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It's either immigration or the economy |
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#101 |
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Join Date: Jan 2012
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The former colonies of the British Empire would have been much better off if they'd been left alone. Especially Ireland.
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#102 |
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Join Date: Feb 2013
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Realistically you do not know that you can only assume how the Chiefs would have acted. If anything like their nearest kin the Scottish Highland chiefs then perhaps many more would have been on the boats to the overseas colonies and Ireland become a land of sheep. It is all supposition.
If the Gaelic chiefs in Ireland had tried, without any backing from Britain or another colonial government, to do the same they would have faced a rebellion off their own people, and there's nothing in Irish history that suggests they ever would have tried such a thing anyway. |
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#103 |
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Join Date: Jan 2012
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The economy must come first. End of story.
Theresa May will not last another month as PM the moment she comes out and says she's putting silly immigration nonsense ahead of business and protecting the economy. Not only that, Scotland has said today they will go for a second referendum if we do not pursue the softest of brexits. So May will be breaking up the UK and destroying our economy in order to meet some silly meaningless immigration targets. No way will this happen, she is not that stupid. |
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#104 |
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Join Date: Nov 2002
Location: Dublin
Posts: 51,658
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The economy must come first. End of story.
Theresa May will not last another month as PM the moment she comes out and says she's putting silly immigration nonsense ahead of business and protecting the economy. Not only that, Scotland has said today they will go for a second referendum if we do not pursue the softest of brexits. So May will be breaking up the UK and destroying our economy in order to meet some silly meaningless immigration targets. No way will this happen, she is not that stupid. May's hawkish and hardline speech to the party conference in September can only be explained by her running scared of public opinion. I can actually see the UK crashing out of the Single Market and Customs Union on this immigration question. |
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#105 |
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Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 34,231
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Interesting article from Martin Kettle. To sum it up he thinks May will give the voters what want even if the economy suffers. Which is a very common refrain on here. Backs up my gut feeling that immigration control will go way beyond what even the most ardent Breixter expects
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...-brexit-speech You and Kettle are right that immigration has to be a red line - national control seems to be wanted, by three quarters of voters. Most of the offers from the Leave campaign were fatally damaged during the campaign - different people offered different things, Farage had no status, the facts were often lies or naive, and offering the impossible, couldn't be binding. However, the main arguments on official offer, people voted for, stand , and can be taken from Boris - as spokesman, in the last debate. Control was the main argument - and that involved national control of immigration, legal independence, and a legal withdrawal from the EU. The economic solutions on offer varied - but Boris's final pitch was for having our free market access - as well as immigration control. That case now has to be tested. Boris has to explain - when it proves impossible. I don't think that immigration control being the only clear red line, though, means a tough line on immigration. A tough line on immigration would be fatal for health, education, agriculture, specialist skills , and the capital. And, as the capital subsidises half the country, everyone else would suffer too. And the joy of Boris's position was that he never, ever, promised lower immigration. The logic was that demand for immigrants should be met. The issue was having national control of the policy. There's nothing there that requires more than a national decision, and if thats whats decided, some sort of unnecessary bureaucracy, to match immigrants to jobs - duplicating what the market does anyway. Numbers could stay the same , rise , or fall. In so far as the top line figure matters. it looks like May may prefer to fiddle with student numbers, and have some sort of regional control, to protect the more xenophobic regions from their own paranoia. Its also unclear if ministers are speaking double speak - or just unaware of what they are talking about. Leadsom seems to support seasonal agricultural labour - oblivious to the fact that the person picking the apples in September. plants the new trees in the autumn, cuts the cabbage in the winter, prunes the trees in the winter, and picks the strawberries in the summer. Its a case of seasonal , meaning annual. |
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#106 |
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I do know that, because the Highland clearances you refer to happened under the aegis of a British government. The fact that some Scottish people colluded with it is par for the course with a colonised society.
If the Gaelic chiefs in Ireland had tried, without any backing from Britain or another colonial government, to do the same they would have faced a rebellion off their own people, and there's nothing in Irish history that suggests they ever would have tried such a thing anyway. |
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#107 |
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Join Date: Feb 2013
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The point was that the relationship between chief and clan in the Scottish highlands was directly drawn from the same system in pre plantation Ireland and possibly pre Norman Ireland. The British government in Scotland did not enable the clearances it was the clan system that enabled it to occur. The belief was that no British Government had a right to rule but that the Chieftain had every right to rule, and normally as he saw fit. Your faith is admirable its basis is a little suspect.
The Duchess of Sutherland was no clan chieftain, and she was responsible for some of the most brutal clearances of the era. |
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#108 |
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Some clan chieftains colluded with it, but its very naive to say that it wasn't enabled by the British government and the system of governance they brought with them. It was also enabled by a racist belief in the superiority of Anglo-Saxons over Celts, (see Charles Trevelyan), which also wouldn't have been the ruling paradigm in either Scotland or Ireland without British colonialism.
The Duchess of Sutherland was no clan chieftain, and she was responsible for some of the most brutal clearances of the era. |
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#109 |
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I have not said it is not complex but it is by no means as simple as you stated. If nasty evil Britain had not been in Ireland then the Irish would have lived a life of love, peace and well being for all. That is an assumption too far and history has many turns where the alternatives are just unknown.
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#110 |
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To sum it up he thinks May will give the voters what want even if the economy suffers.
The sooner Theresa May tells UK voters that we're leaving the Single Market, the less painful it will be. |
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#111 |
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To those who don't believe there is a race to the bottom, it has just been reported that China has a smog cloud over 2000 miles long.
That's what happened when you don't have worker's rights and environmental laws. |
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#112 |
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To those who don't believe there is a race to the bottom, it has just been reported that China has a smog cloud over 2000 miles long.
That's what happened when you don't have worker's rights and environmental laws. |
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#113 |
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What matters is GDP per head. In recent years GDP may have gone up but if the population rises more then we are worse off. How many tens of billions does the infrastructure and housing required cost too.
There is such a thing as quality of life - overcrowding, poor rip off housing, lack of access to a GP or a school place or a sense of community and common identity. There is more to life than just money - our grandparents had a lot less material wealth but they were a lot happier. We now apparently have the most unhappy kids in Europe - possibly as they never see their parents as much as they both have to work to pay the mortgage due to our crazy house prices which would not have been the case in the past. Most of the working age benefits bill gets spent in London due to the high cost of housing benefit. Just happens to be the place with the lowest proportion of its population born outside the UK. |
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#114 |
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Its lucky the EU has those then.
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#115 |
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Yes it is and no reason we shouldn't still have them after leaving the EU.
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#116 |
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To those who don't believe there is a race to the bottom, it has just been reported that China has a smog cloud over 2000 miles long.
That's what happened when you don't have worker's rights and environmental laws. Quote:
Its lucky the EU has those then.
As for immigration: it is the only thing that really matters now. The Brexit campaign, the post referendum anti-EU movement, the Govt, the media have all focused on immigration. May is known for being a hardliner on immigration. And like I have said previously, one of the easiest ways to reduce net migration is to make more people leave. May is a politician - she wants to win the next elections and being hard on immigrants is a vote winner. And so seemingly is the majority of the UK. They don't believe that will will be much of a fallout from Brexit. The line about the 'privileged' treatment of EU migrants that is being trotted out by politicians is hitting home - at least it is with my work colleagues. And they nearly all voted Brexit. Many of them think don't think that expelling those here already isn't too much of a price to pay to leave the EU. And these people aren't racists or political extremists. They really believe that EU migration; past present and future - is the cause of many of the UK's problems. All of that is why I feel that it is possible that any agreement will be beyond what even the likes of Farage and Gove want. |
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#117 |
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So pretty irrelevant to the whole Brexit debate then.
Environmental laws are integral to the EU debate. |
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#118 |
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How do you make that out?
Environmental laws are integral to the EU debate. |
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#119 |
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Join Date: Oct 2003
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So were both the Clean Air Act 1956 and the Clean Air Act 1968 down to the EU...?
Both repealed by the 1993 one which presumably aligned* a fair few regs. * possibly 'harmonised' but I know some see that as a dirty word. |
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#120 |
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That certainly is an assumption too far, but it has zilch in common with anything I posted. Its a knee jerk reaction with some British people, I think, to falsely accuse anyone who points out that colonialism is evil and that countries should be left alone to develop at their own rate and in their own way, of believing ridiculous things like the ones you just posted.
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#121 |
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Well that is not what you pointed out you said they would be much better off. I do not disagree that colonialism is wrong, it was the way of the world. I disagree that countries would have been better off because that is an assumption. Many things would have been different so we do not know.
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#122 |
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Join Date: Feb 2011
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How do you make that out?
Environmental laws are integral to the EU debate. Court rules for second time in 18 months that the government is not doing enough to combat the national air pollution crisis |
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#123 |
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Join Date: Oct 2002
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Its not an assumption that countries are better off left to develop at their own pace and in their own way, its a fact, and it has nothing to do with the nonsense you attributed to me about "everybody living a life of love, peace and happiness for all". Countries are better off left alone because it allows them to go through whatever trials and tribulations their own culture produces and find ways to deal with them. That's how countries progress. Once colonisation enters the picture, all the most progressive forces in society are preoccupied with getting rid of the invader and as a consequence, when they do finally achieve independence, they are left playing catch up both psychologically and politically.
I would love for the Americas to have been left to the native Indians but sadly they were not, and if we hadn't colonised them, it would have been the French or Spanish, and they would have been far worse, just look at South America. |
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#124 |
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Yes? And now you can vote for a Green UK Government that will do something about the Environment.
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#125 |
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That would be fine if another country were not to try to colonise them as well.
I would love for the Americas to have been left to the native Indians but sadly they were not, and if we hadn't colonised them, it would have been the French or Spanish, and they would have been far worse, just look at South America. |
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