Brexit, for once some facts.

flecc

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Agree with much of this - there is an instant celebrity/gratification in contemporary life that's way beyond unrealistic. But I also disagree. By way of example I bought an end of terrace back in 2000 for £130000 in bucks, it's market value now is around £300000. If I were doing what I did in 2000 now 300000 would be a painful stretch,whereas 130000 was just a stretch then.
But only because you would be sticking to that spot. As Norman Tebbitt once remarked, metaphorically getting on one's bike can solve such problems.
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derf

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But only because you would be sticking to that spot. As Norman Tebbitt once remarked, metaphorically getting on one's bike can solve such problems.
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That's true,but,at the risk of sounding terribly petit bourgeois, I used to look at the dishevelled little two up two down in bucks and think "surely someone earning 70k or more a year (for a 300k mortgage) could be forgiven for expecting just a little more from life than it. I can't help having some sympathy for current twenty/thirtysomethings.
 
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Kudoscycles

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There is some noise coming from the EU of trying to keep us in because the new buzz word is Quitaly,the Five Star Movement if it comes to power in Italy,is threatening a referendum about leaving the Euro in October,the people are sick of the austerity and there could be a contagion effect that the EU would wish to avoid.
October could be a critical month,the date of the legal challenge,Corbyn v Smith and wasn't that the date that May said was the start of the Brexit process.
KudosDave
 
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mike killay

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My best guess is that after Brexit, Italy, Holland then France go.
German Banks are in serious trouble apparently.
Merkel is on shaky ground.
Then will be the time to propose EU Two, just a common market without all the Arch Federalist trappings.
Should be a winner.
 

flecc

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Oct 25, 2006
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That's true,but,at the risk of sounding terribly petit bourgeois, I used to look at the dishevelled little two up two down in bucks and think "surely someone earning 70k or more a year (for a 300k mortgage) could be forgiven for expecting just a little more from life than it. I can't help having some sympathy for current twenty/thirtysomethings.
But no different from the same poor start in life over half a century ago, so still no special sympathy from me. It's in the nature of things that most can't start climbing from half way up a ladder. Inflation and the large fluctuations in house costs over time means patience and tolerance eventually results in improved circumstances.

Where I do have sympathy in the UK is in the instability and poor quality of much employment these days. That's one area where things were very much better in the past and it's an area where politicians really do need to act.
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oldgroaner

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My best guess is that after Brexit, Italy, Holland then France go.
German Banks are in serious trouble apparently.
Merkel is on shaky ground.
Then will be the time to propose EU Two, just a common market without all the Arch Federalist trappings.
Should be a winner.
Not really, just a waste of time, and it isn't going to happen anyway as this is just nonsense, but it has been successfully sold to the public and done a lot of damage.
Nothing wrong with the inevitable emergence of a United States of Europe instead of backward looking little nations that are no alternative, run by elites that have not improved with regard to the people from the middle ages.
Do you really want to decline into poverty with no future?
Oh, yes the Economy (meaning the rich) will do very nicely, but already 30% of the nation are in poverty, watch that climb past 50% and then who knows?
EU Two would be a winner, but only for the Winners, and that isn't you
 
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trex

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we can join EU2 if it happens.
 

oldgroaner

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we can join EU2 if it happens.
Why bother?
only the rich will benefit. without membership in the fullest sense the poorer classes will be mere stock to be put to whatever use the elite decide.
The same as now on Steroids.
We deserve better than that as a nation.
And here's a thought for the "Little Englanders" let's look forward 40 years or so
What sort of Nation will this be? how many of the inhabitants will be able to claim that they are not immigrant during the last 150 years or so?
We will be a completely cosmopolitan nation, and there is nothing wrong with that , but it makes a joke of isolating ourselves from the main continental population, doesn't it?
 
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trex

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Why bother?
because half of the country can't keep up with the other half.
It's all well and good to have utopian goals but it's no good if half of the country don't understand why you want them.
 

oldgroaner

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because half of the country can't keep up with the other half.
It's all well and good to have utopian goals but it's no good if half of the country don't understand why you want them.
This is not a Utopian Goal, merely a rational one.
The problem is that simply accepting the free market without a social agenda merely enhances the power that the Elite wield over the population and in the end will lead to social unrest far worse than the little hiccup that the referendum caused.
The 52% will rapidly realise that it hasn't improved their lot, won't they? and will object both to it being done against their wishes and not producing the desired result.
A society that fails to keep the population happy is on the downward curve to failure and disorder.
 

trex

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I do agree with your reasoning - simply accepting the free market without a social agenda is not acceptable in the 21st century but a lot of people don't care for words like market, economy, social agenda. You have to prove that they are better off inside the EU than outside, the elite don't need convincing but most people do. I think too many federalists, even with best intent, monopolise the EU apparatus to push their agenda too fast for the rest to follow. They exploit the fact that we need common market rules to take over control of foreign and defense policies for example.
 

oldgroaner

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I do agree with your reasoning - simply accepting the free market without a social agenda is not acceptable in the 21st century but a lot of people don't care for words like market, economy, social agenda. You have to prove that they are better off inside the EU than outside, the elite don't need convincing but most people do. I think too many federalists, even with best intent, monopolise the EU apparatus to push their agenda too fast for the rest to follow. They exploit the fact that we need common market rules to take over control of foreign and defense policies for example.
I agree in principle, that the pace needs to be controlled, but without our seat in the EU parliament, it may well proceed in a direction we find very much to our disadvantage.
As Churchill pointed out at the time of Dunkirk
"Wars are not won by evacuations"
To which I would add in my far simpler words
"Neither is a better future"
This is particularly true when one considers that most people actually have no records of their own family history further than perhaps two generations, and actually are unaware of much of this nation's history of repressing not only it's enemies, but it's "own" people.
And who are they, when you get down to it? how many can claim to be anything other than Migrants?
look at my own example.
Male side traces back to a Spanish shipwrecked sailor in the Armada that ended up in Scotland and married into the Bell Clan, and took the name, so on that side I am Spanish and Scots, the woman he married had been captured in a raid, lord knows from where!
The Bells were Border Rievers and not the sort of people you would want to meet on a dark night, of for that matter on a sunny summer day.
The Maternal side traces to Danish ancestors from the days of the Vikings.
So despite the time scale, I'm of immigrant stock too!
And the supreme irony now is that due to the disparity of the Birth rate, people who can be classified not to much as "Native British" but more accurately "Early arrivals/Invaders" will be outnumbered by an ethnic mix that has a Muslim religion as the only common factor.
Within a single generation.
And we had better find a way to live with that change!
With the current isolationist view being in the majority the signs are far from encouraging.
 

trex

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it seems to me at the moment that Mrs May's strategy is to build up EFTA into a big enough bloc to rival the EU and get better trading terms between the two. That will solve the sovereignty problem for her.
 

oldgroaner

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" Daily Mail today
Theresa May confirms 800,000 Poles WILL be able to stay after Brexit as she slams hate attacks on Polish communities in UK
  • Polish given reassurance in the PM's most telling statement yet on issue
  • Comments made during a visit to Warsaw for talks with Polish counterpart
  • Mrs May hit out at 'shameful and despicable' attacks on Poles after Brexit
  • Around 800,000 Polish people have made Britain their home since 2004
The British Prime Minister has all but confirmed 800,000 Polish people will remain in the UK after Brexit.

Theresa May, in her most telling statement yet on the issue, condemned 'shameful and despicable' attacks on Poles in the wake of the Brexit vote and insisted they continue to be welcome in Britain.

During a visit to Warsaw for talks with counterpart Beata Szydlo, Mrs May stressed she expected to be able to guarantee the rights of Poles to remain in Britain after it quits the EU and hit out at the wave of hate crime sparked by the referendum."

The Mail is getting some rather scathing comments for Brexit fans who quite clearly imagine that the Poles are all living on Freebies.
You'd think that these people would bother to find out the rules for EU immigrants, coming into the UK, wouldn't you?
 
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oldgroaner

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it seems to me at the moment that Mrs May's strategy is to build up EFTA into a big enough bloc to rival the EU and get better trading terms between the two. That will solve the sovereignty problem for her.
But not for many of us.
And this could prove a killjoy for Mrs May
"
Free movement of people within the EEA
A citizen of an EFTA country can live and work in all other EFTA countries and in all EU countries, and a citizen of an EU country can live and work in all EFTA countries (but for voting and working in sensitive fields, such as government / police / military, citizenship is often required, and non-citizens may not have the same rights to welfare and unemployment benefits as citizens)"

So no dice there
 
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trex

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immigration is a scapegoat for the brexiters elite. They know full well that immigration is there to fulfil the jobs that the local can't or won't do and they pay taxes. What is the point to tell Poles to leave?
 
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oldgroaner

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immigration is a scapegoat for the brexiters elite. They know full well that immigration is there to fulfil the jobs that the local can't or won't do and they pay taxes. What is the point to tell Poles to leave?
None at all of course!
 

gray198

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She also qualified it by saying it was conditional on the rights of UK expats being upheld. As you say it would make no sense and be extremely unfair on the people who have settled and are working, but she is keeping her options open. Who knows what Juncker will do??? Although I don't think even he is stupid enough to penalise Brits abroad. I don't think that the vast majority of people voting for Brexit expected or hoped that foreigners working here would be repatriated as has been the suggestion of some posts on here. Also saw today that Astra Zeneca are investing 300 million in the UK so there is some good news amid the gloom. The Lloyd's decision about jobs was nothing to do with Brexit as suggested,it was planned well in advance
 

oldtom

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She also qualified it by saying it was conditional on the rights of UK expats being upheld.
Perhaps if Mrs May or indeed any of her multi-millionaire friends in the tory party are really concerned about British ex-pats, they could re-appraise the situation of our own people, retired in Australia, NZ, S.Africa and other places around the world where they receive no state pension increases whereas those who settle in the EU do.

That is very discriminatory but more than that, it is shameful!

Tom
 
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flecc

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And here's a thought for the "Little Englanders" let's look forward 40 years or so
What sort of Nation will this be? how many of the inhabitants will be able to claim that they are not immigrant during the last 150 years or so?
We will be a completely cosmopolitan nation
Already there in London, only 46% of the population are white British born.

And even that minority of white British born are scarcely natives of Britain. I'm one of them, mother Anglo-Scots, father Italian. And the part of Italy he was from has a population derived from a mix of German, French and Spanish peoples as well as a traditional southern Italian element. That makes me far more European than English!
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