Oh no!! Brexit not going quite as well as hoped

[newfhouse]

Well as this seems to be a thread for diverse opinion I'd better weigh in here.

If the EU ever was an opportunity for social democratic betterment it went beyond that remit. The balance of power and influence between France (broadly socialist in effect) and Germany (broadly corporate capitalist) changed radically in this century. Germany is now gruner and France doigtier, a number of new member states (Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland) are distinctly right wing repressive, and the focus has changed to playing the superpower economic block game, I reckon.

Whatever 'cheap financial security' may be I have little direct experience of it. I suspect it is a middle class perk. I am not a big fan of benefits from an essentially corporate culture that buys off real dissent while promoting consumerism. I've met people who have come here from Romania to pick tulips for crap pay living in a tent in February in Scotland. Give me a caravan and the minimum wage and I will do this, though I'd prefer onions in September. The car industry has suffered from more and complex tariffs - let it! What an island needs as a bottom line is to grow enough food to feed itself. This was unlikely within EU agricultural norms. Using cheap EU labour for farming was downright exploitation. Food should be more expensive because it should be be grown and harvested sustainably by people with decent living conditions.

The only way to get this is for workers to fight for it. The key to environmental change is for people and communities to value this so much that we will go without cheap energy and build green alternatives. Legislation is the icing on the cake. We have to start local.

Is the EU funding climate change mitigation in frontline developing world communities? This would be my next priority.

Based on this I think we probably agree on more than we disagree. But...

Is it more or less likely that we will see the progress we wish for now that we have reduced our ability to influence trade and agriculture policy?

 

[farfromtheland]

Trying to exert that influence in the milieu of corporate lobbying is getting dragged into a realpolitik that is the real problem, is my take on it.

 

[icowden]

Give me a caravan and the minimum wage and I will do this, though I'd prefer onions in September.

Will you though? It's not the wage that it the issue - it's the hard work and the availability of it. This article gives some detail

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeand...ome-a-fruit-picker-on-life-without-eu-workers

I did read a much better one recently which explains that if you want to pick crops as a job through the year, you *have* to travel to where the crops are growing. Professional crop pickers would travel in a "carvan" going from country to country. They still do - but not to our country cos Brexit.

 

[BoldonLad]

Will you though? It's not the wage that it the issue - it's the hard work and the availability of it. This article gives some detail

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeand...ome-a-fruit-picker-on-life-without-eu-workers

I did read a much better one recently which explains that if you want to pick crops as a job through the year, you *have* to travel to where the crops are growing. Professional crop pickers would travel in a "carvan" going from country to country. They still do - but not to our country cos Brexit.

I never did “crop picking” for a living, but, I am old enough to remember doing tattie picking (potato picking), as a youngster (12+), in between coal picking (along the railway line and/or on the spoil heaps).

 

[Pale Rider]

But, in the words of Johnson, I've been repeatedly assured....





[my bold. my bad]

Oh dear, you are so desperate to slag me off you cannot think rationally.

Are you @theclaud in disguise?

Well a stopped clock's right twice a day.

Better than being stupid all the time.

 

[farfromtheland]

Will you though? It's not the wage that it the issue - it's the hard work and the availability of it. This article gives some detail

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeand...ome-a-fruit-picker-on-life-without-eu-workers

I did read a much better one recently which explains that if you want to pick crops as a job through the year, you *have* to travel to where the crops are growing. Professional crop pickers would travel in a "carvan" going from country to country. They still do - but not to our country cos Brexit.

Yes I would - not most of the year though, enough to pay the rent, which is fortunately not extortionate. I have other freelance work too. I've done 'sh$t-picking' at Reading festival - similar sort of travail. I have an English mate who travelled as a crop picker in France with her van, and an aquaintance who tried similar in England but the grotty hostel culture did for him. Decent accomodation is not too much to demand, is it?

 

[Bromptonaut]

Oh dear, you are so desperate to slag me off you cannot think rationally.

You really need to raise your eyes above your own navel...

 

[Salty seadog]

Oh dear, you are so desperate to slag me off you cannot think rationally.

Are you @theclaud in disguise?



Better than being stupid all the time.

View: https://youtu.be/h6BJJe9JV_A

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

You really need to raise your eyes above your own navel...

I did wonder whether he could identify any manifestations of irrationality on my part. It wouldn't have been repeating the same lie until it took on the character of a psychological truth for the liar.

That said, I take the possibility that I could be confused with @theclaud as a big compliment.

 

[Salty seadog]

I did wonder whether he could identify any manifestations of irrationality on my part. It wouldn't have been repeating the same lie until it took on the character of a psychological truth for the liar.

That said, I take the possibility that I could be confused with @theclaud as a big compliment.

I've met both of you rapscallions but you both fill out a jumper in different ways so I doubt I'd get you mixed up.....

 

[theclaud]

That said, I take the possibility that I could be confused with @theclaud as a big compliment.

 

[cookiemonster]

Better than being stupid all the time.

Remind me of who was clutching their pearls on fake horror at alleged ‘insults?’

 

[PaulB]

Remind me of who was clutching their pearls on fake horror at alleged ‘insults?’

Don't be harsh on a man (or his lapdog) who gives unstinting support to this attempt at a government and calls OTHER people stupid! He's going through a difficult phase at the moment.

 

[fozy tornip]

You really need to raise your eyes above your own navel...

Not if he's sitting zazen he doesn't.

 

[Deleted member 28]

He's going through a difficult phase at the moment.

Not as difficult as you lot by the looks of it, you do nothing but moan about them.