Brexit and moving London forward

The lower paid and more unpleasant jobs is where you will probably find higher proportions of non-ethnic-British employees - no-one is saying only non-British. And certainly the NHS relies on overseas-born workers (not just EU at all), to fill a whole range of jobs, not just physical or menial.

There has never been any plan to have one single Euro-armed-forces. Another scaremongering myth. I have never heard of any plan to merge all the national banks, and none of the EU states would agree to anything of the sort. I agree about Bilderberg and G20

Tempted to agree, but terrified of the likely resulting mess. Gove seems to have a bizarre vision of how the UK should be.

Unfortunately the lack of a plan for what to do post Brexit is the governments fault. If the government granted us a vote then it's not unreasonable to expect them to have some kind of plan in place just in case we did vote to leave. The leave campaign was exactly that, a campaign. They have no power to set government policy and I seriously doubt the government will be taking much notice of them when deciding on post Brexit policy.

On immigration and 'rights' of EU nationals to remain in the UK. We can pronounce on this now (or the new PM can) but why do this when this is also a matter of negotiation? It could then lead to unnecessary recrimination. There will be uncertainty of course.

Politicians and others - Tony Blair in particular - are always telling us of the benefits that immigrants have brought the UK. And I understand that immigrants pay more in taxes than they take in state benefits. So on balance immigrants seem to benefit the UK financially. The problem is that in an over-crowded island - and the south-east is as densely populated as the Netherlands or Bangladesh - immigrants take up housing, medical provision, school places and other services. Where should people now go? The green belt? High rise housing for young families? Why would immigrants care about British culture? It's not their culture, some don't even speak English. If it was just a few immigrants people would be happy, they wouldn't be seen as a threat.

I am also concerned about rising UK population levels. But there is still plenty of capacity for building more homes. Greater London has great swathes of ugly suburbs of detached, semi-detached and terraced two or three storied houses. These could be cpo'd and redeveloped to higher density and height without having to resort to tower blocks and with more green space. There is also quite a lot of real brownfield land available still.

The problem with resources, services and infrastructure for the increased population is that the government is a right-wing Tory one. As such their ideology is a minimal-state one, and they do not believe in intervening in the market. The international economic crash left the UK more in the red than we like to be, and the government used this as an excuse for savage welfare state and other state funding cuts. Given the benefits to the economy of immigration, for businesses and the government, the responsible policy would have been to provide areas of high immigration with more funding for schools, GPs, housing etc. And for English language and culture teaching.

You say that if it was just a few immigrants people would be happy. The rate of immigration and concentration of it in some areas more than others has been difficult for local communities. But I can remember living in a large village/small town where one, just one, French family moved in. The locals were intolerant and unfriendly. More recently white British southerners have been attacked in the north, even in university towns, for being different. I think if you go outside the main large city centres, you step back at least 50 years in time if not 100 years.

In the areas of high immigration, to what extent do the local communities reach out to be welcoming? This would be hardest where hundreds of single unskilled workers come in for seasonal work perhaps, but where there are families moving in, do the schools, churches and just local people get organised to ensure that the incomers are kind of inducted into the local community?

As to immigrants caring about British culture - there are so many variations of British culture. But absolutely there should be mandatory courses for all immigrants on culture, on equal rights, as well as other aspects of life in the UK. I am all for freedom of worship, but I think a clear line has to be drawn when it comes to human rights in the UK. Women are not second class, less valuable, citizens, and that is that! I know that often migrant communities tend to become even more entrenched in their culture, sometimes becoming more conservative in that respect while 'back home' moves forward. But I think if people move here they have to understand what the culture is, and that their children will very likely become more British culturally than they are. Just as British people who move abroad, such as to France, find that their children become very French, and have to adjust to that.

Yes, fortunately the US, India, Iceland (+Faroes etc), Australia and New Zealand are looking keen, with New Zealand offering us trade negotiators, the DTI here being short staffed in that respect. Mexico wants to export to us as well. Certainly an improvement on Gove's Albania model. Whether these have the potential to compensate for the loss of major manufacturers in the UK or loss of the Square Mile's position we don't know. But Mexico is slated to become the world's fifth largest economy by 2015 (World Bank), and it is very open to trade.
People seem to be forgetting that we not only have to rapidly increase exports to minimise the economic shock, but also because we still have that horrendous debt burden to deal with. The one that is the excuse for not putting funds into services etc in areas receiving high numbers of immigrants and/or refugees.

There are thousands of people whose skills and abilities are such that they will never be able to get jobs with wages that allow them to afford to buy a home or rent on the private market in London or the south east. It is cruel and morally indefensible to say these people should only have temporary housing, with their landlord inspecting their finances every one, three or five years. It makes people feel unwanted and unvalued, it means their children's education is constantly at risk of being disrupted by their landlords moving them on more than once. People's health is damaged by the constant stress of it. People need a secure home. It also damages community if there are so many in temporary housing. Social housing was never intended to be only for people on low incomes. It was supposed to be for everyone, so that we have good, settled, mixed, communities. Nor should social housing only be provided in whatever areas are currently less cool, not 'gentrified' and on the outskirts. People in social housing are usually the ones working the longest hours and with the least ability to pay the commuting fares. You cannot say 'we are all in it together' if you treat people who are permanently on low incomes for no fault of their own in this way.

To shift businesses out of London that don't need to be here (such as?). Some do this, even going abroad to better places for their workers to live and work. But they often need to be bribed with incentives. Right-wing Tory governments are less keen on that sort of state involvement. It is not so easy to shift the service industries they support with them, to disparate parts of the UK.

And no, legalising drugs is not the best way to go. Marijuana is one of the major causes of psychotic breakdown and life-time mental health problems in young men in the UK.

Like they did after WW2 - I do agree. We had a successful squatting movement after WW1 and WW2. The latter was called the Vigilante movement - people got together to find empty properties for returning servicemen and their families to live in, and for people on low incomes who could not afford high rents. As now, there was a shortage of housing for ordinary Londoners, but of course for different reasons.

During WW2 there was strong pulling together of ordinary Londoners. The elite sent their families out of London and used basements in their posh clubs as bomb shelters, but the government did not provide much for the ordinary Londoner. Street shelters were built with the wrong sand/lime mix, and became dangerous, used to crumble and collapse. Then there were those useless metal shelters and reinforced tables to sit under. People were forbidden to use the underground tunnels. So they got together and took them over. Having done that, they got together and took over the basements of large public buildings. In the east end of London, there was Mickey's Shelter, vaults under the Fruit and Wool exchange. MIckey was an optician, set up a committee to organise the shelter. Because of these community efforts and some events the people set up, such as invading the Savoy to ask for shelter, the government finally had to start providing deep and/or effective shelters for the ordinary London population. Though thousands had already lost their lives because it was well into the blitz before the government was made to act.

I love reading your posts as you seems to be well read and informed, I don't know how do you do it. I don't always agree with you.For example you want clean air and preserved green spaces but equally inflow of people. It kind of exludes each other.
In response to which businees to go out for example book publishing, newspapers and TV, charity HQs, online education, retailers, import export.
Social housing - a long gone dream that it would be available to all. I think government should be a bit like parents - give people good roots (education, however in general government prefer stupid people as they are easier to control), safety and then give them wings - create opportunities. People should be independent and able to care for themselves, also in housing, the relation between wages and homes should be in such relation that anybody working full time should afford to buy their own nest, starting with studios and progressing. The wages need to go up as how it stands now is outragoues - even people that are not on minimum wage in their late thirties end up house sharing. I'm not talking about disrupting children's education but once they go to the university or working they should work towards their own independence and thus those homes could go to new families.
London should work on strengthening higher education (well, all eduaction) but higher for income and tourism as nobody can take that away.
Out of London back to food producing and as we will now need own manufacturing masive green car production asnifnthey are produced en mass the prices will come down. We could be leaders in that. European single market should be the one that would want to keep trade with us and not us groveling at them, that is why we need to build our own contry strong, not just London.
I am personally opposed to drugs as I believe that any state you achieve with drugs you can achieve without. They are just easy way out with bad consequences. But, as it is, we are only having problems without any benefits. Again, people should be mature enough and not babysat by the government. Anybody who is old enough to drive, join the army, or just be a parent, which to me is the most repsonsible job of all , should be able to decide about their own poison.
Having wages so low that you can't survive on is a disgrace and even though I understand that some businesses would not survive if they would have to pay more it is stil like supporting the businesses when we have to pay tax credits and child credits and housing benefits to those in work.
London should provide training and education for jobs where we lack skilled labour to fill the gap that Brexit will most likley leave.
I'm fed up with writing on a tablet so I'll finish now.

The Leave campaign is now over.

Apologies for a double post but I've just spotted this from the Idler:

'The upheaval of the Brexit vote has got us all into a lather. What is to be done? As ever when stressful situations arise, I recommend real ale, slow cycling and reading Keats....'

I doubt that all those Brexit voters will bother to put time and energy into campaigning for employment rights etc, or into scrutinising UK trade agreements to make sure they don't hand over sovereignty to other large states and the multinationals. It is not as if the Tory far right has an interest in protecting workers' rights either, so my guess is that the baby will be chucked out with the bathwater.

Maybe Barking & Dagenham should lobby to leave London, get the boundary changed and go back to being in Essex.

Of course Sadiq Khan is not using Brexit for his own political reaons. I also am concerned about too-high population levels in the UK, but that did not make me get into bed with campaigns supported by organisations such as the BNP and the neo-Mosleyites. There are plenty of right wing Tory supporters in low income brackets who don't like all the immigration who voted Stay. It was entirely open to successive UK governments to permit and fund building of social housing, genuinely affordable housing, and to put extra services funding in place for areas with high immigrant levels. There was a housing problem long before immigration levels got high. The rational and grown-up way to leave the EU is to FIRST see if it is possible to build up exports elsewhere - it is not as if we don't export world-wide already, after all.

Get into bed with campaigns supported by the BNP? I am not a supporter of the BNP. I am a firm believer that any persons race, ethnic origin, religion, or sexual orientation should not have any impact on how they are treated by myself or any other person or organisation. The BNP supports additional investment in the NHS, so do I, that does not mean I am getting in bed with them.
Over population is becoming an increasing problem in many areas around the country, in London the problem is out of control. Within the EU with it's open border policies there is no way we can have any control of the number of people entering the country.
Far too many people are being forced to live in over-priced substandard conditions, too many houses are being converted into flats and bedsits, desperately trying to squeeze more and more people into smaller and smaller boxes. Yes we need a massive increase in house building but we aren't building enough to cover the desperate shortages we already have without exacerbating the problem by increasing the demand with immigration.

I think Parliament voted 6-1 to hold a referendum on whether the UK should remain or leave the UK. It has therefore to abide by the result.

WRONG.
Inside a corrupt, broken EU we have no chance of influencing or changing anything. Politicians from all sides have repeatedly tried and failed, each time claiming victory, hiding failure. We may be the first country to shun the EU but we sure won't be the last. Being first out will give this country an enormous advantage when the EU does finally collapse under the weight of it's own failures.

The City of London is a county within London - a major financial and legal centre. It is the whole of London that people are suggesting should try to get some kind of separate free city status to enable London to keep its position as a major financial centre in the world.

As soon as the Brexit result came in, top financial folk in cities like Paris, Dublin, Warsaw, Frankfurt and many more, got together to start their campaigns to get London financial businesses to relocate to their capital city. It is estimated that tens of thousands of jobs are at risk. Then there are all the other London businesses that rely on being in the EU to continue being successful, for various reasons that for some include free movement of skilled workers throughout Europe. The latter surely in part is the result of a failure in the UK to provide enough UK 'world-class' workers at all levels. For the UK economy it is not just about zero-hours immigrant labour in small town warehouses and in the fields at harvest time. Though for many of the voters it was about skilled and unskilled wages being driven down.