EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

Mmm. Nandos.

BTW, @Señor_Bear, I was a volunteer for the remain campaign and did indeed go leafletting etc on the campaign trail

Shamelessly stolen from Twitter: I'm resigning from the AA and negotiating separate agreements with car mechanics and recovery operators across the UK. I'll be aiming for the best possible deal.

Nandos.

forrin muck.

#racistchicken

Alcoholics Anonymous?

Ultimately we, the MLE, are likely to be fine - we're above the line as it were, it'll be the poorer sections of society who get fucked just that little bit harder than they are today by the economies reaction to Brexit. We can all choose to leave - and move to wherever our Financial Services industry ends up, Frankfurt maybe, or Paris. Not an option if you are on a zero hours contract in Nando's.

Couldn't put it better myself. So I won't. Anyway, the weather's lovely here in Switzerland, and as a fully-paid-up member of the MLE I'm looking into ways of staying here. Rats, ship, you know the rest.

The problem is simpler a lack of pride and belief that britain can make its citizens lives better. How to solve that though is a tricky conundrum but maybe a start is not worrying about what sort of deal we will get with EU but starting to look at how we govern ourselves. If we can get that right then maybe the rest will fall into place.

Seriously? We're an integrated part of a global economy, and for the last 4 decades we've been an integral part of a common market, dispensing with all bilateral trade agreements and dispensing with all commercial treaty negotiators. You think we're going to get around that fundamental problem with a bit of self-confidence and some good old-fashioned self-belief? FFS.

To answer your rhetorical question, I would hope that one of Britain's Ambitions is to not be relegated to the league of third world countries inhabited by insular provincial fuckwits who fondly look back to the 1950s through rose-tinted war-rationed spectacles, gazing nostalgically to WWII as the population recounts stories of How We Won The War. Sadly, we're not really winning on that front.

the EU is a PR disaster, it does many good things but in peoples minds well they cant even name one and if they do it obviously is not important.

Ever wondered if possibly, just possibly, that might be in some way related to the fact that 90% of the newspapers read by the easily-led population of this country are owned by people who are vehemently opposed to the EU, because it's something outside their control? The main problem is that the majority of the population absorb their opinions and views directly from the popular press, which is owned by people with no respect for the truth, no idea what fair and reasonable comment amounts to, and a fervent interest in self-promotion.

I'm 39 and my education has been for the majority in the Netherlands and English was being thought in school from age 6.

Badly though, by the looks of it.

Terribly. Punctuation isn't my strongest card.

It's significantly better than my Dutch!

English was being thought

Nice typo. :)

Maybe I went to the wrong Dutch schools mine started later than that, 11 I think?

Videogames sorted that out, if you can't understand English instructions in an RPG you're stuck, a good motivation to learn :)

"metropolitan liberal elite":

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/member-of-liberal-elite-struggling-to-pay-rent-again-20161116117214

;)

Poor education in this country means that we do not have enough natives to do many "white collar" jobs - so we need immigrants to do them.
The welfare state has disincentivised many people from wanting to work - so we need immigrants to do the manual labour that Brits will not.
Unemployed people cost a fortune to maintain - so you will all be taxed to the limit to pay for it.

Thank goodness for the immigrants who come here to fill our "skills" gaps, it gives us a (final) chance to set our house in order.

The welfare state has disincentivised many people from wanting to work - so we need immigrants to do the manual labour that Brits will not.

I claimed JSA for a couple of weeks, it was, if I recall correctly, 70 odd quid per week.

This was a while ago, but it is, technically speaking, fuck all - a tenner per day to pay for everything. How does that incentivise you to sit on your arse?

This. Plus you now have to grovel more than ever and participate in unpaid work "training" schemes hosted by Tory donating firms to get it.

I'd rather sell crack than sign on, most people with that spark of Tory in them probably do.

When I lost my job a while ago I signed on. I've paid my taxes and NI for years after all.

Can you get money to pay a mortgage? Can you fuck.

You can get rent paid however. Seems an odd state of affairs to me.

I really needed some financial assistance when unemployed once and it would have been easier to sell a kidney.

Fuckers refused to pay for my travel to a job interview because they said it was too expensive. Job was in Leicester. Only 90 mins door to door. I got the job and it sorted me out financially but the state seemed to prefer me to be unemployed in London instead to avoid paying a £50 train ticket.

Welfare here is shit. I know some people seem to get a good deal, but I suspect those that do often play the system.

If you are honest it's piss. Working Tax Credits is the only one that's not so bad, but it's to keep people in work.

I suppose the line of reasoning is that if people have to choose between starving and a crap low paid job, they'd take that.

But perhaps not, perhaps they go into criminality/really can't work due to family or health/can't pay to get to the job/etc etc...is there research on this?

12 years ago when the ex lost his job the JSA even refused to sort out the mortgage insurance form for the bank (we had insurance)

Luckily he was only out of work for a short period as my wage couldn't have covered all costs, but I worked over 20 hours a week so f-all benefits were paid, not even JSA for him.

[and yeah the rent thing is strange, I wouldn't expect the state to cover a whole mortgage, but rent money be nice]

Claiming it for a couple of weeks while out of work is a bit different. If you are long term unemployed and are in a council property and have children, then tough though it may be to survive, often it is a better situation than having a full time minimum wage job. I have witnessed first hand advisors in the Job Centre recommending people to turn down jobs as they will be worse off.

I think if you have a mortgage you're probably a bit better off than those renting as you have some capital tied up in the house.

There's some calculators online that give this impression.

That's a problem in The Netherlands too, once people go off benefits onto minimum wage they lose certain council benefits, such as free appliance repairs etc.

It means the system isn't working for some people, how to fix it I don't know.