People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?
Strong stuff! - and I can't be signing off on "trash" about the working class people of the North from which I come and who I know so well. They face a test, though, is how I look at it.
It was enormously understandable that in Dec 19 they flocked to the bouncy 'can-do' persona of Boris "Boris" Johnson and his promise to Get Done the Brexit they'd voted for 3 years earlier and seen frustrated at every turn.
But if they were to stick with him next time when all the evidence available to anybody with a brain cell and a willingness to use it is that he and his government don't care two hoots about them, this would be something else entirely. It would show they are fools.
It would also show Johnson and the Tories to be astute readers of the room, very in touch with the people they seek to govern. Because that (fools) is precisely their evaluation of the working class people of the North and it's what they are counting on.
Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.
Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings
Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.
You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.
Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.
We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
What are all the army bods doing. Get them out of the barracks and lined up along the south coast every night, not take long to sort it out.
Thank you Priti.
P.S. I assume you are arming them.
Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up, take them to somewhere else and process them there. Any genuine asylum seekers will end up back in UK, the roasters will end up elsewhere. Making it like going on a very extended holiday with hotels waiting , spending money etc is not working for sure.
"take them to somewhere else" - glad to see you've got a fully worked out solution there.
Not my choice but earlier suggestion of Falklands Isles sounds reasonable, perhaps one of the UK tax havens.
Why do you think it will be easier for a few thousand people living on some small barren islands in the South Atlantic to accommodate and process refugees than a wealthy country of 65 million people?
Think of the employment for islanders and no distractions to processing , nowhere to run away to hide etc. Could all be done lickety split.
You're just as much of a fantasist as HYFUD and his tanks rolling into Coldstream.
People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?
What a disgusting post
Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth
Who on earth do you think you are
Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.
There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
When Charles says 'London' he's thinking of the view over Regent's Park from St John's Wood, not of Ilford or Edmonton or Peckham or Hounslow.
I'd rather live in Peckham than St John's Wood. I virtually do live in Peckham in fact, SE15 is just a couple of streets over. Suburbia isn't grim, it's an oasis of parks and gardens, with thriving communities, friendly neighbours, decent schools, independent shops and restaurants, a plethora of activities for children, a thriving arts scene and reasonable commutes to work in Central London. It's only over priced because it's popular. The only thing that could improve London? If we could spend more of our money on London and less on subsidising people whose main leisure activity is sagging off London.
The old chestnut that London funds the rest of the country rather than the reality that it sucks the life blood out of it and no matter how much is spent there compared to the rest of the country the selfish arseholes are never happy. Full of me me me parasites and bloodsuckers.
The numbers speak for themselves. Londoners pay thousands of pounds more in tax than they receive back in government spending. That's just a fact, sorry if it's inconvenient. I'm very happy. I don't even mind subsidising the rest of the country. I'm not from London, I still have plenty of love for the rest of the UK, including the country of my birth (the same one as yours). I'm just sick of being told how awful we are and what a shit hole I live in by people who are taking my money.
They get disproportionate amounts spent on them , we are not stupid, only last week it was shown London annually had 5 x the amount spent on just transport as NE England. There are shedloads of the same stuff that could be shown as well, if Londoners were not leeching off the rest of the country they would be paying far more taxes.
Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up,
They don't conveniently arrive in aircraft sized batches though and the only way to get unwilling people on long flights is in Rendition Class. This government doesn't have the guts for that.
They can be detained on MOD property till enough to fill a plane. Agree these wobbly jellies have no backbone to resolve the issue though.
There will be too many angry Owen Jones types on Twitter and a few awkward hashtags. They seem scared of that
They either should do something to fix it or just let everybody in , pretending they are doing something is not working for sure and is wasting shedloads of cash. They could easily make it fairer and if you want to come here , no benefits till you have paid x years NI, like Australia have 10K deposit or no health treatment till you have x years NI paid. Instead of paying gangsters money they could save it and use it to fund their asylum request. It si not rocket science if you have the will and the backbone.
OK so you process them on the Falkland Islands. For now we ignore the question of what the Falkland Islanders might want (even though we fought a war forty years ago to defend their sovereign rights). Most of them turn out to be refugees (because most of them are refugees). What next? They stay on the Falklands, where they rapidly outnumber the native population? We bring them back to the UK anyway? What exactly?
If they follow the Australian model...
1. Offer them cash to go back to their countries of origin. 2. Do dodgy deals with shit holes like Cambodia and PNG to take them as refugees.
Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up,
They don't conveniently arrive in aircraft sized batches though and the only way to get unwilling people on long flights is in Rendition Class. This government doesn't have the guts for that.
They can be detained on MOD property till enough to fill a plane. Agree these wobbly jellies have no backbone to resolve the issue though.
There will be too many angry Owen Jones types on Twitter and a few awkward hashtags. They seem scared of that
They either should do something to fix it or just let everybody in , pretending they are doing something is not working for sure and is wasting shedloads of cash. They could easily make it fairer and if you want to come here , no benefits till you have paid x years NI, like Australia have 10K deposit or no health treatment till you have x years NI paid. Instead of paying gangsters money they could save it and use it to fund their asylum request. It si not rocket science if you have the will and the backbone.
That does nothing for those who are currently coming here and instantly disappearing into the Black Economy which is what Farage and co are claiming happens.
Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.
Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings
Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.
You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.
Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.
We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
What are all the army bods doing. Get them out of the barracks and lined up along the south coast every night, not take long to sort it out.
Thank you Priti.
P.S. I assume you are arming them.
Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up, take them to somewhere else and process them there. Any genuine asylum seekers will end up back in UK, the roasters will end up elsewhere. Making it like going on a very extended holiday with hotels waiting , spending money etc is not working for sure.
"take them to somewhere else" - glad to see you've got a fully worked out solution there.
Not my choice but earlier suggestion of Falklands Isles sounds reasonable, perhaps one of the UK tax havens.
Why do you think it will be easier for a few thousand people living on some small barren islands in the South Atlantic to accommodate and process refugees than a wealthy country of 65 million people?
Because a hut on a windswept hillside twenty miles from Port Stanley would be a rather less attractive location in which to end up than a flat in Rochdale. If it's made abundantly clear that boat arrivals won't be allowed to stay then it will become pointless for any more people to pay the traffickers to buy them a dinghy, and the crossings will stop. This benefits future waves of migrants, because they'll save their money and can try settling in a continental country instead, benefits the majority of the UK electorate that doesn't want the migrants, and deprives the traffickers of their livelihood.
The key obstacle, of course, is that the islanders evidently wouldn't be asked to pay for any of this, it would be down to the Treasury, and it would rather wave the people through than part with the cash. If offshoring were cheap it would already have been done.
OK so you process them on the Falkland Islands. For now we ignore the question of what the Falkland Islanders might want (even though we fought a war forty years ago to defend their sovereign rights). Most of them turn out to be refugees (because most of them are refugees). What next? They stay on the Falklands, where they rapidly outnumber the native population? We bring them back to the UK anyway? What exactly?
No, it's then over to Albania. There's a potentially exciting new board game here. Probably too late for the Christmas market though.
Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.
Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings
Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.
You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.
Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.
We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
What are all the army bods doing. Get them out of the barracks and lined up along the south coast every night, not take long to sort it out.
Thank you Priti.
P.S. I assume you are arming them.
Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up, take them to somewhere else and process them there. Any genuine asylum seekers will end up back in UK, the roasters will end up elsewhere. Making it like going on a very extended holiday with hotels waiting , spending money etc is not working for sure.
"take them to somewhere else" - glad to see you've got a fully worked out solution there.
Not my choice but earlier suggestion of Falklands Isles sounds reasonable, perhaps one of the UK tax havens.
Why do you think it will be easier for a few thousand people living on some small barren islands in the South Atlantic to accommodate and process refugees than a wealthy country of 65 million people?
Because a hut on a windswept hillside twenty miles from Port Stanley would be a rather less attractive location in which to end up than a flat in Rochdale.
Dunno. Depends which flat in Rochdale...
Again though, you can plan a reception and processing centre on the moon. You actually need to detail the illegal migrants first to then render them to Camp Priti. And thats where the whole thing falls down - you have to actually stop and detain them rather than them just walking off like here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTveaC4vVDo
Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.
Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings
Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.
You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.
Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.
We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
What are all the army bods doing. Get them out of the barracks and lined up along the south coast every night, not take long to sort it out.
Thank you Priti.
P.S. I assume you are arming them.
Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up, take them to somewhere else and process them there. Any genuine asylum seekers will end up back in UK, the roasters will end up elsewhere. Making it like going on a very extended holiday with hotels waiting , spending money etc is not working for sure.
"take them to somewhere else" - glad to see you've got a fully worked out solution there.
Not my choice but earlier suggestion of Falklands Isles sounds reasonable, perhaps one of the UK tax havens.
Why do you think it will be easier for a few thousand people living on some small barren islands in the South Atlantic to accommodate and process refugees than a wealthy country of 65 million people?
Because a hut on a windswept hillside twenty miles from Port Stanley would be a rather less attractive location in which to end up than a flat in Rochdale. If it's made abundantly clear that boat arrivals won't be allowed to stay then it will become pointless for any more people to pay the traffickers to buy them a dinghy, and the crossings will stop. This benefits future waves of migrants, because they'll save their money and can try settling in a continental country instead, benefits the majority of the UK electorate that doesn't want the migrants, and deprives the traffickers of their livelihood.
The key obstacle, of course, is that the islanders evidently wouldn't be asked to pay for any of this, it would be down to the Treasury, and it would rather wave the people through than part with the cash. If offshoring were cheap it would already have been done.
OK so you process them on the Falkland Islands. For now we ignore the question of what the Falkland Islanders might want (even though we fought a war forty years ago to defend their sovereign rights). Most of them turn out to be refugees (because most of them are refugees). What next? They stay on the Falklands, where they rapidly outnumber the native population? We bring them back to the UK anyway? What exactly?
You got any evidence to show they are refugees. They all stay in UK whether refugees or not so what would change , these clowns don't deport anyone, they put them up in hotels for years till they are pissed off and then they run off or are put in houses and even more spent on them. If they really really are genuine refugees and can prove it , have their papers etc etc then fine bring them back , if not repatriate them pronto. Before you start whining that we cannot repatriate them then stop them coming in first place or leave them in the Falklands unless proven 100% to be refugees. Children excluded , but not the 20-30+ aged one's that the woke charities pass off as 15 year olds.
Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.
Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings
Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.
You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.
Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.
We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
What are all the army bods doing. Get them out of the barracks and lined up along the south coast every night, not take long to sort it out.
Thank you Priti.
P.S. I assume you are arming them.
Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up, take them to somewhere else and process them there. Any genuine asylum seekers will end up back in UK, the roasters will end up elsewhere. Making it like going on a very extended holiday with hotels waiting , spending money etc is not working for sure.
"take them to somewhere else" - glad to see you've got a fully worked out solution there.
Not my choice but earlier suggestion of Falklands Isles sounds reasonable, perhaps one of the UK tax havens.
Why do you think it will be easier for a few thousand people living on some small barren islands in the South Atlantic to accommodate and process refugees than a wealthy country of 65 million people?
Think of the employment for islanders and no distractions to processing , nowhere to run away to hide etc. Could all be done lickety split.
You're just as much of a fantasist as HYFUD and his tanks rolling into Coldstream.
Better than being a fcukwit any day, jog on loser.
Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up,
They don't conveniently arrive in aircraft sized batches though and the only way to get unwilling people on long flights is in Rendition Class. This government doesn't have the guts for that.
They can be detained on MOD property till enough to fill a plane. Agree these wobbly jellies have no backbone to resolve the issue though.
There will be too many angry Owen Jones types on Twitter and a few awkward hashtags. They seem scared of that
They either should do something to fix it or just let everybody in , pretending they are doing something is not working for sure and is wasting shedloads of cash. They could easily make it fairer and if you want to come here , no benefits till you have paid x years NI, like Australia have 10K deposit or no health treatment till you have x years NI paid. Instead of paying gangsters money they could save it and use it to fund their asylum request. It si not rocket science if you have the will and the backbone.
That does nothing for those who are currently coming here and instantly disappearing into the Black Economy which is what Farage and co are claiming happens.
French sort most of that out by making sure they cannot get any state aid, medical , housing etc unless they have ID which is why they are packing out boats to come here.
Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up,
They don't conveniently arrive in aircraft sized batches though and the only way to get unwilling people on long flights is in Rendition Class. This government doesn't have the guts for that.
They can be detained on MOD property till enough to fill a plane. Agree these wobbly jellies have no backbone to resolve the issue though.
There will be too many angry Owen Jones types on Twitter and a few awkward hashtags. They seem scared of that
They either should do something to fix it or just let everybody in , pretending they are doing something is not working for sure and is wasting shedloads of cash. They could easily make it fairer and if you want to come here , no benefits till you have paid x years NI, like Australia have 10K deposit or no health treatment till you have x years NI paid. Instead of paying gangsters money they could save it and use it to fund their asylum request. It si not rocket science if you have the will and the backbone.
That does nothing for those who are currently coming here and instantly disappearing into the Black Economy which is what Farage and co are claiming happens.
French sort most of that out by making sure they cannot get any state aid, medical , housing etc unless they have ID which is why they are packing out boats to come here.
I did considering posting similar earlier today - the only fix will be for us to actually have and use ID cards
Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.
Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings
Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.
You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.
Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.
We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
What are all the army bods doing. Get them out of the barracks and lined up along the south coast every night, not take long to sort it out.
Thank you Priti.
P.S. I assume you are arming them.
Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up, take them to somewhere else and process them there. Any genuine asylum seekers will end up back in UK, the roasters will end up elsewhere. Making it like going on a very extended holiday with hotels waiting , spending money etc is not working for sure.
"take them to somewhere else" - glad to see you've got a fully worked out solution there.
Not my choice but earlier suggestion of Falklands Isles sounds reasonable, perhaps one of the UK tax havens.
Why do you think it will be easier for a few thousand people living on some small barren islands in the South Atlantic to accommodate and process refugees than a wealthy country of 65 million people?
Because a hut on a windswept hillside twenty miles from Port Stanley would be a rather less attractive location in which to end up than a flat in Rochdale. If it's made abundantly clear that boat arrivals won't be allowed to stay then it will become pointless for any more people to pay the traffickers to buy them a dinghy, and the crossings will stop. This benefits future waves of migrants, because they'll save their money and can try settling in a continental country instead, benefits the majority of the UK electorate that doesn't want the migrants, and deprives the traffickers of their livelihood.
The key obstacle, of course, is that the islanders evidently wouldn't be asked to pay for any of this, it would be down to the Treasury, and it would rather wave the people through than part with the cash. If offshoring were cheap it would already have been done.
OK so you process them on the Falkland Islands. For now we ignore the question of what the Falkland Islanders might want (even though we fought a war forty years ago to defend their sovereign rights). Most of them turn out to be refugees (because most of them are refugees). What next? They stay on the Falklands, where they rapidly outnumber the native population? We bring them back to the UK anyway? What exactly?
You got any evidence to show they are refugees. They all stay in UK whether refugees or not so what would change , these clowns don't deport anyone, they put them up in hotels for years till they are pissed off and then they run off or are put in houses and even more spent on them. If they really really are genuine refugees and can prove it , have their papers etc etc then fine bring them back , if not repatriate them pronto. Before you start whining that we cannot repatriate them then stop them coming in first place or leave them in the Falklands unless proven 100% to be refugees. Children excluded , but not the 20-30+ aged one's that the woke charities pass off as 15 year olds.
People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?
Strong stuff! - and I can't be signing off on "trash" about the working class people of the North from which I come and who I know so well. They face a test, though, is how I look at it.
It was enormously understandable that in Dec 19 they flocked to the bouncy 'can-do' persona of Boris "Boris" Johnson and his promise to Get Done the Brexit they'd voted for 3 years earlier and seen frustrated at every turn.
But if they were to stick with him next time when all the evidence available to anybody with a brain cell and a willingness to use it is that he and his government don't care two hoots about them, this would be something else entirely. It would show they are fools.
It would also show Johnson and the Tories to be astute readers of the room, very in touch with the people they seek to govern. Because that (fools) is precisely their evaluation of the working class people of the North and it's what they are counting on.
Its a complex and locally varied situation but here are some advantages the Conservatives might have in northern parts:
1) Better to have a government which doesn't give two hoots for you than one which is actively malign
2) Their new MPs - these constituencies have had decades of MPs who didn't give two hoots but now have MPs who are actually making an effort
3) Areas which are improving irrespective of government but for which the government will get some benefit
4) Areas which were less Conservative than they demographically should have been but for which 2019 was the reset
Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.
Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings
Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.
You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.
Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.
We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
What are all the army bods doing. Get them out of the barracks and lined up along the south coast every night, not take long to sort it out.
Thank you Priti.
P.S. I assume you are arming them.
Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up, take them to somewhere else and process them there. Any genuine asylum seekers will end up back in UK, the roasters will end up elsewhere. Making it like going on a very extended holiday with hotels waiting , spending money etc is not working for sure.
"take them to somewhere else" - glad to see you've got a fully worked out solution there.
Not my choice but earlier suggestion of Falklands Isles sounds reasonable, perhaps one of the UK tax havens.
Why do you think it will be easier for a few thousand people living on some small barren islands in the South Atlantic to accommodate and process refugees than a wealthy country of 65 million people?
Because a hut on a windswept hillside twenty miles from Port Stanley would be a rather less attractive location in which to end up than a flat in Rochdale. If it's made abundantly clear that boat arrivals won't be allowed to stay then it will become pointless for any more people to pay the traffickers to buy them a dinghy, and the crossings will stop. This benefits future waves of migrants, because they'll save their money and can try settling in a continental country instead, benefits the majority of the UK electorate that doesn't want the migrants, and deprives the traffickers of their livelihood.
The key obstacle, of course, is that the islanders evidently wouldn't be asked to pay for any of this, it would be down to the Treasury, and it would rather wave the people through than part with the cash. If offshoring were cheap it would already have been done.
OK so you process them on the Falkland Islands. For now we ignore the question of what the Falkland Islanders might want (even though we fought a war forty years ago to defend their sovereign rights). Most of them turn out to be refugees (because most of them are refugees). What next? They stay on the Falklands, where they rapidly outnumber the native population? We bring them back to the UK anyway? What exactly?
I dare say that the islanders would be quite happy to help Britain in exchange for the ongoing protection of the armed forces, infrastructure improvements and employment opportunities associated with the holding facility, and probably a large stack of cash as well.
None of the arrivals would count as refugees because the Government would simply have passed legislation through Parliament declaring all irregular boat arrivals personae non grata (with a helpful clause declaring the Act to be superior to all other relevant legislation, including the HRA, thus preventing the courts from intervening to have any of them shipped back again.) The law is, after all, what Parliament says it is.
Once future waves of boat people realise that their reward for buying a dinghy - if they don't drown in the Channel first - is to be consigned to an oubliette in the Southern Ocean then they'll stop coming, settle somewhere else instead, and the problem is solved. The holding facility can then be mothballed over a number of years as alternative destinations are found for those already housed there.
And yes, this is all very nasty, but what alternative solution do you have? We know several facts about the state of the world: that long-distance migration from poorer to wealthier countries has become much more prevalent, that it is only going to keep increasing (as economic development means that more people in less well-off countries accumulate enough money to pay for the journey to Europe, and as the effects of climate change bite,) and that there is neither the popular will nor the practical capacity to accommodate millions and millions of refugees and economic migrants in states such as ours. In particular, if you refuse to address the lack of popular consent for unchecked irregular migration, then you're advocating the suspension of democracy simply in order to give the migrants what they want.
Persuading them to stop coming now, rather than when there are 100,000 or 200,000 crossing every year, or simply having ministers throw their hands up in the air and give up, is merely the lesser of the variety of evils with which the country is confronted.
OK so you process them on the Falkland Islands. For now we ignore the question of what the Falkland Islanders might want (even though we fought a war forty years ago to defend their sovereign rights). Most of them turn out to be refugees (because most of them are refugees). What next? They stay on the Falklands, where they rapidly outnumber the native population? We bring them back to the UK anyway? What exactly?
If they follow the Australian model...
1. Offer them cash to go back to their countries of origin. 2. Do dodgy deals with shit holes like Cambodia and PNG to take them as refugees.
You could intern and process them on the Shetland Islands. The oil industry is going to wind down and they need something to replace it. There is an empty airport there that recently closed down, good infrastructure, uninhabited islands for difficult troublemakers etc.
Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.
Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings
Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.
You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.
Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.
We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
What are all the army bods doing. Get them out of the barracks and lined up along the south coast every night, not take long to sort it out.
Thank you Priti.
P.S. I assume you are arming them.
Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up, take them to somewhere else and process them there. Any genuine asylum seekers will end up back in UK, the roasters will end up elsewhere. Making it like going on a very extended holiday with hotels waiting , spending money etc is not working for sure.
"take them to somewhere else" - glad to see you've got a fully worked out solution there.
Not my choice but earlier suggestion of Falklands Isles sounds reasonable, perhaps one of the UK tax havens.
Why do you think it will be easier for a few thousand people living on some small barren islands in the South Atlantic to accommodate and process refugees than a wealthy country of 65 million people?
Because a hut on a windswept hillside twenty miles from Port Stanley would be a rather less attractive location in which to end up than a flat in Rochdale.
Dunno. Depends which flat in Rochdale...
Again though, you can plan a reception and processing centre on the moon. You actually need to detail the illegal migrants first to then render them to Camp Priti. And thats where the whole thing falls down - you have to actually stop and detain them rather than them just walking off like here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTveaC4vVDo
Oh absolutely, and that kind of thing also costs lots of money to implement. All the more reason for the Government not to bother.
People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?
Strong stuff! - and I can't be signing off on "trash" about the working class people of the North from which I come and who I know so well. They face a test, though, is how I look at it.
It was enormously understandable that in Dec 19 they flocked to the bouncy 'can-do' persona of Boris "Boris" Johnson and his promise to Get Done the Brexit they'd voted for 3 years earlier and seen frustrated at every turn.
But if they were to stick with him next time when all the evidence available to anybody with a brain cell and a willingness to use it is that he and his government don't care two hoots about them, this would be something else entirely. It would show they are fools.
It would also show Johnson and the Tories to be astute readers of the room, very in touch with the people they seek to govern. Because that (fools) is precisely their evaluation of the working class people of the North and it's what they are counting on.
Its a complex and locally varied situation but here are some advantages the Conservatives might have in northern parts:
1) Better to have a government which doesn't give two hoots for you than one which is actively malign
2) Their new MPs - these constituencies have had decades of MPs who didn't give two hoots but now have MPs who are actually making an effort
3) Areas which are improving irrespective of government but for which the government will get some benefit
4) Areas which were less Conservative than they demographically should have been but for which 2019 was the reset
Number 1 is a truism. Not convinced this government isn't "actively malign". Every call they've made thus far prtioritises South over North. Wealthy over not. 2 will vary greatly. As you allude to. 3 and 4 are of great weight though. Full employment is a huge improvement over the preceding 2 generations' experience and cannot be merely handwaved away.
People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?
What a disgusting post
Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth
Who on earth do you think you are
Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.
There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
When Charles says 'London' he's thinking of the view over Regent's Park from St John's Wood, not of Ilford or Edmonton or Peckham or Hounslow.
I'd rather live in Peckham than St John's Wood. I virtually do live in Peckham in fact, SE15 is just a couple of streets over. Suburbia isn't grim, it's an oasis of parks and gardens, with thriving communities, friendly neighbours, decent schools, independent shops and restaurants, a plethora of activities for children, a thriving arts scene and reasonable commutes to work in Central London. It's only over priced because it's popular. The only thing that could improve London? If we could spend more of our money on London and less on subsidising people whose main leisure activity is sagging off London.
The old chestnut that London funds the rest of the country rather than the reality that it sucks the life blood out of it and no matter how much is spent there compared to the rest of the country the selfish arseholes are never happy. Full of me me me parasites and bloodsuckers.
The numbers speak for themselves. Londoners pay thousands of pounds more in tax than they receive back in government spending. That's just a fact, sorry if it's inconvenient. I'm very happy. I don't even mind subsidising the rest of the country. I'm not from London, I still have plenty of love for the rest of the UK, including the country of my birth (the same one as yours). I'm just sick of being told how awful we are and what a shit hole I live in by people who are taking my money.
I don't mind the people in London. It's just the city itself is awful. Look at it with a cold eye. Unplanned, appallingly cramped, mostly full of third-rate Victorian architecture, overpriced, brutally congested, dirty, noisy and smelly, full of restaurants that offer food no better than anywhere else in the country but provide half the quantity at double the price - if I'm honest, that's particularly what I remember about being an impoverished student there.
That's even before we get on to the issue of its woefully inadequate utilities network, which means it is chronically short of water, and the bizarre public transport system which nobody would probably use if it wasn't for the fact the roads are so twisty it takes even longer to walk than to take the sardine can, er, underground.
(Your other point is wrong as well, incidentally, as the town I work in is a net contributor to the treasury, so I'm not taking your money.)
If you like it, fine. You're welcome. Means I don't have to live there, which I'm even happier about because it's just not a nice place to be.
Edit - I will admit I do find it annoying when people preach at me that I should love London because it 'subsidises everywhere else.' From that point of view, you should love all farmers in Oxfordshire because they allow the residue from your treated sewage to be spread on their fields. Or the people of the Thames Valley for providing you with water.
Maintaining the current Covid restrictions through the summer would only delay a wave of hospitalisations and deaths rather than reduce them, the chief medical officer for England has warned.
Prof Chris Whitty told a Downing Street briefing that while scientific opinion was mixed on when to lift the last remaining restrictions in the government’s roadmap out of lockdown, he believed that doing so in the summer had some advantages over releasing in the autumn.
“At a certain point, you move to the situation where instead of actually averting hospitalisations and deaths, you move over to just delaying them. So you’re not actually changing the number of people who will go to hospital or die, you may change when they happen,” he said.
“There is quite a strong view by many people, including myself actually, that going in the summer has some advantages, all other things being equal, to opening up into the autumn when schools are going back and when we’re heading into the winter period when the NHS tends to be under greatest pressure for many other reasons,” he added.
And events may well be proving him right, though the picture is complex: Germany, the Netherlands, and a number of other European countries that kept NPIs are now suffering the predicted delayed Winter wave of death, but France, Italy and Spain appear to be holding up quite well. It'll be interesting to see if they manage to avoid going down the tubes too, or if that merely happens more slowly.
Those three countries' cases have started increasing in the same way as the more northerly ones, they are just not so far along the curve. I think the French have said they will rely on high vaccine uptake to keep people out of hospital.
OTOH the French are so frightened of allowing the child casedemic to propagate that they've put masking back into classrooms again - which presents an ideal opportunity for the disease to rip through the community later in the Winter as NPIs become progressively more useless - and I dare say they also have a significantly larger proportion of anti-vaxxers (and also those for whom the vaccines haven't worked very well) who haven't caught Covid. The proportion of the French population that has been vaccinated so far is only about 2% higher than ours and, given that they got started on children a lot earlier than we did, that likely implies a lower percentage of coverage amongst adults.
Of course, if their cases also start taking off like a rocket over the next month or so, then one thing they do have counting in their favour relative to the UK is a better healthcare system. It's looking as if the UK will be able to make it through to Christmas without a new raft of bloody rules, which is vital to put-upon businesses, but when the flu really gets going later in the Winter then it's still possible that the anguished screaming from the decrepit NHS will grow so loud that the Government finds it impossible to ignore. The French have more breathing room in that regard.
There's compulsory masking in schools in Los Angeles too, which I also find incomprehensible.
It’s very comprehensible. You’ve got a stupid f*ckwit as Governor
This is a Los Angeles thing, rather than a california thing.
To give Gavin some credit, most COVID restrictions are now locally - rather than state - derived.
OK so you process them on the Falkland Islands. For now we ignore the question of what the Falkland Islanders might want (even though we fought a war forty years ago to defend their sovereign rights). Most of them turn out to be refugees (because most of them are refugees). What next? They stay on the Falklands, where they rapidly outnumber the native population? We bring them back to the UK anyway? What exactly?
If they follow the Australian model...
1. Offer them cash to go back to their countries of origin. 2. Do dodgy deals with shit holes like Cambodia and PNG to take them as refugees.
You could intern and process them on the Shetland Islands. The oil industry is going to wind down and they need something to replace it. There is an empty airport there that recently closed down, good infrastructure, uninhabited islands for difficult troublemakers etc.
If you've solved the problem of persuading finding somewhere habitable and persuading the existing inhabitants to let you turn it into a home for random people from the war zones of the world, you may as well skip the whole processing part and let them make a charter city. It's probably not a trivial "if" though.
Apologies if this has been raised, but why is this entitled "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon?" Seems to bear no relation to the theme.
It's a Chinese idiom I like, because it is about hidden masters, in this instance the masters are the voters, and they became a dragon for Mrs May, the crouching tiger in 2017.
(Plus I love the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.)
Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.
Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings
Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.
You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.
Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.
We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
What are all the army bods doing. Get them out of the barracks and lined up along the south coast every night, not take long to sort it out.
Thank you Priti.
P.S. I assume you are arming them.
Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up, take them to somewhere else and process them there. Any genuine asylum seekers will end up back in UK, the roasters will end up elsewhere. Making it like going on a very extended holiday with hotels waiting , spending money etc is not working for sure.
"take them to somewhere else" - glad to see you've got a fully worked out solution there.
Not my choice but earlier suggestion of Falklands Isles sounds reasonable, perhaps one of the UK tax havens.
Why do you think it will be easier for a few thousand people living on some small barren islands in the South Atlantic to accommodate and process refugees than a wealthy country of 65 million people?
Because a hut on a windswept hillside twenty miles from Port Stanley would be a rather less attractive location in which to end up than a flat in Rochdale.
Dunno. Depends which flat in Rochdale...
Again though, you can plan a reception and processing centre on the moon. You actually need to detail the illegal migrants first to then render them to Camp Priti. And thats where the whole thing falls down - you have to actually stop and detain them rather than them just walking off like here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTveaC4vVDo
Oh absolutely, and that kind of thing also costs lots of money to implement. All the more reason for the Government not to bother.
Until the tories are outflanked by an electoral force that is even more malignantly nationalist and xenophobic they aren't going to do anything about the Channel situation.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's last Premier League win as Man Utd manager was against Nuno Espirito Santo, whose last Premier League win as Tottenham manager was against Dean Smith, whose last Premier League win as Aston Villa manager was against Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
Apologies if this has been raised, but why is this entitled "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon?" Seems to bear no relation to the theme.
It's a Chinese idiom I like, because it is about hidden masters, in this instance the masters are the voters, and they became a dragon for Mrs May, the crouching tiger in 2017.
(Plus I love the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.)
Ah! Get you now. If I'd wanted such crypticism on a Sunday morning I'd have bought a crossword.
Apologies if this has been raised, but why is this entitled "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon?" Seems to bear no relation to the theme.
It's a Chinese idiom I like, because it is about hidden masters, in this instance the masters are the voters, and they became a dragon for Mrs May, the crouching tiger in 2017.
(Plus I love the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.)
We Khan say her policy presentation was Shere folly.
Apologies if this has been raised, but why is this entitled "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon?" Seems to bear no relation to the theme.
It's a Chinese idiom I like, because it is about hidden masters, in this instance the masters are the voters, and they became a dragon for Mrs May, the crouching tiger in 2017.
(Plus I love the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.)
Ah! Get you now. If I'd wanted such crypticism on a Sunday morning I'd have bought a crossword.
I'll go for my subtle pop music references in the future.
Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.
Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings
Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.
You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.
Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.
We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
What are all the army bods doing. Get them out of the barracks and lined up along the south coast every night, not take long to sort it out.
Thank you Priti.
P.S. I assume you are arming them.
Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up, take them to somewhere else and process them there. Any genuine asylum seekers will end up back in UK, the roasters will end up elsewhere. Making it like going on a very extended holiday with hotels waiting , spending money etc is not working for sure.
"take them to somewhere else" - glad to see you've got a fully worked out solution there.
Not my choice but earlier suggestion of Falklands Isles sounds reasonable, perhaps one of the UK tax havens.
Why do you think it will be easier for a few thousand people living on some small barren islands in the South Atlantic to accommodate and process refugees than a wealthy country of 65 million people?
Because a hut on a windswept hillside twenty miles from Port Stanley would be a rather less attractive location in which to end up than a flat in Rochdale. If it's made abundantly clear that boat arrivals won't be allowed to stay then it will become pointless for any more people to pay the traffickers to buy them a dinghy, and the crossings will stop. This benefits future waves of migrants, because they'll save their money and can try settling in a continental country instead, benefits the majority of the UK electorate that doesn't want the migrants, and deprives the traffickers of their livelihood.
The key obstacle, of course, is that the islanders evidently wouldn't be asked to pay for any of this, it would be down to the Treasury, and it would rather wave the people through than part with the cash. If offshoring were cheap it would already have been done.
OK so you process them on the Falkland Islands. For now we ignore the question of what the Falkland Islanders might want (even though we fought a war forty years ago to defend their sovereign rights). Most of them turn out to be refugees (because most of them are refugees). What next? They stay on the Falklands, where they rapidly outnumber the native population? We bring them back to the UK anyway? What exactly?
I dare say that the islanders would be quite happy to help Britain in exchange for the ongoing protection of the armed forces, infrastructure improvements and employment opportunities associated with the holding facility, and probably a large stack of cash as well.
None of the arrivals would count as refugees because the Government would simply have passed legislation through Parliament declaring all irregular boat arrivals personae non grata (with a helpful clause declaring the Act to be superior to all other relevant legislation, including the HRA, thus preventing the courts from intervening to have any of them shipped back again.) The law is, after all, what Parliament says it is.
Once future waves of boat people realise that their reward for buying a dinghy - if they don't drown in the Channel first - is to be consigned to an oubliette in the Southern Ocean then they'll stop coming, settle somewhere else instead, and the problem is solved. The holding facility can then be mothballed over a number of years as alternative destinations are found for those already housed there.
And yes, this is all very nasty, but what alternative solution do you have? We know several facts about the state of the world: that long-distance migration from poorer to wealthier countries has become much more prevalent, that it is only going to keep increasing (as economic development means that more people in less well-off countries accumulate enough money to pay for the journey to Europe, and as the effects of climate change bite,) and that there is neither the popular will nor the practical capacity to accommodate millions and millions of refugees and economic migrants in states such as ours. In particular, if you refuse to address the lack of popular consent for unchecked irregular migration, then you're advocating the suspension of democracy simply in order to give the migrants what they want.
Persuading them to stop coming now, rather than when there are 100,000 or 200,000 crossing every year, or simply having ministers throw their hands up in the air and give up, is merely the lesser of the variety of evils with which the country is confronted.
There are no easy solutions, maybe no solutions at all other than to accept it's going to happen. Climate change is probably going to make life intolerable in parts of the world with billions of people living in them. Some of those people will end up here. The next few decades are going to be messy. The reality though is that we have more ability to accommodate people than many other countries, including many who already have accommodated far more than us already. I would also note that our fertility rate is well short of the population replacement level and we have a labour shortage. I think the UK population needs to wake up to the reality of the world we live in and not simply say no. It's a suicidally brave politician who says any of this obviously.
People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?
Strong stuff! - and I can't be signing off on "trash" about the working class people of the North from which I come and who I know so well. They face a test, though, is how I look at it.
It was enormously understandable that in Dec 19 they flocked to the bouncy 'can-do' persona of Boris "Boris" Johnson and his promise to Get Done the Brexit they'd voted for 3 years earlier and seen frustrated at every turn.
But if they were to stick with him next time when all the evidence available to anybody with a brain cell and a willingness to use it is that he and his government don't care two hoots about them, this would be something else entirely. It would show they are fools.
It would also show Johnson and the Tories to be astute readers of the room, very in touch with the people they seek to govern. Because that (fools) is precisely their evaluation of the working class people of the North and it's what they are counting on.
Its a complex and locally varied situation but here are some advantages the Conservatives might have in northern parts:
1) Better to have a government which doesn't give two hoots for you than one which is actively malign
2) Their new MPs - these constituencies have had decades of MPs who didn't give two hoots but now have MPs who are actually making an effort
3) Areas which are improving irrespective of government but for which the government will get some benefit
4) Areas which were less Conservative than they demographically should have been but for which 2019 was the reset
Number 1 is a truism. Not convinced this government isn't "actively malign". Every call they've made thus far prtioritises South over North. Wealthy over not. 2 will vary greatly. As you allude to. 3 and 4 are of great weight though. Full employment is a huge improvement over the preceding 2 generations' experience and cannot be merely handwaved away.
I don't think this government is actively malign towards the north, more blunderingly self-obsessed, ignorant and lazy - what I would say is that there was a widespread feeling that previous Conservative governments were actively malign.
Relatedly there is also a feeling that elements of Labour are now actively malign to much of the North / working class - Starmer's 'get some cheap drivers from Europe' demand plays into this.
Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.
Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings
Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.
You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.
Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.
We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
What are all the army bods doing. Get them out of the barracks and lined up along the south coast every night, not take long to sort it out.
Thank you Priti.
P.S. I assume you are arming them.
Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up, take them to somewhere else and process them there. Any genuine asylum seekers will end up back in UK, the roasters will end up elsewhere. Making it like going on a very extended holiday with hotels waiting , spending money etc is not working for sure.
"take them to somewhere else" - glad to see you've got a fully worked out solution there.
Not my choice but earlier suggestion of Falklands Isles sounds reasonable, perhaps one of the UK tax havens.
Why do you think it will be easier for a few thousand people living on some small barren islands in the South Atlantic to accommodate and process refugees than a wealthy country of 65 million people?
Because a hut on a windswept hillside twenty miles from Port Stanley would be a rather less attractive location in which to end up than a flat in Rochdale. If it's made abundantly clear that boat arrivals won't be allowed to stay then it will become pointless for any more people to pay the traffickers to buy them a dinghy, and the crossings will stop. This benefits future waves of migrants, because they'll save their money and can try settling in a continental country instead, benefits the majority of the UK electorate that doesn't want the migrants, and deprives the traffickers of their livelihood.
The key obstacle, of course, is that the islanders evidently wouldn't be asked to pay for any of this, it would be down to the Treasury, and it would rather wave the people through than part with the cash. If offshoring were cheap it would already have been done.
OK so you process them on the Falkland Islands. For now we ignore the question of what the Falkland Islanders might want (even though we fought a war forty years ago to defend their sovereign rights). Most of them turn out to be refugees (because most of them are refugees). What next? They stay on the Falklands, where they rapidly outnumber the native population? We bring them back to the UK anyway? What exactly?
I dare say that the islanders would be quite happy to help Britain in exchange for the ongoing protection of the armed forces, infrastructure improvements and employment opportunities associated with the holding facility, and probably a large stack of cash as well.
None of the arrivals would count as refugees because the Government would simply have passed legislation through Parliament declaring all irregular boat arrivals personae non grata (with a helpful clause declaring the Act to be superior to all other relevant legislation, including the HRA, thus preventing the courts from intervening to have any of them shipped back again.) The law is, after all, what Parliament says it is.
Once future waves of boat people realise that their reward for buying a dinghy - if they don't drown in the Channel first - is to be consigned to an oubliette in the Southern Ocean then they'll stop coming, settle somewhere else instead, and the problem is solved. The holding facility can then be mothballed over a number of years as alternative destinations are found for those already housed there.
And yes, this is all very nasty, but what alternative solution do you have? We know several facts about the state of the world: that long-distance migration from poorer to wealthier countries has become much more prevalent, that it is only going to keep increasing (as economic development means that more people in less well-off countries accumulate enough money to pay for the journey to Europe, and as the effects of climate change bite,) and that there is neither the popular will nor the practical capacity to accommodate millions and millions of refugees and economic migrants in states such as ours. In particular, if you refuse to address the lack of popular consent for unchecked irregular migration, then you're advocating the suspension of democracy simply in order to give the migrants what they want.
Persuading them to stop coming now, rather than when there are 100,000 or 200,000 crossing every year, or simply having ministers throw their hands up in the air and give up, is merely the lesser of the variety of evils with which the country is confronted.
There are no easy solutions, maybe no solutions at all other than to accept it's going to happen. Climate change is probably going to make life intolerable in parts of the world with billions of people living in them. Some of those people will end up here. The next few decades are going to be messy. The reality though is that we have more ability to accommodate people than many other countries, including many who already have accommodated far more than us already. I would also note that our fertility rate is well short of the population replacement level and we have a labour shortage. I think the UK population needs to wake up to the reality of the world we live in and not simply say no. It's a suicidally brave politician who says any of this obviously.
You speak as if sub-replacement fertility rates (and therefore eventual population decline) are a bad thing. Au contraire, we could actually do in the long run with there being fewer people.
Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.
Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings
Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.
You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.
Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.
We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
What are all the army bods doing. Get them out of the barracks and lined up along the south coast every night, not take long to sort it out.
Thank you Priti.
P.S. I assume you are arming them.
Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up, take them to somewhere else and process them there. Any genuine asylum seekers will end up back in UK, the roasters will end up elsewhere. Making it like going on a very extended holiday with hotels waiting , spending money etc is not working for sure.
"take them to somewhere else" - glad to see you've got a fully worked out solution there.
Not my choice but earlier suggestion of Falklands Isles sounds reasonable, perhaps one of the UK tax havens.
Why do you think it will be easier for a few thousand people living on some small barren islands in the South Atlantic to accommodate and process refugees than a wealthy country of 65 million people?
Because a hut on a windswept hillside twenty miles from Port Stanley would be a rather less attractive location in which to end up than a flat in Rochdale. If it's made abundantly clear that boat arrivals won't be allowed to stay then it will become pointless for any more people to pay the traffickers to buy them a dinghy, and the crossings will stop. This benefits future waves of migrants, because they'll save their money and can try settling in a continental country instead, benefits the majority of the UK electorate that doesn't want the migrants, and deprives the traffickers of their livelihood.
The key obstacle, of course, is that the islanders evidently wouldn't be asked to pay for any of this, it would be down to the Treasury, and it would rather wave the people through than part with the cash. If offshoring were cheap it would already have been done.
OK so you process them on the Falkland Islands. For now we ignore the question of what the Falkland Islanders might want (even though we fought a war forty years ago to defend their sovereign rights). Most of them turn out to be refugees (because most of them are refugees). What next? They stay on the Falklands, where they rapidly outnumber the native population? We bring them back to the UK anyway? What exactly?
I dare say that the islanders would be quite happy to help Britain in exchange for the ongoing protection of the armed forces, infrastructure improvements and employment opportunities associated with the holding facility, and probably a large stack of cash as well.
None of the arrivals would count as refugees because the Government would simply have passed legislation through Parliament declaring all irregular boat arrivals personae non grata (with a helpful clause declaring the Act to be superior to all other relevant legislation, including the HRA, thus preventing the courts from intervening to have any of them shipped back again.) The law is, after all, what Parliament says it is.
Once future waves of boat people realise that their reward for buying a dinghy - if they don't drown in the Channel first - is to be consigned to an oubliette in the Southern Ocean then they'll stop coming, settle somewhere else instead, and the problem is solved. The holding facility can then be mothballed over a number of years as alternative destinations are found for those already housed there.
And yes, this is all very nasty, but what alternative solution do you have? We know several facts about the state of the world: that long-distance migration from poorer to wealthier countries has become much more prevalent, that it is only going to keep increasing (as economic development means that more people in less well-off countries accumulate enough money to pay for the journey to Europe, and as the effects of climate change bite,) and that there is neither the popular will nor the practical capacity to accommodate millions and millions of refugees and economic migrants in states such as ours. In particular, if you refuse to address the lack of popular consent for unchecked irregular migration, then you're advocating the suspension of democracy simply in order to give the migrants what they want.
Persuading them to stop coming now, rather than when there are 100,000 or 200,000 crossing every year, or simply having ministers throw their hands up in the air and give up, is merely the lesser of the variety of evils with which the country is confronted.
There are no easy solutions, maybe no solutions at all other than to accept it's going to happen. Climate change is probably going to make life intolerable in parts of the world with billions of people living in them. Some of those people will end up here. The next few decades are going to be messy. The reality though is that we have more ability to accommodate people than many other countries, including many who already have accommodated far more than us already. I would also note that our fertility rate is well short of the population replacement level and we have a labour shortage. I think the UK population needs to wake up to the reality of the world we live in and not simply say no. It's a suicidally brave politician who says any of this obviously.
My local MP (the Home Sec) doesn't think there's a labour shortage; it's just people unwilling to work. She is also, apparently, happy to see at least 1000 new houses built in her constituency. I'm not sure who is going to live in them!
People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?
What a disgusting post
Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth
Who on earth do you think you are
Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.
There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
When Charles says 'London' he's thinking of the view over Regent's Park from St John's Wood, not of Ilford or Edmonton or Peckham or Hounslow.
I'd rather live in Peckham than St John's Wood. I virtually do live in Peckham in fact, SE15 is just a couple of streets over. Suburbia isn't grim, it's an oasis of parks and gardens, with thriving communities, friendly neighbours, decent schools, independent shops and restaurants, a plethora of activities for children, a thriving arts scene and reasonable commutes to work in Central London. It's only over priced because it's popular. The only thing that could improve London? If we could spend more of our money on London and less on subsidising people whose main leisure activity is sagging off London.
The old chestnut that London funds the rest of the country rather than the reality that it sucks the life blood out of it and no matter how much is spent there compared to the rest of the country the selfish arseholes are never happy. Full of me me me parasites and bloodsuckers.
The numbers speak for themselves. Londoners pay thousands of pounds more in tax than they receive back in government spending. That's just a fact, sorry if it's inconvenient. I'm very happy. I don't even mind subsidising the rest of the country. I'm not from London, I still have plenty of love for the rest of the UK, including the country of my birth (the same one as yours). I'm just sick of being told how awful we are and what a shit hole I live in by people who are taking my money.
I don't mind the people in London. It's just the city itself is awful. Look at it with a cold eye. Unplanned, appallingly cramped, mostly full of third-rate Victorian architecture, overpriced, brutally congested, dirty, noisy and smelly, full of restaurants that offer food no better than anywhere else in the country but provide half the quantity at double the price - if I'm honest, that's particularly what I remember about being an impoverished student there.
That's even before we get on to the issue of its woefully inadequate utilities network, which means it is chronically short of water, and the bizarre public transport system which nobody would probably use if it wasn't for the fact the roads are so twisty it takes even longer to walk than to take the sardine can, er, underground.
(Your other point is wrong as well, incidentally, as the town I work in is a net contributor to the treasury, so I'm not taking your money.)
If you like it, fine. You're welcome. Means I don't have to live there, which I'm even happier about because it's just not a nice place to be.
Edit - I will admit I do find it annoying when people preach at me that I should love London because it 'subsidises everywhere else.' From that point of view, you should love all farmers in Oxfordshire because they allow the residue from your treated sewage to be spread on their fields. Or the people of the Thames Valley for providing you with water.
I don't want love, indifference would be fine. It's the constant compulsive slagging off of London by people who don't live in London, don't know London and seem convinced that London is leeching off them that I find so monumentally boring, especially as there are things in London that need money spent on them, but apparently there's no money. Most of the horrible things you attribute to London could be applied to more or less every town and city in Britain. We live in a country built by the Victorians in a hurry and on the cheap and have been living with the consequences ever since.
Apologies if this has been raised, but why is this entitled "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon?" Seems to bear no relation to the theme.
It's a Chinese idiom I like, because it is about hidden masters, in this instance the masters are the voters, and they became a dragon for Mrs May, the crouching tiger in 2017.
(Plus I love the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.)
Ah! Get you now. If I'd wanted such crypticism on a Sunday morning I'd have bought a crossword.
I fully support you eagles! It’s other people’s fault if they don’t understand old Chinese idioms about Hidden masters and out of sight tigers and dragons. I like the heading soon as I saw it. I love the action movie too. And my mum enjoyed it.
If I was being pedantic though, wouldn’t the crocodiles much prefer unadorned human flavour? Than BBQ sauce. And secondly your header might have ignored the point that having promised to sort it kicking can down the road is going to hurt as well. I think it’s whatever option even do nothing is going to hurt, so Boris Johnson has to do like they did in Master and Commander and choose lesser of the weevils. 🙂
And finally, sorry, one thing I have noticed, Boris and his government do like getting people to vote on things before properly reading the details and discussing it, is it fair to say?
Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.
Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings
Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.
You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.
Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.
We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
What are all the army bods doing. Get them out of the barracks and lined up along the south coast every night, not take long to sort it out.
Thank you Priti.
P.S. I assume you are arming them.
Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up, take them to somewhere else and process them there. Any genuine asylum seekers will end up back in UK, the roasters will end up elsewhere. Making it like going on a very extended holiday with hotels waiting , spending money etc is not working for sure.
"take them to somewhere else" - glad to see you've got a fully worked out solution there.
Not my choice but earlier suggestion of Falklands Isles sounds reasonable, perhaps one of the UK tax havens.
Why do you think it will be easier for a few thousand people living on some small barren islands in the South Atlantic to accommodate and process refugees than a wealthy country of 65 million people?
Because a hut on a windswept hillside twenty miles from Port Stanley would be a rather less attractive location in which to end up than a flat in Rochdale. If it's made abundantly clear that boat arrivals won't be allowed to stay then it will become pointless for any more people to pay the traffickers to buy them a dinghy, and the crossings will stop. This benefits future waves of migrants, because they'll save their money and can try settling in a continental country instead, benefits the majority of the UK electorate that doesn't want the migrants, and deprives the traffickers of their livelihood.
The key obstacle, of course, is that the islanders evidently wouldn't be asked to pay for any of this, it would be down to the Treasury, and it would rather wave the people through than part with the cash. If offshoring were cheap it would already have been done.
OK so you process them on the Falkland Islands. For now we ignore the question of what the Falkland Islanders might want (even though we fought a war forty years ago to defend their sovereign rights). Most of them turn out to be refugees (because most of them are refugees). What next? They stay on the Falklands, where they rapidly outnumber the native population? We bring them back to the UK anyway? What exactly?
I dare say that the islanders would be quite happy to help Britain in exchange for the ongoing protection of the armed forces, infrastructure improvements and employment opportunities associated with the holding facility, and probably a large stack of cash as well.
None of the arrivals would count as refugees because the Government would simply have passed legislation through Parliament declaring all irregular boat arrivals personae non grata (with a helpful clause declaring the Act to be superior to all other relevant legislation, including the HRA, thus preventing the courts from intervening to have any of them shipped back again.) The law is, after all, what Parliament says it is.
Once future waves of boat people realise that their reward for buying a dinghy - if they don't drown in the Channel first - is to be consigned to an oubliette in the Southern Ocean then they'll stop coming, settle somewhere else instead, and the problem is solved. The holding facility can then be mothballed over a number of years as alternative destinations are found for those already housed there.
And yes, this is all very nasty, but what alternative solution do you have? We know several facts about the state of the world: that long-distance migration from poorer to wealthier countries has become much more prevalent, that it is only going to keep increasing (as economic development means that more people in less well-off countries accumulate enough money to pay for the journey to Europe, and as the effects of climate change bite,) and that there is neither the popular will nor the practical capacity to accommodate millions and millions of refugees and economic migrants in states such as ours. In particular, if you refuse to address the lack of popular consent for unchecked irregular migration, then you're advocating the suspension of democracy simply in order to give the migrants what they want.
Persuading them to stop coming now, rather than when there are 100,000 or 200,000 crossing every year, or simply having ministers throw their hands up in the air and give up, is merely the lesser of the variety of evils with which the country is confronted.
There are no easy solutions, maybe no solutions at all other than to accept it's going to happen. Climate change is probably going to make life intolerable in parts of the world with billions of people living in them. Some of those people will end up here. The next few decades are going to be messy. The reality though is that we have more ability to accommodate people than many other countries, including many who already have accommodated far more than us already. I would also note that our fertility rate is well short of the population replacement level and we have a labour shortage. I think the UK population needs to wake up to the reality of the world we live in and not simply say no. It's a suicidally brave politician who says any of this obviously.
You speak as if sub-replacement fertility rates (and therefore eventual population decline) are a bad thing. Au contraire, we could actually do in the long run with there being fewer people.
Well, well, well. Just seen this 20 min. or so ago on BBC. Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru's ruling bodies have approved a co-operation deal between the parties in the Senedd. Among the issues to be addressed are 'second homes', although the Conservatives have pointed out there's no mention of the NHS.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's last Premier League win as Man Utd manager was against Nuno Espirito Santo, whose last Premier League win as Tottenham manager was against Dean Smith, whose last Premier League win as Aston Villa manager was against Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?
What a disgusting post
Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth
Who on earth do you think you are
Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.
There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
When Charles says 'London' he's thinking of the view over Regent's Park from St John's Wood, not of Ilford or Edmonton or Peckham or Hounslow.
I'd rather live in Peckham than St John's Wood. I virtually do live in Peckham in fact, SE15 is just a couple of streets over. Suburbia isn't grim, it's an oasis of parks and gardens, with thriving communities, friendly neighbours, decent schools, independent shops and restaurants, a plethora of activities for children, a thriving arts scene and reasonable commutes to work in Central London. It's only over priced because it's popular. The only thing that could improve London? If we could spend more of our money on London and less on subsidising people whose main leisure activity is sagging off London.
The old chestnut that London funds the rest of the country rather than the reality that it sucks the life blood out of it and no matter how much is spent there compared to the rest of the country the selfish arseholes are never happy. Full of me me me parasites and bloodsuckers.
The numbers speak for themselves. Londoners pay thousands of pounds more in tax than they receive back in government spending. That's just a fact, sorry if it's inconvenient. I'm very happy. I don't even mind subsidising the rest of the country. I'm not from London, I still have plenty of love for the rest of the UK, including the country of my birth (the same one as yours). I'm just sick of being told how awful we are and what a shit hole I live in by people who are taking my money.
I don't mind the people in London. It's just the city itself is awful. Look at it with a cold eye. Unplanned, appallingly cramped, mostly full of third-rate Victorian architecture, overpriced, brutally congested, dirty, noisy and smelly, full of restaurants that offer food no better than anywhere else in the country but provide half the quantity at double the price - if I'm honest, that's particularly what I remember about being an impoverished student there.
That's even before we get on to the issue of its woefully inadequate utilities network, which means it is chronically short of water, and the bizarre public transport system which nobody would probably use if it wasn't for the fact the roads are so twisty it takes even longer to walk than to take the sardine can, er, underground.
(Your other point is wrong as well, incidentally, as the town I work in is a net contributor to the treasury, so I'm not taking your money.)
If you like it, fine. You're welcome. Means I don't have to live there, which I'm even happier about because it's just not a nice place to be.
Edit - I will admit I do find it annoying when people preach at me that I should love London because it 'subsidises everywhere else.' From that point of view, you should love all farmers in Oxfordshire because they allow the residue from your treated sewage to be spread on their fields. Or the people of the Thames Valley for providing you with water.
I don't want love, indifference would be fine. It's the constant compulsive slagging off of London by people who don't live in London, don't know London and seem convinced that London is leeching off them that I find so monumentally boring, especially as there are things in London that need money spent on them, but apparently there's no money. Most of the horrible things you attribute to London could be applied to more or less every town and city in Britain. We live in a country built by the Victorians in a hurry and on the cheap and have been living with the consequences ever since.
But I do know London. Know it far better than I want to. Have spent much more time there than I ever wanted to. So you're wrong again.
Yes, that's a perfectly fair point about many towns and cities have the same issues, particularly in terms of appalling urban planning. You are talking after all to somebody who is in the Birmingham commuter ring and used to commute into Bristol. But very few of them have them on the scale of London, simply because the sheer size of it brings its own major problems in that regard.
As for indifference, you're trying to persuade me it's brilliant. Which it isn't. You'd be on a far better wicket pointing out that precisely because of its size and economic clout most of its problems are intractable and therefore something you have to put up with if you want to live there. Then - understand why most of us actually don't, having made the choice to live elsewhere (and yes, in my case it was a choice, I had the option to work there and ran a mile).
Well, well, well. Just seen this 20 min. or so ago on BBC. Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru's ruling bodies have approved a co-operation deal between the parties in the Senedd. Among the issues to be addressed are 'second homes', although the Conservatives have pointed out there's no mention of the NHS.
So the Senedd will be funding second homes for the MSes?
When you look at that and the fact all new fixes will cost £bns and save 5.5 minutes max between York and London I really do wonder why the IRP got their figures from.
Tory Red Wall MP Christian Wakeford tells T&G he is considering voting against the Government this week on changes to means testing on social care. "We're changing the goalposts. We need movement on this because it doesn't seem right" @TimesRadio
Lots of anger among Tory MPs on social care changes - snuck out on Weds - with vote expected tomorrow.
Ex-Cabinet minister Robert Buckland tells @LBCNews he will rebel - and there's "a lot of concern" among Tory colleagues. "Govt should look again at this," he adds.
People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?
What a disgusting post
Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth
Who on earth do you think you are
Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.
There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
When Charles says 'London' he's thinking of the view over Regent's Park from St John's Wood, not of Ilford or Edmonton or Peckham or Hounslow.
I'd rather live in Peckham than St John's Wood. I virtually do live in Peckham in fact, SE15 is just a couple of streets over. Suburbia isn't grim, it's an oasis of parks and gardens, with thriving communities, friendly neighbours, decent schools, independent shops and restaurants, a plethora of activities for children, a thriving arts scene and reasonable commutes to work in Central London. It's only over priced because it's popular. The only thing that could improve London? If we could spend more of our money on London and less on subsidising people whose main leisure activity is sagging off London.
The old chestnut that London funds the rest of the country rather than the reality that it sucks the life blood out of it and no matter how much is spent there compared to the rest of the country the selfish arseholes are never happy. Full of me me me parasites and bloodsuckers.
The numbers speak for themselves. Londoners pay thousands of pounds more in tax than they receive back in government spending. That's just a fact, sorry if it's inconvenient. I'm very happy. I don't even mind subsidising the rest of the country. I'm not from London, I still have plenty of love for the rest of the UK, including the country of my birth (the same one as yours). I'm just sick of being told how awful we are and what a shit hole I live in by people who are taking my money.
I don't mind the people in London. It's just the city itself is awful. Look at it with a cold eye. Unplanned, appallingly cramped, mostly full of third-rate Victorian architecture, overpriced, brutally congested, dirty, noisy and smelly, full of restaurants that offer food no better than anywhere else in the country but provide half the quantity at double the price - if I'm honest, that's particularly what I remember about being an impoverished student there.
That's even before we get on to the issue of its woefully inadequate utilities network, which means it is chronically short of water, and the bizarre public transport system which nobody would probably use if it wasn't for the fact the roads are so twisty it takes even longer to walk than to take the sardine can, er, underground.
(Your other point is wrong as well, incidentally, as the town I work in is a net contributor to the treasury, so I'm not taking your money.)
If you like it, fine. You're welcome. Means I don't have to live there, which I'm even happier about because it's just not a nice place to be.
Edit - I will admit I do find it annoying when people preach at me that I should love London because it 'subsidises everywhere else.' From that point of view, you should love all farmers in Oxfordshire because they allow the residue from your treated sewage to be spread on their fields. Or the people of the Thames Valley for providing you with water.
I don't want love, indifference would be fine. It's the constant compulsive slagging off of London by people who don't live in London, don't know London and seem convinced that London is leeching off them that I find so monumentally boring, especially as there are things in London that need money spent on them, but apparently there's no money. Most of the horrible things you attribute to London could be applied to more or less every town and city in Britain. We live in a country built by the Victorians in a hurry and on the cheap and have been living with the consequences ever since.
London's most immediate problem (and it's one that is going to scare Khan and TFL in the new future) is that there is no way Boris can agree to given TFL the money it needs to survive now.
So TFL is going to have to start working out how to rapidly cut costs...
Separately, the whole point of investing up North is that for a one off sum of money (albeit a lot) is that by making the north more efficient there should would be more tax revenue generated up north.
Tory Red Wall MP Christian Wakeford tells T&G he is considering voting against the Government this week on changes to means testing on social care. "We're changing the goalposts. We need movement on this because it doesn't seem right" @TimesRadio
Lots of anger among Tory MPs on social care changes - snuck out on Weds - with vote expected tomorrow.
Ex-Cabinet minister Robert Buckland tells @LBCNews he will rebel - and there's "a lot of concern" among Tory colleagues. "Govt should look again at this," he adds.
The Whips along with Downing St and the government have lost a lot of credibility...
But are the details really clear though for a proper commons speech picking it apart? There’s a pattern where PM May liked her lectern to speak to the nation, but lot of it sounded like talking to her own party. Whilst Boris government don’t use that method and announcing policy when on a jolly or through newspapers, when they are supposed to use parliament first aren’t they, before get their bit in press and go on relevant field trip? They don’t even use the nice and new US politics type briefing room instead, they tend to use that for new cinema releases.
My point is, if this gets sussed out, vote today with details via our unchallenged spin in media later gets sussed out, might it make them unpopular? Because it’s hard to criticise and vote against in parliament. Do you see what I mean?
If anyone on here still watches GBNews can they say what is the dark tide referred to by Oliver? I'd hate to think he was a racist twat as well as all the other kinds of twat.
When you look at that and the fact all new fixes will cost £bns and save 5.5 minutes max between York and London I really do wonder why the IRP got their figures from.
People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?
What a disgusting post
Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth
Who on earth do you think you are
Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.
There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
When Charles says 'London' he's thinking of the view over Regent's Park from St John's Wood, not of Ilford or Edmonton or Peckham or Hounslow.
I'd rather live in Peckham than St John's Wood. I virtually do live in Peckham in fact, SE15 is just a couple of streets over. Suburbia isn't grim, it's an oasis of parks and gardens, with thriving communities, friendly neighbours, decent schools, independent shops and restaurants, a plethora of activities for children, a thriving arts scene and reasonable commutes to work in Central London. It's only over priced because it's popular. The only thing that could improve London? If we could spend more of our money on London and less on subsidising people whose main leisure activity is sagging off London.
The old chestnut that London funds the rest of the country rather than the reality that it sucks the life blood out of it and no matter how much is spent there compared to the rest of the country the selfish arseholes are never happy. Full of me me me parasites and bloodsuckers.
The numbers speak for themselves. Londoners pay thousands of pounds more in tax than they receive back in government spending. That's just a fact, sorry if it's inconvenient. I'm very happy. I don't even mind subsidising the rest of the country. I'm not from London, I still have plenty of love for the rest of the UK, including the country of my birth (the same one as yours). I'm just sick of being told how awful we are and what a shit hole I live in by people who are taking my money.
I don't mind the people in London. It's just the city itself is awful. Look at it with a cold eye. Unplanned, appallingly cramped, mostly full of third-rate Victorian architecture, overpriced, brutally congested, dirty, noisy and smelly, full of restaurants that offer food no better than anywhere else in the country but provide half the quantity at double the price - if I'm honest, that's particularly what I remember about being an impoverished student there.
That's even before we get on to the issue of its woefully inadequate utilities network, which means it is chronically short of water, and the bizarre public transport system which nobody would probably use if it wasn't for the fact the roads are so twisty it takes even longer to walk than to take the sardine can, er, underground.
(Your other point is wrong as well, incidentally, as the town I work in is a net contributor to the treasury, so I'm not taking your money.)
If you like it, fine. You're welcome. Means I don't have to live there, which I'm even happier about because it's just not a nice place to be.
Edit - I will admit I do find it annoying when people preach at me that I should love London because it 'subsidises everywhere else.' From that point of view, you should love all farmers in Oxfordshire because they allow the residue from your treated sewage to be spread on their fields. Or the people of the Thames Valley for providing you with water.
I don't want love, indifference would be fine. It's the constant compulsive slagging off of London by people who don't live in London, don't know London and seem convinced that London is leeching off them that I find so monumentally boring, especially as there are things in London that need money spent on them, but apparently there's no money. Most of the horrible things you attribute to London could be applied to more or less every town and city in Britain. We live in a country built by the Victorians in a hurry and on the cheap and have been living with the consequences ever since.
But I do know London. Know it far better than I want to. Have spent much more time there than I ever wanted to. So you're wrong again.
Yes, that's a perfectly fair point about many towns and cities have the same issues, particularly in terms of appalling urban planning. You are talking after all to somebody who is in the Birmingham commuter ring and used to commute into Bristol. But very few of them have them on the scale of London, simply because the sheer size of it brings its own major problems in that regard.
As for indifference, you're trying to persuade me it's brilliant. Which it isn't. You'd be on a far better wicket pointing out that precisely because of its size and economic clout most of its problems are intractable and therefore something you have to put up with if you want to live there. Then - understand why most of us actually don't, having made the choice to live elsewhere (and yes, in my case it was a choice, I had the option to work there and ran a mile).
I wasn't talking about you specifically, perhaps you are speaking from a position of profound knowledge but most of the legions of bitter uninformed London haters aren't. London *is* brilliant. I can go and see a West End show or visit a world class gallery or museum and then take a bus home in about 40 minutes for about a pound. I can walk for hours through beautiful parks and open spaces. The high population density supports an almost infinite array of activities for my kids, all within a ten minute walk or drive, including swimming, ballet, contemporary dance, theatre, football, Scouts. Schools and school friends are all a short walk away. The schools are good with motivated pupils and hard working teachers. Every kind of food is available on our doorstep, and local restaurants are no more expensive than those I've been to in other cities. Our neighbourhood is friendly and diverse, nobody makes any comments about our mixed race kids. When my wife and I wanted to write a play, we found talented collaborators among our friends and neighbours and a great local fringe theatre to stage it. Our Victorian house is far from shoddily built. So yeah, I love London.
Angela Rayner @AngelaRayner · 2h . @Jacob_Rees_Mogg didn't declare a £6 million personal loan that he was able to borrow at a much lower interest rate than my constituents would have access to.
His cut-price loan is a financial benefit to and must be declared as an interest. This must be investigated.
I see we’re slagging off the metropolis again today. A tale as old as time, since the rural Babylonians started moaning about Nineveh being a crowded dump yet somehow also unfairly favoured with all that irrigation spending.
Meanwhile here in Brockley the Sunday walkers are crunching through the fallen leaves up to Hilly Fields for a nice coffee and all is looking rather non-shitheapy.
I suspect Sainz also has a 3 place penalty on the grid.
Surely inevitable? I mean, speeding past yellows is a bit off and he'd already been warned for his behaviour at the end of qualifying last week?
Actually no penalty for Sainz
Said he didn't see the flag but did see the car so slowed down which the telemetry confirmed.
Grid is
1. Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) 2. Pierre Gasly (AlphaTauri) 3. Fernando Alonso (Alpine) 4. Lando Norris (McLaren) 5. Valtteri Bottas (Mercedes)* 6. Carlos Sainz (Ferrari) 7. Max Verstappen (Red Bull)** 8. Yuki Tsunoda (AlphaTauri) 9. Esteban Ocon (Alpine) 10. Sebastian Vettel (Aston Martin)
Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.
Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings
Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.
You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.
Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.
We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
What are all the army bods doing. Get them out of the barracks and lined up along the south coast every night, not take long to sort it out.
Thank you Priti.
P.S. I assume you are arming them.
Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up, take them to somewhere else and process them there. Any genuine asylum seekers will end up back in UK, the roasters will end up elsewhere. Making it like going on a very extended holiday with hotels waiting , spending money etc is not working for sure.
"take them to somewhere else" - glad to see you've got a fully worked out solution there.
Not my choice but earlier suggestion of Falklands Isles sounds reasonable, perhaps one of the UK tax havens.
Why do you think it will be easier for a few thousand people living on some small barren islands in the South Atlantic to accommodate and process refugees than a wealthy country of 65 million people?
Because a hut on a windswept hillside twenty miles from Port Stanley would be a rather less attractive location in which to end up than a flat in Rochdale. If it's made abundantly clear that boat arrivals won't be allowed to stay then it will become pointless for any more people to pay the traffickers to buy them a dinghy, and the crossings will stop. This benefits future waves of migrants, because they'll save their money and can try settling in a continental country instead, benefits the majority of the UK electorate that doesn't want the migrants, and deprives the traffickers of their livelihood.
The key obstacle, of course, is that the islanders evidently wouldn't be asked to pay for any of this, it would be down to the Treasury, and it would rather wave the people through than part with the cash. If offshoring were cheap it would already have been done.
OK so you process them on the Falkland Islands. For now we ignore the question of what the Falkland Islanders might want (even though we fought a war forty years ago to defend their sovereign rights). Most of them turn out to be refugees (because most of them are refugees). What next? They stay on the Falklands, where they rapidly outnumber the native population? We bring them back to the UK anyway? What exactly?
I dare say that the islanders would be quite happy to help Britain in exchange for the ongoing protection of the armed forces, infrastructure improvements and employment opportunities associated with the holding facility, and probably a large stack of cash as well.
None of the arrivals would count as refugees because the Government would simply have passed legislation through Parliament declaring all irregular boat arrivals personae non grata (with a helpful clause declaring the Act to be superior to all other relevant legislation, including the HRA, thus preventing the courts from intervening to have any of them shipped back again.) The law is, after all, what Parliament says it is.
Once future waves of boat people realise that their reward for buying a dinghy - if they don't drown in the Channel first - is to be consigned to an oubliette in the Southern Ocean then they'll stop coming, settle somewhere else instead, and the problem is solved. The holding facility can then be mothballed over a number of years as alternative destinations are found for those already housed there.
And yes, this is all very nasty, but what alternative solution do you have? We know several facts about the state of the world: that long-distance migration from poorer to wealthier countries has become much more prevalent, that it is only going to keep increasing (as economic development means that more people in less well-off countries accumulate enough money to pay for the journey to Europe, and as the effects of climate change bite,) and that there is neither the popular will nor the practical capacity to accommodate millions and millions of refugees and economic migrants in states such as ours. In particular, if you refuse to address the lack of popular consent for unchecked irregular migration, then you're advocating the suspension of democracy simply in order to give the migrants what they want.
Persuading them to stop coming now, rather than when there are 100,000 or 200,000 crossing every year, or simply having ministers throw their hands up in the air and give up, is merely the lesser of the variety of evils with which the country is confronted.
There are no easy solutions, maybe no solutions at all other than to accept it's going to happen. Climate change is probably going to make life intolerable in parts of the world with billions of people living in them. Some of those people will end up here. The next few decades are going to be messy. The reality though is that we have more ability to accommodate people than many other countries, including many who already have accommodated far more than us already. I would also note that our fertility rate is well short of the population replacement level and we have a labour shortage. I think the UK population needs to wake up to the reality of the world we live in and not simply say no. It's a suicidally brave politician who says any of this obviously.
Let’s have a look at that argument. You are basically saying “it won’t change, we should live with it.” First of all, that is wrong. It can change. As @pigeon had pointed out, if migrants think we will open our borders, they will come a la Merkel. There is enough evidence to know what happens when you throw your arms up.
Second, re we have enough space. Really? Look at all the problems caused currently when talking about building new homes etc. Now you want to multiple that by a nth factor, and when it’s against the will of the population.
Third, your fertility / labour shortage argument. As @pigeon said, a lower fertility / population rate may not be a bad thing. But you also forget that things change and we may be left with a situation of a big permanent uplift in population when the rationale for bringing in people has disappeared. Look at the mill towns in Lancashire and Yorkshire. Tens of thousands of workers imported from SE Asia on the grounds the factories wanted cheap Labour. Ten years later, those factories are gone but the effects of the demographic change are permanent.
As the Poland / Belarus dispute has shown, there are no easy solutions but we are going to have to get less squeamish. No one is going to be taking up the Belarus’ offer to fly them from Iraq to Minsk any more.
People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?
Strong stuff! - and I can't be signing off on "trash" about the working class people of the North from which I come and who I know so well. They face a test, though, is how I look at it.
It was enormously understandable that in Dec 19 they flocked to the bouncy 'can-do' persona of Boris "Boris" Johnson and his promise to Get Done the Brexit they'd voted for 3 years earlier and seen frustrated at every turn.
But if they were to stick with him next time when all the evidence available to anybody with a brain cell and a willingness to use it is that he and his government don't care two hoots about them, this would be something else entirely. It would show they are fools.
It would also show Johnson and the Tories to be astute readers of the room, very in touch with the people they seek to govern. Because that (fools) is precisely their evaluation of the working class people of the North and it's what they are counting on.
Its a complex and locally varied situation but here are some advantages the Conservatives might have in northern parts:
1) Better to have a government which doesn't give two hoots for you than one which is actively malign
2) Their new MPs - these constituencies have had decades of MPs who didn't give two hoots but now have MPs who are actually making an effort
3) Areas which are improving irrespective of government but for which the government will get some benefit
4) Areas which were less Conservative than they demographically should have been but for which 2019 was the reset
2 and 3 are good points. 4 possibly, not sure. 1 is a nonsense. Hope you didn't put it first because you think it's the strongest point.
If anyone on here still watches GBNews can they say what is the dark tide referred to by Oliver? I'd hate to think he was a racist twat as well as all the other kinds of twat.
Could it be a heartfelt warning about climate change?
People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?
What a disgusting post
Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth
Who on earth do you think you are
Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.
There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
When Charles says 'London' he's thinking of the view over Regent's Park from St John's Wood, not of Ilford or Edmonton or Peckham or Hounslow.
I'd rather live in Peckham than St John's Wood. I virtually do live in Peckham in fact, SE15 is just a couple of streets over. Suburbia isn't grim, it's an oasis of parks and gardens, with thriving communities, friendly neighbours, decent schools, independent shops and restaurants, a plethora of activities for children, a thriving arts scene and reasonable commutes to work in Central London. It's only over priced because it's popular. The only thing that could improve London? If we could spend more of our money on London and less on subsidising people whose main leisure activity is sagging off London.
The old chestnut that London funds the rest of the country rather than the reality that it sucks the life blood out of it and no matter how much is spent there compared to the rest of the country the selfish arseholes are never happy. Full of me me me parasites and bloodsuckers.
The numbers speak for themselves. Londoners pay thousands of pounds more in tax than they receive back in government spending. That's just a fact, sorry if it's inconvenient. I'm very happy. I don't even mind subsidising the rest of the country. I'm not from London, I still have plenty of love for the rest of the UK, including the country of my birth (the same one as yours). I'm just sick of being told how awful we are and what a shit hole I live in by people who are taking my money.
I don't mind the people in London. It's just the city itself is awful. Look at it with a cold eye. Unplanned, appallingly cramped, mostly full of third-rate Victorian architecture, overpriced, brutally congested, dirty, noisy and smelly, full of restaurants that offer food no better than anywhere else in the country but provide half the quantity at double the price - if I'm honest, that's particularly what I remember about being an impoverished student there.
That's even before we get on to the issue of its woefully inadequate utilities network, which means it is chronically short of water, and the bizarre public transport system which nobody would probably use if it wasn't for the fact the roads are so twisty it takes even longer to walk than to take the sardine can, er, underground.
(Your other point is wrong as well, incidentally, as the town I work in is a net contributor to the treasury, so I'm not taking your money.)
If you like it, fine. You're welcome. Means I don't have to live there, which I'm even happier about because it's just not a nice place to be.
Edit - I will admit I do find it annoying when people preach at me that I should love London because it 'subsidises everywhere else.' From that point of view, you should love all farmers in Oxfordshire because they allow the residue from your treated sewage to be spread on their fields. Or the people of the Thames Valley for providing you with water.
I don't want love, indifference would be fine. It's the constant compulsive slagging off of London by people who don't live in London, don't know London and seem convinced that London is leeching off them that I find so monumentally boring, especially as there are things in London that need money spent on them, but apparently there's no money. Most of the horrible things you attribute to London could be applied to more or less every town and city in Britain. We live in a country built by the Victorians in a hurry and on the cheap and have been living with the consequences ever since.
But I do know London. Know it far better than I want to. Have spent much more time there than I ever wanted to. So you're wrong again.
Yes, that's a perfectly fair point about many towns and cities have the same issues, particularly in terms of appalling urban planning. You are talking after all to somebody who is in the Birmingham commuter ring and used to commute into Bristol. But very few of them have them on the scale of London, simply because the sheer size of it brings its own major problems in that regard.
As for indifference, you're trying to persuade me it's brilliant. Which it isn't. You'd be on a far better wicket pointing out that precisely because of its size and economic clout most of its problems are intractable and therefore something you have to put up with if you want to live there. Then - understand why most of us actually don't, having made the choice to live elsewhere (and yes, in my case it was a choice, I had the option to work there and ran a mile).
I wasn't talking about you specifically, perhaps you are speaking from a position of profound knowledge but most of the legions of bitter uninformed London haters aren't. London *is* brilliant. I can go and see a West End show or visit a world class gallery or museum and then take a bus home in about 40 minutes for about a pound. I can walk for hours through beautiful parks and open spaces. The high population density supports an almost infinite array of activities for my kids, all within a ten minute walk or drive, including swimming, ballet, contemporary dance, theatre, football, Scouts. Schools and school friends are all a short walk away. The schools are good with motivated pupils and hard working teachers. Every kind of food is available on our doorstep, and local restaurants are no more expensive than those I've been to in other cities. Our neighbourhood is friendly and diverse, nobody makes any comments about our mixed race kids. When my wife and I wanted to write a play, we found talented collaborators among our friends and neighbours and a great local fringe theatre to stage it. Our Victorian house is far from shoddily built. So yeah, I love London.
I think we're starting to wander off the point here.
My original comment was a fairly flippant response to a comment from RCS that I don't live in London so it's not surprising my house is cheaper. At the same time, it's true. If you believe all that you've written about London that's fine but it definitely isn't my experience of a wide variety of different parts of it. I've found it to be a thoroughly unpleasant place for all the reasons I give, and like I say, the best thing about it was always the sign pointing me home.
What does intrigue me is how defensive Londoners get (and very quickly) when somebody points out their city's shortcomings. You tell me Cannock is an unplanned shitheap full of bad architecture and I'll cheerfully agree with you. It is. The fact it has many other redeeming features including the most glorious surrounding countryside, excellent and not expensive restaurants, theatres and live music venues that afford top-quality productions, affordable housing, an ample water supply and superb transport links coupled to a central geographical location that mean I can be pretty much anywhere in England in two hours more than makes up for that. Only one of those really applies to London. But it's intriguing that many who live there don't see it.
Equally, I suppose if you don't like it you don't stay.
If anyone on here still watches GBNews can they say what is the dark tide referred to by Oliver? I'd hate to think he was a racist twat as well as all the other kinds of twat.
Could it be a heartfelt warning about climate change?
Found it, it's mainly pseudo libertarian antivax twattery with a smidgeon of racist twattery chucked in.
'We turn blind eyes and deaf ears to uncounted numbers of girls raped and abused in Rotherham and other towns all over England, for fear of upsetting community relations.'
Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.
Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings
Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.
You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.
Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.
We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
What are all the army bods doing. Get them out of the barracks and lined up along the south coast every night, not take long to sort it out.
Thank you Priti.
P.S. I assume you are arming them.
Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up, take them to somewhere else and process them there. Any genuine asylum seekers will end up back in UK, the roasters will end up elsewhere. Making it like going on a very extended holiday with hotels waiting , spending money etc is not working for sure.
"take them to somewhere else" - glad to see you've got a fully worked out solution there.
Not my choice but earlier suggestion of Falklands Isles sounds reasonable, perhaps one of the UK tax havens.
Why do you think it will be easier for a few thousand people living on some small barren islands in the South Atlantic to accommodate and process refugees than a wealthy country of 65 million people?
Because a hut on a windswept hillside twenty miles from Port Stanley would be a rather less attractive location in which to end up than a flat in Rochdale.
Dunno. Depends which flat in Rochdale...
Again though, you can plan a reception and processing centre on the moon. You actually need to detail the illegal migrants first to then render them to Camp Priti. And thats where the whole thing falls down - you have to actually stop and detain them rather than them just walking off like here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTveaC4vVDo
Oh absolutely, and that kind of thing also costs lots of money to implement. All the more reason for the Government not to bother.
Until the tories are outflanked by an electoral force that is even more malignantly nationalist and xenophobic they aren't going to do anything about the Channel situation.
It's a little bit like when a stray dog is trotting across your lawn - you don't want it to do anything.
I suspect Sainz also has a 3 place penalty on the grid.
Surely inevitable? I mean, speeding past yellows is a bit off and he'd already been warned for his behaviour at the end of qualifying last week?
Actually no penalty for Sainz
Said he didn't see the flag but did see the car so slowed down which the telemetry confirmed.
Sorry, I was talking about Vercrash'em.
Apparently Mr Horner has just told Sky TV that he thinks the problem was a rogue marshal waving a flag, and that the organisers need to do a better job of controlling the marshals.
Of all the stupid things that man has said over the years, that’s probably the most stupid. How would he feel if the hundreds of volunteers who turn up each weekend so they can go racing, decide not to bother?
Charged with bringing the sport into disrepute in 3, 2, 1…
If anyone on here still watches GBNews can they say what is the dark tide referred to by Oliver? I'd hate to think he was a racist twat as well as all the other kinds of twat.
Could it be a heartfelt warning about climate change?
Europe is going to become more attractive to migrants in the coming decades. The relative ease of travel towards the borders plus increasing stresses of wars and climate change will see increased numbers of refugees. However, this will be swamped by a massive increase in economic migrants as countries in Africa become relatively wealthier - communities and families will find it easier to afford to pay people smugglers to traffic their young men to the Mediterranean coast hoping for work in Europe.
In the end we will either have to have strongly militarily enforced borders or fix the demand side labour issue or both - once again, I recommend @RCS1000 for his video about how the Swiss manage to keep illegal immigration low by making it incredibly unattractive for employers to use illegal immigrant labour.
I suspect Sainz also has a 3 place penalty on the grid.
Surely inevitable? I mean, speeding past yellows is a bit off and he'd already been warned for his behaviour at the end of qualifying last week?
Actually no penalty for Sainz
Said he didn't see the flag but did see the car so slowed down which the telemetry confirmed.
Sorry, I was talking about Vercrash'em.
Apparently Mr Horner has just told Sky TV that he thinks the problem was a rogue marshal waving a flag, and that the organisers need to do a better job of controlling the marshals.
Of all the stupid things that man has said over the years, that’s probably the most stupid. How would he feel if the hundreds of volunteers who turn up each weekend so they can go racing, decide not to bother?
Charged with bringing the sport into disrepute in 3, 2, 1…
+1 - could you give him community service rather than a fine though. Say he needs to marshall the next X F1 practices and races so that he understands what they do (preferably being given the most dangerous point at each race).
If anyone on here still watches GBNews can they say what is the dark tide referred to by Oliver? I'd hate to think he was a racist twat as well as all the other kinds of twat.
Could it be a heartfelt warning about climate change?
Europe is going to become more attractive to migrants in the coming decades. The relative ease of travel towards the borders plus increasing stresses of wars and climate change will see increased numbers of refugees. However, this will be swamped by a massive increase in economic migrants as countries in Africa become relatively wealthier - communities and families will find it easier to afford to pay people smugglers to traffic their young men to the Mediterranean coast hoping for work in Europe.
In the end we will either have to have strongly militarily enforced borders or fix the demand side labour issue or both - once again, I recommend @RCS1000 for his video about how the Swiss manage to keep illegal immigration low by making it incredibly unattractive for employers to use illegal immigrant labour.
As I pointed out earlier to do that we also need to have proper ID cards so it's easy to verify that everyone is a legal worker.
I suspect Sainz also has a 3 place penalty on the grid.
Surely inevitable? I mean, speeding past yellows is a bit off and he'd already been warned for his behaviour at the end of qualifying last week?
Actually no penalty for Sainz
Said he didn't see the flag but did see the car so slowed down which the telemetry confirmed.
Sorry, I was talking about Vercrash'em.
Apparently Mr Horner has just told Sky TV that he thinks the problem was a rogue marshal waving a flag, and that the organisers need to do a better job of controlling the marshals.
Of all the stupid things that man has said over the years, that’s probably the most stupid. How would he feel if the hundreds of volunteers who turn up each weekend so they can go racing, decide not to bother?
Charged with bringing the sport into disrepute in 3, 2, 1…
+1 - could you give him community service rather than a fine though. Say he needs to marshall the next X F1 practices and races so that he understands what they do (preferably being given the most dangerous point at each race).
You all need to follow this Twitter account, a parody of Mr Horner.
Hard to tell which is the parody and which is real Mr Horner.
People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?
Strong stuff! - and I can't be signing off on "trash" about the working class people of the North from which I come and who I know so well. They face a test, though, is how I look at it.
It was enormously understandable that in Dec 19 they flocked to the bouncy 'can-do' persona of Boris "Boris" Johnson and his promise to Get Done the Brexit they'd voted for 3 years earlier and seen frustrated at every turn.
But if they were to stick with him next time when all the evidence available to anybody with a brain cell and a willingness to use it is that he and his government don't care two hoots about them, this would be something else entirely. It would show they are fools.
It would also show Johnson and the Tories to be astute readers of the room, very in touch with the people they seek to govern. Because that (fools) is precisely their evaluation of the working class people of the North and it's what they are counting on.
Its a complex and locally varied situation but here are some advantages the Conservatives might have in northern parts:
1) Better to have a government which doesn't give two hoots for you than one which is actively malign
2) Their new MPs - these constituencies have had decades of MPs who didn't give two hoots but now have MPs who are actually making an effort
3) Areas which are improving irrespective of government but for which the government will get some benefit
4) Areas which were less Conservative than they demographically should have been but for which 2019 was the reset
2 and 3 are good points. 4 possibly, not sure. 1 is a nonsense. Hope you didn't put it first because you think it's the strongest point.
1) Is very much about local perceptions - in mining areas, as an example, the Conservative party was widely viewed as 'the enemy'. I think that has now gone. The Conservatives might still be viewed as incompetent, self-serving and out-of-touch but that's different from being actively malign. The opposite side of the coin might be university constituencies with the perception of the Conservatives now being that of 'the enemy' far more than it was in previous decades.
4) I remember around 2010 posting here the demographics of some Lincolnshire constituency (South Holland perhaps) and those of a South Yorkshire constituency (maybe Rother Valley) - they were pretty much identical on age, education, race, home ownership. I suggested the different voting habits for seemingly similar places came from one traditionally digging potatoes out of the ground and the other coal. Well the coal is now gone so what's to stop the voting patterns of the two places becoming much closer.
I have said many times that Keir Starmer seems like the perfect candidate when he’s up against Boris Johnson when he’s unpopular.
The question is whether he will be up against Boris Johnson
I remain utterly convinced that he will be, yes. For all the shit going down atm he won a landslide majority less than 2 years ago. I can't see him not being given another election unless he doesn't want it. And I can't see him not wanting it.
If anyone on here still watches GBNews can they say what is the dark tide referred to by Oliver? I'd hate to think he was a racist twat as well as all the other kinds of twat.
Could it be a heartfelt warning about climate change?
Europe is going to become more attractive to migrants in the coming decades. The relative ease of travel towards the borders plus increasing stresses of wars and climate change will see increased numbers of refugees. However, this will be swamped by a massive increase in economic migrants as countries in Africa become relatively wealthier - communities and families will find it easier to afford to pay people smugglers to traffic their young men to the Mediterranean coast hoping for work in Europe.
In the end we will either have to have strongly militarily enforced borders or fix the demand side labour issue or both - once again, I recommend @RCS1000 for his video about how the Swiss manage to keep illegal immigration low by making it incredibly unattractive for employers to use illegal immigrant labour.
As I pointed out earlier to do that we also need to have proper ID cards so it's easy to verify that everyone is a legal worker.
Automatic £10,000+ fines should focus minds thou.
It is not just the employment side but also the social welfare / health care system side of the equation. You come to the UK, you will be housed in accommodation, have free access to health care, a support system and social security payments. Even if you don't get a job, that is a vast improvement on what you have. If you have several children, and so you need to be put in a bigger accommodation, so much the better.
If anyone on here still watches GBNews can they say what is the dark tide referred to by Oliver? I'd hate to think he was a racist twat as well as all the other kinds of twat.
Could it be a heartfelt warning about climate change?
Europe is going to become more attractive to migrants in the coming decades. The relative ease of travel towards the borders plus increasing stresses of wars and climate change will see increased numbers of refugees. However, this will be swamped by a massive increase in economic migrants as countries in Africa become relatively wealthier - communities and families will find it easier to afford to pay people smugglers to traffic their young men to the Mediterranean coast hoping for work in Europe.
In the end we will either have to have strongly militarily enforced borders or fix the demand side labour issue or both - once again, I recommend @RCS1000 for his video about how the Swiss manage to keep illegal immigration low by making it incredibly unattractive for employers to use illegal immigrant labour.
As I pointed out earlier to do that we also need to have proper ID cards so it's easy to verify that everyone is a legal worker.
People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?
What a disgusting post
Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth
Who on earth do you think you are
Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.
There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
When Charles says 'London' he's thinking of the view over Regent's Park from St John's Wood, not of Ilford or Edmonton or Peckham or Hounslow.
I'd rather live in Peckham than St John's Wood. I virtually do live in Peckham in fact, SE15 is just a couple of streets over. Suburbia isn't grim, it's an oasis of parks and gardens, with thriving communities, friendly neighbours, decent schools, independent shops and restaurants, a plethora of activities for children, a thriving arts scene and reasonable commutes to work in Central London. It's only over priced because it's popular. The only thing that could improve London? If we could spend more of our money on London and less on subsidising people whose main leisure activity is sagging off London.
The old chestnut that London funds the rest of the country rather than the reality that it sucks the life blood out of it and no matter how much is spent there compared to the rest of the country the selfish arseholes are never happy. Full of me me me parasites and bloodsuckers.
The numbers speak for themselves. Londoners pay thousands of pounds more in tax than they receive back in government spending. That's just a fact, sorry if it's inconvenient. I'm very happy. I don't even mind subsidising the rest of the country. I'm not from London, I still have plenty of love for the rest of the UK, including the country of my birth (the same one as yours). I'm just sick of being told how awful we are and what a shit hole I live in by people who are taking my money.
I don't mind the people in London. It's just the city itself is awful. Look at it with a cold eye. Unplanned, appallingly cramped, mostly full of third-rate Victorian architecture, overpriced, brutally congested, dirty, noisy and smelly, full of restaurants that offer food no better than anywhere else in the country but provide half the quantity at double the price - if I'm honest, that's particularly what I remember about being an impoverished student there.
That's even before we get on to the issue of its woefully inadequate utilities network, which means it is chronically short of water, and the bizarre public transport system which nobody would probably use if it wasn't for the fact the roads are so twisty it takes even longer to walk than to take the sardine can, er, underground.
(Your other point is wrong as well, incidentally, as the town I work in is a net contributor to the treasury, so I'm not taking your money.)
If you like it, fine. You're welcome. Means I don't have to live there, which I'm even happier about because it's just not a nice place to be.
Edit - I will admit I do find it annoying when people preach at me that I should love London because it 'subsidises everywhere else.' From that point of view, you should love all farmers in Oxfordshire because they allow the residue from your treated sewage to be spread on their fields. Or the people of the Thames Valley for providing you with water.
I don't want love, indifference would be fine. It's the constant compulsive slagging off of London by people who don't live in London, don't know London and seem convinced that London is leeching off them that I find so monumentally boring, especially as there are things in London that need money spent on them, but apparently there's no money. Most of the horrible things you attribute to London could be applied to more or less every town and city in Britain. We live in a country built by the Victorians in a hurry and on the cheap and have been living with the consequences ever since.
But I do know London. Know it far better than I want to. Have spent much more time there than I ever wanted to. So you're wrong again.
Yes, that's a perfectly fair point about many towns and cities have the same issues, particularly in terms of appalling urban planning. You are talking after all to somebody who is in the Birmingham commuter ring and used to commute into Bristol. But very few of them have them on the scale of London, simply because the sheer size of it brings its own major problems in that regard.
As for indifference, you're trying to persuade me it's brilliant. Which it isn't. You'd be on a far better wicket pointing out that precisely because of its size and economic clout most of its problems are intractable and therefore something you have to put up with if you want to live there. Then - understand why most of us actually don't, having made the choice to live elsewhere (and yes, in my case it was a choice, I had the option to work there and ran a mile).
I wasn't talking about you specifically, perhaps you are speaking from a position of profound knowledge but most of the legions of bitter uninformed London haters aren't. London *is* brilliant. I can go and see a West End show or visit a world class gallery or museum and then take a bus home in about 40 minutes for about a pound. I can walk for hours through beautiful parks and open spaces. The high population density supports an almost infinite array of activities for my kids, all within a ten minute walk or drive, including swimming, ballet, contemporary dance, theatre, football, Scouts. Schools and school friends are all a short walk away. The schools are good with motivated pupils and hard working teachers. Every kind of food is available on our doorstep, and local restaurants are no more expensive than those I've been to in other cities. Our neighbourhood is friendly and diverse, nobody makes any comments about our mixed race kids. When my wife and I wanted to write a play, we found talented collaborators among our friends and neighbours and a great local fringe theatre to stage it. Our Victorian house is far from shoddily built. So yeah, I love London.
I think we're starting to wander off the point here.
My original comment was a fairly flippant response to a comment from RCS that I don't live in London so it's not surprising my house is cheaper. At the same time, it's true. If you believe all that you've written about London that's fine but it definitely isn't my experience of a wide variety of different parts of it. I've found it to be a thoroughly unpleasant place for all the reasons I give, and like I say, the best thing about it was always the sign pointing me home.
What does intrigue me is how defensive Londoners get (and very quickly) when somebody points out their city's shortcomings. You tell me Cannock is an unplanned shitheap full of bad architecture and I'll cheerfully agree with you. It is. The fact it has many other redeeming features including the most glorious surrounding countryside, excellent and not expensive restaurants, theatres and live music venues that afford top-quality productions, affordable housing, an ample water supply and superb transport links coupled to a central geographical location that mean I can be pretty much anywhere in England in two hours more than makes up for that. Only one of those really applies to London. But it's intriguing that many who live there don't see it.
Equally, I suppose if you don't like it you don't stay.
I'm sure Cannock is lovely, although I've never been and have only the loosest idea of where it is (West Midlands/North West somewhere?) Like I said before, I'm not going to slag off anywhere else. I'm not especially defensive about London, I'm just a bit sick of hearing how terrible it is, when it just manifestly isn't. Probably if I didn't have Covid right now I'd be out enjoying it not getting wound up by people being rude about it. I should probably be fixing the kitchen tap too before we run out of water.
If anyone on here still watches GBNews can they say what is the dark tide referred to by Oliver? I'd hate to think he was a racist twat as well as all the other kinds of twat.
Could it be a heartfelt warning about climate change?
Europe is going to become more attractive to migrants in the coming decades. The relative ease of travel towards the borders plus increasing stresses of wars and climate change will see increased numbers of refugees. However, this will be swamped by a massive increase in economic migrants as countries in Africa become relatively wealthier - communities and families will find it easier to afford to pay people smugglers to traffic their young men to the Mediterranean coast hoping for work in Europe.
In the end we will either have to have strongly militarily enforced borders or fix the demand side labour issue or both - once again, I recommend @RCS1000 for his video about how the Swiss manage to keep illegal immigration low by making it incredibly unattractive for employers to use illegal immigrant labour.
As I pointed out earlier to do that we also need to have proper ID cards so it's easy to verify that everyone is a legal worker.
Automatic £10,000+ fines should focus minds thou.
It is not just the employment side but also the social welfare / health care system side of the equation. You come to the UK, you will be housed in accommodation, have free access to health care, a support system and social security payments. Even if you don't get a job, that is a vast improvement on what you have. If you have several children, and so you need to be put in a bigger accommodation, so much the better.
You seem to have a somewhat rosy view about the plentiful nature of social housing.
I have said many times that Keir Starmer seems like the perfect candidate when he’s up against Boris Johnson when he’s unpopular.
The question is whether he will be up against Boris Johnson
I remain utterly convinced that he will be, yes. For all the shit going down atm he won a landslide majority less than 2 years ago. I can't see him not being given another election unless he doesn't want it. And I can't see him not wanting it.
I'd have agreed with this up until the last week or so. Not so sure now. Really depends on the polling - if it becomes clear over a sustained period that the Tory poll lead has gone, I think they'll want to get Sunak in place in good time for the next election.
If anyone on here still watches GBNews can they say what is the dark tide referred to by Oliver? I'd hate to think he was a racist twat as well as all the other kinds of twat.
Could it be a heartfelt warning about climate change?
Found it, it's mainly pseudo libertarian antivax twattery with a smidgeon of racist twattery chucked in.
'We turn blind eyes and deaf ears to uncounted numbers of girls raped and abused in Rotherham and other towns all over England, for fear of upsetting community relations.'
If anyone on here still watches GBNews can they say what is the dark tide referred to by Oliver? I'd hate to think he was a racist twat as well as all the other kinds of twat.
Could it be a heartfelt warning about climate change?
Found it, it's mainly pseudo libertarian antivax twattery with a smidgeon of racist twattery chucked in.
'We turn blind eyes and deaf ears to uncounted numbers of girls raped and abused in Rotherham and other towns all over England, for fear of upsetting community relations.'
If anyone on here still watches GBNews can they say what is the dark tide referred to by Oliver? I'd hate to think he was a racist twat as well as all the other kinds of twat.
Could it be a heartfelt warning about climate change?
Found it, it's mainly pseudo libertarian antivax twattery with a smidgeon of racist twattery chucked in.
'We turn blind eyes and deaf ears to uncounted numbers of girls raped and abused in Rotherham and other towns all over England, for fear of upsetting community relations.'
People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?
What a disgusting post
Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth
Who on earth do you think you are
Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.
There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
When Charles says 'London' he's thinking of the view over Regent's Park from St John's Wood, not of Ilford or Edmonton or Peckham or Hounslow.
I'd rather live in Peckham than St John's Wood. I virtually do live in Peckham in fact, SE15 is just a couple of streets over. Suburbia isn't grim, it's an oasis of parks and gardens, with thriving communities, friendly neighbours, decent schools, independent shops and restaurants, a plethora of activities for children, a thriving arts scene and reasonable commutes to work in Central London. It's only over priced because it's popular. The only thing that could improve London? If we could spend more of our money on London and less on subsidising people whose main leisure activity is sagging off London.
The old chestnut that London funds the rest of the country rather than the reality that it sucks the life blood out of it and no matter how much is spent there compared to the rest of the country the selfish arseholes are never happy. Full of me me me parasites and bloodsuckers.
The numbers speak for themselves. Londoners pay thousands of pounds more in tax than they receive back in government spending. That's just a fact, sorry if it's inconvenient. I'm very happy. I don't even mind subsidising the rest of the country. I'm not from London, I still have plenty of love for the rest of the UK, including the country of my birth (the same one as yours). I'm just sick of being told how awful we are and what a shit hole I live in by people who are taking my money.
I don't mind the people in London. It's just the city itself is awful. Look at it with a cold eye. Unplanned, appallingly cramped, mostly full of third-rate Victorian architecture, overpriced, brutally congested, dirty, noisy and smelly, full of restaurants that offer food no better than anywhere else in the country but provide half the quantity at double the price - if I'm honest, that's particularly what I remember about being an impoverished student there.
That's even before we get on to the issue of its woefully inadequate utilities network, which means it is chronically short of water, and the bizarre public transport system which nobody would probably use if it wasn't for the fact the roads are so twisty it takes even longer to walk than to take the sardine can, er, underground.
(Your other point is wrong as well, incidentally, as the town I work in is a net contributor to the treasury, so I'm not taking your money.)
If you like it, fine. You're welcome. Means I don't have to live there, which I'm even happier about because it's just not a nice place to be.
Edit - I will admit I do find it annoying when people preach at me that I should love London because it 'subsidises everywhere else.' From that point of view, you should love all farmers in Oxfordshire because they allow the residue from your treated sewage to be spread on their fields. Or the people of the Thames Valley for providing you with water.
London is all those things. But it is also bustling, with world class museums, restaurants, music, theatre, and universities.
You pay a high price to be there - in particular in terms of the price of housing. And it suits some people and at some times of life more than others.
If anyone on here still watches GBNews can they say what is the dark tide referred to by Oliver? I'd hate to think he was a racist twat as well as all the other kinds of twat.
Could it be a heartfelt warning about climate change?
Europe is going to become more attractive to migrants in the coming decades. The relative ease of travel towards the borders plus increasing stresses of wars and climate change will see increased numbers of refugees. However, this will be swamped by a massive increase in economic migrants as countries in Africa become relatively wealthier - communities and families will find it easier to afford to pay people smugglers to traffic their young men to the Mediterranean coast hoping for work in Europe.
In the end we will either have to have strongly militarily enforced borders or fix the demand side labour issue or both - once again, I recommend @RCS1000 for his video about how the Swiss manage to keep illegal immigration low by making it incredibly unattractive for employers to use illegal immigrant labour.
As I pointed out earlier to do that we also need to have proper ID cards so it's easy to verify that everyone is a legal worker.
Automatic £10,000+ fines should focus minds thou.
It is not just the employment side but also the social welfare / health care system side of the equation. You come to the UK, you will be housed in accommodation, have free access to health care, a support system and social security payments. Even if you don't get a job, that is a vast improvement on what you have. If you have several children, and so you need to be put in a bigger accommodation, so much the better.
You seem to have a somewhat rosy view about the plentiful nature of social housing.
+1 - even in Glasgow your typical refugee is stuck in a hotel that is taking them because they can't fill the hotel any other way.
Equally true of most downtrodden seaside resorts
As for money - there does seem to be a two tier approach suggested - those who arrive before applying will get absolutely nothing but those who apply before coming here will receive cash to spend and possibly the right to legally work here.
People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?
What a disgusting post
Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth
Who on earth do you think you are
Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.
There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
When Charles says 'London' he's thinking of the view over Regent's Park from St John's Wood, not of Ilford or Edmonton or Peckham or Hounslow.
I'd rather live in Peckham than St John's Wood. I virtually do live in Peckham in fact, SE15 is just a couple of streets over. Suburbia isn't grim, it's an oasis of parks and gardens, with thriving communities, friendly neighbours, decent schools, independent shops and restaurants, a plethora of activities for children, a thriving arts scene and reasonable commutes to work in Central London. It's only over priced because it's popular. The only thing that could improve London? If we could spend more of our money on London and less on subsidising people whose main leisure activity is sagging off London.
The old chestnut that London funds the rest of the country rather than the reality that it sucks the life blood out of it and no matter how much is spent there compared to the rest of the country the selfish arseholes are never happy. Full of me me me parasites and bloodsuckers.
The numbers speak for themselves. Londoners pay thousands of pounds more in tax than they receive back in government spending. That's just a fact, sorry if it's inconvenient. I'm very happy. I don't even mind subsidising the rest of the country. I'm not from London, I still have plenty of love for the rest of the UK, including the country of my birth (the same one as yours). I'm just sick of being told how awful we are and what a shit hole I live in by people who are taking my money.
I don't mind the people in London. It's just the city itself is awful. Look at it with a cold eye. Unplanned, appallingly cramped, mostly full of third-rate Victorian architecture, overpriced, brutally congested, dirty, noisy and smelly, full of restaurants that offer food no better than anywhere else in the country but provide half the quantity at double the price - if I'm honest, that's particularly what I remember about being an impoverished student there.
That's even before we get on to the issue of its woefully inadequate utilities network, which means it is chronically short of water, and the bizarre public transport system which nobody would probably use if it wasn't for the fact the roads are so twisty it takes even longer to walk than to take the sardine can, er, underground.
(Your other point is wrong as well, incidentally, as the town I work in is a net contributor to the treasury, so I'm not taking your money.)
If you like it, fine. You're welcome. Means I don't have to live there, which I'm even happier about because it's just not a nice place to be.
Edit - I will admit I do find it annoying when people preach at me that I should love London because it 'subsidises everywhere else.' From that point of view, you should love all farmers in Oxfordshire because they allow the residue from your treated sewage to be spread on their fields. Or the people of the Thames Valley for providing you with water.
London is all those things. But it is also bustling, with world class museums, restaurants, music, theatre, and universities.
You pay a high price to be there - in particular in terms of the price of housing. And it suits some people and at some times of life more than others.
I lived in London for five years in the early 90s, when I was in my late teens/early 20s. I loved it, but grew weary of it by the end. I rarely go back, but when I do, I love it - especially when experiencing it with the little 'un, for whom everything is new.
Except... in rush hour. Just one trip in rush hour reminds me why I got the f*** out of town.
In fact, when I was working i used to go into work at seven in the morning - just to avoid the rush hour. Plenty of time to answer emails, do some work, go out to grab a bacon butty from a lovely sandwich place, and then be back at my desk before everyone else arrived.
But London is glorious. Yet there are glorious parts of everywhere in the UK. even Hartlepool.
(I was about to say 'except Middlesborough', but I remembered that had the transporter bridge).
People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?
What a disgusting post
Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth
Who on earth do you think you are
Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.
There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
When Charles says 'London' he's thinking of the view over Regent's Park from St John's Wood, not of Ilford or Edmonton or Peckham or Hounslow.
I'd rather live in Peckham than St John's Wood. I virtually do live in Peckham in fact, SE15 is just a couple of streets over. Suburbia isn't grim, it's an oasis of parks and gardens, with thriving communities, friendly neighbours, decent schools, independent shops and restaurants, a plethora of activities for children, a thriving arts scene and reasonable commutes to work in Central London. It's only over priced because it's popular. The only thing that could improve London? If we could spend more of our money on London and less on subsidising people whose main leisure activity is sagging off London.
The old chestnut that London funds the rest of the country rather than the reality that it sucks the life blood out of it and no matter how much is spent there compared to the rest of the country the selfish arseholes are never happy. Full of me me me parasites and bloodsuckers.
The numbers speak for themselves. Londoners pay thousands of pounds more in tax than they receive back in government spending. That's just a fact, sorry if it's inconvenient. I'm very happy. I don't even mind subsidising the rest of the country. I'm not from London, I still have plenty of love for the rest of the UK, including the country of my birth (the same one as yours). I'm just sick of being told how awful we are and what a shit hole I live in by people who are taking my money.
I don't mind the people in London. It's just the city itself is awful. Look at it with a cold eye. Unplanned, appallingly cramped, mostly full of third-rate Victorian architecture, overpriced, brutally congested, dirty, noisy and smelly, full of restaurants that offer food no better than anywhere else in the country but provide half the quantity at double the price - if I'm honest, that's particularly what I remember about being an impoverished student there.
That's even before we get on to the issue of its woefully inadequate utilities network, which means it is chronically short of water, and the bizarre public transport system which nobody would probably use if it wasn't for the fact the roads are so twisty it takes even longer to walk than to take the sardine can, er, underground.
(Your other point is wrong as well, incidentally, as the town I work in is a net contributor to the treasury, so I'm not taking your money.)
If you like it, fine. You're welcome. Means I don't have to live there, which I'm even happier about because it's just not a nice place to be.
Edit - I will admit I do find it annoying when people preach at me that I should love London because it 'subsidises everywhere else.' From that point of view, you should love all farmers in Oxfordshire because they allow the residue from your treated sewage to be spread on their fields. Or the people of the Thames Valley for providing you with water.
London is all those things. But it is also bustling, with world class museums, restaurants, music, theatre, and universities.
You pay a high price to be there - in particular in terms of the price of housing. And it suits some people and at some times of life more than others.
I lived in London for five years in the early 90s, when I was in my late teens/early 20s. I loved it, but grew weary of it by the end. I rarely go back, but when I do, I love it - especially when experiencing it with the little 'un, for whom everything is new.
Except... in rush hour. Just one trip in rush hour reminds me why I got the f*** out of town.
In fact, when I was working i used to go into work at seven in the morning - just to avoid the rush hour. Plenty of time to answer emails, do some work, go out to grab a bacon butty from a lovely sandwich place, and then be back at my desk before everyone else arrived.
But London is glorious. Yet there are glorious parts of everywhere in the UK. even Hartlepool.
(I was about to say 'except Middlesborough', but I remembered that had the transporter bridge).
People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?
What a disgusting post
Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth
Who on earth do you think you are
Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.
There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
When Charles says 'London' he's thinking of the view over Regent's Park from St John's Wood, not of Ilford or Edmonton or Peckham or Hounslow.
I'd rather live in Peckham than St John's Wood. I virtually do live in Peckham in fact, SE15 is just a couple of streets over. Suburbia isn't grim, it's an oasis of parks and gardens, with thriving communities, friendly neighbours, decent schools, independent shops and restaurants, a plethora of activities for children, a thriving arts scene and reasonable commutes to work in Central London. It's only over priced because it's popular. The only thing that could improve London? If we could spend more of our money on London and less on subsidising people whose main leisure activity is sagging off London.
The old chestnut that London funds the rest of the country rather than the reality that it sucks the life blood out of it and no matter how much is spent there compared to the rest of the country the selfish arseholes are never happy. Full of me me me parasites and bloodsuckers.
The numbers speak for themselves. Londoners pay thousands of pounds more in tax than they receive back in government spending. That's just a fact, sorry if it's inconvenient. I'm very happy. I don't even mind subsidising the rest of the country. I'm not from London, I still have plenty of love for the rest of the UK, including the country of my birth (the same one as yours). I'm just sick of being told how awful we are and what a shit hole I live in by people who are taking my money.
I don't mind the people in London. It's just the city itself is awful. Look at it with a cold eye. Unplanned, appallingly cramped, mostly full of third-rate Victorian architecture, overpriced, brutally congested, dirty, noisy and smelly, full of restaurants that offer food no better than anywhere else in the country but provide half the quantity at double the price - if I'm honest, that's particularly what I remember about being an impoverished student there.
That's even before we get on to the issue of its woefully inadequate utilities network, which means it is chronically short of water, and the bizarre public transport system which nobody would probably use if it wasn't for the fact the roads are so twisty it takes even longer to walk than to take the sardine can, er, underground.
(Your other point is wrong as well, incidentally, as the town I work in is a net contributor to the treasury, so I'm not taking your money.)
If you like it, fine. You're welcome. Means I don't have to live there, which I'm even happier about because it's just not a nice place to be.
Edit - I will admit I do find it annoying when people preach at me that I should love London because it 'subsidises everywhere else.' From that point of view, you should love all farmers in Oxfordshire because they allow the residue from your treated sewage to be spread on their fields. Or the people of the Thames Valley for providing you with water.
I find London a terrific place to live. In addition to the tangibles there's the sense of being at the heart of things. That there's so much you can do is (perversely) particularly important if you don't do much. Eg I like living here now, as a fairly inert body, even more than I did when I was rocketing all over the shop.
I sympathize with your Edit bit though. I don't go with the idea that London subsidizes the rest of the country. It does on fiscal cashflow, yes, but it also sucks in a lot of talent and energy from elsewhere. Places that are therefore denuded of it. I'd like to see it less dominant. Like Boris Johnson pretends he does.
People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?
What a disgusting post
Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth
Who on earth do you think you are
Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.
There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
When Charles says 'London' he's thinking of the view over Regent's Park from St John's Wood, not of Ilford or Edmonton or Peckham or Hounslow.
I'd rather live in Peckham than St John's Wood. I virtually do live in Peckham in fact, SE15 is just a couple of streets over. Suburbia isn't grim, it's an oasis of parks and gardens, with thriving communities, friendly neighbours, decent schools, independent shops and restaurants, a plethora of activities for children, a thriving arts scene and reasonable commutes to work in Central London. It's only over priced because it's popular. The only thing that could improve London? If we could spend more of our money on London and less on subsidising people whose main leisure activity is sagging off London.
The old chestnut that London funds the rest of the country rather than the reality that it sucks the life blood out of it and no matter how much is spent there compared to the rest of the country the selfish arseholes are never happy. Full of me me me parasites and bloodsuckers.
The numbers speak for themselves. Londoners pay thousands of pounds more in tax than they receive back in government spending. That's just a fact, sorry if it's inconvenient. I'm very happy. I don't even mind subsidising the rest of the country. I'm not from London, I still have plenty of love for the rest of the UK, including the country of my birth (the same one as yours). I'm just sick of being told how awful we are and what a shit hole I live in by people who are taking my money.
I don't mind the people in London. It's just the city itself is awful. Look at it with a cold eye. Unplanned, appallingly cramped, mostly full of third-rate Victorian architecture, overpriced, brutally congested, dirty, noisy and smelly, full of restaurants that offer food no better than anywhere else in the country but provide half the quantity at double the price - if I'm honest, that's particularly what I remember about being an impoverished student there.
That's even before we get on to the issue of its woefully inadequate utilities network, which means it is chronically short of water, and the bizarre public transport system which nobody would probably use if it wasn't for the fact the roads are so twisty it takes even longer to walk than to take the sardine can, er, underground.
(Your other point is wrong as well, incidentally, as the town I work in is a net contributor to the treasury, so I'm not taking your money.)
If you like it, fine. You're welcome. Means I don't have to live there, which I'm even happier about because it's just not a nice place to be.
Edit - I will admit I do find it annoying when people preach at me that I should love London because it 'subsidises everywhere else.' From that point of view, you should love all farmers in Oxfordshire because they allow the residue from your treated sewage to be spread on their fields. Or the people of the Thames Valley for providing you with water.
London is all those things. But it is also bustling, with world class museums, restaurants, music, theatre, and universities.
You pay a high price to be there - in particular in terms of the price of housing. And it suits some people and at some times of life more than others.
I lived in London for five years in the early 90s, when I was in my late teens/early 20s. I loved it, but grew weary of it by the end. I rarely go back, but when I do, I love it - especially when experiencing it with the little 'un, for whom everything is new.
Except... in rush hour. Just one trip in rush hour reminds me why I got the f*** out of town.
In fact, when I was working i used to go into work at seven in the morning - just to avoid the rush hour. Plenty of time to answer emails, do some work, go out to grab a bacon butty from a lovely sandwich place, and then be back at my desk before everyone else arrived.
But London is glorious. Yet there are glorious parts of everywhere in the UK. even Hartlepool.
(I was about to say 'except Middlesborough', but I remembered that had the transporter bridge).
That's fine, I never pay any attention to the views of anyone about the town who can't spell it correctly. Fwiw I live in London, absolutely love it, but I also know Middlesbrough well - and I am a lifelong supporter of its football team. The town and its people have many virtues (nowhere but Middlesbrough could have produced a character like Brian Clough in my view) - and the coastline is fantastic.
People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?
What a disgusting post
Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth
Who on earth do you think you are
Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.
There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
When Charles says 'London' he's thinking of the view over Regent's Park from St John's Wood, not of Ilford or Edmonton or Peckham or Hounslow.
I'd rather live in Peckham than St John's Wood. I virtually do live in Peckham in fact, SE15 is just a couple of streets over. Suburbia isn't grim, it's an oasis of parks and gardens, with thriving communities, friendly neighbours, decent schools, independent shops and restaurants, a plethora of activities for children, a thriving arts scene and reasonable commutes to work in Central London. It's only over priced because it's popular. The only thing that could improve London? If we could spend more of our money on London and less on subsidising people whose main leisure activity is sagging off London.
The old chestnut that London funds the rest of the country rather than the reality that it sucks the life blood out of it and no matter how much is spent there compared to the rest of the country the selfish arseholes are never happy. Full of me me me parasites and bloodsuckers.
The numbers speak for themselves. Londoners pay thousands of pounds more in tax than they receive back in government spending. That's just a fact, sorry if it's inconvenient. I'm very happy. I don't even mind subsidising the rest of the country. I'm not from London, I still have plenty of love for the rest of the UK, including the country of my birth (the same one as yours). I'm just sick of being told how awful we are and what a shit hole I live in by people who are taking my money.
I don't mind the people in London. It's just the city itself is awful. Look at it with a cold eye. Unplanned, appallingly cramped, mostly full of third-rate Victorian architecture, overpriced, brutally congested, dirty, noisy and smelly, full of restaurants that offer food no better than anywhere else in the country but provide half the quantity at double the price - if I'm honest, that's particularly what I remember about being an impoverished student there.
That's even before we get on to the issue of its woefully' inadequate utilities network, which means it is chronically short of water, and the bizarre public transport system which nobody would probably use if it wasn't for the fact the roads are so twisty it takes even longer to walk than to take the sardine can, er, underground.
(Your other point is wrong as well, incidentally, as the town I work in is a net contributor to the treasury, so I'm not taking your money.)
If you like it, fine. You're welcome. Means I don't have to live there, which I'm even happier about because it's just not a nice place to be.
Edit - I will admit I do find it annoying when people preach at me that I should love London because it 'subsidises everywhere else.' From that point of view, you should love all farmers in Oxfordshire because they allow the residue from your treated sewage to be spread on their fields. Or the people of the Thames Valley for providing you with water.
I don't want love, indifference would be fine. It's the constant compulsive slagging off of London by people who don't live in London, don't know London and seem convinced that London is leeching off them that I find so monumentally boring, especially as there are things in London that need money spent on them, but apparently there's no money. Most of the horrible things you attribute to London could be applied to more or less every town and city in Britain. We live in a country built by the Victorians in a hurry and on the cheap and have been living with the consequences ever since.
But I do know London. Know it far better than I want to. Have spent much more time there than I ever wanted to. So you're wrong again.
Yes, that's a perfectly fair point about many towns and cities have the same issues, particularly in terms of appalling urban planning. You are talking after all to somebody who is in the Birmingham commuter ring and used to commute into Bristol. But very few of them have them on the scale of London, simply because the sheer size of it brings its own major problems in that regard.
As for indifference, you're trying to persuade me it's brilliant. Which it isn't. You'd be on a far better wicket pointing out that precisely because of its size and economic clout most of its problems are intractable and therefore something you have to put up with if you want to live there. Then - understand why most of us actually don't, having made the choice to live elsewhere (and yes, in my case it was a choice, I had the option to work there and ran a mile).
I wasn't talking about you specifically, perhaps you are speaking from a position of profound knowledge but most of the legions of bitter uninformed London haters aren't. London *is* brilliant. I can go and see a West End show or visit a world class gallery or museum and then take a bus home in about 40 minutes for about a pound. I can walk for hours through beautiful parks and open spaces. The high population density supports an almost infinite array of activities for my kids, all within a ten minute walk or drive, including swimming, ballet, contemporary dance, theatre, football, Scouts. Schools and school friends are all a short walk away. The schools are good with motivated pupils and hard working teachers. Every kind of food is available on our doorstep, and local restaurants are no more expensive than those I've been to in other cities. Our neighbourhood is friendly and diverse, nobody makes any comments about our mixed race kids. When my wife and I wanted to write a play, we found talented collaborators among our friends and neighbours and a great local fringe theatre to stage it. Our Victorian house is far from shoddily built. So yeah, I love London.
I think we're starting to wander off the point here.
My original comment was a fairly flippant response to a comment from RCS that I don't live in London so it's not surprising my house is cheaper. At the same time, it's true. If you believe all that you've written about London that's fine but it definitely isn't my experience of a wide variety of different parts of it. I've found it to be a thoroughly unpleasant place for all the reasons I give, and like I say, the best thing about it was always the sign pointing me home.
What does intrigue me is how defensive Londoners get (and very quickly) when somebody points out their city's shortcomings. You tell me Cannock is an unplanned shitheap full of bad architecture and I'll cheerfully agree with you. It is. The fact it has many other redeeming features including the most glorious surrounding countryside, excellent and not expensive restaurants, theatres and live music venues that afford top-quality productions, affordable housing, an ample water supply and superb transport links coupled to a central geographical location that mean I can be pretty much anywhere in England in two hours more than makes up for that. Only one of those really applies to London. But it's intriguing that many who live there don't see it.
Equally, I suppose if you don't like it you don't stay.
I lived and worked in London for thirty years and represented a part of it on my local council for twenty four of them, elected six times running, during which I got to see aspects that most people don’t see, and was involved in London-wide politics for a fair few years, as well as having a career involved with providing services to the capital.
It was a privilege to represent a part of the capital and I did my best to make my local patch a better place to live. Yet it is the housing market that has ruined the city, for its residents. In the ‘90s, owner occupation was on the rise and the part of east london that I represented, a mix of terraced and semi-detached houses, was a settled community with a lot of young families. When I cashed in and moved away, owner occupation was plummeting (in just my own ward alone, a property moved from owner-occupied to private-rented every three days) and the sense of community had gone. So many properties had been converted to flats or bedsits, retained by their ‘boomer’ owners who had “moved to the country” and now occupied by younger people renting single rooms at extortionate rates, with a fast turnover of residents.
The telling point about outer London for me was always when I returned from a holiday in some more attractive part of the world and returned home, seeing it through the eyes of a visitor. Which never felt good. London residents so easily turn a blind eye to the city’s unattractiveness, away from the centre.
Central London is full of amazing attractions, but these can best be enjoyed as a visitor staying in a nice hotel and scheduling a few days to tour the museums and sights, as I am able to to nowadays. Living in outer London it was all too easy to extol the virtues of living in London without realising that, in reality, central London is mostly enjoyed by a few ultra-rich residents and by tourists. The number of times I actually went to the theatre or suchlike after work, or travelled into the centre at the weekend after a week of unpleasant daily commuting, don’t need to be counted because there were so few of them. Which leaves outer London residents consoling themselves with the places they can reach after a short drive that aren’t in London at all.
Whilst I enjoyed my younger days in London, its pleasures are out of reach nowadays to all except the very rich, and even if I won the lottery I wouldn’t move back there. Indeed I drive through parts of the city that I used to call home, and, through the eyes of an outsider, wonder how it was that I ever managed put up with the squalor of the place.
People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?
What a disgusting post
Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth
Who on earth do you think you are
Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.
There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
When Charles says 'London' he's thinking of the view over Regent's Park from St John's Wood, not of Ilford or Edmonton or Peckham or Hounslow.
I'd rather live in Peckham than St John's Wood. I virtually do live in Peckham in fact, SE15 is just a couple of streets over. Suburbia isn't grim, it's an oasis of parks and gardens, with thriving communities, friendly neighbours, decent schools, independent shops and restaurants, a plethora of activities for children, a thriving arts scene and reasonable commutes to work in Central London. It's only over priced because it's popular. The only thing that could improve London? If we could spend more of our money on London and less on subsidising people whose main leisure activity is sagging off London.
The old chestnut that London funds the rest of the country rather than the reality that it sucks the life blood out of it and no matter how much is spent there compared to the rest of the country the selfish arseholes are never happy. Full of me me me parasites and bloodsuckers.
The numbers speak for themselves. Londoners pay thousands of pounds more in tax than they receive back in government spending. That's just a fact, sorry if it's inconvenient. I'm very happy. I don't even mind subsidising the rest of the country. I'm not from London, I still have plenty of love for the rest of the UK, including the country of my birth (the same one as yours). I'm just sick of being told how awful we are and what a shit hole I live in by people who are taking my money.
I don't mind the people in London. It's just the city itself is awful. Look at it with a cold eye. Unplanned, appallingly cramped, mostly full of third-rate Victorian architecture, overpriced, brutally congested, dirty, noisy and smelly, full of restaurants that offer food no better than anywhere else in the country but provide half the quantity at double the price - if I'm honest, that's particularly what I remember about being an impoverished student there.
That's even before we get on to the issue of its woefully inadequate utilities network, which means it is chronically short of water, and the bizarre public transport system which nobody would probably use if it wasn't for the fact the roads are so twisty it takes even longer to walk than to take the sardine can, er, underground.
(Your other point is wrong as well, incidentally, as the town I work in is a net contributor to the treasury, so I'm not taking your money.)
If you like it, fine. You're welcome. Means I don't have to live there, which I'm even happier about because it's just not a nice place to be.
Edit - I will admit I do find it annoying when people preach at me that I should love London because it 'subsidises everywhere else.' From that point of view, you should love all farmers in Oxfordshire because they allow the residue from your treated sewage to be spread on their fields. Or the people of the Thames Valley for providing you with water.
London is all those things. But it is also bustling, with world class museums, restaurants, music, theatre, and universities.
You pay a high price to be there - in particular in terms of the price of housing. And it suits some people and at some times of life more than others.
I lived in London for five years in the early 90s, when I was in my late teens/early 20s. I loved it, but grew weary of it by the end. I rarely go back, but when I do, I love it - especially when experiencing it with the little 'un, for whom everything is new.
Except... in rush hour. Just one trip in rush hour reminds me why I got the f*** out of town.
In fact, when I was working i used to go into work at seven in the morning - just to avoid the rush hour. Plenty of time to answer emails, do some work, go out to grab a bacon butty from a lovely sandwich place, and then be back at my desk before everyone else arrived.
But London is glorious. Yet there are glorious parts of everywhere in the UK. even Hartlepool.
(I was about to say 'except Middlesborough', but I remembered that had the transporter bridge).
That's fine, I never pay any attention to the views of anyone about the town who can't spell it correctly. Fwiw I live in London, absolutely love it, but I also know Middlesbrough well - and I am a lifelong supporter of its football team. The town and its people have many virtues (nowhere but Middlesbrough could have produced a character like Brian Clough in my view) - and the coastline is fantastic.
I don't think any of the coastline is in Boro, it's a surprisingly small borough. The coast will be Redcar and Hartlepool depending what side of the Tees you are looking at.
Tory Red Wall MP Christian Wakeford tells T&G he is considering voting against the Government this week on changes to means testing on social care. "We're changing the goalposts. We need movement on this because it doesn't seem right" @TimesRadio
Lots of anger among Tory MPs on social care changes - snuck out on Weds - with vote expected tomorrow.
Ex-Cabinet minister Robert Buckland tells @LBCNews he will rebel - and there's "a lot of concern" among Tory colleagues. "Govt should look again at this," he adds.
If anyone on here still watches GBNews can they say what is the dark tide referred to by Oliver? I'd hate to think he was a racist twat as well as all the other kinds of twat.
Could it be a heartfelt warning about climate change?
Found it, it's mainly pseudo libertarian antivax twattery with a smidgeon of racist twattery chucked in.
'We turn blind eyes and deaf ears to uncounted numbers of girls raped and abused in Rotherham and other towns all over England, for fear of upsetting community relations.'
If anyone on here still watches GBNews can they say what is the dark tide referred to by Oliver? I'd hate to think he was a racist twat as well as all the other kinds of twat.
Could it be a heartfelt warning about climate change?
Found it, it's mainly pseudo libertarian antivax twattery with a smidgeon of racist twattery chucked in.
'We turn blind eyes and deaf ears to uncounted numbers of girls raped and abused in Rotherham and other towns all over England, for fear of upsetting community relations.'
People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?
What a disgusting post
Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth
Who on earth do you think you are
Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.
There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
When Charles says 'London' he's thinking of the view over Regent's Park from St John's Wood, not of Ilford or Edmonton or Peckham or Hounslow.
I'd rather live in Peckham than St John's Wood. I virtually do live in Peckham in fact, SE15 is just a couple of streets over. Suburbia isn't grim, it's an oasis of parks and gardens, with thriving communities, friendly neighbours, decent schools, independent shops and restaurants, a plethora of activities for children, a thriving arts scene and reasonable commutes to work in Central London. It's only over priced because it's popular. The only thing that could improve London? If we could spend more of our money on London and less on subsidising people whose main leisure activity is sagging off London.
The old chestnut that London funds the rest of the country rather than the reality that it sucks the life blood out of it and no matter how much is spent there compared to the rest of the country the selfish arseholes are never happy. Full of me me me parasites and bloodsuckers.
The numbers speak for themselves. Londoners pay thousands of pounds more in tax than they receive back in government spending. That's just a fact, sorry if it's inconvenient. I'm very happy. I don't even mind subsidising the rest of the country. I'm not from London, I still have plenty of love for the rest of the UK, including the country of my birth (the same one as yours). I'm just sick of being told how awful we are and what a shit hole I live in by people who are taking my money.
I don't mind the people in London. It's just the city itself is awful. Look at it with a cold eye. Unplanned, appallingly cramped, mostly full of third-rate Victorian architecture, overpriced, brutally congested, dirty, noisy and smelly, full of restaurants that offer food no better than anywhere else in the country but provide half the quantity at double the price - if I'm honest, that's particularly what I remember about being an impoverished student there.
That's even before we get on to the issue of its woefully inadequate utilities network, which means it is chronically short of water, and the bizarre public transport system which nobody would probably use if it wasn't for the fact the roads are so twisty it takes even longer to walk than to take the sardine can, er, underground.
(Your other point is wrong as well, incidentally, as the town I work in is a net contributor to the treasury, so I'm not taking your money.)
If you like it, fine. You're welcome. Means I don't have to live there, which I'm even happier about because it's just not a nice place to be.
Edit - I will admit I do find it annoying when people preach at me that I should love London because it 'subsidises everywhere else.' From that point of view, you should love all farmers in Oxfordshire because they allow the residue from your treated sewage to be spread on their fields. Or the people of the Thames Valley for providing you with water.
London is all those things. But it is also bustling, with world class museums, restaurants, music, theatre, and universities.
You pay a high price to be there - in particular in terms of the price of housing. And it suits some people and at some times of life more than others.
I lived in London for five years in the early 90s, when I was in my late teens/early 20s. I loved it, but grew weary of it by the end. I rarely go back, but when I do, I love it - especially when experiencing it with the little 'un, for whom everything is new.
Except... in rush hour. Just one trip in rush hour reminds me why I got the f*** out of town.
In fact, when I was working i used to go into work at seven in the morning - just to avoid the rush hour. Plenty of time to answer emails, do some work, go out to grab a bacon butty from a lovely sandwich place, and then be back at my desk before everyone else arrived.
But London is glorious. Yet there are glorious parts of everywhere in the UK. even Hartlepool.
(I was about to say 'except Middlesborough', but I remembered that had the transporter bridge).
That's fine, I never pay any attention to the views of anyone about the town who can't spell it correctly. Fwiw I live in London, absolutely love it, but I also know Middlesbrough well - and I am a lifelong supporter of its football team. The town and its people have many virtues (nowhere but Middlesbrough could have produced a character like Brian Clough in my view) - and the coastline is fantastic.
I don't think any of the coastline is in Boro, it's a surprisingly small borough. The coast will be Redcar and Hartlepool depending what side of the Tees you are looking at.
All in easy reach, though. And the town itself has unacknowledged virtues - outstanding examples of Victorian architecture, for example.
People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?
What a disgusting post
Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth
Who on earth do you think you are
Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.
There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
When Charles says 'London' he's thinking of the view over Regent's Park from St John's Wood, not of Ilford or Edmonton or Peckham or Hounslow.
I'd rather live in Peckham than St John's Wood. I virtually do live in Peckham in fact, SE15 is just a couple of streets over. Suburbia isn't grim, it's an oasis of parks and gardens, with thriving communities, friendly neighbours, decent schools, independent shops and restaurants, a plethora of activities for children, a thriving arts scene and reasonable commutes to work in Central London. It's only over priced because it's popular. The only thing that could improve London? If we could spend more of our money on London and less on subsidising people whose main leisure activity is sagging off London.
The old chestnut that London funds the rest of the country rather than the reality that it sucks the life blood out of it and no matter how much is spent there compared to the rest of the country the selfish arseholes are never happy. Full of me me me parasites and bloodsuckers.
The numbers speak for themselves. Londoners pay thousands of pounds more in tax than they receive back in government spending. That's just a fact, sorry if it's inconvenient. I'm very happy. I don't even mind subsidising the rest of the country. I'm not from London, I still have plenty of love for the rest of the UK, including the country of my birth (the same one as yours). I'm just sick of being told how awful we are and what a shit hole I live in by people who are taking my money.
I don't mind the people in London. It's just the city itself is awful. Look at it with a cold eye. Unplanned, appallingly cramped, mostly full of third-rate Victorian architecture, overpriced, brutally congested, dirty, noisy and smelly, full of restaurants that offer food no better than anywhere else in the country but provide half the quantity at double the price - if I'm honest, that's particularly what I remember about being an impoverished student there.
That's even before we get on to the issue of its woefully inadequate utilities network, which means it is chronically short of water, and the bizarre public transport system which nobody would probably use if it wasn't for the fact the roads are so twisty it takes even longer to walk than to take the sardine can, er, underground.
(Your other point is wrong as well, incidentally, as the town I work in is a net contributor to the treasury, so I'm not taking your money.)
If you like it, fine. You're welcome. Means I don't have to live there, which I'm even happier about because it's just not a nice place to be.
Edit - I will admit I do find it annoying when people preach at me that I should love London because it 'subsidises everywhere else.' From that point of view, you should love all farmers in Oxfordshire because they allow the residue from your treated sewage to be spread on their fields. Or the people of the Thames Valley for providing you with water.
London is all those things. But it is also bustling, with world class museums, restaurants, music, theatre, and universities.
You pay a high price to be there - in particular in terms of the price of housing. And it suits some people and at some times of life more than others.
I find it hilarious that people use things like museums, theater, universities and music as a reason to live in London. How many hours do you spend each year doing them? The top 5% probably do 2 hours a week. The average Londoner probably 2 hours a month.
Meanwhile how much do you have to deal with the shitty things about London? If you mainly drive, traffic congestion alone probably costs you 0.5-1 hours a day. Finding parking a similar amount. Being cramped like cattle into tubes would be even more. Living in cramped apartments and housing is something you have to deal with 50 hours plus each week. Crazy expensive gyms, terrible childcare, awful GP waiting lines... the list goes on.
Comments
It was enormously understandable that in Dec 19 they flocked to the bouncy 'can-do' persona of Boris "Boris" Johnson and his promise to Get Done the Brexit they'd voted for 3 years earlier and seen frustrated at every turn.
But if they were to stick with him next time when all the evidence available to anybody with a brain cell and a willingness to use it is that he and his government don't care two hoots about them, this would be something else entirely. It would show they are fools.
It would also show Johnson and the Tories to be astute readers of the room, very in touch with the people they seek to govern. Because that (fools) is precisely their evaluation of the working class people of the North and it's what they are counting on.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicsectorfinance/articles/countryandregionalpublicsectorfinances/financialyearending2020
Figure 2 in particular.
They could easily make it fairer and if you want to come here , no benefits till you have paid x years NI, like Australia have 10K deposit or no health treatment till you have x years NI paid. Instead of paying gangsters money they could save it and use it to fund their asylum request.
It si not rocket science if you have the will and the backbone.
1. Offer them cash to go back to their countries of origin.
2. Do dodgy deals with shit holes like Cambodia and PNG to take them as refugees.
Again though, you can plan a reception and processing centre on the moon. You actually need to detail the illegal migrants first to then render them to Camp Priti. And thats where the whole thing falls down - you have to actually stop and detain them rather than them just walking off like here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTveaC4vVDo
If they really really are genuine refugees and can prove it , have their papers etc etc then fine bring them back , if not repatriate them pronto.
Before you start whining that we cannot repatriate them then stop them coming in first place or leave them in the Falklands unless proven 100% to be refugees. Children excluded , but not the 20-30+ aged one's that the woke charities pass off as 15 year olds.
1) Better to have a government which doesn't give two hoots for you than one which is actively malign
2) Their new MPs - these constituencies have had decades of MPs who didn't give two hoots but now have MPs who are actually making an effort
3) Areas which are improving irrespective of government but for which the government will get some benefit
4) Areas which were less Conservative than they demographically should have been but for which 2019 was the reset
Seems to bear no relation to the theme.
None of the arrivals would count as refugees because the Government would simply have passed legislation through Parliament declaring all irregular boat arrivals personae non grata (with a helpful clause declaring the Act to be superior to all other relevant legislation, including the HRA, thus preventing the courts from intervening to have any of them shipped back again.) The law is, after all, what Parliament says it is.
Once future waves of boat people realise that their reward for buying a dinghy - if they don't drown in the Channel first - is to be consigned to an oubliette in the Southern Ocean then they'll stop coming, settle somewhere else instead, and the problem is solved. The holding facility can then be mothballed over a number of years as alternative destinations are found for those already housed there.
And yes, this is all very nasty, but what alternative solution do you have? We know several facts about the state of the world: that long-distance migration from poorer to wealthier countries has become much more prevalent, that it is only going to keep increasing (as economic development means that more people in less well-off countries accumulate enough money to pay for the journey to Europe, and as the effects of climate change bite,) and that there is neither the popular will nor the practical capacity to accommodate millions and millions of refugees and economic migrants in states such as ours. In particular, if you refuse to address the lack of popular consent for unchecked irregular migration, then you're advocating the suspension of democracy simply in order to give the migrants what they want.
Persuading them to stop coming now, rather than when there are 100,000 or 200,000 crossing every year, or simply having ministers throw their hands up in the air and give up, is merely the lesser of the variety of evils with which the country is confronted.
2 will vary greatly. As you allude to.
3 and 4 are of great weight though. Full employment is a huge improvement over the preceding 2 generations' experience and cannot be merely handwaved away.
That's even before we get on to the issue of its woefully inadequate utilities network, which means it is chronically short of water, and the bizarre public transport system which nobody would probably use if it wasn't for the fact the roads are so twisty it takes even longer to walk than to take the sardine can, er, underground.
(Your other point is wrong as well, incidentally, as the town I work in is a net contributor to the treasury, so I'm not taking your money.)
If you like it, fine. You're welcome. Means I don't have to live there, which I'm even happier about because it's just not a nice place to be.
Edit - I will admit I do find it annoying when people preach at me that I should love London because it 'subsidises everywhere else.' From that point of view, you should love all farmers in Oxfordshire because they allow the residue from your treated sewage to be spread on their fields. Or the people of the Thames Valley for providing you with water.
To give Gavin some credit, most COVID restrictions are now locally - rather than state - derived.
(Plus I love the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.)
https://twitter.com/RichJolly/status/1462389179044802560
The question is whether he will be up against Boris Johnson
Every time I see it I want to punch my screen.
If I'd wanted such crypticism on a Sunday morning I'd have bought a crossword.
The reality though is that we have more ability to accommodate people than many other countries, including many who already have accommodated far more than us already. I would also note that our fertility rate is well short of the population replacement level and we have a labour shortage. I think the UK population needs to wake up to the reality of the world we live in and not simply say no. It's a suicidally brave politician who says any of this obviously.
Relatedly there is also a feeling that elements of Labour are now actively malign to much of the North / working class - Starmer's 'get some cheap drivers from Europe' demand plays into this.
My cousin's daughter will sing the anthems at the Gabba for the first Ashes Test. No freebie as of yet...
I'm not sure who is going to live in them!
Most of the horrible things you attribute to London could be applied to more or less every town and city in Britain. We live in a country built by the Victorians in a hurry and on the cheap and have been living with the consequences ever since.
If I was being pedantic though, wouldn’t the crocodiles much prefer unadorned human flavour? Than BBQ sauce. And secondly your header might have ignored the point that having promised to sort it kicking can down the road is going to hurt as well. I think it’s whatever option even do nothing is going to hurt, so Boris Johnson has to do like they did in Master and Commander and choose lesser of the weevils. 🙂
And finally, sorry, one thing I have noticed, Boris and his government do like getting people to vote on things before properly reading the details and discussing it, is it fair to say?
https://twitter.com/KennyFarq/status/1462366352308686850?s=20
Scottish nationalism is so much better than anyone else's nationalism.....
Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru's ruling bodies have approved a co-operation deal between the parties in the Senedd.
Among the issues to be addressed are 'second homes', although the Conservatives have pointed out there's no mention of the NHS.
Yes, that's a perfectly fair point about many towns and cities have the same issues, particularly in terms of appalling urban planning. You are talking after all to somebody who is in the Birmingham commuter ring and used to commute into Bristol. But very few of them have them on the scale of London, simply because the sheer size of it brings its own major problems in that regard.
As for indifference, you're trying to persuade me it's brilliant. Which it isn't. You'd be on a far better wicket pointing out that precisely because of its size and economic clout most of its problems are intractable and therefore something you have to put up with if you want to live there. Then - understand why most of us actually don't, having made the choice to live elsewhere (and yes, in my case it was a choice, I had the option to work there and ran a mile).
Could she sing 'God save the England Cricket team' instead of the original lyrics? IT would fit the mood better...
https://cdn.networkrail.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/East-Coast-Main-Line-Route-Study.pdf
When you look at that and the fact all new fixes will cost £bns and save 5.5 minutes max between York and London I really do wonder why the IRP got their figures from.
@TimesRadio
https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/1462395533264314368?s=20
Lots of anger among Tory MPs on social care changes - snuck out on Weds - with vote expected tomorrow.
Ex-Cabinet minister Robert Buckland tells @LBCNews he will rebel - and there's "a lot of concern" among Tory colleagues. "Govt should look again at this," he adds.
https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1462379268625899524?s=20
The Whips along with Downing St and the government have lost a lot of credibility...
So TFL is going to have to start working out how to rapidly cut costs...
Separately, the whole point of investing up North is that for a one off sum of money (albeit a lot) is that by making the north more efficient there should would be more tax revenue generated up north.
https://twitter.com/andrewbensonf1/status/1462397206556811267
My point is, if this gets sussed out, vote today with details via our unchallenged spin in media later gets sussed out, might it make them unpopular? Because it’s hard to criticise and vote against in parliament. Do you see what I mean?
London *is* brilliant. I can go and see a West End show or visit a world class gallery or museum and then take a bus home in about 40 minutes for about a pound. I can walk for hours through beautiful parks and open spaces. The high population density supports an almost infinite array of activities for my kids, all within a ten minute walk or drive, including swimming, ballet, contemporary dance, theatre, football, Scouts. Schools and school friends are all a short walk away. The schools are good with motivated pupils and hard working teachers. Every kind of food is available on our doorstep, and local restaurants are no more expensive than those I've been to in other cities. Our neighbourhood is friendly and diverse, nobody makes any comments about our mixed race kids. When my wife and I wanted to write a play, we found talented collaborators among our friends and neighbours and a great local fringe theatre to stage it. Our Victorian house is far from shoddily built. So yeah, I love London.
5 place drop for Max
I suspect Sainz also has a 3 place penalty on the grid.
@AngelaRayner
·
2h
.
@Jacob_Rees_Mogg
didn't declare a £6 million personal loan that he was able to borrow at a much lower interest rate than my constituents would have access to.
His cut-price loan is a financial benefit to and must be declared as an interest. This must be investigated.
1 - Hamilton
_____2 - Gasly
3 - Alonso
_____4 - Norris
5 - Bottas
_____6 - Tsunoda
7 - Verstappen
_____8 - Ocon
9 - Vettel
_____10 - Sainz
(All places below 10 unaffected)
Meanwhile here in Brockley the Sunday walkers are crunching through the fallen leaves up to Hilly Fields for a nice coffee and all is looking rather non-shitheapy.
https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/decision-document/2021 Qatar Grand Prix - Decision - Car 55 - Single yellow flag.pdf
Said he didn't see the flag but did see the car so slowed down which the telemetry confirmed.
Grid is
1. Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes)
2. Pierre Gasly (AlphaTauri)
3. Fernando Alonso (Alpine)
4. Lando Norris (McLaren)
5. Valtteri Bottas (Mercedes)*
6. Carlos Sainz (Ferrari)
7. Max Verstappen (Red Bull)**
8. Yuki Tsunoda (AlphaTauri)
9. Esteban Ocon (Alpine)
10. Sebastian Vettel (Aston Martin)
Second, re we have enough space. Really? Look at all the problems caused currently when talking about building new homes etc. Now you want to multiple that by a nth factor, and when it’s against the will of the population.
Third, your fertility / labour shortage argument. As @pigeon said, a lower fertility / population rate may not be a bad thing. But you also forget that things change and we may be left with a situation of a big permanent uplift in population when the rationale for bringing in people has disappeared. Look at the mill towns in Lancashire and Yorkshire. Tens of thousands of workers imported from SE Asia on the grounds the factories wanted cheap Labour. Ten years later, those factories are gone but the effects of the demographic change are permanent.
As the Poland / Belarus dispute has shown, there are no easy solutions but we are going to have to get less squeamish. No one is going to be taking up the Belarus’ offer to fly them from Iraq to Minsk any more.
1 - Hamilton
_____2 - Gasly
3 - Alonso
_____4 - Norris
5 - Bottas
_____6 - Sainz
7 - Verstappen
_____8 - Tsunoda
9 - Ocon
_____10 - Vettel
(All places below 10 unaffected)
My original comment was a fairly flippant response to a comment from RCS that I don't live in London so it's not surprising my house is cheaper. At the same time, it's true. If you believe all that you've written about London that's fine but it definitely isn't my experience of a wide variety of different parts of it. I've found it to be a thoroughly unpleasant place for all the reasons I give, and like I say, the best thing about it was always the sign pointing me home.
What does intrigue me is how defensive Londoners get (and very quickly) when somebody points out their city's shortcomings. You tell me Cannock is an unplanned shitheap full of bad architecture and I'll cheerfully agree with you. It is. The fact it has many other redeeming features including the most glorious surrounding countryside, excellent and not expensive restaurants, theatres and live music venues that afford top-quality productions, affordable housing, an ample water supply and superb transport links coupled to a central geographical location that mean I can be pretty much anywhere in England in two hours more than makes up for that. Only one of those really applies to London. But it's intriguing that many who live there don't see it.
Equally, I suppose if you don't like it you don't stay.
'We turn blind eyes and deaf ears to uncounted numbers of girls raped and abused in Rotherham and other towns all over England, for fear of upsetting community relations.'
https://tinyurl.com/5672927e
Of all the stupid things that man has said over the years, that’s probably the most stupid. How would he feel if the hundreds of volunteers who turn up each weekend so they can go racing, decide not to bother?
Charged with bringing the sport into disrepute in 3, 2, 1…
In the end we will either have to have strongly militarily enforced borders or fix the demand side labour issue or both - once again, I recommend @RCS1000 for his video about how the Swiss manage to keep illegal immigration low by making it incredibly unattractive for employers to use illegal immigrant labour.
Automatic £10,000+ fines should focus minds thou.
Hard to tell which is the parody and which is real Mr Horner.
https://twitter.com/WhingerSpice
4) I remember around 2010 posting here the demographics of some Lincolnshire constituency (South Holland perhaps) and those of a South Yorkshire constituency (maybe Rother Valley) - they were pretty much identical on age, education, race, home ownership. I suggested the different voting habits for seemingly similar places came from one traditionally digging potatoes out of the ground and the other coal. Well the coal is now gone so what's to stop the voting patterns of the two places becoming much closer.
You pay a high price to be there - in particular in terms of the price of housing. And it suits some people and at some times of life more than others.
Equally true of most downtrodden seaside resorts
As for money - there does seem to be a two tier approach suggested - those who arrive before applying will get absolutely nothing but those who apply before coming here will receive cash to spend and possibly the right to legally work here.
Except... in rush hour. Just one trip in rush hour reminds me why I got the f*** out of town.
In fact, when I was working i used to go into work at seven in the morning - just to avoid the rush hour. Plenty of time to answer emails, do some work, go out to grab a bacon butty from a lovely sandwich place, and then be back at my desk before everyone else arrived.
But London is glorious. Yet there are glorious parts of everywhere in the UK. even Hartlepool.
(I was about to say 'except Middlesborough', but I remembered that had the transporter bridge).
I sympathize with your Edit bit though. I don't go with the idea that London subsidizes the rest of the country. It does on fiscal cashflow, yes, but it also sucks in a lot of talent and energy from elsewhere. Places that are therefore denuded of it. I'd like to see it less dominant. Like Boris Johnson pretends he does.
It was a privilege to represent a part of the capital and I did my best to make my local patch a better place to live. Yet it is the housing market that has ruined the city, for its residents. In the ‘90s, owner occupation was on the rise and the part of east london that I represented, a mix of terraced and semi-detached houses, was a settled community with a lot of young families. When I cashed in and moved away, owner occupation was plummeting (in just my own ward alone, a property moved from owner-occupied to private-rented every three days) and the sense of community had gone. So many properties had been converted to flats or bedsits, retained by their ‘boomer’ owners who had “moved to the country” and now occupied by younger people renting single rooms at extortionate rates, with a fast turnover of residents.
The telling point about outer London for me was always when I returned from a holiday in some more attractive part of the world and returned home, seeing it through the eyes of a visitor. Which never felt good. London residents so easily turn a blind eye to the city’s unattractiveness, away from the centre.
Central London is full of amazing attractions, but these can best be enjoyed as a visitor staying in a nice hotel and scheduling a few days to tour the museums and sights, as I am able to to nowadays. Living in outer London it was all too easy to extol the virtues of living in London without realising that, in reality, central London is mostly enjoyed by a few ultra-rich residents and by tourists. The number of times I actually went to the theatre or suchlike after work, or travelled into the centre at the weekend after a week of unpleasant daily commuting, don’t need to be counted because there were so few of them. Which leaves outer London residents consoling themselves with the places they can reach after a short drive that aren’t in London at all.
Whilst I enjoyed my younger days in London, its pleasures are out of reach nowadays to all except the very rich, and even if I won the lottery I wouldn’t move back there. Indeed I drive through parts of the city that I used to call home, and, through the eyes of an outsider, wonder how it was that I ever managed put up with the squalor of the place.
Meanwhile how much do you have to deal with the shitty things about London? If you mainly drive, traffic congestion alone probably costs you 0.5-1 hours a day. Finding parking a similar amount. Being cramped like cattle into tubes would be even more. Living in cramped apartments and housing is something you have to deal with 50 hours plus each week. Crazy expensive gyms, terrible childcare, awful GP waiting lines... the list goes on.