johnnybangkok

Your whole post is very well put and I agree with the vast majority of it but I think I agree mostly with your last paragraph. I think disappointment in life and the bad decisions they have made (and can no longer rectify) means there are so many 'curmudgeons' around these days, desperately trying to remain relevant but mostly just trying to be heard (and of course with the internet they have the vehicle to do so). You see a lot of it here on AseanNow, with the usual suspects even popping up in this thread. They have an opinion (rarely based on facts and rarely other than anecdotal) and they'll be damned if that opinion won't be heard and damned if they will change it, even when presented with overwhelming evidence to the contrary. But what they don't realise is this has been a trend for eons. The older generation dismissive of the younger generation whilst completely forgetting they used to be the younger generation themselves. A good example would be this quote that I gaurantee many posters here would agree with:- "The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect to their elders.... They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and are tyrants over their teachers." That was from Aristotle some 2,400 years ago.

Thank you for posting a great article that clearly demonstrates this is nothing but political posturing, summed up quite eloquently by '“We know he’s not really anti-vax, he’s on the record, but now he’s taking this position for really blatant political purposes, it appears, and it’s really undermining to health care professionals,” said David Pate, a retired health systems executive and lifelong Republican who has advised Idaho Gov. Brad Little (R). You would think it quite incredible that life and death situations can be quite so easily politicised in America but when you read the comments of people like Tippaporn, you understand there is still a huge base of 'sceptics' (primarily GOP) who are just salavating at any attempt to validate the nonsense they have been sprouting for the last 2 years. But it does also show how any candidate looking to take over the Republican party has to cater to the 'out there' base that Trump has such a strangle-hold of. This is going to be an interesting race to the bottom for the GOP leadership but a sad state of affairs that it has to get to this.

A persons location has nothing to do with their ability to comment on a Thai centric forum (as has been pointed out to you numerous times by the moderators) but since you ask, it's fine. Thailand has it's own problems but it isn't facing a deluge of strikes, massively high inflation and issues with immigration. It also hasn't decided to seperate from it's largest trading partner and has no issues with staffing shortages in it's manufacturing, hospitality, wholesale & retail, health and construction industries. Thanks for asking.

With your level of knowledge, that's pretty much all I would expect.

This is exactly why the Brexit referendum was such a mistake. The overly simple question of 'in or out' completely ignored the vast majority of people who wanted less political affiliations with the EU but wanted to keep good trading terms with our biggest market (amazingly enough, what we exactly had before Cameron got scared about UKIP and stuck his oar in). If done again, with the simple question 'would you like things to return exactly back to our relationship with the EU we had before Brexit', what would you vote?

It isn't both. I'm not sure why I have to explain these things to you (yet again) but let me try and do it simply. There are now no longer EU nationals because we closed our borders to the free-flow of nationals amongst member states. There was however nearly 5 million who applied and got UK residency after this was declared. This however had nothing to do with illegal immigration and/or asylum seekers who are predominately NOT from EU states but from places like Syria, Iran, Albania, Afghanistan etc. The numbers here have risen but you are still not talking nearly enough numbers to affect the 'shortage of workers' as asylum seekers account for approx. 185,000. And the big point is whilst getting their asylum application sorted, these people are NOT allowed to work. That then leaves the illegal immigrants of which the numbers are much higher. It is gestimated that there is anything from 594,000 to 745,000 illegal immigrants in the UK but here's the thing, they are illegal and therefore cannot take up legal employment (surprise, surprise) so they can't and won't be employed in mainstream business so yet again they don't affect the shortage of workers (cash in hand and black market businesses benefit though). For people like yourself who based much of their Brexit decision on these sort of things, you would have hoped you were better educated on the subject. Silly of me to think that though.

Since I have answered all of these 'points' to you in previos posts to include the UK's very low unemployment rate (and the manufacturing, hospitality, wholesale & retail, NHS & Social Work and construction really struggling without EU employees https://www.ft.com/content/a9677ee4-281d-4d0d-8456-661982890304), the minimum wage requirements in the UK (for ALL employees) and the fact that asylum seekers don't get 'an easy life living off social benefits', I can only assume you don't want to know the facts because it doesn't feed into your myopic narrative. That then only leaves us with you 'point' about redressing EU laws. Your link doesn't provide anything other than a long page outlining the Tories desire to have 'all remaining retained EU Law repealed, or assimilated into UK domestic law' but that doesn't answer the question I posed. EXACTLY what specific laws enacted by the EU will be repealed that you believe will 're-birth' the UK? It's a simple question, please answer it.

My apologies for my lack of comprehension but if you don't want to be misconstrued then perhaps you need to write your posts a bit clearer. Saying 'I voted to leave the EU in the full knowledge that successive UK governments had failed to implement it's own immigration policies - illegal immigrants were a separate factor and governments failed to get to grips with the problem.', sounds very much like you had an issue with immigration and voted because of it. You may well be the Brexit Unicorn who voted leave for reasons other than immigration but I can assure you, you are very much in the minority (as this thread clearly demonstrates).

And in this sense would you say that Brexit was a success then? You voted Brexit because of immigration concerns but apart from stopping a few Polish bricklayers, the immigration problem seems to be even worse now. Could it be (and here's a wild idea), the leave campaign preyed on your insecurities and distrust of 'johnny foreigner', in the full knowledge the immigration problem could never be completely solved but the emotions it brings out in people (especially fear) is a great way to get people to the voting booth? You were all sold a turkey but none of you will admit to it. Economically it's been terrible. It's also created a huge problem with N. Ireland, and hasn't done a single thing as far as illegal immigration is concerned. The UK makes it's own laws (as it always did) so no benefit there and our standing on the world stage has taken a very big hit. Any buyers remorse yet?

As has been said many, many times before (or is it just wilful ignorance from all Brexiters?), the UK ALWAYS had control of it's borders but, yet again, you conflate two very seperate issues. I'm going to ignore your 'criminals and claiming benefits for their families' nonsense as the usual right wing fear-mongering cr@p that was fed to you all by the leave campaign and focus on the fact that EU workers in the UK added far more to the economy than they ever took out - EU migrants pay £20bn more in taxes than they receive https://www.ft.com/content/c49043a8-6447-11e4-b219-00144feabdc0. They couldn't all have been 'criminals and claiming benefits for their families'. And the new law you are talking about isn't aimed at EU nationals but illegal immigrants who make the perilous channel crossing and the likes (mostly from Albania, Iran/Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan etc). As has been said sooooooooooo many times, none of us are condoning illegal immigrants and any way of clearing up that mess is welcome but the bigger problem isn't the actual numbers but the huge back-log that the current government can't seem to get sorted which in turn is adding significent amounts to the cost. But I do find it interesting though that when asked for all these new laws that you believed would 're-birth' the UK and all you can come up is one that isn't a new law after all, as the UK had the ability to control it's borders even whilst still a part of the EU. I'd ask for some more but I know you won't be able to come up with any because it never was about regaining an imaginary lost sovereinty but it was all about immigration which in turn was fuelled by xenophobia and in some cases, downright racism.

I think there might be a couple of hundred thousand loyalists who would vehemently disagree with you.

So what laws as in 'return to it's own laws' do you think the UK will enact that will drag it out of all this? Brexiters always quote the 'sovereignty' issue as a major reason for getting out of the EU so what exact laws will 're-birth' the UK?

You are talking about major trade agreements between sovereign nations. They are always going to be 'difficult'. I'll ignore your NI comment as the 'little England' opinion you and many Brexit fans obviously have.

Why am I not surprised you are blaming the EU and why do you not even know about all of this? You are just your typical Brexiter; big on emotions - small on facts and details. Here, educate yourself - https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-53724381

NI is yet another example of how badly thought out Brexit was. Everyone could see that N.I. is attached to Eire and therefore needed some sort of border, but equally, everyone understood the importance of NOT erecting a hard border. This was gone over time and time again at the time of Brexit yet all the Tories could do was kick the issue down the road to 'hopefully' get sorted 'later'. The 'solution' came in the form of The Northern Island Protocol which was initially agreed but the Tories now want to go back on. All the Tories can say is the EU is being unreasonable when it's actually them that have gone back on an already agreed and negotiated trade agreement. In the meantime, the UK's international credentials take yet another massive hit as amazingly enough, countries don't take too kindly to other countries welching on their deals. It still hasn't been sorted and will remain a major problem with no clear solution for quite some time. Yeah for Brexit!

Yes 'quite a few'. There's also my other friend who is also in the building industry who voted out to 'stop the Poles from nicking all the jobs' only to find he can't get the people to do the work now and those that do want twice as much money as he was paying before. There's another friend who runs a bar/bistro who can't get enough staff and all his costs have gone up dramatically and finally another friend who services small, private aeroplanes who struggles to get the parts which are all invariably imported. Each one of them have said how much of a mess their respective businesses are in after Brexit and how if they knew what they knew now, they'd have voted to remain.

I'm here to please

I'm not really sure what your point is here. I've already cleared up the 'Sistah' bit for you in my previous post and corrected your wrong 'rainbow colours' ascertion by explaining they are Rastafarian colours NOT LGBTQ. The conspiracy theory I was refering to was when you said '...played the racist card, presumably with financial benefit'. There is non evidence any of this was, at the time, for financial benefit (although I'm sure plenty will now jump on this by saying it is now). No idea what you are going on about with your "Refuge for Men with Families" though and no idea why it's relevant to this topic.

Ok let's go with 'many' or 'the majority'. Better?

Quite a few actually. My most recent was a good friend who runs a building company in Leeds (popular topic for many on this thread). He voted Brexit to 'keep the immigrants out' not realising that many of his sub-contractors used a lot of Polish workers (stupid mistake really). He now struggles to get the work done and when it can be done, it costs him 30-40% more than before. Couple this with logistic problems in getting supplies and generally everything costing a lot more than it used to, he is really struggling to remain competative. He DEFINATELY has buyers remorse.

The topic for this thread is 'why is the UK struggling more than other countries' and therefore Brexit has to be mentioned. It's not 'moaning'; it's pointing out the obvious. In contrast, all Brexit fans just want to do is bury their heads in the sand and attempt to deny Brexit isn't a major contributory factor to the UK's current problems. This is despite all of the facts and data saying it is.

Ok Captain Chaos. Those are some 'out there' ideas for sure but not very practical. The UK has long-standing obligations to foreign aid that can't just be turned off like a tap. NATO offers the UK a better option for defence against stronger aggressors (Russia for example) than 'going it alone'. We already sell far more arms to countries than is conscionable to many and there's no way in hell the UK should be beholding to Russia and it's oil as we have seen how the likes of Germany are suffering badly from putting all their eggs in one basket. We do plenty of deals with China already and many UK exporters (particularly luxury goods and the likes of Scotch producers) count China as one of it's top 3 markets. However I've no issue with putting immigrants to work straight away (and I'm sure many of them would welcome it) but the incompetance from the Tory government means asylum applications are so far behind where they need to be to make this practicly impossible. I take it the last 3 are just for yourself so will leave it at that.

I'm not sure I would say Brexit is the 'MAIN cause for the failing economy' as obviously the debt run up during Covid and the energy price hike caused by the Ukrainian war are also major contributory factors. I would however say Brexit is a major contributory factor to the UK's woes. Of that there can be no denying (despite many posters here attempting to do just that).

I think there is no denying he is the worst but why does he still musters such massive support in the US? He is now openly courting white supremacists (as well as deranged hip hop stars), he has consistently denied the legitimacy of the 2020 elections, he instigated the storming of the capital and is currently defending no less than 19 legal actions. Now he is talking about changing the constitution for his own benefit. But none of it matters to his fan base who deflect, excuse or just simply bury their heads in the sand. So what is it that appeals to quite so many that they will deny what they see with their own eyes or hear with thier own ears in the defence of this man?

You were 'confused' enough not to know why Sistah was spelled the way it was and 'confused' enough to not know those were Rastafarian colours she was wearing. And you were certainly confused enough to think that Ngozi 'used (the) opportunity for distraction to further discord and, played the racist card, presumably with financial benefit'. That's a leap of reasoning more in line with many of the conspiracy thoeries being bandied around by other posters here. And I commented on 'flashing your credentials' as you were the one that thought it neccessary to write 'Am I racist? Think not, have had many interactions with many nationalities over the course of my scholastic years to present day. Happily married to a Thai national with partial Chinese heritage, can't call me Xenophobic.' I will 'accept' you're not racist but I do think you're confused.