Should we stop bullying the United Kingdom?

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Except Irish businesses need certainty asap and these people like the obscenely wealthy Rees Mogg don't want to admit they've led millions of ignorant British English people down a cul de sac so like the snivelling cowards that they are they keep placating their supporters with the pleasing folie de grandeur of "We're still a world power and we'd be greater still only for the EU".

Everybody is out of step but our Johnny and scapegoats, especially foreign ones, will always be used by the Tories.

The truly galling thing is that it was economically rightwing British Tory policies, aped by New Labour when they took over in 1997, which was the biggest supporter of huge immigration to Britain. This was done as the central means of keeping labour costs low in Britain. And now the same rightwing politicians are putting themselves forward as defenders of the very class of menial workers and plebs whose jobs were always the first to be threatened by the immigration which the Tories always advocated for economic reasons. There aren't enough decades of the rosary to pray for the poor English on this one. A people who are absolutely hoodwinked by their social superiors in the Tory party.

Well there’s two wings to the Conservative party - English nationalist and free market libertarians.

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Which is ironic given that in May 2004 the British ignored EU restrictions on the movement of citizens of new members states like Poland and 9 other countries to encourage them to move to Britain and thus keep wage rates low for the British plebs who now faced more competition. And of course all those Pakistanis, West Indians and the like are in Britain because of the EU and not because of the British Empire/British jingoism?

How predictably pathetic that Brexiters and their scapegoating of the EU have wiped these, and much more, from the historical record.

The ordinary guy is still going to blame the EU though. In the north of England Labour is always going to win.

British jingoism doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t impose border control either.

Aegir wrote: »

I have some bad news for you I'm afraid. Now sit down while I break this to you gently.

There is no magic money tree.

Are you ok hun?

So, now that you know that, can you understand that the UK would have had to borrow the money to lend to Ireland, That money would attract interest. It is only right that the interest on that loan is covered by the Irish government, is it not? or are you suggesting that Ireland should scrounge off the UK tax payer?



how many UK banks did the Irish government bail out? or German, Dutch, Swiss, Spanish for that matter?

I'l give you a clue, it was none. The only banks bailed out by the Irish government were Irish ones.

All the foreign banks that lost billions in Ireland, were all bailed out by the tax payers in their respective countries. The reason the UK didn't set up a "Bad Bank" like Ireland did with NAMA, is because they already had one, with it's head quarters right next to Tara Street station.

The Irish property bubble, caused by greed, poor governance and a downright criminally incompetent government, cost tax payers across europe billions, so less of the boo hoo, feel sorry for us ****e please.

The UK itself had a parallel and almost identical crisis. The result was the biggest state bailout in British history and the largest corporate loss in British history.

HBOS and RBS were nationalised

RBS alone had £325bn of toxic assets sitting in a government vehicle effectively doing the same thing as NAMA just using a different mechanism.

In both countries, the state ended up standing behind mornic decisions made by banks that had gone nuts.

Their total bailout package was approximately £500 billion (€564 billion) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_Kingdom_bank_rescue_package

The UK banks that entered the Irish market late, notably HBOS behaved absolutely irresponsibility and lost billions in a very short time period by taking unbelievably stupid risks.

You can blame Irish regulation (or lack thereof) to a point; but there was a bank culture of absolutely risk blindness and magic thinking going on too. Banks are supposed to be competent at carrying out investment risk analysis. It's one of the only things that have to be good at. Instead they got extremely good at selling loans and forgot about all the rest of things banks actually have to do.

The 2008 disaster shows one thing : we cannot trust the banks to manage themselves, be transparent, or comply with rules unless they’re policed with aggressive and intrusive regulation as they could literally destroy countries if we don’t do that. Most of them broke every rule in the book, lied and then dumped their risk on sovereign states.

But I don’t think you can give the UK a free pass on having a regulatory environment that was any better than ours was. Both countries (and the US and several continental countries and Iceland) came very close to being economically destroyed by their own rogue banking sectors.

Also that friendly loan the UK gave us is earning them about 400 million a year in interest payments and they won’t accept early repayment. On the plus side, if GBP goes soft after Brexit, well have saved a fortune.

Aegir wrote: »

I’m not sure what your point is?

Are Irish tax payers paying off UK debts, as Fuaranch claims?

He is doing what the Brexiteers are doing, blaming Johnny Foreigner for something that is the fault of no one but the Irish government. It’s irrelvant what the UK’s debt or bank bailout is, that is just a look over there statement.

No. Irish tax payers are not on the hook for UK commercial bank bailouts. The UK took care of its own disastrous mess with a programme that paralleled what happened here and in the US. We are, however, guaranteeing and managing out a load of loans that were run up by Irish regulated banks in the UK and around the world. Anglo, for example, had huge property loans all over the place.

We are also on the hook for international loans that we took out, largely to deal with current expenditure during the 2008 crisis where our economy was turned upside down for several years. Massive borrowing had to happen to keep the country stable and functioning during that period and we have actually managed to refinance it and reduce the debt level quite a lot over the last few years.

I would, however, be very cautious of using Irish debt to GDP ratios as our GDP (in common with a lot of small, wealthy countries that attract FDI) is subject to huge variations due to things like movement of intellectual property and transfer pricing and so on.

My point is that the Irish situation was not unique and the UK tends to forget that for all the tabloid ranting about the Eurozone crisis and the Irish banking crisis, they had an absolutely parallel and equally huge banking and financial disaster in 2008 in the UK.

I find the Irish are great at wallowing in "only in Ireland" misery and the UK is the opposite. They can't remember any negative history. The Empire's remembered through rose tinted glasses and is imaged to have been some kind of club based on garden parties and hugs, The 1970s IMF bailout is erased from memory, the 1980s recessions and riots are largely erased from Tory memory at least, Northern Ireland happened somewhere far, far away in a foreign land that they've had no influence over at any stage, the 2008 crisis only impacted the Euro and they'd no banking issues at all.. the list is endless.

There's nothing wrong with self critique and there's nothing necessarily wrong with thinking positively either. However, I find both Ireland and England are off the deep-end and in opposite directions on those issues. One has an inability to forget anything and the other can't remember anything.

steddyeddy wrote: »

I think it's indicative of the intelligence of leave voters that they voted to leave the EU because they didn't like Pakistani immigrants.

Let's call them what they are, Pakistani........



Expats. After all, sauce for the goose.

Remember last year Michael O Leary warned that come Sept. 2018 there would be no Summer 2019 flight planned of Britain didn't secure flying rights.

Can't find anything stating this issues has been resolved. Will flights to and from the UK to Europe be cancelled next year?

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

The term expat isn’t the same as immigrant for a reason, it’s not permanent. Immigration is generally considered permanent.

The definition states permanently or temporarily.

There's plenty of Eastern European and Chinese "immigrants" who went home after the crash and I never would have thought the large UK expat community would have any intention of leaving the sun and sand to return to the UK.

Ya the BBC did a report and found it's just semantics http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20170119-who-should-be-called-an-expat

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

The US call temporary working visas (ie the H1B) a non immigrant visa.

The ex pats to Arab countries (for instance) are not immigrants - none willl have permanent residency rights or the right to citizenship (nor would any child born there).

It's semantics. The word might mean something for you, but the dictionary definition means it can go both ways.


An immigrant is simply someone who moves to another country and takes up permant residence. It's not specific to any particular reason.


BTW, the H1B is a bad example as it is a very specific visa. The generic US non immigrant Visa is quote "required by anyone seeking temporary admission to the United States who is not eligible to travel visa free under the Visa Waiver Program (ESTA) or is traveling to the U.S. for a wide variety of reasons, including tourism, business, medical treatment, study, research and certain types of temporary work"

badtoro wrote: »

Let's call them what they are, Pakistani........



Expats. After all, sauce for the goose.

Its the vast numbers of Eastern Europeans clogging up the NHS.

My aunt is waiting 4 weeks for a doctor appointment in Scotland. My cousin cant find a school for his kid as they are full.

Its immigration from the EU /SNP policy or both.

People voted for Britex because they got sick of seeing free loaders from Poland getting preferential treatment when they give nothing back.

Its immigration from the EU not Pakistan that is the issue.

prinzeugen wrote: »

Its the vast numbers of Eastern Europeans clogging up the NHS.

My aunt is waiting 4 weeks for a doctor appointment in Scotland. My cousin cant find a school for his kid as they are full.

Its immigration from the EU /SNP policy or both.

People voted for Britex because they got sick of seeing free loaders from Poland getting preferential treatment when they give nothing back.

Its immigration from the EU not Pakistan that is the issue.

Free loaders from Poland? Are there loads of polish people that have moved to Scotland to sit around doing nothing on the meagre unemployment payments there? Have you any stats to back that up? Sounds like perpetuating xenophobic rubbish to me