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Originally Posted by swagman
Definately off topic but worth (I think) another view from the UK. Not all think the same way as the other UK respondant re recent UK immigration.
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Always worth another view
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Originally Posted by swagman
Many over this side still consider that the UK joining the EU was wrong - but equally many others don't. Not sure the timing is related, but factually since the UK joined, it's economy has boomed, compared with most other member states. . |
To be pedantric, the UK never joined the EU. We joined the Common Market, a beast of an entirely different colour. The thing transmogrified into something else entirely while we weren't paying attention!
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Originally Posted by swagman
It is true that membership has opened up labour markets in the UK to lower paid workers from recent EU joiners, but its easy to forget it equally opened up higher paid roles outside the UK which many skilled Brits take advantage of.........
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Many? Some yes but in the context of tens of thousands of economic migrants the balance is defintiely one sided
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Originally Posted by swagman
Its also opened up wider markets for UK services across a wider europe - which lots of UK companies have taken advantage of the benefit of the UK economy as a whole.
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Now that is, to some extent, true. Although unfortunately the truth is in a lot of cases that due to our lower wages, longer working hours and weaker
employment laws the UK has been a very attractive place for industry from outside the EU to manufacture goods
for sale within the EU.
Whilst this has undoubtedly been good for the financial markets and those involved in high end
service industries such as IT etc. it has meant that throughout the decades since we signed up to the Common Market, unskilled and semi-skilled workers, who make up the majority of the workforce, have lagged signficiantly behind their European neighbours as far as overall standard of living is concerned.
The ex-Eastern Bloc economic migration into Western Europe (a problem not confined soley to the UK but affecting
Germany, the Scandanavian countries and the low countries as well as
France to a lesser extent) is driving wages down and hours up. In the unskilled end of the labour market, people are now on average getting less paid holiday than at any time since the 1960's, working longer hours than at any time since the 1950's and, realtively speaking, earning less than at any time since the 1970's
The UK (and probably the other industrial/financial economies of Western Europe for that matter) has a growing gap between the archetypal have's and have not's. Had
health problems not led to my quitting the IT industry some years ago to work in less demanding relatively unskilled jobs I would doubtless be one of the have's enjoying (at least for a while) the benefits of EU membership. And no doubt singing from a different hymn sheet!
It's hard to see the benefits when you can't get any work however trivial in an area of supposedly 100%
employment. The more so when every warehouse, factory, most lorry cabs and a growing number of shops and offices are staffed by Eastern Europeans who'll work all the hours they can for whatever they can get and live 3 to a room in rented accomodation for a couple of years before going home.
Given their circumstances I don't blame them one bit, in their shoes I'd walk the same road but it's tough on people like us and especially for our
kids who really struggle to find any sort of work (and who are cunningly kept off the unemployment statistics by various
government machinations), who'll never be able to afford to buy their own home and who struggle even to find the rent on anywhere half way decent to live.
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Originally Posted by swagman
At the end of the day it really comes back to swings and roundabouts - and dependent on an individuals situation / position will depend on whether they see a win or a loss.
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I'm not an economist so whether the overall balance is positive or negative I can't possibly know for sure. However I do think we get all of the drawbacks of EU membership with few of the benefits ...
We're a net contributor to EU funds
Immigration is significantly higher than emigration
We apply EU legislation more rigourously than anyone else
We didn't sign up to Schengen to can't travel as freely as others in the EU
Whilst we gained some non-EU industry to replace our declining home industry, the profits go back to
Japan, the
USA or wherever and you can bet that the next big overseas financed manufacturing plant will be built in the former Eastern Bloc countries
And so on and so on!
Now this is really off-topic so I'll shut up before the mods tell me off! Happy to continue the debate by PM or on the off-topic forum though
As far as I know, off the top of my 
, and I did try to be restrained. Honest 
. Fair enuf really 
Jersey, sticking it up the Anglo's since 1066 
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