Did I say everybdy is happy ?
Why are you talking about France, it’s the UK that is exiting.
The Brexiteer crowd have gone awful quiet as the whole thing is going to shit already and the UK hasn’t even left yet. Then again for folks like Boris Johnson that’s a modus operanda.
Because you would get overly defensive, so I moved to France. Where people are not happy at not being able to pay the taxes France is demanding from them.
Which brings us to the point, people who work hard, expect to pay taxes, but they expect those taxes to go back to the people collectively, so their lives improve. We haven’t seen that in the UK in decades. It’s always for the worse, at the expense of the people.
Privatize all the utilities, great we pay more so they can turn a profit. Always in debt, but trust the government. Always taxing more, imposing more limits on what you can and can’t say, slash the pensions of teachers who have worked decades and are soon to retire.
It’s not supposed to work like this, we went from issuing grants to people who wanted to study, to offering the loans to charging them 10k pounds a year.
There is a reason it’s all one sided, and there is a reason people feel like they are getting screwed all the time.
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If you want to attack Ireland go ahead. I can point you to many articles from British media publications slandering our prime minister for sticking up for our country’s rights in Europe and also for maintaining the Good Friday Agreement and no hard border. Which is what he is supposed to do ! Other EU member states have stood by this existing agreement, no surprise.
France always has riots, what’s new.
The UK has taken a wrong turn it’s really sad to see how this thing was manipulated by certain elites. When I talk about the UK I am not attacking British people, I’m attacking the establishment that used it as a political football for their own ends.
It’s the Tory govt with their over arching austerity policies. You can only so much blood out of a stone.
It’s incredible, isn’t it? Taxes are at the highest level they’ve been since WW2. The government takes close to half of GNI, and the general populace seem to be getting buggerall for it.
I believe income taxes in the UK are very much at the low end for many Western countries, especially on high earners. Probably the influence of bankers in London.
I’m not a fan of taxes but it doesn’t look like the UK is a high tax economy from afar.
What I don’t get is how the EU is somehow responsible for the high taxes or austerity or whatever ?
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It’s true that governments everywhere are imposing higher taxes; it’s only a matter of time before we get taxed for taking a dump. My point was merely that there’s an awful lot of money going IN and very little of practical value coming OUT. The fact that everyone is being shafted just as badly elsewhere in Europe is rather beside the point.
Not everybody pays a lot of tax i.e. Facebook , Starbucks, Apple Inc and friends!
The establishment has long been the enemy of the people. For decades. Both sides. They never think how to actually improve the lives of the people they are supposed to serve.
Ever think why the governments are allowing mass migration? It makes more money for corporations and lowers their operating costs. Instead of X number of Brits buying bog role, toothpaste and groceries. You have X number of Brits and Y number of immigrants buying their groceries, renewing their tv license (something else that should have gone away a long time ago), using banks, buying shit. Which they probably think is great because it keeps the wheels of the economy turning. Don’t want it to stagnate.
Might need to provide housing, and benefits, schooling and hospital services. But hey, that’s what people pay taxes for, right? God forbid that working families might think some of the benefit of paying taxes might go to them in pensions or their kids for an easier University education.
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I have found it pointless to put any points forward…you just say " I am right" ( as opposed to my opinion is…) There is no meaningful discourse and you will not accept that the EU is in a total mess, or that the UK voted out . The Politicians and others simply did not want that to happen and everything has been done to make Brexit a total mess. You took your bag of silver from the EU…well done, I wish that the UK could have be allowed to exit with no deal almost 2 years ago. It was made quite clear …as per this clip…what is so hard to understand. Whether it is bad or good…you think ignoring all those who voted is correct?
Maybe watch this clip in full .
Whereas lower immigration leads to…
A RISE IN WAGES ??? SHUT IT DOWN, YOU RACIST NATIONALISTS.
Personally I would agree some limits on immigration are very reasonable and a good thing. But there are better ways to go about it than throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Also in the UK case non EU immigration is actually higher than EU immigration.
Ive also heard from people in the UK that after the brexit vote expressions of racism have increased a lot in some areas, it kind of normalised a certain attitude.
One must also be mindful that migration policy can be a two way street.
It would be very interesting to see how long wage increases can be sustained. That’s a good thing for sure, but everything has to evaluated as part of a whole, job opportunities, job losses, currency strength, inflation etc.
Immigration doesn’t always mean lower wages, absolutely not. In Taiwan we have almost no white collar immigrants and wages here are generally crap. Now for blue collar there could be an argument that they are keeping wages down, for sure.
Earlier I posted conspiracy theories about May over the last year. At first the conspiracy theory was that May was pushing the UK into a no deal brexit.
Now the latest conspiracy theories are that May is pushing UK into a permanent union with the EU, by threatening a no deal brexit!
Interesting how they evolve over time to accommodate new realities !
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It is a drastic move and I can see the benefits of being in the EU too, as well as having more bargaining power as a collective.
It’s not like the public hasn’t been trying to get the Governments ear for decades, they were just being ignored. Then it became, sorry folks, even if we wanted to do something the EU says we can’t. At that point I think it was the straw that broke the camels back.
I stayed out of the vote, I live here, this is my home and it’s something the people who will have to live there should decide. That was my opinion then and I think it was the right one. But I can certainly see both sides.
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I don’t think May engineered it that way deliberately. It might be the outcome. Parliament votes “no” , May steps down, someone else has a “are you sure?” vote and UK remains. Definitely not 0% probability.
But when I think of May’s attempts to leave the EU gracefully, I think her form was more like this. Might be a little NSFW, but I added it in case people want to avoid even slightly questionable content.
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The UK is in a corner now. Hard Brexit with the break up of the Union, or remain. I think our hand will be forced and the former will be the case.
When I was growing up the UK and US were the promised land. My homeland was an austerity wasteland as the govt told everybody had to 'tighten their belts ’ as they ran the economy into the ground (meanwhile the prime minister was paying 1000 pound shirts and buying islands on his salary). My father was afraid of losing his job periodically throughout the 80s. Unemployment was 20% at times. You couldn’t get a job in McDonalds or the local supermarket. The North was a mess, bombings and shooting on a daily basis.
The UK was a shining star of prosperity , London was booming and everybody knew students got ample grants and had a great life (the young ones), even being on the dole there wasn’t so bad. Then the 90s and early 2000s and the UK was still flying…My buddies were there and it just so positive, there was a lot less racism even compared to the early 90s and it was a forward looking place . The UK celebrated diversity, it welcomed foreigners. Times change. I’m not saying it’s a write off or anything I’m sure it will bounce back… but …When?
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Genius.
Here’s an interesting article. Interesting times.
One of the very curious things about British politics as it stands now is we face one of a number of very implausible outcomes. We might have an election. We might have a referendum. We might have no deal. The prime minister’s deal might be accepted.
They’re all massively implausible, okay? But what we know is that one of them is going to happen. That’s what makes things in Britain so odd.
Conspiracy theory territory? Perhaps. what they are doing actually makes sense if you look at it from the point of view of running an economy and trying to create a positive feedback loop.
Without people coming in you need to deal with some negative loops. A demand for housing keeps the prices rising, either being bought or rented. people buying and selling is good for an economy. If the population is declining there is a negative loop that is set up, less interest in housing, prices drop, negative equity and it’s not so good.
Same can be argued for the job market, closed system means peoples wages go up, but companies are making less profit and you risk them packing up shop and going elsewhere.
I can see the benefits of immigrants being carefully or selectively brought in. There is a balance to be had IMO.
What they tried to do was boil the frog too quickly.