Brexit: Time to make your plans, UK IT biz The Brexit debate continues and, with the Leave and Remain camps neck and neck, it looks likely that the undecided few will carry the result. It seems that we can expect more headline-grabbing soundbites until the vote on June 23. The polarised nature of this debate is throwing up some interesting oddities, so you might be …
The irony of this is that the UK had all these before the ECHR - in fact our freedom has been based on our Common Law. If we removed ourselves from the ECHR, things would be unlikely to change very much. I prefer that we were able to legislate for reasonable measures, e.g. preventing prisoners from having a vote, rather than having this blocked by an unaccountable figure from an alien justice system.
The UK is a signatory to the Eurpean Convnention on Human Rights. The British Govt has been bound by the decisions of the Court of Human Rights since day 1. Why do you think the Tories got so annoyed when it banned the use of corporal punishment in British schools. It also banned the Isle of Man from whipping criminals and they aren't even part of the EU.
The purpose of the ECJ is to interpret EU law (including the EU Charter of Fundatmental Rights which includes the rights dealt with by the ECHR). To the extent that an element of Human Rights law is applicable to the EU then it would have to give it special significance because TADAH every EU member state is a signatory to the ECHR treaty therefore to ignore the rulings would result in the EU member states being fined or whatever the sanctions the ECHR has.
We can only get out of being bound by the ECHR rulings if we decide to derogate our agreement to the Treaty that puts on the Council of Europe. That would make us the same as Belarus and even the Tories are having a hard time figuring out how that little PR trick will work.
plenty of informed (i.e. not from politicians) debate before the election comprehensively rubbished the notion that the UK could magically pull out of the treaty it unveiled over 50 years ago.
Quite aside from the spectre of Russian demonstrators placarding Call-me-Dave (or whoever inherits his chalice) at Moscow central (no doubt handsomely paid by a mischevious Putin) calling on the UK to "recognise Human Rights", there's the nitty-gritty of unpicking it from successive court rulings.
It's also worth noting (as Teresa May hasn't) that the ECHR also places *limits* on Human Rights. Limits which a "British Bill of Rights" will manage to fuck up.
Bluntly, the chances of the UK leaving the ECHR are vanishingly small. And DC and chums knew that before 2015.
Politicians being dishonest. Now there's a thing.
We're staying in.
It'll probably be by a very narrow margin, and there will almost certainly be some dubious loss or finding of postal votes and ballot boxes, but we'll stay in.
Either that or it'll be like Ireland - repeated ballots until they get the result they want.
I'm puzzled as to why so much so-called EU "debate" in the media is so utterly focussed on immigration.
The EU has a built-in, right-wing, neo-liberal economic agenda; a string of directives promote privatisation of national assets. Remember what Greece was forced to do :- "now that we've tied you to the Euro by ignoring the entry conditions for you - ensuring you're economically non-viable in perpetuity - you can only have a bail-out loan if you privatise your ports infrastructure" (what connection is there between these, save an ideological one?) The utterly opaque, unaccountable non-democratic structure (four chambers, only one of them elected, with MEPs who do not have equivalent powers to Brit MPs) is perfectly calculated to support this.
Being concerned about this is not a matter of being a "little-Englander". I'd guess the slogan "a vote for the EU is a vote for NHS privatisation" would help a lot of those "dont-knows" make up their minds pretty sharpish. But I ain't holding my breath for the necessary media coverage.
Why was Greece forced to sell state assets? Because by doing so they received something called money which can be used by the State to pay pensions, the interest on loans and lots of other wonderful and worthwhile things that all Govts need to do. Kind of like why you have to sell your house when you can't afford the mortgage.
The EU does not have directives that force privatisation it does have directives that strive to create a level economic playing field for businesses. State owned business skew that playing field as they can keep going back to the Govt to get money when they lose money undercutting other businesses (Air France was a great example of that).
As for undemocratic, compared to what the House of Lords? The Council of Ministers contains elected officials from every Member State and at the end of the day those elected ministers can decide whether to suppor or reject the suggestions of the European Commission whch in some ways is like the House of Lords being made of personal appointees of the relevant member states leader (Dave Cameron in the UK's case). And then MEPs. Not sure where your fourth chamber comes from because last time I checked the treaties all EU law goes from Commission to Parliament to Council of Ministers.
As for being right wing neo liberal agendas, have you looked at the UK govt recently? In fact the biggest threat to the NHS remains the British Govt not the EU or even TTIP. But then if you are American, the EU is the communist replacement for the old USSR what with its social welfare and health for all ideas.
The reason why immigration is the focus is pretty simple. No one knows what will happen if the UK votes to leave (well other than the economy will suffer from a short to medium shock of major consequence for business and citizens alike) or stay (other than things will go as before). Therefore the Brexit bunch have identified something simple to understand, "the EU lets in lots of foreigners and they are all coming to the UK" and then complains when those who want to stay say "its more complicated that that".
I do agree about it not being an issue of "little-Englander" mentality though. It is significantly more complex than that. Europe is riven with massive problems not all of which the UK is immune to. Those cracks need to be addressed, if we are outside we cannot do that, if we are inside we will have to use diplomacy (not somethng we are very good at) and all the while we have the media constantly making out that everything is simple and can be fixed with a quick wave of a magic wand (talk about dumbing down the population). Whatever the decision on 23rd June, the consequences will be massive and no one in the media is telling anyone the truth about that.
Greece was forced to privatise €50bn of state assets. That is a) forced privatisation, b) undemocratic, and c) a right wing neo-liberal agenda whichever way you look at it.
Greece was forced of nothing, it could have refused the plan and let its population fail into a greater poverty.
Greeks are the first responsible for the state of Greece. They chose for decades to cheat and spend more than they earn. The rest of the Union had to pay € 240,000,000,000 to bailout Greece, it does not seem nonlogical it asks Geece to stop to be a Danaides barrel.
They very much do force privatisation, I live in Ireland and the introduction of water meters here has been very contentious. The latest missive from the company Irish Water is that if they don't do as ordered by the troika there will be fines and court cases.
Sovereignty went out the window with the EU.
I am not sure how I will vote but I will make a point on the fear-mongering by the In crowd.
This is the country that survived World War II, the Blitz, rationing, end of Empire and the Oil Crisis. Trying to scare the population into voting in a particular way will not be well received, and could easily get lots of people to vote Out just because of bloody-mindedness. Even more stupid is to get a coalition of big businesses and banks to tell us plebs how badly we will be hit by exit.
Trying to scare the population into voting in a particular way will not be well received, and could easily get lots of people to vote in just because of bloody-mindedness.
I hear lots of scaremongering from both sides to be honest.
Personally, I've lived my whole life in the EU and never had a problem with it. I have travelled to several EU countries, some richer than others, and can see that people everywhere are just that - people. I think we have bigger problems at home to deal with, like our own corrupt political system and island nation attitude towards the rest of the world.
Just like the test a few years ago when a bunch of dart players played darts and purchased fictional shares, etc, based on the outcome of the numbers hit, and as I recall the experts were stunned to find that their special 'financial' skills were only just a match for some blokes with darts, - in the same way, we can all gabble on incessantly (including me), as to the outcome of the referendum. No one knows, not the experts, not me, not you, but, leaving the EU (in my opinion) would at least be a brand new start, an adventure, from the grey goo of slow inevitable decline that the EU has become and, by it's very nature incapable of changing away from.
Bring on the vote - lets be a little braver and get out and enjoy the adventure.
It seems like the UK is so dependent on the EU that if we left, every aspect of our lives will be affected negatively... Jobs, trade, youth employment, football, gaming, currency swings, prices of food and goods etc. In the IT industry, over reliance on an entity - the EU in this case - is called "single point in failure" and is a risk that needs to be mitigated. We mitigate by voting OUT!!
UK never did anything positive for the EU, never helped to built it, on the contrary, ever tried to weaken it. It's a dead weight, and a US trojan: EU will be much better without UK.
Also, this will give another opportunities to our Scottish brothers and sisters to become free again from London's rules.
So please, for the brexit vote 'yes' !
>UK never did anything positive for the EU, never helped to built it,
If the UK never did anything for the EU why are EU countries rolling out their scariest threats to scare the UK population from voting to leave? One or a mix of these is my guess A: They need the UK's contributions, B: They need to keep the UK in the EU to avoid it becoming a threat, C: The EU actually values the UK. My gut feeling is mostly A and B, a tiny bit of C.
UK's contributions? Seriously? Which ones?
Nah, I don"t think most countries fear UK leaves, but some of their leaders do. IMHO political leaders are afraid that Brexit could lead to another rise of right and left-wing populism whose main argument is to accuse EU to be responsible for everything bad.
I also believe they may have some interests in keeping the City into the EU. Personal interests, I mean.
>UK pays less than Italy, with a stronger economy:
Italy pays slightly more than the UK but then takes most of the money it paid in back out so it's net contributions are far less than the UK.
The fact is that the EU is pissing it's pants about what happens when the UK leaves because they won't get be getting money from the UK and the UK won't be restrained by EU meddling designed specially to hurt the UKs services sector.
I live in mainland Europe, and honsestly, there is almost no press coverage on Brexit. No one feels threaned by Brexit. if the UK leave the EU, there will be financial complications and some extra legal hasles, but noone really cares - the UK is making a big fuss about their own worries and decisions.
It's like the 15 year old boy who screams and shouts in the house that he is leaving, and he starts packing a suitcase. - do his brothers ans sisters care? Not really, they may even be looking forward to it as to share the room or he toys ...
"The UK is hardly likely to bar those with skills it needs is it? How about having our own rules and recruiting talent from the whole world, not just the EU?"
It's an externality. Right-wing politicians receive the electoral benefit from being tough on immigration, but it's businesses, not the politicians, who bear the cost.
In case you'd not noticed, we do.
All the EU(/EEA) does is to make visa free travel and the right to work and live in the same way as within your own country. Leaving the EU (and EEA) will remove this right and mean the rest of the world rules apply. (Unless something is agreed in the 2 year exit negotiations).
Leaving gives us NOTHING. It just makes it more difficult for us to work in Europe and vice versa.
"Leaving gives us NOTHING. It just makes it more difficult for us to work in Europe and vice versa."
If you could get a *skilled* job in the rest of the EU right now I suspect you would be eligible for a visa sponsored by your employer and the UK not being in the EU any more wouldn't matter much.
I don't think any off the RACIST XENOPHOBES^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H out camp care about skilled people coming into the UK. They care about mass migration of uneducated unskilled people from poorer nations, the direct effects (no jobs for native uneducated unskilled peoples) and the indirect effects (paying for translators etc at schools for their kids).
"If you could get a *skilled* job in the rest of the EU right now I suspect you would be eligible for a visa sponsored by your employer and the UK not being in the EU any more wouldn't matter much."
Don't kid youself, before EU, even and especially skilled workers, you had to prove that noone in your country has the skills you are looking for ... Tougher than you think.
As one of the poorer people in UK today, because I have a long standing disability, my observation is that the first thing which Brexit will Break is any European Social Funding that the voluntary sector and depreived areas of Britain have enjoyed as a means to bolster the lack of investment from the UK Govermins.
I think about things like the river Taff barrage and other major ESF contributions made to the communities in south Wales and the other (none London) regions of UK. I think about the ESF grants that I and others have received, which have allowed us to take NVQ and other qualifications, specifically designed for managers working in the voluntary sector. I think about the grants I received for the specially adapted office furniture which means I can still work even though disabled. I also think about the office equipment which, as a disabled person returning to work I also received ESF grants for.
I think that I can safely say that, without these ESF grants I would have a BSc in IT but be unable to work as there is no other way I could have got the very expensive specialist equipment that I needed. The UK Govermin had made no such provisions to help people back into work and in recent years what ever grants were once available have dried up since the Tories gained power.
Next things taken away will be our rights to free speech and lawful assembly and any disabled people will be turned into Soylent Green which will be fed to the few remaining workers who are unable to afford vegetables and meat imported from Europe and beyond.
ALF
While I would feel sorry for you if you were worse off if the UK left the EU I think you, like many others, are trying to make out that their single issue should be a big enough reason to stay.
There are going to be losers and winners either way and I think it's fairly selfish to suggest that a whole nation of millions of people should buy someone's sob story about how it'll hurt their lifestyle, wallet, business etc and vote to stay in out of guilt. Equally I think it's selfish for people to complain that some Polish guy stole their job so everyone should vote to leave.
You might be receiving grants from the EU at the moment but maybe if the UK isn't paying child support for children that have never stepped foot in the UK any more then UK tax payer money could go to fund grants for people that need them in the UK? Maybe the grants you are receiving aren't really financially viable in the first place and the only reason the EU can grant them is because it has no idea what the books look like?
I sympathise with you about UK government policy but I'm afraid you are falling for the EU's sleight-of-hand tricks. Why do you think the UK doesn't fund these things? So that it can create a space for the EU to do them and get the credit for it. You've fallen for it, I'm sorry to say.
The money you were given is UK taxpayers' money. The Labour government prior to the Conservative government was attacking the disabled and the ill with just as much heartlessness. It was under the Labour government that I started fighting it, so I know.
The money that Wales, for instance, has received was always UK taxpayers' money. It is not EU money. EU VAT is one of the things that has made the cost of living in the UK go up, not down, including in Wales. I'm afraid that you have the UK public to thank for your bridge. We not only paid for it with our money, we also paid for it with our sovereignty.
My issues with the EU include...
Allowing UK child benefit payments to kids who don't even live in the UK
Unlimited migration from any EU nation into the UK
The EU does not know how it spends the money it receives for its budget, something like 4% is unaccounted for.
The EU MEP's shuffle between Brussels and Strasbourg and is a waste of time and money, something that EU parliament should stop.
Voting for prisoners and many other rules should not be dictated by Brussels, and as such if we stay in, every looney EU rule will be voted in by majority voting and we just have to take the hits.
These are some of my reasons for not staying in the EU and if Brexit happens, then David Cameron should be kicked out and get someone in who can negotiate a new deal with Europe.
Allowing UK child benefit payments to kids who don't even live in the UK
That's a new one I've not heard before. Is it the latest from the Daily Mail?
I wonder how many zeroes there are between the decimal point and a non-zero digit when we see what percentage that is in the relevant figure? I'm going to go ahead an guess that it's something like 0.0001% of the benefit budget. Can you quote the actual figure for me?
Been known for a long time..
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11139515/600000-a-week-paid-out-in-child-benefit-to-parents-overseas.html
quote "In 2014, Figures show that £31million was paid to families of children living overseas last year. In all 20,400 Child Benefit claims were made, covering 34,268 children – two thirds of whom are living in Poland. "
Although the child benefit cost is around £11 bn and my maths may be a bit wrong, around 0.002% goes abroad, wouldn't it better to spend it on people who need it in the UK?
Although the child benefit cost is around £11 bn and my maths may be a bit wrong, around 0.002% goes abroad, wouldn't it better to spend it on people who need it in the UK?
Sounds like it's not a real problem then. £31M might sound like a lot to you an I, but when we have a budget deficit of £69B, a number more than 2,000 times bigger, I think we can safely say it's not a significant issue when it comes to the UK's finances. We could probably account for that number if we wanted to, by making one medium sized multinational corporation pay their taxes properly.
@Paul IT
Remember... Brits (like me) living on the continent receive child benefit in the country where they work / reside.
You won't see that in the - one sided - figures you quote, because though British children are the beneficiaries... it is not a cost to the UK Government.
So here's a suggestion. From your "0.002% goes abroad" number, subtract the amount paid by European governments to Brits working/residing in Europe.
Remember... Brits (like me) living on the continent receive child benefit in the country where they work / reside.
You won't see that in the - one sided - figures you quote, because though British children are the beneficiaries... it is not a cost to the UK Government.
So here's a suggestion. From your "0.002% goes abroad" number, subtract the amount paid by European governments to Brits working/residing in Europe.
I don't know how outdated this is (it's 2013) but the Telegraph helpfully listed benefits available in other EU countries, and yes it does appear that in a lot of cases Brits working abroad are also claiming Child Benefit for their dependents who live in the UK. Sauce for the Goose etc.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/10391238/Benefits-in-Europe-country-by-country.html
> Allowing UK child benefit payments to kids who don't even live in the UK
Our failing. Why should English people get it if their kids don't live here? Fix that and the problem is gone.
> Unlimited migration from any EU nation into the UK
But we are allowed to go in the other direction? To be honest this is the one thing I totally want to keep. I want to be able to work and live anywhere in the EU. It's hardly the EU's fault if our businesses only want to pay wages that only migrants living 4 couples to a house for a couple of years can build a future on.
> The EU does not know how it spends the money it receives for its budget, something like 4% is unaccounted for.
Needs fixing, but all sorts of crap goes on in Westminster too.
> The EU MEP's shuffle between Brussels and Strasbourg and is a waste of time and money, something that EU parliament should stop.
Agreed, but like the previous, not enough for me to sacrifice my EU passport for.
> Voting for prisoners
I don't have a problem with the concept, however I would prefer that all prisons are treated as one single constituency and elect 1 MP. (otherwise it could skew elections).
But that actually comes from ECHR which we are NOT voting on. Our vote is whether we are to remain in the EU. (The EU is also subject to the ECHR).
"The EU does not know how it spends the money it receives for its budget, something like 4% is unaccounted for."
Central EU accounts are correct and signed off every year, the issue you mention is due to grants given to individual Governments which often do not submit detailed accounts of how they spent the money in time (Apparently the UK government is among the guilty) or contain errors in the submission (this is where a lot of the "corruption" claims come from, it's not corruption as such it's some local admin filling the form in incorrectly or incompletely), it is this that the brexiters and the press are constantly screaming about when they mention "unaudited accounts", they are audited but not signed off at the appropriate time because of the problems with the returns from some countries.
When you look at the size of the EU, getting accurate returns from 29 countries on time and in the correct format must be like herding cats.
Maybe I'm about to say something really stupid because I don't have enough information.
I believe that, ultimately, the EU is governed by its people, and the UK is governed by the City of London Corporation.. So Brexit would be better, because then CoL opposition to a Tobin Tax can't spread beyond the influence sphere of the UK, and won't be able to poison the wider EU and Eurozone systems.
We need a stable financial system; Europe (incl. UK) is still bleeding from 2008.
"The Leave campaign points to the trade deal that Canada reached and postulates that the UK could do the same. The Remain campaign points out that this took Canada several years to negotiate and it is still not in force."
And I truly hope our new Canadian government scraps this trade deal. It is probably one of the worst things that could happen to Canada!! The former Conservative government must have been on drugs when they were negotiating the deal!
I don't understand why you are worried about legal matters. Laws don't change overnight, and they are certainly not revoked.
I would be much more worried about the change: North American companies that have their European HQ in the Uk will have to change their organisation. The UK offices will only work in the UK.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
