To keep you all amused, Brexiteers and Remoaners alike, I have written a little playlet which you can find on my blog here: https://gliddofglood.typepad.com/the_glidd_of_glood_blog/2019/03/playlet-for-today-march-2019.html Well, it was a better way of spending Saturday evening than looking at The Voice. Have fun. You can lambast it here. You'll want to!
" Anyway, if I asked everyone again, they’d probably have changed their minds and we wouldn’t go, so I’m buggered if I’m doing that." Good job you're getting some entries in the blog now. Soon you'll have new bike to ride, - hopefully an old one too - and of course lawns to mow...
I have to say you put forward a powerful argument over the last few pages, I nearly bought it. Then I remembered your in Switzerland. Brilliant country a bit expensive to live there not known for its multiculturalism or need for cheap Labour or for its generous social welfare or for being a full member of the EU. Or for having a strong growth in far right / anti EU parties like the UK, France, Germany, Poland etc who have that going on at the moment. Then I realised you have no idea what's pissing us all off. That's when I discounted your point of view. TB
pretty much every survey ever conducted puts immigration at the top of the list as a reason for voting for brexit. a quarter of the swiss population is non swiss.
A little light reading from,"Labour Heartlands": https://labourheartlands.com/third-...SoPuM22TbOlDL1-JGQwqIaDXMyDb_Ky7f_fCmthQgJrYs
yip, worth a read, jurnos killed within the EU boundaries with no connection to the EU other than they where killed within the EU Boundary. hellish...
right, time for another reff, should the UK leave the UK https://twitter.com/jimwaterson/status/1101744525326893056
If I’ve got that close, I’m not entirely wasting my time! Yes, I am in Switzerland but to your points: Multiculturalism - well, as Finm points out, a quarter of the population here are non-Swiss. In any case, if you live around here, in the French- speaking bit, you can’t really understand the other 3/4 of the country as they are all speaking a strange German dialect or less likely, Italian. Plenty of asylum seekers too and people from other countries. But we all rub along. Cheap labour - Switzerland is like anywhere, there are always jobs the indigenous population doesn’t want to do. In the Swiss case they aren’t too keen on tunnelling through the Alps or building things outside in mid-winter. They don’t mind organising it, they just don’t to be wielding the pick. So the Italians, Portuguese and Turks did it on the cheap and then stayed. Even now it’s not uncommon to see a Portuguese flag fluttering from a big construction crane. I saw one on Friday. The Italians opened a lot of garages and restaurants. The social welfare is interesting. If you become unemployed, they pay you 70% of your last pay packet for up to 2 years while you look for a job. They keep tabs on you, mind, to make sure you’re looking. After that, things go downhill but with little unemployment, they expect you to at least find something in that time. There’s no National Health Service but we all have to pay for expensive health insurance. It’s something of a scam as the premiums seem to go up every year. Taxwise, if you added that amount to the tax you have to pay, it’s probably not that dissimilar to the UK. We’re not a member of the EU but we have got Schengen making it even easier, in theory, for EU nationals to come here than for the UK. Are we in a customs union? I couldn’t tell you. There are about 200 bilateral agreements with the EU. For example, if you buy something from the EU, there are no tariffs, the EU VAT is knocked off and we pay the VAT here at 7.6% which tends to be cheaper. On the other hand, we get hammered on food prices but that is a combination of protectionism, being stitched up by the supermarket duopoly (who allowed that to happen??) high wages and high rents. We suck it up. The strongest political force at the moment is the right-wing UDC. They are the people who have organised several anti-EU votes and were responsible for the anti-minaret referendum which passed into law. So yes, there is no shortage of xenophobes around here too. But normally Swiss common sense prevails. There is plenty of anti-EU feeling in Switzerland but people are pragmatic. You have to put up with the things you don’t like to get the advantages of working with them. We are in no doubt who is the junior partner in negotiations. We’re surrounded by EU countries - what choice do we really have? But it is what it is. There was a vote on repealing Schengen which actually passed, but the government has been dragging its feet as it’s unworkable. The EU immediately retaliated by stopping all sorts of scientific collaboration projects, said we can’t “cherry pick” etc. Fact is, free movement comes with the territory. It’s much as I have been arguing here: it’s not perfect but what is? No point in ruining the country just so you can survey it from the vantage point of your high horse. This will amuse you: a week ago the government had some explaining to do: they’d budgeted for a deficit but they made CHF 3 billion surplus last year - again! Happens every year. Plenty of people complained about it. What sort of crap forecasters must these people be? You just can’t please some people. Things aren’t perfect but they’re not too bad. That’s about as much as you can hope for.
a mate moved out there a few years back to teach tech at high school. so some of the new swiss talk weegie, how hard most that be for them? he and his family love it and aint considering moving back ever. unless...
Are you saying that you expect to get a free trade deal with the EU while not paying for the privilege whilst the other 27 continue to pay for a free trade deal? Is that your suggestion?
Its following the rules of the club and even offered to let the whole of the U.K. stay in the customs union after the NI bigots rejected the idea of only NI being in the customs union. Alas, that concession from the EU to the U.K. was labelled a trap, even though it was the PM who asked for it.
Oh, just like Japan you mean? Of course not, they want to punish us while punishing themselves to do so of course
What would really annoy me is that if as a result of the UK leaving the EU and the rise of anti EU sentiment across the continent then the EU made constitutional changes that would make staying palatable. TB
