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United States of Europe??

PsB said:
I'm pretty sure EEA members like Norway or Switzerland don't view it in such zero-sum terms.
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Switzerland is not an EEA member - it was refused in a 1992 referendum. The vote split was interesting:

600px-Swiss_EEA_membership_referendum_results_by_canton%2C_1992.png

With the exception of the two Basel cantons, the French speakers all said yes, the rest said no. What the map doesn't show is Liechtenstein, which voted yes, and is thus in the EEA, which would have pleased Hilti (its biggest employer).

The TV interviews at the time were revelatory - the French speakers saw EEA membership as opening up to the world, the German speakers saw it as letting in more nasty foreign influence (a thankfully dwindling proportion of Swiss see the country as Paradise on Earth, surrounded by greedy, grasping, jealous foreigners).
 
Seeker_UK said:
It is.

Apologies if I misunderstand your post, but I don't consider a few tens of thousands of desparate people who want to come and make a life in the UK (and contribute to its economy and wellbeing) a threat that we need protecting from. Are you saying they are?
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Borders across which people can transit at liberty are not, by definition, protected.

However, the word that I should have used in this context is 'control', rather than protect.

I might add, at my peril, that I don't entirely swallow the popular mollification that people want to come here for anything quite so altruistic as to 'contribute to its economy'. When I travelled to France and Germany to work, I did so to and for my own advantage. I don't imagine that they'd be any different.

Your post also hazes the line between the definition of 'asylum-seeker' and 'economic migrant'. If people come here claiming to be asylum-seekers, they have a bona-fide and legal claim to that asylum. If they do so as economic migrants looking for 'a better life', they will be consigned, as I understand it, to the 50% odd that will be rejected at the first instance.
 
ks.234 said:
Happy to see that my proposals, such as they are, have been elevated from ‘ridiculous fantasy’ to actually possible. Thank you.

However, diluting the Human Rights act to facilitate change is not the way to go. Even if largely ignored by our government that denies basic human rights in so many areas, weakening the HRA further will only serve to further weaken such protections as basic human rights have now.

If you mean that the protocol that asylum seekers should seek asylum in the first country they enter, then yes, that needs to be changed. But, that protocol is part of a European protocol, and as we have now left the EU we do not need to change anything except our hostile environment and attitude towards brown people.
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I think that your proposals, in isolation, constitute something like lunacy, albeit if BJ keeps pissing off the French, we might well find them becoming reality. Michel Barnier is now amongst the increasing numbers of French politicians looking for the Le Touquet Agreement to be rescinded.

The words 'in isolation' are important. Without a far more efficient and robust immigration system, in which failed asylum-seekers are actually and efficiently repatriated, I suspect that we in terms of both systems and society will be unable to cope at almost every level. I have every sympathy with your comments on the HRA, particularly with this government's record on it, but as things stand the Human Rights legal industry ensures that very, very few failed asylum-seekers actually leave as it is. If migrants, asylum or otherwise, see the UK as a walk-in, and know that once they get here they cannot be removed, they will make hay. You may think that is not a bad thing, or you may even think it a good thing, but I don't begin to imagine you are in a majority, or even anything like one, except perhaps on these pages.

The Dublin Protocol has long since broken down, in large due to the permeability of borders within the EU. Asylum seekers simply disappear, especially those who, by destroying their ID papers, wish to. In terms of international agreements I suspect that the grandaddy of them all, the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, needs looking at again, with reference to the definitions of asylum-seekers against a far more complex background of economic and environmental population displacements than existed in the post war period for which it was designed, as well as refugees from war zones, for which it was.
 
SteveS1 said:
But are you not firmly on the side of a project and government that did everything possible to prevent such discussion and fan the flames of ignorance for their own ends?
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No, I'm not, even leaving out the fact that I disagree with some of your premise.
 
I disagree with the actuality of the EU to the point that I am (reluctantly) pro-Brexit. It isn't the same thing.
 
eternumviti said:
I think that your proposals, in isolation, constitute something like lunacy, albeit if BJ keeps pissing off the French, we might well find them becoming reality. Michel Barnier is now amongst the increasing numbers of French politicians looking for the Le Touquet Agreement to be rescinded.

The words 'in isolation' are important. Without a far more efficient and robust immigration system, in which failed asylum-seekers are actually and efficiently repatriated, I suspect that we in terms of both systems and society will be unable to cope at almost every level. I have every sympathy with your comments on the HRA, particularly with this government's record on it, but as things stand the Human Rights legal industry ensures that very, very few failed asylum-seekers actually leave as it is. If migrants, asylum or otherwise, see the UK as a walk-in, and know that once they get here they cannot be removed, they will make hay. You may think that is not a bad thing, or you may even think it a good thing, but I don't begin to imagine you are in a majority, or even anything like one, except perhaps on these pages.

The Dublin Protocol has long since broken down, in large due to the permeability of borders within the EU. Asylum seekers simply disappear, especially those who, by destroying their ID papers, wish to. In terms of international agreements I suspect that the grandaddy of them all, the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, needs looking at again, with reference to the definitions of asylum-seekers against a far more complex background of economic and environmental population displacements than existed in the post war period for which it was designed, as well as refugees from war zones, for which it was.
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My proposal is clearly not the product of a lunatic mind as you keep suggesting. On the contrary, your justifications which were based on an economic argument based on false assumptions and the inherent criminality of those seeking asylum that is based on ignorance and prejudice.

This country cannot go broke due to immigration or anything else, it can afford to fund as many public services in the UK as it likes to the top of the glass. The assumption that those seeking a better life are criminal by nature is prejudicial in every sense of the word.

If as you say the majority of voters in this country have options based on ignorance and prejudice, that just shows how far informed debate has given way to Trumpian propaganda. If that is the case, the faux sympathy shown when the direct consequences of government policy result in the deaths of men, women, children and the unborn, is hypocrisy. If you support an unlimited lay hostile environment to migrants, you cannot be surprised when the inevitable actually happens. Don’t vote F*ck ‘Em, then pretend saddness when they get f*cked
 
ks.234 said:
This country cannot go broke due to immigration or anything else, it can afford to fund as many public services in the UK as it likes to the top of the glass.
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Most people here think the UK is broke, a failed state Decmeron calls it.
 
Some facts here:

https://unherd.com/2021/11/the-calais-crisis-cant-be-solved/?1638105630858

The liberal hand-wringing is annoying but lots of good info once the author gets that out of the way.

The answer is straightforward: safe routes to claim asylum in the UK. My view is that applications should be processed on UK soil, rather than "striking a deal" with the French. We're still one of the wealthiest nations on the planet, so how hard can this be, really? Appeasing xenophobia is not an excuse for abdicating our moral responsibility to fellow human beings.

Don't read below the line on that article by the way. Pure white supremacist racism from most commenters, but that's unHerd for you. See also The Spectator magazine, the Daily Telegraph, the Mail... all of which have done more to mainstream far-right ideas than any other publications.

Required reading:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1509815635/?tag=pinkfishmedia-21

A work of profound humanity. Liberalism at its finest (by which I mean consistent liberalism that really does value all individual human lives).

I also recommend that members follow or support the various refugee charities:

https://www.jcwi.org.uk/

https://twitter.com/migrantsorg

https://twitter.com/FIRMCharter

This is one of the defining moral issues of our age (perhaps the moral issue). Be on the right side.
 
This site contains affiliate links for which pink fish media may be compensated.
richardg said:
Most people here think the UK is broke, a failed state Decmeron calls it.
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Possibly because at a time when the richest are coining it thanks to the politicians they pay for and billions of pounds of public money is being shovelled into donor's pockets - Johnson talks of ‘building back better’ and 'levelling up'.

Meanwhile the reality is huge growth in food banks and poverty being fuelled directly by deliberate policy. Sounds pretty close to a state that is failing to me. The fact that some of those affected bought Johnson's folksy boosterism matters not one jot.
 
SteveS1 said:
Possibly because at a time when the richest are coining it thanks to the politicians they pay for and billions of pounds of public money is being shovelled into donor's pockets - Johnson talks of ‘building back better’ and 'levelling up'.

Meanwhile the reality is huge growth in food banks and poverty being fuelled directly by deliberate policy. Sounds pretty close to a state that is failing to me. The fact that some of those affected bought Johnson's folksy boosterism matters not one jot.
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Maybe it sounds close to being one to you, and is one to Decameron. But to rational people with a balanced point of view, it is a long way from being one.
 
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