Poll: EU Referendum Voting Intentions

How do you intent to vote in the EU referendum

  • Yes - to stay in the EU

    Votes: 486 58.1%

  • No - to leave the EU

    Votes: 307 36.7%

  • Sepp Blatter

    Votes: 43 5.1%
  • Total voters
    836
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Here's the issue I have with the main pro-EU argument regarding giving businesses and people free movement being good for trade.

If standardising practices, making it easy to work anywhere and reducing waste is the goal then why is there no major push for a common language?

The language we speak and communicate in has huge impacts on business and only using one across Europe would, it seems to me, removes more obstacles/issues/barriers for businesses that not having things the often citing dreaded import duties.

When a Swiss company makes a product, it needs to hire numerous translators and print instructions for it's product in numerous European Languages. For a book publisher they have to physically make a different product for most EU states to accommodate the many different languages used in them.

When the EU meet you need a massive team of translators working live and an intricate sound system just so delegates can understand each other and have a debate.

To be clear I'm not advocating for a common EU language, I'm asking why pro-EUers aren't if their primary consideration is removing as many barriers and costs to businesses trading as possible.
 
scorza said:
You seemed to be implying that the chap has a workforce consisting of 75% Polish nationals because they're harder working and more intelligent than UK nationals. Surely that's a racist paradigm?
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Well, I never said anything about intelligence and really, common, you are strectching the point you are trying to make to breaking point.

As Ubersonic just said...

ubersonic said:
Lazy and hard working are not races, so favouring one over the other cannot be racism.
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Not that I'm generalising that all UK youngsters are lazy and not hard working, but the gist is correct, the employer is just taking on the best workers for their business from the pool available , if that was UK workers they would employ them, but it isn't...so they don't.
 
Mr Jack said:
Because it's a hugely politically volatile thing to push for and, in practice there is a steadily emerging de facto common language in Europe: English.
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Precisely. English is the de facto international language, there doesn't need to be any formal move to it.

The town hall here has just voted to start issuing all formal documentation in English.....just as well because formal German is a bloody nightmare to translate :P
 
Freakbro said:
Well, I never said anything about intelligence and really, common, you are strectching the point you are trying to make to breaking point.

As Ubersonic just said...



Not that I'm generalising that all UK youngsters are lazy and not hard working, but the gist is correct, the employer is just taking on the best workers for their business from the pool available , if that was UK workers they would employ them, but it isn't...so they don't.
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Sounds exactly the sort of thing that employers with near 100% white-British workforces used to say in the '70s. "Oh we have nothing against black people, but the ones that apply for our jobs just haven't met our high standards".
 
Freakbro said:
Probably because like for like they are harder working and more reliable than their UK equivalent. This is an overall average of course, there will always be exceptions.

I know a few people who run factories for landwork and for this type of hard manual work, for typically low pay, they have said for years that the immigrants (before the Eastern European influx it was the Portuguese and others before that) are far better employees than the English equivalent, even after taking into account any language barriers.

Part of the reason has been mentioned before though, young immigrant workers will put up with living (and working) conditions that our youngsters have been brought up to expect better, like living 8+ to a house, hot bedding and generally being treated like a disposable commodity.
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The bit in white is why you employ them, the bit in red is the excuse you use.

I work with a team of 70 manual working employees, I'd say 10% are Eastern European and from what I've seen they are not harder working than their UK counterpart, once they've secured their contract and are past the probationary period that is.

I think people confuse the completely natural human desire to keep up appearances and be ambitious when you're new to somewhere with some kind of intrinsic human trait based on where you are born.

It's like when you go to a new friend's house for the first time. You offer to take your shoes off, wait to be asked if you want a drink/food, mind your P&Q's etc. But an old friend whose house you've been to a million times you'll happily walk in, make yourself a cup of tea and put your feet up on their coffee table.
 
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scorza said:
Sounds exactly the sort of thing that employers with near 100% white-British workforces used to say in the '70s. "Oh we have nothing against black people, but the ones that apply for our jobs just haven't met our high standards".
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Which is discriminating against the foreigners ('blacks') and doesn't surprise me one bit given how intrinsically and culturally racist the UK still was in the 70's

This is now 40 years later and the UK is in no way comparable to then but also, can you explain to me the motivation why an English employer would be being 'racist'....against their own kind, the English?
 
scorza said:
I'm a firm believer in looking after the pennies, and the pounds will look after themselves. In any case, 60 Euro per person sounds like quite a lot to me, then again I believe that the 50p per person (or whatever it is) to maintain the Royal Family is too much.

It's all very well saying that we're helping our less well off neighbours, but I was reading at the weekend about how educational standards in Poland are now ahead of the UK's and one of the main reasons for that was the declining pupil:teacher ratio over there, and the increasing ratio here. So basically UK schools are over-stretched and paying the price thanks in part to uncontrolled immigration, while the country a lot of those immigrants are from are enjoying an easy life. Yes I'm all in favour of fixing our neighbour's fence if it has blown down, but now while my own house is on fire.
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Comparisons to the Royals are very good actually. They cost a bit per person (sixty-something pence/year), the benefits they bring are hard to quantify, and if we scrapped them the outcome would be very unpredictable, but overall they probably bring a net income to the country. Just like EU membership! :p

I don't know how much you can blame our poor education system on immigrants so I'll just share this amusing Daily Mail article I found:

Influx of Polish children into schools has 'helped improve British pupils' grades'
(Those Poles coming here, enriching our economy and boosting our children's grades! :p)

I like your metaphor about fences and houses though :D
 
Freakbro said:
Which is discriminating against the foreigners ('blacks') and doesn't surprise me one bit given how intrinsically and culturally racist the UK still was in the 70's

This is now 40 years later and the UK is in no way comparable to then but also, can you explain to me the motivation why an English employer would be being 'racist'....against their own kind, the English?
Click to expand...

I think his point was that we've heard the excuse of 'people of group Y aren't as good workers as group X' before to conceal a harder to justify position.

So the racist 70s business owner used the 'hard workers' line to hide the fact he just didn't want to hire black people whereas today the same line is being used because it's easier to defend than saying "I want to pay as little as possible to my workers".
 
I believe even the Daily Mail is for staying in the EU now which means Murdoch is worried about the only thing he ever worries about - his money. If even die hard conservatives such as him fear the consequences of an exit, there's no chance for it to actually happen.
 
estebanrey said:
I think his point was that we've heard the excuse of 'people of group Y aren't as good workers as group X' before to conceal a harder to justify position.

So the racist 70s business owner used the 'hard workers' line to hide the fact he just didn't want to hire black people whereas today the same line is being used because it's easier to defend than saying "I want to pay as little as possible to my workers".
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Sure, I appreciate that, but then the reason you've said (in bold) even if true, isn't racist is it, which was my point.
 
estebanrey said:
So the racist 70s business owner used the 'hard workers' line to hide the fact he just didn't want to hire black people whereas today the same line is being used because it's easier to defend than saying "I want to pay as little as possible to my workers".
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Sorry I don't see it.

If it's a minimum wage job then they get paid the same per hour, the reason the hard workers are cheaper to employ is because they do 4 hours work in 4 hours whereas the lazy ones will take 6 hours and cost more. The is nothing wrong with choosing hard workers over lazy ones.
 
Tefal said:
thing is most people would have been perfectly happy with free movement right up until we let in

Slovakia,
hungry,
Poland,
Bulgaria,
Lithuania,
Romania,
Slovenia,

and the other **** holes that are of no real benefit to us to have free movement with.
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The UK was the leading nation in getting all those countries in because "we" thought after the soviet union they'd want a light touch eu and would back us up in Atlantacist issues, big mistake there.
 
Freakbro said:
Which is discriminating against the foreigners ('blacks') and doesn't surprise me one bit given how intrinsically and culturally racist the UK still was in the 70's

This is now 40 years later and the UK is in no way comparable to then but also, can you explain to me the motivation why an English employer would be being 'racist'....against their own kind, the English?
Click to expand...

Does the reason behind racism matter in the slightest?

Zethor said:
I believe even the Daily Mail is for staying in the EU now which means Murdoch is worried about the only thing he ever worries about - his money. If even die hard conservatives such as him fear the consequences of an exit, there's no chance for it to actually happen.
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Murdoch doesn't own the Daily Mail (Lord Rothermere does), but it's true that he's changed his mind and now wants to stay in the EU. So all you little sheeple who read The Sun now know which way to vote.
 
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