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Politics, politics, politics

I think some people have a very easy and simple view of life that is often pigeon holed. People could say at worse my father had no ambition and I would say that would be true. But he loved England for what England was and it was enough for him, he loved Blues music and the influence it had on the world, he loved the impact it had on British Music and accepted the fact that Dr Feelgood were not as good as Muddy Waters but he wouldn't have swapped them for the world, he loved roaving green fields and hills and loved walking for hours along the Thames. He loves cups of tea and a pint of real ale.

 
galeforce said:
Culture shouldn't be maintained it should be evolved.
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I agree with this but integration is a key part of that evolution, otherwise you end up with two distinct cultures rather than one and that is where problems begin.

For the record I'm sure many Brits are guilty of the exact same thing, moving to Spain to live in ex-pat communities.
 
Richie said:
I agree with this but integration is a key part of that evolution, otherwise you end up with two distinct cultures rather than one and that is where problems begin.

For the record I'm sure many Brits are guilty of the exact same thing, moving to Spain to live in ex-pat communities.
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I think integration can only happen slowly, it may appear that communities are dragged and dropped but they do rub up against each other and thats where the process begins.
 
Modric THFC said:
My twitter timeline is full of middle class sports journos all supporting remain, none of which will vote because they are in France.

And the polls are miles out http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/british-referendum-polls-are-a-mess/
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The are postal votes.

I know people will not believe this next story and I actually told the guy telling me to go to the police.

A friend of ours told us about visiting his mother in a care home and told her he would help with her postal vote, would not tell her how to vote just show her then leave the room and come back in when she had finished and then post it for her. She told him that two of her careers had told her she had to vote remain because otherwise they would be forced to leave the country. He complained to the home owner, but was told they were agency and would not be used again.

Very very low standards to drop to there and frankly he should have gone to the police so this sort of behaviour the imitation of our elderly could be stopped.
 
glorygloryeze said:
Interesting. So let me get this straight; you are saying that if the populations had been given a vote to decide who were to be these "Presidents" it would have been seen as the EU extending its power, so to avoid this perception (Reality?) the "Presidents" were instead "chosen" by the Governments of the member states?
So basically these "Presidents" were elected/created by the back door instead in the open because there was a fear that the populations would see it for what it is: extending EU power. And say "No thanks."
If it is not extending EU power, why is there:
a) a need for an "EU President"
b) documentation outlined by these very same "Presidents" advocating AND planning for the creation of a Fiscal, Financial and POLITICAL Union?

Also, do you not think the above is the very definition of "unelected Bureaucrats" and do you not then see it as natural that many in the population want to Vote out because they did not ask their Government to choose said "Unelected Bureaucrats" on their behalf?
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The the Presidents and Commission are the equivalent of the UK civil service. They are chosen and can be removed by the democratically elected member governments and have no powers to introduce laws. They can propose laws (again similar to the UK civil service) but they have to go through the European Parliament and be approved by the governments of the member states.

There are plenty of undemocratic elements of the UK government that I do not see leave campaigners complaining about. We have a 800 member strong unelected House of Lords which is the second largest legislature in the world. It is quite common for Prime Ministers to appoint unelected ministers from the Lords. Our electoral system means that your vote only counts in a handful of seats. The vast majority of UK legislation comes in the form of Statutory Instruments that are drafted by officials and rarely debated in Parliament. You have no say who is running the Civil Service, many of whom hold more power than many MPs. We do not directly elect a Prime Minister and roughly once a decade we get a sitting Prime Minister ousted and replaced by someone we have not chosen.

The five presidents' report that you quoted relates to the Eurozone countries and has no bearing on the UK.
 
Message to anyone who reads this thread: whatever your views, whether you want to leave or remain, make sure you get out and vote tomorrow.
 
milo said:
The the Presidents and Commission are the equivalent of the UK civil service. They are chosen and can be removed by the democratically elected member governments and have no powers to introduce laws. They can propose laws (again similar to the UK civil service) but they have to go through the European Parliament and be approved by the governments of the member states.

There are plenty of undemocratic elements of the UK government that I do not see leave campaigners complaining about. We have a 800 member strong unelected House of Lords which is the second largest legislature in the world. It is quite common for Prime Ministers to appoint unelected ministers from the Lords. Our electoral system means that your vote only counts in a handful of seats. The vast majority of UK legislation comes in the form of Statutory Instruments that are drafted by officials and rarely debated in Parliament. You have no say who is running the Civil Service, many of whom hold more power than many MPs. We do not directly elect a Prime Minister and roughly once a decade we get a sitting Prime Minister ousted and replaced by someone we have not chosen.

The five presidents' report that you quoted relates to the Eurozone countries and has no bearing on the UK.
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So taking as read that our own democracy is far from perfect and needs a lot of work. Why on earth would we make ourselves less democratic by being a part of the EU? Why take the power another couple of steps away from voters?

This is especially pertinent when you consider that this country has been voting in centre-right governments (or those that pretended to be in order to win elections) for longer than most people on this forum have been alive. Why would we chain ourselves to a less democratic, failing, socialist experiment?
 
galeforce said:
I think integration can only happen slowly, it may appear that communities are dragged and dropped but they do rub up against each other and thats where the process begins.
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In my experience (overall) integration becomes less likely as immigrant populations increase. Whilst you have more people integrating well because there are more to integrate, the proportion that are integrating well drops.

One of our managers is Polish and she's been here for almost as long as Poland have had free EU movement and feels it's becoming a barrier to employment for us. According to her she had no choice but to integrate - she had to speak English or not speak, she had to have English friends or no friends, she had to buy English products or no products.

In her opinion that no longer applies to more recent Polish immigrants. Some of the staff that are not learning English at all live in a house full of Polish people rented from a Polish landlord. They buy Polish products in Polish shops, they drink in Polish pubs and clubs with other Polish people.

Those people are comparatively rare but on the increase and that can't be good for either population. A similar situation happened with a lot of the Asian staff we have in Birmingham. The difference being, that because they have such a patriarchal culture, it's only the wives that didn't integrate, the men still did. The next generation seems to have a fairly even split - to the point where some of the people who work with us are fully integrated but have a sibling that cannot speak a word of English.
 
scaramanga said:
So taking as read that our own democracy is far from perfect and needs a lot of work. Why on earth would we make ourselves less democratic by being a part of the EU? Why take the power another couple of steps away from voters?

This is especially pertinent when you consider that this country has been voting in centre-right governments (or those that pretended to be in order to win elections) for longer than most people on this forum have been alive. Why would we chain ourselves to a less democratic, failing, socialist experiment?
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All international agreements involve some loss of sovereignty. We are in this one because it gives us access to a huge market.

If you are to have a 28 nation shared market, you need some body that sets the rules and resolves disputes. Most EU regulations are designed to reduce non-tariff barriers, this makes it easier for UK businesses to trade across the EU.

Even if we vote to leave the EU, we will still be bound by EU regulations if we want to continue to trade there but without a say in them.

I wouldn't choose the current EU structure given a blank piece of paper but I think a lot of the complaints are overstated. The Commission has no powers to implement laws. They can suggest laws but they have to go through the European Parliament and final say on everything rests with national governments.

We also are exempt from closer political and economic union. Even if we had a government that was in favour of closer union, the coalition government introduced a law requiring there to be a referendum on any constituional changes.

Of course the EU has problems and the southern EU states have been hit very hard by the 2008 recession but there are signs of recovery. The Eurozone has entered growth this year and Poland is currently the fastest growing economy in Europe.

I don't think that the EU qualifies as being socialist in any recognisable definition of the word.
 
This from Facebook, made me chuckle.


friday's going to be amazing! i'm going to wake up in my Union Jack jim-jams to the sound of a squadron of Spitfires racing overhead and leaving a trail of hot buttered crumpets behind them

I'll run to the corner shop past all the british children who are laughing and squealing with excitement as they make a beautiful statue of the queen out of happy wriggling bulldog puppies - with two corgis for her eyebrows!

bunting flutters everywhere and the man from the betting shop steps into the street - "guess what! England just won the World Cup & The Ashes & The Grand National and here's the best bit - Boris put a bet on it for everyone! you're all MILLIONAIRES!!!"

the red arrows fly overhead dropping fish and chips as i walk into the corner shop, get my morning paper and go to the counter. "how much please?" i say to the asian lad there. "1 pence, everything in the whole shop now costs just 1p!" he laughs, "leave it on the counter, i'm off back to pakistan - we all are!"

and he's right! outside in the streets jolly old nigel farage is leading a huge crowd of happy foreigners - turks, poles, romanians, syrians - there's even a few English people with heavy suntans mixed up in there! nigel's playing Rule Britannia on a long pipe, rather like the pipe that takes the gas into your oven, and they're all following and smiling and talking foreign, bless them!

just then boris flies overhead in a concorde made of Bank of England gold - "don't worry!" he laughs "I've cut out all the bits the French made!" and with that he crashes into the ground at 1200 miles an hour, along with the economy, the country and all the dozy nostalgic foreigner-fearing fudgewits who fell for his flimflam.

grow up. wake up.

IN


Sitting on my porcelain throne using Fapatalk
 
scaramanga said:
In my experience (overall) integration becomes less likely as immigrant populations increase. Whilst you have more people integrating well because there are more to integrate, the proportion that are integrating well drops.

One of our managers is Polish and she's been here for almost as long as Poland have had free EU movement and feels it's becoming a barrier to employment for us. According to her she had no choice but to integrate - she had to speak English or not speak, she had to have English friends or no friends, she had to buy English products or no products.

In her opinion that no longer applies to more recent Polish immigrants. Some of the staff that are not learning English at all live in a house full of Polish people rented from a Polish landlord. They buy Polish products in Polish shops, they drink in Polish pubs and clubs with other Polish people.

Those people are comparatively rare but on the increase and that can't be good for either population. A similar situation happened with a lot of the Asian staff we have in Birmingham. The difference being, that because they have such a patriarchal culture, it's only the wives that didn't integrate, the men still did. The next generation seems to have a fairly even split - to the point where some of the people who work with us are fully integrated but have a sibling that cannot speak a word of English.
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I think you need to take a longer view, I'm sure individuals don't, but look 2/3 generations down the line, some level of integration is inevitable, we have plenty of time


glasgowspur said:
Yet they did exit polls for the Indy ref and got it spot on!
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I meant for this one only
 
galeforce said:
I think you need to take a longer view, I'm sure individuals don't, but look 2/3 generations down the line, some level of integration is inevitable, we have plenty of time




I meant for this one only
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Yes but the explanation given in the videoclip as to why it wouldn't work was also true for the Indy ref, yet they not only done it but got it spot on.
Not getting at you by the way, you're just passing on the story, just seems strange. The explanation in isolation makes perfect sense, but not when they had a success at a similar event less than two years ago.
 
glasgowspur said:
Yes but the explanation given in the videoclip as to why it wouldn't work was also true for the Indy ref, yet they not only done it but got it spot on.
Not getting at you by the way, you're just passing on the story, just seems strange. The explanation in isolation makes perfect sense, but not when they had a success at a similar event less than two years ago.
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any idea how they did that one?
 
milo said:
All international agreements involve some loss of sovereignty. We are in this one because it gives us access to a huge market.

If you are to have a 28 nation shared market, you need some body that sets the rules and resolves disputes. Most EU regulations are designed to reduce non-tariff barriers, this makes it easier for UK businesses to trade across the EU.

Even if we vote to leave the EU, we will still be bound by EU regulations if we want to continue to trade there but without a say in them.

I wouldn't choose the current EU structure given a blank piece of paper but I think a lot of the complaints are overstated. The Commission has no powers to implement laws. They can suggest laws but they have to go through the European Parliament and final say on everything rests with national governments.

We also are exempt from closer political and economic union. Even if we had a government that was in favour of closer union, the coalition government introduced a law requiring there to be a referendum on any constituional changes.

Of course the EU has problems and the southern EU states have been hit very hard by the 2008 recession but there are signs of recovery. The Eurozone has entered growth this year and Poland is currently the fastest growing economy in Europe.

I don't think that the EU qualifies as being socialist in any recognisable definition of the word.
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If you ask anyone who works in one form of compliance or another (especially employment), they'll all be able to list a load of EU regulations that we are held to which have no effect whatsoever on products or services.

I have no issue with reducing non-tariff barriers - if we want to sell goods to a country our exports have to conform to their rules and regs. My issue is with the other regulations, of which there are a surprisingly large amount.

In terms of the EU being socialist - it involves large flows of money from the rich nations to the poor ones. That sounds like the worst bits of socialism to me.

Anyway, I've made my vote. It was uncomfortable voting for something I feel so strongly against, but my wallet weighs heavier than my conscience and I like to keep it that way.
 
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