Brexit discussion thread XIV (Please read OP before posting)

Bigus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117814554#Comment_117814554

I know a lad that has a large manufacturing business here in Ireland , and the biggest benefit to him of imported labour was/is , eager Eastern Europeans putting manners back on his Irish workforce, who had taken to not appearing on Mondays due to hangovers and looking to go early on a Friday evening aswell.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117815299#Comment_117815299

Well, that's the point where the spectre of xenophobia raises the ugly head over the parapet, isn't it? Some will huff and puff brexit wasn't about racism, but as you point out, a fear of cheap (sometimes brown faced) labour worried the Express faithful.

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117815299#Comment_117815299

I saw someone suggest during the week that the whole freedom of movement / EU worker debate was total gaslighting by the English tabloids. They invented a bogus "EU immigration crisis" to enrage their readers, when the freedom of movement system was working reasonably well and boosting the UK economy.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117815018#Comment_117815018

Yeah. People are unemployed for lots of reasons. Some of them are that they in between jobs, or they are tied to a location where there isn't much local employment opportunity, but another one is that they've tried to get into the workforce but do not have the character traits that make them 'good employees'

There are lads I know who I'm amazed have a job because I wouldn't trust them as far as I can throw them. And there are people I know who suffer from a lack of self confidence and are just worn out from being mistreated by employers who, at this level of salary, can often treat their workers really really badly.

The UK brexited on the promise that they would improve working conditions that were being held back by immigrant labour. Now is their chance to deliver on this promise.

My breath is not held that Tories won't just make the lives of the unemployed increasingly miserable, re-introducing slavery by the back door.

Sam Russell

I would estimate that there are about 5% to 10% of any workforce who are unemployable - either through disability or lack of education, strength, ability, or just no suitable job opportunities. Ad those who would freeload, or work on the black.

However, migrants tend to not have any of this type as it makes little sense to move to a new country without the intention of making a better life, and living at the bottom of society does not fit that project. The Eastern Europeans intended either to make the move permanent or to build up a pot of savings to make life in their home country much better. Other migrants from outside of the EU might not have worked to this pattern - but the UK did not have to allow them in.

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117817851#Comment_117817851

It's all Daily Mail / Daily Express stuff, they are completely in thrall to the propagandists. Migrant workers, refugees, benefit claimants, businesses, the EU, Macron, lefties, liberals.....these are all traditional targets for the far right rags.

druss

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117818591#Comment_117818591

The French elections are going to be great for the Express in particular. There is no result that can't be spun as Brexit connected, even if it won't be a blip in actual voter conciousness.

"EU to collapse? Macron numbers PLUMMET in SHOCK new poll"

"FURY as Brexit villian Barnier looks set to become French President"

"Non Monsieur. France REJECTS anti-UK Barnier as lack of Marks and Spencer sandwiches GRIPS Paris"

I presume they can just re-run the last set of Le Pen headlines.

ArmaniJeanss

Of all the papers to have an editorial beginning 'Lets Unite with the EU', I doubt the Daily Mail would have been anyone's racing favourite.

MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: Let's unite with the EU to crush the curse of border bureaucracy | Daily Mail Online

It's basically Mr M&S Archie Norman bemoaning the paperwork and looking for computerisation.

Seth Brundle

British government plans to replace the current copyright system which protects authors incomes by allowing prices for different regions of the world will allegedly allow a flood of cheap imports and will badly damage the writing industry through massive financial losses to the publishing industry and subsequent job cuts. This will apparently have knock on effects for future authors being able to get signed and will also affect tv and movie scripts.

Launching a consultation – due to conclude on Tuesday – into the replacement of the copyright system used by the UK under the EU, business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said Brexit allowed the UK to devise a new regime as a “stand-alone sovereign nation”.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/books-brexit-hilary-mantel-publishers-b1909856.html

pixelburp

So more and more, it has become patently obvious Brexit operates as nothing more than a thin excuse for a Firesale of standards, legislation and protections that had previously kept markets free of manipulation and exploration. Burn down everything, and sneak new rules while everything gets rebuilt.

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117822944#Comment_117822944

This 'standalone sovereign nation' idea is risky. It could theoretically work under an inspired and visionary government, but we all know the Tories are useless and incompetent and probably the worst UK government of the last 200 years. Hairbrained schemes like the copyright one are quite rightly panicking people.

Seth Brundle

It also shows that the current government are consistently changing rules and practices without discussing them with the important stakeholders. Why would you consider the above copyright example without talking to various reps from the publishing industry and taking their feedback on board?

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117823227#Comment_117823227

It's very typical of how they've handled Brexit in general. Refused to engage with stakeholders, declined offers of extensions from the EU.....every decision seems to be purely political and ideological, rather than practical.

ambro25

That consultation about copyright is just another UKCA-disaster-in-waiting for what are, again and essentially, ideological reasons.

The biggest issue is less copyright attaching to works of art or authorship, to which the linked article relates, than medicines, as the consultation is about parallel markets (‘exhaustion of rights’) more generally, i.e. what and where can IP owners can (and reciprocally can’t) enforce according to where something is first marketed with their consent.

And in that particular context, the NI Protocol is a sizeable grain of sand in the wheels, because the EU-spec parallel market that must remain in place there, means that the UK cannot revert to a national exhaustion of rights regime (and which the UK government has accordingly already nixed by reason of same).

Professor Moriarty

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117814899#Comment_117814899

As if by magic. From an op-ed piece in today's Telegraph by Roger Bootle. For context, the very fortunate Roger attended Oxford:

"So here is my big idea to boost the GDP of this country: radically reduce the size of the university sector and with it the proportion of young people taking degrees. How radical? Cutting it in half would be a good start."

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117823851#Comment_117823851

Reading up on him, he appears to be one of those crank, right wing "Brexit economists". That's all anyone needs to know.

Professor Moriarty

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117824092#Comment_117824092

Of which there is a multitude in the Telegraph.

pixelburp

I've noticed those distinctly or vocally right of centre have latched onto this lately; the latest thing ruining the world being that GCSE grades are overly inflated and too many young people have degrees. IIRC Nigel Farage was on that hobby horse via his latest grift at GB News. The aggressive prejudice against the young by (what I'm going to go ahead and presume are) the middle-aged, middle-class would be hilarious if it wasn't so creepily insidious and demonstrably destructive to society.

Maybe these people finally found a way to voice their blatant sexism against these "over-educated career women", via some faux intellectual concern for the economy.

Widdensushi

Could it be that they have alot of people with degrees but a shortage of jobs that those degrees are relevant for?

Cabaal

SNIP. Don't dump videos here please.

looksee

There may be a glimmer of sense in what he is proposing though. He is wrong however about the fact that cutting university places would save money.

University degrees are essential for the education and training for many jobs, but not all. Greater investment in funding for less academic but equally, and often more, useful - and in a lot of cases more lucrative - jobs would make a good deal more sense than the pure academic education that university was intended for.

If the term 'university' is being used very loosely to cover all manner of technical college and life skills courses then ok, university for all. But if we are discussing academic courses then their necessity is over stated and the finance could be more practically and usefully applied.

Is there an unconscious bias here that assumes academic means better or superior people? Because they are not. Academic intelligence is to be valued, but all other forms of intelligence are of equal but different importance to society. So long as this tendency to apply class to jobs then there will be the tendency to push all students into academic study - despite the waste of resources. If it can be accepted that effectively creating two classes of people - academics and failures is counter productive and give the 'failures' the skills to be productive rather than putting them down.

Fortunately in real life this latter course is being taken, albeit with an attitude of they are less important, they require less funding, and the educators involved have a tendency to try and subtly shift into academic approaches - I have seen this at first hand. Give equal respect and resources to developing different types of intelligence and produce a broader range of socially productive people.

Edit, apologies, I was so busy getting on my hobbyhorse that I went completely off topic.

listermint

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117826519#Comment_117826519

He hasn't argued for that though. It's pure head line grabbing. You trying to eek out some semblance of meaning from what be is saying is giving it credence. This is more of the same rile people up, be Divisive, profit.

Sam Russell

Well, they voted for Brexit because they wanted to get rid of the Polish plumbers, and now they must train new plumbers but the young ones all want to go to university and study Art and Humanities. University is much more fun than fixing leaking toilets.

George Bernard Shaw was right - youth is wasted on the young.

Christy42

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117826663#Comment_117826663

You want to be young again so you can work on fixing leaky toilets? This sounds more like the old want to waste the youth of the young.

There is a big issue though. Recently the US has had a labour shortage due to people not wanting to go back to work after/during the pandemic for tiny wages. However in that case wages will be brought up and there is labour ready to go back to work for a fairer wage. However with Brexit I am not sure there is that labour ready to go. Certainly people like truck drivers will get more money which is a positive (I don't buy the higher prices muck, raising workers prices won't raise the final price that much since workers only make up part of the final cost of the product and it isn't like wages will double) however then you can't have anyone flooding the market to take up all the roles so a lot of shelves will still go unfilled and smaller places will lose out. You don't get thousands of truck drivers out of thin air because you increase wages. People have other jobs already and it requires training. The same for other jobs like plumbing etc.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117826151#Comment_117826151

The problem is that the young have been abandoned by the right and it's as unnecessary as it is self-destructive. Conservatives know that their ideology has no merits for the people you've locked out of the system and the numbers of those inside it have dwindled. The result is that the radical change that they dread now has no real downside for those on the outside and their numbers are growing as housing becomes more expensive and that's before the likes of Lloyd's bank starting bulk buying housing stock.

There was more talk here this time last year of f*cking garden centres for rural Tories than for schoolchildren's grades and Universities. Anything "for seniors" has been given priority for re-opening whereas nightclubs have only just opened up again.

The same people demonising the young will then be wailing when they end up doing something like joining groups like BLM or Extinction Rebellion after they've poisoned the well so much that they feel like there's no other option since we live in an unrepresentative democracy where untrammeled power can be wielded on the back of 43% of the vote.

I wouldn't worry about Farage and the dozen or so viewers he has. The grades thing crops up every year. He'll find something else to bloviate about sooner or later and barely anyone will pay attention.

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117826663#Comment_117826663

It's something of a myth anyway that everyone is studying bland and generic degree subjects such as the arts or "media studies" at uni. Numerous students are doing highly specialised degrees in science, healthcare, medicine, education, psychology, engineering, performing arts etc. The education bashers like the Brexiteers are trying to infer that university is just a three or four year doss and the students aren't learning anything (which is simply not true).

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117827762#Comment_117827762

Well, having dumbed down A levels results to the extent that over 50% get A or A+, and so get into college to study whatever course they can get into with their grades, whether that particular course suits they needs or wants as far as a career is concerned, it follows that studying for a masters is required for serious students because the graduate is not educated enough for meaningful employment.

Vocational training is better for the majority of school leavers, and many undergraduate courses do tend towards vocational training, because the students are not academic enough.

Other countries, like Germany and Switzerland use the apprentice route for many careers which is blended with formal college training. It works well for them producing well educated professionals, whether plumbers or bank employees.

roosterman71

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117827762#Comment_117827762

It was a 3 or 4 year doss for many in power these days. Sure didn't Boris himself study language or something like that. Maybe the people coming up with this stuff are just drawing on their own experience

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117827974#Comment_117827974

There was nothing to stop the government from improving options regarding vocational training without creating artificial staffing shortages.

All you've really presented here are lazy generalisations. University increases people's life chances which is why attendance is so high. It's easy for you to look down on Arts and Humanities graduates but it's probably better than slaving on low wages in the trades.

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117828008#Comment_117828008

The point I am making is the level of dumbing down of the education system in the UK does it no favours.

I fully appreciate the need for good education for all to better their lives and prospects. I just do not believe that the current scheme in the UK is a good way to achieve the best prospects for the youth of today. How can a school leaver have any idea what their lot will turn out after Uni if they have no idea what course to study, or what employment prospects that that course could lead to after they qualify.

Many students are unaware that every mark they attain at every stage of their university course will carry with them as part of their results. Quite different to school where it is only the final result that matters. Plus, Uni offers little hand holding for the less able.