A great day for Britain

[PAH]

if you don't accept immigrants now, you can forget cheap food and universal healthcare and you can watch lots of international businesses leave

Isn't that due to the high cost of living in the UK, forcing people to require higher wages?

As the lowest paid jobs are barely better than the benefits available for not working, they have to get immigrants in to fill those jobs as they are currently willing to work harder for less.

If there was virtually no unemployment amongst the unskilled classes that fill these low paid jobs then you'd have a point.

The only long term solution is to lower the costs of living in the UK, starting with house/accommodation prices and food/energy/fuel, and make it more beneficial to go to work on low pay than sit at home on benefits.

Just like there can be no real solution to poverty (the bar can only be raised at the expense of others), there can be no highly paid job for everyone. Someone's got to work for peanuts and it may as well be our own under-educated people than those imported from elsewhere, so all the infrastructure can cope with the population without needing massive investment.

[Mich the Tester]

Isn't that due to the high cost of living in the UK, forcing people to require higher wages?

Someone's got to work for peanuts and it may as well be our own under-educated people than those imported from elsewhere, so all the infrastructure can cope with the population without needing massive investment.

Also a good point; here in NL, there's a massive oversupply of office space but housing is ridiculously expensive and beyond the means of those on low incomes; more and more companies just don't want big offices and the accompanying costs; their staff are mobile and can work anywhere. Trouble is, councils made a lot of money selling land to speculators to build offices, but haven't build enough low cost homes. It seems to be changing now as office owners are facing the choice of either demolishing and losing their money or turning office buildings into appartments.

[doodab]

Isn't that due to the high cost of living in the UK, forcing people to require higher wages?

As the lowest paid jobs are barely better than the benefits available for not working, they have to get immigrants in to fill those jobs as they are currently willing to work harder for less.

If there was virtually no unemployment amongst the unskilled classes that fill these low paid jobs then you'd have a point.

The only long term solution is to lower the costs of living in the UK, starting with house/accommodation prices and food/energy/fuel, and make it more beneficial to go to work on low pay than sit at home on benefits.

Just like there can be no real solution to poverty (the bar can only be raised at the expense of others), there can be no highly paid job for everyone. Someone's got to work for peanuts and it may as well be our own under-educated people than those imported from elsewhere, so all the infrastructure can cope with the population without needing massive investment.

All of the great empires of history (including ours) were built on the back of slaves. Remove the slaves from the labour market and it will all go tits up. Pay through the nose to remove them from the labour market and it will go tits up even faster.

[PAH]

here in NL, there's a massive oversupply of office space but housing is ridiculously expensive and beyond the means of those on low incomes; more and more companies just don't want big offices and the accompanying costs; their staff are mobile and can work anywhere ... office owners are facing the choice of either demolishing and losing their money or turning office buildings into appartments.

Sounds very similar to the UK. The logical move is to allow the oversupply of commercial property to be converted to residential, when located in a suitable place (i.e. not the middle of an industrial zone).

Office space demand is in decline partly due to many people choosing home based small businesses where feasible. Probably cheaper to build an home office in the garden than pay commercial rates and rent.

I'm sure many that work from home would prefer an office somewhere local they could use to segregate home/work. Requires the costs of renting office space to fall to competitive levels.

Though more likely the government will increase taxes on working from home to try to force them into commercial property. Depends how many people with influence have expensive office blocks sat empty.

[PAH]

All of the great empires of history (including ours) were built on the back of slaves. Remove the slaves from the labour market and it will all go tits up. Pay through the nose to remove them from the labour market and it will go tits up even faster.

It's quite simple. To have the rich you need the poor as there's only so much resource to go around. As we have the rich they don't want to give that up to make the poor less poor.

All the cheap debt many millions in Europe and the USA have built up over the last 10 or 20 years is why we're here with this thread today.

Poor people given a carrot (0% credit cards, 125% mortgages) to pretend they're not poor for a while. Yet they've just made themselves poorer in the long run.

[sasguru]

It's quite simple. To have the rich you need the poor as there's only so much resource to go around. As we have the rich they don't want to give that up to make the poor less poor.

.

Ah the zero-sum fallacy.
If a writer writes a book that makes him rich or someone creates some software to make them rich how exactly have they impoverished someone else?
If zero-sum were true, how come the world now has more middle class and wealthy people than ever, especially in once-poor countries?
The paucity of logical thought on here is surprsing for people who are supposed to use their brains for a living, FFS

[Mich the Tester]

Poor people are of no use to me or my family whatsoever; we need people who can afford to buy lots of stuff. What we'd really like to see is poor people becoming richer, so they can buy more stuff. 'Stuff' is not necessarily some tangible product, but may be a service, and in fact, in my business and our family business, 'stuff' is a service. Ergo; profit and wealth is not limited by the availability of natural resources so long as people are creative enough to provide services that are efficient and wanted by someone and so long as richer people aren't spending all their money on tangible products, but spending money on services. There is also no need for lots of people to be 'poor' as long as they are educated or trained to use their skills to provide a service that other people want.

[OwlHoot]

Well done Dave!
Now we can go it alone and leave Europe to continue its inevitable decline, while we once again face outwards towards the broader world.

I wouldn't get too carried away - That might all just be a big show, to disguise what is really happening or planned.

[Old Greg]

I'm all for withdrawal from the EU as it increases democracy. But people are being hoodwinked into thinking it's a binary choice between the status quo (in EU) and the staus quo ante (powers returned to Westminster). Of course Eurosceptic MPs want to have the power, and while that is prefereable to EU membership (as it's more accountable through the limited representative democracy that we have) we should be able to take this opportunity to look at more participative models of democracy. Of course we won't get that (or even be told of it as an option) as MPs want the power and the vested interests that control the press and other media wouldn't like that anyway as it might challenge their economic dominance.

The other thing about his that cracks me up is a view that this will be 'in the national interest'. There is no single national interest, and neither is national interest the clearest way of dividing up interests. If anyone thinks that the interests on British bankers are more aligned wiht the interests of British pensioners (which is what 'in the UK interest' suggests) that they are with French, Spanish or German bankers (which is what 'class interest' would suggest), then they need to sit in the corner have a good long think.

[Mich the Tester]

I'm all for withdrawal from the EU as it increases democracy. But people are being hoodwinked into thinking it's a binary choice between the status quo (in EU) and the staus quo ante (powers returned to Westminster). Of course Eurosceptic MPs want to have the power, and while that is prefereable to EU membership (as it's more accountable through the limited representative democracy that we have) we should be able to take this opportunity to look at more participative models of democracy. Of course we won't get that (or even be told of it as an option) as MPs want the power and the vested interests that control the press and other media wouldn't like that anyway as it might challenge their economic dominance.

It's certainly not a binary choice; there are lots of people who want to see big reforms in the EU including a major reduction in EU regulation, without throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Those people include a lot of German centre right voters. Better to seek alliance with them than to walk out in a huff.