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 Mr. Burning wrote:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38561501

Please don't be shocked by this, his position re Europe has been known since the 70's


Also, anyone hear the Beeb asking him if he will resign over the NHS crisis...did they get their jezzas mixed up?

Ironically if Corbyn had of campaigned upon these, his established and well known beliefs, he could have actually have established himself as a credible leader and lead the many labour members/voters in the way that he espouses to and I don't know...actually provides some opposition.

Instead he folded, then hid, then blamed others to preserve the status quo. New type of politics seems very much like the old.

As I've said before, we, the British people, were badly let down by our leaders during the EU referendum, be you Remain, be you Leave. The quality of debate on both sides was appalling, but as somebody said, society gets the democracy and the politicians it deserves...



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 notprop wrote:

 Mr. Burning wrote:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38561501

Please don't be shocked by this, his position re Europe has been known since the 70's


Also, anyone hear the Beeb asking him if he will resign over the NHS crisis...did they get their jezzas mixed up?

Ironically if Corbyn had of campaigned upon these, his established and well known beliefs, he could have actually have established himself as a credible leader and lead the many labour members/voters in the way that he espouses to and I don't know...actually provides some opposition.

Instead he folded, then hid, then blamed others to preserve the status quo. New type of politics seems very much like the old.

I think in his heart Corbyn wanted to lash out at the EU during the referendum, but the Blairites and the Hampstead Heath liberals in the party held him back.

He is the leader of the Labour Party and has managed to rebuff a leadership contest, I don't think that Corbyn has been held back by anyone beyond his own lack of leadership skill, mismanagement and attempt to play the political game.

An ideal chance to get up there and lead a movement and he shied away from it.

Q: When did the Islington Socialist mafia move to Hampstead Heath?

A: When his supporters realised that Corby lived in Islington.

 notprop wrote:
He is the leader of the Labour Party and has managed to rebuff a leadership contest, I don't think that Corbyn has been held back by anyone beyond his own lack of leadership skill, mismanagement and attempt to play the political game.

An ideal chance to get up there and lead a movement and he shied away from it.

Q: When did the Islington Socialist mafia move to Hampstead Heath?

A: When his supporters realised that Corby lived in Islington.

Hampstead Heath, Islington, it's all London, it's al the same to me.

People have taken me to task on this many a time, but I remain convinced that Campbell is still lurking in the background, marshalling the Blairites, waiting for the right moment to strike...

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 notprop wrote:
He is the leader of the Labour Party and has managed to rebuff a leadership contest, I don't think that Corbyn has been held back by anyone beyond his own lack of leadership skill, mismanagement and attempt to play the political game.

An ideal chance to get up there and lead a movement and he shied away from it.

Q: When did the Islington Socialist mafia move to Hampstead Heath?

A: When his supporters realised that Corby lived in Islington.

Hampstead Heath, Islington, it's all London, it's al the same to me.

People have taken me to task on this many a time, but I remain convinced that Campbell is still lurking in the background, marshalling the Blairites, waiting for the right moment to strike...

Lurking? Its Labour. Feth this New Labour and Blairite positioning. It's more accurate to say that Old Labour are finding a way back in.

And by old I mean horrible 70s pipe smoking technical college Labour.

Both May and Corbyn seem to have come to the conclusion that the major domestic political concern about the EU is immigration, not economic factors.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Both May and Corbyn seem to have come to the conclusion that the major domestic political concern about the EU is immigration, not economic factors.

I was talking with my brother over Christmas about it, and it was the only topic he was interested in, as a leave supporter.

Not found anyone off the forum, of my personal acquaintance, cite sovereignty as their main argument either, that's usually a 2nd place support. No one has said they felt it was for the good of the economy.

Basically, I feel that if the previous and current governments had actually made a concerted effort to address public feeling about immigration, through maybe education and tackling the affects in certain areas where immigration has had an actual impact, rather than just fob it off as racism, then it's unlikely Leave would have even achieved half of their vote.

It's too late. Cameron screwed up by announcing the target of 100,000 immigrants per year without any attempt to calculate the actual "right" number of immigrants. He just picked a number out of his arse because it sounded good. The real number of immigrants needed each year depends on various economic conditions. On top of the "required" immigration, people who have married foreigners have a legal right to married life, so their spouses would be added on. IDK how many that is per year.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It's too late. Cameron screwed up by announcing the target of 100,000 immigrants per year without any attempt to calculate the actual "right" number of immigrants. He just picked a number out of his arse because it sounded good. The real number of immigrants needed each year depends on various economic conditions. On top of the "required" immigration, people who have married foreigners have a legal right to married life, so their spouses would be added on. IDK how many that is per year.

People who married foreigners have a legal right as things stand, but wait until the Tories pull us out of the ECJ and try and fob us off with their British bill of rights bullgak.

If we can't get rid of foreign ne'er do wells I don't see the machinery of state being put into action for a housewife/husband or indeed any other foreign born person currently paying their taxes.

 notprop wrote:
If we can't get rid of foreign ne'er do wells I don't see the machinery of state being put into action for a housewife/husband or indeed any other foreign born person currently paying their taxes.

Recent media reports would say otherwise. Don't underestimate the crushing effects of petty bureaucracy. I've had a few run ins with it myself over the years

 notprop wrote:
If we can't get rid of foreign ne'er do wells I don't see the machinery of state being put into action for a housewife/husband or indeed any other foreign born person currently paying their taxes.

Do you not remember Theresa May proposing changes to the rules which would require foreign students at UK colleges to return to their home country before being allowed to apply for a UK work visa after their studies have finished? So the machinery of the state was put into action in order to force people out after we had just spent time and money educating them and increasing their skillset.

So you're saying a student would have to apply to a different type of visa when their existing leave to remain had elapsed.

The horror, the horror!

Because a student has never overstayed a student visa before...

 notprop wrote:
So you're saying a student would have to apply to a different type of visa when their existing leave to remain had elapsed.

The horror, the horror!

Because a student has never overstayed a student visa before...

No, I am saying that forcing a student to leave the country in order to apply for that visa rather than let them apply whilst in the country is idiotic. Prior to this change, students had a period of time after their studies had finished with which to find work and apply for a work visa. Once a student has left, there is a lot less incentive to return to the UK rather than go anywhere else in the world.

So you have the situation where the UK is training skilled workers for other countries to get the economic benefits of.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
So you have the situation where the UK is training skilled workers for other countries to get the economic benefits of.

And whats wrong with that? They've paid for their tuition haven't they?

I do agree that forcing a Student to leave so they reapply for a work visa is silly however.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
So you have the situation where the UK is training skilled workers for other countries to get the economic benefits of.

And whats wrong with that? They've paid for their tuition haven't they?

Because it really dumb to train skilled workers so other countries can then employ them without having to fund their studies? There is a limited amount of space on courses and you want to maximise the economic benefit of that course so you want the most people graduating from that course to then work in the UK and contribute to our economy.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

And whats wrong with that? They've paid for their tuition haven't they?

They paid their subsidised tuition certainly. It's quite surprising how the fee structure changes when you add in the local version of Erasmus grants.

So. The financial sector of the UK. Few fun facts to get started. It employs about 4% of the UK workforce, and generates about 11.5% of tax receipts. It's one of the top three financial centres in the world, along with Tokyo and New York. The UK is the world's largest exporter of financial services, and it counts for about 10% of our national output. It receives about a third of all direct foreign investment into the UK.

So it's a pretty big deal for the UK. But what exactly is 'financial services'? It gets thrown around a lot as a phrase, but here's what it's generally held to include:-

-Commercial Banking
-Investment Banking
-Insurance
-Foreign Exchange Services (financial transfers, currency conversion, etc)
-Brokerage
-Accountancy
-Financial Planning

The above is not exhaustive, but contains the major players. We also have a large raft of support services/sectors for the above, from consultancy to legal services, which in turn employ about another 2% of the workforce. Altogether, it's reasonably well distributed across the UK (Edinburgh has a fairly big financial sector, for example). All of these services combined create one stonking great mesh of supporting networks and facilities which have helped to make the UK such a fertile financial powerhouse, and one of the prime ecosystems in the world to do business. Encouraged by the spread of English as the language of business, the highly developed legal system, and the core stability of the UK, anyone who wants to do serious finance in this part of the world comes to London to get things done.

So! That's what we've got. A lot of people slag off 'fat cat bankers' without realising just how much money the financial sector puts on the plate of the average man when it comes to helping to fund things like the NHS, and keeping UK Government borrowing costs infinitesimal.

If you've paid attention to the news lately, you will read endlessly about how France is just waiting to 'steal' the financial sector, how banks are just going to up and leave and we'll all revert to being paupers in the street, etcetc. Truth be told though, whilst there are several grains of truth buried in these headlines, they are like most popular headlines that are highly politicised; namely exaggerated and grossly simplistic. What is good for one section of financial services is often bad for another, and irrelevant to a third. Simply lumping the financial sector under one general headline as a collective with collective needs and motivations misleads to begin with. It's a bit like claiming 'Manufacturing' is going to flee the country, or discussing 'deficit' without specifying what kind you're actually talking about.

Brexit is an interesting case. It has several pros, minor adjustments, and cons. So I'm going to lay some of the primary ones that have been identified out.

Starting off with the potential pros:-

-By leaving the EU, Britain can loosen certain regulations and avoid other new ones coming into play in Europe in order to make ourselves more generally attractive. This includes facets of EU legislation such as the bonus cap, aspects of the Alternative Investment Funds Directive, or current EU proposals for a financial transactions tax. There's been much concern that such things are hobbling our competitive position vis-a-vis America/Japan, and this could be our chance to get up to speed.
-Bi-lateral trade agreements with new emerging financial centres like Hong Kong/Singapore will become a possibility, making us more attractive as an investment destination.

Mitigated risks:-

-Investment banking will likely be able to continue operating with no issues through subsidiaries based in the EU. It is what the Swiss banking sector (a highly successful one) currently does.
-The highly developed ecosystem of legal and professional support services cannot be easily replicated or 'moved'. It ensures that the financial sector as a whole is unlikely to severely contract over a short period of time, but rather to be a gradual decline (assuming everything goes wrong).
-There is potential for uncertainty if all EU legislation is suddenly declared invalid, but as that is a wider legislative issue, it is likely a provision will be made for this concern.
-Regardless of damage to brokerage activities within the EU, the UK is likely to remain the pre-eminent trading for foreign exchange markets. This should ensure that no European centre can compete in the short to mid term.
-Much in the way of financial framework and international regulations have actually been agreed by many separate international bodies, meaning it is unlikely that there will be any substantial regulatory barriers raised by the EU after Brexit.

The cons however:-

-Brexit could restrict the physical movement of banking professionals across the EU.
-If we leave the EEA, passporting rights could potentially be revoked, impacting on UK commercial banking, brokerage, and insurance activities within the EU. If we stay within it instead, we will lose our ability to influence newer regulations laid out by the EU. It is possible that these issues could be negotiated out of, but it is likely to be the hardest sell to the EU.
-UK clients will lose access to the ECJ as a means of recourse.

So! To keep it short and sweet, the tl;dr version is simply this. Commercial banking (the high street banks), insurance (self-explanatory) and brokerage for EU activities are highly dependent on our ability to keep passporting. If we lose it, they will likely move their official headquarters to Europe. But the fact that investments and foreign exchange/brokerage markets along with the highly developed professional support network will still be located here will ensure that they are forced to retain significant investment and presence within the UK at worst.

In other words, if we lose passporting, we are likely to see a contraction in related parts of the financial sector, but the financial sector itself will not 'vanish' or 'relocate'. If it does collapse, it will be a slow motion affair whereby it drains away over the next thirty years. And there's no guarantee whatsoever that will happen, and it could indeed end up going the other way. Much like anything to do with economics!

*note that this is the diagnosis of someone who's read through quite a few evaluations of the whole thing by professionals writing for professionals, and has a reasonable grasp of business/economics but who is not actually one of those professionals.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
So you have the situation where the UK is training skilled workers for other countries to get the economic benefits of.

And whats wrong with that? They've paid for their tuition haven't they?

I do agree that forcing a Student to leave so they reapply for a work visa is silly however.

It's a bit ironic though that the government talks about needing skilled migrants though and will be given easier Visa 'bys' when you potentially have that workforce on your doorstep already. The student visa issue is just an easy way to try and control numbers without much 'effort'. The fact that many (even high profile) universities use this income to top up fees to make some courses viable (for example sciences which cost about 50% more than the fees covers because of labs) isn't really considered. You want a young healthy workforce because that is what supports us all into ill health and old age. Suppose the worst happens and an individual is diagnosed with cancer that requires an expensive drugs/operations that takes 2 years. During that time you are unlikely to contributing to society in terms of tax so someone else out there (or many out there) need to support it to allow you to get better. If you have a population of older people then the support for this system starts to dwindle.


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 malamis wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

And whats wrong with that? They've paid for their tuition haven't they?

They paid their subsidised tuition certainly. It's quite surprising how the fee structure changes when you add in the local version of Erasmus grants.

It's not just tuition fees. They also support local businesses through sales of food/drink and so on. In some ways students are more likely to help local smaller businesses simply because of the way they act (as in they aren't rushing back and forth from work, possibly with family and have little time other than to go to a supermarket for supplies)


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On an aside this news story is shocking if true (I would note it is a few messages down the line so could have slightly got mangled). It could also really damage May's reputation if it is correct.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/nhs-crisis-bbc-report-of-meeting-between-trust-and-doctors_uk_5874fd3de4b0cf4ed40fefaf?utm_hp_ref=uk-news

I was watching the news on my TV, and I saw, on France 2, that, in England, there are officialy sharia courts ?
No civil courts, but sharia courts, judging people by the sharia ?!
The example shown was a divorce. Three muslims erudites were judging the case of a woman asking divorce because her husband beat her.
They said that sharia courts has began since the 80's.

I have known for long that England isn't like France in relation to religions but, whoa, just whoa.

Any experience, thought about this ?

Ketara you missed one of the primary reasons for international financial trade in the UK (if not the most important to US investors) and that's the deregulated trading/markets we have. France and Germany do not allow this and so just do not have the same draw.

I'm less concerned about passporting as there are ways and means through subsidiaries if (big if) there were trade barriers in place that prevented normal trading relations.

Other than that nicely summerised.

 godardc wrote:
I was watching the news on my TV, and I saw, on France 2, that, in England, there are officialy sharia courts ?
No civil courts, but sharia courts, judging people by the sharia ?!
The example shown was a divorce. Three muslims erudites were judging the case of a woman asking divorce because her husband beat her.
They said that sharia courts has began since the 80's.

I have known for long that England isn't like France in relation to religions but, whoa, just whoa.

Any experience, thought about this ?

We do not have Sharia courts. If both parties wish to use a third party arbitration scheme which applies Sharia law then they can, however it does not have the authority of an actual court and cannot enforce "law" which violates the UKs law. So in the case you mention about divorce if the Sharia council says she cannot get divorced it has no authority over British courts of law and so she could still go to court and get divorced. What it mainly does is assess whether there is grounds for divorce purely under religious law. So she could be legally divorced from her husband by acting through the UKs courts but still be considered married to him under islamic law, though that has no legal ramifications (but could of course affect her religious life, such as how welcome she is at her local mosque, whether she could get married again under the eyes of the Islamic faith etc.).

https://fullfact.org/law/uks-sharia-courts/

I think the answer is probably more like, there are unofficially sharia courts. Perhaps in such situations where both parties agree to a contract (where the contract would be British law), but the means of determining what the terms of that contract are up to, well, pretty much whoever the two signees are.

Assuming the contracts not illegal in some other shape or form, of course.

There's then the question of, did both parties really sign that contract and agree to it of their own free will, or was there cultural, peer and familial pressure to do so... But to pretend that's an issue unique to Sharia Law is where things go off the rails.
But I am not a lawyer, and could be talking complete tosh.

Interesting, so they made gross approximations ?
However, why is your governement investigating if there is no problem ?

 godardc wrote:
Interesting, so they made gross approximations ?
However, why is your governement investigating if there is no problem ?

Probably because a lot of it is underground and we don't know the full extent of it.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 godardc wrote:
Interesting, so they made gross approximations ?
However, why is your governement investigating if there is no problem ?

Probably because a lot of it is underground and we don't know the full extent of it.

This. More information is always good. Making sure that they are not being used for things they shouldn't, overstepping their boundaries etc.

 godardc wrote:
Interesting, so they made gross approximations ?
However, why is your governement investigating if there is no problem ?

You investigate to see if there is a problem. It's a fallacy to think there is a problem because there is a decision to investigate. Let the research do the work rather than assume there is a problem because the research is being undertaken.

My *guess* is that the result will be something similar to the outcome of the electoral commission report on potential fraud. As our society is relatively fractured and divided and with a lack of integration from all sides then there is a risk that those people without a) a reasonable grasp of more than one language b) very well insulated from other viewpoints can lead to a situation where family/friends/the local non-integrated community could effectively become the sole provider of the news/laws etc. That leads to the risk that some people simply aren't aware of their legal rights and options and hence non-legal methods of arbitration can become accepted simply because of lack of awareness. It's the same issue we have with slavery. Those kept as slaves don't have access to the information of their 'rights' because of their 'captors' and hence become normalised to what they are subjected to as what they should come to expect. However it is not isolated to one background or another. Take Great Yarmouth for example, despite the fact that it is overwhelmingly white british (97%) the recent (unscientific poll) showed a significant favour towards controlling their borders despite the fact that they have never been exposed to any significant level of immigration. Basically the community has become an echo chamber of an issue that isn't one locally and that lack of acceptance of news leads to a more paternal/community biased view of the world which is easily controlled by a few individuals if they know what they are doing.

 godardc wrote:
I was watching the news on my TV, and I saw, on France 2, that, in England, there are officialy sharia courts ?
No civil courts, but sharia courts, judging people by the sharia ?!
The example shown was a divorce. Three muslims erudites were judging the case of a woman asking divorce because her husband beat her.
They said that sharia courts has began since the 80's.

I have known for long that England isn't like France in relation to religions but, whoa, just whoa.

Any experience, thought about this ?

You've seen a misrepresentation or misunderstanding of the situation. There are sharia and jewish community based civil tribunals, whose judgements are not binding and do no see criminal cases.


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 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
So you have the situation where the UK is training skilled workers for other countries to get the economic benefits of.

And whats wrong with that? They've paid for their tuition haven't they?

Because it really dumb to train skilled workers so other countries can then employ them without having to fund their studies? There is a limited amount of space on courses and you want to maximise the economic benefit of that course so you want the most people graduating from that course to then work in the UK and contribute to our economy.

But that's exactly what we do. The NHS basically is kept going by imported foreign workers whose medical training was paid for by their country of birth.

That is the weird situation we have got into. There are hundreds of vacancies for GPs. We cannot find enough British people to train to become GPs, partly because the acceptance rate is very low due to the high standards. We import large numbers of foreign GPs to fill the gap. We pay a lot of them very high agency staff rates.

I sent a mail with link you provided me.
I don't think they are going to answer me, but one can hope.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

But that's exactly what we do. The NHS basically is kept going by imported foreign workers whose medical training was paid for by their country of birth.

That is the weird situation we have got into. There are hundreds of vacancies for GPs. We cannot find enough British people to train to become GPs, partly because the acceptance rate is very low due to the high standards. We import large numbers of foreign GPs to fill the gap. We pay a lot of them very high agency staff rates.

Whilst yes the dropout rate is not exactly fun times, because British medical training holds water in the rest of the commonwealth and much of the world (compared to, say, French), where they have the exact same problem but nicer weather or, in some cases, a more liberal culture, there's something of a lack of reasons for folks who have the gumption to qualify as a GP to remain in the country in the first place given the options that degree of accomplishment opens to them.

That Britain has steadily become "not the best option" in new and exciting ways, i'd suggest, is the bigger problem.