Brexit 2020+

The EU says a promise isn't good enough

Were you surprised? I was surprised.

No deal was always what Johnsons paymasters wanted. It was only ever going to go that way.

No visas for low skilled workers

Well....off the top of my head that stupendous idea will totally **** a number of business i know of in Dumfries & Galloway, from care homes, fish processing, food manufacturing, farming, hospitality/ local shops etc...etc.

Home Secretary Priti Patel said the new system would mean "the brightest and the best will be able to come to the United Kingdom".

As long as the job pays more than £25,600

Ive never earned anywhere near that amount ffsake, Dya think the shit will hit the fan/barn door/face before we leave at the end of the year or at some point in the next 9 months?, for some reason September is raising my spidey sense hackles, i hope it crumbles around them and come the new year we will march en-mass into Westminster and reclaim the parliament.

Yeah i know there is zero chance of that happening but if i screw my eyes shut really tight i can almost imagine a revolution in the air, on second thoughts that'll never happen either will it?

want to protest?, let the police know first, there's a good citizen

Another load of totally unworkable, right-wing ideologically-driven nonsense that won't survive first contact with the real world.

Seems like government policy is to keep pacifying the flag-waving thicko's, xenophobes and racists even if that means producing more pie-in-the-sky, cake and eat it policy/fantasy that will be impossible to implement and financially catastrophic. And just from a practical point of view, the Home Office have an absolutely fantastic track record of administering this kind of thing.

I don't think you have to be mystic Meg to know what will coming down the line right behind the proposal to kick all the foreign low paid workers out. Priti Patel tellingly referred to the policy as 'encouraging the economically inactive into the economy'. So then... A Norman Tebbit 'on yer bike' retread, where if you're unemployed then you're off to Norfolk to pick fruit or we stop your benefits.

She then said that it's also to encourage investment into automation. Automate what? picking fruit, cooking in cafe kitchens and wiping old peoples arses?

I'm sure all the Brexit voters will be delighted to know that the only jobs they are going to get back are the unpaid low skilled ones they haven't been prepared to do for the last 20 years. At least until we get a few free trade deals under our belts involving free movement with wherever 🙄

And I love the fact that the qualifying salary is higher than the EO salary of the Home Office staff approving the application

Automate what? picking fruit, cooking in cafe kitchens and wiping old peoples arses?

I reckon the fruit picking and arse wiping machines could be co-designed to share technology and thus drive down costs.

Just as soon as we harness unicorn-fart-power, obviously.

But it is just the BELIEF I lack, you see, there must be more entrepreneurial types out there just waiting for the sunlit uplands of brexit to provide them with the impetus to succeed.

While it makes perfect sense to welcome those with PhDs and well paid posts from all over the world… it’s hardly the ‘sticking it to the global elite’ message of 2016, is it? As I’ve been boring on about for four years now, ending FoM is an attack on the freedoms of working class people… the well off and/or top level educated people will continue to have opportunities across Europe (including the UK)… yes, it’ll be more difficult for them to go and work, live and learn where they want, but it’ll become next to impossible for those without the means.

How much is Malta charging millionaires to get their EU passports and citizenships?

totally **** a number of business i know of in Dumfries & Galloway

Did you see Newsnight last night? Watch it if you want your blood boiled.

Basically, Scotland’s businesses and services can go jump. Maitlis doing the English Nationlists in government’s job for them.

As I’ve been boring on about for four years now, ending FoM is an attack on the freedoms of working class people

Going to have to agree with you there Kelvin. The main things stopping me working in other countries are my mastery or otherwise of languages and whether or not I want to live there. And that was true with FoM too - but I don’t represent the average.

I’m sure all the Brexit voters will be delighted to know that the only jobs they are going to get back are the unpaid low skilled ones

On the bright side it will expose the ****lessness and entitlement that generally exists in the UK population. Lets see if our native working class heroes step up to do the jobs that they cry are being 'stolen' by foreigners. I very much doubt they will. British jobs for british people!

Same barriers for me igm… it’s not a selfish moan.

Basically, Scotland’s businesses and services can go jump.

I don't think they will be unique in being thrown under the Brexit bus there. They'll be joining a long list of people who are about to be bent over.

It'd probably be quicker to make a list of which areas of the economy are not about to be sacrificed on the idealogical alter of Brexit

We're about to witness a 'rebalancing of the economy' that is going to make the Thatcher revolution look like a minor bit of tinkering at the edges. All under the guise of nationalist populism. Only the hardest of hard Brexit's is going to suffice. A complete and total break with European norms

There are going to be many, many losers and very few winners. I think we can all guess who those winners will be though.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51550421

This will surely decimate the hospitality industry in the UK. In the highlands for example, there are simply not enough people to fill the roles in the hotels and restaurants. In London and pretty much every big city, hotels are staffed predominantly non UK nationals.

Where do the government think we're going to magic up people to fill these roles once we slam the door shut on FoM?

One argument is that employers will have to put up wages to attract staff in these roles. £25000 however rules out nurses which is utterly ridiculous

As I’ve been boring on about for four years now, ending FoM is an attack on the freedoms of working class people

I agree with this as well.

I’m sure I know someone who voted leave then retired in Spain very happy to vote for its removal but took advantage of it 🙁

This will surely decimate the hospitality industry in the UK.

With the right-wing ultra-neoliberal project that is Brexit, under a Tory government with a massive majority, I'm sure we can all count on an end to the exploitation of workers being one of the definite outcomes

Yeah it would be great if everyone in hospitality, care workers, fruit pickers etc,. earn't £26K
How that would actually work and the impacts it would have are not simple though.

Dya think the shit will hit the fan/barn door/face before we leave at the end of the year or at some point in the next 9 months?, for some reason September is raising my spidey sense hackles, i hope it crumbles around them and come the new year we will march en-mass into Westminster and reclaim the parliament.

Yeah i know there is zero chance of that happening

Dunno I have a feeling that if the truck drivers strike they’d be in a world of pain, no petrol or food on the shelves and Boris and his cronies will be nailed to the wall by the their own.

The points based system is just for show, it'll end up with the same amount of immigration , low skilled & unskilled, but people will believe the hype.

Zilo - you're not wrong about wages of the lowest paid, but that doesn't solve the problem that UK labour market isn't as mobile/geographically distributed as politicians assume, and pushing staff costs will push the room price up which makes us less competitive because the UK will be a lot more expensive than France, Germany and all the other EU countries with tourism, services, banks etc

Maybe these “big city” hotels need to change the way they operate, stop exploiting staff.

Rural hotels are even more reliant on non-locally born staff than city hotels. People move. We need that. I fear it’ll be decades before that fact properly informs government policy again.

Dunno I have a feeling that if the truck drivers strike they’d be in a world of pain, no petrol or food on the shelves and Boris and his cronies will be nailed to the wall by the their own.

Fantasies of karmic retribution for those who engineered all of this are just that. Fantasies. They will continue living high and dry, profiting from crisis and moving on to soft-retirement and book deals as soon as. The divided electorate shall be blaming each other and the EU via social media. Tabloids and TV Punch and Judy reality shows such as QT and Piers TM will stir the pot and keep it boiling. All the usual suspects calling each other ‘liars’ and ‘losers’. Then the Next Leader arrives to mop up and lead us to Glory. His supporters won’t be nearly so cuddly as these posh, narcissistic crisis capitalists.

You’re saying you WANT to live in a society where the wealthy are waited on by poorly paid immigrants? Maybe these “big city” hotels need to change the way they operate, stop exploiting staff.

The wages of the hospitality industry is a completely separate discussion.

What about those that have come to work in the hospitality industry in the UK for cultural enrichment, professional development, to advance their English skills etc?

All gone. No more.

Characteristics Tradeable Points
Offer of job by approved sponsor No 20
Job at appropriate skill level No 20
Speaks English at required level No 10
Salary of £20,480 (minimum) – £23,039 Yes 0
Salary of £23,040 – £25,599 Yes 10
Salary of £25,600 or above Yes 20
Job in a shortage occupation
(as designated by the MAC) Yes 20
Education qualification:
PhD in subject relevant to the job Yes 10
Education qualification:
PhD in a STEM subject relevant to
the job Yes 20

I think Kimbers right.

If you're in any doubt what is driving this then there's a Tory MP (Tobias Ellwood) on Five Live now echoing Priti Patels message this morning.

This is about 'driving the economically inactive back into the workplace' and reducing the benefits bill.

It has been pointed out to him, as it was with Priti Patel that with unemployment at an all time low, the 'economically inactive' are mainly the sick, disabled, full time carers, students and pensioners.

So we're still none the wiser as to who's supposed to do these jobs? People in wheelchairs, perhaps? Your gran?

It's clear already that this is completely unworkable nonsense. Unusual for one of Joris Bonsons bright ideas

unemployment at an all time low

I read many years ago that the unemployment figures were in real danger of getting so low that the lie was exposed, don't tell me that the idiots in charge actually believe them?

Well they can have it one way or the other. Not both.

Either the unemployment figures are accurate, in which case this policy is absolutely ludicrous, or the unemployment figures are total bollocks.

Hmmmmmm.... I wonder which it is?

Fantasies of karmic retribution for those who engineered all of this are just that. Fantasies.

No fantasies here for retribution,they loved Thatcher but soon put the knife in when they thought they’d lose an election with her.

No fantasies here for retribution,they loved Thatcher but soon put the knife in when they thought they’d lose an election with her.

Which is great when you are trying to get rid of deranged leadership and replace it with something more sensible.

I'm not quite sure that would happen nowadays.

In amongst the ranting there is a discussion on economics to be had here if anyone's interested. But I suspect not.

She then said that it’s also to encourage investment into automation. Automate what?

There are lots of machines that exist to do manual jobs that I've never seen used here. Stuff like laying block paving, digging out tree stumps and such. I suspect that we don't see them here because we can employ immigrants on a low wage instead. Question is, is this a good idea? Too much cheap work might just keep people trapped in low skill jobs, because the people who work in them get no training or investment. If there are fewer people to work in the low skill jobs and they can become automated, the proportion of people in higher skilled jobs would increase by default which could/should(?) result in growth of skills? I'm not sure but it's worth thinking about.

I know this is a thread for remainer ranting so I'm not expecting any intelligent economist answers... 😉

There are lots of machines that exist to do manual jobs that I’ve never seen used here. Stuff like laying block paving, digging out tree stumps and such.

Molls... go and get a quote to get your driveway block paved or some tree stumps removed then get back to us and see if you still think those are low skill, low paid jobs

And when you're in Sleepy Meadows care home for the terminally bewildered, which one of those machines would you like to wipe your arse? 😉

which one of those machines would you like to wipe your arse?

Tree stump remover, got to be.

digging out tree stumps and such.

like these guys?

https://www.ruskins.co.uk/tree-moving

watched a row of them moved at my last work, pretty cool to watch

it might be true that we have underinvested in tech, but I see no reason why this will suddenly be reversed

the collapse in apprenticeships in the last decade has as much if not more to do with the privitasiation of learn direct as FOM

technical education in this country is woeful, weakening of unions also contributed to heavily this

whats not mentioned when tories get a raging semi about 'australian points based immigration' is that student loans in australia can be used for technical education, not just uni.

There's also deathly silence about social care, either costs for this will have to rise massively or these rules will have to be changed on immigration

Its pretty obvious that cummings envisages a services, R&D, finance based economy, with manufacturing going from 20 to 5% ? of the economy, but those red wall seats are going to be hit the very hardest by this, wholesale education & training reforms will be needed to stop these regions getting a repeat shafting, exactly as they did as the mines closed.

And when you’re in Sleepy Meadows care home for the terminally bewildered, which one of those machines would you like to wipe your arse? 😉

After meeting the minimum requirement retirement age of 95 and having your ‘Britanniac’ care plan fully paid up to the minimum 300,000 uk$ of course.

I’m not expecting any intelligent economist answers…

It would probably help had you made an intelligent point in the first place.

whats not mentioned when tories get a raging semi about ‘australian points based immigration’ is that student loans in australia can be used for technical education, not just uni.

They don’t really get a raging semi over it they just need something to get in the papers and on the news that makes their believers think happy Tory thoughts.

I’ve just had a sobering thought. With their being no limit on immigration for skilled migrants from all over the world, maybe it’ll soon be the type of middle class slacker who’s got time to be poncing around on Internet forums who’ll then end up wiping arses or picking spuds? 😳

ultra-neoliberal project that is Brexit

From Wikipedia (I know):

"Neoliberalism is generally associated with policies of economic liberalization, including privatization, deregulation, globalization, free trade, austerity"

Companies will need to train more British workers to fill vacancies when the new immigration system kicks in requiring foreign workers to have qualifications and the ability to speak English, Priti Patel, the home secretary, has said.

In a round of television and radio interviews, she said 8 million people between the ages of 16 and 64 were “economically inactive” and could be given the skills to do jobs in sectors where there were shortages as a result of the new points-based system.

Never understood the logic in being keen on using immigration to fill higher paying jobs, leaving the locals to pick up the leftovers.

Or the irony of the party of free markets wanting to be so interventionist in the supply of labour.

Surely the ultimate irony of all this is Home Secretary Priti Patel announcing a points-based immigration system that would have denied entry to the UK to her own parents?

A few years ago, that would have been an episode of the Thick Of It, nowadays its just par for the course.

Irony is now bleeding to death in a gutter after the kicking its had for the last few years

Member
Yeah it would be great if everyone in hospitality, care workers, fruit pickers etc,. earn’t £26K
How that would actually work and the impacts it would have are not simple though.

It would push all wages up I would imagine. If a nurse could get more money picking strawberries then they would probably switch to fruit picking! My wife is a nurse and works under extreme pressure everyday, if she could pick strawberries for more money I reckon she would!!

Then there would be an even bigger shortage of nurses... so put wages up...

I think the UK is in for a whole lot of pain this decade....

I'm potentially ****ed and my life as I know it is on the line.

I feel for you all....

This is simply a wealth transfer driver, reduce labour suppy, drive up wages, money moves to poor people and ceeates additional taxes, poor people get charged more for goods and services (beer and rent) hence spend additional money and transfer it to landlords (including Wetherspoons pun intended)

Additional taxes raised get spent on "infrastructure" projects an endless transfer of debt/wealth.

And when you’re in Sleepy Meadows care home for the terminally bewildered, which one of those machines would you like to wipe your arse?

My mother actually needs to get into a home like this for the limited time available. Care workers seem to be non-existent. It's a ****ing nightmare, compounded by other issues, but mainly that one.

It would probably help had you made an intelligent point in the first place.

So.. what's your view then?

Never understood the logic in being keen on using immigration to fill higher paying jobs, leaving the locals to pick up the leftovers.

The idea is that importing skills increases the value in what our businesses can do. If a software company has one really good architect and five drones, they might only be able to do one project at a time. If they can get hold of another really good architect they can then do two projects at once, but they need another 5 drones. Theoretically the drones will be youngsters trained in software development, but the issue we're going to have is that they won't be able to find any more such youngsters. If we trained more people to become developers then they'd not be able to do whatever it was they would otherwise have done, pick fruit, work in shops etc. Theoretically then, you have to automate those things. But of course not all of it can be automated.

Restructuring the economy is a hugely difficult project that no-one in government has the first clue about, as is becoming evident.

Care workers are hard to recruit because money is limited. The amount councils pay for care is insufficient to pay workers more

Given the record numbers of people in work, where are these 8 million extra Brits coming from?

Or is one of these government triumphs a crock of shite?

Given the record numbers of people in work, where are these 8 million extra Brits coming from?

They're Schrodinger's Unemployed

The actual amount of unemployed might or might not include people on zero hours contracts, depending on time of day and required dictat du jour.

The 'forcing the lazy benefit scroungers into employment' thing is a sop to the old vote, who just want things to be the way they used to be in the 1930s, when men where men, women were women, and people without jobs starved to death in a ditch / froze to death in an unheated house / etc, and it was THEIR FAULT for not working and being guilty of sloth.

But I'm with kimbers - it'll be all fudged behind some points system which won't end up changing that much but will allow the old racists to go an toss off about how jolly pure the locals in Little Whinging are these days.

I thought this was bang on the money:

https://truepublica.org.uk/united-kingdom/britains-existential-crisis-is-now-looking-very-real/

Given the record numbers of people in work, where are these 8 million extra Brits coming from?

Pretty sure there's some massaging of figures going on here. You're statistically 'employed' if you work one hour a month.

Then there would be an even bigger shortage of nurses… so put wages up…

I think this is the plan. It will stoke wage inflation, which will in turn supercharge price inflation. People only generally take note of the former though, so Boris will bask in the glory of everyone feeling richer, along with the narrative of reducing benefits expenditure and full employment, while conveniently ignoring the fact that high inflation is a tax on the poor. It's Trumpian feel-good economics. Remember when he said 'F*** business!'? Looks like he was telling the truth.

Schrodinger’s Unemployed

Chapeau.

I don't think I would have been able to live in the UK with this system.
When I left the UK, I was working as a catering manager and earning 29k.

I can guarantee you that hotels and restaurants are not going to pay 26k for waiters, chefs and cleaners. No way.

Japan is leaps and bounds ahead of the UK in terms of automation and yet it is still desperate for the young or poorly educated.

It would push all wages up I would imagine.

i don’t think it works like that. If you pay people more to pick carrots then the price of carrots increases to cover that so more of people’s income go to pay for carrots.

nurses wages can’t go up because they are paid from the public purse. Only way to pay them more is to increase money available to the NHS. That would require the increase of tax which would leave less money for carrots.

If all wages were increased the result would be inflation that would need to be controlled by increasing interest rates which would remove the money from people’s pockets that they can’t use to buy the more expensive goods so companies close and make people redundant.

that said inflation seems to have been low for years, according to the figures )and so have interest rates). I suspect the low inflation is more misinformation because the price of the weekly shop goes up all the time.

Surely the ultimate irony of all this is Home Secretary Priti Patel announcing a points-based immigration system that would have denied entry to the UK to her own parents?

Nope just shows she’s another hypocrite happy to slam doors in other people’s faces as long they’ve passed thru.

I have a lot of Hospitality clients and they have no idea how they are going to get staff.

One client is offering minimum £10 per hour in the North West and they get zero local applicants.

You’d hope that the reality of how the world works would make an appearance at some point.

Unfortunately, we appear to have a PM who when he said ‘**** business!” Really meant it, surrounded by a bunch of thick-as-mince nodding dogs who are happy to go along with whatever he says

I reckon I could nip down to my local and come up with some better candidates for government ministers than this lot- given that quite a few of them have actually run successful businesses in the real world. This cabinet couldn’t run a bath and are just echoing right wing neoliberal bullshit they heard on Fox News

I have come to the conclusion that Brexit is the biggest economic and social experiment ever conducted in modern history.

The repurposing of a whole country seemingly overnight. It's almost Communist in its reach but attempting to do it in a democratic country/manner. Something is going to break.

To be an historian 100 years from now!

I reckon it will be a text book example of how a seemingly learned and civilised society can pull the plug on itself.

seemingly learned and civilised society

You are joking right? There's nothing learned or civilised about our 'society', either in the past or now. Especially now.

If you read Naomi Kleins ‘No Logo’, that was a neoliberal economic experiment carried out in the authoritarian regime of Burma. If you read ‘the Shock Doctrine’ that was a neoliberal experiment conducted In Argentina and Chile. All oppressive regimes where it was carried out at gunpoint with the help of death squads.

The most audacious experiment yet in this weird Miltan Friedman/Ayn Rand narrative is going to take place in an advanced European economy. Ours. And they actually got people to vote for it!

We should be looking to Chile, Argentina and Burma as to how these things tend to end. It’s fair to say that none went well

This won’t either

Well... for 99% of us. For the 1% I’m sure it’ll be absolutely bloody brilliant. Always is.

I don’t know about you but I’m not happy about being used as a guinea pig, given how the other guinea pigs have ended up.

The EU know who is the driving forces behind this. The same people who make excuses for Pinochet. They’re not stupid. They know what a threat this is. And they will treat it accordingly

That doesn’t just mean no deal/crash out/WTO/Australian style deal. That’s just the start of it. This means a full on clash of ideologies. And that never ends well. And like the Mitchell and Web sketch, ‘we’ will be the baddies ...

If we accept that this is happening and we can't change it, how do I get to be one of the 1 out of 100 winners of Brexit?

Start with £100m in an offshore account?

The repurposing of a whole country seemingly overnight. It’s almost Communist in its reach but attempting to do it in a democratic country/manner. Something is going to break.

It’s very odd,I think we are in strange times.

If we accept that this is happening and we can’t change it, how do I get to be one of the 1 out of 100 winners of Brexit?

You are too late now. You should have planned better, you knew it was coming.

I agree with poopscoop, the only bit i am not sure of is the currently invisible internal Tory party civil war. The ERG dont like Dominic or his approach even though he won the election for them. Currently the ERG are keeping their heads down, they dont have much time for the likes of Rishi or Patel.

Dont think the ERG like HS2, Huawei, the new immigration policy or the new northern Tory MPs much, they will keep quiet if they can get a no deal brexit but post that i think they will hang Boris and Dominic out to dry and blame him for everything.

Francois has had a little dig at Dominic but was quickly pulled back in

Google is planning to move its British users' accounts out of the control of European Union privacy regulators, placing them under U.S. jurisdiction instead, sources said.

the United States has among the weakest privacy protections of any major economy, with no broad law despite years of advocacy by consumer protection groups.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-privacy-eu-exclusive-idUSKBN20D2M3

In coming months, other U.S. tech companies will have to make similar choices, according to people involved in internal discussions elsewhere.

The ERG are now, more than ever, what they've always been... useful idiots

Their motivation is a rose-tinted, flag-waving nostalgia. A return to empire. They handy for Cummings and co to have along as fellow travellers to motivate the bitter old racists to get out and vote for this.

But this project isn't about a return to the past. Far from it. This is about tearing up the past. A neoliberal Year Zero where the economic and social orthodoxy that has prevailed since the second world war is finally dispensed with. Yesterdays policy announcement confirmed that the freedom of movement that we have all just always accepted is over! Thats now history! Think about it... thats a huge thing. You've just had a massive chunk of your rights taken away.

Expect many more announcements like that. You'll soon be exempt from European human rights legislation. After that, this lot will be left to decide what Workers rights and Environmental standards you will or won't be subject too. Among many other things. Dominic Cummings will be deciding that for you. Think that's going to end well?

Unless they intend to force students,people who are unable to work because of ill health and those who have taken early retirement into work then there isn't anything like 8 million people available to work.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/51560120

Google is planning to move its British users’ accounts out of the control of European Union privacy regulators, placing them under U.S. jurisdiction instead, sources said.

In case anyone isn't reading the article - they are saying that UK users data will still follow UK data protection rules which currently are the same as GDPR. The move is to allow them to change the data protection rules should the UK rules change in the future. If the UK rules changed but the data was held in Ireland as it currently is, there could be conflicts.

New trade barriers + end of FoM =

https://twitter.com/davidheniguk/status/1230424956267376641?s=21

https://twitter.com/davidheniguk/status/1230427060612554752?s=21

Who cares what it means… saying it raises the blood…

https://twitter.com/arobertwebb/status/1230461043035590656?s=21

And in other news, johnson may be re-setting his relationship with business leaders.
Will any of them remind him of his 'f... business' comment? Someone should.
If it happens, will be start of the re-education process; repeat after me....brexit is good.
https://news.sky.com/story/boris-johnson-poised-to-axe-network-of-business-councils-11938560

We can't have people around telling us stuff we don't want to hear... like 'facts'

If they're not prepared to wave their little flags and shout about Brexit being absolutely bloody brilliant, then there's no place for them here

Dominic Cummings, special adviser to PM Johnson, is known to be angry over the reaction of business groups to the Brexit vote

FFS

How dare they not agree with Cummings!

That blokes time is limited I reckon.

That blokes time is limited I reckon.

Most of the cabinet would be back benchers without him, and what he did for their campaigns in 2016&19, and Johnson would never have been PM. If they think he can keep them there for more than 5 years, he’ll be sticking around. He also tends to mouth off when he’s on the outside… so they’ll be scared of letting go of him.

How dare they not agree with Cummings!

That blokes time is limited I reckon

He'll be fine - as "the man who weaponised Britain's stupid" he'll be in demand somewhere