Best Of

Truss gets it:

https://x.com/trussliz/status/2030958767278272838

Fundamental problem is all the models used by British state (economic model, energy model) are deterministic.

They don't take into account the value of options or sovereign capability.

They essentially bake in globalist assumptions (migration is a positive, Britain will always be able to get goods/commodities at affordable price, history has ended).

These models are hard wired into legislation and unaccountable bodies (such as the OBR and CCC).

It's one of the reasons it is so hard to get policies like fracking/migration cuts/defence projects through, you are fighting these projections.

We need to start from scratch. We should be basing policy on what Britain needs to thrive in all scenarios - not just the globalist utopian one.

I don't even know where to start with this.

She does have at least half a point. I was listening to a IFS (so hardly right wing extremist) podcast, and they noted that the OBR's migration modeling works roughly as follows:
Take projected number of immigrants, calculate their projected incomes, calculate tax due, add to projected government tax receipts.
All projected costs of this immigration are assumed to already be included in the government's spending plans, thus no adjustment is made for these costs.

Now, in a "steady state" sort of a way, this kind of works - if departmental spending has the correct amount in to cover the cost of immigration, one has to include the additional tax generated from immigration somewhere.

However, it means that plugging in different numbers of immigrants into the OBR model is meaningless, as it changes the projected tax take, but not the projected costs. This pretty much bakes into the forecasting model a presumption that lots of immigration is double plus good, and low immigration is very bad.

Obviously, it tells us nothing at-all about if migration is actually good news for the exchequer, but it means the treasury definitely wants lots of it anyway...

Here's the square that needs circling (so to speak).

We're all living longer. We have a birthrate well below replacement. The cost of looking after the old falls on those of working age. And a 80 year old has something like 10x the costs to the NHS of a 30 year old.

The greater the number of retirees relative to the number of workers, the more of each worker's output needs to be spent on retirees.

We need to square that with productivity, which can be encouraged via highly skilled migration as countries like Switzerland seek.

We do not square that with unproductive minimum wage jobs.

Switzerland and Singapore imports lots of minimum wage people too: the cooks in restaurants and the nannies and the cleaners, they're not Swiss nationals.

What they do a really good job in doing is making sure that their own citizens have better skills.

Switzerland offers no visa pathways AFAIK for minimum wage people.

And Singapore only does so with pathways that never lead to citizenship AFAIK.

Indeed. And I've said in the past that the UK is very unusual (and basically wrong) in not having two classes of visas: immigrant and non-immigrant. My current US visa (an O-1) is a non-immigrant one, with no path to permanent residency and/or citizenship.

But that doesn't stop the fact that the Switzerland and Singapore are absolutely full of low wage, low skill immigrants. It's just that they are going home aftter five years.

---

Of course, even with non-immigrant visas, some people are going to end up staying, thanks to marriage and the like.

And Singapore does have a path to citizenship (or for an immigrant visa that in turn leads there), but it does require you to get up to the level of education that you would need for an immigrant visa. So, what you have is a fair number of people who turn up on non-immigrant visas, and then take courses at Singapore University, and then change their status.

Immigrants also cannot claim benefits or use public services in Singapore, they have to support themselves

My wife's passport/visa when she first came to the UK contained the line: No Recourse To Public Services

For the first 5 years but a 10 year proposal is being mooted. There are differences if you have children though. Did you not check this site?

https://www.nrpfnetwork.org.uk/information-and-resources/rights-and-entitlements

The whole benefit/financial support system has a long list of exceptions so you will always have an opportunity to create a narrative depending on your viewpoint.

Truss gets it:

https://x.com/trussliz/status/2030958767278272838

Fundamental problem is all the models used by British state (economic model, energy model) are deterministic.

They don't take into account the value of options or sovereign capability.

They essentially bake in globalist assumptions (migration is a positive, Britain will always be able to get goods/commodities at affordable price, history has ended).

These models are hard wired into legislation and unaccountable bodies (such as the OBR and CCC).

It's one of the reasons it is so hard to get policies like fracking/migration cuts/defence projects through, you are fighting these projections.

We need to start from scratch. We should be basing policy on what Britain needs to thrive in all scenarios - not just the globalist utopian one.

I don't even know where to start with this.

The funny thing is that there is a kernel of truth in there somewhere.

The infamous Treasury Model that says that any investment outside London is a looser, for example.

Many of the models are childishly linear. And many of the policies are reductionist and take no account of the inevitable effects.

For example - politicians handed the right to grant visas to companies. In effect.

Then were astonished when companies started selling visas. In a trade that escalated in criminality.

Truss gets it:

https://x.com/trussliz/status/2030958767278272838

Fundamental problem is all the models used by British state (economic model, energy model) are deterministic.

They don't take into account the value of options or sovereign capability.

They essentially bake in globalist assumptions (migration is a positive, Britain will always be able to get goods/commodities at affordable price, history has ended).

These models are hard wired into legislation and unaccountable bodies (such as the OBR and CCC).

It's one of the reasons it is so hard to get policies like fracking/migration cuts/defence projects through, you are fighting these projections.

We need to start from scratch. We should be basing policy on what Britain needs to thrive in all scenarios - not just the globalist utopian one.

I don't even know where to start with this.

She does have at least half a point. I was listening to a IFS (so hardly right wing extremist) podcast, and they noted that the OBR's migration modeling works roughly as follows:
Take projected number of immigrants, calculate their projected incomes, calculate tax due, add to projected government tax receipts.
All projected costs of this immigration are assumed to already be included in the government's spending plans, thus no adjustment is made for these costs.

Now, in a "steady state" sort of a way, this kind of works - if departmental spending has the correct amount in to cover the cost of immigration, one has to include the additional tax generated from immigration somewhere.

However, it means that plugging in different numbers of immigrants into the OBR model is meaningless, as it changes the projected tax take, but not the projected costs. This pretty much bakes into the forecasting model a presumption that lots of immigration is double plus good, and low immigration is very bad.

Obviously, it tells us nothing at-all about if migration is actually good news for the exchequer, but it means the treasury definitely wants lots of it anyway...

Here's the square that needs circling (so to speak).

We're all living longer. We have a birthrate well below replacement. The cost of looking after the old falls on those of working age. And a 80 year old has something like 10x the costs to the NHS of a 30 year old.

The greater the number of retirees relative to the number of workers, the more of each worker's output needs to be spent on retirees.

We need to square that with productivity, which can be encouraged via highly skilled migration as countries like Switzerland seek.

We do not square that with unproductive minimum wage jobs.

Switzerland and Singapore imports lots of minimum wage people too: the cooks in restaurants and the nannies and the cleaners, they're not Swiss nationals.

What they do a really good job in doing is making sure that their own citizens have better skills.

Switzerland offers no visa pathways AFAIK for minimum wage people.

And Singapore only does so with pathways that never lead to citizenship AFAIK.

Indeed. And I've said in the past that the UK is very unusual (and basically wrong) in not having two classes of visas: immigrant and non-immigrant. My current US visa (an O-1) is a non-immigrant one, with no path to permanent residency and/or citizenship.

But that doesn't stop the fact that the Switzerland and Singapore are absolutely full of low wage, low skill immigrants. It's just that they are going home aftter five years.

---

Of course, even with non-immigrant visas, some people are going to end up staying, thanks to marriage and the like.

And Singapore does have a path to citizenship (or for an immigrant visa that in turn leads there), but it does require you to get up to the level of education that you would need for an immigrant visa. So, what you have is a fair number of people who turn up on non-immigrant visas, and then take courses at Singapore University, and then change their status.

Immigrants also cannot claim benefits or use public services in Singapore, they have to support themselves

My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.

Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.

That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.

Trouble is that there are two bits to the retirement age, and they both affect the state's finances.

There's the age where people get a state pension, and yes, the government can control that.

The trickier one is when well-paid people conclude that they have enough money to live off, thank you very much, and they are frankly bored and tired of work, certainly full-time work. If you have a house you have paid for and no kids to support, it's remarkable how much less money you need. (Those pension people who say that a comfortable retirement costs £44k a year are talking out of their bottoms, aren't they?) I don't see how you stop them, or even that the government should try. But it's still work not being done, taxes not being paid and the dependency ratio being tilted unhelpfully.

And its the people who can and do retire or reduce hours early who are saying we should keep increasing the pension age. Those without that choice and expected to keep working into their seventies don't like it and end up voting anti establishment, and a decent chunk of them end up on welfare anyway.

Whilst I am fortunate enough to be in the former camp, not sure it is fair to say the pension age needs to be increased without offering some restructuring in the latter groups favour too.

Truss gets it:

https://x.com/trussliz/status/2030958767278272838

Fundamental problem is all the models used by British state (economic model, energy model) are deterministic.

They don't take into account the value of options or sovereign capability.

They essentially bake in globalist assumptions (migration is a positive, Britain will always be able to get goods/commodities at affordable price, history has ended).

These models are hard wired into legislation and unaccountable bodies (such as the OBR and CCC).

It's one of the reasons it is so hard to get policies like fracking/migration cuts/defence projects through, you are fighting these projections.

We need to start from scratch. We should be basing policy on what Britain needs to thrive in all scenarios - not just the globalist utopian one.

I don't even know where to start with this.

She does have at least half a point. I was listening to a IFS (so hardly right wing extremist) podcast, and they noted that the OBR's migration modeling works roughly as follows:
Take projected number of immigrants, calculate their projected incomes, calculate tax due, add to projected government tax receipts.
All projected costs of this immigration are assumed to already be included in the government's spending plans, thus no adjustment is made for these costs.

Now, in a "steady state" sort of a way, this kind of works - if departmental spending has the correct amount in to cover the cost of immigration, one has to include the additional tax generated from immigration somewhere.

However, it means that plugging in different numbers of immigrants into the OBR model is meaningless, as it changes the projected tax take, but not the projected costs. This pretty much bakes into the forecasting model a presumption that lots of immigration is double plus good, and low immigration is very bad.

Obviously, it tells us nothing at-all about if migration is actually good news for the exchequer, but it means the treasury definitely wants lots of it anyway...

Here's the square that needs circling (so to speak).

We're all living longer. We have a birthrate well below replacement. The cost of looking after the old falls on those of working age. And a 80 year old has something like 10x the costs to the NHS of a 30 year old.

The greater the number of retirees relative to the number of workers, the more of each worker's output needs to be spent on retirees.

We need to square that with productivity, which can be encouraged via highly skilled migration as countries like Switzerland seek.

We do not square that with unproductive minimum wage jobs.

Switzerland and Singapore imports lots of minimum wage people too: the cooks in restaurants and the nannies and the cleaners, they're not Swiss nationals.

What they do a really good job in doing is making sure that their own citizens have better skills.

Switzerland offers no visa pathways AFAIK for minimum wage people.

And Singapore only does so with pathways that never lead to citizenship AFAIK.

Indeed. And I've said in the past that the UK is very unusual (and basically wrong) in not having two classes of visas: immigrant and non-immigrant. My current US visa (an O-1) is a non-immigrant one, with no path to permanent residency and/or citizenship.

But that doesn't stop the fact that the Switzerland and Singapore are absolutely full of low wage, low skill immigrants. It's just that they are going home aftter five years.

---

Of course, even with non-immigrant visas, some people are going to end up staying, thanks to marriage and the like.

And Singapore does have a path to citizenship (or for an immigrant visa that in turn leads there), but it does require you to get up to the level of education that you would need for an immigrant visa. So, what you have is a fair number of people who turn up on non-immigrant visas, and then take courses at Singapore University, and then change their status.

Immigrants also cannot claim benefits or use public services in Singapore, they have to support themselves

My wife's passport/visa when she first came to the UK contained the line: No Recourse To Public Services

My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.

Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.

That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.

Trouble is that there are two bits to the retirement age, and they both affect the state's finances.

There's the age where people get a state pension, and yes, the government can control that.

The trickier one is when well-paid people conclude that they have enough money to live off, thank you very much, and they are frankly bored and tired of work, certainly full-time work. If you have a house you have paid for and no kids to support, it's remarkable how much less money you need. (Those pension people who say that a comfortable retirement costs £44k a year are talking out of their bottoms, aren't they?) I don't see how you stop them, or even that the government should try. But it's still work not being done, taxes not being paid and the dependency ratio being tilted unhelpfully.

The main point on which Starmer and Badenoch publicly disagreed was on whether we should have allowed the USA the use of UK bases when asked. Starmer appears internally to have taken the same 'deranged, warmongering, X-brained' view as Badenoch on this, but was outvoted by the cabinet.

In any event, UK bases were still attacked, and our ability to defend our own territory, as well as to assist countries we are supposed to be close to (the Gulf States and the Europeans, most notably Cyprus) has been shown to be inadequate, which - needless to say - appears to have damaged our diplomatic reputation among those countries - a blunder for a Prime Minister who prides himself on his foreign policy acumen. This is where the opposition needs to focus its criticism - not on whether we should have supported a conflict that was happening anyway, but whether we have responded well to the fallout.

Sensible post and agree

Suggest @MoonRabbit takes note

Spinning or what.

Kemi is on completely the wrong side of public opinion.

Her comments this morning have dug the hole deeper still.

She has no off button.

Totally out of control.

How can the Tories attack Labour with a straight face when in 14 years to July 2024 they reduced defence spending by 22%,hollowed out all Services, recruitment, procurement.

To compound this they let Armed Forces Housing to rot, allowed veterans to rot.

Never in British history has so much wilful damage been done to our Armed Forces and Global reputation by so few.

These disastrous policies will take a decade to correct.

The Tories are shameful and treacherous on this issue.

If Badenoch had one slither or decency backbone contrition or respect she would apologise and apologise daily.

Replying to yourself now

Your invective would have more salience if you didn't want Tel Aviv flattened along with US oilfields and called out Iran ot slaughtering 40,000 of their own citizens

It's Beirut being flattened right now, and Israel did slaughter 50,000 Palestinians.

I do not argue that and both Netanyahu and Hamas are pure evil

However, Iran slaughted 40,000 of their own citizens for wanting to protest

This is how things escalate. I have heard the figure 30,000 but you are ther first to make it 40,000. Apparently it was less than 10,000 (but that isn't something to shout about) I strogly suggest you to read the Oborne piece. You might get a better perspective without having your prejudices tampererd with in any way.

The Ayatollah was an evil murderous bastard. In the interest of BBC style balance do we know Bibi's body count?

On a like-for-like basis of unarmed civilians murdered in cold blood without provocation?

AFAIK it is zero. If you know otherwise, I would be curious.

For starters 80,000 civilians, about half of whom women and children. We can add the bombings in Lebanon, Iraq and Iran. Although my question was how many deaths has he been responsible for over the last 40 years.

80,000 casualties was the total, there is no breakdown on civilians versus non-civilians in that figure.

And that is not murdered in cold blood without provocation, it is casualties in war. A war with a damned big provocation.

War has casualties, including civilian casualties. Cold blooded murder is something entirely different.

What Iran has done, which Israel has not, is the latter.

No, what Israel has done has also often been cold blooded murder. They and you might pretend otherwise but that is the truth.

How?

It was war. People die in war.

Our invasion of Iraq led to up to a million deaths by some estimates. Gaza was 8% of that figure.

How was our invasion just war while theirs with 8% of the casualties of ours was cold blooded murder?

Ours wasn’t just. 👍

The main point on which Starmer and Badenoch publicly disagreed was on whether we should have allowed the USA the use of UK bases when asked. Starmer appears internally to have taken the same 'deranged, warmongering, X-brained' view as Badenoch on this, but was outvoted by the cabinet.

In any event, UK bases were still attacked, and our ability to defend our own territory, as well as to assist countries we are supposed to be close to (the Gulf States and the Europeans, most notably Cyprus) has been shown to be inadequate, which - needless to say - appears to have damaged our diplomatic reputation among those countries - a blunder for a Prime Minister who prides himself on his foreign policy acumen. This is where the opposition needs to focus its criticism - not on whether we should have supported a conflict that was happening anyway, but whether we have responded well to the fallout.

Sensible post and agree

Suggest @MoonRabbit takes note

Spinning or what.

Kemi is on completely the wrong side of public opinion.

Her comments this morning have dug the hole deeper still.

She has no off button.

Totally out of control.

How can the Tories attack Labour with a straight face when in 14 years to July 2024 they reduced defence spending by 22%,hollowed out all Services, recruitment, procurement.

To compound this they let Armed Forces Housing to rot, allowed veterans to rot.

Never in British history has so much wilful damage been done to our Armed Forces and Global reputation by so few.

These disastrous policies will take a decade to correct.

The Tories are shameful and treacherous on this issue.

If Badenoch had one slither or decency backbone contrition or respect she would apologise and apologise daily.

Replying to yourself now

Your invective would have more salience if you didn't want Tel Aviv flattened along with US oilfields and called out Iran ot slaughtering 40,000 of their own citizens

It's Beirut being flattened right now, and Israel did slaughter 50,000 Palestinians.

I do not argue that and both Netanyahu and Hamas are pure evil

However, Iran slaughted 40,000 of their own citizens for wanting to protest

This is how things escalate. I have heard the figure 30,000 but you are ther first to make it 40,000. Apparently it was less than 10,000 (but that isn't something to shout about) I strogly suggest you to read the Oborne piece. You might get a better perspective without having your prejudices tampererd with in any way.

The Ayatollah was an evil murderous bastard. In the interest of BBC style balance do we know Bibi's body count?

On a like-for-like basis of unarmed civilians murdered in cold blood without provocation?

AFAIK it is zero. If you know otherwise, I would be curious.

For starters 80,000 civilians, about half of whom women and children. We can add the bombings in Lebanon, Iraq and Iran. Although my question was how many deaths has he been responsible for over the last 40 years.

80,000 casualties was the total, there is no breakdown on civilians versus non-civilians in that figure.

And that is not murdered in cold blood without provocation, it is casualties in war. A war with a damned big provocation.

War has casualties, including civilian casualties. Cold blooded murder is something entirely different.

What Iran has done, which Israel has not, is the latter.

No, what Israel has done has also often been cold blooded murder. They and you might pretend otherwise but that is the truth.

How?

It was war. People die in war.

Our invasion of Iraq led to up to a million deaths by some estimates. Gaza was 8% of that figure.

How was our invasion just war while theirs with 8% of the casualties of ours was cold blooded murder?

The direct and deliberate targeting of civilians. That is murder. Indeed in Iraq the US prosecuted soldiers for exactly that. Not happened in Israel of course because it has been Government policy.

What evidence is there of direct and deliberate targeting of civilians?

As opposed to civilians dying in conflict?

Simply saying "this is the death toll" is not evidence.

Mossad throwing Hamas Grandees out of Doha high rise windows is targeted action.

Carpet bombing a major hospital because there might be a Hamas sniper on the roof is not appropriate targeting.

Is that an event that you can give a link for? The hospital story in Gaza was a really odd one - the building didn't look that big for a start.

You've tumbled my game. I am busted! No one except Hamas Grandees died in Gaza.