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    talking of Boris Johnson

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      Taking our country back... to 1386?

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        Originally posted by Tubby Isaacs View Post
        Lords Minister for Brexit, Baroness Anelay, has resigned.
        She only resigned because of a stubborn James Bond type injury, we’ve all had them...

        (from the Independent): The Brexit department has lost its third minister in four months after Baroness Anelay stepped down from the front bench on Friday.

        The Conservative peer cited "a worsening of an injury sustained in 2015" as her reason for leaving the Department for Exiting the European Union. […] injury sustained after an "ill-judged" leap out of a Black Hawk Helicopter during a previous ministerial tour of Bosnia

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          I’ve just come across this astonishing figure in the Independent:

          In 2015, the last full year for which Home Office data is available, 3,699 EU citizens were detained under immigration powers – 11.4 per cent of all detainees – while in 2009 just 768 were detained, 2.7 per cent of the total.

          Figures for 2016 are likely to be higher: The detention of EU citizens has continued to shoot up, with 1,227 detained in the third quarter of 2016 – 17 per cent of the total number recorded in that period.

          So, that’s roughly 8,000 EU citizens held in UK detention centres before being deported in 2015 & 2016. Crikey, that’s a very high figure for a group of people who are supposed to benefit from the "freedom of movement" right!

          Do other EU countries (proportionally) detain and deport so many EU nationals, does anyone know? These people do not appear to be criminals, otherwise they would be expelled directly from prison at the end of their sentence (if they legally had be deported at all) I imagine but I don’t know how it all works.

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            I used to work in this area about 20 years ago. The plan was to remove foreign nationals the minute they were released from prison. No idea why all these are in immigration detention.

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              Originally posted by Moonlight shadow View Post
              Brexit update from my employer....5 bullet points, not a single positive one; interested to note immigration restrictions is seen as a potential major problem. My employer is a rather large company with a a number of EU sites. They have relocation options galore...
              I have yet to meet a Brexiter (or read/hear one) who can convincingly present just one single, tangible net benefit of Brexit. On the contrary, to the exclusion of the Brextremists, the vast majority of people can now see (reluctantly or not) plenty of quantifiable and less quantifiable negatives, and huge ones at that too. (doesn’t mean that this group would all vote Remain in a second ref of course, but the dynamics of the Leave vote do not necessarily mirror what people actually think and can now see with their own eyes – eg £ falling –, there are many extraneous factors at play here, eg emotivity.)

              The usual guff about "sovereignty" is neither here nor there as it is well-known that the UK had full sovereignty all along of course, a fact even highlighted in the government’s Brexit white paper of January 2017 (link below)! But hey, why bother with those damned facts when you can spew out so much fearmongering drivel and still surge triumphantly into the sunny Arcadian uplands of Brexitannia where we’ll all blissfully grow our own vegetables and milk our own goat (tethered in the hallway for the gardenless households).

              The Independent of Feb. 2 2017:

              The Brexit White Paper completely contradicts a key argument for Brexit

              Parliament has “remained sovereign throughout our membership to the EU” despite people “not always feeling like that”, the Brexit White Paper says.


              Immigration? Again, the UK always has long had full latitude to restrict EU immigration as is the case in most EU countries but chose not to for a variety of reasons, I suspect mainly because the successive gvts couldn’t be arsed to set up a suitable IT system or apposite scheme (not the UK’s strongest suit, eg NHS pulls the plug on its £11bn NHS IT system, or Home Office borders security scheme is '£1bn waste of money'), sort out the paperwork and also because, well, EU immigration skilled and "unskilled" (inverted commas as I deeply dislike this word) filled the many skills/labour shortages and mismatches pertaining to the UK job market.

              Not to mention the sheer cost: can you imagine the Tories saying to the general public and businesses (so many of them relying on EU immigration) in these austerity times, "We’re going to use loads of your hard-earned tax to spend it on trying to control EU immigration", they feared it’d have been seen as utter profligacy. Let’s not forget that EU-related matters were never really a priority for the vast majority of people irrespective of their political persuasion, I remember seeing a poll saying that it was only the 16th or 17th item on the list of priorities for the electorate in the run-up to the 2015 General Elections. Not sure how accurate a picture of this is but if memory serves, EU-related stuff certainly wasn’t troubling most voters in 2015. It’s only afterwards (Cameron’s dreadful decision to hold the ref) that it was whipped into a frenzy and got so many anti-everything people frothing at the mouth, not least most of the UK media who have been increasingly negative of the EU over the last decades as our era wallowed in full-blown declinism (Negative coverage of EU in UK newspapers nearly doubled in 40 years, study finds... Positive coverage fell from 25 per cent to 10 per cent
              )

              EU nationals pushing down wages and therefore wages will substantially go up after Brexit once "immigration is reined in"?

              Complex issue but it wouldn’t appear so. There’ll be the odd professional sector that’ll benefit no doubt – the immigration lawyers niche springs to mind… – but as a hard Brexit is likely to tank the economy, workers will be worse off on average.

              Anyway, whatever wage increase we may see in future in the UK will be more than offset by inflation, rising taxes, increased pension contributions (from employee AND employer, having certain knock-on effects on other areas at the workplace) on one’s pay packet etc.
              Last edited by Pérou Flaquettes; 28-10-2017, 10:29.

              Comment


                Originally posted by Tubby Isaacs View Post
                I used to work in this area about 20 years ago. The plan was to remove foreign nationals the minute they were released from prison. No idea why all these are in immigration detention.
                AFAYK, was a difference made (by the courts/by law) between a "foreign national" and "an EU national"?

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                  No, we deported both. We even deported to Ireland.

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                    OK, thanks, that's what I thought. But this is academic of course as those ~8,000 EU nationals I'm referring to in post #2332 are not criminals/have not been sent to jail AFAWK, but to an Immigration removal centre.

                    Still, if someone on here could enlighten us regarding my Q (in post #2332), I'd be most grateful.

                    Do other EU countries (proportionally) detain and deport so many EU nationals, does anyone know? These people do not appear to be criminals, otherwise they would be expelled directly from prison at the end of their sentence (if they legally had be deported at all) I imagine but I don’t know how it all works.

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                      Why are they in immigration detention at all? It's very odd.

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                        Because they're adjudged to have "misused" their right to freedom of movement. Presumably rough sleepers for the most part, under the justification of "being an unreasonable burden on the social assistance of the state".

                        Most of the Home Office guidance is available online by the way, the one about detaining EEA nationals is here if you're interested.

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                          Not to mention the sheer cost: can you imagine the Tories saying to the general public and businesses (so many of them relying on EU immigration) in these austerity times, "We’re going to use loads of your hard-earned tax to spend it on trying to control EU immigration", they feared it’d have been seen as utter profligacy.
                          You're a lot more confident than I am. I think that message would have gone down pretty well in many parts of the country.

                          Comment


                            Originally posted by Tubby Isaacs View Post
                            Why are they in immigration detention at all? It's very odd.
                            Is detention correlated with skin colour?

                            Comment


                              Originally posted by Fussbudget View Post
                              Because they're adjudged to have "misused" their right to freedom of movement. Presumably rough sleepers for the most part, under the justification of "being an unreasonable burden on the social assistance of the state".

                              Most of the Home Office guidance is available online by the way, the one about detaining EEA nationals is here if you're interested.
                              Thanks for the link Fussbudget, will have a gander. I’ve just come across this Independent article that chimes with the tenor of your post re rough sleepers.

                              It would of course have been a lot clearer for everybody if the UK had bothered beforehand to properly define and delineate, and publicise, the right(s) to stay in the UK, as most EU countries have done I believe, eg Ireland.

                              I doubt all these 8,000+ EU nationals detained in Immigration centres were all rough sleepers, that’s an awful lot of EU rough sleepers. Some or many must have been detained and deported for more benign reasons, cf the Independent link I gave in my post #2332 … “Some detained for losing their ID card or holding a birthday party in a park - prompting claims the Government is seeking to deter others from moving to Britain”).

                              I wonder now how they deal with EU28 rough sleepers/homeless people in other EU countries, or people who have birthday parties in parks, I mean there must be quite of lot of them in France, Spain etc. people who have fallen on hard times and end up living rough, even for a short while.
                              Last edited by Pérou Flaquettes; 28-10-2017, 12:18.

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                                If the Irish Govt spent money on deporting polish homeless people, rather than trying to house people, I think someone would burn down the dail.

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                                  How come they're homeless if they've simultaneously stolen local jobs while trousering benefits?

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                                    Cunning foreign devilry, of course.

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                                      I believe the phrase is "too clever by half."

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                                        Brexit loons now after Barry Sheerman MP, who committed the sin of stating facts that better educated people voted Remain. This is apparently the same as calling Brexiters thick.

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                                          Said Brexit loons didn't exactly dispel the image of being thick in the process.

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                                            They're still banging this culture war drum.

                                            James Cleverly‏Verified account
                                            @JamesCleverly
                                            I heard this from students quite regularly at @Conservatives conference. Groupthink getting marked up, critical thinking being marked down.
                                            "Groupthink" here meaning mastering the brief properly. "Critical thinking" meaning cribbing some lies from Daniel Hannan.

                                            I like the cut of this chap's jib.

                                            an Shaw‏ @Prof_ian_shaw Oct 29
                                            Replying to @Telegraph
                                            A student who could coherently argue a case for Brexit Deserves a first and I'd send the essay to Govt as they clearly have no idea
                                            I've no idea what the point of this is. Who's this target audience who hate universities and take professors supporting Remain so personally? It's like the shit Ken Barlow got in the first episode of Coronation Street, in 1960.
                                            Last edited by Tubby Isaacs; 30-10-2017, 16:03.

                                            Comment


                                              The world's worst poker player speaks.

                                              Nick Timothy‏Verified account
                                              @NickJTimothy
                                              Telling Barnier Brexit can be overturned, which is what these 3 want, only undermines Britain’s negotiating position
                                              "These 3" are Ken Clarke, Nick Clegg and Andrew Adonis. Because Barnier missed Donald Tusk saying exactly the same thing last week.

                                              Anyway, being able to pull out if things go badly is good for our negotiating position, isn't it?

                                              Comment


                                                Unbelievable. From today.

                                                Adam Bienkov‏Verified account
                                                @AdamBienkov
                                                David Davis on the Northern Ireland border, says if Brexit means new trade tariffs: "we've got a real problem."

                                                Comment


                                                  No shit.

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                                                    Does he know about non-tariff barriers?

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