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Well all those people that didn't want to start from a default position of hard Brexit have got the resulting wipe-out, we have given way on everything.

Worse still to all intents and purposes the EU has annexed Northern Ireland, this is going to have profound repercussions.

I don't think the UK had any option but to give way on everything.

If you are leaving an organisation why on earth should they give way on anything that may be to their disadvantage?

As regards Northern Ireland, that is another fudge to suit everyone. As I understand it, it is a 'backstop' proposal if no better arrangement can be devised. Our useless government seems to believe that with added 'technology' all things are possible! We can have a border that simultaneously exists and doesn't exist. The world's first quantum entangled customs posts perhaps!

As you say, big trouble looms!

Just goes to show how much power EU had over us.... do we really want to go back to the slave owner ?

They still have power over us, the best we can hope for is a hokey cokey agreement one foot in one foot out, without a say and loss of benefits, I'am afraid there are only really two choices, either stay in or leave completely and tell them to stick their demands. to be honest I voted to remain, but I would rather be out than have a half arsed agreement.

We went into those talks premising we were subservient to them and they were in charge of the negotiations, totally wrong!

Reading back on EU's voting.

Back in June 2016 the EU voted on annexing Northern Ireland (support the membership of Northern Ireland in the European Union “by whatever arrangement necessary”), the vote was lost but only by 44%-56%.

Interestingly, this was also an occasion when a weird EU parliamentary mechanism came into play. When MEPs vote on a matter, they can later change their vote, on this occasion 65 MEPs changed their vote, the majority of whom changed their vote in favour of annexation.

Even stranger, the majority of UKIP MEPs voted in favour of annexation??? - though Farage was against.

Hi DD, it’s always good to read your insightful views on the machinations of the body politic.
Even though my interest and respect for politics in general and politicians in particular is declining exponentially, I believe we are heading for a general election which has been called for by Boris the buffoon. If I’m correct this is because the Buffoon hopes he can garner move M.P’s to push through his Brexit plans ( correct me if I’m wrong).
What I’m wondering is, should I bother voting? What’s the point?
This government, or any government come to that, don’t seem to mind us having some say in the composition of our local councils, but when it comes to important national matters they obviously think we are too thick to make the right choices i.e their choices.
Who was it that said. “ Democracy only gives us the right to choose our own dictators “ ?

There is a need to vote, if you think public services are at their knees now, its going to be a lot worse if the Tories get in yet again.

Notice all the usual socialist promises coming from the Conservatives at the moment, its the same at every election and far too many people fall for it.

The top 1% of the country have doubled their income when the other 99% has virtually stood still.

The amount of senior managers in banks and other companies getting bonuses in the £millions for failing is a joke and an insult to the workforce and the people of this country.

The £millions bonuses paid out to directors and management in this country and throughout the EU and world, is nothing to do with our Government.
The Government cannot dictate to companies by telling them what and how to pay their staff.

What I do think is scandalous is the concept of the minimum wage that was introduced back in the early 2000's , when companies were able to redesign jobs, offer the minimum wage, and the employee was then able to claim benefits to raise their income to a certain level. That resulted in the companies being supported by the Government, which allowed them to still make the same or more profits and excess money which was allocated to wages had to be spent or got rid of on salaries or bonuses, to keep the books straight.
It's a concept that has now become the norm.
At the same time as most jobs changed to part time jobs, to accommodate the 3 million workforce that came in from the EU, it kept the unemployment figures down. The additional money for benefits to make up the shortfall came from the EU . All EU countries now have minimum wage. Taken some out of poverty and landed a whole load more in it.
The EU strategy was of the 120 million people living in poverty in the EU to lift 20million out of poverty by 2020...... and they have failed .

We as a country cannot criticize because we are still members of the EU, but to blame Governments for the ongoing federalisation of the EU, is wrong and hopefully we will get out and begin to make our own way . No chance with Corbyn or Jo Swinson . Corbyn can't be trusted one iota , and if people want to stay in the EU the 'toothless wonder' is the better option.
But at the end of the day, the MP's are delegated by us for us, the public.... not for their own personal gain . So far, that trust has been abused on a massive scale .

There are rules and regulations but they are inadequate. It is morally wrong and the Government have powers to control such things. What is worse, there are laws that help large bonus recipients avoid paying "normal" tax.


Also, consider equating it to inheritance tax:-

if a parent gives a large "bonus" to their children then die within seven years, then inheritance tax kicks in.

If a company gives a large bonus and goes bust within seven years??????


Another example:-

If a person makes a gift to another person, they must be able to "maintain their standard of living" after giving that gift otherwise numerous controls kick in for benefits and tax.

If a company gives a bonus but trades at a loss, they pay less tax????



Yep, prior to that, the employer didn't have to restructure jobs to pay much less wages and have employees on benefits.



The UK has never received one penny of funding from the EU, furthermore there is nothing in our UK payments that reduced them dependent on what benefits we paid. Even furthermore, more workers increased our GDP which increased the payments we made to the EU.

[quote=granny]to accommodate the 3 million workforce that came in from the EU[quote=granny]Which shows that prior to minimum wage, the UK low paid sector had worse pay than the poorest countries in the EU, despite the UK being the 4th richest nation in the world at that time.

Minimum wage dragged millions of people out of abject poverty, yes, that was at a cost to others but that is what a fair and moral society is about. When one person receives a bonus that is more than the increase of twenty million workers added together, that is immoral.

There are rules and regulations but they are inadequate. It is morally wrong and the Government have powers to control such things. What is worse, there are laws that help large bonus recipients avoid paying "normal" tax.


Also, consider equating it to inheritance tax:-

if a parent gives a large "bonus" to their children then die within seven years, then inheritance tax kicks in.

If a company gives a large bonus and goes bust within seven years??????


Another example:-

If a person makes a gift to another person, they must be able to "maintain their standard of living" after giving that gift otherwise numerous controls kick in for benefits and tax.

If a company gives a bonus but trades at a loss, they pay less tax????



Yep, prior to that, the employer didn't have to restructure jobs to pay much less wages and have employees on benefits.



The UK has never received one penny of funding from the EU, furthermore there is nothing in our UK payments that reduced them dependent on what benefits we paid. Even furthermore, more workers increased our GDP which increased the payments we made to the EU.

Well I understood that the EU contributed the benefits for EU nationals.



It might be immoral, but explain that to foreign owned banks , companies and institutions and hope they take note .

As you stated yourself, the low pay EU immigrants only started coming over here in quantity after we introduced minimum wage, the low pay jobs weren't worth coming over for before that. I'm talking about manual Labour not office jobs, most office jobs had Unions. It wasn't unheard of for people to work in exchange for food. There were many British manual labourers going to the EU for work, this escalated after the minimum wage because the previous ultra-low-wage employers were not set up to provide minimum wage.

More than 800,000 people were paid less than the minimum wage just before it was introduced and this didn't include the economic migrants from the UK.

Minimum wage was still a pretty poor wage when it was introduced, it was still propped up by other benefits, especially for families.

Within the EU, benefits are paid by the nation that the people are resident in using the local rules, there is no clawback from the EU or country of origin within the EU. In fact most EU countries don't know where most of their emigrated residents are, if I go to Germany there is no requirement for me to inform the UK that I have done so, yet I can claim German benefits after meeting their criteria.

State Pensions have different arrangements to benefits, they are paid by the nation(s) that you have State Pension credits with (and you meet the eligibility criteria), it is possible to receive multiple state pensions from different nations, this applies outside the EU as well.

All laws are about morality, financial institutions not liking things has no bearing on whether a law should exist, in fact in most cases it would be an endorsement that a law should exist.

I think it's probably true to say that the low paid EU migrants that came over after we introduced the minimum wage was because in 2004 either ten or eleven countries joined the EU, all from the Eastern block on extremely low incomes and had given rise to the prepared ground for them all 3million plus to arrive and take our full time jobs, .. if you remember many jobs went to job share and part time.

Then came the job evaluation being rolled out nationwide, and that either upgraded or down graded positions . Up graded got massive amounts of back pay covering a period of years, down grading in many cases finished off jobs altogether.
Then the EVR .... Oh so many took EVR !! , followed by becoming re- employed within the same institution on a different grade.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_average_wage

I don't know where you get all your facts and figures from, DD. It must take you hours to research but you never give the links.

Sometimes they are calculated using data from different sources. I used to write all the notes down but I ended up with stacks of paper with notes which I hadn't got a clue about, so I just scribble calculations when I need to now. The same bits of paper have loads of part numbers and dimensions scribbled down for one of my other personas and then some of my madcap designs, it gets messy.

The 800,000 was calculated starting from 830,000 that the low pay commission published as to the number on minimum wage after the start in 1999 then I added and subtracted some other figures which I don't recall but part of it was the lower quartile earnings trends from around those years. 800,000 was a realistic minimum, it could be a lot higher (and a slight chance it could be lower) but I ran out of data and patience on the numbers, periodicity, frequency etc of UK economic migrants and as there were loads of rogue employers still around it would be a rough estimate at best.

The 2007 EU expansion countries were not allowed to come here to work other than seasonal jobs and other exceptions until 2014. This was after the UK was conned when we agreed to no restriction on the 2004 expansion countries in the expectation that would be the norm, in practice almost all other EU countries put restrictions on and hence we became the prime target for freedom of movement.

It was Bulgaria and Romania that were new members in 2007. The other 10 that joined in 2004 (as I wrote previously) were nearly all, if not all ,ex communist countries and jobs available here were in the hospitality sector, which covers a wide range of employments. not just seasonal.