1. I put a lot of effort into raising awareness of Freedom of Movement and the benefit of it and I help people make the case for better mobility arrangements after Brexit.
Mobility and immigration for non EU citizens is a country matter not an EU-wide matter.
2. If you don’t agree that change happen, that’s fair enough. But **please unfollow me**.
3. If we genuinely want change for the better we have to be willing to ask for it. (It’s neither exceptionalist nor cakeist to want your rights back or for general improvements)
4. If you want to make arguments against what we are asking for them please write them on a napkin, colour in all the letters, and then pop the napkin in the bin.
Putting them on Twitter doesn’t help us.
5. Let our opponents make the arguments against us.
1. I’d like to correct a few myths about the European Union in relation to bureaucracy and red tape.
2. The purpose of the EU is not to create more bureaucracy. The purpose is to cut holes in the bureaucracy of member states to make it easier for members to do business with each other and be mobile.
3. Because it does that, they don’t want one member cheating and dropping production standards to gain an unfair advantage. That’s why there is some regulation of standards. (This is what they mean by a level playing field)
1. Here are my ideas on how the you can use Twitter to change the course of Brexit…
(Expect trolls from doing this so be prepared to ignore and block them)
2. This works because political parties use social media sentiment monitoring tools to analyse the public mood.
3. The aim of paid troll disinformation farms is
(a) to demoralise you,
(b) to ensure they get more tweets out than you that are negative about what you are calling for,
and (c) ultimately to destabilise society and make you think your fellow countrymen are idiots.
2. The UK government claims to want to take back control of borders.
But did they mean control of settlement immigration? Or actual control of border crossings?
Do they even know what they want to control?
3. In reality, as a non-Schengen country, and as an island, the UK has always had full control of its border crossing points. UK is surrounded by water which helps. The only exception perhaps is the open Irish border but that’s down to the Good Friday Agreement not EU membership.
1. Freedom of Movement of People isn’t “uncontrolled immigration” despite what some politicians want you to believe.
This thread explains some of the benefits of it.
2. It’s superior to visas because:
- it’s quick (shorter queues)
- on demand (not months of waiting)
- reciprocal (not one-way immigration to the UK)
- not tied to a particular job
- cheap (no wasteful fees)
- conditions in event you want to stay more than 90 days
3. It’s superior to visa-waivers because you get:
- treated as national
- more certainty at borders (no reliance on whim of border guard so long as you have valid ID that’s valid and don’t present a threat.
- no day counting (although UK has no outbound checks)
- faster borders
1. The reason I champion the rights of per year dwellers, itinerant workers, seasonal workers and even general travellers is that Freedom of Movement was so much more than IMMIGRATION. Mobility is about staying where you are and temporarily being somewhere else.
2. I think the idea of MOBILITY has been lost and misunderstood. Thrown away in haste in a futile and misguided attempt to limit or control permanent immigration.
3. The biggest champions of FOM in the UK tended to be people who had used it once to emigrate permanently. For them it avoided a one-time visa.
1. The online abuse I’ve received in recent years has been quite phenomenal. It’s easy to block some of it out but it does get a bit wearing after a while. Nevertheless I want to help correct some of the deliberate disinformation perpetuated about Freedom of Movement and Europe.
2. Freedom of Movement of people isn’t the same as “uncontrolled immigration”. It matters to people all over Europe and it gives them freedom from abusive employment where visas are conditional on jobs.
3. Freedom of Movement ended purely because of UK government choices. Not because Brits voted for that. Not because UK left the EU and not even because UK left the EEA.