Hepcat,

That is not my experience of the French workforce. I am talking private sector too - not state employees. The French can be extremely obstructive. Other nationalities are more conciliatory. These are not necessarily Trade Unionists either. The myth of a hugely unionized French work force is one spread by the UK media.

Last edited by Kingston1an (2016-05-22 08:13:30)

I do not think anyone knows exactly what would happen with Brexit.

However, if there were no changes at all then there would not be much incentive to leave in the first place.

At least when my local MP loses his seat I know I had a say in it. I am not even sure who my MEP is and what he/she actually does.

A quick Google search and you will find plenty of articles and discussion on why the Dutch Somalis left The Netherlands for Blighty. The starting point was a clamp down on benefit fraud and some people in key positions were found to have bogus credentials.

That bit of benefit fraud was endemic over here on an industrial scale. Along with people smuggling, passport fraud and money laundering.

The case I was referring to involved a high level official in one of the council's here who had bogus credentials and was not qualified. That opened the Thongs made of barbed wire's box on scrutinizing the Somalis and they uncovered massive fraud. That was in the early and mid 2000's. Many then went to the UK, but a counter argument is that the went over there because it was more welcoming.

Whichever way you swing, the statistics show that movement of Somalis as immigration from the EU, The Netherlands.

Edit: in my experience, people underestimate cultural differences. Why should we act startled, or act in disbelief when those from countries where corruption is endemic and part of the norm bring those practices with them? It's like the whole discipline of anthropology and sociology has been forgotten about. Cultures and behaviour are different and morals are not relative.

Last edited by 4F Hepcat (2016-05-24 07:15:08)

Seek and ye shall find.....

http://www.politicsforum.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=108&t=30839

http://www.nltimes.nl/2015/05/12/dutch-somalis-often-struggle-financially-report/

Some of the links are broken on the first one now, but the exodus began after a crackdown on benefit fraud in 2001. You get a gist of the issues and the two positions on why they left for the UK. But yes, with some notable exceptions, en masse the Somalis haven't been as successful as other immigrant and asylum seekers in The Netherlands. And it does look like they can make a better go of it in the UK.

At that time you refer to, Wilders was pretty much a pariah to polite society, as was Hirsi Ali who was viewed as rocking the boat and the Dutch middle class wanted her gone. To say that politcians like Wilders made life impossible for some communities is a bit much. He was a marginal freak like figure at the time.

The Dutch are really quite liberal and generous and welcoming to asylum seekers, but much less so now than back in the early 2000's. And the government is most welcoming of all, they're totally into taking the allotted amount of the current refugess, which I notice the Brits aren't.

Last edited by 4F Hepcat (2016-05-25 05:41:31)

The recent Somali diaspora in the USA have not been that successful either has it? Probably too difficult to set up businesses there too.

If we're not careful, the legacy our grandchildren will inherit is a globalised, homogenized and mobilized Third World.

My understanding is that Norway and Switzerland pay into the programmes they are involved with in the EU. I wouldn't say "must". If they weren't involved, which is by choice, they wouldn't pay.

By nations, the UK's biggest trading partner in exports is USA. China is number 4 and bigger than The Netherlands, just about which is number 5. But combined, the EU is the UK's largest trading partner by far.

The Brits are different, that's a fact, as is Spain vs Germany, etc. The needs of each nation is too diverse to be bet by a super federal state. This is not the USA.

The problem is the Euro, the currency problem is the killer, along with the security issues we now face. Whether the UK ultimately stays or leaves, the break up is inevitable.

Access to the free market is an excellent idea, and if only Europe had limited its ambitions to this. The workers rights is a load of baubles and trinkets as nations like France are uncompetitive and need labour reform to rectify this. Meanwhile, Italy is uncompetitive because of the Euro.

The sovereignty issue is persuasive too: we saw the unilateral actions of one lady last year impose an unhealthy and costly plan on all member states, whilst Cameron went to renegotiate and came back with naff all. If the UK was so important to the plan, so essential to avoiding war in Europe, why no compromise. I put it to you that the EU is incapable of reform and that tyranny lurks in its corridors of power. Meanwhile, that lady all too powerful when it came to Cameron's attempt at a renegotiation, shamefully prostrate herself to Erdogan.

Here in The Netherlands and in the industry I am in, we see significant Indian knowledge export. Not being in the EU has not hindered the Indian engineers coming into the EU. What's good for the Indians, surely will be good for the Brits too?

The security of Europe is provided by NATO, recent events show that rather than protecting the Europe, the EU endangers it.

If Britain exits, it will effectively reinvigorate and accelerate the process of EU break-up. It's only a matter of time, the race is on to erase the resistance to merge/castrate/remove national identities to ensure break-up never happens, but it's about geopolitical realities that cannot be erased. From my perspective, it looks like a damage limitation exercise to exit and ensure access to markets before the whole proverbial goes up in flames.

Cut through all the scare talk that's going on by both sides- here is a three minute interview on Newsnight with Charles Moore, former editor of the Daily Telegraph and not someone whose ideas I would normally lean towards, but here he makes the best summing up of the EU referendum I have heard anywhere. He comes on at about 25:50.....


http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07crvzd/newsnight-27052016

This is a good opinion piece by Boris in today's Telegraph:

The only continent with weaker economic growth than Europe is Antarctica.

Yes indeed, let us talk about economics. Let’s look at the real economic impact of the European Union on Britain and Europe.

We can dismiss most of the claims for the “single market” – too often an excuse for a morass of politically driven legislation that costs UK business about £600 million a week. In the 20 years since the dawn of the 1992 Single Market programme, there were many countries that did far better than the UK at exporting to the EU; 27 non-EU countries did better at increasing their exports of goods, and 21 did better at ramping up their exports of services. Of course they did: American and other non-EU businesses have excellent “access” to the EU, but aren’t wrapped in EU red tape, whereas we have only 6 per cent of companies trading with the rest of the EU – yet 100 per cent of them have to comply with EU law.

And is the EU booming, thanks to the “single market”? Of course not. Since 2008 the US has seen gross domestic product go up by about 13 per cent; the EU’s has gone up by 3 per cent. The EU is a graveyard of low growth; the only continent with lower growth is currently Antarctica. That is partly because of the sclerotic one-size-fits-all Brussels approach to regulation; but, worse, in the last decade the EU has been suffering from a self-inflicted economic disaster – the euro.

We get inured to some of the figures – the 50 per cent youth unemployment in Greece and Spain – without stopping to think of the individual tragedies; the suicide rates; the inability to get medical treatments; the blighting of young lives. It is a moral outrage; and the search for a safety valve is continuous.

On our doorstep we have a vast and developing tragedy – caused by the folly of trying to impose a single currency on an area with different labour markets and different rates of productivity. Take away their ability to devalue – with their own independent currencies – and many parts of the EU have found it impossible to compete.

What can they do? There are broadly three responses. The first is for the battered southern Mediterranean states to obey the diktat of the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. They can cut costs. They can punish workers. They can cut pensions and holidays and benefits and hope that they can somehow bring their unit labour costs in line with Germany. The resulting austerity has taken a vicious toll, demand has fallen, confidence is shot to hell, and the suffering continues. The riots have now spread to France.

“We are in the throes of the fastest demographic change for 1,000 years”

Alternatively, they can be treated as the poor and backward parts of a single political unit – like the south of the US, or the Mezzogiorno of Italy. They can beg for cash subsidies to keep them going.

The trouble with this approach is that it requires the German taxpayer to be extremely generous to non-Germans – and as the programme develops, the Germans are inevitably demanding restraint on the fiscal policies of their clients, since he who pays the piper calls the tune. That is why the next step – post the UK referendum – is to try full-bore to create an “economic government of Europe”, using the single-market institutions, in a way that will inevitably drag us in – and for which the UK taxpayer will end up paying. This “political union” will be both horrifically anti-democratic and expensive; for us, too.

Then, of course, there is a third way in which people can respond to the disaster of being locked in a suboptimal currency zone, when their own region is unable to compete. They can simply move. That is what is happening now – on a scale never seen before in our lives. People are leaving the areas of Europe that are being hit by the euro crisis, and they are moving in search of work – above all to Britain. Last week we saw some astonishing figures: 270,000 immigrants from the EU – and 184,000 net. That is the same as a city the size of Oxford. We are in the throes of the fastest demographic change for 1,000 years.

I have always championed the benefits of immigration, and the ability of talented people from around the world to contribute to the life of this country. But how can anyone claim that this is not an economic phenomenon? Immigration is now the single biggest driver of our population – set to soar to 70 or 80 million. It is this surge in demand that is largely causing the housing crisis, and the almost overwhelming pressure to destroy the green belt. It is immigration that has been relentlessly helping to compress the wages of the low-paid while the FTSE-100 chiefs (many lobbying for Remain) have seen their pay go up to 150 times that of their average worker.

Priti Patel was absolutely right to point out yesterday that such executives – nice and well-meaning though they may be – are insulated from the impacts of these inflows on GP surgeries and school places. And the flows will get much, much bigger as the new Living Wage takes effect. The UK minimum wage is already the equivalent of €1,529 a month – compared with €215 in Bulgaria and €233 in Romania. Think of that magnetic effect – if we continue, as now, with no way of moderating the tide.

There may be a case to be made for this influx. Perhaps the public could be persuaded. But that is emphatically not what the Government has chosen to do. Year after year we have been told that immigration can be cut to the “tens of thousands” – a claim that now looks demonstrably hollow as long as we are in the EU.

People do not necessarily object to immigration, and certainly not to the immigrants themselves. They object to the absence of democratic consent. There is no balance or discretion in the policy, because we do not control it – and the only way to take back control is to vote Leave on June 23.

The idea of Boris Johnson giving a shit about the victims of decades of neo-liberalism is farcical.