What about the Unity?

Have to disagree with you mate.
At elections you know who the party leader is and what his manifesto is. When they change leaders in mid term you can be stuck with someone who’s agenda alienates you.
This is why BJ was so critical of Gordon Brown - ironic!

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You well know that in the uk we do not operate a presidential system, as so patiently pointed out by @tommor.

However it is crystal clear that had such a system been in operation, our President Now would be Nigel Farage !

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If their agenda is alienating too many people they will lose MP’s at the next election and get voted out. In fact, it usually happens that if MP’s see their own constituency support dying away dramatically they force the leader to resign.

Of course its rich that Boris Johnson criticised another politician for doing what he has done himself. That’s all part of the game. Parliament can enact laws to make certain political “tricks” illegal - but they don’t (because the opposition might want to have those same dodgy tricks up its sleeve for when they get into power). Power is the name of the game, not truth.

And money - imagine former PM Cameron doing an interview that would make headlines just as his book is being released.

Are any of them poor I wonder.

Well he could take up US citizenship and run for President there?

Meantime come on the Lib Dems, another convert to the cause added to their number plus they have voted to revoke article 50 - yoho :slight_smile:

Back to the thread title, the Unity is dead.

Here in NI we are taking swimming lessons:

NI_in_sea

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Long live and long rule the Prime Minister Cumm…ehh i mean Johnson

And may he rule over 2/3rd of an island

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I meant, not that its a surpise to me or something i didnt already know in 2016- but here again:

And may we be a nation once again :slight_smile:

YouTube

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It will be very sad if any of the home countries leaves the UK. But not so sad that they should not have the option.

As far as NI is concerned, it is doubly tragic that UK governments have repeatedly dealt with the issues in such a ham-fisted way. Not talking about Brexit, I’m going back centuries. But we are where we are - so if NI thinks it should be out of the UK, just as Scotland might, they have the right to leave.

It would be interesting if there were some sort of independence race going on here. Imagine what would be the situation if one country left the UK, say either Scotland or NI, and the second to leave the UK was England. How would the remaining two countries feel about that?

An unlikely scenario but not impossible. Stranger things have happened. A few years back Breton separatists were calling for a unified Breton nation comprising Brittany, Wales and Scotland.

116.000 poles left the UK in 2018. Seems many more to follow soon. So the brexiteers get exactly what they want. Skilled people with jobs, Phd’s and degrees are leaving the country.

I wonder what happens to real estate prices when a city in the size of Sheffield leaves the country and gets replaced by unskilled labourforce that needs years of training just to resume standards held years before as the normal.

As estimates suggest half of the polish UK population will be leaving the UK after brexit.

Could the UK lose a million or two of its population after brexit if other citizen of other nationalities also chose to leave?

No doubt the Polish government would rather that hard-working tax-paying Poles in the UK were hard-working and tax-paying in Poland. He might be expected to have concerns apart from the best interests of his Polish compatriots in the UK.

I hope nobody who is hard-working and tax-paying in the UK needs to leave due to Brexit.

That is true and an oft cited situation regarding “immigrant workers” - and clearly in this case the uk’s gain of young workers is Eastern Europes loss domestically.

However if you drive thrugh Poland as we did a few years ago, you will notice teh Plethora of new and part built houses at the side of semi derelict old dwellings. - One may surmise as we did, that the young people who were working in teh uk and elsewhere were sending money home, to finance this building work. This is perfectly logical action if the young people were intending in the fullness of time, to return as locally wealthy residents.

What the “working and paying tax in the uk” argument fails to recognise is that the action of sending money home effectively equates to invisible “import costs” to the uk, which are not recognised or accounted for either in the official figures or by those extolling the virtues of “immigrant labour” as net contributors to the uk economy.

Similarly, the same actions are bringing money into Poland and therefore can be equated to “invisible exports” of great benefit to local tradesmen and builders suppliers etc.

Plus I certainly don’t accept the value of any argument that Poles or anyone else are “taking all our jobs”.

If a foreign national lives and works in the UK he is contributing to it’s economy with the rent/rates/paye/Nat Insurance/ electricity/phones/clothing and all the other costs of living.

If he is able to send money home then that must represent his savings - he has 3 choices, either to put it in a bank, put it under the mattress or send it home.

Only the first choice marginally affects the UK economy, the rest have no impact.

In my city there is a huge re-cycling plant operated on a 24hr schedule, I often see the busses pick up the workers all of whom are foreign nationals.

I often wonder what exactly does the Govt do with the extra PAYE/Nat Ins that these guys pay - I do know it didnt go into healthcare.

Does it just go into the pot and then we grumble when we cannot get a GP appointment.

Anyways, I know I wouldn’t like to work in that plant - it’s the rats you see…

Fair points.

Common criticisms of (especially) Eastern European workers in the UK are hard to square up. Firstly they take jobs from British workers by taking low pay, secondly they send piles of money home rather than spend it here.

If they’re on such low wages, how can they be sending vast sums of money home?

Aye and it’s funny how these things can work out in the long term.

My father worked in England, he lived a frugal life there saving and sending money home, then eventually coming back.

Because of his hard work my parents were able to ensure that i got a grammar school education (not private but still costly).

Because of that education I was able to get a job in business management as a 17yr old.

Because of that first job I was able to start up in business and have since paid a lot in corporation taxes/rates/vat etc back to the UK. Also have been lucky enough to employ others who likewise have paid their taxes over the years.

BTW - the sky news story this evening has a certain substance - the Irish PM is to meet Boris next week in NY - the Taoiseach was overheard to say that the ‘mood music is good’ (although the official line is that the gaps are wide).

Anyways, more pound buying up ahead methinks.

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Well certainly the recent figures for UK are significantly better than for EU and today the BoE held interest rates again whereas the EU reduced theirs and spoke again of QE.

Coupled with the more placatory rhetoric coming from Barnier and Verhofstatt yesterday and today - That is a possible - unless the “Supreme Court” situation is decided on an ‘unusual’ basis next week - we shall see :sunglasses:

sorry about my absence in the talk about “guest workers”

i thought of making a long post, but i fear it will anyways fall on deaf ears.

so here ill just post a few numbers

cost of rasing a child in the western world: 0-18 years = parents average $210.000 / government = 110.000
cost of rasing a child with higher education in the western world: 0-24 years = average $290.000 / government = 150.000
cost of rasing a child with high education (phd) in the western world = parents: $290.000 government = $320.000

if we count the polish guestworker population in the UK as 75% normal educated, 22% higher education and 3% high education then the united kingdon owes poland the amount of 389 billion USD

or if you want to look at it in different way: every polish worker needs to send aroun 700 USD home to poland every month to make up for that economic loss, taken into acount he works 35 years in the UK.

i highly doubt anybody does manage to send 750 home a month with the jokes of a paycheck they can earn in the UK and especially after deducting the cost of living, and even less so reliably every month for 35 years.

in fact 95% never send any money home from day one.

whoever think that any building in poland has been build by money sent from the UK, simpy lives in the 1990ies. as poland is the fastest growing economy in europe. the GDP has risen by 400% in the last 25 years. i hardly believe poland needs any money beeing send by workers abroad to build any houses.

and the statement of the polish prime minister saying “people come back, we need you to work here as we have almost no unemplyment and high wages” supports the idea that poland is not interest in any way in money beeing send from abroad by any polish guest workers.

And here:

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People not educated in higher economy do not understand what a huge benefit it is to recieve guest workers from developed economies. Its like using steroids for your own economy. The effects are hugely positive in several factors. and the negative effects for the country out of which they emmigrate is much worse than the positives that immigration/emmigration creates for the beneficiary country (the one they immigrate to).

Taking in workers from undeveloped countries is less beneficiary as they need years of schooling before they can contribute and usually they can contribute a smaller amount of time as they need extensive and expensive schooling in ordee to be able to contribute.

But poland is a developed country and anybody out of poland has enough education to start a job in his/her field on the very first day after arrival.

Here this research of a oxford professor might shock you:

https://www.ft.com/content/f1ca7b14-b1d6-11e8-87e0-d84e0d934341

It is conducted on immigrants from developed economies (europe, america, japan) immigrating
to US and UK.

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