EU blackmailing the UK

[houseinthesnow]

So it comes to pass. The EU have decided unless we agree to their unreasonable demands they will halt all travel, including air and road travel whilst still fishing in our waters apparently!

It is nothing short of piracy.

The true nature of the EU has been exposed for some time, hence our departure - but now no one can be any doubt just to the levels they will sink to.
The EU have no interest in trade relations, nor cooperation, they only seek control and power. The trading relations is and was always, window dressing to create a superstate - and it seems they are now not afraid to inflict as much damage as possible to stop a member leaving.
Even the most passionate remainer will now see how deeply disturbing this behaviour actually is.

One could argue it is an act of war in fact.

It should be treated as such.

I will happily eat beans to the end of my days than be blackmailed by the EU. We all knew it would get nasty at the end, but who they knew they were capable of this. I suppose we can't be that surprised given the past. The gloves are off now for sure - and that goes both ways we should remind them.

Hard hats on.

We have an excellent welfare state. Please let's not get carried away, there's no 'Dickensian levels

No you don't, You have people literally starving to death after their disability benefits were cut off. You have unprecedented levels, still rising, of reliance on food banks. You have children going hungry in unheated homes.
Dickensian is a stretch but lets not pretend there is anything to be proud of.

Sorry, houseinthesnow your post above was too long...

Actually it wasn't. It was just full of nonsense and contrary points.

I see the UK as a global country, with a rich history of relationships with the whole world, I don't want to be tethered to an ageing monolithic institution that takes forever and ever to sign big deals, to respond to the world - to modernise. I prefer that we join alliances and welcome the whole world to come and live and work here, if they bring their skills with them. We owe a great deal to many commonwealth countries, and I think they should be, at the very least on an equal footing to anyone from Europe.

So these 'alliances' would they be like a political organisation of countries with a common objective and goals? Which countries were you thinking of, and whats in it for them? Would we still have soverignty then? And how would this alliance be better than the slow EU? Do Commonwealth countries really want to reform a new organisation around the UK which they all declared independence from because we didn't respect their soverignty? What skills do you want people to bring here and how does this stop overcrowding problems? The jobs we have some of the most vacancies for are low paid ones like carers and fruit and veg pickers.

I'm intrigued as to what you think our shared values are with Europe and what our shared values in this new mysterious alliance would be instead.

In terms of benefits and the cost, have a little look at how much is spent on benefits and then can we have a debate about offshore tax evasion and asset stripping. Like that fella Green and his Mrs in Monaco. How do we do that outside the EU which has tried to bring reform in this area but met resistance from the UK.

Strangely enough we were net beneficaries from the EU thanks to dear old Maggie. Thats right, we got more money OUT of the EU than we put IN.

But you know, why let facts get in the way of a good xenophobic nonsense rant about something you clearly haven't really looked into nor understand.

@onlythepianoplayer, no it's not like the ex-H wanting to buy GMO food wholesale and relabel it and insist his ex-W sell it in her family's organic food shop. That's not a good simile.

OP, life is too short to go through your highly imaginative list of supposed benefits in detail, but here are a few highlights:

Control over immigration. Our country is a small country and we can only take so many people - we certainly reached our capacity many years ago.

We have control now. You do know that Brexit won't bring immigration to an end, don't you, OP?

Politically we were always going to have to leave anyway, as even remainers balk at the idea of european armies and financial controls over states

Except that we had a power of veto. Classic Leaver scaremongering.

Many markets has been flooded with cheap labour

Including the NHS. If you have spent any time in hospital recently, you will know that the system is really heavily dependent on EU citizens. I really hate to think what is going to happen when that comes to end.

Are you looking forward to paying so much more for everything when cheap labour is no longer available?

Now when someone commits a serious crime in our country they will be deported, currently they can just return

No, they can't, other than under a new identity, because they would be imprisoned on entry otherwise. And of course if you can produce a new identity Brexit will make precisely zero difference.

Your children and mine will inherit a country they can actually govern, rather than one that is cowering under the EU commission's rules. No one can actually call it democratic institution can they!

Nothing is stopping us from governing the country as we are currently. The reality is that as long as we are dependent on trade with other countries, i.e. forever, we are going to have to accept their conditions for trade. More so, as we will be in such a weak trading position comparatively.

Many companies will thrive without the EU red tape strangling creativity - many will make much more money too as we expand into new markets

So how come so many of the big companies have left or are in the process of leaving? As for that creativity, have you seen the effects of leaving on things like scientific research? They really are pretty disastrous.

11) The incredible amount of money we were paying in just to be part of the EU is eyewatering, and getting larger and larger. I would rather we invested in our own country.

Have you compared that with what we got out of it in terms of inward investment and trade? And it all pales into insignificance compared with the cost of leaving and all the trade we are losing.

@RedToothBrush, if only there were statesman (stateswomen) with good senses of humour like Mrs Thatcher around now. She'd pull the country together.

Thanks to that odious little twerp Macron.

'You have people literally starving to death '

Literally?! Have you got a link please.

I though we had the highest obesity rates in Europe..

Now of course that isn't healthy either but no one is 'starving to death' in the UK. Quite the opposite.

Control over immigration. Our country is a small country and we can only take so many people - we certainly reached our capacity many years ago. Our schools are full, our hospitals are full, our roads are full, our GP surgeries are full and it is impossible to get an app even two years ago. You could endlessly throw money at this situation, and it will never get any better, because you can not accept endless numbers of people and expect to serve them to the same standard. It is impossible. We are absolutely full to bursting, and there was not a single mechanism that the EU were even willing to TALK about, much less action on countries like ours being able to put a break on the millions of people arriving here.

We can control, and have always been able to control, non-EU migration to the country. Yet migration from outside the EU has risen every year since 2013, with particularly huge rises since the Brexit referendum.

So for example, net migration from outside the EU was 163,000 in the year to June 2018, and 229,000 in the year to June 2019.

Isn’t it funny? We’re FULL apparently. But yet the one type of immigration we can control and always could - and it’s increased consistently.

In short, net migration figures will remain pretty much the same.

*Control over immigration. Our country is a small country and we can only take so many people - we certainly reached our capacity many years ago.

We have control now. You do know that Brexit won't bring immigration to an end, don't you, OP?*

How is there control now with freedom of movement throughout the EU?

[quote Zilla1]@RedToothBrush, if only there were statesman (stateswomen) with good senses of humour like Mrs Thatcher around now. She'd pull the country together.[/quote]
she had more balls that Cameron and Boris combined.

In fact she still does.

And I detested her in the 1980s. I lost count the number of marches I went on.

@GetOffYourHighHorse, I don't know if this is the case the PP had in mind. I found it terrible and sad. It was reasonably broadly publicised, IMO.

www.disabilityrightsuk.org/news/2020/january/disabled-man-starved-death-after-dwp-wrongly-stopped-his-benefits

amp.theguardian.com/society/2019/jan/29/disabled-people-hungry-thatcher-social-fabric

amp.theguardian.com/society/2020/jan/28/disabled-man-starved-to-death-after-dwp-stopped-his-benefits

There you go HighHorse.

[quote Zilla1]@RedToothBrush, if only there were statesman (stateswomen) with good senses of humour like Mrs Thatcher around now. She'd pull the country together.[/quote]
Right. Now you are really pushing it!

But yeah the rebate was pretty good for us. Not so great for smaller states who had to fork out more for their membership of the EU per head of population. Cos you know these trade deals are all about being equally fair to everyone.

@DGRossetti, I remember a speech fairly soon after the election drawing on St Francis "Where there is discord, may we bring harmony..." If only every politician were are true to their word as she demonstrably was when she said this.

[quote Zilla1]@GetOffYourHighHorse, I don't know if this is the case the PP had in mind. I found it terrible and sad. It was reasonably broadly publicised, IMO.

www.disabilityrightsuk.org/news/2020/january/disabled-man-starved-death-after-dwp-wrongly-stopped-his-benefits[/quote]
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-53904251

The death of a woman whose one-year-old child was reportedly found malnourished beside her body is being investigated.

...

Although, here's JRMs take on it.

It's a wonder brexiteers didn't consider these pitfalls and only looked towards their blue passports!

@DGRossetti, another terrible case. I suppose these are the outliers with adverse health impacts from poverty spread across the majority.

@GetOffYourHighHorse

'The gap between rich and poor is on Dickensian levels.'

Dickensian .

We have an excellent welfare state. Please let's not get carried away, there's no 'Dickensian levels'.

@@GetOffYourHighHorse, an excellent welfare system will give you

• a nearly full salary if you are made redundant for 6 months
• full time salary if the company can’t keep you for several months. You then. Have priority when said company is hiring again
• state support increases as you have more children, no limit.
• state pension is a MINNIMUM of £400 a month.. that's when you haven’t been able to get a full pension. People get in averages 80% of their wage as their pension
• when people are ill, they are still paid their. Normal wages not the meagre SSSP. The sickness pay here is lower than in the US..

many more examples but the U.K. really does NOT have a generous welfare system

2. Our welfare system has been abused for years, with people from Eastern Europe and other countries sending home child benefit and other benefits to their home countries Legally claiming benefits they are entitled to as TAX PAYERS(my cleaner did this for three years so I know just how it works, she was very honest about why they came) and using our services without having paid into them, many were arriving for operations, to have babies and all the rest, because in many other countries in Europe you have to pay to see a doctor, a midwife and an operation. E11 is means tourists get the same healthcare they get in their home country but again UK TAX PAYERS are entitled to NHS care - similar to UK pensioners in Spain accessing health care We were paying benefits to people that don't even live here, and have in fact never lived here! Can you provide a link for that or do you mean the children of UK tax payers? And because it is part of the EU law not to discriminate, we have no choice but to continue. Or we could stop the benefits None working EU immigrants have no recourse to public funds unless they work and pay tax , and our own people would then suffer. I would rather see the money go to the people in real need, that actually live in this country

You really need to add some facts to your rants - it might make you look a bit less daft

[quote Zilla1]@DGRossetti, I remember a speech fairly soon after the election drawing on St Francis "Where there is discord, may we bring harmony..." If only every politician were are true to their word as she demonstrably was when she said this.[/quote]
Like I said, I pretty much detested her.

However, because I'm not as thick as I sound, I could also find some positives in her.

1. Listening to science. Not consistently. But certainly she immediately grasped her experts were right over AIDS and implemented a hard-hitting, world leading and life saving programme in the UK. Despite her own drooling backebenchers not getting a single word of the science.

2. She didn't stand for any nonsense from the Eurosceptics - even though she was decidedly lukewarm over Europe. Especially in the EEC phase.

3. She pretty much handbagged France and Germany into accepting that there had to be a Single Market in the EEC for it to be worth the UKs while.

So 3 good pluses there. Compared to Boris, Mays and Camerons combined total of "fuck all".

You can’t expect to stop paying your subscription and leave the Golf Club and then continue to play on the course.

[quote Zilla1]@DGRossetti, another terrible case. I suppose these are the outliers with adverse health impacts from poverty spread across the majority.[/quote]
The problem is, despite plenty of lectures from experts like JRM, Gove, Raab and the likes, people insist on being poor, vulnerable and disabled.

So really, it's their own fault.

Britains benefits are amongst the least in europe

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/britains-benefits-among-least-generous-7390983

But we, the Great British Public, voted to LEAVE. Why are we surprised that the EU don't want to shake our hands upon departure? We have told them we don't want to be in the club any more.

Why are so many people shocked and wounded by the emergence of the implications of leaving the EU? Surely those that voted for Brexit factored in these changes?

If they didn't, sorry but that's nothing short of stupidity and if they did, we can stop with the faux horror. We don't get to say "I don't want to play anymore," and then throw our toys out the pram when we suddenly get our sweets taken away.

Wise up OP

OP is illustrating perfectly the power of the populist playbook, as originated by Goebels and refined in the US. Avoid facts and policy, stir emotions, especially anger, xenophobia, and nationalism, and blame the “other”. In this case the EU /remainers /immigrants but it could be and has been Mexicans or Jews.

“Populists separate campaigning from governance. Their leaders are selected not for any governing skills but strictly for their ability to drive engagement. That’s why many of them — Beppe Grillo, Boris Johnson, Trump — come from entertainment industries. A quick route to engagement is arousing anger. In Finkelstein’s words, “The guy who says, ‘I have a seven-point plan for fixing the pensions system’” will lose to “the guy who says, ‘Throw them out! Get rid of those people’”.

For Finkelstein, more important than choosing one’s own candidate was selecting the right enemy. The ideal enemy is a person or group who can be presented as the embodiment of assorted evils. The populist script says: no matter how placid and safe your country might seem, this enemy intends to destroy your way of life or even kill you.”

Hence we get a man elected for three word slogans and empty blustering rhetoric, entirely incapable of governance. As shown by the mismanagement of Covid, just a taster of the car crash to come, when OP will see the hopes and dreams with which leave engaged her /him crash into the complicated reality, that actually requires the boring skills of governance.....