EU Referendum

bonusmedia · Jun 9, 2016

RobM said:
lol investment advice... you're good for 'I'll have fries with that'. Leave important things to us big boys.

Gosh, this tickles my testosterone glands. 1000 mosquito nets to you, old chap

newguy · Jun 9, 2016

Let's not have falling outs here already. There's still two weeks to the vote

bonusmedia · Jun 9, 2016

https://www.againstmalaria.com/MyNets.aspx?DonationID=190123

If you made £17k on the falling pound you really ought to shove a few quid into the most efficient life-saving intervention the world

AssetDomains · Jun 10, 2016

RobM said:
True. It should never be about the issues. Let's ignore the elephant in the room and discuss the ins and outs of the exit/remain vote WITHOUT mentioning immigration, public opinion, finance, past and future economics, or anything else that will make me sad. Seriously do I have to paint my room blue or an off-colour blue - these are important European things to me.

I didn't say its not an issue not to mention it neither do any on remain side. What I'm saying don't try and blame everything what's going wrong with public services on immigrants. Lets take the NHS as its an area I have a little experience having been training in it for the last 8 months. Biggest strains on the NHS Are 1 greater life expectancy, 2 the savage cutbacks to social care on a local level meaning that those in great need in are country are having to turn to AE / GP's for help because services that used to help them have been scaled back or withdrawn. I've treated hundreds of patients so far during my training I can count on one hand those who were from eastern Europe so no their not swamping the NHS from what I can see. There is plenty of Europeans working dam hard inside it though.

AssetDomains · Jun 10, 2016

And just for clarity do I think it would be a good thing to take back control of the borders YES.
It just pisses me of that some on the leave side are happy to malign and blame society's ills on people who for the most part hard working decent foke just looking to get on in life

denchomsky · Jun 10, 2016

bonusmedia said:
Can I have extra hard-working free-thinking immigrants on that please boss?

oh yes, be my guest... if only there were away to sort them from the convicted criminals, zealots and scroungers??....mmm..oh we can't because anyone can come in.

AssetDomains · Jun 10, 2016

denchomsky said:
oh yes, be my guest... if only there were away to sort them from the convicted criminals, zealots and scroungers??....mmm..oh we can't because anyone can come in.

Convicted criminals can be refused entry. Migrants can't claim benefits for 3 months and with changes have to leave if there not working within 6

signature · Jun 10, 2016

denchomsky said:
oh yes, be my guest... if only there were away to sort them from the convicted criminals, zealots and scroungers??....mmm..oh we can't because anyone can come in.

One question for you, do you have immigrants as friends or neighbours and if you do, how many are criminals, zealots and scroungers??

websaway · Jun 10, 2016

AssetDomains said:
Watched it on +1 interesting debate especially when it finally moved away from immigration. I wish leave would focus more sovereignty than scaremongering about all the woes of the country being down to migrants. It would certainly make it easier for me to get behind the argument

I wonder which bit of a population the size of Newcastle every year do some people not seem to comprehend.

martin-s · Jun 10, 2016

AssetDomains said:
Lets take the NHS as its an area I have a little experience having been training in it for the last 8 months. Biggest strains on the NHS Are 1 greater life expectancy, 2 the savage cutbacks to social care on a local level

Here are some NHS statistics for you:

The NHS deals with over 1 million patients every 36 hours.
In 2014/15 there were 45 per cent more operations ('procedures and interventions' as defined by Hospital Episode Statistics, excluding diagnostic testing) completed by the NHS compared to 2004/05, with an increase from 6.848m to 9.920m.
The total annual attendances at Accident & Emergency departments was 22.923m in 2015/16, 22 per cent higher than a decade earlier (18.759m).
There were 15.892m total hospital admissions in 2014/15, 31 per cent more than a decade earlier (12.102m).
The total number of outpatient attendances in 2014/15 was 85.632m, an increase of 4.4 per cent on the previous year (82.060m).
There was an 18.5 per cent increase in emergency incidents between 2007/08 and 2012/13, reaching 6.89m in the latter year.

If you aren't willing to tie any of the increased workload to population increases, you are being delusional.

Source: http://www.nhsconfed.org/resources/key-statistics-on-the-nhs

And here's a graph of the NHS budget. I couldn't find one without the forecast years, but I certainly doubt that there has been any funding decreases.

The thing is, I love the NHS. When my twins spent a month in SCBU, they were utterly superb. Every single person we met was the same. Yes there is room for improvement, we can still reduce waste at a management level for example.

But one of the big pressures is population increase. Fact.

websaway · Jun 10, 2016

AssetDomains said:
And just for clarity do I think it would be a good thing to take back control of the borders YES.
It just pisses me of that some on the leave side are happy to malign and blame society's ills on people who for the most part hard working decent foke just looking to get on in life

The problem can actually be that they are too hard working. This for me is about the fact that an unknown amount and unknown people can simply walk into our country any time they like, that defies all logic for numerous reasons. I worry that intelligent politicians who will not openly recognise this problem for fear they will damage their remain argument. At least Eddy Izzard last night made his position quite clear, he isn't sitting on the fence. He wants a world where everyone becomes free to travel wherever they like. So, if a country does well ,all the needy in the world can simply descend on it, overwhelm it, and so destroy it with unsustainable pressure on schools, housing, jobs, and free health service. Not sure what Eddie does, I think he's a comedian. He should go to Syria he would make them laugh his head off.

Edwin · Jun 10, 2016

websaway said:
The problem can actually be that they are too hard working. This for me is about the fact that an unknown amount and unknown people can simply walk into our country any time they like, that defies all logic for numerous reasons. I worry that intelligent politicians who will not openly recognise this problem for fear they will damage their remain argument. At least Eddy Izzard last night made his position quite clear, he isn't sitting on the fence. He wants a world where everyone becomes free to travel wherever they like. So, if a country does well ,all the needy in the world can simply descend on it, overwhelm it, and so destroy it with unsustainable pressure on schools, housing, jobs, and free health service. Not sure what Eddie does, I think he's a comedian. He should go to Syria he would make them laugh his head off.

How? You will have to be a working "needy" person (your language, not mine - I don't like it particularly) in order to claim benefits. And if you're working, well statistically you're paying more in than you're taking back out of the system so you're part of the solution not the problem (every surplus £ is a £ that can be spent on schools or the NHS or any one of a thousand other things)

As for the notion that somebody should be kept out of the UK "because they're too hard working", well how daft does that really sound? It's a very modern disease to seek to "level down" to the lowest common denominator, rather than get the very best out of people.

BREWSTERS · Jun 10, 2016

websaway said:
Not sure what Eddie does, I think he's a comedian.

He used to be...stopped being funny seemingly overnight several years ago.

Edwin · Jun 10, 2016

Australia and Canada keep being mentioned quite a lot in the debates (more than you might expect given how far away they are).

The population of the UK grew 6.85% between 2004 and 2013, from 59.99 million to 64.1 million.
The population of Canada grew 9.88% between 2004 and 2013, from 32 million to 35.16 million.
The population of Australia grew 14.90% between 2004 and 2013, from 20.13 million to 23.13 million.

Population growth isn't something magic that's been invented for the UK. It's happening all over the place. And actually it's happening significantly less in the UK than in places that are held up as examples of how the UK might be if we Leave.

websaway · Jun 10, 2016

Edwin said:
How? You will have to be a working "needy" person (your language, not mine - I don't like it particularly) in order to claim benefits. And if you're working, well statistically you're paying more in than you're taking back out of the system so you're part of the solution not the problem (every surplus £ is a £ that can be spent on schools or the NHS or any one of a thousand other things)

As for the notion that somebody should be kept out of the UK "because they're too hard working", well how daft does that really sound? It's a very modern disease to seek to "level down" to the lowest common denominator, rather than get the very best out of people.

So your logic is that if 4,000,000 unskilled workers arrived in Engand tomorrow and worked for less than 4,000,000 of our unskilled workers get paid at the moment, and so put our 4,000,000 unskilled workers on the dole, the fact that the immigrants work and pay into the system negates concerns about uncontrolled immigration.

websaway · Jun 10, 2016

Edwin said:
Australia and Canada keep being mentioned quite a lot in the debates (more than you might expect given how far away they are).

The population of the UK grew 6.85% between 2004 and 2013, from 59.99 million to 64.1 million.
The population of Canada grew 9.88% between 2004 and 2013, from 32 million to 35.16 million.
The population of Australia grew 14.90% between 2004 and 2013, from 20.13 million to 23.13 million.

Population growth isn't something magic that's been invented for the UK. It's happening all over the place. And actually it's happening significantly less in the UK than in places that are held up as examples of how the UK might be if we Leave.

Are you completely losing it. These countries control their immigration. The numbers are higher because they want them and they are who they want. Which bit of 300,000 people per year and maybe a million next year that have to be housed and schooled do you not understand. It's not about immigration it's about controlled immigration.

Edwin · Jun 10, 2016

One of the biggest factors putting a greater strain on the NHS is the aging population. For example, "bed blocking" by elderly patients (that hospitals are unable to discharge) has reached record levels.

This gets mentioned, but it gets mentioned a lot less than it should given the magnitude of the problem. And why's that? Because historically old people vote more than young people, so politicians of all stripes chase their vote.

Another massive factor is that successive governments have removed beds from hospitals at a quite astonishing rate (significantly more under the Tories than under Labour, but it happened under both parties) at a time when the population has continuously grown.

From https://fullfact.org/health/bed-blocking-what-it-and-it-paralysing-nhs/

But since a large part of the current fighting over the referendum is Tory-on-Tory, they're hardly going to highlight their own cutbacks as the source of the problem. And the other parties are holding back, because they're all on the Remain platform alongside(ish) Cameron.

Edwin · Jun 10, 2016

websaway said:
So your logic is that if 4,000,000 unskilled workers arrived in Engand tomorrow and worked for less than 4,000,000 of our unskilled workers get paid at the moment, and so put our 4,000,000 unskilled workers on the dole, the fact that the immigrants work and pay into the system negates concerns about uncontrolled immigration.

Over 2,000,000 more people were born during the timeframe I quoted than died during that time. I think they're still too young to take jobs away.

Edwin · Jun 10, 2016

websaway said:
Are you completely losing it. These countries control their immigration. The numbers are higher because they want them and they are who they want. Which bit of 300,000 people per year and maybe a million next year that have to be housed and schooled do you not understand. It's not about immigration it's about controlled immigration.

What makes you think that you speak for everyone in the UK when you say that immigration is out of control?

Edwin · Jun 10, 2016

That's the danger of simplifying the argument by blaming everything on immigration. Which is a point that people tried to make again and again in the debates as well.

Can some of the UK's ills be blamed on immigration some of the time? Yes.

Does it therefore follow that all of the UK's ills can be blamed on immigration all of the time? Absolutely NOT.

If the Leave camp were willing to acknowledge the reality of the above and nuance their argument, I think their other arguments might be more persuasive. But so long as they persist in the myth, the corrosive lie, that everything stems from (out of control) immigration they're not only impossible to take seriously, they're actively contributing to spreading their own brand of fear.