Al Krow

There will be another vote for Scottish independence, for sure. But will the vote then keep being repeated ad infinitum until the Scots give the "right" answer (which btw is exactly what happened with EU referenda - ask Ireland and France)? I think the position will be very interesting in 12 months time when Scotland has her fisheries back and is then asked whether she wishes to give up control of these back to EU, adopt the Euro and also cut spending so that their deficit reduces from 7% to 3%. That will make austerity look like a cake walk, compounding an already not well managed education and health service up there (or so I understand). I'm not sure that a vote for an independent Scotland will be a slam dunk. But another vote will happen, no question. And worst of all, will Scottish musicians have to pay £240 per head to play in England? (See what I just did there to keep it thread related! ) 😄

Good luck to them.

Lol. Bit of an extreme reaction to visas? But you're right it really is that important a reason for such a break up. 😂

Yeah perhaps they should. It's just that the Scots had a "once in a generation / lifetime" vote on independence only a couple of years beforehand and decided they wanted to be part of the Union. Democracy eh?

Haha! To keep things fair, maybe also about time the English were given a vote on independence then too? They might decide that if they were of the view that £12 billion a year subs to the EU was too much, then keeping the £19 billion a year subs to the Scots might be even better! They could then provide free visas to all English pro-musicians to travel all round the world (and free tuition fees for all English students for good measure) 😂

H - you might want to merge this thread with the already existing one on the same topic...

Helped I suspect by us continuing to treat others' legitimately held views with respect. Always a good thing, when it can be pulled off! Quite enough of that, isn't it about time you pushed off abroad? 😁

Talking of economic activity, lunch break over, for me. This particular son of immigrants (who sorted out their visas) needs to get back to work 😁

But let's take worst case and say that this doesn't happen. Are we really saying that the opportunity to generate £10s billions of economic activity is going to be passed up because EU artists are going to stop coming over. Are there really no UK artists to take their place (e.g. all the pro-musos looking for work who are not moving to Dublin)?

Again I'm struggling with your numbers. How many artists are coming over to the UK to generate £10s billions in small amounts? What are you considering to be a small amount, and we can work backwards to the number of overseas artists coming to the UK each year.

And that's where I'm struggling with the economic analysis. If its worth £10s billions then frankly some enterprising half wit is going to spot that it's worth sorting out visas. It's either worth a lot of money, in which case visa costs and effort are worth it, or it's not?

Our joint love for music trumps politics every day of the week, buddy 😉

Yeah but your use of filter pedals live more than makes up for it 😁

True and the pro-muso small club scene is worth diddly squat over here, as folk have already pointed out. What is worth £billions is film and computer graphics. We're doing brilliantly on that score as a nation.

Tbf the 3M+ from the EU and the other several million from the rest of the world only up sticks and are prepared to leave their homelands and communities because the economic prospects are better over in the UK - assuming that they are economic migrants, of course, which the vast majority are / were (my parents included). So if there is a bigger pot of gold elsewhere and the opportunity to take go for it! You have my admiration sir! It does take a LOT of get up and go to leave the place you've grown up in; the reason why we have such capable EU and rest of the world citizens doing so well over here (and who often get first dibs on unskilled work) is that so many of them were folk with exactly that "get up and go".

So should UK pro-musicians worried about a loss of livelihood from EU work be prepared to get off their backsides and move to Europe, while they can before the 31 Dec this year and FoM is still available, in the same way that 3 million+ EU citizens have been prepared to up sticks and move to the UK in search of work? Dublin would be great place to live, for example, and there are plenty of others!

Here's the link again (and I'll post it in the OP for ease of reference) to Jon Willis' Helix patches. http://drtonelab.com/ Rumour has it that some Helix users are now preferring the speaker cab EQ settings, particularly the 8x10, on the Dr Tonelab page over cab sims and IR’s. If that's the case then that should address a key gap in the HX Effects armoury.

People also voted against changing the system when offered the chance on 5 May 2011, by an overwhelming majority. Democracy eh?

We're not going to agree on this one, but that's ok. What I do know is that there are 800,000 16 to 24 year olds in the UK who are not in education or training [Source ONS]. Post ending FoM bosses are going to have invest in equipping some of these with skills and paying a decent wage instead of relying on cheap already trained workers from overseas. If even 100,000 of these youngsters are helped into work and a productive life as a result, then I'm afraid 500 or so (or whatever the number is) pro musos not being able to work in the EU is not something I'm going to shed a tear over.

Things will indeed change following the end of FoM and a new visa / immigration policy and there will be winners and losers. For the average unskilled British worker ie those as a group most left behind by globalisation in the UK, things should get better: employers will no longer get away with some of the lowest levels of workforce investment amongst advanced economies as they are forced to abandon their addiction to cheap E European workers trained at some one else's expense. That may, as you say, come at the price of some pro musos having to get a day job, like the rest of us.

Well yes, that was my point about Spotify much earlier in the thread... Adapt or go the way of the dinosaurs.

Can't argue with that!

That ain't going to happen. If it's a consequence of FoM coming to an end, then so be it. Sometimes we have to live with what our fellow countrymen vote for - it's called democracy. There are going to be winners and losers from the changes to visa / immigration laws, but from what @peteb is saying there aren't a vast number of EU musos coming over here to play anyway 'cos there's no money in it. And as @Lozz196 rightly said earlier in thread, UK bands managed to get across to Europe prior to FoM and before we all became marmalade sandwiches. Btw ignore @skankdelvar (even if he and I appear to be on the same side of the argument on this one) he's obviously having a grump which, when you get to our age, we're all entitled to do once in a while! 😁

Ok, that's painful.