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Post by racingteatray on Sept 13, 2017 10:26:58 GMT
How's the head this morning? My wife was getting very agitated this morning about this: www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/sep/11/no-europeans-need-apply-growing-evidence-discrimination-uk-brexitShe has permanent residence and has applied for citizenship, but is predictably outraged all the same. Regardless of whether the discrimination is or isn't true or real, what is real from talking to friends in London is that many continental Europeans simply don't feel welcome or comfortable anymore, regardless of whether they have British citizenship or not. Jeff - what does your wife make of it?
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Post by Deleted on Sept 13, 2017 10:54:33 GMT
My head is fine, no overdoing it, rather a small libation. Racism is what it say's on the tin, no exceptions. Being your wife, citizenship comes with the territory as I understand it. EU citizens here legally should have the right to apply for work and when denied that right through racist policies, have the right under UK law to redress. As an extension of this thought, I caught a small amount of a bbc program this morning majoring on discrimination towards traveling communities/groups. I take issue with this part of our community due partly to them traveling in the UK rather than anywhere else. The damage done when they visit parts of the UK and blatant ignoring of UK law with respect to planning permissions etc. Being called Pikey's does not strike me as particularly bad either. When we leave the EU, will we be able to find the guts nationally, to PNG them to the Emerald isle? This sounds really racist but a large part of my family come from Ireland, they chose to live here within the law and pay taxes etc like anyone else. Do the travelers do the same? There is a serious side to this and that is another country that had a traveler problem but from Romania. The German governments was instructed by the EU legal system that they had to keep these travelers and find them homes/places to stay. What did the Germans do? They herded them under armed guard to the border with whatever vehicles they had still fit to move and forced them over said border. The vehicles that were unfit were scrapped and anything not taken by the travelers was junked. Would we get away with this and knowing the answer, why not?
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Post by scouse on Sept 13, 2017 11:38:52 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Sept 13, 2017 13:33:55 GMT
I know it is considered gauche to say but, "when You are right etc".
Jean-Claude Juncker has confirmed the EU will pursue a policy of ever-continuing expansion, create its own army, and force constituent countries to open their borders and join the beleaguered Euro in an speech which will only serve to confirm the decision of every Brexit voter. In his ‘State of the Union’ address to the European Parliament this morning, Juncker restated the EU’s commitment to an expansionist set of policies to further erode the sovereignty of member states; a platform which Remainers will find difficult to explain away.
He explicitly re-stated his ambition to see the European Union continue to expand:
“We must maintain a credible enlargement perspective for the Western Balkans… the European Union will be greater than 27 in number.”
On immigration and free movement, Juncker said the Schengen passport-less area would be extended “immediately” to Bulgaria and Romania:
“If we want to strengthen the protection of our external borders, then we need to open the Schengen area of free movement to Bulgaria and Romania immediately. We should also allow Croatia to become a full Schengen member once it meets all the criteria.”
He confirmed that the EU will create a ‘European Defence Union’ by 2025 – that is, an EU army:
“And I want us to dedicate further efforts to defence matters. A new European Defence Fund is in the offing. As is a Permanent Structured Cooperation in the area of defence. By 2025 we need a fully-fledged European Defence Union. We need it. And NATO wants it.”
On the Euro, Juncker pushed towards compulsory membership for member states:
“The euro is meant to be the single currency of the European Union as a whole. All but two of our Member States are required and entitled to join the euro once they fulfil all conditions. Member States that want to join the euro must be able to do so. This is why I am proposing to create a Euro-accession Instrument, offering technical and even financial assistance.”
And he called for a single European president (merging his job with Donald Tusk’s) and an end to national vetoes.
He then amusingly went on to say Britain will “regret” Brexit. Remainers wondering why the polls haven’t swung back their way should watch Juncker’s speech this morning…
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Post by Big Blue on Sept 13, 2017 15:29:52 GMT
I saw Juncker's speech and again this fuels some of the Brexiteer mentality if reported in certain manner. He did not state there will be an EU army as he understands that it will not be able to exist in any meaningful manner; there will have to be German regiments, French regiments and Spanish, Italian etc. because orders given to German squaddies in Italian may not be heeded in the manner imagined! So with that scenario as each EU state has an armed force all there may be centrally is a strategic direction with the purpose of defending the EU. Which is...er...what there is now. The likelihood is more likely to surround funding of the national regiments and flag status. From the UK point of view as an island nation defence is somewhat a different proposition than mainland Europe as it's hard to walk across our borders (NI excepted).
As to Racing's question as to what W2.0 thinks: she gets less livid on a daily basis but awaits what long-term EU nationals will need to do to remain in the UK before calming down. As a tax payer and NatIns number holder her biggest concern will be retention of her UK pension rights (she is a final salary scheme member at Network Rail as well) and healthcare benefits if required (she still pays healthcare back in SK as well, and does an SK tax return every year to cover off her rental earnings there). Then there will be the issue of returning to the UK after holidays and indeed going on holiday to the EU with UK passport holders (me as Our daughters have UK birth certificates and Slovak ones too so will be able to have an EU ID card at 18). I have pointed out to her that non-UK passport holders have lived and worked in the UK for decades so it's more about the provisions put in place as opposed to a flotilla of boats waiting at Dover to exile all EU nationals in the UK on the day after Article 50 requirements have all been completed.
On the flip side Slovak friends who are UK residents with UK kids and UK Health Insurance cards for use in the EU were told they were invalid during the month after last year's vote whilst in Europe.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 13, 2017 15:56:23 GMT
"On the flip side Slovak friends who are UK residents with UK kids and UK Health Insurance cards for use in the EU were told they were invalid during the month after last year's vote whilst in Europe!".
Pretty disgusting state of affairs and demonstrates for me that a lot of people in all walks of life are ignorant of the legal requirements of their post. Bloody sad too.
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Post by Boxer6 on Sept 13, 2017 17:44:36 GMT
My head is fine, no overdoing it, rather a small libation. Racism is what it say's on the tin, no exceptions. Being your wife, citizenship comes with the territory as I understand it. EU citizens here legally should have the right to apply for work and when denied that right through racist policies, have the right under UK law to redress. As an extension of this thought, I caught a small amount of a bbc program this morning majoring on discrimination towards traveling communities/groups. I take issue with this part of our community due partly to them traveling in the UK rather than anywhere else. The damage done when they visit parts of the UK and blatant ignoring of UK law with respect to planning permissions etc. Being called Pikey's does not strike me as particularly bad either. When we leave the EU, will we be able to find the guts nationally, to PNG them to the Emerald isle? This sounds really racist but a large part of my family come from Ireland, they chose to live here within the law and pay taxes etc like anyone else. Do the travelers do the same? There is a serious side to this and that is another country that had a traveler problem but from Romania. The German governments was instructed by the EU legal system that they had to keep these travelers and find them homes/places to stay. What did the Germans do? They herded them under armed guard to the border with whatever vehicles they had still fit to move and forced them over said border. The vehicles that were unfit were scrapped and anything not taken by the travelers was junked. Would we get away with this and knowing the answer, why not? I'm not so sure that's correct Mike; I seem to recall reading a number of stories where legally and "properly (*)" married couples, where one party was non-UK born, said person had been forced to leave the country and "go home". I was reminded of those stories just last week when I saw Drumpf's latest edict on DACA workers in the US, in fact. Mind you, I think most of these people were also non-EU, so that might be the difference.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 13, 2017 18:15:48 GMT
I would hope that if someone is fit to enter the country and marry one of its citizens, there would be proof of their fitness to become citizens and while I am writing this I think to all these marriage gangs selling mail order brides. There is of course a difference and I would hope common sense and the wife in question works, pays dues and produces a beneficial result to the bottom line. There are citizens of this country I would very happily export to the Antarctic with a nissan hut and a tin of beans between them before I even considered behaving reprehensibly to the good and contributing people with an origin outside the UK. I too have a problem with the notion of common sense, it is in short supply just about everywhere. I felt badly enough I had to email MR Juncke or should I say Fuehrer Juncke. Bleep etc.
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Post by racingteatray on Sept 13, 2017 22:15:26 GMT
No, I'm afraid it is insufficient to be married to a Brit.
It was actually more straightforward for my wife (who has lived and worked here since 2001) to apply for the permanent residence card and then citizenship on the basis of her exercising her EU treaty rights than it was to do so on the basis of simply being my wife.
I might be a lawyer used to complex forms and contracts, but the UK procedures and requirements for obtaining citizenship are hellishly complex. It's easy to get lost amid the "Surinder Singh Route" and other "routes" to citizenship. In fact, if you are an EU citizen applying for citizenship, it effectively assumes you do so on the basis of your treaty rights, and much of the text about applying on the basis of marriage seems to assume you would be marrying someone who themselves has acquired citizenship rather than having been born with it. I shall be glad when the whole process is over.
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Post by racingteatray on Sept 13, 2017 22:33:19 GMT
I have pointed out to her that non-UK passport holders have lived and worked in the UK for decades so it's more about the provisions put in place as opposed to a flotilla of boats waiting at Dover to exile all EU nationals in the UK on the day after Article 50 requirements have all been completed. Yes, I was making this point at dinner last weekend with a bunch of French and Italian friends who I felt were being a little over-dramatic about the whole thing. They won't get kicked out (at least not the skilled professional variety I was dining with) and I don't really think that international companies recruiting in places like London will discriminate against them in the future any more than they do against Americans, Russians, Chinese, Brazilians, Japanese etc etc, all of whom are present in abundance in London and still seem to manage to get decent jobs here without EU freedom of movement. They just won't necessarily get the preferential ease of access compared to the aforementioned other nationalities that they previously enjoyed.
Out in the English provinces it might be a different story but I wouldn't know, having (for better or for worse) fled them for London 16 years ago.
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Post by ChrisM on Sept 14, 2017 7:35:16 GMT
It's easy to get lost amid the "Surinder Singh Route" and other "routes" to citizenship. I know someone called Surinder Singh; please would you explain this route (I hope he's not involved....)
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Post by johnc on Sept 14, 2017 12:28:39 GMT
We have a few Polish clients and I also have a Polish member of staff. They have all felt a bit of a cold shoulder since the Brexit vote even in supposedly liberally minded Scotland.
One in particular took on the running of a chip shop and the business dried up overnight. They asked the staff if they knew why and they were told it was because they were taking Scottish jobs! They were actually taking over from a Scottish Italian couple who were retiring but it shows that even where the vote was remain there is an underlying racism which is totally unfounded and irrational.
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Post by Big Blue on Sept 14, 2017 13:04:40 GMT
One in particular took on the running of a chip shop and the business dried up overnight. They asked the staff if they knew why and they were told it was because they were taking Scottish jobs!
So the shop has reopened under Scottish ownership, right?
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2017 15:17:50 GMT
Brexit yes, paranoia no. Civilisation?
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Post by racingteatray on Sept 14, 2017 20:45:18 GMT
It's easy to get lost amid the "Surinder Singh Route" and other "routes" to citizenship. I know someone called Surinder Singh; please would you explain this route (I hope he's not involved....) www.gov.uk/family-permit/surinder-singh
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Post by racingteatray on Sept 14, 2017 20:47:30 GMT
Just been to Munich for a 24 hr flying visit to talk to a hall full of German clients about high yield bonds.
Guess what they all wanted to ask about...
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Post by Boxer6 on Sept 14, 2017 22:21:54 GMT
Just been to Munich for a 24 hr flying visit to talk to a hall full of German clients about high yield bonds. Guess what they all wanted to ask about... How badly Celtic were hammered by PSG the other night?
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Post by ChrisM on Sept 15, 2017 7:12:12 GMT
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Post by PetrolEd on Sept 15, 2017 8:06:55 GMT
Tell us more about these high yield bonds, zero risk yeah?
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Post by Tim on Sept 15, 2017 13:31:25 GMT
One in particular took on the running of a chip shop and the business dried up overnight. They asked the staff if they knew why and they were told it was because they were taking Scottish jobs!
So the shop has reopened under Scottish ownership, right?
They should move to St Andrews then because the Tail End chippy in Market Street (just up from the Tesco Metro) is run by, and 50% staffed by, Poles.
It is NEVER quiet in there but their speed of service (and quality of product) is far in excess of the majority of chip shops in the general area!
(I hope this doesn't come across as me being an expert on chip shops, I only go occasionally ).
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Post by johnc on Sept 15, 2017 14:00:04 GMT
I have enjoyed both Cromers and the Tail End. I also had lunch today in a great café owned and staffed solely by Poles and it was, as usual excellent in every way.
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Post by racingteatray on Sept 15, 2017 23:18:57 GMT
Tell us more about these high yield bonds, zero risk yeah? No high yield without high risk...
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Post by Deleted on Sept 16, 2017 22:09:44 GMT
Actually, I have these Brooke bonds based in China, or is it caramic, no risque very high yield but you must promise not to tell anyone...............
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Post by ChrisM on Sept 17, 2017 20:17:20 GMT
Actually, I have these Brooke bonds based in China..... Have you got them down to a Tea ?
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Post by Deleted on Sept 18, 2017 10:06:57 GMT
Tea yes, digestives no, not going overboard...
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Post by racingteatray on Sept 18, 2017 13:12:06 GMT
This piece in the FT on Boris' latest bit of self-aggrandisement is worth a read:
Just as he intended, Boris Johnson’s Brexit manifesto in the Daily Telegraph has brought the undivided attention of all of Westminster, and the media that cover it, on to him. Just days before Prime Minister Theresa May is set to give a long-heralded speech on Brexit in Florence, her foreign secretary has upstaged her. The political game analysis (my colleagues Sebastian Payne and Henry Mance have the details) is all about whether he has also undermined her, and how this will play with the Tory grassroots. The FT editorial column slams him for being “crass”, “facile” and “deeply self-serving”.
The only thing left for Free Lunch to do is provide a little analysis of the substance of the foreign secretary’s Telegraph article: what he actually says about the facts of Brexit, and when he plays fast and loose with the truth.
The piece has been very cleverly crafted to challenge the prime minister without anywhere contradicting her official or implied policy. Johnson insists that Brexit must entail leaving the customs union, the single market and the “penumbra of the European Court of Justice”, all of which were set out by May in January. At the same time, he makes no mention of timing or a transition, and therefore leaves open the possibility of the standstill interim period that the chancellor of the exchequer has mooted. He does mention “settling our accounts”, which accepts that there are accounts to be settled.
In other words, there is nothing here to commit Johnson to a quarrel with what Free Lunch has for some time outlined as the most probable outcome: a standstill in which the UK remains part of all the EU’s structures for a few years (but with no vote or influence), followed by a hard Brexit that raises barriers to trade to a level similar to that embodied by the EU-Canada free trade agreement about to enter into force. What this is, rather, is a shot across the bow of anyone who would change the government’s policy from this destination. Depending on the content of May’s imminent speech, the showdown could come as soon as Friday.
Beyond that, the piece is full of misrepresentations. They concern both distant and recent events. It is not true that Britons were sold only an economic project and no political union in the 1975 referendum; and it is not true that “before the referendum, we all agreed on what leaving the EU logically must entail”, namely the hard Brexit outlined above. On the single market, Johnson did not even agree with himself.
The article paints a very Johnson-esque picture of the EU as a bureaucratic monster (“a gigantic and ever-tightening cat’s cradle of red tape”, to be precise) imposed on the UK against its will. “If we had been asked to design the EU ourselves,” he writes, “we would have nothing like the body that exists today. We tried so often to frustrate it . . . we kept trying to stop this or that . . . we tried to stop the expansion of majority voting”.
This is misleading at best. It has always been in Britain’s gift to stop any move from unanimous to majority voting, since any such shift itself requires unanimity. All of these moves have happened because the UK has decided to support them. Besides, Britain has been able to opt out of all the deeper integration it didn’t like.
Johnson knows this, of course. On the single market, he wrote last year: “When I went to Brussels in 1989, I found well-meaning officials (many of them British) trying to break down barriers to trade with a new procedure — agreed by Margaret Thatcher — called Qualified Majority Voting.” That was more informed than he feigns to be today. Majority voting for the single market was essential to the great push for more open cross-border trade that Thatcher championed — and largely won.
Johnson betrays Thatcher in another way. He revives the deceptive £350m-a-week figure that was painted on the side of the Vote Leave campaign bus: “And yes — once we have settled our accounts, we will take back control of roughly £350 million per week. It would be a fine thing, as many of us have pointed out, if a lot of that money went on the NHS . . . ” For this, he was immediately slapped down by the UK Statistics Authority, whose chair called him out for “a clear misuse of official statistics”, against which Johnson entered into an unseemly spat over what exactly his words meant. Johnson’s figure wildly exaggerates the narrow budgetary cost the UK could in principle save when it leaves the EU (the BBC’s reality check is as simple a refutation as any). But the most curious part of his argument is that if the UK really does not have control of £350m a week — the notional gross contribution the UK must make to the EU budget — then he implies that the celebrated Budget rebate that Thatcher pulled off in 1984, and that the UK has enjoyed ever since, was all a sham.
Johnson was also better informed when, in February of last year, he wrote that leaving the single market would divert energy from “the real problems of this country — low skills, low social mobility, low investment etc — that have nothing to do with Europe”. That is quite true: Britain’s economic problems are of its own making, as are the many ways in which it lags behind other big EU countries. And yet in his latest piece, he tries to present Brexit as the opportunity to fix all of these things. But these are policy areas in which there was never a need to “take back control” because none had been given away. To defend Brexit on these grounds is simply illogical.
The key to any method in this madness is probably this sentence from Johnson’s latest article: “We have been able to blame bureaucracy and to blame Brussels, and my point is that after Brexit we will no longer be able to blame anyone but ourselves.” He knows whereof he speaks: Johnson is one of the country’s greatest purveyors of Brussels-blaming. He may be signalling that the political class he represents is incapable of fixing the country’s problems until it runs out of scapegoats. Or he could just be spearheading a collective sort of pre-emptive therapy against cognitive dissonance. Talking up opportunities that were always there for the taking as somehow newly enabled may just keep at bay the nagging suspicion of having made a very big mistake.
The man's a fat blonde weasel.
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Post by scouse on Sept 18, 2017 13:44:00 GMT
As is this one from the Evening Standard www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-hits-back-at-claims-nhs-brexit-pledge-was-clear-misuse-of-figures-in-scathing-letter-a3636856.html"You say that I claim that there would be £350 million that 'might be available for extra public spending' when we leave the EU. "This is a complete misrepresentation of what I said and I would like you to withdraw it. I in fact said: 'once we have settled our accounts we will take back control of roughly £350m per week. It would be a fine thing, as many of us have pointed out, if a lot of that money went on the NHS'. "That is very different from claiming that there would be an extra £350m available for public spending and I am amazed that you should impute such a statement to me."
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Post by racingteatray on Sept 18, 2017 15:48:42 GMT
Boris is the most astounding toad of a man. That is verbal weaselling of the highest order and, no matter which way you cut it, wrong.
By saying "once we have settled our accounts we will take back control of roughly £350m per week. It would be a fine thing, as many of us have pointed out, if a lot of that money went on the NHS", I am pretty certain that nearly every voter who read that would interpret it as meaning "we will get £350m per week back into the public purse" and the reference to the NHS is certainly designed to plant to idea in the reader's mind that it would be available for public spending.
So Boris might be amazed, but only perhaps because he didn't expect anyone to call him out on to his political sleight of hand quite so quickly.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 18, 2017 16:58:15 GMT
Sorry but it say's no such thing and means no such thing. Boris may be a weasel and a toad but this bovine is the grist to the mill of politicking and it is past time it stopped.
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Post by racingteatray on Sept 18, 2017 17:08:24 GMT
Sorry but it say's no such thing and means no such thing. Boris may be a weasel and a toad but this bovine is the grist to the mill of politicking and it is past time it stopped. What do you think Boris said and meant then?
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