UK Politics - Put your mask in the bin and hug your granny

[Stannis Eats No Peaches]

Labour do need to come up with a concrete policy, because the lack thereof makes it sound like Boris has got a point.

[Spockydog]

3 minutes ago, Stannis Eats No Peaches said:

Labour do need to come up with a concrete policy, because the lack thereof makes it sound like Boris has got a point.

The sad fact is Labour haven't come up with any policies of note since Starmer became leader. They are a hollow shell of what an opposition should be.

[Rippounet]

6 hours ago, Heartofice said:

This very much does not sound like a country can simply put in place a policy of 'no more immigrants please'. Rather that there is legal procedure for removing residents once they have arrived.

This is correct.

6 hours ago, Heartofice said:

It also seems like doing so should be under exceptional circumstances and will likely result in a lengthy and unpleasant court case.

I think you're missing the point, which is that the UK could have tried to control immigration within the EU and only launched the Brexit process if the controls were opposed by the EU and/or resulted in numerous lengthy court cases.

Leaving the EU without even trying to explore what was actually possible under DIRECTIVE 2004/38/EC was ridiculous.

[Derfel Cadarn]

3 hours ago, Spockydog said:

Meanwhile, Schrödinger's Lockdown is being both discussed and denied by government goons. 

Not a lockdown, it’s a firebreak! :p

[A Horse Named Stranger]

23 minutes ago, Stannis Eats No Peaches said:

Labour do need to come up with a concrete policy, because the lack thereof makes it sound like Boris has got a point.

You think we'll get Social Care down right on auto-loop is not gonna cut it?

 

[Heartofice]

33 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

This is correct.

Then what is the point? It doesn’t sound like a reasonable alternative , and it’s telling that nobody else ever tried to use it. 

Also Cameron did try and make changes to the immigration system before the referendum, his public failure at doing so was one of the reasons we ended up having the vote in the first place 

[Rippounet]

27 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Then what is the point? It doesn’t sound like a reasonable alternative , and it’s telling that nobody else ever tried to use it.

This is a bit disingenuous. If the UK government had started registering migrants as they arrived and warned them that there were plenty of reasons for expulsing them after three months (lack of employment, abuse of rights or frauds, health or security risks... etc), then surely there would have been fewer people coming in to begin with. And I don't see why this would be "unreasonable" given the system that is now in place. And surely, the UK wouldn't have been afraid of legal procedures, would it?

I'm not sure what you mean by nobody else trying to use it, because most EU countries did just that during the transition period when the Eastern European states joined (there's a reason why 70% of them went to the three states with no restrictions).
So this isn't a logistical problem and it's been done a lot.
Of course, if the UK had tried to implement such a scheme outside of the transition period, it would have had to defend such a choice in front of EU institutions. And I'm tempted to say: so what? It was still an actual alternative to Brexit within the EU, one that was never tried.

Also, as regards to immigrant workers finding jobs easily because of them "being cheaper and more flexible than UK workers.", assuming this is true, surely that's a problem with your labor laws. With a minimum wage and a decent labor code, immigrant workers would have no competitive advantage over local workers.

So I'm calling bullshit on your calling bullshit. The fact remains that the UK never tried to fight the EU to "control its immigration." It could have tried. It knew exactly how to do it. It never did.

[Which Tyler]

19 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

This is a bit disingenuous.

 

[Heartofice]

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

This is a bit disingenuous. If the UK government had started registering migrants as they arrived and warned them that there were plenty of reasons for expulsing them after three months (lack of employment, abuse of rights or frauds, health or security risks... etc), then surely there would have been fewer people coming in to begin with. And I don't see why this would be "unreasonable" given the system that is now in place. And surely, the UK wouldn't have been afraid of legal procedures, would it?

I don't understand what point you are trying to make here. The rules you proposed would do nothing to even dent the immigration levels. Why would they? The government would need to be able to prove to a court (which court? the ECJ? Another issue) whether someone had the right to stay in their country based off some vague, hard to define metrics that they would most likely lose and it would drag on for years. How is that practical? Honestly I don't even know why you have bothered to bring it up it's so completely irrelevant. How is that even close to a country being able to define it's own immigration policy? What a nonsense. 

 

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

I'm not sure what you mean by nobody else trying to use it, because most EU countries did just that during the transition period when the Eastern European states joined (there's a reason why 70% of them went to the three states with no restrictions).
So this isn't a logistical problem and it's been done a lot.

Which countries are using it now to successfully control their own immigration policy?

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

And I'm tempted to say: so what? It was still an actual alternative to Brexit within the EU, one that was never tried.

It is nothing like an alternative. 
 

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

Also, as regards to immigrant workers finding jobs easily because of them "being cheaper and more flexible than UK workers.", assuming this is true, surely that's a problem with your labor laws. With a minimum wage and a decent labor code, immigrant workers would have no competitive advantage over local workers.

Er yeah, labour laws do need reform. Separate issue. The point was the one of the tedious belaboured points was that the UK could have done more to stop EU migrants claiming unemployment benefits, which is mostly an irrelevance because so many were employed anyway. One of the things Cameron was attempting to do was prevent workers sending all their money outside the country and back to their home countries, but he was basically knocked back on that by the Polish.

[mormont]

It is surely worth noting, though, that the idea that EU migrant labour was 'cheaper' is built on the assumption that these workers weren't getting the minimum wage or their employers were otherwise breaking the law through discriminatory and illegal wage practices.

Talking about 'cheaper' labour as a reason to control immigration is skirting close to blaming the victims, IMO.  

[Heartofice]

4 minutes ago, mormont said:

It is surely worth noting, though, that the idea that EU migrant labour was 'cheaper' is built on the assumption that these workers weren't getting the minimum wage or their employers were otherwise breaking the law through discriminatory and illegal wage practices.

Talking about 'cheaper' labour as a reason to control immigration is skirting close to blaming the victims, IMO.  

No it’s not. It’s built on the assumption that they are prepared to accept a lower wage than comparable native workers. Do you think that isn’t true?

[Fragile Bird]

4 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

No it’s not. It’s built on the assumption that they are prepared to accept a lower wage than comparable native workers. Do you think that isn’t true?

Well, duh, isn’t that the classic definition of exploiting labour?

[mormont]

52 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

No it’s not. It’s built on the assumption that they are prepared to accept a lower wage than comparable native workers. Do you think that isn’t true?

OK, so let's break this down.

Certain jobs pay minimum wage. In those cases, the only way EU workers, whether prepared to or not, could accept a lower wage than comparable native workers is if the employer was breaking the law. This was a goodish chunk of the jobs (eg fruit picking) that were being filled, though not the majority by any means,

For most other jobs, say in a factory, it would be illegal for the employer to discriminate against EU workers by paying them less than UK workers for doing the same job, or even similar jobs, purely because they are EU workers. So again, willing or not, the employer would be discriminating against EU workers if their assembly line had, say, 5 UK workers on £12 an hour and 15 EU workers on £9 an hour.

So in these cases, when people talk about EU workers being 'cheaper'/'willing to accept a lower wage' (and they do: I'm not saying that's what you're doing here, but this is a part of the conversation and your comments should at least reflect this), what they are saying is code for 'these workers were willing to accept illegal exploitation by their employer'. (Much as, for many, 'control of immigration' was code for 'reduced immigration'.)

I would hope that we can agree that in these cases, though, the workers were being exploited and so it would be unfair to blame the migrants themselves for this state of affairs.

So what are we left with, then? A class of jobs that a, pay more than minimum wage but b, UK workers are reluctant to do because they consider the compensation is too low for the unpleasant aspects of the job. Maybe the hours are unsociable, the work low status, or the physical demands are high. Maybe it needs a mobile or seasonal workforce. And a lot of the employment EU workers took up fit this bill.

This may well have been what you were thinking of. But again, I think it's pretty clear that if the employers were paying below the UK market rate for the job, they were exploiting the EU workers, and again it's unfair to blame the EU workers for that. After all, most of these employers were well aware of the makeup of their workforce. They knew what they were doing.

The only concession I'd make there is that some of those employers genuinely would go out of business if they paid the market rate. This is a fundamental problem in our economy. We want things cheap, and we are barely prepared to pay for some things at all, particularly social goods (eg social care, mentioned above). Again, not the fault of migrant labour. It's our fucked up society that's to blame.

[Rippounet]

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I don't understand what point you are trying to make here. The rules you proposed would do nothing to even dent the immigration levels. Why would they? The government would need to be able to prove to a court (which court? the ECJ? Another issue) whether someone had the right to stay in their country based off some vague, hard to define metrics that they would most likely lose and it would drag on for years. How is that practical? Honestly I don't even know why you have bothered to bring it up it's so completely irrelevant. How is that even close to a country being able to define it's own immigration policy? What a nonsense.

Restrictions on immigrant workers have often come with the expansion of the EU (with Greece, the A8, Bulgaria, Romania... ).
Some states restrict access to social benefits. Just google what Belgium has been doing for instance.
There are several well-known mechanisms that can be put in place within the EU.

The fact that you believe these mechanisms are "vague" or that they lead to lengthy court cases (that are lost)... is telling, to say the least.

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The rules you proposed would do nothing to even dent the immigration levels.

Well, it's widely admitted that their absence led to 70% of immigrants from A8 countries heading to Ireland and the UK.

Efficiency is always a difficult question, but since the UK didn't bother trying anything, it was never in a position to blame the EU for much.

Talking of which, have you ever heard of the Calais Jungle?
Have you never asked yourself why immigrants were so desperate to get all the way to the UK, even when they had already reached EU countries like Italy or France? Would you be surprised to learn that this was because the UK was far fore more welcoming than France for instance?
See, bureaucratic rules can be powerful deterrents. Conversely, their absence can be a powerful incentive.
The UK didn't want to bother with bureaucracy. Eh, fair enough. But that was never on the EU.

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Which countries are using it now to successfully control their own immigration policy?

Liechstentein belongs to both the Schengen area and the European free market, and has immigration quotas.

The point here, again, isn't that it was easy to implement. The point is that it wasn't even tried.

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Er yeah, labour laws do need reform. Separate issue.

Of course it's the same issue. If your labor laws allow for the exploitation of foreign workers, then you get foreign workers competing with your own national workers.

[Werthead]

Quote

So what are we left with, then? A class of jobs that a, pay more than minimum wage but b, UK workers are reluctant to do because they consider the compensation is too low for the unpleasant aspects of the job. Maybe the hours are unsociable, the work low status, or the physical demands are high. Maybe it needs a mobile or seasonal workforce. And a lot of the employment EU workers took up fit this bill.

There's also the aspect that there are jobs in Britain which make sense if you go and do them for 3-4 months in an intensive burst, living on site and working long hours, if you're living in another country with a much lower cost of living, and you go back home afterwards. Replacing those jobs with Brits is impossible not for the reasons it's unpleasant etc (though that doesn't help), but because it doesn't make any kind of economic sense even if you live quite nearby, and none at all if you're living in a big town or city halfway across the country and can get a job that pays more just sitting on the phone all day or staring at Excel spreadsheets.

Quote

The only concession I'd make there is that some of those employers genuinely would go out of business if they paid the market rate. This is a fundamental problem in our economy. We want things cheap, and we are barely prepared to pay for some things at all, particularly social goods (eg social care, mentioned above). Again, not the fault of migrant labour. It's our fucked up society that's to blame.

Britain has a huge problem in that we have a low-tax economy compared to a lot of other countries (and European and Scandinavian countries in particular), a very meh level of income, but a high cost of living, paying over the odds for food, housing utilities and services. That leaves virtually no flex in the system. If governments could, say, depress house prices by embarking on a genuine national housebuilding scheme, bringing down mortgage and rent costs for many millions of people, that would release billions that could go into a social care tax or NI scheme. The same if they could find ways of reducing other costs.

But since they can't do that, and it's anathema and probably fatal to the Tories to do that (and to be fair, New Labour didn't do a lot with it either), and they have little interest in doing things to genuinely help grow the economy, it means there isn't really any capacity in the system. People probably would pay a bit more to "buy British" goods made/grown/picked in Britain (Games Workshop is an interesting example of that), but they can't when other costs remain so high.

[Heartofice]

23 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

 

Liechstentein belongs to both the Schengen area and the European free market, and has immigration quotas.

 

I don't really have time to answer the rest of your post, especially as you seem to have dramatically diverted away from the question I posed to you, as in which countries have used the ruling you mentioned to reduce their immigration levels dramatically.

Now, why oh why did you think Liechestein was a good example of a country with immigration quotas? It is an absolutely tiny country and the 'emergency brake' measures were enacted because it is so incredibly small. (its 1/1515th the size of the UK). Do you honestly believe the UK would have had the ability to pull the emergency brake on immigration in the same way? (hint, we know it didn't, because Cameron asked and the EU said no)

[Rippounet]

8 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

I don't really have time to answer the rest of your post, especially as you seem to have dramatically diverted away from the question I posed to you, as in which countries have used the ruling you mentioned to reduce their immigration levels dramatically.

You keep missing the point, don't you? Almost all the other EU countries did it. Britain was the one major country that didn't.

32 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

(hint, we know it didn't, because Cameron asked and the EU said no)

Did it now?
You might want to double-check this.

[Zorral]

My, we're seeing so much of this on the forums lately.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions

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Just asking questions (also known as JAQing off) is a way of attempting to make wild accusations acceptable (and hopefully not legally actionable) by framing them as questions rather than statements. It shifts the burden of proof to one's opponenent . . .

https://minnesotareformer.com/2020/12/17/no-youre-not-just-asking-questions-youre-spreading-disinformation/

Quote

 

. . .  right now a lot of people are weaponizing this notion of “just asking questions.” Framing it this way allows the person to make a wild accusation in question format, rather than phrasing it as a statement. Often either the questioner knows the truth and denies it for political reasons, or they are willfully ignorant. Conspiracy theorists and malicious actors who spread disinformation intentionally — such as propagandists or foreign adversaries — often favor this tactic. 

Doing so allows them to shift the burden of truth, then implicitly reject the truth, and finally legitimize the disinformation — all while maintaining an air of respectability. . . .

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

Quote

a/k/a Sealioning (also spelled sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with persistent requests for evidence or repeated questions, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity.[1][2][3][4] It may take the form of "incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate".[5] The term originated with a 2014 strip of the webcomic Wondermark by David Malki.[6]

 

[DaveSumm]

10 hours ago, Zorral said:

maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity

Very difficult to differentiate from actual sincerity of course, but I guess it’s not possible to have a sincere reason for voting Leave.

[Derfel Cadarn]

A quote from twitter:

”Schrodinger's millennial - cannot afford their own home because of avocado toast and netflix subscriptions but also the ones who can afford to pay for the social care of those who do.”