Felix.

"Freedom of movement and residence for persons in the EU is the cornerstone of Union citizenship, which was established by the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992. The provisions governing the free movement of persons are laid down in Directive 2004/38/EC on the right of EU citizens and their family members to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member States."

Seem open to me, or am I missing something?

Felix.

Well if you ask 'men in the street' such as Paul Ormerod MPhil (Oxford) in Economics and forecaster at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. He seems quite positive that we will be better off; he writes:

"....Brexit offers the UK the opportunity to compete in a world which is rapidly evolving. We don’t need the madness of MIFID II. The EU lives in terror of an innovative, lightly taxed UK which embraces rather than resists the rapid pace of change in the world economy.

In the longer term, the less we have to do with the European Commission and its central planning mindset the better. Any short-term disruption will be well worth the price.

Brexit is not going as well as it could, not for the usual conventional reasons, but because the government has not embraced this vision sufficiently.

The short-term evidence, for what it is worth, contradicts almost everything which hard core Remainers have claimed. There has not been a recession. The economy continues to grow. Employment is at record highs and unemployment is down to levels last seen in the mid-1970s. In the City, according to property specialists such as Knight Frank, the problem will soon be one of a shortage of office space."

So, the country does better and we don't have to pay the EU membership.

trails

iTrader: (41)

He cites Project Fear in the first paragraph, that's the language of a leaver so undermines everything he writes due to unconscious bias. lolz at the use of the Knight Frank quote; shortage (and cost) of space has been an issue in the city for many years; one of the reasons smart working and desk reduction it facilitates is a common approach. Knight Frank also speaks about the pent up demand caused by political uncertainly, Phil is spouting based on his political belief.

matt-c

iTrader: (5)

Depressing conversation

dpb

An academic paid by some consultancy
Looks like his main income is from flogging paperback semi fiction , churning out at least one a year


I certainly would not have him down as the man in the street gig worker

Mr Fuji

It could be a degree in Spanish, or Cinema!

Joking apart, the question of public sector pay has nothing to do with Brexit or the EU, and won't be eased by leaving as the amount saved is negligible in the great scheme of things, and it's entirely likely that that value will be wiped off anyway, thus making it unavailable!

Felix.

My point was that May wanted a magic pot of money from somewhere. Leaving the EU might just give her the pot she wanted.

dpb

Do you mean her retirement pot money perhaps ?

BMWhere?

THE point is, while £350M (let's pretend that figure were true) a week sounds like a magic money tree to you and I, in the grand scheme of things, compared to the NHS costs, school costs, public sector costs etc. it really is peanuts! When you consider the net cost of EU membership is only half of that and the economic benefit that membership brings then there really is no magic money tree to be found in Brexit, only a magic money drain that will cost the public even more!

As for open borders, we only have an open border with Ireland which in turn has closed borders to the rest of the EU. Freedom of movement is not the same as an open border. If you want to travel to the UK from the EU, you have to pass through passport control, that is a closed border! Freedom of movement is also a conditional thing and residence can be refused to EU citizens that don't meet the requirements.

You would think that after three years of Brexit, people would have done some fact checking by now rather that still reiterating the same arguments that have long been debunked!

Felix.

So, someone from say Poland or Romania can enter the UK with their respective passport - and say they are only visiting the UK for 2 weeks

Felix.

More like £250M a week when you take the rebate into account - but the rebate can change can in not?

£250M a week is still a big sum of money and quite a money tree in anyone's book.
If the government continue to say that we have no money for anything at all (youth services, NHS, public sector etc) then surly the principle of 'looking after the pennies' must play a part. It just makes no sense paying that amount of money out each week when we are hard up.

albob

"It just makes no sense paying that amount of money out each week when we are hard up"

Have you not been watching the News -- the Conservative Leadership contenders have both been promising to spend Billions! -- seems they have found a 'Magic Money Tree' !!!

BMWhere?

£250M per week is the gross amount we actually pay to the EU after the rebate, but the EU gives us about £100M back in regional investments and farming and fishing rebates. The rebate is linked to the contributions, so varies when the budget or exchange rate changes, but the rebate calculation is fixed.

Yes £250M or £350M or £150M is a huge amount in anyone's book except the government's book where its really not that much and is certainly not the magic money tree that the NHS, teachers, police etc. desperately need. The only magic money tree is called tax rises, particularly for corporates and high earners, yet the current prospective replacement PMs are promising exactly the opposite in a cynical move to win votes from the over privileged conservative party members that get to pick them.

dpb

As can most people from the world over.

??

Felix.

No, for me to enter say the USA I will need Esta's before I can enter. And the appropriate checks will be made of me before I can get one.

But anyone from the EU can enter the UK and then disappear - and then leave again when every they want. Basically the right ".....of EU citizens and their family members to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member States."

dpb

Iv no wish to be part of the USA

Mr Fuji

But it's not exactly hard to get an ESTA, or for non EU people to get whatever they need to come so, so the difference is slight. Essentially, people can (and do) come here and disappear, from everywhere. The numbers are small, I doubt Brexit will change that, we are not about to close our borders!

Felix.

The numbers are not small, the numbers are huge.

Our town alone has an 'inner city area' mainly of street houses. These are now occupied by huge numbers of Czechs, Polish, Romanians, Slovaks. As the Czechs don't get along with the Slovaks, who don't get along with the Polish and none get along with the Romanians - so they have all split themselves into streets of their nationalities. And it often flares up with running battles usually involving knives and bottles and blood everywhere. But no one wants to tell anyone about anything expect the horrified local children that have to witness this.

Mix into this, that most of the Cannabis farms are now being run by either Polish or Czechs who can move people in and out of the country as they please - and also tax the local dealers with violent consequences.

We are finding huge farms almost daily, which means that many other farms are not being discovered - this will only go on and on.....

Also, they control a lot of the human trafficking from outside the EU with horrible things happening to the people who are brought across. And again, when the heat is on, the operators just leave the country and send someone else to replace them.

dpb

I bet this happens in America as well , where its so hard to get into

BMWhere?

I don't see that as a problem with EU membership or freedom of movement, but a problem of UK policing, or more to the point, lack of funding for UK policing! Leaving the EU won't fix crime problems, nor will the small amount of cash that leaving the EU will bring. If we want to properly tackle crime (and other problems), then we need to properly fund the police and the only way to do that is to raise taxes - Unfortunately the Brexit supporters want to cut taxes and make the UK a tax haven which will only worsen the problems!

Sad Weevil

iTrader: (1)

Where I live, it's Vietnamese gangs doing all this, and last time I looked they're definitely not in the EU. The only sensible response is to legalise weed. And we don't have an open border. It's very tightly controlled. If it wasn't, why do you think people have been crossing the channel in rubber boats and getting arrested on beaches? I could drive from Calais to Finland's border with Russia without any passport checks. That's open borders. Try getting back into this country when your passports been nicked or lost.

dpb

Looney brexit brigade resurfaced mad old cow comparing oppressed uk members in same breath as shackled slaves

Even Nigel looked bit nervous

Felix.

I think you will find the gangs are using trafficked people from Vietnam as slave labour to set up the farms and look after them - gardeners in other words.
The people who are managing and controlling the farms are much closer to Europe. The ones we find almost always have a Polish or Czech link - either the owners of the property or the materials used, type of plants etc etc

'People crossing the channel in rubber boats' tend to be from places like Eritrea, Somalia, Iran, Syria etc - outside the EU
Everyone else from the EU doesn't need to do this - they must have an easier way in and out of the country

We don't have gangs from Eritrea, Somalia, Iran, Syria - causing us problems any where near like the gangs from EU countries do. And the freedom to come and go as they please makes it too easy to become untouchable.

dpb

No arrest warrant after we leave !

Felix.

Great - because they work so well......not

We have UK citizens extradited to EU countries who's legal setup leaves a lot to be desired and end up in jail on minimal evidence
Requests from other countries to arrest their citizens in the UK costs us a fortune to implement and send them back to their country

Trying to apply for one is a logistical nightmare - you have to basically prove that they are guilty before you can obtain one. So you can't get one if you have suspicion that a person is involved and you need to interview them to obtain evidence. For example, a rape suspect can not be arrested in order to obtain his DNA sample and hence the offence can not be proven. And you try and ask a EU police force for assistance in the matter, they will just wave the European Arrest Warrant legislation at you.

But compare that to Australia - someone on my shift had a fraud inquiry where the phone data pointed at the suspect begin in Australia. Quick email to someone at the local station, and an officer went round and interviewed him and seized his computers for us.

Conclusion - less red tape = more progress

dpb

Nothing to do with Aus being an English speaking ex colony / part of the Commonwealth then...?

Felix.

Not at all, we have had similar successes locating telephone scammers through Africa

dpb

Haha I can well imagine them not bothering with protocol in Africa,having been there a bit

Sad Weevil

iTrader: (1)

Vietnamese gangs were operating here, no Eastern European involvement. So your solution to criminal gangs is to ban all Eastern Europeans from being able to live and work here. What percentage of them are criminals? Who will fill the crime void when they're no longer here? As long as there is a massive amount of money to be made from drugs, someone will simply take over the business. Perhaps you'd prefer home-grown criminals? Or Albanians, they're not in the EU, and are operating freely here. In the 80's, it was Jamaican gangs running the drug trade. Honestly, if you think that leaving the EU is somehow going to decrease crime, you're deluded.

Felix.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan...ngham-48881327

You need to target the gangs as so far they find living and working in the UK too easy. You're right, there is a massive amount of money being made, but all of this goes back to Poland etc.

I'm not sating it will stop all crime, but it will go a long way especially in my area. Less running knife battles on the street, less targeting vulnerable missing from homes (often juveniles) etc etc. And I'm not saying ban all Eastern Europeans, but have it more like Australia have with immigration.