Indeed, they still take out, but I am talking net - eg. they take £100, but give back £137.Quote:
Originally Posted by adECW
In terms of infrastructure, perhaps we should ditch that stupid HS2 line - that would allow us to afford proper infrastructure (20 years to complete? Come off it!)
The figure is from research conducted by UCL - unfortunately I cannot link you to an article, just something that came up in an A2 Politics lesson.
Technically they could build the HS2 a lot faster if they didn't have to deal with the courts/laws and all that stuff due to peoples homes etc etc etc. From what I have read about it anyway.Quote:
Originally Posted by Marketing
It just seems embarrassing that they have laid out a 20 year timeline, when if you look at Japan etc they have had "bullet" trains for years.Quote:
Originally Posted by xxMATTGxx
If they really want to stimulate the economy, scrap the project. Install fibre optic in every household in the UK - that will boost the economy, be much faster and work out cheaper!
It's difficult to say we should be more forceful with out immigration policy, and we usually are told to be "more like Australia", but Australia is in the middle of no where and hasn't got such an integrated history as us and Europe. We're so close to Europe and to be completely harsh on visitors and those hoping to live here is a bit unfair, especially when they do actually contribute. I'm not sure if a pay in x amount of pounds when you move here is reasonable, as you have the problem with people who do small, labour intensive jobs who can't really afford to work and live here. Let's face it, not many British people would want to stand in the middle of fields in the summer picking strawberries for virtually nothing, and given how little time there is in a day the local community won't do it for free like they did pre-World War 2.
It's not difficult at all, because with hundreds of thousands coming in yearly our services can't cope, our towns and cites are being culturally changed beyond recongnition and large scale immigration is compounding unskilled youth immigration at a time when we have enough of it ourselves.Quote:
Originally Posted by GommeInc
As for the fields point - somebody put this forward to Nigel Farage the other month, and he rightly retorted that befofe the gates to Eastern Europe were opened in the mid-2000s', cabbages and strawberries were not rotting in the fields. So it's a dud point.
Besides, with immigration - my main problem is cultural change and fragmentation rather than economics, and it's the same with the European Union; although there's a strong economic case for leaving, I find the European project incompatible with our values (parliamentary sovereignty and democracy) and I reject it's eventual goal - just as with immigration I reject the idea that large numbers of people should be imported into our towns and cities changing them into cultural ghettos.
That's all monetary anyway and there's no solid evidence, not saying I disbelieve you, but those who do claim won't be on any system at all because they are ILLEGAL immigrants and nobody has any idea how many of them there are - the figure branding around often is 7 figures. That won't be taken into account with the figures you quote, will it? Nobody could ever know that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Marketing
Our infrastructure still cannot cope, legal/illegal, paying/non-paying.