Arnold S

Like this?

We need to look after our own first, say people who would never help anyone

Or this

DXBtoDOH

You are doing the classic attacking the messenger rather than the message.

nonthaburi

Sorry, I meant benefit fraud.

nonthaburi

There should be a direct correlation between yearly salary and inches of screen allowed.

65k = 65''

Arnold S

Prattling on about champagne socialists and Tuscany already set the bar. However, I did want to pick up on a point of agreement a few posts back about UK immigration and neoliberalism.

Years before Brexit and UKIP, when people were moaning about the Polish invasion and the BNP enjoyed an element of support, it was obvious then it was your ASDA and Tesco boardrooms that wanted Romanians picking cabbages for very obvious reasons.

Governments (of either persuasion) are happy to go along with this as they're unlikely to demand too much from the state and it gives the UK workforce a kick up the arse. Of course it's an impossible sell to the working class so they have to dress it up via the appropriate channels.

The biggest problem for many in the UK is that they want their milk delivered to their door by someone they're on first name terms with but don't want to pay the 50p that costs when they can get it with the big shop for 20p.

Cheap milk and potatoes means immigration and that's straight up capitalism that's driving that.

littlejimmy

Yep, and under-investment due to austerity has contributed to the problem too. Someone above mentioned crowded schools and long waits for GP appointments. Immigration is only half the story. Of course, during the referendum campaign, Cameron and Osbourne couldn't admit it was their policies that had contributed to this and allowed the Leave side to get away with blaming immigration.

DXBtoDOH

It all starts with Blair and New Labour, doesn't it? They who so ramped up the scale of government spending that eventually led to the need for austerity, and who also opened the immigration floodgates, first with non-EU migration and then with EU migration by allowing early FOM. So when the shit hit the fan, it really hit the fan.

I'll politely disagree that immigration is only half the story. I'd venture that it's 75% of the story. If we had not had the large scale immigration of 2000-2016, we would not have left the EU. Period.

littlejimmy

Yeah, if you like, cause Labour caused the Global Financial Crash in 2008... the Tories supported Labour spending up until the GFC and supported the bailouts all the way, by the way, but decided they could exploit the resulting debt for their gain to try and win the election in 2010.

littlejimmy

And I politely disagree with that assessment, which seems to be plucked from thin air. I don't deny that immigration levels were large, but at the same time, the government since 2010 has imposed idealogically-driven austerity instead of investing in the necessary infrastructure, which could have mitigated some of the issues around a higher population, and also promoted growth and a higher tax take to clear the debts more quickly.

Like I said, many factors at play here.

DXBtoDOH

If you look at the breakdown of who voted in the referendum, the majority of Labour voters (who you'd think would be most impacted by austerity) voted to remain, whereas the majority of Conservative voters (who'd you think would be least impacted by austerity) voted to leave. The percentage who were badly affected by austerity and who voted to leave was always a distinctly minority. While they alone could have swung the margin to Brexit it's highly likely they would have voted to leave anyway due to their demographics.

Blaming the referendum on austerity is a red herring. The deprived areas that voted to leave were deprived areas long before austerity was even a twinkle in David Cameron's eyes. They were deprived areas in the 1990s. They could justify leaving the EU because their experience was that it made no economic difference to them to remain in the EU. What economic benefits was gained from being in the EU was just not felt by these communities. Just because there's a few boards up with the EU logo and stars on it doesn't mean anything, and can actually be counterproductive, as the EU learned to their surprise in June 2016.

But the impact of austerity via cuts to social services was certainly made much worse through the soaring population - all immigration driven when you have a much larger number of people competing for the same or scarcer level of resources (similar issue with housing). Interestingly enough, it must be pointed out that despite cuts government spending still increased every year under the coalition and Cameron's brief post-coalition majority. They just slowed the rate of government growth. The kind of austerity we had was absolutely nothing compared to the shock austerity Ireland underwent after their crash, or what the Greeks are going through.

The working classes who swung the victory for Brexit voted to leave because they were tired of immigration and felt they had received no real economic or social benefit from being in the EU.

Arnold S

The only thing I'd agree with there is, it started with new Labour, but only then as a timeline measurement.

littlejimmy

Can't really argue with that. As I've said before, there were rules available to apply some vetting on being able to support themselves, but the governments chose not to enforce them, for whatever reason.

Arnold S

To use rightie parlance, it seems the poor butt hurt snowflake has only got cliches. For what it's worth, I've nothing against either companies or individuals making money and was simply pointing out that a free market economy performs better fiscally, the more immigration is introduced into the workforce.

Tesco makes more profit paying foreign potato pickers on minimum wage, temporary contracts while the Dubai skyline would only possible with subcontinent workers and their rate of pay.

Arnold S

You do understand that, for the Emirati's the UAE is largely a socialist country?

DXBtoDOH

Eh. Not really. The wealth gap between the richest Emiratis and the average Emiratis is still huge.

They do have an unique economic model in which a minority (sub 10% in reality) of population gets generous social benefits derived from the back of the 90% who are expats and get no social benefits. Hardly socialistic to me.