Wanderer Vagabond

Once again all you are doing is highlighting a problem as you choose to see it. You have signally failed to come up with anything that could reasonably be interpreted as a solution, just saying 'let's do things differently' isn't a solution, it's a Jeremy Corbyn soundbite. How you define exploitation might be a good place to start. People either start up a company themselves or they choose to work for an existent company. The way in which you are talking is as though those who work for others are all 'exploited', well if they don't like it let them start their own company and work for themselves. If they cannot be bothered to do that they then have to work for others and try to negotiate the best working conditions that they can, this was where unions came in. A variety of Governments have effectively crippled the unions with the blessing of the UK population you now have to try to negotiate these best working conditions on your own, and you are then working from a position of weakness. That is the reality, if you don't like it go and find yourself a desert island somewhere to try to develop some new but unworkable social system.

In general terms I'd agree with what you are saying, particularly regarding people 'rescuing' their dogs since there have been numerous documented incidents of people doing exactly that and drowning and the dog itself swimming to safety, as you say a pointless waste of life. Where I may differ however is regarding a child in the water. You are standing at a lockside and a young child (say aged 5 to 10) falls in and doesn't come up, what are you going to do? stand there looking at the water and muttering 'Darwin strikes again'. Poke around with a boat pole to see if you can find where they are? I wouldn't be keen to enter the water but I don't think I could live with myself afterwards if I didn't make some sort of attempt. An adult would be a different matter since even if you manage to locate them, in their panic there is every possibility of them taking you down with them, but I don't think I could walk away from a child in those circumstances. With the right conditions (not too rough a sea, firmly attached to a line to shore held by reliable helpers and carrying some form of buoyancy) I'd go into the sea after a child. Much though I like dogs I wouldn't do it for a dog, they can usually swim!

The old 'straw man' argument raises its head again, nowhere in my post did I use the phrase 'facing up to reality', that is exclusively your phrase so I can only assume that you are realising that you are failing to do so. The trends that you refer to that are getting us nowhere are exclusively of our own construct in the UK (bog all to do with the EU). We have taken with enthusiasm to zero hours contracts, fake 'self employment' and a variety of other scams intended to weaken the position of the workforce since we (as a nation, not individually) have accepted the lie that Unions were behind any failure in the employment realm. We have now got exactly what we deserve, crap employment conditions dictated by a wealthy elite. Some have been knocked down a peg or two (Mike Ashley at Sports Direct being an example) but not by 'people power' but by good journalism exposing how he runs his business. What you will sadly find however is that provided the product is cheap people will buy it, they have little or no concern of how it got onto the shelves or whether it was made under slave conditions. How many people refuse to buy Thai prawns and shimps even though they are caught by boats manned by slaves? pretty much no-one. If you hope that the consumer is suddenly going to become all moral and willingly pay more so that UK workers get a better deal once we are out of the EU, you do indeed need a reality check.

I have to say that is an incredibly naive view of how you think that the world works. The power to change things is only available to those who have power, this crap about 'people power' is just that, crap. The world has had the so called 'Arab Spring' where the people expressed their desire for things to be different, where did that end out? Syria and Libya in chaos, Egypt back under the rule of a quasi dictator. Going back, the fall of the USSR was driven by 'people power' who now are apparently quite content with their current dictator, Putin, since they believe he is going to restore Russian 'greatness'. The hope of those looking forward (to the backwoods) once we are out of the EU have some vain belief that it is going to be like the days of Empire again, you are going to be sorely disappointed. The industry and trade which you deride is what has, in the past, delivered wealth to the UK. You are quite free to,"....reject the force the market is placing on this country....." if you have the mindset of 'stop the world, I want to get off'. I think however that you will find that people living in Burundi,Liberia,Yemen and a number of other powerless, poor countries would exchange their 'freedom' to be poor and powerless for a stronger handle on the market. I'm not saying that what we have is in any way perfect, and I also dislike a lot of what the market economy delivers, but then reality kicks in and I realise that without this market economy we also could enjoy the privilege of true poverty.

Wonderful idea but since Thatcher effectively destroyed and outsourced our manufacturing base who precisely is going to make this stuff in the 10 or 15 years it will take us to get back up to speed (assuming that all other nations just stand and watch)? We can't even make our own nuclear reactors anymore since, despite being in at the start, we no longer have the skills, we need the French and Chinese to build them for us. As I travel the country the places where we used to make stuff is now what can comfortably be called industrial wasteland. I notice that the nice Mr Dyson who thought leaving the EU would be splendid has a workforce that is 80% Malaysian, unfortunately they remain in Malaysia so contribute naff all to the UK.

The way the system works is where is says that is what happens. If you get yourself into a position to be able to take out a mortgage you will be earning above the threshold level to start paying off your student loan so, since HMRC generously help themselves to the money to pass onto the Student Loan Company, it will be gone from your wages before you get chance to try to get a mortgage with it. I also think that your impression may be somewhat misplaced, helping themselves to your money is the 'easy' bit. Try asking the Student Loan Company how much you actually owe (should you have a student debt) and you will not get a direct answer because they haven't got a clue, unlike if you ask your bank how much you owe on a loan. Try to recover money from them if they continue taking money out of your wages even once the debt is paid off, you'll have more luck getting blood from a stone, if the Student Loan company was a bank they'd be in liquidation for utter incompetence by now (but then we always bail the banks out don't we?) I too am grateful that I paid only a reasonable amount for my university education, but gratitude doesn't do any good for the youngsters of today. I'm equally grateful that I'll be collecting an old age pension before I'm in my 90's, again not much help for the youngsters of today who will be financing it and not getting the same deal.

Given that, on current calculations, less than 50% are ever going to pay off their student loan it won't be ' at least to start with', that debt will hang over their heads for 30 years. During that time they may also have wanted to buy a house (fat chance) or a car but of course paying off the unsecured debt of the student loan comes first. The sole purpose of student loans is was to give the finance sector a boost (now they are selling off the student loan book) and to enable University Chancellor to pay themselves exorbitant and unjustified salaries, it has to be one of the crappest ideas (a labour)government have ever come up with. What's the next move? getting kids to take out loans for their primary and secondary education? Let's load the kids up with as much debt as we can so they can get used to a life permanently in debt

I think that Government encourage the culture of living in perpetual debt. Look at what they do to students, dump them with a £30,000 - £50,000 unsecured loan as soon as they leave university. I have no problem with secured loans since if it all goes t*ts up you can sell, unsecured loans I've never had time for and it would definitely have discouraged me from studying at University. So what Government want is an uneducated population in permanent debt.

There is the same chance of the EU collapsing as there is of the UK splitting into its constituent nations (i.e. no chance).

Just so that I understand where you are coming from, when the leavers suggested the possible disadvantages of leaving the EU they, in your view were talking rubbish. You however feel quite entitled to spout utter rubbish based upon nothing at all and call it factual? I have also looked at history and see that the greatest threats have always come from petty nationalism backed up with fear of 'other' and spiced with some lunatic who claims that he/she is going to cure it all. Nations working together have rarely achieved such damage as an individual nation following some half wit will achieve.

So you accept what you are spouting is indeed utter rubbish. I rest my case. 'Internal' and 'External' threats? So you don't think that the group responsible for the Bataclan massacre in Paris may constitute an 'internal' threat then (French and Belgian citizens)? The Westminster terrorist Adrian Elms, also known as Khalid Massod, might constitute an internal threat? Your reading of anything to do with the EU is merely paranoid and no longer worth commenting upon

Rather than just spouting such utter nonsense perhaps you'd care to share with us the source, or is this just your totally unsupported opinion? Your second assertion is no better, we have 23 of 28 states of the EU who recognise Kosovo and therefore 5 that do not, how is that an EU decision? The decision to recognise Kosovo is down to individual states or would you prefer that the EU really was a superstate that dictated everything to its members? 5 members chooose not to recognise Kosovo, have they been sanctioned? thrown out of the EU? Fined? No, none of the above, they are entitled to a difference of opinion. I don't suppose for one minute that Spain ever will get Gibraltar, but if Mrs May chooses to express an opinion on the Catalan situation, Gibraltar will be one of the fronts upon which Spain will retaliate to throw spanners in the works of any Brexit agreement (there are others that they would probably use as well).

From my personal viewpoint I don't really understand the Madrid Government's excessive response to this Catalan plebiscite. They had already told the Catalan Government that they, as the national government, did not sanction the vote so the natural response would be to also tell them that they would take no notice of the vote since the Spanish courts had deemed the vote unconstitutional. If the Catalans still went on and held the vote, so be it, the National Government had already stated it's position no matter what the outcome. An unconstitutional UDI wouldn't have been accepted by any other nation so any such declaration by Catalonia would have been merely an insignificance. By sending in the non-Catalan Riot Police they have unnecessarily inflamed the situation to the point where further violence is a high likelihood. It's a bit like a declaration of war, you may think that your own government are a bunch of incompetents but once the call to war comes the likelihood of supporting them increases.

Oddly enough, I agree with your criticism, however for a blatantly anti-EU poster to criticise the EU response we should, in the interests of fairness direct the same criticism towards our own politicians if they are making the same response. Equally in the interests of fairness we should also be lauding the UK politicians who have been openly critical, both Corbyn and Cable, but I don't see that as a likely outcome either As an aside, I suspect that May's silence might well be diplomatically astute since if she unnecessarily aggravates Spain they are likely to throw all manner of spanners into the works of Brexit, Gibraltar probably being where they would start.

Would that be the same market forces that have resulted in the growth of low paid,low skilled work in the UK (the market has imported the cheap labour you decry elsewhere). Please, let us all bow down and worship at the temple of 'market forces' shall we? Surely we should accept low wages as 'the price to be paid' shouldn't we??