[Trinidad]

Vampyr, on 2015-May-12, 09:09, said:

God, why do you have to be so boring?

I don't know why god has to be so boring, but the question seems off-topic.

Rik

[mike777]

Vampyr, on 2015-May-12, 10:57, said:

Where did you get the idea that they are young or hard-working?

So you are suggesting they are not?

1) From the news they look young
2) It takes a lot of work to be a refuge and survive, not for the lazy.

the very old, very sick, very lazy would be the first to die.

[hrothgar]

mike777, on 2015-May-12, 09:11, said:

I would certainly view working as a greeter at Walmart a very honorable job to have in my older days esp at our local store.

I was just thinking about that at my local homedepot the other day, that might be a pretty neat job.

I suppose the job I would really enjoy would be as a greeter at my local movie theater, but they have a great guy there now.

Let's check back in after a few years on the job.

Me, I am planning a dissolute retirement.
Not sure whether its going to be in Ecuador or Morocco or Boston, but there shall be wine, women, song, and cats.

[mike777]

Enjoy your retirement Richard.

Having been retired for a number of years now, getting out of the house and working as a greeter at my local area stores sounds like something different that I might enjoy. If I can do half the great job the guy does at the local movie house I would be proud.

As for right now it is back to the lawn work.

[Vampyr]

mike777, on 2015-May-12, 11:06, said:

So you are suggesting they are not?

1) From the news they look young
2) It takes a lot of work to be a refuge and survive, not for the lazy.

the very old, very sick, very lazy would be the first to die.

Many collect benefits. Failed asylum seekers just stay illegally, and don't pay taxes or in any way support the health care, schools etc that they use.

In Calais, there are advisers who assist those who enter the country by holding onto the Eurostar.

Australia has the right idea.

[mike777]

Vampyr, on 2015-May-12, 15:37, said:

Many collect benefits. Failed asylum seekers just stay illegally, and don't pay taxes or in any way support the health care, schools etc that they use.

In Calais, there are advisers who assist those who enter the country by holding onto the Eurostar.

Australia has the right idea.

Of course some do and there are short term costs.

You seem to believe most if not all of them do. You don't say there are any benefits, huge benefits. You only seem to look at the costs and I agree there are costs.

Sorry but they said the same thing about the Jews in the 30's. The usa to its shame turned many away, many who would have made this country better.

[helene_t]

The Guardian said:

Earlier this year, the Home Office deported a foreign-born lecturer at the University of Nottingham with a young family, because her high-profile international fieldwork meant she was outside of the UK for more days than allowed on her visa. She couldn’t have known this was coming: the time limit came into force in 2012 and was applied retrospectively to her research travels in previous years.

http://www.theguardi...-for-uk-science

So much for British immigration policies.

[helene_t]

kenberg, on 2015-May-11, 06:19, said:

I guess that I don't take Texas secession as a serious possibility but when it comes up I have an inclination to say "So if you want to go, go." I haven't seen this reaction much discussed but surely there must be some in London who feel that way toward the Scots, and some in Europe who feel that way toward the UK. Cameron has promised to re-negotiate the terms of EU membership and then put it to a vote. This can sound a lot like "Here is a list of things that you can do for us, and if you agree to do them then maybe we will stick around, and maybe we won't".

Scotland may be comparable to Texas in this respect. Many people have this strange patriotic/nationalistic/imperialistic sentiment which I never understood. I know that some people in Denmark are upset by the thought of territorial losses (I have even had history teachers who very obviously had such sentiments). I am sure that a significant number of English people would be similarly adverse to losing Scotland (or Northern Ireland, or the Falklands).

As for UK leaving EU I think it is much less of an emotional issue. I wonder how big a proportion of the continental Europeans even know that UK is an EU member. For those who know it would more be a cost/benefit issue. Probably few would see an advantage in having UK leaving the EU and many would see disadvantages of it. But it wouldn't feel like a territorial loss.

What was the public reaction to the loss of Hong Kong? It happened before my time here.

[NickRW]

helene_t, on 2015-May-12, 16:54, said:

What was the public reaction to the loss of Hong Kong? It happened before my time here.

I don't remember there being a great deal of emotion expressed - some in the media perhaps - but not much amongst ordinary people. We had a lease on Hong Kong - everybody knew it was coming to the end.

[NickRW]

helene_t, on 2015-May-12, 16:54, said:

As for UK leaving EU I think it is much less of an emotional issue.

Au contraire. I hate the EU. I freely admit that I have relatively little rational reason for it (or indeed little reason to like it either). I just hate it.

Same with the Scots and their view of the rest of the UK. A lot of them simply don't want to be part of it.

It is about a sense of identity.

[helene_t]

Oh I am sure about that. I was taking about what continental Europeans think about uk leaving.

[NickRW]

helene_t, on 2015-May-13, 05:36, said:

Oh I am sure about that. I was taking about what continental Europeans think about uk leaving.

Well, if they feel the same as I (as an Englishman) feel about Scotland, I wouldn't be surprised if they're glad to see the back of us. Not that I hate the Scots - quite the reverse in fact - it is just they've never been happy campers in the Union - so go - just go and good luck,

[Vampyr]

NickRW, on 2015-May-13, 06:31, said:

Well, if they feel the same as I (as an Englishman) feel about Scotland, I wouldn't be surprised if they're glad to see the back of us.

I doubt that. Who will pay Spanish olive farmers to sit on their verandah drinking sangria if a relatively wealthy country with low unemployment leaves the EU?

Unlike you, I have a lot of rational reasons for wanting out of Europe. I am not going to go into any detail, but I find that the UK comes out the loser on every issue. Basically we are the mugs, and they need us a lot more than we need them (which IMO is not at all).

A slightly different matter is that it seems to me that the loss of sovereignty kind of creeps up, with the end result being finding yourself in a United States of Europe, which you never planned to be a part of.

Oh, and did anyone notice that we were promised a referendum on the EU "Constitution"? But then they changed a few words, said it was magically not a constitution any longer, and hey presto, no need for a referendum.

[helene_t]

Vampyr, on 2015-May-11, 10:50, said:

The UK has been told that it must take tens of thousands of migrants crossing the Mediterranean, and presumably cannot simply take them and then send them home. For many British this will be the last straw.

I am sure many people see it that way but the West has some responsibility for the mess in the Middle East, I don't see why Tony Blair's country can't take a few thousands refugees when Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan have taken millions.

OK, West Africans in Libya is a slightly different issue but many of those people are actually entitled to assylum if they manage to get to som safe country. I don't think it is fair that Italy takes all of them just because the boats happen to sink in their waters.

[WellSpyder]

Vampyr, on 2015-May-13, 07:53, said:

Oh, and did anyone notice that we were promised a referendum on the EU "Constitution"? But then they changed a few words, said it was magically not a constitution any longer, and hey presto, no need for a referendum.

Yes, I noticed. My wife keep asking me why anybody believes we are going to have a referendum on the EU this time round when we were promised one last time but never had it...

[kenberg]

Someone, and I am thinking that it might even have been an Englishman, said something about there being a tide in the affairs of men. Is there one here? if so, what is its direction?

Before the American entry into World War II, Roosevelt met with Churchill, corresponded with Churchill, argued with Churchill, planned with Churchill. If he had similar early dialogues with de Gaulle, or with the Norwegian Prime Minister whose name I would have to look up, I am unaware of it.

When the UK joined the EU, we heard things from them such as "We are Europeans now". I thought of this as "London, Paris, Berlin (or maybe Bonn then) etc are now a unit, Washington and London less so than we were."

Here in the US, we are told that we are pivoting toward Asia. Whatever that means, I don't think it means that I will be as easily comfortable in Beijing as I am in London, but anyway we are pivoting.

So what's happening? If the UK pulls out of the EU, I imagine that will strike many as saying "No, we aren't European after all".

Trade agreements are one thing, cultural rapport is another.


Maybe we must take the current when it serves, but it would be good to know where it is headed.

[NickRW]

kenberg, on 2015-May-13, 09:54, said:

When the UK joined the EU,...

Stop right there. "We" never joined the EU. What this country voted to join was called, at the time, the Common Market. As we understood it, it was a trading club, not a particularly political entity. The Common Market, at least in principle, was a good idea (if the practicalities left a lot to be desired!). The Common Market evolved in to the EEC and later the EU - which are ever more overt moves in the direction of becoming a full blow European State. Brits never voted for that.

Nick

[helene_t]

NickRW, on 2015-May-13, 05:32, said:

It is about a sense of identity.

Yeah I think that sums up most of it. There are, of course, practical considerations also, one could for example be in favour of retaining the Belgian federation for practical reasons even if one "feels" Flemmish or Valonian and not Belgian. But I think the practical issues are too complex for most (if not all) people to understand, never mind weighing the pros and cons.

Personally I "feel" very much European. It wouldn't occur to me to take into consideration whether the EU is a good thing for a particular member state because I don't identify with any member state in particular. I may be inclined to favour policies that are good for mathematicians, bridge players, cat owners or homosexuals, or just for me personally, but really that is a silly selfish attitude to politics which I would like to think I manage to stay above, most of the time at least. I am sure it would be beneficial for rich regions such as London, Baden-Wurttemberg and Catalonia to withdraw from UK/Germany/Spain and/or from the EU but I would prefer the decisions to be made on the basis of what is best for the common good.

Yesterday, I made a back-of-the-envelop calculations for the sensitivity of a proposed pondwater DNA test meant to detect crested newts on lands where a building permisson that could threaten the animals is pending. I came out at 85%. A colleague said that 85% would be good enough for the regulators. I joked that with the new UK government we might get away with 50%. "Oh but the regulators are in Brussels". At first it astonished me that such a thing which obviously ought to be optimized to local environmental conditions is centralized at that level. One could argue whether the optimal decision level would be the village council or the county council, in any case London would be mildly crazy and Brussels sounds like a bad joke.

But thinking more about it I can sorta understand. Vendors of the technology, such as the organization I work for, prefer to work towards European quality norms so that we can sell the same product everywhere. So of course our lobbyist in Brussels fight for getting those things centralized.

But my feelings about such things are mixed. On paper it sounds great to have everything centralized and benefit from the economy of scale. But we all know that the economy of scale doesn't work. Large organizations, whether public or private, work like a Dilbert cartoon or "Yes, minister!". Your local, independent bank is much more efficient than the international colossums. Of all the governments that control your life, probably the village council is the most efficient one and the UN the least efficient one.

There is something else: By pooling all our DNA test expertise in Bruseels we can make more qualified decisions than if each village council had to make their own policies based on the opinion of local amateur experts. But the consequence of this is that the experts in Brussels don't have to communicate in a way that is understandable for village council politicians, never mind for ordinary citizens. So centralization erodes democracy.

I used to favour centralization for the very oportunistic reason that the EU aparatus in general, and the EP in particular, happened to be more aligned with my personal political preferences than most national governments. Since the latest EP election, where the EP was filled up with xenophobic populist morons, I might will reverse that attitude.

But to be honest I will probably always support Brussels regardless of their policies. Because I just hate nation states.

[Aberlour10]

NickRW, on 2015-May-14, 02:19, said:

Brits never voted for that.

Nick

They did.

Every four years they voted in GB for politicans who developed, negotiated and accepted all these changes in the EU during last decades.

[Vampyr]

WellSpyder, on 2015-May-13, 09:33, said:

Yes, I noticed. My wife keep asking me why anybody believes we are going to have a referendum on the EU this time round when we were promised one last time but never had it...

Right. I can imagine Cameron coming back with fancy-sounding and/or fake concessions and then making the referendum something other than in/out.

Let's see him get those fisheries back, and then the referendum is anybody's...