“Everybody thought the EU was about people coming into the country … no-one told of us the benefits”.

Maybe if other areas saw a fraction of the investment and job creation they would not be reliant on London. It's self-perpetuating.

The same London that raises enough tax revenue to be a net contributor to services in the rest of the country (along with contributions from the SE and the East of England)?

What, like London? Yes!

Over half the economy is made up of SMEs though.

Modern business need an educated workforce, with access to healthcare & i'm talking about modern business not the 1820s

If we shut down the NHS and stopped Universal Education, the economy would completely collapse.

As i said, we need both.

Public service workers provide the education and health services to enable the private sector to even begin to operate.

I'm sorry but that isn't correct. The private sector existed long before there were any public services. The NHS is not yet 80 years old.

Public services wouldn't be there if the taxes paid by the private sector didn't pay for them. Profit and tax, which in this country are close to 100% created by the private sector, have to exist before public services can exist.

This is no chicken and egg situation, the money to pay nurses and buy hospitals has to exist first.

The public sector is of course immensely important to modern life. Recognising how it is paid for is not a criticism and does not mean that its services are not valued.

Public service workers provide the education and health services to enable the private sector to even begin to operate.

In your case, the private sector don't provide an emergency fire service when their factory catches fire... & they don't provide AE for when their CEO has a heart attack.

So one can make the valid argument that its public sector workers that prop up the private sector....

But of course the reality is we need both, there is no hierarchy.

Oh puhleeeze.

Don't make statements like No one is working for the good of the country except for the despised and impoverished public sector workers if you don't want well argued responses.

The post of yours I've quoted is making a different point altogether. I don't have time now, off on bus to watch a football match in Division 7, but I'll happily debate the huge problems with inherited wealth with you later.

I have done. Leisure services then the Fire service.

I value everyone who works hard in the public services but I also know who pays their wages.

And clearly you think ‘bias’ is only for those who don’t agree with you.

Thix is not a time when those born without inherited wealth and family support can work up to the same level of wealth that the boomers - my parents generation, not some unknown mythical time - enjoyed. My own parents worked far less than myself and gained far more. This is fact, current and historical fact. Generational inequality and the increased levels of inequality now are well documented and fact. I’m wasting my time arguing with those who consider facts to be biased because they themselves were born into wealth they don’t recognise, however entertaining your ignorance occasionally is.

You don’t work for the public sector either then.

@WaryCrow

No. No one is working for the good of the country except for the despised and impoverished public sector workers.The rest are all working to create wealth for the supremely rich.

Teeny weeny bit biased there?

Everyone outside the public sector who pays tax in their pay or spends on Vat rated goods is paying for the upkeep of this country. Those "despised and impoverished" public sector workers most of whom are neither, can only be paid because other people pay taxes.

Most employees are employees of companies owned by shareholders, most of whom will not be rich, or held pension funds holding people's future pensions in their hands, or they are employees of SMEs owned by hard working middle class people.

A very small percentage of people work directly to benefit the super rich, many of whom are super rich by shoveling money around the world, not by employing grunt level workers.

‘Lucrative’ night shifts in a hospital. Oh my dear lord.

I work in a hospital and have just come off nights. They’re only ‘lucrative’ by comparison. They do not pay the cost of all the work I would have to do for free - I would be paying actually - on the wards to move up a band. In case you haven’t noticed - you clearly haven’t - nursing recruitment on uni courses has dropped off a cliff because it is not worth doing unless you’re a foreigner who’s done it abroad for free, or comparatively little o ce translated to British living costs.

Can barely type for laughing. You’re right slavery is a bad comparison. Roman house slaves - house slaves, not mining obv- expected to be housed, fed and decently dressed and at certain times had a good chance of e of being freed and set up in business with perpetual patronage.

No. No one is working for the good of the country except for the despised and impoverished public sector workers.The rest are all working to create wealth for the supremely rich.

Its been a long time since people ever saw the result of their labour.

You sound like a communist, weirdly. Collective farms did not go well.

It is obvious you have no idea about modern poverty levels or what it is to live poor nowadays, barely making enough to pay the rent, scraping down the back of the sofa to find a few coins for a bit of heating or an extra loaf or tin of beans.

English is the most commonly taught language elsewhere in the world and the most easily accessible. It’s virtually the worlds second language and many country’s use it as a lingua Franca. This is the local problem, that our companies and government can recruit from across the world, gaining skills for which they have not paid in education and training. That’s why they won’t pay for education and training here.

That also accounts for the apparent benefits to “the economy” whatever that term means. That machine does not have to benefit ordinary people, in fact there’s no benefit in some rich people’s heads to allowing workers enough to live on. And now they don’t even need to pay for new workers, birth or education or death, but import new mugs from all over the world.

Yes so politicians against John Major. Nothing to do with EU.

Pre 90s labour against the EEC. That's not the same as the EU.

Post 1993, we had already joined without the population given any choice in the matter

So basically John Major was the only one who got us into EU. .
He didn't ask the electorate

And he was probably simply because the opposition was Neil Kinnock . People probably still remembered the constant 70s strikes from Labour rule and Kinnock was definitely of that ilk. And if as you said Kinnock was probeu then what choice did the people have? Major pro EU or Kinnock pro EU.

Plenty of Tory politicians campaigned against John Major at the time, he called them Bastards and even had a vote of confidence in his leadership, he went on to win the 1992 GE, with 45.5% of the vote, Reform are currently on 24%.

Pre 1990s Labour were against the EEC, they campaigned against joining the EEC or staying in it.
Only when Smith & Kinnock came along did their official stance change.

Post 1993, we had UKIP, Farage himself tried 3 or 4 times to get elected and failed every time.

Even after FOM in the 2000s, Labour still got in another 2 times and then we voted in the very pro LDs and the pro EU Cameron.... UKIP came no-where.

The electorate have had plenty of occasions to have opposed the EEC or the EU.

You are obviously reading incorrectly. I never ever said Thatcher was in power while we were IN the EU.. If you are referring to the statement that *Thatcher was in most of the time" then that refers to pre 1993. Before we joined the EU.

The who premise of that was no choice on whether to JOIN the EU in the first place for the general public. The EEC is a different kettle of fish to the EU.

So what you are saying that it's the people who voted for Major that made the decision on us entering the EU then. Which parties at the time were against us joining? I was an adult at that time and don't recall any politicians saying ' no don't join the EU"

Basically this.
We have lost so much manufacturing employment over the decades and no amount of subsidy is going to correct this.

Like i said, keep digging! its entertaining!

You ve just changed the goal posts, you originally stated "Thatcher was in power when we were IN the EU... nope...

You then claimed we had no anti EU party to vote for, we did, we had 2.

Pre 1993, we voted in the pro EEC Tories, 4 times.... then again in 1992, under the pro EU Major.... Thatcher helped design the SM.... listen to her speeches on the huge benefits to UK business?

On the EEC, we had a referendum, we voted to stay in, based on what Brexitiers say now, we should never have even had a 2nd vote because thats "not honouring democracy"

Looking forward to your next none argument!

Education is free up till the age of 18. Government subsidies are available for college courses. Night schools or lucrative night-shifts are always there (see the Post Office, local hospitals). Learning a language can be done virtually free of charge, with internet resources. Professional qualficiations could be studied for around a schedule. Excuses again.

You sound completely unaware that not everyone is equally able to take advantage of those things.

This is a free market, and it's not on the person to feel wanted enough to get a job. It's on them to prove their worth in order to get a job.

It's not a fair playing field. It's always going to be the brighter and more capable people, who already speak English well and are at the minimum bilingual, who decide that it would be good to take a few years experiencing living in the UK and financing that by working in Costa.

The spotty 18 year old who has few qualifications and no experience of work doesn't have a hope of competing for jobs in that situation. Neither does the frazzled mum with childcare responsibilities, or a whole host of other people.

One of the things I've been happiest about since Freedom of Movement ended is seeing people who are visibly from a different and more diverse background given employment opportunities behind the counter in Costa.

I'm going to be livid if Starmer blights those chances again by agreeing a youth exchange (youth? It's 18-35!!) scheme that the EU is pushing for without strict criteria and limits on numbers.

I think the whole “nobody told us” nonsense and the final sentence of the article (“How is it, locals ask, that we've been failed for so long?“) are very telling. No initiative, no sense of responsibility to improve things for themselves, all woe is me and expecting everyone else to fix their problems for them like a bunch of whining toddlers stamping their feet in a tantrum. Just like toddlers, they need to learn that actions have consequences.

In fact the pretence that they “didn’t know” is disingenuous anyway. They deliberately trashed things for everyone, repeatedly telling everyone that they “didn’t care if Brexit made us poorer”. Well, they got their wish.

Presumably by making “us poorer” they really meant everyone else but them. Given what their stupidity has inflicted on everyone else I have zero sympathy that their wish to be poorer came true and think Brexit-voting areas should be given no additional Government funding above standard allocations per head of population at all until the losses in areas that didn’t vote for Brexit have been repaid.

The loss to tax revenues annually equates to just a little more than the total tax rises since 2016, so none of those would have been necessary in the absence of Brexit. We’d also have had significantly higher growth, lower administrative costs, and obviously the tax rises themselves have also depressed the economy further compounding the Brexit doom loop.

It’ll continue compounding until this idiocy is substantially reversed but clearly we’ll never get back exactly what we had before, so one tax that should be levied is a Brexit tax to fill the hole in finances, to be paid by all who will admit to voting for it. I wonder how many would come forward to show they will keep their word about “not caring it will make people poorer”? Given they are Farage fans presumably they have no integrity so I doubt a single one would own up and pay it.

It did
As did the war driving the COL crisis and lots more economic crap
But the money "saved" by brexit was never going to happen. And the resulting impact on the economy

COVID happened after that. Cost shitloads

OK we agree then. I don't understand why slavery was brought into it. Perhaps that person can explain ... or preferably never mention it again as it makes no sense

@CaptainMyCaptain it was @SerendipityJane who brought slavery into it. She replied ‘So did slavery’ to Industrialisation created huge wealth which the whole country enjoyed.

I would also like to know the relevance to slavery in this context.