The new total will include 174,200 Ukrainian refugees and 160,700 Hongkongers fleeing repression in China — groups entering the country via special visa schemes that command considerable public support.
It will also include large numbers of foreign students — they totaled 485,758 last year
Though to be fair since we are talking net migration and a significant number of those students will leave each year, it is debatable how much influence student numbers have on the figures we are talking about.
I am very cynical about "students".
I think it's a back-door for many to get into the UK permanently, particularly since they can bring families too - it's only the fees that cap the numbers.
If we greatly reduce the numbers of foreign students, we will need to find alternative funding for universities. Though we know the instinct of the right would be simply to shut half of them down, why waste money on "David Beckham Studies" anyway?
Figures for courses should be published against average non graduate stats. For each course
Course name %unemployed and %wage differential vs non graduates at 1,5,10,20 and 30 years. I suspect indeed on those measures some courses are worthless.
While some take a course out of pure intellectual interest many however do so because they think it will give them a higher paying job.
Students deserve these figures to allow them the information they need to choose.
Why waste money on "Jane Austen studies"? English was the media studies of its day. For the sake of the country, employers need to become less snooty about where they recruit from, like when Google discovered its best programmers did not come from Ivy League colleges.
I'm in favour of education for all. Cynics can have a field day allocating courses to trade schools or finishing schools but the rich and powerful often went to the latter.
Having to do all those trendy things like learn Anglo Saxon, read Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon and the Parlement of Foules never felt quite to have the robust rigour of a proper old fashioned media studies course. But distance lends enchantment perhaps.
If you look back to when English courses were introduced over a hundred years ago, the arguments were the same. Learning poems was for schoolchildren. Reading novels was a trivial pursuit; worse than that, a woman's hobby. Face it, an English degree is a posh version of Richard & Judy's book club. And how many English graduates go on to become poets or novelists?
The capacity to translate Beowulf or to identify classical sources in Paradise Lost has never failed to give me that extra edge in the competitive race of life. Pub talk is always enlivened by informed discussion of The Dream of the Rood. Grandchildren open mouthed and enchanted by tales of Gorboduc and the Dunciad.
I'm reading Paradise Lost right now. It doesn't half go on.
That's a screed I associate with serial killers because of a particularly haunting song on Murder Ballads by Nick Cave (and the Bad Seeds).
The new total will include 174,200 Ukrainian refugees and 160,700 Hongkongers fleeing repression in China — groups entering the country via special visa schemes that command considerable public support.
It will also include large numbers of foreign students — they totaled 485,758 last year
Though to be fair since we are talking net migration and a significant number of those students will leave each year, it is debatable how much influence student numbers have on the figures we are talking about.
I am very cynical about "students".
I think it's a back-door for many to get into the UK permanently, particularly since they can bring families too - it's only the fees that cap the numbers.
If we greatly reduce the numbers of foreign students, we will need to find alternative funding for universities. Though we know the instinct of the right would be simply to shut half of them down, why waste money on "David Beckham Studies" anyway?
Figures for courses should be published against average non graduate stats. For each course
Course name %unemployed and %wage differential vs non graduates at 1,5,10,20 and 30 years. I suspect indeed on those measures some courses are worthless.
While some take a course out of pure intellectual interest many however do so because they think it will give them a higher paying job.
Students deserve these figures to allow them the information they need to choose.
Why waste money on "Jane Austen studies"? English was the media studies of its day. For the sake of the country, employers need to become less snooty about where they recruit from, like when Google discovered its best programmers did not come from Ivy League colleges.
I'm in favour of education for all. Cynics can have a field day allocating courses to trade schools or finishing schools but the rich and powerful often went to the latter.
Having to do all those trendy things like learn Anglo Saxon, read Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon and the Parlement of Foules never felt quite to have the robust rigour of a proper old fashioned media studies course. But distance lends enchantment perhaps.
If you look back to when English courses were introduced over a hundred years ago, the arguments were the same. Learning poems was for schoolchildren. Reading novels was a trivial pursuit; worse than that, a woman's hobby. Face it, an English degree is a posh version of Richard & Judy's book club. And how many English graduates go on to become poets or novelists?
The capacity to translate Beowulf or to identify classical sources in Paradise Lost has never failed to give me that extra edge in the competitive race of life. Pub talk is always enlivened by informed discussion of The Dream of the Rood. Grandchildren open mouthed and enchanted by tales of Gorboduc and the Dunciad.
I'm reading Paradise Lost right now. It doesn't half go on.
Don’t worry, Paradise Regain’d is only a mini-sequel.
This is a sector where the UK is internationally competitive. It does wonders for our balance of payments. It would be madness to cut off our nose to spite our face by cutting down international student numbers.
And yet the Home Office under successive Home Secretaries is determined to count students as immigrants.
Home Secretaries have for years been trying to take students out of the stats - but that would make U.K. figures incompatible with international stats, so they haven’t got their way.
The government has delayed the “40 new hospitals” until 2030 or beyond.
One of the more ridiculous claims. Building new units is good in itself, pretending that a new wing is in fact a new hospital is so risible you have to wonder who they think they are fooling. (Themselves?)
The new total will include 174,200 Ukrainian refugees and 160,700 Hongkongers fleeing repression in China — groups entering the country via special visa schemes that command considerable public support.
It will also include large numbers of foreign students — they totaled 485,758 last year
Though to be fair since we are talking net migration and a significant number of those students will leave each year, it is debatable how much influence student numbers have on the figures we are talking about.
I am very cynical about "students".
I think it's a back-door for many to get into the UK permanently, particularly since they can bring families too - it's only the fees that cap the numbers.
If we greatly reduce the numbers of foreign students, we will need to find alternative funding for universities. Though we know the instinct of the right would be simply to shut half of them down, why waste money on "David Beckham Studies" anyway?
Figures for courses should be published against average non graduate stats. For each course
Course name %unemployed and %wage differential vs non graduates at 1,5,10,20 and 30 years. I suspect indeed on those measures some courses are worthless.
While some take a course out of pure intellectual interest many however do so because they think it will give them a higher paying job.
Students deserve these figures to allow them the information they need to choose.
Why waste money on "Jane Austen studies"? English was the media studies of its day. For the sake of the country, employers need to become less snooty about where they recruit from, like when Google discovered its best programmers did not come from Ivy League colleges.
I'm in favour of education for all. Cynics can have a field day allocating courses to trade schools or finishing schools but the rich and powerful often went to the latter.
Having to do all those trendy things like learn Anglo Saxon, read Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon and the Parlement of Foules never felt quite to have the robust rigour of a proper old fashioned media studies course. But distance lends enchantment perhaps.
If you look back to when English courses were introduced over a hundred years ago, the arguments were the same. Learning poems was for schoolchildren. Reading novels was a trivial pursuit; worse than that, a woman's hobby. Face it, an English degree is a posh version of Richard & Judy's book club. And how many English graduates go on to become poets or novelists?
The capacity to translate Beowulf or to identify classical sources in Paradise Lost has never failed to give me that extra edge in the competitive race of life. Pub talk is always enlivened by informed discussion of The Dream of the Rood. Grandchildren open mouthed and enchanted by tales of Gorboduc and the Dunciad.
I'm reading Paradise Lost right now. It doesn't half go on.
Don’t worry, Paradise Regain’d is only a mini-sequel.
Yeah I noticed it looked a bit more condensed - the edition I have has both. Maybe Milton made enough out of the first one to hire an editor?
I would say that in the last 3 years Starmer has made Labour electable again which is no mean feat after the catastrophe of the Corbyn era. He has driven those low life nutters out of Labour in the same way Kinnick did with Militant. He has also sought to reorientate Labour to the centre ground by abandoning the pledges that got him elected one at a time.
The package he is offering now is dull, boring and safe. Which is exactly what he needs. I still think he will make a small majority with the help of a serious dod of seats from Scotland.
He is no Tony Blair or even David Cameron but he has been a significantly better than average LOTO.
I think so much of being a successful LOTO is timing.
If Keir Starmer had tried exactly the same things up against Cameron in GE2015 he'd probably have got no further than Ed Miliband - especially as his personal presence and ratings are so bland.
People just weren't willing to give Labour a hearing then and wanted the Conservatives to continue with their plan. The same applies, of course, in inverse to Rishi as PM now. It will apply to the next Conservative LOTO, in particular.
So remember that point next time someone is "crap": timing.
If William Hague had stood for the leadership in 2001 or 2005, instead of 1997…
The new total will include 174,200 Ukrainian refugees and 160,700 Hongkongers fleeing repression in China — groups entering the country via special visa schemes that command considerable public support.
It will also include large numbers of foreign students — they totaled 485,758 last year
Though to be fair since we are talking net migration and a significant number of those students will leave each year, it is debatable how much influence student numbers have on the figures we are talking about.
I am very cynical about "students".
I think it's a back-door for many to get into the UK permanently, particularly since they can bring families too - it's only the fees that cap the numbers.
If we greatly reduce the numbers of foreign students, we will need to find alternative funding for universities. Though we know the instinct of the right would be simply to shut half of them down, why waste money on "David Beckham Studies" anyway?
Figures for courses should be published against average non graduate stats. For each course
Course name %unemployed and %wage differential vs non graduates at 1,5,10,20 and 30 years. I suspect indeed on those measures some courses are worthless.
While some take a course out of pure intellectual interest many however do so because they think it will give them a higher paying job.
Students deserve these figures to allow them the information they need to choose.
Why waste money on "Jane Austen studies"? English was the media studies of its day. For the sake of the country, employers need to become less snooty about where they recruit from, like when Google discovered its best programmers did not come from Ivy League colleges.
I'm in favour of education for all. Cynics can have a field day allocating courses to trade schools or finishing schools but the rich and powerful often went to the latter.
Having to do all those trendy things like learn Anglo Saxon, read Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon and the Parlement of Foules never felt quite to have the robust rigour of a proper old fashioned media studies course. But distance lends enchantment perhaps.
If you look back to when English courses were introduced over a hundred years ago, the arguments were the same. Learning poems was for schoolchildren. Reading novels was a trivial pursuit; worse than that, a woman's hobby. Face it, an English degree is a posh version of Richard & Judy's book club. And how many English graduates go on to become poets or novelists?
The capacity to translate Beowulf or to identify classical sources in Paradise Lost has never failed to give me that extra edge in the competitive race of life. Pub talk is always enlivened by informed discussion of The Dream of the Rood. Grandchildren open mouthed and enchanted by tales of Gorboduc and the Dunciad.
I'm reading Paradise Lost right now. It doesn't half go on.
This is a sector where the UK is internationally competitive. It does wonders for our balance of payments. It would be madness to cut off our nose to spite our face by cutting down international student numbers.
And yet the Home Office under successive Home Secretaries is determined to count students as immigrants.
Home Secretaries have for years been trying to take students out of the stats - but that would make U.K. figures incompatible with international stats, so they haven’t got their way.
Given our outsize university sector, it skews any comparison anyway. Stupid argument for keeping it.
I would say that in the last 3 years Starmer has made Labour electable again which is no mean feat after the catastrophe of the Corbyn era. He has driven those low life nutters out of Labour in the same way Kinnick did with Militant. He has also sought to reorientate Labour to the centre ground by abandoning the pledges that got him elected one at a time.
The package he is offering now is dull, boring and safe. Which is exactly what he needs. I still think he will make a small majority with the help of a serious dod of seats from Scotland.
He is no Tony Blair or even David Cameron but he has been a significantly better than average LOTO.
I think so much of being a successful LOTO is timing.
If Keir Starmer had tried exactly the same things up against Cameron in GE2015 he'd probably have got no further than Ed Miliband - especially as his personal presence and ratings are so bland.
People just weren't willing to give Labour a hearing then and wanted the Conservatives to continue with their plan. The same applies, of course, in inverse to Rishi as PM now. It will apply to the next Conservative LOTO, in particular.
So remember that point next time someone is "crap": timing.
If William Hague had stood for the leadership in 2001 or 2005, instead of 1997…
How about in 2024? He's not that old, surely?
Born 1961. 36 in 1997 44 in 2005 <<—— when he should have stood. 62 today Younger than Theresa May, older than Boris Johnson and David Cameron.
Not in the Commons any more though, he goes by Lord Hague these days.
This is a sector where the UK is internationally competitive. It does wonders for our balance of payments. It would be madness to cut off our nose to spite our face by cutting down international student numbers.
And yet the Home Office under successive Home Secretaries is determined to count students as immigrants.
Home Secretaries have for years been trying to take students out of the stats - but that would make U.K. figures incompatible with international stats, so they haven’t got their way.
If you change the base in this respect, then to properly net the figures, you would have to count out students who you never counted in in the first place. Or rebase the figures going back several years.
I've no doubt the statisticians went over this carefully, but I still wonder if some unavoidable quirks have made their way into the data and lopsided it a little. Though probably not enough to negate the headlines that will be written.
This is a sector where the UK is internationally competitive. It does wonders for our balance of payments. It would be madness to cut off our nose to spite our face by cutting down international student numbers.
And yet the Home Office under successive Home Secretaries is determined to count students as immigrants.
Home Secretaries have for years been trying to take students out of the stats - but that would make U.K. figures incompatible with international stats, so they haven’t got their way.
Given our outsize university sector, it skews any comparison anyway. Stupid argument for keeping it.
They need keeping in because if the student leaves then they'll emigrate (-1 to the figures some years hence). So the only students kept in over a period of years are those that are staying, and if they're staying then they're definitely an immigrant.
The new total will include 174,200 Ukrainian refugees and 160,700 Hongkongers fleeing repression in China — groups entering the country via special visa schemes that command considerable public support.
It will also include large numbers of foreign students — they totaled 485,758 last year
Though to be fair since we are talking net migration and a significant number of those students will leave each year, it is debatable how much influence student numbers have on the figures we are talking about.
I am very cynical about "students".
I think it's a back-door for many to get into the UK permanently, particularly since they can bring families too - it's only the fees that cap the numbers.
If we greatly reduce the numbers of foreign students, we will need to find alternative funding for universities. Though we know the instinct of the right would be simply to shut half of them down, why waste money on "David Beckham Studies" anyway?
Figures for courses should be published against average non graduate stats. For each course
Course name %unemployed and %wage differential vs non graduates at 1,5,10,20 and 30 years. I suspect indeed on those measures some courses are worthless.
While some take a course out of pure intellectual interest many however do so because they think it will give them a higher paying job.
Students deserve these figures to allow them the information they need to choose.
Why waste money on "Jane Austen studies"? English was the media studies of its day. For the sake of the country, employers need to become less snooty about where they recruit from, like when Google discovered its best programmers did not come from Ivy League colleges.
I'm in favour of education for all. Cynics can have a field day allocating courses to trade schools or finishing schools but the rich and powerful often went to the latter.
Having to do all those trendy things like learn Anglo Saxon, read Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon and the Parlement of Foules never felt quite to have the robust rigour of a proper old fashioned media studies course. But distance lends enchantment perhaps.
If you look back to when English courses were introduced over a hundred years ago, the arguments were the same. Learning poems was for schoolchildren. Reading novels was a trivial pursuit; worse than that, a woman's hobby. Face it, an English degree is a posh version of Richard & Judy's book club. And how many English graduates go on to become poets or novelists?
The capacity to translate Beowulf or to identify classical sources in Paradise Lost has never failed to give me that extra edge in the competitive race of life. Pub talk is always enlivened by informed discussion of The Dream of the Rood. Grandchildren open mouthed and enchanted by tales of Gorboduc and the Dunciad.
I'm reading Paradise Lost right now. It doesn't half go on.
And the bad guy's the only interesting character.
Yeah I'm getting that. Satan. Complex guy. Mammon seems like a good guy. Perhaps I've been working in the financial sector too long but I found his speech in book 2 quite persuasive.
"DESANTIS: "The woke mind virus is basically a form of cultural marxism.” I went to a public meeting with our MP (Suella) and she mentioned Cultural Marxism. I wonder if anyone in Fareham knows what it is.
The new PM, Chris Hipkins, seems notably more competent than Jacinda Ardern, and is adopting a more Sino-skeptic foreign policy.
The Labour/Green government are currently neck and neck in the polls with a possible National/Act alternative.
National’s leader, former Air NZ CEO Christopher Luxon, is a bit underwhelming.
The Māori Party, which could gain up to 4/5 seats and the balance of power in NZ’s 120-strong parliament, have become quite radical in the last few years. This could be weaponised against Labour, if it were thought they needed Māori Party votes to stay in government.
But I think the odds narrowly favour a continuation of the Labour/Green coalition.
"DESANTIS: "The woke mind virus is basically a form of cultural marxism.” I went to a public meeting with our MP (Suella) and she mentioned Cultural Marxism. I wonder if anyone in Fareham knows what it is.
This is a sector where the UK is internationally competitive. It does wonders for our balance of payments. It would be madness to cut off our nose to spite our face by cutting down international student numbers.
And yet the Home Office under successive Home Secretaries is determined to count students as immigrants.
They are immigrants that's why, if they're here to study a three year course. Anyone who moves here planning to be here for 12 months or more is by definition an immigrant, and if they leave after three years then they are an emigrant.
Besides it seems entirely reasonable considering its a net figure?
If foreign students are emigrating after graduation, then unless the sector is expanding the net figure would be zero. If they're not emigrating after graduation, then the net figure is positive.
The net figure being positive could be a really good thing. But if it is, its a fact, and we shouldn't twist facts to say what we want them to say - the truth is the truth, and the truth is important.
The chief constable of Police Scotland has admitted that institutional racism, sexism, misogyny and discrimination exists within in the force.
Sir Iain Livingstone told a meeting of the Scottish Police Authority that prejudice is a “reality for Police Scotland” and is “rightly of great concern”.
This is a sector where the UK is internationally competitive. It does wonders for our balance of payments. It would be madness to cut off our nose to spite our face by cutting down international student numbers.
And yet the Home Office under successive Home Secretaries is determined to count students as immigrants.
Home Secretaries have for years been trying to take students out of the stats - but that would make U.K. figures incompatible with international stats, so they haven’t got their way.
Given our outsize university sector, it skews any comparison anyway. Stupid argument for keeping it.
They need keeping in because if the student leaves then they'll emigrate (-1 to the figures some years hence). So the only students kept in over a period of years are those that are staying, and if they're staying then they're definitely an immigrant.
Is this bit about food regulation ? “You need major, major overhaul of the whole enchilada with respect to public health in this country.”
Good to see presidential candidates picking ideas from the fascist playbook the rejection of modernism (page 14) subjecting opposing ideologies to violence (page 88)
And what's this "war room" shit about? Why not just call it a bunker, you dead-eyed psycho?
War room seems to be American for campaign headquarters, with a hint of below-radar edginess. The film The War Room about the Clinton campaign is said to have inspired a young Dominic Cummings in his quest for greatness. The similarly-titled War Room is a more recent film about the power of prayer and it is possible DeSantis is hoping to lure in religiously-minded voters.
This GOP primary battle is certainly turning me religious. Every night before I go to bed I kneel and pray to the almighty that they find somebody other than Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis.
This is a sector where the UK is internationally competitive. It does wonders for our balance of payments. It would be madness to cut off our nose to spite our face by cutting down international student numbers.
And yet the Home Office under successive Home Secretaries is determined to count students as immigrants.
Home Secretaries have for years been trying to take students out of the stats - but that would make U.K. figures incompatible with international stats, so they haven’t got their way.
Given our outsize university sector, it skews any comparison anyway. Stupid argument for keeping it.
Government have screwed up the presentation of the statistics.
1. There was an outsize cohort of international students last year, because of deferrals during the pandemic, and universities are generally pretty good at managing accomodation.
2. There was a huge, mostly temporary, influx of Ukranian refugees, who are mostly living with families and not affecting housing demand.
3. There was a huge one-off influx of Hong Kong residents fleeing that country, most of whom are in the middle classes and not dependent on the State.
If they’d done some presentation around these three groups, the government can make a good case for the post-Brexit immigration system working well, apart from the small boats.
The chief constable of Police Scotland has admitted that institutional racism, sexism, misogyny and discrimination exists within in the force.
Sir Iain Livingstone told a meeting of the Scottish Police Authority that prejudice is a “reality for Police Scotland” and is “rightly of great concern”.
It's all just theatre. If he genuinely believed his police force was institutionally bigoted, and a matter of great concern, he would have resigned in disgrace.
Was having lunch with an ex-Cons minister the other day.
Why, I asked, if every government for over a decade has pledged to lower immigration are we seeing record high net migration numbers.
They said that he had worked in many departments and of all of them were pretty well run and efficient bar one; the Home Office was the most dysfunctional and they could well believe there was some civil service effort conscious or otherwise to prevent the policy being enacted.
I was and am super-sceptical that a cabal of (presumably remainer) civil servants are frustrating the government's efforts to reduce immigration but they seemed to think this was the case.
The probable Rutherglen by-election is almost becoming a free hit for the SNP. The apparent certainty of a Labour gain here means that such a result will be met with a shrug of the shoulders by most.
A Labour win has been over hyped already by the overwhelmingly Brit Nat unionist media in Scotland (including BBC Scotland and to a lesser extent STV). If the SNP were to hold a seat, which was one of the six that Labour held between 2017-2019, that would be a disaster for Labour in Scotland.
I await with interest who the SNP candidate turns out to be, as that may be critical. The Labour candidate Michael Shanks seems to think attacking Ferrier is going to get the job done for him, but he will be attacked for his party's "make Brexit work" and other stances not approved by a majority in Scotland (he can't go heavily on GRR, for example, as Labour MSPs were more in favour than SNP MSPs).
Sure to be either a family member or SPAD of an SNP MSP/MP and sure to be woketastic and a lickspittle to boot.
Thread. The Russian propaganda argues that Ukrainians are afraid to speak Russian and there is an ethnic conflict. I took a walk in Poltava and recorded which language people speak. Similar to Kyiv it is 50/50 and dialect. People are free to speak whatever; there is no tension.1/ https://twitter.com/Mylovanov/status/1661638363449905155
This is my favourite Tina Turner song - You Got What You Wanted. It was released as a single in November 68, while Hey Jude was No.1, then released on the album Cussin’, Cryin’ And Carryin’ On in 69. It’s funky as hell
The new total will include 174,200 Ukrainian refugees and 160,700 Hongkongers fleeing repression in China — groups entering the country via special visa schemes that command considerable public support.
It will also include large numbers of foreign students — they totaled 485,758 last year
Though to be fair since we are talking net migration and a significant number of those students will leave each year, it is debatable how much influence student numbers have on the figures we are talking about.
I am very cynical about "students".
I think it's a back-door for many to get into the UK permanently, particularly since they can bring families too - it's only the fees that cap the numbers.
If we greatly reduce the numbers of foreign students, we will need to find alternative funding for universities. Though we know the instinct of the right would be simply to shut half of them down, why waste money on "David Beckham Studies" anyway?
Figures for courses should be published against average non graduate stats. For each course
Course name %unemployed and %wage differential vs non graduates at 1,5,10,20 and 30 years. I suspect indeed on those measures some courses are worthless.
While some take a course out of pure intellectual interest many however do so because they think it will give them a higher paying job.
Students deserve these figures to allow them the information they need to choose.
Not sure that the differentials compared to non-grads are included (but anyone going to university should be capable of working that out from published figures) and not 30 years out, but then I'm not sure that information on long term outcomes for someone doing a course 30 years ago is that relevant. 30 years ago is in the middle of the 90s mass expansion so things could be quite different now in many places.
"Are they not?"
Is that a Scottishism? I always imagine it said with a Scottish accent. Perhaps too much Dr Finlay as a child.
I'm a bit of a linguistic sponge and work with many Scots. I use 'outwith' quite frequently. No idea whether 'are they not' is a Scottish turn of phrase.
Mr. Royale, one of the most intriguing aspects of the Diadochi era is that almost any one of them could've founded a successful dynasty. It was bad luck for so many of them to be around when there were so many capable and intelligent leaders.
Likewise, Hannibal had atrocious luck. A few centuries later, Rome would've capitulated. A few centuries earlier, Rome would've been too weak to fight. But he encountered it at the zenith of its patriotic fervour, and militarily on the ascendant too.
Edited extra bit: Machiavelli makes a similar note regarding leaders requiring opportunity, such as Theseus and uniting the scattered Athenians.
Randomness, luck, chance and opportunity steer all things. Every single important bit of my (lucky) life at this moment would have been different - radically so, but for being placed in a particular language subject set, against my will, at school at age 12.
Most lives when you track back depend on utterly trivial forks in the road.
And the single most influential chance factor of all is birth circumstances - where and to whom you are born.
It isn't just a matter of material comfort and security, although that helps. The best luck you can have is to be born into a happy family.
And on that philosophical note I shall go and return to mine. Laters.
Morning all! Lets all enjoy the spectacle of today's *legal* migration numbers and the mouth-foaming from a right wing. "We're not racists" they insist, they just want all foreigners to go away. Which isn't racism, its jingoism, bigotry, false patriotism where the Empire still dominates the world, all that bollocks.
Starmer's attack on this yesterday was clever, because it calls out the hypocrisy. What may be less clever is that it doesn't face into the reality that much of the WWC red wall vote is as I describe - jingoist and bigoted. They don't want anyone who isn't them living there, never mind people who speak funny.
You really didn’t need to repeat that bile.
Many of us on the centre-right are proud of what the UK has done for Ukraine and Hong Kong over the past year, and believe that a skills-based system is better than a free-for-all based on nationality, that had the effect of driving down wages for the very poorest in society.
People seemingly only wanted a points-based migration system that greatly reduced numbers. Your side won - and we have that points-based system. Yet instead of everyone been delighted that it is working, the right are up in arms at the numbers of people it is allowing in.
As I have politely pointed out on here before, the target immigration number of so many is zero, or preferably a negative number. Their aim is to keep people out, the means of migration is merely a target along the route to foreigners go home.
You are a long long long way away . Try knocking doors on some of these red wall estates and actually ask people what they think.
That's you throwing your own prejudices around.
I did not want to see a reduction in numbers, in fact a fear of reduction in numbers is one reason I originally supported Remain.
Part of what convinced me to switch to Leave was the immigration debate being reframed by those in Vote Leave (as opposed to Farage's racist bunch) not as being in favour of cutting it, but controlling it and ending discrimination.
If we have record numbers of people coming here, all of whom meet our criteria of who we want to have here, then that is a record success in my eyes - not a record failure.
I'm no fan of the current government, since I think they're extremely anti-aspiration. But this is one thing that is going well.
Was having lunch with an ex-Cons minister the other day.
Why, I asked, if every government for over a decade has pledged to lower immigration are we seeing record high net migration numbers.
They said that he had worked in many departments and of all of them were pretty well run and efficient bar one; the Home Office was the most dysfunctional and they could well believe there was some civil service effort conscious or otherwise to prevent the policy being enacted.
I was and am super-sceptical that a cabal of (presumably remainer) civil servants are frustrating the government's efforts to reduce immigration but they seemed to think this was the case.
Isn't the issue that the better run departments, like the Treasury, don't want immigration to go down? The government might want immigration to come down but they want lots of other stuff too that is incompatible with that, and the other stuff wins. Probably rightly.
Was having lunch with an ex-Cons minister the other day.
Why, I asked, if every government for over a decade has pledged to lower immigration are we seeing record high net migration numbers.
They said that he had worked in many departments and of all of them were pretty well run and efficient bar one; the Home Office was the most dysfunctional and they could well believe there was some civil service effort conscious or otherwise to prevent the policy being enacted.
I was and am super-sceptical that a cabal of (presumably remainer) civil servants are frustrating the government's efforts to reduce immigration but they seemed to think this was the case.
Look at the last couple of decades' Home Secretaries. With leadership like that, is it any wonder it's a dysfunctional organisation ?
One success Rishi has had: the flow of Albanians has stopped. 12,000 arrived in 2022, but only 28 made the crossing between January and March this year.
"DESANTIS: "The woke mind virus is basically a form of cultural marxism.” I went to a public meeting with our MP (Suella) and she mentioned Cultural Marxism. I wonder if anyone in Fareham knows what it is.
I'm absolutely sure that neither DeSantis or Suella know what it is either.
Mr. Royale, one of the most intriguing aspects of the Diadochi era is that almost any one of them could've founded a successful dynasty. It was bad luck for so many of them to be around when there were so many capable and intelligent leaders.
Likewise, Hannibal had atrocious luck. A few centuries later, Rome would've capitulated. A few centuries earlier, Rome would've been too weak to fight. But he encountered it at the zenith of its patriotic fervour, and militarily on the ascendant too.
Edited extra bit: Machiavelli makes a similar note regarding leaders requiring opportunity, such as Theseus and uniting the scattered Athenians.
Randomness, luck, chance and opportunity steer all things. Every single important bit of my (lucky) life at this moment would have been different - radically so, but for being placed in a particular language subject set, against my will, at school at age 12.
Most lives when you track back depend on utterly trivial forks in the road.
And the single most influential chance factor of all is birth circumstances - where and to whom you are born.
It isn't just a matter of material comfort and security, although that helps. The best luck you can have is to be born into a happy family.
And on that philosophical note I shall go and return to mine. Laters.
Was having lunch with an ex-Cons minister the other day.
Why, I asked, if every government for over a decade has pledged to lower immigration are we seeing record high net migration numbers.
They said that he had worked in many departments and of all of them were pretty well run and efficient bar one; the Home Office was the most dysfunctional and they could well believe there was some civil service effort conscious or otherwise to prevent the policy being enacted.
I was and am super-sceptical that a cabal of (presumably remainer) civil servants are frustrating the government's efforts to reduce immigration but they seemed to think this was the case.
Look at the last couple of decades' Home Secretaries. With leadership like that, is it any wonder it's a dysfunctional organisation ?
Was having lunch with an ex-Cons minister the other day.
Why, I asked, if every government for over a decade has pledged to lower immigration are we seeing record high net migration numbers.
They said that he had worked in many departments and of all of them were pretty well run and efficient bar one; the Home Office was the most dysfunctional and they could well believe there was some civil service effort conscious or otherwise to prevent the policy being enacted.
I was and am super-sceptical that a cabal of (presumably remainer) civil servants are frustrating the government's efforts to reduce immigration but they seemed to think this was the case.
The entire Suffolk police force (3 cars and a van) appears to be in Southwold (outside the post office) to arrest a little old lady with a trolley. Unless she has a shotgun in the trolley it appears to be an over reaction. The trolley has made several trips in and out of the police van.
Was having lunch with an ex-Cons minister the other day.
Why, I asked, if every government for over a decade has pledged to lower immigration are we seeing record high net migration numbers.
They said that he had worked in many departments and of all of them were pretty well run and efficient bar one; the Home Office was the most dysfunctional and they could well believe there was some civil service effort conscious or otherwise to prevent the policy being enacted.
I was and am super-sceptical that a cabal of (presumably remainer) civil servants are frustrating the government's efforts to reduce immigration but they seemed to think this was the case.
You did very well at obscuring gender, presumably to help preserve anonymity*, right up until word four of paragraph 2
*up until then I was wondering how many non-binary Home Office ministers there had been and thinking not many
Was having lunch with an ex-Cons minister the other day.
Why, I asked, if every government for over a decade has pledged to lower immigration are we seeing record high net migration numbers.
They said that he had worked in many departments and of all of them were pretty well run and efficient bar one; the Home Office was the most dysfunctional and they could well believe there was some civil service effort conscious or otherwise to prevent the policy being enacted.
I was and am super-sceptical that a cabal of (presumably remainer) civil servants are frustrating the government's efforts to reduce immigration but they seemed to think this was the case.
I'm so looking forward to Labour actually looking at where the problem is and either abolishing the Treasury or at the very changing to keep out of regional matters.
Mr. Royale, one of the most intriguing aspects of the Diadochi era is that almost any one of them could've founded a successful dynasty. It was bad luck for so many of them to be around when there were so many capable and intelligent leaders.
Likewise, Hannibal had atrocious luck. A few centuries later, Rome would've capitulated. A few centuries earlier, Rome would've been too weak to fight. But he encountered it at the zenith of its patriotic fervour, and militarily on the ascendant too.
Edited extra bit: Machiavelli makes a similar note regarding leaders requiring opportunity, such as Theseus and uniting the scattered Athenians.
Randomness, luck, chance and opportunity steer all things. Every single important bit of my (lucky) life at this moment would have been different - radically so, but for being placed in a particular language subject set, against my will, at school at age 12.
Most lives when you track back depend on utterly trivial forks in the road.
And the single most influential chance factor of all is birth circumstances - where and to whom you are born.
It isn't just a matter of material comfort and security, although that helps. The best luck you can have is to be born into a happy family.
And on that philosophical note I shall go and return to mine. Laters.
The new total will include 174,200 Ukrainian refugees and 160,700 Hongkongers fleeing repression in China — groups entering the country via special visa schemes that command considerable public support.
It will also include large numbers of foreign students — they totaled 485,758 last year
Though to be fair since we are talking net migration and a significant number of those students will leave each year, it is debatable how much influence student numbers have on the figures we are talking about.
I am very cynical about "students".
I think it's a back-door for many to get into the UK permanently, particularly since they can bring families too - it's only the fees that cap the numbers.
Fees income from foreign students is an important part of the economy. It’s much bigger than fishing. Remember how much the fishing industry was a talking point during Brexit? It’s much less than the educating foreign students industry.
I agree - but my local Facebook group absolutely hates them.
Student accommodation only just pips 15-minutes cities as the source of all evil in Edinburgh. Developers love them because they can build scandi-prison cell accomodation and no one complains about the quality.
There's another piece to that puzzle.
I asked the people working on a block of student accommodation about certain features - the builders reckoned that they were designed so that the prison cells could be knocked together and turned into flats with minimum effort.
Getting permission to build student accommodation is easier, apparently. So the university goes in with a developer and builds a block on the edge of a not so good area. The student gentrify it. The prices rise. Sell the block as flats. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
I would say that in the last 3 years Starmer has made Labour electable again which is no mean feat after the catastrophe of the Corbyn era. He has driven those low life nutters out of Labour in the same way Kinnick did with Militant. He has also sought to reorientate Labour to the centre ground by abandoning the pledges that got him elected one at a time.
The package he is offering now is dull, boring and safe. Which is exactly what he needs. I still think he will make a small majority with the help of a serious dod of seats from Scotland.
He is no Tony Blair or even David Cameron but he has been a significantly better than average LOTO.
I think so much of being a successful LOTO is timing.
If Keir Starmer had tried exactly the same things up against Cameron in GE2015 he'd probably have got no further than Ed Miliband - especially as his personal presence and ratings are so bland.
People just weren't willing to give Labour a hearing then and wanted the Conservatives to continue with their plan. The same applies, of course, in inverse to Rishi as PM now. It will apply to the next Conservative LOTO, in particular.
So remember that point next time someone is "crap": timing.
If William Hague had stood for the leadership in 2001 or 2005, instead of 1997…
You have to take your chances when they come, though, and Hague's might well not have come again. Portillo was unexpectedly unavailable in 1997, and Hague was a relatively obvious unifying choice with the other candidates being Clarke and Redwood.
Maybe, had he sat it out, he'd still have been in contention in 2001 or 2005. But it would have seemed pretty gutless and his star might very well have waned.
Hague was always a mixed bag - a capable Commons performer but always came across as a bit odd to the public (although he's improved with age and with distance from frontline politics, as many do). And in terms of political strategy goes, it took some going to retreat further back into the core vote and not even to get a bit of dead cat bounce in the 2001 election. I don't mind the guy, but he's not a giant and I'm not sure he'd even have been a significant contender in 2001 or 2005 - he needed some good fortune to be the man in 1997.
Is this bit about food regulation ? “You need major, major overhaul of the whole enchilada with respect to public health in this country.”
Given US portion sizes perhaps there should be a ban on serving the whole enchilada and it should be split into thirds for breakfast, lunch and dinner?
Not sure if you're joking, but "the whole enchilada" is a common phrase in the US like "the whole shooting match" or "the whole kit and caboodle" here.
“You need major, major overhaul of the whole shooting match with respect to public health in this country.”
Still sounds stupid.
(And everyone knows what 'the whole enchilada' means.)
"Major overhaul of public health" I suppose he means. He's got a lot of padding in there.
I think it's more of a dog whistle to the antivaxxers. Hence the extended periphrasis.
Do you know, I genuinely thought for a moment he intended to *improve* healthcare... 😀
When Americans talk about “healthcare” in a legislative sense, they almost certainly mean either vaccinations or abortions, depending on their political beliefs. Perhaps also sex-change operations.
Memories of standing on those outside platforms (13 and 14?) where the through trains run. It was close to dangerous at peak times, the best part of two decades ago.
The new total will include 174,200 Ukrainian refugees and 160,700 Hongkongers fleeing repression in China — groups entering the country via special visa schemes that command considerable public support.
It will also include large numbers of foreign students — they totaled 485,758 last year
Though to be fair since we are talking net migration and a significant number of those students will leave each year, it is debatable how much influence student numbers have on the figures we are talking about.
I am very cynical about "students".
I think it's a back-door for many to get into the UK permanently, particularly since they can bring families too - it's only the fees that cap the numbers.
Fees income from foreign students is an important part of the economy. It’s much bigger than fishing. Remember how much the fishing industry was a talking point during Brexit? It’s much less than the educating foreign students industry.
I agree - but my local Facebook group absolutely hates them.
Student accommodation only just pips 15-minutes cities as the source of all evil in Edinburgh. Developers love them because they can build scandi-prison cell accomodation and no one complains about the quality.
There's another piece to that puzzle.
I asked the people working on a block of student accommodation about certain features - the builders reckoned that they were designed so that the prison cells could be knocked together and turned into flats with minimum effort.
Getting permission to build student accommodation is easier, apparently. So the university goes in with a developer and builds a block on the edge of a not so good area. The student gentrify it. The prices rise. Sell the block as flats. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Students have changed a bit since my day if their presence increases the desirability of an area.
One success Rishi has had: the flow of Albanians has stopped. 12,000 arrived in 2022, but only 28 made the crossing between January and March this year.
In 2021, Peter Lam Bui posted a parody video impersonating Salt Bae – Nusret Gökçe, a Turkish chef who parlayed his meme stardom into high-end eateries – by sprinkling herbs on noodle soup and calling himself “Green Onion Bae”.
But his video came after a clip of a high-ranking Vietnamese official in London tucking into a steak at Gökçe’s Knightsbridge venue went viral in Vietnam. Lam was in trouble within days of uploading his video, and filmed a police visit to his home in the central city of Da Nang.
On Thursday, the former activist, 39, was convicted of spreading anti-state propaganda by a court in Da Nang, lawyer Le Dinh Viet told AFP...
The new total will include 174,200 Ukrainian refugees and 160,700 Hongkongers fleeing repression in China — groups entering the country via special visa schemes that command considerable public support.
It will also include large numbers of foreign students — they totaled 485,758 last year
Though to be fair since we are talking net migration and a significant number of those students will leave each year, it is debatable how much influence student numbers have on the figures we are talking about.
I am very cynical about "students".
I think it's a back-door for many to get into the UK permanently, particularly since they can bring families too - it's only the fees that cap the numbers.
If we greatly reduce the numbers of foreign students, we will need to find alternative funding for universities. Though we know the instinct of the right would be simply to shut half of them down, why waste money on "David Beckham Studies" anyway?
Figures for courses should be published against average non graduate stats. For each course
Course name %unemployed and %wage differential vs non graduates at 1,5,10,20 and 30 years. I suspect indeed on those measures some courses are worthless.
While some take a course out of pure intellectual interest many however do so because they think it will give them a higher paying job.
Students deserve these figures to allow them the information they need to choose.
Why waste money on "Jane Austen studies"? English was the media studies of its day. For the sake of the country, employers need to become less snooty about where they recruit from, like when Google discovered its best programmers did not come from Ivy League colleges.
I'm in favour of education for all. Cynics can have a field day allocating courses to trade schools or finishing schools but the rich and powerful often went to the latter.
Having to do all those trendy things like learn Anglo Saxon, read Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon and the Parlement of Foules never felt quite to have the robust rigour of a proper old fashioned media studies course. But distance lends enchantment perhaps.
If you look back to when English courses were introduced over a hundred years ago, the arguments were the same. Learning poems was for schoolchildren. Reading novels was a trivial pursuit; worse than that, a woman's hobby. Face it, an English degree is a posh version of Richard & Judy's book club. And how many English graduates go on to become poets or novelists?
The capacity to translate Beowulf or to identify classical sources in Paradise Lost has never failed to give me that extra edge in the competitive race of life. Pub talk is always enlivened by informed discussion of The Dream of the Rood. Grandchildren open mouthed and enchanted by tales of Gorboduc and the Dunciad.
I'm reading Paradise Lost right now. It doesn't half go on.
Don’t worry, Paradise Regain’d is only a mini-sequel.
Reading English gives you an advantage in this. Because you have already read these ghastly works (Regain'd worse than Lost) you don't have to read them again.
Memories of standing on those outside platforms (13 and 14?) where the through trains run. It was close to dangerous at peak times, the best part of two decades ago.
It's even worse now.
Particularly as Northern and TPE use those platforms, because they are regularly late, you have platforms 13 & 14 heaving with passengers, and often nowhere to go.
It is a miracle there hasn't been a mass casualty incident there with people falling off the platforms or being crushed up the stairs.
The new total will include 174,200 Ukrainian refugees and 160,700 Hongkongers fleeing repression in China — groups entering the country via special visa schemes that command considerable public support.
It will also include large numbers of foreign students — they totaled 485,758 last year
Though to be fair since we are talking net migration and a significant number of those students will leave each year, it is debatable how much influence student numbers have on the figures we are talking about.
I am very cynical about "students".
I think it's a back-door for many to get into the UK permanently, particularly since they can bring families too - it's only the fees that cap the numbers.
If we greatly reduce the numbers of foreign students, we will need to find alternative funding for universities. Though we know the instinct of the right would be simply to shut half of them down, why waste money on "David Beckham Studies" anyway?
Figures for courses should be published against average non graduate stats. For each course
Course name %unemployed and %wage differential vs non graduates at 1,5,10,20 and 30 years. I suspect indeed on those measures some courses are worthless.
While some take a course out of pure intellectual interest many however do so because they think it will give them a higher paying job.
Students deserve these figures to allow them the information they need to choose.
Why waste money on "Jane Austen studies"? English was the media studies of its day. For the sake of the country, employers need to become less snooty about where they recruit from, like when Google discovered its best programmers did not come from Ivy League colleges.
I'm in favour of education for all. Cynics can have a field day allocating courses to trade schools or finishing schools but the rich and powerful often went to the latter.
Having to do all those trendy things like learn Anglo Saxon, read Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon and the Parlement of Foules never felt quite to have the robust rigour of a proper old fashioned media studies course. But distance lends enchantment perhaps.
If you look back to when English courses were introduced over a hundred years ago, the arguments were the same. Learning poems was for schoolchildren. Reading novels was a trivial pursuit; worse than that, a woman's hobby. Face it, an English degree is a posh version of Richard & Judy's book club. And how many English graduates go on to become poets or novelists?
The capacity to translate Beowulf or to identify classical sources in Paradise Lost has never failed to give me that extra edge in the competitive race of life. Pub talk is always enlivened by informed discussion of The Dream of the Rood. Grandchildren open mouthed and enchanted by tales of Gorboduc and the Dunciad.
I'm reading Paradise Lost right now. It doesn't half go on.
Don’t worry, Paradise Regain’d is only a mini-sequel.
Reading English gives you an advantage in this. Because you have already read these ghastly works (Regain'd worse than Lost) you don't have to read them again.
I'm not sure how anything could be worse than Lost.
It started off good in the first few seasons, but that last season a really awful disappointment.
Was having lunch with an ex-Cons minister the other day.
Why, I asked, if every government for over a decade has pledged to lower immigration are we seeing record high net migration numbers.
They said that he had worked in many departments and of all of them were pretty well run and efficient bar one; the Home Office was the most dysfunctional and they could well believe there was some civil service effort conscious or otherwise to prevent the policy being enacted.
I was and am super-sceptical that a cabal of (presumably remainer) civil servants are frustrating the government's efforts to reduce immigration but they seemed to think this was the case.
You did very well at obscuring gender, presumably to help preserve anonymity*, right up until word four of paragraph 2
*up until then I was wondering how many non-binary Home Office ministers there had been and thinking not many
Memories of standing on those outside platforms (13 and 14?) where the through trains run. It was close to dangerous at peak times, the best part of two decades ago.
It's even worse now.
Particularly as Northern and TPE use those platforms, because they are regularly late, you have platforms 13 & 14 heaving with passengers, and often nowhere to go.
It is a miracle there hasn't been a mass casualty incident there with people falling off the platforms or being crushed up the stairs.
I used those platforms on many occasions, during my "Northern Expedition" of 2017.
The new total will include 174,200 Ukrainian refugees and 160,700 Hongkongers fleeing repression in China — groups entering the country via special visa schemes that command considerable public support.
It will also include large numbers of foreign students — they totaled 485,758 last year
Though to be fair since we are talking net migration and a significant number of those students will leave each year, it is debatable how much influence student numbers have on the figures we are talking about.
I am very cynical about "students".
I think it's a back-door for many to get into the UK permanently, particularly since they can bring families too - it's only the fees that cap the numbers.
Fees income from foreign students is an important part of the economy. It’s much bigger than fishing. Remember how much the fishing industry was a talking point during Brexit? It’s much less than the educating foreign students industry.
I agree - but my local Facebook group absolutely hates them.
Student accommodation only just pips 15-minutes cities as the source of all evil in Edinburgh. Developers love them because they can build scandi-prison cell accomodation and no one complains about the quality.
There's another piece to that puzzle.
I asked the people working on a block of student accommodation about certain features - the builders reckoned that they were designed so that the prison cells could be knocked together and turned into flats with minimum effort.
Getting permission to build student accommodation is easier, apparently. So the university goes in with a developer and builds a block on the edge of a not so good area. The student gentrify it. The prices rise. Sell the block as flats. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Students have changed a bit since my day if their presence increases the desirability of an area.
They don't tend to stab people and are very, very middle class in general. Especially the Citizen Smith types.
Morning all! Lets all enjoy the spectacle of today's *legal* migration numbers and the mouth-foaming from a right wing. "We're not racists" they insist, they just want all foreigners to go away. Which isn't racism, its jingoism, bigotry, false patriotism where the Empire still dominates the world, all that bollocks.
Starmer's attack on this yesterday was clever, because it calls out the hypocrisy. What may be less clever is that it doesn't face into the reality that much of the WWC red wall vote is as I describe - jingoist and bigoted. They don't want anyone who isn't them living there, never mind people who speak funny.
You really didn’t need to repeat that bile.
Many of us on the centre-right are proud of what the UK has done for Ukraine and Hong Kong over the past year, and believe that a skills-based system is better than a free-for-all based on nationality, that had the effect of driving down wages for the very poorest in society.
People seemingly only wanted a points-based migration system that greatly reduced numbers. Your side won - and we have that points-based system. Yet instead of everyone been delighted that it is working, the right are up in arms at the numbers of people it is allowing in.
As I have politely pointed out on here before, the target immigration number of so many is zero, or preferably a negative number. Their aim is to keep people out, the means of migration is merely a target along the route to foreigners go home.
You are a long long long way away . Try knocking doors on some of these red wall estates and actually ask people what they think.
That's you throwing your own prejudices around.
I did not want to see a reduction in numbers, in fact a fear of reduction in numbers is one reason I originally supported Remain.
Part of what convinced me to switch to Leave was the immigration debate being reframed by those in Vote Leave (as opposed to Farage's racist bunch) not as being in favour of cutting it, but controlling it and ending discrimination.
If we have record numbers of people coming here, all of whom meet our criteria of who we want to have here, then that is a record success in my eyes - not a record failure.
I'm no fan of the current government, since I think they're extremely anti-aspiration. But this is one thing that is going well.
You may not want a reduction in numbers. But so many Tories and Tory supporters do. And PM after PM after PM has had to pledge to make a very real reduction in numbers. "My own prejudices" are what Rishi Sunak has said today on the This Morning sofa.
The new total will include 174,200 Ukrainian refugees and 160,700 Hongkongers fleeing repression in China — groups entering the country via special visa schemes that command considerable public support.
It will also include large numbers of foreign students — they totaled 485,758 last year
Though to be fair since we are talking net migration and a significant number of those students will leave each year, it is debatable how much influence student numbers have on the figures we are talking about.
I am very cynical about "students".
I think it's a back-door for many to get into the UK permanently, particularly since they can bring families too - it's only the fees that cap the numbers.
If we greatly reduce the numbers of foreign students, we will need to find alternative funding for universities. Though we know the instinct of the right would be simply to shut half of them down, why waste money on "David Beckham Studies" anyway?
Figures for courses should be published against average non graduate stats. For each course
Course name %unemployed and %wage differential vs non graduates at 1,5,10,20 and 30 years. I suspect indeed on those measures some courses are worthless.
While some take a course out of pure intellectual interest many however do so because they think it will give them a higher paying job.
Students deserve these figures to allow them the information they need to choose.
Why waste money on "Jane Austen studies"? English was the media studies of its day. For the sake of the country, employers need to become less snooty about where they recruit from, like when Google discovered its best programmers did not come from Ivy League colleges.
I'm in favour of education for all. Cynics can have a field day allocating courses to trade schools or finishing schools but the rich and powerful often went to the latter.
Having to do all those trendy things like learn Anglo Saxon, read Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon and the Parlement of Foules never felt quite to have the robust rigour of a proper old fashioned media studies course. But distance lends enchantment perhaps.
If you look back to when English courses were introduced over a hundred years ago, the arguments were the same. Learning poems was for schoolchildren. Reading novels was a trivial pursuit; worse than that, a woman's hobby. Face it, an English degree is a posh version of Richard & Judy's book club. And how many English graduates go on to become poets or novelists?
The capacity to translate Beowulf or to identify classical sources in Paradise Lost has never failed to give me that extra edge in the competitive race of life. Pub talk is always enlivened by informed discussion of The Dream of the Rood. Grandchildren open mouthed and enchanted by tales of Gorboduc and the Dunciad.
I'm reading Paradise Lost right now. It doesn't half go on.
And the bad guy's the only interesting character.
Yeah I'm getting that. Satan. Complex guy. Mammon seems like a good guy. Perhaps I've been working in the financial sector too long but I found his speech in book 2 quite persuasive.
Pilgrims' Progress, now almost unread, is a much more fun read from the puritan tradition of the 17th century. Very English, no classical allusions much, short and to the point, unerring in its aim at fallen human nature. And, most of all, gives us 'Vanity Fair', title of great novel and a two word description of so much of modernity.
And then there's this:
Then went the jury out, whose names were, Mr. Blind-man, Mr. No-good, Mr. Malice, Mr. Love-lust, Mr. Live-loose, Mr. Heady, Mr. High-mind, Mr. Enmity, Mr. Liar, Mr. Cruelty, Mr. Hate-light, and Mr. Implacable......
And that's without even starting on the House of Commons.
The new total will include 174,200 Ukrainian refugees and 160,700 Hongkongers fleeing repression in China — groups entering the country via special visa schemes that command considerable public support.
It will also include large numbers of foreign students — they totaled 485,758 last year
Though to be fair since we are talking net migration and a significant number of those students will leave each year, it is debatable how much influence student numbers have on the figures we are talking about.
I am very cynical about "students".
I think it's a back-door for many to get into the UK permanently, particularly since they can bring families too - it's only the fees that cap the numbers.
If we greatly reduce the numbers of foreign students, we will need to find alternative funding for universities. Though we know the instinct of the right would be simply to shut half of them down, why waste money on "David Beckham Studies" anyway?
Figures for courses should be published against average non graduate stats. For each course
Course name %unemployed and %wage differential vs non graduates at 1,5,10,20 and 30 years. I suspect indeed on those measures some courses are worthless.
While some take a course out of pure intellectual interest many however do so because they think it will give them a higher paying job.
Students deserve these figures to allow them the information they need to choose.
Why waste money on "Jane Austen studies"? English was the media studies of its day. For the sake of the country, employers need to become less snooty about where they recruit from, like when Google discovered its best programmers did not come from Ivy League colleges.
I'm in favour of education for all. Cynics can have a field day allocating courses to trade schools or finishing schools but the rich and powerful often went to the latter.
Having to do all those trendy things like learn Anglo Saxon, read Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon and the Parlement of Foules never felt quite to have the robust rigour of a proper old fashioned media studies course. But distance lends enchantment perhaps.
If you look back to when English courses were introduced over a hundred years ago, the arguments were the same. Learning poems was for schoolchildren. Reading novels was a trivial pursuit; worse than that, a woman's hobby. Face it, an English degree is a posh version of Richard & Judy's book club. And how many English graduates go on to become poets or novelists?
The capacity to translate Beowulf or to identify classical sources in Paradise Lost has never failed to give me that extra edge in the competitive race of life. Pub talk is always enlivened by informed discussion of The Dream of the Rood. Grandchildren open mouthed and enchanted by tales of Gorboduc and the Dunciad.
I'm reading Paradise Lost right now. It doesn't half go on.
And the bad guy's the only interesting character.
Yeah I'm getting that. Satan. Complex guy. Mammon seems like a good guy. Perhaps I've been working in the financial sector too long but I found his speech in book 2 quite persuasive.
Pilgrims' Progress, now almost unread, is a much more fun read from the puritan tradition of the 17th century. Very English, no classical allusions much, short and to the point, unerring in its aim at fallen human nature. And, most of all, gives us 'Vanity Fair', title of great novel and a two word description of so much of modernity.
and then there's this:
Then went the jury out, whose names were, Mr. Blind-man, Mr. No-good, Mr. Malice, Mr. Love-lust, Mr. Live-loose, Mr. Heady, Mr. High-mind, Mr. Enmity, Mr. Liar, Mr. Cruelty, Mr. Hate-light, and Mr. Implacable......
The new total will include 174,200 Ukrainian refugees and 160,700 Hongkongers fleeing repression in China — groups entering the country via special visa schemes that command considerable public support.
It will also include large numbers of foreign students — they totaled 485,758 last year
Though to be fair since we are talking net migration and a significant number of those students will leave each year, it is debatable how much influence student numbers have on the figures we are talking about.
I am very cynical about "students".
I think it's a back-door for many to get into the UK permanently, particularly since they can bring families too - it's only the fees that cap the numbers.
If we greatly reduce the numbers of foreign students, we will need to find alternative funding for universities. Though we know the instinct of the right would be simply to shut half of them down, why waste money on "David Beckham Studies" anyway?
Figures for courses should be published against average non graduate stats. For each course
Course name %unemployed and %wage differential vs non graduates at 1,5,10,20 and 30 years. I suspect indeed on those measures some courses are worthless.
While some take a course out of pure intellectual interest many however do so because they think it will give them a higher paying job.
Students deserve these figures to allow them the information they need to choose.
Not sure that the differentials compared to non-grads are included (but anyone going to university should be capable of working that out from published figures) and not 30 years out, but then I'm not sure that information on long term outcomes for someone doing a course 30 years ago is that relevant. 30 years ago is in the middle of the 90s mass expansion so things could be quite different now in many places.
"Are they not?"
Is that a Scottishism? I always imagine it said with a Scottish accent. Perhaps too much Dr Finlay as a child.
I'm so looking forward to Labour actually looking at where the problem is and either abolishing the Treasury or at the very changing to keep out of regional matters.
The new approach is very simple. The DfT have crippled Northern and Transpennine. So by permanently cutting the number of services run you cut the number of paths needed and poor, the problem goes away.
This is a sector where the UK is internationally competitive. It does wonders for our balance of payments. It would be madness to cut off our nose to spite our face by cutting down international student numbers.
And yet the Home Office under successive Home Secretaries is determined to count students as immigrants.
Home Secretaries have for years been trying to take students out of the stats - but that would make U.K. figures incompatible with international stats, so they haven’t got their way.
Given our outsize university sector, it skews any comparison anyway. Stupid argument for keeping it.
Government have screwed up the presentation of the statistics.
1. There was an outsize cohort of international students last year, because of deferrals during the pandemic, and universities are generally pretty good at managing accomodation.
2. There was a huge, mostly temporary, influx of Ukranian refugees, who are mostly living with families and not affecting housing demand.
3. There was a huge one-off influx of Hong Kong residents fleeing that country, most of whom are in the middle classes and not dependent on the State.
If they’d done some presentation around these three groups, the government can make a good case for the post-Brexit immigration system working well, apart from the small boats.
It's probably deliberate: this time next year they can proclaim success as the numbers drop by 25%.
Memories of standing on those outside platforms (13 and 14?) where the through trains run. It was close to dangerous at peak times, the best part of two decades ago.
It's even worse now.
Particularly as Northern and TPE use those platforms, because they are regularly late, you have platforms 13 & 14 heaving with passengers, and often nowhere to go.
It is a miracle there hasn't been a mass casualty incident there with people falling off the platforms or being crushed up the stairs.
I used those platforms on many occasions, during my "Northern Expedition" of 2017.
Did you meet Amundsen at the ramp end, by any chance?
The new total will include 174,200 Ukrainian refugees and 160,700 Hongkongers fleeing repression in China — groups entering the country via special visa schemes that command considerable public support.
It will also include large numbers of foreign students — they totaled 485,758 last year
Though to be fair since we are talking net migration and a significant number of those students will leave each year, it is debatable how much influence student numbers have on the figures we are talking about.
I am very cynical about "students".
I think it's a back-door for many to get into the UK permanently, particularly since they can bring families too - it's only the fees that cap the numbers.
If we greatly reduce the numbers of foreign students, we will need to find alternative funding for universities. Though we know the instinct of the right would be simply to shut half of them down, why waste money on "David Beckham Studies" anyway?
Figures for courses should be published against average non graduate stats. For each course
Course name %unemployed and %wage differential vs non graduates at 1,5,10,20 and 30 years. I suspect indeed on those measures some courses are worthless.
While some take a course out of pure intellectual interest many however do so because they think it will give them a higher paying job.
Students deserve these figures to allow them the information they need to choose.
Why waste money on "Jane Austen studies"? English was the media studies of its day. For the sake of the country, employers need to become less snooty about where they recruit from, like when Google discovered its best programmers did not come from Ivy League colleges.
I'm in favour of education for all. Cynics can have a field day allocating courses to trade schools or finishing schools but the rich and powerful often went to the latter.
Having to do all those trendy things like learn Anglo Saxon, read Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon and the Parlement of Foules never felt quite to have the robust rigour of a proper old fashioned media studies course. But distance lends enchantment perhaps.
If you look back to when English courses were introduced over a hundred years ago, the arguments were the same. Learning poems was for schoolchildren. Reading novels was a trivial pursuit; worse than that, a woman's hobby. Face it, an English degree is a posh version of Richard & Judy's book club. And how many English graduates go on to become poets or novelists?
The capacity to translate Beowulf or to identify classical sources in Paradise Lost has never failed to give me that extra edge in the competitive race of life. Pub talk is always enlivened by informed discussion of The Dream of the Rood. Grandchildren open mouthed and enchanted by tales of Gorboduc and the Dunciad.
I'm reading Paradise Lost right now. It doesn't half go on.
And the bad guy's the only interesting character.
Yeah I'm getting that. Satan. Complex guy. Mammon seems like a good guy. Perhaps I've been working in the financial sector too long but I found his speech in book 2 quite persuasive.
Pilgrims' Progress, now almost unread, is a much more fun read from the puritan tradition of the 17th century. Very English, no classical allusions much, short and to the point, unerring in its aim at fallen human nature. And, most of all, gives us 'Vanity Fair', title of great novel and a two word description of so much of modernity.
And then there's this:
Then went the jury out, whose names were, Mr. Blind-man, Mr. No-good, Mr. Malice, Mr. Love-lust, Mr. Live-loose, Mr. Heady, Mr. High-mind, Mr. Enmity, Mr. Liar, Mr. Cruelty, Mr. Hate-light, and Mr. Implacable......
And that's without even starting on the House of Commons.
It is of course a list of PBers' real names but I'm not going to dox anybody - you can work them out for yourselves.
I'm so looking forward to Labour actually looking at where the problem is and either abolishing the Treasury or at the very changing to keep out of regional matters.
The new approach is very simple. The DfT have crippled Northern and Transpennine. So by permanently cutting the number of services run you cut the number of paths needed and poor, the problem goes away.
Dunno about DfT, but TP are cancelling trains even on top of the services timetabled. Were not TP accidentally using the wrong code to entet cancelled trains? Which accidentally improved their reporting stats from 23% cancelled to 7% cancelled? They're sure doing theirt best to save money on station redevelopment.
But of course London is so much more important and gets the Crossrail (budget explosion included).
£72m doesn't buy a lot of infrastructure with the way that we now do it. A platform on the up fast at Salford Crescent and some rebuilding at Oxford Road doesn't really fix things.
The flat junctions along the Castlefield corridor are the problem. None of those are getting replaced. The lack of platforms along the corridor to loop stuff in case of disruption are the big problem, and again this does nothing. Even if they have enough cash to make Oxford Road platform 1 useable again, it isn't enough - in length or capacity - for what they need.
It won't help the Tories sell levelling up, will it?
I'm so looking forward to Labour actually looking at where the problem is and either abolishing the Treasury or at the very changing to keep out of regional matters.
The new approach is very simple. The DfT have crippled Northern and Transpennine. So by permanently cutting the number of services run you cut the number of paths needed and poor, the problem goes away.
Dunno about DfT, but TP are cancelling trains even on top of the services timetabled. Were not TP accidentally using the wrong code to entet cancelled trains? Which accidentally improved their reporting stats from 23% cancelled to 7% cancelled? They're sure doing theirt best to save money on station redevelopment.
But of course London is so much more important and gets the Crossrail (budget explosion included).
TPE has abruptly had the decision to award a 6 months contract extension reversed. It is sheer coincidence they did so straight after taking a beating in the locals. The MD of TPE is being replaced, but that is pretty much all that changes.
So much of the damage done to TPE was by DfT dictat. First was operating as the DfT directed, and the same DfT will now direct OLR Rail (who despite the name is a private sector operator).
The "wrong code" you refer to is a thing called P-coding. Created for major periods of disruption, this allows an operator to cancel a train without it showing as cancelled. It simply disappears. This is done to massage the figures as it means the minister is quoting a smaller number of cancelled trains.
The new total will include 174,200 Ukrainian refugees and 160,700 Hongkongers fleeing repression in China — groups entering the country via special visa schemes that command considerable public support.
It will also include large numbers of foreign students — they totaled 485,758 last year
Though to be fair since we are talking net migration and a significant number of those students will leave each year, it is debatable how much influence student numbers have on the figures we are talking about.
I am very cynical about "students".
I think it's a back-door for many to get into the UK permanently, particularly since they can bring families too - it's only the fees that cap the numbers.
If we greatly reduce the numbers of foreign students, we will need to find alternative funding for universities. Though we know the instinct of the right would be simply to shut half of them down, why waste money on "David Beckham Studies" anyway?
Figures for courses should be published against average non graduate stats. For each course
Course name %unemployed and %wage differential vs non graduates at 1,5,10,20 and 30 years. I suspect indeed on those measures some courses are worthless.
While some take a course out of pure intellectual interest many however do so because they think it will give them a higher paying job.
Students deserve these figures to allow them the information they need to choose.
Why waste money on "Jane Austen studies"? English was the media studies of its day. For the sake of the country, employers need to become less snooty about where they recruit from, like when Google discovered its best programmers did not come from Ivy League colleges.
I'm in favour of education for all. Cynics can have a field day allocating courses to trade schools or finishing schools but the rich and powerful often went to the latter.
Having to do all those trendy things like learn Anglo Saxon, read Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon and the Parlement of Foules never felt quite to have the robust rigour of a proper old fashioned media studies course. But distance lends enchantment perhaps.
If you look back to when English courses were introduced over a hundred years ago, the arguments were the same. Learning poems was for schoolchildren. Reading novels was a trivial pursuit; worse than that, a woman's hobby. Face it, an English degree is a posh version of Richard & Judy's book club. And how many English graduates go on to become poets or novelists?
The capacity to translate Beowulf or to identify classical sources in Paradise Lost has never failed to give me that extra edge in the competitive race of life. Pub talk is always enlivened by informed discussion of The Dream of the Rood. Grandchildren open mouthed and enchanted by tales of Gorboduc and the Dunciad.
I'm reading Paradise Lost right now. It doesn't half go on.
And the bad guy's the only interesting character.
Yeah I'm getting that. Satan. Complex guy. Mammon seems like a good guy. Perhaps I've been working in the financial sector too long but I found his speech in book 2 quite persuasive.
Pilgrims' Progress, now almost unread, is a much more fun read from the puritan tradition of the 17th century. Very English, no classical allusions much, short and to the point, unerring in its aim at fallen human nature. And, most of all, gives us 'Vanity Fair', title of great novel and a two word description of so much of modernity.
And then there's this:
Then went the jury out, whose names were, Mr. Blind-man, Mr. No-good, Mr. Malice, Mr. Love-lust, Mr. Live-loose, Mr. Heady, Mr. High-mind, Mr. Enmity, Mr. Liar, Mr. Cruelty, Mr. Hate-light, and Mr. Implacable......
And that's without even starting on the House of Commons.
It is of course a list of PBers' real names but I'm not going to dox anybody - you can work them out for yourselves.
Jilly Cooper is presumably focus grouped to perfectly chime with 73 year old nimby ladies called “Heather”, who live in LD/Con marginals.
It makes the Prime Minister sound like a complete twit.
It's as fake as Johnson and his wine crate buses. We all know Sunak is a huge nerd and can probably give chapter and verse on the Star Wars extended universe novels and such-like. I wouldn't be surprised if he could tell you the difference between a Necron and a squig.
We know he's lying. He knows we know he's lying. He knows that it didn't matter that we know that he's lying, because the subconscious alteration of his image has happened anyway, and will work to his benefit. It's such a load of shite.
At least with Leo Varadker you know that you're getting his genuine self on his Instagram, because no adviser would have told him that a fridge full of pre-cooked omelette in lidless tupperware was going to improve his image.
Jilly Cooper is presumably focus grouped to perfectly chime with 73 year old nimby ladies called “Heather”, who live in LD/Con marginals.
It makes the Prime Minister sound like a complete twit.
It's as fake as Johnson and his wine crate buses. We all know Sunak is a huge nerd and can probably give chapter and verse on the Star Wars extended universe novels and such-like. I wouldn't be surprised if he could tell you the difference between a Necron and a squig.
We know he's lying. He knows we know he's lying. He knows that it didn't matter that we know that he's lying, because the subconscious alteration of his image has happened anyway, and will work to his benefit. It's such a load of shite.
At least with Leo Varadker you know that you're getting his genuine self on his Instagram, because no adviser would have told him that a fridge full of pre-cooked omelette in lidless tupperware was going to improve his image.
“a fridge full of pre-cooked omelette in lidless tupperware” absolutely no way!
Was having lunch with an ex-Cons minister the other day.
Why, I asked, if every government for over a decade has pledged to lower immigration are we seeing record high net migration numbers.
They said that he had worked in many departments and of all of them were pretty well run and efficient bar one; the Home Office was the most dysfunctional and they could well believe there was some civil service effort conscious or otherwise to prevent the policy being enacted.
I was and am super-sceptical that a cabal of (presumably remainer) civil servants are frustrating the government's efforts to reduce immigration but they seemed to think this was the case.
You did very well at obscuring gender, presumably to help preserve anonymity*, right up until word four of paragraph 2
*up until then I was wondering how many non-binary Home Office ministers there had been and thinking not many
Yes. I blundered.
Or maybe a cunning deliberate 'mistake' to hide the true, female, identity
The new total will include 174,200 Ukrainian refugees and 160,700 Hongkongers fleeing repression in China — groups entering the country via special visa schemes that command considerable public support.
It will also include large numbers of foreign students — they totaled 485,758 last year
Though to be fair since we are talking net migration and a significant number of those students will leave each year, it is debatable how much influence student numbers have on the figures we are talking about.
I am very cynical about "students".
I think it's a back-door for many to get into the UK permanently, particularly since they can bring families too - it's only the fees that cap the numbers.
Fees income from foreign students is an important part of the economy. It’s much bigger than fishing. Remember how much the fishing industry was a talking point during Brexit? It’s much less than the educating foreign students industry.
I agree - but my local Facebook group absolutely hates them.
Student accommodation only just pips 15-minutes cities as the source of all evil in Edinburgh. Developers love them because they can build scandi-prison cell accomodation and no one complains about the quality.
There's another piece to that puzzle.
I asked the people working on a block of student accommodation about certain features - the builders reckoned that they were designed so that the prison cells could be knocked together and turned into flats with minimum effort.
Getting permission to build student accommodation is easier, apparently. So the university goes in with a developer and builds a block on the edge of a not so good area. The student gentrify it. The prices rise. Sell the block as flats. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Students have changed a bit since my day if their presence increases the desirability of an area.
They don't tend to stab people and are very, very middle class in general. Especially the Citizen Smith types.
Jilly Cooper is presumably focus grouped to perfectly chime with 73 year old nimby ladies called “Heather”, who live in LD/Con marginals.
It makes the Prime Minister sound like a complete twit.
It's as fake as Johnson and his wine crate buses. We all know Sunak is a huge nerd and can probably give chapter and verse on the Star Wars extended universe novels and such-like. I wouldn't be surprised if he could tell you the difference between a Necron and a squig.
We know he's lying. He knows we know he's lying. He knows that it didn't matter that we know that he's lying, because the subconscious alteration of his image has happened anyway, and will work to his benefit. It's such a load of shite.
At least with Leo Varadker you know that you're getting his genuine self on his Instagram, because no adviser would have told him that a fridge full of pre-cooked omelette in lidless tupperware was going to improve his image.
“a fridge full of pre-cooked omelette in lidless tupperware” absolutely no way!
SF will surely form the next government now 🫢
The story didn't receive the attention it deserved in Britain because of the small matter of the Truss Implosion.
Jilly Cooper is presumably focus grouped to perfectly chime with 73 year old nimby ladies called “Heather”, who live in LD/Con marginals.
It makes the Prime Minister sound like a complete twit.
It's as fake as Johnson and his wine crate buses. We all know Sunak is a huge nerd and can probably give chapter and verse on the Star Wars extended universe novels and such-like. I wouldn't be surprised if he could tell you the difference between a Necron and a squig.
We know he's lying. He knows we know he's lying. He knows that it didn't matter that we know that he's lying, because the subconscious alteration of his image has happened anyway, and will work to his benefit. It's such a load of shite.
At least with Leo Varadker you know that you're getting his genuine self on his Instagram, because no adviser would have told him that a fridge full of pre-cooked omelette in lidless tupperware was going to improve his image.
“a fridge full of pre-cooked omelette in lidless tupperware” absolutely no way!
SF will surely form the next government now 🫢
The story didn't receive the attention it deserved in Britain because of the small matter of the Truss Implosion.
The new total will include 174,200 Ukrainian refugees and 160,700 Hongkongers fleeing repression in China — groups entering the country via special visa schemes that command considerable public support.
It will also include large numbers of foreign students — they totaled 485,758 last year
Though to be fair since we are talking net migration and a significant number of those students will leave each year, it is debatable how much influence student numbers have on the figures we are talking about.
I am very cynical about "students".
I think it's a back-door for many to get into the UK permanently, particularly since they can bring families too - it's only the fees that cap the numbers.
Fees income from foreign students is an important part of the economy. It’s much bigger than fishing. Remember how much the fishing industry was a talking point during Brexit? It’s much less than the educating foreign students industry.
I agree - but my local Facebook group absolutely hates them.
Student accommodation only just pips 15-minutes cities as the source of all evil in Edinburgh. Developers love them because they can build scandi-prison cell accomodation and no one complains about the quality.
There's another piece to that puzzle.
I asked the people working on a block of student accommodation about certain features - the builders reckoned that they were designed so that the prison cells could be knocked together and turned into flats with minimum effort.
Getting permission to build student accommodation is easier, apparently. So the university goes in with a developer and builds a block on the edge of a not so good area. The student gentrify it. The prices rise. Sell the block as flats. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Students have changed a bit since my day if their presence increases the desirability of an area.
They don't tend to stab people and are very, very middle class in general. Especially the Citizen Smith types.
Ah. So they have changed since my day!
The Alan’s Snackbar enthusiasts are still there, though somewhat reduced. At least at UCL.
Comments
Stupid argument for keeping it.
36 in 1997
44 in 2005 <<—— when he should have stood.
62 today
Younger than Theresa May, older than Boris Johnson and David Cameron.
Not in the Commons any more though, he goes by Lord Hague these days.
I've no doubt the statisticians went over this carefully, but I still wonder if some unavoidable quirks have made their way into the data and lopsided it a little. Though probably not enough to negate the headlines that will be written.
Mammon seems like a good guy. Perhaps I've been working in the financial sector too long but I found his speech in book 2 quite persuasive.
I went to a public meeting with our MP (Suella) and she mentioned Cultural Marxism.
I wonder if anyone in Fareham knows what it is.
The new PM, Chris Hipkins, seems notably more competent than Jacinda Ardern, and is adopting a more Sino-skeptic foreign policy.
The Labour/Green government are currently neck and neck in the polls with a possible National/Act alternative.
National’s leader, former Air NZ CEO Christopher Luxon, is a bit underwhelming.
The Māori Party, which could gain up to 4/5 seats and the balance of power in NZ’s 120-strong parliament, have become quite radical in the last few years. This could be weaponised against Labour, if it were thought they needed Māori Party votes to stay in government.
But I think the odds narrowly favour a continuation of the Labour/Green coalition.
Don't hold your breath
Besides it seems entirely reasonable considering its a net figure?
If foreign students are emigrating after graduation, then unless the sector is expanding the net figure would be zero. If they're not emigrating after graduation, then the net figure is positive.
The net figure being positive could be a really good thing. But if it is, its a fact, and we shouldn't twist facts to say what we want them to say - the truth is the truth, and the truth is important.
The chief constable of Police Scotland has admitted that institutional racism, sexism, misogyny and discrimination exists within in the force.
Sir Iain Livingstone told a meeting of the Scottish Police Authority that prejudice is a “reality for Police Scotland” and is “rightly of great concern”.
https://www.holyrood.com/news/view,chief-accepts-that-police-scotland-is-racist-and-sexist
Sometime what you wish for, gets you instead.
1. There was an outsize cohort of international students last year, because of deferrals during the pandemic, and universities are generally pretty good at managing accomodation.
2. There was a huge, mostly temporary, influx of Ukranian refugees, who are mostly living with families and not affecting housing demand.
3. There was a huge one-off influx of Hong Kong residents fleeing that country, most of whom are in the middle classes and not dependent on the State.
If they’d done some presentation around these three groups, the government can make a good case for the post-Brexit immigration system working well, apart from the small boats.
Why, I asked, if every government for over a decade has pledged to lower immigration are we seeing record high net migration numbers.
They said that he had worked in many departments and of all of them were pretty well run and efficient bar one; the Home Office was the most dysfunctional and they could well believe there was some civil service effort conscious or otherwise to prevent the policy being enacted.
I was and am super-sceptical that a cabal of (presumably remainer) civil servants are frustrating the government's efforts to reduce immigration but they seemed to think this was the case.
For the last few months the war seems to have fallen into a stalemate, with Bakhmut as the meat grinder.
I don't know if its too much to hope that Wagner are pulling out because they've been defeated, even if they're claiming victory.
The Russian propaganda argues that Ukrainians are afraid to speak Russian and there is an ethnic conflict. I took a walk in Poltava and recorded which language people speak. Similar to Kyiv it is 50/50 and dialect. People are free to speak whatever; there is no tension.1/
https://twitter.com/Mylovanov/status/1661638363449905155
https://youtu.be/TZjS5YOrrKA
I did not want to see a reduction in numbers, in fact a fear of reduction in numbers is one reason I originally supported Remain.
Part of what convinced me to switch to Leave was the immigration debate being reframed by those in Vote Leave (as opposed to Farage's racist bunch) not as being in favour of cutting it, but controlling it and ending discrimination.
If we have record numbers of people coming here, all of whom meet our criteria of who we want to have here, then that is a record success in my eyes - not a record failure.
I'm no fan of the current government, since I think they're extremely anti-aspiration. But this is one thing that is going well.
With leadership like that, is it any wonder it's a dysfunctional organisation ?
(Also I assume he was never at Education ?)
Immigration control is a bit whack-a-mole.
How is Jacob?
You don't get this level of excitement in L.A.
*up until then I was wondering how many non-binary Home Office ministers there had been and thinking not many
"he had worked"
“Long-held plans for two new platforms at Manchester's Piccadilly station have been pulled with a 'new approach' to ease congestion on the railways to be prepared.”
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/newsmanchester/long-held-plans-for-two-new-piccadilly-platforms-to-solve-manchesters-rail-chaos-have-been-pulled/ar-AA1bESXe
I'm so looking forward to Labour actually looking at where the problem is and either abolishing the Treasury or at the very changing to keep out of regional matters.
Peter is a super powerful AI.
I asked the people working on a block of student accommodation about certain features - the builders reckoned that they were designed so that the prison cells could be knocked together and turned into flats with minimum effort.
Getting permission to build student accommodation is easier, apparently. So the university goes in with a developer and builds a block on the edge of a not so good area. The student gentrify it. The prices rise. Sell the block as flats. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Maybe, had he sat it out, he'd still have been in contention in 2001 or 2005. But it would have seemed pretty gutless and his star might very well have waned.
Hague was always a mixed bag - a capable Commons performer but always came across as a bit odd to the public (although he's improved with age and with distance from frontline politics, as many do). And in terms of political strategy goes, it took some going to retreat further back into the core vote and not even to get a bit of dead cat bounce in the 2001 election. I don't mind the guy, but he's not a giant and I'm not sure he'd even have been a significant contender in 2001 or 2005 - he needed some good fortune to be the man in 1997.
Noodle vendor who parodied Salt Bae jailed in Vietnam for ‘anti-state propaganda’
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/25/noodle-vendor-who-parodied-salt-bae-jailed-in-vietnam-for-anti-state-propaganda
A Vietnam court has jailed a noodle seller who went viral for impersonating celebrity chef Salt Bae, after the restaurateur served a gold-leaf steak to a powerful official, his lawyer said.
In 2021, Peter Lam Bui posted a parody video impersonating Salt Bae – Nusret Gökçe, a Turkish chef who parlayed his meme stardom into high-end eateries – by sprinkling herbs on noodle soup and calling himself “Green Onion Bae”.
But his video came after a clip of a high-ranking Vietnamese official in London tucking into a steak at Gökçe’s Knightsbridge venue went viral in Vietnam. Lam was in trouble within days of uploading his video, and filmed a police visit to his home in the central city of Da Nang.
On Thursday, the former activist, 39, was convicted of spreading anti-state propaganda by a court in Da Nang, lawyer Le Dinh Viet told AFP...
Particularly as Northern and TPE use those platforms, because they are regularly late, you have platforms 13 & 14 heaving with passengers, and often nowhere to go.
It is a miracle there hasn't been a mass casualty incident there with people falling off the platforms or being crushed up the stairs.
It started off good in the first few seasons, but that last season a really awful disappointment.
Not my prejudices at all. Tory prejudices.
And then there's this:
Then went the jury out, whose names were, Mr. Blind-man, Mr. No-good, Mr. Malice, Mr. Love-lust, Mr. Live-loose, Mr. Heady, Mr. High-mind, Mr. Enmity, Mr. Liar, Mr. Cruelty, Mr. Hate-light, and Mr. Implacable......
And that's without even starting on the House of Commons.
Not me guv hitching my trailer to (fruitcakes, loons and closet) racists, no sirree not me.
But of course London is so much more important and gets the Crossrail (budget explosion included).
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/11/nobody-believes-me-when-i-tell-them-how-bad-transpennine-express-is
The flat junctions along the Castlefield corridor are the problem. None of those are getting replaced. The lack of platforms along the corridor to loop stuff in case of disruption are the big problem, and again this does nothing. Even if they have enough cash to make Oxford Road platform 1 useable again, it isn't enough - in length or capacity - for what they need.
It won't help the Tories sell levelling up, will it?
So much of the damage done to TPE was by DfT dictat. First was operating as the DfT directed, and the same DfT will now direct OLR Rail (who despite the name is a private sector operator).
The "wrong code" you refer to is a thing called P-coding. Created for major periods of disruption, this allows an operator to cancel a train without it showing as cancelled. It simply disappears. This is done to massage the figures as it means the minister is quoting a smaller number of cancelled trains.
First one is @SeanT, second @SeanT, third.....
Yup, they are all @SeanTs
We know he's lying. He knows we know he's lying. He knows that it didn't matter that we know that he's lying, because the subconscious alteration of his image has happened anyway, and will work to his benefit. It's such a load of shite.
At least with Leo Varadker you know that you're getting his genuine self on his Instagram, because no adviser would have told him that a fridge full of pre-cooked omelette in lidless tupperware was going to improve his image.
SF will surely form the next government now 🫢
https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/leo-varadkar-mocked-online-after-revealing-whats-inside-his-perfectly-prepped-fridge/42074196.html
Which would have require a reconquest of Ireland.
“This is a righteous judgement of God upon these barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent… cheese.”