Current Affairs EU In or Out

[peteblue]

Coming from someone who is comfortably retired this is kinda irritating. It won't be you who deals with the hardships and pains. It'll be those of us already busting our balls to try and raise families and barely managing as it is. I haven't got the stomach for seeing myself or friends of mine losing our jobs and homes. Soz abar me.

What the hell do you think those of us who are now retired went through. Who do you think actually built this bloody place after the war, it certainly wasn't you and it wasn't bloody easy. It is insulting in the extreme to imagine that those retired are living off your endeavours. I live off what I've earned over many years, and I want my kids and granddaughter to do the same. Why do you think you will lose a job, are you not good enough, do you not work hard enough. We can get out and earn a living outside of Europe and do well. Soz abar not feeling sorry for you......

 

[abelard]

What the hell do you think those of us who are now retired went through. Who do you think actually built this bloody place after the war, it certainly wasn't you and it wasn't bloody easy. It is insulting in the extreme to imagine that those retired are living off your endeavours. I live off what I've earned over many years, and I want my kids and granddaughter to do the same. Why do you think you will lose a job, are you not good enough, do you not work hard enough. We can get out and earn a living outside of Europe and do well. Soz abar not feeling sorry for you......

 

[Bruce Wayne]

This is not true Bruce, no matter how much you want to believe it. Academics just want constant revenue and the ability to earn a good living, they have never had to go out into the big bad world and fight or work for anything. Commercial powers prefer an easy life but more and more are beginning to appreciate the opportunities that will come their way. They have been locked into a way of believing in the EU for so long that they have never seen what the rest of the planet has to offer, their eyes are being opened.

These 'smaller towns' that you speak of still represent the majority of the people of the UK, your comment is quite distasteful because they provide you with not only the overall majority of taxation but the very necessary resources for you to stay alive. You are presenting a very small minded London centric view of the world.

As a separate point, as we remind ourselves of the sacrifices of our families in wars gone by, how would our cities even exist without the endeavours and sacrifices of the millions of 'non city' folk who fought for you.....

Pete, of the UK population, just over 9 million live in rural areas. Or less than live in London alone if you like. They're nowhere near a majority and certainly won't drive the economic growth you hope for.

 

[peteblue]

N

Oh dear me.....Well, I got my degrees without any payment from the state, because I was working at 16, I received no money from my parents because they had none (having had their home destroyed in WW2), and everything I have I got was through my own work. This silly video may well apply to some London based elite, but for the rest of us it is unreal. There are actually many millions of folk who just got on with life and made something for themselves. This video is the sort of thing that today's whinging youth want to believe in, because it's always someone else's fault.....

 

[peteblue]

Pete, of the UK population, just over 9 million live in rural areas. Or less than live in London alone if you like. They're nowhere near a majority and certainly won't drive the economic growth you hope for.

Define rural. You mentioned 'small towns', I think your numbers may be slightly off.....

 

[peteblue]

Pete, of the UK population, just over 9 million live in rural areas. Or less than live in London alone if you like. They're nowhere near a majority and certainly won't drive the economic growth you hope for.

In fact Bruce, having looked further, we have approx 65M people in the U.K., try listing all the cities in the U.K. and see what their population adds up to......

 

[abelard]

N
Oh dear me.....Well, I got my degrees without any payment from the state, because I was working at 16, I received no money from my parents because they had none (having had their home destroyed in WW2), and everything I have I got was through my own work.

It often seems as though a conservative, almost by definition, is someone who is opposed to even the suggestion of empathy with anybody else. That and a robust historical amnesia.

This one was interesting, too:
http://www.newstatesman.com/2017/08...t-proves-baby-boomers-hate-their-own-children

Parents want their kids to have more opportunities and a better life than they once had themselves. That, at least, is the theory – but the baby boomer generation, which remade the world in so many ways, seems determined to chuck that one out of the window as well.

The latest evidence for this thesis comes from YouGov, which has been polling Britain on its attitude to Brexit (because obviously we all desperately want to know more about that). It found significant evidence of what, in a shameless attempt to go viral, it termed “Brexit extremism“.

A healthy majority of Leave voters, it found, claimed that “significant damage to the British economy” would be a price worth paying for Brexit: 61 per cent, compared to just 20 per cent who disagreed. More bizarrely, when the question was made more personal, and respondents were asked would it be worth “you or members of your family" losing their jobs, 39 per cent still thought Brexit was totes worth it – slightly more than the 38 per cent who, like normal, sane people, replied “obviously not”.

How much can we trust these figures? It’s one thing to tell a pollster you don’t mind getting poorer. Actually doing it is another matter entirely, and my suspicion has always been that a government which delivers on people’s demands that they swap riches for sovereignty is a government which will come to regret it.

The difficulty with that thesis, though, is the age breakdown. The older Leave voters are, the more likely they are to think crashing the economy because they don’t like Belgians is a pretty fine kind of idea:

That trend reaches its peak among the Leavers aged over 65, fully half of whom are happy to tell pollsters that they don’t give a [Poor language removed] if Brexit causes a relative to lose their job, they want it and they want it hard.

The thing about the over 65s is that relatively few of them work: to be blunt about it, those most enthusiastic about people losing jobs are those who don’t have jobs to lose. The vast majority of this oldest cohort will be on pensions, whose value is far less likely to come under threat from a recession than almost any other form of income. Most will own their own houses, too. They’re the section of the population most likely to be left entirely unscathed by the Brexit-based recession. They are quite literally alright, Jack – and, it turns out, fully half of them don’t care if their kids aren’t.

Baby boomers, as a cohort, benefited from free education, generous welfare and cheap housing, then voted for parties which denied those things to their kids. Their contribution to intergenerational inequality led my colleague Stephen Bush, in one of his frequent bouts of being infuriatingly good at his job, to note that, “The baby boomer is one of the few mammals that eats its own young.” All this we already knew.

Nonetheless, it’s rare to see this selfishness communicated so baldly, so shamelessly. When asked directly whether they’d swap the wealth and security of their own children for a blue passport and the ability to deport Polish plumbers, they said yes in huge numbers.

“Would you like your children to have a better life than yourselves?” You Gov asked them. And the reply came back: “[Poor language removed] 'em.”

 

[Blue 1]

What the hell do you think those of us who are now retired went through. Who do you think actually built this bloody place after the war, it certainly wasn't you and it wasn't bloody easy. It is insulting in the extreme to imagine that those retired are living off your endeavours. I live off what I've earned over many years, and I want my kids and granddaughter to do the same. Why do you think you will lose a job, are you not good enough, do you not work hard enough. We can get out and earn a living outside of Europe and do well. Soz abar not feeling sorry for you......

I don't imagine for a second that you're living off my endeavours, Pete. That would be beyond ridiculous. My parents are of your generation and I hope you're thoroughly enjoying a well-earned retirement.

I am worried I will lose my job because I work for a small food manufacturer who buys many ingredients from the EU, and I'm bloody terrified of a rise in interest rates putting my mortgage beyond me, and I am worried about the kind of education my kids are going to get when local schools are cutting staff left right and centre.

I don't expect anyone to feel sorry for me. Life isn't like that. Nobody owes you anything. I'm where I am now, which is better off than many people, through my own graft. but it's still bloody precarious.
The coming years aren't going to be hard for you, though, so don't sit there pontificating about how hard you had it and how we haven't got the stomach for it. Would you have grown up during rationing, given the choice?

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Define rural. You mentioned 'small towns', I think your numbers may be slightly off.....

They're official government stats Pete. If you look anywhere in the world, the trend is overwhelmingly to move from rural areas to urban areas. Regarding your latter point, if you add up places with a cathedral, it comes to around 21.5 million.

More importantly though, if you take the 15 biggest British cities, they generate around 2 trillion of the 2.6 trillion UK GDP. Of those 15 cities, only Birmingham voted to leave. Of the top 25 universities, just 2 of the towns hosting them voted to leave.

That's my point, because whether it's bright young people, new technologies and startups or any of the other things that go into economic growth, they are by and large concentrated in areas where people wanted to stay.

I had dinner with the guy trying to grow the Isle of Man economy, and obviously they weren't given a vote, but he overwhelmingly thought it was a terrible move. It wouldn't stop his attempts to grow the Manx economy, but it would make it harder, and he is looking all around the world for growth, with particular success in places like South Africa.

 

[Groucho]

They're official government stats Pete. If you look anywhere in the world, the trend is overwhelmingly to move from rural areas to urban areas. Regarding your latter point, if you add up places with a cathedral, it comes to around 21.5 million.

More importantly though, if you take the 15 biggest British cities, they generate around 2 trillion of the 2.6 trillion UK GDP. Of those 15 cities, only Birmingham voted to leave. Of the top 25 universities, just 2 of the towns hosting them voted to leave.

That's my point, because whether it's bright young people, new technologies and startups or any of the other things that go into economic growth, they are by and large concentrated in areas where people wanted to stay.

I had dinner with the guy trying to grow the Isle of Man economy, and obviously they weren't given a vote, but he overwhelmingly thought it was a terrible move. It wouldn't stop his attempts to grow the Manx economy, but it would make it harder, and he is looking all around the world for growth, with particular success in places like South Africa.

If we had a snap second referendum right now, I'm certain remain would win.

The whole thing is madness, making life harder for ourselves.

 

[NilSatisOptimum]

The rural v urban debate is for more influenced by an economy that is greatly influenced by the service sector. If we had much more balanced economy there would some possibility of making Brexit as we were, or with some hard work a success. But not a chance the way the country is set up internally Uk is just not going to compete with low wage of china or india etc, it would take a generation of infrastructure rebalance, producing rebalance import export rebalance housing rebalance and home owners just would not accept the devaluation of properties or rents.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

The rural v urban debate is for more influenced by an economy that is greatly influenced by the service sector. If we had much more balanced economy there would some possibility of making Brexit as we were, or with some hard work a success. But not a chance the way the country is set up internally Uk is just not going to compete with low wage of china or india etc, it would take a generation of infrastructure rebalance, producing rebalance import export rebalance housing rebalance and home owners just would not accept the devaluation of properties or rents.

The days of unskilled manufacturing are numbered I'm afraid. It's not just low wage competition, but also automation and the growing capabilities of 3D printing that will render low-skilled jobs in manufacturing largely a thing of the past. It's hard to overlook the sense that this vote was largely a protest by those that have/feel left behind by society, and whilst it's certainly been useful in highlighting that issue, I'm far from convinced that Brexit will make a blind bit of difference, or that the government appreciate the underlying issues behind the vote at all. It's much easier to blame the EU than it is to examine the root causes.

 

[Old Blue 2]

I'm bloody terrified of a rise in interest rates putting my mortgage beyond me...

The coming years aren't going to be hard for you, though, so don't sit there pontificating about how hard you had it and how we haven't got the stomach for it. Would you have grown up during rationing, given the choice?

1. You should have tried living under Thatcher with 15% interest rates...

2. The fact that he has got himself into a financial position where he can survive financially in retirement is no reason whatsoever to castigate him in the manner that you have done. He is quite at liberty to express how hard things were in his time. I believe he was commenting on the fact that the younger generation whinge at the slightest thing (jeez, you see enough of it in this thread alone, never mind across other forums on the interent!), and they, far from being forward looking, appear to want to maintain the 'status quo' for fear what the alternative may be llike.

3. Rationing wasnt a choice for those who lived through it (my parents and my wife's parents), it was a fact.

 

[Old Blue 2]

If we had a snap second referendum right now, I'm certain remain would win.

Illogical premise, Groucho. No one can be certain of something like that...

 

[Blue 1]

1. You should have tried living under Thatcher with 15% interest rates...

2. The fact that he has got himself into a financial position where he can survive financially in retirement is no reason whatsoever to castigate him in the manner that you have done. He is quite at liberty to express how hard things were in his time. I believe he was commenting on the fact that the younger generation whinge at the slightest thing (jeez, you see enough of it in this thread alone, never mind across other forums on the interent!), and they, far from being forward looking, appear to want to maintain the 'status quo' for fear what the alternative may be llike.

3. Rationing wasnt a choice for those who lived through it (my parents and my wife's parents), it was a fact.

1. I was old enough to witness the carnage that caused. Didn't really understand what was going on at the time, just saw friends families losing their houses. Sorry for not wanting that to happen to me.

2. Sorry, no. Pete sitting there "castigating" my generation for not having the "stomach" to "get on with" the "hard road ahead" while he's comfortably retired is not OK. It won't affect him. I've no doubt things were tougher in the immediate post-war years, but the coming years are going to be utterly grim for many of us and we're going to have to have the stomach for it. That it's so completely unnecessary is what galls.

I can respect him for getting himself where he is, fair play to the bloke. It's all most of us want, eventually, although it becomes more unlikely for anyone below 50 with each year that passes.

3. Of course rationing wasn't a choice, I didn't say it was, I asked, given the choice, would anyone have chosen to have lived through it? My parents and some aunts and uncles are old enough to have lived through it too.