EU Referendum

[Hobbit]

My brother has just realised that tonight is the deadline to register to vote and he doesn't have the internet so I'm trying to register for him. The website has clearly not been scaled to cope with the demand as I've been trying for about an hour without success. Another government IT fiasco.

Took me 3 evenings to register

 

[FairwayDodger]

Took me 3 evenings to register

Yeah I didn't manage to get him registered until this morning. Fair enough he's left it to the last minute but did try to do it within the deadline and ultimately it's a failure of the IT system that has cost him his vote.

 

[chrisd]

Took me 3 evenings to register

................ it's always like that with old, computer illiterate codgers Brian! :smirk:

 

[Foxholer]

Some may go home, it would be stupid to suggest none will but why would they want to go home to be poor in later life. It makes no sense and is not what has traditionally happened with immigrants. How many went home to the Caribbean for example.

Probably to be with 'the rest of their family' and 'living rather better than if they had stayed at home'! I'm also not saying that all of them will, but the close proximity and excellent transport links are likely to make this much simpler and economical than for non-EU migrants!

I'm surprised that's not rather obvious to you! It certainly is to me, both from my own circumstances and by observing the ttitudes/plans of other migrants!

 

[Hobbit]

If you have two buckets, one full of money(the contributing countries) and one empty(the receiving countries) and you tip money from one into the other till its equal, the wealthy countries become poorer and the poorer countries become wealthier.

Are we a wealthy country? By far, our biggest growth since 2004 is food banks!! Strangely enough, and purely by a huge coincidence, the EU opened its doors to 10 new members on the 1st May 2004, and not one of them is or has ever been a net contributor. However, several of them are net exporters of labour or, cynically, they've offloaded their unemployed.

I do a lot of work with charities up and down the country. The demand on them, whilst their resources are dwindling, is unprecedented.

We are the only country in the world that meets its UN Overseas Aid target... and we have food banks!!

I have no problem with immigration IF we can cope with it... and we have food banks!!

 

[SocketRocket]

Probably to be with 'the rest of their family' and 'living rather better than if they had stayed at home'! I'm also not saying that all of them will, but the close proximity and excellent transport links are likely to make this much simpler and economical than for non-EU migrants!

I'm surprised that's not rather obvious to you! It certainly is to me, both from my own circumstances and by observing the ttitudes/plans of other migrants!

I don't understand how you cant see you are wrong. I explained that immigrants from the Caribbean never went home in old age, most Brits that go to Australia, New Zealand , Canada etc don't come home in old age.

If this is moving into another of your personal campaigns with me then I suggest we leave it out now. All you have to do is refrain from replying or getting the last word. Bet you cant! :smirk:

 

[vkurup]

Asians are at a disadvantage with the current EU open borders so yes, Brexit would give them a more level playing field to be considered for a life in the UK.

Silly Smiley again. Silly boy.

Yesterday I was listening to the debate on the BBC Asian Network while driving. One of the callers had probably the most hilarious reason why she wanted 'Out. Her background was that she was here from an Asian country for her studies and then took up a job. She has a decent paying job and is married to a British man, but still waiting citizenship. Every year she has to ensure that she keeps her job and a certain level of pay to ensure she meets the home office criteria. All this is good stuff, till she mentioned why she was voting out.
Acc to her (and I paraphrase), she wanted out because she has to continuously prove that she is employed while the EU migrants dont have to. She had spend 7K in the past 6 years on visa fees while the EU migrants dont. So she wanted a level playing field and want EU folks to pay visa fees like her. She said she did not want to hear the arguments for and against but she was only voting due to 'personal' reasons. Acc to her, if the Brits want to go to Europe, then the Brits should pay visa fees. If they want to go to her native country then they should pay visa fees. While the firm she was working for would be affected by a Brexit, it did not matter as long as the europeans paid visa fees.. I was in splits as the moderator was driving a coach through her argument. When she stopped it felt like she was still Brexiting and would change it only if the Europeans pay visa fees every year. I guess everyone has their own reason.

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

Think I can. There's been a sudden blitz of publicity about the deadline today hence the obvious spike in demand and the website just can't cope. It's very poor, amateurish.

This is unfair. I used to work on Government Gateway - and if you do your self assessment tax return on-line you will use GG. I can assure you that a huge amount of time, effort and planning is put into scaling the technical environment to support a last minute rush to complete returns on the evening of 31st January. At first we didn't get it right as we didn't realise how many would leave it quite so late - but rather than just expect peoples behaviour to change the environment has been scaled so that it now copes pretty well - and that means coping with about 11 million on-line tax returns - and over 500,000 on 31st January!

For EU voting registration it is reasonable to expect most folks to register in plenty of time and the system will have been scaled accordingly with a large contingency. When it became evident that a lot of folks hadn't registered and there was a push to get folks to register there is very little that can be done in the very short term to upgrade the system. And what we get is that the web site crashed or struggled at 10pm last night. Now that is leaving it to the last minute and frankly if you were wanting to vote then you shouldn't have been waiting to that late.

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

Yesterday I was listening to the debate on the BBC Asian Network while driving. One of the callers had probably the most hilarious reason why she wanted 'Out. Her background was that she was here from an Asian country for her studies and then took up a job. She has a decent paying job and is married to a British man, but still waiting citizenship. Every year she has to ensure that she keeps her job and a certain level of pay to ensure she meets the home office criteria. All this is good stuff, till she mentioned why she was voting out.
Acc to her (and I paraphrase), she wanted out because she has to continuously prove that she is employed while the EU migrants dont have to. She had spend 7K in the past 6 years on visa fees while the EU migrants dont. So she wanted a level playing field and want EU folks to pay visa fees like her. She said she did not want to hear the arguments for and against but she was only voting due to 'personal' reasons. Acc to her, if the Brits want to go to Europe, then the Brits should pay visa fees. If they want to go to her native country then they should pay visa fees. While the firm she was working for would be affected by a Brexit, it did not matter as long as the europeans paid visa fees.. I was in splits as the moderator was driving a coach through her argument. When she stopped it felt like she was still Brexiting and would change it only if the Europeans pay visa fees every year. I guess everyone has their own reason.

Hey - I've read letters and heard from individuals who will vote out because they don't like kilos and kilometres, and want pounds and miles back. Not sure if they want pennies and shillings back - but I wouldn't be surprised if they did.

 

[jp5]

Why should it matter if it's hours before a deadline or days before a deadline?

If you set a deadline then you should be able to accept all applications up until that deadline.

The experts at the Government didn't do their job in provisioning sufficient resources to handle the demand.

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

Why should it matter if it's hours before a deadline or days before a deadline?

If you set a deadline then you should be able to accept all applications up until that deadline.

The experts at the Government didn't do their job in provisioning sufficient resources to handle the demand.

You cannot scale for all eventualities - and provisioning of resources is not simply adding more. Sometimes you just can't without completely rebuilding an environment. And if that environment covers multiple government websites (as they do) the potential technical issues and service disruptions simply mean that you cannot provision a service to cope with all possibilities.

 

[FairwayDodger]

This is unfair. I used to work on Government Gateway - and if you do your self assessment tax return on-line you will use GG. I can assure you that a huge amount of time, effort and planning is put into scaling the technical environment to support a last minute rush to complete returns on the evening of 31st January. At first we didn't get it right as we didn't realise how many would leave it quite so late - but rather than just expect peoples behaviour to change the environment has been scaled so that it now copes pretty well - and that means coping with about 11 million on-line tax returns - and over 500,000 on 31st January!

For EU voting registration it is reasonable to expect most folks to register in plenty of time and the system will have been scaled accordingly with a large contingency. When it became evident that a lot of folks hadn't registered and there was a push to get folks to register there is very little that can be done in the very short term to upgrade the system. And what we get is that the web site crashed or struggled at 10pm last night. Now that is leaving it to the last minute and frankly if you were wanting to vote then you shouldn't have been waiting to that late.

It's not unfair. The system was clearly inadequate to cope with the entirely predictable last minute rush and many citizens have been disenfranchised as a result.

What's not fair is to shift the blame to individuals who were attempting to register within the allowed period.

 

[SocketRocket]

Yesterday I was listening to the debate on the BBC Asian Network while driving. One of the callers had probably the most hilarious reason why she wanted 'Out. Her background was that she was here from an Asian country for her studies and then took up a job. She has a decent paying job and is married to a British man, but still waiting citizenship. Every year she has to ensure that she keeps her job and a certain level of pay to ensure she meets the home office criteria. All this is good stuff, till she mentioned why she was voting out.
Acc to her (and I paraphrase), she wanted out because she has to continuously prove that she is employed while the EU migrants dont have to. She had spend 7K in the past 6 years on visa fees while the EU migrants dont. So she wanted a level playing field and want EU folks to pay visa fees like her. She said she did not want to hear the arguments for and against but she was only voting due to 'personal' reasons. Acc to her, if the Brits want to go to Europe, then the Brits should pay visa fees. If they want to go to her native country then they should pay visa fees. While the firm she was working for would be affected by a Brexit, it did not matter as long as the europeans paid visa fees.. I was in splits as the moderator was driving a coach through her argument. When she stopped it felt like she was still Brexiting and would change it only if the Europeans pay visa fees every year. I guess everyone has their own reason.

As you say everyone has their own reason. It's would be madness to quote every one that was a bit odd and consider that a reflection of one side or the other.

 

[SocketRocket]

Hey - I've read letters and heard from individuals who will vote out because they don't like kilos and kilometres, and want pounds and miles back. Not sure if they want pennies and shillings back - but I wouldn't be surprised if they did.

As I posted above it is rather silly to make such comments. If you watched the debate by Cameron and Farage with a live audience you would see that people are very serious about the matter and some compelling arguments for both sides.

 

[ColchesterFC]

It's not unfair. The system was clearly inadequate to cope with the entirely predictable last minute rush and many citizens have been disenfranchised as a result.

What's not fair is to shift the blame to individuals who were attempting to register within the allowed period.

If you have a flight to catch do you leave yourself plenty of time to get to the airport? Or do you leave it to the last possible minute to leave and then when you get stuck in traffic blame the airline for you missing your flight?

And if as you say the last minute rush was entirely predictable why didn't you register earlier?

 

[jp5]

What on earth has catching a plane got to do with registering to vote?!

Anyway looks like common sense will prevail and they will extend voter registration to today.

 

[FairwayDodger]

If you have a flight to catch do you leave yourself plenty of time to get to the airport? Or do you leave it to the last possible minute to leave and then when you get stuck in traffic blame the airline for you missing your flight?

And if as you say the last minute rush was entirely predictable why didn't you register earlier?

Not the same thing at all.

I've always been registered but this has caught out people who maybe aren't as politically engaged or computer literate but for whom the blitz of "get registered" publicity finally hit home. Anyone going online before 11.45 last night should have had plenty of time to register. They've been let down by yet another government it failure.

Reading a report today (no idea how they got this figure) that said about 20,000 people were trying to register just before midnight. That's not really a lot for a system to handle.

 

[Crazyface]

Norway's contribution to the EU, for access in four specific market areas, is €884million. An awful lot less than the UK's, which is the spin a Leaver would put on it. I'd be interested to know the value of Norway's exports to the EU compared to ours.

Norway have also, as you highlighted, had to agree to free movement of people. Quite what that means in terms of non-EU citizens travelling from an EU country I don't know but, again, it would be nice to know.

However, what's to say an exited UK wouldn't argue for different terms... crystal ball time?

Free movement of people.....to a country that's dark for 8 months and has a serious level of alcoholism and suicide becacause of it. Yeah, sure we'll agree to free movement...who in their right mind will want to come here !!!

 

[MegaSteve]

The experts at the Government didn't do their job in provisioning sufficient resources to handle the demand.

Not to be unexpected with this government and its 'experts'...

Folk are only going to arrive in their tens of thousands...
So need to go mad building homes/schools etc...
In fact, we can even shut some hospitals down etc...

 

[IanM]

Open borders???


If you don't know how many players are coming to the golf day, how do you know how many tee times to book?

Or maybe we have huge surpluses of hospital beds, school places, jobs and housing?