Benefits for immigrants from the EU

[AtW]

Not all Romanians and Bulgarians are Roma. Not all Roma are Bulgarian or Romanian.

What about Romans?

[AtW]

US steel producers are being undercut by cheap foreign producers costing jobs in the US.

What's the simple answer easy! lets introduce tariffs and this protects steel jobs, oh why didn't we think of this before....we saved 50,000 jobs whoohoo

Oh hang on say US car manufacturers and everyone else using steel now we're using very expensive steel and we can't sell our goods abroad I'm afraid we' all be sacking 500,000 employees, hope you don't mind.

Here is more appropriate example - rare earth elements were too expensive to mine in USA, so Chinese took all the market and now they decide what quotas to introduce for foreign countries. There is nothing wrong with an import tariff on imported products that come from countries that don't give a tulip about ecology there, workers' lifes etc - short term benefit of lower prices in a long term will result in people not having jobs in the first place to afford even those "cheap" imported products.

[minestrone]

Yeah very deranged - ask any historian or any MEP the reasons why the Common Market came into existence. One of the reasons was to to prevent war. You are unlikely to fight someone who you have a lot of common aims including trade links with. You only have to look at the countries who were part of the former Yugoslavia or people in Iraq to see when they had a common enemy they were less inclined to kill each other.

You seriously think that giving migrants benefits stops us from war. FFS.

[xoggoth]

Darn it, atW thinks he's Bill Gates now!

[SueEllen]

I am talking about the modern nutty middle class notions. Nobody sane can believe it literally but they certainly are prepared to spend an awful lot of money and effort to very little effect in striving towards it, and, in opposing selection in schools for example, do so at the expense of the more able.

Marx was a real socialist and much more sensible. How his mantra is compatible with the idea that people should remain in houses that are too big for them or in areas that no working man could afford to live in is beyond me.

These people and their working class counterparts are the problem though. They believe the sh*t peddled by Blair which meant their off-spring didn't have to do menial jobs as part of their CV.

If you don't have enough British young people who have to spend a least a summer working in a sh*tty job to earn money to do things with including live, then if a load of young but slightly older immigrants with the right attitude come along off course you are going to employ them for the same money if you can.

[SueEllen]

You seriously think that giving migrants benefits stops us from war. FFS.

The issue is a wider one than just the benefits - obviously you haven't bothered to digest other posts that point that out. Benefits are linked to employment which are linked to the trade links with other EU nations. You can't take the benefit issue in isolation which is what you, some of the press and the Tories are trying to do.

Put it this way - there are lots of working people on housing benefit. Why? To answer the why you have to look at rents, the availability of social housing, the geographical areas that have jobs, house building over the years, the size and make up of households and any population increases.

[SueEllen]

Here is more appropriate example - rare earth elements were too expensive to mine in USA, so Chinese took all the market and now they decide what quotas to introduce for foreign countries. There is nothing wrong with an import tariff on imported products that come from countries that don't give a tulip about ecology there, workers' lifes etc - short term benefit of lower prices in a long term will result in people not having jobs in the first place to afford even those "cheap" imported products.

No need to go there. You need to explain to minestrone in simple terms some of the reasons for the existence of the EU and why it's lead to reciprocal treaties and agreements that look strange in isolation.

[xoggoth]

ask any historian or any MEP the reasons why the Common Market came into existence. One of the reasons was to to prevent war. You are unlikely to fight someone who you have a lot of common aims including trade links with. You only have to look at the countries who were part of the former Yugoslavia or people in Iraq to see when they had a common enemy they were less inclined to kill each other.

Some leaders were inclined to say that but even when the common market first began, let alone later when it expanded, another war between Western European nations looked extremely unlikely. Real factors in peace were probably a) not repeating the mistakes of WW1 with hugely expensive reparations and b) the common threat from the USSR, as you implied yourself with the common enemy comment.

"Preventing another European war" looks like just another bit of propaganda by our egocentric, self-serving leaders, a ploy to impose their impractical idealism on the rest of us. They benefit, the common man picks up the bill. We go on being fooled to feed their smugness.

[xoggoth]

If you don't have enough British young people who have to spend a least a summer working in a sh*tty job to earn money to do things with including live

Depends how sh*tty. I agree they need to do a decent day's work for their pay but I would query whether they should have to compete with those from very poor countries who have had to graft very hard simply to survive. If a nation achieves a good level of prosperity, some of that prosperity should be shared with those at the bottom of society and that means they should not have to work all hours for low pay.

[AtW]

You need to explain to minestrone in simple terms some of the reasons for the existence of the EU and why it's lead to reciprocal treaties and agreements that look strange in isolation.

I think it's best for him to put the kettle on and let the adults do the talking