EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

Social and economic inequality has been measurably greater in the UK before we joined the EU, and in-spite of having joined the EU (when the inequality in every other country in the EU decreased and social mobility increased - in the UK the opposite happened).

What inequality exist in the UK is 100% attributable to the UK, not the EU.

Indeed. It's been a failure of national government. Thatcher ripped the guts out of a lot of communities by closing the mines and other heavy industries, and no subsequent government has ever adequately sought to regenerate these areas.

It's not even that.

Look at land ownership. Our house prices are insane, and enslave those who aren't in the top n% of jobs, because so much of it is still owned by landed gentry.

What century do we live in? Every other European country solved this long ago.

I was in Dorset recently for a wedding and was talking to a local guy about this, and he mentioned a startling fact, Dorset... the county, is predominantly owned by 3 families. Three!

We can dress it up however we like, we can call it whatever anyone wants, but when the numbers are on paper the majority of the wealth is still owned by a tiny % of people, just like it always has been. Those people are not harmed over the years by whoever is in government, and they do not suffer in austerity or hard times.

Most importantly, as time goes by those people get richer, and the progressions made between the start of the industrial revolution and the 1960s are slowly being put in reverse.

Social inequality in the UK is terrible, amongst the worst in Europe if not the worst.

Brexit wasn't about this, and doesn't correct this. It's a UK thing, and the only thing Brexit does is allow this situation to further perpetuate as the EU were a force against social inequality (a slow, lumbering, blunt force... but a force nonetheless).

Kevin Cahill's book Who Owns Britain sets out the figures pretty starkly: the UK is 60m acres in extent, and two-thirds of it is owned by 0.36% of the population, or 158,000 families. A staggering 24m families live on the 3m acres of the nation's "urban plot" – and not surprisingly buy into the idea that Britain is a severely overcrowded country in which land is extremely scarce.

Exactly.

If we, the population and people of Britain, really want to "take back control". Then this should be the control of land, the control of the system of wealth, the ability to control and reduce inequality.

But frankly, that isn't actually what any Leavers I've spoken to want. What I've head instead amounts to, "treat the symptom, not the cause". As such, it will achieve nothing, not even an illusory benefit as the cause is real and so are the effects.

Vast swathes of that land are set aside for the pursuits of the rich too. Huge swathes of Scotland support a massive deer population who, with no natural predators, cause widespread damage to the ecosystem. Grouse moor management is one of the main causes of an increase in flooding, as the practise of heather burning inhibits the upland's ability to catch and hold rainwater.

Here here. People should only own one house!

And gold courses, fuck golf courses.

7.1% of London’s Green Belt is golf courses – nearly two and a half thousand hectares – double the size of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

http://londonfirst.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Green-Belt-Report-February-2015.pdf

Global migration of the work forces can indeed depress pay...but only if the local government allows it. This government here isn't so keen on taking corrective measures.

It would be interesting to see if for example Australia has the same issue. It has a points system along with a skill shortage system.

You also did not remark on immigration from outside the EU...about half of the UK immigration.

I'm not sure what the solution is. The closing the door horse has well and truly bolted everywhere.

The people from for example Poland who work in the UK when the pound was high did so because their wages were much too low in Poland. Perhaps we rather need an universal wage everywhere in Europe than restricting migration.

Tx. People mentioned it on my feed with no link to it.

People of the UK I present you: Your government ;)

when the inequality in every other country in the UK decreased

I assume you meant 'EU' here. There are a lot of studies that suggest inequality in Europe has increased in recent decades, however. Here's one as an example:

http://www.poverty.ac.uk/report-europe-income-distribution-inequality-international-comparisons/rising-income-inequality

Specifically on Germany:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/23/wealth-gap-inequality-germany-higher-study

I believe this is because the European ideal was quite thoroughly betrayed by certain governments in the 1980s and 1990s. I personally think there is still a lot that is great about the EU, but there is a problem with increasing the size of markets, as it tends to create oligopolies shared between only a few large companies, or at the least tends to favour larger enterprises over small and localised ones. Needless to say, this can all be addressed by maintaining proper tax régimes etc., but that hasn't been done. Remain and reform.

Ah, maybe my statement would be better qualified as "UK inequality was greater before the EU, and remains greater than other European countries in the EU, whilst increasing at a faster rate than other countries in the EU".

It remains true that the UK's problems are of the UK's making, not of the EU's making.

I wonder how much of an impact homeownership rates have on those statistics. IIRC the Germans have one of the lowest percentages in the euro zone, if not the "developed world".

(Germany has had decades of, by German standards, unjust governments, with the worst under the egregious Helmut Kohl, briefly interrupted by a largely ineffectual Blairite government under Schröder that introduced the "Agenda 2010", a still hotly-disputed set of measures re-regulating social welfare. Searching for "Hartz IV" should yield quite a lot of information about it. The levels even of visible poverty when travelling around Germany are often shocking--quite normally-dressed pensioners begging in the street, people searching bins, again often pensioners, for recyclables that they can return to make a few cents, etc.)

So much this! Education is key, the more people can understand about how they are being shafted the more likely they are to try and change it!

This is an inherently nationalist proposition, as it prioritises 'our working classes' over anyone who would come here to work. Why should I have any more affinity with an 'English' person than a 'Polish' person or an 'Romanian' person? What is the moral argument to prevent people coming here outside of nationalism?

The real issue is effective enforcement of workers rights and the minimum / living wage.

I agree. There's no doubt that inequality in the UK is worse than over there, and that much of the problem is not caused by the EU. There's also this strange phenomenon that the UK 'aristocracy' (not really, as the term falsely implies, government by the 'best') has never been largely abolished as it was in Germany in 1918-1919 (enough of it survived to still cause problems, but its power was much diminished). That the same people/families, e.g. the owners of the Grand Estates in London, have been collecting rent on the same land for centuries, that land ownership is still so heavily concentrated as a consequence of the Enclosures, the first 'Industrial Revolution', etc. are things that are just not present to the same degree over there. The UK's education system, the media, and other factors are consequences of that.

'If this does not reflect your views, you must understand
That those who own this country also own this land'
(Billy Bragg, 'It Says Here')

Perhaps, ironically, the UK could be the only or one of the few countries in which the recent influence of the EU has been more benign. I don't know if that's really the case, but if it were, it being the one of all countries that voted 'leave' would be terrible.

The German sense of betrayal is largely due to a gradual abandonment of the post-war settlement of 'social market democracy', which was a compromise between socialism and market-driven forces and was relatively stable (although obviously also heavily criticised) for decades. Kohl especially started to dismantle it, and then he rushed the country into the annexation of East Germany, again without any proper preparation, claiming that the time window for doing so was very short, as the Soviet Union would be back in condition to prevent reunification again a few years after that. This led to the near-complete destruction of the East German economy when it should have been given more time to get on some more equal footing with the West German economy while it still had its traditional markets in the east, and terrible social devastation, with some areas having 40% unemployment for more than a decade. This is one of the main factors that has fuelled the rise of far-right activities in East Germany, too. Anyway, there's so much to be said about all that. I expect that most other European countries have similar stories to tell.

Where do you draw the line? Your neighbours in your street or town, your cousins, your siblings, your children, your wife? Who should you care for over and above you?

I'm not taking this your a racist bullshit for wanting the best for British people. There's nothing wrong with a healthy amount of nationalism.

Kohl ... rushed the country into the annexation of East Germany, again without any proper preparation, claiming that the time window for doing so was very short, as the Soviet Union would be back in condition to prevent reunification again a few years after that.

I think he was correct on this, and time will show it too.

Whilst interesting it is all rather tangential to Brexit and whatever issues (perceived or real) the UK faces in the future, and their root cause.

If a flat minimum wage and benefit system was implemented across the EU it would solve all manner of issues but it's impossible due to the differences in currency/GDP/dorrahs so until that time the net losers are the richer countries, GB being one of them.

The EU enforced austerity in the (PIGS) Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain has crippled their young with unemployment and the problem is growing. Add to that the migrant crisis and the EU is in a bad way with pretty grim medium and long term prospects.

I don't understand why the EU is so resolute on continuing the failing path along which it treads. Oh yeah, German fucking banks.

I'm not saying leaving the EU will solve our issues but it does at least remove some of the contributing factors and force change. I only hope we have a government that can bring the right change. Foolishly, probably.

Nationalism is just dumb. We're at the 100 year anniversary of some of the greatest losses of life due to wars fought by nationalism and one of the most telling things in all of the letters from the frontlines, the poems, the art... isn't that anyone, at all, died for King & Country... they fought and died not for the nation, but because of their family, their friends.

Nothing in that mentions racial background, language, passport (let's not even get started on the fact that the passport is an essentially modern invention that only really has gained it's current status since World War 2), religious beliefs, gender, shoe size, preference for wearing mustard trousers or any other factor.

People don't die for nations, they die because rich people with power send them off to war, and in the midst of that war they fight to preserve the things they love, which ultimately are friends and family, the person in the trench next to them... not country.

Muhammed Ali had it spot on when he declined to go to Vietnam:

“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?

No, I am not going ten thousand miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would put my prestige in jeopardy and could cause me to lose millions of dollars which should accrue to me as the champion.

But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is right here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality…

If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. But I either have to obey the laws of the land or the laws of Allah. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail. We’ve been in jail for four hundred years.”

The only war is class war. It's always been true, but the ones who suffer the most are blind to the underlying root cause.

^

And it's the same for me as an EU national: Why would I not care about the UK people? (I even defend Northern Ireland I mean...hello...). I do, but I find it hard with this brexit vote. Now I am suddenly "the problem" according to politics...

Ireland, as a whole, was not interesting for immigration for a long time and it lead to a somewhat closed society with ingrained attitudes. People coming in from elsewhere makes everything think and forces change.

And as a whole most people don't mind visitors (if the visitors behave, what that is, well that's of course up for discussion!) with some people in NI being pleasantly surprised that others now WANT to come here.

But the government KNOWS these challenges are coming. It's like come on, same things happen everywhere, somebody somewhere has a solution, do they even Google/speak to others/academic?

"I don't understand why the EU is so resolute on continuing the failing path along which it treads" No neither do I, but blaming banks and capitalism with no restrictions is probably right :)

The Tories are all chummy with banks too. So, nothing will change unless the UK votes left-wing for ages.

What the EU is supposed to do about a migrant "crisis" is beyond anyone. There are so many people and unlike the past you can't just take a piece of free land anymore and farm.

So perhaps the EU should thrown lots of money at it, which is possible if everyone is happy to pay for this by tax. For people they don't see as "one of us". Good luck with that...

Note that the UK/USA quite happily fight over in the ME, but mainland EU is getting all the issues. Money from them? Hah, no...not their problem...

It's not ALL bad where my parents live (NL) people are volunteering to give English lessons, they're opening up old buildings, people gather up clothing etc ...solidarity is not completely lost :)

Nationalism is just dumb.

That's all that needs to be said.

Although it's worth noting that nationalism not only pulls us into conflict, but prevents us from helping those in need exactly through sentiments like this:

Where do you draw the line? Your neighbours in your street or town, your cousins, your siblings, your children, your wife? Who should you care for over and above you?

This is a hugely difficult question to answer, but the idea that we have a stronger moral obligation to support people in the Lake District after a winter of flooding than refugees living in terrible conditions in Calais certainly seems wrong to me.

Ultimately... on mass immigration... there are really only 2 options. When you boil it down, go through policies in your head, run through scenarios, and let them play out over time... you're left with this:

1. You can accept it happens, and figure out how to make it work for you (or the country)
   
2. You can pick up a gun and line a border and kill those who cross a line
   
   

I'm not joking on that second one, because if a million people really do turn up at your border and keep walking towards your armed guards... either you don't shoot and they walk past, or you've got to be willing to shoot.

The modern world isn't willing to shoot.

Which means the people are coming, people will arrive, they cannot be deported (faster than they arrive), and this issue is here, it's real, it's now.

So we're at #1. But instead of figuring it out, how does this help us? How do we benefit? Europe and the UK is mostly in a "fuck this shit, no thanks" mode. But really, it's happening, we're not collectively willing to put guns on borders, it is happening.

We should be looking at ourselves and asking what our weaknesses are, how to use/redirect this new influx of people willing to work and apply themselves such that we can strengthen those weaknesses.

Our weaknesses in the UK is lack of innovation and growth in the North, an increased pension burden with lower income tax revenue from a post-baby-boomer generation, lots of things.

And nearly all of our issues have an aspect that can be answered by "massive amount of new, working age, skilled labour".

And this isn't "they talk all the jobs", growth begets growth, jobs create jobs, more income tax revenue means more investment.

We're not willing to put guns on borders, we should embrace immigration instead and make it work for the country and us as people in this country.