Here is the reality on doctors' pay. The UK is not the highest payer in Europe for hospital doctors but it is well above the median. It is also considerably higher than the nearest comparable system, Sweden, which has a nationalised system unlike most other "mixed economy" health systems
Additionally UK doctors have the safest jobs than any other walk of life, even by public sector standards. It is almost impossible to sack a hospital doctor in the NHS, even when they are incompetent. They also have highly lucrative pension schemes which see them retire on pensions that give them a take home payment that is in excess of double what the average taxpayer earns, and hospital consultants often also have lucrative private practices that are effectively conflicts of interest, but the NHS turns a blind eye to it.
Most so-called "junior" doctors (those below consultant level) earn salaries that are very comparative to other non-partner level professionals such as lawyers and accountants that are outside the distorted salaries found in London.
As for GPs: they are raking it in! The reality is that if doctors were a little less greedy there would be the possibility to be more generous to other health professionals who are probably underpaid.
In summary, those that are swallowing the line of the doctors unions that they are underpaid, I have a bridge to sell you.
BIB: that GPs are raking in £80,000 a year does not mean junior hospital doctors are not underpaid (or overworked or working antisocial hours).
As a junior analyst I worked from 7am to 10pm fairly often despite my contract hours being 8am to 5pm, I got paid fuck all to do it as well. Junior doctoring is exactly the same, short term shite while you're in your 20s so you can climb the earnings ladder and once you hit 30 you've got a substantial income.
If we're going to change the model to pay more at an earlier stage then pay later in medical careers needs to fall.
What I don't understand is why doctors think they should be treated any differently to other high yielding industry, all lawyers, financiers, analysts etc... will start on shit wages for long hours, it's called paying one's dues. Doctors seem to want to have their cake and eat it.
That's a reasonable point Max in general.
But in specific at the moment the previously already lower wages that junior doctors are getting paid aren't just being frozen in real terms, but a proposed substantial cut. While taxpayers money is going to pay others a double-digit rise, including the state pension of retired doctors on defined benefit schemes.
That's f***ed up is it not?
Should a retired doctor on a defined benefit scheme get a double-digit percentage increase in their state pension, while a junior doctor sees a nearly double-digit percentage cut in their real terms income from their already lower wage? Is that paying their dues?
Keeping lower wages flat, while other wages are flat, is entirely reasonable. But cutting some wages in real terms while increasing others by double digit percentages . . . that's a political choice, not necessity.
You have been admirably consistent about wanting a free market in labour. There is a free market for junior doctors in fact there is surplus demand. Hence by your own estimation, as indeed you have noted, wages should fall as they are competed downwards. They shouldn't rise.
Plus the NPV of a "junior doctors" wages is substantially higher than many others and as we know they are bright enough to have worked this out.
What happens to senior consultants or investment bankers is neither here nor there.
Absolutely Topping.
If there's more qualified job applicants for the junior doctors role to replace them, rather than pay what they're demanding, then I have no qualms with that being done. Sack the strikers and replace them with those equally qualified who are willing to do the job at the offered rate instead of a higher rate.
But I'm curious about what you mean by surplus demand meaning wages should fall? Surplus demand for junior doctors would mean the wage rises, surplus supply of people willing to do the job would mean a fall, and I'm not sure there's any evidence that there's surplus supply of people wanting and qualified to do that role.
If there is surplus supply, let the market do its thing and let any who end up without a job consider how they might have acted differently. But I don't think there is.
I believe there is surplus demand for junior doctors jobs.
Not enough places at med school, rather than not enough wanting to become docs.
Exactly. More people want to be doctors than there are available places.
Anyway, on thread - surely not. Yousaf has all Nicola Sturgeon's negatives and none of her positives. I don't really see what consituency he appeals to.
Not my party, obviously, and I don't know the selectorate. But when other parties have elected leaders who don't necessarily speak to the wider electorate, they've done so because they represent an obvious strain of what that party believes. I would have thought the SNP equivalent would be more akin to Ash Regan. Yousaf strikes me as neither one to connect to the wider electorate nor one to boldly fight the battle for independence whatever public opinion believes.
It beggars belief given it is supposed to be party of independence and only Regan has any real interest in it
Surely they all have real interest in it? The basic problem remains that not enough voters share that interest. And unless you can move people from no to yes, you are left howling at the moon.
From what I saw Forbes gets this rather simple concept and the others don't.
Yousaf and Forbes seem to have pretty much the same position here.
Here is the reality on doctors' pay. The UK is not the highest payer in Europe for hospital doctors but it is well above the median. It is also considerably higher than the nearest comparable system, Sweden, which has a nationalised system unlike most other "mixed economy" health systems
Additionally UK doctors have the safest jobs than any other walk of life, even by public sector standards. It is almost impossible to sack a hospital doctor in the NHS, even when they are incompetent. They also have highly lucrative pension schemes which see them retire on pensions that give them a take home payment that is in excess of double what the average taxpayer earns, and hospital consultants often also have lucrative private practices that are effectively conflicts of interest, but the NHS turns a blind eye to it.
Most so-called "junior" doctors (those below consultant level) earn salaries that are very comparative to other non-partner level professionals such as lawyers and accountants that are outside the distorted salaries found in London.
As for GPs: they are raking it in! The reality is that if doctors were a little less greedy there would be the possibility to be more generous to other health professionals who are probably underpaid.
In summary, those that are swallowing the line of the doctors unions that they are underpaid, I have a bridge to sell you.
BIB: that GPs are raking in £80,000 a year does not mean junior hospital doctors are not underpaid (or overworked or working antisocial hours).
As a junior analyst I worked from 7am to 10pm fairly often despite my contract hours being 8am to 5pm, I got paid fuck all to do it as well. Junior doctoring is exactly the same, short term shite while you're in your 20s so you can climb the earnings ladder and once you hit 30 you've got a substantial income.
If we're going to change the model to pay more at an earlier stage then pay later in medical careers needs to fall.
What I don't understand is why doctors think they should be treated any differently to other high yielding industry, all lawyers, financiers, analysts etc... will start on shit wages for long hours, it's called paying one's dues. Doctors seem to want to have their cake and eat it.
That's a reasonable point Max in general.
But in specific at the moment the previously already lower wages that junior doctors are getting paid aren't just being frozen in real terms, but a proposed substantial cut. While taxpayers money is going to pay others a double-digit rise, including the state pension of retired doctors on defined benefit schemes.
That's f***ed up is it not?
Should a retired doctor on a defined benefit scheme get a double-digit percentage increase in their state pension, while a junior doctor sees a nearly double-digit percentage cut in their real terms income from their already lower wage? Is that paying their dues?
Keeping lower wages flat, while other wages are flat, is entirely reasonable. But cutting some wages in real terms while increasing others by double digit percentages . . . that's a political choice, not necessity.
You have been admirably consistent about wanting a free market in labour. There is a free market for junior doctors in fact there is surplus demand. Hence by your own estimation, as indeed you have noted, wages should fall as they are competed downwards. They shouldn't rise.
Plus the NPV of a "junior doctors" wages is substantially higher than many others and as we know they are bright enough to have worked this out.
What happens to senior consultants or investment bankers is neither here nor there.
Absolutely Topping.
If there's more qualified job applicants for the junior doctors role to replace them, rather than pay what they're demanding, then I have no qualms with that being done. Sack the strikers and replace them with those equally qualified who are willing to do the job at the offered rate instead of a higher rate.
But I'm curious about what you mean by surplus demand meaning wages should fall? Surplus demand for junior doctors would mean the wage rises, surplus supply of people willing to do the job would mean a fall, and I'm not sure there's any evidence that there's surplus supply of people wanting and qualified to do that role.
If there is surplus supply, let the market do its thing and let any who end up without a job consider how they might have acted differently. But I don't think there is.
I believe there is surplus demand for junior doctors jobs.
Not enough places at med school, rather than not enough wanting to become docs.
Exactly. More people want to be doctors than there are available places.
I’ve solved it all and squared the circle with the boat people. We open a huge medical school in Rwanda, anyone who arrives by boat goes and trains as a doctor or a nurse and when qualified gets to come to the UK with a medical job waiting. No need to thank me Suella.
Yesterday I read some posts on here that suggested the harsher people fleeing in dingys (sic) were treated the better Sunaks figures. It was written by someone who is apparently well versed in the Red Wall and Tory thinking. It seemed to be written approvingly though that's not important. But what a disgusting indictment of this country and the voters they attract.
I missed that comment, but I think its utterly preposterous and wrong and whoever said that knows absolutely nothing about the Red Wall.
Certain commentators on this site, especially some who live in the South in deepest blue territory, seem to project their own prejudices onto the North/Red Wall.
As someone who lives up here may I reject them all. There are a small minority of racists in the North, like there are everywhere else, but that is not what the Red Wall is and its not the North. Anyone who is saying that is not well versed whatsoever in the Red Wall and has almost certainly never lived here, never campaigned here, and never knocked up voters here.
FPT. Sorry I wasn't able to reply. I like your sentiments but the proof of the pudding is in the Prime Minister's appointment of Suella Braverman. Her statements about the people in dinghies have been pretty disgusting yet considered to be just what the Red Wallers want to hear to bring them back on side. If they were unattractive to that vital voting block I'm sure Sunak would have removed her.
Or Sunak recognises that the Red Wall could be lost either way and Suella is there to appeal to more traditionally blue seats to keep them happy and in the blue column.
The kind of seats from which all these comments projecting onto the Red Wall their own prejudices seem to be coming from anyway.
I can't think of a single commentator on this site from a Red Wall seat who is expressing those views or endorsing Suella Braverman. Those who seem to be doing so, seem to be in more typically safe blue seats than Red Wall seats.
Red Wall has become a flippant byline for people's own prejudices rather than thinking seriously about what people here actually want.
Hear hear, as someone who lives in a red wall seat I can only echo this. I would also go as far to say I have never heard anyone express a view on it. Issues like pay, fuel bills, availability of groceries for sure but not boat people.
People like Rogerdamus just have a passionate dislike for anything red wall blaming the red wall for Brexit. But your debating what people in the Red Wall think with a guy who spends half his life in France. He won't know, as you say it is people projecting.
Quite right too. If they are investigating him, it is proof that they are corrupt.
Bad people. Very bad people. DRAIN THE SWAMP!
To be fair to Trump (yes, I know), the prosecutor he’s been arguing with this week is an elected Democrat from New York, whose manifesto was basically we’ll get the bad orange man. Mixing politics and law like this, is pretty much always a bad idea.
It does now appear that the Grand Jury can’t be convinced to issue charges, in this particular case anyway.
That's not obviously true. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Bragg ...On February 23, 2022, Carey R. Dunne and Mark F. Pomerantz, the lead prosecutors in the New York County District Attorney's investigation into Donald Trump and his businesses, resigned abruptly after Bragg "indicated to them that he had doubts about moving forward with a case against Mr. Trump".[15] In his letter of resignation, Pomerantz wrote that the "team that has been investigating Mr. Trump harbors no doubt about whether he committed crimes,[16] including falsifying business records, and that it was "a grave failure of justice"[16] not to pursue criminal charges.[17] The New York Times reported that Bragg "balked at pursuing an indictment against Mr. Trump" and lacked confidence proving in court that Trump "knowingly falsified the value of his assets on annual financial statements...
He says his most important issue, however, is addressing gun violence and de-carcerating Rikers Island.
"We have been given a profound trust tonight. To whom much is given, much is required, and we've heard Mark talk about it, we've heard Brian talk about it, the fundamental role of a district attorney is to guarantee both fairness and safety. That is the trust that's been given to me on the ballot, but given to all of us, that's what we've worked for, to show the city and the country a model for pairing partnership, pairing fairness and safety into one."..
I have very little to go off here, but my gut is that the higher Tory poll ratings are more likely to the accurate ones.
Not because I want them to be, but because I suspect the spiral of silence is now even more pronounced than it was pre-Truss. It’s not exactly easy to say you support the government right now.
What I am not sure about is whether the relevant pollsters that are showing higher Tory ratings are adjusting more aggressively to counter that. I am sure someone more in tune with the methodology would be able to tell me!
I don't really get why you think the spiral of silence would be worse than previously. It isn't that difficult for someone who supports the Government (of which I am not one) to say, "Sunak is a competent bloke in difficult circumstances, who is trying to stop the boats". Why is that more embarrassing to admit than backing Johnson at the height of Partygate?
At a recent Geoff Norcott show he asked for a show of hands from people who had voted Tory last time. Practically none, for which he made lots of jokes along the line of 'come on'. It is understandable people are shy of admitting they voted Tory or will vote Tory. So it is only reasonable to assume there will be a shy Tory element hiding in the polls. The trouble is how do you measure it. You can make all sorts of assumptions based upon other data collected, but you can never be sure whether someone really isn't a Tory or is just lying to you when they say they are a 'Don't know', but always intend to vote Tory. Any adjustment you make based upon history may not apply this time.
Statistical analysis of when a light bulb fails is much easier than asking people how they will vote.
First item is the coming transport strikes in Germany on Monday. Second: the EU summit discussing rules on when the sale ICE cars will be banned, and the banking crisis. Third: war in Ukraine. Fourth: arguments about the funding of future corona vaccinations in Germany. Fifth: the financial markets. Sixth: state of high-speed internet in Germany. Seventh: Ramadan in Germany. Eighth: Bayern reportedly parting with Nagelsmann.
That cannot be right; the UK is the center of the known universe.
The Germans seem to have a fixation with what's happening in Germany. Very niche.
Whoever wins on Monday it is likely all downhill for the SNP and all uphill for Scottish Labour.
A new Scottish Ipsos poll for the Times gives Sturgeon a still healthy +8% rating. Forbes though is on -8%, behind Scottish Labour Leader Sarwar on -4%.
Yousaf is on an abysmal -20% with Scottish voters and Regan an even worse -23%. Sir Keir by contrast is on -9% with Scots
Sturgeon’s approval went up, but then it’s easy to think well of someone on their way out. Haven’t we seen these boosts in approval ratings for departing politicians before?
Equally, whatever their approval ratings now, whoever becomes the new FM will immediately be seen differently. I suspect the winner will see some boost in his or her ratings.
Very unlikely. New leaders only get a bounce if replacing an unpopular leader.
Yousaf or Forbes will be unpopular leaders replacing Sturgeon, a popular leader
Top Gear axed. Maybe they could spend the money on the BBC Singers instead.
Top Gear was a massive net income for the BBC* - for overseas TV rights, overseas format rights, books, magazines, DVDs, Youtube channel etc.
*BBC Studios. The commercial arm of the Corporation, rather than the BBC itself.
The ratings for the main TV show have been falling since they changed the presenters, and the current lineup is one idiot, one cricketer, and one car journalist. And now they’ve put someone in the hospital, again. It might be done for good this time.
First item is the coming transport strikes in Germany on Monday. Second: the EU summit discussing rules on when the sale ICE cars will be banned, and the banking crisis. Third: war in Ukraine. Fourth: arguments about the funding of future corona vaccinations in Germany. Fifth: the financial markets. Sixth: state of high-speed internet in Germany. Seventh: Ramadan in Germany. Eighth: Bayern reportedly parting with Nagelsmann.
That cannot be right; the UK is the center of the known universe.
The Germans seem to have a fixation with what's happening in Germany. Very niche.
It's like the Monty Python "News for Parrots" sketch
First item is the coming transport strikes in Germany on Monday. Second: the EU summit discussing rules on when the sale ICE cars will be banned, and the banking crisis. Third: war in Ukraine. Fourth: arguments about the funding of future corona vaccinations in Germany. Fifth: the financial markets. Sixth: state of high-speed internet in Germany. Seventh: Ramadan in Germany. Eighth: Bayern reportedly parting with Nagelsmann.
That cannot be right; the UK is the center of the known universe.
The Germans seem to have a fixation with what's happening in Germany. Very niche.
A German friend once told me that they're not much interested in cricket! A preposterous idea.
Here is the reality on doctors' pay. The UK is not the highest payer in Europe for hospital doctors but it is well above the median. It is also considerably higher than the nearest comparable system, Sweden, which has a nationalised system unlike most other "mixed economy" health systems
Additionally UK doctors have the safest jobs than any other walk of life, even by public sector standards. It is almost impossible to sack a hospital doctor in the NHS, even when they are incompetent. They also have highly lucrative pension schemes which see them retire on pensions that give them a take home payment that is in excess of double what the average taxpayer earns, and hospital consultants often also have lucrative private practices that are effectively conflicts of interest, but the NHS turns a blind eye to it.
Most so-called "junior" doctors (those below consultant level) earn salaries that are very comparative to other non-partner level professionals such as lawyers and accountants that are outside the distorted salaries found in London.
As for GPs: they are raking it in! The reality is that if doctors were a little less greedy there would be the possibility to be more generous to other health professionals who are probably underpaid.
In summary, those that are swallowing the line of the doctors unions that they are underpaid, I have a bridge to sell you.
BIB: that GPs are raking in £80,000 a year does not mean junior hospital doctors are not underpaid (or overworked or working antisocial hours).
As a junior analyst I worked from 7am to 10pm fairly often despite my contract hours being 8am to 5pm, I got paid fuck all to do it as well. Junior doctoring is exactly the same, short term shite while you're in your 20s so you can climb the earnings ladder and once you hit 30 you've got a substantial income.
If we're going to change the model to pay more at an earlier stage then pay later in medical careers needs to fall.
What I don't understand is why doctors think they should be treated any differently to other high yielding industry, all lawyers, financiers, analysts etc... will start on shit wages for long hours, it's called paying one's dues. Doctors seem to want to have their cake and eat it.
That's a reasonable point Max in general.
But in specific at the moment the previously already lower wages that junior doctors are getting paid aren't just being frozen in real terms, but a proposed substantial cut. While taxpayers money is going to pay others a double-digit rise, including the state pension of retired doctors on defined benefit schemes.
That's f***ed up is it not?
Should a retired doctor on a defined benefit scheme get a double-digit percentage increase in their state pension, while a junior doctor sees a nearly double-digit percentage cut in their real terms income from their already lower wage? Is that paying their dues?
Keeping lower wages flat, while other wages are flat, is entirely reasonable. But cutting some wages in real terms while increasing others by double digit percentages . . . that's a political choice, not necessity.
You have been admirably consistent about wanting a free market in labour. There is a free market for junior doctors in fact there is surplus demand. Hence by your own estimation, as indeed you have noted, wages should fall as they are competed downwards. They shouldn't rise.
Plus the NPV of a "junior doctors" wages is substantially higher than many others and as we know they are bright enough to have worked this out.
What happens to senior consultants or investment bankers is neither here nor there.
But it's not a free market, there has been surplus demand for doctors for going on 30 years and yet supply of doctors has been held down artificially by the state.
I've already said it many times, it's time for the government to lift the cap on medical school places so universities and hospitals can train as many doctors as are necessary and then we'll see what the NPV of doctoring actually is, if it turns out we train too many we end up becoming a next exporter of doctors for a while until the NPV rises again.
Absolutely that is a good policy for the long-term.
Top Gear axed. Maybe they could spend the money on the BBC Singers instead.
Top Gear was a massive net income for the BBC* - for overseas TV rights, overseas format rights, books, magazines, DVDs, Youtube channel etc.
*BBC Studios. The commercial arm of the Corporation, rather than the BBC itself.
The ratings for the main TV show have been falling since they changed the presenters, and the current lineup is one idiot, one cricketer, and one car journalist. And now they’ve put someone in the hospital, again. It might be done for good this time.
It's not as good as the Clarkson era but it is still enjoyable telly. One of the few programmes on ordinary TV that I would remember to watch. Probably they need to conduct a full health and safety review. Having said that, Flintoff seems to throw himself into situations with minimal concern for his own safety. Hopefully it will be back.
Here is the reality on doctors' pay. The UK is not the highest payer in Europe for hospital doctors but it is well above the median. It is also considerably higher than the nearest comparable system, Sweden, which has a nationalised system unlike most other "mixed economy" health systems
Additionally UK doctors have the safest jobs than any other walk of life, even by public sector standards. It is almost impossible to sack a hospital doctor in the NHS, even when they are incompetent. They also have highly lucrative pension schemes which see them retire on pensions that give them a take home payment that is in excess of double what the average taxpayer earns, and hospital consultants often also have lucrative private practices that are effectively conflicts of interest, but the NHS turns a blind eye to it.
Most so-called "junior" doctors (those below consultant level) earn salaries that are very comparative to other non-partner level professionals such as lawyers and accountants that are outside the distorted salaries found in London.
As for GPs: they are raking it in! The reality is that if doctors were a little less greedy there would be the possibility to be more generous to other health professionals who are probably underpaid.
In summary, those that are swallowing the line of the doctors unions that they are underpaid, I have a bridge to sell you.
BIB: that GPs are raking in £80,000 a year does not mean junior hospital doctors are not underpaid (or overworked or working antisocial hours).
As a junior analyst I worked from 7am to 10pm fairly often despite my contract hours being 8am to 5pm, I got paid fuck all to do it as well. Junior doctoring is exactly the same, short term shite while you're in your 20s so you can climb the earnings ladder and once you hit 30 you've got a substantial income.
If we're going to change the model to pay more at an earlier stage then pay later in medical careers needs to fall.
What I don't understand is why doctors think they should be treated any differently to other high yielding industry, all lawyers, financiers, analysts etc... will start on shit wages for long hours, it's called paying one's dues. Doctors seem to want to have their cake and eat it.
That's a reasonable point Max in general.
But in specific at the moment the previously already lower wages that junior doctors are getting paid aren't just being frozen in real terms, but a proposed substantial cut. While taxpayers money is going to pay others a double-digit rise, including the state pension of retired doctors on defined benefit schemes.
That's f***ed up is it not?
Should a retired doctor on a defined benefit scheme get a double-digit percentage increase in their state pension, while a junior doctor sees a nearly double-digit percentage cut in their real terms income from their already lower wage? Is that paying their dues?
Keeping lower wages flat, while other wages are flat, is entirely reasonable. But cutting some wages in real terms while increasing others by double digit percentages . . . that's a political choice, not necessity.
You have been admirably consistent about wanting a free market in labour. There is a free market for junior doctors in fact there is surplus demand. Hence by your own estimation, as indeed you have noted, wages should fall as they are competed downwards. They shouldn't rise.
Plus the NPV of a "junior doctors" wages is substantially higher than many others and as we know they are bright enough to have worked this out.
What happens to senior consultants or investment bankers is neither here nor there.
Absolutely Topping.
If there's more qualified job applicants for the junior doctors role to replace them, rather than pay what they're demanding, then I have no qualms with that being done. Sack the strikers and replace them with those equally qualified who are willing to do the job at the offered rate instead of a higher rate.
But I'm curious about what you mean by surplus demand meaning wages should fall? Surplus demand for junior doctors would mean the wage rises, surplus supply of people willing to do the job would mean a fall, and I'm not sure there's any evidence that there's surplus supply of people wanting and qualified to do that role.
If there is surplus supply, let the market do its thing and let any who end up without a job consider how they might have acted differently. But I don't think there is.
I believe there is surplus demand for junior doctors jobs.
Not enough places at med school, rather than not enough wanting to become docs.
Exactly. More people want to be doctors than there are available places.
Med school applicants != junior doctors.
Do you propose we sack striking junior doctors and replace them with 18 year olds who've just completed their A-Levels but were denied a place at medical school?
Expanding med schools may expand the supply of potential junior doctors in the future, but it doesn't mean there's an oversupply of doctors at the minute.
One thing to note is that the experience of inspection can vary massively, depending both on the particular school, and the inspectors they are lucky or unlucky enough to get.
Here is the reality on doctors' pay. The UK is not the highest payer in Europe for hospital doctors but it is well above the median. It is also considerably higher than the nearest comparable system, Sweden, which has a nationalised system unlike most other "mixed economy" health systems
Additionally UK doctors have the safest jobs than any other walk of life, even by public sector standards. It is almost impossible to sack a hospital doctor in the NHS, even when they are incompetent. They also have highly lucrative pension schemes which see them retire on pensions that give them a take home payment that is in excess of double what the average taxpayer earns, and hospital consultants often also have lucrative private practices that are effectively conflicts of interest, but the NHS turns a blind eye to it.
Most so-called "junior" doctors (those below consultant level) earn salaries that are very comparative to other non-partner level professionals such as lawyers and accountants that are outside the distorted salaries found in London.
As for GPs: they are raking it in! The reality is that if doctors were a little less greedy there would be the possibility to be more generous to other health professionals who are probably underpaid.
In summary, those that are swallowing the line of the doctors unions that they are underpaid, I have a bridge to sell you.
BIB: that GPs are raking in £80,000 a year does not mean junior hospital doctors are not underpaid (or overworked or working antisocial hours).
As a junior analyst I worked from 7am to 10pm fairly often despite my contract hours being 8am to 5pm, I got paid fuck all to do it as well. Junior doctoring is exactly the same, short term shite while you're in your 20s so you can climb the earnings ladder and once you hit 30 you've got a substantial income.
If we're going to change the model to pay more at an earlier stage then pay later in medical careers needs to fall.
What I don't understand is why doctors think they should be treated any differently to other high yielding industry, all lawyers, financiers, analysts etc... will start on shit wages for long hours, it's called paying one's dues. Doctors seem to want to have their cake and eat it.
That's a reasonable point Max in general.
But in specific at the moment the previously already lower wages that junior doctors are getting paid aren't just being frozen in real terms, but a proposed substantial cut. While taxpayers money is going to pay others a double-digit rise, including the state pension of retired doctors on defined benefit schemes.
That's f***ed up is it not?
Should a retired doctor on a defined benefit scheme get a double-digit percentage increase in their state pension, while a junior doctor sees a nearly double-digit percentage cut in their real terms income from their already lower wage? Is that paying their dues?
Keeping lower wages flat, while other wages are flat, is entirely reasonable. But cutting some wages in real terms while increasing others by double digit percentages . . . that's a political choice, not necessity.
You have been admirably consistent about wanting a free market in labour. There is a free market for junior doctors in fact there is surplus demand. Hence by your own estimation, as indeed you have noted, wages should fall as they are competed downwards. They shouldn't rise.
Plus the NPV of a "junior doctors" wages is substantially higher than many others and as we know they are bright enough to have worked this out.
What happens to senior consultants or investment bankers is neither here nor there.
But it's not a free market, there has been surplus demand for doctors for going on 30 years and yet supply of doctors has been held down artificially by the state.
I've already said it many times, it's time for the government to lift the cap on medical school places so universities and hospitals can train as many doctors as are necessary and then we'll see what the NPV of doctoring actually is, if it turns out we train too many we end up becoming a next exporter of doctors for a while until the NPV rises again.
The problem there is that a medical degree costs more than £9250 a year to teach - so how do you square that circle?
Yesterday I read some posts on here that suggested the harsher people fleeing in dingys (sic) were treated the better Sunaks figures. It was written by someone who is apparently well versed in the Red Wall and Tory thinking. It seemed to be written approvingly though that's not important. But what a disgusting indictment of this country and the voters they attract.
I missed that comment, but I think its utterly preposterous and wrong and whoever said that knows absolutely nothing about the Red Wall.
Certain commentators on this site, especially some who live in the South in deepest blue territory, seem to project their own prejudices onto the North/Red Wall.
As someone who lives up here may I reject them all. There are a small minority of racists in the North, like there are everywhere else, but that is not what the Red Wall is and its not the North. Anyone who is saying that is not well versed whatsoever in the Red Wall and has almost certainly never lived here, never campaigned here, and never knocked up voters here.
FPT. Sorry I wasn't able to reply. I like your sentiments but the proof of the pudding is in the Prime Minister's appointment of Suella Braverman. Her statements about the people in dinghies have been pretty disgusting yet considered to be just what the Red Wallers want to hear to bring them back on side. If they were unattractive to that vital voting block I'm sure Sunak would have removed her.
Or Sunak recognises that the Red Wall could be lost either way and Suella is there to appeal to more traditionally blue seats to keep them happy and in the blue column.
The kind of seats from which all these comments projecting onto the Red Wall their own prejudices seem to be coming from anyway.
I can't think of a single commentator on this site from a Red Wall seat who is expressing those views or endorsing Suella Braverman. Those who seem to be doing so, seem to be in more typically safe blue seats than Red Wall seats.
Red Wall has become a flippant byline for people's own prejudices rather than thinking seriously about what people here actually want.
Hear hear, as someone who lives in a red wall seat I can only echo this. I would also go as far to say I have never heard anyone express a view on it. Issues like pay, fuel bills, availability of groceries for sure but not boat people.
People like Rogerdamus just have a passionate dislike for anything red wall blaming the red wall for Brexit. But your debating what people in the Red Wall think with a guy who spends half his life in France. He won't know, as you say it is people projecting.
The Red Wall is not a place, it's a type of voter. Specifically those who voted Tory for the 1st time in 2019 through genuine enthusiasm for Boris and his Brexit. These people delivered the big Con win and have been identified by both parties as key to the next election too. They will typically be Hard Leavers, quite nationalistic, anti-empathetic to migrants and refugees. The rhetoric designed to appeal to them can therefore cause the nose to wrinkle but we may as well get used to it, at least for the next 18 months.
Here is the reality on doctors' pay. The UK is not the highest payer in Europe for hospital doctors but it is well above the median. It is also considerably higher than the nearest comparable system, Sweden, which has a nationalised system unlike most other "mixed economy" health systems
Additionally UK doctors have the safest jobs than any other walk of life, even by public sector standards. It is almost impossible to sack a hospital doctor in the NHS, even when they are incompetent. They also have highly lucrative pension schemes which see them retire on pensions that give them a take home payment that is in excess of double what the average taxpayer earns, and hospital consultants often also have lucrative private practices that are effectively conflicts of interest, but the NHS turns a blind eye to it.
Most so-called "junior" doctors (those below consultant level) earn salaries that are very comparative to other non-partner level professionals such as lawyers and accountants that are outside the distorted salaries found in London.
As for GPs: they are raking it in! The reality is that if doctors were a little less greedy there would be the possibility to be more generous to other health professionals who are probably underpaid.
In summary, those that are swallowing the line of the doctors unions that they are underpaid, I have a bridge to sell you.
BIB: that GPs are raking in £80,000 a year does not mean junior hospital doctors are not underpaid (or overworked or working antisocial hours).
As a junior analyst I worked from 7am to 10pm fairly often despite my contract hours being 8am to 5pm, I got paid fuck all to do it as well. Junior doctoring is exactly the same, short term shite while you're in your 20s so you can climb the earnings ladder and once you hit 30 you've got a substantial income.
If we're going to change the model to pay more at an earlier stage then pay later in medical careers needs to fall.
What I don't understand is why doctors think they should be treated any differently to other high yielding industry, all lawyers, financiers, analysts etc... will start on shit wages for long hours, it's called paying one's dues. Doctors seem to want to have their cake and eat it.
That's a reasonable point Max in general.
But in specific at the moment the previously already lower wages that junior doctors are getting paid aren't just being frozen in real terms, but a proposed substantial cut. While taxpayers money is going to pay others a double-digit rise, including the state pension of retired doctors on defined benefit schemes.
That's f***ed up is it not?
Should a retired doctor on a defined benefit scheme get a double-digit percentage increase in their state pension, while a junior doctor sees a nearly double-digit percentage cut in their real terms income from their already lower wage? Is that paying their dues?
Keeping lower wages flat, while other wages are flat, is entirely reasonable. But cutting some wages in real terms while increasing others by double digit percentages . . . that's a political choice, not necessity.
You have been admirably consistent about wanting a free market in labour. There is a free market for junior doctors in fact there is surplus demand. Hence by your own estimation, as indeed you have noted, wages should fall as they are competed downwards. They shouldn't rise.
Plus the NPV of a "junior doctors" wages is substantially higher than many others and as we know they are bright enough to have worked this out.
What happens to senior consultants or investment bankers is neither here nor there.
But it's not a free market, there has been surplus demand for doctors for going on 30 years and yet supply of doctors has been held down artificially by the state.
I've already said it many times, it's time for the government to lift the cap on medical school places so universities and hospitals can train as many doctors as are necessary and then we'll see what the NPV of doctoring actually is, if it turns out we train too many we end up becoming a next exporter of doctors for a while until the NPV rises again.
The problem there is that a medical degree costs more than £9250 a year to teach - so how do you square that circle?
Charge the student the full cost of the course, and pay off 5% of the debt for every year they work in the NHS.
Here is the reality on doctors' pay. The UK is not the highest payer in Europe for hospital doctors but it is well above the median. It is also considerably higher than the nearest comparable system, Sweden, which has a nationalised system unlike most other "mixed economy" health systems
Additionally UK doctors have the safest jobs than any other walk of life, even by public sector standards. It is almost impossible to sack a hospital doctor in the NHS, even when they are incompetent. They also have highly lucrative pension schemes which see them retire on pensions that give them a take home payment that is in excess of double what the average taxpayer earns, and hospital consultants often also have lucrative private practices that are effectively conflicts of interest, but the NHS turns a blind eye to it.
Most so-called "junior" doctors (those below consultant level) earn salaries that are very comparative to other non-partner level professionals such as lawyers and accountants that are outside the distorted salaries found in London.
As for GPs: they are raking it in! The reality is that if doctors were a little less greedy there would be the possibility to be more generous to other health professionals who are probably underpaid.
In summary, those that are swallowing the line of the doctors unions that they are underpaid, I have a bridge to sell you.
BIB: that GPs are raking in £80,000 a year does not mean junior hospital doctors are not underpaid (or overworked or working antisocial hours).
As a junior analyst I worked from 7am to 10pm fairly often despite my contract hours being 8am to 5pm, I got paid fuck all to do it as well. Junior doctoring is exactly the same, short term shite while you're in your 20s so you can climb the earnings ladder and once you hit 30 you've got a substantial income.
If we're going to change the model to pay more at an earlier stage then pay later in medical careers needs to fall.
What I don't understand is why doctors think they should be treated any differently to other high yielding industry, all lawyers, financiers, analysts etc... will start on shit wages for long hours, it's called paying one's dues. Doctors seem to want to have their cake and eat it.
That's a reasonable point Max in general.
But in specific at the moment the previously already lower wages that junior doctors are getting paid aren't just being frozen in real terms, but a proposed substantial cut. While taxpayers money is going to pay others a double-digit rise, including the state pension of retired doctors on defined benefit schemes.
That's f***ed up is it not?
Should a retired doctor on a defined benefit scheme get a double-digit percentage increase in their state pension, while a junior doctor sees a nearly double-digit percentage cut in their real terms income from their already lower wage? Is that paying their dues?
Keeping lower wages flat, while other wages are flat, is entirely reasonable. But cutting some wages in real terms while increasing others by double digit percentages . . . that's a political choice, not necessity.
You have been admirably consistent about wanting a free market in labour. There is a free market for junior doctors in fact there is surplus demand. Hence by your own estimation, as indeed you have noted, wages should fall as they are competed downwards. They shouldn't rise.
Plus the NPV of a "junior doctors" wages is substantially higher than many others and as we know they are bright enough to have worked this out.
What happens to senior consultants or investment bankers is neither here nor there.
Absolutely Topping.
If there's more qualified job applicants for the junior doctors role to replace them, rather than pay what they're demanding, then I have no qualms with that being done. Sack the strikers and replace them with those equally qualified who are willing to do the job at the offered rate instead of a higher rate.
But I'm curious about what you mean by surplus demand meaning wages should fall? Surplus demand for junior doctors would mean the wage rises, surplus supply of people willing to do the job would mean a fall, and I'm not sure there's any evidence that there's surplus supply of people wanting and qualified to do that role.
If there is surplus supply, let the market do its thing and let any who end up without a job consider how they might have acted differently. But I don't think there is.
I believe there is surplus demand for junior doctors jobs.
Not enough places at med school, rather than not enough wanting to become docs.
Exactly. More people want to be doctors than there are available places.
Med school applicants != junior doctors.
Do you propose we sack striking junior doctors and replace them with 18 year olds who've just completed their A-Levels but were denied a place at medical school?
Expanding med schools may expand the supply of potential junior doctors in the future, but it doesn't mean there's an oversupply of doctors at the minute.
There is an oversupply of people who want to become junior doctors.
Here is the reality on doctors' pay. The UK is not the highest payer in Europe for hospital doctors but it is well above the median. It is also considerably higher than the nearest comparable system, Sweden, which has a nationalised system unlike most other "mixed economy" health systems
Additionally UK doctors have the safest jobs than any other walk of life, even by public sector standards. It is almost impossible to sack a hospital doctor in the NHS, even when they are incompetent. They also have highly lucrative pension schemes which see them retire on pensions that give them a take home payment that is in excess of double what the average taxpayer earns, and hospital consultants often also have lucrative private practices that are effectively conflicts of interest, but the NHS turns a blind eye to it.
Most so-called "junior" doctors (those below consultant level) earn salaries that are very comparative to other non-partner level professionals such as lawyers and accountants that are outside the distorted salaries found in London.
As for GPs: they are raking it in! The reality is that if doctors were a little less greedy there would be the possibility to be more generous to other health professionals who are probably underpaid.
In summary, those that are swallowing the line of the doctors unions that they are underpaid, I have a bridge to sell you.
BIB: that GPs are raking in £80,000 a year does not mean junior hospital doctors are not underpaid (or overworked or working antisocial hours).
As a junior analyst I worked from 7am to 10pm fairly often despite my contract hours being 8am to 5pm, I got paid fuck all to do it as well. Junior doctoring is exactly the same, short term shite while you're in your 20s so you can climb the earnings ladder and once you hit 30 you've got a substantial income.
If we're going to change the model to pay more at an earlier stage then pay later in medical careers needs to fall.
What I don't understand is why doctors think they should be treated any differently to other high yielding industry, all lawyers, financiers, analysts etc... will start on shit wages for long hours, it's called paying one's dues. Doctors seem to want to have their cake and eat it.
That's a reasonable point Max in general.
But in specific at the moment the previously already lower wages that junior doctors are getting paid aren't just being frozen in real terms, but a proposed substantial cut. While taxpayers money is going to pay others a double-digit rise, including the state pension of retired doctors on defined benefit schemes.
That's f***ed up is it not?
Should a retired doctor on a defined benefit scheme get a double-digit percentage increase in their state pension, while a junior doctor sees a nearly double-digit percentage cut in their real terms income from their already lower wage? Is that paying their dues?
Keeping lower wages flat, while other wages are flat, is entirely reasonable. But cutting some wages in real terms while increasing others by double digit percentages . . . that's a political choice, not necessity.
You have been admirably consistent about wanting a free market in labour. There is a free market for junior doctors in fact there is surplus demand. Hence by your own estimation, as indeed you have noted, wages should fall as they are competed downwards. They shouldn't rise.
Plus the NPV of a "junior doctors" wages is substantially higher than many others and as we know they are bright enough to have worked this out.
What happens to senior consultants or investment bankers is neither here nor there.
But it's not a free market, there has been surplus demand for doctors for going on 30 years and yet supply of doctors has been held down artificially by the state.
I've already said it many times, it's time for the government to lift the cap on medical school places so universities and hospitals can train as many doctors as are necessary and then we'll see what the NPV of doctoring actually is, if it turns out we train too many we end up becoming a next exporter of doctors for a while until the NPV rises again.
The problem there is that a medical degree costs more than £9250 a year to teach - so how do you square that circle?
Primary school and secondary school education costs more than £0 a year to teach.
I'd abolish the graduate tax, merge it into Income Tax along with National Insurance, and fully fund education from taxes from Reception to Graduation.
Education is one thing its worthwhile to be provided and those who are well educated should be the taxpayers of the future in general.
Here is the reality on doctors' pay. The UK is not the highest payer in Europe for hospital doctors but it is well above the median. It is also considerably higher than the nearest comparable system, Sweden, which has a nationalised system unlike most other "mixed economy" health systems
Additionally UK doctors have the safest jobs than any other walk of life, even by public sector standards. It is almost impossible to sack a hospital doctor in the NHS, even when they are incompetent. They also have highly lucrative pension schemes which see them retire on pensions that give them a take home payment that is in excess of double what the average taxpayer earns, and hospital consultants often also have lucrative private practices that are effectively conflicts of interest, but the NHS turns a blind eye to it.
Most so-called "junior" doctors (those below consultant level) earn salaries that are very comparative to other non-partner level professionals such as lawyers and accountants that are outside the distorted salaries found in London.
As for GPs: they are raking it in! The reality is that if doctors were a little less greedy there would be the possibility to be more generous to other health professionals who are probably underpaid.
In summary, those that are swallowing the line of the doctors unions that they are underpaid, I have a bridge to sell you.
BIB: that GPs are raking in £80,000 a year does not mean junior hospital doctors are not underpaid (or overworked or working antisocial hours).
As a junior analyst I worked from 7am to 10pm fairly often despite my contract hours being 8am to 5pm, I got paid fuck all to do it as well. Junior doctoring is exactly the same, short term shite while you're in your 20s so you can climb the earnings ladder and once you hit 30 you've got a substantial income.
If we're going to change the model to pay more at an earlier stage then pay later in medical careers needs to fall.
What I don't understand is why doctors think they should be treated any differently to other high yielding industry, all lawyers, financiers, analysts etc... will start on shit wages for long hours, it's called paying one's dues. Doctors seem to want to have their cake and eat it.
That's a reasonable point Max in general.
But in specific at the moment the previously already lower wages that junior doctors are getting paid aren't just being frozen in real terms, but a proposed substantial cut. While taxpayers money is going to pay others a double-digit rise, including the state pension of retired doctors on defined benefit schemes.
That's f***ed up is it not?
Should a retired doctor on a defined benefit scheme get a double-digit percentage increase in their state pension, while a junior doctor sees a nearly double-digit percentage cut in their real terms income from their already lower wage? Is that paying their dues?
Keeping lower wages flat, while other wages are flat, is entirely reasonable. But cutting some wages in real terms while increasing others by double digit percentages . . . that's a political choice, not necessity.
You have been admirably consistent about wanting a free market in labour. There is a free market for junior doctors in fact there is surplus demand. Hence by your own estimation, as indeed you have noted, wages should fall as they are competed downwards. They shouldn't rise.
Plus the NPV of a "junior doctors" wages is substantially higher than many others and as we know they are bright enough to have worked this out.
What happens to senior consultants or investment bankers is neither here nor there.
Absolutely Topping.
If there's more qualified job applicants for the junior doctors role to replace them, rather than pay what they're demanding, then I have no qualms with that being done. Sack the strikers and replace them with those equally qualified who are willing to do the job at the offered rate instead of a higher rate.
But I'm curious about what you mean by surplus demand meaning wages should fall? Surplus demand for junior doctors would mean the wage rises, surplus supply of people willing to do the job would mean a fall, and I'm not sure there's any evidence that there's surplus supply of people wanting and qualified to do that role.
If there is surplus supply, let the market do its thing and let any who end up without a job consider how they might have acted differently. But I don't think there is.
I believe there is surplus demand for junior doctors jobs.
Not enough places at med school, rather than not enough wanting to become docs.
Exactly. More people want to be doctors than there are available places.
Med school applicants != junior doctors.
Do you propose we sack striking junior doctors and replace them with 18 year olds who've just completed their A-Levels but were denied a place at medical school?
Expanding med schools may expand the supply of potential junior doctors in the future, but it doesn't mean there's an oversupply of doctors at the minute.
There is an oversupply of people who want to become junior doctors.
My six year old wants to be a vet. Does that mean she can be one?
Here is the reality on doctors' pay. The UK is not the highest payer in Europe for hospital doctors but it is well above the median. It is also considerably higher than the nearest comparable system, Sweden, which has a nationalised system unlike most other "mixed economy" health systems
Additionally UK doctors have the safest jobs than any other walk of life, even by public sector standards. It is almost impossible to sack a hospital doctor in the NHS, even when they are incompetent. They also have highly lucrative pension schemes which see them retire on pensions that give them a take home payment that is in excess of double what the average taxpayer earns, and hospital consultants often also have lucrative private practices that are effectively conflicts of interest, but the NHS turns a blind eye to it.
Most so-called "junior" doctors (those below consultant level) earn salaries that are very comparative to other non-partner level professionals such as lawyers and accountants that are outside the distorted salaries found in London.
As for GPs: they are raking it in! The reality is that if doctors were a little less greedy there would be the possibility to be more generous to other health professionals who are probably underpaid.
In summary, those that are swallowing the line of the doctors unions that they are underpaid, I have a bridge to sell you.
BIB: that GPs are raking in £80,000 a year does not mean junior hospital doctors are not underpaid (or overworked or working antisocial hours).
As a junior analyst I worked from 7am to 10pm fairly often despite my contract hours being 8am to 5pm, I got paid fuck all to do it as well. Junior doctoring is exactly the same, short term shite while you're in your 20s so you can climb the earnings ladder and once you hit 30 you've got a substantial income.
If we're going to change the model to pay more at an earlier stage then pay later in medical careers needs to fall.
What I don't understand is why doctors think they should be treated any differently to other high yielding industry, all lawyers, financiers, analysts etc... will start on shit wages for long hours, it's called paying one's dues. Doctors seem to want to have their cake and eat it.
That's a reasonable point Max in general.
But in specific at the moment the previously already lower wages that junior doctors are getting paid aren't just being frozen in real terms, but a proposed substantial cut. While taxpayers money is going to pay others a double-digit rise, including the state pension of retired doctors on defined benefit schemes.
That's f***ed up is it not?
Should a retired doctor on a defined benefit scheme get a double-digit percentage increase in their state pension, while a junior doctor sees a nearly double-digit percentage cut in their real terms income from their already lower wage? Is that paying their dues?
Keeping lower wages flat, while other wages are flat, is entirely reasonable. But cutting some wages in real terms while increasing others by double digit percentages . . . that's a political choice, not necessity.
You have been admirably consistent about wanting a free market in labour. There is a free market for junior doctors in fact there is surplus demand. Hence by your own estimation, as indeed you have noted, wages should fall as they are competed downwards. They shouldn't rise.
Plus the NPV of a "junior doctors" wages is substantially higher than many others and as we know they are bright enough to have worked this out.
What happens to senior consultants or investment bankers is neither here nor there.
But it's not a free market, there has been surplus demand for doctors for going on 30 years and yet supply of doctors has been held down artificially by the state.
I've already said it many times, it's time for the government to lift the cap on medical school places so universities and hospitals can train as many doctors as are necessary and then we'll see what the NPV of doctoring actually is, if it turns out we train too many we end up becoming a next exporter of doctors for a while until the NPV rises again.
The problem there is that a medical degree costs more than £9250 a year to teach - so how do you square that circle?
Charge the student the full cost of the course, and pay off 5% of the debt for every year they work in the NHS.
That would provide a very strong incentive to get a better paying job overseas.
Here is the reality on doctors' pay. The UK is not the highest payer in Europe for hospital doctors but it is well above the median. It is also considerably higher than the nearest comparable system, Sweden, which has a nationalised system unlike most other "mixed economy" health systems
Additionally UK doctors have the safest jobs than any other walk of life, even by public sector standards. It is almost impossible to sack a hospital doctor in the NHS, even when they are incompetent. They also have highly lucrative pension schemes which see them retire on pensions that give them a take home payment that is in excess of double what the average taxpayer earns, and hospital consultants often also have lucrative private practices that are effectively conflicts of interest, but the NHS turns a blind eye to it.
Most so-called "junior" doctors (those below consultant level) earn salaries that are very comparative to other non-partner level professionals such as lawyers and accountants that are outside the distorted salaries found in London.
As for GPs: they are raking it in! The reality is that if doctors were a little less greedy there would be the possibility to be more generous to other health professionals who are probably underpaid.
In summary, those that are swallowing the line of the doctors unions that they are underpaid, I have a bridge to sell you.
BIB: that GPs are raking in £80,000 a year does not mean junior hospital doctors are not underpaid (or overworked or working antisocial hours).
As a junior analyst I worked from 7am to 10pm fairly often despite my contract hours being 8am to 5pm, I got paid fuck all to do it as well. Junior doctoring is exactly the same, short term shite while you're in your 20s so you can climb the earnings ladder and once you hit 30 you've got a substantial income.
If we're going to change the model to pay more at an earlier stage then pay later in medical careers needs to fall.
What I don't understand is why doctors think they should be treated any differently to other high yielding industry, all lawyers, financiers, analysts etc... will start on shit wages for long hours, it's called paying one's dues. Doctors seem to want to have their cake and eat it.
That's a reasonable point Max in general.
But in specific at the moment the previously already lower wages that junior doctors are getting paid aren't just being frozen in real terms, but a proposed substantial cut. While taxpayers money is going to pay others a double-digit rise, including the state pension of retired doctors on defined benefit schemes.
That's f***ed up is it not?
Should a retired doctor on a defined benefit scheme get a double-digit percentage increase in their state pension, while a junior doctor sees a nearly double-digit percentage cut in their real terms income from their already lower wage? Is that paying their dues?
Keeping lower wages flat, while other wages are flat, is entirely reasonable. But cutting some wages in real terms while increasing others by double digit percentages . . . that's a political choice, not necessity.
You have been admirably consistent about wanting a free market in labour. There is a free market for junior doctors in fact there is surplus demand. Hence by your own estimation, as indeed you have noted, wages should fall as they are competed downwards. They shouldn't rise.
Plus the NPV of a "junior doctors" wages is substantially higher than many others and as we know they are bright enough to have worked this out.
What happens to senior consultants or investment bankers is neither here nor there.
Absolutely Topping.
If there's more qualified job applicants for the junior doctors role to replace them, rather than pay what they're demanding, then I have no qualms with that being done. Sack the strikers and replace them with those equally qualified who are willing to do the job at the offered rate instead of a higher rate.
But I'm curious about what you mean by surplus demand meaning wages should fall? Surplus demand for junior doctors would mean the wage rises, surplus supply of people willing to do the job would mean a fall, and I'm not sure there's any evidence that there's surplus supply of people wanting and qualified to do that role.
If there is surplus supply, let the market do its thing and let any who end up without a job consider how they might have acted differently. But I don't think there is.
I believe there is surplus demand for junior doctors jobs.
Not enough places at med school, rather than not enough wanting to become docs.
Exactly. More people want to be doctors than there are available places.
Med school applicants != junior doctors.
Do you propose we sack striking junior doctors and replace them with 18 year olds who've just completed their A-Levels but were denied a place at medical school?
Expanding med schools may expand the supply of potential junior doctors in the future, but it doesn't mean there's an oversupply of doctors at the minute.
There is an oversupply of people who want to become junior doctors.
My six year old wants to be a vet. Does that mean she can be one?
If she gets straight As in sciences, why not? Although IIRC veterinary medicine is even more oversubscribed than human medicine.
Anyway, on thread - surely not. Yousaf has all Nicola Sturgeon's negatives and none of her positives. I don't really see what consituency he appeals to.
Not my party, obviously, and I don't know the selectorate. But when other parties have elected leaders who don't necessarily speak to the wider electorate, they've done so because they represent an obvious strain of what that party believes. I would have thought the SNP equivalent would be more akin to Ash Regan. Yousaf strikes me as neither one to connect to the wider electorate nor one to boldly fight the battle for independence whatever public opinion believes.
The obvious strain of party belief which Regan represents belongs to Alba, the bleedin’ obvious evidence of which is that her official endorsements remain Cherry, Salmond and Murray.
Also: NB that the betting question is "next FM" not "next SNP leader".
If Forbes wins the leadership it’ll be interesting to see how the FM vote goes. I imagine the agreement with the Greens will be down the tubes, in that scenario would the Greens sit on their hands?
I still can't see any reason why there's a worse outcome for the new SNP leader than Sturgeon got in 2016 - elected by a minority with only a handful of votes for another candidate and mass abstentions from the opposition parties.
The new SNP leader might not have a majority, but nobody else will either.
Wasn't a minority. Exactrly 50%, the PO not normally voting unless it is tied.
Semantics, and arguably not very accurate semantics at that.
Your repeated argument of "the new SNP leader isn't necessarily going to be the new FM" relies on all other parties coalescing around a single candidate.
Come on.
We're not in Westminster. *There are separate votes for each candidate*.
That seems like a misleading description of the process.
As the result is valid, and as Nicola Sturgeon has received more votes than the total number of votes for the other candidate, I declare that Nicola Sturgeon is selected as the Parliament’s nominee for appointment as First Minister. As required by the Scotland Act 1998, I shall now recommend to Her Majesty that she appoint Nicola Sturgeon as the First Minister.
All the SNP MSPs are going to vote for the new SNP leader. What "other candidate" is going to get more votes?
Nevertheless, it's true (I checked). It's possible for abstentions or illness to happen in any party. And people do not, so far as I can see, have to be consistent in their voting.
I literally checked the Official Report from 2016. There are "separate votes" only in the sense that MSPs aren't given a ballot paper with options "SNP leader, token opposition party candidate, abstain", they vote electronically sequentially for one of the options.
In the real world, all SNP MSPs are going to vote for the new SNP leader to be FM and no other single candidate is going to get enough votes to overcome that. Why are you wasting time denying the obvious?
You seem to have wasted an awful lot of time on a parliamentary process in a country not your own.
Yesterday I read some posts on here that suggested the harsher people fleeing in dingys (sic) were treated the better Sunaks figures. It was written by someone who is apparently well versed in the Red Wall and Tory thinking. It seemed to be written approvingly though that's not important. But what a disgusting indictment of this country and the voters they attract.
I missed that comment, but I think its utterly preposterous and wrong and whoever said that knows absolutely nothing about the Red Wall.
Certain commentators on this site, especially some who live in the South in deepest blue territory, seem to project their own prejudices onto the North/Red Wall.
As someone who lives up here may I reject them all. There are a small minority of racists in the North, like there are everywhere else, but that is not what the Red Wall is and its not the North. Anyone who is saying that is not well versed whatsoever in the Red Wall and has almost certainly never lived here, never campaigned here, and never knocked up voters here.
FPT. Sorry I wasn't able to reply. I like your sentiments but the proof of the pudding is in the Prime Minister's appointment of Suella Braverman. Her statements about the people in dinghies have been pretty disgusting yet considered to be just what the Red Wallers want to hear to bring them back on side. If they were unattractive to that vital voting block I'm sure Sunak would have removed her.
Or Sunak recognises that the Red Wall could be lost either way and Suella is there to appeal to more traditionally blue seats to keep them happy and in the blue column.
The kind of seats from which all these comments projecting onto the Red Wall their own prejudices seem to be coming from anyway.
I can't think of a single commentator on this site from a Red Wall seat who is expressing those views or endorsing Suella Braverman. Those who seem to be doing so, seem to be in more typically safe blue seats than Red Wall seats.
Red Wall has become a flippant byline for people's own prejudices rather than thinking seriously about what people here actually want.
Hear hear, as someone who lives in a red wall seat I can only echo this. I would also go as far to say I have never heard anyone express a view on it. Issues like pay, fuel bills, availability of groceries for sure but not boat people.
People like Rogerdamus just have a passionate dislike for anything red wall blaming the red wall for Brexit. But your debating what people in the Red Wall think with a guy who spends half his life in France. He won't know, as you say it is people projecting.
The Red Wall is not a place, it's a type of voter. Specifically those who voted Tory for the 1st time in 2019 through genuine enthusiasm for Boris and his Brexit. These people delivered the big Con win and have been identified by both parties as key to the next election too. They will typically be Hard Leavers, quite nationalistic, anti-empathetic to migrants and refugees. The rhetoric designed to appeal to them can therefore cause the nose to wrinkle but we may as well get used to it, at least for the next 18 months.
This is also a myth. The term Red Wall was coined before Boris led the party.
The Red Wall identifies a changing type of voter that demographically elsewhere in the country would have voted Tory but didn't in the Red Wall. The Red Wall was trending blue long before Boris and Brexit.
Anyway, on thread - surely not. Yousaf has all Nicola Sturgeon's negatives and none of her positives. I don't really see what consituency he appeals to.
Not my party, obviously, and I don't know the selectorate. But when other parties have elected leaders who don't necessarily speak to the wider electorate, they've done so because they represent an obvious strain of what that party believes. I would have thought the SNP equivalent would be more akin to Ash Regan. Yousaf strikes me as neither one to connect to the wider electorate nor one to boldly fight the battle for independence whatever public opinion believes.
The obvious strain of party belief which Regan represents belongs to Alba, the bleedin’ obvious evidence of which is that her official endorsements remain Cherry, Salmond and Murray.
Also: NB that the betting question is "next FM" not "next SNP leader".
If Forbes wins the leadership it’ll be interesting to see how the FM vote goes. I imagine the agreement with the Greens will be down the tubes, in that scenario would the Greens sit on their hands?
I still can't see any reason why there's a worse outcome for the new SNP leader than Sturgeon got in 2016 - elected by a minority with only a handful of votes for another candidate and mass abstentions from the opposition parties.
The new SNP leader might not have a majority, but nobody else will either.
Wasn't a minority. Exactrly 50%, the PO not normally voting unless it is tied.
Semantics, and arguably not very accurate semantics at that.
Your repeated argument of "the new SNP leader isn't necessarily going to be the new FM" relies on all other parties coalescing around a single candidate.
Come on.
We're not in Westminster. *There are separate votes for each candidate*.
That seems like a misleading description of the process.
As the result is valid, and as Nicola Sturgeon has received more votes than the total number of votes for the other candidate, I declare that Nicola Sturgeon is selected as the Parliament’s nominee for appointment as First Minister. As required by the Scotland Act 1998, I shall now recommend to Her Majesty that she appoint Nicola Sturgeon as the First Minister.
All the SNP MSPs are going to vote for the new SNP leader. What "other candidate" is going to get more votes?
Nevertheless, it's true (I checked). It's possible for abstentions or illness to happen in any party. And people do not, so far as I can see, have to be consistent in their voting.
I literally checked the Official Report from 2016. There are "separate votes" only in the sense that MSPs aren't given a ballot paper with options "SNP leader, token opposition party candidate, abstain", they vote electronically sequentially for one of the options.
In the real world, all SNP MSPs are going to vote for the new SNP leader to be FM and no other single candidate is going to get enough votes to overcome that. Why are you wasting time denying the obvious?
That depends on how many SNP MPs there are once the new leader is elected, and then how many are present and willing to vote; and ditto which way the Greens vote, if at all. Unlike Westminster, there is such a thing as a Green + Unionist Coalition phenomenon, as has happened before on occasion, notably the Edinburgh Trams. The Greens [edit: and the Edinburgh Labour and LD folk] wabnted the trams,. the Unionists saw it as an opportunity to wreck things. ,
Green + Unionists together won't have more MSPs than the SNP - and even if they did they won't all coalesce around a single candidate for FM.
Here is the reality on doctors' pay. The UK is not the highest payer in Europe for hospital doctors but it is well above the median. It is also considerably higher than the nearest comparable system, Sweden, which has a nationalised system unlike most other "mixed economy" health systems
Additionally UK doctors have the safest jobs than any other walk of life, even by public sector standards. It is almost impossible to sack a hospital doctor in the NHS, even when they are incompetent. They also have highly lucrative pension schemes which see them retire on pensions that give them a take home payment that is in excess of double what the average taxpayer earns, and hospital consultants often also have lucrative private practices that are effectively conflicts of interest, but the NHS turns a blind eye to it.
Most so-called "junior" doctors (those below consultant level) earn salaries that are very comparative to other non-partner level professionals such as lawyers and accountants that are outside the distorted salaries found in London.
As for GPs: they are raking it in! The reality is that if doctors were a little less greedy there would be the possibility to be more generous to other health professionals who are probably underpaid.
In summary, those that are swallowing the line of the doctors unions that they are underpaid, I have a bridge to sell you.
BIB: that GPs are raking in £80,000 a year does not mean junior hospital doctors are not underpaid (or overworked or working antisocial hours).
As a junior analyst I worked from 7am to 10pm fairly often despite my contract hours being 8am to 5pm, I got paid fuck all to do it as well. Junior doctoring is exactly the same, short term shite while you're in your 20s so you can climb the earnings ladder and once you hit 30 you've got a substantial income.
If we're going to change the model to pay more at an earlier stage then pay later in medical careers needs to fall.
What I don't understand is why doctors think they should be treated any differently to other high yielding industry, all lawyers, financiers, analysts etc... will start on shit wages for long hours, it's called paying one's dues. Doctors seem to want to have their cake and eat it.
That's a reasonable point Max in general.
But in specific at the moment the previously already lower wages that junior doctors are getting paid aren't just being frozen in real terms, but a proposed substantial cut. While taxpayers money is going to pay others a double-digit rise, including the state pension of retired doctors on defined benefit schemes.
That's f***ed up is it not?
Should a retired doctor on a defined benefit scheme get a double-digit percentage increase in their state pension, while a junior doctor sees a nearly double-digit percentage cut in their real terms income from their already lower wage? Is that paying their dues?
Keeping lower wages flat, while other wages are flat, is entirely reasonable. But cutting some wages in real terms while increasing others by double digit percentages . . . that's a political choice, not necessity.
You have been admirably consistent about wanting a free market in labour. There is a free market for junior doctors in fact there is surplus demand. Hence by your own estimation, as indeed you have noted, wages should fall as they are competed downwards. They shouldn't rise.
Plus the NPV of a "junior doctors" wages is substantially higher than many others and as we know they are bright enough to have worked this out.
What happens to senior consultants or investment bankers is neither here nor there.
But it's not a free market, there has been surplus demand for doctors for going on 30 years and yet supply of doctors has been held down artificially by the state.
I've already said it many times, it's time for the government to lift the cap on medical school places so universities and hospitals can train as many doctors as are necessary and then we'll see what the NPV of doctoring actually is, if it turns out we train too many we end up becoming a next exporter of doctors for a while until the NPV rises again.
The problem there is that a medical degree costs more than £9250 a year to teach - so how do you square that circle?
Charge the student the full cost of the course, and pay off 5% of the debt for every year they work in the NHS.
That would provide a very strong incentive to get a better paying job overseas.
Here is the reality on doctors' pay. The UK is not the highest payer in Europe for hospital doctors but it is well above the median. It is also considerably higher than the nearest comparable system, Sweden, which has a nationalised system unlike most other "mixed economy" health systems
Additionally UK doctors have the safest jobs than any other walk of life, even by public sector standards. It is almost impossible to sack a hospital doctor in the NHS, even when they are incompetent. They also have highly lucrative pension schemes which see them retire on pensions that give them a take home payment that is in excess of double what the average taxpayer earns, and hospital consultants often also have lucrative private practices that are effectively conflicts of interest, but the NHS turns a blind eye to it.
Most so-called "junior" doctors (those below consultant level) earn salaries that are very comparative to other non-partner level professionals such as lawyers and accountants that are outside the distorted salaries found in London.
As for GPs: they are raking it in! The reality is that if doctors were a little less greedy there would be the possibility to be more generous to other health professionals who are probably underpaid.
In summary, those that are swallowing the line of the doctors unions that they are underpaid, I have a bridge to sell you.
BIB: that GPs are raking in £80,000 a year does not mean junior hospital doctors are not underpaid (or overworked or working antisocial hours).
As a junior analyst I worked from 7am to 10pm fairly often despite my contract hours being 8am to 5pm, I got paid fuck all to do it as well. Junior doctoring is exactly the same, short term shite while you're in your 20s so you can climb the earnings ladder and once you hit 30 you've got a substantial income.
If we're going to change the model to pay more at an earlier stage then pay later in medical careers needs to fall.
What I don't understand is why doctors think they should be treated any differently to other high yielding industry, all lawyers, financiers, analysts etc... will start on shit wages for long hours, it's called paying one's dues. Doctors seem to want to have their cake and eat it.
That's a reasonable point Max in general.
But in specific at the moment the previously already lower wages that junior doctors are getting paid aren't just being frozen in real terms, but a proposed substantial cut. While taxpayers money is going to pay others a double-digit rise, including the state pension of retired doctors on defined benefit schemes.
That's f***ed up is it not?
Should a retired doctor on a defined benefit scheme get a double-digit percentage increase in their state pension, while a junior doctor sees a nearly double-digit percentage cut in their real terms income from their already lower wage? Is that paying their dues?
Keeping lower wages flat, while other wages are flat, is entirely reasonable. But cutting some wages in real terms while increasing others by double digit percentages . . . that's a political choice, not necessity.
You have been admirably consistent about wanting a free market in labour. There is a free market for junior doctors in fact there is surplus demand. Hence by your own estimation, as indeed you have noted, wages should fall as they are competed downwards. They shouldn't rise.
Plus the NPV of a "junior doctors" wages is substantially higher than many others and as we know they are bright enough to have worked this out.
What happens to senior consultants or investment bankers is neither here nor there.
Absolutely Topping.
If there's more qualified job applicants for the junior doctors role to replace them, rather than pay what they're demanding, then I have no qualms with that being done. Sack the strikers and replace them with those equally qualified who are willing to do the job at the offered rate instead of a higher rate.
But I'm curious about what you mean by surplus demand meaning wages should fall? Surplus demand for junior doctors would mean the wage rises, surplus supply of people willing to do the job would mean a fall, and I'm not sure there's any evidence that there's surplus supply of people wanting and qualified to do that role.
If there is surplus supply, let the market do its thing and let any who end up without a job consider how they might have acted differently. But I don't think there is.
I believe there is surplus demand for junior doctors jobs.
Not enough places at med school, rather than not enough wanting to become docs.
Exactly. More people want to be doctors than there are available places.
Med school applicants != junior doctors.
Do you propose we sack striking junior doctors and replace them with 18 year olds who've just completed their A-Levels but were denied a place at medical school?
Expanding med schools may expand the supply of potential junior doctors in the future, but it doesn't mean there's an oversupply of doctors at the minute.
There is an oversupply of people who want to become junior doctors.
My six year old wants to be a vet. Does that mean she can be one?
If she gets straight As in sciences, why not? Although IIRC veterinary medicine is even more oversubscribed than human medicine.
Indeed in 20 years time she might be a vet. Or she might be a doctor. Or an author, a gymnast or any of the other things she's wanted to be at different times. Probably not a butterfly though which is what she wanted to be when she grew up when she was four.
A-level applicants for med school are no more qualified to be junior doctors today than my six year old is to be a vet. Expanding med schools will take time and money and could address the shortage in the future, but that they're oversubscribed today does not mean there's an oversupply of qualified junior doctors today.
Here is the reality on doctors' pay. The UK is not the highest payer in Europe for hospital doctors but it is well above the median. It is also considerably higher than the nearest comparable system, Sweden, which has a nationalised system unlike most other "mixed economy" health systems
Additionally UK doctors have the safest jobs than any other walk of life, even by public sector standards. It is almost impossible to sack a hospital doctor in the NHS, even when they are incompetent. They also have highly lucrative pension schemes which see them retire on pensions that give them a take home payment that is in excess of double what the average taxpayer earns, and hospital consultants often also have lucrative private practices that are effectively conflicts of interest, but the NHS turns a blind eye to it.
Most so-called "junior" doctors (those below consultant level) earn salaries that are very comparative to other non-partner level professionals such as lawyers and accountants that are outside the distorted salaries found in London.
As for GPs: they are raking it in! The reality is that if doctors were a little less greedy there would be the possibility to be more generous to other health professionals who are probably underpaid.
In summary, those that are swallowing the line of the doctors unions that they are underpaid, I have a bridge to sell you.
BIB: that GPs are raking in £80,000 a year does not mean junior hospital doctors are not underpaid (or overworked or working antisocial hours).
As a junior analyst I worked from 7am to 10pm fairly often despite my contract hours being 8am to 5pm, I got paid fuck all to do it as well. Junior doctoring is exactly the same, short term shite while you're in your 20s so you can climb the earnings ladder and once you hit 30 you've got a substantial income.
If we're going to change the model to pay more at an earlier stage then pay later in medical careers needs to fall.
What I don't understand is why doctors think they should be treated any differently to other high yielding industry, all lawyers, financiers, analysts etc... will start on shit wages for long hours, it's called paying one's dues. Doctors seem to want to have their cake and eat it.
That's a reasonable point Max in general.
But in specific at the moment the previously already lower wages that junior doctors are getting paid aren't just being frozen in real terms, but a proposed substantial cut. While taxpayers money is going to pay others a double-digit rise, including the state pension of retired doctors on defined benefit schemes.
That's f***ed up is it not?
Should a retired doctor on a defined benefit scheme get a double-digit percentage increase in their state pension, while a junior doctor sees a nearly double-digit percentage cut in their real terms income from their already lower wage? Is that paying their dues?
Keeping lower wages flat, while other wages are flat, is entirely reasonable. But cutting some wages in real terms while increasing others by double digit percentages . . . that's a political choice, not necessity.
You have been admirably consistent about wanting a free market in labour. There is a free market for junior doctors in fact there is surplus demand. Hence by your own estimation, as indeed you have noted, wages should fall as they are competed downwards. They shouldn't rise.
Plus the NPV of a "junior doctors" wages is substantially higher than many others and as we know they are bright enough to have worked this out.
What happens to senior consultants or investment bankers is neither here nor there.
But it's not a free market, there has been surplus demand for doctors for going on 30 years and yet supply of doctors has been held down artificially by the state.
I've already said it many times, it's time for the government to lift the cap on medical school places so universities and hospitals can train as many doctors as are necessary and then we'll see what the NPV of doctoring actually is, if it turns out we train too many we end up becoming a next exporter of doctors for a while until the NPV rises again.
The problem there is that a medical degree costs more than £9250 a year to teach - so how do you square that circle?
Charge the student the full cost of the course, and pay off 5% of the debt for every year they work in the NHS.
That would provide a very strong incentive to get a better paying job overseas.
It’s similar to what airlines do with pilots.
You’d have to get a much better paid job overseas, rather than one a little better paid, to make it worthwhile. If the course cost £200k, they’d be paying you £10k a year (in post-tax index-linked income) towards the loan. If you leave, you’ll need to get a commercial loan to settle the outstanding balance.
Top Gear axed. Maybe they could spend the money on the BBC Singers instead.
Top Gear was a massive net income for the BBC* - for overseas TV rights, overseas format rights, books, magazines, DVDs, Youtube channel etc.
*BBC Studios. The commercial arm of the Corporation, rather than the BBC itself.
The ratings for the main TV show have been falling since they changed the presenters, and the current lineup is one idiot, one cricketer, and one car journalist. And now they’ve put someone in the hospital, again. It might be done for good this time.
I've never seen the fucking thing apart from bits on flights but I feel like automotive YouTube has rendered it pointless.
Yesterday I read some posts on here that suggested the harsher people fleeing in dingys (sic) were treated the better Sunaks figures. It was written by someone who is apparently well versed in the Red Wall and Tory thinking. It seemed to be written approvingly though that's not important. But what a disgusting indictment of this country and the voters they attract.
I missed that comment, but I think its utterly preposterous and wrong and whoever said that knows absolutely nothing about the Red Wall.
Certain commentators on this site, especially some who live in the South in deepest blue territory, seem to project their own prejudices onto the North/Red Wall.
As someone who lives up here may I reject them all. There are a small minority of racists in the North, like there are everywhere else, but that is not what the Red Wall is and its not the North. Anyone who is saying that is not well versed whatsoever in the Red Wall and has almost certainly never lived here, never campaigned here, and never knocked up voters here.
FPT. Sorry I wasn't able to reply. I like your sentiments but the proof of the pudding is in the Prime Minister's appointment of Suella Braverman. Her statements about the people in dinghies have been pretty disgusting yet considered to be just what the Red Wallers want to hear to bring them back on side. If they were unattractive to that vital voting block I'm sure Sunak would have removed her.
Or Sunak recognises that the Red Wall could be lost either way and Suella is there to appeal to more traditionally blue seats to keep them happy and in the blue column.
The kind of seats from which all these comments projecting onto the Red Wall their own prejudices seem to be coming from anyway.
I can't think of a single commentator on this site from a Red Wall seat who is expressing those views or endorsing Suella Braverman. Those who seem to be doing so, seem to be in more typically safe blue seats than Red Wall seats.
Red Wall has become a flippant byline for people's own prejudices rather than thinking seriously about what people here actually want.
Hear hear, as someone who lives in a red wall seat I can only echo this. I would also go as far to say I have never heard anyone express a view on it. Issues like pay, fuel bills, availability of groceries for sure but not boat people.
People like Rogerdamus just have a passionate dislike for anything red wall blaming the red wall for Brexit. But your debating what people in the Red Wall think with a guy who spends half his life in France. He won't know, as you say it is people projecting.
The Red Wall is not a place, it's a type of voter. Specifically those who voted Tory for the 1st time in 2019 through genuine enthusiasm for Boris and his Brexit.
That might be how you define it, but it's not the standard definition.
The Red Wall is defined by those constituencies that up until 2017 were still voting Labour even though, on strictly demographic analysis, they should already have switched to the Tories.
Here is the reality on doctors' pay. The UK is not the highest payer in Europe for hospital doctors but it is well above the median. It is also considerably higher than the nearest comparable system, Sweden, which has a nationalised system unlike most other "mixed economy" health systems
Additionally UK doctors have the safest jobs than any other walk of life, even by public sector standards. It is almost impossible to sack a hospital doctor in the NHS, even when they are incompetent. They also have highly lucrative pension schemes which see them retire on pensions that give them a take home payment that is in excess of double what the average taxpayer earns, and hospital consultants often also have lucrative private practices that are effectively conflicts of interest, but the NHS turns a blind eye to it.
Most so-called "junior" doctors (those below consultant level) earn salaries that are very comparative to other non-partner level professionals such as lawyers and accountants that are outside the distorted salaries found in London.
As for GPs: they are raking it in! The reality is that if doctors were a little less greedy there would be the possibility to be more generous to other health professionals who are probably underpaid.
In summary, those that are swallowing the line of the doctors unions that they are underpaid, I have a bridge to sell you.
BIB: that GPs are raking in £80,000 a year does not mean junior hospital doctors are not underpaid (or overworked or working antisocial hours).
As a junior analyst I worked from 7am to 10pm fairly often despite my contract hours being 8am to 5pm, I got paid fuck all to do it as well. Junior doctoring is exactly the same, short term shite while you're in your 20s so you can climb the earnings ladder and once you hit 30 you've got a substantial income.
If we're going to change the model to pay more at an earlier stage then pay later in medical careers needs to fall.
What I don't understand is why doctors think they should be treated any differently to other high yielding industry, all lawyers, financiers, analysts etc... will start on shit wages for long hours, it's called paying one's dues. Doctors seem to want to have their cake and eat it.
That's a reasonable point Max in general.
But in specific at the moment the previously already lower wages that junior doctors are getting paid aren't just being frozen in real terms, but a proposed substantial cut. While taxpayers money is going to pay others a double-digit rise, including the state pension of retired doctors on defined benefit schemes.
That's f***ed up is it not?
Should a retired doctor on a defined benefit scheme get a double-digit percentage increase in their state pension, while a junior doctor sees a nearly double-digit percentage cut in their real terms income from their already lower wage? Is that paying their dues?
Keeping lower wages flat, while other wages are flat, is entirely reasonable. But cutting some wages in real terms while increasing others by double digit percentages . . . that's a political choice, not necessity.
You have been admirably consistent about wanting a free market in labour. There is a free market for junior doctors in fact there is surplus demand. Hence by your own estimation, as indeed you have noted, wages should fall as they are competed downwards. They shouldn't rise.
Plus the NPV of a "junior doctors" wages is substantially higher than many others and as we know they are bright enough to have worked this out.
What happens to senior consultants or investment bankers is neither here nor there.
But it's not a free market, there has been surplus demand for doctors for going on 30 years and yet supply of doctors has been held down artificially by the state.
I've already said it many times, it's time for the government to lift the cap on medical school places so universities and hospitals can train as many doctors as are necessary and then we'll see what the NPV of doctoring actually is, if it turns out we train too many we end up becoming a next exporter of doctors for a while until the NPV rises again.
The problem there is that a medical degree costs more than £9250 a year to teach - so how do you square that circle?
Charge the student the full cost of the course, and pay off 5% of the debt for every year they work in the NHS.
Ballpark figure for the cost of training a doctor is about a quarter of a million pounds. That's a helluva training bond.
Given that, with the best will and selection processes in the world, there will be people who train as doctors who shouldn't in the end do any doctoring, I'd find it hard to recommend many 18 year olds taking that big a gamble.
Especially if the plan is to make sure you have an excess of junior doctors to keep everything competitive and the doctors keen and mean.
Yesterday I read some posts on here that suggested the harsher people fleeing in dingys (sic) were treated the better Sunaks figures. It was written by someone who is apparently well versed in the Red Wall and Tory thinking. It seemed to be written approvingly though that's not important. But what a disgusting indictment of this country and the voters they attract.
I missed that comment, but I think its utterly preposterous and wrong and whoever said that knows absolutely nothing about the Red Wall.
Certain commentators on this site, especially some who live in the South in deepest blue territory, seem to project their own prejudices onto the North/Red Wall.
As someone who lives up here may I reject them all. There are a small minority of racists in the North, like there are everywhere else, but that is not what the Red Wall is and its not the North. Anyone who is saying that is not well versed whatsoever in the Red Wall and has almost certainly never lived here, never campaigned here, and never knocked up voters here.
FPT. Sorry I wasn't able to reply. I like your sentiments but the proof of the pudding is in the Prime Minister's appointment of Suella Braverman. Her statements about the people in dinghies have been pretty disgusting yet considered to be just what the Red Wallers want to hear to bring them back on side. If they were unattractive to that vital voting block I'm sure Sunak would have removed her.
Or Sunak recognises that the Red Wall could be lost either way and Suella is there to appeal to more traditionally blue seats to keep them happy and in the blue column.
The kind of seats from which all these comments projecting onto the Red Wall their own prejudices seem to be coming from anyway.
I can't think of a single commentator on this site from a Red Wall seat who is expressing those views or endorsing Suella Braverman. Those who seem to be doing so, seem to be in more typically safe blue seats than Red Wall seats.
Red Wall has become a flippant byline for people's own prejudices rather than thinking seriously about what people here actually want.
Hear hear, as someone who lives in a red wall seat I can only echo this. I would also go as far to say I have never heard anyone express a view on it. Issues like pay, fuel bills, availability of groceries for sure but not boat people.
People like Rogerdamus just have a passionate dislike for anything red wall blaming the red wall for Brexit. But your debating what people in the Red Wall think with a guy who spends half his life in France. He won't know, as you say it is people projecting.
The Red Wall is not a place, it's a type of voter. Specifically those who voted Tory for the 1st time in 2019 through genuine enthusiasm for Boris and his Brexit. These people delivered the big Con win and have been identified by both parties as key to the next election too. They will typically be Hard Leavers, quite nationalistic, anti-empathetic to migrants and refugees. The rhetoric designed to appeal to them can therefore cause the nose to wrinkle but we may as well get used to it, at least for the next 18 months.
Is it possible for politicians to do anything to stop the boats without causing the nose to wrinkle?
My understanding is that the vast majority of those crossing the channel illegally are not - in any sense of the word we would understand - refugees. And my view is that their arrival is not really a positive for the country - nor indeed (though this is less of my business) for their country of origin (i.e. Albania etc.). So I'd quite like something done which prevents their arrival. The Rwanda policy might disappoint many, but it does at least have the merit of being any policy at all, which is a welcome contrast to the last 30 years of immigration policy. For the record, I'm happy to welcome the likes of the Ukrainians, who are clearly genuine refugees.
You might take a different view on the desirability of the arrival of illegal immigrants, but I don't think my view is extreme or in any way 'wrong' to hold. Wrinkling your nose in distaste at the view that the crossings ought to be prevented is not particularly helpful.
If DB falls, it’ll make 2008 seem like a brief and technical recession.
The German government won’t let it happen though, and the EU will be told to get off should they try and intervene.
If banks make profits in the future, shouldn't they pay that money back to the public? After all, when they fail they expect the government to bail them out.
Yesterday I read some posts on here that suggested the harsher people fleeing in dingys (sic) were treated the better Sunaks figures. It was written by someone who is apparently well versed in the Red Wall and Tory thinking. It seemed to be written approvingly though that's not important. But what a disgusting indictment of this country and the voters they attract.
I missed that comment, but I think its utterly preposterous and wrong and whoever said that knows absolutely nothing about the Red Wall.
Certain commentators on this site, especially some who live in the South in deepest blue territory, seem to project their own prejudices onto the North/Red Wall.
As someone who lives up here may I reject them all. There are a small minority of racists in the North, like there are everywhere else, but that is not what the Red Wall is and its not the North. Anyone who is saying that is not well versed whatsoever in the Red Wall and has almost certainly never lived here, never campaigned here, and never knocked up voters here.
FPT. Sorry I wasn't able to reply. I like your sentiments but the proof of the pudding is in the Prime Minister's appointment of Suella Braverman. Her statements about the people in dinghies have been pretty disgusting yet considered to be just what the Red Wallers want to hear to bring them back on side. If they were unattractive to that vital voting block I'm sure Sunak would have removed her.
Or Sunak recognises that the Red Wall could be lost either way and Suella is there to appeal to more traditionally blue seats to keep them happy and in the blue column.
The kind of seats from which all these comments projecting onto the Red Wall their own prejudices seem to be coming from anyway.
I can't think of a single commentator on this site from a Red Wall seat who is expressing those views or endorsing Suella Braverman. Those who seem to be doing so, seem to be in more typically safe blue seats than Red Wall seats.
Red Wall has become a flippant byline for people's own prejudices rather than thinking seriously about what people here actually want.
Hear hear, as someone who lives in a red wall seat I can only echo this. I would also go as far to say I have never heard anyone express a view on it. Issues like pay, fuel bills, availability of groceries for sure but not boat people.
People like Rogerdamus just have a passionate dislike for anything red wall blaming the red wall for Brexit. But your debating what people in the Red Wall think with a guy who spends half his life in France. He won't know, as you say it is people projecting.
The Red Wall is not a place, it's a type of voter. Specifically those who voted Tory for the 1st time in 2019 through genuine enthusiasm for Boris and his Brexit. These people delivered the big Con win and have been identified by both parties as key to the next election too. They will typically be Hard Leavers, quite nationalistic, anti-empathetic to migrants and refugees. The rhetoric designed to appeal to them can therefore cause the nose to wrinkle but we may as well get used to it, at least for the next 18 months.
Is it possible for politicians to do anything to stop the boats without causing the nose to wrinkle?
My understanding is that the vast majority of those crossing the channel illegally are not - in any sense of the word we would understand - refugees. And my view is that their arrival is not really a positive for the country - nor indeed (though this is less of my business) for their country of origin (i.e. Albania etc.). So I'd quite like something done which prevents their arrival. The Rwanda policy might disappoint many, but it does at least have the merit of being any policy at all, which is a welcome contrast to the last 30 years of immigration policy. For the record, I'm happy to welcome the likes of the Ukrainians, who are clearly genuine refugees.
You might take a different view on the desirability of the arrival of illegal immigrants, but I don't think my view is extreme or in any way 'wrong' to hold. Wrinkling your nose in distaste at the view that the crossings ought to be prevented is not particularly helpful.
This may seem like splitting hairs, but implementing the Rwanda policy but without any overt nastiness about it.
Suella is repugnant, the bile she comes out with is just nasty.
Sunak's Tweet recently about how people would be denied access to modern slavery laws was similarly nasty.
A tightrope needs to be walked between doing what is tough but necessary, due to regrettable circumstances, and not being nasty about it.
One thing to note is that the experience of inspection can vary massively, depending both on the particular school, and the inspectors they are lucky or unlucky enough to get.
Mrs Cole, who, before she retired, taught Early Years, spent ages preparing for an Inspection and got an absolutely glowing report. Another teacher at the same school got a stinker and gave up!
Anyway, on thread - surely not. Yousaf has all Nicola Sturgeon's negatives and none of her positives. I don't really see what consituency he appeals to.
Not my party, obviously, and I don't know the selectorate. But when other parties have elected leaders who don't necessarily speak to the wider electorate, they've done so because they represent an obvious strain of what that party believes. I would have thought the SNP equivalent would be more akin to Ash Regan. Yousaf strikes me as neither one to connect to the wider electorate nor one to boldly fight the battle for independence whatever public opinion believes.
The obvious strain of party belief which Regan represents belongs to Alba, the bleedin’ obvious evidence of which is that her official endorsements remain Cherry, Salmond and Murray.
Also: NB that the betting question is "next FM" not "next SNP leader".
If Forbes wins the leadership it’ll be interesting to see how the FM vote goes. I imagine the agreement with the Greens will be down the tubes, in that scenario would the Greens sit on their hands?
I still can't see any reason why there's a worse outcome for the new SNP leader than Sturgeon got in 2016 - elected by a minority with only a handful of votes for another candidate and mass abstentions from the opposition parties.
The new SNP leader might not have a majority, but nobody else will either.
Wasn't a minority. Exactrly 50%, the PO not normally voting unless it is tied.
Semantics, and arguably not very accurate semantics at that.
Your repeated argument of "the new SNP leader isn't necessarily going to be the new FM" relies on all other parties coalescing around a single candidate.
Come on.
We're not in Westminster. *There are separate votes for each candidate*.
That seems like a misleading description of the process.
As the result is valid, and as Nicola Sturgeon has received more votes than the total number of votes for the other candidate, I declare that Nicola Sturgeon is selected as the Parliament’s nominee for appointment as First Minister. As required by the Scotland Act 1998, I shall now recommend to Her Majesty that she appoint Nicola Sturgeon as the First Minister.
All the SNP MSPs are going to vote for the new SNP leader. What "other candidate" is going to get more votes?
Nevertheless, it's true (I checked). It's possible for abstentions or illness to happen in any party. And people do not, so far as I can see, have to be consistent in their voting.
I literally checked the Official Report from 2016. There are "separate votes" only in the sense that MSPs aren't given a ballot paper with options "SNP leader, token opposition party candidate, abstain", they vote electronically sequentially for one of the options.
In the real world, all SNP MSPs are going to vote for the new SNP leader to be FM and no other single candidate is going to get enough votes to overcome that. Why are you wasting time denying the obvious?
You seem to have wasted an awful lot of time on a parliamentary process in a country not your own.
It is my own country, try again.
Ah, a real live British nationalist. I assume you’ve never voted in the country on which you’re opining repeatedly, but it must be some satisfaction that you get to impose the rsoles for whom you vote on us anyway.
Top Gear axed. Maybe they could spend the money on the BBC Singers instead.
Top Gear was a massive net income for the BBC* - for overseas TV rights, overseas format rights, books, magazines, DVDs, Youtube channel etc.
*BBC Studios. The commercial arm of the Corporation, rather than the BBC itself.
The ratings for the main TV show have been falling since they changed the presenters, and the current lineup is one idiot, one cricketer, and one car journalist. And now they’ve put someone in the hospital, again. It might be done for good this time.
I've never seen the fucking thing apart from bits on flights but I feel like automotive YouTube has rendered it pointless.
Yes I know I am an automotive YouTuber, but when I say that I agree I am not talking about my amateur stuff. There is some truly brilliant stuff made on YouTube, and the ideas tend to be head and shoulders above the tired "haven't I seen this before" japes on Top Gear.
I actually thought the current presenter line up was decent. But the format is well past it and I've found it increasingly hard to justify watching the thing knowing there are no new ideas. Best to let it quietly drop. Rory Reid was better on YouTube than on the show. Chris Harris the same...
If DB falls, it’ll make 2008 seem like a brief and technical recession.
The German government won’t let it happen though, and the EU will be told to get off should they try and intervene.
If banks make profits in the future, shouldn't they pay that money back to the public? After all, when they fail they expect the government to bail them out.
It depends exactly what’s meant by bail-out. In most of the current cases, the shareholders of the bank have been wiped out completely, and those protected have been individuals and companies with money on deposit.
Yesterday I read some posts on here that suggested the harsher people fleeing in dingys (sic) were treated the better Sunaks figures. It was written by someone who is apparently well versed in the Red Wall and Tory thinking. It seemed to be written approvingly though that's not important. But what a disgusting indictment of this country and the voters they attract.
I missed that comment, but I think its utterly preposterous and wrong and whoever said that knows absolutely nothing about the Red Wall.
Certain commentators on this site, especially some who live in the South in deepest blue territory, seem to project their own prejudices onto the North/Red Wall.
As someone who lives up here may I reject them all. There are a small minority of racists in the North, like there are everywhere else, but that is not what the Red Wall is and its not the North. Anyone who is saying that is not well versed whatsoever in the Red Wall and has almost certainly never lived here, never campaigned here, and never knocked up voters here.
FPT. Sorry I wasn't able to reply. I like your sentiments but the proof of the pudding is in the Prime Minister's appointment of Suella Braverman. Her statements about the people in dinghies have been pretty disgusting yet considered to be just what the Red Wallers want to hear to bring them back on side. If they were unattractive to that vital voting block I'm sure Sunak would have removed her.
Or Sunak recognises that the Red Wall could be lost either way and Suella is there to appeal to more traditionally blue seats to keep them happy and in the blue column.
The kind of seats from which all these comments projecting onto the Red Wall their own prejudices seem to be coming from anyway.
I can't think of a single commentator on this site from a Red Wall seat who is expressing those views or endorsing Suella Braverman. Those who seem to be doing so, seem to be in more typically safe blue seats than Red Wall seats.
Red Wall has become a flippant byline for people's own prejudices rather than thinking seriously about what people here actually want.
Hear hear, as someone who lives in a red wall seat I can only echo this. I would also go as far to say I have never heard anyone express a view on it. Issues like pay, fuel bills, availability of groceries for sure but not boat people.
People like Rogerdamus just have a passionate dislike for anything red wall blaming the red wall for Brexit. But your debating what people in the Red Wall think with a guy who spends half his life in France. He won't know, as you say it is people projecting.
The Red Wall is not a place, it's a type of voter. Specifically those who voted Tory for the 1st time in 2019 through genuine enthusiasm for Boris and his Brexit. These people delivered the big Con win and have been identified by both parties as key to the next election too. They will typically be Hard Leavers, quite nationalistic, anti-empathetic to migrants and refugees. The rhetoric designed to appeal to them can therefore cause the nose to wrinkle but we may as well get used to it, at least for the next 18 months.
Is it possible for politicians to do anything to stop the boats without causing the nose to wrinkle?
My understanding is that the vast majority of those crossing the channel illegally are not - in any sense of the word we would understand - refugees. And my view is that their arrival is not really a positive for the country - nor indeed (though this is less of my business) for their country of origin (i.e. Albania etc.). So I'd quite like something done which prevents their arrival. The Rwanda policy might disappoint many, but it does at least have the merit of being any policy at all, which is a welcome contrast to the last 30 years of immigration policy. For the record, I'm happy to welcome the likes of the Ukrainians, who are clearly genuine refugees.
You might take a different view on the desirability of the arrival of illegal immigrants, but I don't think my view is extreme or in any way 'wrong' to hold. Wrinkling your nose in distaste at the view that the crossings ought to be prevented is not particularly helpful.
This may seem like splitting hairs, but implementing the Rwanda policy but without any overt nastiness about it.
Suella is repugnant, the bile she comes out with is just nasty.
Sunak's Tweet recently about how people would be denied access to modern slavery laws was similarly nasty.
A tightrope needs to be walked between doing what is tough but necessary, due to regrettable circumstances, and not being nasty about it.
Fine. I'd note though that we seem to afford unlimited moral slack to those who fall off the tightrope to one side and none at all to those who fall off the tightrope on the other.
Anyway, on thread - surely not. Yousaf has all Nicola Sturgeon's negatives and none of her positives. I don't really see what consituency he appeals to.
Not my party, obviously, and I don't know the selectorate. But when other parties have elected leaders who don't necessarily speak to the wider electorate, they've done so because they represent an obvious strain of what that party believes. I would have thought the SNP equivalent would be more akin to Ash Regan. Yousaf strikes me as neither one to connect to the wider electorate nor one to boldly fight the battle for independence whatever public opinion believes.
The obvious strain of party belief which Regan represents belongs to Alba, the bleedin’ obvious evidence of which is that her official endorsements remain Cherry, Salmond and Murray.
Also: NB that the betting question is "next FM" not "next SNP leader".
If Forbes wins the leadership it’ll be interesting to see how the FM vote goes. I imagine the agreement with the Greens will be down the tubes, in that scenario would the Greens sit on their hands?
I still can't see any reason why there's a worse outcome for the new SNP leader than Sturgeon got in 2016 - elected by a minority with only a handful of votes for another candidate and mass abstentions from the opposition parties.
The new SNP leader might not have a majority, but nobody else will either.
Wasn't a minority. Exactrly 50%, the PO not normally voting unless it is tied.
Semantics, and arguably not very accurate semantics at that.
Your repeated argument of "the new SNP leader isn't necessarily going to be the new FM" relies on all other parties coalescing around a single candidate.
Come on.
We're not in Westminster. *There are separate votes for each candidate*.
That seems like a misleading description of the process.
As the result is valid, and as Nicola Sturgeon has received more votes than the total number of votes for the other candidate, I declare that Nicola Sturgeon is selected as the Parliament’s nominee for appointment as First Minister. As required by the Scotland Act 1998, I shall now recommend to Her Majesty that she appoint Nicola Sturgeon as the First Minister.
All the SNP MSPs are going to vote for the new SNP leader. What "other candidate" is going to get more votes?
Nevertheless, it's true (I checked). It's possible for abstentions or illness to happen in any party. And people do not, so far as I can see, have to be consistent in their voting.
I literally checked the Official Report from 2016. There are "separate votes" only in the sense that MSPs aren't given a ballot paper with options "SNP leader, token opposition party candidate, abstain", they vote electronically sequentially for one of the options.
In the real world, all SNP MSPs are going to vote for the new SNP leader to be FM and no other single candidate is going to get enough votes to overcome that. Why are you wasting time denying the obvious?
You seem to have wasted an awful lot of time on a parliamentary process in a country not your own.
It is my own country, try again.
Ah, a real live British nationalist. I assume you’ve never voted in the country on which you’re opining repeatedly, but it must be some satisfaction that you get to impose the rsoles for whom you vote on us anyway.
Yesterday I read some posts on here that suggested the harsher people fleeing in dingys (sic) were treated the better Sunaks figures. It was written by someone who is apparently well versed in the Red Wall and Tory thinking. It seemed to be written approvingly though that's not important. But what a disgusting indictment of this country and the voters they attract.
I missed that comment, but I think its utterly preposterous and wrong and whoever said that knows absolutely nothing about the Red Wall.
Certain commentators on this site, especially some who live in the South in deepest blue territory, seem to project their own prejudices onto the North/Red Wall.
As someone who lives up here may I reject them all. There are a small minority of racists in the North, like there are everywhere else, but that is not what the Red Wall is and its not the North. Anyone who is saying that is not well versed whatsoever in the Red Wall and has almost certainly never lived here, never campaigned here, and never knocked up voters here.
FPT. Sorry I wasn't able to reply. I like your sentiments but the proof of the pudding is in the Prime Minister's appointment of Suella Braverman. Her statements about the people in dinghies have been pretty disgusting yet considered to be just what the Red Wallers want to hear to bring them back on side. If they were unattractive to that vital voting block I'm sure Sunak would have removed her.
Or Sunak recognises that the Red Wall could be lost either way and Suella is there to appeal to more traditionally blue seats to keep them happy and in the blue column.
The kind of seats from which all these comments projecting onto the Red Wall their own prejudices seem to be coming from anyway.
I can't think of a single commentator on this site from a Red Wall seat who is expressing those views or endorsing Suella Braverman. Those who seem to be doing so, seem to be in more typically safe blue seats than Red Wall seats.
Red Wall has become a flippant byline for people's own prejudices rather than thinking seriously about what people here actually want.
Hear hear, as someone who lives in a red wall seat I can only echo this. I would also go as far to say I have never heard anyone express a view on it. Issues like pay, fuel bills, availability of groceries for sure but not boat people.
People like Rogerdamus just have a passionate dislike for anything red wall blaming the red wall for Brexit. But your debating what people in the Red Wall think with a guy who spends half his life in France. He won't know, as you say it is people projecting.
The Red Wall is not a place, it's a type of voter. Specifically those who voted Tory for the 1st time in 2019 through genuine enthusiasm for Boris and his Brexit. These people delivered the big Con win and have been identified by both parties as key to the next election too. They will typically be Hard Leavers, quite nationalistic, anti-empathetic to migrants and refugees. The rhetoric designed to appeal to them can therefore cause the nose to wrinkle but we may as well get used to it, at least for the next 18 months.
Is it possible for politicians to do anything to stop the boats without causing the nose to wrinkle?
My understanding is that the vast majority of those crossing the channel illegally are not - in any sense of the word we would understand - refugees. And my view is that their arrival is not really a positive for the country - nor indeed (though this is less of my business) for their country of origin (i.e. Albania etc.). So I'd quite like something done which prevents their arrival. The Rwanda policy might disappoint many, but it does at least have the merit of being any policy at all, which is a welcome contrast to the last 30 years of immigration policy. For the record, I'm happy to welcome the likes of the Ukrainians, who are clearly genuine refugees.
You might take a different view on the desirability of the arrival of illegal immigrants, but I don't think my view is extreme or in any way 'wrong' to hold. Wrinkling your nose in distaste at the view that the crossings ought to be prevented is not particularly helpful.
I thought most, apart from most Albanians, were genuine. As are their wives and children.
Yesterday I read some posts on here that suggested the harsher people fleeing in dingys (sic) were treated the better Sunaks figures. It was written by someone who is apparently well versed in the Red Wall and Tory thinking. It seemed to be written approvingly though that's not important. But what a disgusting indictment of this country and the voters they attract.
I missed that comment, but I think its utterly preposterous and wrong and whoever said that knows absolutely nothing about the Red Wall.
Certain commentators on this site, especially some who live in the South in deepest blue territory, seem to project their own prejudices onto the North/Red Wall.
As someone who lives up here may I reject them all. There are a small minority of racists in the North, like there are everywhere else, but that is not what the Red Wall is and its not the North. Anyone who is saying that is not well versed whatsoever in the Red Wall and has almost certainly never lived here, never campaigned here, and never knocked up voters here.
FPT. Sorry I wasn't able to reply. I like your sentiments but the proof of the pudding is in the Prime Minister's appointment of Suella Braverman. Her statements about the people in dinghies have been pretty disgusting yet considered to be just what the Red Wallers want to hear to bring them back on side. If they were unattractive to that vital voting block I'm sure Sunak would have removed her.
Or Sunak recognises that the Red Wall could be lost either way and Suella is there to appeal to more traditionally blue seats to keep them happy and in the blue column.
The kind of seats from which all these comments projecting onto the Red Wall their own prejudices seem to be coming from anyway.
I can't think of a single commentator on this site from a Red Wall seat who is expressing those views or endorsing Suella Braverman. Those who seem to be doing so, seem to be in more typically safe blue seats than Red Wall seats.
Red Wall has become a flippant byline for people's own prejudices rather than thinking seriously about what people here actually want.
Hear hear, as someone who lives in a red wall seat I can only echo this. I would also go as far to say I have never heard anyone express a view on it. Issues like pay, fuel bills, availability of groceries for sure but not boat people.
People like Rogerdamus just have a passionate dislike for anything red wall blaming the red wall for Brexit. But your debating what people in the Red Wall think with a guy who spends half his life in France. He won't know, as you say it is people projecting.
The Red Wall is not a place, it's a type of voter. Specifically those who voted Tory for the 1st time in 2019 through genuine enthusiasm for Boris and his Brexit. These people delivered the big Con win and have been identified by both parties as key to the next election too. They will typically be Hard Leavers, quite nationalistic, anti-empathetic to migrants and refugees. The rhetoric designed to appeal to them can therefore cause the nose to wrinkle but we may as well get used to it, at least for the next 18 months.
This is also a myth. The term Red Wall was coined before Boris led the party.
The Red Wall identifies a changing type of voter that demographically elsewhere in the country would have voted Tory but didn't in the Red Wall. The Red Wall was trending blue long before Boris and Brexit.
What I'm talking about is not a myth. At GE19 the trend you correctly reference took a step jump and delivered the Boris landslide. Cause? Genuine enthusiasm for him and for Brexit, the 'hard' version thereof.
As I say it relates to a type of voter not a place. That's how you can make sense of the phrase 'appealing to the Red Wall'. It means appealing to that type of voter not to any particular place.
There are Red Wall voters all over England, including in the Blue Wall. It just so happens that current electoral chemistry makes them crucial to many swing seats and these swing seats where they are crucial are mainly in the North and the Midlands.
Top Gear axed. Maybe they could spend the money on the BBC Singers instead.
Top Gear was a massive net income for the BBC* - for overseas TV rights, overseas format rights, books, magazines, DVDs, Youtube channel etc.
*BBC Studios. The commercial arm of the Corporation, rather than the BBC itself.
The ratings for the main TV show have been falling since they changed the presenters, and the current lineup is one idiot, one cricketer, and one car journalist. And now they’ve put someone in the hospital, again. It might be done for good this time.
I've never seen the fucking thing apart from bits on flights but I feel like automotive YouTube has rendered it pointless.
Yes I know I am an automotive YouTuber, but when I say that I agree I am not talking about my amateur stuff. There is some truly brilliant stuff made on YouTube, and the ideas tend to be head and shoulders above the tired "haven't I seen this before" japes on Top Gear.
I actually thought the current presenter line up was decent. But the format is well past it and I've found it increasingly hard to justify watching the thing knowing there are no new ideas. Best to let it quietly drop. Rory Reid was better on YouTube than on the show. Chris Harris the same...
Initial 'new' crew with Chris Evans was a disaster. Did the BBC think Evans was actually a popular likeable person? Epic myopia.
The current three have almost gelled, but you still get the impression that Paddy and Freddy would go to the pub together, but not with Harris.
Here is the reality on doctors' pay. The UK is not the highest payer in Europe for hospital doctors but it is well above the median. It is also considerably higher than the nearest comparable system, Sweden, which has a nationalised system unlike most other "mixed economy" health systems
Additionally UK doctors have the safest jobs than any other walk of life, even by public sector standards. It is almost impossible to sack a hospital doctor in the NHS, even when they are incompetent. They also have highly lucrative pension schemes which see them retire on pensions that give them a take home payment that is in excess of double what the average taxpayer earns, and hospital consultants often also have lucrative private practices that are effectively conflicts of interest, but the NHS turns a blind eye to it.
Most so-called "junior" doctors (those below consultant level) earn salaries that are very comparative to other non-partner level professionals such as lawyers and accountants that are outside the distorted salaries found in London.
As for GPs: they are raking it in! The reality is that if doctors were a little less greedy there would be the possibility to be more generous to other health professionals who are probably underpaid.
In summary, those that are swallowing the line of the doctors unions that they are underpaid, I have a bridge to sell you.
BIB: that GPs are raking in £80,000 a year does not mean junior hospital doctors are not underpaid (or overworked or working antisocial hours).
As a junior analyst I worked from 7am to 10pm fairly often despite my contract hours being 8am to 5pm, I got paid fuck all to do it as well. Junior doctoring is exactly the same, short term shite while you're in your 20s so you can climb the earnings ladder and once you hit 30 you've got a substantial income.
If we're going to change the model to pay more at an earlier stage then pay later in medical careers needs to fall.
What I don't understand is why doctors think they should be treated any differently to other high yielding industry, all lawyers, financiers, analysts etc... will start on shit wages for long hours, it's called paying one's dues. Doctors seem to want to have their cake and eat it.
That's a reasonable point Max in general.
But in specific at the moment the previously already lower wages that junior doctors are getting paid aren't just being frozen in real terms, but a proposed substantial cut. While taxpayers money is going to pay others a double-digit rise, including the state pension of retired doctors on defined benefit schemes.
That's f***ed up is it not?
Should a retired doctor on a defined benefit scheme get a double-digit percentage increase in their state pension, while a junior doctor sees a nearly double-digit percentage cut in their real terms income from their already lower wage? Is that paying their dues?
Keeping lower wages flat, while other wages are flat, is entirely reasonable. But cutting some wages in real terms while increasing others by double digit percentages . . . that's a political choice, not necessity.
You have been admirably consistent about wanting a free market in labour. There is a free market for junior doctors in fact there is surplus demand. Hence by your own estimation, as indeed you have noted, wages should fall as they are competed downwards. They shouldn't rise.
Plus the NPV of a "junior doctors" wages is substantially higher than many others and as we know they are bright enough to have worked this out.
What happens to senior consultants or investment bankers is neither here nor there.
But it's not a free market, there has been surplus demand for doctors for going on 30 years and yet supply of doctors has been held down artificially by the state.
I've already said it many times, it's time for the government to lift the cap on medical school places so universities and hospitals can train as many doctors as are necessary and then we'll see what the NPV of doctoring actually is, if it turns out we train too many we end up becoming a next exporter of doctors for a while until the NPV rises again.
The problem there is that a medical degree costs more than £9250 a year to teach - so how do you square that circle?
Charge the student the full cost of the course, and pay off 5% of the debt for every year they work in the NHS.
That would hugely discourage people from poorer backgrounds going into medicine.
Here is the reality on doctors' pay. The UK is not the highest payer in Europe for hospital doctors but it is well above the median. It is also considerably higher than the nearest comparable system, Sweden, which has a nationalised system unlike most other "mixed economy" health systems
Additionally UK doctors have the safest jobs than any other walk of life, even by public sector standards. It is almost impossible to sack a hospital doctor in the NHS, even when they are incompetent. They also have highly lucrative pension schemes which see them retire on pensions that give them a take home payment that is in excess of double what the average taxpayer earns, and hospital consultants often also have lucrative private practices that are effectively conflicts of interest, but the NHS turns a blind eye to it.
Most so-called "junior" doctors (those below consultant level) earn salaries that are very comparative to other non-partner level professionals such as lawyers and accountants that are outside the distorted salaries found in London.
As for GPs: they are raking it in! The reality is that if doctors were a little less greedy there would be the possibility to be more generous to other health professionals who are probably underpaid.
In summary, those that are swallowing the line of the doctors unions that they are underpaid, I have a bridge to sell you.
BIB: that GPs are raking in £80,000 a year does not mean junior hospital doctors are not underpaid (or overworked or working antisocial hours).
As a junior analyst I worked from 7am to 10pm fairly often despite my contract hours being 8am to 5pm, I got paid fuck all to do it as well. Junior doctoring is exactly the same, short term shite while you're in your 20s so you can climb the earnings ladder and once you hit 30 you've got a substantial income.
If we're going to change the model to pay more at an earlier stage then pay later in medical careers needs to fall.
What I don't understand is why doctors think they should be treated any differently to other high yielding industry, all lawyers, financiers, analysts etc... will start on shit wages for long hours, it's called paying one's dues. Doctors seem to want to have their cake and eat it.
That's a reasonable point Max in general.
But in specific at the moment the previously already lower wages that junior doctors are getting paid aren't just being frozen in real terms, but a proposed substantial cut. While taxpayers money is going to pay others a double-digit rise, including the state pension of retired doctors on defined benefit schemes.
That's f***ed up is it not?
Should a retired doctor on a defined benefit scheme get a double-digit percentage increase in their state pension, while a junior doctor sees a nearly double-digit percentage cut in their real terms income from their already lower wage? Is that paying their dues?
Keeping lower wages flat, while other wages are flat, is entirely reasonable. But cutting some wages in real terms while increasing others by double digit percentages . . . that's a political choice, not necessity.
You have been admirably consistent about wanting a free market in labour. There is a free market for junior doctors in fact there is surplus demand. Hence by your own estimation, as indeed you have noted, wages should fall as they are competed downwards. They shouldn't rise.
Plus the NPV of a "junior doctors" wages is substantially higher than many others and as we know they are bright enough to have worked this out.
What happens to senior consultants or investment bankers is neither here nor there.
But it's not a free market, there has been surplus demand for doctors for going on 30 years and yet supply of doctors has been held down artificially by the state.
I've already said it many times, it's time for the government to lift the cap on medical school places so universities and hospitals can train as many doctors as are necessary and then we'll see what the NPV of doctoring actually is, if it turns out we train too many we end up becoming a next exporter of doctors for a while until the NPV rises again.
The problem there is that a medical degree costs more than £9250 a year to teach - so how do you square that circle?
Charge the student the full cost of the course, and pay off 5% of the debt for every year they work in the NHS.
That would hugely discourage people from poorer backgrounds going into medicine.
On the contrary, it would give many more of them the opportunity.
Yesterday I read some posts on here that suggested the harsher people fleeing in dingys (sic) were treated the better Sunaks figures. It was written by someone who is apparently well versed in the Red Wall and Tory thinking. It seemed to be written approvingly though that's not important. But what a disgusting indictment of this country and the voters they attract.
I missed that comment, but I think its utterly preposterous and wrong and whoever said that knows absolutely nothing about the Red Wall.
Certain commentators on this site, especially some who live in the South in deepest blue territory, seem to project their own prejudices onto the North/Red Wall.
As someone who lives up here may I reject them all. There are a small minority of racists in the North, like there are everywhere else, but that is not what the Red Wall is and its not the North. Anyone who is saying that is not well versed whatsoever in the Red Wall and has almost certainly never lived here, never campaigned here, and never knocked up voters here.
FPT. Sorry I wasn't able to reply. I like your sentiments but the proof of the pudding is in the Prime Minister's appointment of Suella Braverman. Her statements about the people in dinghies have been pretty disgusting yet considered to be just what the Red Wallers want to hear to bring them back on side. If they were unattractive to that vital voting block I'm sure Sunak would have removed her.
Or Sunak recognises that the Red Wall could be lost either way and Suella is there to appeal to more traditionally blue seats to keep them happy and in the blue column.
The kind of seats from which all these comments projecting onto the Red Wall their own prejudices seem to be coming from anyway.
I can't think of a single commentator on this site from a Red Wall seat who is expressing those views or endorsing Suella Braverman. Those who seem to be doing so, seem to be in more typically safe blue seats than Red Wall seats.
Red Wall has become a flippant byline for people's own prejudices rather than thinking seriously about what people here actually want.
Hear hear, as someone who lives in a red wall seat I can only echo this. I would also go as far to say I have never heard anyone express a view on it. Issues like pay, fuel bills, availability of groceries for sure but not boat people.
People like Rogerdamus just have a passionate dislike for anything red wall blaming the red wall for Brexit. But your debating what people in the Red Wall think with a guy who spends half his life in France. He won't know, as you say it is people projecting.
The Red Wall is not a place, it's a type of voter. Specifically those who voted Tory for the 1st time in 2019 through genuine enthusiasm for Boris and his Brexit. These people delivered the big Con win and have been identified by both parties as key to the next election too. They will typically be Hard Leavers, quite nationalistic, anti-empathetic to migrants and refugees. The rhetoric designed to appeal to them can therefore cause the nose to wrinkle but we may as well get used to it, at least for the next 18 months.
This is also a myth. The term Red Wall was coined before Boris led the party.
The Red Wall identifies a changing type of voter that demographically elsewhere in the country would have voted Tory but didn't in the Red Wall. The Red Wall was trending blue long before Boris and Brexit.
What I'm talking about is not a myth. At GE19 the trend you correctly reference took a step jump and delivered the Boris landslide. Cause? Genuine enthusiasm for him and for Brexit, the 'hard' version thereof.
As I say it relates to a type of voter not a place. That's how you can make sense of the phrase 'appealing to the Red Wall'. It means appealing to that type of voter not to any particular place.
There are Red Wall voters all over England, including in the Blue Wall. It just so happens that current electoral chemistry makes them crucial to many swing seats and these swing seats where they are crucial are mainly in the North and the Midlands.
Enthusiasm for a hard Brexit. No. It was Boris’s ‘oven ready deal’.
Oh, and Bart is correct. But have it your own way.
Yesterday I read some posts on here that suggested the harsher people fleeing in dingys (sic) were treated the better Sunaks figures. It was written by someone who is apparently well versed in the Red Wall and Tory thinking. It seemed to be written approvingly though that's not important. But what a disgusting indictment of this country and the voters they attract.
I missed that comment, but I think its utterly preposterous and wrong and whoever said that knows absolutely nothing about the Red Wall.
Certain commentators on this site, especially some who live in the South in deepest blue territory, seem to project their own prejudices onto the North/Red Wall.
As someone who lives up here may I reject them all. There are a small minority of racists in the North, like there are everywhere else, but that is not what the Red Wall is and its not the North. Anyone who is saying that is not well versed whatsoever in the Red Wall and has almost certainly never lived here, never campaigned here, and never knocked up voters here.
FPT. Sorry I wasn't able to reply. I like your sentiments but the proof of the pudding is in the Prime Minister's appointment of Suella Braverman. Her statements about the people in dinghies have been pretty disgusting yet considered to be just what the Red Wallers want to hear to bring them back on side. If they were unattractive to that vital voting block I'm sure Sunak would have removed her.
Or Sunak recognises that the Red Wall could be lost either way and Suella is there to appeal to more traditionally blue seats to keep them happy and in the blue column.
The kind of seats from which all these comments projecting onto the Red Wall their own prejudices seem to be coming from anyway.
I can't think of a single commentator on this site from a Red Wall seat who is expressing those views or endorsing Suella Braverman. Those who seem to be doing so, seem to be in more typically safe blue seats than Red Wall seats.
Red Wall has become a flippant byline for people's own prejudices rather than thinking seriously about what people here actually want.
Hear hear, as someone who lives in a red wall seat I can only echo this. I would also go as far to say I have never heard anyone express a view on it. Issues like pay, fuel bills, availability of groceries for sure but not boat people.
People like Rogerdamus just have a passionate dislike for anything red wall blaming the red wall for Brexit. But your debating what people in the Red Wall think with a guy who spends half his life in France. He won't know, as you say it is people projecting.
The Red Wall is not a place, it's a type of voter. Specifically those who voted Tory for the 1st time in 2019 through genuine enthusiasm for Boris and his Brexit. These people delivered the big Con win and have been identified by both parties as key to the next election too. They will typically be Hard Leavers, quite nationalistic, anti-empathetic to migrants and refugees. The rhetoric designed to appeal to them can therefore cause the nose to wrinkle but we may as well get used to it, at least for the next 18 months.
Is it possible for politicians to do anything to stop the boats without causing the nose to wrinkle?
My understanding is that the vast majority of those crossing the channel illegally are not - in any sense of the word we would understand - refugees. And my view is that their arrival is not really a positive for the country - nor indeed (though this is less of my business) for their country of origin (i.e. Albania etc.). So I'd quite like something done which prevents their arrival. The Rwanda policy might disappoint many, but it does at least have the merit of being any policy at all, which is a welcome contrast to the last 30 years of immigration policy. For the record, I'm happy to welcome the likes of the Ukrainians, who are clearly genuine refugees.
You might take a different view on the desirability of the arrival of illegal immigrants, but I don't think my view is extreme or in any way 'wrong' to hold. Wrinkling your nose in distaste at the view that the crossings ought to be prevented is not particularly helpful.
A policy of dealing with the current backlog and promptly processing applications, and sending back those who do not have a valid claim, seems acceptable to everyone… except theConservative Party.
Yesterday I read some posts on here that suggested the harsher people fleeing in dingys (sic) were treated the better Sunaks figures. It was written by someone who is apparently well versed in the Red Wall and Tory thinking. It seemed to be written approvingly though that's not important. But what a disgusting indictment of this country and the voters they attract.
I missed that comment, but I think its utterly preposterous and wrong and whoever said that knows absolutely nothing about the Red Wall.
Certain commentators on this site, especially some who live in the South in deepest blue territory, seem to project their own prejudices onto the North/Red Wall.
As someone who lives up here may I reject them all. There are a small minority of racists in the North, like there are everywhere else, but that is not what the Red Wall is and its not the North. Anyone who is saying that is not well versed whatsoever in the Red Wall and has almost certainly never lived here, never campaigned here, and never knocked up voters here.
FPT. Sorry I wasn't able to reply. I like your sentiments but the proof of the pudding is in the Prime Minister's appointment of Suella Braverman. Her statements about the people in dinghies have been pretty disgusting yet considered to be just what the Red Wallers want to hear to bring them back on side. If they were unattractive to that vital voting block I'm sure Sunak would have removed her.
Or Sunak recognises that the Red Wall could be lost either way and Suella is there to appeal to more traditionally blue seats to keep them happy and in the blue column.
The kind of seats from which all these comments projecting onto the Red Wall their own prejudices seem to be coming from anyway.
I can't think of a single commentator on this site from a Red Wall seat who is expressing those views or endorsing Suella Braverman. Those who seem to be doing so, seem to be in more typically safe blue seats than Red Wall seats.
Red Wall has become a flippant byline for people's own prejudices rather than thinking seriously about what people here actually want.
Hear hear, as someone who lives in a red wall seat I can only echo this. I would also go as far to say I have never heard anyone express a view on it. Issues like pay, fuel bills, availability of groceries for sure but not boat people.
People like Rogerdamus just have a passionate dislike for anything red wall blaming the red wall for Brexit. But your debating what people in the Red Wall think with a guy who spends half his life in France. He won't know, as you say it is people projecting.
The Red Wall is not a place, it's a type of voter. Specifically those who voted Tory for the 1st time in 2019 through genuine enthusiasm for Boris and his Brexit.
That might be how you define it, but it's not the standard definition.
The Red Wall is defined by those constituencies that up until 2017 were still voting Labour even though, on strictly demographic analysis, they should already have switched to the Tories.
Ok but my formulation adds value because it's more accurate. When a policy or piece of rhetoric is described as "targeted at the Red Wall" it means it's designed to get a particular type of voter nodding and fist pumping, and that type of voter is found in all 4 corners of this country that we all love.
Yesterday I read some posts on here that suggested the harsher people fleeing in dingys (sic) were treated the better Sunaks figures. It was written by someone who is apparently well versed in the Red Wall and Tory thinking. It seemed to be written approvingly though that's not important. But what a disgusting indictment of this country and the voters they attract.
I missed that comment, but I think its utterly preposterous and wrong and whoever said that knows absolutely nothing about the Red Wall.
Certain commentators on this site, especially some who live in the South in deepest blue territory, seem to project their own prejudices onto the North/Red Wall.
As someone who lives up here may I reject them all. There are a small minority of racists in the North, like there are everywhere else, but that is not what the Red Wall is and its not the North. Anyone who is saying that is not well versed whatsoever in the Red Wall and has almost certainly never lived here, never campaigned here, and never knocked up voters here.
FPT. Sorry I wasn't able to reply. I like your sentiments but the proof of the pudding is in the Prime Minister's appointment of Suella Braverman. Her statements about the people in dinghies have been pretty disgusting yet considered to be just what the Red Wallers want to hear to bring them back on side. If they were unattractive to that vital voting block I'm sure Sunak would have removed her.
Or Sunak recognises that the Red Wall could be lost either way and Suella is there to appeal to more traditionally blue seats to keep them happy and in the blue column.
The kind of seats from which all these comments projecting onto the Red Wall their own prejudices seem to be coming from anyway.
I can't think of a single commentator on this site from a Red Wall seat who is expressing those views or endorsing Suella Braverman. Those who seem to be doing so, seem to be in more typically safe blue seats than Red Wall seats.
Red Wall has become a flippant byline for people's own prejudices rather than thinking seriously about what people here actually want.
Hear hear, as someone who lives in a red wall seat I can only echo this. I would also go as far to say I have never heard anyone express a view on it. Issues like pay, fuel bills, availability of groceries for sure but not boat people.
People like Rogerdamus just have a passionate dislike for anything red wall blaming the red wall for Brexit. But your debating what people in the Red Wall think with a guy who spends half his life in France. He won't know, as you say it is people projecting.
The Red Wall is not a place, it's a type of voter. Specifically those who voted Tory for the 1st time in 2019 through genuine enthusiasm for Boris and his Brexit. These people delivered the big Con win and have been identified by both parties as key to the next election too. They will typically be Hard Leavers, quite nationalistic, anti-empathetic to migrants and refugees. The rhetoric designed to appeal to them can therefore cause the nose to wrinkle but we may as well get used to it, at least for the next 18 months.
Is it possible for politicians to do anything to stop the boats without causing the nose to wrinkle?
My understanding is that the vast majority of those crossing the channel illegally are not - in any sense of the word we would understand - refugees. And my view is that their arrival is not really a positive for the country - nor indeed (though this is less of my business) for their country of origin (i.e. Albania etc.). So I'd quite like something done which prevents their arrival. The Rwanda policy might disappoint many, but it does at least have the merit of being any policy at all, which is a welcome contrast to the last 30 years of immigration policy. For the record, I'm happy to welcome the likes of the Ukrainians, who are clearly genuine refugees.
You might take a different view on the desirability of the arrival of illegal immigrants, but I don't think my view is extreme or in any way 'wrong' to hold. Wrinkling your nose in distaste at the view that the crossings ought to be prevented is not particularly helpful.
I thought most, apart from most Albanians, were genuine. As are their wives and children.
Its tricky. There are a lot of immigration lawyers who know exactly the case to make, and how to ensure you 'lose' your documents. I'm sure very many are indeed genuinely fleeing and need asylum. I'm also sure a lot are trying to get a better life. In the old days we'd welcome those who want to work and make a better life. I still think we should, with some caveats. Its not unfair to expect those arriving to want to integrate to a reasonable extent. We are a tolerant nation, but people should learn English. We should not need to have translators constantly on hand for the NHS and Police Force. New arrivals should also not complain about existing society - we are a western democracy - deal with that.
Yesterday I read some posts on here that suggested the harsher people fleeing in dingys (sic) were treated the better Sunaks figures. It was written by someone who is apparently well versed in the Red Wall and Tory thinking. It seemed to be written approvingly though that's not important. But what a disgusting indictment of this country and the voters they attract.
I missed that comment, but I think its utterly preposterous and wrong and whoever said that knows absolutely nothing about the Red Wall.
Certain commentators on this site, especially some who live in the South in deepest blue territory, seem to project their own prejudices onto the North/Red Wall.
As someone who lives up here may I reject them all. There are a small minority of racists in the North, like there are everywhere else, but that is not what the Red Wall is and its not the North. Anyone who is saying that is not well versed whatsoever in the Red Wall and has almost certainly never lived here, never campaigned here, and never knocked up voters here.
FPT. Sorry I wasn't able to reply. I like your sentiments but the proof of the pudding is in the Prime Minister's appointment of Suella Braverman. Her statements about the people in dinghies have been pretty disgusting yet considered to be just what the Red Wallers want to hear to bring them back on side. If they were unattractive to that vital voting block I'm sure Sunak would have removed her.
Or Sunak recognises that the Red Wall could be lost either way and Suella is there to appeal to more traditionally blue seats to keep them happy and in the blue column.
The kind of seats from which all these comments projecting onto the Red Wall their own prejudices seem to be coming from anyway.
I can't think of a single commentator on this site from a Red Wall seat who is expressing those views or endorsing Suella Braverman. Those who seem to be doing so, seem to be in more typically safe blue seats than Red Wall seats.
Red Wall has become a flippant byline for people's own prejudices rather than thinking seriously about what people here actually want.
Hear hear, as someone who lives in a red wall seat I can only echo this. I would also go as far to say I have never heard anyone express a view on it. Issues like pay, fuel bills, availability of groceries for sure but not boat people.
People like Rogerdamus just have a passionate dislike for anything red wall blaming the red wall for Brexit. But your debating what people in the Red Wall think with a guy who spends half his life in France. He won't know, as you say it is people projecting.
The Red Wall is not a place, it's a type of voter. Specifically those who voted Tory for the 1st time in 2019 through genuine enthusiasm for Boris and his Brexit. These people delivered the big Con win and have been identified by both parties as key to the next election too. They will typically be Hard Leavers, quite nationalistic, anti-empathetic to migrants and refugees. The rhetoric designed to appeal to them can therefore cause the nose to wrinkle but we may as well get used to it, at least for the next 18 months.
Is it possible for politicians to do anything to stop the boats without causing the nose to wrinkle?
My understanding is that the vast majority of those crossing the channel illegally are not - in any sense of the word we would understand - refugees. And my view is that their arrival is not really a positive for the country - nor indeed (though this is less of my business) for their country of origin (i.e. Albania etc.). So I'd quite like something done which prevents their arrival. The Rwanda policy might disappoint many, but it does at least have the merit of being any policy at all, which is a welcome contrast to the last 30 years of immigration policy. For the record, I'm happy to welcome the likes of the Ukrainians, who are clearly genuine refugees.
You might take a different view on the desirability of the arrival of illegal immigrants, but I don't think my view is extreme or in any way 'wrong' to hold. Wrinkling your nose in distaste at the view that the crossings ought to be prevented is not particularly helpful.
A policy of dealing with the current backlog and promptly processing applications, and sending back those who do not have a valid claim, seems acceptable to everyone… except theConservative Party.
The problem with the phrase "sending back those who do not have a valid claim" is that it implies that is a significant share of applicants.
Top Gear axed. Maybe they could spend the money on the BBC Singers instead.
Top Gear was a massive net income for the BBC* - for overseas TV rights, overseas format rights, books, magazines, DVDs, Youtube channel etc.
*BBC Studios. The commercial arm of the Corporation, rather than the BBC itself.
The ratings for the main TV show have been falling since they changed the presenters, and the current lineup is one idiot, one cricketer, and one car journalist. And now they’ve put someone in the hospital, again. It might be done for good this time.
I've never seen the fucking thing apart from bits on flights but I feel like automotive YouTube has rendered it pointless.
Yes I know I am an automotive YouTuber, but when I say that I agree I am not talking about my amateur stuff. There is some truly brilliant stuff made on YouTube, and the ideas tend to be head and shoulders above the tired "haven't I seen this before" japes on Top Gear.
I actually thought the current presenter line up was decent. But the format is well past it and I've found it increasingly hard to justify watching the thing knowing there are no new ideas. Best to let it quietly drop. Rory Reid was better on YouTube than on the show. Chris Harris the same...
Initial 'new' crew with Chris Evans was a disaster. Did the BBC think Evans was actually a popular likeable person? Epic myopia.
The current three have almost gelled, but you still get the impression that Paddy and Freddy would go to the pub together, but not with Harris.
Chris Evans was very popular and a genuine petrolhead. It didn't work, though and Matt le Blanc didn't help.
Top Gear axed. Maybe they could spend the money on the BBC Singers instead.
Top Gear was a massive net income for the BBC* - for overseas TV rights, overseas format rights, books, magazines, DVDs, Youtube channel etc.
*BBC Studios. The commercial arm of the Corporation, rather than the BBC itself.
The ratings for the main TV show have been falling since they changed the presenters, and the current lineup is one idiot, one cricketer, and one car journalist. And now they’ve put someone in the hospital, again. It might be done for good this time.
I've never seen the fucking thing apart from bits on flights but I feel like automotive YouTube has rendered it pointless.
Yes I know I am an automotive YouTuber, but when I say that I agree I am not talking about my amateur stuff. There is some truly brilliant stuff made on YouTube, and the ideas tend to be head and shoulders above the tired "haven't I seen this before" japes on Top Gear.
I actually thought the current presenter line up was decent. But the format is well past it and I've found it increasingly hard to justify watching the thing knowing there are no new ideas. Best to let it quietly drop. Rory Reid was better on YouTube than on the show. Chris Harris the same...
Initial 'new' crew with Chris Evans was a disaster. Did the BBC think Evans was actually a popular likeable person? Epic myopia.
The current three have almost gelled, but you still get the impression that Paddy and Freddy would go to the pub together, but not with Harris.
Chris Evans was very popular and a genuine petrolhead. It didn't work, though and Matt le Blanc didn't help.
Popular with who? I have always found him to be an utter prick.
Top Gear axed. Maybe they could spend the money on the BBC Singers instead.
Top Gear was a massive net income for the BBC* - for overseas TV rights, overseas format rights, books, magazines, DVDs, Youtube channel etc.
*BBC Studios. The commercial arm of the Corporation, rather than the BBC itself.
The ratings for the main TV show have been falling since they changed the presenters, and the current lineup is one idiot, one cricketer, and one car journalist. And now they’ve put someone in the hospital, again. It might be done for good this time.
I've never seen the fucking thing apart from bits on flights but I feel like automotive YouTube has rendered it pointless.
Yes I know I am an automotive YouTuber, but when I say that I agree I am not talking about my amateur stuff. There is some truly brilliant stuff made on YouTube, and the ideas tend to be head and shoulders above the tired "haven't I seen this before" japes on Top Gear.
I actually thought the current presenter line up was decent. But the format is well past it and I've found it increasingly hard to justify watching the thing knowing there are no new ideas. Best to let it quietly drop. Rory Reid was better on YouTube than on the show. Chris Harris the same...
Initial 'new' crew with Chris Evans was a disaster. Did the BBC think Evans was actually a popular likeable person? Epic myopia.
The current three have almost gelled, but you still get the impression that Paddy and Freddy would go to the pub together, but not with Harris.
Chris Evans was very popular and a genuine petrolhead. It didn't work, though and Matt le Blanc didn't help.
Evans was, and still is, popular. But not in Top Gear. Just putting a popular personality into a pre existing format doesn’t mean it will work.
Top Gear axed. Maybe they could spend the money on the BBC Singers instead.
Top Gear was a massive net income for the BBC* - for overseas TV rights, overseas format rights, books, magazines, DVDs, Youtube channel etc.
*BBC Studios. The commercial arm of the Corporation, rather than the BBC itself.
The ratings for the main TV show have been falling since they changed the presenters, and the current lineup is one idiot, one cricketer, and one car journalist. And now they’ve put someone in the hospital, again. It might be done for good this time.
I've never seen the fucking thing apart from bits on flights but I feel like automotive YouTube has rendered it pointless.
Yes I know I am an automotive YouTuber, but when I say that I agree I am not talking about my amateur stuff. There is some truly brilliant stuff made on YouTube, and the ideas tend to be head and shoulders above the tired "haven't I seen this before" japes on Top Gear.
I actually thought the current presenter line up was decent. But the format is well past it and I've found it increasingly hard to justify watching the thing knowing there are no new ideas. Best to let it quietly drop. Rory Reid was better on YouTube than on the show. Chris Harris the same...
Initial 'new' crew with Chris Evans was a disaster. Did the BBC think Evans was actually a popular likeable person? Epic myopia.
The current three have almost gelled, but you still get the impression that Paddy and Freddy would go to the pub together, but not with Harris.
Chris Evans was very popular and a genuine petrolhead. It didn't work, though and Matt le Blanc didn't help.
Evans was, and still is, popular. But not in Top Gear. Just putting a popular personality into a pre existing format doesn’t mean it will work.
Is he though? Really? Maybe its just me, but I cannot stand him.
Top Gear axed. Maybe they could spend the money on the BBC Singers instead.
Top Gear was a massive net income for the BBC* - for overseas TV rights, overseas format rights, books, magazines, DVDs, Youtube channel etc.
*BBC Studios. The commercial arm of the Corporation, rather than the BBC itself.
The ratings for the main TV show have been falling since they changed the presenters, and the current lineup is one idiot, one cricketer, and one car journalist. And now they’ve put someone in the hospital, again. It might be done for good this time.
I've never seen the fucking thing apart from bits on flights but I feel like automotive YouTube has rendered it pointless.
Yes I know I am an automotive YouTuber, but when I say that I agree I am not talking about my amateur stuff. There is some truly brilliant stuff made on YouTube, and the ideas tend to be head and shoulders above the tired "haven't I seen this before" japes on Top Gear.
I actually thought the current presenter line up was decent. But the format is well past it and I've found it increasingly hard to justify watching the thing knowing there are no new ideas. Best to let it quietly drop. Rory Reid was better on YouTube than on the show. Chris Harris the same...
Initial 'new' crew with Chris Evans was a disaster. Did the BBC think Evans was actually a popular likeable person? Epic myopia.
The current three have almost gelled, but you still get the impression that Paddy and Freddy would go to the pub together, but not with Harris.
Chris Evans was very popular and a genuine petrolhead. It didn't work, though and Matt le Blanc didn't help.
Popular with who? I have always found him to be an utter prick.
In the modern media landscape you only need to be liked by about a tenth of the population to be "very popular" in ratings terms.
Here is the reality on doctors' pay. The UK is not the highest payer in Europe for hospital doctors but it is well above the median. It is also considerably higher than the nearest comparable system, Sweden, which has a nationalised system unlike most other "mixed economy" health systems
Additionally UK doctors have the safest jobs than any other walk of life, even by public sector standards. It is almost impossible to sack a hospital doctor in the NHS, even when they are incompetent. They also have highly lucrative pension schemes which see them retire on pensions that give them a take home payment that is in excess of double what the average taxpayer earns, and hospital consultants often also have lucrative private practices that are effectively conflicts of interest, but the NHS turns a blind eye to it.
Most so-called "junior" doctors (those below consultant level) earn salaries that are very comparative to other non-partner level professionals such as lawyers and accountants that are outside the distorted salaries found in London.
As for GPs: they are raking it in! The reality is that if doctors were a little less greedy there would be the possibility to be more generous to other health professionals who are probably underpaid.
In summary, those that are swallowing the line of the doctors unions that they are underpaid, I have a bridge to sell you.
BIB: that GPs are raking in £80,000 a year does not mean junior hospital doctors are not underpaid (or overworked or working antisocial hours).
As a junior analyst I worked from 7am to 10pm fairly often despite my contract hours being 8am to 5pm, I got paid fuck all to do it as well. Junior doctoring is exactly the same, short term shite while you're in your 20s so you can climb the earnings ladder and once you hit 30 you've got a substantial income.
If we're going to change the model to pay more at an earlier stage then pay later in medical careers needs to fall.
What I don't understand is why doctors think they should be treated any differently to other high yielding industry, all lawyers, financiers, analysts etc... will start on shit wages for long hours, it's called paying one's dues. Doctors seem to want to have their cake and eat it.
That's a reasonable point Max in general.
But in specific at the moment the previously already lower wages that junior doctors are getting paid aren't just being frozen in real terms, but a proposed substantial cut. While taxpayers money is going to pay others a double-digit rise, including the state pension of retired doctors on defined benefit schemes.
That's f***ed up is it not?
Should a retired doctor on a defined benefit scheme get a double-digit percentage increase in their state pension, while a junior doctor sees a nearly double-digit percentage cut in their real terms income from their already lower wage? Is that paying their dues?
Keeping lower wages flat, while other wages are flat, is entirely reasonable. But cutting some wages in real terms while increasing others by double digit percentages . . . that's a political choice, not necessity.
You have been admirably consistent about wanting a free market in labour. There is a free market for junior doctors in fact there is surplus demand. Hence by your own estimation, as indeed you have noted, wages should fall as they are competed downwards. They shouldn't rise.
Plus the NPV of a "junior doctors" wages is substantially higher than many others and as we know they are bright enough to have worked this out.
What happens to senior consultants or investment bankers is neither here nor there.
But it's not a free market, there has been surplus demand for doctors for going on 30 years and yet supply of doctors has been held down artificially by the state.
I've already said it many times, it's time for the government to lift the cap on medical school places so universities and hospitals can train as many doctors as are necessary and then we'll see what the NPV of doctoring actually is, if it turns out we train too many we end up becoming a next exporter of doctors for a while until the NPV rises again.
The problem there is that a medical degree costs more than £9250 a year to teach - so how do you square that circle?
Charge the student the full cost of the course, and pay off 5% of the debt for every year they work in the NHS.
That would hugely discourage people from poorer backgrounds going into medicine.
On the contrary, it would give many more of them the opportunity.
I’m all for more places at medical school, but large debts have a variety of detrimental effects. If we want to look at some actual evidence, consider these examples:
Here is the reality on doctors' pay. The UK is not the highest payer in Europe for hospital doctors but it is well above the median. It is also considerably higher than the nearest comparable system, Sweden, which has a nationalised system unlike most other "mixed economy" health systems
Additionally UK doctors have the safest jobs than any other walk of life, even by public sector standards. It is almost impossible to sack a hospital doctor in the NHS, even when they are incompetent. They also have highly lucrative pension schemes which see them retire on pensions that give them a take home payment that is in excess of double what the average taxpayer earns, and hospital consultants often also have lucrative private practices that are effectively conflicts of interest, but the NHS turns a blind eye to it.
Most so-called "junior" doctors (those below consultant level) earn salaries that are very comparative to other non-partner level professionals such as lawyers and accountants that are outside the distorted salaries found in London.
As for GPs: they are raking it in! The reality is that if doctors were a little less greedy there would be the possibility to be more generous to other health professionals who are probably underpaid.
In summary, those that are swallowing the line of the doctors unions that they are underpaid, I have a bridge to sell you.
BIB: that GPs are raking in £80,000 a year does not mean junior hospital doctors are not underpaid (or overworked or working antisocial hours).
As a junior analyst I worked from 7am to 10pm fairly often despite my contract hours being 8am to 5pm, I got paid fuck all to do it as well. Junior doctoring is exactly the same, short term shite while you're in your 20s so you can climb the earnings ladder and once you hit 30 you've got a substantial income.
If we're going to change the model to pay more at an earlier stage then pay later in medical careers needs to fall.
What I don't understand is why doctors think they should be treated any differently to other high yielding industry, all lawyers, financiers, analysts etc... will start on shit wages for long hours, it's called paying one's dues. Doctors seem to want to have their cake and eat it.
That's a reasonable point Max in general.
But in specific at the moment the previously already lower wages that junior doctors are getting paid aren't just being frozen in real terms, but a proposed substantial cut. While taxpayers money is going to pay others a double-digit rise, including the state pension of retired doctors on defined benefit schemes.
That's f***ed up is it not?
Should a retired doctor on a defined benefit scheme get a double-digit percentage increase in their state pension, while a junior doctor sees a nearly double-digit percentage cut in their real terms income from their already lower wage? Is that paying their dues?
Keeping lower wages flat, while other wages are flat, is entirely reasonable. But cutting some wages in real terms while increasing others by double digit percentages . . . that's a political choice, not necessity.
You have been admirably consistent about wanting a free market in labour. There is a free market for junior doctors in fact there is surplus demand. Hence by your own estimation, as indeed you have noted, wages should fall as they are competed downwards. They shouldn't rise.
Plus the NPV of a "junior doctors" wages is substantially higher than many others and as we know they are bright enough to have worked this out.
What happens to senior consultants or investment bankers is neither here nor there.
But it's not a free market, there has been surplus demand for doctors for going on 30 years and yet supply of doctors has been held down artificially by the state.
I've already said it many times, it's time for the government to lift the cap on medical school places so universities and hospitals can train as many doctors as are necessary and then we'll see what the NPV of doctoring actually is, if it turns out we train too many we end up becoming a next exporter of doctors for a while until the NPV rises again.
The problem there is that a medical degree costs more than £9250 a year to teach - so how do you square that circle?
Charge the student the full cost of the course, and pay off 5% of the debt for every year they work in the NHS.
That would hugely discourage people from poorer backgrounds going into medicine.
On the contrary, it would give many more of them the opportunity.
Tosh.
I work with sixth formers in an edgy bit of inner London. We have enough trouble with people wanging on about student debt as it is. (Remember kids, it's not a debt designed to be paid off, it's predominantly a tax on graduates who earn lots. The whole point is that those of you who use your degrees to earn megabucks also pay towards the degrees of those who do valuable but less well-paid jobs.)
Your training bond idea says that, unless they stay working for the NHS until they are in their forties, they are going to be hit with a charge in the tens to hundreds of thousands of pounds. Even if their life and love story takes them elsewhere. Or it turns out that they should really be doing medical research instead. Or (God doesn't forbid, it happens too much) they end up wimpering in their car (or worse driving their car into the nearest tree) at the end of a shift because they just can't take the pressure any more.
Part of my job is about getting young people to aspire and aim high. You don't do that by saying "there's a risk that you will be the cost of a house down if it all goes wrong."
Top Gear axed. Maybe they could spend the money on the BBC Singers instead.
Top Gear was a massive net income for the BBC* - for overseas TV rights, overseas format rights, books, magazines, DVDs, Youtube channel etc.
*BBC Studios. The commercial arm of the Corporation, rather than the BBC itself.
The ratings for the main TV show have been falling since they changed the presenters, and the current lineup is one idiot, one cricketer, and one car journalist. And now they’ve put someone in the hospital, again. It might be done for good this time.
I've never seen the fucking thing apart from bits on flights but I feel like automotive YouTube has rendered it pointless.
Yes I know I am an automotive YouTuber, but when I say that I agree I am not talking about my amateur stuff. There is some truly brilliant stuff made on YouTube, and the ideas tend to be head and shoulders above the tired "haven't I seen this before" japes on Top Gear.
I actually thought the current presenter line up was decent. But the format is well past it and I've found it increasingly hard to justify watching the thing knowing there are no new ideas. Best to let it quietly drop. Rory Reid was better on YouTube than on the show. Chris Harris the same...
Initial 'new' crew with Chris Evans was a disaster. Did the BBC think Evans was actually a popular likeable person? Epic myopia.
The current three have almost gelled, but you still get the impression that Paddy and Freddy would go to the pub together, but not with Harris.
Chris Evans was very popular and a genuine petrolhead. It didn't work, though and Matt le Blanc didn't help.
Popular with who? I have always found him to be an utter prick.
He got more Radio 2 listeners than the sainted Terry Wogan. Not me, but millions of others.
Yesterday I read some posts on here that suggested the harsher people fleeing in dingys (sic) were treated the better Sunaks figures. It was written by someone who is apparently well versed in the Red Wall and Tory thinking. It seemed to be written approvingly though that's not important. But what a disgusting indictment of this country and the voters they attract.
I missed that comment, but I think its utterly preposterous and wrong and whoever said that knows absolutely nothing about the Red Wall.
Certain commentators on this site, especially some who live in the South in deepest blue territory, seem to project their own prejudices onto the North/Red Wall.
As someone who lives up here may I reject them all. There are a small minority of racists in the North, like there are everywhere else, but that is not what the Red Wall is and its not the North. Anyone who is saying that is not well versed whatsoever in the Red Wall and has almost certainly never lived here, never campaigned here, and never knocked up voters here.
FPT. Sorry I wasn't able to reply. I like your sentiments but the proof of the pudding is in the Prime Minister's appointment of Suella Braverman. Her statements about the people in dinghies have been pretty disgusting yet considered to be just what the Red Wallers want to hear to bring them back on side. If they were unattractive to that vital voting block I'm sure Sunak would have removed her.
Or Sunak recognises that the Red Wall could be lost either way and Suella is there to appeal to more traditionally blue seats to keep them happy and in the blue column.
The kind of seats from which all these comments projecting onto the Red Wall their own prejudices seem to be coming from anyway.
I can't think of a single commentator on this site from a Red Wall seat who is expressing those views or endorsing Suella Braverman. Those who seem to be doing so, seem to be in more typically safe blue seats than Red Wall seats.
Red Wall has become a flippant byline for people's own prejudices rather than thinking seriously about what people here actually want.
Hear hear, as someone who lives in a red wall seat I can only echo this. I would also go as far to say I have never heard anyone express a view on it. Issues like pay, fuel bills, availability of groceries for sure but not boat people.
People like Rogerdamus just have a passionate dislike for anything red wall blaming the red wall for Brexit. But your debating what people in the Red Wall think with a guy who spends half his life in France. He won't know, as you say it is people projecting.
The Red Wall is not a place, it's a type of voter. Specifically those who voted Tory for the 1st time in 2019 through genuine enthusiasm for Boris and his Brexit. These people delivered the big Con win and have been identified by both parties as key to the next election too. They will typically be Hard Leavers, quite nationalistic, anti-empathetic to migrants and refugees. The rhetoric designed to appeal to them can therefore cause the nose to wrinkle but we may as well get used to it, at least for the next 18 months.
This is also a myth. The term Red Wall was coined before Boris led the party.
The Red Wall identifies a changing type of voter that demographically elsewhere in the country would have voted Tory but didn't in the Red Wall. The Red Wall was trending blue long before Boris and Brexit.
What I'm talking about is not a myth. At GE19 the trend you correctly reference took a step jump and delivered the Boris landslide. Cause? Genuine enthusiasm for him and for Brexit, the 'hard' version thereof.
As I say it relates to a type of voter not a place. That's how you can make sense of the phrase 'appealing to the Red Wall'. It means appealing to that type of voter not to any particular place.
There are Red Wall voters all over England, including in the Blue Wall. It just so happens that current electoral chemistry makes them crucial to many swing seats and these swing seats where they are crucial are mainly in the North and the Midlands.
Enthusiasm for a hard Brexit. No. It was Boris’s ‘oven ready deal’.
Oh, and Bart is correct. But have it your own way.
Yep, some just wanted Brexit to be all over. That was also significant to the landslide. VERY significant imo. But this co-exists quite happily with what I'm saying. As does Bart's (related but at the same time slightly different) point about the trend. No rights and wrongs here so far. Just valuable obervations.
Top Gear axed. Maybe they could spend the money on the BBC Singers instead.
Top Gear was a massive net income for the BBC* - for overseas TV rights, overseas format rights, books, magazines, DVDs, Youtube channel etc.
*BBC Studios. The commercial arm of the Corporation, rather than the BBC itself.
The ratings for the main TV show have been falling since they changed the presenters, and the current lineup is one idiot, one cricketer, and one car journalist. And now they’ve put someone in the hospital, again. It might be done for good this time.
I've never seen the fucking thing apart from bits on flights but I feel like automotive YouTube has rendered it pointless.
Yes I know I am an automotive YouTuber, but when I say that I agree I am not talking about my amateur stuff. There is some truly brilliant stuff made on YouTube, and the ideas tend to be head and shoulders above the tired "haven't I seen this before" japes on Top Gear.
I actually thought the current presenter line up was decent. But the format is well past it and I've found it increasingly hard to justify watching the thing knowing there are no new ideas. Best to let it quietly drop. Rory Reid was better on YouTube than on the show. Chris Harris the same...
Initial 'new' crew with Chris Evans was a disaster. Did the BBC think Evans was actually a popular likeable person? Epic myopia.
The current three have almost gelled, but you still get the impression that Paddy and Freddy would go to the pub together, but not with Harris.
Chris Evans was very popular and a genuine petrolhead. It didn't work, though and Matt le Blanc didn't help.
Evans was, and still is, popular. But not in Top Gear. Just putting a popular personality into a pre existing format doesn’t mean it will work.
Is he though? Really? Maybe its just me, but I cannot stand him.
My Mom is the same. Can’t stand him.
His BBC Radio 2 breakfast show was a success and his Virgin Radio one is too.
Here is the reality on doctors' pay. The UK is not the highest payer in Europe for hospital doctors but it is well above the median. It is also considerably higher than the nearest comparable system, Sweden, which has a nationalised system unlike most other "mixed economy" health systems
Additionally UK doctors have the safest jobs than any other walk of life, even by public sector standards. It is almost impossible to sack a hospital doctor in the NHS, even when they are incompetent. They also have highly lucrative pension schemes which see them retire on pensions that give them a take home payment that is in excess of double what the average taxpayer earns, and hospital consultants often also have lucrative private practices that are effectively conflicts of interest, but the NHS turns a blind eye to it.
Most so-called "junior" doctors (those below consultant level) earn salaries that are very comparative to other non-partner level professionals such as lawyers and accountants that are outside the distorted salaries found in London.
As for GPs: they are raking it in! The reality is that if doctors were a little less greedy there would be the possibility to be more generous to other health professionals who are probably underpaid.
In summary, those that are swallowing the line of the doctors unions that they are underpaid, I have a bridge to sell you.
BIB: that GPs are raking in £80,000 a year does not mean junior hospital doctors are not underpaid (or overworked or working antisocial hours).
As a junior analyst I worked from 7am to 10pm fairly often despite my contract hours being 8am to 5pm, I got paid fuck all to do it as well. Junior doctoring is exactly the same, short term shite while you're in your 20s so you can climb the earnings ladder and once you hit 30 you've got a substantial income.
If we're going to change the model to pay more at an earlier stage then pay later in medical careers needs to fall.
What I don't understand is why doctors think they should be treated any differently to other high yielding industry, all lawyers, financiers, analysts etc... will start on shit wages for long hours, it's called paying one's dues. Doctors seem to want to have their cake and eat it.
That's a reasonable point Max in general.
But in specific at the moment the previously already lower wages that junior doctors are getting paid aren't just being frozen in real terms, but a proposed substantial cut. While taxpayers money is going to pay others a double-digit rise, including the state pension of retired doctors on defined benefit schemes.
That's f***ed up is it not?
Should a retired doctor on a defined benefit scheme get a double-digit percentage increase in their state pension, while a junior doctor sees a nearly double-digit percentage cut in their real terms income from their already lower wage? Is that paying their dues?
Keeping lower wages flat, while other wages are flat, is entirely reasonable. But cutting some wages in real terms while increasing others by double digit percentages . . . that's a political choice, not necessity.
You have been admirably consistent about wanting a free market in labour. There is a free market for junior doctors in fact there is surplus demand. Hence by your own estimation, as indeed you have noted, wages should fall as they are competed downwards. They shouldn't rise.
Plus the NPV of a "junior doctors" wages is substantially higher than many others and as we know they are bright enough to have worked this out.
What happens to senior consultants or investment bankers is neither here nor there.
But it's not a free market, there has been surplus demand for doctors for going on 30 years and yet supply of doctors has been held down artificially by the state.
I've already said it many times, it's time for the government to lift the cap on medical school places so universities and hospitals can train as many doctors as are necessary and then we'll see what the NPV of doctoring actually is, if it turns out we train too many we end up becoming a next exporter of doctors for a while until the NPV rises again.
The problem there is that a medical degree costs more than £9250 a year to teach - so how do you square that circle?
Charge the student the full cost of the course, and pay off 5% of the debt for every year they work in the NHS.
That would hugely discourage people from poorer backgrounds going into medicine.
On the contrary, it would give many more of them the opportunity.
Tosh.
I work with sixth formers in an edgy bit of inner London. We have enough trouble with people wanging on about student debt as it is. (Remember kids, it's not a debt designed to be paid off, it's predominantly a tax on graduates who earn lots. The whole point is that those of you who use your degrees to earn megabucks also pay towards the degrees of those who do valuable but less well-paid jobs.)
Your training bond idea says that, unless they stay working for the NHS until they are in their forties, they are going to be hit with a charge in the tens to hundreds of thousands of pounds. Even if their life and love story takes them elsewhere. Or it turns out that they should really be doing medical research instead. Or (God doesn't forbid, it happens too much) they end up wimpering in their car (or worse driving their car into the nearest tree) at the end of a shift because they just can't take the pressure any more.
Part of my job is about getting young people to aspire and aim high. You don't do that by saying "there's a risk that you will be the cost of a house down if it all goes wrong."
Anyone who goes into medicine not intending to work in the NHS or medical research should expect to pay for it anyway. Anyone who leaves for compassion/competency reasons would presumably be let off as they are with things like the armed forces schemes.
Yesterday I read some posts on here that suggested the harsher people fleeing in dingys (sic) were treated the better Sunaks figures. It was written by someone who is apparently well versed in the Red Wall and Tory thinking. It seemed to be written approvingly though that's not important. But what a disgusting indictment of this country and the voters they attract.
I missed that comment, but I think its utterly preposterous and wrong and whoever said that knows absolutely nothing about the Red Wall.
Certain commentators on this site, especially some who live in the South in deepest blue territory, seem to project their own prejudices onto the North/Red Wall.
As someone who lives up here may I reject them all. There are a small minority of racists in the North, like there are everywhere else, but that is not what the Red Wall is and its not the North. Anyone who is saying that is not well versed whatsoever in the Red Wall and has almost certainly never lived here, never campaigned here, and never knocked up voters here.
FPT. Sorry I wasn't able to reply. I like your sentiments but the proof of the pudding is in the Prime Minister's appointment of Suella Braverman. Her statements about the people in dinghies have been pretty disgusting yet considered to be just what the Red Wallers want to hear to bring them back on side. If they were unattractive to that vital voting block I'm sure Sunak would have removed her.
Or Sunak recognises that the Red Wall could be lost either way and Suella is there to appeal to more traditionally blue seats to keep them happy and in the blue column.
The kind of seats from which all these comments projecting onto the Red Wall their own prejudices seem to be coming from anyway.
I can't think of a single commentator on this site from a Red Wall seat who is expressing those views or endorsing Suella Braverman. Those who seem to be doing so, seem to be in more typically safe blue seats than Red Wall seats.
Red Wall has become a flippant byline for people's own prejudices rather than thinking seriously about what people here actually want.
Hear hear, as someone who lives in a red wall seat I can only echo this. I would also go as far to say I have never heard anyone express a view on it. Issues like pay, fuel bills, availability of groceries for sure but not boat people.
People like Rogerdamus just have a passionate dislike for anything red wall blaming the red wall for Brexit. But your debating what people in the Red Wall think with a guy who spends half his life in France. He won't know, as you say it is people projecting.
The Red Wall is not a place, it's a type of voter. Specifically those who voted Tory for the 1st time in 2019 through genuine enthusiasm for Boris and his Brexit. These people delivered the big Con win and have been identified by both parties as key to the next election too. They will typically be Hard Leavers, quite nationalistic, anti-empathetic to migrants and refugees. The rhetoric designed to appeal to them can therefore cause the nose to wrinkle but we may as well get used to it, at least for the next 18 months.
Is it possible for politicians to do anything to stop the boats without causing the nose to wrinkle?
My understanding is that the vast majority of those crossing the channel illegally are not - in any sense of the word we would understand - refugees. And my view is that their arrival is not really a positive for the country - nor indeed (though this is less of my business) for their country of origin (i.e. Albania etc.). So I'd quite like something done which prevents their arrival. The Rwanda policy might disappoint many, but it does at least have the merit of being any policy at all, which is a welcome contrast to the last 30 years of immigration policy. For the record, I'm happy to welcome the likes of the Ukrainians, who are clearly genuine refugees.
You might take a different view on the desirability of the arrival of illegal immigrants, but I don't think my view is extreme or in any way 'wrong' to hold. Wrinkling your nose in distaste at the view that the crossings ought to be prevented is not particularly helpful.
A policy of dealing with the current backlog and promptly processing applications, and sending back those who do not have a valid claim, seems acceptable to everyone… except theConservative Party.
The problem with the phrase "sending back those who do not have a valid claim" is that it implies that is a significant share of applicants.
Which is at variance with recent history.
Whether it’s a smaller or larger proportion, it’s still a good policy, it still reduces costs for the state, it still produces fairer outcomes, it still discourages some.
Also, the government and Conservative friendly commentators have repeatedly emphasised that many of the people coming over on boats at present, unlike recent history, are from countries like Albania and don’t have valid claims.
I find it bizarre that expecting the Home Office to do its job is somehow unreasonable or foolish.
Yesterday I read some posts on here that suggested the harsher people fleeing in dingys (sic) were treated the better Sunaks figures. It was written by someone who is apparently well versed in the Red Wall and Tory thinking. It seemed to be written approvingly though that's not important. But what a disgusting indictment of this country and the voters they attract.
I missed that comment, but I think its utterly preposterous and wrong and whoever said that knows absolutely nothing about the Red Wall.
Certain commentators on this site, especially some who live in the South in deepest blue territory, seem to project their own prejudices onto the North/Red Wall.
As someone who lives up here may I reject them all. There are a small minority of racists in the North, like there are everywhere else, but that is not what the Red Wall is and its not the North. Anyone who is saying that is not well versed whatsoever in the Red Wall and has almost certainly never lived here, never campaigned here, and never knocked up voters here.
FPT. Sorry I wasn't able to reply. I like your sentiments but the proof of the pudding is in the Prime Minister's appointment of Suella Braverman. Her statements about the people in dinghies have been pretty disgusting yet considered to be just what the Red Wallers want to hear to bring them back on side. If they were unattractive to that vital voting block I'm sure Sunak would have removed her.
Or Sunak recognises that the Red Wall could be lost either way and Suella is there to appeal to more traditionally blue seats to keep them happy and in the blue column.
The kind of seats from which all these comments projecting onto the Red Wall their own prejudices seem to be coming from anyway.
I can't think of a single commentator on this site from a Red Wall seat who is expressing those views or endorsing Suella Braverman. Those who seem to be doing so, seem to be in more typically safe blue seats than Red Wall seats.
Red Wall has become a flippant byline for people's own prejudices rather than thinking seriously about what people here actually want.
Hear hear, as someone who lives in a red wall seat I can only echo this. I would also go as far to say I have never heard anyone express a view on it. Issues like pay, fuel bills, availability of groceries for sure but not boat people.
People like Rogerdamus just have a passionate dislike for anything red wall blaming the red wall for Brexit. But your debating what people in the Red Wall think with a guy who spends half his life in France. He won't know, as you say it is people projecting.
The Red Wall is not a place, it's a type of voter. Specifically those who voted Tory for the 1st time in 2019 through genuine enthusiasm for Boris and his Brexit. These people delivered the big Con win and have been identified by both parties as key to the next election too. They will typically be Hard Leavers, quite nationalistic, anti-empathetic to migrants and refugees. The rhetoric designed to appeal to them can therefore cause the nose to wrinkle but we may as well get used to it, at least for the next 18 months.
Is it possible for politicians to do anything to stop the boats without causing the nose to wrinkle?
My understanding is that the vast majority of those crossing the channel illegally are not - in any sense of the word we would understand - refugees. And my view is that their arrival is not really a positive for the country - nor indeed (though this is less of my business) for their country of origin (i.e. Albania etc.). So I'd quite like something done which prevents their arrival. The Rwanda policy might disappoint many, but it does at least have the merit of being any policy at all, which is a welcome contrast to the last 30 years of immigration policy. For the record, I'm happy to welcome the likes of the Ukrainians, who are clearly genuine refugees.
You might take a different view on the desirability of the arrival of illegal immigrants, but I don't think my view is extreme or in any way 'wrong' to hold. Wrinkling your nose in distaste at the view that the crossings ought to be prevented is not particularly helpful.
A policy of dealing with the current backlog and promptly processing applications, and sending back those who do not have a valid claim, seems acceptable to everyone… except theConservative Party.
The problem with the phrase "sending back those who do not have a valid claim" is that it implies that is a significant share of applicants.
Which is at variance with recent history.
Include some doctors too. Just saying. It takes some for ever to get through the Home Office process.
Top Gear axed. Maybe they could spend the money on the BBC Singers instead.
Top Gear was a massive net income for the BBC* - for overseas TV rights, overseas format rights, books, magazines, DVDs, Youtube channel etc.
*BBC Studios. The commercial arm of the Corporation, rather than the BBC itself.
The ratings for the main TV show have been falling since they changed the presenters, and the current lineup is one idiot, one cricketer, and one car journalist. And now they’ve put someone in the hospital, again. It might be done for good this time.
I've never seen the fucking thing apart from bits on flights but I feel like automotive YouTube has rendered it pointless.
Yes I know I am an automotive YouTuber, but when I say that I agree I am not talking about my amateur stuff. There is some truly brilliant stuff made on YouTube, and the ideas tend to be head and shoulders above the tired "haven't I seen this before" japes on Top Gear.
I actually thought the current presenter line up was decent. But the format is well past it and I've found it increasingly hard to justify watching the thing knowing there are no new ideas. Best to let it quietly drop. Rory Reid was better on YouTube than on the show. Chris Harris the same...
Initial 'new' crew with Chris Evans was a disaster. Did the BBC think Evans was actually a popular likeable person? Epic myopia.
The current three have almost gelled, but you still get the impression that Paddy and Freddy would go to the pub together, but not with Harris.
Chris Evans was very popular and a genuine petrolhead. It didn't work, though and Matt le Blanc didn't help.
Evans was, and still is, popular. But not in Top Gear. Just putting a popular personality into a pre existing format doesn’t mean it will work.
This is the problem with the BBC today. They are utterly obsessed with "personalities" and getting the personality into the job. I stopped watching the Beeb many years ago now because almost everything they came up with was celebrity this, that or the other.
If what you're producing is good then the show itself should be the star and people who were relatively unheard of can shine in a good show and grow into being the personalities of the future.
Yes the trio of Clarkson, Hammond and May may have been big personalities by the end, but who had heard of Hammond before he started on Top Gear? He got the job originally because he'd be good at it, not because he was a major known "personality". The BBC seems to have long lost sight of that idea.
Yesterday I read some posts on here that suggested the harsher people fleeing in dingys (sic) were treated the better Sunaks figures. It was written by someone who is apparently well versed in the Red Wall and Tory thinking. It seemed to be written approvingly though that's not important. But what a disgusting indictment of this country and the voters they attract.
I missed that comment, but I think its utterly preposterous and wrong and whoever said that knows absolutely nothing about the Red Wall.
Certain commentators on this site, especially some who live in the South in deepest blue territory, seem to project their own prejudices onto the North/Red Wall.
As someone who lives up here may I reject them all. There are a small minority of racists in the North, like there are everywhere else, but that is not what the Red Wall is and its not the North. Anyone who is saying that is not well versed whatsoever in the Red Wall and has almost certainly never lived here, never campaigned here, and never knocked up voters here.
FPT. Sorry I wasn't able to reply. I like your sentiments but the proof of the pudding is in the Prime Minister's appointment of Suella Braverman. Her statements about the people in dinghies have been pretty disgusting yet considered to be just what the Red Wallers want to hear to bring them back on side. If they were unattractive to that vital voting block I'm sure Sunak would have removed her.
Or Sunak recognises that the Red Wall could be lost either way and Suella is there to appeal to more traditionally blue seats to keep them happy and in the blue column.
The kind of seats from which all these comments projecting onto the Red Wall their own prejudices seem to be coming from anyway.
I can't think of a single commentator on this site from a Red Wall seat who is expressing those views or endorsing Suella Braverman. Those who seem to be doing so, seem to be in more typically safe blue seats than Red Wall seats.
Red Wall has become a flippant byline for people's own prejudices rather than thinking seriously about what people here actually want.
Hear hear, as someone who lives in a red wall seat I can only echo this. I would also go as far to say I have never heard anyone express a view on it. Issues like pay, fuel bills, availability of groceries for sure but not boat people.
People like Rogerdamus just have a passionate dislike for anything red wall blaming the red wall for Brexit. But your debating what people in the Red Wall think with a guy who spends half his life in France. He won't know, as you say it is people projecting.
The Red Wall is not a place, it's a type of voter. Specifically those who voted Tory for the 1st time in 2019 through genuine enthusiasm for Boris and his Brexit. These people delivered the big Con win and have been identified by both parties as key to the next election too. They will typically be Hard Leavers, quite nationalistic, anti-empathetic to migrants and refugees. The rhetoric designed to appeal to them can therefore cause the nose to wrinkle but we may as well get used to it, at least for the next 18 months.
Is it possible for politicians to do anything to stop the boats without causing the nose to wrinkle?
My understanding is that the vast majority of those crossing the channel illegally are not - in any sense of the word we would understand - refugees. And my view is that their arrival is not really a positive for the country - nor indeed (though this is less of my business) for their country of origin (i.e. Albania etc.). So I'd quite like something done which prevents their arrival. The Rwanda policy might disappoint many, but it does at least have the merit of being any policy at all, which is a welcome contrast to the last 30 years of immigration policy. For the record, I'm happy to welcome the likes of the Ukrainians, who are clearly genuine refugees.
You might take a different view on the desirability of the arrival of illegal immigrants, but I don't think my view is extreme or in any way 'wrong' to hold. Wrinkling your nose in distaste at the view that the crossings ought to be prevented is not particularly helpful.
A policy of dealing with the current backlog and promptly processing applications, and sending back those who do not have a valid claim, seems acceptable to everyone… except theConservative Party.
Except - practical experience has shown us that that's even less plausible than the Rwanda option. There needs to be something to deter people coming in the first place. Without that, the whole 3rd world beats a path to our door.
It seems their is an uptick for Sunak and his party but a long way to go
The selective use of opinion polls? Hmmm. Perhaps you could again give us some definitive voting intention from "North Wales Polling".
Edit; I note, in defending your position you didn't add the Yougov to the other two favourable for the Conservatives polls.
A careful analysis of all opinion polls may suggest that LAB is currently ahead but this does not guarantee that they will get an overall majority at the next GE.
Here is the reality on doctors' pay. The UK is not the highest payer in Europe for hospital doctors but it is well above the median. It is also considerably higher than the nearest comparable system, Sweden, which has a nationalised system unlike most other "mixed economy" health systems
Additionally UK doctors have the safest jobs than any other walk of life, even by public sector standards. It is almost impossible to sack a hospital doctor in the NHS, even when they are incompetent. They also have highly lucrative pension schemes which see them retire on pensions that give them a take home payment that is in excess of double what the average taxpayer earns, and hospital consultants often also have lucrative private practices that are effectively conflicts of interest, but the NHS turns a blind eye to it.
Most so-called "junior" doctors (those below consultant level) earn salaries that are very comparative to other non-partner level professionals such as lawyers and accountants that are outside the distorted salaries found in London.
As for GPs: they are raking it in! The reality is that if doctors were a little less greedy there would be the possibility to be more generous to other health professionals who are probably underpaid.
In summary, those that are swallowing the line of the doctors unions that they are underpaid, I have a bridge to sell you.
BIB: that GPs are raking in £80,000 a year does not mean junior hospital doctors are not underpaid (or overworked or working antisocial hours).
As a junior analyst I worked from 7am to 10pm fairly often despite my contract hours being 8am to 5pm, I got paid fuck all to do it as well. Junior doctoring is exactly the same, short term shite while you're in your 20s so you can climb the earnings ladder and once you hit 30 you've got a substantial income.
If we're going to change the model to pay more at an earlier stage then pay later in medical careers needs to fall.
What I don't understand is why doctors think they should be treated any differently to other high yielding industry, all lawyers, financiers, analysts etc... will start on shit wages for long hours, it's called paying one's dues. Doctors seem to want to have their cake and eat it.
That's a reasonable point Max in general.
But in specific at the moment the previously already lower wages that junior doctors are getting paid aren't just being frozen in real terms, but a proposed substantial cut. While taxpayers money is going to pay others a double-digit rise, including the state pension of retired doctors on defined benefit schemes.
That's f***ed up is it not?
Should a retired doctor on a defined benefit scheme get a double-digit percentage increase in their state pension, while a junior doctor sees a nearly double-digit percentage cut in their real terms income from their already lower wage? Is that paying their dues?
Keeping lower wages flat, while other wages are flat, is entirely reasonable. But cutting some wages in real terms while increasing others by double digit percentages . . . that's a political choice, not necessity.
You have been admirably consistent about wanting a free market in labour. There is a free market for junior doctors in fact there is surplus demand. Hence by your own estimation, as indeed you have noted, wages should fall as they are competed downwards. They shouldn't rise.
Plus the NPV of a "junior doctors" wages is substantially higher than many others and as we know they are bright enough to have worked this out.
What happens to senior consultants or investment bankers is neither here nor there.
But it's not a free market, there has been surplus demand for doctors for going on 30 years and yet supply of doctors has been held down artificially by the state.
I've already said it many times, it's time for the government to lift the cap on medical school places so universities and hospitals can train as many doctors as are necessary and then we'll see what the NPV of doctoring actually is, if it turns out we train too many we end up becoming a next exporter of doctors for a while until the NPV rises again.
The problem there is that a medical degree costs more than £9250 a year to teach - so how do you square that circle?
Charge the student the full cost of the course, and pay off 5% of the debt for every year they work in the NHS.
That would hugely discourage people from poorer backgrounds going into medicine.
On the contrary, it would give many more of them the opportunity.
Tosh.
I work with sixth formers in an edgy bit of inner London. We have enough trouble with people wanging on about student debt as it is. (Remember kids, it's not a debt designed to be paid off, it's predominantly a tax on graduates who earn lots. The whole point is that those of you who use your degrees to earn megabucks also pay towards the degrees of those who do valuable but less well-paid jobs.)
Your training bond idea says that, unless they stay working for the NHS until they are in their forties, they are going to be hit with a charge in the tens to hundreds of thousands of pounds. Even if their life and love story takes them elsewhere. Or it turns out that they should really be doing medical research instead. Or (God doesn't forbid, it happens too much) they end up wimpering in their car (or worse driving their car into the nearest tree) at the end of a shift because they just can't take the pressure any more.
Part of my job is about getting young people to aspire and aim high. You don't do that by saying "there's a risk that you will be the cost of a house down if it all goes wrong."
I’m just relaying my experience of how things work in another industry with high training costs, and one where more traditional student finance options are not available.
The other piece of the puzzle, is what is known in aviation as LOL - loss of licence insurance, which clears outstanding training bonds if you fail your medical.
The issue of medical students, is that currently the government are paying the large majority of the £200k up front, with no obligation on the student to work for the NHS afterwards. So many are moving overseas, or giving up for family reasons after only a few years.
Yesterday I read some posts on here that suggested the harsher people fleeing in dingys (sic) were treated the better Sunaks figures. It was written by someone who is apparently well versed in the Red Wall and Tory thinking. It seemed to be written approvingly though that's not important. But what a disgusting indictment of this country and the voters they attract.
I missed that comment, but I think its utterly preposterous and wrong and whoever said that knows absolutely nothing about the Red Wall.
Certain commentators on this site, especially some who live in the South in deepest blue territory, seem to project their own prejudices onto the North/Red Wall.
As someone who lives up here may I reject them all. There are a small minority of racists in the North, like there are everywhere else, but that is not what the Red Wall is and its not the North. Anyone who is saying that is not well versed whatsoever in the Red Wall and has almost certainly never lived here, never campaigned here, and never knocked up voters here.
FPT. Sorry I wasn't able to reply. I like your sentiments but the proof of the pudding is in the Prime Minister's appointment of Suella Braverman. Her statements about the people in dinghies have been pretty disgusting yet considered to be just what the Red Wallers want to hear to bring them back on side. If they were unattractive to that vital voting block I'm sure Sunak would have removed her.
Or Sunak recognises that the Red Wall could be lost either way and Suella is there to appeal to more traditionally blue seats to keep them happy and in the blue column.
The kind of seats from which all these comments projecting onto the Red Wall their own prejudices seem to be coming from anyway.
I can't think of a single commentator on this site from a Red Wall seat who is expressing those views or endorsing Suella Braverman. Those who seem to be doing so, seem to be in more typically safe blue seats than Red Wall seats.
Red Wall has become a flippant byline for people's own prejudices rather than thinking seriously about what people here actually want.
Hear hear, as someone who lives in a red wall seat I can only echo this. I would also go as far to say I have never heard anyone express a view on it. Issues like pay, fuel bills, availability of groceries for sure but not boat people.
People like Rogerdamus just have a passionate dislike for anything red wall blaming the red wall for Brexit. But your debating what people in the Red Wall think with a guy who spends half his life in France. He won't know, as you say it is people projecting.
The Red Wall is not a place, it's a type of voter. Specifically those who voted Tory for the 1st time in 2019 through genuine enthusiasm for Boris and his Brexit. These people delivered the big Con win and have been identified by both parties as key to the next election too. They will typically be Hard Leavers, quite nationalistic, anti-empathetic to migrants and refugees. The rhetoric designed to appeal to them can therefore cause the nose to wrinkle but we may as well get used to it, at least for the next 18 months.
This is also a myth. The term Red Wall was coined before Boris led the party.
The Red Wall identifies a changing type of voter that demographically elsewhere in the country would have voted Tory but didn't in the Red Wall. The Red Wall was trending blue long before Boris and Brexit.
What I'm talking about is not a myth. At GE19 the trend you correctly reference took a step jump and delivered the Boris landslide. Cause? Genuine enthusiasm for him and for Brexit, the 'hard' version thereof.
As I say it relates to a type of voter not a place. That's how you can make sense of the phrase 'appealing to the Red Wall'. It means appealing to that type of voter not to any particular place.
There are Red Wall voters all over England, including in the Blue Wall. It just so happens that current electoral chemistry makes them crucial to many swing seats and these swing seats where they are crucial are mainly in the North and the Midlands.
Enthusiasm for a hard Brexit. No. It was Boris’s ‘oven ready deal’.
Oh, and Bart is correct. But have it your own way.
Yep, some just wanted Brexit to be all over. That was also significant to the landslide. VERY significant imo. But this co-exists quite happily with what I'm saying. As does Bart's (related but at the same time slightly different) point about the trend. No rights and wrongs here so far. Just valuable obervations.
Yes, don't confuse enthusiasm for a hard Brexit with hard enthusiam for Brexit.
Here is the reality on doctors' pay. The UK is not the highest payer in Europe for hospital doctors but it is well above the median. It is also considerably higher than the nearest comparable system, Sweden, which has a nationalised system unlike most other "mixed economy" health systems
Additionally UK doctors have the safest jobs than any other walk of life, even by public sector standards. It is almost impossible to sack a hospital doctor in the NHS, even when they are incompetent. They also have highly lucrative pension schemes which see them retire on pensions that give them a take home payment that is in excess of double what the average taxpayer earns, and hospital consultants often also have lucrative private practices that are effectively conflicts of interest, but the NHS turns a blind eye to it.
Most so-called "junior" doctors (those below consultant level) earn salaries that are very comparative to other non-partner level professionals such as lawyers and accountants that are outside the distorted salaries found in London.
As for GPs: they are raking it in! The reality is that if doctors were a little less greedy there would be the possibility to be more generous to other health professionals who are probably underpaid.
In summary, those that are swallowing the line of the doctors unions that they are underpaid, I have a bridge to sell you.
BIB: that GPs are raking in £80,000 a year does not mean junior hospital doctors are not underpaid (or overworked or working antisocial hours).
As a junior analyst I worked from 7am to 10pm fairly often despite my contract hours being 8am to 5pm, I got paid fuck all to do it as well. Junior doctoring is exactly the same, short term shite while you're in your 20s so you can climb the earnings ladder and once you hit 30 you've got a substantial income.
If we're going to change the model to pay more at an earlier stage then pay later in medical careers needs to fall.
What I don't understand is why doctors think they should be treated any differently to other high yielding industry, all lawyers, financiers, analysts etc... will start on shit wages for long hours, it's called paying one's dues. Doctors seem to want to have their cake and eat it.
That's a reasonable point Max in general.
But in specific at the moment the previously already lower wages that junior doctors are getting paid aren't just being frozen in real terms, but a proposed substantial cut. While taxpayers money is going to pay others a double-digit rise, including the state pension of retired doctors on defined benefit schemes.
That's f***ed up is it not?
Should a retired doctor on a defined benefit scheme get a double-digit percentage increase in their state pension, while a junior doctor sees a nearly double-digit percentage cut in their real terms income from their already lower wage? Is that paying their dues?
Keeping lower wages flat, while other wages are flat, is entirely reasonable. But cutting some wages in real terms while increasing others by double digit percentages . . . that's a political choice, not necessity.
You have been admirably consistent about wanting a free market in labour. There is a free market for junior doctors in fact there is surplus demand. Hence by your own estimation, as indeed you have noted, wages should fall as they are competed downwards. They shouldn't rise.
Plus the NPV of a "junior doctors" wages is substantially higher than many others and as we know they are bright enough to have worked this out.
What happens to senior consultants or investment bankers is neither here nor there.
But it's not a free market, there has been surplus demand for doctors for going on 30 years and yet supply of doctors has been held down artificially by the state.
I've already said it many times, it's time for the government to lift the cap on medical school places so universities and hospitals can train as many doctors as are necessary and then we'll see what the NPV of doctoring actually is, if it turns out we train too many we end up becoming a next exporter of doctors for a while until the NPV rises again.
The problem there is that a medical degree costs more than £9250 a year to teach - so how do you square that circle?
Charge the student the full cost of the course, and pay off 5% of the debt for every year they work in the NHS.
That would hugely discourage people from poorer backgrounds going into medicine.
On the contrary, it would give many more of them the opportunity.
Tosh.
I work with sixth formers in an edgy bit of inner London. We have enough trouble with people wanging on about student debt as it is. (Remember kids, it's not a debt designed to be paid off, it's predominantly a tax on graduates who earn lots. The whole point is that those of you who use your degrees to earn megabucks also pay towards the degrees of those who do valuable but less well-paid jobs.)
Your training bond idea says that, unless they stay working for the NHS until they are in their forties, they are going to be hit with a charge in the tens to hundreds of thousands of pounds. Even if their life and love story takes them elsewhere. Or it turns out that they should really be doing medical research instead. Or (God doesn't forbid, it happens too much) they end up wimpering in their car (or worse driving their car into the nearest tree) at the end of a shift because they just can't take the pressure any more.
Part of my job is about getting young people to aspire and aim high. You don't do that by saying "there's a risk that you will be the cost of a house down if it all goes wrong."
I’m just relaying my experience of how things work in another industry with high training costs, and one where more traditional student finance options are not available.
The other piece of the puzzle, is what is known in aviation as LOL - loss of licence insurance, which clears outstanding training bonds if you fail your medical.
The issue of medical students, is that currently the government are paying the large majority of the £200k up front, with no obligation on the student to work for the NHS afterwards. So many are moving overseas, or giving up for family reasons after only a few years.
This might seem silly but seriously: So what?
Some people move overseas. OK that happens.
Some people move here from overseas.
If someone is trained in the UK then goes to be a doctor in Dubai - and someone from Dubai is trained to be a doctor there then moves to the UK - does the UK repay Dubai the cost of training the person who moved here?
People move, that's a fact of life. There's nothing wrong with it. Most people don't, some people will, just roll with it.
On average we get more moving to the UK than away from it anyway.
I'm sure very many are indeed genuinely fleeing and need asylum. I'm also sure a lot are trying to get a better life. In the old days we'd welcome those who want to work and make a better life. I still think we should, with some caveats. Its not unfair to expect those arriving to want to integrate to a reasonable extent. We are a tolerant nation, but people should learn English. We should not need to have translators constantly on hand for the NHS and Police Force. New arrivals should also not complain about existing society - we are a western democracy - deal with that.
The level of language ability you need to successfully negotiate dealing with a bad medical problem, or getting into difficulties with the police, is actually pretty high -- I would expect that for somebody trying to integrate and learn English that they would still prefer native-language assistance in those situations for a long time after they were able to get along well in English in their daily lives. The stakes are high and there's often unfamiliar vocab.
Becoming part of a western democracy also includes having the right to complain about it, by the way :-)
In 2022, almost half of small boat arrivals were from these 2 nationalities - Albanians (28%) and Afghans (20%), as shown in Figure 4. Albanians were more prominent from July to September 2022, whereas Afghans became more prominent from October to December 2022.
The majority of small boat arrivals claim asylum. In 2022, 90% (40,302 of 44,666 arrivals) claimed asylum or were recorded as a dependant on an asylum application. However, small boat arrivals account for less than half (45%) of the total number of people claiming asylum in the UK in 2022.
Most asylum claims from small boat arrivals are still awaiting a decision; more recent periods will naturally have a higher proportion of asylum applications awaiting a decision, as less time has passed to allow for applications to be processed. 97% (34,793) of small boat asylum applications in the latest year, or 83% (56,883) of all small boat asylum applications since 2018, are awaiting a decision.
Trouble is that quite a bit of what is known doesn't fit the narrative.
Yesterday I read some posts on here that suggested the harsher people fleeing in dingys (sic) were treated the better Sunaks figures. It was written by someone who is apparently well versed in the Red Wall and Tory thinking. It seemed to be written approvingly though that's not important. But what a disgusting indictment of this country and the voters they attract.
I missed that comment, but I think its utterly preposterous and wrong and whoever said that knows absolutely nothing about the Red Wall.
Certain commentators on this site, especially some who live in the South in deepest blue territory, seem to project their own prejudices onto the North/Red Wall.
As someone who lives up here may I reject them all. There are a small minority of racists in the North, like there are everywhere else, but that is not what the Red Wall is and its not the North. Anyone who is saying that is not well versed whatsoever in the Red Wall and has almost certainly never lived here, never campaigned here, and never knocked up voters here.
FPT. Sorry I wasn't able to reply. I like your sentiments but the proof of the pudding is in the Prime Minister's appointment of Suella Braverman. Her statements about the people in dinghies have been pretty disgusting yet considered to be just what the Red Wallers want to hear to bring them back on side. If they were unattractive to that vital voting block I'm sure Sunak would have removed her.
Or Sunak recognises that the Red Wall could be lost either way and Suella is there to appeal to more traditionally blue seats to keep them happy and in the blue column.
The kind of seats from which all these comments projecting onto the Red Wall their own prejudices seem to be coming from anyway.
I can't think of a single commentator on this site from a Red Wall seat who is expressing those views or endorsing Suella Braverman. Those who seem to be doing so, seem to be in more typically safe blue seats than Red Wall seats.
Red Wall has become a flippant byline for people's own prejudices rather than thinking seriously about what people here actually want.
Hear hear, as someone who lives in a red wall seat I can only echo this. I would also go as far to say I have never heard anyone express a view on it. Issues like pay, fuel bills, availability of groceries for sure but not boat people.
People like Rogerdamus just have a passionate dislike for anything red wall blaming the red wall for Brexit. But your debating what people in the Red Wall think with a guy who spends half his life in France. He won't know, as you say it is people projecting.
The Red Wall is not a place, it's a type of voter. Specifically those who voted Tory for the 1st time in 2019 through genuine enthusiasm for Boris and his Brexit. These people delivered the big Con win and have been identified by both parties as key to the next election too. They will typically be Hard Leavers, quite nationalistic, anti-empathetic to migrants and refugees. The rhetoric designed to appeal to them can therefore cause the nose to wrinkle but we may as well get used to it, at least for the next 18 months.
Is it possible for politicians to do anything to stop the boats without causing the nose to wrinkle?
My understanding is that the vast majority of those crossing the channel illegally are not - in any sense of the word we would understand - refugees. And my view is that their arrival is not really a positive for the country - nor indeed (though this is less of my business) for their country of origin (i.e. Albania etc.). So I'd quite like something done which prevents their arrival. The Rwanda policy might disappoint many, but it does at least have the merit of being any policy at all, which is a welcome contrast to the last 30 years of immigration policy. For the record, I'm happy to welcome the likes of the Ukrainians, who are clearly genuine refugees.
You might take a different view on the desirability of the arrival of illegal immigrants, but I don't think my view is extreme or in any way 'wrong' to hold. Wrinkling your nose in distaste at the view that the crossings ought to be prevented is not particularly helpful.
A policy of dealing with the current backlog and promptly processing applications, and sending back those who do not have a valid claim, seems acceptable to everyone… except theConservative Party.
Except - practical experience has shown us that that's even less plausible than the Rwanda option. There needs to be something to deter people coming in the first place. Without that, the whole 3rd world beats a path to our door.
If getting the current system to work promptly and efficiently is "less plausible", then why do you have any faith that the Rwanda option will be executed well enough? If a succession of Conservative Home Secretaries are unable to enforce the existing rules, allowing a massive backlog to develop, why do you want to give them more powers? Enforce the existing rules, save money, allow those with valid asylum claims to get out of the system and into jobs where they can contribute to the country, and deport those without valid claims.
Promptly deporting individuals who do not have a valid asylum claim will deter people without valid asylum claims.
Yesterday I read some posts on here that suggested the harsher people fleeing in dingys (sic) were treated the better Sunaks figures. It was written by someone who is apparently well versed in the Red Wall and Tory thinking. It seemed to be written approvingly though that's not important. But what a disgusting indictment of this country and the voters they attract.
I missed that comment, but I think its utterly preposterous and wrong and whoever said that knows absolutely nothing about the Red Wall.
Certain commentators on this site, especially some who live in the South in deepest blue territory, seem to project their own prejudices onto the North/Red Wall.
As someone who lives up here may I reject them all. There are a small minority of racists in the North, like there are everywhere else, but that is not what the Red Wall is and its not the North. Anyone who is saying that is not well versed whatsoever in the Red Wall and has almost certainly never lived here, never campaigned here, and never knocked up voters here.
FPT. Sorry I wasn't able to reply. I like your sentiments but the proof of the pudding is in the Prime Minister's appointment of Suella Braverman. Her statements about the people in dinghies have been pretty disgusting yet considered to be just what the Red Wallers want to hear to bring them back on side. If they were unattractive to that vital voting block I'm sure Sunak would have removed her.
Or Sunak recognises that the Red Wall could be lost either way and Suella is there to appeal to more traditionally blue seats to keep them happy and in the blue column.
The kind of seats from which all these comments projecting onto the Red Wall their own prejudices seem to be coming from anyway.
I can't think of a single commentator on this site from a Red Wall seat who is expressing those views or endorsing Suella Braverman. Those who seem to be doing so, seem to be in more typically safe blue seats than Red Wall seats.
Red Wall has become a flippant byline for people's own prejudices rather than thinking seriously about what people here actually want.
Hear hear, as someone who lives in a red wall seat I can only echo this. I would also go as far to say I have never heard anyone express a view on it. Issues like pay, fuel bills, availability of groceries for sure but not boat people.
People like Rogerdamus just have a passionate dislike for anything red wall blaming the red wall for Brexit. But your debating what people in the Red Wall think with a guy who spends half his life in France. He won't know, as you say it is people projecting.
The Red Wall is not a place, it's a type of voter. Specifically those who voted Tory for the 1st time in 2019 through genuine enthusiasm for Boris and his Brexit. These people delivered the big Con win and have been identified by both parties as key to the next election too. They will typically be Hard Leavers, quite nationalistic, anti-empathetic to migrants and refugees. The rhetoric designed to appeal to them can therefore cause the nose to wrinkle but we may as well get used to it, at least for the next 18 months.
Is it possible for politicians to do anything to stop the boats without causing the nose to wrinkle?
My understanding is that the vast majority of those crossing the channel illegally are not - in any sense of the word we would understand - refugees. And my view is that their arrival is not really a positive for the country - nor indeed (though this is less of my business) for their country of origin (i.e. Albania etc.). So I'd quite like something done which prevents their arrival. The Rwanda policy might disappoint many, but it does at least have the merit of being any policy at all, which is a welcome contrast to the last 30 years of immigration policy. For the record, I'm happy to welcome the likes of the Ukrainians, who are clearly genuine refugees.
You might take a different view on the desirability of the arrival of illegal immigrants, but I don't think my view is extreme or in any way 'wrong' to hold. Wrinkling your nose in distaste at the view that the crossings ought to be prevented is not particularly helpful.
You say the vast majority are not refugees but when we do (eventually) manage to process asylum applications most are granted.
As for the 'nose wrinkling' well it's the flipside of the Braverman rhetoric. The cost of turning some people on is to turn others off.
Anyway, on thread - surely not. Yousaf has all Nicola Sturgeon's negatives and none of her positives. I don't really see what consituency he appeals to.
Not my party, obviously, and I don't know the selectorate. But when other parties have elected leaders who don't necessarily speak to the wider electorate, they've done so because they represent an obvious strain of what that party believes. I would have thought the SNP equivalent would be more akin to Ash Regan. Yousaf strikes me as neither one to connect to the wider electorate nor one to boldly fight the battle for independence whatever public opinion believes.
The obvious strain of party belief which Regan represents belongs to Alba, the bleedin’ obvious evidence of which is that her official endorsements remain Cherry, Salmond and Murray.
Also: NB that the betting question is "next FM" not "next SNP leader".
If Forbes wins the leadership it’ll be interesting to see how the FM vote goes. I imagine the agreement with the Greens will be down the tubes, in that scenario would the Greens sit on their hands?
I still can't see any reason why there's a worse outcome for the new SNP leader than Sturgeon got in 2016 - elected by a minority with only a handful of votes for another candidate and mass abstentions from the opposition parties.
The new SNP leader might not have a majority, but nobody else will either.
Wasn't a minority. Exactrly 50%, the PO not normally voting unless it is tied.
Semantics, and arguably not very accurate semantics at that.
Your repeated argument of "the new SNP leader isn't necessarily going to be the new FM" relies on all other parties coalescing around a single candidate.
Come on.
We're not in Westminster. *There are separate votes for each candidate*.
That seems like a misleading description of the process.
As the result is valid, and as Nicola Sturgeon has received more votes than the total number of votes for the other candidate, I declare that Nicola Sturgeon is selected as the Parliament’s nominee for appointment as First Minister. As required by the Scotland Act 1998, I shall now recommend to Her Majesty that she appoint Nicola Sturgeon as the First Minister.
All the SNP MSPs are going to vote for the new SNP leader. What "other candidate" is going to get more votes?
Nevertheless, it's true (I checked). It's possible for abstentions or illness to happen in any party. And people do not, so far as I can see, have to be consistent in their voting.
I literally checked the Official Report from 2016. There are "separate votes" only in the sense that MSPs aren't given a ballot paper with options "SNP leader, token opposition party candidate, abstain", they vote electronically sequentially for one of the options.
In the real world, all SNP MSPs are going to vote for the new SNP leader to be FM and no other single candidate is going to get enough votes to overcome that. Why are you wasting time denying the obvious?
You seem to have wasted an awful lot of time on a parliamentary process in a country not your own.
It is my own country, try again.
Ah, a real live British nationalist. I assume you’ve never voted in the country on which you’re opining repeatedly, but it must be some satisfaction that you get to impose the rsoles for whom you vote on us anyway.
You assume incorrectly, try again.
You're not interesting enough to do the dance of the seven veils (or changing usernames).
Yesterday I read some posts on here that suggested the harsher people fleeing in dingys (sic) were treated the better Sunaks figures. It was written by someone who is apparently well versed in the Red Wall and Tory thinking. It seemed to be written approvingly though that's not important. But what a disgusting indictment of this country and the voters they attract.
I missed that comment, but I think its utterly preposterous and wrong and whoever said that knows absolutely nothing about the Red Wall.
Certain commentators on this site, especially some who live in the South in deepest blue territory, seem to project their own prejudices onto the North/Red Wall.
As someone who lives up here may I reject them all. There are a small minority of racists in the North, like there are everywhere else, but that is not what the Red Wall is and its not the North. Anyone who is saying that is not well versed whatsoever in the Red Wall and has almost certainly never lived here, never campaigned here, and never knocked up voters here.
FPT. Sorry I wasn't able to reply. I like your sentiments but the proof of the pudding is in the Prime Minister's appointment of Suella Braverman. Her statements about the people in dinghies have been pretty disgusting yet considered to be just what the Red Wallers want to hear to bring them back on side. If they were unattractive to that vital voting block I'm sure Sunak would have removed her.
Or Sunak recognises that the Red Wall could be lost either way and Suella is there to appeal to more traditionally blue seats to keep them happy and in the blue column.
The kind of seats from which all these comments projecting onto the Red Wall their own prejudices seem to be coming from anyway.
I can't think of a single commentator on this site from a Red Wall seat who is expressing those views or endorsing Suella Braverman. Those who seem to be doing so, seem to be in more typically safe blue seats than Red Wall seats.
Red Wall has become a flippant byline for people's own prejudices rather than thinking seriously about what people here actually want.
Hear hear, as someone who lives in a red wall seat I can only echo this. I would also go as far to say I have never heard anyone express a view on it. Issues like pay, fuel bills, availability of groceries for sure but not boat people.
People like Rogerdamus just have a passionate dislike for anything red wall blaming the red wall for Brexit. But your debating what people in the Red Wall think with a guy who spends half his life in France. He won't know, as you say it is people projecting.
The Red Wall is not a place, it's a type of voter. Specifically those who voted Tory for the 1st time in 2019 through genuine enthusiasm for Boris and his Brexit. These people delivered the big Con win and have been identified by both parties as key to the next election too. They will typically be Hard Leavers, quite nationalistic, anti-empathetic to migrants and refugees. The rhetoric designed to appeal to them can therefore cause the nose to wrinkle but we may as well get used to it, at least for the next 18 months.
Is it possible for politicians to do anything to stop the boats without causing the nose to wrinkle?
My understanding is that the vast majority of those crossing the channel illegally are not - in any sense of the word we would understand - refugees. And my view is that their arrival is not really a positive for the country - nor indeed (though this is less of my business) for their country of origin (i.e. Albania etc.). So I'd quite like something done which prevents their arrival. The Rwanda policy might disappoint many, but it does at least have the merit of being any policy at all, which is a welcome contrast to the last 30 years of immigration policy. For the record, I'm happy to welcome the likes of the Ukrainians, who are clearly genuine refugees.
You might take a different view on the desirability of the arrival of illegal immigrants, but I don't think my view is extreme or in any way 'wrong' to hold. Wrinkling your nose in distaste at the view that the crossings ought to be prevented is not particularly helpful.
A policy of dealing with the current backlog and promptly processing applications, and sending back those who do not have a valid claim, seems acceptable to everyone… except theConservative Party.
The problem with the phrase "sending back those who do not have a valid claim" is that it implies that is a significant share of applicants.
Which is at variance with recent history.
Whether it’s a smaller or larger proportion, it’s still a good policy, it still reduces costs for the state, it still produces fairer outcomes, it still discourages some.
Also, the government and Conservative friendly commentators have repeatedly emphasised that many of the people coming over on boats at present, unlike recent history, are from countries like Albania and don’t have valid claims.
I find it bizarre that expecting the Home Office to do its job is somehow unreasonable or foolish.
Here is the reality on doctors' pay. The UK is not the highest payer in Europe for hospital doctors but it is well above the median. It is also considerably higher than the nearest comparable system, Sweden, which has a nationalised system unlike most other "mixed economy" health systems
Additionally UK doctors have the safest jobs than any other walk of life, even by public sector standards. It is almost impossible to sack a hospital doctor in the NHS, even when they are incompetent. They also have highly lucrative pension schemes which see them retire on pensions that give them a take home payment that is in excess of double what the average taxpayer earns, and hospital consultants often also have lucrative private practices that are effectively conflicts of interest, but the NHS turns a blind eye to it.
Most so-called "junior" doctors (those below consultant level) earn salaries that are very comparative to other non-partner level professionals such as lawyers and accountants that are outside the distorted salaries found in London.
As for GPs: they are raking it in! The reality is that if doctors were a little less greedy there would be the possibility to be more generous to other health professionals who are probably underpaid.
In summary, those that are swallowing the line of the doctors unions that they are underpaid, I have a bridge to sell you.
BIB: that GPs are raking in £80,000 a year does not mean junior hospital doctors are not underpaid (or overworked or working antisocial hours).
As a junior analyst I worked from 7am to 10pm fairly often despite my contract hours being 8am to 5pm, I got paid fuck all to do it as well. Junior doctoring is exactly the same, short term shite while you're in your 20s so you can climb the earnings ladder and once you hit 30 you've got a substantial income.
If we're going to change the model to pay more at an earlier stage then pay later in medical careers needs to fall.
What I don't understand is why doctors think they should be treated any differently to other high yielding industry, all lawyers, financiers, analysts etc... will start on shit wages for long hours, it's called paying one's dues. Doctors seem to want to have their cake and eat it.
That's a reasonable point Max in general.
But in specific at the moment the previously already lower wages that junior doctors are getting paid aren't just being frozen in real terms, but a proposed substantial cut. While taxpayers money is going to pay others a double-digit rise, including the state pension of retired doctors on defined benefit schemes.
That's f***ed up is it not?
Should a retired doctor on a defined benefit scheme get a double-digit percentage increase in their state pension, while a junior doctor sees a nearly double-digit percentage cut in their real terms income from their already lower wage? Is that paying their dues?
Keeping lower wages flat, while other wages are flat, is entirely reasonable. But cutting some wages in real terms while increasing others by double digit percentages . . . that's a political choice, not necessity.
You have been admirably consistent about wanting a free market in labour. There is a free market for junior doctors in fact there is surplus demand. Hence by your own estimation, as indeed you have noted, wages should fall as they are competed downwards. They shouldn't rise.
Plus the NPV of a "junior doctors" wages is substantially higher than many others and as we know they are bright enough to have worked this out.
What happens to senior consultants or investment bankers is neither here nor there.
But it's not a free market, there has been surplus demand for doctors for going on 30 years and yet supply of doctors has been held down artificially by the state.
I've already said it many times, it's time for the government to lift the cap on medical school places so universities and hospitals can train as many doctors as are necessary and then we'll see what the NPV of doctoring actually is, if it turns out we train too many we end up becoming a next exporter of doctors for a while until the NPV rises again.
The problem there is that a medical degree costs more than £9250 a year to teach - so how do you square that circle?
Charge the student the full cost of the course, and pay off 5% of the debt for every year they work in the NHS.
That would hugely discourage people from poorer backgrounds going into medicine.
On the contrary, it would give many more of them the opportunity.
Tosh.
I work with sixth formers in an edgy bit of inner London. We have enough trouble with people wanging on about student debt as it is. (Remember kids, it's not a debt designed to be paid off, it's predominantly a tax on graduates who earn lots. The whole point is that those of you who use your degrees to earn megabucks also pay towards the degrees of those who do valuable but less well-paid jobs.)
Your training bond idea says that, unless they stay working for the NHS until they are in their forties, they are going to be hit with a charge in the tens to hundreds of thousands of pounds. Even if their life and love story takes them elsewhere. Or it turns out that they should really be doing medical research instead. Or (God doesn't forbid, it happens too much) they end up wimpering in their car (or worse driving their car into the nearest tree) at the end of a shift because they just can't take the pressure any more.
Part of my job is about getting young people to aspire and aim high. You don't do that by saying "there's a risk that you will be the cost of a house down if it all goes wrong."
I’m just relaying my experience of how things work in another industry with high training costs, and one where more traditional student finance options are not available.
The other piece of the puzzle, is what is known in aviation as LOL - loss of licence insurance, which clears outstanding training bonds if you fail your medical.
The issue of medical students, is that currently the government are paying the large majority of the £200k up front, with no obligation on the student to work for the NHS afterwards. So many are moving overseas, or giving up for family reasons after only a few years.
This might seem silly but seriously: So what?
Some people move overseas. OK that happens.
Some people move here from overseas.
If someone is trained in the UK then goes to be a doctor in Dubai - and someone from Dubai is trained to be a doctor there then moves to the UK - does the UK repay Dubai the cost of training the person who moved here?
People move, that's a fact of life. There's nothing wrong with it. Most people don't, some people will, just roll with it.
On average we get more moving to the UK than away from it anyway.
If you train as a doctor almost anywhere without an NHS, you’ll end up with a £200k loan to your name, which will follow you around the world. The UK is the outlier.
90% of British doctors in Dubai, as an example, will be working in the private sector. There might be a handful in the public hospital or in public health. The pay is comparable to the UK, but with no income tax. IIRC the only places offering huge salaries to doctors are the USA and Australia.
Yesterday I read some posts on here that suggested the harsher people fleeing in dingys (sic) were treated the better Sunaks figures. It was written by someone who is apparently well versed in the Red Wall and Tory thinking. It seemed to be written approvingly though that's not important. But what a disgusting indictment of this country and the voters they attract.
I missed that comment, but I think its utterly preposterous and wrong and whoever said that knows absolutely nothing about the Red Wall.
Certain commentators on this site, especially some who live in the South in deepest blue territory, seem to project their own prejudices onto the North/Red Wall.
As someone who lives up here may I reject them all. There are a small minority of racists in the North, like there are everywhere else, but that is not what the Red Wall is and its not the North. Anyone who is saying that is not well versed whatsoever in the Red Wall and has almost certainly never lived here, never campaigned here, and never knocked up voters here.
FPT. Sorry I wasn't able to reply. I like your sentiments but the proof of the pudding is in the Prime Minister's appointment of Suella Braverman. Her statements about the people in dinghies have been pretty disgusting yet considered to be just what the Red Wallers want to hear to bring them back on side. If they were unattractive to that vital voting block I'm sure Sunak would have removed her.
Or Sunak recognises that the Red Wall could be lost either way and Suella is there to appeal to more traditionally blue seats to keep them happy and in the blue column.
The kind of seats from which all these comments projecting onto the Red Wall their own prejudices seem to be coming from anyway.
I can't think of a single commentator on this site from a Red Wall seat who is expressing those views or endorsing Suella Braverman. Those who seem to be doing so, seem to be in more typically safe blue seats than Red Wall seats.
Red Wall has become a flippant byline for people's own prejudices rather than thinking seriously about what people here actually want.
Hear hear, as someone who lives in a red wall seat I can only echo this. I would also go as far to say I have never heard anyone express a view on it. Issues like pay, fuel bills, availability of groceries for sure but not boat people.
People like Rogerdamus just have a passionate dislike for anything red wall blaming the red wall for Brexit. But your debating what people in the Red Wall think with a guy who spends half his life in France. He won't know, as you say it is people projecting.
The Red Wall is not a place, it's a type of voter. Specifically those who voted Tory for the 1st time in 2019 through genuine enthusiasm for Boris and his Brexit. These people delivered the big Con win and have been identified by both parties as key to the next election too. They will typically be Hard Leavers, quite nationalistic, anti-empathetic to migrants and refugees. The rhetoric designed to appeal to them can therefore cause the nose to wrinkle but we may as well get used to it, at least for the next 18 months.
Is it possible for politicians to do anything to stop the boats without causing the nose to wrinkle?
My understanding is that the vast majority of those crossing the channel illegally are not - in any sense of the word we would understand - refugees. And my view is that their arrival is not really a positive for the country - nor indeed (though this is less of my business) for their country of origin (i.e. Albania etc.). So I'd quite like something done which prevents their arrival. The Rwanda policy might disappoint many, but it does at least have the merit of being any policy at all, which is a welcome contrast to the last 30 years of immigration policy. For the record, I'm happy to welcome the likes of the Ukrainians, who are clearly genuine refugees.
You might take a different view on the desirability of the arrival of illegal immigrants, but I don't think my view is extreme or in any way 'wrong' to hold. Wrinkling your nose in distaste at the view that the crossings ought to be prevented is not particularly helpful.
A policy of dealing with the current backlog and promptly processing applications, and sending back those who do not have a valid claim, seems acceptable to everyone… except theConservative Party.
Except - practical experience has shown us that that's even less plausible than the Rwanda option. There needs to be something to deter people coming in the first place. Without that, the whole 3rd world beats a path to our door.
Simple. Options that will work.
1) All individuals entering the country without documentation are deemed to have enlisted in the Royal Navy. Solves the manning crisis. 2) Employ the Libyan Coastguard to catch the boats and enslave the people in them.
etc
Or we could make it £100K fine to employ an undocumented individual. £50K goes to the immigrant (on conviction). Plus they get unlimited leave to remain.
Here is the reality on doctors' pay. The UK is not the highest payer in Europe for hospital doctors but it is well above the median. It is also considerably higher than the nearest comparable system, Sweden, which has a nationalised system unlike most other "mixed economy" health systems
Additionally UK doctors have the safest jobs than any other walk of life, even by public sector standards. It is almost impossible to sack a hospital doctor in the NHS, even when they are incompetent. They also have highly lucrative pension schemes which see them retire on pensions that give them a take home payment that is in excess of double what the average taxpayer earns, and hospital consultants often also have lucrative private practices that are effectively conflicts of interest, but the NHS turns a blind eye to it.
Most so-called "junior" doctors (those below consultant level) earn salaries that are very comparative to other non-partner level professionals such as lawyers and accountants that are outside the distorted salaries found in London.
As for GPs: they are raking it in! The reality is that if doctors were a little less greedy there would be the possibility to be more generous to other health professionals who are probably underpaid.
In summary, those that are swallowing the line of the doctors unions that they are underpaid, I have a bridge to sell you.
BIB: that GPs are raking in £80,000 a year does not mean junior hospital doctors are not underpaid (or overworked or working antisocial hours).
As a junior analyst I worked from 7am to 10pm fairly often despite my contract hours being 8am to 5pm, I got paid fuck all to do it as well. Junior doctoring is exactly the same, short term shite while you're in your 20s so you can climb the earnings ladder and once you hit 30 you've got a substantial income.
If we're going to change the model to pay more at an earlier stage then pay later in medical careers needs to fall.
What I don't understand is why doctors think they should be treated any differently to other high yielding industry, all lawyers, financiers, analysts etc... will start on shit wages for long hours, it's called paying one's dues. Doctors seem to want to have their cake and eat it.
That's a reasonable point Max in general.
But in specific at the moment the previously already lower wages that junior doctors are getting paid aren't just being frozen in real terms, but a proposed substantial cut. While taxpayers money is going to pay others a double-digit rise, including the state pension of retired doctors on defined benefit schemes.
That's f***ed up is it not?
Should a retired doctor on a defined benefit scheme get a double-digit percentage increase in their state pension, while a junior doctor sees a nearly double-digit percentage cut in their real terms income from their already lower wage? Is that paying their dues?
Keeping lower wages flat, while other wages are flat, is entirely reasonable. But cutting some wages in real terms while increasing others by double digit percentages . . . that's a political choice, not necessity.
You have been admirably consistent about wanting a free market in labour. There is a free market for junior doctors in fact there is surplus demand. Hence by your own estimation, as indeed you have noted, wages should fall as they are competed downwards. They shouldn't rise.
Plus the NPV of a "junior doctors" wages is substantially higher than many others and as we know they are bright enough to have worked this out.
What happens to senior consultants or investment bankers is neither here nor there.
But it's not a free market, there has been surplus demand for doctors for going on 30 years and yet supply of doctors has been held down artificially by the state.
I've already said it many times, it's time for the government to lift the cap on medical school places so universities and hospitals can train as many doctors as are necessary and then we'll see what the NPV of doctoring actually is, if it turns out we train too many we end up becoming a next exporter of doctors for a while until the NPV rises again.
The problem there is that a medical degree costs more than £9250 a year to teach - so how do you square that circle?
Charge the student the full cost of the course, and pay off 5% of the debt for every year they work in the NHS.
That would hugely discourage people from poorer backgrounds going into medicine.
On the contrary, it would give many more of them the opportunity.
Tosh.
I work with sixth formers in an edgy bit of inner London. We have enough trouble with people wanging on about student debt as it is. (Remember kids, it's not a debt designed to be paid off, it's predominantly a tax on graduates who earn lots. The whole point is that those of you who use your degrees to earn megabucks also pay towards the degrees of those who do valuable but less well-paid jobs.)
Your training bond idea says that, unless they stay working for the NHS until they are in their forties, they are going to be hit with a charge in the tens to hundreds of thousands of pounds. Even if their life and love story takes them elsewhere. Or it turns out that they should really be doing medical research instead. Or (God doesn't forbid, it happens too much) they end up wimpering in their car (or worse driving their car into the nearest tree) at the end of a shift because they just can't take the pressure any more.
Part of my job is about getting young people to aspire and aim high. You don't do that by saying "there's a risk that you will be the cost of a house down if it all goes wrong."
Anyone who goes into medicine not intending to work in the NHS or medical research should expect to pay for it anyway. Anyone who leaves for compassion/competency reasons would presumably be let off as they are with things like the armed forces schemes.
Given the barriers to doing medicine at the moment, I'd be really surprised if anyone (OK, more than a handful) do so without fully intending to become medical doctors for the rest of their lives. So what is the bond meant to achieve, except pushing a bit of spending down the line?
There is an issue where physics graduates take the humungous teacher training bursary with little or no intention of becoming teachers, but that's different. Education is desperate. (And the bursary is humungous; given that it's tax-free, it meant that when I had a PGCE student, they took home more each month than I did.)
It seems their is an uptick for Sunak and his party but a long way to go
The selective use of opinion polls? Hmmm. Perhaps you could again give us some definitive voting intention from "North Wales Polling".
Edit; I note, in defending your position you didn't add the Yougov to the other two favourable for the Conservatives polls.
A careful analysis of all opinion polls may suggest that LAB is currently ahead but this does not guarantee that they will get an overall majority at the next GE.
Swingback, to at least some extent is inevitable, particularly when closer to the vote the DK's swing back to their historical party of choice.
Current polls tell us no more than two key features regarding Lab and Con. Labour are currently attracting around 45% of voters and the trend is that the Conservatives are improving, albeit very slowly. By the time of the next election at the current attrition rate of circa 1% point per month, by Autumn 2024 the Conservatives could be between 1 and 5 points ahead. Clearly some black swan events could ratchet the gap down more quickly. A Johnson return, or a Sunak/Johnson victory in Ukraine?
My view is the next election could well be a 1992 redux. That is no more than a hunch, and at the moment at least, if we are basing our analysis on all the evidence available, it points to the complete opposite.
Yesterday I read some posts on here that suggested the harsher people fleeing in dingys (sic) were treated the better Sunaks figures. It was written by someone who is apparently well versed in the Red Wall and Tory thinking. It seemed to be written approvingly though that's not important. But what a disgusting indictment of this country and the voters they attract.
I missed that comment, but I think its utterly preposterous and wrong and whoever said that knows absolutely nothing about the Red Wall.
Certain commentators on this site, especially some who live in the South in deepest blue territory, seem to project their own prejudices onto the North/Red Wall.
As someone who lives up here may I reject them all. There are a small minority of racists in the North, like there are everywhere else, but that is not what the Red Wall is and its not the North. Anyone who is saying that is not well versed whatsoever in the Red Wall and has almost certainly never lived here, never campaigned here, and never knocked up voters here.
FPT. Sorry I wasn't able to reply. I like your sentiments but the proof of the pudding is in the Prime Minister's appointment of Suella Braverman. Her statements about the people in dinghies have been pretty disgusting yet considered to be just what the Red Wallers want to hear to bring them back on side. If they were unattractive to that vital voting block I'm sure Sunak would have removed her.
Or Sunak recognises that the Red Wall could be lost either way and Suella is there to appeal to more traditionally blue seats to keep them happy and in the blue column.
The kind of seats from which all these comments projecting onto the Red Wall their own prejudices seem to be coming from anyway.
I can't think of a single commentator on this site from a Red Wall seat who is expressing those views or endorsing Suella Braverman. Those who seem to be doing so, seem to be in more typically safe blue seats than Red Wall seats.
Red Wall has become a flippant byline for people's own prejudices rather than thinking seriously about what people here actually want.
Hear hear, as someone who lives in a red wall seat I can only echo this. I would also go as far to say I have never heard anyone express a view on it. Issues like pay, fuel bills, availability of groceries for sure but not boat people.
People like Rogerdamus just have a passionate dislike for anything red wall blaming the red wall for Brexit. But your debating what people in the Red Wall think with a guy who spends half his life in France. He won't know, as you say it is people projecting.
The Red Wall is not a place, it's a type of voter. Specifically those who voted Tory for the 1st time in 2019 through genuine enthusiasm for Boris and his Brexit. These people delivered the big Con win and have been identified by both parties as key to the next election too. They will typically be Hard Leavers, quite nationalistic, anti-empathetic to migrants and refugees. The rhetoric designed to appeal to them can therefore cause the nose to wrinkle but we may as well get used to it, at least for the next 18 months.
Is it possible for politicians to do anything to stop the boats without causing the nose to wrinkle?
My understanding is that the vast majority of those crossing the channel illegally are not - in any sense of the word we would understand - refugees. And my view is that their arrival is not really a positive for the country - nor indeed (though this is less of my business) for their country of origin (i.e. Albania etc.). So I'd quite like something done which prevents their arrival. The Rwanda policy might disappoint many, but it does at least have the merit of being any policy at all, which is a welcome contrast to the last 30 years of immigration policy. For the record, I'm happy to welcome the likes of the Ukrainians, who are clearly genuine refugees.
You might take a different view on the desirability of the arrival of illegal immigrants, but I don't think my view is extreme or in any way 'wrong' to hold. Wrinkling your nose in distaste at the view that the crossings ought to be prevented is not particularly helpful.
I thought most, apart from most Albanians, were genuine. As are their wives and children.
Its tricky. There are a lot of immigration lawyers who know exactly the case to make, and how to ensure you 'lose' your documents. I'm sure very many are indeed genuinely fleeing and need asylum. I'm also sure a lot are trying to get a better life. In the old days we'd welcome those who want to work and make a better life. I still think we should, with some caveats. Its not unfair to expect those arriving to want to integrate to a reasonable extent. We are a tolerant nation, but people should learn English. We should not need to have translators constantly on hand for the NHS and Police Force. New arrivals should also not complain about existing society - we are a western democracy - deal with that.
Part of the issue is that the boundaries for "genuine" have increased year by year due to talented lawyers. It was originally meant to be for the equivalent of Jews fleeing the Holocaust plus political dissidents. Whereas now it counts anyone originally from a warzone or a gang-infested country, even if there are other areas of their country they could stay.
That creates a potential refugee pool of tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people. So the actual selection factor is whether they have enough money, bravery and/or good luck to get here. That is clearly an awful filter if you are genuinely trying to help the people who need it most.
A much better filter would be "will this person be able to integrate into the post-war society?" If you are a general victim of the hardships of war and crime, the answer is usually yes and you should be hosted in a refugee camp on the borders of your home country and go back after the war. If you are part of a hated minority group that has been brutalized by the majority, the answer is usually no and the West should take you in. And that should apply to people in the Middle Eastern. camps rather than just who gets here.
I'm sure very many are indeed genuinely fleeing and need asylum. I'm also sure a lot are trying to get a better life. In the old days we'd welcome those who want to work and make a better life. I still think we should, with some caveats. Its not unfair to expect those arriving to want to integrate to a reasonable extent. We are a tolerant nation, but people should learn English. We should not need to have translators constantly on hand for the NHS and Police Force. New arrivals should also not complain about existing society - we are a western democracy - deal with that.
The level of language ability you need to successfully negotiate dealing with a bad medical problem, or getting into difficulties with the police, is actually pretty high -- I would expect that for somebody trying to integrate and learn English that they would still prefer native-language assistance in those situations for a long time after they were able to get along well in English in their daily lives. The stakes are high and there's often unfamiliar vocab.
Becoming part of a western democracy also includes having the right to complain about it, by the way :-)
To an extent, but I think its a bit rich to move to a country then start telling the natives how to behave. We did that in our colonial phase and it wasn't right then, either.
Yesterday I read some posts on here that suggested the harsher people fleeing in dingys (sic) were treated the better Sunaks figures. It was written by someone who is apparently well versed in the Red Wall and Tory thinking. It seemed to be written approvingly though that's not important. But what a disgusting indictment of this country and the voters they attract.
I missed that comment, but I think its utterly preposterous and wrong and whoever said that knows absolutely nothing about the Red Wall.
Certain commentators on this site, especially some who live in the South in deepest blue territory, seem to project their own prejudices onto the North/Red Wall.
As someone who lives up here may I reject them all. There are a small minority of racists in the North, like there are everywhere else, but that is not what the Red Wall is and its not the North. Anyone who is saying that is not well versed whatsoever in the Red Wall and has almost certainly never lived here, never campaigned here, and never knocked up voters here.
FPT. Sorry I wasn't able to reply. I like your sentiments but the proof of the pudding is in the Prime Minister's appointment of Suella Braverman. Her statements about the people in dinghies have been pretty disgusting yet considered to be just what the Red Wallers want to hear to bring them back on side. If they were unattractive to that vital voting block I'm sure Sunak would have removed her.
Or Sunak recognises that the Red Wall could be lost either way and Suella is there to appeal to more traditionally blue seats to keep them happy and in the blue column.
The kind of seats from which all these comments projecting onto the Red Wall their own prejudices seem to be coming from anyway.
I can't think of a single commentator on this site from a Red Wall seat who is expressing those views or endorsing Suella Braverman. Those who seem to be doing so, seem to be in more typically safe blue seats than Red Wall seats.
Red Wall has become a flippant byline for people's own prejudices rather than thinking seriously about what people here actually want.
Hear hear, as someone who lives in a red wall seat I can only echo this. I would also go as far to say I have never heard anyone express a view on it. Issues like pay, fuel bills, availability of groceries for sure but not boat people.
People like Rogerdamus just have a passionate dislike for anything red wall blaming the red wall for Brexit. But your debating what people in the Red Wall think with a guy who spends half his life in France. He won't know, as you say it is people projecting.
The Red Wall is not a place, it's a type of voter. Specifically those who voted Tory for the 1st time in 2019 through genuine enthusiasm for Boris and his Brexit. These people delivered the big Con win and have been identified by both parties as key to the next election too. They will typically be Hard Leavers, quite nationalistic, anti-empathetic to migrants and refugees. The rhetoric designed to appeal to them can therefore cause the nose to wrinkle but we may as well get used to it, at least for the next 18 months.
Is it possible for politicians to do anything to stop the boats without causing the nose to wrinkle?
My understanding is that the vast majority of those crossing the channel illegally are not - in any sense of the word we would understand - refugees. And my view is that their arrival is not really a positive for the country - nor indeed (though this is less of my business) for their country of origin (i.e. Albania etc.). So I'd quite like something done which prevents their arrival. The Rwanda policy might disappoint many, but it does at least have the merit of being any policy at all, which is a welcome contrast to the last 30 years of immigration policy. For the record, I'm happy to welcome the likes of the Ukrainians, who are clearly genuine refugees.
You might take a different view on the desirability of the arrival of illegal immigrants, but I don't think my view is extreme or in any way 'wrong' to hold. Wrinkling your nose in distaste at the view that the crossings ought to be prevented is not particularly helpful.
A policy of dealing with the current backlog and promptly processing applications, and sending back those who do not have a valid claim, seems acceptable to everyone… except theConservative Party.
Except - practical experience has shown us that that's even less plausible than the Rwanda option. There needs to be something to deter people coming in the first place. Without that, the whole 3rd world beats a path to our door.
Simple. Options that will work.
1) All individuals entering the country without documentation are deemed to have enlisted in the Royal Navy. Solves the manning crisis. 2) Employ the Libyan Coastguard to catch the boats and enslave the people in them.
etc
Or we could make it £100K fine to employ an undocumented individual. £50K goes to the immigrant (on conviction). Plus they get unlimited leave to remain.
Last idea is great and should also apply to contractors like Uber and DoorDash.
It seems their is an uptick for Sunak and his party but a long way to go
Sunak does come across as a steady hand and competent.
If he had 4 years I'd think he had a chance. At best now, for him, is NOM with Labour on most seats.
IMHO, the NEV share for the locals will be in the region of Lab 40% Con 30%, which is still a solid result for Labour, but a long way short of some of the bigger poll leads.
It seems their is an uptick for Sunak and his party but a long way to go
The selective use of opinion polls? Hmmm. Perhaps you could again give us some definitive voting intention from "North Wales Polling".
Edit; I note, in defending your position you didn't
add the Yougov to the other two favourable for
the Conservatives polls.
Funny old world.
PB seems to have returned to its default position of overanalysing hypothetical polls which are released at an undefined point in the future.
It is an interesting contrast.
We of a non-PB faithful persuasion look at the evidence and ponder: "Hmm, a 15 point Labour lead, that can't be right" and those of the PB faithful persuasion ponder: "Hmm, a 15 point Tory deficit, that can't be right".
It seems their is an uptick for Sunak and his party but a long way to go
The selective use of opinion polls? Hmmm. Perhaps you could again give us some definitive voting intention from "North Wales Polling".
Edit; I note, in defending your position you didn't add the Yougov to the other two favourable for the Conservatives polls.
A careful analysis of all opinion polls may suggest that LAB is currently ahead but this does not guarantee that they will get an overall majority at the next GE.
Swingback, to at least some extent is inevitable, particularly when closer to the vote the DK's swing back to their historical party of choice.
Current polls tell us no more than two key features regarding Lab and Con. Labour are currently attracting around 45% of voters and the trend is that the Conservatives are improving, albeit very slowly. By the time of the next election at the current attrition rate of circa 1% point per month, by Autumn 2024 the Conservatives could be between 1 and 5 points ahead. Clearly some black swan events could ratchet the gap down more quickly. A Johnson return, or a Sunak/Johnson victory in Ukraine?
My view is the next election could well be a 1992 redux. That is no more than a hunch, and at the moment at least, if we are basing our analysis on all the evidence available, it points to the complete opposite.
You talk of a "current attrition rate of circa 1% point per month". For how long has that been going on? 2 months? 3 months? It's definitely not more than 4 months. Why should something that has been happening for ~3 months, at most (if at all), be guaranteed to continue for another 18 months, until autumn '24?
It seems their is an uptick for Sunak and his party but a long way to go
The selective use of opinion polls? Hmmm. Perhaps you could again give us some definitive voting intention from "North Wales Polling".
Edit; I note, in defending your position you didn't add the Yougov to the other two favourable for the Conservatives polls.
A careful analysis of all opinion polls may suggest that LAB is currently ahead but this does not guarantee that they will get an overall majority at the next GE.
Swingback, to at least some extent is inevitable, particularly when closer to the vote the DK's swing back to their historical party of choice.
Current polls tell us no more than two key features regarding Lab and Con. Labour are currently attracting around 45% of voters and the trend is that the Conservatives are improving, albeit very slowly. By the time of the next election at the current attrition rate of circa 1% point per month, by Autumn 2024 the Conservatives could be between 1 and 5 points ahead. Clearly some black swan events could ratchet the gap down more quickly. A Johnson return, or a Sunak/Johnson victory in Ukraine?
My view is the next election could well be a 1992 redux. That is no more than a hunch, and at the moment at least, if we are basing our analysis on all the evidence available, it points to the complete opposite.
You talk of a "current attrition rate of circa 1% point per month". For how long has that been going on? 2 months? 3 months? It's definitely not more than 4 months. Why should something that has been happening for ~3 months, at most (if at all), be guaranteed to continue for another 18 months, until autumn '24?
I was putting myself into the mindset of the PB faithful. That 45 seems reasonably solid, certainly for the moment.
Yesterday I read some posts on here that suggested the harsher people fleeing in dingys (sic) were treated the better Sunaks figures. It was written by someone who is apparently well versed in the Red Wall and Tory thinking. It seemed to be written approvingly though that's not important. But what a disgusting indictment of this country and the voters they attract.
I missed that comment, but I think its utterly preposterous and wrong and whoever said that knows absolutely nothing about the Red Wall.
Certain commentators on this site, especially some who live in the South in deepest blue territory, seem to project their own prejudices onto the North/Red Wall.
As someone who lives up here may I reject them all. There are a small minority of racists in the North, like there are everywhere else, but that is not what the Red Wall is and its not the North. Anyone who is saying that is not well versed whatsoever in the Red Wall and has almost certainly never lived here, never campaigned here, and never knocked up voters here.
FPT. Sorry I wasn't able to reply. I like your sentiments but the proof of the pudding is in the Prime Minister's appointment of Suella Braverman. Her statements about the people in dinghies have been pretty disgusting yet considered to be just what the Red Wallers want to hear to bring them back on side. If they were unattractive to that vital voting block I'm sure Sunak would have removed her.
Or Sunak recognises that the Red Wall could be lost either way and Suella is there to appeal to more traditionally blue seats to keep them happy and in the blue column.
The kind of seats from which all these comments projecting onto the Red Wall their own prejudices seem to be coming from anyway.
I can't think of a single commentator on this site from a Red Wall seat who is expressing those views or endorsing Suella Braverman. Those who seem to be doing so, seem to be in more typically safe blue seats than Red Wall seats.
Red Wall has become a flippant byline for people's own prejudices rather than thinking seriously about what people here actually want.
Hear hear, as someone who lives in a red wall seat I can only echo this. I would also go as far to say I have never heard anyone express a view on it. Issues like pay, fuel bills, availability of groceries for sure but not boat people.
People like Rogerdamus just have a passionate dislike for anything red wall blaming the red wall for Brexit. But your debating what people in the Red Wall think with a guy who spends half his life in France. He won't know, as you say it is people projecting.
The Red Wall is not a place, it's a type of voter. Specifically those who voted Tory for the 1st time in 2019 through genuine enthusiasm for Boris and his Brexit. These people delivered the big Con win and have been identified by both parties as key to the next election too. They will typically be Hard Leavers, quite nationalistic, anti-empathetic to migrants and refugees. The rhetoric designed to appeal to them can therefore cause the nose to wrinkle but we may as well get used to it, at least for the next 18 months.
Is it possible for politicians to do anything to stop the boats without causing the nose to wrinkle?
My understanding is that the vast majority of those crossing the channel illegally are not - in any sense of the word we would understand - refugees. And my view is that their arrival is not really a positive for the country - nor indeed (though this is less of my business) for their country of origin (i.e. Albania etc.). So I'd quite like something done which prevents their arrival. The Rwanda policy might disappoint many, but it does at least have the merit of being any policy at all, which is a welcome contrast to the last 30 years of immigration policy. For the record, I'm happy to welcome the likes of the Ukrainians, who are clearly genuine refugees.
You might take a different view on the desirability of the arrival of illegal immigrants, but I don't think my view is extreme or in any way 'wrong' to hold. Wrinkling your nose in distaste at the view that the crossings ought to be prevented is not particularly helpful.
A policy of dealing with the current backlog and promptly processing applications, and sending back those who do not have a valid claim, seems acceptable to everyone… except theConservative Party.
Except - practical experience has shown us that that's even less plausible than the Rwanda option. There needs to be something to deter people coming in the first place. Without that, the whole 3rd world beats a path to our door.
Simple. Options that will work.
1) All individuals entering the country without documentation are deemed to have enlisted in the Royal Navy. Solves the manning crisis. 2) Employ the Libyan Coastguard to catch the boats and enslave the people in them.
etc
Or we could make it £100K fine to employ an undocumented individual. £50K goes to the immigrant (on conviction). Plus they get unlimited leave to remain.
Last idea is great and should also apply to contractors like Uber and DoorDash.
Personally I prefer 1)
EDIT: the main point is that it is self financing & self policing. Extend it to anyone deliberately paying less than minimum wage, just for LOLs
Comments
People like Rogerdamus just have a passionate dislike for anything red wall blaming the red wall for Brexit. But your debating what people in the Red Wall think with a guy who spends half his life in France. He won't know, as you say it is people projecting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Bragg
...On February 23, 2022, Carey R. Dunne and Mark F. Pomerantz, the lead prosecutors in the New York County District Attorney's investigation into Donald Trump and his businesses, resigned abruptly after Bragg "indicated to them that he had doubts about moving forward with a case against Mr. Trump".[15] In his letter of resignation, Pomerantz wrote that the "team that has been investigating Mr. Trump harbors no doubt about whether he committed crimes,[16] including falsifying business records, and that it was "a grave failure of justice"[16] not to pursue criminal charges.[17] The New York Times reported that Bragg "balked at pursuing an indictment against Mr. Trump" and lacked confidence proving in court that Trump "knowingly falsified the value of his assets on annual financial statements...
His priorities appear to lie elsewhere.
https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/voters-to-elect-new-manhattan-da-will-be-just-the-4th-person-to-hold-the-office-in-80-years/
...Bragg spoke about disparities in the criminal legal system, providing supports for those returning home from incarceration and providing resources for those with mental health illnesses and substance abuse issues.
He says his most important issue, however, is addressing gun violence and de-carcerating Rikers Island.
"We have been given a profound trust tonight. To whom much is given, much is required, and we've heard Mark talk about it, we've heard Brian talk about it, the fundamental role of a district attorney is to guarantee both fairness and safety. That is the trust that's been given to me on the ballot, but given to all of us, that's what we've worked for, to show the city and the country a model for pairing partnership, pairing fairness and safety into one."..
And the Singers have been reprieved, have they not ?
Statistical analysis of when a light bulb fails is much easier than asking people how they will vote.
Yousaf or Forbes will be unpopular leaders replacing Sturgeon, a popular leader
If he had 4 years I'd think he had a chance. At best now, for him, is NOM with Labour on most seats.
*BBC Studios. The commercial arm of the Corporation, rather than the BBC itself.
The ratings for the main TV show have been falling since they changed the presenters, and the current lineup is one idiot, one cricketer, and one car journalist. And now they’ve put someone in the hospital, again. It might be done for good this time.
Do you propose we sack striking junior doctors and replace them with 18 year olds who've just completed their A-Levels but were denied a place at medical school?
Expanding med schools may expand the supply of potential junior doctors in the future, but it doesn't mean there's an oversupply of doctors at the minute.
Teachers live in fear of Ofsted’s punitive inspections. It needs reforming now
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/24/teachers-ofsted-inspections-schools-children
The comments below are also interesting.
One thing to note is that the experience of inspection can vary massively, depending both on the particular school, and the inspectors they are lucky or unlucky enough to get.
I'd abolish the graduate tax, merge it into Income Tax along with National Insurance, and fully fund education from taxes from Reception to Graduation.
Education is one thing its worthwhile to be provided and those who are well educated should be the taxpayers of the future in general.
The Red Wall identifies a changing type of voter that demographically elsewhere in the country would have voted Tory but didn't in the Red Wall. The Red Wall was trending blue long before Boris and Brexit.
Its more to do with housing than Boris.
https://www.economist.com/britain/2021/03/31/the-truth-behind-the-tories-northern-strongholds
Look beyond the post-industrial misery. Comfortable suburbs are the source of the party’s newfound support
A-level applicants for med school are no more qualified to be junior doctors today than my six year old is to be a vet. Expanding med schools will take time and money and could address the shortage in the future, but that they're oversubscribed today does not mean there's an oversupply of qualified junior doctors today.
You’d have to get a much better paid job overseas, rather than one a little better paid, to make it worthwhile. If the course cost £200k, they’d be paying you £10k a year (in post-tax index-linked income) towards the loan. If you leave, you’ll need to get a commercial loan to settle the outstanding balance.
The Red Wall is defined by those constituencies that up until 2017 were still voting Labour even though, on strictly demographic analysis, they should already have switched to the Tories.
Given that, with the best will and selection processes in the world, there will be people who train as doctors who shouldn't in the end do any doctoring, I'd find it hard to recommend many 18 year olds taking that big a gamble.
Especially if the plan is to make sure you have an excess of junior doctors to keep everything competitive and the doctors keen and mean.
My understanding is that the vast majority of those crossing the channel illegally are not - in any sense of the word we would understand - refugees. And my view is that their arrival is not really a positive for the country - nor indeed (though this is less of my business) for their country of origin (i.e. Albania etc.).
So I'd quite like something done which prevents their arrival.
The Rwanda policy might disappoint many, but it does at least have the merit of being any policy at all, which is a welcome contrast to the last 30 years of immigration policy.
For the record, I'm happy to welcome the likes of the Ukrainians, who are clearly genuine refugees.
You might take a different view on the desirability of the arrival of illegal immigrants, but I don't think my view is extreme or in any way 'wrong' to hold. Wrinkling your nose in distaste at the view that the crossings ought to be prevented is not particularly helpful.
Suella is repugnant, the bile she comes out with is just nasty.
Sunak's Tweet recently about how people would be denied access to modern slavery laws was similarly nasty.
A tightrope needs to be walked between doing what is tough but necessary, due to regrettable circumstances, and not being nasty about it.
I assume you’ve never voted in the country on which you’re opining repeatedly, but it must be some satisfaction that you get to impose the rsoles for whom you vote on us anyway.
I actually thought the current presenter line up was decent. But the format is well past it and I've found it increasingly hard to justify watching the thing knowing there are no new ideas. Best to let it quietly drop. Rory Reid was better on YouTube than on the show. Chris Harris the same...
NEW: it’s all kicking off in Tory land.
As admin, Minister Steve Baker is removing MPs one by one from the official ERG WhatsApp group saying Brexit is done so group is disbanding.
IDS accused him of being irrational shortly before he himself was kicked out.
😅
https://twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1639257970596007937
I'd note though that we seem to afford unlimited moral slack to those who fall off the tightrope to one side and none at all to those who fall off the tightrope on the other.
As I say it relates to a type of voter not a place. That's how you can make sense of the phrase 'appealing to the Red Wall'. It means appealing to that type of voter not to any particular place.
There are Red Wall voters all over England, including in the Blue Wall. It just so happens that current electoral chemistry makes them crucial to many swing seats and these swing seats where they are crucial are mainly in the North and the Midlands.
The current three have almost gelled, but you still get the impression that Paddy and Freddy would go to the pub together, but not with Harris.
Oh, and Bart is correct. But have it your own way.
I'm sure very many are indeed genuinely fleeing and need asylum. I'm also sure a lot are trying to get a better life. In the old days we'd welcome those who want to work and make a better life. I still think we should, with some caveats. Its not unfair to expect those arriving to want to integrate to a reasonable extent. We are a tolerant nation, but people should learn English. We should not need to have translators constantly on hand for the NHS and Police Force. New arrivals should also not complain about existing society - we are a western democracy - deal with that.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/joint-statement-on-the-withdrawal-agreement-joint-committee-and-trade-and-cooperation-agreement-partnership-council-meetings-24-march-2023
"Trade: They looked forward to the signing of Memoranda of Understanding on financial services and on intellectual property soon."
Not equivalence, surely? Must be something less.
"Union Programmes: They noted the openness of both sides to take forward discussions on association in the coming weeks."
Horizon, presumably.
Which is at variance with recent history.
Edit; I note, in defending your position you didn't add the Yougov to the other two favourable for the Conservatives polls.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/81-004-x/2006001/9183-eng.htm
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03075070802211802
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/9/7/e029980
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4229497/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S154614401930972X
I work with sixth formers in an edgy bit of inner London. We have enough trouble with people wanging on about student debt as it is. (Remember kids, it's not a debt designed to be paid off, it's predominantly a tax on graduates who earn lots. The whole point is that those of you who use your degrees to earn megabucks also pay towards the degrees of those who do valuable but less well-paid jobs.)
Your training bond idea says that, unless they stay working for the NHS until they are in their forties, they are going to be hit with a charge in the tens to hundreds of thousands of pounds. Even if their life and love story takes them elsewhere. Or it turns out that they should really be doing medical research instead. Or (God doesn't forbid, it happens too much) they end up wimpering in their car (or worse driving their car into the nearest tree) at the end of a shift because they just can't take the pressure any more.
Part of my job is about getting young people to aspire and aim high. You don't do that by saying "there's a risk that you will be the cost of a house down if it all goes wrong."
For example, is boat activity largely displacing other sources of asylum seekers?
What is the breakdown of nationalities of people arriving by boat?
What proportion of boat arrivals come from countries - like Afghanistan - where the majority of arrivals are granted asylum?
What proportion of arrivals have conveniently lost their documents?
His BBC Radio 2 breakfast show was a success and his Virgin Radio one is too.
Also, the government and Conservative friendly commentators have repeatedly emphasised that many of the people coming over on boats at present, unlike recent history, are from countries like Albania and don’t have valid claims.
I find it bizarre that expecting the Home Office to do its job is somehow unreasonable or foolish.
PB seems to have returned to its default position of overanalysing hypothetical polls which are released at an undefined point in the future.
If what you're producing is good then the show itself should be the star and people who were relatively unheard of can shine in a good show and grow into being the personalities of the future.
Yes the trio of Clarkson, Hammond and May may have been big personalities by the end, but who had heard of Hammond before he started on Top Gear? He got the job originally because he'd be good at it, not because he was a major known "personality". The BBC seems to have long lost sight of that idea.
The other piece of the puzzle, is what is known in aviation as LOL - loss of licence insurance, which clears outstanding training bonds if you fail your medical.
The issue of medical students, is that currently the government are paying the large majority of the £200k up front, with no obligation on the student to work for the NHS afterwards. So many are moving overseas, or giving up for family reasons after only a few years.
Some people move overseas. OK that happens.
Some people move here from overseas.
If someone is trained in the UK then goes to be a doctor in Dubai - and someone from Dubai is trained to be a doctor there then moves to the UK - does the UK repay Dubai the cost of training the person who moved here?
People move, that's a fact of life. There's nothing wrong with it. Most people don't, some people will, just roll with it.
On average we get more moving to the UK than away from it anyway.
Becoming part of a western democracy also includes having the right to complain about it, by the way :-)
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/irregular-migration-to-the-uk-year-ending-december-2022/irregular-migration-to-the-uk-year-ending-december-2022
In 2022, almost half of small boat arrivals were from these 2 nationalities - Albanians (28%) and Afghans (20%), as shown in Figure 4. Albanians were more prominent from July to September 2022, whereas Afghans became more prominent from October to December 2022.
The majority of small boat arrivals claim asylum. In 2022, 90% (40,302 of 44,666 arrivals) claimed asylum or were recorded as a dependant on an asylum application. However, small boat arrivals account for less than half (45%) of the total number of people claiming asylum in the UK in 2022.
Most asylum claims from small boat arrivals are still awaiting a decision; more recent periods will naturally have a higher proportion of asylum applications awaiting a decision, as less time has passed to allow for applications to be processed. 97% (34,793) of small boat asylum applications in the latest year, or 83% (56,883) of all small boat asylum applications since 2018, are awaiting a decision.
Trouble is that quite a bit of what is known doesn't fit the narrative.
Promptly deporting individuals who do not have a valid asylum claim will deter people without valid asylum claims.
As for the 'nose wrinkling' well it's the flipside of the Braverman rhetoric. The cost of turning some people on is to turn others off.
Ahm oot.
90% of British doctors in Dubai, as an example, will be working in the private sector. There might be a handful in the public hospital or in public health. The pay is comparable to the UK, but with no income tax. IIRC the only places offering huge salaries to doctors are the USA and Australia.
1) All individuals entering the country without documentation are deemed to have enlisted in the Royal Navy. Solves the manning crisis.
2) Employ the Libyan Coastguard to catch the boats and enslave the people in them.
etc
Or we could make it £100K fine to employ an undocumented individual. £50K goes to the immigrant (on conviction). Plus they get unlimited leave to remain.
There is an issue where physics graduates take the humungous teacher training bursary with little or no intention of becoming teachers, but that's different. Education is desperate. (And the bursary is humungous; given that it's tax-free, it meant that when I had a PGCE student, they took home more each month than I did.)
Current polls tell us no more than two key features regarding Lab and Con. Labour are currently attracting around 45% of voters and the trend is that the Conservatives are improving, albeit very slowly. By the time of the next election at the current attrition rate of circa 1% point per month, by Autumn 2024 the Conservatives could be between 1 and 5 points ahead. Clearly some black swan events could ratchet the gap down more quickly. A Johnson return, or a Sunak/Johnson victory in Ukraine?
My view is the next election could well be a 1992 redux. That is no more than a hunch, and at the moment at least, if we are basing our analysis on all the evidence available, it points to the complete opposite.
That creates a potential refugee pool of tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people. So the actual selection factor is whether they have enough money, bravery and/or good luck to get here. That is clearly an awful filter if you are genuinely trying to help the people who need it most.
A much better filter would be "will this person be able to integrate into the post-war society?" If you are a general victim of the hardships of war and crime, the answer is usually yes and you should be hosted in a refugee camp on the borders of your home country and go back after the war. If you are part of a hated minority group that has been brutalized by the majority, the answer is usually no and the West should take you in. And that should apply to people in the Middle Eastern. camps rather than just who gets here.
We of a non-PB faithful persuasion look at the evidence and ponder: "Hmm, a 15 point Labour lead, that can't be right" and those of the PB faithful persuasion ponder: "Hmm, a 15 point Tory deficit, that can't be right".
EDIT: the main point is that it is self financing & self policing. Extend it to anyone deliberately paying less than minimum wage, just for LOLs