johnnybangkok

Xenophobia rears it’s ugly head once again.

Then you should know better.

No. Just no. So you’re not allowed to change your mind once you see how bad your decision was? In there lies madness. Brexit was a horrible decision made by individuals not equipped to know the full consequences of their decision but blinded by xenophobia and/or racism and a Little Britain mentality. It had to be that because it certainly wasn’t anything sensible. It wasn’t based on inclusiveness or moving the world forward and it certainly wasn’t based on economics. There comes a point where you have to accept the result was wrong, accept is was wrong and move on to correcting it.

The manufacturing industry is 40% of Thailand’s GDP. Tourism is 20%. Any drop in purchasing or spending has a knock on effect. The UK is still a world presence but the major picture is the world itself. No problem for the boomer generation of course, you’ve already done your time. Big problem for all the rest of us though that rely on world economic confidence.

The general apathy of the masses isn’t a reason to not be concerned. We are all too aware of what national apathy can lead to. And to conflate remainers concerns with self-interest is a typical Leavers response. It was this self-interest and myopic thinking that got us into this mess in the first place.

World economics (amazingly enough) affect the world. Including Thailand.

Most are not actually downright lying but their tribal loyality to the Brexit Brigrade won't allow them to recognise verifiable facts and more information that doesn't back up their idea that Brexit is just the best and was the right thing to do. Denial, deflection, disinformation; and when all else fails the 'give it a few years, it's early days!' nonsense.

There really is no need to resort to terms such as 'sad losers'. It's hardly adding to the conversation and just encourages the wrong idea of winners and losers. You may have 'won' the vote, but you 'lose' with the obvious consequences of why Brexit is adding to the UK's woes (and yes we know it's not the only reason, but it's certainly a major contributory factor).

I'm not really sure where you are going with all this. No one is denying that corporations play a big part in the exploitation of workers (is this really news to you?) but this CBI isn't an employer, they are a trade body. Perhaps their membership did what you say, but that's not them. I also can't comment on the ins and outs of B.A.E.; all I can say is dodgy stuff goes on all the time. If your point is that hiring foreigners should not be left to corporations and the influx of EU nationals into the UK should only be done by the government, well first of all I'd say they would do a terrible job (as they currently are with asylum seekers) but secondly, you're throwing out the baby with the bath water. Of course there were plenty of companies exploiting cheaper labour (and by the way, if a company does do this then they DO get hit with a substantial fine but also a County Court Judegement that can prove VERY detrimental to any company), but I would say they still represent a very small percentage of total employers and in most cases, corporations stuck to minimum wage requirements and all other laws that govern employment in the UK. Wages in some sectors may have gone down because Polish hod carriers undercut local employees but the bigger picture is the UK benefitted from these workers and the cold truth is now the UK is missing these EU workers and it's putting a strain on employers and subsequently, a strain on the economy. P.S. The 'nonsense' comment was in regard to your views on the vaccine. It's off-topic but more importantly it's just wrong.

Not entirely sure what your 1st paragraph was about. I wasn't talking about Syrian doctors. And I'm glad you can be so cavalier with uprooting poor Dec and his whole family. Take it from me it's not easy.

And the “faceless bureaucrats” of Whitehall are also unelected so what’s your point?

And the example I gave? Is Dec from Newcastle (that’s his name now) with his wife and three kids and family all around going to “travel and live where the work is?” I made the point about it being a young man’s thing for a reason. There’s no excuse for the young to not get off their lazy ar$e and go find work, I did it myself and was a much better person for it. But it’s a very different thing for someone over 40 with family their life all around them. Very different.

Oh the originality. Do you not think every single government since unemployment begin hasn't thought of this? The issue is location. Large swathes of the unemployed come from cities and large towns. The jobs you speak of need to be close by or they become only available to the young who are the only ones who can easily up-root. If you worked as a skilled machinist in a factory in Newcastle, with a wife, 3 kids, a mortgage and family around you, there's no amount of re-training that's going to make you up-root all of that to take a hospital porters job in (insert shi!!y town name here). Unemployment is much more nuanced than just 're-train the peasants!'

Ok. Minus the berry-picking then. All the rest still stand.

Lets just deal with your actuals rather than your 'prophecies'. As has been pointed out to you before, the UK currently operates a points system for immigration that highlights 'essential workers' and higher end employees such as IT, engineers, doctors etc. How is this going to work for berry-pickers, factory workers, a janitor in the NHS and similar low level jobs that need nothing more than a physical body and the desire to do the job? A desire that many Brits do not have. This idea of 'controlling' all immigrants like a factory assembly line, nicely glosses over the many jobs that EU workers actually did in the UK and why the CBI has recommended that the UK 'should enable "economic migration" in areas where skilled workers cannot be found'. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63697458 . Why is this? 'Recent official figures show the UK's unemployment rate has edged up, and the Bank of England has forecast it will nearly double by 2025 as the country goes through a tough recession. Meanwhile job vacancies remain near record levels'. In other words Brits don't want to do the jobs that EU immigrants are more than happy to do. That is a huge problem with only one solution. I have already addressed your nonsense regarding the Covid vaccine so I don't think there's any point in repeating myself.

I got it. Hence the edit.

I edited my post

Well when you consider the NHS alone employs 1.2 million people (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/record-numbers-of-staff-working-in-the-nhs), and supermarkets employ about the same and then add hotels & hospitality, the services industries, charity work and all those others mentioned, it still doesn't represent the vast majority of UK workers. But I get your point.

Not denying any of this but to use the construction industry as a barometer for the whole of the UK is neither accurate nor helpful. It's also not the largest industry either https://www.ibisworld.com/united-kingdom/industry-trends/biggest-industries-by-employment/

As you have readily admitted, you're no fan of football, but if you were (like me) you would see how much of a travesty awarding Qatar the World Cup was in the first place. As Fat (above) pointed out, this selection was mired in controversy from the beginning (with most believing it was all done with bribes) as Qatar should NEVER have been awarded this prestigous event as it had no stadiums (it had to build 7 from scratch), did not have the infrastructure (it had to build whole cities and 100's of hotels) has summer temperaturs in excess of 50 degrees (125 degrees F) and is known for it's abysmal human rights record and jailing and killing of the LGBTQ community. It's estimated that 6,500 foreign workers (mostly from India, Nepal and Bangladesh) died in the construction of the facilities and stories run rife about appalling living conditions, people not allowed to leave the country and people not being paid. It was basically modern slavery on a huge scale. The 'activist' element of all this is not just about LBTQ rights but human rights in general and much of it is aimed at FIFA as much as Qatar and all of it, in my opinion, is entirely justified. By the way, if you want to know more about it, John Oliver did an excellent expose about it all which can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMqLDhl8PXw

At least he was being honest. Unlike the vast majority of other posters on here.

What, you're not advocating a full invasion and stripping of all it's assets?

It seems that every Brexit fan on this thread was at some time working in the construction industry as this is the only industry that keeps on getting brought up and was seemingly adversely affected by these nationals. We've had hod carriers in Cricklwood, sparkies at the Olympic Stadium and bad managers for brickies in London. This may surpise you but the UK is made up of more than just the construction industry and a LOT of industries benefited from EU workers who basically would do the jobs Brits turned their noses up at (hotels & hospitality, factories, NHS, fruit pickers, refuse collection etc) I'm sorry that a Polish bricklayer could do as good (if not better) job than some of you for a lot less money but it's not indicative of all jobs and was used as an easy 'they're taking your jobs' when the opposite in fact was true https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/20/reality-check-are-eu-migrants-really-taking-british-jobs' The UK had record unemployment in the lead up to Brexit https://www.statista.com/statistics/279898/unemployment-rate-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/ and these EU immigrants played a vital role in it's success, consistently adding more in the form of NI contributions and tax than they ever took out in benefits and now they are no longer around, the UK is REALLY struggling to fill these roles which in turn is having a huge affect on the economy. These are the facts.

Do you even know that Alabania isn't even part of the EU and therefore Brexit would have no impact on Albanians coming in or out of the UK as they would all be illegal or asylum seekers at best?

Whether it was bendy bananas, vacuum cleaners or immigration, the Brexit Brigade were sold lies after lies to constitute the worst commercial decision ever taken by a sovereign nation. But none of them looked into the validity of these frankly ridiculous statements because facts seldom mattered and cognitive bias was the order of the day. Even on this thread, many have been presented with substantiated facts and solid reasons behind the absurdities they were sold (and keep on repeating) but time and time again they are ignored because all that really mattered was keeping those pesky foreigners away from England's hallowed shores. At least for large parts of this thread we got to see the real reasons why most voted Brexit and it had nothing to do with the economy (with many openly admitting they don't give a damn), or even the supposedly oppressive EU law (which was neither oppressive nor compulsory) and everything to do with 'securing borders'. The whole topic of this thread was 'why is the uk struggling more than other countries' and whilst I will freely admit (and have stated previously) that there are more than one contributory factor to take into account, to deny Brexit has played and continues to play a major part in this 'struggle' is ostrich syndrome of the highest order.