I was in my "hands around the world" mode there, but ultimately I do believe that should be the goal, however idealistic that may be. In the short term I don't believe tighter border controls will either work or actually have any fiscal or social benefit. The London School of Economics found a strong base of migrant workers is actually good for communities and produced a decrease in crime.

Plus we all get to go on our holidays without having to obtain a visa

And retire to Spain where we can enjoy the company of english pensioners complaining about the number of immigrants in England.

One final thing from me, what kind of a party has "get rid of political correctness" as part of their Manifesto? What does that even mean? Does that mean we'll be free to be openly racist, sexist, homophobic? Does it mean politicians won't have to pander to the minorities in our society in order to protect those vulnerable white, englishman cowering behind their pints of stella? Their manifesto does a great job of propogating to base level politics without any real evidence to support what they would do to generate all this wealth (other than for themselves.) I also presume their MEPs when they get elected will be donating their salaries to charity?

Edited by taylors lovechild (22 May 2014 3.06pm)

Neoliberalism stems from the Chicago school of thought of the 60s that was imposed on Chile in the 70. Some say it I based on Ayn Rand's pseudo-philosophy of Übermenschen and greed-worship. Neoliberalism promotes privatisation, globalisation, free market economics and deregulation.

The first of the democratically elected neoliberals were Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US. They both set about introducing ideologically driven neoliberal reforms, such as the complete withdrawal of capital controls by Tory Chancellor Geoffrey Howe and the deregulation of the US financial markets that led to vast corruption scandals like Enron and the global financial sector insolvency crisis of 2007-08.

By 1989 the ideology of neoliberalism was enshrined as the economic orthodoxy of the world as undemocratic Washington based institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the US Treasury Department signed up to a ten point economic plan which was riddled with neoliberal ideology such as trade liberalisation, privatisation, financial sector deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy. This agreement between anti-democratic organisations is misleadingly referred to as "The Washington Consensus".

These days, the IMF is the most high profile pusher of neoliberal economic policies. Their strategy involves applying strict "structural adjustment" conditions on their loans. These conditions are invariably neoliberal reforms such as privatisation of utilities, services and government owned industries, tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, the abandonment of capital controls, the removal of democratic controls over central banks and monetary policy and the deregulation of financial industries.

Neoliberal economic policies have created economic disaster after economic disaster, virtually wherever they have been tried out.

From [Link]

"...but pulling figures out of your arse.."

Oh my - how's the reading comprehension course going? Please READ the article you posted, particularly the bullet points in the main text. Here, I'll help you out:

- Polish registrations were up by 11,000 to 102,000
- Italian registrations rose by 9,000 to 42,000
- Bulgarian registrations climbed by 7,000 to 18,000
- And Romanian registrations increased by 29,000 to 47,000.

Tell me, did the BBC also pull figures out of their arse? Pick up on the Polish 108,000 vs 102,000 if you like, that's little more than 6% discrepancy.

EU migration (ie, the ones we have NO control over) is up 27%.

Read that sentence again. 27%. No matter how the BBC and leftwing press dress it up, the statistics are there.

And as I was at pains to point out, net migration is a pointless statistic. Irrespective of it not being like-with-like (it is not "workers leaving, working arriving" it is STILL 200,000 extra people, and those are just the registered workers - not the dependants, those working illegally. Up or down a little, the point remains: year-on-year, 200,000. So don't give me your crap about "oh, but net migration hasn't changed". It is STILL too high, too high by far.

Meanwhile, the fearmongering you refer to comes from and has been actively espoused by the paid-for press reeling out smear and dis-information. This has led to one councillor getting stabbed in the street and an MEP having his house bricked - that's what I know of, there may indeed be more incidents.

But here's the thing. The press and the mainstream parties have turned this into a one-issue election: immigration. Already they've been shown that they cannot be trusted on it, and they have no control over it from the EU. Open door migration is madness. Labour said it themselves, and yet now want your vote so they can keep doing it.

Despite all this, I'm not interested in immigration per se (I'd like it down, I'd like our unemployed youth to fill the labour gap), what really drives my vote is the mandate the EU doesn't have to control our country. We've never had a say on it, we've never been given the choice (that, for example many of the EU countries were given for the "treaty"/constitution), and the main political parties capable of returning MEPs treat us with utter contempt and disrespect by not offering that choice.

Personally I'd like the 'apparent democracy' that we live in to allow everyone to air their views should they wish too. That's democratic right?
Should the ridiculous oppression of PC be scrapped then I truly doubt you'd see a sudden mass of people running around screaming 'I hate blacks/whites/gays/women/foreigners etc etc' because people are generally friendly to each other. But it may stop the ridiculous situation where a 60+yr old DJ gets the sack for playing a tune from many many years ago that unbeknown to him contained the word '******'.

There's two sides to a coin. That's the point you miss bud.

I voted. It felt good.

"That was fun and to round off the day, I am off to steal a charity collection box and then desecrate a place of worship.” - Smokey, The Selhurst Arms, 26/02/02

I didn't and it equally felt good.