Brexit 2019 and Poland

I don't care.

Because it wouldn't be your loved ones waiting for essential treatment.
And you were calling me out as callous?

No, it'll be somebody else's loved ones in some other country who can't get essential treatment because the UK can't be bothered to train enough doctors (or pay them well enough). But since when did India need.... (smirk) healthcare?!? The very idea is absurd!!!


you want your fellow citizens to make do with less (pay, security), so that the rich can make do with more, I never took you for a Thatcherites, but somehow here we are...

I don't follow your line of attack.
Personal freedom in the EU, and the clue is in the word "union" means that the individual is able to settle where they wish.
I applaud that freedom - which you also enjoy.
It is a nonsense to say that EU citizens have taken British jobs, but it fits an agenda.
This UK government's policy is to the right of Thatcherism, and I have stated that I am in favour of taxing the rich to pay for the NHS.

As to freedom of movement, it is cheaper to import health professionals than to train them locally - no political party is going to reverse that policy, scandalous though it be.

The NHS is still one of the very best health services in the world, and if you are seriously suggesting that Polish professionals, working in an ultra right wing system where just NINE percent of GDP is invested in the NFZ, are happy to necessarily build their careers here, then you are barking.

Polish healthcare professionals are scandalously underpaid by a government that realizes that professionals won't vote for it. Poland needs to dramatically increase the percentage of the budget spent on healthcare but it won't because the votes bought by handouts come first.


Freedom of movement is a bit like air bnb, a little is fine but when there's too much then it lowers everybody's standard of living, see Barcelona where an explosion of airbnb apartments has had devastating effects on the local population.

Again, you only think in terms of one country with an afterthought or two about Poland, but when you look more holistically at the whole EU a very different picture emerges. How long can southern countries afford to hemorrhage young talented generations because the restrictive regimen of the euro keeps their economies in the toilet?

Union means that in terms of recruiting talent the UK is a permanent winner and Spain is a permanent loser, it's a return to feudalism but with countries instead of individuals (and comes with a burgeoning precariat in every EU country).

theguardian.com/world/2019/may/15/cash-credits-and-crisis-life-in-the-new-european-precariat

I know, lets take their passports away like in the good old PRL days.
Do you really think it would be better for thwm to stay in their home countries, unemployed and relaying on their families?

And do you really thing that when Australia or USA are giving away visas to the specialists they need they ask other governments whether they could use them at home?

How many years did USA drain the science fields and somehow the world didn't colapse. And they don't have freedom of movement...

People move countries for all sorts of reasons maf. Under the Tories, only the sons of diplomats and the rich would be able to do so. And I am surprised by your tone which is starting to sound like a false position. Better to come clean - you don't really feel that way, do you? Oh, the hypocrisy!

I am sure you are au fait with the term 'What is good for the goose is good for the gander'.
theguardian.com/education/2019/nov/13/why-british-teachers-fleeing-overseas-international-schools

A tough question.... if Polish people had had freedom of movement in 1980 the PRL might still be in place. Allowing the discontented to simply leave is a great way for dysfunctional governments to stay in power (Central American governments actually make money from forcing large numbers of the population to emigrate).

Simple unchanging positions favoring a policy that worked at one time is the road to societal (and individual) stagnation. Maintaining dysfunctional austerity governments for the sake of private banks and justifying it by 'freedom of movement' is not a great or sustainable policy.

Ideally, there would be the kind of freedom of movement that has long existed in the Scandinavian countries and not forced job emigration for the sake of bankers.

Maybe, maybe not. But in those times people still had jobs, could have a roof over their head and food on the table out of their own work.

What do you think would happen to those young people once their parents died? What with their pensions?
Somehow through history it were the closed societies that were thorn apart.

Gdansk and Wroclaw are European cities now, like they were centuries ago.
Excellent, and the strange "It's our country, and we want you to leave" mentality is dead and buried, as the Tories will discover to their cost.

"It's our country" does not necessarily lead inevitably to "we want you to leave".

And... if you can't make people leave.... do you have a country at all? is there anything remotely resembling a unique UK culture that new arrivals are expected to conform to? Or is the UK now a place on the map where diverse people meet to do business and nothing else?

Piffle.
If people want to keep to a culture, they can. If they want to go to church, they can.
Otherwise, the UK is European, and that's the way it should be - a modern state, both for its' security and because of John Donne:):)

I can agree with some of this though....
theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/13/mccluskey-tells-corbyn-defy-calls-extend-freedom-of-movement

You agree with the concerns of the working class or agree with the idea of deceiving them (lying by omission and then screwing them over after the election)?

The only person screwing over the working class, as you put it, is Johnson. It's an old right-wing game. Vote for us, we are the party of the working class; we are the only party that will make our country great again, by limiting immigration and "giving the people back their law making decisions"

It's a cringeworthy dumb ploy aimed at voters who the Tories regard as simpletons, and a play based on emotive subjects.

How about Corbyn?
If you think JC is the messiah, why don't you vote for him?

Far too Workers' Socialist Party for me. I would back somebody like Watson or Starmer, but Momentum will never get elected. And the Tories under careerist Johnson and that bitchh in the Home Office will ruin the Britain I was brought up in though. I have known a European Britain all my adult life, and you can keep the xenophobic country that the UK is becoming.

I will go back for holidays and the like - but I wash my hands of any ties.

Such a shame you feel that way.
As you can probably guess, I am nowhere near as pessimistic as you are.
And I don't think Britain is becoming xenophobic at all.
We have always been open minded and tolerant, we are just heaving under the influx of mass immigration.... it just needs to be controlled.
And I don't understand why an unskilled Pole can just.walk in and yet an Indian surgeon is controlled.
Makes no sense to me.

Well...the unskilled Pole can now make his future here in Poland - if he wants to get a skill....and the flood to the UK died down a long time ago. 40 zl an hour, to send money back to Poland, doesn't make any sense for a Pole on minimum wage. He can make 40 zl an hour here on the sites. The developer has a guy dry walling my property who earns more than that, and you can pick up dry lining skills with a City and Guilds.

An Indian surgeon has qualifications that are not fully recognised in the UK without add-ons I believe....then he has an annoying 1500 pounds a year visa charge - OK if he's a surgeon, but if he's an ordinary house doctor then it would make more sense to waive his visa fees. Same goes for nurses.

Johnson's speech today about British apprentices getting government contracts first after Brexit is just another soundbite. How can newly qualified technicians have the same skillset as more experienced foreign workers?


No higher than it's ever been, and Brexit wont reduce it one iota. A fallacy created by politicians, for politicians. They have to have something to feed on. Like all of us.

I am not seeing that mate.
All those types of Poles that I know have got their residency sorted.
None of them are planning to return, except maybe to retire.
But the influx of new Polish immigrants died.
Though Romanians and Bulgarians are still coming.
I wonder why so few Czechs and Hungarians never came?
We have plenty of Slowaks,Lithuanians and even Latvians.

That's what I meant. They're staying put in Poland. Most Eastern European immigrants to the UK were Poles. That wave of immigration is over. Hence no excuse for Brexit as immigration is not a British concern any more - just for the politicians, because it wins the vote of tattoo man from Chorley.

But it is Doug, just not from Poland.
As I said, Romanians and Bulgarians are still coming.
So much so that the Romanians are opening loads of shops and restaurants to service their own people.
I even have a couple of Bulgarian shops near me!
I don't mind as I like the food from both countries..... :-)

Aren't both of those majority opinion in the UK?

How precisely does increased unskilled immigration benefit lower income citizens?

It doesn't harm them. If there weren't austerity, a larger population to service means results in a growing service sector, and a vibrant economy. Of course, if you don't invest in schools and healthcare, and social housing, then you get the present situation.

But that is government policy, and the immigrants are not to blame for that.
In a recent Maori poll, 73 percent of respondents didn't identify immigration as a present concern.

To get back to the nitty gritty of the topic of Brexit, here is an interesting short article where Phil Hogan, who will be negotiating the new trade arrangements between the UK and EU gives a bit of insight into the likely terms and the length of time it will take to get there:

rte.ie/news/brexit/2019/1113/1090735-phil-hogan/

I would have thought the Maoris were a textbook case of people who were swamped by immigration !

May I looked up that Arnade book - not on Polish iTunes and 30 quid on the BritIsh itunes !! For the audio version. Is it so good ?

The pictures are just as important as the text... you can get most of the information from his twitter feed (esp in 2015-16 where he reported how dissatisfied the American precariat was with the system to the great displeasure of liberals)

He also wrote several articles for some British paper (guardian?)

twitter.com/Chris_arnade

Touche! But then...I am a Grauniad reader!


No no Atch! We're not having that! Blast those damn Irish journalists! Mr Gove has personally promised us instant gratification on our magical trade deals with the galactic empire and I, I...I.......believe.......er.......hang on a moment...are you saying that actually......

Oh no - not a ten year delay for our victory?!! {Dougpol runs down street, ranting about the evil establishment, between bending, and occasionally succeeding in actually snapping, car aerials in his anger and petulant frustration}

Conspiracy proven!

Ah, the enlightened liberal mindset... The crisis really does not exist, and even if in any case it did, we would strongly condemn it so that it would no longer exist.

Not sure what happened.... some stuff I'd added didn't make it through.

Anyhoo... Arnade is I think a better photographer/observer than writer so I'd pass on the audio book and use the money for something else (maybe check his old twitter feed and look up articles he's written).


But there is austerity, not as a momentary hiccup but as the new normal. That's not changing regardless who wins.

This points to a bigger problem - the problems in European countries aren't problems that can be solved by elections anymore because EU countries are locked into so many non-negotiable agreements that governments can't do much. I think this will lead to elections being downgraded in importance even more than they are now.

Technocracy (like the UE) and real democracy can't co-exist.

Because a lot of the time the directives make more sense than what went before. I well remember Britain in the 60s - a bygone age - a little like Poland if left to it's own devices.

As in - just 5 years ago they were rebuilding the city centre of Katowice using tractors and trailers. You really couldn't make it up. Surprisingly they agreed to leave the horses at home, but would have used them too in the construction if they could have.

The EU is there to phase out such tomfoolery. Quite right too - individual countries don't know their arse from their elbow on many matters.