Best Of

One has to think like a Labourite.

The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.

So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.

Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.

Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.

It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.

Which is where most Greens now come from.

The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.

Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.

I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.

Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…

Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.

They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.

I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.

Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard.
Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.

Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.

I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.

But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.

Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.

Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.

Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.

I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.

Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.

The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.

I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.

If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.

Wrong

There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.

Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.

Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.

In theory, yes. In practice, no.

In practice, yes.

In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.

Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.

That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.

Unfortunately… https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgl4vrlk7do

“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”

Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.

Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.

The universities have no money, and the government is going to start charging them £925 per each overseas student: https://thepienews.com/englands-universities-face-330m-loss-under-new-925-per-international-student-levy/ Overseas students are the main source of income for universities as home undergrad fees have failed to rise with inflation and the government only pays 80% of the cost on most research grants.

I cannot understand what the government are playing at with education. If they were actively trying to sabotage it they could scarcely be doing more.

It’s as though they don’t realise how fragile things are and how much they are risking causing systemic financial collapse.

Which may be the case, of course.

Should the government bale out University (Vice Chancellors) of their inability to run their operations within the financial straightjacket while paying themselves high salaries. If they want to f**k up an operation and pay themselves bonuses, they should have joined a utility like a water company.

Should universities be private sector (and pay the cost of failure) or public sector (to be baled out) or some sort of hybrid.

I despise Vice Chancellors with all my heart, but the current financial situation is at least as much due to government policy as to their greed and ineptitude.

If you order them to take as many students as they can, including from overseas, and make them build accommodation to cope, then cut funding for domestic students, arbitrarily withdraw visa programmes because of drunken lies by some Fascist hack in the Daily Wail, then cut funding for research, then freeze domestic payments, then whack up taxes, you can't be surprised if the numbers end up not adding up.

One has to think like a Labourite.

The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.

So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.

Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.

Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.

It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.

Which is where most Greens now come from.

The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.

Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.

I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.

Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…

Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.

They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.

I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.

Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard.
Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.

Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.

I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.

But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.

Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.

Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.

Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.

I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.

Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.

The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.

I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.

If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.

Wrong

There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.

Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.

Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.

In theory, yes. In practice, no.

In practice, yes.

In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.

Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.

That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.

Unfortunately… https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgl4vrlk7do

“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”

Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.

Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.

The universities have no money, and the government is going to start charging them £925 per each overseas student: https://thepienews.com/englands-universities-face-330m-loss-under-new-925-per-international-student-levy/ Overseas students are the main source of income for universities as home undergrad fees have failed to rise with inflation and the government only pays 80% of the cost on most research grants.

I cannot understand what the government are playing at with education. If they were actively trying to sabotage it they could scarcely be doing more.

It’s as though they don’t realise how fragile things are and how much they are risking causing systemic financial collapse.

Which may be the case, of course.

It is hardly difficult to understand. The Conservative government saw a good opportunity to significantly expand income from overseas students numbers, and rarely for them, actually quickly succeeded in delivering it. For some inexplicable reason, they somehow didn't understand that this meant immigration numbers would also rise rapidly, whilst they were promising to bring them down. Also, for the reason of it requiring money and a bit of work, they didn't bother with building enough housing and infrastructure. So they panicked and started bringing the numbers down.

The public and press have made it clear following the Boriswave that immigration of 500k-1m per year is not going to be accepted so the Labour government is not going to reverse course on overseas numbers.

More broadly, the numbers no longer add up for a significant chunk of the domestic student population, going to university is no longer a likely path to increase their earning potential less costs. Adding more costs to domestic students will just make that clearer and accelerate a change towards fewer students.

Universities need to re-imagine their sector. Once the migration debate has cooled down we should revisit overseas students as a source of national income, they should come out of the national migration stats and we should build the accompanying infrastructure but we also need better ways of policing whether they stay or leave afterwards and control of some of the more dubious institutions that were essentially offering a pathway to living here rather than education.

If there was an industry ripe for being turned upside-down by technology, it would be undergraduate degrees.

Instead, we have a system of institutional and regulatory capture, selling scarcity by the admissions process, for teenagers to spend three years racking up debt that can’t even be dismissed by bankruptcy despite usurious interest rates.

My harsh (to universities and staff) solution is to allow anyone to sit university exams at cost plus reasonable margin, whether they have studied there or not.

One has to think like a Labourite.

The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.

So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.

Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.

Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.

It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.

Which is where most Greens now come from.

The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.

Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.

I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.

Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…

Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.

They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.

I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.

Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard.
Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.

Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.

I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.

But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.

Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.

Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.

Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.

I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.

Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.

The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.

I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.

If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.

Wrong

There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.

Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.

Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.

In theory, yes. In practice, no.

In practice, yes.

In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.

Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.

That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.

Unfortunately… https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgl4vrlk7do

“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”

Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.

Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.

The universities have no money, and the government is going to start charging them £925 per each overseas student: https://thepienews.com/englands-universities-face-330m-loss-under-new-925-per-international-student-levy/ Overseas students are the main source of income for universities as home undergrad fees have failed to rise with inflation and the government only pays 80% of the cost on most research grants.

I cannot understand what the government are playing at with education. If they were actively trying to sabotage it they could scarcely be doing more.

It’s as though they don’t realise how fragile things are and how much they are risking causing systemic financial collapse.

Which may be the case, of course.

It is hardly difficult to understand. The Conservative government saw a good opportunity to significantly expand income from overseas students numbers, and rarely for them, actually quickly succeeded in delivering it. For some inexplicable reason, they somehow didn't understand that this meant immigration numbers would also rise rapidly, whilst they were promising to bring them down. Also, for the reason of it requiring money and a bit of work, they didn't bother with building enough housing and infrastructure. So they panicked and started bringing the numbers down.

The public and press have made it clear following the Boriswave that immigration of 500k-1m per year is not going to be accepted so the Labour government is not going to reverse course on overseas numbers.

More broadly, the numbers no longer add up for a significant chunk of the domestic student population, going to university is no longer a likely path to increase their earning potential less costs. Adding more costs to domestic students will just make that clearer and accelerate a change towards fewer students.

Universities need to re-imagine their sector. Once the migration debate has cooled down we should revisit overseas students as a source of national income, they should come out of the national migration stats and we should build the accompanying infrastructure but we also need better ways of policing whether they stay or leave afterwards and control of some of the more dubious institutions that were essentially offering a pathway to living here rather than education.

Yes, that's all true, but that doesn't answer the issue with these new taxes, or the cuts to research funding.

New taxes are being added to lots of industries over the last few years - banks, energy, betting, private schools to name just a few - because the public cannot cope with the prospect of paying more income tax and will vote out anyone who doesn't pledge not to raise it. The numbers don't add up and we won't vote for anyone who will even try to make them, so this is what we get.

One has to think like a Labourite.

The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.

So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.

Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.

Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.

It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.

Which is where most Greens now come from.

The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.

Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.

I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.

Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…

Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.

They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.

I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.

Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard.
Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.

Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.

I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.

But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.

Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.

Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.

Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.

I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.

Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.

The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.

I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.

If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.

Wrong

There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.

Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.

Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.

In theory, yes. In practice, no.

In practice, yes.

In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.

Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.

That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.

Unfortunately… https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgl4vrlk7do

“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”

Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.

Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.

The universities have no money, and the government is going to start charging them £925 per each overseas student: https://thepienews.com/englands-universities-face-330m-loss-under-new-925-per-international-student-levy/ Overseas students are the main source of income for universities as home undergrad fees have failed to rise with inflation and the government only pays 80% of the cost on most research grants.

I cannot understand what the government are playing at with education. If they were actively trying to sabotage it they could scarcely be doing more.

It’s as though they don’t realise how fragile things are and how much they are risking causing systemic financial collapse.

Which may be the case, of course.

It is hardly difficult to understand. The Conservative government saw a good opportunity to significantly expand income from overseas students numbers, and rarely for them, actually quickly succeeded in delivering it. For some inexplicable reason, they somehow didn't understand that this meant immigration numbers would also rise rapidly, whilst they were promising to bring them down. Also, for the reason of it requiring money and a bit of work, they didn't bother with building enough housing and infrastructure. So they panicked and started bringing the numbers down.

The public and press have made it clear following the Boriswave that immigration of 500k-1m per year is not going to be accepted so the Labour government is not going to reverse course on overseas numbers.

More broadly, the numbers no longer add up for a significant chunk of the domestic student population, going to university is no longer a likely path to increase their earning potential less costs. Adding more costs to domestic students will just make that clearer and accelerate a change towards fewer students.

Universities need to re-imagine their sector. Once the migration debate has cooled down we should revisit overseas students as a source of national income, they should come out of the national migration stats and we should build the accompanying infrastructure but we also need better ways of policing whether they stay or leave afterwards and control of some of the more dubious institutions that were essentially offering a pathway to living here rather than education.

One has to think like a Labourite.

The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.

So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.

Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.

Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.

It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.

Which is where most Greens now come from.

The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.

Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.

I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.

Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…

Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.

They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.

I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.

Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard.
Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.

Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.

I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.

But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.

Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.

Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.

Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.

I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.

Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.

The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.

I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.

If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.

Wrong

There are multiple ways to achieve growth without importing labour.

Investing in productivity is one way. Another is moving the economy towards higher paid, higher productivity industries that already exist.

Cheap importer labour is the cheap boiled sweets of economics - feels good at first. Terrible as a long term diet.

In theory, yes. In practice, no.

In practice, yes.

In practice growing the economy with minimum wage labour deflates productivity and worsens our economy per capita.

Growth needs to be per capita or it is meaningless.

That's not an anti-immigration argument, we should maximise skilled migration to supplement our skills for the same reason as to why we have universal education.

Unfortunately… https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgl4vrlk7do

“One of Britain's most distinguished scientists, Prof Sir Paul Nurse, says the government is "shooting itself in the foot" with its visa system for science researchers.”

Perhaps the NHS surcharge would be less of a problem if we paid postdocs more than £35k.

Alternatively, universities are welcome to stump up the surety and the surcharge. As I believe NHS trusts do.

The universities have no money, and the government is going to start charging them £925 per each overseas student: https://thepienews.com/englands-universities-face-330m-loss-under-new-925-per-international-student-levy/ Overseas students are the main source of income for universities as home undergrad fees have failed to rise with inflation and the government only pays 80% of the cost on most research grants.

I cannot understand what the government are playing at with education. If they were actively trying to sabotage it they could scarcely be doing more.

It’s as though they don’t realise how fragile things are and how much they are risking causing systemic financial collapse.

Which may be the case, of course.

Should the government bale out University (Vice Chancellors) of their inability to run their operations within the financial straightjacket while paying themselves high salaries. If they want to f**k up an operation and pay themselves bonuses, they should have joined a utility like a water company.

Should universities be private sector (and pay the cost of failure) or public sector (to be baled out) or some sort of hybrid.

Betting Post

F1: as a special festive punishment, here's the final pre-race ramble of 2025:
https://morrisf1.blogspot.com/2025/12/abu-dhabi-2025-pre-qualifying_7.html

I've backed Piastri each way at 8.5 and Bearman to beat Hamilton at 1.62. Bearman has looked faster all weekend and starts with a 5 place advantage. Piastri's been looking much more competitive lately, and I think he's got a solid chance (more than the market believes) to be top 2 or even claim the win.

Guess where I’m going this afternoon 🏎️🏁

(I don’t have a ticket yet though, will be trying to find someone with a spare, or I might end up in the hotel sports bar across the road watching on TV.)

Hope it's a good one.

I was just running through the numbers and it seems Piastri (title) is still my best result, but Verstappen and Norris aren't too far behind. Still irked at myself for nervously hedging it too early, but green whoever gets that.