The current iteration of the Tory Party needs to FOAD.
You voted for Sunak, did you not?
As the least worst option, your candidate fucked up the economy for a generation, and will keep the party out for a similar generation.
Truss supporters, like Brexit supporters, really should reflect on the unflushable turds they've given the country.
No, the economic turds were built up by your mate the Chancellor from 2020 to 2022 and his predecessors over the 10 years before that. The fact that with one quick squeeze of his bowels his successor finally blocked the toilet for 3 weeks this Autumn is neither here nor there.
Truss and Kwarteng enacted virtually no measures of lasting effect apart from the NI reduction, which is just about the only thing of their legacy to survive after today. What they did do though was to remove the rose tinted spectacles from the markets' eyes, so that they're finally taking a more critical look and recognising the UK economy as the basket case it's become over the long term.
The UK economy has been a Ponzi scheme for 20 years. Relying on ever greater amounts of immigration (which led to perpetually high property prices) and fat taxes from the City. This was completely unsustainable because
1. All that immigration has deeply unpleasant or radical or contradictory consequences. Brexit was just one of them
2. High property prices are just another way to fuck the young, who then consider voting Corbyn, SNP, etc
3. The taxes from the City took a big hit from the GFC and yada yada yada
And now the markets have realised this and Ouch
We will no doubt survive, and eventually find a new economic model. But the pain of the necessary reset is going to be intense
Immigration isn't a Ponzi scheme, it's simply a natural consequence of different demographics and different economic situations in different parts of the world and the technology existing to make migration relatively cheap. It has always been like this - we act like it's a new thing because the phenomenon of other people coming to the UK is relatively recent (not that recent of course, large scale immigration started soon after ww2, more than 70 years ago) but we were exporting large numbers of people to the rest of the world from the 17th century onwards. When Britons emigrated to the Americas or Australia or Africa was that a Ponzi scheme? Arguably the entire human civilisation, which is devouring the world's resources at an unsustainable pace, is a Ponzi scheme, but there's nothing especially unsustainable about post war immigration patterns in the UK. People might not like it, of course, that's an entirely different question.
Total bollocks
Immigration into the UK in recent decades has been completely unprecedented in scale and proportion
1 in 6 people in the UK is now foreign born. This has consequences. And one of them was Brexit. It’s not why I voted for it, but many did. As Remainers keep reminding us. And yet it was the Remainers that opened the borders
Here's a list of foreign born people I know.
My wife's parents (father worked for decades as a doctor in the NHS) My wife's brothers (both doctors, one a GP in a poor part of Leeds, the other looks after sick newborns) My brother's partner Two of my children My boss (started a multi billion dollar hedge fund, employs a lot of people in the UK, is a major philanthropist) Most of my colleagues Loads of the parents I know from school Loads of my neighbours Loads of my friends
Meanwhile, I have lived abroad in two different countries for eight years altogether.
I just don't see what the problem is with people moving about. It's the world we live in. If we didn't want people moving here we shouldn't have colonised half the world, taught them all English and invented the jet engine.
So you would put no control at all on immigration? Which is where we were inside the EU, in effect
If you do that, all that happens is you get governments which are further and further to the right, as the locals get evermore desperate
You’re smart enough to know this is stupid and counterproductive. Brexit happened because we had vast amounts of immigration
Ergo, you have to control it. Then it’s just a question of how and at what level
I agree it can't be a free for all, no country would do that. And I accept that while I would personally have limits in order to prevent a race to the bottom in low skilled wages, we'd probably have to have even more restrictions than I personally favour as I'm fully aware that I'm more liberal on these things than most people are. I thought EU freedom of movement was good because it struck a decent balance between freedom and limits, most notably in restricting it to countries with broadly similar levels of income and culture, and it was completely reciprocal. Obviously lots of people felt differently. I still think that fundamentally migration is a natural part of human existence and that this obsession with borders and nationhood is a bit of a dead end. I hope that one day in the distant future we will live in a world without borders. Again, I'm aware that this is a minority view.
So your comments were just worthless virtue-signalling. Thought so
Required for 60+ Details from your valid, machine-readable passport or your valid UK driving licence (full or provisional) A colour image of your valid, machine-readable passport. This must be in .png or .jpg format and be less than 6MB. The image must show your photo, personal details and passport number
Is that required for Oyster 18+?
Such nuance is beyond the twitter character limit.
Read the ERS link I posted, there's more options for older voters than there is for younger voters, do you think that's acceptable?
There are more constraints too, as is pointed out above.
The current iteration of the Tory Party needs to FOAD.
You voted for Sunak, did you not?
As the least worst option, your candidate fucked up the economy for a generation, and will keep the party out for a similar generation.
Truss supporters, like Brexit supporters, really should reflect on the unflushable turds they've given the country.
No, the economic turds were built up by your mate the Chancellor from 2020 to 2022 and his predecessors over the 10 years before that. The fact that with one quick squeeze of his bowels his successor finally blocked the toilet for 3 weeks this Autumn is neither here nor there.
Truss and Kwarteng enacted virtually no measures of lasting effect apart from the NI reduction, which is just about the only thing of their legacy to survive after today. What they did do though was to remove the rose tinted spectacles from the markets' eyes, so that they're finally taking a more critical look and recognising the UK economy as the basket case it's become over the long term.
The UK economy has been a Ponzi scheme for 20 years. Relying on ever greater amounts of immigration (which led to perpetually high property prices) and fat taxes from the City. This was completely unsustainable because
1. All that immigration has deeply unpleasant or radical or contradictory consequences. Brexit was just one of them
2. High property prices are just another way to fuck the young, who then consider voting Corbyn, SNP, etc
3. The taxes from the City took a big hit from the GFC and yada yada yada
And now the markets have realised this and Ouch
We will no doubt survive, and eventually find a new economic model. But the pain of the necessary reset is going to be intense
Immigration isn't a Ponzi scheme, it's simply a natural consequence of different demographics and different economic situations in different parts of the world and the technology existing to make migration relatively cheap. It has always been like this - we act like it's a new thing because the phenomenon of other people coming to the UK is relatively recent (not that recent of course, large scale immigration started soon after ww2, more than 70 years ago) but we were exporting large numbers of people to the rest of the world from the 17th century onwards. When Britons emigrated to the Americas or Australia or Africa was that a Ponzi scheme? Arguably the entire human civilisation, which is devouring the world's resources at an unsustainable pace, is a Ponzi scheme, but there's nothing especially unsustainable about post war immigration patterns in the UK. People might not like it, of course, that's an entirely different question.
Total bollocks
Immigration into the UK in recent decades has been completely unprecedented in scale and proportion
1 in 6 people in the UK is now foreign born. This has consequences. And one of them was Brexit. It’s not why I voted for it, but many did. As Remainers keep reminding us. And yet it was the Remainers that opened the borders
Here's a list of foreign born people I know.
My wife's parents (father worked for decades as a doctor in the NHS) My wife's brothers (both doctors, one a GP in a poor part of Leeds, the other looks after sick newborns) My brother's partner Two of my children My boss (started a multi billion dollar hedge fund, employs a lot of people in the UK, is a major philanthropist) Most of my colleagues Loads of the parents I know from school Loads of my neighbours Loads of my friends
Meanwhile, I have lived abroad in two different countries for eight years altogether.
I just don't see what the problem is with people moving about. It's the world we live in. If we didn't want people moving here we shouldn't have colonised half the world, taught them all English and invented the jet engine.
"I'm sorry Mr. Working Class Lad from a Council Estate. If you didn't want unaffordable housing prices from population growth, your pay and conditions undercut from poor immigrants, and a big social divide in your town from a new community that sticks to itself, you should have intervened 100 years before your birth with the upper middle class actions in Asia."
Mr WCL would be paying Belgian tax rates if it weren't for immigrant workers propping up the British pensioner regime.
Depends on the immigrant group. Indian doctors, German engineers and French bankers, for sure. But poor immigrants are net costs to the taxpayer over a lifetime. That's why people want control over immigration, so they can let in the net adds and filter the rest. Big business, on the other hand, wants as much cheap labour as possible.
Well, almost everyone is a net cost to the taxpayer over a lifetime, including the average doctor, engineer and banker, depending on how many kids they have. (Albeit PB comments seems to contain a disproportionate share of six-figure folks.)
That's not true. Government spending per person is about 10k. You have to be earning about 40k a year to pay that much in income tax. Of course there will be years you don't pay as much tax post retirement, and there are other taxes like NI and VAT, but the overall number comes out around a similar point.
Required for 60+ Details from your valid, machine-readable passport or your valid UK driving licence (full or provisional) A colour image of your valid, machine-readable passport. This must be in .png or .jpg format and be less than 6MB. The image must show your photo, personal details and passport number
Is that required for Oyster 18+?
Such nuance is beyond the twitter character limit.
Read the ERS link I posted, there's more options for older voters than there is for younger voters, do you think that's acceptable?
We should introduce passport checks for ALL Oyster cards to correct this terrible wrong
A Trump Lake ticket makes total sense for both of them
It revives her nearly dead-on-arrival political career
It softens Trump with a telegenic, articulate and plausible woman who can probably sell Trumpism better than him
I wouldn’t write them entirely off. Unfortunately
Why is unfortunate? They both seem deeply unpleasant personally, but we don't need to ask them to tea. For Britain, it seems a better option than Biden, who I see is interfering in NI again in his more lucid moments. All part of life's rich tapestry.
No, I think Trump approaches outright evil
Pretty sure that's in the job description.
Actually no, it isn't.
No it's not. But a few candidates besides Trump would fit the description.
We simply do not need ID for voting in this country.
Too late.
I think a lot of people probably don't see what the big deal is about ID for voting, so long as what qualifies as ID is sufficiently wide so as not to clearly penalise people who are less likely to have, say, a passport or driver's licence.
But like the issue of general ID cards, ID for voting seemed a solution looking for a problem to me. The goverment would argue precaution no doubt, but was there proof of a issue which this would solve? How big an issue, and was this a proportionate approach?
The other problem for them is a policy which might look benign when you are ahead in the polls can look sinister when you are well behind, as an attempt to eke out any advantage you can find.
A modest proposal: on polling day, voters should be made to pass rigorous eye tests to ensure that they can see the ballot and memory tests to ensure they know what they are voting for.
The current iteration of the Tory Party needs to FOAD.
You voted for Sunak, did you not?
As the least worst option, your candidate fucked up the economy for a generation, and will keep the party out for a similar generation.
Truss supporters, like Brexit supporters, really should reflect on the unflushable turds they've given the country.
No, the economic turds were built up by your mate the Chancellor from 2020 to 2022 and his predecessors over the 10 years before that. The fact that with one quick squeeze of his bowels his successor finally blocked the toilet for 3 weeks this Autumn is neither here nor there.
Truss and Kwarteng enacted virtually no measures of lasting effect apart from the NI reduction, which is just about the only thing of their legacy to survive after today. What they did do though was to remove the rose tinted spectacles from the markets' eyes, so that they're finally taking a more critical look and recognising the UK economy as the basket case it's become over the long term.
The UK economy has been a Ponzi scheme for 20 years. Relying on ever greater amounts of immigration (which led to perpetually high property prices) and fat taxes from the City. This was completely unsustainable because
1. All that immigration has deeply unpleasant or radical or contradictory consequences. Brexit was just one of them
2. High property prices are just another way to fuck the young, who then consider voting Corbyn, SNP, etc
3. The taxes from the City took a big hit from the GFC and yada yada yada
And now the markets have realised this and Ouch
We will no doubt survive, and eventually find a new economic model. But the pain of the necessary reset is going to be intense
Immigration isn't a Ponzi scheme, it's simply a natural consequence of different demographics and different economic situations in different parts of the world and the technology existing to make migration relatively cheap. It has always been like this - we act like it's a new thing because the phenomenon of other people coming to the UK is relatively recent (not that recent of course, large scale immigration started soon after ww2, more than 70 years ago) but we were exporting large numbers of people to the rest of the world from the 17th century onwards. When Britons emigrated to the Americas or Australia or Africa was that a Ponzi scheme? Arguably the entire human civilisation, which is devouring the world's resources at an unsustainable pace, is a Ponzi scheme, but there's nothing especially unsustainable about post war immigration patterns in the UK. People might not like it, of course, that's an entirely different question.
Total bollocks
Immigration into the UK in recent decades has been completely unprecedented in scale and proportion
1 in 6 people in the UK is now foreign born. This has consequences. And one of them was Brexit. It’s not why I voted for it, but many did. As Remainers keep reminding us. And yet it was the Remainers that opened the borders
Here's a list of foreign born people I know.
My wife's parents (father worked for decades as a doctor in the NHS) My wife's brothers (both doctors, one a GP in a poor part of Leeds, the other looks after sick newborns) My brother's partner Two of my children My boss (started a multi billion dollar hedge fund, employs a lot of people in the UK, is a major philanthropist) Most of my colleagues Loads of the parents I know from school Loads of my neighbours Loads of my friends
Meanwhile, I have lived abroad in two different countries for eight years altogether.
I just don't see what the problem is with people moving about. It's the world we live in. If we didn't want people moving here we shouldn't have colonised half the world, taught them all English and invented the jet engine.
Sweden didn't colonise much, and they've got plenty of immigrants.
Apart from half of what is now England, although it was a fair time ago…
The current iteration of the Tory Party needs to FOAD.
You voted for Sunak, did you not?
As the least worst option, your candidate fucked up the economy for a generation, and will keep the party out for a similar generation.
Truss supporters, like Brexit supporters, really should reflect on the unflushable turds they've given the country.
No, the economic turds were built up by your mate the Chancellor from 2020 to 2022 and his predecessors over the 10 years before that. The fact that with one quick squeeze of his bowels his successor finally blocked the toilet for 3 weeks this Autumn is neither here nor there.
Truss and Kwarteng enacted virtually no measures of lasting effect apart from the NI reduction, which is just about the only thing of their legacy to survive after today. What they did do though was to remove the rose tinted spectacles from the markets' eyes, so that they're finally taking a more critical look and recognising the UK economy as the basket case it's become over the long term.
The UK economy has been a Ponzi scheme for 20 years. Relying on ever greater amounts of immigration (which led to perpetually high property prices) and fat taxes from the City. This was completely unsustainable because
1. All that immigration has deeply unpleasant or radical or contradictory consequences. Brexit was just one of them
2. High property prices are just another way to fuck the young, who then consider voting Corbyn, SNP, etc
3. The taxes from the City took a big hit from the GFC and yada yada yada
And now the markets have realised this and Ouch
We will no doubt survive, and eventually find a new economic model. But the pain of the necessary reset is going to be intense
Immigration isn't a Ponzi scheme, it's simply a natural consequence of different demographics and different economic situations in different parts of the world and the technology existing to make migration relatively cheap. It has always been like this - we act like it's a new thing because the phenomenon of other people coming to the UK is relatively recent (not that recent of course, large scale immigration started soon after ww2, more than 70 years ago) but we were exporting large numbers of people to the rest of the world from the 17th century onwards. When Britons emigrated to the Americas or Australia or Africa was that a Ponzi scheme? Arguably the entire human civilisation, which is devouring the world's resources at an unsustainable pace, is a Ponzi scheme, but there's nothing especially unsustainable about post war immigration patterns in the UK. People might not like it, of course, that's an entirely different question.
Total bollocks
Immigration into the UK in recent decades has been completely unprecedented in scale and proportion
1 in 6 people in the UK is now foreign born. This has consequences. And one of them was Brexit. It’s not why I voted for it, but many did. As Remainers keep reminding us. And yet it was the Remainers that opened the borders
Here's a list of foreign born people I know.
My wife's parents (father worked for decades as a doctor in the NHS) My wife's brothers (both doctors, one a GP in a poor part of Leeds, the other looks after sick newborns) My brother's partner Two of my children My boss (started a multi billion dollar hedge fund, employs a lot of people in the UK, is a major philanthropist) Most of my colleagues Loads of the parents I know from school Loads of my neighbours Loads of my friends
Meanwhile, I have lived abroad in two different countries for eight years altogether.
I just don't see what the problem is with people moving about. It's the world we live in. If we didn't want people moving here we shouldn't have colonised half the world, taught them all English and invented the jet engine.
Sweden didn't colonise much, and they've got plenty of immigrants.
Apart from half of what is now England, although it was a fair time ago…
A Trump Lake ticket makes total sense for both of them
It revives her nearly dead-on-arrival political career
It softens Trump with a telegenic, articulate and plausible woman who can probably sell Trumpism better than him
I wouldn’t write them entirely off. Unfortunately
Why is unfortunate? They both seem deeply unpleasant personally, but we don't need to ask them to tea. For Britain, it seems a better option than Biden, who I see is interfering in NI again in his more lucid moments. All part of life's rich tapestry.
No, I think Trump approaches outright evil
Pretty sure that's in the job description.
Actually no, it isn't.
No it's not. But a few candidates besides Trump would fit the description.
You appreciate that Trump and election-denier Lake pose a serious threat to US democracy?
A Trump Lake ticket makes total sense for both of them
It revives her nearly dead-on-arrival political career
It softens Trump with a telegenic, articulate and plausible woman who can probably sell Trumpism better than him
I wouldn’t write them entirely off. Unfortunately
Normally, VP picks are announced only after the nomination has been secured. So, if it is to Lake, we'll probably not know for 18 months, or even longer.
Unless Trump flounces from the GOP and just announces his own party.
Though the idea Kari Lake is plausible is laughable. She's a loon.
She's plausible enough to have come from nowhere, taken the GOP Arizona primary, and now come within inches of being Arizona governor
She is definitely "plausible"
I can't think of a better fit as a VP candidate for Trump
The current iteration of the Tory Party needs to FOAD.
You voted for Sunak, did you not?
As the least worst option, your candidate fucked up the economy for a generation, and will keep the party out for a similar generation.
Truss supporters, like Brexit supporters, really should reflect on the unflushable turds they've given the country.
No, the economic turds were built up by your mate the Chancellor from 2020 to 2022 and his predecessors over the 10 years before that. The fact that with one quick squeeze of his bowels his successor finally blocked the toilet for 3 weeks this Autumn is neither here nor there.
Truss and Kwarteng enacted virtually no measures of lasting effect apart from the NI reduction, which is just about the only thing of their legacy to survive after today. What they did do though was to remove the rose tinted spectacles from the markets' eyes, so that they're finally taking a more critical look and recognising the UK economy as the basket case it's become over the long term.
The UK economy has been a Ponzi scheme for 20 years. Relying on ever greater amounts of immigration (which led to perpetually high property prices) and fat taxes from the City. This was completely unsustainable because
1. All that immigration has deeply unpleasant or radical or contradictory consequences. Brexit was just one of them
2. High property prices are just another way to fuck the young, who then consider voting Corbyn, SNP, etc
3. The taxes from the City took a big hit from the GFC and yada yada yada
And now the markets have realised this and Ouch
We will no doubt survive, and eventually find a new economic model. But the pain of the necessary reset is going to be intense
Immigration isn't a Ponzi scheme, it's simply a natural consequence of different demographics and different economic situations in different parts of the world and the technology existing to make migration relatively cheap. It has always been like this - we act like it's a new thing because the phenomenon of other people coming to the UK is relatively recent (not that recent of course, large scale immigration started soon after ww2, more than 70 years ago) but we were exporting large numbers of people to the rest of the world from the 17th century onwards. When Britons emigrated to the Americas or Australia or Africa was that a Ponzi scheme? Arguably the entire human civilisation, which is devouring the world's resources at an unsustainable pace, is a Ponzi scheme, but there's nothing especially unsustainable about post war immigration patterns in the UK. People might not like it, of course, that's an entirely different question.
Total bollocks
Immigration into the UK in recent decades has been completely unprecedented in scale and proportion
1 in 6 people in the UK is now foreign born. This has consequences. And one of them was Brexit. It’s not why I voted for it, but many did. As Remainers keep reminding us. And yet it was the Remainers that opened the borders
Here's a list of foreign born people I know.
My wife's parents (father worked for decades as a doctor in the NHS) My wife's brothers (both doctors, one a GP in a poor part of Leeds, the other looks after sick newborns) My brother's partner Two of my children My boss (started a multi billion dollar hedge fund, employs a lot of people in the UK, is a major philanthropist) Most of my colleagues Loads of the parents I know from school Loads of my neighbours Loads of my friends
Meanwhile, I have lived abroad in two different countries for eight years altogether.
I just don't see what the problem is with people moving about. It's the world we live in. If we didn't want people moving here we shouldn't have colonised half the world, taught them all English and invented the jet engine.
"I'm sorry Mr. Working Class Lad from a Council Estate. If you didn't want unaffordable housing prices from population growth, your pay and conditions undercut from poor immigrants, and a big social divide in your town from a new community that sticks to itself, you should have intervened 100 years before your birth with the upper middle class actions in Asia."
Mr WCL would be paying Belgian tax rates if it weren't for immigrant workers propping up the British pensioner regime.
Depends on the immigrant group. Indian doctors, German engineers and French bankers, for sure. But poor immigrants are net costs to the taxpayer over a lifetime. That's why people want control over immigration, so they can let in the net adds and filter the rest. Big business, on the other hand, wants as much cheap labour as possible.
Well, almost everyone is a net cost to the taxpayer over a lifetime, including the average doctor, engineer and banker, depending on how many kids they have. (Albeit PB comments seems to contain a disproportionate share of six-figure folks.)
That's not true. Government spending per person is about 10k. You have to be earning about 40k a year to pay that much in income tax. Of course there will be years you don't pay as much tax post retirement, and there are other taxes like NI and VAT, but the overall number comes out around a similar point.
That is true of workers, but you spend circa half your life as an infant, learner or pensioner, and plenty of people raise kids full-time or take early retirement, especially the ones who would have paid lots more taxes prior to 65. So if you are on 60k for 30 years and have a long retirement, it's probably a net win.
The current iteration of the Tory Party needs to FOAD.
You voted for Sunak, did you not?
As the least worst option, your candidate fucked up the economy for a generation, and will keep the party out for a similar generation.
Truss supporters, like Brexit supporters, really should reflect on the unflushable turds they've given the country.
No, the economic turds were built up by your mate the Chancellor from 2020 to 2022 and his predecessors over the 10 years before that. The fact that with one quick squeeze of his bowels his successor finally blocked the toilet for 3 weeks this Autumn is neither here nor there.
Truss and Kwarteng enacted virtually no measures of lasting effect apart from the NI reduction, which is just about the only thing of their legacy to survive after today. What they did do though was to remove the rose tinted spectacles from the markets' eyes, so that they're finally taking a more critical look and recognising the UK economy as the basket case it's become over the long term.
The UK economy has been a Ponzi scheme for 20 years. Relying on ever greater amounts of immigration (which led to perpetually high property prices) and fat taxes from the City. This was completely unsustainable because
1. All that immigration has deeply unpleasant or radical or contradictory consequences. Brexit was just one of them
2. High property prices are just another way to fuck the young, who then consider voting Corbyn, SNP, etc
3. The taxes from the City took a big hit from the GFC and yada yada yada
And now the markets have realised this and Ouch
We will no doubt survive, and eventually find a new economic model. But the pain of the necessary reset is going to be intense
Immigration isn't a Ponzi scheme, it's simply a natural consequence of different demographics and different economic situations in different parts of the world and the technology existing to make migration relatively cheap. It has always been like this - we act like it's a new thing because the phenomenon of other people coming to the UK is relatively recent (not that recent of course, large scale immigration started soon after ww2, more than 70 years ago) but we were exporting large numbers of people to the rest of the world from the 17th century onwards. When Britons emigrated to the Americas or Australia or Africa was that a Ponzi scheme? Arguably the entire human civilisation, which is devouring the world's resources at an unsustainable pace, is a Ponzi scheme, but there's nothing especially unsustainable about post war immigration patterns in the UK. People might not like it, of course, that's an entirely different question.
Total bollocks
Immigration into the UK in recent decades has been completely unprecedented in scale and proportion
1 in 6 people in the UK is now foreign born. This has consequences. And one of them was Brexit. It’s not why I voted for it, but many did. As Remainers keep reminding us. And yet it was the Remainers that opened the borders
Here's a list of foreign born people I know.
My wife's parents (father worked for decades as a doctor in the NHS) My wife's brothers (both doctors, one a GP in a poor part of Leeds, the other looks after sick newborns) My brother's partner Two of my children My boss (started a multi billion dollar hedge fund, employs a lot of people in the UK, is a major philanthropist) Most of my colleagues Loads of the parents I know from school Loads of my neighbours Loads of my friends
Meanwhile, I have lived abroad in two different countries for eight years altogether.
I just don't see what the problem is with people moving about. It's the world we live in. If we didn't want people moving here we shouldn't have colonised half the world, taught them all English and invented the jet engine.
Sweden didn't colonise much, and they've got plenty of immigrants.
Apart from half of what is now England, although it was a fair time ago…
The current iteration of the Tory Party needs to FOAD.
You voted for Sunak, did you not?
As the least worst option, your candidate fucked up the economy for a generation, and will keep the party out for a similar generation.
Truss supporters, like Brexit supporters, really should reflect on the unflushable turds they've given the country.
No, the economic turds were built up by your mate the Chancellor from 2020 to 2022 and his predecessors over the 10 years before that. The fact that with one quick squeeze of his bowels his successor finally blocked the toilet for 3 weeks this Autumn is neither here nor there.
Truss and Kwarteng enacted virtually no measures of lasting effect apart from the NI reduction, which is just about the only thing of their legacy to survive after today. What they did do though was to remove the rose tinted spectacles from the markets' eyes, so that they're finally taking a more critical look and recognising the UK economy as the basket case it's become over the long term.
The UK economy has been a Ponzi scheme for 20 years. Relying on ever greater amounts of immigration (which led to perpetually high property prices) and fat taxes from the City. This was completely unsustainable because
1. All that immigration has deeply unpleasant or radical or contradictory consequences. Brexit was just one of them
2. High property prices are just another way to fuck the young, who then consider voting Corbyn, SNP, etc
3. The taxes from the City took a big hit from the GFC and yada yada yada
And now the markets have realised this and Ouch
We will no doubt survive, and eventually find a new economic model. But the pain of the necessary reset is going to be intense
Immigration isn't a Ponzi scheme, it's simply a natural consequence of different demographics and different economic situations in different parts of the world and the technology existing to make migration relatively cheap. It has always been like this - we act like it's a new thing because the phenomenon of other people coming to the UK is relatively recent (not that recent of course, large scale immigration started soon after ww2, more than 70 years ago) but we were exporting large numbers of people to the rest of the world from the 17th century onwards. When Britons emigrated to the Americas or Australia or Africa was that a Ponzi scheme? Arguably the entire human civilisation, which is devouring the world's resources at an unsustainable pace, is a Ponzi scheme, but there's nothing especially unsustainable about post war immigration patterns in the UK. People might not like it, of course, that's an entirely different question.
Total bollocks
Immigration into the UK in recent decades has been completely unprecedented in scale and proportion
1 in 6 people in the UK is now foreign born. This has consequences. And one of them was Brexit. It’s not why I voted for it, but many did. As Remainers keep reminding us. And yet it was the Remainers that opened the borders
Here's a list of foreign born people I know.
My wife's parents (father worked for decades as a doctor in the NHS) My wife's brothers (both doctors, one a GP in a poor part of Leeds, the other looks after sick newborns) My brother's partner Two of my children My boss (started a multi billion dollar hedge fund, employs a lot of people in the UK, is a major philanthropist) Most of my colleagues Loads of the parents I know from school Loads of my neighbours Loads of my friends
Meanwhile, I have lived abroad in two different countries for eight years altogether.
I just don't see what the problem is with people moving about. It's the world we live in. If we didn't want people moving here we shouldn't have colonised half the world, taught them all English and invented the jet engine.
Sweden didn't colonise much, and they've got plenty of immigrants.
Apart from half of what is now England, although it was a fair time ago…
The Swedelaw?
Brings to mind the cabbage plains near Ankh-Morpork.
A Trump Lake ticket makes total sense for both of them
It revives her nearly dead-on-arrival political career
It softens Trump with a telegenic, articulate and plausible woman who can probably sell Trumpism better than him
I wouldn’t write them entirely off. Unfortunately
Normally, VP picks are announced only after the nomination has been secured. So, if it is to Lake, we'll probably not know for 18 months, or even longer.
Unless Trump flounces from the GOP and just announces his own party.
Though the idea Kari Lake is plausible is laughable. She's a loon.
She's plausible enough to have come from nowhere, taken the GOP Arizona primary, and now come within inches of being Arizona governor
She is definitely "plausible"
I can't think of a better fit as a VP candidate for Trump
He has a big problem with women voters
He needs a winner though, not someone to do rabble rousing - he's already good at that. Who brings him something like Pence presumably brought evangelicals?
After all, 'within inches of being Arizona governor' is not much of a cv when the Republicans won by 14, 12 and 12, in the last three gubernatorials there.
The point is that there is no need for voter ID, it will just increase the number of likely Labour voters who get denied a vote on the day.
Now, that's just being cynical. Who could possibly think this is a form of voter suppression aimed at those not voting Conservative?
It is, by any measure, a sledgehammer to crack the tiniest of nuts. Have there been instances of electoral fraud? Yes, and many of them around postal and proxy votes rather than personation (vote early and often) or anything else. One might argue banning postal and proxy votes would be the way forward but that seems not to be in favour and there are sound reasons why.
Perhaps a more rigorous approach to the verification of postal and proxy votes is the way forward especially in those areas where a problem has ben shown to exist.
The current iteration of the Tory Party needs to FOAD.
You voted for Sunak, did you not?
As the least worst option, your candidate fucked up the economy for a generation, and will keep the party out for a similar generation.
Truss supporters, like Brexit supporters, really should reflect on the unflushable turds they've given the country.
No, the economic turds were built up by your mate the Chancellor from 2020 to 2022 and his predecessors over the 10 years before that. The fact that with one quick squeeze of his bowels his successor finally blocked the toilet for 3 weeks this Autumn is neither here nor there.
Truss and Kwarteng enacted virtually no measures of lasting effect apart from the NI reduction, which is just about the only thing of their legacy to survive after today. What they did do though was to remove the rose tinted spectacles from the markets' eyes, so that they're finally taking a more critical look and recognising the UK economy as the basket case it's become over the long term.
The UK economy has been a Ponzi scheme for 20 years. Relying on ever greater amounts of immigration (which led to perpetually high property prices) and fat taxes from the City. This was completely unsustainable because
1. All that immigration has deeply unpleasant or radical or contradictory consequences. Brexit was just one of them
2. High property prices are just another way to fuck the young, who then consider voting Corbyn, SNP, etc
3. The taxes from the City took a big hit from the GFC and yada yada yada
And now the markets have realised this and Ouch
We will no doubt survive, and eventually find a new economic model. But the pain of the necessary reset is going to be intense
Immigration isn't a Ponzi scheme, it's simply a natural consequence of different demographics and different economic situations in different parts of the world and the technology existing to make migration relatively cheap. It has always been like this - we act like it's a new thing because the phenomenon of other people coming to the UK is relatively recent (not that recent of course, large scale immigration started soon after ww2, more than 70 years ago) but we were exporting large numbers of people to the rest of the world from the 17th century onwards. When Britons emigrated to the Americas or Australia or Africa was that a Ponzi scheme? Arguably the entire human civilisation, which is devouring the world's resources at an unsustainable pace, is a Ponzi scheme, but there's nothing especially unsustainable about post war immigration patterns in the UK. People might not like it, of course, that's an entirely different question.
Total bollocks
Immigration into the UK in recent decades has been completely unprecedented in scale and proportion
1 in 6 people in the UK is now foreign born. This has consequences. And one of them was Brexit. It’s not why I voted for it, but many did. As Remainers keep reminding us. And yet it was the Remainers that opened the borders
Here's a list of foreign born people I know.
My wife's parents (father worked for decades as a doctor in the NHS) My wife's brothers (both doctors, one a GP in a poor part of Leeds, the other looks after sick newborns) My brother's partner Two of my children My boss (started a multi billion dollar hedge fund, employs a lot of people in the UK, is a major philanthropist) Most of my colleagues Loads of the parents I know from school Loads of my neighbours Loads of my friends
Meanwhile, I have lived abroad in two different countries for eight years altogether.
I just don't see what the problem is with people moving about. It's the world we live in. If we didn't want people moving here we shouldn't have colonised half the world, taught them all English and invented the jet engine.
"I'm sorry Mr. Working Class Lad from a Council Estate. If you didn't want unaffordable housing prices from population growth, your pay and conditions undercut from poor immigrants, and a big social divide in your town from a new community that sticks to itself, you should have intervened 100 years before your birth with the upper middle class actions in Asia."
Mr WCL would be paying Belgian tax rates if it weren't for immigrant workers propping up the British pensioner regime.
Depends on the immigrant group. Indian doctors, German engineers and French bankers, for sure. But poor immigrants are net costs to the taxpayer over a lifetime. That's why people want control over immigration, so they can let in the net adds and filter the rest. Big business, on the other hand, wants as much cheap labour as possible.
Well, almost everyone is a net cost to the taxpayer over a lifetime, including the average doctor, engineer and banker, depending on how many kids they have. (Albeit PB comments seems to contain a disproportionate share of six-figure folks.)
That's not true. Government spending per person is about 10k. You have to be earning about 40k a year to pay that much in income tax. Of course there will be years you don't pay as much tax post retirement, and there are other taxes like NI and VAT, but the overall number comes out around a similar point.
That is true of workers, but you spend circa half your life as an infant, learner or pensioner, and plenty of people raise kids full-time or take early retirement, especially the ones who would have paid lots more taxes prior to 65. So if you are on 60k for 30 years and have a long retirement, it's probably a net win.
As a worker you're also indirectly responsible for plenty of other taxes. Obvious ones like VAT that you pay yourself. but also an employee would have employer's NI, and there are hell of a lot of businesses paying corporation tax that wouldn't be generated money without the labour of the people who work in them, or without people paying for services etc.
A Trump Lake ticket makes total sense for both of them
It revives her nearly dead-on-arrival political career
It softens Trump with a telegenic, articulate and plausible woman who can probably sell Trumpism better than him
I wouldn’t write them entirely off. Unfortunately
"unfortunately" - lol
I know it pleasures you to think I am a secret Trumpite Nazi, but I sincerely do not want Trump to win - with Lake or not. And if he chooses Lake I reckon that increases his chances, which is bad
I don't want Woke Dems to win either, at all, but Trump is the nearer and larger danger
Ron De Santis, please. Anti-woke, but patriotic, sound on Putin and not insane
I'm not a fan of young people either, but I do know old people like this.
Older Britons often seem to think young people aren't buying houses and settling down because they're having massive amounts of fun that their generation never did - but when they actually think about it it amounts to buying coffee and using a tumbledryer.
It does read like an attempt to disproportionately skew the vote toward older people, which is a disgrace.
I have two thoughts on this. (1) Ludicrous that one form of Oyster card is valid and one not. Even if it’s not deliberately done to favour older voters, it sure gives that impression. (2) What’s an Oyster card?*
* Ok, I know what one is, but, like the vast majority of the country, don’t live in fecking London, you self obsessed wankers…
Yes, yes, you don't live in London - most people don't.
There's nothing stopping other towns and cities implementing a similar policy if they wished.
It does read like an attempt to disproportionately skew the vote toward older people, which is a disgrace.
I have two thoughts on this. (1) Ludicrous that one form of Oyster card is valid and one not. Even if it’s not deliberately done to favour older voters, it sure gives that impression. (2) What’s an Oyster card?*
* Ok, I know what one is, but, like the vast majority of the country, don’t live in fecking London, you self obsessed wankers…
Yes, yes, you don't live in London - most people don't.
There's nothing stopping other towns and cities implementing a similar policy if they wished.
I’m guessing that below a certain population size it just isn’t worth the investment to have your own distinct system.
It does read like an attempt to disproportionately skew the vote toward older people, which is a disgrace.
I have two thoughts on this. (1) Ludicrous that one form of Oyster card is valid and one not. Even if it’s not deliberately done to favour older voters, it sure gives that impression. (2) What’s an Oyster card?*
* Ok, I know what one is, but, like the vast majority of the country, don’t live in fecking London, you self obsessed wankers…
Yes, yes, you don't live in London - most people don't.
There's nothing stopping other towns and cities implementing a similar policy if they wished.
The equivalent passes are allowed as valid forms of ID. So, outside London there are freedom passes, over 60s bus passes etc.
In fact, the list is chock full of passes for people who are over 60, but things like student/uni passes, strangely aren't allowed.
I'm not a fan of young people either, but I do know old people like this.
Older Britons often seem to think young people aren't buying houses and settling down because they're having massive amounts of fun that their generation never did - but when they actually think about it it amounts to buying coffee and using a tumbledryer.
I think a lot of older people think this, but don’t appreciate the gulf between ‘have a few more instant coffees rather than going to that expensive coffee house’ and the sheer scale of money now needed to get on the housing market.
It does read like an attempt to disproportionately skew the vote toward older people, which is a disgrace.
I have two thoughts on this. (1) Ludicrous that one form of Oyster card is valid and one not. Even if it’s not deliberately done to favour older voters, it sure gives that impression. (2) What’s an Oyster card?*
* Ok, I know what one is, but, like the vast majority of the country, don’t live in fecking London, you self obsessed wankers…
Yes, yes, you don't live in London - most people don't.
There's nothing stopping other towns and cities implementing a similar policy if they wished.
It does read like an attempt to disproportionately skew the vote toward older people, which is a disgrace.
I have two thoughts on this. (1) Ludicrous that one form of Oyster card is valid and one not. Even if it’s not deliberately done to favour older voters, it sure gives that impression. (2) What’s an Oyster card?*
* Ok, I know what one is, but, like the vast majority of the country, don’t live in fecking London, you self obsessed wankers…
Yes, yes, you don't live in London - most people don't.
There's nothing stopping other towns and cities implementing a similar policy if they wished.
I’m guessing that below a certain population size it just isn’t worth the investment to have your own distinct system.
The solution is simple - turn market towns into large cities.
I’m in favour of retaining a reasonable pension. The triple lock should go, though. Increase it with earnings, only. And tax income above the basic pension level more aggressively.
I’m fine with wealth/asset/property taxes, too.
Our housing stock of family homes should be occupied by families with kids 0-18, mainly. It’s absurd for people to retain their “family home” for many decades after their family moves out. And then use their political power to veto new family homes being built in their area.
I recon, once the tories finally get kicked out, the political power of todays wealthy pensioners will dwindle. They’ve had their cake and eaten it. The next Tory voter coalition will be solidly centred on tax cuts for workers.
It does read like an attempt to disproportionately skew the vote toward older people, which is a disgrace.
I have two thoughts on this. (1) Ludicrous that one form of Oyster card is valid and one not. Even if it’s not deliberately done to favour older voters, it sure gives that impression. (2) What’s an Oyster card?*
* Ok, I know what one is, but, like the vast majority of the country, don’t live in fecking London, you self obsessed wankers…
Yes, yes, you don't live in London - most people don't.
There's nothing stopping other towns and cities implementing a similar policy if they wished.
I’m guessing that below a certain population size it just isn’t worth the investment to have your own distinct system.
The solution is simple - turn market towns into large cities.
Or make the Oyster scheme nationwide for all forms of public transport.
I'm not a fan of young people either, but I do know old people like this.
Older Britons often seem to think young people aren't buying houses and settling down because they're having massive amounts of fun that their generation never did - but when they actually think about it it amounts to buying coffee and using a tumbledryer.
I think a lot of older people think this, but don’t appreciate the gulf between ‘have a few more instant coffees rather than going to that expensive coffee house’ and the sheer scale of money now needed to get on the housing market.
See also 'they have smart phones!' (also applied to refugees). When smartphones are a) very useful (unless you are AndyJS), b) can be reasonably cheap.
The current iteration of the Tory Party needs to FOAD.
You voted for Sunak, did you not?
As the least worst option, your candidate fucked up the economy for a generation, and will keep the party out for a similar generation.
Truss supporters, like Brexit supporters, really should reflect on the unflushable turds they've given the country.
No, the economic turds were built up by your mate the Chancellor from 2020 to 2022 and his predecessors over the 10 years before that. The fact that with one quick squeeze of his bowels his successor finally blocked the toilet for 3 weeks this Autumn is neither here nor there.
Truss and Kwarteng enacted virtually no measures of lasting effect apart from the NI reduction, which is just about the only thing of their legacy to survive after today. What they did do though was to remove the rose tinted spectacles from the markets' eyes, so that they're finally taking a more critical look and recognising the UK economy as the basket case it's become over the long term.
The UK economy has been a Ponzi scheme for 20 years. Relying on ever greater amounts of immigration (which led to perpetually high property prices) and fat taxes from the City. This was completely unsustainable because
1. All that immigration has deeply unpleasant or radical or contradictory consequences. Brexit was just one of them
2. High property prices are just another way to fuck the young, who then consider voting Corbyn, SNP, etc
3. The taxes from the City took a big hit from the GFC and yada yada yada
And now the markets have realised this and Ouch
We will no doubt survive, and eventually find a new economic model. But the pain of the necessary reset is going to be intense
Immigration isn't a Ponzi scheme, it's simply a natural consequence of different demographics and different economic situations in different parts of the world and the technology existing to make migration relatively cheap. It has always been like this - we act like it's a new thing because the phenomenon of other people coming to the UK is relatively recent (not that recent of course, large scale immigration started soon after ww2, more than 70 years ago) but we were exporting large numbers of people to the rest of the world from the 17th century onwards. When Britons emigrated to the Americas or Australia or Africa was that a Ponzi scheme? Arguably the entire human civilisation, which is devouring the world's resources at an unsustainable pace, is a Ponzi scheme, but there's nothing especially unsustainable about post war immigration patterns in the UK. People might not like it, of course, that's an entirely different question.
Total bollocks
Immigration into the UK in recent decades has been completely unprecedented in scale and proportion
1 in 6 people in the UK is now foreign born. This has consequences. And one of them was Brexit. It’s not why I voted for it, but many did. As Remainers keep reminding us. And yet it was the Remainers that opened the borders
Here's a list of foreign born people I know.
My wife's parents (father worked for decades as a doctor in the NHS) My wife's brothers (both doctors, one a GP in a poor part of Leeds, the other looks after sick newborns) My brother's partner Two of my children My boss (started a multi billion dollar hedge fund, employs a lot of people in the UK, is a major philanthropist) Most of my colleagues Loads of the parents I know from school Loads of my neighbours Loads of my friends
Meanwhile, I have lived abroad in two different countries for eight years altogether.
I just don't see what the problem is with people moving about. It's the world we live in. If we didn't want people moving here we shouldn't have colonised half the world, taught them all English and invented the jet engine.
"I'm sorry Mr. Working Class Lad from a Council Estate. If you didn't want unaffordable housing prices from population growth, your pay and conditions undercut from poor immigrants, and a big social divide in your town from a new community that sticks to itself, you should have intervened 100 years before your birth with the upper middle class actions in Asia."
Mr WCL would be paying Belgian tax rates if it weren't for immigrant workers propping up the British pensioner regime.
Depends on the immigrant group. Indian doctors, German engineers and French bankers, for sure. But poor immigrants are net costs to the taxpayer over a lifetime. That's why people want control over immigration, so they can let in the net adds and filter the rest. Big business, on the other hand, wants as much cheap labour as possible.
Well, almost everyone is a net cost to the taxpayer over a lifetime, including the average doctor, engineer and banker, depending on how many kids they have. (Albeit PB comments seems to contain a disproportionate share of six-figure folks.)
That's not true. Government spending per person is about 10k. You have to be earning about 40k a year to pay that much in income tax. Of course there will be years you don't pay as much tax post retirement, and there are other taxes like NI and VAT, but the overall number comes out around a similar point.
That is true of workers, but you spend circa half your life as an infant, learner or pensioner, and plenty of people raise kids full-time or take early retirement, especially the ones who would have paid lots more taxes prior to 65. So if you are on 60k for 30 years and have a long retirement, it's probably a net win.
As a worker you're also indirectly responsible for plenty of other taxes. Obvious ones like VAT that you pay yourself. but also an employee would have employer's NI, and there are hell of a lot of businesses paying corporation tax that wouldn't be generated money without the labour of the people who work in them, or without people paying for services etc.
This is true, but if the average person were a net taxpayer and high earners also put it much more than they got out, there would be a big permanent budget surplus. That's not the case, though, because of big items like pensions, NHS, and the education budget, where the average person ends up getting five-figure sums per year, free at point of use, for a lot of their lives. So the point of immigration policy can't be to increase the number of net taxpayers, because that's a solved problem (just soak the top 20% again).
I'm not a fan of young people either, but I do know old people like this.
Older Britons often seem to think young people aren't buying houses and settling down because they're having massive amounts of fun that their generation never did - but when they actually think about it it amounts to buying coffee and using a tumbledryer.
Funnily enough, the young people I know (including myself) don't tend to use tumbledryers because they don't tend to buy their own white goods and if they do, a washer is usually cheaper.
Interesting website - try the quiz! I scored 2 and 3 on my two attempts. The theme may be of general interest to us here... https://www.wearepolesapart.com/
The current iteration of the Tory Party needs to FOAD.
You voted for Sunak, did you not?
As the least worst option, your candidate fucked up the economy for a generation, and will keep the party out for a similar generation.
Truss supporters, like Brexit supporters, really should reflect on the unflushable turds they've given the country.
No, the economic turds were built up by your mate the Chancellor from 2020 to 2022 and his predecessors over the 10 years before that. The fact that with one quick squeeze of his bowels his successor finally blocked the toilet for 3 weeks this Autumn is neither here nor there.
Truss and Kwarteng enacted virtually no measures of lasting effect apart from the NI reduction, which is just about the only thing of their legacy to survive after today. What they did do though was to remove the rose tinted spectacles from the markets' eyes, so that they're finally taking a more critical look and recognising the UK economy as the basket case it's become over the long term.
The UK economy has been a Ponzi scheme for 20 years. Relying on ever greater amounts of immigration (which led to perpetually high property prices) and fat taxes from the City. This was completely unsustainable because
1. All that immigration has deeply unpleasant or radical or contradictory consequences. Brexit was just one of them
2. High property prices are just another way to fuck the young, who then consider voting Corbyn, SNP, etc
3. The taxes from the City took a big hit from the GFC and yada yada yada
And now the markets have realised this and Ouch
We will no doubt survive, and eventually find a new economic model. But the pain of the necessary reset is going to be intense
Immigration isn't a Ponzi scheme, it's simply a natural consequence of different demographics and different economic situations in different parts of the world and the technology existing to make migration relatively cheap. It has always been like this - we act like it's a new thing because the phenomenon of other people coming to the UK is relatively recent (not that recent of course, large scale immigration started soon after ww2, more than 70 years ago) but we were exporting large numbers of people to the rest of the world from the 17th century onwards. When Britons emigrated to the Americas or Australia or Africa was that a Ponzi scheme? Arguably the entire human civilisation, which is devouring the world's resources at an unsustainable pace, is a Ponzi scheme, but there's nothing especially unsustainable about post war immigration patterns in the UK. People might not like it, of course, that's an entirely different question.
Total bollocks
Immigration into the UK in recent decades has been completely unprecedented in scale and proportion
1 in 6 people in the UK is now foreign born. This has consequences. And one of them was Brexit. It’s not why I voted for it, but many did. As Remainers keep reminding us. And yet it was the Remainers that opened the borders
Here's a list of foreign born people I know.
My wife's parents (father worked for decades as a doctor in the NHS) My wife's brothers (both doctors, one a GP in a poor part of Leeds, the other looks after sick newborns) My brother's partner Two of my children My boss (started a multi billion dollar hedge fund, employs a lot of people in the UK, is a major philanthropist) Most of my colleagues Loads of the parents I know from school Loads of my neighbours Loads of my friends
Meanwhile, I have lived abroad in two different countries for eight years altogether.
I just don't see what the problem is with people moving about. It's the world we live in. If we didn't want people moving here we shouldn't have colonised half the world, taught them all English and invented the jet engine.
"I'm sorry Mr. Working Class Lad from a Council Estate. If you didn't want unaffordable housing prices from population growth, your pay and conditions undercut from poor immigrants, and a big social divide in your town from a new community that sticks to itself, you should have intervened 100 years before your birth with the upper middle class actions in Asia."
Mr WCL would be paying Belgian tax rates if it weren't for immigrant workers propping up the British pensioner regime.
Depends on the immigrant group. Indian doctors, German engineers and French bankers, for sure. But poor immigrants are net costs to the taxpayer over a lifetime. That's why people want control over immigration, so they can let in the net adds and filter the rest. Big business, on the other hand, wants as much cheap labour as possible.
Well, almost everyone is a net cost to the taxpayer over a lifetime, including the average doctor, engineer and banker, depending on how many kids they have. (Albeit PB comments seems to contain a disproportionate share of six-figure folks.)
That's not true. Government spending per person is about 10k. You have to be earning about 40k a year to pay that much in income tax. Of course there will be years you don't pay as much tax post retirement, and there are other taxes like NI and VAT, but the overall number comes out around a similar point.
That is true of workers, but you spend circa half your life as an infant, learner or pensioner, and plenty of people raise kids full-time or take early retirement, especially the ones who would have paid lots more taxes prior to 65. So if you are on 60k for 30 years and have a long retirement, it's probably a net win.
As a worker you're also indirectly responsible for plenty of other taxes. Obvious ones like VAT that you pay yourself. but also an employee would have employer's NI, and there are hell of a lot of businesses paying corporation tax that wouldn't be generated money without the labour of the people who work in them, or without people paying for services etc.
This is true, but if the average person were a net taxpayer and high earners also put it much more than they got out, there would be a big permanent budget surplus. That's not the case, though, because of big items like pensions, NHS, and the education budget, where the average person ends up getting five-figure sums per year, free at point of use, for a lot of their lives. So the point of immigration policy can't be to increase the number of net taxpayers, because that's a solved problem (just soak the top 20% again).
I'd be interested to see if someone has actually worked this all out, because I can't think of many businesses that don't ultimately need people to generate money.
I suspect we'd have to get rid of all the workers and then see how much tax the top 20% actually generate independently. Can you think of many examples?
It does read like an attempt to disproportionately skew the vote toward older people, which is a disgrace.
I have two thoughts on this. (1) Ludicrous that one form of Oyster card is valid and one not. Even if it’s not deliberately done to favour older voters, it sure gives that impression. (2) What’s an Oyster card?*
* Ok, I know what one is, but, like the vast majority of the country, don’t live in fecking London, you self obsessed wankers…
Yes, yes, you don't live in London - most people don't.
There's nothing stopping other towns and cities implementing a similar policy if they wished.
The equivalent passes are allowed as valid forms of ID. So, outside London there are freedom passes, over 60s bus passes etc.
In fact, the list is chock full of passes for people who are over 60, but things like student/uni passes, strangely aren't allowed.
Shocking. And fails to address the real problem which is the failure to check the security of postal voting.
I'm not a fan of young people either, but I do know old people like this.
Older Britons often seem to think young people aren't buying houses and settling down because they're having massive amounts of fun that their generation never did - but when they actually think about it it amounts to buying coffee and using a tumbledryer.
I think a lot of older people think this, but don’t appreciate the gulf between ‘have a few more instant coffees rather than going to that expensive coffee house’ and the sheer scale of money now needed to get on the housing market.
See also 'they have smart phones!' (also applied to refugees). When smartphones are a) very useful (unless you are AndyJS), b) can be reasonably cheap.
I passed a nail bar in town today and noticed five young ladies shoulder-to-shoulder having their nails buffed by another five young ladies. How can the chancellor crack down on this sort of futile economic activity in favour of bricklaying?
The government’s voter ID scheme has been released. Turns out there are few anomalies.
Is there a difference in the process by which both are obtained?
Answering my own question, the 60+ one requires proof of your passport, whereas the 18+ one only requires you to upload a photo. It's easy to see why one is accepted and one is not.
Exactly it's an entirely logical reason, not some weird conspiracy.
It does read like an attempt to disproportionately skew the vote toward older people, which is a disgrace.
I have two thoughts on this. (1) Ludicrous that one form of Oyster card is valid and one not. Even if it’s not deliberately done to favour older voters, it sure gives that impression. (2) What’s an Oyster card?*
* Ok, I know what one is, but, like the vast majority of the country, don’t live in fecking London, you self obsessed wankers… *
NOBODY USES OYSTER CARDS IN LONDON, even if they live in London.
Cashless via any known bank card works the same way so there is absolutely no point whatsoever in having an Oyster.
A modest proposal: on polling day, voters should be made to pass rigorous eye tests to ensure that they can see the ballot and memory tests to ensure they know what they are voting for.
Test their short-term memory by asking if they know who is the prime minister?
Interesting website - try the quiz! I scored 2 and 3 on my two attempts. The theme may be of general interest to us here... https://www.wearepolesapart.com/
Three for me. Votes based on feeling not logic. May have some bearing on this ID thing. If people "feel" it is an attempt to suppress the vote it may backfire.
It does read like an attempt to disproportionately skew the vote toward older people, which is a disgrace.
I have two thoughts on this. (1) Ludicrous that one form of Oyster card is valid and one not. Even if it’s not deliberately done to favour older voters, it sure gives that impression. (2) What’s an Oyster card?*
* Ok, I know what one is, but, like the vast majority of the country, don’t live in fecking London, you self obsessed wankers… *
NOBODY USES OYSTER CARDS IN LONDON, even if they live in London.
Cashless via any known bank card works the same way so there is absolutely no point whatsoever in having an Oyster.
It does read like an attempt to disproportionately skew the vote toward older people, which is a disgrace.
I have two thoughts on this. (1) Ludicrous that one form of Oyster card is valid and one not. Even if it’s not deliberately done to favour older voters, it sure gives that impression. (2) What’s an Oyster card?*
* Ok, I know what one is, but, like the vast majority of the country, don’t live in fecking London, you self obsessed wankers…
Yes, yes, you don't live in London - most people don't.
There's nothing stopping other towns and cities implementing a similar policy if they wished.
In Warminster? What would they use it on?
The FV432s parked outside the School of Infantry. (Warriors and Mastiffs, rather, now, probably.)
The current iteration of the Tory Party needs to FOAD.
You voted for Sunak, did you not?
As the least worst option, your candidate fucked up the economy for a generation, and will keep the party out for a similar generation.
Truss supporters, like Brexit supporters, really should reflect on the unflushable turds they've given the country.
No, the economic turds were built up by your mate the Chancellor from 2020 to 2022 and his predecessors over the 10 years before that. The fact that with one quick squeeze of his bowels his successor finally blocked the toilet for 3 weeks this Autumn is neither here nor there.
Truss and Kwarteng enacted virtually no measures of lasting effect apart from the NI reduction, which is just about the only thing of their legacy to survive after today. What they did do though was to remove the rose tinted spectacles from the markets' eyes, so that they're finally taking a more critical look and recognising the UK economy as the basket case it's become over the long term.
The UK economy has been a Ponzi scheme for 20 years. Relying on ever greater amounts of immigration (which led to perpetually high property prices) and fat taxes from the City. This was completely unsustainable because
1. All that immigration has deeply unpleasant or radical or contradictory consequences. Brexit was just one of them
2. High property prices are just another way to fuck the young, who then consider voting Corbyn, SNP, etc
3. The taxes from the City took a big hit from the GFC and yada yada yada
And now the markets have realised this and Ouch
We will no doubt survive, and eventually find a new economic model. But the pain of the necessary reset is going to be intense
Immigration isn't a Ponzi scheme, it's simply a natural consequence of different demographics and different economic situations in different parts of the world and the technology existing to make migration relatively cheap. It has always been like this - we act like it's a new thing because the phenomenon of other people coming to the UK is relatively recent (not that recent of course, large scale immigration started soon after ww2, more than 70 years ago) but we were exporting large numbers of people to the rest of the world from the 17th century onwards. When Britons emigrated to the Americas or Australia or Africa was that a Ponzi scheme? Arguably the entire human civilisation, which is devouring the world's resources at an unsustainable pace, is a Ponzi scheme, but there's nothing especially unsustainable about post war immigration patterns in the UK. People might not like it, of course, that's an entirely different question.
Total bollocks
Immigration into the UK in recent decades has been completely unprecedented in scale and proportion
1 in 6 people in the UK is now foreign born. This has consequences. And one of them was Brexit. It’s not why I voted for it, but many did. As Remainers keep reminding us. And yet it was the Remainers that opened the borders
Here's a list of foreign born people I know.
My wife's parents (father worked for decades as a doctor in the NHS) My wife's brothers (both doctors, one a GP in a poor part of Leeds, the other looks after sick newborns) My brother's partner Two of my children My boss (started a multi billion dollar hedge fund, employs a lot of people in the UK, is a major philanthropist) Most of my colleagues Loads of the parents I know from school Loads of my neighbours Loads of my friends
Meanwhile, I have lived abroad in two different countries for eight years altogether.
I just don't see what the problem is with people moving about. It's the world we live in. If we didn't want people moving here we shouldn't have colonised half the world, taught them all English and invented the jet engine.
Sweden didn't colonise much, and they've got plenty of immigrants.
Apart from half of what is now England, although it was a fair time ago…
The Swedelaw?
Ran as far as Gretna. After that was the law of the turnip.
It does read like an attempt to disproportionately skew the vote toward older people, which is a disgrace.
I have two thoughts on this. (1) Ludicrous that one form of Oyster card is valid and one not. Even if it’s not deliberately done to favour older voters, it sure gives that impression. (2) What’s an Oyster card?*
* Ok, I know what one is, but, like the vast majority of the country, don’t live in fecking London, you self obsessed wankers… *
NOBODY USES OYSTER CARDS IN LONDON, even if they live in London.
Cashless via any known bank card works the same way so there is absolutely no point whatsoever in having an Oyster.
Interesting website - try the quiz! I scored 2 and 3 on my two attempts. The theme may be of general interest to us here... https://www.wearepolesapart.com/
Having tried the quiz (once - not wasting my time again) I think that was rather obvious. Pick some voters who have voted against the natural vote for their overall views and then amaze (!) people trying to guess how they voted or would vote. A bit like putting the spot the ball ball in the wrong place on purpose.
Interesting website - try the quiz! I scored 2 and 3 on my two attempts. The theme may be of general interest to us here... https://www.wearepolesapart.com/
I don't quite get it - it seems to be drawn at random, but without knowing whether the information is chosen at random or specifically to be counter-intuitive, it's hard to tell if it's quite representative or just centrist scolds lecturing the reader against Bayes' Theorem.
Surely the way around not having ID is to simply apply for a postal vote? I did during the pandemic. Got a permanent one, no questions asked, no reason required.
It does read like an attempt to disproportionately skew the vote toward older people, which is a disgrace.
I have two thoughts on this. (1) Ludicrous that one form of Oyster card is valid and one not. Even if it’s not deliberately done to favour older voters, it sure gives that impression. (2) What’s an Oyster card?*
* Ok, I know what one is, but, like the vast majority of the country, don’t live in fecking London, you self obsessed wankers… *
NOBODY USES OYSTER CARDS IN LONDON, even if they live in London.
Cashless via any known bank card works the same way so there is absolutely no point whatsoever in having an Oyster.
The SNP is trying to quell a coup in its Westminster group after an MP from the 2019 intake launched an attempt to oust Ian Blackford as leader.
Stephen Flynn, the Aberdeen South MP and energy spokesman, has informed senior party officials of his intention to lead the group in the Commons, The Times has been told.
His supporters said it became apparent at around lunchtime today that he had the backing of enough MPs to win any potential contest, which triggered his decision to challenge.
He subsequently told Ian McCann, the party’s compliance officer, that he would put his name forward at next month’s annual general meeting of the Westminster group.
Blackford’s allies were trying to persuade Flynn, 34, to back out and disputed the claim that he commanded majority support among MPs.
A modest proposal: on polling day, voters should be made to pass rigorous eye tests to ensure that they can see the ballot and memory tests to ensure they know what they are voting for.
Test their short-term memory by asking if they know who is the prime minister?
It does read like an attempt to disproportionately skew the vote toward older people, which is a disgrace.
I have two thoughts on this. (1) Ludicrous that one form of Oyster card is valid and one not. Even if it’s not deliberately done to favour older voters, it sure gives that impression. (2) What’s an Oyster card?*
* Ok, I know what one is, but, like the vast majority of the country, don’t live in fecking London, you self obsessed wankers… *
NOBODY USES OYSTER CARDS IN LONDON, even if they live in London.
Cashless via any known bank card works the same way so there is absolutely no point whatsoever in having an Oyster.
I'm not a fan of young people either, but I do know old people like this.
Older Britons often seem to think young people aren't buying houses and settling down because they're having massive amounts of fun that their generation never did - but when they actually think about it it amounts to buying coffee and using a tumbledryer.
I think a lot of older people think this, but don’t appreciate the gulf between ‘have a few more instant coffees rather than going to that expensive coffee house’ and the sheer scale of money now needed to get on the housing market.
See also 'they have smart phones!' (also applied to refugees). When smartphones are a) very useful (unless you are AndyJS), b) can be reasonably cheap.
I wonder if Labour will outflank the Tories by offering a tax cut to workers at the next GE.
Minimum wage (£10.42) * 30 hours per week * 52 weeks (assuming paid holidays) = £16,255.20 - so you could see a promise to increase the personal allowance, and thereby cut tax for everyone earning under £100k, being an attractive proposition, if you can work out how to pay for it.
Outside London in England you get a bus pass when you reach State Pension age. Not at 60. You also can't use that pass before 9am. Never have. Hence old people known as "twirlies". (Am I too early? = I'm a twirly in Scouse).
NOBODY USES OYSTER CARDS IN LONDON, even if they live in London.
Cashless via any known bank card works the same way so there is absolutely no point whatsoever in having an Oyster.
In 2021 they still made up about a third of journeys. So nobody is a large exaggeration.
Well then there are many idiots / provincial people who don’t realise that they are completely unnecessary. All you need is a phone. Don’t even need a bank card.
The current iteration of the Tory Party needs to FOAD.
You voted for Sunak, did you not?
As the least worst option, your candidate fucked up the economy for a generation, and will keep the party out for a similar generation.
Truss supporters, like Brexit supporters, really should reflect on the unflushable turds they've given the country.
No, the economic turds were built up by your mate the Chancellor from 2020 to 2022 and his predecessors over the 10 years before that. The fact that with one quick squeeze of his bowels his successor finally blocked the toilet for 3 weeks this Autumn is neither here nor there.
Truss and Kwarteng enacted virtually no measures of lasting effect apart from the NI reduction, which is just about the only thing of their legacy to survive after today. What they did do though was to remove the rose tinted spectacles from the markets' eyes, so that they're finally taking a more critical look and recognising the UK economy as the basket case it's become over the long term.
The legacy of the brief Truss/Kwarteng period has been to fix the idea in the minds of many voters that the mess we are in now is down to Tory incompetence.
It does read like an attempt to disproportionately skew the vote toward older people, which is a disgrace.
I have two thoughts on this. (1) Ludicrous that one form of Oyster card is valid and one not. Even if it’s not deliberately done to favour older voters, it sure gives that impression. (2) What’s an Oyster card?*
* Ok, I know what one is, but, like the vast majority of the country, don’t live in fecking London, you self obsessed wankers… *
NOBODY USES OYSTER CARDS IN LONDON, even if they live in London.
Cashless via any known bank card works the same way so there is absolutely no point whatsoever in having an Oyster.
There's a generalisation if there ever was one. Older people use them, younger people use them. Those who pay also use bank cards and phones I'll freely admit but I'd venture there are still a lot of Oyster cards in use every day.
Those who don't pay (or choose not to pay) have their own methods of getting through the barriers.
When the revenue protection team and British Transport Police visit East Ham, they always seem to get a good haul of (mainly younger male) offenders.
It does read like an attempt to disproportionately skew the vote toward older people, which is a disgrace.
I have two thoughts on this. (1) Ludicrous that one form of Oyster card is valid and one not. Even if it’s not deliberately done to favour older voters, it sure gives that impression. (2) What’s an Oyster card?*
* Ok, I know what one is, but, like the vast majority of the country, don’t live in fecking London, you self obsessed wankers…
Yes, yes, you don't live in London - most people don't.
There's nothing stopping other towns and cities implementing a similar policy if they wished.
In Warminster? What would they use it on?
The FV432s parked outside the School of Infantry. (Warriors and Mastiffs, rather, now, probably.)
I wish! That would be awesome. Best we get is the vintage bus ride to Imber once a year (past lots of dead tanks on the ranges).
The current iteration of the Tory Party needs to FOAD.
You voted for Sunak, did you not?
As the least worst option, your candidate fucked up the economy for a generation, and will keep the party out for a similar generation.
Truss supporters, like Brexit supporters, really should reflect on the unflushable turds they've given the country.
No, the economic turds were built up by your mate the Chancellor from 2020 to 2022 and his predecessors over the 10 years before that. The fact that with one quick squeeze of his bowels his successor finally blocked the toilet for 3 weeks this Autumn is neither here nor there.
Truss and Kwarteng enacted virtually no measures of lasting effect apart from the NI reduction, which is just about the only thing of their legacy to survive after today. What they did do though was to remove the rose tinted spectacles from the markets' eyes, so that they're finally taking a more critical look and recognising the UK economy as the basket case it's become over the long term.
The UK economy has been a Ponzi scheme for 20 years. Relying on ever greater amounts of immigration (which led to perpetually high property prices) and fat taxes from the City. This was completely unsustainable because
1. All that immigration has deeply unpleasant or radical or contradictory consequences. Brexit was just one of them
2. High property prices are just another way to fuck the young, who then consider voting Corbyn, SNP, etc
3. The taxes from the City took a big hit from the GFC and yada yada yada
And now the markets have realised this and Ouch
We will no doubt survive, and eventually find a new economic model. But the pain of the necessary reset is going to be intense
Immigration isn't a Ponzi scheme, it's simply a natural consequence of different demographics and different economic situations in different parts of the world and the technology existing to make migration relatively cheap. It has always been like this - we act like it's a new thing because the phenomenon of other people coming to the UK is relatively recent (not that recent of course, large scale immigration started soon after ww2, more than 70 years ago) but we were exporting large numbers of people to the rest of the world from the 17th century onwards. When Britons emigrated to the Americas or Australia or Africa was that a Ponzi scheme? Arguably the entire human civilisation, which is devouring the world's resources at an unsustainable pace, is a Ponzi scheme, but there's nothing especially unsustainable about post war immigration patterns in the UK. People might not like it, of course, that's an entirely different question.
Total bollocks
Immigration into the UK in recent decades has been completely unprecedented in scale and proportion
1 in 6 people in the UK is now foreign born. This has consequences. And one of them was Brexit. It’s not why I voted for it, but many did. As Remainers keep reminding us. And yet it was the Remainers that opened the borders
Here's a list of foreign born people I know.
My wife's parents (father worked for decades as a doctor in the NHS) My wife's brothers (both doctors, one a GP in a poor part of Leeds, the other looks after sick newborns) My brother's partner Two of my children My boss (started a multi billion dollar hedge fund, employs a lot of people in the UK, is a major philanthropist) Most of my colleagues Loads of the parents I know from school Loads of my neighbours Loads of my friends
Meanwhile, I have lived abroad in two different countries for eight years altogether.
I just don't see what the problem is with people moving about. It's the world we live in. If we didn't want people moving here we shouldn't have colonised half the world, taught them all English and invented the jet engine.
Sweden didn't colonise much, and they've got plenty of immigrants.
It does read like an attempt to disproportionately skew the vote toward older people, which is a disgrace.
I have two thoughts on this. (1) Ludicrous that one form of Oyster card is valid and one not. Even if it’s not deliberately done to favour older voters, it sure gives that impression. (2) What’s an Oyster card?*
* Ok, I know what one is, but, like the vast majority of the country, don’t live in fecking London, you self obsessed wankers… *
NOBODY USES OYSTER CARDS IN LONDON, even if they live in London.
The current iteration of the Tory Party needs to FOAD.
You voted for Sunak, did you not?
As the least worst option, your candidate fucked up the economy for a generation, and will keep the party out for a similar generation.
Truss supporters, like Brexit supporters, really should reflect on the unflushable turds they've given the country.
No, the economic turds were built up by your mate the Chancellor from 2020 to 2022 and his predecessors over the 10 years before that. The fact that with one quick squeeze of his bowels his successor finally blocked the toilet for 3 weeks this Autumn is neither here nor there.
Truss and Kwarteng enacted virtually no measures of lasting effect apart from the NI reduction, which is just about the only thing of their legacy to survive after today. What they did do though was to remove the rose tinted spectacles from the markets' eyes, so that they're finally taking a more critical look and recognising the UK economy as the basket case it's become over the long term.
The UK economy has been a Ponzi scheme for 20 years. Relying on ever greater amounts of immigration (which led to perpetually high property prices) and fat taxes from the City. This was completely unsustainable because
1. All that immigration has deeply unpleasant or radical or contradictory consequences. Brexit was just one of them
2. High property prices are just another way to fuck the young, who then consider voting Corbyn, SNP, etc
3. The taxes from the City took a big hit from the GFC and yada yada yada
And now the markets have realised this and Ouch
We will no doubt survive, and eventually find a new economic model. But the pain of the necessary reset is going to be intense
Immigration isn't a Ponzi scheme, it's simply a natural consequence of different demographics and different economic situations in different parts of the world and the technology existing to make migration relatively cheap. It has always been like this - we act like it's a new thing because the phenomenon of other people coming to the UK is relatively recent (not that recent of course, large scale immigration started soon after ww2, more than 70 years ago) but we were exporting large numbers of people to the rest of the world from the 17th century onwards. When Britons emigrated to the Americas or Australia or Africa was that a Ponzi scheme? Arguably the entire human civilisation, which is devouring the world's resources at an unsustainable pace, is a Ponzi scheme, but there's nothing especially unsustainable about post war immigration patterns in the UK. People might not like it, of course, that's an entirely different question.
Total bollocks
Immigration into the UK in recent decades has been completely unprecedented in scale and proportion
1 in 6 people in the UK is now foreign born. This has consequences. And one of them was Brexit. It’s not why I voted for it, but many did. As Remainers keep reminding us. And yet it was the Remainers that opened the borders
Here's a list of foreign born people I know.
My wife's parents (father worked for decades as a doctor in the NHS) My wife's brothers (both doctors, one a GP in a poor part of Leeds, the other looks after sick newborns) My brother's partner Two of my children My boss (started a multi billion dollar hedge fund, employs a lot of people in the UK, is a major philanthropist) Most of my colleagues Loads of the parents I know from school Loads of my neighbours Loads of my friends
Meanwhile, I have lived abroad in two different countries for eight years altogether.
I just don't see what the problem is with people moving about. It's the world we live in. If we didn't want people moving here we shouldn't have colonised half the world, taught them all English and invented the jet engine.
Sweden didn't colonise much, and they've got plenty of immigrants.
Erik the Viking says Hi!
Erik the Red? Not to mention his son Leif.
In any case, what about all this 'Northmen' stuff in, erm, Normandy, Iceland, Rus, and so on?
They should close all ticket stations on the Tube as paper tickets are even stupider and equally as pointless as Oysters. I mean, it’s not even possible to pay cash on a bus (rightly).
The current iteration of the Tory Party needs to FOAD.
You voted for Sunak, did you not?
As the least worst option, your candidate fucked up the economy for a generation, and will keep the party out for a similar generation.
Truss supporters, like Brexit supporters, really should reflect on the unflushable turds they've given the country.
No, the economic turds were built up by your mate the Chancellor from 2020 to 2022 and his predecessors over the 10 years before that. The fact that with one quick squeeze of his bowels his successor finally blocked the toilet for 3 weeks this Autumn is neither here nor there.
Truss and Kwarteng enacted virtually no measures of lasting effect apart from the NI reduction, which is just about the only thing of their legacy to survive after today. What they did do though was to remove the rose tinted spectacles from the markets' eyes, so that they're finally taking a more critical look and recognising the UK economy as the basket case it's become over the long term.
The legacy of the brief Truss/Kwarteng period has been to fix the idea in the minds of many voters that the mess we are in now is down to Tory incompetence.
Yes, there are non-Tory reasons for some of the huge mess we are in (even though they have been in power a long time), but their actions (and apparently cluelessness as to our problems) leading to their own ousting makes it pretty reasonable for people to assume it all down to the party.
'Part-mandarin, part-mortician, Hunt delivered his statement in the tone of a dad breaking the news to his child that their pet hamster died over the summer holidays' | Writes @Madz_Grant
The current iteration of the Tory Party needs to FOAD.
You voted for Sunak, did you not?
As the least worst option, your candidate fucked up the economy for a generation, and will keep the party out for a similar generation.
Truss supporters, like Brexit supporters, really should reflect on the unflushable turds they've given the country.
No, the economic turds were built up by your mate the Chancellor from 2020 to 2022 and his predecessors over the 10 years before that. The fact that with one quick squeeze of his bowels his successor finally blocked the toilet for 3 weeks this Autumn is neither here nor there.
Truss and Kwarteng enacted virtually no measures of lasting effect apart from the NI reduction, which is just about the only thing of their legacy to survive after today. What they did do though was to remove the rose tinted spectacles from the markets' eyes, so that they're finally taking a more critical look and recognising the UK economy as the basket case it's become over the long term.
The UK economy has been a Ponzi scheme for 20 years. Relying on ever greater amounts of immigration (which led to perpetually high property prices) and fat taxes from the City. This was completely unsustainable because
1. All that immigration has deeply unpleasant or radical or contradictory consequences. Brexit was just one of them
2. High property prices are just another way to fuck the young, who then consider voting Corbyn, SNP, etc
3. The taxes from the City took a big hit from the GFC and yada yada yada
And now the markets have realised this and Ouch
We will no doubt survive, and eventually find a new economic model. But the pain of the necessary reset is going to be intense
Immigration isn't a Ponzi scheme, it's simply a natural consequence of different demographics and different economic situations in different parts of the world and the technology existing to make migration relatively cheap. It has always been like this - we act like it's a new thing because the phenomenon of other people coming to the UK is relatively recent (not that recent of course, large scale immigration started soon after ww2, more than 70 years ago) but we were exporting large numbers of people to the rest of the world from the 17th century onwards. When Britons emigrated to the Americas or Australia or Africa was that a Ponzi scheme? Arguably the entire human civilisation, which is devouring the world's resources at an unsustainable pace, is a Ponzi scheme, but there's nothing especially unsustainable about post war immigration patterns in the UK. People might not like it, of course, that's an entirely different question.
Total bollocks
Immigration into the UK in recent decades has been completely unprecedented in scale and proportion
1 in 6 people in the UK is now foreign born. This has consequences. And one of them was Brexit. It’s not why I voted for it, but many did. As Remainers keep reminding us. And yet it was the Remainers that opened the borders
Here's a list of foreign born people I know.
My wife's parents (father worked for decades as a doctor in the NHS) My wife's brothers (both doctors, one a GP in a poor part of Leeds, the other looks after sick newborns) My brother's partner Two of my children My boss (started a multi billion dollar hedge fund, employs a lot of people in the UK, is a major philanthropist) Most of my colleagues Loads of the parents I know from school Loads of my neighbours Loads of my friends
Meanwhile, I have lived abroad in two different countries for eight years altogether.
I just don't see what the problem is with people moving about. It's the world we live in. If we didn't want people moving here we shouldn't have colonised half the world, taught them all English and invented the jet engine.
"I'm sorry Mr. Working Class Lad from a Council Estate. If you didn't want unaffordable housing prices from population growth, your pay and conditions undercut from poor immigrants, and a big social divide in your town from a new community that sticks to itself, you should have intervened 100 years before your birth with the upper middle class actions in Asia."
Mr WCL would be paying Belgian tax rates if it weren't for immigrant workers propping up the British pensioner regime.
Depends on the immigrant group. Indian doctors, German engineers and French bankers, for sure. But poor immigrants are net costs to the taxpayer over a lifetime. That's why people want control over immigration, so they can let in the net adds and filter the rest. Big business, on the other hand, wants as much cheap labour as possible.
Well, almost everyone is a net cost to the taxpayer over a lifetime, including the average doctor, engineer and banker, depending on how many kids they have. (Albeit PB comments seems to contain a disproportionate share of six-figure folks.)
That's not true. Government spending per person is about 10k. You have to be earning about 40k a year to pay that much in income tax. Of course there will be years you don't pay as much tax post retirement, and there are other taxes like NI and VAT, but the overall number comes out around a similar point.
That is true of workers, but you spend circa half your life as an infant, learner or pensioner, and plenty of people raise kids full-time or take early retirement, especially the ones who would have paid lots more taxes prior to 65. So if you are on 60k for 30 years and have a long retirement, it's probably a net win.
As a worker you're also indirectly responsible for plenty of other taxes. Obvious ones like VAT that you pay yourself. but also an employee would have employer's NI, and there are hell of a lot of businesses paying corporation tax that wouldn't be generated money without the labour of the people who work in them, or without people paying for services etc.
This is true, but if the average person were a net taxpayer and high earners also put it much more than they got out, there would be a big permanent budget surplus. That's not the case, though, because of big items like pensions, NHS, and the education budget, where the average person ends up getting five-figure sums per year, free at point of use, for a lot of their lives. So the point of immigration policy can't be to increase the number of net taxpayers, because that's a solved problem (just soak the top 20% again).
I'd be interested to see if someone has actually worked this all out, because I can't think of many businesses that don't ultimately need people to generate money.
I suspect we'd have to get rid of all the workers and then see how much tax the top 20% actually generate independently. Can you think of many examples?
Needless to say, businesses are taxed on their profits (efficiency in delivering services) and not incomes (amount of services delivered). But you have hit on the real reason why rich countries want immigration. Not for net tax revenues directly, which they can raise pretty rapidly, but to increase aggregate demand and labour supply in general. It happens that recent immigration demographically reduces other workers' tax bills, but that's not the most important point.
Unfortunately, I don’t understand at least half of the words that they’re using. But I think it disagrees with @LostPassword
Me being an idiot and not studying any science beyond GCSE means that I have absolutely no idea who is right. But I do feel like I’m learning something. Maybe.
Such a shame when such an attractive theory is destroyed by evidence!
It does read like an attempt to disproportionately skew the vote toward older people, which is a disgrace.
I have two thoughts on this. (1) Ludicrous that one form of Oyster card is valid and one not. Even if it’s not deliberately done to favour older voters, it sure gives that impression. (2) What’s an Oyster card?*
* Ok, I know what one is, but, like the vast majority of the country, don’t live in fecking London, you self obsessed wankers… *
NOBODY USES OYSTER CARDS IN LONDON, even if they live in London.
I do.
Why? You can just use your phone (unless you get free travel for some reason - in which case fine, but that’s not relevant to my point. For Joe Public, Oysters are pointless clutter)
They should close all ticket stations on the Tube as paper tickets are even stupider and equally as pointless as Oysters. I mean, it’s not even possible to pay cash on a bus (rightly).
Gamblers mostly like to laugh at their sports output, but as it happens most of their tournament win probabilities are very close to the betting market estimates this time around.
Comments
I think a lot of people probably don't see what the big deal is about ID for voting, so long as what qualifies as ID is sufficiently wide so as not to clearly penalise people who are less likely to have, say, a passport or driver's licence.
But like the issue of general ID cards, ID for voting seemed a solution looking for a problem to me. The goverment would argue precaution no doubt, but was there proof of a issue which this would solve? How big an issue, and was this a proportionate approach?
The other problem for them is a policy which might look benign when you are ahead in the polls can look sinister when you are well behind, as an attempt to eke out any advantage you can find.
She is definitely "plausible"
I can't think of a better fit as a VP candidate for Trump
He has a big problem with women voters
After all, 'within inches of being Arizona governor' is not much of a cv when the Republicans won by 14, 12 and 12, in the last three gubernatorials there.
I do love the word gubernatorial.
It is, by any measure, a sledgehammer to crack the tiniest of nuts. Have there been instances of electoral fraud? Yes, and many of them around postal and proxy votes rather than personation (vote early and often) or anything else. One might argue banning postal and proxy votes would be the way forward but that seems not to be in favour and there are sound reasons why.
Perhaps a more rigorous approach to the verification of postal and proxy votes is the way forward especially in those areas where a problem has ben shown to exist.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/17/un-chief-warns-of-breakdown-in-trust-with-no-deal-in-sight-at-cop27?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
I don't want Woke Dems to win either, at all, but Trump is the nearer and larger danger
Ron De Santis, please. Anti-woke, but patriotic, sound on Putin and not insane
Older Britons often seem to think young people aren't buying houses and settling down because they're having massive amounts of fun that their generation never did - but when they actually think about it it amounts to buying coffee and using a tumbledryer.
https://twitter.com/BDSixsmith/status/1593242142394449920?cxt=HHwWgIDUqbDSqpwsAAAA
There's nothing stopping other towns and cities implementing a similar policy if they wished.
https://twitter.com/leonardocarella/status/1592933304495636480?cxt=HHwWgIDQ1dKZnpssAAAA
TV or radio (6)
In fact, the list is chock full of passes for people who are over 60, but things like student/uni passes, strangely aren't allowed.
I’m fine with wealth/asset/property taxes, too.
Our housing stock of family homes should be occupied by families with kids 0-18, mainly. It’s absurd for people to retain their “family home” for many decades after their family moves out. And then use their political power to veto new family homes being built in their area.
I recon, once the tories finally get kicked out, the political power of todays wealthy pensioners will dwindle. They’ve had their cake and eaten it. The next Tory voter coalition will be solidly centred on tax cuts for workers.
Hope he returns tho. I like his waspish outlook, even if he oversteps when pissed as a duke
I suspect we'd have to get rid of all the workers and then see how much tax the top 20% actually generate independently. Can you think of many examples?
Ideal!
Cashless via any known bank card works the same way so there is absolutely no point whatsoever in having an Oyster.
What about people over the age of 60?
A bit like putting the spot the ball ball in the wrong place on purpose.
I did during the pandemic. Got a permanent one, no questions asked, no reason required.
Stephen Flynn, the Aberdeen South MP and energy spokesman, has informed senior party officials of his intention to lead the group in the Commons, The Times has been told.
His supporters said it became apparent at around lunchtime today that he had the backing of enough MPs to win any potential contest, which triggered his decision to challenge.
He subsequently told Ian McCann, the party’s compliance officer, that he would put his name forward at next month’s annual general meeting of the Westminster group.
Blackford’s allies were trying to persuade Flynn, 34, to back out and disputed the claim that he commanded majority support among MPs.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/stephen-flynn-launches-bid-to-oust-ian-blackford-as-snp-westminster-leader-g9qvwx23g
Not at 60.
You also can't use that pass before 9am. Never have.
Hence old people known as "twirlies".
(Am I too early? = I'm a twirly in Scouse).
Those who don't pay (or choose not to pay) have their own methods of getting through the barriers.
When the revenue protection team and British Transport Police visit East Ham, they always seem to get a good haul of (mainly younger male) offenders.
Female competitors at Wimbledon will be allowed to wear dark-coloured undershorts from next year.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/63666684
He should have been permanently banned long ago.
Read more ⤵️
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/11/17/undertaker-jeremy-hunt-breaks-bad-news-economy-sir-humphrey/?utm_content=politics&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1668708548-2
Hooray! The @FiveThirtyEight World Cup model has arrived.
Gamblers mostly like to laugh at their sports output, but as it happens most of their tournament win probabilities are very close to the betting market estimates this time around.
https://twitter.com/shadsy/status/1592982504478474240?s=46&t=7acgFT8LWBCLjHRc_hSA4g
England 7% chance?