We are at 47.4% fossil fuels, and 20.6% renewables.
Given on windy days we can easily see these figures reversed, it's clear that a workable form of energy storage (preferably medium-term storage) is vital. Goodness knows what form that will be, though.
Store the excess energy as heat. I think 1970's storage heaters controllable by internet for weather conditions and best spot rates for domestic use. Heated sand for industrial storage. Sand is the cheapest material and has a massive heat capacity.
People have been trying to build such systems for years. Lots of detail problems to solve.
What are the main problems with sand based heat storage for excess electricity production, bearing in mind the economic case only has to be justified on the marginal cost at peak prices?
Well, you now have a pile of red to sand. How do you get the heat back, efficiently?
This leads to molten salts, eutectic (lead/bismuth) etc...
I know you two are going to bang back and forth about energy-to-heat-to-heat-storage-to-energy all day - molten salts! - so I'll just say "you know we can pump water up a mountain and let it flow back down", like we've been doing for forty years, and leave it there
Sadly, there seem to be some small impediments in my plan to blow the top off Ben Nevis with a 10 megaton nuclear weapon to create suitable location for pumped storage.
There aren't even vaguely enough places for pumped storage in the UK, compared to the size of the demand on the grid, to do storage on a sufficient scale.
Incidentally, it would cost about the same to build the same capacity as Dinorwig out of trailers full of batteries https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/megapack
A Megapack is now about $900k dollars. So $300K per MWh.
Dinorwig is 9.1 GWh - 9100 x 300k = $2.7 billion
Dinorwig cost 485 million pounds between 1977 and 1984
Which is 2-4 billion today (big difference between 1977 and 1984. Good luck getting it done for that, again.
with the exchange rate, that's about $2.5-5 billion dollars.
Yes, but we can do another Dinorwig without having to bring in foreign equipment (and maintenance costs). We've had fifty years worth of object lessons in being dependent on the Saudis for oil, and a two-year reminder of the unwisdom of letting Putin grab our gentle bits with gas. I am fucked if we are lobbing yet more billions at Musk. Can we buy British, just for once? Let's stop enriching foreign fantasists, torturers, and dictators for once. We're British. We can dig a hole and lay pipe. Let's do that instead.
1) we don’t have enough locations to do pumped storage. By orders of magnitude. 2) if you actually ordered 9.1 GWh of batteries, that would be the output of a fair sized battery factory. There is no spare capacity at the moment. So you would need to build a new factory. As part of the deal you could demand that the battery factory is built in the U.K. 3) the Tesla offering is just an illustration of relative price. 4) if you do 2), you can carry on building more storage. Oh, and batteries for EVs.
Oh shut up with your "facts" and "reason", this is PB
(OK, but we can do both. Pumped storage and batteries. No one basket for our eggs)
Would the Remoaners on here finally STFU if we got a reformed Brexit that gave us back Freedom of Movement?
It seems to be the most emotive and profound loss, from Brexit, for a majority of Remainery people (and I share some of the pain, as I say). Perhaps that is the place where Britain could finally reconcile. Brexit Plus. Brexit Plus Freedom of Movement
We'll be like the ERG in reverse - you'll never appease us with titbit after titbit, grudging morsel after dry crumb. We'll always want more. Pure, hard, diamond-tipped Rejoin. Whatever acronym is the 180 degree opposite of BRINO. I want my EU citizenship back.
Blue flagged, rather than brown-watered, beaches, the Euro, Schengen, the banning of offshore tax havens, the whole shebang please. Coming out hasn't worked, let's go back in full-throttle. If you could make that so I'd be very appreciative.
Incidentally, it was very astute of Question Time to stuff last night's audience full of ill-informed gammon, dribbling out the same tired, discredited Johnsonian garbage. (Didn't watch it, of course, but the QT hashtag throws up a damning verdict from the hive mind.) In a few years when admitting voting Leave in polite company will be akin to squatting down and curling one out on your host's lovely dining table, nice people can shudder and say with a contemptuous titter 'No, of course I didn't vote Leave! It was voted for by those ghastly mouth-breathing idiots who look like they've been sculpted out of pork pie meat. What common accents they have. Like on that Question Time, you remember.'
Aaaaand, this sneering drivel is why you will never get to Rejoin. You immediately alienate a Liberal Leaver like me, and make me yearn for even Harder Brexit so you suffer, again and again
I know you are half joking, but you are only half joking. So I say to the other half: HAHAHAHAHAHA, we're never going back in. Tough shit
The basic problem they have is that most people in the UK have an underlying identity and low level patriotism based on being British and their home nation. Even as we become more cosmopolitan, Brits still want to come back to hearing British regional accents and the local customs and food. Meanwhile the really hardcore remainers identify more with Paris and Berlin and have cultural cringe over Skegness.
So there is no understanding there that Brits, even when some think it is economically advantageous to be in the EU, don't like lawmaking from Brussells, no passport checks on Romanians and economic policy set in Frankfurt.
I suspect some Remainers know this, which is why they want as much unintegrated immigration as possible, so they have a voting base not attached to traditional British culture.
Hardcore Remainers are unremittingly awful people. I can't work out whether they were always awful, nasty, sneering, and mentally inadequate, and we simply didn't notice - or whether Brexit made them that way. Genuine puzzle
Hardcore Remainers have also long replaced Tory voters as the snobbiest voters around (and a lot of them happen to be LDs)
That really isn’t an assumption you are entitled to make. I’m proud to be a hard-core Remainer, and as far as I’m concerned Jack’s as good as his master.
Some Remainers unfortunately do seem to operate within a kind of caste system with themselves at the top, EU migrants as an approved labouring class, and Brexit voters as the untouchables with whom they are embarrassed to share a country. It's the "but who will serve my sandwiches in Pret?" attitude.
That's a piece of hackneyed nonsense. It's not like that at all. It's just that people like me are sad about the hard tangible benefits of EU membership being tossed away in return for nothing but jingoistic hot air, red tape and hassle. There are no plusses whatsoever unless you count Boris Johnson and Liz Truss getting a crack at being PM as a plus.
So, no, it was without doubt a terrible terrible decision we took 7 years ago today, but there's no big personal animus towards Leavers, either individually or as a group. Certainly not from me anyway. Although I will admit (being perfectly serious here) that if I was moving house there is no way I'd consider a place that voted for Brexit.
Would the Remoaners on here finally STFU if we got a reformed Brexit that gave us back Freedom of Movement?
It seems to be the most emotive and profound loss, from Brexit, for a majority of Remainery people (and I share some of the pain, as I say). Perhaps that is the place where Britain could finally reconcile. Brexit Plus. Brexit Plus Freedom of Movement
We'll be like the ERG in reverse - you'll never appease us with titbit after titbit, grudging morsel after dry crumb. We'll always want more. Pure, hard, diamond-tipped Rejoin. Whatever acronym is the 180 degree opposite of BRINO. I want my EU citizenship back.
Blue flagged, rather than brown-watered, beaches, the Euro, Schengen, the banning of offshore tax havens, the whole shebang please. Coming out hasn't worked, let's go back in full-throttle. If you could make that so I'd be very appreciative.
Incidentally, it was very astute of Question Time to stuff last night's audience full of ill-informed gammon, dribbling out the same tired, discredited Johnsonian garbage. (Didn't watch it, of course, but the QT hashtag throws up a damning verdict from the hive mind.) In a few years when admitting voting Leave in polite company will be akin to squatting down and curling one out on your host's lovely dining table, nice people can shudder and say with a contemptuous titter 'No, of course I didn't vote Leave! It was voted for by those ghastly mouth-breathing idiots who look like they've been sculpted out of pork pie meat. What common accents they have. Like on that Question Time, you remember.'
Aaaaand, this sneering drivel is why you will never get to Rejoin. You immediately alienate a Liberal Leaver like me, and make me yearn for even Harder Brexit so you suffer, again and again
I know you are half joking, but you are only half joking. So I say to the other half: HAHAHAHAHAHA, we're never going back in. Tough shit
The basic problem they have is that most people in the UK have an underlying identity and low level patriotism based on being British and their home nation. Even as we become more cosmopolitan, Brits still want to come back to hearing British regional accents and the local customs and food. Meanwhile the really hardcore remainers identify more with Paris and Berlin and have cultural cringe over Skegness.
So there is no understanding there that Brits, even when some think it is economically advantageous to be in the EU, don't like lawmaking from Brussells, no passport checks on Romanians and economic policy set in Frankfurt.
I suspect some Remainers know this, which is why they want as much unintegrated immigration as possible, so they have a voting base not attached to traditional British culture.
Hardcore Remainers are unremittingly awful people. I can't work out whether they were always awful, nasty, sneering, and mentally inadequate, and we simply didn't notice - or whether Brexit made them that way. Genuine puzzle
The simple fact is some people were better off when we were in the EU, some people were worse off under the EU. Now it is reversed.
Losing their FoM is actually a really crap argument in my view because the number of Brits that actually ever took advantage of it was less than 2% of the population (not talking people taking a 2 week vacation in france, I mean those that moved to live or work). The 98% that didn't want to take advantage of it still had to pay for it.
I take you point but dispute your numbers. Quite a lot of Brits studied in the EU, or worked temporarily in the EU (think of the bands touring, now finding it much harder), young Brits got jobs in ski resorts or Spanish holiday towns, and so on. And many people had second homes in the EU
Probably more like 20% of the country used FoM in some form (is my rough guess)
And for some others it was just the sense of possibility they liked. One day they could retire to the sun in Cyprus; Not any more
And I share their pain to an extent and I wish we could get FoM back in a way that suits Brexiteers and Remainers. A man is allowed to dream
You are having a laugh....20% don't talk bollocks 13 million have not worked abroad or studied abroad. The figure for brits using FoM to move or work in EU countries has always been dwarfed by them moving to america/australia etc and the figures for those is less than 3%
I did pluck the numbef out of my Cornish butt, so it is quite probably wrong, but I still feel 2% is an underestimate
But the point remains the same. A lot of Remainer angst is the loss of FoM. If they could get that back they could be mollified, and we would still be Brexit Britain. And then we could all move on from frigging Brexit, which would be a good thing
To essay a New Brexit Metaphor (oh goody), Brexit is like a choose-your-own-toppings pizza, chosen by the entire country.
Everyone, certainly in the 52%, probably more widely, put their own desired topping on the pizza. The bacon of trade deals. The mushrooms of immigration control. The pineapple of sovereignty. The fish of... fish. The marmite and banana of undermining Ulster-Eire detente.
And quite a bit of the popularity of the resulting pizza was that everyone could see the topping they had asked for, and didn't worry too much about the other stuff that was being put on as well. Two problems though.
The main one is quite how much is on this damn pizza, making it pretty indigestable. The only way to secure all the freedoms that various members of the 52% wanted was to distance ourselves a long way from any sort of EU relationship, beyond the most tokenistic. (Something for something, remember). So we have ended up where we have. (Like you, I kinda assumed that Brexit would be going from just inside the European tent to just outside. Maybe not Single Market, that would be pointless, but a Blue Peter approximation of the same. I was wrong, and I now think I misread the logic beforehand.)
The other is that some of the things on the pizza, some of the things that make it really indigestible for some, are other people's favourite toppings. See Freedom Of Movement.
So we're stuck with this thing on our plate, that very few of us really want to eat. But it's there, and we're still at the "you're not going anywhere until your plate is clear, don't you know there are starving children in Africa" stage of the conversation. The force for some degree of Brapprochment is, I think, irrestistible in the end. But the object is currently immovable.
I think the problem is we asked for extra Ham and Pineapple and what we got presented with is 99% pineapple.
Not even that, when the customs controls actually start. Just US-style synthetic cheese left. Like a surplus warehouse full of time-expired crates of those foil wrapped processed cheese triangles so popular in Boomer childhood families' shopping.
I do like Mary Harrington. That article could have gone in a hysterical direction, and instead meandered unexpectedly. I frequently disagree with her conclusions but do like reading her, so thank you. It's like John Gray: I think he's frequently wrong but I like his style.
I prefer the work of Difford and Tilbrook who assert "it's cool to be a cat".
I'm surprised that Britain's most famous cat-identifier hasn't come up in this debate: George Galloway.
I do like Mary Harrington. That article could have gone in a hysterical direction, and instead meandered unexpectedly. I frequently disagree with her conclusions but do like reading her, so thank you. It's like John Gray: I think he's frequently wrong but I like his style.
I prefer the work of Difford and Tilbrook who assert "it's cool to be a cat".
I'm surprised that Britain's most famous cat-identifier hasn't come up in this debate: George Galloway.
He did, yesterday or the day before, when I upset poor Kinabalu's tummy by referencing him.
We are at 47.4% fossil fuels, and 20.6% renewables.
Given on windy days we can easily see these figures reversed, it's clear that a workable form of energy storage (preferably medium-term storage) is vital. Goodness knows what form that will be, though.
Store the excess energy as heat. I think 1970's storage heaters controllable by internet for weather conditions and best spot rates for domestic use. Heated sand for industrial storage. Sand is the cheapest material and has a massive heat capacity.
People have been trying to build such systems for years. Lots of detail problems to solve.
What are the main problems with sand based heat storage for excess electricity production, bearing in mind the economic case only has to be justified on the marginal cost at peak prices?
Well, you now have a pile of red to sand. How do you get the heat back, efficiently?
This leads to molten salts, eutectic (lead/bismuth) etc...
I know you two are going to bang back and forth about energy-to-heat-to-heat-storage-to-energy all day - molten salts! - so I'll just say "you know we can pump water up a mountain and let it flow back down", like we've been doing for forty years, and leave it there
Sadly, there seem to be some small impediments in my plan to blow the top off Ben Nevis with a 10 megaton nuclear weapon to create suitable location for pumped storage.
There aren't even vaguely enough places for pumped storage in the UK, compared to the size of the demand on the grid, to do storage on a sufficient scale.
Incidentally, it would cost about the same to build the same capacity as Dinorwig out of trailers full of batteries https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/megapack
A Megapack is now about $900k dollars. So $300K per MWh.
Dinorwig is 9.1 GWh - 9100 x 300k = $2.7 billion
Dinorwig cost 485 million pounds between 1977 and 1984
Which is 2-4 billion today (big difference between 1977 and 1984. Good luck getting it done for that, again.
with the exchange rate, that's about $2.5-5 billion dollars.
Yes, but we can do another Dinorwig without having to bring in foreign equipment (and maintenance costs). We've had fifty years worth of object lessons in being dependent on the Saudis for oil, and a two-year reminder of the unwisdom of letting Putin grab our gentle bits with gas. I am fucked if we are lobbing yet more billions at Musk. Can we buy British, just for once? Let's stop enriching foreign fantasists, torturers, and dictators for once. We're British. We can dig a hole and lay pipe. Let's do that instead.
1) we don’t have enough locations to do pumped storage. By orders of magnitude. 2) if you actually ordered 9.1 GWh of batteries, that would be the output of a fair sized battery factory. There is no spare capacity at the moment. So you would need to build a new factory. As part of the deal you could demand that the battery factory is built in the U.K. 3) the Tesla offering is just an illustration of relative price. 4) if you do 2), you can carry on building more storage. Oh, and batteries for EVs.
Oh shut up with your "facts" and "reason", this is PB
(OK, but we can do both. Pumped storage and batteries. No one basket for our eggs)
What about synthetic fuels? Any chance that they could be practical?
Britain doesn’t do capital investment. The culture is against it. Britain has lagged peer economies basically forever on this metric.
I don’t really know why that is. But I wonder if it stems back to Victorian times when frankly it was a more profitable use of capital to invest in Uruguayan mines and Californian railway, and so a weird “tradition” developed in which the home country was just left to fend for itself.
That worked only so long as Britain maintained industrial technology advantage but ever since 1860 it’s been a slow decline, and definitively so since (pick your date) 1918, 1925, or 1979.
It's utterly perplexing to me. Take the recent arguing about mortgages and how to help people. That's only treating the symptom. It's not the cause of the problem. The cause is a massive under supply of housing going back many decades. People in the UK spend too much money for too little crap housing, so that a return to moderate and normal interest rates is crucifying them.
Where is the political party saying "we will build 5 million homes over the next decade to fix the supply problem"? There isn't one, the debate is about tweaks not anyone grasping the nettle to fix the problem.
The UK population will pass 70 million within a couple of years — assuming population statistics are correct which given the Settled Status scheme uptake may not be the case — and we are nailed on for 80 million by 2050, unless something incredible happens to migration*.
We need to build an enormous amount of everything. A building programme like nothing in living memory, probably even surpassing the post-war years.
* Climate change is likely to make the UK even more attractive for migrants, so don't believe under 100,000 a year is plausible, we'll be lucky if we can keep it down to two or three times that.
I do like Mary Harrington. That article could have gone in a hysterical direction, and instead meandered unexpectedly. I frequently disagree with her conclusions but do like reading her, so thank you. It's like John Gray: I think he's frequently wrong but I like his style.
I prefer the work of Difford and Tilbrook who assert "it's cool to be a cat".
I'm surprised that Britain's most famous cat-identifier hasn't come up in this debate: George Galloway.
When it comes to cat metrics Galloway is the Rula thumb!
We are at 47.4% fossil fuels, and 20.6% renewables.
Given on windy days we can easily see these figures reversed, it's clear that a workable form of energy storage (preferably medium-term storage) is vital. Goodness knows what form that will be, though.
Store the excess energy as heat. I think 1970's storage heaters controllable by internet for weather conditions and best spot rates for domestic use. Heated sand for industrial storage. Sand is the cheapest material and has a massive heat capacity.
People have been trying to build such systems for years. Lots of detail problems to solve.
What are the main problems with sand based heat storage for excess electricity production, bearing in mind the economic case only has to be justified on the marginal cost at peak prices?
Well, you now have a pile of red to sand. How do you get the heat back, efficiently?
This leads to molten salts, eutectic (lead/bismuth) etc...
I know you two are going to bang back and forth about energy-to-heat-to-heat-storage-to-energy all day - molten salts! - so I'll just say "you know we can pump water up a mountain and let it flow back down", like we've been doing for forty years, and leave it there
Sadly, there seem to be some small impediments in my plan to blow the top off Ben Nevis with a 10 megaton nuclear weapon to create suitable location for pumped storage.
There aren't even vaguely enough places for pumped storage in the UK, compared to the size of the demand on the grid, to do storage on a sufficient scale.
Incidentally, it would cost about the same to build the same capacity as Dinorwig out of trailers full of batteries https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/megapack
A Megapack is now about $900k dollars. So $300K per MWh.
Dinorwig is 9.1 GWh - 9100 x 300k = $2.7 billion
Dinorwig cost 485 million pounds between 1977 and 1984
Which is 2-4 billion today (big difference between 1977 and 1984. Good luck getting it done for that, again.
with the exchange rate, that's about $2.5-5 billion dollars.
Yes, but we can do another Dinorwig without having to bring in foreign equipment (and maintenance costs). We've had fifty years worth of object lessons in being dependent on the Saudis for oil, and a two-year reminder of the unwisdom of letting Putin grab our gentle bits with gas. I am fucked if we are lobbing yet more billions at Musk. Can we buy British, just for once? Let's stop enriching foreign fantasists, torturers, and dictators for once. We're British. We can dig a hole and lay pipe. Let's do that instead.
James Cameron criticises the mission to the Titanic, which is a bit odd since he's done it himself 33 times.
Using high quality, properly designed, rated and tested equipment.
Sounds rather elitist to me.
Well, on SS Titanic's last voyage, 1st-class passengers DID have superior survival rate overall.
Though note that IIRC higher percentage of 3rd-class WOMEN were saved than than of 1st-class men.
Among later were top personal aide to the then-POTUS and the patriarch of Guggenheims.
Rose's mum: "Will the lifeboats be seated according to class? I hope they're not too crowded." Rose: "Oh mother, shut up! Don't you understand? The water is freezing and there aren't enough boats. Not enough by half. Half the people on this ship are going to die!" Cal Hockley: "Not the better half!"
Quite a few of the tropes in that film were copied from the Nazi film version. Which was specifically designed to be anti-British propaganda.
For example, the locked gates.
Mr Andrews: "I'm sorry that I didn't build you a stronger ship, young Rose."
Britain doesn’t do capital investment. The culture is against it. Britain has lagged peer economies basically forever on this metric.
I don’t really know why that is. But I wonder if it stems back to Victorian times when frankly it was a more profitable use of capital to invest in Uruguayan mines and Californian railway, and so a weird “tradition” developed in which the home country was just left to fend for itself.
That worked only so long as Britain maintained industrial technology advantage but ever since 1860 it’s been a slow decline, and definitively so since (pick your date) 1918, 1925, or 1979.
It's utterly perplexing to me. Take the recent arguing about mortgages and how to help people. That's only treating the symptom. It's not the cause of the problem. The cause is a massive under supply of housing going back many decades. People in the UK spend too much money for too little crap housing, so that a return to moderate and normal interest rates is crucifying them.
Where is the political party saying "we will build 5 million homes over the next decade to fix the supply problem"? There isn't one, the debate is about tweaks not anyone grasping the nettle to fix the problem.
The UK population will pass 70 million within a couple of years — assuming population statistics are correct which given the Settled Status scheme uptake may not be the case — and we are nailed on for 80 million by 2050, unless something incredible happens to migration*.
We need to build an enormous amount of everything. A building programme like nothing in living memory, probably even surpassing the post-war years.
* Climate change is likely to make the UK even more attractive for migrants, so don't believe under 100,000 a year is plausible, we'll be lucky if we can keep it down to two or three times that.
Just because furriners do it, doesn't mean we can, seems to be the attitude. But the very fact that the Scots are actually building as much as they can within their allocated budget shows that there's nothing in the water that makes it impossible.
We are at 47.4% fossil fuels, and 20.6% renewables.
Given on windy days we can easily see these figures reversed, it's clear that a workable form of energy storage (preferably medium-term storage) is vital. Goodness knows what form that will be, though.
Store the excess energy as heat. I think 1970's storage heaters controllable by internet for weather conditions and best spot rates for domestic use. Heated sand for industrial storage. Sand is the cheapest material and has a massive heat capacity.
People have been trying to build such systems for years. Lots of detail problems to solve.
What are the main problems with sand based heat storage for excess electricity production, bearing in mind the economic case only has to be justified on the marginal cost at peak prices?
Well, you now have a pile of red to sand. How do you get the heat back, efficiently?
This leads to molten salts, eutectic (lead/bismuth) etc...
I know you two are going to bang back and forth about energy-to-heat-to-heat-storage-to-energy all day - molten salts! - so I'll just say "you know we can pump water up a mountain and let it flow back down", like we've been doing for forty years, and leave it there
Sadly, there seem to be some small impediments in my plan to blow the top off Ben Nevis with a 10 megaton nuclear weapon to create suitable location for pumped storage.
There aren't even vaguely enough places for pumped storage in the UK, compared to the size of the demand on the grid, to do storage on a sufficient scale.
Incidentally, it would cost about the same to build the same capacity as Dinorwig out of trailers full of batteries https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/megapack
A Megapack is now about $900k dollars. So $300K per MWh.
Dinorwig is 9.1 GWh - 9100 x 300k = $2.7 billion
Dinorwig cost 485 million pounds between 1977 and 1984
Which is 2-4 billion today (big difference between 1977 and 1984. Good luck getting it done for that, again.
with the exchange rate, that's about $2.5-5 billion dollars.
Yes, but we can do another Dinorwig without having to bring in foreign equipment (and maintenance costs). We've had fifty years worth of object lessons in being dependent on the Saudis for oil, and a two-year reminder of the unwisdom of letting Putin grab our gentle bits with gas. I am fucked if we are lobbing yet more billions at Musk. Can we buy British, just for once? Let's stop enriching foreign fantasists, torturers, and dictators for once. We're British. We can dig a hole and lay pipe. Let's do that instead.
Scotland says good luck with your one difficult 3GW capacity site in Wales:
Britain doesn’t do capital investment. The culture is against it. Britain has lagged peer economies basically forever on this metric.
I don’t really know why that is. But I wonder if it stems back to Victorian times when frankly it was a more profitable use of capital to invest in Uruguayan mines and Californian railway, and so a weird “tradition” developed in which the home country was just left to fend for itself.
That worked only so long as Britain maintained industrial technology advantage but ever since 1860 it’s been a slow decline, and definitively so since (pick your date) 1918, 1925, or 1979.
It's utterly perplexing to me. Take the recent arguing about mortgages and how to help people. That's only treating the symptom. It's not the cause of the problem. The cause is a massive under supply of housing going back many decades. People in the UK spend too much money for too little crap housing, so that a return to moderate and normal interest rates is crucifying them.
Where is the political party saying "we will build 5 million homes over the next decade to fix the supply problem"? There isn't one, the debate is about tweaks not anyone grasping the nettle to fix the problem.
The UK population will pass 70 million within a couple of years — assuming population statistics are correct which given the Settled Status scheme uptake may not be the case — and we are nailed on for 80 million by 2050, unless something incredible happens to migration*.
We need to build an enormous amount of everything. A building programme like nothing in living memory, probably even surpassing the post-war years.
* Climate change is likely to make the UK even more attractive for migrants, so don't believe under 100,000 a year is plausible, we'll be lucky if we can keep it down to two or three times that.
Part of the problem is that people start saying that saying we need to build houses, roads due to population increase is "immigrant blaming"
Because it is so much more "immigrant friendly" to have them (the immigrants) living in bunk beds, 4 to a room.....
It's true that strong favourites have often drifted out. However, they're typically something like Governor of Vermont rather that "recent President of the United States".
We are at 47.4% fossil fuels, and 20.6% renewables.
Given on windy days we can easily see these figures reversed, it's clear that a workable form of energy storage (preferably medium-term storage) is vital. Goodness knows what form that will be, though.
Store the excess energy as heat. I think 1970's storage heaters controllable by internet for weather conditions and best spot rates for domestic use. Heated sand for industrial storage. Sand is the cheapest material and has a massive heat capacity.
People have been trying to build such systems for years. Lots of detail problems to solve.
What are the main problems with sand based heat storage for excess electricity production, bearing in mind the economic case only has to be justified on the marginal cost at peak prices?
Well, you now have a pile of red to sand. How do you get the heat back, efficiently?
This leads to molten salts, eutectic (lead/bismuth) etc...
I know you two are going to bang back and forth about energy-to-heat-to-heat-storage-to-energy all day - molten salts! - so I'll just say "you know we can pump water up a mountain and let it flow back down", like we've been doing for forty years, and leave it there
Sadly, there seem to be some small impediments in my plan to blow the top off Ben Nevis with a 10 megaton nuclear weapon to create suitable location for pumped storage.
There aren't even vaguely enough places for pumped storage in the UK, compared to the size of the demand on the grid, to do storage on a sufficient scale.
Incidentally, it would cost about the same to build the same capacity as Dinorwig out of trailers full of batteries https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/megapack
A Megapack is now about $900k dollars. So $300K per MWh.
Dinorwig is 9.1 GWh - 9100 x 300k = $2.7 billion
Dinorwig cost 485 million pounds between 1977 and 1984
Which is 2-4 billion today (big difference between 1977 and 1984. Good luck getting it done for that, again.
with the exchange rate, that's about $2.5-5 billion dollars.
Yes, but we can do another Dinorwig without having to bring in foreign equipment (and maintenance costs). We've had fifty years worth of object lessons in being dependent on the Saudis for oil, and a two-year reminder of the unwisdom of letting Putin grab our gentle bits with gas. I am fucked if we are lobbing yet more billions at Musk. Can we buy British, just for once? Let's stop enriching foreign fantasists, torturers, and dictators for once. We're British. We can dig a hole and lay pipe. Let's do that instead.
1) we don’t have enough locations to do pumped storage. By orders of magnitude. 2) if you actually ordered 9.1 GWh of batteries, that would be the output of a fair sized battery factory. There is no spare capacity at the moment. So you would need to build a new factory. As part of the deal you could demand that the battery factory is built in the U.K. 3) the Tesla offering is just an illustration of relative price. 4) if you do 2), you can carry on building more storage. Oh, and batteries for EVs.
Oh shut up with your "facts" and "reason", this is PB
(OK, but we can do both. Pumped storage and batteries. No one basket for our eggs)
What about synthetic fuels? Any chance that they could be practical?
Costs are high - they may come lower. Some thermodynamics calculations suggest the lower limits are not cheap, however.
Oh, hang him! Hang him high from the nearest yardarm! Curse the man who sold hooky ice cream to the French! Bring back the guillotine, I say!
Corporal punishment would perhaps be appropriate - 6 of the best with Mr. Whippy.
Mind you, given seeing a documentary at a young age, I legally selling ice cream suggests heroin & ultraviolence
A Clockwork Orange is a documentary about milk bars?
"There was me, that is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel, and my three droogs, that is Priti, Govey and Dom, and we sat in the Kensington Milkbar trying to make up our Raab-oodocks what to do with the evening. The Kensington Milkbar sold Milk-plus, milk plus corn syrup or GM soya or chlorinated chicken, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old No-deal Brexit!"
I do like Mary Harrington. That article could have gone in a hysterical direction, and instead meandered unexpectedly. I frequently disagree with her conclusions but do like reading her, so thank you. It's like John Gray: I think he's frequently wrong but I like his style.
I prefer the work of Difford and Tilbrook who assert "it's cool to be a cat".
I'm surprised that Britain's most famous cat-identifier hasn't come up in this debate: George Galloway.
James Cameron criticises the mission to the Titanic, which is a bit odd since he's done it himself 33 times.
Using high quality, properly designed, rated and tested equipment.
Sounds rather elitist to me.
Well, on SS Titanic's last voyage, 1st-class passengers DID have superior survival rate overall.
Though note that IIRC higher percentage of 3rd-class WOMEN were saved than than of 1st-class men.
Among later were top personal aide to the then-POTUS and the patriarch of Guggenheims.
Rose's mum: "Will the lifeboats be seated according to class? I hope they're not too crowded." Rose: "Oh mother, shut up! Don't you understand? The water is freezing and there aren't enough boats. Not enough by half. Half the people on this ship are going to die!" Cal Hockley: "Not the better half!"
What I meant to say, was that the presidential aide and mega-millionaire were NOT among those rescued.
Because they never even tried to get into a lifeboat.
As Walter Lord, author of "Night to Remember" observed (in an interview I think) most men circa 1912 were of the general view, that it would be profoundly wrong, for a man to (for example) to take a seat in a lifeboat before a woman or child.
And that they judged other men - and themselves - by such standards. With severe social stigma attached to violations, esp. egregious ones.
As in case of Cunard executive J. Bruce Ismay, who DID survive the disaster . . . and never lived it down.
Would the Remoaners on here finally STFU if we got a reformed Brexit that gave us back Freedom of Movement?
It seems to be the most emotive and profound loss, from Brexit, for a majority of Remainery people (and I share some of the pain, as I say). Perhaps that is the place where Britain could finally reconcile. Brexit Plus. Brexit Plus Freedom of Movement
We'll be like the ERG in reverse - you'll never appease us with titbit after titbit, grudging morsel after dry crumb. We'll always want more. Pure, hard, diamond-tipped Rejoin. Whatever acronym is the 180 degree opposite of BRINO. I want my EU citizenship back.
Blue flagged, rather than brown-watered, beaches, the Euro, Schengen, the banning of offshore tax havens, the whole shebang please. Coming out hasn't worked, let's go back in full-throttle. If you could make that so I'd be very appreciative.
Incidentally, it was very astute of Question Time to stuff last night's audience full of ill-informed gammon, dribbling out the same tired, discredited Johnsonian garbage. (Didn't watch it, of course, but the QT hashtag throws up a damning verdict from the hive mind.) In a few years when admitting voting Leave in polite company will be akin to squatting down and curling one out on your host's lovely dining table, nice people can shudder and say with a contemptuous titter 'No, of course I didn't vote Leave! It was voted for by those ghastly mouth-breathing idiots who look like they've been sculpted out of pork pie meat. What common accents they have. Like on that Question Time, you remember.'
Aaaaand, this sneering drivel is why you will never get to Rejoin. You immediately alienate a Liberal Leaver like me, and make me yearn for even Harder Brexit so you suffer, again and again
I know you are half joking, but you are only half joking. So I say to the other half: HAHAHAHAHAHA, we're never going back in. Tough shit
The basic problem they have is that most people in the UK have an underlying identity and low level patriotism based on being British and their home nation. Even as we become more cosmopolitan, Brits still want to come back to hearing British regional accents and the local customs and food. Meanwhile the really hardcore remainers identify more with Paris and Berlin and have cultural cringe over Skegness.
So there is no understanding there that Brits, even when some think it is economically advantageous to be in the EU, don't like lawmaking from Brussells, no passport checks on Romanians and economic policy set in Frankfurt.
I suspect some Remainers know this, which is why they want as much unintegrated immigration as possible, so they have a voting base not attached to traditional British culture.
Hardcore Remainers are unremittingly awful people. I can't work out whether they were always awful, nasty, sneering, and mentally inadequate, and we simply didn't notice - or whether Brexit made them that way. Genuine puzzle
Hardcore Remainers have also long replaced Tory voters as the snobbiest voters around (and a lot of them happen to be LDs)
That really isn’t an assumption you are entitled to make. I’m proud to be a hard-core Remainer, and as far as I’m concerned Jack’s as good as his master.
Some Remainers unfortunately do seem to operate within a kind of caste system with themselves at the top, EU migrants as an approved labouring class, and Brexit voters as the untouchables with whom they are embarrassed to share a country. It's the "but who will serve my sandwiches in Pret?" attitude.
That's a piece of hackneyed nonsense. It's not like that at all. It's just that people like me are sad about the hard tangible benefits of EU membership being tossed away in return for nothing but jingoistic hot air, red tape and hassle. There are no plusses whatsoever unless you count Boris Johnson and Liz Truss getting a crack at being PM as a plus.
So, no, it was without doubt a terrible terrible decision we took 7 years ago today, but there's no big personal animus towards Leavers, either individually or as a group. Certainly not from me anyway. Although I will admit (being perfectly serious here) that if I was moving house there is no way I'd consider a place that voted for Brexit.
The benefits of the EU haven't been tossed away for nothing though, we no longer pay for those benefits which frankly most leavers did not see as worth it. EU membership cost about 10£ bill a year, each and ever tax payer therefore was paying if we go on the adult population of the uk of around 45 million was costing us about 222£ a year.
Most didnt use FoM, only 12% of gdp comes from exports half of which is to the eu so lets say 6% of exports. We were all paying to support tiny minorities of people and companies that benefitted from EU membership. Now speaking as someone who earns well south of a 6 figure salary unlike most of PB
I couldnt afford to call in a plumber/electrician/au pair etc even during FoM and had to do it myself
My rent continually raised because increased population
Doctors waiting times went up because population went up by 10% with no extra doctors
I didn't want to work in the EU or live in the EU
Since FoM disappeared many people including me have for the first time in ages got pay rises because bosses can't just go fuck you plenty will do your job for less ( I was earning the same in 2002 as I was in 2016 despite changing jobs 3 times)
So explain to me what was the advantage to me of the EU that I should pay 222£ a year (actually more when you consider about half the country doesnt actually pay income tax)
James Cameron criticises the mission to the Titanic, which is a bit odd since he's done it himself 33 times.
Using high quality, properly designed, rated and tested equipment.
Sounds rather elitist to me.
Well, on SS Titanic's last voyage, 1st-class passengers DID have superior survival rate overall.
Though note that IIRC higher percentage of 3rd-class WOMEN were saved than than of 1st-class men.
Among later were top personal aide to the then-POTUS and the patriarch of Guggenheims.
Rose's mum: "Will the lifeboats be seated according to class? I hope they're not too crowded." Rose: "Oh mother, shut up! Don't you understand? The water is freezing and there aren't enough boats. Not enough by half. Half the people on this ship are going to die!" Cal Hockley: "Not the better half!"
What I meant to say, was that the presidential aide and mega-millionaire were NOT among those rescued.
Because they never even tried to get into a lifeboat.
As Walter Lord, author of "Night to Remember" observed (in an interview I think) most men circa 1912 were of the general view, that it would be profoundly wrong, for a man to (for example) to take a seat in a lifeboat before a woman or child.
And that they judged other men - and themselves - by such standards. With severe social stigma attached to violations, esp. egregious ones.
As in case of Cunard executive J. Bruce Ismay, who DID survive the disaster . . . and never lived it down.
I think it wasGuggenheim (as protrayed in "Titanic"), when offered a life jacket by a crewman: "No, thank you! We are dressed in our finest, and intend to go down as gentlemen!"
Britain doesn’t do capital investment. The culture is against it. Britain has lagged peer economies basically forever on this metric.
I don’t really know why that is. But I wonder if it stems back to Victorian times when frankly it was a more profitable use of capital to invest in Uruguayan mines and Californian railway, and so a weird “tradition” developed in which the home country was just left to fend for itself.
That worked only so long as Britain maintained industrial technology advantage but ever since 1860 it’s been a slow decline, and definitively so since (pick your date) 1918, 1925, or 1979.
It's utterly perplexing to me. Take the recent arguing about mortgages and how to help people. That's only treating the symptom. It's not the cause of the problem. The cause is a massive under supply of housing going back many decades. People in the UK spend too much money for too little crap housing, so that a return to moderate and normal interest rates is crucifying them.
Where is the political party saying "we will build 5 million homes over the next decade to fix the supply problem"? There isn't one, the debate is about tweaks not anyone grasping the nettle to fix the problem.
The UK population will pass 70 million within a couple of years — assuming population statistics are correct which given the Settled Status scheme uptake may not be the case — and we are nailed on for 80 million by 2050, unless something incredible happens to migration*.
We need to build an enormous amount of everything. A building programme like nothing in living memory, probably even surpassing the post-war years.
* Climate change is likely to make the UK even more attractive for migrants, so don't believe under 100,000 a year is plausible, we'll be lucky if we can keep it down to two or three times that.
Of course the UK needs a massive house building programme but you need to overcome two problems in my non expert opinion. Firstly there needs to be at least a suspension or ban on non UK resident house purchasers, even if only new build.
Secondly you need to get past the nimbys. The only way I can think of doing that is to tie development to council funding so each council gets govt financing to encourage building housing and if their targets aren’t met they get penalised financially from their next year’s overall budget so when people living in that council are faced with reduced services making their little nimby paradises less pleasant then they might have to start being less selfish.
Council gets financial help to build, gets given a good argument to crush nimbyism and hopefully unbungs the system.
Oh, hang him! Hang him high from the nearest yardarm! Curse the man who sold hooky ice cream to the French! Bring back the guillotine, I say!
Corporal punishment would perhaps be appropriate - 6 of the best with Mr. Whippy.
Mind you, given seeing a documentary at a young age, I legally selling ice cream suggests heroin & ultraviolence
A Clockwork Orange is a documentary about milk bars?
"There was me, that is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel, and my three droogs, that is Priti, Govey and Dom, and we sat in the Kensington Milkbar trying to make up our Raab-oodocks what to do with the evening. The Kensington Milkbar sold Milk-plus, milk plus corn syrup or GM soya or chlorinated chicken, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old No-deal Brexit!"
I do like Mary Harrington. That article could have gone in a hysterical direction, and instead meandered unexpectedly. I frequently disagree with her conclusions but do like reading her, so thank you. It's like John Gray: I think he's frequently wrong but I like his style.
I prefer the work of Difford and Tilbrook who assert "it's cool to be a cat".
I'm surprised that Britain's most famous cat-identifier hasn't come up in this debate: George Galloway.
When it comes to cat metrics Galloway is the Rula thumb!
Was not Tommy Sheridan (remember him?) famed for HIS (tom) cat-ing around?
Britain doesn’t do capital investment. The culture is against it. Britain has lagged peer economies basically forever on this metric.
I don’t really know why that is. But I wonder if it stems back to Victorian times when frankly it was a more profitable use of capital to invest in Uruguayan mines and Californian railway, and so a weird “tradition” developed in which the home country was just left to fend for itself.
That worked only so long as Britain maintained industrial technology advantage but ever since 1860 it’s been a slow decline, and definitively so since (pick your date) 1918, 1925, or 1979.
It's utterly perplexing to me. Take the recent arguing about mortgages and how to help people. That's only treating the symptom. It's not the cause of the problem. The cause is a massive under supply of housing going back many decades. People in the UK spend too much money for too little crap housing, so that a return to moderate and normal interest rates is crucifying them.
Where is the political party saying "we will build 5 million homes over the next decade to fix the supply problem"? There isn't one, the debate is about tweaks not anyone grasping the nettle to fix the problem.
The UK population will pass 70 million within a couple of years — assuming population statistics are correct which given the Settled Status scheme uptake may not be the case — and we are nailed on for 80 million by 2050, unless something incredible happens to migration*.
We need to build an enormous amount of everything. A building programme like nothing in living memory, probably even surpassing the post-war years.
* Climate change is likely to make the UK even more attractive for migrants, so don't believe under 100,000 a year is plausible, we'll be lucky if we can keep it down to two or three times that.
Part of the problem is that people start saying that saying we nee to build houses, roads due to population increase is "immigrant blaming"
Because it is so much more "immigrant friendly" to have them (the immigrants) living in bunk beds, 4 to a room.....
Can you give any specific instances to support this rather bizarre claim?
' Van operators were involved in frequent violence and intimidation tactics, the most notable example of which involved a driver and his family who were killed in an arson attack that resulted in a twenty-year court battle. The conflicts generated widespread public outrage, and earned the Strathclyde Police the nickname of "Serious Chimes Squad" ....'
James Cameron criticises the mission to the Titanic, which is a bit odd since he's done it himself 33 times.
Using high quality, properly designed, rated and tested equipment.
Sounds rather elitist to me.
Well, on SS Titanic's last voyage, 1st-class passengers DID have superior survival rate overall.
Though note that IIRC higher percentage of 3rd-class WOMEN were saved than than of 1st-class men.
Among later were top personal aide to the then-POTUS and the patriarch of Guggenheims.
Rose's mum: "Will the lifeboats be seated according to class? I hope they're not too crowded." Rose: "Oh mother, shut up! Don't you understand? The water is freezing and there aren't enough boats. Not enough by half. Half the people on this ship are going to die!" Cal Hockley: "Not the better half!"
What I meant to say, was that the presidential aide and mega-millionaire were NOT among those rescued.
Because they never even tried to get into a lifeboat.
As Walter Lord, author of "Night to Remember" observed (in an interview I think) most men circa 1912 were of the general view, that it would be profoundly wrong, for a man to (for example) to take a seat in a lifeboat before a woman or child.
And that they judged other men - and themselves - by such standards. With severe social stigma attached to violations, esp. egregious ones.
As in case of Cunard executive J. Bruce Ismay, who DID survive the disaster . . . and never lived it down.
This attitude didn't come out of thin air. Just like nearly all the Victorian/Edwardian rules that we find a bit strange today.
It was a reaction to earlier ship sinkings where the only survivors (pretty much) were the ablest bodied men.
We are at 47.4% fossil fuels, and 20.6% renewables.
Given on windy days we can easily see these figures reversed, it's clear that a workable form of energy storage (preferably medium-term storage) is vital. Goodness knows what form that will be, though.
Store the excess energy as heat. I think 1970's storage heaters controllable by internet for weather conditions and best spot rates for domestic use. Heated sand for industrial storage. Sand is the cheapest material and has a massive heat capacity.
People have been trying to build such systems for years. Lots of detail problems to solve.
What are the main problems with sand based heat storage for excess electricity production, bearing in mind the economic case only has to be justified on the marginal cost at peak prices?
Well, you now have a pile of red to sand. How do you get the heat back, efficiently?
This leads to molten salts, eutectic (lead/bismuth) etc...
I know you two are going to bang back and forth about energy-to-heat-to-heat-storage-to-energy all day - molten salts! - so I'll just say "you know we can pump water up a mountain and let it flow back down", like we've been doing for forty years, and leave it there
Sadly, there seem to be some small impediments in my plan to blow the top off Ben Nevis with a 10 megaton nuclear weapon to create suitable location for pumped storage.
There aren't even vaguely enough places for pumped storage in the UK, compared to the size of the demand on the grid, to do storage on a sufficient scale.
Incidentally, it would cost about the same to build the same capacity as Dinorwig out of trailers full of batteries https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/megapack
A Megapack is now about $900k dollars. So $300K per MWh.
Dinorwig is 9.1 GWh - 9100 x 300k = $2.7 billion
Dinorwig cost 485 million pounds between 1977 and 1984
Which is 2-4 billion today (big difference between 1977 and 1984. Good luck getting it done for that, again.
with the exchange rate, that's about $2.5-5 billion dollars.
Yes, but we can do another Dinorwig without having to bring in foreign equipment (and maintenance costs). We've had fifty years worth of object lessons in being dependent on the Saudis for oil, and a two-year reminder of the unwisdom of letting Putin grab our gentle bits with gas. I am fucked if we are lobbing yet more billions at Musk. Can we buy British, just for once? Let's stop enriching foreign fantasists, torturers, and dictators for once. We're British. We can dig a hole and lay pipe. Let's do that instead.
Scotland says good luck with your one difficult 3GW capacity site in Wales:
I do like Mary Harrington. That article could have gone in a hysterical direction, and instead meandered unexpectedly. I frequently disagree with her conclusions but do like reading her, so thank you. It's like John Gray: I think he's frequently wrong but I like his style.
I prefer the work of Difford and Tilbrook who assert "it's cool to be a cat".
I'm surprised that Britain's most famous cat-identifier hasn't come up in this debate: George Galloway.
' Van operators were involved in frequent violence and intimidation tactics, the most notable example of which involved a driver and his family who were killed in an arson attack that resulted in a twenty-year court battle. The conflicts generated widespread public outrage, and earned the Strathclyde Police the nickname of "Serious Chimes Squad" ....'
I think it was even referenced in an episode of New Tricks in which they had to investigate an ice cream war on their patch.
We are at 47.4% fossil fuels, and 20.6% renewables.
Given on windy days we can easily see these figures reversed, it's clear that a workable form of energy storage (preferably medium-term storage) is vital. Goodness knows what form that will be, though.
Store the excess energy as heat. I think 1970's storage heaters controllable by internet for weather conditions and best spot rates for domestic use. Heated sand for industrial storage. Sand is the cheapest material and has a massive heat capacity.
People have been trying to build such systems for years. Lots of detail problems to solve.
What are the main problems with sand based heat storage for excess electricity production, bearing in mind the economic case only has to be justified on the marginal cost at peak prices?
Well, you now have a pile of red to sand. How do you get the heat back, efficiently?
This leads to molten salts, eutectic (lead/bismuth) etc...
I know you two are going to bang back and forth about energy-to-heat-to-heat-storage-to-energy all day - molten salts! - so I'll just say "you know we can pump water up a mountain and let it flow back down", like we've been doing for forty years, and leave it there
Sadly, there seem to be some small impediments in my plan to blow the top off Ben Nevis with a 10 megaton nuclear weapon to create suitable location for pumped storage.
There aren't even vaguely enough places for pumped storage in the UK, compared to the size of the demand on the grid, to do storage on a sufficient scale.
Incidentally, it would cost about the same to build the same capacity as Dinorwig out of trailers full of batteries https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/megapack
A Megapack is now about $900k dollars. So $300K per MWh.
Dinorwig is 9.1 GWh - 9100 x 300k = $2.7 billion
Dinorwig cost 485 million pounds between 1977 and 1984
Which is 2-4 billion today (big difference between 1977 and 1984. Good luck getting it done for that, again.
with the exchange rate, that's about $2.5-5 billion dollars.
Yes, but we can do another Dinorwig without having to bring in foreign equipment (and maintenance costs). We've had fifty years worth of object lessons in being dependent on the Saudis for oil, and a two-year reminder of the unwisdom of letting Putin grab our gentle bits with gas. I am fucked if we are lobbing yet more billions at Musk. Can we buy British, just for once? Let's stop enriching foreign fantasists, torturers, and dictators for once. We're British. We can dig a hole and lay pipe. Let's do that instead.
Scotland says good luck with your one difficult 3GW capacity site in Wales:
Thank you for the map. It had many dots and the meaning was not obvious, but I assume it supported your point.
The pumped storage potential sites list for Scotland reminds me rather of the wind farm potential sites - the numbers are quite... interesting in origin.
Of course the UK needs a massive house building programme but you need to overcome two problems in my non expert opinion. Firstly there needs to be at least a suspension or ban on non UK resident house purchasers, even if only new build.
Secondly you need to get past the nimbys. The only way I can think of doing that is to tie development to council funding so each council gets govt financing to encourage building housing and if their targets aren’t met they get penalised financially from their next year’s overall budget so when people living in that council are faced with reduced services making their little nimby paradises less pleasant then they might have to start being less selfish.
Council gets financial help to build, gets given a good argument to crush nimbyism and hopefully unbungs the system.
I'm very pro-stick for dealing with such issues. I always think that people who oppose stuff being built, like phone masts, should learn to live without the things they won't have built near them. I suspect they would change their minds pretty darn quick if they had to do without.
Britain doesn’t do capital investment. The culture is against it. Britain has lagged peer economies basically forever on this metric.
I don’t really know why that is. But I wonder if it stems back to Victorian times when frankly it was a more profitable use of capital to invest in Uruguayan mines and Californian railway, and so a weird “tradition” developed in which the home country was just left to fend for itself.
That worked only so long as Britain maintained industrial technology advantage but ever since 1860 it’s been a slow decline, and definitively so since (pick your date) 1918, 1925, or 1979.
It's utterly perplexing to me. Take the recent arguing about mortgages and how to help people. That's only treating the symptom. It's not the cause of the problem. The cause is a massive under supply of housing going back many decades. People in the UK spend too much money for too little crap housing, so that a return to moderate and normal interest rates is crucifying them.
Where is the political party saying "we will build 5 million homes over the next decade to fix the supply problem"? There isn't one, the debate is about tweaks not anyone grasping the nettle to fix the problem.
The UK population will pass 70 million within a couple of years — assuming population statistics are correct which given the Settled Status scheme uptake may not be the case — and we are nailed on for 80 million by 2050, unless something incredible happens to migration*.
We need to build an enormous amount of everything. A building programme like nothing in living memory, probably even surpassing the post-war years.
* Climate change is likely to make the UK even more attractive for migrants, so don't believe under 100,000 a year is plausible, we'll be lucky if we can keep it down to two or three times that.
Of course the UK needs a massive house building programme but you need to overcome two problems in my non expert opinion. Firstly there needs to be at least a suspension or ban on non UK resident house purchasers, even if only new build.
Secondly you need to get past the nimbys. The only way I can think of doing that is to tie development to council funding so each council gets govt financing to encourage building housing and if their targets aren’t met they get penalised financially from their next year’s overall budget so when people living in that council are faced with reduced services making their little nimby paradises less pleasant then they might have to start being less selfish.
Council gets financial help to build, gets given a good argument to crush nimbyism and hopefully unbungs the system.
Worth pointing out yet again that 90% of all housing development planning is passed first time by local councils and a further 5% is passed on appeal.
So the idea that the vast underbuild is due to nimbyism is a myth. Yes nimbyism does of course exist but its power and influence is massively overstated. As long as the gap between planning permissions and builds keeps increasing by around 80 - 100K a year, planning is not the issue.
James Cameron criticises the mission to the Titanic, which is a bit odd since he's done it himself 33 times.
Using high quality, properly designed, rated and tested equipment.
Sounds rather elitist to me.
Well, on SS Titanic's last voyage, 1st-class passengers DID have superior survival rate overall.
Though note that IIRC higher percentage of 3rd-class WOMEN were saved than than of 1st-class men.
Among later were top personal aide to the then-POTUS and the patriarch of Guggenheims.
Rose's mum: "Will the lifeboats be seated according to class? I hope they're not too crowded." Rose: "Oh mother, shut up! Don't you understand? The water is freezing and there aren't enough boats. Not enough by half. Half the people on this ship are going to die!" Cal Hockley: "Not the better half!"
What I meant to say, was that the presidential aide and mega-millionaire were NOT among those rescued.
Because they never even tried to get into a lifeboat.
As Walter Lord, author of "Night to Remember" observed (in an interview I think) most men circa 1912 were of the general view, that it would be profoundly wrong, for a man to (for example) to take a seat in a lifeboat before a woman or child.
And that they judged other men - and themselves - by such standards. With severe social stigma attached to violations, esp. egregious ones.
As in case of Cunard executive J. Bruce Ismay, who DID survive the disaster . . . and never lived it down.
I think it wasGuggenheim (as protrayed in "Titanic"), when offered a life jacket by a crewman: "No, thank you! We are dressed in our finest, and intend to go down as gentlemen!"
Guggenheim's wife - who like him was no spring chicken - refused to get on a lifeboat.
Saying (I paraphrase), I've been with the old coot too long, to even think of leaving him now.
Would the Remoaners on here finally STFU if we got a reformed Brexit that gave us back Freedom of Movement?
It seems to be the most emotive and profound loss, from Brexit, for a majority of Remainery people (and I share some of the pain, as I say). Perhaps that is the place where Britain could finally reconcile. Brexit Plus. Brexit Plus Freedom of Movement
We'll be like the ERG in reverse - you'll never appease us with titbit after titbit, grudging morsel after dry crumb. We'll always want more. Pure, hard, diamond-tipped Rejoin. Whatever acronym is the 180 degree opposite of BRINO. I want my EU citizenship back.
Blue flagged, rather than brown-watered, beaches, the Euro, Schengen, the banning of offshore tax havens, the whole shebang please. Coming out hasn't worked, let's go back in full-throttle. If you could make that so I'd be very appreciative.
Incidentally, it was very astute of Question Time to stuff last night's audience full of ill-informed gammon, dribbling out the same tired, discredited Johnsonian garbage. (Didn't watch it, of course, but the QT hashtag throws up a damning verdict from the hive mind.) In a few years when admitting voting Leave in polite company will be akin to squatting down and curling one out on your host's lovely dining table, nice people can shudder and say with a contemptuous titter 'No, of course I didn't vote Leave! It was voted for by those ghastly mouth-breathing idiots who look like they've been sculpted out of pork pie meat. What common accents they have. Like on that Question Time, you remember.'
Aaaaand, this sneering drivel is why you will never get to Rejoin. You immediately alienate a Liberal Leaver like me, and make me yearn for even Harder Brexit so you suffer, again and again
I know you are half joking, but you are only half joking. So I say to the other half: HAHAHAHAHAHA, we're never going back in. Tough shit
The basic problem they have is that most people in the UK have an underlying identity and low level patriotism based on being British and their home nation. Even as we become more cosmopolitan, Brits still want to come back to hearing British regional accents and the local customs and food. Meanwhile the really hardcore remainers identify more with Paris and Berlin and have cultural cringe over Skegness.
So there is no understanding there that Brits, even when some think it is economically advantageous to be in the EU, don't like lawmaking from Brussells, no passport checks on Romanians and economic policy set in Frankfurt.
I suspect some Remainers know this, which is why they want as much unintegrated immigration as possible, so they have a voting base not attached to traditional British culture.
Hardcore Remainers are unremittingly awful people. I can't work out whether they were always awful, nasty, sneering, and mentally inadequate, and we simply didn't notice - or whether Brexit made them that way. Genuine puzzle
The simple fact is some people were better off when we were in the EU, some people were worse off under the EU. Now it is reversed.
Losing their FoM is actually a really crap argument in my view because the number of Brits that actually ever took advantage of it was less than 2% of the population (not talking people taking a 2 week vacation in france, I mean those that moved to live or work). The 98% that didn't want to take advantage of it still had to pay for it.
What exactly was the cost of freedom of movement ? Most economic analysis has FoM as defined by the European variety as a net benefit for the UK.
The price of freedom of movement is being in the EU had a cost. It was a benefit to the GDP of the country but not such a benefit to people who's jobs were nailed to minimum wage by the infinite labour pool, nor such a benefit to places like slough where I used to live where the population grew by about ten percent in a year due to Eastern european accession without any sign of extra doctors, police, hospital provision, school places and certainly not a sufficient increase in housing.
Where are all the immigrants going now that we've left? Somewhere other than Slough? Or still Slough?
Difference is now their are lower bounds for salaries at least so those that come are actually paying their way. Someone coming over to work a minimum wage job is not contributing above their cost to the state. Please don't try to say a lot of EU workers weren't working min wage jobs in hospitality as that has been a complaint of certain posters here that those nice eastern european hospitality staff have vanished.
Yeah, I want to see some calculations before I trust you at your word on that. If someone comes here from abroad, we've not paid for their schooling, we're not paying for their retirement. On average they will be younger and healthier than the average person. How much are they costing the exchequer?
There are some areas of expenditure where they apply to immigrants because everybody benefits from them e.g. defence and policing. And some where they apply less to immigrants, like state pensions, health and social care. And others where it's really dubious whether you should apply it to them, such as debt interest payments (is new immigrant really responsible for UK government loans undertaken years before that immigrant ever came here?)
Of course, immigrants will pay PAYE/NI/VAT/Fuel duty/corporation tax/business rates in the normal way in most cases.
So, no, I'm not taking your word for it that someone on the minimum wage isn't "paying their way". Not without some proper tax/spend breakdowns that take account for the demographic skewness.
Apart from in slough the second gen asian immigrants were complaining about their childrens schooling being hindered because the schools were full of eastern european children who didnt speak english as a first language so lessons were slowed down.
A lot of eastern europeans I knew in slough had kids while over here and showed every sign of settling here. I don't have any stats for how many actually stay and make a life here because no one is counted out of the country but my estimate based on those I knew in slough is 30 to 50% so yes we will be covering their retirement too.
The simple fact is we dont seem to have stats on any of this. Being my normal cynical self I suspect that is because if they collected them they would show FoM wasn't such a benefit to the country once services were taken into account. Hence why its always quoted as GDP.
You have a country of 55 million, you add 10 million and its a surprise GDP rises? It doesn't mean GDP per capita rises
Yes, so when I say "we're not paying for their retirement", I mean NOW. Yes, SOME will stay and eventually need state pensions and health and social care which I covered under "apply less to immigrants, like state pensions, health and social care". Less, not non-existent. And yes, some immigrants have children and therefore are more likely to be a tax drain, but that's the same as people born in this country too.
Immigrants cost and benefit this country. Everybody knows both are true. The question of where the tipping point is, well it's a multidimensional question covering health, dependants, duration, spending behaviour, and so on. It's not easy to work out, and maybe you're right that there's no reliable figure for it. But you implied you knew the answer when you said
to work a minimum wage job is not contributing above their cost to the state
I now see you were simply assuming that to be case, and I have serious doubts about whether it's a true.
Someone on minimum wage will pay 900 income tax approx and 550 ni a year, how far do you imagine that goes paying towards public services? An immigrant or anyone young will still visit a doctor, need police/fire/be eligible for housing benefit/need their children schooled etc
You mention the fire brigade, which is not exactly the biggest spend in government but let's look at it. It's funded by a mix of central government and council tax. You forgot council tax, didn't you? And VAT.
As an example of the sorts of numbers we're talking about, receipts from council tax are about ten times the cost of fire services countrywide.
So yes, all immigrants certainly do benefit from fire services, not just the minority who actually need the service in a given year (because it's there always for all of us), but they also pay for it.
Similar calculations can be done for other areas of the budget. It's really very far from obvious which side of the equation the average immigrant comes down on, even restricting it to those on minimum wage.
Let me ask you this, too: if you found out that minimum-wage immigrants were actually "paying their way", would you actually change your mind on FoM? Or are there other factors at play?
Then down to you to prove it if you don't believe it. I notice you have gone quiet on your claim of well over a million living and working in the eu after I quoted a source. To be revenue neutral you have to earn about 36k a year in this country. Even accounting for pensions and end of life health care I don't believe a min wage worker can be revenue neutral earning half the amount.
The simple fact is neither point of view is provable beyond doubt because figures are so obscured. However claiming a min wage worker is a drain on the treasury is I believe on the balance of probabilities a lot more likely than them being a net contributor
Britain doesn’t do capital investment. The culture is against it. Britain has lagged peer economies basically forever on this metric.
I don’t really know why that is. But I wonder if it stems back to Victorian times when frankly it was a more profitable use of capital to invest in Uruguayan mines and Californian railway, and so a weird “tradition” developed in which the home country was just left to fend for itself.
That worked only so long as Britain maintained industrial technology advantage but ever since 1860 it’s been a slow decline, and definitively so since (pick your date) 1918, 1925, or 1979.
It's utterly perplexing to me. Take the recent arguing about mortgages and how to help people. That's only treating the symptom. It's not the cause of the problem. The cause is a massive under supply of housing going back many decades. People in the UK spend too much money for too little crap housing, so that a return to moderate and normal interest rates is crucifying them.
Where is the political party saying "we will build 5 million homes over the next decade to fix the supply problem"? There isn't one, the debate is about tweaks not anyone grasping the nettle to fix the problem.
The UK population will pass 70 million within a couple of years — assuming population statistics are correct which given the Settled Status scheme uptake may not be the case — and we are nailed on for 80 million by 2050, unless something incredible happens to migration*.
We need to build an enormous amount of everything. A building programme like nothing in living memory, probably even surpassing the post-war years.
* Climate change is likely to make the UK even more attractive for migrants, so don't believe under 100,000 a year is plausible, we'll be lucky if we can keep it down to two or three times that.
Of course the UK needs a massive house building programme but you need to overcome two problems in my non expert opinion. Firstly there needs to be at least a suspension or ban on non UK resident house purchasers, even if only new build.
Secondly you need to get past the nimbys. The only way I can think of doing that is to tie development to council funding so each council gets govt financing to encourage building housing and if their targets aren’t met they get penalised financially from their next year’s overall budget so when people living in that council are faced with reduced services making their little nimby paradises less pleasant then they might have to start being less selfish.
Council gets financial help to build, gets given a good argument to crush nimbyism and hopefully unbungs the system.
Worth pointing out yet again that 90% of all housing development planning is passed first time by local councils and a further 5% is passed on appeal.
So the idea that the vast underbuild is due to nimbyism is a myth. Yes nimbyism does of course exist but its power and influence is massively overstated. As long as the gap between planning permissions and builds keeps increasing by around 80 - 100K a year, planning is not the issue.
I look at planning apps quite often, a recent mast was rejected for "damaging the look and feel of the area". It's a city.
I do like Mary Harrington. That article could have gone in a hysterical direction, and instead meandered unexpectedly. I frequently disagree with her conclusions but do like reading her, so thank you. It's like John Gray: I think he's frequently wrong but I like his style.
I prefer the work of Difford and Tilbrook who assert "it's cool to be a cat".
I'm surprised that Britain's most famous cat-identifier hasn't come up in this debate: George Galloway.
When it comes to cat metrics Galloway is the Rula thumb!
Was not Tommy Sheridan (remember him?) famed for HIS (tom) cat-ing around?
Britain doesn’t do capital investment. The culture is against it. Britain has lagged peer economies basically forever on this metric.
I don’t really know why that is. But I wonder if it stems back to Victorian times when frankly it was a more profitable use of capital to invest in Uruguayan mines and Californian railway, and so a weird “tradition” developed in which the home country was just left to fend for itself.
That worked only so long as Britain maintained industrial technology advantage but ever since 1860 it’s been a slow decline, and definitively so since (pick your date) 1918, 1925, or 1979.
It's utterly perplexing to me. Take the recent arguing about mortgages and how to help people. That's only treating the symptom. It's not the cause of the problem. The cause is a massive under supply of housing going back many decades. People in the UK spend too much money for too little crap housing, so that a return to moderate and normal interest rates is crucifying them.
Where is the political party saying "we will build 5 million homes over the next decade to fix the supply problem"? There isn't one, the debate is about tweaks not anyone grasping the nettle to fix the problem.
The UK population will pass 70 million within a couple of years — assuming population statistics are correct which given the Settled Status scheme uptake may not be the case — and we are nailed on for 80 million by 2050, unless something incredible happens to migration*.
We need to build an enormous amount of everything. A building programme like nothing in living memory, probably even surpassing the post-war years.
* Climate change is likely to make the UK even more attractive for migrants, so don't believe under 100,000 a year is plausible, we'll be lucky if we can keep it down to two or three times that.
The only parts of the country where there's room to build houses are not popular places for people to move to, like the north-east.
Britain doesn’t do capital investment. The culture is against it. Britain has lagged peer economies basically forever on this metric.
I don’t really know why that is. But I wonder if it stems back to Victorian times when frankly it was a more profitable use of capital to invest in Uruguayan mines and Californian railway, and so a weird “tradition” developed in which the home country was just left to fend for itself.
That worked only so long as Britain maintained industrial technology advantage but ever since 1860 it’s been a slow decline, and definitively so since (pick your date) 1918, 1925, or 1979.
It's utterly perplexing to me. Take the recent arguing about mortgages and how to help people. That's only treating the symptom. It's not the cause of the problem. The cause is a massive under supply of housing going back many decades. People in the UK spend too much money for too little crap housing, so that a return to moderate and normal interest rates is crucifying them.
Where is the political party saying "we will build 5 million homes over the next decade to fix the supply problem"? There isn't one, the debate is about tweaks not anyone grasping the nettle to fix the problem.
The UK population will pass 70 million within a couple of years — assuming population statistics are correct which given the Settled Status scheme uptake may not be the case — and we are nailed on for 80 million by 2050, unless something incredible happens to migration*.
We need to build an enormous amount of everything. A building programme like nothing in living memory, probably even surpassing the post-war years.
* Climate change is likely to make the UK even more attractive for migrants, so don't believe under 100,000 a year is plausible, we'll be lucky if we can keep it down to two or three times that.
The only parts of the country where there's room to build houses are not popular places for people to move to, like the north-east.
They might become more popular, if the weather improves
Also we need to knock down about 200 hideous towns, and rebuild them like Poundbury
Britain doesn’t do capital investment. The culture is against it. Britain has lagged peer economies basically forever on this metric.
I don’t really know why that is. But I wonder if it stems back to Victorian times when frankly it was a more profitable use of capital to invest in Uruguayan mines and Californian railway, and so a weird “tradition” developed in which the home country was just left to fend for itself.
That worked only so long as Britain maintained industrial technology advantage but ever since 1860 it’s been a slow decline, and definitively so since (pick your date) 1918, 1925, or 1979.
It's utterly perplexing to me. Take the recent arguing about mortgages and how to help people. That's only treating the symptom. It's not the cause of the problem. The cause is a massive under supply of housing going back many decades. People in the UK spend too much money for too little crap housing, so that a return to moderate and normal interest rates is crucifying them.
Where is the political party saying "we will build 5 million homes over the next decade to fix the supply problem"? There isn't one, the debate is about tweaks not anyone grasping the nettle to fix the problem.
The UK population will pass 70 million within a couple of years — assuming population statistics are correct which given the Settled Status scheme uptake may not be the case — and we are nailed on for 80 million by 2050, unless something incredible happens to migration*.
We need to build an enormous amount of everything. A building programme like nothing in living memory, probably even surpassing the post-war years.
* Climate change is likely to make the UK even more attractive for migrants, so don't believe under 100,000 a year is plausible, we'll be lucky if we can keep it down to two or three times that.
Of course the UK needs a massive house building programme but you need to overcome two problems in my non expert opinion. Firstly there needs to be at least a suspension or ban on non UK resident house purchasers, even if only new build.
Secondly you need to get past the nimbys. The only way I can think of doing that is to tie development to council funding so each council gets govt financing to encourage building housing and if their targets aren’t met they get penalised financially from their next year’s overall budget so when people living in that council are faced with reduced services making their little nimby paradises less pleasant then they might have to start being less selfish.
Council gets financial help to build, gets given a good argument to crush nimbyism and hopefully unbungs the system.
Worth pointing out yet again that 90% of all housing development planning is passed first time by local councils and a further 5% is passed on appeal.
So the idea that the vast underbuild is due to nimbyism is a myth. Yes nimbyism does of course exist but its power and influence is massively overstated. As long as the gap between planning permissions and builds keeps increasing by around 80 - 100K a year, planning is not the issue.
I look at planning apps quite often, a recent mast was rejected for "damaging the look and feel of the area". It's a city.
To be fair I was talking about housing developments not things like masts. There are still plenty of myths around about masts and councillors have far more undue infleunce over these as they are not part of any official local plan.
Britain doesn’t do capital investment. The culture is against it. Britain has lagged peer economies basically forever on this metric.
I don’t really know why that is. But I wonder if it stems back to Victorian times when frankly it was a more profitable use of capital to invest in Uruguayan mines and Californian railway, and so a weird “tradition” developed in which the home country was just left to fend for itself.
That worked only so long as Britain maintained industrial technology advantage but ever since 1860 it’s been a slow decline, and definitively so since (pick your date) 1918, 1925, or 1979.
It's utterly perplexing to me. Take the recent arguing about mortgages and how to help people. That's only treating the symptom. It's not the cause of the problem. The cause is a massive under supply of housing going back many decades. People in the UK spend too much money for too little crap housing, so that a return to moderate and normal interest rates is crucifying them.
Where is the political party saying "we will build 5 million homes over the next decade to fix the supply problem"? There isn't one, the debate is about tweaks not anyone grasping the nettle to fix the problem.
The UK population will pass 70 million within a couple of years — assuming population statistics are correct which given the Settled Status scheme uptake may not be the case — and we are nailed on for 80 million by 2050, unless something incredible happens to migration*.
We need to build an enormous amount of everything. A building programme like nothing in living memory, probably even surpassing the post-war years.
* Climate change is likely to make the UK even more attractive for migrants, so don't believe under 100,000 a year is plausible, we'll be lucky if we can keep it down to two or three times that.
Of course the UK needs a massive house building programme but you need to overcome two problems in my non expert opinion. Firstly there needs to be at least a suspension or ban on non UK resident house purchasers, even if only new build.
Secondly you need to get past the nimbys. The only way I can think of doing that is to tie development to council funding so each council gets govt financing to encourage building housing and if their targets aren’t met they get penalised financially from their next year’s overall budget so when people living in that council are faced with reduced services making their little nimby paradises less pleasant then they might have to start being less selfish.
Council gets financial help to build, gets given a good argument to crush nimbyism and hopefully unbungs the system.
Worth pointing out yet again that 90% of all housing development planning is passed first time by local councils and a further 5% is passed on appeal.
So the idea that the vast underbuild is due to nimbyism is a myth. Yes nimbyism does of course exist but its power and influence is massively overstated. As long as the gap between planning permissions and builds keeps increasing by around 80 - 100K a year, planning is not the issue.
I'm guessing the issue is that developers prefer to sell houses for more than the cost of building and if the price falls the number being built will fall accordingly. A point worth considering by those who simultaneously advocate more housing and cheaper housing. And if anyone thinks the answer is more council houses, they also have to be paid for by someone or other.
I do like Mary Harrington. That article could have gone in a hysterical direction, and instead meandered unexpectedly. I frequently disagree with her conclusions but do like reading her, so thank you. It's like John Gray: I think he's frequently wrong but I like his style.
I prefer the work of Difford and Tilbrook who assert "it's cool to be a cat".
I'm surprised that Britain's most famous cat-identifier hasn't come up in this debate: George Galloway.
When it comes to cat metrics Galloway is the Rula thumb!
Was not Tommy Sheridan (remember him?) famed for HIS (tom) cat-ing around?
Here's Galloway (as a cat) with Rula Lenska.
Once seen, can never be unseen.
By any chance, do you (or some other PBer) have pics of Tommy Sheridan from when HE was "stumping"?
Guessing they'd be even more (whats the word?) unforgettable? Eye-watering?
Britain doesn’t do capital investment. The culture is against it. Britain has lagged peer economies basically forever on this metric.
I don’t really know why that is. But I wonder if it stems back to Victorian times when frankly it was a more profitable use of capital to invest in Uruguayan mines and Californian railway, and so a weird “tradition” developed in which the home country was just left to fend for itself.
That worked only so long as Britain maintained industrial technology advantage but ever since 1860 it’s been a slow decline, and definitively so since (pick your date) 1918, 1925, or 1979.
It's utterly perplexing to me. Take the recent arguing about mortgages and how to help people. That's only treating the symptom. It's not the cause of the problem. The cause is a massive under supply of housing going back many decades. People in the UK spend too much money for too little crap housing, so that a return to moderate and normal interest rates is crucifying them.
Where is the political party saying "we will build 5 million homes over the next decade to fix the supply problem"? There isn't one, the debate is about tweaks not anyone grasping the nettle to fix the problem.
The UK population will pass 70 million within a couple of years — assuming population statistics are correct which given the Settled Status scheme uptake may not be the case — and we are nailed on for 80 million by 2050, unless something incredible happens to migration*.
We need to build an enormous amount of everything. A building programme like nothing in living memory, probably even surpassing the post-war years.
* Climate change is likely to make the UK even more attractive for migrants, so don't believe under 100,000 a year is plausible, we'll be lucky if we can keep it down to two or three times that.
The only parts of the country where there's room to build houses are not popular places for people to move to, like the north-east.
If you took the first half mile of green belt round a town, plenty of space.
Britain doesn’t do capital investment. The culture is against it. Britain has lagged peer economies basically forever on this metric.
I don’t really know why that is. But I wonder if it stems back to Victorian times when frankly it was a more profitable use of capital to invest in Uruguayan mines and Californian railway, and so a weird “tradition” developed in which the home country was just left to fend for itself.
That worked only so long as Britain maintained industrial technology advantage but ever since 1860 it’s been a slow decline, and definitively so since (pick your date) 1918, 1925, or 1979.
It's utterly perplexing to me. Take the recent arguing about mortgages and how to help people. That's only treating the symptom. It's not the cause of the problem. The cause is a massive under supply of housing going back many decades. People in the UK spend too much money for too little crap housing, so that a return to moderate and normal interest rates is crucifying them.
Where is the political party saying "we will build 5 million homes over the next decade to fix the supply problem"? There isn't one, the debate is about tweaks not anyone grasping the nettle to fix the problem.
The UK population will pass 70 million within a couple of years — assuming population statistics are correct which given the Settled Status scheme uptake may not be the case — and we are nailed on for 80 million by 2050, unless something incredible happens to migration*.
We need to build an enormous amount of everything. A building programme like nothing in living memory, probably even surpassing the post-war years.
* Climate change is likely to make the UK even more attractive for migrants, so don't believe under 100,000 a year is plausible, we'll be lucky if we can keep it down to two or three times that.
The only parts of the country where there's room to build houses are not popular places for people to move to, like the north-east.
There seem to be plenty of sites around Colchester. Was told yesterday of yet another site, on the Clacton road, where 6000 are to be built.
' Van operators were involved in frequent violence and intimidation tactics, the most notable example of which involved a driver and his family who were killed in an arson attack that resulted in a twenty-year court battle. The conflicts generated widespread public outrage, and earned the Strathclyde Police the nickname of "Serious Chimes Squad" ....'
And NOT just in Glasgow; for instance, not exactly unknown in NYC. . .
I do like Mary Harrington. That article could have gone in a hysterical direction, and instead meandered unexpectedly. I frequently disagree with her conclusions but do like reading her, so thank you. It's like John Gray: I think he's frequently wrong but I like his style.
I prefer the work of Difford and Tilbrook who assert "it's cool to be a cat".
I'm surprised that Britain's most famous cat-identifier hasn't come up in this debate: George Galloway.
When it comes to cat metrics Galloway is the Rula thumb!
Was not Tommy Sheridan (remember him?) famed for HIS (tom) cat-ing around?
Here's Galloway (as a cat) with Rula Lenska.
Once seen, can never be unseen.
By any chance, do you (or some other PBer) have pics of Tommy Sheridan from when HE was "stumping"?
Guessing they'd be even more (whats the word?) unforgettable? Eye-watering?
Re Tommy S, rather more the question was whether the video was of him at all.
I do like Mary Harrington. That article could have gone in a hysterical direction, and instead meandered unexpectedly. I frequently disagree with her conclusions but do like reading her, so thank you. It's like John Gray: I think he's frequently wrong but I like his style.
I prefer the work of Difford and Tilbrook who assert "it's cool to be a cat".
I'm surprised that Britain's most famous cat-identifier hasn't come up in this debate: George Galloway.
When it comes to cat metrics Galloway is the Rula thumb!
Was not Tommy Sheridan (remember him?) famed for HIS (tom) cat-ing around?
Here's Galloway (as a cat) with Rula Lenska.
Once seen, can never be unseen.
By any chance, do you (or some other PBer) have pics of Tommy Sheridan from when HE was "stumping"?
Guessing they'd be even more (whats the word?) unforgettable? Eye-watering?
I'd forgotten Sheridan embarrassed himself on "Big Brother" too.
Britain doesn’t do capital investment. The culture is against it. Britain has lagged peer economies basically forever on this metric.
I don’t really know why that is. But I wonder if it stems back to Victorian times when frankly it was a more profitable use of capital to invest in Uruguayan mines and Californian railway, and so a weird “tradition” developed in which the home country was just left to fend for itself.
That worked only so long as Britain maintained industrial technology advantage but ever since 1860 it’s been a slow decline, and definitively so since (pick your date) 1918, 1925, or 1979.
It's utterly perplexing to me. Take the recent arguing about mortgages and how to help people. That's only treating the symptom. It's not the cause of the problem. The cause is a massive under supply of housing going back many decades. People in the UK spend too much money for too little crap housing, so that a return to moderate and normal interest rates is crucifying them.
Where is the political party saying "we will build 5 million homes over the next decade to fix the supply problem"? There isn't one, the debate is about tweaks not anyone grasping the nettle to fix the problem.
The UK population will pass 70 million within a couple of years — assuming population statistics are correct which given the Settled Status scheme uptake may not be the case — and we are nailed on for 80 million by 2050, unless something incredible happens to migration*.
We need to build an enormous amount of everything. A building programme like nothing in living memory, probably even surpassing the post-war years.
* Climate change is likely to make the UK even more attractive for migrants, so don't believe under 100,000 a year is plausible, we'll be lucky if we can keep it down to two or three times that.
Part of the problem is that people start saying that saying we need to build houses, roads due to population increase is "immigrant blaming"
Because it is so much more "immigrant friendly" to have them (the immigrants) living in bunk beds, 4 to a room.....
The bit that sticks in the throat somewhat is when the dots are joined up to reveal "if only we didn't have immigration, we wouldn't need all these ghastly houses." That's not the only way to join said dots, but it does happen from time to time.
What about building things because it gives everyone options, choices and nicer places to live? Or allows growing bits of the economy (Oxbridge tech, for example... it will work better if located near the boffins) to grow?
Would the Remoaners on here finally STFU if we got a reformed Brexit that gave us back Freedom of Movement?
It seems to be the most emotive and profound loss, from Brexit, for a majority of Remainery people (and I share some of the pain, as I say). Perhaps that is the place where Britain could finally reconcile. Brexit Plus. Brexit Plus Freedom of Movement
We'll be like the ERG in reverse - you'll never appease us with titbit after titbit, grudging morsel after dry crumb. We'll always want more. Pure, hard, diamond-tipped Rejoin. Whatever acronym is the 180 degree opposite of BRINO. I want my EU citizenship back.
Blue flagged, rather than brown-watered, beaches, the Euro, Schengen, the banning of offshore tax havens, the whole shebang please. Coming out hasn't worked, let's go back in full-throttle. If you could make that so I'd be very appreciative.
Incidentally, it was very astute of Question Time to stuff last night's audience full of ill-informed gammon, dribbling out the same tired, discredited Johnsonian garbage. (Didn't watch it, of course, but the QT hashtag throws up a damning verdict from the hive mind.) In a few years when admitting voting Leave in polite company will be akin to squatting down and curling one out on your host's lovely dining table, nice people can shudder and say with a contemptuous titter 'No, of course I didn't vote Leave! It was voted for by those ghastly mouth-breathing idiots who look like they've been sculpted out of pork pie meat. What common accents they have. Like on that Question Time, you remember.'
Aaaaand, this sneering drivel is why you will never get to Rejoin. You immediately alienate a Liberal Leaver like me, and make me yearn for even Harder Brexit so you suffer, again and again
I know you are half joking, but you are only half joking. So I say to the other half: HAHAHAHAHAHA, we're never going back in. Tough shit
The basic problem they have is that most people in the UK have an underlying identity and low level patriotism based on being British and their home nation. Even as we become more cosmopolitan, Brits still want to come back to hearing British regional accents and the local customs and food. Meanwhile the really hardcore remainers identify more with Paris and Berlin and have cultural cringe over Skegness.
So there is no understanding there that Brits, even when some think it is economically advantageous to be in the EU, don't like lawmaking from Brussells, no passport checks on Romanians and economic policy set in Frankfurt.
I suspect some Remainers know this, which is why they want as much unintegrated immigration as possible, so they have a voting base not attached to traditional British culture.
Hardcore Remainers are unremittingly awful people. I can't work out whether they were always awful, nasty, sneering, and mentally inadequate, and we simply didn't notice - or whether Brexit made them that way. Genuine puzzle
Hardcore Remainers have also long replaced Tory voters as the snobbiest voters around (and a lot of them happen to be LDs)
That really isn’t an assumption you are entitled to make. I’m proud to be a hard-core Remainer, and as far as I’m concerned Jack’s as good as his master.
Some Remainers unfortunately do seem to operate within a kind of caste system with themselves at the top, EU migrants as an approved labouring class, and Brexit voters as the untouchables with whom they are embarrassed to share a country. It's the "but who will serve my sandwiches in Pret?" attitude.
That's a piece of hackneyed nonsense. It's not like that at all. It's just that people like me are sad about the hard tangible benefits of EU membership being tossed away in return for nothing but jingoistic hot air, red tape and hassle. There are no plusses whatsoever unless you count Boris Johnson and Liz Truss getting a crack at being PM as a plus.
So, no, it was without doubt a terrible terrible decision we took 7 years ago today, but there's no big personal animus towards Leavers, either individually or as a group. Certainly not from me anyway. Although I will admit (being perfectly serious here) that if I was moving house there is no way I'd consider a place that voted for Brexit.
You're ruling out rather a lot of the nicest places in the UK, as a place to spend your final years
eg Cornwall voted Brexit
Also Herefordshire, Dorset, Somerset, much of Devon, mid Wales, much of Sussex, much of the Home Counties in general, Suffolk, Pembrokeshire, Northumberland, the Peaks, and on and on. Many of the most beautiful corners of Britain were Leave
' Van operators were involved in frequent violence and intimidation tactics, the most notable example of which involved a driver and his family who were killed in an arson attack that resulted in a twenty-year court battle. The conflicts generated widespread public outrage, and earned the Strathclyde Police the nickname of "Serious Chimes Squad" ....'
And NOT just in Glasgow; for instance, not exactly unknown in NYC. . .
Would the Remoaners on here finally STFU if we got a reformed Brexit that gave us back Freedom of Movement?
It seems to be the most emotive and profound loss, from Brexit, for a majority of Remainery people (and I share some of the pain, as I say). Perhaps that is the place where Britain could finally reconcile. Brexit Plus. Brexit Plus Freedom of Movement
We'll be like the ERG in reverse - you'll never appease us with titbit after titbit, grudging morsel after dry crumb. We'll always want more. Pure, hard, diamond-tipped Rejoin. Whatever acronym is the 180 degree opposite of BRINO. I want my EU citizenship back.
Blue flagged, rather than brown-watered, beaches, the Euro, Schengen, the banning of offshore tax havens, the whole shebang please. Coming out hasn't worked, let's go back in full-throttle. If you could make that so I'd be very appreciative.
Incidentally, it was very astute of Question Time to stuff last night's audience full of ill-informed gammon, dribbling out the same tired, discredited Johnsonian garbage. (Didn't watch it, of course, but the QT hashtag throws up a damning verdict from the hive mind.) In a few years when admitting voting Leave in polite company will be akin to squatting down and curling one out on your host's lovely dining table, nice people can shudder and say with a contemptuous titter 'No, of course I didn't vote Leave! It was voted for by those ghastly mouth-breathing idiots who look like they've been sculpted out of pork pie meat. What common accents they have. Like on that Question Time, you remember.'
Aaaaand, this sneering drivel is why you will never get to Rejoin. You immediately alienate a Liberal Leaver like me, and make me yearn for even Harder Brexit so you suffer, again and again
I know you are half joking, but you are only half joking. So I say to the other half: HAHAHAHAHAHA, we're never going back in. Tough shit
The basic problem they have is that most people in the UK have an underlying identity and low level patriotism based on being British and their home nation. Even as we become more cosmopolitan, Brits still want to come back to hearing British regional accents and the local customs and food. Meanwhile the really hardcore remainers identify more with Paris and Berlin and have cultural cringe over Skegness.
So there is no understanding there that Brits, even when some think it is economically advantageous to be in the EU, don't like lawmaking from Brussells, no passport checks on Romanians and economic policy set in Frankfurt.
I suspect some Remainers know this, which is why they want as much unintegrated immigration as possible, so they have a voting base not attached to traditional British culture.
Hardcore Remainers are unremittingly awful people. I can't work out whether they were always awful, nasty, sneering, and mentally inadequate, and we simply didn't notice - or whether Brexit made them that way. Genuine puzzle
The simple fact is some people were better off when we were in the EU, some people were worse off under the EU. Now it is reversed.
Losing their FoM is actually a really crap argument in my view because the number of Brits that actually ever took advantage of it was less than 2% of the population (not talking people taking a 2 week vacation in france, I mean those that moved to live or work). The 98% that didn't want to take advantage of it still had to pay for it.
I take you point but dispute your numbers. Quite a lot of Brits studied in the EU, or worked temporarily in the EU (think of the bands touring, now finding it much harder), young Brits got jobs in ski resorts or Spanish holiday towns, and so on. And many people had second homes in the EU
Probably more like 20% of the country used FoM in some form (is my rough guess)
And for some others it was just the sense of possibility they liked. One day they could retire to the sun in Cyprus; Not any more
And I share their pain to an extent and I wish we could get FoM back in a way that suits Brexiteers and Remainers. A man is allowed to dream
You are having a laugh....20% don't talk bollocks 13 million have not worked abroad or studied abroad. The figure for brits using FoM to move or work in EU countries has always been dwarfed by them moving to america/australia etc and the figures for those is less than 3%
I did pluck the numbef out of my Cornish butt, so it is quite probably wrong, but I still feel 2% is an underestimate
But the point remains the same. A lot of Remainer angst is the loss of FoM. If they could get that back they could be mollified, and we would still be Brexit Britain. And then we could all move on from frigging Brexit, which would be a good thing
Last stat I saw for people living and working in the eu (including retirees) was approx 700K. 65 million population then 700k is just over 1% so I doubled it to account for people who did work there.....even multiplying by 5 which I would say is the upper bound to account for is only 5%
It's more than 700k in just Spain, Ireland, and France combined. The total figure will be in excess of a million.
wow lets say then 1.5million it is still a fucking small percentage even if I accepted you figures
Ireland doesnt really count as we had a CTA with them before the EU and still have
The EU has not been the most common destination for Brits choosing to emigrate; 33% of all British-born emigrants living outside the UK in 2017 lived in Australia or New Zealand, 28% lived in the US or Canada and 26% in the EU – of which 6% lived in Ireland
So Sunak's government now has a net satisfaction rating higher than Major's in 1997 and higher than Truss and May's, even if slightly worse than Boris'
A result a bit better than than Major in 1997 is still a disaster for the Tories.
Given the Tories were heading for a 1993 Canadian Tories style wipeout and less than 50 seats under Truss last autumn, many Tory MPs would have bitten your hand off for a slightly better than Major 1997 result back then
They were not heading for that - polling is a snapshot not a prediction, as you will know.
Your threadbare Sunak ramping as he marches the Tory Party to crushing defeat is embarrassing.
They were. Truss resigned on 21 October last year, all polls in the week before her resignation had the Tories under 25%. One People Polling poll had the Tories on just 14%, Redfield had the Tories on just 19%. Results which would have left the Tories nearer 0 than 50 seats under FPTP
They were not, because a GE was not due to take place in the week before/after her resignation. Had a GE been imminent, then yes, your point would have some validity.
Under Sunak, the Tories have made a modest recovery which indicates little except some died in the wool Tory supporters reverting to type. There is no indication that had Truss stayed, this wouldn't still have happened.
The minor recovery has only happened under Sunak, had Truss stayed the polling evidence is the Tories would not only have lost to Labour by a landslide but ceased to be the main Opposition. The LDs or SNP may well have won more MPs than the Truss Tories would have
I don't see what polling evidence there could be that could prove this hypothetical situation, but by all means present some.
Truss was prepared to be unpopular (not that unpopular obvs.) in the short term because she believed that there was a pay off in her policies that would manifest itself before the GE - a healthier economy, more affordable childcare, increased energy supply leading to lower bills, increased food supply leading to lower food costs, increased investment from the cancelling of the CT rise etc.
Had those policies borne fruit, a modest, or even non-modest polling recovery could have taken place. Even if they hadn't, one would still expect a small recovery as the mini-budget fiasco died as a news story.
I have just given you one.
Put in the last Redfield poll under Truss' Premiership and you got Labour 571 seats, SNP 33, LDs 19 and Tories just 6.
Now however the latest Redfield poll gives Labour 469, Tories 105, SNP 33, LD 22. So even on that poll Sunak still doing about 100 MPs better than Truss
I am not going to lambast you for being stupid, because I know full well that you completely understand the point that I am making; you're just choosing not to acknowledge it.
I will merely reiterate that mid-term polling, especially in the immediate aftermath of a policy crisis like the mini-budget fiasco, cannot predict the outcome of a General Election due to take place more than two years in the future. You know that, I know that, anyone who reads PB knows that.
So you don't have any evidence that had Truss survived, the Tories wouldn't have recovered in the polls - I didn't think you would have.
Yes I know you think Truss would have recovered but on the polls before she resigned even Epping Forest would have gone Labour. Brentwood and Ongar (where we now live) would have been one of the handful of Tory seats left (and only because of the rural bits around Ongar, Brentwood itself would also have gone Labour)
I think we can both agree that the polls at the end of Liz Truss's premiership were catastrophic. However, we cannot infer that no recovery would have taken place - and tbf I cannot infer that a significant recovery in excess of what Sunak has managed would have taken place. Truss was always a gamble. What upsets me about Sunak is there's no gamble, just crushing certainty.
How is it a Trussian future carries with it the normal caveat of an unseeable future, but you absolutely know what is going to happen under Sunak? Has the change of PM somehow shifted the laws of thermodynamics?
The nature of their respective policy programmes. Crudely characterised, Truss's grab for growth was high risk/high reward, Sunak/Hunt's nails in the coffin approach is no risk/no reward.
I don't actually believe that Truss's policies were that risky, or Sunak's policies that free of risk, but as a summary it'll do.
The basic problem with Truss - and it was a massive, unbelievably arrogant, and stupid one - was there was absolutely no attempt to show workings or contingencies, to the extent they didn't even get the budget properly marked by the OBR. That left her in a situation where she was left saying would cut taxes, do supply-side reform at some later date, and that it would all pay for itself at a time when even if you agreed with the theory, there were some significant economic headwinds blowing against us (some self-inflicted, some not) and public attitudes to spending cuts are pretty against because there's not any politically easy fat to cut any more. So of course markets took flight, because (probably rightly) assume that unless you can explain your thinking and methods well, you're a fool who just wants to pursue your pet project without thinking through how it will work in the real world. And that should growth not go gangbusters, quickly, you won't be able to fill the big holes in your budget by doing stuff that'll lose you the next election anyway. A smarter, less arrogant group of people believing in similar basic economic theories would have realised the need to explain themselves properly, and the need for sequencing (e.g. your supply side reforms before the biggest tax cuts).
Just used the BBC's mortgage calc. Bit of term extension should see me fine at the moment in two years time. Wouldn't want rates to rise too much more though lol
Would the Remoaners on here finally STFU if we got a reformed Brexit that gave us back Freedom of Movement?
It seems to be the most emotive and profound loss, from Brexit, for a majority of Remainery people (and I share some of the pain, as I say). Perhaps that is the place where Britain could finally reconcile. Brexit Plus. Brexit Plus Freedom of Movement
We'll be like the ERG in reverse - you'll never appease us with titbit after titbit, grudging morsel after dry crumb. We'll always want more. Pure, hard, diamond-tipped Rejoin. Whatever acronym is the 180 degree opposite of BRINO. I want my EU citizenship back.
Blue flagged, rather than brown-watered, beaches, the Euro, Schengen, the banning of offshore tax havens, the whole shebang please. Coming out hasn't worked, let's go back in full-throttle. If you could make that so I'd be very appreciative.
Incidentally, it was very astute of Question Time to stuff last night's audience full of ill-informed gammon, dribbling out the same tired, discredited Johnsonian garbage. (Didn't watch it, of course, but the QT hashtag throws up a damning verdict from the hive mind.) In a few years when admitting voting Leave in polite company will be akin to squatting down and curling one out on your host's lovely dining table, nice people can shudder and say with a contemptuous titter 'No, of course I didn't vote Leave! It was voted for by those ghastly mouth-breathing idiots who look like they've been sculpted out of pork pie meat. What common accents they have. Like on that Question Time, you remember.'
Aaaaand, this sneering drivel is why you will never get to Rejoin. You immediately alienate a Liberal Leaver like me, and make me yearn for even Harder Brexit so you suffer, again and again
I know you are half joking, but you are only half joking. So I say to the other half: HAHAHAHAHAHA, we're never going back in. Tough shit
The basic problem they have is that most people in the UK have an underlying identity and low level patriotism based on being British and their home nation. Even as we become more cosmopolitan, Brits still want to come back to hearing British regional accents and the local customs and food. Meanwhile the really hardcore remainers identify more with Paris and Berlin and have cultural cringe over Skegness.
So there is no understanding there that Brits, even when some think it is economically advantageous to be in the EU, don't like lawmaking from Brussells, no passport checks on Romanians and economic policy set in Frankfurt.
I suspect some Remainers know this, which is why they want as much unintegrated immigration as possible, so they have a voting base not attached to traditional British culture.
Hardcore Remainers are unremittingly awful people. I can't work out whether they were always awful, nasty, sneering, and mentally inadequate, and we simply didn't notice - or whether Brexit made them that way. Genuine puzzle
The simple fact is some people were better off when we were in the EU, some people were worse off under the EU. Now it is reversed.
Losing their FoM is actually a really crap argument in my view because the number of Brits that actually ever took advantage of it was less than 2% of the population (not talking people taking a 2 week vacation in france, I mean those that moved to live or work). The 98% that didn't want to take advantage of it still had to pay for it.
What exactly was the cost of freedom of movement ? Most economic analysis has FoM as defined by the European variety as a net benefit for the UK.
The price of freedom of movement is being in the EU had a cost. It was a benefit to the GDP of the country but not such a benefit to people who's jobs were nailed to minimum wage by the infinite labour pool, nor such a benefit to places like slough where I used to live where the population grew by about ten percent in a year due to Eastern european accession without any sign of extra doctors, police, hospital provision, school places and certainly not a sufficient increase in housing.
Where are all the immigrants going now that we've left? Somewhere other than Slough? Or still Slough?
Difference is now their are lower bounds for salaries at least so those that come are actually paying their way. Someone coming over to work a minimum wage job is not contributing above their cost to the state. Please don't try to say a lot of EU workers weren't working min wage jobs in hospitality as that has been a complaint of certain posters here that those nice eastern european hospitality staff have vanished.
Yeah, I want to see some calculations before I trust you at your word on that. If someone comes here from abroad, we've not paid for their schooling, we're not paying for their retirement. On average they will be younger and healthier than the average person. How much are they costing the exchequer?
There are some areas of expenditure where they apply to immigrants because everybody benefits from them e.g. defence and policing. And some where they apply less to immigrants, like state pensions, health and social care. And others where it's really dubious whether you should apply it to them, such as debt interest payments (is new immigrant really responsible for UK government loans undertaken years before that immigrant ever came here?)
Of course, immigrants will pay PAYE/NI/VAT/Fuel duty/corporation tax/business rates in the normal way in most cases.
So, no, I'm not taking your word for it that someone on the minimum wage isn't "paying their way". Not without some proper tax/spend breakdowns that take account for the demographic skewness.
Apart from in slough the second gen asian immigrants were complaining about their childrens schooling being hindered because the schools were full of eastern european children who didnt speak english as a first language so lessons were slowed down.
A lot of eastern europeans I knew in slough had kids while over here and showed every sign of settling here. I don't have any stats for how many actually stay and make a life here because no one is counted out of the country but my estimate based on those I knew in slough is 30 to 50% so yes we will be covering their retirement too.
The simple fact is we dont seem to have stats on any of this. Being my normal cynical self I suspect that is because if they collected them they would show FoM wasn't such a benefit to the country once services were taken into account. Hence why its always quoted as GDP.
You have a country of 55 million, you add 10 million and its a surprise GDP rises? It doesn't mean GDP per capita rises
Yes, so when I say "we're not paying for their retirement", I mean NOW. Yes, SOME will stay and eventually need state pensions and health and social care which I covered under "apply less to immigrants, like state pensions, health and social care". Less, not non-existent. And yes, some immigrants have children and therefore are more likely to be a tax drain, but that's the same as people born in this country too.
Immigrants cost and benefit this country. Everybody knows both are true. The question of where the tipping point is, well it's a multidimensional question covering health, dependants, duration, spending behaviour, and so on. It's not easy to work out, and maybe you're right that there's no reliable figure for it. But you implied you knew the answer when you said
to work a minimum wage job is not contributing above their cost to the state
I now see you were simply assuming that to be case, and I have serious doubts about whether it's a true.
Someone on minimum wage will pay 900 income tax approx and 550 ni a year, how far do you imagine that goes paying towards public services? An immigrant or anyone young will still visit a doctor, need police/fire/be eligible for housing benefit/need their children schooled etc
You mention the fire brigade, which is not exactly the biggest spend in government but let's look at it. It's funded by a mix of central government and council tax. You forgot council tax, didn't you? And VAT.
As an example of the sorts of numbers we're talking about, receipts from council tax are about ten times the cost of fire services countrywide.
So yes, all immigrants certainly do benefit from fire services, not just the minority who actually need the service in a given year (because it's there always for all of us), but they also pay for it.
Similar calculations can be done for other areas of the budget. It's really very far from obvious which side of the equation the average immigrant comes down on, even restricting it to those on minimum wage.
Let me ask you this, too: if you found out that minimum-wage immigrants were actually "paying their way", would you actually change your mind on FoM? Or are there other factors at play?
Then down to you to prove it if you don't believe it. I notice you have gone quiet on your claim of well over a million living and working in the eu after I quoted a source. To be revenue neutral you have to earn about 36k a year in this country. Even accounting for pensions and end of life health care I don't believe a min wage worker can be revenue neutral earning half the amount.
The simple fact is neither point of view is provable beyond doubt because figures are so obscured. However claiming a min wage worker is a drain on the treasury is I believe on the balance of probabilities a lot more likely than them being a net contributor
So how are you arriving at your "£36k" figure? Are you assuming all people are interchangeable and cost the exchequer an equal amount? Because I was explicitly trying to caution you off that fiction, since it involved asymmetrical assumptions.
Basically, you have a selection bias in your "revenue" side (minimum wage immigrants). Since that selection will affect (probably radically) the services that group will need, you cannot just take the bulk figures for everyone and divide it.
If you need to see why this is absurd, you'd have to assume that 10% of the government budget being allocated to these minimum wage immigrants is in the form of state pension. I mean, obviously if your group of people who BY DEFINITION are working, how many of them will ALSO be receiving the state pension? A handful, to be sure, but close enough to nil.
You can't just take the overall spend and divide when you are thinking about a SELECTION of people paying their way. Try again.
and my whole point is that immigrants coming to work minimum wage is likely costing us money not being a net gain. I said before I would happily accept 500k immigrants from anywhere earning 30k rather than 100k eu immigrants coming to take min wage jobs
Would the Remoaners on here finally STFU if we got a reformed Brexit that gave us back Freedom of Movement?
It seems to be the most emotive and profound loss, from Brexit, for a majority of Remainery people (and I share some of the pain, as I say). Perhaps that is the place where Britain could finally reconcile. Brexit Plus. Brexit Plus Freedom of Movement
We'll be like the ERG in reverse - you'll never appease us with titbit after titbit, grudging morsel after dry crumb. We'll always want more. Pure, hard, diamond-tipped Rejoin. Whatever acronym is the 180 degree opposite of BRINO. I want my EU citizenship back.
Blue flagged, rather than brown-watered, beaches, the Euro, Schengen, the banning of offshore tax havens, the whole shebang please. Coming out hasn't worked, let's go back in full-throttle. If you could make that so I'd be very appreciative.
Incidentally, it was very astute of Question Time to stuff last night's audience full of ill-informed gammon, dribbling out the same tired, discredited Johnsonian garbage. (Didn't watch it, of course, but the QT hashtag throws up a damning verdict from the hive mind.) In a few years when admitting voting Leave in polite company will be akin to squatting down and curling one out on your host's lovely dining table, nice people can shudder and say with a contemptuous titter 'No, of course I didn't vote Leave! It was voted for by those ghastly mouth-breathing idiots who look like they've been sculpted out of pork pie meat. What common accents they have. Like on that Question Time, you remember.'
Aaaaand, this sneering drivel is why you will never get to Rejoin. You immediately alienate a Liberal Leaver like me, and make me yearn for even Harder Brexit so you suffer, again and again
I know you are half joking, but you are only half joking. So I say to the other half: HAHAHAHAHAHA, we're never going back in. Tough shit
The basic problem they have is that most people in the UK have an underlying identity and low level patriotism based on being British and their home nation. Even as we become more cosmopolitan, Brits still want to come back to hearing British regional accents and the local customs and food. Meanwhile the really hardcore remainers identify more with Paris and Berlin and have cultural cringe over Skegness.
So there is no understanding there that Brits, even when some think it is economically advantageous to be in the EU, don't like lawmaking from Brussells, no passport checks on Romanians and economic policy set in Frankfurt.
I suspect some Remainers know this, which is why they want as much unintegrated immigration as possible, so they have a voting base not attached to traditional British culture.
Hardcore Remainers are unremittingly awful people. I can't work out whether they were always awful, nasty, sneering, and mentally inadequate, and we simply didn't notice - or whether Brexit made them that way. Genuine puzzle
Hardcore Remainers have also long replaced Tory voters as the snobbiest voters around (and a lot of them happen to be LDs)
That really isn’t an assumption you are entitled to make. I’m proud to be a hard-core Remainer, and as far as I’m concerned Jack’s as good as his master.
Some Remainers unfortunately do seem to operate within a kind of caste system with themselves at the top, EU migrants as an approved labouring class, and Brexit voters as the untouchables with whom they are embarrassed to share a country. It's the "but who will serve my sandwiches in Pret?" attitude.
That's a piece of hackneyed nonsense. It's not like that at all. It's just that people like me are sad about the hard tangible benefits of EU membership being tossed away in return for nothing but jingoistic hot air, red tape and hassle. There are no plusses whatsoever unless you count Boris Johnson and Liz Truss getting a crack at being PM as a plus.
So, no, it was without doubt a terrible terrible decision we took 7 years ago today, but there's no big personal animus towards Leavers, either individually or as a group. Certainly not from me anyway. Although I will admit (being perfectly serious here) that if I was moving house there is no way I'd consider a place that voted for Brexit.
The benefits of the EU haven't been tossed away for nothing though, we no longer pay for those benefits which frankly most leavers did not see as worth it. EU membership cost about 10£ bill a year, each and ever tax payer therefore was paying if we go on the adult population of the uk of around 45 million was costing us about 222£ a year.
Most didnt use FoM, only 12% of gdp comes from exports half of which is to the eu so lets say 6% of exports. We were all paying to support tiny minorities of people and companies that benefitted from EU membership. Now speaking as someone who earns well south of a 6 figure salary unlike most of PB
I couldnt afford to call in a plumber/electrician/au pair etc even during FoM and had to do it myself
My rent continually raised because increased population
Doctors waiting times went up because population went up by 10% with no extra doctors
I didn't want to work in the EU or live in the EU
Since FoM disappeared many people including me have for the first time in ages got pay rises because bosses can't just go fuck you plenty will do your job for less ( I was earning the same in 2002 as I was in 2016 despite changing jobs 3 times)
So explain to me what was the advantage to me of the EU that I should pay 222£ a year (actually more when you consider about half the country doesnt actually pay income tax)
There will be individuals who benefit and perhaps you're one of them. You know your circumstances better than me. However the net impact on the economy is negative. Theory said so before the event, practice says so after it. On top of that our influence in the world is reduced. Poorer, weaker, this is the reality of Brexit Britain. It isn't even delivering its USP (to Leavers) of lower immigration.
I might still be ok with it if it were to lead to a significant sustainable redistribution of wealth in favour of the poor. But the claims that it's doing this are tosh as far as I can see. All we've got are damaged supply chains, worse terms of trade, chaotic labour shortages and embedded inflation. Very few Britons will emerge better off and those that do will be the usual suspects. Bet you any money that'll be the case.
So Sunak's government now has a net satisfaction rating higher than Major's in 1997 and higher than Truss and May's, even if slightly worse than Boris'
A result a bit better than than Major in 1997 is still a disaster for the Tories.
Given the Tories were heading for a 1993 Canadian Tories style wipeout and less than 50 seats under Truss last autumn, many Tory MPs would have bitten your hand off for a slightly better than Major 1997 result back then
They were not heading for that - polling is a snapshot not a prediction, as you will know.
Your threadbare Sunak ramping as he marches the Tory Party to crushing defeat is embarrassing.
They were. Truss resigned on 21 October last year, all polls in the week before her resignation had the Tories under 25%. One People Polling poll had the Tories on just 14%, Redfield had the Tories on just 19%. Results which would have left the Tories nearer 0 than 50 seats under FPTP
They were not, because a GE was not due to take place in the week before/after her resignation. Had a GE been imminent, then yes, your point would have some validity.
Under Sunak, the Tories have made a modest recovery which indicates little except some died in the wool Tory supporters reverting to type. There is no indication that had Truss stayed, this wouldn't still have happened.
The minor recovery has only happened under Sunak, had Truss stayed the polling evidence is the Tories would not only have lost to Labour by a landslide but ceased to be the main Opposition. The LDs or SNP may well have won more MPs than the Truss Tories would have
I don't see what polling evidence there could be that could prove this hypothetical situation, but by all means present some.
Truss was prepared to be unpopular (not that unpopular obvs.) in the short term because she believed that there was a pay off in her policies that would manifest itself before the GE - a healthier economy, more affordable childcare, increased energy supply leading to lower bills, increased food supply leading to lower food costs, increased investment from the cancelling of the CT rise etc.
Had those policies borne fruit, a modest, or even non-modest polling recovery could have taken place. Even if they hadn't, one would still expect a small recovery as the mini-budget fiasco died as a news story.
I have just given you one.
Put in the last Redfield poll under Truss' Premiership and you got Labour 571 seats, SNP 33, LDs 19 and Tories just 6.
Now however the latest Redfield poll gives Labour 469, Tories 105, SNP 33, LD 22. So even on that poll Sunak still doing about 100 MPs better than Truss
I am not going to lambast you for being stupid, because I know full well that you completely understand the point that I am making; you're just choosing not to acknowledge it.
I will merely reiterate that mid-term polling, especially in the immediate aftermath of a policy crisis like the mini-budget fiasco, cannot predict the outcome of a General Election due to take place more than two years in the future. You know that, I know that, anyone who reads PB knows that.
So you don't have any evidence that had Truss survived, the Tories wouldn't have recovered in the polls - I didn't think you would have.
Yes I know you think Truss would have recovered but on the polls before she resigned even Epping Forest would have gone Labour. Brentwood and Ongar (where we now live) would have been one of the handful of Tory seats left (and only because of the rural bits around Ongar, Brentwood itself would also have gone Labour)
I think we can both agree that the polls at the end of Liz Truss's premiership were catastrophic. However, we cannot infer that no recovery would have taken place - and tbf I cannot infer that a significant recovery in excess of what Sunak has managed would have taken place. Truss was always a gamble. What upsets me about Sunak is there's no gamble, just crushing certainty.
How is it a Trussian future carries with it the normal caveat of an unseeable future, but you absolutely know what is going to happen under Sunak? Has the change of PM somehow shifted the laws of thermodynamics?
The nature of their respective policy programmes. Crudely characterised, Truss's grab for growth was high risk/high reward, Sunak/Hunt's nails in the coffin approach is no risk/no reward.
I don't actually believe that Truss's policies were that risky, or Sunak's policies that free of risk, but as a summary it'll do.
The basic problem with Truss - and it was a massive, unbelievably arrogant, and stupid one - was there was absolutely no attempt to show workings or contingencies, to the extent they didn't even get the budget properly marked by the OBR. That left her in a situation where she was left saying would cut taxes, do supply-side reform at some later date, and that it would all pay for itself at a time when even if you agreed with the theory, there were some significant economic headwinds blowing against us (some self-inflicted, some not) and public attitudes to spending cuts are pretty against because there's not any politically easy fat to cut any more. So of course markets took flight, because (probably rightly) assume that unless you can explain your thinking and methods well, you're a fool who just wants to pursue your pet project without thinking through how it will work in the real world. And that should growth not go gangbusters, quickly, you won't be able to fill the big holes in your budget by doing stuff that'll lose you the next election anyway. A smarter, less arrogant group of people believing in similar basic economic theories would have realised the need to explain themselves properly, and the need for sequencing (e.g. your supply side reforms before the biggest tax cuts).
The budgetary equivalent of a dive to the Titanic in a carbon-fibre hulled submersible, as it were.
We are at 47.4% fossil fuels, and 20.6% renewables.
Given on windy days we can easily see these figures reversed, it's clear that a workable form of energy storage (preferably medium-term storage) is vital. Goodness knows what form that will be, though.
Store the excess energy as heat. I think 1970's storage heaters controllable by internet for weather conditions and best spot rates for domestic use. Heated sand for industrial storage. Sand is the cheapest material and has a massive heat capacity.
People have been trying to build such systems for years. Lots of detail problems to solve.
What are the main problems with sand based heat storage for excess electricity production, bearing in mind the economic case only has to be justified on the marginal cost at peak prices?
Well, you now have a pile of red to sand. How do you get the heat back, efficiently?
This leads to molten salts, eutectic (lead/bismuth) etc...
I know you two are going to bang back and forth about energy-to-heat-to-heat-storage-to-energy all day - molten salts! - so I'll just say "you know we can pump water up a mountain and let it flow back down", like we've been doing for forty years, and leave it there
Sadly, there seem to be some small impediments in my plan to blow the top off Ben Nevis with a 10 megaton nuclear weapon to create suitable location for pumped storage.
There aren't even vaguely enough places for pumped storage in the UK, compared to the size of the demand on the grid, to do storage on a sufficient scale.
Incidentally, it would cost about the same to build the same capacity as Dinorwig out of trailers full of batteries https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/megapack
A Megapack is now about $900k dollars. So $300K per MWh.
Dinorwig is 9.1 GWh - 9100 x 300k = $2.7 billion
Dinorwig cost 485 million pounds between 1977 and 1984
Which is 2-4 billion today (big difference between 1977 and 1984. Good luck getting it done for that, again.
with the exchange rate, that's about $2.5-5 billion dollars.
Yes, but we can do another Dinorwig without having to bring in foreign equipment (and maintenance costs). We've had fifty years worth of object lessons in being dependent on the Saudis for oil, and a two-year reminder of the unwisdom of letting Putin grab our gentle bits with gas. I am fucked if we are lobbing yet more billions at Musk. Can we buy British, just for once? Let's stop enriching foreign fantasists, torturers, and dictators for once. We're British. We can dig a hole and lay pipe. Let's do that instead.
Scotland says good luck with your one difficult 3GW capacity site in Wales:
There are various pumped storage projects ready to go, but there isn't currently the commercial incentive to build them. They may not 'solve' all our storage issues, but they would certainly help.
And here I was assuming the drug peddling icecream vans in Grand Theft Auto Vice City had been a commentary on american culture, but given Rockstar North are based in Edinburgh I imagine they had heard the stories.
Would the Remoaners on here finally STFU if we got a reformed Brexit that gave us back Freedom of Movement?
It seems to be the most emotive and profound loss, from Brexit, for a majority of Remainery people (and I share some of the pain, as I say). Perhaps that is the place where Britain could finally reconcile. Brexit Plus. Brexit Plus Freedom of Movement
We'll be like the ERG in reverse - you'll never appease us with titbit after titbit, grudging morsel after dry crumb. We'll always want more. Pure, hard, diamond-tipped Rejoin. Whatever acronym is the 180 degree opposite of BRINO. I want my EU citizenship back.
Blue flagged, rather than brown-watered, beaches, the Euro, Schengen, the banning of offshore tax havens, the whole shebang please. Coming out hasn't worked, let's go back in full-throttle. If you could make that so I'd be very appreciative.
Incidentally, it was very astute of Question Time to stuff last night's audience full of ill-informed gammon, dribbling out the same tired, discredited Johnsonian garbage. (Didn't watch it, of course, but the QT hashtag throws up a damning verdict from the hive mind.) In a few years when admitting voting Leave in polite company will be akin to squatting down and curling one out on your host's lovely dining table, nice people can shudder and say with a contemptuous titter 'No, of course I didn't vote Leave! It was voted for by those ghastly mouth-breathing idiots who look like they've been sculpted out of pork pie meat. What common accents they have. Like on that Question Time, you remember.'
Aaaaand, this sneering drivel is why you will never get to Rejoin. You immediately alienate a Liberal Leaver like me, and make me yearn for even Harder Brexit so you suffer, again and again
I know you are half joking, but you are only half joking. So I say to the other half: HAHAHAHAHAHA, we're never going back in. Tough shit
The basic problem they have is that most people in the UK have an underlying identity and low level patriotism based on being British and their home nation. Even as we become more cosmopolitan, Brits still want to come back to hearing British regional accents and the local customs and food. Meanwhile the really hardcore remainers identify more with Paris and Berlin and have cultural cringe over Skegness.
So there is no understanding there that Brits, even when some think it is economically advantageous to be in the EU, don't like lawmaking from Brussells, no passport checks on Romanians and economic policy set in Frankfurt.
I suspect some Remainers know this, which is why they want as much unintegrated immigration as possible, so they have a voting base not attached to traditional British culture.
Hardcore Remainers are unremittingly awful people. I can't work out whether they were always awful, nasty, sneering, and mentally inadequate, and we simply didn't notice - or whether Brexit made them that way. Genuine puzzle
Hardcore Remainers have also long replaced Tory voters as the snobbiest voters around (and a lot of them happen to be LDs)
That really isn’t an assumption you are entitled to make. I’m proud to be a hard-core Remainer, and as far as I’m concerned Jack’s as good as his master.
Some Remainers unfortunately do seem to operate within a kind of caste system with themselves at the top, EU migrants as an approved labouring class, and Brexit voters as the untouchables with whom they are embarrassed to share a country. It's the "but who will serve my sandwiches in Pret?" attitude.
That's a piece of hackneyed nonsense. It's not like that at all. It's just that people like me are sad about the hard tangible benefits of EU membership being tossed away in return for nothing but jingoistic hot air, red tape and hassle. There are no plusses whatsoever unless you count Boris Johnson and Liz Truss getting a crack at being PM as a plus.
So, no, it was without doubt a terrible terrible decision we took 7 years ago today, but there's no big personal animus towards Leavers, either individually or as a group. Certainly not from me anyway. Although I will admit (being perfectly serious here) that if I was moving house there is no way I'd consider a place that voted for Brexit.
You're ruling out rather a lot of the nicest places in the UK, as a place to spend your final years
eg Cornwall voted Brexit
Also Herefordshire, Dorset, Somerset, much of Devon, mid Wales, much of Sussex, much of the Home Counties in general, Suffolk, Pembrokeshire, Northumberland, the Peaks, and on and on. Many of the most beautiful corners of Britain were Leave
Would the Remoaners on here finally STFU if we got a reformed Brexit that gave us back Freedom of Movement?
It seems to be the most emotive and profound loss, from Brexit, for a majority of Remainery people (and I share some of the pain, as I say). Perhaps that is the place where Britain could finally reconcile. Brexit Plus. Brexit Plus Freedom of Movement
We'll be like the ERG in reverse - you'll never appease us with titbit after titbit, grudging morsel after dry crumb. We'll always want more. Pure, hard, diamond-tipped Rejoin. Whatever acronym is the 180 degree opposite of BRINO. I want my EU citizenship back.
Blue flagged, rather than brown-watered, beaches, the Euro, Schengen, the banning of offshore tax havens, the whole shebang please. Coming out hasn't worked, let's go back in full-throttle. If you could make that so I'd be very appreciative.
Incidentally, it was very astute of Question Time to stuff last night's audience full of ill-informed gammon, dribbling out the same tired, discredited Johnsonian garbage. (Didn't watch it, of course, but the QT hashtag throws up a damning verdict from the hive mind.) In a few years when admitting voting Leave in polite company will be akin to squatting down and curling one out on your host's lovely dining table, nice people can shudder and say with a contemptuous titter 'No, of course I didn't vote Leave! It was voted for by those ghastly mouth-breathing idiots who look like they've been sculpted out of pork pie meat. What common accents they have. Like on that Question Time, you remember.'
Aaaaand, this sneering drivel is why you will never get to Rejoin. You immediately alienate a Liberal Leaver like me, and make me yearn for even Harder Brexit so you suffer, again and again
I know you are half joking, but you are only half joking. So I say to the other half: HAHAHAHAHAHA, we're never going back in. Tough shit
The basic problem they have is that most people in the UK have an underlying identity and low level patriotism based on being British and their home nation. Even as we become more cosmopolitan, Brits still want to come back to hearing British regional accents and the local customs and food. Meanwhile the really hardcore remainers identify more with Paris and Berlin and have cultural cringe over Skegness.
So there is no understanding there that Brits, even when some think it is economically advantageous to be in the EU, don't like lawmaking from Brussells, no passport checks on Romanians and economic policy set in Frankfurt.
I suspect some Remainers know this, which is why they want as much unintegrated immigration as possible, so they have a voting base not attached to traditional British culture.
Hardcore Remainers are unremittingly awful people. I can't work out whether they were always awful, nasty, sneering, and mentally inadequate, and we simply didn't notice - or whether Brexit made them that way. Genuine puzzle
The simple fact is some people were better off when we were in the EU, some people were worse off under the EU. Now it is reversed.
Losing their FoM is actually a really crap argument in my view because the number of Brits that actually ever took advantage of it was less than 2% of the population (not talking people taking a 2 week vacation in france, I mean those that moved to live or work). The 98% that didn't want to take advantage of it still had to pay for it.
What exactly was the cost of freedom of movement ? Most economic analysis has FoM as defined by the European variety as a net benefit for the UK.
The price of freedom of movement is being in the EU had a cost. It was a benefit to the GDP of the country but not such a benefit to people who's jobs were nailed to minimum wage by the infinite labour pool, nor such a benefit to places like slough where I used to live where the population grew by about ten percent in a year due to Eastern european accession without any sign of extra doctors, police, hospital provision, school places and certainly not a sufficient increase in housing.
Where are all the immigrants going now that we've left? Somewhere other than Slough? Or still Slough?
Difference is now their are lower bounds for salaries at least so those that come are actually paying their way. Someone coming over to work a minimum wage job is not contributing above their cost to the state. Please don't try to say a lot of EU workers weren't working min wage jobs in hospitality as that has been a complaint of certain posters here that those nice eastern european hospitality staff have vanished.
Yeah, I want to see some calculations before I trust you at your word on that. If someone comes here from abroad, we've not paid for their schooling, we're not paying for their retirement. On average they will be younger and healthier than the average person. How much are they costing the exchequer?
There are some areas of expenditure where they apply to immigrants because everybody benefits from them e.g. defence and policing. And some where they apply less to immigrants, like state pensions, health and social care. And others where it's really dubious whether you should apply it to them, such as debt interest payments (is new immigrant really responsible for UK government loans undertaken years before that immigrant ever came here?)
Of course, immigrants will pay PAYE/NI/VAT/Fuel duty/corporation tax/business rates in the normal way in most cases.
So, no, I'm not taking your word for it that someone on the minimum wage isn't "paying their way". Not without some proper tax/spend breakdowns that take account for the demographic skewness.
Apart from in slough the second gen asian immigrants were complaining about their childrens schooling being hindered because the schools were full of eastern european children who didnt speak english as a first language so lessons were slowed down.
A lot of eastern europeans I knew in slough had kids while over here and showed every sign of settling here. I don't have any stats for how many actually stay and make a life here because no one is counted out of the country but my estimate based on those I knew in slough is 30 to 50% so yes we will be covering their retirement too.
The simple fact is we dont seem to have stats on any of this. Being my normal cynical self I suspect that is because if they collected them they would show FoM wasn't such a benefit to the country once services were taken into account. Hence why its always quoted as GDP.
You have a country of 55 million, you add 10 million and its a surprise GDP rises? It doesn't mean GDP per capita rises
Yes, so when I say "we're not paying for their retirement", I mean NOW. Yes, SOME will stay and eventually need state pensions and health and social care which I covered under "apply less to immigrants, like state pensions, health and social care". Less, not non-existent. And yes, some immigrants have children and therefore are more likely to be a tax drain, but that's the same as people born in this country too.
Immigrants cost and benefit this country. Everybody knows both are true. The question of where the tipping point is, well it's a multidimensional question covering health, dependants, duration, spending behaviour, and so on. It's not easy to work out, and maybe you're right that there's no reliable figure for it. But you implied you knew the answer when you said
to work a minimum wage job is not contributing above their cost to the state
I now see you were simply assuming that to be case, and I have serious doubts about whether it's a true.
Someone on minimum wage will pay 900 income tax approx and 550 ni a year, how far do you imagine that goes paying towards public services? An immigrant or anyone young will still visit a doctor, need police/fire/be eligible for housing benefit/need their children schooled etc
You mention the fire brigade, which is not exactly the biggest spend in government but let's look at it. It's funded by a mix of central government and council tax. You forgot council tax, didn't you? And VAT.
As an example of the sorts of numbers we're talking about, receipts from council tax are about ten times the cost of fire services countrywide.
So yes, all immigrants certainly do benefit from fire services, not just the minority who actually need the service in a given year (because it's there always for all of us), but they also pay for it.
Similar calculations can be done for other areas of the budget. It's really very far from obvious which side of the equation the average immigrant comes down on, even restricting it to those on minimum wage.
Let me ask you this, too: if you found out that minimum-wage immigrants were actually "paying their way", would you actually change your mind on FoM? Or are there other factors at play?
Then down to you to prove it if you don't believe it. I notice you have gone quiet on your claim of well over a million living and working in the eu after I quoted a source. To be revenue neutral you have to earn about 36k a year in this country. Even accounting for pensions and end of life health care I don't believe a min wage worker can be revenue neutral earning half the amount.
The simple fact is neither point of view is provable beyond doubt because figures are so obscured. However claiming a min wage worker is a drain on the treasury is I believe on the balance of probabilities a lot more likely than them being a net contributor
So how are you arriving at your "£36k" figure? Are you assuming all people are interchangeable and cost the exchequer an equal amount? Because I was explicitly trying to caution you off that fiction, since it involved asymmetrical assumptions.
Basically, you have a selection bias in your "revenue" side (minimum wage immigrants). Since that selection will affect (probably radically) the services that group will need, you cannot just take the bulk figures for everyone and divide it.
If you need to see why this is absurd, you'd have to assume that 10% of the government budget being allocated to these minimum wage immigrants is in the form of state pension. I mean, obviously if your group of people who BY DEFINITION are working, how many of them will ALSO be receiving the state pension? A handful, to be sure, but close enough to nil.
You can't just take the overall spend and divide when you are thinking about a SELECTION of people paying their way. Try again.
and my whole point is that immigrants coming to work minimum wage is likely costing us money not being a net gain. I said before I would happily accept 500k immigrants from anywhere earning 30k rather than 100k eu immigrants coming to take min wage jobs
What do you think the surge in non-EU migration is working on. I don't think it is biochemistry
So Sunak's government now has a net satisfaction rating higher than Major's in 1997 and higher than Truss and May's, even if slightly worse than Boris'
A result a bit better than than Major in 1997 is still a disaster for the Tories.
Given the Tories were heading for a 1993 Canadian Tories style wipeout and less than 50 seats under Truss last autumn, many Tory MPs would have bitten your hand off for a slightly better than Major 1997 result back then
They were not heading for that - polling is a snapshot not a prediction, as you will know.
Your threadbare Sunak ramping as he marches the Tory Party to crushing defeat is embarrassing.
They were. Truss resigned on 21 October last year, all polls in the week before her resignation had the Tories under 25%. One People Polling poll had the Tories on just 14%, Redfield had the Tories on just 19%. Results which would have left the Tories nearer 0 than 50 seats under FPTP
They were not, because a GE was not due to take place in the week before/after her resignation. Had a GE been imminent, then yes, your point would have some validity.
Under Sunak, the Tories have made a modest recovery which indicates little except some died in the wool Tory supporters reverting to type. There is no indication that had Truss stayed, this wouldn't still have happened.
The minor recovery has only happened under Sunak, had Truss stayed the polling evidence is the Tories would not only have lost to Labour by a landslide but ceased to be the main Opposition. The LDs or SNP may well have won more MPs than the Truss Tories would have
I don't see what polling evidence there could be that could prove this hypothetical situation, but by all means present some.
Truss was prepared to be unpopular (not that unpopular obvs.) in the short term because she believed that there was a pay off in her policies that would manifest itself before the GE - a healthier economy, more affordable childcare, increased energy supply leading to lower bills, increased food supply leading to lower food costs, increased investment from the cancelling of the CT rise etc.
Had those policies borne fruit, a modest, or even non-modest polling recovery could have taken place. Even if they hadn't, one would still expect a small recovery as the mini-budget fiasco died as a news story.
I have just given you one.
Put in the last Redfield poll under Truss' Premiership and you got Labour 571 seats, SNP 33, LDs 19 and Tories just 6.
Now however the latest Redfield poll gives Labour 469, Tories 105, SNP 33, LD 22. So even on that poll Sunak still doing about 100 MPs better than Truss
I am not going to lambast you for being stupid, because I know full well that you completely understand the point that I am making; you're just choosing not to acknowledge it.
I will merely reiterate that mid-term polling, especially in the immediate aftermath of a policy crisis like the mini-budget fiasco, cannot predict the outcome of a General Election due to take place more than two years in the future. You know that, I know that, anyone who reads PB knows that.
So you don't have any evidence that had Truss survived, the Tories wouldn't have recovered in the polls - I didn't think you would have.
Yes I know you think Truss would have recovered but on the polls before she resigned even Epping Forest would have gone Labour. Brentwood and Ongar (where we now live) would have been one of the handful of Tory seats left (and only because of the rural bits around Ongar, Brentwood itself would also have gone Labour)
I think we can both agree that the polls at the end of Liz Truss's premiership were catastrophic. However, we cannot infer that no recovery would have taken place - and tbf I cannot infer that a significant recovery in excess of what Sunak has managed would have taken place. Truss was always a gamble. What upsets me about Sunak is there's no gamble, just crushing certainty.
How is it a Trussian future carries with it the normal caveat of an unseeable future, but you absolutely know what is going to happen under Sunak? Has the change of PM somehow shifted the laws of thermodynamics?
The nature of their respective policy programmes. Crudely characterised, Truss's grab for growth was high risk/high reward, Sunak/Hunt's nails in the coffin approach is no risk/no reward.
I don't actually believe that Truss's policies were that risky, or Sunak's policies that free of risk, but as a summary it'll do.
The basic problem with Truss - and it was a massive, unbelievably arrogant, and stupid one - was there was absolutely no attempt to show workings or contingencies, to the extent they didn't even get the budget properly marked by the OBR. That left her in a situation where she was left saying would cut taxes, do supply-side reform at some later date, and that it would all pay for itself at a time when even if you agreed with the theory, there were some significant economic headwinds blowing against us (some self-inflicted, some not) and public attitudes to spending cuts are pretty against because there's not any politically easy fat to cut any more. So of course markets took flight, because (probably rightly) assume that unless you can explain your thinking and methods well, you're a fool who just wants to pursue your pet project without thinking through how it will work in the real world. And that should growth not go gangbusters, quickly, you won't be able to fill the big holes in your budget by doing stuff that'll lose you the next election anyway. A smarter, less arrogant group of people believing in similar basic economic theories would have realised the need to explain themselves properly, and the need for sequencing (e.g. your supply side reforms before the biggest tax cuts).
Indeed. A major problem with the attempt to rewrite things to claim she never got a fair chance is that it was her job to explain things, not everyone elses to just react pliantly. Even really bad PMs should be able to last more than 50 days, and no matter how much people can claim it was all that perfidious rogue Sunak's fault, or the media or whatever, she clearly was not up to preparing or explaining things even to last 2 months.
By itself the briefness speaks volumes. A PM has to be able to deal with media, opposition, and internal ructions.
Would the Remoaners on here finally STFU if we got a reformed Brexit that gave us back Freedom of Movement?
It seems to be the most emotive and profound loss, from Brexit, for a majority of Remainery people (and I share some of the pain, as I say). Perhaps that is the place where Britain could finally reconcile. Brexit Plus. Brexit Plus Freedom of Movement
We'll be like the ERG in reverse - you'll never appease us with titbit after titbit, grudging morsel after dry crumb. We'll always want more. Pure, hard, diamond-tipped Rejoin. Whatever acronym is the 180 degree opposite of BRINO. I want my EU citizenship back.
Blue flagged, rather than brown-watered, beaches, the Euro, Schengen, the banning of offshore tax havens, the whole shebang please. Coming out hasn't worked, let's go back in full-throttle. If you could make that so I'd be very appreciative.
Incidentally, it was very astute of Question Time to stuff last night's audience full of ill-informed gammon, dribbling out the same tired, discredited Johnsonian garbage. (Didn't watch it, of course, but the QT hashtag throws up a damning verdict from the hive mind.) In a few years when admitting voting Leave in polite company will be akin to squatting down and curling one out on your host's lovely dining table, nice people can shudder and say with a contemptuous titter 'No, of course I didn't vote Leave! It was voted for by those ghastly mouth-breathing idiots who look like they've been sculpted out of pork pie meat. What common accents they have. Like on that Question Time, you remember.'
Aaaaand, this sneering drivel is why you will never get to Rejoin. You immediately alienate a Liberal Leaver like me, and make me yearn for even Harder Brexit so you suffer, again and again
I know you are half joking, but you are only half joking. So I say to the other half: HAHAHAHAHAHA, we're never going back in. Tough shit
The basic problem they have is that most people in the UK have an underlying identity and low level patriotism based on being British and their home nation. Even as we become more cosmopolitan, Brits still want to come back to hearing British regional accents and the local customs and food. Meanwhile the really hardcore remainers identify more with Paris and Berlin and have cultural cringe over Skegness.
So there is no understanding there that Brits, even when some think it is economically advantageous to be in the EU, don't like lawmaking from Brussells, no passport checks on Romanians and economic policy set in Frankfurt.
I suspect some Remainers know this, which is why they want as much unintegrated immigration as possible, so they have a voting base not attached to traditional British culture.
Hardcore Remainers are unremittingly awful people. I can't work out whether they were always awful, nasty, sneering, and mentally inadequate, and we simply didn't notice - or whether Brexit made them that way. Genuine puzzle
Hardcore Remainers have also long replaced Tory voters as the snobbiest voters around (and a lot of them happen to be LDs)
That really isn’t an assumption you are entitled to make. I’m proud to be a hard-core Remainer, and as far as I’m concerned Jack’s as good as his master.
Some Remainers unfortunately do seem to operate within a kind of caste system with themselves at the top, EU migrants as an approved labouring class, and Brexit voters as the untouchables with whom they are embarrassed to share a country. It's the "but who will serve my sandwiches in Pret?" attitude.
That's a piece of hackneyed nonsense. It's not like that at all. It's just that people like me are sad about the hard tangible benefits of EU membership being tossed away in return for nothing but jingoistic hot air, red tape and hassle. There are no plusses whatsoever unless you count Boris Johnson and Liz Truss getting a crack at being PM as a plus.
So, no, it was without doubt a terrible terrible decision we took 7 years ago today, but there's no big personal animus towards Leavers, either individually or as a group. Certainly not from me anyway. Although I will admit (being perfectly serious here) that if I was moving house there is no way I'd consider a place that voted for Brexit.
The benefits of the EU haven't been tossed away for nothing though, we no longer pay for those benefits which frankly most leavers did not see as worth it. EU membership cost about 10£ bill a year, each and ever tax payer therefore was paying if we go on the adult population of the uk of around 45 million was costing us about 222£ a year.
Most didnt use FoM, only 12% of gdp comes from exports half of which is to the eu so lets say 6% of exports. We were all paying to support tiny minorities of people and companies that benefitted from EU membership. Now speaking as someone who earns well south of a 6 figure salary unlike most of PB
I couldnt afford to call in a plumber/electrician/au pair etc even during FoM and had to do it myself
My rent continually raised because increased population
Doctors waiting times went up because population went up by 10% with no extra doctors
I didn't want to work in the EU or live in the EU
Since FoM disappeared many people including me have for the first time in ages got pay rises because bosses can't just go fuck you plenty will do your job for less ( I was earning the same in 2002 as I was in 2016 despite changing jobs 3 times)
So explain to me what was the advantage to me of the EU that I should pay 222£ a year (actually more when you consider about half the country doesnt actually pay income tax)
There will be individuals who benefit and perhaps you're one of them. You know your circumstances better than me. However the net impact on the economy is negative. Theory said so before the event, practice says so after it. On top of that our influence in the world is reduced. Poorer, weaker, this is the reality of Brexit Britain. It isn't even delivering its USP (to Leavers) of lower immigration.
I might still be ok with it if it were to lead to a significant sustainable redistribution of wealth in favour of the poor. But the claims that it's doing this are tosh as far as I can see. All we've got are damaged supply chains, worse terms of trade, chaotic labour shortages and embedded inflation. Very few Britons will emerge better off and those that do will be the usual suspects. Bet you any money that'll be the case.
The economy doing better however is irrelevant for all those who get no benefit from it doing better. Unless you are trying to argue trickle down economics which would be bizarre for a self confessed lefty.
If the gdp of the country doubles but I get no benefit from it and actually get poorer how does that help me? There are millions in that position living from hand to mouth while people keep telling them the country is getting richer off immigration while they are see escalating rents, minimum wage becoming maximum wage in many sectors, and decreasing services because more people are looking for housing jobs and services.
Do I hold immigrants responsible? No I don't they are doing what is best for them. I am sure you can agree. However you also have to accept that the poor also have a right to do whats best for them not what is best for you and for many that was vote leave. This is why you lost.
So Sunak's government now has a net satisfaction rating higher than Major's in 1997 and higher than Truss and May's, even if slightly worse than Boris'
A result a bit better than than Major in 1997 is still a disaster for the Tories.
Given the Tories were heading for a 1993 Canadian Tories style wipeout and less than 50 seats under Truss last autumn, many Tory MPs would have bitten your hand off for a slightly better than Major 1997 result back then
They were not heading for that - polling is a snapshot not a prediction, as you will know.
Your threadbare Sunak ramping as he marches the Tory Party to crushing defeat is embarrassing.
They were. Truss resigned on 21 October last year, all polls in the week before her resignation had the Tories under 25%. One People Polling poll had the Tories on just 14%, Redfield had the Tories on just 19%. Results which would have left the Tories nearer 0 than 50 seats under FPTP
They were not, because a GE was not due to take place in the week before/after her resignation. Had a GE been imminent, then yes, your point would have some validity.
Under Sunak, the Tories have made a modest recovery which indicates little except some died in the wool Tory supporters reverting to type. There is no indication that had Truss stayed, this wouldn't still have happened.
The minor recovery has only happened under Sunak, had Truss stayed the polling evidence is the Tories would not only have lost to Labour by a landslide but ceased to be the main Opposition. The LDs or SNP may well have won more MPs than the Truss Tories would have
I don't see what polling evidence there could be that could prove this hypothetical situation, but by all means present some.
Truss was prepared to be unpopular (not that unpopular obvs.) in the short term because she believed that there was a pay off in her policies that would manifest itself before the GE - a healthier economy, more affordable childcare, increased energy supply leading to lower bills, increased food supply leading to lower food costs, increased investment from the cancelling of the CT rise etc.
Had those policies borne fruit, a modest, or even non-modest polling recovery could have taken place. Even if they hadn't, one would still expect a small recovery as the mini-budget fiasco died as a news story.
I have just given you one.
Put in the last Redfield poll under Truss' Premiership and you got Labour 571 seats, SNP 33, LDs 19 and Tories just 6.
Now however the latest Redfield poll gives Labour 469, Tories 105, SNP 33, LD 22. So even on that poll Sunak still doing about 100 MPs better than Truss
I am not going to lambast you for being stupid, because I know full well that you completely understand the point that I am making; you're just choosing not to acknowledge it.
I will merely reiterate that mid-term polling, especially in the immediate aftermath of a policy crisis like the mini-budget fiasco, cannot predict the outcome of a General Election due to take place more than two years in the future. You know that, I know that, anyone who reads PB knows that.
So you don't have any evidence that had Truss survived, the Tories wouldn't have recovered in the polls - I didn't think you would have.
Yes I know you think Truss would have recovered but on the polls before she resigned even Epping Forest would have gone Labour. Brentwood and Ongar (where we now live) would have been one of the handful of Tory seats left (and only because of the rural bits around Ongar, Brentwood itself would also have gone Labour)
I think we can both agree that the polls at the end of Liz Truss's premiership were catastrophic. However, we cannot infer that no recovery would have taken place - and tbf I cannot infer that a significant recovery in excess of what Sunak has managed would have taken place. Truss was always a gamble. What upsets me about Sunak is there's no gamble, just crushing certainty.
How is it a Trussian future carries with it the normal caveat of an unseeable future, but you absolutely know what is going to happen under Sunak? Has the change of PM somehow shifted the laws of thermodynamics?
The nature of their respective policy programmes. Crudely characterised, Truss's grab for growth was high risk/high reward, Sunak/Hunt's nails in the coffin approach is no risk/no reward.
I don't actually believe that Truss's policies were that risky, or Sunak's policies that free of risk, but as a summary it'll do.
The basic problem with Truss - and it was a massive, unbelievably arrogant, and stupid one - was there was absolutely no attempt to show workings or contingencies, to the extent they didn't even get the budget properly marked by the OBR. That left her in a situation where she was left saying would cut taxes, do supply-side reform at some later date, and that it would all pay for itself at a time when even if you agreed with the theory, there were some significant economic headwinds blowing against us (some self-inflicted, some not) and public attitudes to spending cuts are pretty against because there's not any politically easy fat to cut any more. So of course markets took flight, because (probably rightly) assume that unless you can explain your thinking and methods well, you're a fool who just wants to pursue your pet project without thinking through how it will work in the real world. And that should growth not go gangbusters, quickly, you won't be able to fill the big holes in your budget by doing stuff that'll lose you the next election anyway. A smarter, less arrogant group of people believing in similar basic economic theories would have realised the need to explain themselves properly, and the need for sequencing (e.g. your supply side reforms before the biggest tax cuts).
I don't disagree with the general thrust of your remarks - the mini-budget was very poorly executed and Truss paid the political price.
However, the fact of the matter is that Truss's tax cuts weren't all that massive. By far the biggest ticket item in the mini-budget was the energy price guarantee, and that was universally accepted.
Britain doesn’t do capital investment. The culture is against it. Britain has lagged peer economies basically forever on this metric.
I don’t really know why that is. But I wonder if it stems back to Victorian times when frankly it was a more profitable use of capital to invest in Uruguayan mines and Californian railway, and so a weird “tradition” developed in which the home country was just left to fend for itself.
That worked only so long as Britain maintained industrial technology advantage but ever since 1860 it’s been a slow decline, and definitively so since (pick your date) 1918, 1925, or 1979.
It's utterly perplexing to me. Take the recent arguing about mortgages and how to help people. That's only treating the symptom. It's not the cause of the problem. The cause is a massive under supply of housing going back many decades. People in the UK spend too much money for too little crap housing, so that a return to moderate and normal interest rates is crucifying them.
Where is the political party saying "we will build 5 million homes over the next decade to fix the supply problem"? There isn't one, the debate is about tweaks not anyone grasping the nettle to fix the problem.
The UK population will pass 70 million within a couple of years — assuming population statistics are correct which given the Settled Status scheme uptake may not be the case — and we are nailed on for 80 million by 2050, unless something incredible happens to migration*.
We need to build an enormous amount of everything. A building programme like nothing in living memory, probably even surpassing the post-war years.
* Climate change is likely to make the UK even more attractive for migrants, so don't believe under 100,000 a year is plausible, we'll be lucky if we can keep it down to two or three times that.
Of course the UK needs a massive house building programme but you need to overcome two problems in my non expert opinion. Firstly there needs to be at least a suspension or ban on non UK resident house purchasers, even if only new build.
Secondly you need to get past the nimbys. The only way I can think of doing that is to tie development to council funding so each council gets govt financing to encourage building housing and if their targets aren’t met they get penalised financially from their next year’s overall budget so when people living in that council are faced with reduced services making their little nimby paradises less pleasant then they might have to start being less selfish.
Council gets financial help to build, gets given a good argument to crush nimbyism and hopefully unbungs the system.
Worth pointing out yet again that 90% of all housing development planning is passed first time by local councils and a further 5% is passed on appeal.
So the idea that the vast underbuild is due to nimbyism is a myth. Yes nimbyism does of course exist but its power and influence is massively overstated. As long as the gap between planning permissions and builds keeps increasing by around 80 - 100K a year, planning is not the issue.
As I said, in my non expert opinion which is code for “I don’t know what the f I’m talking about really”.
Is there not a way though where councils can put in conditions to planning permission so it’s only granted with caveats that building must be completed within x time?
I’m sure I’ve read on here that developers get the real value in a site once it’s got planning permission so if they sit and wait for permission then they can’t mark up the asset on their books and so their company value is less so less attractive to shareholders and lower bonuses for execs.
It just seems there must be a number of carrots and sticks that could be used to encourage more building.
Would the Remoaners on here finally STFU if we got a reformed Brexit that gave us back Freedom of Movement?
It seems to be the most emotive and profound loss, from Brexit, for a majority of Remainery people (and I share some of the pain, as I say). Perhaps that is the place where Britain could finally reconcile. Brexit Plus. Brexit Plus Freedom of Movement
We'll be like the ERG in reverse - you'll never appease us with titbit after titbit, grudging morsel after dry crumb. We'll always want more. Pure, hard, diamond-tipped Rejoin. Whatever acronym is the 180 degree opposite of BRINO. I want my EU citizenship back.
Blue flagged, rather than brown-watered, beaches, the Euro, Schengen, the banning of offshore tax havens, the whole shebang please. Coming out hasn't worked, let's go back in full-throttle. If you could make that so I'd be very appreciative.
Incidentally, it was very astute of Question Time to stuff last night's audience full of ill-informed gammon, dribbling out the same tired, discredited Johnsonian garbage. (Didn't watch it, of course, but the QT hashtag throws up a damning verdict from the hive mind.) In a few years when admitting voting Leave in polite company will be akin to squatting down and curling one out on your host's lovely dining table, nice people can shudder and say with a contemptuous titter 'No, of course I didn't vote Leave! It was voted for by those ghastly mouth-breathing idiots who look like they've been sculpted out of pork pie meat. What common accents they have. Like on that Question Time, you remember.'
Aaaaand, this sneering drivel is why you will never get to Rejoin. You immediately alienate a Liberal Leaver like me, and make me yearn for even Harder Brexit so you suffer, again and again
I know you are half joking, but you are only half joking. So I say to the other half: HAHAHAHAHAHA, we're never going back in. Tough shit
The basic problem they have is that most people in the UK have an underlying identity and low level patriotism based on being British and their home nation. Even as we become more cosmopolitan, Brits still want to come back to hearing British regional accents and the local customs and food. Meanwhile the really hardcore remainers identify more with Paris and Berlin and have cultural cringe over Skegness.
So there is no understanding there that Brits, even when some think it is economically advantageous to be in the EU, don't like lawmaking from Brussells, no passport checks on Romanians and economic policy set in Frankfurt.
I suspect some Remainers know this, which is why they want as much unintegrated immigration as possible, so they have a voting base not attached to traditional British culture.
Hardcore Remainers are unremittingly awful people. I can't work out whether they were always awful, nasty, sneering, and mentally inadequate, and we simply didn't notice - or whether Brexit made them that way. Genuine puzzle
The simple fact is some people were better off when we were in the EU, some people were worse off under the EU. Now it is reversed.
Losing their FoM is actually a really crap argument in my view because the number of Brits that actually ever took advantage of it was less than 2% of the population (not talking people taking a 2 week vacation in france, I mean those that moved to live or work). The 98% that didn't want to take advantage of it still had to pay for it.
What exactly was the cost of freedom of movement ? Most economic analysis has FoM as defined by the European variety as a net benefit for the UK.
The price of freedom of movement is being in the EU had a cost. It was a benefit to the GDP of the country but not such a benefit to people who's jobs were nailed to minimum wage by the infinite labour pool, nor such a benefit to places like slough where I used to live where the population grew by about ten percent in a year due to Eastern european accession without any sign of extra doctors, police, hospital provision, school places and certainly not a sufficient increase in housing.
Where are all the immigrants going now that we've left? Somewhere other than Slough? Or still Slough?
Difference is now their are lower bounds for salaries at least so those that come are actually paying their way. Someone coming over to work a minimum wage job is not contributing above their cost to the state. Please don't try to say a lot of EU workers weren't working min wage jobs in hospitality as that has been a complaint of certain posters here that those nice eastern european hospitality staff have vanished.
Yeah, I want to see some calculations before I trust you at your word on that. If someone comes here from abroad, we've not paid for their schooling, we're not paying for their retirement. On average they will be younger and healthier than the average person. How much are they costing the exchequer?
There are some areas of expenditure where they apply to immigrants because everybody benefits from them e.g. defence and policing. And some where they apply less to immigrants, like state pensions, health and social care. And others where it's really dubious whether you should apply it to them, such as debt interest payments (is new immigrant really responsible for UK government loans undertaken years before that immigrant ever came here?)
Of course, immigrants will pay PAYE/NI/VAT/Fuel duty/corporation tax/business rates in the normal way in most cases.
So, no, I'm not taking your word for it that someone on the minimum wage isn't "paying their way". Not without some proper tax/spend breakdowns that take account for the demographic skewness.
Apart from in slough the second gen asian immigrants were complaining about their childrens schooling being hindered because the schools were full of eastern european children who didnt speak english as a first language so lessons were slowed down.
A lot of eastern europeans I knew in slough had kids while over here and showed every sign of settling here. I don't have any stats for how many actually stay and make a life here because no one is counted out of the country but my estimate based on those I knew in slough is 30 to 50% so yes we will be covering their retirement too.
The simple fact is we dont seem to have stats on any of this. Being my normal cynical self I suspect that is because if they collected them they would show FoM wasn't such a benefit to the country once services were taken into account. Hence why its always quoted as GDP.
You have a country of 55 million, you add 10 million and its a surprise GDP rises? It doesn't mean GDP per capita rises
Yes, so when I say "we're not paying for their retirement", I mean NOW. Yes, SOME will stay and eventually need state pensions and health and social care which I covered under "apply less to immigrants, like state pensions, health and social care". Less, not non-existent. And yes, some immigrants have children and therefore are more likely to be a tax drain, but that's the same as people born in this country too.
Immigrants cost and benefit this country. Everybody knows both are true. The question of where the tipping point is, well it's a multidimensional question covering health, dependants, duration, spending behaviour, and so on. It's not easy to work out, and maybe you're right that there's no reliable figure for it. But you implied you knew the answer when you said
to work a minimum wage job is not contributing above their cost to the state
I now see you were simply assuming that to be case, and I have serious doubts about whether it's a true.
Someone on minimum wage will pay 900 income tax approx and 550 ni a year, how far do you imagine that goes paying towards public services? An immigrant or anyone young will still visit a doctor, need police/fire/be eligible for housing benefit/need their children schooled etc
You mention the fire brigade, which is not exactly the biggest spend in government but let's look at it. It's funded by a mix of central government and council tax. You forgot council tax, didn't you? And VAT.
As an example of the sorts of numbers we're talking about, receipts from council tax are about ten times the cost of fire services countrywide.
So yes, all immigrants certainly do benefit from fire services, not just the minority who actually need the service in a given year (because it's there always for all of us), but they also pay for it.
Similar calculations can be done for other areas of the budget. It's really very far from obvious which side of the equation the average immigrant comes down on, even restricting it to those on minimum wage.
Let me ask you this, too: if you found out that minimum-wage immigrants were actually "paying their way", would you actually change your mind on FoM? Or are there other factors at play?
Then down to you to prove it if you don't believe it. I notice you have gone quiet on your claim of well over a million living and working in the eu after I quoted a source. To be revenue neutral you have to earn about 36k a year in this country. Even accounting for pensions and end of life health care I don't believe a min wage worker can be revenue neutral earning half the amount.
The simple fact is neither point of view is provable beyond doubt because figures are so obscured. However claiming a min wage worker is a drain on the treasury is I believe on the balance of probabilities a lot more likely than them being a net contributor
So how are you arriving at your "£36k" figure? Are you assuming all people are interchangeable and cost the exchequer an equal amount? Because I was explicitly trying to caution you off that fiction, since it involved asymmetrical assumptions.
Basically, you have a selection bias in your "revenue" side (minimum wage immigrants). Since that selection will affect (probably radically) the services that group will need, you cannot just take the bulk figures for everyone and divide it.
If you need to see why this is absurd, you'd have to assume that 10% of the government budget being allocated to these minimum wage immigrants is in the form of state pension. I mean, obviously if your group of people who BY DEFINITION are working, how many of them will ALSO be receiving the state pension? A handful, to be sure, but close enough to nil.
You can't just take the overall spend and divide when you are thinking about a SELECTION of people paying their way. Try again.
and my whole point is that immigrants coming to work minimum wage is likely costing us money not being a net gain. I said before I would happily accept 500k immigrants from anywhere earning 30k rather than 100k eu immigrants coming to take min wage jobs
What do you think the surge in non-EU migration is working on. I don't think it is biochemistry
To enter the country to live and work now you need a minimum salary for the job. If you say yes but its low I would agree and most of those salaries need raising. However at least its a start.
Would the Remoaners on here finally STFU if we got a reformed Brexit that gave us back Freedom of Movement?
It seems to be the most emotive and profound loss, from Brexit, for a majority of Remainery people (and I share some of the pain, as I say). Perhaps that is the place where Britain could finally reconcile. Brexit Plus. Brexit Plus Freedom of Movement
We'll be like the ERG in reverse - you'll never appease us with titbit after titbit, grudging morsel after dry crumb. We'll always want more. Pure, hard, diamond-tipped Rejoin. Whatever acronym is the 180 degree opposite of BRINO. I want my EU citizenship back.
Blue flagged, rather than brown-watered, beaches, the Euro, Schengen, the banning of offshore tax havens, the whole shebang please. Coming out hasn't worked, let's go back in full-throttle. If you could make that so I'd be very appreciative.
Incidentally, it was very astute of Question Time to stuff last night's audience full of ill-informed gammon, dribbling out the same tired, discredited Johnsonian garbage. (Didn't watch it, of course, but the QT hashtag throws up a damning verdict from the hive mind.) In a few years when admitting voting Leave in polite company will be akin to squatting down and curling one out on your host's lovely dining table, nice people can shudder and say with a contemptuous titter 'No, of course I didn't vote Leave! It was voted for by those ghastly mouth-breathing idiots who look like they've been sculpted out of pork pie meat. What common accents they have. Like on that Question Time, you remember.'
Aaaaand, this sneering drivel is why you will never get to Rejoin. You immediately alienate a Liberal Leaver like me, and make me yearn for even Harder Brexit so you suffer, again and again
I know you are half joking, but you are only half joking. So I say to the other half: HAHAHAHAHAHA, we're never going back in. Tough shit
The basic problem they have is that most people in the UK have an underlying identity and low level patriotism based on being British and their home nation. Even as we become more cosmopolitan, Brits still want to come back to hearing British regional accents and the local customs and food. Meanwhile the really hardcore remainers identify more with Paris and Berlin and have cultural cringe over Skegness.
So there is no understanding there that Brits, even when some think it is economically advantageous to be in the EU, don't like lawmaking from Brussells, no passport checks on Romanians and economic policy set in Frankfurt.
I suspect some Remainers know this, which is why they want as much unintegrated immigration as possible, so they have a voting base not attached to traditional British culture.
Hardcore Remainers are unremittingly awful people. I can't work out whether they were always awful, nasty, sneering, and mentally inadequate, and we simply didn't notice - or whether Brexit made them that way. Genuine puzzle
The simple fact is some people were better off when we were in the EU, some people were worse off under the EU. Now it is reversed.
Losing their FoM is actually a really crap argument in my view because the number of Brits that actually ever took advantage of it was less than 2% of the population (not talking people taking a 2 week vacation in france, I mean those that moved to live or work). The 98% that didn't want to take advantage of it still had to pay for it.
What exactly was the cost of freedom of movement ? Most economic analysis has FoM as defined by the European variety as a net benefit for the UK.
The price of freedom of movement is being in the EU had a cost. It was a benefit to the GDP of the country but not such a benefit to people who's jobs were nailed to minimum wage by the infinite labour pool, nor such a benefit to places like slough where I used to live where the population grew by about ten percent in a year due to Eastern european accession without any sign of extra doctors, police, hospital provision, school places and certainly not a sufficient increase in housing.
Where are all the immigrants going now that we've left? Somewhere other than Slough? Or still Slough?
Difference is now their are lower bounds for salaries at least so those that come are actually paying their way. Someone coming over to work a minimum wage job is not contributing above their cost to the state. Please don't try to say a lot of EU workers weren't working min wage jobs in hospitality as that has been a complaint of certain posters here that those nice eastern european hospitality staff have vanished.
Yeah, I want to see some calculations before I trust you at your word on that. If someone comes here from abroad, we've not paid for their schooling, we're not paying for their retirement. On average they will be younger and healthier than the average person. How much are they costing the exchequer?
There are some areas of expenditure where they apply to immigrants because everybody benefits from them e.g. defence and policing. And some where they apply less to immigrants, like state pensions, health and social care. And others where it's really dubious whether you should apply it to them, such as debt interest payments (is new immigrant really responsible for UK government loans undertaken years before that immigrant ever came here?)
Of course, immigrants will pay PAYE/NI/VAT/Fuel duty/corporation tax/business rates in the normal way in most cases.
So, no, I'm not taking your word for it that someone on the minimum wage isn't "paying their way". Not without some proper tax/spend breakdowns that take account for the demographic skewness.
Apart from in slough the second gen asian immigrants were complaining about their childrens schooling being hindered because the schools were full of eastern european children who didnt speak english as a first language so lessons were slowed down.
A lot of eastern europeans I knew in slough had kids while over here and showed every sign of settling here. I don't have any stats for how many actually stay and make a life here because no one is counted out of the country but my estimate based on those I knew in slough is 30 to 50% so yes we will be covering their retirement too.
The simple fact is we dont seem to have stats on any of this. Being my normal cynical self I suspect that is because if they collected them they would show FoM wasn't such a benefit to the country once services were taken into account. Hence why its always quoted as GDP.
You have a country of 55 million, you add 10 million and its a surprise GDP rises? It doesn't mean GDP per capita rises
Yes, so when I say "we're not paying for their retirement", I mean NOW. Yes, SOME will stay and eventually need state pensions and health and social care which I covered under "apply less to immigrants, like state pensions, health and social care". Less, not non-existent. And yes, some immigrants have children and therefore are more likely to be a tax drain, but that's the same as people born in this country too.
Immigrants cost and benefit this country. Everybody knows both are true. The question of where the tipping point is, well it's a multidimensional question covering health, dependants, duration, spending behaviour, and so on. It's not easy to work out, and maybe you're right that there's no reliable figure for it. But you implied you knew the answer when you said
to work a minimum wage job is not contributing above their cost to the state
I now see you were simply assuming that to be case, and I have serious doubts about whether it's a true.
Someone on minimum wage will pay 900 income tax approx and 550 ni a year, how far do you imagine that goes paying towards public services? An immigrant or anyone young will still visit a doctor, need police/fire/be eligible for housing benefit/need their children schooled etc
You mention the fire brigade, which is not exactly the biggest spend in government but let's look at it. It's funded by a mix of central government and council tax. You forgot council tax, didn't you? And VAT.
As an example of the sorts of numbers we're talking about, receipts from council tax are about ten times the cost of fire services countrywide.
So yes, all immigrants certainly do benefit from fire services, not just the minority who actually need the service in a given year (because it's there always for all of us), but they also pay for it.
Similar calculations can be done for other areas of the budget. It's really very far from obvious which side of the equation the average immigrant comes down on, even restricting it to those on minimum wage.
Let me ask you this, too: if you found out that minimum-wage immigrants were actually "paying their way", would you actually change your mind on FoM? Or are there other factors at play?
Then down to you to prove it if you don't believe it. I notice you have gone quiet on your claim of well over a million living and working in the eu after I quoted a source. To be revenue neutral you have to earn about 36k a year in this country. Even accounting for pensions and end of life health care I don't believe a min wage worker can be revenue neutral earning half the amount.
The simple fact is neither point of view is provable beyond doubt because figures are so obscured. However claiming a min wage worker is a drain on the treasury is I believe on the balance of probabilities a lot more likely than them being a net contributor
So how are you arriving at your "£36k" figure? Are you assuming all people are interchangeable and cost the exchequer an equal amount? Because I was explicitly trying to caution you off that fiction, since it involved asymmetrical assumptions.
Basically, you have a selection bias in your "revenue" side (minimum wage immigrants). Since that selection will affect (probably radically) the services that group will need, you cannot just take the bulk figures for everyone and divide it.
If you need to see why this is absurd, you'd have to assume that 10% of the government budget being allocated to these minimum wage immigrants is in the form of state pension. I mean, obviously if your group of people who BY DEFINITION are working, how many of them will ALSO be receiving the state pension? A handful, to be sure, but close enough to nil.
You can't just take the overall spend and divide when you are thinking about a SELECTION of people paying their way. Try again.
and my whole point is that immigrants coming to work minimum wage is likely costing us money not being a net gain. I said before I would happily accept 500k immigrants from anywhere earning 30k rather than 100k eu immigrants coming to take min wage jobs
Did you even read that article?
Here things become a little more complicated.
Firstly, these are averages. Whether you pay more than you get back will depend a great deal on whether you have children of school age, whether you claim child benefit, or whether you need to call on the NHS. Have you taken maternity or paternity leave, or taken part in a government training scheme? It all increases the value you are deemed to have extracted from the state.
But the biggest single factor pushing a greater proportion of homes into state dependency is our aging population and the increasing numbers in need of a state pension.
I mean, it's hitting all the same points I've been making. Of course, this article is also doing exactly the thing I said you can't do, which is assuming your selection is, for the purposes of revenue, specific... but for the purposes of spend, general.
Do you actually understand what "selection bias" means? I don't think you do.
Simply put here are the unknowns
How many eu migrants came....we didnt count them in How many came with children.....we didnt count them in How many have kids needing schooling while they are here How many stayed a few years and left....we didnt count them out What the actual cost of any service the state provides is for a given age for example I accept the cost of healthcare is increases as you age but it is on average non zero for any given age group.
Till we have those figures I cant prove my point nor can you prove yours.
I remain of the opinion however based on those figures a min wage worker whether immigrant or citizen is taking out more than they put in
And here I was assuming the drug peddling icecream vans in Grand Theft Auto Vice City had been a commentary on american culture, but given Rockstar North are based in Edinburgh I imagine they had heard the stories.
Wouldn't surprise me at all if some of them were 'Weegies by origin and/or by current residence - it's very easy to commute between the two cities (despite some notions on PB in the past).
To be fair I was talking about housing developments not things like masts. There are still plenty of myths around about masts and councillors have far more undue infleunce over these as they are not part of any official local plan.
I feel they should be be brought into the plans properly. They are very important along with FTTP for future growth etc.
I don't feel there should not be much legitimate reason to reject a mast beyond I don't know actual safety issues like reducing visibility of cars, what say you?
So Sunak's government now has a net satisfaction rating higher than Major's in 1997 and higher than Truss and May's, even if slightly worse than Boris'
A result a bit better than than Major in 1997 is still a disaster for the Tories.
Given the Tories were heading for a 1993 Canadian Tories style wipeout and less than 50 seats under Truss last autumn, many Tory MPs would have bitten your hand off for a slightly better than Major 1997 result back then
They were not heading for that - polling is a snapshot not a prediction, as you will know.
Your threadbare Sunak ramping as he marches the Tory Party to crushing defeat is embarrassing.
They were. Truss resigned on 21 October last year, all polls in the week before her resignation had the Tories under 25%. One People Polling poll had the Tories on just 14%, Redfield had the Tories on just 19%. Results which would have left the Tories nearer 0 than 50 seats under FPTP
They were not, because a GE was not due to take place in the week before/after her resignation. Had a GE been imminent, then yes, your point would have some validity.
Under Sunak, the Tories have made a modest recovery which indicates little except some died in the wool Tory supporters reverting to type. There is no indication that had Truss stayed, this wouldn't still have happened.
The minor recovery has only happened under Sunak, had Truss stayed the polling evidence is the Tories would not only have lost to Labour by a landslide but ceased to be the main Opposition. The LDs or SNP may well have won more MPs than the Truss Tories would have
I don't see what polling evidence there could be that could prove this hypothetical situation, but by all means present some.
Truss was prepared to be unpopular (not that unpopular obvs.) in the short term because she believed that there was a pay off in her policies that would manifest itself before the GE - a healthier economy, more affordable childcare, increased energy supply leading to lower bills, increased food supply leading to lower food costs, increased investment from the cancelling of the CT rise etc.
Had those policies borne fruit, a modest, or even non-modest polling recovery could have taken place. Even if they hadn't, one would still expect a small recovery as the mini-budget fiasco died as a news story.
I have just given you one.
Put in the last Redfield poll under Truss' Premiership and you got Labour 571 seats, SNP 33, LDs 19 and Tories just 6.
Now however the latest Redfield poll gives Labour 469, Tories 105, SNP 33, LD 22. So even on that poll Sunak still doing about 100 MPs better than Truss
I am not going to lambast you for being stupid, because I know full well that you completely understand the point that I am making; you're just choosing not to acknowledge it.
I will merely reiterate that mid-term polling, especially in the immediate aftermath of a policy crisis like the mini-budget fiasco, cannot predict the outcome of a General Election due to take place more than two years in the future. You know that, I know that, anyone who reads PB knows that.
So you don't have any evidence that had Truss survived, the Tories wouldn't have recovered in the polls - I didn't think you would have.
Yes I know you think Truss would have recovered but on the polls before she resigned even Epping Forest would have gone Labour. Brentwood and Ongar (where we now live) would have been one of the handful of Tory seats left (and only because of the rural bits around Ongar, Brentwood itself would also have gone Labour)
I think we can both agree that the polls at the end of Liz Truss's premiership were catastrophic. However, we cannot infer that no recovery would have taken place - and tbf I cannot infer that a significant recovery in excess of what Sunak has managed would have taken place. Truss was always a gamble. What upsets me about Sunak is there's no gamble, just crushing certainty.
How is it a Trussian future carries with it the normal caveat of an unseeable future, but you absolutely know what is going to happen under Sunak? Has the change of PM somehow shifted the laws of thermodynamics?
The nature of their respective policy programmes. Crudely characterised, Truss's grab for growth was high risk/high reward, Sunak/Hunt's nails in the coffin approach is no risk/no reward.
I don't actually believe that Truss's policies were that risky, or Sunak's policies that free of risk, but as a summary it'll do.
The basic problem with Truss - and it was a massive, unbelievably arrogant, and stupid one - was there was absolutely no attempt to show workings or contingencies, to the extent they didn't even get the budget properly marked by the OBR. That left her in a situation where she was left saying would cut taxes, do supply-side reform at some later date, and that it would all pay for itself at a time when even if you agreed with the theory, there were some significant economic headwinds blowing against us (some self-inflicted, some not) and public attitudes to spending cuts are pretty against because there's not any politically easy fat to cut any more. So of course markets took flight, because (probably rightly) assume that unless you can explain your thinking and methods well, you're a fool who just wants to pursue your pet project without thinking through how it will work in the real world. And that should growth not go gangbusters, quickly, you won't be able to fill the big holes in your budget by doing stuff that'll lose you the next election anyway. A smarter, less arrogant group of people believing in similar basic economic theories would have realised the need to explain themselves properly, and the need for sequencing (e.g. your supply side reforms before the biggest tax cuts).
Yep. If you're going the 'slash taxes' route from a position of high debt & deficit you also need spending cuts and supply side reforms, ie the difficult bits of the strategy, the bits that require hard thought and hard sell. You can't just miss them out or say 'maybe later' as you do the tax cuts on tick. The whole thing was infantile imo. A quite incredible episode.
Would the Remoaners on here finally STFU if we got a reformed Brexit that gave us back Freedom of Movement?
It seems to be the most emotive and profound loss, from Brexit, for a majority of Remainery people (and I share some of the pain, as I say). Perhaps that is the place where Britain could finally reconcile. Brexit Plus. Brexit Plus Freedom of Movement
We'll be like the ERG in reverse - you'll never appease us with titbit after titbit, grudging morsel after dry crumb. We'll always want more. Pure, hard, diamond-tipped Rejoin. Whatever acronym is the 180 degree opposite of BRINO. I want my EU citizenship back.
Blue flagged, rather than brown-watered, beaches, the Euro, Schengen, the banning of offshore tax havens, the whole shebang please. Coming out hasn't worked, let's go back in full-throttle. If you could make that so I'd be very appreciative.
Incidentally, it was very astute of Question Time to stuff last night's audience full of ill-informed gammon, dribbling out the same tired, discredited Johnsonian garbage. (Didn't watch it, of course, but the QT hashtag throws up a damning verdict from the hive mind.) In a few years when admitting voting Leave in polite company will be akin to squatting down and curling one out on your host's lovely dining table, nice people can shudder and say with a contemptuous titter 'No, of course I didn't vote Leave! It was voted for by those ghastly mouth-breathing idiots who look like they've been sculpted out of pork pie meat. What common accents they have. Like on that Question Time, you remember.'
Aaaaand, this sneering drivel is why you will never get to Rejoin. You immediately alienate a Liberal Leaver like me, and make me yearn for even Harder Brexit so you suffer, again and again
I know you are half joking, but you are only half joking. So I say to the other half: HAHAHAHAHAHA, we're never going back in. Tough shit
The basic problem they have is that most people in the UK have an underlying identity and low level patriotism based on being British and their home nation. Even as we become more cosmopolitan, Brits still want to come back to hearing British regional accents and the local customs and food. Meanwhile the really hardcore remainers identify more with Paris and Berlin and have cultural cringe over Skegness.
So there is no understanding there that Brits, even when some think it is economically advantageous to be in the EU, don't like lawmaking from Brussells, no passport checks on Romanians and economic policy set in Frankfurt.
I suspect some Remainers know this, which is why they want as much unintegrated immigration as possible, so they have a voting base not attached to traditional British culture.
Hardcore Remainers are unremittingly awful people. I can't work out whether they were always awful, nasty, sneering, and mentally inadequate, and we simply didn't notice - or whether Brexit made them that way. Genuine puzzle
Hardcore Remainers have also long replaced Tory voters as the snobbiest voters around (and a lot of them happen to be LDs)
That really isn’t an assumption you are entitled to make. I’m proud to be a hard-core Remainer, and as far as I’m concerned Jack’s as good as his master.
Some Remainers unfortunately do seem to operate within a kind of caste system with themselves at the top, EU migrants as an approved labouring class, and Brexit voters as the untouchables with whom they are embarrassed to share a country. It's the "but who will serve my sandwiches in Pret?" attitude.
That's a piece of hackneyed nonsense. It's not like that at all. It's just that people like me are sad about the hard tangible benefits of EU membership being tossed away in return for nothing but jingoistic hot air, red tape and hassle. There are no plusses whatsoever unless you count Boris Johnson and Liz Truss getting a crack at being PM as a plus.
So, no, it was without doubt a terrible terrible decision we took 7 years ago today, but there's no big personal animus towards Leavers, either individually or as a group. Certainly not from me anyway. Although I will admit (being perfectly serious here) that if I was moving house there is no way I'd consider a place that voted for Brexit.
The benefits of the EU haven't been tossed away for nothing though, we no longer pay for those benefits which frankly most leavers did not see as worth it. EU membership cost about 10£ bill a year, each and ever tax payer therefore was paying if we go on the adult population of the uk of around 45 million was costing us about 222£ a year.
Most didnt use FoM, only 12% of gdp comes from exports half of which is to the eu so lets say 6% of exports. We were all paying to support tiny minorities of people and companies that benefitted from EU membership. Now speaking as someone who earns well south of a 6 figure salary unlike most of PB
I couldnt afford to call in a plumber/electrician/au pair etc even during FoM and had to do it myself
My rent continually raised because increased population
Doctors waiting times went up because population went up by 10% with no extra doctors
I didn't want to work in the EU or live in the EU
Since FoM disappeared many people including me have for the first time in ages got pay rises because bosses can't just go fuck you plenty will do your job for less ( I was earning the same in 2002 as I was in 2016 despite changing jobs 3 times)
So explain to me what was the advantage to me of the EU that I should pay 222£ a year (actually more when you consider about half the country doesnt actually pay income tax)
There will be individuals who benefit and perhaps you're one of them. You know your circumstances better than me. However the net impact on the economy is negative. Theory said so before the event, practice says so after it. On top of that our influence in the world is reduced. Poorer, weaker, this is the reality of Brexit Britain. It isn't even delivering its USP (to Leavers) of lower immigration.
I might still be ok with it if it were to lead to a significant sustainable redistribution of wealth in favour of the poor. But the claims that it's doing this are tosh as far as I can see. All we've got are damaged supply chains, worse terms of trade, chaotic labour shortages and embedded inflation. Very few Britons will emerge better off and those that do will be the usual suspects. Bet you any money that'll be the case.
The economy doing better however is irrelevant for all those who get no benefit from it doing better. Unless you are trying to argue trickle down economics which would be bizarre for a self confessed lefty.
If the gdp of the country doubles but I get no benefit from it and actually get poorer how does that help me? There are millions in that position living from hand to mouth while people keep telling them the country is getting richer off immigration while they are see escalating rents, minimum wage becoming maximum wage in many sectors, and decreasing services because more people are looking for housing jobs and services.
Do I hold immigrants responsible? No I don't they are doing what is best for them. I am sure you can agree. However you also have to accept that the poor also have a right to do whats best for them not what is best for you and for many that was vote leave. This is why you lost.
I like how you think you're in a good position to decide on why you think the EU referendum turned out the way it did when you can't even tell the difference between 6/100 and 6/26. You're an absolute mess.
where have I mistaken 6/100 for 6/26....the article said excluding ireland 780k or so with a further 6% going to ireland.....that means 6% extra on top of eu emmigration not 6% based on emigration to each country it means 6% extra on top of total eu emigration. Learn to read maybe
The NHS is broken part 94. Context - I had leukaemia in 2012, in remission since early 2013. Also asthmatic (mild). At one point I was told to shield, the letter arriving the day shielding ended. I’m pretty healthy. Two weeks ago was invited to get a covid booster. Today a message came about a vaccination clinic 1-4 pm. Raced home early from work made it at 3.50. Lady on reception asked if I had a booking. I said no, but was invited by text. She turned me away as I was not clinically extremely vulnerable. I could have asked to see a medic, but decided not, but went straight to the GP surgery to check. They confirmed I was eligible. I was also not the only one treated this way today.
All too typical of a system that doesn’t quite work.
Britain doesn’t do capital investment. The culture is against it. Britain has lagged peer economies basically forever on this metric.
I don’t really know why that is. But I wonder if it stems back to Victorian times when frankly it was a more profitable use of capital to invest in Uruguayan mines and Californian railway, and so a weird “tradition” developed in which the home country was just left to fend for itself.
That worked only so long as Britain maintained industrial technology advantage but ever since 1860 it’s been a slow decline, and definitively so since (pick your date) 1918, 1925, or 1979.
It's utterly perplexing to me. Take the recent arguing about mortgages and how to help people. That's only treating the symptom. It's not the cause of the problem. The cause is a massive under supply of housing going back many decades. People in the UK spend too much money for too little crap housing, so that a return to moderate and normal interest rates is crucifying them.
Where is the political party saying "we will build 5 million homes over the next decade to fix the supply problem"? There isn't one, the debate is about tweaks not anyone grasping the nettle to fix the problem.
The UK population will pass 70 million within a couple of years — assuming population statistics are correct which given the Settled Status scheme uptake may not be the case — and we are nailed on for 80 million by 2050, unless something incredible happens to migration*.
We need to build an enormous amount of everything. A building programme like nothing in living memory, probably even surpassing the post-war years.
* Climate change is likely to make the UK even more attractive for migrants, so don't believe under 100,000 a year is plausible, we'll be lucky if we can keep it down to two or three times that.
Of course the UK needs a massive house building programme but you need to overcome two problems in my non expert opinion. Firstly there needs to be at least a suspension or ban on non UK resident house purchasers, even if only new build.
Secondly you need to get past the nimbys. The only way I can think of doing that is to tie development to council funding so each council gets govt financing to encourage building housing and if their targets aren’t met they get penalised financially from their next year’s overall budget so when people living in that council are faced with reduced services making their little nimby paradises less pleasant then they might have to start being less selfish.
Council gets financial help to build, gets given a good argument to crush nimbyism and hopefully unbungs the system.
Worth pointing out yet again that 90% of all housing development planning is passed first time by local councils and a further 5% is passed on appeal.
So the idea that the vast underbuild is due to nimbyism is a myth. Yes nimbyism does of course exist but its power and influence is massively overstated. As long as the gap between planning permissions and builds keeps increasing by around 80 - 100K a year, planning is not the issue.
As I said, in my non expert opinion which is code for “I don’t know what the f I’m talking about really”.
Is there not a way though where councils can put in conditions to planning permission so it’s only granted with caveats that building must be completed within x time?
I’m sure I’ve read on here that developers get the real value in a site once it’s got planning permission so if they sit and wait for permission then they can’t mark up the asset on their books and so their company value is less so less attractive to shareholders and lower bonuses for execs.
It just seems there must be a number of carrots and sticks that could be used to encourage more building.
If you actually started building all the houses there is planning permission for, the NIMBYs would be on it like a tramp on chips.
The overall level of building is the result of the planning system interacting with the house builders.
Some of the responses to this are revealing. For example the suggestion that if prices fall, there will be a "strike" by the house builders. But if there is actual competition, such a producer strike is not possible - this is why monopolies are considered bad. See Adam Smith.
The truth is that we often have local monopolies on house building - one of the big outfits is doing all the building in an area. When that happens the usual monopoly bullshit follows
Would the Remoaners on here finally STFU if we got a reformed Brexit that gave us back Freedom of Movement?
It seems to be the most emotive and profound loss, from Brexit, for a majority of Remainery people (and I share some of the pain, as I say). Perhaps that is the place where Britain could finally reconcile. Brexit Plus. Brexit Plus Freedom of Movement
We'll be like the ERG in reverse - you'll never appease us with titbit after titbit, grudging morsel after dry crumb. We'll always want more. Pure, hard, diamond-tipped Rejoin. Whatever acronym is the 180 degree opposite of BRINO. I want my EU citizenship back.
Blue flagged, rather than brown-watered, beaches, the Euro, Schengen, the banning of offshore tax havens, the whole shebang please. Coming out hasn't worked, let's go back in full-throttle. If you could make that so I'd be very appreciative.
Incidentally, it was very astute of Question Time to stuff last night's audience full of ill-informed gammon, dribbling out the same tired, discredited Johnsonian garbage. (Didn't watch it, of course, but the QT hashtag throws up a damning verdict from the hive mind.) In a few years when admitting voting Leave in polite company will be akin to squatting down and curling one out on your host's lovely dining table, nice people can shudder and say with a contemptuous titter 'No, of course I didn't vote Leave! It was voted for by those ghastly mouth-breathing idiots who look like they've been sculpted out of pork pie meat. What common accents they have. Like on that Question Time, you remember.'
Aaaaand, this sneering drivel is why you will never get to Rejoin. You immediately alienate a Liberal Leaver like me, and make me yearn for even Harder Brexit so you suffer, again and again
I know you are half joking, but you are only half joking. So I say to the other half: HAHAHAHAHAHA, we're never going back in. Tough shit
The basic problem they have is that most people in the UK have an underlying identity and low level patriotism based on being British and their home nation. Even as we become more cosmopolitan, Brits still want to come back to hearing British regional accents and the local customs and food. Meanwhile the really hardcore remainers identify more with Paris and Berlin and have cultural cringe over Skegness.
So there is no understanding there that Brits, even when some think it is economically advantageous to be in the EU, don't like lawmaking from Brussells, no passport checks on Romanians and economic policy set in Frankfurt.
I suspect some Remainers know this, which is why they want as much unintegrated immigration as possible, so they have a voting base not attached to traditional British culture.
Hardcore Remainers are unremittingly awful people. I can't work out whether they were always awful, nasty, sneering, and mentally inadequate, and we simply didn't notice - or whether Brexit made them that way. Genuine puzzle
The simple fact is some people were better off when we were in the EU, some people were worse off under the EU. Now it is reversed.
Losing their FoM is actually a really crap argument in my view because the number of Brits that actually ever took advantage of it was less than 2% of the population (not talking people taking a 2 week vacation in france, I mean those that moved to live or work). The 98% that didn't want to take advantage of it still had to pay for it.
What exactly was the cost of freedom of movement ? Most economic analysis has FoM as defined by the European variety as a net benefit for the UK.
The price of freedom of movement is being in the EU had a cost. It was a benefit to the GDP of the country but not such a benefit to people who's jobs were nailed to minimum wage by the infinite labour pool, nor such a benefit to places like slough where I used to live where the population grew by about ten percent in a year due to Eastern european accession without any sign of extra doctors, police, hospital provision, school places and certainly not a sufficient increase in housing.
Where are all the immigrants going now that we've left? Somewhere other than Slough? Or still Slough?
Difference is now their are lower bounds for salaries at least so those that come are actually paying their way. Someone coming over to work a minimum wage job is not contributing above their cost to the state. Please don't try to say a lot of EU workers weren't working min wage jobs in hospitality as that has been a complaint of certain posters here that those nice eastern european hospitality staff have vanished.
Yeah, I want to see some calculations before I trust you at your word on that. If someone comes here from abroad, we've not paid for their schooling, we're not paying for their retirement. On average they will be younger and healthier than the average person. How much are they costing the exchequer?
There are some areas of expenditure where they apply to immigrants because everybody benefits from them e.g. defence and policing. And some where they apply less to immigrants, like state pensions, health and social care. And others where it's really dubious whether you should apply it to them, such as debt interest payments (is new immigrant really responsible for UK government loans undertaken years before that immigrant ever came here?)
Of course, immigrants will pay PAYE/NI/VAT/Fuel duty/corporation tax/business rates in the normal way in most cases.
So, no, I'm not taking your word for it that someone on the minimum wage isn't "paying their way". Not without some proper tax/spend breakdowns that take account for the demographic skewness.
Apart from in slough the second gen asian immigrants were complaining about their childrens schooling being hindered because the schools were full of eastern european children who didnt speak english as a first language so lessons were slowed down.
A lot of eastern europeans I knew in slough had kids while over here and showed every sign of settling here. I don't have any stats for how many actually stay and make a life here because no one is counted out of the country but my estimate based on those I knew in slough is 30 to 50% so yes we will be covering their retirement too.
The simple fact is we dont seem to have stats on any of this. Being my normal cynical self I suspect that is because if they collected them they would show FoM wasn't such a benefit to the country once services were taken into account. Hence why its always quoted as GDP.
You have a country of 55 million, you add 10 million and its a surprise GDP rises? It doesn't mean GDP per capita rises
Yes, so when I say "we're not paying for their retirement", I mean NOW. Yes, SOME will stay and eventually need state pensions and health and social care which I covered under "apply less to immigrants, like state pensions, health and social care". Less, not non-existent. And yes, some immigrants have children and therefore are more likely to be a tax drain, but that's the same as people born in this country too.
Immigrants cost and benefit this country. Everybody knows both are true. The question of where the tipping point is, well it's a multidimensional question covering health, dependants, duration, spending behaviour, and so on. It's not easy to work out, and maybe you're right that there's no reliable figure for it. But you implied you knew the answer when you said
to work a minimum wage job is not contributing above their cost to the state
I now see you were simply assuming that to be case, and I have serious doubts about whether it's a true.
Someone on minimum wage will pay 900 income tax approx and 550 ni a year, how far do you imagine that goes paying towards public services? An immigrant or anyone young will still visit a doctor, need police/fire/be eligible for housing benefit/need their children schooled etc
You mention the fire brigade, which is not exactly the biggest spend in government but let's look at it. It's funded by a mix of central government and council tax. You forgot council tax, didn't you? And VAT.
As an example of the sorts of numbers we're talking about, receipts from council tax are about ten times the cost of fire services countrywide.
So yes, all immigrants certainly do benefit from fire services, not just the minority who actually need the service in a given year (because it's there always for all of us), but they also pay for it.
Similar calculations can be done for other areas of the budget. It's really very far from obvious which side of the equation the average immigrant comes down on, even restricting it to those on minimum wage.
Let me ask you this, too: if you found out that minimum-wage immigrants were actually "paying their way", would you actually change your mind on FoM? Or are there other factors at play?
Then down to you to prove it if you don't believe it. I notice you have gone quiet on your claim of well over a million living and working in the eu after I quoted a source. To be revenue neutral you have to earn about 36k a year in this country. Even accounting for pensions and end of life health care I don't believe a min wage worker can be revenue neutral earning half the amount.
The simple fact is neither point of view is provable beyond doubt because figures are so obscured. However claiming a min wage worker is a drain on the treasury is I believe on the balance of probabilities a lot more likely than them being a net contributor
So how are you arriving at your "£36k" figure? Are you assuming all people are interchangeable and cost the exchequer an equal amount? Because I was explicitly trying to caution you off that fiction, since it involved asymmetrical assumptions.
Basically, you have a selection bias in your "revenue" side (minimum wage immigrants). Since that selection will affect (probably radically) the services that group will need, you cannot just take the bulk figures for everyone and divide it.
If you need to see why this is absurd, you'd have to assume that 10% of the government budget being allocated to these minimum wage immigrants is in the form of state pension. I mean, obviously if your group of people who BY DEFINITION are working, how many of them will ALSO be receiving the state pension? A handful, to be sure, but close enough to nil.
You can't just take the overall spend and divide when you are thinking about a SELECTION of people paying their way. Try again.
and my whole point is that immigrants coming to work minimum wage is likely costing us money not being a net gain. I said before I would happily accept 500k immigrants from anywhere earning 30k rather than 100k eu immigrants coming to take min wage jobs
What do you think the surge in non-EU migration is working on. I don't think it is biochemistry
You think there could be a massive surge in labs researching coronaviruses?
Fuck no...
Kim Jong Il: It will be @Leon time 911 times 2356.
Chris: My god, that's... I don't even know what that is!
The basic problem with Truss - and it was a massive, unbelievably arrogant, and stupid one - was there was absolutely no attempt to show workings or contingencies, to the extent they didn't even get the budget properly marked by the OBR. That left her in a situation where she was left saying would cut taxes, do supply-side reform at some later date, and that it would all pay for itself at a time when even if you agreed with the theory, there were some significant economic headwinds blowing against us (some self-inflicted, some not) and public attitudes to spending cuts are pretty against because there's not any politically easy fat to cut any more. So of course markets took flight, because (probably rightly) assume that unless you can explain your thinking and methods well, you're a fool who just wants to pursue your pet project without thinking through how it will work in the real world. And that should growth not go gangbusters, quickly, you won't be able to fill the big holes in your budget by doing stuff that'll lose you the next election anyway. A smarter, less arrogant group of people believing in similar basic economic theories would have realised the need to explain themselves properly, and the need for sequencing (e.g. your supply side reforms before the biggest tax cuts).
Indeed. A major problem with the attempt to rewrite things to claim she never got a fair chance is that it was her job to explain things, not everyone elses to just react pliantly. Even really bad PMs should be able to last more than 50 days, and no matter how much people can claim it was all that perfidious rogue Sunak's fault, or the media or whatever, she clearly was not up to preparing or explaining things even to last 2 months.
By itself the briefness speaks volumes. A PM has to be able to deal with media, opposition, and internal ructions.
BIB (bit in bold)
This is sadly true. Blair had Campbell and Mandleson to do media, Prescott for internal ructions, and himself against the opposition. I don't know who the equivalents are for Sunak/Starmer, but they are not doing a good job I fear.
Would the Remoaners on here finally STFU if we got a reformed Brexit that gave us back Freedom of Movement?
It seems to be the most emotive and profound loss, from Brexit, for a majority of Remainery people (and I share some of the pain, as I say). Perhaps that is the place where Britain could finally reconcile. Brexit Plus. Brexit Plus Freedom of Movement
We'll be like the ERG in reverse - you'll never appease us with titbit after titbit, grudging morsel after dry crumb. We'll always want more. Pure, hard, diamond-tipped Rejoin. Whatever acronym is the 180 degree opposite of BRINO. I want my EU citizenship back.
Blue flagged, rather than brown-watered, beaches, the Euro, Schengen, the banning of offshore tax havens, the whole shebang please. Coming out hasn't worked, let's go back in full-throttle. If you could make that so I'd be very appreciative.
Incidentally, it was very astute of Question Time to stuff last night's audience full of ill-informed gammon, dribbling out the same tired, discredited Johnsonian garbage. (Didn't watch it, of course, but the QT hashtag throws up a damning verdict from the hive mind.) In a few years when admitting voting Leave in polite company will be akin to squatting down and curling one out on your host's lovely dining table, nice people can shudder and say with a contemptuous titter 'No, of course I didn't vote Leave! It was voted for by those ghastly mouth-breathing idiots who look like they've been sculpted out of pork pie meat. What common accents they have. Like on that Question Time, you remember.'
Aaaaand, this sneering drivel is why you will never get to Rejoin. You immediately alienate a Liberal Leaver like me, and make me yearn for even Harder Brexit so you suffer, again and again
I know you are half joking, but you are only half joking. So I say to the other half: HAHAHAHAHAHA, we're never going back in. Tough shit
The basic problem they have is that most people in the UK have an underlying identity and low level patriotism based on being British and their home nation. Even as we become more cosmopolitan, Brits still want to come back to hearing British regional accents and the local customs and food. Meanwhile the really hardcore remainers identify more with Paris and Berlin and have cultural cringe over Skegness.
So there is no understanding there that Brits, even when some think it is economically advantageous to be in the EU, don't like lawmaking from Brussells, no passport checks on Romanians and economic policy set in Frankfurt.
I suspect some Remainers know this, which is why they want as much unintegrated immigration as possible, so they have a voting base not attached to traditional British culture.
Hardcore Remainers are unremittingly awful people. I can't work out whether they were always awful, nasty, sneering, and mentally inadequate, and we simply didn't notice - or whether Brexit made them that way. Genuine puzzle
The simple fact is some people were better off when we were in the EU, some people were worse off under the EU. Now it is reversed.
Losing their FoM is actually a really crap argument in my view because the number of Brits that actually ever took advantage of it was less than 2% of the population (not talking people taking a 2 week vacation in france, I mean those that moved to live or work). The 98% that didn't want to take advantage of it still had to pay for it.
What exactly was the cost of freedom of movement ? Most economic analysis has FoM as defined by the European variety as a net benefit for the UK.
The price of freedom of movement is being in the EU had a cost. It was a benefit to the GDP of the country but not such a benefit to people who's jobs were nailed to minimum wage by the infinite labour pool, nor such a benefit to places like slough where I used to live where the population grew by about ten percent in a year due to Eastern european accession without any sign of extra doctors, police, hospital provision, school places and certainly not a sufficient increase in housing.
Where are all the immigrants going now that we've left? Somewhere other than Slough? Or still Slough?
Difference is now their are lower bounds for salaries at least so those that come are actually paying their way. Someone coming over to work a minimum wage job is not contributing above their cost to the state. Please don't try to say a lot of EU workers weren't working min wage jobs in hospitality as that has been a complaint of certain posters here that those nice eastern european hospitality staff have vanished.
Yeah, I want to see some calculations before I trust you at your word on that. If someone comes here from abroad, we've not paid for their schooling, we're not paying for their retirement. On average they will be younger and healthier than the average person. How much are they costing the exchequer?
There are some areas of expenditure where they apply to immigrants because everybody benefits from them e.g. defence and policing. And some where they apply less to immigrants, like state pensions, health and social care. And others where it's really dubious whether you should apply it to them, such as debt interest payments (is new immigrant really responsible for UK government loans undertaken years before that immigrant ever came here?)
Of course, immigrants will pay PAYE/NI/VAT/Fuel duty/corporation tax/business rates in the normal way in most cases.
So, no, I'm not taking your word for it that someone on the minimum wage isn't "paying their way". Not without some proper tax/spend breakdowns that take account for the demographic skewness.
Apart from in slough the second gen asian immigrants were complaining about their childrens schooling being hindered because the schools were full of eastern european children who didnt speak english as a first language so lessons were slowed down.
A lot of eastern europeans I knew in slough had kids while over here and showed every sign of settling here. I don't have any stats for how many actually stay and make a life here because no one is counted out of the country but my estimate based on those I knew in slough is 30 to 50% so yes we will be covering their retirement too.
The simple fact is we dont seem to have stats on any of this. Being my normal cynical self I suspect that is because if they collected them they would show FoM wasn't such a benefit to the country once services were taken into account. Hence why its always quoted as GDP.
You have a country of 55 million, you add 10 million and its a surprise GDP rises? It doesn't mean GDP per capita rises
Yes, so when I say "we're not paying for their retirement", I mean NOW. Yes, SOME will stay and eventually need state pensions and health and social care which I covered under "apply less to immigrants, like state pensions, health and social care". Less, not non-existent. And yes, some immigrants have children and therefore are more likely to be a tax drain, but that's the same as people born in this country too.
Immigrants cost and benefit this country. Everybody knows both are true. The question of where the tipping point is, well it's a multidimensional question covering health, dependants, duration, spending behaviour, and so on. It's not easy to work out, and maybe you're right that there's no reliable figure for it. But you implied you knew the answer when you said
to work a minimum wage job is not contributing above their cost to the state
I now see you were simply assuming that to be case, and I have serious doubts about whether it's a true.
Someone on minimum wage will pay 900 income tax approx and 550 ni a year, how far do you imagine that goes paying towards public services? An immigrant or anyone young will still visit a doctor, need police/fire/be eligible for housing benefit/need their children schooled etc
You mention the fire brigade, which is not exactly the biggest spend in government but let's look at it. It's funded by a mix of central government and council tax. You forgot council tax, didn't you? And VAT.
As an example of the sorts of numbers we're talking about, receipts from council tax are about ten times the cost of fire services countrywide.
So yes, all immigrants certainly do benefit from fire services, not just the minority who actually need the service in a given year (because it's there always for all of us), but they also pay for it.
Similar calculations can be done for other areas of the budget. It's really very far from obvious which side of the equation the average immigrant comes down on, even restricting it to those on minimum wage.
Let me ask you this, too: if you found out that minimum-wage immigrants were actually "paying their way", would you actually change your mind on FoM? Or are there other factors at play?
Then down to you to prove it if you don't believe it. I notice you have gone quiet on your claim of well over a million living and working in the eu after I quoted a source. To be revenue neutral you have to earn about 36k a year in this country. Even accounting for pensions and end of life health care I don't believe a min wage worker can be revenue neutral earning half the amount.
The simple fact is neither point of view is provable beyond doubt because figures are so obscured. However claiming a min wage worker is a drain on the treasury is I believe on the balance of probabilities a lot more likely than them being a net contributor
So how are you arriving at your "£36k" figure? Are you assuming all people are interchangeable and cost the exchequer an equal amount? Because I was explicitly trying to caution you off that fiction, since it involved asymmetrical assumptions.
Basically, you have a selection bias in your "revenue" side (minimum wage immigrants). Since that selection will affect (probably radically) the services that group will need, you cannot just take the bulk figures for everyone and divide it.
If you need to see why this is absurd, you'd have to assume that 10% of the government budget being allocated to these minimum wage immigrants is in the form of state pension. I mean, obviously if your group of people who BY DEFINITION are working, how many of them will ALSO be receiving the state pension? A handful, to be sure, but close enough to nil.
You can't just take the overall spend and divide when you are thinking about a SELECTION of people paying their way. Try again.
and my whole point is that immigrants coming to work minimum wage is likely costing us money not being a net gain. I said before I would happily accept 500k immigrants from anywhere earning 30k rather than 100k eu immigrants coming to take min wage jobs
Did you even read that article?
Here things become a little more complicated.
Firstly, these are averages. Whether you pay more than you get back will depend a great deal on whether you have children of school age, whether you claim child benefit, or whether you need to call on the NHS. Have you taken maternity or paternity leave, or taken part in a government training scheme? It all increases the value you are deemed to have extracted from the state.
But the biggest single factor pushing a greater proportion of homes into state dependency is our aging population and the increasing numbers in need of a state pension.
I mean, it's hitting all the same points I've been making. Of course, this article is also doing exactly the thing I said you can't do, which is assuming your selection is, for the purposes of revenue, specific... but for the purposes of spend, general.
Do you actually understand what "selection bias" means? I don't think you do.
Simply put here are the unknowns
How many eu migrants came....we didnt count them in How many came with children.....we didnt count them in How many have kids needing schooling while they are here How many stayed a few years and left....we didnt count them out What the actual cost of any service the state provides is for a given age for example I accept the cost of healthcare is increases as you age but it is on average non zero for any given age group.
Till we have those figures I cant prove my point nor can you prove yours.
I remain of the opinion however based on those figures a min wage worker whether immigrant or citizen is taking out more than they put in
My points was simply that I doubted your figures! Now you're saying you can't prove them, THAT IS MY POINT.
You might be right. I don't know. You sure as shit don't know. You're just assuming. Jeez, what a fucking struggle it is just to get you to the fucking start line.
Would the Remoaners on here finally STFU if we got a reformed Brexit that gave us back Freedom of Movement?
It seems to be the most emotive and profound loss, from Brexit, for a majority of Remainery people (and I share some of the pain, as I say). Perhaps that is the place where Britain could finally reconcile. Brexit Plus. Brexit Plus Freedom of Movement
We'll be like the ERG in reverse - you'll never appease us with titbit after titbit, grudging morsel after dry crumb. We'll always want more. Pure, hard, diamond-tipped Rejoin. Whatever acronym is the 180 degree opposite of BRINO. I want my EU citizenship back.
Blue flagged, rather than brown-watered, beaches, the Euro, Schengen, the banning of offshore tax havens, the whole shebang please. Coming out hasn't worked, let's go back in full-throttle. If you could make that so I'd be very appreciative.
Incidentally, it was very astute of Question Time to stuff last night's audience full of ill-informed gammon, dribbling out the same tired, discredited Johnsonian garbage. (Didn't watch it, of course, but the QT hashtag throws up a damning verdict from the hive mind.) In a few years when admitting voting Leave in polite company will be akin to squatting down and curling one out on your host's lovely dining table, nice people can shudder and say with a contemptuous titter 'No, of course I didn't vote Leave! It was voted for by those ghastly mouth-breathing idiots who look like they've been sculpted out of pork pie meat. What common accents they have. Like on that Question Time, you remember.'
Aaaaand, this sneering drivel is why you will never get to Rejoin. You immediately alienate a Liberal Leaver like me, and make me yearn for even Harder Brexit so you suffer, again and again
I know you are half joking, but you are only half joking. So I say to the other half: HAHAHAHAHAHA, we're never going back in. Tough shit
The basic problem they have is that most people in the UK have an underlying identity and low level patriotism based on being British and their home nation. Even as we become more cosmopolitan, Brits still want to come back to hearing British regional accents and the local customs and food. Meanwhile the really hardcore remainers identify more with Paris and Berlin and have cultural cringe over Skegness.
So there is no understanding there that Brits, even when some think it is economically advantageous to be in the EU, don't like lawmaking from Brussells, no passport checks on Romanians and economic policy set in Frankfurt.
I suspect some Remainers know this, which is why they want as much unintegrated immigration as possible, so they have a voting base not attached to traditional British culture.
Hardcore Remainers are unremittingly awful people. I can't work out whether they were always awful, nasty, sneering, and mentally inadequate, and we simply didn't notice - or whether Brexit made them that way. Genuine puzzle
The simple fact is some people were better off when we were in the EU, some people were worse off under the EU. Now it is reversed.
Losing their FoM is actually a really crap argument in my view because the number of Brits that actually ever took advantage of it was less than 2% of the population (not talking people taking a 2 week vacation in france, I mean those that moved to live or work). The 98% that didn't want to take advantage of it still had to pay for it.
What exactly was the cost of freedom of movement ? Most economic analysis has FoM as defined by the European variety as a net benefit for the UK.
The price of freedom of movement is being in the EU had a cost. It was a benefit to the GDP of the country but not such a benefit to people who's jobs were nailed to minimum wage by the infinite labour pool, nor such a benefit to places like slough where I used to live where the population grew by about ten percent in a year due to Eastern european accession without any sign of extra doctors, police, hospital provision, school places and certainly not a sufficient increase in housing.
Where are all the immigrants going now that we've left? Somewhere other than Slough? Or still Slough?
Difference is now their are lower bounds for salaries at least so those that come are actually paying their way. Someone coming over to work a minimum wage job is not contributing above their cost to the state. Please don't try to say a lot of EU workers weren't working min wage jobs in hospitality as that has been a complaint of certain posters here that those nice eastern european hospitality staff have vanished.
Yeah, I want to see some calculations before I trust you at your word on that. If someone comes here from abroad, we've not paid for their schooling, we're not paying for their retirement. On average they will be younger and healthier than the average person. How much are they costing the exchequer?
There are some areas of expenditure where they apply to immigrants because everybody benefits from them e.g. defence and policing. And some where they apply less to immigrants, like state pensions, health and social care. And others where it's really dubious whether you should apply it to them, such as debt interest payments (is new immigrant really responsible for UK government loans undertaken years before that immigrant ever came here?)
Of course, immigrants will pay PAYE/NI/VAT/Fuel duty/corporation tax/business rates in the normal way in most cases.
So, no, I'm not taking your word for it that someone on the minimum wage isn't "paying their way". Not without some proper tax/spend breakdowns that take account for the demographic skewness.
Apart from in slough the second gen asian immigrants were complaining about their childrens schooling being hindered because the schools were full of eastern european children who didnt speak english as a first language so lessons were slowed down.
A lot of eastern europeans I knew in slough had kids while over here and showed every sign of settling here. I don't have any stats for how many actually stay and make a life here because no one is counted out of the country but my estimate based on those I knew in slough is 30 to 50% so yes we will be covering their retirement too.
The simple fact is we dont seem to have stats on any of this. Being my normal cynical self I suspect that is because if they collected them they would show FoM wasn't such a benefit to the country once services were taken into account. Hence why its always quoted as GDP.
You have a country of 55 million, you add 10 million and its a surprise GDP rises? It doesn't mean GDP per capita rises
Yes, so when I say "we're not paying for their retirement", I mean NOW. Yes, SOME will stay and eventually need state pensions and health and social care which I covered under "apply less to immigrants, like state pensions, health and social care". Less, not non-existent. And yes, some immigrants have children and therefore are more likely to be a tax drain, but that's the same as people born in this country too.
Immigrants cost and benefit this country. Everybody knows both are true. The question of where the tipping point is, well it's a multidimensional question covering health, dependants, duration, spending behaviour, and so on. It's not easy to work out, and maybe you're right that there's no reliable figure for it. But you implied you knew the answer when you said
to work a minimum wage job is not contributing above their cost to the state
I now see you were simply assuming that to be case, and I have serious doubts about whether it's a true.
Someone on minimum wage will pay 900 income tax approx and 550 ni a year, how far do you imagine that goes paying towards public services? An immigrant or anyone young will still visit a doctor, need police/fire/be eligible for housing benefit/need their children schooled etc
You mention the fire brigade, which is not exactly the biggest spend in government but let's look at it. It's funded by a mix of central government and council tax. You forgot council tax, didn't you? And VAT.
As an example of the sorts of numbers we're talking about, receipts from council tax are about ten times the cost of fire services countrywide.
So yes, all immigrants certainly do benefit from fire services, not just the minority who actually need the service in a given year (because it's there always for all of us), but they also pay for it.
Similar calculations can be done for other areas of the budget. It's really very far from obvious which side of the equation the average immigrant comes down on, even restricting it to those on minimum wage.
Let me ask you this, too: if you found out that minimum-wage immigrants were actually "paying their way", would you actually change your mind on FoM? Or are there other factors at play?
Then down to you to prove it if you don't believe it. I notice you have gone quiet on your claim of well over a million living and working in the eu after I quoted a source. To be revenue neutral you have to earn about 36k a year in this country. Even accounting for pensions and end of life health care I don't believe a min wage worker can be revenue neutral earning half the amount.
The simple fact is neither point of view is provable beyond doubt because figures are so obscured. However claiming a min wage worker is a drain on the treasury is I believe on the balance of probabilities a lot more likely than them being a net contributor
So how are you arriving at your "£36k" figure? Are you assuming all people are interchangeable and cost the exchequer an equal amount? Because I was explicitly trying to caution you off that fiction, since it involved asymmetrical assumptions.
Basically, you have a selection bias in your "revenue" side (minimum wage immigrants). Since that selection will affect (probably radically) the services that group will need, you cannot just take the bulk figures for everyone and divide it.
If you need to see why this is absurd, you'd have to assume that 10% of the government budget being allocated to these minimum wage immigrants is in the form of state pension. I mean, obviously if your group of people who BY DEFINITION are working, how many of them will ALSO be receiving the state pension? A handful, to be sure, but close enough to nil.
You can't just take the overall spend and divide when you are thinking about a SELECTION of people paying their way. Try again.
and my whole point is that immigrants coming to work minimum wage is likely costing us money not being a net gain. I said before I would happily accept 500k immigrants from anywhere earning 30k rather than 100k eu immigrants coming to take min wage jobs
Did you even read that article?
Here things become a little more complicated.
Firstly, these are averages. Whether you pay more than you get back will depend a great deal on whether you have children of school age, whether you claim child benefit, or whether you need to call on the NHS. Have you taken maternity or paternity leave, or taken part in a government training scheme? It all increases the value you are deemed to have extracted from the state.
But the biggest single factor pushing a greater proportion of homes into state dependency is our aging population and the increasing numbers in need of a state pension.
I mean, it's hitting all the same points I've been making. Of course, this article is also doing exactly the thing I said you can't do, which is assuming your selection is, for the purposes of revenue, specific... but for the purposes of spend, general.
Do you actually understand what "selection bias" means? I don't think you do.
Simply put here are the unknowns
How many eu migrants came....we didnt count them in How many came with children.....we didnt count them in How many have kids needing schooling while they are here How many stayed a few years and left....we didnt count them out What the actual cost of any service the state provides is for a given age for example I accept the cost of healthcare is increases as you age but it is on average non zero for any given age group.
Till we have those figures I cant prove my point nor can you prove yours.
I remain of the opinion however based on those figures a min wage worker whether immigrant or citizen is taking out more than they put in
My points was simply that I doubted your figures! Now you're saying you can't prove them, THAT IS MY POINT.
You might be right. I don't know. You sure as shit don't know. You're just assuming. Jeez, what a fucking struggle it is just to get you to the fucking start line.
And my point is neither can you
and regardless the point remains brits could move to ireland before the EU and still can regardless of FOM so they dont count. Regardless and you didnt provide that link before and I accept I was wrong on that but you still cant claim the end of Fom cut off your access to ireland. Please feel free to move their I will even hand you your coat
The basic problem with Truss - and it was a massive, unbelievably arrogant, and stupid one - was there was absolutely no attempt to show workings or contingencies, to the extent they didn't even get the budget properly marked by the OBR. That left her in a situation where she was left saying would cut taxes, do supply-side reform at some later date, and that it would all pay for itself at a time when even if you agreed with the theory, there were some significant economic headwinds blowing against us (some self-inflicted, some not) and public attitudes to spending cuts are pretty against because there's not any politically easy fat to cut any more. So of course markets took flight, because (probably rightly) assume that unless you can explain your thinking and methods well, you're a fool who just wants to pursue your pet project without thinking through how it will work in the real world. And that should growth not go gangbusters, quickly, you won't be able to fill the big holes in your budget by doing stuff that'll lose you the next election anyway. A smarter, less arrogant group of people believing in similar basic economic theories would have realised the need to explain themselves properly, and the need for sequencing (e.g. your supply side reforms before the biggest tax cuts).
Indeed. A major problem with the attempt to rewrite things to claim she never got a fair chance is that it was her job to explain things, not everyone elses to just react pliantly. Even really bad PMs should be able to last more than 50 days, and no matter how much people can claim it was all that perfidious rogue Sunak's fault, or the media or whatever, she clearly was not up to preparing or explaining things even to last 2 months.
By itself the briefness speaks volumes. A PM has to be able to deal with media, opposition, and internal ructions.
BIB (bit in bold)
This is sadly true. Blair had Campbell and Mandleson to do media, Prescott for internal ructions, and himself against the opposition. I don't know who the equivalents are for Sunak/Starmer, but they are not doing a good job I fear.
I think they are objectively doing a good job. They've got him to 20 points ahead and the average public reaction to him is "meh"
This atavistic urge to blame immigrants is so frustrating.
Britain (and the West, and much of the world) is in demographic decline.
Without immigration the population and the economy would be SHRINKING, fast, and the demographic burden, ie the worker:pensioner ratio would be WORSE.
I have some issues with high levels of immigration. But the macro picture is clear.
They don’t take your jobs: Britain enjoyed full employment.
They don’t reduce your wages: in most sectors, native workers were able to “step up” into more senior positions.
They don’t steal your benefits: Immigrants are LESS dependent on benefits than native Brits, and indeed more highly skilled.
We’re left with blaming immigrants for British firm’s refusal to make capital investment. Let’s just say, given that refusal long pre-dates the rise of mass immigration, that the jury is decidedly out on that.
Comments
As the continuing court cases regarding abortion make abundantly clear.
(OK, but we can do both. Pumped storage and batteries. No one basket for our eggs)
So, no, it was without doubt a terrible terrible decision we took 7 years ago today, but there's no big personal animus towards Leavers, either individually or as a group. Certainly not from me anyway. Although I will admit (being perfectly serious here) that if I was moving house there is no way I'd consider a place that voted for Brexit.
https://www.latlong.net/location/a-clockwork-orange-locations-801
Apols: get it now.
Where is the political party saying "we will build 5 million homes over the next decade to fix the supply problem"? There isn't one, the debate is about tweaks not anyone grasping the nettle to fix the problem.
The UK population will pass 70 million within a couple of years — assuming population statistics are correct which given the Settled Status scheme uptake may not be the case — and we are nailed on for 80 million by 2050, unless something incredible happens to migration*.
We need to build an enormous amount of everything. A building programme like nothing in living memory, probably even surpassing the post-war years.
* Climate change is likely to make the UK even more attractive for migrants, so don't believe under 100,000 a year is plausible, we'll be lucky if we can keep it down to two or three times that.
https://re100.anu.edu.au/#share=g-d39a5688446926d55bf059716f828959
Because it is so much more "immigrant friendly" to have them (the immigrants) living in bunk beds, 4 to a room.....
Because they never even tried to get into a lifeboat.
As Walter Lord, author of "Night to Remember" observed (in an interview I think) most men circa 1912 were of the general view, that it would be profoundly wrong, for a man to (for example) to take a seat in a lifeboat before a woman or child.
And that they judged other men - and themselves - by such standards. With severe social stigma attached to violations, esp. egregious ones.
As in case of Cunard executive J. Bruce Ismay, who DID survive the disaster . . . and never lived it down.
Most didnt use FoM, only 12% of gdp comes from exports half of which is to the eu so lets say 6% of exports. We were all paying to support tiny minorities of people and companies that benefitted from EU membership. Now speaking as someone who earns well south of a 6 figure salary unlike most of PB
I couldnt afford to call in a plumber/electrician/au pair etc even during FoM and had to do it myself
My rent continually raised because increased population
Doctors waiting times went up because population went up by 10% with no extra doctors
I didn't want to work in the EU or live in the EU
Since FoM disappeared many people including me have for the first time in ages got pay rises because bosses can't just go fuck you plenty will do your job for less ( I was earning the same in 2002 as I was in 2016 despite changing jobs 3 times)
So explain to me what was the advantage to me of the EU that I should pay 222£ a year (actually more when you consider about half the country doesnt actually pay income tax)
"No, thank you! We are dressed in our finest, and intend to go down as gentlemen!"
Secondly you need to get past the nimbys. The only way I can think of doing that is to tie development to council funding so each council gets govt financing to encourage building housing and if their targets aren’t met they get penalised financially from their next year’s overall budget so when people living in that council are faced with reduced services making their little nimby paradises less pleasant then they might have to start being less selfish.
Council gets financial help to build, gets given a good argument to crush nimbyism and hopefully unbungs the system.
Van operators were involved in frequent violence and intimidation tactics, the most notable example of which involved a driver and his family who were killed in an arson attack that resulted in a twenty-year court battle. The conflicts generated widespread public outrage, and earned the Strathclyde Police the nickname of "Serious Chimes Squad" ....'
It was a reaction to earlier ship sinkings where the only survivors (pretty much) were the ablest bodied men.
So the idea that the vast underbuild is due to nimbyism is a myth. Yes nimbyism does of course exist but its power and influence is massively overstated. As long as the gap between planning permissions and builds keeps increasing by around 80 - 100K a year, planning is not the issue.
Saying (I paraphrase), I've been with the old coot too long, to even think of leaving him now.
The simple fact is neither point of view is provable beyond doubt because figures are so obscured. However claiming a min wage worker is a drain on the treasury is I believe on the balance of probabilities a lot more likely than them being a net contributor
Here's Galloway (as a cat) with Rula Lenska.
Once seen, can never be unseen.
Also we need to knock down about 200 hideous towns, and rebuild them like Poundbury
Guessing they'd be even more (whats the word?) unforgettable? Eye-watering?
https://ny.eater.com/2017/5/30/15713060/mister-softee-new-york-ice-cream-turf-war
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Sheridan
What about building things because it gives everyone options, choices and nicer places to live? Or allows growing bits of the economy (Oxbridge tech, for example... it will work better if located near the boffins) to grow?
eg Cornwall voted Brexit
Also Herefordshire, Dorset, Somerset, much of Devon, mid Wales, much of Sussex, much of the Home Counties in general, Suffolk, Pembrokeshire, Northumberland, the Peaks, and on and on. Many of the most beautiful corners of Britain were Leave
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_and_Joy_(1984_film)
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2215070/Are-contributor-burden-nations-finances--Squeezed-middle-increasingly-dependent-state.html
and my whole point is that immigrants coming to work minimum wage is likely costing us money not being a net gain. I said before I would happily accept 500k immigrants from anywhere earning 30k rather than 100k eu immigrants coming to take min wage jobs
I might still be ok with it if it were to lead to a significant sustainable redistribution of wealth in favour of the poor. But the claims that it's doing this are tosh as far as I can see. All we've got are damaged supply chains, worse terms of trade, chaotic labour shortages and embedded inflation. Very few Britons will emerge better off and those that do will be the usual suspects. Bet you any money that'll be the case.
By itself the briefness speaks volumes. A PM has to be able to deal with media, opposition, and internal ructions.
If the gdp of the country doubles but I get no benefit from it and actually get poorer how does that help me? There are millions in that position living from hand to mouth while people keep telling them the country is getting richer off immigration while they are see escalating rents, minimum wage becoming maximum wage in many sectors, and decreasing services because more people are looking for housing jobs and services.
Do I hold immigrants responsible? No I don't they are doing what is best for them. I am sure you can agree. However you also have to accept that the poor also have a right to do whats best for them not what is best for you and for many that was vote leave. This is why you lost.
However, the fact of the matter is that Truss's tax cuts weren't all that massive. By far the biggest ticket item in the mini-budget was the energy price guarantee, and that was universally accepted.
Is there not a way though where councils can put in conditions to planning permission so it’s only granted with caveats that building must be completed within x time?
I’m sure I’ve read on here that developers get the real value in a site once it’s got planning permission so if they sit and wait for permission then they can’t mark up the asset on their books and so their company value is less so less attractive to shareholders and lower bonuses for execs.
It just seems there must be a number of carrots and sticks that could be used to encourage more building.
Labour is more trusted than the Conservatives on EVERY issue.
Which party do voters trust the most on...? (Labour | the Conservatives)
NHS (41% | 18%)
Housing (39% | 18%)
Education (39% | 18%)
The Economy (36% | 24%)
Immigration (32% | 22%)
Ukraine (30% | 26%)
https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1672201630408744967
How many eu migrants came....we didnt count them in
How many came with children.....we didnt count them in
How many have kids needing schooling while they are here
How many stayed a few years and left....we didnt count them out
What the actual cost of any service the state provides is for a given age for example I accept the cost of healthcare is increases as you age but it is on average non zero for any given age group.
Till we have those figures I cant prove my point nor can you prove yours.
I remain of the opinion however based on those figures a min wage worker whether immigrant or citizen is taking out more than they put in
I don't feel there should not be much legitimate reason to reject a mast beyond I don't know actual safety issues like reducing visibility of cars, what say you?
A day for history book in #Texas.
Records were smashed in many stations, the most important all time records for any month broken or tied today:
114 San Angelo
113 Ozona
113 Del Rio
112 Kingsville
108 Rockspring tied
109 Sonora tied
https://twitter.com/extremetemps/status/1671297726003150849
112F is around 44C.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-65985598
Two weeks ago was invited to get a covid booster. Today a message came about a vaccination clinic 1-4 pm. Raced home early from work made it at 3.50. Lady on reception asked if I had a booking. I said no, but was invited by text. She turned me away as I was not clinically extremely vulnerable. I could have asked to see a medic, but decided not, but went straight to the GP surgery to check. They confirmed I was eligible. I was also not the only one treated this way today.
All too typical of a system that doesn’t quite work.
The overall level of building is the result of the planning system interacting with the house builders.
Some of the responses to this are revealing. For example the suggestion that if prices fall, there will be a "strike" by the house builders. But if there is actual competition, such a producer strike is not possible - this is why monopolies are considered bad. See Adam Smith.
The truth is that we often have local monopolies on house building - one of the big outfits is doing all the building in an area. When that happens the usual monopoly bullshit follows
Fuck no...
Kim Jong Il: It will be @Leon time 911 times 2356.
Chris: My god, that's... I don't even know what that is!
Kim Jong Il: Nobody does!
This is sadly true. Blair had Campbell and Mandleson to do media, Prescott for internal ructions, and himself against the opposition. I don't know who the equivalents are for Sunak/Starmer, but they are not doing a good job I fear.
Britain (and the West, and much of the world) is in demographic decline.
Without immigration the population and the economy would be SHRINKING, fast, and the demographic burden, ie the worker:pensioner ratio would be WORSE.
I have some issues with high levels of immigration.
But the macro picture is clear.
They don’t take your jobs: Britain enjoyed full employment.
They don’t reduce your wages: in most sectors, native workers were able to “step up” into more senior positions.
They don’t steal your benefits: Immigrants are LESS dependent on benefits than native Brits, and indeed more highly skilled.
We’re left with blaming immigrants for British firm’s refusal to make capital investment. Let’s just say, given that refusal long pre-dates the rise of mass immigration, that the jury is decidedly out on that.