The Brexit Arms

[BrandySours]

And so it is done....! 🙌

Finally!

🥳 🎉 🇬🇧 🍾 🥂

Merry Xmas!!

@ListeningQuietly

Being in the EU didn’t improve the lives of the working class in the UK Holiday pay Maternity pay Clean Air Clean water Health and safety The EU attracted other country’s working class to the UK and improved their lives. Yup the UK have always been crap at recoding who comes here from anwhere, ever On the whole the EU didn’t help many of the UK working class. The UK Government is responsible for Citizen welfare, not the Brussels bureaucracy I know you will blame the UK government but the EU did not specifically improve the lives of the UK working class. (a) it was not the EUs job (b) the UK Government will not change its spots

Clean water?

You really do feel like the UK is a living water aid advert don’t you? The delusion as to what actually goes on in the UK is laughable.

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/517415/treasury_analysis_economic_impact_of_eu_membership_web.pdf

classonline.org.uk/docs/Does_the_EU_work_for_working_class_people%28FINAL_2%29.pdf

And the biggest irony with all of this Remainer drama is that by your own argument the UK was involved in deciding all of these protections. The UK improved their own citizens lives. As an EU member, by default the UK agreed and then implemented all of these changes. Similarly you argue that we should have stayed in the EU as we can best make changes to policy inside the tent rather than outside. You are therefore very clear that the UK played a full part in agreeing and implementing all of the positives that you believe the EU have delivered.

[quote Aria11]assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/517415/treasury_analysis_economic_impact_of_eu_membership_web.pdf

classonline.org.uk/docs/Does_the_EU_work_for_working_class_people%28FINAL_2%29.pdf[/quote]
Thanks for the 2016 Remain propaganda publication. It failed though. Didn’t it?

So you believe that 100,000 of people who voted for Brexit are all BNP supporting fascists .... really?? That’s what you think a substantial proportion of the British public are? A vast amount of different views are represented by the Brexit vote - it’s only a small proportion of the blinkered remainers (as exemplified has on MN) that like to believe that they are all working class racists perpetuated by the media. The reality check .... there aren’t enough of them!! Others voted too .... and a large proportion are second/third/fourth gen ex-colony immigrants. It’s not so simplistic that remainers are on the side of righteousness while the rest of us are uneducated racists.
I don’t believe that women should be labelled ‘non men’ as the green party states so does that mean I can not agree with any of their other policies? Can’t align myself with their climate change agenda? I don’t believe that transwomen are women either (although I think they need additional protection and support) and that means that view align with some alt right nutters. So that means I’m an alt right loonie too?

We are, at last, increasingly becoming a global community. Trump was vilified for try to push through protectionist ‘America first’ agenda but somehow EU fanatics fail to see that the EU is EXACTLY the same. White Christian ex-colony powers - German, France & uk ruling over all.

And to the poster who posted a question about how university entrance is an different today, it’s not! It took 40 years for the EU to become what it is ..... today is not the end, it the beginning (I hope) along with Trump being kicked out of a more global view. A world view that starts to look to at individual countries working together in a multitude of different ways so maybe some trade and culture deals might include this? Why not? Euramus (which was fairly dire but at least something) didn’t start with the EEC in the 70’s.

And the biggest irony with all of this Remainer drama is that by your own argument the UK was involved in deciding all of these protections. The UK improved their own citizens lives.

You are wrong again, I am afraid. The UK governments opposed a lot of EU social policy initiatives, including on working time, among others. The simple reason for this was their dislike for social, including labour, rights. If only such comments were made on the basis of actual knowledge about what actually happened.

Thanks for the 2016 Remain propaganda publication. It failed though. Didn’t it?

Let me see...Do I prefer to read the analysis of those that have expertise in these areas or those of people that clearly don't have a clue about what they are talking and label everything as 'propaganda'?

I am sure you like others are experts in UK or EU social policy.

In the case of working time, the vote was by qualified majority btw. The UK did not vote in favour but the legislation still passed because other countries, which obviously cared more about providing for working time limits and entitlements, voted in favour. So there goes your idea about the UK being socially progressive.

• Erasmus Don’t know why my phone keeps autocorrecting to something else!!

We are still waiting, by the way, for the evidence that you have about the negative impact of the EU on the working class.

Aria11
Nice cherry picking there. You found the one that the UK didn’t but no mention of the extended maternity rights which were led by the uk ???
The working time directive has been a bloody disaster for junior doctors - ask any of the medical folk on here.

@Otellie

A majority of people working in the NHS are British, although in some areas it may not initially appear like that, due to the concentration of different groups of people living in particular areas.

5 years ago, my NHS coalface department was 80% British trained, 10% Australian, 10% EU.

It's now 70% 'developing world' trained. No EU. No Australians.

The developing world staff include some who admit to having bought qualifications.

Post grad diploma, in our specialist area, UK? A year's study, exams and dissertation. Nigeria? 3 days, US$500. Thank you.

Can I ask you to not bother with shrieks of racism? These are facts.

People voted how they voted for all sorts of reasons. And some didn't vote at all.
We are where we are and we are heading where we are heading which, thanks to Brexit , is the likely break up of the Union - partial or total.
Now you can either embrace the break up of the Union or fear it. If you care about the Union , you should start fighting for it now. And just to remind you, the first bits likely to go are the bits that voted Remain. By a larger margin than the overall vote for Leave. So you need to make nice with them or let them go in a velvet divorce like Czechoslovakia had.

@LurkingLeaver

I'm not sure less choice is a bad thing. Isn't the choice mostly a price/quality balance? It's only those who have money to spare that 'choice' becomes an issue....for those who budget very carefully, the choice stops beyond the cheapest options.

And you see that as a good thing?

I wonder how long the Remainer Pity Party will last? The only fuel it uses is Brexit pride that we have left. Some sort of Clean Energy it is.

aria11

In practice, this means that between 1993 and 2017, the total effect of EU migration on the wages of UK-born workers was estimated to be a 4.9% reduction in wages for those at the 10th earnings percentile, a 1.6% reduction at the 25th percentile, a 1.6% increase at the 50th percentile, and a 4.4% increase at the 90th percentile.

Full report in migration observatory website

You need to get past this "Remainer Pity Party" narrative. Or you will get left behind. Because those battles are over. You won. There are new battles ahead. And dwelling on 2016 will get you nowhere @TerryHearn

Noname99, you would like to think that this is cherrypicking but I am afraid it is not. The working time directive may have presented issues for junior doctors but this was again the problem of the way it was implemented in the UK, not the Directive per se, which allows flexibility at natonal level. There were no such problems in other countries. As for maternity rights, this is a single exception. There are plenty of others where the UK rejected the introduction of greater labour standards, including, for instance, in the case of posting of workers. This is why European trade unions and left-wing political parties are not bothered at all about Brexit; in fact, they think that it is now much easier to adopt socially progressive policies. Another positive impact of Brexit for Europe.

Aria11
Erm .... nope .... not the single exception at all ..... here are a few more where uk worker rights exceed the EU rules:

5.6 weeks of annual leave in the UK as compared to the EU requirement of 4 weeks;

The right to request flexible working for all employees, as against the EU requirement for the right to request flexible working for parents on return from parental leave;

52 weeks of maternity leave, of which 39 weeks are paid – as compared to the 14 weeks of paid maternity leave required by the Pregnant Workers’ Directive. The same rules apply to those who adopt;

Paternity leave and pay for new dads or a mother’s partner where there are currently no protections from the EU;

Shared Parental Leave and Pay helps promote a greater attachment to the labour market for working parents, particularly women, as it gives working families more choice and flexibility – enabling them to combine work with childcare responsibilities;

18 weeks of parental leave per parent per child up to a child’s 18th birthday, compared to the EU’s requirement to the age of 8.

@bellinisurge

But kids from deprived backgrounds now no longer have the chance to give life and a short term crap job in another country a chance. And who knows what opportunities they'll get if they build up their language skills. A cheap bus ticket or even a cheap plane ticket gets you there. You meet people, you enhance your cv. You grow up.

This resonated with me.

Aged 17, in 1978, I set off to Bavaria with one of my mum's friend's DDs, to work in a small hotel. Not a word of German.

What a fantastic experience. Although I have travelled extensively since, what a blast. I had no idea about what was 'out there', how people actually lived their lives, and,tbh, how much more comfortable 1978 Germany was compared to Sick Man of Europe- Britain.

I headed out there with a passport and a boat-train ticket.

My DSs won't be able to do that. Unless as Software Engineering consultants, with enough points, who will set up comfortable lives in, say Germany.

Where they will pay their taxes.

Noname99, I am aware of the data, thank you. You forgot to include that immigration has little or no impact on average employment or unemployment of existing workers. I would assume that this would be quite important given the concerns of UK citizens that EU migrants are stealing their jobs. As for the impact on wages, it is not pronounced first of all and secondly (and I may become repetitive here) it is largely attributable to UK policy choices. The example I gave earlier about the posting of workers is a good one: the UK had complete freedom, under the then Posting of Workers Directive, a policy of obliging employers to pay workers posted in the UK the wages and benefits included in collective agreements. Guess what though? It didn't and that explains the wage differentials in such cases. Other countries have done that, e.g. Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and many others. Why did the UK government not do this? Because the strategy adopted was one of attracting foreign investment irrespective of the cost; this was a strategic choice made purely on the basis of the interests of successive UK governments and nothing else.

belliniurge

That’s irony for you! I don’t think leave voters are the ones that are dwelling!!

And why the sudden switch of your concerns about the ‘union’ .... the world changes .... people change. What’s wrong with the people of a former country deciding they want to return to it. I don’t not advocate armed intervention AT ALL but are you saying that Croatia should exist? Because it was once Yugoslavia? Or that the Georgia or Estonia should be under Russian control because they once were.
If Scottish people want Scotland to become an independent state then more power to them. I hope they get a chance to vote again, I hope that they can work a way to become economically viable and join the Euro if that is what they want. I’d even support England supporting this financially over an agreed transition period. The world changes .... its a good thing.

5.6 weeks of annual leave in the UK as compared to the EU requirement of 4 weeks; Annual leave was included in the Working Time Directive (before that the UK had no legislation at all).

The right to request flexible working for all employees, as against the EU requirement for the right to request flexible working for parents on return from parental leave; You do realise that Directives establish a floor and not a ceiling of rights, right? It is then up to each EU Member State to decide where the ceiling is. Isn't this something that Brexiteers wanted?

52 weeks of maternity leave, of which 39 weeks are paid – as compared to the 14 weeks of paid maternity leave required by the Pregnant Workers’ Directive. The same rules apply to those who adopt; Same as above

Paternity leave and pay for new dads or a mother’s partner where there are currently no protections from the EU;

Shared Parental Leave and Pay helps promote a greater attachment to the labour market for working parents, particularly women, as it gives working families more choice and flexibility – enabling them to combine work with childcare responsibilities; This has been largely a failure, plenty of reasons for this including the significant pay gap between men and women.

18 weeks of parental leave per parent per child up to a child’s 18th birthday, compared to the EU’s requirement to the age of 8. Again, see above re the point about the function of Directives. In issues that matter mostly to working class people, e.g. wages etc., the UK has tried and succeeded to prioritise economic than social interests.

The UK is unequal and becoming more so.

Boris Johnson's father is getting a French passport to protect himself.

Nigel Farage and his family have German passports to look after themselves

Who is looking after the people who voted for them ?