your claim that it was a policy matter that could be fixed ‘easily and cheaply’ was wrong.
It is not wrong, you design your policy to be funded and flexible enough to deal with mistakes.
So someone gets their wages/welfare on a Friday, makes a silly mistake (or an outside shock like a breakdown occurs that takes all their money) and they have no cash left by Saturday. How do you easily and cheaply fix that mistake?
Having safety nets is meant to be a good thing. Why are you against safety nets?
A food bank safety net? Great idea. But they aren't a safety net - they are daily life for far too many. The system is designed to fuck over the poor as hard as possible whilst gaslighting the "middle class" to blame the poor for their problems. The marginal rate of tax - which you yourself have rightly railed against - for people trying to get back on their feet is punative and deliberately so.
We have always had the poor and needy. But I have never before seen a government who sets out to design a system purposefully as punishing and demeaning as this.
Bollocks are they daily life. How many do you know who go to food banks daily? They aren't even set up to operate that way.
Yes I totally believe the marginal rate of tax issue and other issues need addressing. But don't pretend that getting rid of food banks is either easy or desirable.
PS the marginal rate of tax issue was real during Browns tenure too. It is something that has always made me angry, I wrote a paper on it at university showing how tax rates could be up to or over 100% back then.
We know the Tories can't sign on to the level playing field - they want to change our standards. And as they aren't going to voluntarily raise our standards they want to lower them. They can't come out and say this because "we're going to allow the import of weevil-infested American food" and "we're going to allow your employer force you to work longer for less pay and worse conditions" doesn't look good on the side of a bus.
So no deal it is. If it hurts people that only helps soften them up for when the new patriotic working time and employment rules come into effect. Work harder you plebs!
The level playing field is an illusion. There is no such thing.
So Germany, for example, has a vastly superior education system. Maybe not for their top 5% but for the bulk of their population. They are more productive. This is exacerbated by their tendency to invest much more than we do. The result is generally superior products at more competitive prices in the world market. Well done them.
Now you add the LPF illusion. What you are saying is that those advantages should be consolidated, that their competitive advantages should not be vulnerable to us having a more flexible labour market (lower employment standards), a willingness to tolerate some pollution to get jobs (lower environmental standards) and a willingness as a society to invest in an industry to remain competitive (government aid).
Which, if you are Germany , makes a lot of sense. You protect your competitive advantage, your trade surplus and you stop people competing with you in other ways that are categorised as "unfair".
If you are in a club of countries that are broadly at the same level as the EEC was this may be tolerable. The upsides may outweigh the downsides (such as a permanent and large trade deficit in our case). But when we are no longer in that club what exactly are the upsides? We have to trade off our uncompetitive trade and deficit for what exactly? Access to a market that we are not competitive in. Hmm...
Those UK businesses selling into the Single Market are clearly competitive within it. How do they and their employees benefit from having reduced access to it?
UK plc is not and has not been competitive in the SM since its origin and the price of those sales is more unemployment in this country and increasing foreign ownership of our assets. This is what people don't see. They look at jobs in Nissan and miss the fact that jobs are lost because the vast majority of our cars are BMWs, Audis, Renaults and Fiats, all of which are jobs lost to this country, purchasing power lost to this country and a lower standard of living as a result.
Every country will have deficits in some areas and surpluses in others. I do not deny the laws of competitive advantage. But the net situation really needs to balance and ours doesn't. We need to do something about that. Our government is being asked not to by the LPF provisions. They are being asked to commit to staying in the same position we have been in for the last 20 years.
I know that I have wound some PB Tories up in the past by talking morality, but for me this is a basic issue. It is immoral to treat people the way this government does. Universal Credit - by accident or design - acts to make people who have nothing get deeper into debt whilst belittling and demeaning them. UC makes it so much harder to escape poverty once you are on it. "We now have foodbanks" when the system literally leaves people no other source of food is not something to brag about.
I know that people have all kinds of reasons for why they vote for who they vote for. But can anyone please simply state a moral case in support for the practical realities of Universal Credit. A rational reason why trying to starve the poor and sick and dying is a just policy.
This isn't a left / right issue. No previous Tory government would have done this.
Universal credit is based on the principle that people have a few £100 spare quid to see them though a month until the first payment arrives.
And that simply isn't the case, while its perfectly understandable that wages are paid in arrears, that simple can't be the case when people have nothing.
That highlights why the UK has always been an uncomfortable member, as we as a nation don't tend to vote for parties who propose the european social model, so always at odds with these ideas that the leading lights in the EU hold so dear and want to advance / see as the solution to many problems.
Tony Blair won 3 General Election landslides with that model.
But the idea that Britons vote because of their policy on the EU is risible. Not until Brexit emerged from its chthonian shadows in the last handful of years did it ever raise its head as an issue of importance to the majority of British voters.
It was an issue that vexed ideologues not the British public.
No, he promised better public services, but to follow the Tory economy plans. It was only in the dying months of the Brown government did he really put up income tax rates to more European levels.
He was a massive pro-European.
The idea that Europe featured anywhere in the minds of most British voters is just laughably ridiculous. No one cared. No one. Except the ideologues on the right of the tory party.
The rest of us got on with our lives. We enjoyed sauntering around Europe and, like most Europeans, we enjoyed having the occasional laugh at the EU's moments of silliness.
Up to a point Lord Copper.. the referendum demonstrated that for many the EU was at best tolerated and at worst not worth staying in - sadly for me but that result represented a massive political failure for the remain campaign.
Brown following the "Tory model" from the previous govt lasted iirc 2 years on an election commitment. Out of 13.
To be fair to Mr Brown, I don't think he ever took us to the tax levels of most in the EU. He did far more of the questionable stuff by stealth and hiding it - eg all that PFI borrowing govt income from up to 60 years in the future.
All he did on Income Tax Rate was to add the additional rate, and withdraw the exempt band from the top 1-2%.
To be fair to the Tories since, they haven't cut anything very much either.
That highlights why the UK has always been an uncomfortable member, as we as a nation don't tend to vote for parties who propose the european social model, so always at odds with these ideas that the leading lights in the EU hold so dear and want to advance / see as the solution to many problems.
Tony Blair won 3 General Election landslides with that model.
But the idea that Britons vote because of their policy on the EU is risible. Not until Brexit emerged from its chthonian shadows in the last handful of years did it ever raise its head as an issue of importance to the majority of British voters.
It was an issue that vexed ideologues not the British public.
No, he promised better public services, but to follow the Tory economy plans. It was only in the dying months of the Brown government did he really put up income tax rates to more European levels.
He was a massive pro-European.
The idea that Europe featured anywhere in the minds of most British voters is just laughably ridiculous. No one cared. No one. Except the ideologues on the right of the tory party.
The rest of us got on with our lives. We enjoyed sauntering around Europe and, like most Europeans, we enjoyed having the occasional laugh at the EU's moments of silliness.
Well I think when they said only 15k Poles would arrive and millions did, it became rather a talking point.
Exactly. It only became an issue when it was tagged with other inflammatory messages. Up until Cameron's referendum error, which wasn't for the British public but for Tory MPs, the EU didn't feature in a single Top 5 issue in any opinion poll or exit poll for a General Election. Go and look.
Should we / should we not join the Euro was a huge talking point. As was the Lisbon Treaty. Fundamentally, it was all about should we be much closer to Europe and the European project. Blair knew politically he couldn't get joining the Euro through, and Lisbon was only signed after Brown slipped in via the backdoor under the cover of darkness.
If it was a non-issue in the public's minds, when Cameron offered the referendum just for the Tory MPs / UKIP, he would have won it easily wouldn't he...like AV referendum, people looked at that and went nought wrong with FPTP, no change required, what's all this nonsense about.
Not many voters were thinking about the Lisbon Treaty when they voted in 2016. Many weren't even thinking about the EU that much.
Sampling Home Counties saloon bars isn't going to prove representative.
How the goalposts have moved ! You hardly ever hear the alleged positive case for Brexit , they don’t even bother now.
Brexit continues to be the greatest fraud ever committed by any government on its people . Would Vote Leave have won in 2016 on a Remain v No deal or maybe no deal .
I know that I have wound some PB Tories up in the past by talking morality, but for me this is a basic issue. It is immoral to treat people the way this government does. Universal Credit - by accident or design - acts to make people who have nothing get deeper into debt whilst belittling and demeaning them. UC makes it so much harder to escape poverty once you are on it. "We now have foodbanks" when the system literally leaves people no other source of food is not something to brag about.
I know that people have all kinds of reasons for why they vote for who they vote for. But can anyone please simply state a moral case in support for the practical realities of Universal Credit. A rational reason why trying to starve the poor and sick and dying is a just policy.
This isn't a left / right issue. No previous Tory government would have done this.
Universal credit is based on the principle that people have a few £100 spare quid to see them though a month until the first payment arrives.
And that simply isn't the case, while its perfectly understandable that wages are paid in arrears, that simple can't be the case when people have nothing.
The idea is you have just received your last month's pay. You are not supposed to be able to live on benefits anyway, you are supposed to get a job
Can someone explain what benefit we get for abandoning freedom of movement for Brits., much high insurance costs of visiting EU countries, higher food price in the UK among many negatives, UK motor manufacturing reduced etc
Simple we stop allowing in low value immigrants. I am entirely unphased by the number or nationality but its a simple fact that immigrants that are not net contributors to the treasury means that the public service pie has to stretch further without additional money. Explain to me why a minimum wage barista of any nationality is worth having as an immigrant
Wouldn't it be simpler to let the free market decide that?
Absolutely.
No Universal Credit or other wage related welfare for non-citizens and an annual NHS subscription fee. If they still want to come then welcome with open arms, if they only want to come for welfare then no thanks.
Nobody in their right mind would come here for welfare. Living on welfare in 2020 Britain is utter shite.
Only someone very entitled and sheltered from a global perspective could say that.
If you think life is so shite in Britain why not try moving to eg Romania and working a minimum wage job there with whatever welfare they'll supply you with and see how much your life improves by?
The idea that welfare in the UK is bad compared to the rest of Europe is clearly from someone who has never lived outside the UK.
I am sure that the idea that there are places in Eastern Europe poorer than the UK is of huge comfort to the thousands dependent on food banks this Christmas.
No one in the UK, a rich nation, should be dependent on a food bank. It’s Dickensian.
Google:
"Does Europe have food banks? In the EU, almost 19 million people, or six per cent of the Union's population, currently turn to food banks. With about 3.6 million people served, France's food banks are the second in coverage worldwide and the largest in Europe (19 per cent of the EU total)."
You clearly need to get out more
What is going on in the EU is irrelevant. In a wealthy civilised society we should not need food banks. We didn’t need the before, we don’t have to rely on them now. No amount of whaterboutery changes that. If we can afford moonshots, we can afford to feed people.
You referenced Eastern Europe but your straw man turned out to be French - tres jolie! I hadn't realised you were so hostile to our friends in the EU - no doubt you're pleased at the way things are going.
Eh? I didn’t reference Romania. I was responding to another comment much as you are. But note you dodge the core issue.
Hungary is in eastern Europe - as is Romania - you really need to get out more
Hungary is in central Europe, as they themselves hugely prefer. Harder to argue for Romania (it's clearly been a debate at WP, which puts the latter "at the crossroads of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe"!)
Re Barbara Windsor: I don't know if this is just me but I have always been rather concerned regarding the positive comments about her bearing in mind her relationships with truly nasty gangsters. She can't possibly not been aware of what they were up to.
Yes, it's obviously not good to speak ill of the recently deceased, and I always enjoyed her general presence, but I coudn't help noticing too in her obituary that in she had been involved in earlier life not just with one gangster but two or more than that.
Married to one for 20 years, long relationship with a Kray, relationship with another. You would have to be exceedingly stupid not to be aware of what they were up to. It has bugged me for years that this was just ignored. It shouldn't have impacted her ability to get work, but making her a Dame? What were they thinking?
Mr. Pioneers, the minimum wage and maternity leave are drastically higher in this country than the EU average.
The assumption that the Evil Tories will set fire to the poor and throw the unemployed into furnaces to provide electricity may be exaggerated.
On food banks: these started under Blair, in a boom. They've risen under every PM (I believe, not sure of the most recent stats for the incumbent) since, during recession, recovery, and more recent turbulence.
Personally I have no problem signing up to the LPF. By and large, such environmental, occupational and food regulations coming out of the EU are well thought through, well drafted and key protections of our own standards. There are many reasons that I am pro-EU, but the LPF regulations in the Single Market are one of them.
I know that I have wound some PB Tories up in the past by talking morality, but for me this is a basic issue. It is immoral to treat people the way this government does. Universal Credit - by accident or design - acts to make people who have nothing get deeper into debt whilst belittling and demeaning them. UC makes it so much harder to escape poverty once you are on it. "We now have foodbanks" when the system literally leaves people no other source of food is not something to brag about.
I know that people have all kinds of reasons for why they vote for who they vote for. But can anyone please simply state a moral case in support for the practical realities of Universal Credit. A rational reason why trying to starve the poor and sick and dying is a just policy.
This isn't a left / right issue. No previous Tory government would have done this.
Universal credit is based on the principle that people have a few £100 spare quid to see them though a month until the first payment arrives.
And that simply isn't the case, while its perfectly understandable that wages are paid in arrears, that simple can't be the case when people have nothing.
Universal Credit has many flaws but overall it is better than what came before and is well designed to reflect work to make it easier for people to get into work. The problem before was that someone who left benefits by taking a job was expected to go from getting benefits up front to wages a money in arrears, it was unrealistic. Now people can start a job and they don't even need to leave the UC system when starting work.
Upfront payments exist in UC now and have done for quite a while.
Mr. Pioneers, the minimum wage and maternity leave are drastically higher in this country than the EU average.
The assumption that the Evil Tories will set fire to the poor and throw the unemployed into furnaces to provide electricity may be exaggerated.
On food banks: these started under Blair, in a boom. They've risen under every PM (I believe, not sure of the most recent stats for the incumbent) since, during recession, recovery, and more recent turbulence.
The idea that the rise in last-resort foodbank demand of the last 6-8 years has been comparable to the previous thirty is fantasy, I'm afraid.
The Coronavirus figures in the UK are supremely depressing.
Cases are moving back upwards. The fall in hospitalisations has flattened of. The ONS weekly deaths figure is still growing.
But sure, let's whinge about how areas are not in low enough tier levels.
Christmas is going to be murder.
I agree that the numbers are depressing. Our tier system, even applied more severely than was indicated, is not working.
But we need to think about why it is not working. People getting seriously fed up of the restrictions is obviously a big factor. A desperation to have some sort of economy is another. Educational establishments are probably one of the largest. Is the answer on this to double down?
We are still hitting this virus with an ever less effective mallet almost at random instead of identifying areas of weakness and actual risk. Maybe we don't have the science. Maybe it's just too hard. But it's going to be a tough few months until the vaccines start to impact on the R rate.
We know the Tories can't sign on to the level playing field - they want to change our standards. And as they aren't going to voluntarily raise our standards they want to lower them. They can't come out and say this because "we're going to allow the import of weevil-infested American food" and "we're going to allow your employer force you to work longer for less pay and worse conditions" doesn't look good on the side of a bus.
So no deal it is. If it hurts people that only helps soften them up for when the new patriotic working time and employment rules come into effect. Work harder you plebs!
This is quite to misunderstand what the argument is about. No one is disputing a level playing field for existing regs. It’s the automatic ratchet on future rules and one way punishment mechanism without pre ante arbitration that’s the problem.
There’s also plenty of area where UK standards far exist the EU regs or average, on animal welfare, carbon and minimum wage to name a few. It would be great if just occasionally people would look beyond their tribalism and consider the pros and cons of their own argument.
The Coronavirus figures in the UK are supremely depressing.
Cases are moving back upwards. The fall in hospitalisations has flattened of. The ONS weekly deaths figure is still growing.
But sure, let's whinge about how areas are not in low enough tier levels.
Christmas is going to be murder.
Yep. Also, you were right about East Lothian, whose denizens seem intent on proving that level 2 isn't sufficient to keep the virus in control. They went to level 2 two weeks ago, and cases are shooting up.
The current official figure up to Dec 5 by specimen date has a rate of 76.6/week/100,000, up from 42.0 five days earlier. That's concerning enough, yet if you add up the cases for the 7 days up to Dec 8, which aren't even complete yet, you already get to a rate of 112.1, up by a factor of 2.45 (!) from a week earlier.
Therefore I suspect Edinburgh can forget about being moved down, and Sturgeon had got a dilemma on her hands with East Lothian: move it back up to level 3 again straight away, or watch it for a week or two in the hope that the bad news will itself moderate behaviour and stabilize numbers.
(Edit: corrected week-to-week increase from 2.67x to 2.45x.)
Even "an Australia style deal" has backfired. Pick a friendly anglosphere country that people like. Australia! Lets have an Australia deal, people like Neighbours don't they? To cement it lets hire their former PM as a Trade Advisor.
"You don't want a deal like the one Australia has got. Its shit" isn't the message they were hoping for. No doubt they will continue to wheel intellectual giants like Robert Jenrick into TV studios to state that we'll get a fine Australia style deal. The presenter will then put Turnbill's comments to him, which will be batted away as "just an opinion" as if the former PM of Australia knows less about Australia's deal than Jenrick does.
Even more remarkably people will take Jenrick at face value! Any of the usual suspects on here who have parrotted the merits of an Australia style deal want to tell us why the former Australian PM hired by Britain for his knowledge about trade deals done't know what he's talking about?
A useful clear description of the problem. Thank you. Two questions: I have often heard it said that in fact our farming standards are higher than those required in the EU as a whole. Is this true?
Secondly, with regard to "cheaper/nastier" products; some examples would be helpful. What sort of products, and cheaper and nastier in what sort of way is the EU fearing we will poison/kill/maim them with? The domestic pressures not to allow products that are useless, and labour force pressures not to allow slave labour should be enough?
Can someone explain what benefit we get for abandoning freedom of movement for Brits., much high insurance costs of visiting EU countries, higher food price in the UK among many negatives, UK motor manufacturing reduced etc
Simple we stop allowing in low value immigrants. I am entirely unphased by the number or nationality but its a simple fact that immigrants that are not net contributors to the treasury means that the public service pie has to stretch further without additional money. Explain to me why a minimum wage barista of any nationality is worth having as an immigrant
Wouldn't it be simpler to let the free market decide that?
Absolutely.
No Universal Credit or other wage related welfare for non-citizens and an annual NHS subscription fee. If they still want to come then welcome with open arms, if they only want to come for welfare then no thanks.
Nobody in their right mind would come here for welfare. Living on welfare in 2020 Britain is utter shite.
Only someone very entitled and sheltered from a global perspective could say that.
If you think life is so shite in Britain why not try moving to eg Romania and working a minimum wage job there with whatever welfare they'll supply you with and see how much your life improves by?
The idea that welfare in the UK is bad compared to the rest of Europe is clearly from someone who has never lived outside the UK.
I am sure that the idea that there are places in Eastern Europe poorer than the UK is of huge comfort to the thousands dependent on food banks this Christmas.
No one in the UK, a rich nation, should be dependent on a food bank. It’s Dickensian.
Google:
"Does Europe have food banks? In the EU, almost 19 million people, or six per cent of the Union's population, currently turn to food banks. With about 3.6 million people served, France's food banks are the second in coverage worldwide and the largest in Europe (19 per cent of the EU total)."
You clearly need to get out more
What is going on in the EU is irrelevant. In a wealthy civilised society we should not need food banks. We didn’t need the before, we don’t have to rely on them now. No amount of whaterboutery changes that. If we can afford moonshots, we can afford to feed people.
You referenced Eastern Europe but your straw man turned out to be French - tres jolie! I hadn't realised you were so hostile to our friends in the EU - no doubt you're pleased at the way things are going.
Eh? I didn’t reference Romania. I was responding to another comment much as you are. But note you dodge the core issue.
Hungary is in eastern Europe - as is Romania - you really need to get out more
Again, clearly no problem with the core issue that thousands in the UK cannot afford the bare essentials in life and when hard times come they have to go begging for food.
A situation for which successive Conservative Governments are largely to blame.The incompetence and carelessness of Cameron and Osborne started it.
Incorrect. There was a huge demand for the services of foodbanks under Brown and Blair. They just made it nearly impossible to set them up or operate them effectively - for example, government agencies were discouraged from working with them to direct people who needed help there.
I was working with one from 2009 and it was a nightmare trying to sort out the red tape. Then Cameron adopted them as part of his ‘Big Society’ and everything became hugely easier.
And demand increased because significant cuts to welfare provision occurred, alongside a series of changes which made accessing welfare much harder and more time consuming. Or are you denying this has happened?
Yes. They're limited by supply and generosity not demand.
Unless you think that previously food banks had an abundance of food sat idle going in the bin because nobody wanted it?
If food banks are growing it means more people are being generous, not that more people need them. As more people get generous the food banks can reach more people than before. That's literally how charity works.
Charity tends to work by people responding to an increased need. You see that a disaster has occurred, you donate some money. You see that there is a growing need for food, you donate money or food. But, as history shows, charity is no substitute for the state. It was only when the state got involved that endemic mass poverty began to decline to any significant degree here and elsewhere.
Charity is far better than the state.
I can tell you that from umpteen personal experiences
Yes, it is always comforting to blame the poor and vulnerable for being poor and vulnerable.
There’s a certain outlook (well demonstrated on here) that finds it psychologically necessary to believe in a component of moral failure in inconvenient groups of people. The unemployed, benefit recipients, legal immigrants, illegal immigrants, asylum seekers, food bank users, the badly nourished, they all get them going.
Can someone explain what benefit we get for abandoning freedom of movement for Brits., much high insurance costs of visiting EU countries, higher food price in the UK among many negatives, UK motor manufacturing reduced etc
Simple we stop allowing in low value immigrants. I am entirely unphased by the number or nationality but its a simple fact that immigrants that are not net contributors to the treasury means that the public service pie has to stretch further without additional money. Explain to me why a minimum wage barista of any nationality is worth having as an immigrant
Wouldn't it be simpler to let the free market decide that?
Absolutely.
No Universal Credit or other wage related welfare for non-citizens and an annual NHS subscription fee. If they still want to come then welcome with open arms, if they only want to come for welfare then no thanks.
Nobody in their right mind would come here for welfare. Living on welfare in 2020 Britain is utter shite.
Only someone very entitled and sheltered from a global perspective could say that.
If you think life is so shite in Britain why not try moving to eg Romania and working a minimum wage job there with whatever welfare they'll supply you with and see how much your life improves by?
Only someone who does not have to live on welfare would argue with the notion that living on welfare is shite. It keeps you alive, but restricts your life and the choices you can make in any number of ways. The idea that people flock to the UK to take advantage of our welfare system is for the fairies - especially as EU immigration is falling as it rises from elsewhere.
In work welfare in this country is not at all shite from a global perspective. In some parts of the EU you can get a minimum wage of €1.95 per hour - whereas here you can get a minimum wage five times that and then get Universal Credit on top of your waves too.
Just because you wish things were better does not mean things are bad here.
Things are worse here than they used to be. For those who rely on welfare they are bad full stop. I wish fewer people had to rely on welfare. I think we can treat those who do a whole lot better. I don't know if you have ever had to rely on state handouts to look after yourself and your family. I have. It is not a pleasant experience. And the system was a lot less punitive than it is now when I had to.
I was involved with CAB and later Citizens Advice for over 40 years. I'm certain the situation is worse now, and more complex, and the attitude of many of the 'haves' seems to be hardening.
Yes, it is always comforting to blame the poor and vulnerable for being poor and vulnerable.
It's not just about blame though is it?
Do people screw up sometimes? Yes. Should they go hungry because of it? Should their kids go hungry because of it? No.
Do people sometimes get into need for reasons out of their control? Yes. Should they go hungry because of it? Should their kids go hungry because of it? No.
Offering a form of safety net doesn't mean being judgemental about why people get into need ... But it is important to understand why and that there is no easy fix to that.
At one point during Blair and Browns tenure every other advert on TV and Radio seemed to be for either payday or other forms of lenders, or ambulance chasing lawyers. So people were getting bombarded by messages to call Wonga if they were in difficulty but food banks weren't available.
The idea need didn't exist a decade ago is a lie.
It did, but the last-resort demand for foodbanks, the demand with no options or easy choices involved in it, was significantly less.
What evidence do you have for that?
Supply was less so people turned to Wonga etc instead. That is bad. What evidence do you have that need was less?
For me, this is a genuinely exciting choice between two options that both have much to recommend them. With a deal, we put all the recent uncertainty to bed, people on both sides can take a much needed break from thinking about it - the psychological benefits of the smoothest possible transition are not inconsiderable. Without one, undoubtedly the more exciting option, we galvanise the country around the subject of its own future prosperity in a way not seen since the 1930's. We become an independent, prosperous trading nation. I understand that people aren't as excited as me, and that you don't really enjoy reading this, but it's honestly how I feel.
Brexit Kool Aid overdose.
Not at all - I've always felt this way and said as much. We have just suffered (and are suffering) the dislocation of a global plague - and doing ok. Problems find solutions. Anyone trading away long term benefits because of fear of short-term disruption isn't thinking straight.
You don’t become a trading nation by walking away from free trade.
Indeed not! Embrace free trade and abolish tariffs on imports. (Seriously)
Indeed. One of the first Brexit benefits should be that stuff, especially food, gets cheaper. UK needs very few import tarrifs.
Pity that because of the reimposition of red tape and the rather disastrous impact that time spend checking said red tape has on border crossings, stuff is getting more expensive not less.
How do you get more red tape when you abolish tariffs and quotas? You get none =less! This was what @Sandpit was responding to.
Mr. Pioneers, the minimum wage and maternity leave are drastically higher in this country than the EU average.
The assumption that the Evil Tories will set fire to the poor and throw the unemployed into furnaces to provide electricity may be exaggerated.
On food banks: these started under Blair, in a boom. They've risen under every PM (I believe, not sure of the most recent stats for the incumbent) since, during recession, recovery, and more recent turbulence.
Higher than the European average? How about the western European average? Its just that if you are talking about maternity leave I know the pennies that mothers get here compares rather badly with the pounds they get almost anywhere else. Maybe its more than they get in Romania. So what.
Upfront payments exist in UC now and have done for quite a while.
Yes. If you get you MP involved with the appeal you get a loan. Which then gets docked from a UC payment that is already not enough to exist on. Hence why you end up being fed by the food bank.
Mr. Pioneers, we're speaking of the UK and EU. There is no Western European bloc we were a member of and are negotiating with. I think that'd be an interesting idea and could make economic sense, without all the political entanglements. Unfortunately, it's also utterly unrealistic.
Edited extra bit: also, I could be wrong but I think the maternity leave here is more months than pretty much anywhere else.
Evil Tories, thwarting women's career aspirations!
Can someone explain what benefit we get for abandoning freedom of movement for Brits., much high insurance costs of visiting EU countries, higher food price in the UK among many negatives, UK motor manufacturing reduced etc
Simple we stop allowing in low value immigrants. I am entirely unphased by the number or nationality but its a simple fact that immigrants that are not net contributors to the treasury means that the public service pie has to stretch further without additional money. Explain to me why a minimum wage barista of any nationality is worth having as an immigrant
Wouldn't it be simpler to let the free market decide that?
Absolutely.
No Universal Credit or other wage related welfare for non-citizens and an annual NHS subscription fee. If they still want to come then welcome with open arms, if they only want to come for welfare then no thanks.
Nobody in their right mind would come here for welfare. Living on welfare in 2020 Britain is utter shite.
Only someone very entitled and sheltered from a global perspective could say that.
If you think life is so shite in Britain why not try moving to eg Romania and working a minimum wage job there with whatever welfare they'll supply you with and see how much your life improves by?
Only someone who does not have to live on welfare would argue with the notion that living on welfare is shite. It keeps you alive, but restricts your life and the choices you can make in any number of ways. The idea that people flock to the UK to take advantage of our welfare system is for the fairies - especially as EU immigration is falling as it rises from elsewhere.
In work welfare in this country is not at all shite from a global perspective. In some parts of the EU you can get a minimum wage of €1.95 per hour - whereas here you can get a minimum wage five times that and then get Universal Credit on top of your waves too.
Just because you wish things were better does not mean things are bad here.
Things are worse here than they used to be. For those who rely on welfare they are bad full stop. I wish fewer people had to rely on welfare. I think we can treat those who do a whole lot better. I don't know if you have ever had to rely on state handouts to look after yourself and your family. I have. It is not a pleasant experience. And the system was a lot less punitive than it is now when I had to.
I was involved with CAB and later Citizens Advice for over 40 years. I'm certain the situation is worse now, and more complex, and the attitude of many of the 'haves' seems to be hardening.
Yes, it is always comforting to blame the poor and vulnerable for being poor and vulnerable.
It's not just about blame though is it?
Do people screw up sometimes? Yes. Should they go hungry because of it? Should their kids go hungry because of it? No.
Do people sometimes get into need for reasons out of their control? Yes. Should they go hungry because of it? Should their kids go hungry because of it? No.
Offering a form of safety net doesn't mean being judgemental about why people get into need ... But it is important to understand why and that there is no easy fix to that.
At one point during Blair and Browns tenure every other advert on TV and Radio seemed to be for either payday or other forms of lenders, or ambulance chasing lawyers. So people were getting bombarded by messages to call Wonga if they were in difficulty but food banks weren't available.
The idea need didn't exist a decade ago is a lie.
It did, but the last-resort demand for foodbanks, the demand with no options or easy choices involved in it, was significantly less.
What evidence do you have for that?
Supply was less so people turned to Wonga etc instead. That is bad. What evidence do you have that need was less?
The Cameron/coalition government encouraged organisations such as foodbanks culturally from 2010. The explosion in foodbank demand, that everyone in the sector noticed, was in 2014-15, as the effects of the first welfare changes kicked in. A withering away of state support was explicitly what many Tory voters wanted.
I know that I have wound some PB Tories up in the past by talking morality, but for me this is a basic issue. It is immoral to treat people the way this government does. Universal Credit - by accident or design - acts to make people who have nothing get deeper into debt whilst belittling and demeaning them. UC makes it so much harder to escape poverty once you are on it. "We now have foodbanks" when the system literally leaves people no other source of food is not something to brag about.
I know that people have all kinds of reasons for why they vote for who they vote for. But can anyone please simply state a moral case in support for the practical realities of Universal Credit. A rational reason why trying to starve the poor and sick and dying is a just policy.
This isn't a left / right issue. No previous Tory government would have done this.
Universal credit is based on the principle that people have a few £100 spare quid to see them though a month until the first payment arrives.
And that simply isn't the case, while its perfectly understandable that wages are paid in arrears, that simple can't be the case when people have nothing.
The idea is you have just received your last month's pay. You are not supposed to be able to live on benefits anyway, you are supposed to get a job
Yes, precisely. The system is designed to be punitive. The fact that many don't have the financial or social resources to be able to bridge the gap is the problem that foodbanks solve.
If you recall The Boys From the Blackstuff, it wasn't much fun being poor 40 years ago either.
Upfront payments exist in UC now and have done for quite a while.
Yes. If you get you MP involved with the appeal you get a loan. Which then gets docked from a UC payment that is already not enough to exist on. Hence why you end up being fed by the food bank.
No. It is an option up front for everyone no MP necessary and it is an interest free loan spaced out over 12 months - including even if you get back into work you keep the money you were lent and it just comes interest free out of the payments later in the year.
Mr. Pioneers, we're speaking of the UK and EU. There is no Western European bloc we were a member of and are negotiating with. I think that'd be an interesting idea and could make economic sense, without all the political entanglements. Unfortunately, it's also utterly unrealistic.
Edited extra bit: also, I could be wrong but I think the maternity leave here is more months than pretty much anywhere else.
Evil Tories, thwarting women's career aspirations!
You may be forgetting about parental leave. This is leave that can be divided between the mother and father, and is granted in addition to maternity/paternity leave. As far as I'm aware, it's higher in almost every other EU country than it is in the UK.
Upfront payments exist in UC now and have done for quite a while.
Yes. If you get you MP involved with the appeal you get a loan. Which then gets docked from a UC payment that is already not enough to exist on. Hence why you end up being fed by the food bank.
No. It is an option up front for everyone no MP necessary and it is an interest free loan spaced out over 12 months - including even if you get back into work you keep the money you were lent and it just comes interest free out of the payments later in the year.
That's not quite what seems to be happening in many cases though. And, as others have posted, too often there's a punitive, negative attitude towards those claiming,
As is often the case, suspect I'll be focusing more on the midfield battles than the podium, which should be between three chaps (assuming Bottas doesn't have more misfortune).
Can someone explain what benefit we get for abandoning freedom of movement for Brits., much high insurance costs of visiting EU countries, higher food price in the UK among many negatives, UK motor manufacturing reduced etc
Simple we stop allowing in low value immigrants. I am entirely unphased by the number or nationality but its a simple fact that immigrants that are not net contributors to the treasury means that the public service pie has to stretch further without additional money. Explain to me why a minimum wage barista of any nationality is worth having as an immigrant
Wouldn't it be simpler to let the free market decide that?
Absolutely.
No Universal Credit or other wage related welfare for non-citizens and an annual NHS subscription fee. If they still want to come then welcome with open arms, if they only want to come for welfare then no thanks.
Nobody in their right mind would come here for welfare. Living on welfare in 2020 Britain is utter shite.
Only someone very entitled and sheltered from a global perspective could say that.
If you think life is so shite in Britain why not try moving to eg Romania and working a minimum wage job there with whatever welfare they'll supply you with and see how much your life improves by?
Only someone who does not have to live on welfare would argue with the notion that living on welfare is shite. It keeps you alive, but restricts your life and the choices you can make in any number of ways. The idea that people flock to the UK to take advantage of our welfare system is for the fairies - especially as EU immigration is falling as it rises from elsewhere.
In work welfare in this country is not at all shite from a global perspective. In some parts of the EU you can get a minimum wage of €1.95 per hour - whereas here you can get a minimum wage five times that and then get Universal Credit on top of your waves too.
Just because you wish things were better does not mean things are bad here.
Things are worse here than they used to be. For those who rely on welfare they are bad full stop. I wish fewer people had to rely on welfare. I think we can treat those who do a whole lot better. I don't know if you have ever had to rely on state handouts to look after yourself and your family. I have. It is not a pleasant experience. And the system was a lot less punitive than it is now when I had to.
I was involved with CAB and later Citizens Advice for over 40 years. I'm certain the situation is worse now, and more complex, and the attitude of many of the 'haves' seems to be hardening.
Yes, it is always comforting to blame the poor and vulnerable for being poor and vulnerable.
It's not just about blame though is it?
Do people screw up sometimes? Yes. Should they go hungry because of it? Should their kids go hungry because of it? No.
Do people sometimes get into need for reasons out of their control? Yes. Should they go hungry because of it? Should their kids go hungry because of it? No.
Offering a form of safety net doesn't mean being judgemental about why people get into need ... But it is important to understand why and that there is no easy fix to that.
At one point during Blair and Browns tenure every other advert on TV and Radio seemed to be for either payday or other forms of lenders, or ambulance chasing lawyers. So people were getting bombarded by messages to call Wonga if they were in difficulty but food banks weren't available.
The idea need didn't exist a decade ago is a lie.
It did, but the last-resort demand for foodbanks, the demand with no options or easy choices involved in it, was significantly less.
What evidence do you have for that?
Supply was less so people turned to Wonga etc instead. That is bad. What evidence do you have that need was less?
The Cameron/coalition government encouraged organisations such as foodbanks culturally from 2010. The explosion in foodbank demand, that everyone in the sector noticed, was in 2014-15, as the effects of the first welfare changes kicked in. A withering away of state support was explicitly what many Tory voters wanted.
No that is a rewriting of history.
Under Blair and Browns tenure payday loans like Wonga went from almost unheard of to a multi billion pound industry.
Cameron tackled this and quite right too. I would rather people go to a food bank than Wonga at exorbitant interest rates.
The safety net under Blair and Brown wasn't food banks or welfare. It was loan sharks. It was evil.
Personally I have no problem signing up to the LPF. By and large, such environmental, occupational and food regulations coming out of the EU are well thought through, well drafted and key protections of our own standards. There are many reasons that I am pro-EU, but the LPF regulations in the Single Market are one of them.
Personally I have no problem signing up to the LPF. By and large, such environmental, occupational and food regulations coming out of the EU are well thought through, well drafted and key protections of our own standards. There are many reasons that I am pro-EU, but the LPF regulations in the Single Market are one of them.
Define “LPF” - does that include minimum wages?
No, that is one of many ways that countries within the EU are sovereign, alongside health and social welfare policy.
I know that I have wound some PB Tories up in the past by talking morality, but for me this is a basic issue. It is immoral to treat people the way this government does. Universal Credit - by accident or design - acts to make people who have nothing get deeper into debt whilst belittling and demeaning them. UC makes it so much harder to escape poverty once you are on it. "We now have foodbanks" when the system literally leaves people no other source of food is not something to brag about.
I know that people have all kinds of reasons for why they vote for who they vote for. But can anyone please simply state a moral case in support for the practical realities of Universal Credit. A rational reason why trying to starve the poor and sick and dying is a just policy.
This isn't a left / right issue. No previous Tory government would have done this.
Universal credit is based on the principle that people have a few £100 spare quid to see them though a month until the first payment arrives.
And that simply isn't the case, while its perfectly understandable that wages are paid in arrears, that simple can't be the case when people have nothing.
The idea is you have just received your last month's pay. You are not supposed to be able to live on benefits anyway, you are supposed to get a job
Yes, precisely. The system is designed to be punitive. The fact that many don't have the financial or social resources to be able to bridge the gap is the problem that foodbanks solve.
If you recall The Boys From the Blackstuff, it wasn't much fun being poor 40 years ago either.
The last point I certainly agree with. I remember the mass unemployment of the late 70s and early 80s where there were no jobs and people were diverted in their millions onto disability to make the numbers look better. The jobs miracle of the last 10 years is a vast improvement in the situation of most of our poor that tends to be overlooked in these arguments. A lot of this has come from in work benefits and subsidised labour. This is a good thing but has had an impact on the resources available to the welfare state.
The first point I don't agree with but it is necessary to qualify that to some extent. UC was designed to sweep away the absurd and incomprehensible encrustaceans that had built up over the 70 years of the welfare state which randomly gave more to some and less to others (providing you could find the right form). The principles of simplicity and, ha, a LPF, are sound.
So why has it become such a bogeyman? Clearly, the system had far too great delays built into it before payments were made. Loans are a completely unsatisfactory answer to this because they need to be repaid by deductions off already modest payments. Many, most people on benefits live hand to mouth, they don't have the resources to cope with such delays. These delays have been reduced if not eliminated but it is still a problem.
Also there is the bias of complaint. Those whose benefits increased because of the simplicity don't cheer but those who have lost out scream. Some of those screams are justified because some of the complexities of the old system were there for a reason. This is tricky because if this system becomes as encrusted as the old with exceptions the point of it is lost.
I do not see those positions as incompatible. Failure to reach a trade deal between the UK and the EU will be a failure of statecraft for all concerned on both sides of the fence. But it is looking increasingly likely to occur. To infer that this is one side's fault is simplistic.
Mr. Pioneers, the minimum wage and maternity leave are drastically higher in this country than the EU average.
The minimu wage it the UK is drastically larger than the EU average, because the cost of living in the UK is drastically higher than the average in the EU.
Re Barbara Windsor: I don't know if this is just me but I have always been rather concerned regarding the positive comments about her bearing in mind her relationships with truly nasty gangsters. She can't possibly not been aware of what they were up to.
Yes, it's obviously not good to speak ill of the recently deceased, and I always enjoyed her general presence, but I coudn't help noticing too in her obituary that in she had been involved in earlier life not just with one gangster but two or more than that.
Married to one for 20 years, long relationship with a Kray, relationship with another. You would have to be exceedingly stupid not to be aware of what they were up to. It has bugged me for years that this was just ignored. It shouldn't have impacted her ability to get work, but making her a Dame? What were they thinking?
I know that I have wound some PB Tories up in the past by talking morality, but for me this is a basic issue. It is immoral to treat people the way this government does. Universal Credit - by accident or design - acts to make people who have nothing get deeper into debt whilst belittling and demeaning them. UC makes it so much harder to escape poverty once you are on it. "We now have foodbanks" when the system literally leaves people no other source of food is not something to brag about.
I know that people have all kinds of reasons for why they vote for who they vote for. But can anyone please simply state a moral case in support for the practical realities of Universal Credit. A rational reason why trying to starve the poor and sick and dying is a just policy.
This isn't a left / right issue. No previous Tory government would have done this.
Universal credit is based on the principle that people have a few £100 spare quid to see them though a month until the first payment arrives.
And that simply isn't the case, while its perfectly understandable that wages are paid in arrears, that simple can't be the case when people have nothing.
The idea is you have just received your last month's pay. You are not supposed to be able to live on benefits anyway, you are supposed to get a job
Yes, precisely. The system is designed to be punitive. The fact that many don't have the financial or social resources to be able to bridge the gap is the problem that foodbanks solve.
If you recall The Boys From the Blackstuff, it wasn't much fun being poor 40 years ago either.
The last point I certainly agree with. I remember the mass unemployment of the late 70s and early 80s where there were no jobs and people were diverted in their millions onto disability to make the numbers look better. The jobs miracle of the last 10 years is a vast improvement in the situation of most of our poor that tends to be overlooked in these arguments. A lot of this has come from in work benefits and subsidised labour. This is a good thing but has had an impact on the resources available to the welfare state.
The first point I don't agree with but it is necessary to qualify that to some extent. UC was designed to sweep away the absurd and incomprehensible encrustaceans that had built up over the 70 years of the welfare state which randomly gave more to some and less to others (providing you could find the right form). The principles of simplicity and, ha, a LPF, are sound.
So why has it become such a bogeyman? Clearly, the system had far too great delays built into it before payments were made. Loans are a completely unsatisfactory answer to this because they need to be repaid by deductions off already modest payments. Many, most people on benefits live hand to mouth, they don't have the resources to cope with such delays. These delays have been reduced if not eliminated but it is still a problem.
Also there is the bias of complaint. Those whose benefits increased because of the simplicity don't cheer but those who have lost out scream. Some of those screams are justified because some of the complexities of the old system were there for a reason. This is tricky because if this system becomes as encrusted as the old with exceptions the point of it is lost.
It's worth remembering that IDS resigned because Osborne kept on slicing more money away from the system. One of the main reasons the system is so punitive is that it simply isn't enough money.
Can someone explain what benefit we get for abandoning freedom of movement for Brits., much high insurance costs of visiting EU countries, higher food price in the UK among many negatives, UK motor manufacturing reduced etc
Simple we stop allowing in low value immigrants. I am entirely unphased by the number or nationality but its a simple fact that immigrants that are not net contributors to the treasury means that the public service pie has to stretch further without additional money. Explain to me why a minimum wage barista of any nationality is worth having as an immigrant
Wouldn't it be simpler to let the free market decide that?
Absolutely.
No Universal Credit or other wage related welfare for non-citizens and an annual NHS subscription fee. If they still want to come then welcome with open arms, if they only want to come for welfare then no thanks.
Nobody in their right mind would come here for welfare. Living on welfare in 2020 Britain is utter shite.
Only someone very entitled and sheltered from a global perspective could say that.
If you think life is so shite in Britain why not try moving to eg Romania and working a minimum wage job there with whatever welfare they'll supply you with and see how much your life improves by?
Only someone who does not have to live on welfare would argue with the notion that living on welfare is shite. It keeps you alive, but restricts your life and the choices you can make in any number of ways. The idea that people flock to the UK to take advantage of our welfare system is for the fairies - especially as EU immigration is falling as it rises from elsewhere.
In work welfare in this country is not at all shite from a global perspective. In some parts of the EU you can get a minimum wage of €1.95 per hour - whereas here you can get a minimum wage five times that and then get Universal Credit on top of your waves too.
Just because you wish things were better does not mean things are bad here.
Things are worse here than they used to be. For those who rely on welfare they are bad full stop. I wish fewer people had to rely on welfare. I think we can treat those who do a whole lot better. I don't know if you have ever had to rely on state handouts to look after yourself and your family. I have. It is not a pleasant experience. And the system was a lot less punitive than it is now when I had to.
I was involved with CAB and later Citizens Advice for over 40 years. I'm certain the situation is worse now, and more complex, and the attitude of many of the 'haves' seems to be hardening.
Yes, it is always comforting to blame the poor and vulnerable for being poor and vulnerable.
It's not just about blame though is it?
Do people screw up sometimes? Yes. Should they go hungry because of it? Should their kids go hungry because of it? No.
Do people sometimes get into need for reasons out of their control? Yes. Should they go hungry because of it? Should their kids go hungry because of it? No.
Offering a form of safety net doesn't mean being judgemental about why people get into need ... But it is important to understand why and that there is no easy fix to that.
At one point during Blair and Browns tenure every other advert on TV and Radio seemed to be for either payday or other forms of lenders, or ambulance chasing lawyers. So people were getting bombarded by messages to call Wonga if they were in difficulty but food banks weren't available.
The idea need didn't exist a decade ago is a lie.
It did, but the last-resort demand for foodbanks, the demand with no options or easy choices involved in it, was significantly less.
What evidence do you have for that?
Supply was less so people turned to Wonga etc instead. That is bad. What evidence do you have that need was less?
The Cameron/coalition government encouraged organisations such as foodbanks culturally from 2010. The explosion in foodbank demand, that everyone in the sector noticed, was in 2014-15, as the effects of the first welfare changes kicked in. A withering away of state support was explicitly what many Tory voters wanted.
No that is a rewriting of history.
Under Blair and Browns tenure payday loans like Wonga went from almost unheard of to a multi billion pound industry.
Cameron tackled this and quite right too. I would rather people go to a food bank than Wonga at exorbitant interest rates.
The safety net under Blair and Brown wasn't food banks or welfare. It was loan sharks. It was evil.
The reason Wonga adverts disappeared is regulation of interest rates and repayments, not because of foodbanks.
Can someone explain what benefit we get for abandoning freedom of movement for Brits., much high insurance costs of visiting EU countries, higher food price in the UK among many negatives, UK motor manufacturing reduced etc
Simple we stop allowing in low value immigrants. I am entirely unphased by the number or nationality but its a simple fact that immigrants that are not net contributors to the treasury means that the public service pie has to stretch further without additional money. Explain to me why a minimum wage barista of any nationality is worth having as an immigrant
Wouldn't it be simpler to let the free market decide that?
Absolutely.
No Universal Credit or other wage related welfare for non-citizens and an annual NHS subscription fee. If they still want to come then welcome with open arms, if they only want to come for welfare then no thanks.
Nobody in their right mind would come here for welfare. Living on welfare in 2020 Britain is utter shite.
Only someone very entitled and sheltered from a global perspective could say that.
If you think life is so shite in Britain why not try moving to eg Romania and working a minimum wage job there with whatever welfare they'll supply you with and see how much your life improves by?
The idea that welfare in the UK is bad compared to the rest of Europe is clearly from someone who has never lived outside the UK.
I am sure that the idea that there are places in Eastern Europe poorer than the UK is of huge comfort to the thousands dependent on food banks this Christmas.
No one in the UK, a rich nation, should be dependent on a food bank. It’s Dickensian.
Google:
"Does Europe have food banks? In the EU, almost 19 million people, or six per cent of the Union's population, currently turn to food banks. With about 3.6 million people served, France's food banks are the second in coverage worldwide and the largest in Europe (19 per cent of the EU total)."
You clearly need to get out more
What is going on in the EU is irrelevant. In a wealthy civilised society we should not need food banks. We didn’t need the before, we don’t have to rely on them now. No amount of whaterboutery changes that. If we can afford moonshots, we can afford to feed people.
You referenced Eastern Europe but your straw man turned out to be French - tres jolie! I hadn't realised you were so hostile to our friends in the EU - no doubt you're pleased at the way things are going.
Eh? I didn’t reference Romania. I was responding to another comment much as you are. But note you dodge the core issue.
Hungary is in eastern Europe - as is Romania - you really need to get out more
Again, clearly no problem with the core issue that thousands in the UK cannot afford the bare essentials in life and when hard times come they have to go begging for food.
A situation for which successive Conservative Governments are largely to blame.The incompetence and carelessness of Cameron and Osborne started it.
I simply don’t understand why it doesn’t bother some people that their countrymen and women cannot afford food and have to beg for handouts, especially when it would easily and pretty cheaply ended by changes in policy.
Would you like to know how many people come to food banks because they put all their money for that month on the 3.30 at Doncaster and the horse came last?
I don’t have a figure, but if anecdotal experience is anything to go by it’s a lot. You can’t legislate for that sort of stupidity. It’s up there with LuckyGuy1983’s ardent and totally false belief that the Titanic was really the Olympic.
Always save your bus fare home -- old betting maxim.
Can someone explain what benefit we get for abandoning freedom of movement for Brits., much high insurance costs of visiting EU countries, higher food price in the UK among many negatives, UK motor manufacturing reduced etc
Simple we stop allowing in low value immigrants. I am entirely unphased by the number or nationality but its a simple fact that immigrants that are not net contributors to the treasury means that the public service pie has to stretch further without additional money. Explain to me why a minimum wage barista of any nationality is worth having as an immigrant
Wouldn't it be simpler to let the free market decide that?
Absolutely.
No Universal Credit or other wage related welfare for non-citizens and an annual NHS subscription fee. If they still want to come then welcome with open arms, if they only want to come for welfare then no thanks.
Nobody in their right mind would come here for welfare. Living on welfare in 2020 Britain is utter shite.
Only someone very entitled and sheltered from a global perspective could say that.
If you think life is so shite in Britain why not try moving to eg Romania and working a minimum wage job there with whatever welfare they'll supply you with and see how much your life improves by?
Only someone who does not have to live on welfare would argue with the notion that living on welfare is shite. It keeps you alive, but restricts your life and the choices you can make in any number of ways. The idea that people flock to the UK to take advantage of our welfare system is for the fairies - especially as EU immigration is falling as it rises from elsewhere.
In work welfare in this country is not at all shite from a global perspective. In some parts of the EU you can get a minimum wage of €1.95 per hour - whereas here you can get a minimum wage five times that and then get Universal Credit on top of your waves too.
Just because you wish things were better does not mean things are bad here.
Things are worse here than they used to be. For those who rely on welfare they are bad full stop. I wish fewer people had to rely on welfare. I think we can treat those who do a whole lot better. I don't know if you have ever had to rely on state handouts to look after yourself and your family. I have. It is not a pleasant experience. And the system was a lot less punitive than it is now when I had to.
I was involved with CAB and later Citizens Advice for over 40 years. I'm certain the situation is worse now, and more complex, and the attitude of many of the 'haves' seems to be hardening.
Yes, it is always comforting to blame the poor and vulnerable for being poor and vulnerable.
It's not just about blame though is it?
Do people screw up sometimes? Yes. Should they go hungry because of it? Should their kids go hungry because of it? No.
Do people sometimes get into need for reasons out of their control? Yes. Should they go hungry because of it? Should their kids go hungry because of it? No.
Offering a form of safety net doesn't mean being judgemental about why people get into need ... But it is important to understand why and that there is no easy fix to that.
At one point during Blair and Browns tenure every other advert on TV and Radio seemed to be for either payday or other forms of lenders, or ambulance chasing lawyers. So people were getting bombarded by messages to call Wonga if they were in difficulty but food banks weren't available.
The idea need didn't exist a decade ago is a lie.
It did, but the last-resort demand for foodbanks, the demand with no options or easy choices involved in it, was significantly less.
What evidence do you have for that?
Supply was less so people turned to Wonga etc instead. That is bad. What evidence do you have that need was less?
The Cameron/coalition government encouraged organisations such as foodbanks culturally from 2010. The explosion in foodbank demand, that everyone in the sector noticed, was in 2014-15, as the effects of the first welfare changes kicked in. A withering away of state support was explicitly what many Tory voters wanted.
No that is a rewriting of history.
Under Blair and Browns tenure payday loans like Wonga went from almost unheard of to a multi billion pound industry.
Cameron tackled this and quite right too. I would rather people go to a food bank than Wonga at exorbitant interest rates.
The safety net under Blair and Brown wasn't food banks or welfare. It was loan sharks. It was evil.
That's not the case, I'm afraid. The people who know best on this are people who run foodbanks, and what was reported below is what they say.
Can someone explain what benefit we get for abandoning freedom of movement for Brits., much high insurance costs of visiting EU countries, higher food price in the UK among many negatives, UK motor manufacturing reduced etc
Simple we stop allowing in low value immigrants. I am entirely unphased by the number or nationality but its a simple fact that immigrants that are not net contributors to the treasury means that the public service pie has to stretch further without additional money. Explain to me why a minimum wage barista of any nationality is worth having as an immigrant
Wouldn't it be simpler to let the free market decide that?
Absolutely.
No Universal Credit or other wage related welfare for non-citizens and an annual NHS subscription fee. If they still want to come then welcome with open arms, if they only want to come for welfare then no thanks.
Nobody in their right mind would come here for welfare. Living on welfare in 2020 Britain is utter shite.
Only someone very entitled and sheltered from a global perspective could say that.
If you think life is so shite in Britain why not try moving to eg Romania and working a minimum wage job there with whatever welfare they'll supply you with and see how much your life improves by?
Only someone who does not have to live on welfare would argue with the notion that living on welfare is shite. It keeps you alive, but restricts your life and the choices you can make in any number of ways. The idea that people flock to the UK to take advantage of our welfare system is for the fairies - especially as EU immigration is falling as it rises from elsewhere.
In work welfare in this country is not at all shite from a global perspective. In some parts of the EU you can get a minimum wage of €1.95 per hour - whereas here you can get a minimum wage five times that and then get Universal Credit on top of your waves too.
Just because you wish things were better does not mean things are bad here.
Things are worse here than they used to be. For those who rely on welfare they are bad full stop. I wish fewer people had to rely on welfare. I think we can treat those who do a whole lot better. I don't know if you have ever had to rely on state handouts to look after yourself and your family. I have. It is not a pleasant experience. And the system was a lot less punitive than it is now when I had to.
I was involved with CAB and later Citizens Advice for over 40 years. I'm certain the situation is worse now, and more complex, and the attitude of many of the 'haves' seems to be hardening.
Yes, it is always comforting to blame the poor and vulnerable for being poor and vulnerable.
It's not just about blame though is it?
Do people screw up sometimes? Yes. Should they go hungry because of it? Should their kids go hungry because of it? No.
Do people sometimes get into need for reasons out of their control? Yes. Should they go hungry because of it? Should their kids go hungry because of it? No.
Offering a form of safety net doesn't mean being judgemental about why people get into need ... But it is important to understand why and that there is no easy fix to that.
At one point during Blair and Browns tenure every other advert on TV and Radio seemed to be for either payday or other forms of lenders, or ambulance chasing lawyers. So people were getting bombarded by messages to call Wonga if they were in difficulty but food banks weren't available.
The idea need didn't exist a decade ago is a lie.
It did, but the last-resort demand for foodbanks, the demand with no options or easy choices involved in it, was significantly less.
What evidence do you have for that?
Supply was less so people turned to Wonga etc instead. That is bad. What evidence do you have that need was less?
The Cameron/coalition government encouraged organisations such as foodbanks culturally from 2010. The explosion in foodbank demand, that everyone in the sector noticed, was in 2014-15, as the effects of the first welfare changes kicked in. A withering away of state support was explicitly what many Tory voters wanted.
No that is a rewriting of history.
Under Blair and Browns tenure payday loans like Wonga went from almost unheard of to a multi billion pound industry.
Cameron tackled this and quite right too. I would rather people go to a food bank than Wonga at exorbitant interest rates.
The safety net under Blair and Brown wasn't food banks or welfare. It was loan sharks. It was evil.
The reason Wonga adverts disappeared is regulation of interest rates and repayments, not because of foodbanks.
Wonga equally should never have lent against universal credit payments - that would breach all consumer credit laws.
I know that I have wound some PB Tories up in the past by talking morality, but for me this is a basic issue. It is immoral to treat people the way this government does. Universal Credit - by accident or design - acts to make people who have nothing get deeper into debt whilst belittling and demeaning them. UC makes it so much harder to escape poverty once you are on it. "We now have foodbanks" when the system literally leaves people no other source of food is not something to brag about.
I know that people have all kinds of reasons for why they vote for who they vote for. But can anyone please simply state a moral case in support for the practical realities of Universal Credit. A rational reason why trying to starve the poor and sick and dying is a just policy.
This isn't a left / right issue. No previous Tory government would have done this.
Universal credit is based on the principle that people have a few £100 spare quid to see them though a month until the first payment arrives.
And that simply isn't the case, while its perfectly understandable that wages are paid in arrears, that simple can't be the case when people have nothing.
The idea is you have just received your last month's pay. You are not supposed to be able to live on benefits anyway, you are supposed to get a job
Yes, precisely. The system is designed to be punitive. The fact that many don't have the financial or social resources to be able to bridge the gap is the problem that foodbanks solve.
If you recall The Boys From the Blackstuff, it wasn't much fun being poor 40 years ago either.
The last point I certainly agree with. I remember the mass unemployment of the late 70s and early 80s where there were no jobs and people were diverted in their millions onto disability to make the numbers look better. The jobs miracle of the last 10 years is a vast improvement in the situation of most of our poor that tends to be overlooked in these arguments. A lot of this has come from in work benefits and subsidised labour. This is a good thing but has had an impact on the resources available to the welfare state.
The first point I don't agree with but it is necessary to qualify that to some extent. UC was designed to sweep away the absurd and incomprehensible encrustaceans that had built up over the 70 years of the welfare state which randomly gave more to some and less to others (providing you could find the right form). The principles of simplicity and, ha, a LPF, are sound.
So why has it become such a bogeyman? Clearly, the system had far too great delays built into it before payments were made. Loans are a completely unsatisfactory answer to this because they need to be repaid by deductions off already modest payments. Many, most people on benefits live hand to mouth, they don't have the resources to cope with such delays. These delays have been reduced if not eliminated but it is still a problem.
Also there is the bias of complaint. Those whose benefits increased because of the simplicity don't cheer but those who have lost out scream. Some of those screams are justified because some of the complexities of the old system were there for a reason. This is tricky because if this system becomes as encrusted as the old with exceptions the point of it is lost.
It's worth remembering that IDS resigned because Osborne kept on slicing more money away from the system. One of the main reasons the system is so punitive is that it simply isn't enough money.
Yes, it is unfortunate that the new system was brought in in a time of austerity. A little additional grease might have greatly facilitated the changes. But in the 80s we weren't spending tens of billions on in work benefits. CB and HB was about as far as it went. This is and was a massive improvement for the bottom 20% of our population.
I do not see those positions as incompatible. Failure to reach a trade deal between the UK and the EU will be a failure of statecraft for all concerned on both sides of the fence. But it is looking increasingly likely to occur. To infer that this is one side's fault is simplistic.
Of course it isn't. We have by far the most to lose. We've had more than four years to prepare, and the timetable - following on from triggering A50 - was ours to choose. We were promised an easy deal preserving current benefits including frictionless trade. We had the option of buying more time, at any stage. And we're doing the whole thing voluntarily. It would be a massive failure.
Mr. Pioneers, we're speaking of the UK and EU. There is no Western European bloc we were a member of and are negotiating with. I think that'd be an interesting idea and could make economic sense, without all the political entanglements. Unfortunately, it's also utterly unrealistic.
Edited extra bit: also, I could be wrong but I think the maternity leave here is more months than pretty much anywhere else.
Evil Tories, thwarting women's career aspirations!
You may be forgetting about parental leave. This is leave that can be divided between the mother and father, and is granted in addition to maternity/paternity leave. As far as I'm aware, it's higher in almost every other EU country than it is in the UK.
Don't know about other EU countries, but in Germany parents can get 14 months Elterngeld, which is generally 65% of the salary of the parent taking it. There is also the 14 weeks statutory maternity leave around the birth itself.
That highlights why the UK has always been an uncomfortable member, as we as a nation don't tend to vote for parties who propose the european social model, so always at odds with these ideas that the leading lights in the EU hold so dear and want to advance / see as the solution to many problems.
Tony Blair won 3 General Election landslides with that model.
But the idea that Britons vote because of their policy on the EU is risible. Not until Brexit emerged from its chthonian shadows in the last handful of years did it ever raise its head as an issue of importance to the majority of British voters.
It was an issue that vexed ideologues not the British public.
No, he promised better public services, but to follow the Tory economy plans. It was only in the dying months of the Brown government did he really put up income tax rates to more European levels.
He was a massive pro-European.
The idea that Europe featured anywhere in the minds of most British voters is just laughably ridiculous. No one cared. No one. Except the ideologues on the right of the tory party.
The rest of us got on with our lives. We enjoyed sauntering around Europe and, like most Europeans, we enjoyed having the occasional laugh at the EU's moments of silliness.
Well I think when they said only 15k Poles would arrive and millions did, it became rather a talking point.
Exactly. It only became an issue when it was tagged with other inflammatory messages. Up until Cameron's referendum error, which wasn't for the British public but for Tory MPs, the EU didn't feature in a single Top 5 issue in any opinion poll or exit poll for a General Election. Go and look.
Should we / should we not join the Euro was a huge talking point. As was the Lisbon Treaty. Fundamentally, it was all about should we be much closer to Europe and the European project. Blair knew politically he couldn't get joining the Euro through, and Lisbon was only signed after Brown slipped in via the backdoor under the cover of darkness.
If it was a non-issue in the public's minds, when Cameron offered the referendum just for the Tory MPs / UKIP, he would have won it easily wouldn't he...like AV referendum, people looked at that and went nought wrong with FPTP, no change required, what's all this nonsense about.
Not many voters were thinking about the Lisbon Treaty when they voted in 2016. Many weren't even thinking about the EU that much.
Sampling Home Counties saloon bars isn't going to prove representative.
I was, and it was one of the principle arguements that came up on here.
It was certainly widely known - remember The Sun ran a big campaign on it in 2009 with "cast iron Dave" so lots of WC voters were aware and made the connection.
Can someone explain what benefit we get for abandoning freedom of movement for Brits., much high insurance costs of visiting EU countries, higher food price in the UK among many negatives, UK motor manufacturing reduced etc
Simple we stop allowing in low value immigrants. I am entirely unphased by the number or nationality but its a simple fact that immigrants that are not net contributors to the treasury means that the public service pie has to stretch further without additional money. Explain to me why a minimum wage barista of any nationality is worth having as an immigrant
Wouldn't it be simpler to let the free market decide that?
Absolutely.
No Universal Credit or other wage related welfare for non-citizens and an annual NHS subscription fee. If they still want to come then welcome with open arms, if they only want to come for welfare then no thanks.
Nobody in their right mind would come here for welfare. Living on welfare in 2020 Britain is utter shite.
Only someone very entitled and sheltered from a global perspective could say that.
If you think life is so shite in Britain why not try moving to eg Romania and working a minimum wage job there with whatever welfare they'll supply you with and see how much your life improves by?
Only someone who does not have to live on welfare would argue with the notion that living on welfare is shite. It keeps you alive, but restricts your life and the choices you can make in any number of ways. The idea that people flock to the UK to take advantage of our welfare system is for the fairies - especially as EU immigration is falling as it rises from elsewhere.
In work welfare in this country is not at all shite from a global perspective. In some parts of the EU you can get a minimum wage of €1.95 per hour - whereas here you can get a minimum wage five times that and then get Universal Credit on top of your waves too.
Just because you wish things were better does not mean things are bad here.
Things are worse here than they used to be. For those who rely on welfare they are bad full stop. I wish fewer people had to rely on welfare. I think we can treat those who do a whole lot better. I don't know if you have ever had to rely on state handouts to look after yourself and your family. I have. It is not a pleasant experience. And the system was a lot less punitive than it is now when I had to.
I was involved with CAB and later Citizens Advice for over 40 years. I'm certain the situation is worse now, and more complex, and the attitude of many of the 'haves' seems to be hardening.
Yes, it is always comforting to blame the poor and vulnerable for being poor and vulnerable.
It's not just about blame though is it?
Do people screw up sometimes? Yes. Should they go hungry because of it? Should their kids go hungry because of it? No.
Do people sometimes get into need for reasons out of their control? Yes. Should they go hungry because of it? Should their kids go hungry because of it? No.
Offering a form of safety net doesn't mean being judgemental about why people get into need ... But it is important to understand why and that there is no easy fix to that.
At one point during Blair and Browns tenure every other advert on TV and Radio seemed to be for either payday or other forms of lenders, or ambulance chasing lawyers. So people were getting bombarded by messages to call Wonga if they were in difficulty but food banks weren't available.
The idea need didn't exist a decade ago is a lie.
It did, but the last-resort demand for foodbanks, the demand with no options or easy choices involved in it, was significantly less.
What evidence do you have for that?
Supply was less so people turned to Wonga etc instead. That is bad. What evidence do you have that need was less?
The Cameron/coalition government encouraged organisations such as foodbanks culturally from 2010. The explosion in foodbank demand, that everyone in the sector noticed, was in 2014-15, as the effects of the first welfare changes kicked in. A withering away of state support was explicitly what many Tory voters wanted.
No that is a rewriting of history.
Under Blair and Browns tenure payday loans like Wonga went from almost unheard of to a multi billion pound industry.
Cameron tackled this and quite right too. I would rather people go to a food bank than Wonga at exorbitant interest rates.
The safety net under Blair and Brown wasn't food banks or welfare. It was loan sharks. It was evil.
That's not the case, I'm afraid. The people who know best on this are people who run foodbanks, and what was reported below is what they say.
So billions of pounds per annum were being borrowed at thousands of percent APR for no reason whatsoever?
I do not see those positions as incompatible. Failure to reach a trade deal between the UK and the EU will be a failure of statecraft for all concerned on both sides of the fence. But it is looking increasingly likely to occur. To infer that this is one side's fault is simplistic.
Of course it isn't. We have by far the most to lose. We've had more than four years to prepare, and the timetable - following on from triggering A50 - was ours to choose. We were promised an easy deal preserving current benefits including frictionless trade. We had the option of buying more time, at any stage. And we're doing the whole thing voluntarily. It would be a massive failure.
Exactly, so the Leaver Blame game really wont wash. It is also why Johnson is on a very slippery slope. He can try to do his Bulldog act but Tory MPs are going to start panicking if the Spring elections are the kind of massacre that is now well in prospect. So 21 departure for BoZo looks like the favourite.
Can someone explain what benefit we get for abandoning freedom of movement for Brits., much high insurance costs of visiting EU countries, higher food price in the UK among many negatives, UK motor manufacturing reduced etc
Simple we stop allowing in low value immigrants. I am entirely unphased by the number or nationality but its a simple fact that immigrants that are not net contributors to the treasury means that the public service pie has to stretch further without additional money. Explain to me why a minimum wage barista of any nationality is worth having as an immigrant
Wouldn't it be simpler to let the free market decide that?
Absolutely.
No Universal Credit or other wage related welfare for non-citizens and an annual NHS subscription fee. If they still want to come then welcome with open arms, if they only want to come for welfare then no thanks.
Nobody in their right mind would come here for welfare. Living on welfare in 2020 Britain is utter shite.
Only someone very entitled and sheltered from a global perspective could say that.
If you think life is so shite in Britain why not try moving to eg Romania and working a minimum wage job there with whatever welfare they'll supply you with and see how much your life improves by?
Only someone who does not have to live on welfare would argue with the notion that living on welfare is shite. It keeps you alive, but restricts your life and the choices you can make in any number of ways. The idea that people flock to the UK to take advantage of our welfare system is for the fairies - especially as EU immigration is falling as it rises from elsewhere.
In work welfare in this country is not at all shite from a global perspective. In some parts of the EU you can get a minimum wage of €1.95 per hour - whereas here you can get a minimum wage five times that and then get Universal Credit on top of your waves too.
Just because you wish things were better does not mean things are bad here.
Things are worse here than they used to be. For those who rely on welfare they are bad full stop. I wish fewer people had to rely on welfare. I think we can treat those who do a whole lot better. I don't know if you have ever had to rely on state handouts to look after yourself and your family. I have. It is not a pleasant experience. And the system was a lot less punitive than it is now when I had to.
I was involved with CAB and later Citizens Advice for over 40 years. I'm certain the situation is worse now, and more complex, and the attitude of many of the 'haves' seems to be hardening.
Yes, it is always comforting to blame the poor and vulnerable for being poor and vulnerable.
It's not just about blame though is it?
Do people screw up sometimes? Yes. Should they go hungry because of it? Should their kids go hungry because of it? No.
Do people sometimes get into need for reasons out of their control? Yes. Should they go hungry because of it? Should their kids go hungry because of it? No.
Offering a form of safety net doesn't mean being judgemental about why people get into need ... But it is important to understand why and that there is no easy fix to that.
At one point during Blair and Browns tenure every other advert on TV and Radio seemed to be for either payday or other forms of lenders, or ambulance chasing lawyers. So people were getting bombarded by messages to call Wonga if they were in difficulty but food banks weren't available.
The idea need didn't exist a decade ago is a lie.
It did, but the last-resort demand for foodbanks, the demand with no options or easy choices involved in it, was significantly less.
What evidence do you have for that?
Supply was less so people turned to Wonga etc instead. That is bad. What evidence do you have that need was less?
The Cameron/coalition government encouraged organisations such as foodbanks culturally from 2010. The explosion in foodbank demand, that everyone in the sector noticed, was in 2014-15, as the effects of the first welfare changes kicked in. A withering away of state support was explicitly what many Tory voters wanted.
No that is a rewriting of history.
Under Blair and Browns tenure payday loans like Wonga went from almost unheard of to a multi billion pound industry.
Cameron tackled this and quite right too. I would rather people go to a food bank than Wonga at exorbitant interest rates.
The safety net under Blair and Brown wasn't food banks or welfare. It was loan sharks. It was evil.
That's not the case, I'm afraid. The people who know best on this are people who run foodbanks, and what was reported below is what they say.
So billions of pounds per annum were being borrowed at thousands of percent APR for no reason whatsoever?
Don't be ridiculous.
There's no qualitative comparison. Payday loan sharks extract from the emotionally and financially vulnerable, but they never exclude those considered materially able to support themselves, as foodbanks routinely do.
I do not see those positions as incompatible. Failure to reach a trade deal between the UK and the EU will be a failure of statecraft for all concerned on both sides of the fence. But it is looking increasingly likely to occur. To infer that this is one side's fault is simplistic.
Of course it isn't. We have by far the most to lose. We've had more than four years to prepare, and the timetable - following on from triggering A50 - was ours to choose. We were promised an easy deal preserving current benefits including frictionless trade. We had the option of buying more time, at any stage. And we're doing the whole thing voluntarily. It would be a massive failure.
I disagree with most of that.
We do not have the most to lose. We have a huge trade deficit with the EU.
The timetabling was not ours to choose. The EU demanded sequencing and would not discuss the future arrangements until the details of leaving were sorted out. That was a colossal mistake as many said at the time.
We still want frictionless trade but it is not currently on offer without conditions that would be damaging to us.
None of which is to say that we are blameless. Hammond's determination not to make any preparations for no deal was incomprehensibly stupid. A lot of time was wasted with lazy and incompetent buffoons like David Davis. We have been slow to get that a deal involves compromise on both sides. Failures all round I would say.
Can someone explain what benefit we get for abandoning freedom of movement for Brits., much high insurance costs of visiting EU countries, higher food price in the UK among many negatives, UK motor manufacturing reduced etc
Simple we stop allowing in low value immigrants. I am entirely unphased by the number or nationality but its a simple fact that immigrants that are not net contributors to the treasury means that the public service pie has to stretch further without additional money. Explain to me why a minimum wage barista of any nationality is worth having as an immigrant
Wouldn't it be simpler to let the free market decide that?
Absolutely.
No Universal Credit or other wage related welfare for non-citizens and an annual NHS subscription fee. If they still want to come then welcome with open arms, if they only want to come for welfare then no thanks.
Nobody in their right mind would come here for welfare. Living on welfare in 2020 Britain is utter shite.
Only someone very entitled and sheltered from a global perspective could say that.
If you think life is so shite in Britain why not try moving to eg Romania and working a minimum wage job there with whatever welfare they'll supply you with and see how much your life improves by?
Only someone who does not have to live on welfare would argue with the notion that living on welfare is shite. It keeps you alive, but restricts your life and the choices you can make in any number of ways. The idea that people flock to the UK to take advantage of our welfare system is for the fairies - especially as EU immigration is falling as it rises from elsewhere.
In work welfare in this country is not at all shite from a global perspective. In some parts of the EU you can get a minimum wage of €1.95 per hour - whereas here you can get a minimum wage five times that and then get Universal Credit on top of your waves too.
Just because you wish things were better does not mean things are bad here.
Things are worse here than they used to be. For those who rely on welfare they are bad full stop. I wish fewer people had to rely on welfare. I think we can treat those who do a whole lot better. I don't know if you have ever had to rely on state handouts to look after yourself and your family. I have. It is not a pleasant experience. And the system was a lot less punitive than it is now when I had to.
I was involved with CAB and later Citizens Advice for over 40 years. I'm certain the situation is worse now, and more complex, and the attitude of many of the 'haves' seems to be hardening.
Yes, it is always comforting to blame the poor and vulnerable for being poor and vulnerable.
It's not just about blame though is it?
Do people screw up sometimes? Yes. Should they go hungry because of it? Should their kids go hungry because of it? No.
Do people sometimes get into need for reasons out of their control? Yes. Should they go hungry because of it? Should their kids go hungry because of it? No.
Offering a form of safety net doesn't mean being judgemental about why people get into need ... But it is important to understand why and that there is no easy fix to that.
At one point during Blair and Browns tenure every other advert on TV and Radio seemed to be for either payday or other forms of lenders, or ambulance chasing lawyers. So people were getting bombarded by messages to call Wonga if they were in difficulty but food banks weren't available.
The idea need didn't exist a decade ago is a lie.
It did, but the last-resort demand for foodbanks, the demand with no options or easy choices involved in it, was significantly less.
What evidence do you have for that?
Supply was less so people turned to Wonga etc instead. That is bad. What evidence do you have that need was less?
The Cameron/coalition government encouraged organisations such as foodbanks culturally from 2010. The explosion in foodbank demand, that everyone in the sector noticed, was in 2014-15, as the effects of the first welfare changes kicked in. A withering away of state support was explicitly what many Tory voters wanted.
No that is a rewriting of history.
Under Blair and Browns tenure payday loans like Wonga went from almost unheard of to a multi billion pound industry.
Cameron tackled this and quite right too. I would rather people go to a food bank than Wonga at exorbitant interest rates.
The safety net under Blair and Brown wasn't food banks or welfare. It was loan sharks. It was evil.
I don't know if I wholly agree.
At the time Wonga worked for me. If I had an unexpected bill six days before payday (and a couple of times I did) then I could borrow £200 and pay back £215 seven days later.
If I went over my overdraft limit with my bank they (at the time) hit me with a £30 penalty charge plus costs - so Wonga was cheaper.
I could otherwise have used a cash advance on my credit card but I didn't have one at the time.
This is how most of the rest of Europe and North America really see the current situation, from Washington to Athens. It will take a huge amount to shift the current view.
I wonder if any governments had bet heavily on it?
EU placed an order for 300 million doses...it was their main bet.
...and? Everyone was blindfold and pinning the tail on the donkey, it just happens the UK Government made an inspired guess.
On something they have had control over, namely an EU trade deal they appear, so far, to be less inspired. Perhaps they should have "guessed" the trade deal too!
Can someone explain what benefit we get for abandoning freedom of movement for Brits., much high insurance costs of visiting EU countries, higher food price in the UK among many negatives, UK motor manufacturing reduced etc
Simple we stop allowing in low value immigrants. I am entirely unphased by the number or nationality but its a simple fact that immigrants that are not net contributors to the treasury means that the public service pie has to stretch further without additional money. Explain to me why a minimum wage barista of any nationality is worth having as an immigrant
Wouldn't it be simpler to let the free market decide that?
Absolutely.
No Universal Credit or other wage related welfare for non-citizens and an annual NHS subscription fee. If they still want to come then welcome with open arms, if they only want to come for welfare then no thanks.
Nobody in their right mind would come here for welfare. Living on welfare in 2020 Britain is utter shite.
Only someone very entitled and sheltered from a global perspective could say that.
If you think life is so shite in Britain why not try moving to eg Romania and working a minimum wage job there with whatever welfare they'll supply you with and see how much your life improves by?
The idea that welfare in the UK is bad compared to the rest of Europe is clearly from someone who has never lived outside the UK.
I am sure that the idea that there are places in Eastern Europe poorer than the UK is of huge comfort to the thousands dependent on food banks this Christmas.
No one in the UK, a rich nation, should be dependent on a food bank. It’s Dickensian.
Google:
"Does Europe have food banks? In the EU, almost 19 million people, or six per cent of the Union's population, currently turn to food banks. With about 3.6 million people served, France's food banks are the second in coverage worldwide and the largest in Europe (19 per cent of the EU total)."
You clearly need to get out more
What is going on in the EU is irrelevant. In a wealthy civilised society we should not need food banks. We didn’t need the before, we don’t have to rely on them now. No amount of whaterboutery changes that. If we can afford moonshots, we can afford to feed people.
I agree on the problem needing to be faced regardless, but it is not irrelevant when someone was making the point about how bad welfare is here presumably compared to other places. It was clearly a point about the problem of welfare being worse here, not simply, as you are suggesting, that there is a problem, as it was context of a brexit topic.
I mean, someone complaining about the burglary rate, for example, could do so as no matter what the rate is elsewhere burglary is an issue people face here which needs addressing. But if their point was that the rate here is really bad, and the context is to suggest it's bad compared to other places that actually are the same or worse, that's relevant.
We know the Tories can't sign on to the level playing field - they want to change our standards. And as they aren't going to voluntarily raise our standards they want to lower them. They can't come out and say this because "we're going to allow the import of weevil-infested American food" and "we're going to allow your employer force you to work longer for less pay and worse conditions" doesn't look good on the side of a bus.
So no deal it is. If it hurts people that only helps soften them up for when the new patriotic working time and employment rules come into effect. Work harder you plebs!
This is quite to misunderstand what the argument is about. No one is disputing a level playing field for existing regs. It’s the automatic ratchet on future rules and one way punishment mechanism without pre ante arbitration that’s the problem.
There’s also plenty of area where UK standards far exist the EU regs or average, on animal welfare, carbon and minimum wage to name a few. It would be great if just occasionally people would look beyond their tribalism and consider the pros and cons of their own argument.
This really does seem like something where sensible and rational governance that would suit both sides could easily be worked out behind the scenes.
If they were both sincere and playing with a straight bat, that is.
I know that I have wound some PB Tories up in the past by talking morality, but for me this is a basic issue. It is immoral to treat people the way this government does. Universal Credit - by accident or design - acts to make people who have nothing get deeper into debt whilst belittling and demeaning them. UC makes it so much harder to escape poverty once you are on it. "We now have foodbanks" when the system literally leaves people no other source of food is not something to brag about.
I know that people have all kinds of reasons for why they vote for who they vote for. But can anyone please simply state a moral case in support for the practical realities of Universal Credit. A rational reason why trying to starve the poor and sick and dying is a just policy.
This isn't a left / right issue. No previous Tory government would have done this.
Universal credit is based on the principle that people have a few £100 spare quid to see them though a month until the first payment arrives.
And that simply isn't the case, while its perfectly understandable that wages are paid in arrears, that simple can't be the case when people have nothing.
Universal Credit has many flaws but overall it is better than what came before and is well designed to reflect work to make it easier for people to get into work. The problem before was that someone who left benefits by taking a job was expected to go from getting benefits up front to wages a money in arrears, it was unrealistic. Now people can start a job and they don't even need to leave the UC system when starting work.
Upfront payments exist in UC now and have done for quite a while.
I do not see those positions as incompatible. Failure to reach a trade deal between the UK and the EU will be a failure of statecraft for all concerned on both sides of the fence. But it is looking increasingly likely to occur. To infer that this is one side's fault is simplistic.
Of course it isn't. We have by far the most to lose. We've had more than four years to prepare, and the timetable - following on from triggering A50 - was ours to choose. We were promised an easy deal preserving current benefits including frictionless trade. We had the option of buying more time, at any stage. And we're doing the whole thing voluntarily. It would be a massive failure.
Exactly, so the Leaver Blame game really wont wash. It is also why Johnson is on a very slippery slope. He can try to do his Bulldog act but Tory MPs are going to start panicking if the Spring elections are the kind of massacre that is now well in prospect. So 21 departure for BoZo looks like the favourite.
Nah. A spring disaster is almost expected at this point and though the MPs show little spine around polling and elections, with his majority and years to a GE I think he can eke out to 2022 even in a worst case scenario. And we know how hard someone can cling on.
PM 2019-2022 looks a lot better than PM 2019-2021. Dont surprised if that is in his mind.
I think best case scenario he goes in 2023 though, I dont think we'll be lucky enough for earlier
I do not see those positions as incompatible. Failure to reach a trade deal between the UK and the EU will be a failure of statecraft for all concerned on both sides of the fence. But it is looking increasingly likely to occur. To infer that this is one side's fault is simplistic.
Of course it isn't. We have by far the most to lose. We've had more than four years to prepare, and the timetable - following on from triggering A50 - was ours to choose. We were promised an easy deal preserving current benefits including frictionless trade. We had the option of buying more time, at any stage. And we're doing the whole thing voluntarily. It would be a massive failure.
I disagree with most of that.
We do not have the most to lose. We have a huge trade deficit with the EU.
The timetabling was not ours to choose. The EU demanded sequencing and would not discuss the future arrangements until the details of leaving were sorted out. That was a colossal mistake as many said at the time.
We still want frictionless trade but it is not currently on offer without conditions that would be damaging to us.
None of which is to say that we are blameless. Hammond's determination not to make any preparations for no deal was incomprehensibly stupid. A lot of time was wasted with lazy and incompetent buffoons like David Davis. We have been slow to get that a deal involves compromise on both sides. Failures all round I would say.
Just assertion and wishful thinking.
I suspect we may be about to find out who has the most to lose. The trade deficit is a lot less important than the actual proportions of trade involved.
The decision to start the process by triggering A50 was entirely ours. We'd have waited until we had developed a proper plan - and used the notification as leverage - had it not been for the usual idiots in the Tory and UKIP parties just wanting to get on with it regardless. And we could have delayed the January date, had it not been for Bozo's idiotic legislation putting handcuffs on his own hands.
We all want frictionless trade. Wanting isn't the issue - we were promised it, by leading Tory politicians who are now responsible for delivering on their promises.
A no deal exit will be a Tory failure that would make Black Wednesday look like a walk in the park.
Can someone explain what benefit we get for abandoning freedom of movement for Brits., much high insurance costs of visiting EU countries, higher food price in the UK among many negatives, UK motor manufacturing reduced etc
Simple we stop allowing in low value immigrants. I am entirely unphased by the number or nationality but its a simple fact that immigrants that are not net contributors to the treasury means that the public service pie has to stretch further without additional money. Explain to me why a minimum wage barista of any nationality is worth having as an immigrant
Wouldn't it be simpler to let the free market decide that?
Absolutely.
No Universal Credit or other wage related welfare for non-citizens and an annual NHS subscription fee. If they still want to come then welcome with open arms, if they only want to come for welfare then no thanks.
Nobody in their right mind would come here for welfare. Living on welfare in 2020 Britain is utter shite.
Only someone very entitled and sheltered from a global perspective could say that.
If you think life is so shite in Britain why not try moving to eg Romania and working a minimum wage job there with whatever welfare they'll supply you with and see how much your life improves by?
Only someone who does not have to live on welfare would argue with the notion that living on welfare is shite. It keeps you alive, but restricts your life and the choices you can make in any number of ways. The idea that people flock to the UK to take advantage of our welfare system is for the fairies - especially as EU immigration is falling as it rises from elsewhere.
In work welfare in this country is not at all shite from a global perspective. In some parts of the EU you can get a minimum wage of €1.95 per hour - whereas here you can get a minimum wage five times that and then get Universal Credit on top of your waves too.
Just because you wish things were better does not mean things are bad here.
Things are worse here than they used to be. For those who rely on welfare they are bad full stop. I wish fewer people had to rely on welfare. I think we can treat those who do a whole lot better. I don't know if you have ever had to rely on state handouts to look after yourself and your family. I have. It is not a pleasant experience. And the system was a lot less punitive than it is now when I had to.
I was involved with CAB and later Citizens Advice for over 40 years. I'm certain the situation is worse now, and more complex, and the attitude of many of the 'haves' seems to be hardening.
Yes, it is always comforting to blame the poor and vulnerable for being poor and vulnerable.
It's not just about blame though is it?
Do people screw up sometimes? Yes. Should they go hungry because of it? Should their kids go hungry because of it? No.
Do people sometimes get into need for reasons out of their control? Yes. Should they go hungry because of it? Should their kids go hungry because of it? No.
Offering a form of safety net doesn't mean being judgemental about why people get into need ... But it is important to understand why and that there is no easy fix to that.
At one point during Blair and Browns tenure every other advert on TV and Radio seemed to be for either payday or other forms of lenders, or ambulance chasing lawyers. So people were getting bombarded by messages to call Wonga if they were in difficulty but food banks weren't available.
The idea need didn't exist a decade ago is a lie.
It did, but the last-resort demand for foodbanks, the demand with no options or easy choices involved in it, was significantly less.
What evidence do you have for that?
Supply was less so people turned to Wonga etc instead. That is bad. What evidence do you have that need was less?
The Cameron/coalition government encouraged organisations such as foodbanks culturally from 2010. The explosion in foodbank demand, that everyone in the sector noticed, was in 2014-15, as the effects of the first welfare changes kicked in. A withering away of state support was explicitly what many Tory voters wanted.
No that is a rewriting of history.
Under Blair and Browns tenure payday loans like Wonga went from almost unheard of to a multi billion pound industry.
Cameron tackled this and quite right too. I would rather people go to a food bank than Wonga at exorbitant interest rates.
The safety net under Blair and Brown wasn't food banks or welfare. It was loan sharks. It was evil.
I don't know if I wholly agree.
At the time Wonga worked for me. If I had an unexpected bill six days before payday (and a couple of times I did) then I could borrow £200 and pay back £215 seven days later.
If I went over my overdraft limit with my bank they (at the time) hit me with a £30 penalty charge plus costs - so Wonga was cheaper.
I could otherwise have used a cash advance on my credit card but I didn't have one at the time.
If you had an unexpected bill six days before payday why not just phone the creditor up and tell them you'd be paying it six days late?
I do not see those positions as incompatible. Failure to reach a trade deal between the UK and the EU will be a failure of statecraft for all concerned on both sides of the fence. But it is looking increasingly likely to occur. To infer that this is one side's fault is simplistic.
Of course it isn't. We have by far the most to lose. We've had more than four years to prepare, and the timetable - following on from triggering A50 - was ours to choose. We were promised an easy deal preserving current benefits including frictionless trade. We had the option of buying more time, at any stage. And we're doing the whole thing voluntarily. It would be a massive failure.
I disagree with most of that.
We do not have the most to lose. We have a huge trade deficit with the EU.
The timetabling was not ours to choose. The EU demanded sequencing and would not discuss the future arrangements until the details of leaving were sorted out. That was a colossal mistake as many said at the time.
We still want frictionless trade but it is not currently on offer without conditions that would be damaging to us.
None of which is to say that we are blameless. Hammond's determination not to make any preparations for no deal was incomprehensibly stupid. A lot of time was wasted with lazy and incompetent buffoons like David Davis. We have been slow to get that a deal involves compromise on both sides. Failures all round I would say.
Our trade deficit with the EU should not be a comfort blanket. We have a deficit in goods but a surplus in services. Almost no government attention is paid to securing this. As @TheScreamingEagles points out, a fair chunk of the City is moving its doubloons and pieces of eight to the EU. Still, fish, eh?
I suspect the no deal penny is yet to drop for most of the Boris rampers on here. They may be right and he pulls a last minute rabbit out of a hat.
You and I have arrived at the same conclusion, but from different directions. So who, if no deal comes to pass will they blame? I suspect Blair, Starmer and the EU, most notably the French.
The level playing field is an illusion. There is no such thing.
So Germany, for example, has a vastly superior education system. Maybe not for their top 5% but for the bulk of their population. They are more productive. This is exacerbated by their tendency to invest much more than we do. The result is generally superior products at more competitive prices in the world market. Well done them.
Now you add the LPF illusion. What you are saying is that those advantages should be consolidated, that their competitive advantages should not be vulnerable to us having a more flexible labour market (lower employment standards), a willingness to tolerate some pollution to get jobs (lower environmental standards) and a willingness as a society to invest in an industry to remain competitive (government aid).
Which, if you are Germany , makes a lot of sense. You protect your competitive advantage, your trade surplus and you stop people competing with you in other ways that are categorised as "unfair".
If you are in a club of countries that are broadly at the same level as the EEC was this may be tolerable. The upsides may outweigh the downsides (such as a permanent and large trade deficit in our case). But when we are no longer in that club what exactly are the upsides? We have to trade off our uncompetitive trade and deficit for what exactly? Access to a market that we are not competitive in. Hmm...
Those UK businesses selling into the Single Market are clearly competitive within it. How do they and their employees benefit from having reduced access to it?
UK plc is not and has not been competitive in the SM since its origin and the price of those sales is more unemployment in this country and increasing foreign ownership of our assets. This is what people don't see. They look at jobs in Nissan and miss the fact that jobs are lost because the vast majority of our cars are BMWs, Audis, Renaults and Fiats, all of which are jobs lost to this country, purchasing power lost to this country and a lower standard of living as a result.
Every country will have deficits in some areas and surpluses in others. I do not deny the laws of competitive advantage. But the net situation really needs to balance and ours doesn't. We need to do something about that. Our government is being asked not to by the LPF provisions. They are being asked to commit to staying in the same position we have been in for the last 20 years.
Well we've made a pretty lousy start, then.
Pretty well the entirety of production of the new generation of cars, and the battery production that goes with it, will be built in Europe. The only large scale battery development which has been announced here is the 'Britishvolt' factory (which has just decided to relocate from Wales to Northumberland). Everything else in terms of production - Tesla, the Chinese and South Korean factories - are being built on the continent.
And many of those decisions about inward investment are strongly influenced by Brexit.
A useful clear description of the problem. Thank you. Two questions: I have often heard it said that in fact our farming standards are higher than those required in the EU as a whole. Is this true?
Secondly, with regard to "cheaper/nastier" products; some examples would be helpful. What sort of products, and cheaper and nastier in what sort of way is the EU fearing we will poison/kill/maim them with? The domestic pressures not to allow products that are useless, and labour force pressures not to allow slave labour should be enough?
On point 1: no, not systematically. I know most about animal welfare standards, though I believe the same applies to other areas. Like other European countries, we have chosen to raise required standards above the minimum EU level in various selective ways. Where the standard is not required, we have the full range of farms from excellent to almost disgusting, like all the other countries. It would be true to say we are in the best 25%, but individual products are produced in Britain in ways that would be unlawful in some European countries and this appears likely to increase - e.g. the EU is considering banning hen cages (convenient for the farmer so saves money, but cruel to the hen, who cannot perform natural behaviour), but Britain is currently not.
On point 2, the indiscriminate use of antibiotics on farms causes risks to human health. If you think your herd might be at risk from an illness, it's tempting to give them ALL antibiotics of types also used in humans. The antibiotics leak into the human supply chain and accelerate the tendency of bugs to resist antibiotics. Generally-accepted best practice (about to be mandatory in the EU) is only to give the antibiotic to animals who are in fact sick. Britain is so far resisting this reform, because indiscriminate use is commonplace in Britain, though the industry has made efforts to reduce it. (As a matter of interest, the US is even worse - an issue for trade talks.)
The issues are not yet enormous - up to this month the basic standards have, after all, been the same. But it's clearly going to be an issue, and our demand to be allowed to refuse to adopt new standards but still trade on equal terms is not viable in the long term.
Bloomberg mangling the language - "failure is now a real option". It's a possibility. Who would choose failure?
Boris has total freedom to chose a deal. If we have No Deal, he will have chosen failure.
Not in his eyes. Nor mine.
Who is stopping him?
No one. It's the unacceptable nature of what the EU has put on the table. Why would he choose that?
btw the relationship with the EU that we are inching towards is that spelled out by Philip Hammond when he was Chancellor early on, which so horrified those German politicians.
Can someone explain what benefit we get for abandoning freedom of movement for Brits., much high insurance costs of visiting EU countries, higher food price in the UK among many negatives, UK motor manufacturing reduced etc
Simple we stop allowing in low value immigrants. I am entirely unphased by the number or nationality but its a simple fact that immigrants that are not net contributors to the treasury means that the public service pie has to stretch further without additional money. Explain to me why a minimum wage barista of any nationality is worth having as an immigrant
Wouldn't it be simpler to let the free market decide that?
Absolutely.
No Universal Credit or other wage related welfare for non-citizens and an annual NHS subscription fee. If they still want to come then welcome with open arms, if they only want to come for welfare then no thanks.
Nobody in their right mind would come here for welfare. Living on welfare in 2020 Britain is utter shite.
Only someone very entitled and sheltered from a global perspective could say that.
If you think life is so shite in Britain why not try moving to eg Romania and working a minimum wage job there with whatever welfare they'll supply you with and see how much your life improves by?
Only someone who does not have to live on welfare would argue with the notion that living on welfare is shite. It keeps you alive, but restricts your life and the choices you can make in any number of ways. The idea that people flock to the UK to take advantage of our welfare system is for the fairies - especially as EU immigration is falling as it rises from elsewhere.
In work welfare in this country is not at all shite from a global perspective. In some parts of the EU you can get a minimum wage of €1.95 per hour - whereas here you can get a minimum wage five times that and then get Universal Credit on top of your waves too.
Just because you wish things were better does not mean things are bad here.
Things are worse here than they used to be. For those who rely on welfare they are bad full stop. I wish fewer people had to rely on welfare. I think we can treat those who do a whole lot better. I don't know if you have ever had to rely on state handouts to look after yourself and your family. I have. It is not a pleasant experience. And the system was a lot less punitive than it is now when I had to.
I was involved with CAB and later Citizens Advice for over 40 years. I'm certain the situation is worse now, and more complex, and the attitude of many of the 'haves' seems to be hardening.
Yes, it is always comforting to blame the poor and vulnerable for being poor and vulnerable.
It's not just about blame though is it?
Do people screw up sometimes? Yes. Should they go hungry because of it? Should their kids go hungry because of it? No.
Do people sometimes get into need for reasons out of their control? Yes. Should they go hungry because of it? Should their kids go hungry because of it? No.
Offering a form of safety net doesn't mean being judgemental about why people get into need ... But it is important to understand why and that there is no easy fix to that.
At one point during Blair and Browns tenure every other advert on TV and Radio seemed to be for either payday or other forms of lenders, or ambulance chasing lawyers. So people were getting bombarded by messages to call Wonga if they were in difficulty but food banks weren't available.
The idea need didn't exist a decade ago is a lie.
It did, but the last-resort demand for foodbanks, the demand with no options or easy choices involved in it, was significantly less.
What evidence do you have for that?
Supply was less so people turned to Wonga etc instead. That is bad. What evidence do you have that need was less?
The Cameron/coalition government encouraged organisations such as foodbanks culturally from 2010. The explosion in foodbank demand, that everyone in the sector noticed, was in 2014-15, as the effects of the first welfare changes kicked in. A withering away of state support was explicitly what many Tory voters wanted.
No that is a rewriting of history.
Under Blair and Browns tenure payday loans like Wonga went from almost unheard of to a multi billion pound industry.
Cameron tackled this and quite right too. I would rather people go to a food bank than Wonga at exorbitant interest rates.
The safety net under Blair and Brown wasn't food banks or welfare. It was loan sharks. It was evil.
It's you who is rewriting history. Wonga didn't start trading until 2006, and wasn't a big player until the financial crash and in the years after, so only right at the tail end of Blair/Brown. It was pressure from a campaign against it and other such lenders by Stella Creasy (Lab) that brought changes to the rules, as Osborne recognised. The Spectator gave Creasy the campaigning MP of the year award in 2011 for her work.
There's a piece on the Spectator blog this morning by Patrick O'Flynn which argues that No Deal makes Starmer unelectable.
A lot of it rests on the supposition that, as I have mentioned on here before, if (it's a big conditional) No Deal is more of an inconvenience rather than an Apolcalypse then remainers expectation management will bite them. He rightly says that stuff like second holiday owners needing a visa to spend more than 90 days at it are the stuff of jokes rather than vote winners. That's right.
But he's holding himself a bit of a hostage to fortune that it won't be that bad and even if he's right he misses the point a bit. In a General Election voters tend to go for the party of competence. If Thatcher had lost the Falklands War having said she would win it the public wouldn't have gone "oh, good try Maggie, we don't blame you for losing British islands to a hostile power and then sacrificing numerous lives ina doomed attempt to retake them, it's the Argentinans fault for invading, we don't blame you for having a jolly good try, here have a majority". They would have punished her for failing to defend the place and then failing to retake it.
Similarly if Johnson fails to prepare the public for No Deal psycholgically ("one in a million chance") or by putting in place the requisite preparations (I live in East Kent, a mile from the M20, there are no adequate preparations) they are unlikely to say "oh, good try Boris, we can forgive you for the economic disruption and humiliation, it's the EU's fault for agreeing to our terms, we don't blame you for having a jolly good try, here have a majority". The reputation for incompetence, on top of the less than stellar grades he's getting for Covid, will be the issue. This idea the country (or what is left of it) will rally round the flag is for the birds.
Can someone explain what benefit we get for abandoning freedom of movement for Brits., much high insurance costs of visiting EU countries, higher food price in the UK among many negatives, UK motor manufacturing reduced etc
Simple we stop allowing in low value immigrants. I am entirely unphased by the number or nationality but its a simple fact that immigrants that are not net contributors to the treasury means that the public service pie has to stretch further without additional money. Explain to me why a minimum wage barista of any nationality is worth having as an immigrant
Wouldn't it be simpler to let the free market decide that?
Absolutely.
No Universal Credit or other wage related welfare for non-citizens and an annual NHS subscription fee. If they still want to come then welcome with open arms, if they only want to come for welfare then no thanks.
Nobody in their right mind would come here for welfare. Living on welfare in 2020 Britain is utter shite.
Only someone very entitled and sheltered from a global perspective could say that.
If you think life is so shite in Britain why not try moving to eg Romania and working a minimum wage job there with whatever welfare they'll supply you with and see how much your life improves by?
Only someone who does not have to live on welfare would argue with the notion that living on welfare is shite. It keeps you alive, but restricts your life and the choices you can make in any number of ways. The idea that people flock to the UK to take advantage of our welfare system is for the fairies - especially as EU immigration is falling as it rises from elsewhere.
In work welfare in this country is not at all shite from a global perspective. In some parts of the EU you can get a minimum wage of €1.95 per hour - whereas here you can get a minimum wage five times that and then get Universal Credit on top of your waves too.
Just because you wish things were better does not mean things are bad here.
Things are worse here than they used to be. For those who rely on welfare they are bad full stop. I wish fewer people had to rely on welfare. I think we can treat those who do a whole lot better. I don't know if you have ever had to rely on state handouts to look after yourself and your family. I have. It is not a pleasant experience. And the system was a lot less punitive than it is now when I had to.
I was involved with CAB and later Citizens Advice for over 40 years. I'm certain the situation is worse now, and more complex, and the attitude of many of the 'haves' seems to be hardening.
Yes, it is always comforting to blame the poor and vulnerable for being poor and vulnerable.
It's not just about blame though is it?
Do people screw up sometimes? Yes. Should they go hungry because of it? Should their kids go hungry because of it? No.
Do people sometimes get into need for reasons out of their control? Yes. Should they go hungry because of it? Should their kids go hungry because of it? No.
Offering a form of safety net doesn't mean being judgemental about why people get into need ... But it is important to understand why and that there is no easy fix to that.
At one point during Blair and Browns tenure every other advert on TV and Radio seemed to be for either payday or other forms of lenders, or ambulance chasing lawyers. So people were getting bombarded by messages to call Wonga if they were in difficulty but food banks weren't available.
The idea need didn't exist a decade ago is a lie.
It did, but the last-resort demand for foodbanks, the demand with no options or easy choices involved in it, was significantly less.
What evidence do you have for that?
Supply was less so people turned to Wonga etc instead. That is bad. What evidence do you have that need was less?
The Cameron/coalition government encouraged organisations such as foodbanks culturally from 2010. The explosion in foodbank demand, that everyone in the sector noticed, was in 2014-15, as the effects of the first welfare changes kicked in. A withering away of state support was explicitly what many Tory voters wanted.
No that is a rewriting of history.
Under Blair and Browns tenure payday loans like Wonga went from almost unheard of to a multi billion pound industry.
Cameron tackled this and quite right too. I would rather people go to a food bank than Wonga at exorbitant interest rates.
The safety net under Blair and Brown wasn't food banks or welfare. It was loan sharks. It was evil.
I don't know if I wholly agree.
At the time Wonga worked for me. If I had an unexpected bill six days before payday (and a couple of times I did) then I could borrow £200 and pay back £215 seven days later.
If I went over my overdraft limit with my bank they (at the time) hit me with a £30 penalty charge plus costs - so Wonga was cheaper.
I could otherwise have used a cash advance on my credit card but I didn't have one at the time.
If you had an unexpected bill six days before payday why not just phone the creditor up and tell them you'd be paying it six days late?
Bloomberg mangling the language - "failure is now a real option". It's a possibility. Who would choose failure?
Boris has total freedom to chose a deal. If we have No Deal, he will have chosen failure.
I don't think that's a fair assessment really as it suggests that we should take any deal. Let's imagine the only deal on offer included freedom of movement which both main parties now reject. At that point, Boris still has the choice to choose a deal, but no deal wouldn't be a failure because the terms would be too much.
I think the UK needs to move some way in these negotiations as we've been hiding way too far behind some of the red lines, but it's not fair to suggest that no deal is always a failure.
So none of the usual suspects want to comment on the fact that the Australia-style deal they are trumpeting is shit according to former Aussie PM turned UK trade adviser Malcolm Turnbull?
Bloomberg mangling the language - "failure is now a real option". It's a possibility. Who would choose failure?
Boris has total freedom to chose a deal. If we have No Deal, he will have chosen failure.
Not in his eyes. Nor mine.
Well, sorry to say it but you are a gullible fool then. The only diplomatic failure bigger than this would be war. Johnson has failed on everything he said he would deliver re Brexit since 2016. The man is a walking disaster area, and his apologists are even worse
Can someone explain what benefit we get for abandoning freedom of movement for Brits., much high insurance costs of visiting EU countries, higher food price in the UK among many negatives, UK motor manufacturing reduced etc
Simple we stop allowing in low value immigrants. I am entirely unphased by the number or nationality but its a simple fact that immigrants that are not net contributors to the treasury means that the public service pie has to stretch further without additional money. Explain to me why a minimum wage barista of any nationality is worth having as an immigrant
Wouldn't it be simpler to let the free market decide that?
Absolutely.
No Universal Credit or other wage related welfare for non-citizens and an annual NHS subscription fee. If they still want to come then welcome with open arms, if they only want to come for welfare then no thanks.
Nobody in their right mind would come here for welfare. Living on welfare in 2020 Britain is utter shite.
Only someone very entitled and sheltered from a global perspective could say that.
If you think life is so shite in Britain why not try moving to eg Romania and working a minimum wage job there with whatever welfare they'll supply you with and see how much your life improves by?
Did you actually read what I said? I did not say "life is shite in Britain", I said "Living on welfare in 2020 Britain is utter shite"
There's a piece on the Spectator blog this morning by Patrick O'Flynn which argues that No Deal makes Starmer unelectable.
A lot of it rests on the supposition that, as I have mentioned on here before, if (it's a big conditional) No Deal is more of an inconvenience rather than an Apolcalypse then remainers expectation management will bite them. He rightly says that stuff like second holiday owners needing a visa to spend more than 90 days at it are the stuff of jokes rather than vote winners. That's right.
But he's holding himself a bit of a hostage to fortune that it won't be that bad and even if he's right he misses the point a bit. In a General Election voters tend to go for the party of competence. If Thatcher had lost the Falklands War having said she would win it the public wouldn't have gone "oh, good try Maggie, we don't blame you for losing British islands to a hostile power and then sacrificing numerous lives ina doomed attempt to retake them, it's the Argentinans fault for invading, we don't blame you for having a jolly good try, here have a majority". They would have punished her for failing to defend the place and then failing to retake it.
Similarly if Johnson fails to prepare the public for No Deal psycholgically ("one in a million chance") or by putting in place the requisite preparations (I live in East Kent, a mile from the M20, there are no adequate preparations) they are unlikely to say "oh, good try Boris, we can forgive you for the economic disruption and humiliation, it's the EU's fault for agreeing to our terms, we don't blame you for having a jolly good try, here have a majority". The reputation for incompetence, on top of the less than stellar grades he's getting for Covid, will be the issue. This idea the country (or what is left of it) will rally round the flag is for the birds.
Spot on. Large amounts of both swing, and even core Tory voters are still not expecting major material changes to their lives.
I can tell you that from umpteen personal experiences
We've always had profound respect for your lived experience of poverty, disadvantage and deprivation.
@dura_ace Changing subject. We were discussing yesterday whether or not the general belgrano and/or its escorts ought to have detected conqueror. Any views?
Comments
Yes I totally believe the marginal rate of tax issue and other issues need addressing. But don't pretend that getting rid of food banks is either easy or desirable.
PS the marginal rate of tax issue was real during Browns tenure too. It is something that has always made me angry, I wrote a paper on it at university showing how tax rates could be up to or over 100% back then.
So no deal it is. If it hurts people that only helps soften them up for when the new patriotic working time and employment rules come into effect. Work harder you plebs!
Every country will have deficits in some areas and surpluses in others. I do not deny the laws of competitive advantage. But the net situation really needs to balance and ours doesn't. We need to do something about that. Our government is being asked not to by the LPF provisions. They are being asked to commit to staying in the same position we have been in for the last 20 years.
And that simply isn't the case, while its perfectly understandable that wages are paid in arrears, that simple can't be the case when people have nothing.
To be fair to Mr Brown, I don't think he ever took us to the tax levels of most in the EU. He did far more of the questionable stuff by stealth and hiding it - eg all that PFI borrowing govt income from up to 60 years in the future.
All he did on Income Tax Rate was to add the additional rate, and withdraw the exempt band from the top 1-2%.
To be fair to the Tories since, they haven't cut anything very much either.
IIRC.
Sampling Home Counties saloon bars isn't going to prove representative.
Brexit continues to be the greatest fraud ever committed by any government on its people . Would Vote Leave have won in 2016 on a Remain v No deal or maybe no deal .
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20201211-sanofi-gsk-covid-vaccine-delayed-until-end-of-2021
I wonder if any governments had bet heavily on it?
The assumption that the Evil Tories will set fire to the poor and throw the unemployed into furnaces to provide electricity may be exaggerated.
On food banks: these started under Blair, in a boom. They've risen under every PM (I believe, not sure of the most recent stats for the incumbent) since, during recession, recovery, and more recent turbulence.
Upfront payments exist in UC now and have done for quite a while.
But we need to think about why it is not working. People getting seriously fed up of the restrictions is obviously a big factor. A desperation to have some sort of economy is another. Educational establishments are probably one of the largest. Is the answer on this to double down?
We are still hitting this virus with an ever less effective mallet almost at random instead of identifying areas of weakness and actual risk. Maybe we don't have the science. Maybe it's just too hard. But it's going to be a tough few months until the vaccines start to impact on the R rate.
There’s also plenty of area where UK standards far exist the EU regs or average, on animal welfare, carbon and minimum wage to name a few. It would be great if just occasionally people would look beyond their tribalism and consider the pros and cons of their own argument.
The current official figure up to Dec 5 by specimen date has a rate of 76.6/week/100,000, up from 42.0 five days earlier. That's concerning enough, yet if you add up the cases for the 7 days up to Dec 8, which aren't even complete yet, you already get to a rate of 112.1, up by a factor of 2.45 (!) from a week earlier.
Therefore I suspect Edinburgh can forget about being moved down, and Sturgeon had got a dilemma on her hands with East Lothian: move it back up to level 3 again straight away, or watch it for a week or two in the hope that the bad news will itself moderate behaviour and stabilize numbers.
(Edit: corrected week-to-week increase from 2.67x to 2.45x.)
"You don't want a deal like the one Australia has got. Its shit" isn't the message they were hoping for. No doubt they will continue to wheel intellectual giants like Robert Jenrick into TV studios to state that we'll get a fine Australia style deal. The presenter will then put Turnbill's comments to him, which will be batted away as "just an opinion" as if the former PM of Australia knows less about Australia's deal than Jenrick does.
Even more remarkably people will take Jenrick at face value! Any of the usual suspects on here who have parrotted the merits of an Australia style deal want to tell us why the former Australian PM hired by Britain for his knowledge about trade deals done't know what he's talking about?
Secondly, with regard to "cheaper/nastier" products; some examples would be helpful. What sort of products, and cheaper and nastier in what sort of way is the EU fearing we will poison/kill/maim them with? The domestic pressures not to allow products that are useless, and labour force pressures not to allow slave labour should be enough?
I can tell you that from umpteen personal experiences
Supply was less so people turned to Wonga etc instead. That is bad. What evidence do you have that need was less?
Edited extra bit: also, I could be wrong but I think the maternity leave here is more months than pretty much anywhere else.
Evil Tories, thwarting women's career aspirations!
If you recall The Boys From the Blackstuff, it wasn't much fun being poor 40 years ago either.
As is often the case, suspect I'll be focusing more on the midfield battles than the podium, which should be between three chaps (assuming Bottas doesn't have more misfortune).
Under Blair and Browns tenure payday loans like Wonga went from almost unheard of to a multi billion pound industry.
Cameron tackled this and quite right too. I would rather people go to a food bank than Wonga at exorbitant interest rates.
The safety net under Blair and Brown wasn't food banks or welfare. It was loan sharks. It was evil.
The first point I don't agree with but it is necessary to qualify that to some extent. UC was designed to sweep away the absurd and incomprehensible encrustaceans that had built up over the 70 years of the welfare state which randomly gave more to some and less to others (providing you could find the right form). The principles of simplicity and, ha, a LPF, are sound.
So why has it become such a bogeyman? Clearly, the system had far too great delays built into it before payments were made. Loans are a completely unsatisfactory answer to this because they need to be repaid by deductions off already modest payments. Many, most people on benefits live hand to mouth, they don't have the resources to cope with such delays. These delays have been reduced if not eliminated but it is still a problem.
Also there is the bias of complaint. Those whose benefits increased because of the simplicity don't cheer but those who have lost out scream. Some of those screams are justified because some of the complexities of the old system were there for a reason. This is tricky because if this system becomes as encrusted as the old with exceptions the point of it is lost.
They were called payday loans for a reason...
There is also the 14 weeks statutory maternity leave around the birth itself.
What it shows is BoZo clearly stating that he has failed on his own terms.
It was certainly widely known - remember The Sun ran a big campaign on it in 2009 with "cast iron Dave" so lots of WC voters were aware and made the connection.
Don't be ridiculous.
We do not have the most to lose. We have a huge trade deficit with the EU.
The timetabling was not ours to choose. The EU demanded sequencing and would not discuss the future arrangements until the details of leaving were sorted out. That was a colossal mistake as many said at the time.
We still want frictionless trade but it is not currently on offer without conditions that would be damaging to us.
None of which is to say that we are blameless. Hammond's determination not to make any preparations for no deal was incomprehensibly stupid. A lot of time was wasted with lazy and incompetent buffoons like David Davis. We have been slow to get that a deal involves compromise on both sides. Failures all round I would say.
It's a possibility. Who would choose failure?
At the time Wonga worked for me. If I had an unexpected bill six days before payday (and a couple of times I did) then I could borrow £200 and pay back £215 seven days later.
If I went over my overdraft limit with my bank they (at the time) hit me with a £30 penalty charge plus costs - so Wonga was cheaper.
I could otherwise have used a cash advance on my credit card but I didn't have one at the time.
On something they have had control over, namely an EU trade deal they appear, so far, to be less inspired. Perhaps they should have "guessed" the trade deal too!
I mean, someone complaining about the burglary rate, for example, could do so as no matter what the rate is elsewhere burglary is an issue people face here which needs addressing. But if their point was that the rate here is really bad, and the context is to suggest it's bad compared to other places that actually are the same or worse, that's relevant.
If they were both sincere and playing with a straight bat, that is.
PM 2019-2022 looks a lot better than PM 2019-2021. Dont surprised if that is in his mind.
I think best case scenario he goes in 2023 though, I dont think we'll be lucky enough for earlier
I suspect we may be about to find out who has the most to lose. The trade deficit is a lot less important than the actual proportions of trade involved.
The decision to start the process by triggering A50 was entirely ours. We'd have waited until we had developed a proper plan - and used the notification as leverage - had it not been for the usual idiots in the Tory and UKIP parties just wanting to get on with it regardless. And we could have delayed the January date, had it not been for Bozo's idiotic legislation putting handcuffs on his own hands.
We all want frictionless trade. Wanting isn't the issue - we were promised it, by leading Tory politicians who are now responsible for delivering on their promises.
A no deal exit will be a Tory failure that would make Black Wednesday look like a walk in the park.
You and I have arrived at the same conclusion, but from different directions. So who, if no deal comes to pass will they blame? I suspect Blair, Starmer and the EU, most notably the French.
Come on Carrie, do your duty!
Pretty well the entirety of production of the new generation of cars, and the battery production that goes with it, will be built in Europe.
The only large scale battery development which has been announced here is the 'Britishvolt' factory (which has just decided to relocate from Wales to Northumberland).
Everything else in terms of production - Tesla, the Chinese and South Korean factories - are being built on the continent.
And many of those decisions about inward investment are strongly influenced by Brexit.
On point 2, the indiscriminate use of antibiotics on farms causes risks to human health. If you think your herd might be at risk from an illness, it's tempting to give them ALL antibiotics of types also used in humans. The antibiotics leak into the human supply chain and accelerate the tendency of bugs to resist antibiotics. Generally-accepted best practice (about to be mandatory in the EU) is only to give the antibiotic to animals who are in fact sick. Britain is so far resisting this reform, because indiscriminate use is commonplace in Britain, though the industry has made efforts to reduce it. (As a matter of interest, the US is even worse - an issue for trade talks.)
The issues are not yet enormous - up to this month the basic standards have, after all, been the same. But it's clearly going to be an issue, and our demand to be allowed to refuse to adopt new standards but still trade on equal terms is not viable in the long term.
btw the relationship with the EU that we are inching towards is that spelled out by Philip Hammond when he was Chancellor early on, which so horrified those German politicians.
A lot of it rests on the supposition that, as I have mentioned on here before, if (it's a big conditional) No Deal is more of an inconvenience rather than an Apolcalypse then remainers expectation management will bite them. He rightly says that stuff like second holiday owners needing a visa to spend more than 90 days at it are the stuff of jokes rather than vote winners. That's right.
But he's holding himself a bit of a hostage to fortune that it won't be that bad and even if he's right he misses the point a bit. In a General Election voters tend to go for the party of competence. If Thatcher had lost the Falklands War having said she would win it the public wouldn't have gone "oh, good try Maggie, we don't blame you for losing British islands to a hostile power and then sacrificing numerous lives ina doomed attempt to retake them, it's the Argentinans fault for invading, we don't blame you for having a jolly good try, here have a majority". They would have punished her for failing to defend the place and then failing to retake it.
Similarly if Johnson fails to prepare the public for No Deal psycholgically ("one in a million chance") or by putting in place the requisite preparations (I live in East Kent, a mile from the M20, there are no adequate preparations) they are unlikely to say "oh, good try Boris, we can forgive you for the economic disruption and humiliation, it's the EU's fault for agreeing to our terms, we don't blame you for having a jolly good try, here have a majority". The reputation for incompetence, on top of the less than stellar grades he's getting for Covid, will be the issue. This idea the country (or what is left of it) will rally round the flag is for the birds.
I think the UK needs to move some way in these negotiations as we've been hiding way too far behind some of the red lines, but it's not fair to suggest that no deal is always a failure.
Can't think why not...
Big difference.