I see the government is to appoint a “lavatories tsar” to encourage councils to re-open the 10% of public lavatories that remain shut after the pandemic.
Oh great. Cones Hotline, 2023 Edition.
On topic, the one wildcard I could potentially see working for Sunak is to announce ID cards. Compulsory for claiming benefit or entering employment. Do it under the guise of a “national emergency” of a wave of boats etc. etc. If you’re being really cynical, throw in a dog-whistle unattributed rumour about recording birth gender on the card.
Labour couldn’t follow without splitting the party. Which is a problem in itself for Starmer, whose approach has basically been to shadow the Tories on most domestic issues and just fight on competence instead. It would be the clear blue water the Tories need.
To be clear I don’t know if it would work, and I don’t support ID cards myself, but as a last-throw-of-the-dice political strategy it has some gruesome merit.
That's actually a good idea, but the competent execution of such a scheme is so far beyond the capacities of this government that it's laughable. Every card issued would have a photo of Alistair Jack's ringpiece on it instead of the card holder. Or somesuch tragi-comic balls up.
Yep, ID Cards are the impossible dream. Similar applied to Vaxports in the pandemic. You just can't see us pulling this sort of thing off.
So the way that you could do ID cards is incrementally. Basically you say that either a driving licence or a passport serves as an ID card; and you then get DVLA to offer a driving-licence-which-doesn’t-allow-you-to-drive. There you go, ID cards.
You then build incrementally on that by keying other government databases to it, one at a time, as and when the political need arises or a rebuild/refactor opportunity.
But… you’re entirely right in that we wouldn’t pull it off. It would become a massive from-scratch project given to Fujitsu or IBM or another one of the consulting usual suspects, who would build it to a monolith spec which completely ignores real world needs, and it would go the way of every other government IT project.
I refer the gentleman to the last time a government ID card was implemented.
The demented IT project you mention was spec’d and the tenders sent out. The problem was trying to turn it into the Minority Report.
The DVLA database is a disaster. The number of fraudulent drivers licenses is the cherry on top.
Some IT wanker with moobs and a dakimakura obviously fucked something up because when I renewed my license when I moved back from Russia there was no motorcycle category on it even though I passed my bike test in 1984. They would not be moved by pleas or threats of legal action because the records were "lost". I had to take the test again (on an MV F4 lol).
That might just have been a very minor operation of karma ?
Given your great respect for traffic regulations of all kinds.
On the small boats, we could Stop The Boats. Allow the dead afghans to come legally. You know Afghans? We broke their country, abandoned them to the Taliban whilst the Foreign Secretary couldn't be arsed to get off his sun lounger.
When Tories say Stop The Boats what they really mean is stop the migrants. The desired number of asylum seekers and refugees is zero. None. We're full. We're fed up with paying for them when we have so many of our own we don't want to pay for either.
It seems likely that the Tories and RefUKformKIP will be battling to win the ignorant racist vote. I genuinely can see the government saying "no migrants" as a policy. Then when Labour point out that is impossible, illegal, immortal they will scream SEE LABOUR WANT TO LET 14bn IN TO TAKE ALL YOUR MONEY.
What is even more depressing is that some otherwise sensible people - a few of this parish - will still find an excuse what they are voting for *that*.
I'm not seeing that the attitude in your second paragraph is racist. It may be ungenerous but that is a different criticism.
Racist? No. Although all the actual racists bang on about Muslims and non-whites. As we have seen in the past, there is as much anger aimed at white christian Europeans - Romanians as an example - as there is aimed at people with a "funny tinge".
So it's not racism. It's exceptionalism. Jingoism. Basic "we don't want anyone who isn't us" bigotry.
At the low end, wage suppression from migration was, quite definitely used by a range of businesses. Which is why they supported it.
So inflation was low (house prices don’t count, you see), Deliveroo was cheap. All good. For middle class people like me. Awesome that I’ve got the cuisine of 109 countries within a 30 min of my doorstep.
For those whose hobs went down to minimum wage, not so much. When you add in the steady, sustained refusal to build infrastructure to match the increase in population… well, something has got to give.
I advocate high skilled migration and high infrastructure build as well. For those, the other day, whining about barn conversions on the Yorkshire Moors - times have changed. Already.
We need 8 million more properties in the U.K. for the people who are here, right now. And you have two choices - one, go with it, build some nice towns. Or fight until the bulldozers will be coming for the bits of the countryside you like.
Personally, I’m quite taken with idea of a town on piles on Coniston Water. Do you want to wait until people start agreeing with me?
Idiots say "Britain is full". It really isn't. And flying over the southern English midlands on my way down to Luton last week it was visible just how much open and empty land there is .
Milton Keynes was outside my window. Build another three of them. One in Lincolnshire, one in East Yorkshire. One in the south west. Maybe more.
But actually plan the things. Where will people live. Shop. Eat. Go to school. How will they get about. MK works and that's quite old. Improve that and it'll be good.
An amazing opportunity. Not just another 300k homes but all those new businesses. All of the buildings need to be constructed plus utilities and transport links. Don't contract it out to Australians or offshore consortia. Form BritBuild and do it ourselves.
A vast amount of money tipped into the immediate economy as people have jobs building it all. Then the long term economic benefits.
Or, maintain the "we're full" line to provide succour to racists and morons.
Watching the conflict between “immigration is good” and “all the works of humans are evil” - the modern progressive default - is of interest.
You can sometimes see fear. In the realisation that the contradiction must end. Each year the population grows faster than the increase in infrastructure.
Buy shares in JCB.
Because people like me see an empty horizon. And want to put a town and some villages there. Because I *like* the better works of man.
Yes. The cognitive dissonance is palpable in the sewage debate. Our seas and rivers are full of shit (and they are, and it is bad). But some of the people who get most worked up about this are those most pro-immigration and “let them all in”
And it is getting harder and harder to ignore the obvious causal connection between “adding millions of people to our population every year” and “oh god all our services are collapsing under the sheer weight of numbers”
600,000 net migrants last year. 600,000. Plus the boat people
Is there a kind of exotic new logic whereby if you don't approve of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda it means you're happy for the whole world to come and live in the UK?
No but the ultimate questions are:
1) How many migrants should be accepted ?
2) Which migrants should be accepted ?
3) What do you do with any extra migrants ?
4) How should the country be changed to deal with the migrants that are accepted ?
No, the ultimate question is "why does the right keep trying to put a number on this?" Is there a magic number of people that the UK can cope with? How many makes us "full" and what proportion of the remaining number vs current are expected to be asylum seekers?
Its asylum. We take valid claims. We allow them to work. We remove criminals and invalid claimants. Like basically everywhere else.
So what do you define as a valid claim ?
Is it anyone who lives under a nasty authoritarian government perhaps ?
If so then we can include the entire population of China to start off with.
Russia is a horrible country as well - are they all entitled to asylum ?
Burma ? Iran ? Afghanistan ? Pakistan ? Being a minority in India can be pretty unpleasant ? What about the Middle East ? Or Africa ? Or Latin America ?
You need to stop the self-righteousness and deal with the reality.
And that reality includes numbers.
So *the entire population of China* want to claim asylum here?
So you're not willing to define what a 'valid claim' might be.
Nor do you want to mention the reality of actual numbers.
So it could be 10k per year, or 50k per year or 100k per year or 500k per year or a million per year or more and more.
Who knows and you don't care.
And that's alright because you're just signalling your virtue on an website not managing the system.
But in reality the questions I listed twenty minutes ago are the ones that need to be answered.
"Signalling my virtue" = not supporting the "just drown them" rhetoric.
I don't have to answer your questions - your government does. And the answers are very similar to those given by all of our neighbouring countries. You can say "a million a year" but even you aren't dumb enough to think that is possible.
Then again you just suggested the entire population of China wants to claim asylum here...
So you're now making things up rather than deal with the unfortunate reality of numbers.
Why is a million a year impossible ?
There are hundreds of millions, billions even depending upon the definitions, who live in failed states, oppressive states, economically backward states and so on.
And most of these countries are increasing in population year upon year.
So the migrants are going to continue and the numbers are likely to increase.
I don't blame them - they have little to lose and potentially much to gain - but any government in this country ultimately has to answer these questions:
1) How many migrants should be accepted ?
2) Which migrants should be accepted ?
3) What do you do with any extra migrants ?
4) How should the country be changed to deal with the migrants that are accepted ?
Your willingness to keep digging is gratifying to those of us you are entertaining.
They are, at face value, reasonable questions.
The fact that they can’t be answered in public is due to the fixity of the debate.
Screaming that there is no issue at the top of your voice leads to Brexit.
My approach is to answer the questions. If we want immigration in this country, we need a joined up plan.
I would say that we should say that a net migration rate above 1% of existing population per annum is undesirable. Due to infrastructure strain, if nothing else.
I haven’t seen anyone in this thread “screaming” that there is no issue. There is an issue. Discussion of that issue, I suggest, is not helped by people making wild, exaggerated claims. Anyway, let’s discuss your suggestion.
The UK exceeded your 1% suggested target last year. What I’m curious to know is what your response, as a voter, is to this. Are you going to not vote for the party in charge that has exceeded your suggested target?
I'm not going to vote for the current government. Made up my mind on that a long time back.
On migration, there is nearly no-one who wants to have a rational discussion on any side.
My smell test for rational - come up with a maximum immigration number with some kind of justification.
Given the current government is not doing what you want on immigration, may I ask why you are intending to vote for them? Is this because you think they’re doing well on other policies (say, reducing NHS waiting lists, reducing inflation, reducing national debt and whatever the other pledge was)? Is this because immigration is a relatively unimportant policy area for you?
I see the government is to appoint a “lavatories tsar” to encourage councils to re-open the 10% of public lavatories that remain shut after the pandemic.
Oh great. Cones Hotline, 2023 Edition.
On topic, the one wildcard I could potentially see working for Sunak is to announce ID cards. Compulsory for claiming benefit or entering employment. Do it under the guise of a “national emergency” of a wave of boats etc. etc. If you’re being really cynical, throw in a dog-whistle unattributed rumour about recording birth gender on the card.
Labour couldn’t follow without splitting the party. Which is a problem in itself for Starmer, whose approach has basically been to shadow the Tories on most domestic issues and just fight on competence instead. It would be the clear blue water the Tories need.
To be clear I don’t know if it would work, and I don’t support ID cards myself, but as a last-throw-of-the-dice political strategy it has some gruesome merit.
That's actually a good idea, but the competent execution of such a scheme is so far beyond the capacities of this government that it's laughable. Every card issued would have a photo of Alistair Jack's ringpiece on it instead of the card holder. Or somesuch tragi-comic balls up.
Yep, ID Cards are the impossible dream. Similar applied to Vaxports in the pandemic. You just can't see us pulling this sort of thing off.
So the way that you could do ID cards is incrementally. Basically you say that either a driving licence or a passport serves as an ID card; and you then get DVLA to offer a driving-licence-which-doesn’t-allow-you-to-drive. There you go, ID cards.
You then build incrementally on that by keying other government databases to it, one at a time, as and when the political need arises or a rebuild/refactor opportunity.
But… you’re entirely right in that we wouldn’t pull it off. It would become a massive from-scratch project given to Fujitsu or IBM or another one of the consulting usual suspects, who would build it to a monolith spec which completely ignores real world needs, and it would go the way of every other government IT project.
Well you don't start from the DVLA as their dataset isn't appropriate as @Malmesbury pointed out earlier.
You can start from the passport office as they are the only people who know who is a UK citizen but then it comes down to what the point of the ID card is and the feature creep that Governments will continue to try and create because they love to fiddle and love short cuts to save money.
You can't start there, either. Their dataset is full of bad data.
One processing office for the passport office, for example, in South London, started giving out passports to all and sundry. It seems it was laziness, rather than bad actors. The bad actors heard about it quite rapidly, though.
The story goes that the Americans caught some interesting people in Kurdistan who had British passports - when followed up, they were genuine, but they had no right to them.
I cam across this when a relative, who runs a building business, queried some passports he was shown - the stories didn't match the documents. A lawyer told him that it was quite possible they weren't fake, but issued incorrectly.
How the hell does that work, from the employer’s point of view, if someone not entitled to it has a genuine British passport?
The lawyer said that the law was complicated, and not especially rational. It could even be, that you could be convicted of illegally employing people, even if they had a passport issued by the passport office!
Presumably if you just accepted the passport at face value you’d be fine, but if you raised doubts about it but still employed the guy you’re in trouble, because that’s the way that these contradictory laws tend to work in practice. The expression of having doubts is the motive to convict you.
Yet 50% of voters back banning migrants who come to the UK in small boats from ever re‑entering the UK, being able to settle permanently in the UK, and receiving British citizenship and 74% of Conservative voters and 72% of Leave voters back stopping migrants boats from coming here and there getting citizenship.
So the government and Braverman's low ratings on this issue are likely because voters don't think they are being effective enough in controlling the migrant boats
Yet 50% of voters back banning migrants who come to the UK in small boats from ever re‑entering the UK, being able to settle permanently in the UK, and receiving British citizenship and 74% of Conservative voters and 72% of Leave voters back stopping migrants boats from coming here and there getting citizenship.
So the government and Braverman's low ratings on this issue are likely because voters don't think they are being effective enough in controlling the migrant boats
On the small boats, we could Stop The Boats. Allow the dead afghans to come legally. You know Afghans? We broke their country, abandoned them to the Taliban whilst the Foreign Secretary couldn't be arsed to get off his sun lounger.
When Tories say Stop The Boats what they really mean is stop the migrants. The desired number of asylum seekers and refugees is zero. None. We're full. We're fed up with paying for them when we have so many of our own we don't want to pay for either.
It seems likely that the Tories and RefUKformKIP will be battling to win the ignorant racist vote. I genuinely can see the government saying "no migrants" as a policy. Then when Labour point out that is impossible, illegal, immortal they will scream SEE LABOUR WANT TO LET 14bn IN TO TAKE ALL YOUR MONEY.
What is even more depressing is that some otherwise sensible people - a few of this parish - will still find an excuse what they are voting for *that*.
I'm not seeing that the attitude in your second paragraph is racist. It may be ungenerous but that is a different criticism.
Racist? No. Although all the actual racists bang on about Muslims and non-whites. As we have seen in the past, there is as much anger aimed at white christian Europeans - Romanians as an example - as there is aimed at people with a "funny tinge".
So it's not racism. It's exceptionalism. Jingoism. Basic "we don't want anyone who isn't us" bigotry.
At the low end, wage suppression from migration was, quite definitely used by a range of businesses. Which is why they supported it.
So inflation was low (house prices don’t count, you see), Deliveroo was cheap. All good. For middle class people like me. Awesome that I’ve got the cuisine of 109 countries within a 30 min of my doorstep.
For those whose hobs went down to minimum wage, not so much. When you add in the steady, sustained refusal to build infrastructure to match the increase in population… well, something has got to give.
I advocate high skilled migration and high infrastructure build as well. For those, the other day, whining about barn conversions on the Yorkshire Moors - times have changed. Already.
We need 8 million more properties in the U.K. for the people who are here, right now. And you have two choices - one, go with it, build some nice towns. Or fight until the bulldozers will be coming for the bits of the countryside you like.
Personally, I’m quite taken with idea of a town on piles on Coniston Water. Do you want to wait until people start agreeing with me?
Idiots say "Britain is full". It really isn't. And flying over the southern English midlands on my way down to Luton last week it was visible just how much open and empty land there is .
Milton Keynes was outside my window. Build another three of them. One in Lincolnshire, one in East Yorkshire. One in the south west. Maybe more.
But actually plan the things. Where will people live. Shop. Eat. Go to school. How will they get about. MK works and that's quite old. Improve that and it'll be good.
An amazing opportunity. Not just another 300k homes but all those new businesses. All of the buildings need to be constructed plus utilities and transport links. Don't contract it out to Australians or offshore consortia. Form BritBuild and do it ourselves.
A vast amount of money tipped into the immediate economy as people have jobs building it all. Then the long term economic benefits.
Or, maintain the "we're full" line to provide succour to racists and morons.
Watching the conflict between “immigration is good” and “all the works of humans are evil” - the modern progressive default - is of interest.
You can sometimes see fear. In the realisation that the contradiction must end. Each year the population grows faster than the increase in infrastructure.
Buy shares in JCB.
Because people like me see an empty horizon. And want to put a town and some villages there. Because I *like* the better works of man.
Yes. The cognitive dissonance is palpable in the sewage debate. Our seas and rivers are full of shit (and they are, and it is bad). But some of the people who get most worked up about this are those most pro-immigration and “let them all in”
And it is getting harder and harder to ignore the obvious causal connection between “adding millions of people to our population every year” and “oh god all our services are collapsing under the sheer weight of numbers”
600,000 net migrants last year. 600,000. Plus the boat people
Is there a kind of exotic new logic whereby if you don't approve of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda it means you're happy for the whole world to come and live in the UK?
No but the ultimate questions are:
1) How many migrants should be accepted ?
2) Which migrants should be accepted ?
3) What do you do with any extra migrants ?
4) How should the country be changed to deal with the migrants that are accepted ?
1) all of them 2) all of them 3) admit them 4) build nothing, change nothing.
This is the policy that some advocate. People who can dress themselves, even.
I am a Neon Fascist Imperialist - so I think we should build a bedroom per migrant, school class places, hospitals, roads etc in proportion. This is apparently an extreme position. But hey, extremism *is* the Nu Kool.
Fuck The Green Belt.
If you could please introduce us to this wanker you're railing against we could maybe join in. Is he there now?
Go look at the pearl clutching at the thought of a a few thousand barns being converted in Yorkshire. Then compare the names on this thread.
I see the government is to appoint a “lavatories tsar” to encourage councils to re-open the 10% of public lavatories that remain shut after the pandemic.
Oh great. Cones Hotline, 2023 Edition.
On topic, the one wildcard I could potentially see working for Sunak is to announce ID cards. Compulsory for claiming benefit or entering employment. Do it under the guise of a “national emergency” of a wave of boats etc. etc. If you’re being really cynical, throw in a dog-whistle unattributed rumour about recording birth gender on the card.
Labour couldn’t follow without splitting the party. Which is a problem in itself for Starmer, whose approach has basically been to shadow the Tories on most domestic issues and just fight on competence instead. It would be the clear blue water the Tories need.
To be clear I don’t know if it would work, and I don’t support ID cards myself, but as a last-throw-of-the-dice political strategy it has some gruesome merit.
That's actually a good idea, but the competent execution of such a scheme is so far beyond the capacities of this government that it's laughable. Every card issued would have a photo of Alistair Jack's ringpiece on it instead of the card holder. Or somesuch tragi-comic balls up.
Yep, ID Cards are the impossible dream. Similar applied to Vaxports in the pandemic. You just can't see us pulling this sort of thing off.
So the way that you could do ID cards is incrementally. Basically you say that either a driving licence or a passport serves as an ID card; and you then get DVLA to offer a driving-licence-which-doesn’t-allow-you-to-drive. There you go, ID cards.
You then build incrementally on that by keying other government databases to it, one at a time, as and when the political need arises or a rebuild/refactor opportunity.
But… you’re entirely right in that we wouldn’t pull it off. It would become a massive from-scratch project given to Fujitsu or IBM or another one of the consulting usual suspects, who would build it to a monolith spec which completely ignores real world needs, and it would go the way of every other government IT project.
I refer the gentleman to the last time a government ID card was implemented.
The demented IT project you mention was spec’d and the tenders sent out. The problem was trying to turn it into the Minority Report.
The DVLA database is a disaster. The number of fraudulent drivers licenses is the cherry on top.
Some IT wanker with moobs and a dakimakura obviously fucked something up because when I renewed my license when I moved back from Russia there was no motorcycle category on it even though I passed my bike test in 1984. They would not be moved by pleas or threats of legal action because the records were "lost". I had to take the test again (on an MV F4 lol).
That might just have been a very minor operation of karma ?
Given your great respect for traffic regulations of all kinds.
{Scene - the DVLA}
Manager - What is the "Wichser" boolean field in the database records? German IT dev - It's to identify people we really, really like.
Yet 50% of voters back banning migrants who come to the UK in small boats from ever re‑entering the UK, being able to settle permanently in the UK, and receiving British citizenship and 74% of Conservative voters and 72% of Leave voters back stopping migrants boats from coming here and there getting citizenship.
So the government and Braverman's low ratings on this issue are likely because voters don't think they are being effective enough in controlling the migrant boats
Yes, the public is WAY more hawkish on small boats than the debate here
Yes 52% of voters in the South, 52% of voters in the North, 50% of voters in the Midlands and Wales and 46% of Scots (to 39% of Scots in favour) back banning migrants on the boats from setting in the UK and getting citizenship.
Yet 50% of voters back banning migrants who come to the UK in small boats from ever re‑entering the UK, being able to settle permanently in the UK, and receiving British citizenship and 74% of Conservative voters and 72% of Leave voters back stopping migrants boats from coming here and there getting citizenship.
So the government and Braverman's low ratings on this issue are likely because voters don't think they are being effective enough in controlling the migrant boats
Yes, the public is WAY more hawkish on small boats than the debate here
Yes, it’s a combination of the British sense of fair play, that people should go through the right channels in advance; and a lack of understanding of why we don’t simply bus irregular arrivals straight to Dover, to be put on the first ferry back from whence they came.
Do have to ask PB Tories - when this week's big push on immigration has unravelled into such an embarrassing farce, how do you manage to attack everyone else for the situation rather than yourselves?
The barge was patently stupid from start to finish. It was hardly a surprise that it was a fiasco. And that would provide a solution for only a small fraction of the people you need to intern.
So your "plan" (writ in crayon as it is) wouldn't deliver even if it was executed competently. Which it wasn't and never will be. Yet you send out like likes of Jenrick who appear to be Labour party implants doing their best to kill the Tory vote.
Yes, it's complicated because it cuts across a whole lot of policy areas so implementing a solution (if there were one which worked, it would have been by now) impacts the whole economy and society.
The truth is we want immigration sometimes and usually when we need cheap labour to power the economy. We will always need certain forms of immigration - specialists for example - and we have always provided an education environment for those to come here, learn the best and hopefully right way of doing things and return to their countries to impart their wisdom.
The other truth of migration is not "build it and they will come" but that people go where the money is so whether that's London, the Rhineland or Dubai, the possibility of enriching oneself (and one's family) especially if no such possibility exists where you are or to earn amounts of money which to us may seem trivial but to someone from Eritrea, Niger or Afghanistan seem like vast sums is not to be underestimated.
Go on most cruise ships and you'll hear the crew talk about sending a big part of their wages home so the work we provide enriches other countries and other societies.
So we're back to @another_richard's questions which promote the wider questions and arguments on housing provision. Whether it's 8 million homes as @Malmesbury claims or some other number, building houses isn't just about building houses - it's about building communities and mitigating the pressure on pre-existing networks whether it be sewage, transport or health services.
There are other questions about our post-colonial engagement in some parts of the world - the Chinese for example, have happily exploited resources in many areas but that exploitation has brought investment for improved transport infrastructure and work for many. Still, one might argue that is better than nothing.
Yet 50% of voters back banning migrants who come to the UK in small boats from ever re‑entering the UK, being able to settle permanently in the UK, and receiving British citizenship and 74% of Conservative voters and 72% of Leave voters back stopping migrants boats from coming here and there getting citizenship.
So the government and Braverman's low ratings on this issue are likely because voters don't think they are being effective enough in controlling the migrant boats
Yes, the public is WAY more hawkish on small boats than the debate here
Yes, it’s a combination of the British sense of fair play, that people should go through the right channels in advance; and a lack of understanding of why we don’t simply bus irregular arrivals straight to Dover, to be put on the first ferry back from whence they came.
And the PB leftoids refuse to see how dangerous this is. And point at the polls and say “look, no one cares”. Which is exactly what they used to do with Brexit
Well, I haven’t posted on this thread yet but I’m happy to join the list of those who see no solution to the U.K. housing crisis if properties such as this were to become residential… nor any connection between this very narrow aspect of National Park planning policy and asylum policy…
On the small boats, we could Stop The Boats. Allow the dead afghans to come legally. You know Afghans? We broke their country, abandoned them to the Taliban whilst the Foreign Secretary couldn't be arsed to get off his sun lounger.
When Tories say Stop The Boats what they really mean is stop the migrants. The desired number of asylum seekers and refugees is zero. None. We're full. We're fed up with paying for them when we have so many of our own we don't want to pay for either.
It seems likely that the Tories and RefUKformKIP will be battling to win the ignorant racist vote. I genuinely can see the government saying "no migrants" as a policy. Then when Labour point out that is impossible, illegal, immortal they will scream SEE LABOUR WANT TO LET 14bn IN TO TAKE ALL YOUR MONEY.
What is even more depressing is that some otherwise sensible people - a few of this parish - will still find an excuse what they are voting for *that*.
I'm not seeing that the attitude in your second paragraph is racist. It may be ungenerous but that is a different criticism.
Racist? No. Although all the actual racists bang on about Muslims and non-whites. As we have seen in the past, there is as much anger aimed at white christian Europeans - Romanians as an example - as there is aimed at people with a "funny tinge".
So it's not racism. It's exceptionalism. Jingoism. Basic "we don't want anyone who isn't us" bigotry.
At the low end, wage suppression from migration was, quite definitely used by a range of businesses. Which is why they supported it.
So inflation was low (house prices don’t count, you see), Deliveroo was cheap. All good. For middle class people like me. Awesome that I’ve got the cuisine of 109 countries within a 30 min of my doorstep.
For those whose hobs went down to minimum wage, not so much. When you add in the steady, sustained refusal to build infrastructure to match the increase in population… well, something has got to give.
I advocate high skilled migration and high infrastructure build as well. For those, the other day, whining about barn conversions on the Yorkshire Moors - times have changed. Already.
We need 8 million more properties in the U.K. for the people who are here, right now. And you have two choices - one, go with it, build some nice towns. Or fight until the bulldozers will be coming for the bits of the countryside you like.
Personally, I’m quite taken with idea of a town on piles on Coniston Water. Do you want to wait until people start agreeing with me?
Idiots say "Britain is full". It really isn't. And flying over the southern English midlands on my way down to Luton last week it was visible just how much open and empty land there is .
Milton Keynes was outside my window. Build another three of them. One in Lincolnshire, one in East Yorkshire. One in the south west. Maybe more.
But actually plan the things. Where will people live. Shop. Eat. Go to school. How will they get about. MK works and that's quite old. Improve that and it'll be good.
An amazing opportunity. Not just another 300k homes but all those new businesses. All of the buildings need to be constructed plus utilities and transport links. Don't contract it out to Australians or offshore consortia. Form BritBuild and do it ourselves.
A vast amount of money tipped into the immediate economy as people have jobs building it all. Then the long term economic benefits.
Or, maintain the "we're full" line to provide succour to racists and morons.
Watching the conflict between “immigration is good” and “all the works of humans are evil” - the modern progressive default - is of interest.
You can sometimes see fear. In the realisation that the contradiction must end. Each year the population grows faster than the increase in infrastructure.
Buy shares in JCB.
Because people like me see an empty horizon. And want to put a town and some villages there. Because I *like* the better works of man.
Yes. The cognitive dissonance is palpable in the sewage debate. Our seas and rivers are full of shit (and they are, and it is bad). But some of the people who get most worked up about this are those most pro-immigration and “let them all in”
And it is getting harder and harder to ignore the obvious causal connection between “adding millions of people to our population every year” and “oh god all our services are collapsing under the sheer weight of numbers”
600,000 net migrants last year. 600,000. Plus the boat people
Is there a kind of exotic new logic whereby if you don't approve of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda it means you're happy for the whole world to come and live in the UK?
No but the ultimate questions are:
1) How many migrants should be accepted ?
2) Which migrants should be accepted ?
3) What do you do with any extra migrants ?
4) How should the country be changed to deal with the migrants that are accepted ?
1) all of them 2) all of them 3) admit them 4) build nothing, change nothing.
This is the policy that some advocate. People who can dress themselves, even.
I am a Neon Fascist Imperialist - so I think we should build a bedroom per migrant, school class places, hospitals, roads etc in proportion. This is apparently an extreme position. But hey, extremism *is* the Nu Kool.
Fuck The Green Belt.
If you could please introduce us to this wanker you're railing against we could maybe join in. Is he there now?
Go look at the pearl clutching at the thought of a a few thousand barns being converted in Yorkshire. Then compare the names on this thread.
Yorkshire Dales barn conversions are nailed on to be second homes. It is in the national interest for national parks to look like national parks.
I see the government is to appoint a “lavatories tsar” to encourage councils to re-open the 10% of public lavatories that remain shut after the pandemic.
Oh great. Cones Hotline, 2023 Edition.
On topic, the one wildcard I could potentially see working for Sunak is to announce ID cards. Compulsory for claiming benefit or entering employment. Do it under the guise of a “national emergency” of a wave of boats etc. etc. If you’re being really cynical, throw in a dog-whistle unattributed rumour about recording birth gender on the card.
Labour couldn’t follow without splitting the party. Which is a problem in itself for Starmer, whose approach has basically been to shadow the Tories on most domestic issues and just fight on competence instead. It would be the clear blue water the Tories need.
To be clear I don’t know if it would work, and I don’t support ID cards myself, but as a last-throw-of-the-dice political strategy it has some gruesome merit.
That's actually a good idea, but the competent execution of such a scheme is so far beyond the capacities of this government that it's laughable. Every card issued would have a photo of Alistair Jack's ringpiece on it instead of the card holder. Or somesuch tragi-comic balls up.
Yep, ID Cards are the impossible dream. Similar applied to Vaxports in the pandemic. You just can't see us pulling this sort of thing off.
Which is why I actually don't sneer at Garden Walker's original idea of focusing on public lavs. There is an issue there (you often can't find one in an emergency) and ok it's not sexy, it won't ignite either the red wall or the blue wall, but the solution (build more toilets and make sure they always have paper) is easy to get your head round and implement, ie it's exactly the sort of issue we need Rishi Sunak to concentrate on in his final year as PM.
It'll be good for him too since it will generate a legacy. Like David Cameron with his Gay Marriage he'll have something to point to when people ask him what of real lasting benefit there is to show for his time in office.
Seriously, Sunak should concentrate on delivering low key bread and butter improvements rather than seeking headlines on wedge issues that seem to damage him more than his opposition. Firstly because sorting stuff out gives him a track record he won't otherwise have. Secondly it's a marker for a more sensible Conservative Party for when they do eventually become serious again.
Yet 50% of voters back banning migrants who come to the UK in small boats from ever re‑entering the UK, being able to settle permanently in the UK, and receiving British citizenship and 74% of Conservative voters and 72% of Leave voters back stopping migrants boats from coming here and there getting citizenship.
So the government and Braverman's low ratings on this issue are likely because voters don't think they are being effective enough in controlling the migrant boats
Yes, the public is WAY more hawkish on small boats than the debate here
Yes, it’s a combination of the British sense of fair play, that people should go through the right channels in advance; and a lack of understanding of why we don’t simply bus irregular arrivals straight to Dover, to be put on the first ferry back from whence they came.
I think this is the weaponised stupidity and ignorance of which I refer:
"People should go through the right channels". There was no legal channel those dead Afghans could have used. And they were used, by us, then abandoned and cut off. "Why not simply bus irregular arrivals" - because Take Back Control doesn't allow us to dictate terms to the French about how they run their border.
English exceptionalism boggles the mind. Well, boggles mine anyway.
"Lavatory" is a word I haven't heard used since Margot Leadbetter. Do Southerners still use the term? Presumably. Have they any idea how ludicrous Lavatory Tsar sounds up here?
Sounds pretty ludicrous here in Hampstead too tbf. Although we are well served so I don't think the Tsar will be directing any budget here. Won't need to spend a penny.
Not surprising though from the party that thinks calling food banks ‘community pantries’ is a goer.
Do have to ask PB Tories - when this week's big push on immigration has unravelled into such an embarrassing farce, how do you manage to attack everyone else for the situation rather than yourselves?
The barge was patently stupid from start to finish. It was hardly a surprise that it was a fiasco. And that would provide a solution for only a small fraction of the people you need to intern.
So your "plan" (writ in crayon as it is) wouldn't deliver even if it was executed competently. Which it wasn't and never will be. Yet you send out like likes of Jenrick who appear to be Labour party implants doing their best to kill the Tory vote.
Why?
Who are these “PB Tories”? As far as I can tell almost every PB-er of the right has abandoned the government in despair at their incompetence. Perhaps only @HYUFD and maybe @Big_G_NorthWales remain loyal (and I’m not sure of the latter)
Is out of the question that tories in opposition reach for the emotional support animal of Big Lee Anderson as leader?
Too common for the membership. Sort of guy who would say toilet czar when he meant lavatory.
Cludgie czar would be much better. Onomatopoeic innit.
Edit: now if they actually gave councils proper money, ringfenced if need be, to do something about public latrines. If it was good enough for the Victorians ... but we are receding from Victorian values towards barbarism.
Yet 50% of voters back banning migrants who come to the UK in small boats from ever re‑entering the UK, being able to settle permanently in the UK, and receiving British citizenship and 74% of Conservative voters and 72% of Leave voters back stopping migrants boats from coming here and there getting citizenship.
So the government and Braverman's low ratings on this issue are likely because voters don't think they are being effective enough in controlling the migrant boats
Yes, the public is WAY more hawkish on small boats than the debate here
Yes, it’s a combination of the British sense of fair play, that people should go through the right channels in advance; and a lack of understanding of why we don’t simply bus irregular arrivals straight to Dover, to be put on the first ferry back from whence they came.
And the PB leftoids refuse to see how dangerous this is. And point at the polls and say “look, no one cares”. Which is exactly what they used to do with Brexit
People care. Some care a huge amount. But they don't care as much as a whole load of other issues which seems to be the claim.
And even if they did really care enough for this to be a top 3 voting issue, the incumbent lot are so grossly incompetent as for it to be a vote loser.
As always back to basics. Under any system we will need to be able to process asylum claims and some of those claimants we will want to intern whilst we decide.
Which means we can't sustain the idiocy of the Home Office and the lunacy of "the barge, the barge" as a solution. And yet anyone who points out that one barge isn't a solution, that you can't practically stick triple the safe number on there and there aren't enough barges anyway is accused of wanting the entire population of China to arrive tomorrow.
On the small boats, we could Stop The Boats. Allow the dead afghans to come legally. You know Afghans? We broke their country, abandoned them to the Taliban whilst the Foreign Secretary couldn't be arsed to get off his sun lounger.
When Tories say Stop The Boats what they really mean is stop the migrants. The desired number of asylum seekers and refugees is zero. None. We're full. We're fed up with paying for them when we have so many of our own we don't want to pay for either.
It seems likely that the Tories and RefUKformKIP will be battling to win the ignorant racist vote. I genuinely can see the government saying "no migrants" as a policy. Then when Labour point out that is impossible, illegal, immortal they will scream SEE LABOUR WANT TO LET 14bn IN TO TAKE ALL YOUR MONEY.
What is even more depressing is that some otherwise sensible people - a few of this parish - will still find an excuse what they are voting for *that*.
I'm not seeing that the attitude in your second paragraph is racist. It may be ungenerous but that is a different criticism.
Racist? No. Although all the actual racists bang on about Muslims and non-whites. As we have seen in the past, there is as much anger aimed at white christian Europeans - Romanians as an example - as there is aimed at people with a "funny tinge".
So it's not racism. It's exceptionalism. Jingoism. Basic "we don't want anyone who isn't us" bigotry.
At the low end, wage suppression from migration was, quite definitely used by a range of businesses. Which is why they supported it.
So inflation was low (house prices don’t count, you see), Deliveroo was cheap. All good. For middle class people like me. Awesome that I’ve got the cuisine of 109 countries within a 30 min of my doorstep.
For those whose hobs went down to minimum wage, not so much. When you add in the steady, sustained refusal to build infrastructure to match the increase in population… well, something has got to give.
I advocate high skilled migration and high infrastructure build as well. For those, the other day, whining about barn conversions on the Yorkshire Moors - times have changed. Already.
We need 8 million more properties in the U.K. for the people who are here, right now. And you have two choices - one, go with it, build some nice towns. Or fight until the bulldozers will be coming for the bits of the countryside you like.
Personally, I’m quite taken with idea of a town on piles on Coniston Water. Do you want to wait until people start agreeing with me?
Idiots say "Britain is full". It really isn't. And flying over the southern English midlands on my way down to Luton last week it was visible just how much open and empty land there is .
Milton Keynes was outside my window. Build another three of them. One in Lincolnshire, one in East Yorkshire. One in the south west. Maybe more.
But actually plan the things. Where will people live. Shop. Eat. Go to school. How will they get about. MK works and that's quite old. Improve that and it'll be good.
An amazing opportunity. Not just another 300k homes but all those new businesses. All of the buildings need to be constructed plus utilities and transport links. Don't contract it out to Australians or offshore consortia. Form BritBuild and do it ourselves.
A vast amount of money tipped into the immediate economy as people have jobs building it all. Then the long term economic benefits.
Or, maintain the "we're full" line to provide succour to racists and morons.
Watching the conflict between “immigration is good” and “all the works of humans are evil” - the modern progressive default - is of interest.
You can sometimes see fear. In the realisation that the contradiction must end. Each year the population grows faster than the increase in infrastructure.
Buy shares in JCB.
Because people like me see an empty horizon. And want to put a town and some villages there. Because I *like* the better works of man.
Yes. The cognitive dissonance is palpable in the sewage debate. Our seas and rivers are full of shit (and they are, and it is bad). But some of the people who get most worked up about this are those most pro-immigration and “let them all in”
And it is getting harder and harder to ignore the obvious causal connection between “adding millions of people to our population every year” and “oh god all our services are collapsing under the sheer weight of numbers”
600,000 net migrants last year. 600,000. Plus the boat people
Is there a kind of exotic new logic whereby if you don't approve of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda it means you're happy for the whole world to come and live in the UK?
No but the ultimate questions are:
1) How many migrants should be accepted ?
2) Which migrants should be accepted ?
3) What do you do with any extra migrants ?
4) How should the country be changed to deal with the migrants that are accepted ?
1) all of them 2) all of them 3) admit them 4) build nothing, change nothing.
This is the policy that some advocate. People who can dress themselves, even.
I am a Neon Fascist Imperialist - so I think we should build a bedroom per migrant, school class places, hospitals, roads etc in proportion. This is apparently an extreme position. But hey, extremism *is* the Nu Kool.
Fuck The Green Belt.
If you could please introduce us to this wanker you're railing against we could maybe join in. Is he there now?
Go look at the pearl clutching at the thought of a a few thousand barns being converted in Yorkshire. Then compare the names on this thread.
Yorkshire Dales barn conversions are nailed on to be second homes. It is in the national interest for national parks to look like national parks.
The right for people to have a home is a higher national interest. Please lie down in front of the bulldozers.
I see the government is to appoint a “lavatories tsar” to encourage councils to re-open the 10% of public lavatories that remain shut after the pandemic.
Oh great. Cones Hotline, 2023 Edition.
On topic, the one wildcard I could potentially see working for Sunak is to announce ID cards. Compulsory for claiming benefit or entering employment. Do it under the guise of a “national emergency” of a wave of boats etc. etc. If you’re being really cynical, throw in a dog-whistle unattributed rumour about recording birth gender on the card.
Labour couldn’t follow without splitting the party. Which is a problem in itself for Starmer, whose approach has basically been to shadow the Tories on most domestic issues and just fight on competence instead. It would be the clear blue water the Tories need.
To be clear I don’t know if it would work, and I don’t support ID cards myself, but as a last-throw-of-the-dice political strategy it has some gruesome merit.
That's actually a good idea, but the competent execution of such a scheme is so far beyond the capacities of this government that it's laughable. Every card issued would have a photo of Alistair Jack's ringpiece on it instead of the card holder. Or somesuch tragi-comic balls up.
Yep, ID Cards are the impossible dream. Similar applied to Vaxports in the pandemic. You just can't see us pulling this sort of thing off.
Which is why I actually don't sneer at Garden Walker's original idea of focusing on public lavs. There is an issue there (you often can't find one in an emergency) and ok it's not sexy, it won't ignite either the red wall or the blue wall, but the solution (build more toilets and make sure they always have paper) is easy to get your head round and implement, ie it's exactly the sort of issue we need Rishi Sunak to concentrate on in his final year as PM.
It'll be good for him too since it will generate a legacy. Like David Cameron with his Gay Marriage he'll have something to point to when people ask him what of real lasting benefit there is to show for his time in office.
Seriously, Sunak should concentrate on delivering low key bread and butter improvements rather than seeking headlines on wedge issues that seem to damage him more than his opposition. Firstly because sorting stuff out gives him a track record he won't otherwise have. Secondly it's a marker for a more sensible Conservative Party for when they do eventually become serious again.
I’ve been saying for ages that a party which promised to fix the small stuff would get a lot of votes. Clean our streets. Stop graffiti. Do something about litter. Fix the broken windows of life
Well, I haven’t posted on this thread yet but I’m happy to join the list of those who see no solution to the U.K. housing crisis if properties such as this were to become residential… nor any connection between this very narrow aspect of National Park planning policy and asylum policy…
There doesn't seem to be any good reason for not finding out what's actually there.
as with so many things in this country, upsetting the sensibilities of boomers.
THE BOOMERS ARE UPSET
[PB motto]
And generation x is relentlessly uninformed about geography, history and psychology. Not "in this country." The history and psychology you can research for yourself.
Whilst true, the Boomers are also poorly informed and - worse - are stuck in a mindset based on neoliberal economics and Cold-war strategy.
As a group they are afraid of inflation, still think distance doesn't matter, taxes should not be raised, an infinite number of immigrants is achievable, globalisation will provide the best possible answer, and still think we can run a global military.
But the realities on the ground speak against this: we have run up an enormous amount of debt which we cannot deflate away, we cannot police our borders whilst equipping to fight a war in the Pacific, we are planning on suppressing wages by importing replacements, and we can no longer rely on goods from China.
In short: Boomer's wisdom is outdated, unrealistic, and will only create problems, not solve them
"Impossible" is an infinitely high bar. Let's settle for "impracticable"
It is impracticable to build the houses, roads, schools, sewers and hospitals for that number in that time. From memory, England and Wales have about 25-30 million households (from studio rooms up to mansions). We cannot build a million more per year, we just don't have the money to employ that number of workers and buy the resources to do it.
We do not have the money to send a man to Pluto, we do not have the money to invade China, and we do not have the money to accommodate a million people per year in a manner we would accept for themselves. We could create shanty towns and favelas in which children play in rubbish tips and raw sewage, yes, but I think you would not like that.
We really need to stop indulging in fantasy politics.
We accepted 600,000 net migrants last year. On top of about 60,000 illegals?
That's 2/3 of a million. 660,000. Not far from the "million" which you - correctly - describe as completely impracticable
And we then wonder why services are strained, the NHS creaks, the roads are pot-holed, the rivers become sewers, and rents are out of control. This is not quantum thermodynamics. We are accepting too many people into a crowded island, which slowly diminishes the quality of life for everyone on it
Imagine if you lived in a two bed house then eight people came to stay. After a while it would look like a tip, even if everyone did their scrupulous best to keep it tidy
If we ARE going to accept 1m a year or more then we need to get with my plan to level Luton and turn it into a forest of elegant skyscrapers like Hong Kong. We could do the same with Slough, Swindon, Portsmouth, and Coventry
The highest number of dwellings built by a large European country is France (our size population) with 370k per annum give or take.
That is approx. 50% more than here.
380k would be 500k->750k people, allowing for larger households of migrants, and HMOs etc.
Well, I haven’t posted on this thread yet but I’m happy to join the list of those who see no solution to the U.K. housing crisis if properties such as this were to become residential… nor any connection between this very narrow aspect of National Park planning policy and asylum policy…
Looks ripe to build a town there.
Possibly not. Look at that hillslope. Looks as if it could be a fossil landslip from periglacial times. Then you start digging arouind the base with a JCB, and hey presto it's not fossil any more.
Edit: and possibly deep peat in that silted up valley-let.
I'm getting a sense that the media narrative is changing. Adam Boulton has a piece on Sky this morning entitled 'Change Election Looms' and although he' being slightly playful because he's initially talking about 75 MPs standing down, the tenor of the piece is about a seachange.
When September comes I think the media will be ready to move on. They can sustain this perhaps for 13 months, although they will be egging Sunak on for the 8 month option. What the media won't tolerate is a PM clinging to power by his fingernails until Jan '25.
It may seem strange to put the election timing in the hands of the media but, to an extent, that is what happens when you don't have a fixed term parliament act. A PM who dithers, or who is seen deliberately to delay in the hope of Miraculous Mr Micawber, soon falls prey to the vultures. Three PMs in my lifetime have been victims of this: John Major in 1997 and Gordon Brown in 2007. Both held out for the longest time and got their comeuppance. I can just about remember Jim Callaghan in 1979 when the same thing happened following the winter of discontent.
Suanak will probably get away with October '24. Just. He'll be eviscerated if he tries the January '25 option.
If you go too long, you lose the media and you lose the election.
(p.s. nice though the current polls are for Labour, I don't trust polling taken during August.)
If Sunak goes early, he loses; if Sunak goes late, he loses but has had an extra six months in Downing Street, and there's a remote chance something will turn up.
Quite. It's faint hope, but still hope. The additional grumpiness at holding on till the end is worth thatrisk.
On the small boats, we could Stop The Boats. Allow the dead afghans to come legally. You know Afghans? We broke their country, abandoned them to the Taliban whilst the Foreign Secretary couldn't be arsed to get off his sun lounger.
When Tories say Stop The Boats what they really mean is stop the migrants. The desired number of asylum seekers and refugees is zero. None. We're full. We're fed up with paying for them when we have so many of our own we don't want to pay for either.
It seems likely that the Tories and RefUKformKIP will be battling to win the ignorant racist vote. I genuinely can see the government saying "no migrants" as a policy. Then when Labour point out that is impossible, illegal, immortal they will scream SEE LABOUR WANT TO LET 14bn IN TO TAKE ALL YOUR MONEY.
What is even more depressing is that some otherwise sensible people - a few of this parish - will still find an excuse what they are voting for *that*.
I'm not seeing that the attitude in your second paragraph is racist. It may be ungenerous but that is a different criticism.
Racist? No. Although all the actual racists bang on about Muslims and non-whites. As we have seen in the past, there is as much anger aimed at white christian Europeans - Romanians as an example - as there is aimed at people with a "funny tinge".
So it's not racism. It's exceptionalism. Jingoism. Basic "we don't want anyone who isn't us" bigotry.
At the low end, wage suppression from migration was, quite definitely used by a range of businesses. Which is why they supported it.
So inflation was low (house prices don’t count, you see), Deliveroo was cheap. All good. For middle class people like me. Awesome that I’ve got the cuisine of 109 countries within a 30 min of my doorstep.
For those whose hobs went down to minimum wage, not so much. When you add in the steady, sustained refusal to build infrastructure to match the increase in population… well, something has got to give.
I advocate high skilled migration and high infrastructure build as well. For those, the other day, whining about barn conversions on the Yorkshire Moors - times have changed. Already.
We need 8 million more properties in the U.K. for the people who are here, right now. And you have two choices - one, go with it, build some nice towns. Or fight until the bulldozers will be coming for the bits of the countryside you like.
Personally, I’m quite taken with idea of a town on piles on Coniston Water. Do you want to wait until people start agreeing with me?
Idiots say "Britain is full". It really isn't. And flying over the southern English midlands on my way down to Luton last week it was visible just how much open and empty land there is .
Milton Keynes was outside my window. Build another three of them. One in Lincolnshire, one in East Yorkshire. One in the south west. Maybe more.
But actually plan the things. Where will people live. Shop. Eat. Go to school. How will they get about. MK works and that's quite old. Improve that and it'll be good.
An amazing opportunity. Not just another 300k homes but all those new businesses. All of the buildings need to be constructed plus utilities and transport links. Don't contract it out to Australians or offshore consortia. Form BritBuild and do it ourselves.
A vast amount of money tipped into the immediate economy as people have jobs building it all. Then the long term economic benefits.
Or, maintain the "we're full" line to provide succour to racists and morons.
Watching the conflict between “immigration is good” and “all the works of humans are evil” - the modern progressive default - is of interest.
You can sometimes see fear. In the realisation that the contradiction must end. Each year the population grows faster than the increase in infrastructure.
Buy shares in JCB.
Because people like me see an empty horizon. And want to put a town and some villages there. Because I *like* the better works of man.
Yes. The cognitive dissonance is palpable in the sewage debate. Our seas and rivers are full of shit (and they are, and it is bad). But some of the people who get most worked up about this are those most pro-immigration and “let them all in”
And it is getting harder and harder to ignore the obvious causal connection between “adding millions of people to our population every year” and “oh god all our services are collapsing under the sheer weight of numbers”
600,000 net migrants last year. 600,000. Plus the boat people
Is there a kind of exotic new logic whereby if you don't approve of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda it means you're happy for the whole world to come and live in the UK?
No but the ultimate questions are:
1) How many migrants should be accepted ?
2) Which migrants should be accepted ?
3) What do you do with any extra migrants ?
4) How should the country be changed to deal with the migrants that are accepted ?
1) all of them 2) all of them 3) admit them 4) build nothing, change nothing.
This is the policy that some advocate. People who can dress themselves, even.
I am a Neon Fascist Imperialist - so I think we should build a bedroom per migrant, school class places, hospitals, roads etc in proportion. This is apparently an extreme position. But hey, extremism *is* the Nu Kool.
Fuck The Green Belt.
If you could please introduce us to this wanker you're railing against we could maybe join in. Is he there now?
Go look at the pearl clutching at the thought of a a few thousand barns being converted in Yorkshire. Then compare the names on this thread.
Yorkshire Dales barn conversions are nailed on to be second homes. It is in the national interest for national parks to look like national parks.
The right for people to have a home is a higher national interest. Please lie down in front of the bulldozers.
Yes. You are being silly. We should be building new towns, but not in national parks.
I'm getting a sense that the media narrative is changing. Adam Boulton has a piece on Sky this morning entitled 'Change Election Looms' and although he' being slightly playful because he's initially talking about 75 MPs standing down, the tenor of the piece is about a seachange.
When September comes I think the media will be ready to move on. They can sustain this perhaps for 13 months, although they will be egging Sunak on for the 8 month option. What the media won't tolerate is a PM clinging to power by his fingernails until Jan '25.
It may seem strange to put the election timing in the hands of the media but, to an extent, that is what happens when you don't have a fixed term parliament act. A PM who dithers, or who is seen deliberately to delay in the hope of Miraculous Mr Micawber, soon falls prey to the vultures. Three PMs in my lifetime have been victims of this: John Major in 1997 and Gordon Brown in 2007. Both held out for the longest time and got their comeuppance. I can just about remember Jim Callaghan in 1979 when the same thing happened following the winter of discontent.
Suanak will probably get away with October '24. Just. He'll be eviscerated if he tries the January '25 option.
If you go too long, you lose the media and you lose the election.
(p.s. nice though the current polls are for Labour, I don't trust polling taken during August.)
If Sunak goes early, he loses; if Sunak goes late, he loses but has had an extra six months in Downing Street, and there's a remote chance something will turn up.
Quite. It's faint hope, but still hope. The additional grumpiness at holding on till the end is worth that rusk.
"Lavatory" is a word I haven't heard used since Margot Leadbetter. Do Southerners still use the term? Presumably. Have they any idea how ludicrous Lavatory Tsar sounds up here?
Sounds pretty ludicrous here in Hampstead too tbf. Although we are well served so I don't think the Tsar will be directing any budget here. Won't need to spend a penny.
Not surprising though from the party that thinks calling food banks ‘community pantries’ is a goer.
Oh god really? I hadn't seen that.
The latest diaphanously talented (my God, there’ve been a lot) contender for Tory leadership.
Yet 50% of voters back banning migrants who come to the UK in small boats from ever re‑entering the UK, being able to settle permanently in the UK, and receiving British citizenship and 74% of Conservative voters and 72% of Leave voters back stopping migrants boats from coming here and there getting citizenship.
So the government and Braverman's low ratings on this issue are likely because voters don't think they are being effective enough in controlling the migrant boats
I see the government is to appoint a “lavatories tsar” to encourage councils to re-open the 10% of public lavatories that remain shut after the pandemic.
Oh great. Cones Hotline, 2023 Edition.
On topic, the one wildcard I could potentially see working for Sunak is to announce ID cards. Compulsory for claiming benefit or entering employment. Do it under the guise of a “national emergency” of a wave of boats etc. etc. If you’re being really cynical, throw in a dog-whistle unattributed rumour about recording birth gender on the card.
Labour couldn’t follow without splitting the party. Which is a problem in itself for Starmer, whose approach has basically been to shadow the Tories on most domestic issues and just fight on competence instead. It would be the clear blue water the Tories need.
To be clear I don’t know if it would work, and I don’t support ID cards myself, but as a last-throw-of-the-dice political strategy it has some gruesome merit.
That's actually a good idea, but the competent execution of such a scheme is so far beyond the capacities of this government that it's laughable. Every card issued would have a photo of Alistair Jack's ringpiece on it instead of the card holder. Or somesuch tragi-comic balls up.
Yep, ID Cards are the impossible dream. Similar applied to Vaxports in the pandemic. You just can't see us pulling this sort of thing off.
Which is why I actually don't sneer at Garden Walker's original idea of focusing on public lavs. There is an issue there (you often can't find one in an emergency) and ok it's not sexy, it won't ignite either the red wall or the blue wall, but the solution (build more toilets and make sure they always have paper) is easy to get your head round and implement, ie it's exactly the sort of issue we need Rishi Sunak to concentrate on in his final year as PM.
It'll be good for him too since it will generate a legacy. Like David Cameron with his Gay Marriage he'll have something to point to when people ask him what of real lasting benefit there is to show for his time in office.
Seriously, Sunak should concentrate on delivering low key bread and butter improvements rather than seeking headlines on wedge issues that seem to damage him more than his opposition. Firstly because sorting stuff out gives him a track record he won't otherwise have. Secondly it's a marker for a more sensible Conservative Party for when they do eventually become serious again.
I’ve been saying for ages that a party which promised to fix the small stuff would get a lot of votes. Clean our streets. Stop graffiti. Do something about litter. Fix the broken windows of life
But don’t just talk it. Do it
I agree. A lot of small and visible things feel grubby and crap, and that colours perception.
I think the government agree hence things like future high street funding, but thr solutions are thinly spread or ineffective.
“The founder of Extinction Rebellion has hit out at Sadiq Khan’s ultra-low emissions zone (Ulez) as “intrusive” and “regressive” for the lowest-paid Londoners.
“Roger Hallam made the comments in a thread on social media site X, in which he also attacked “urban middle-class neo-liberal Left” thinkers behind the Mayor’s road charge.
“He was responding to a Guardian column by Prof Devi Sridhar that argued in favour of Ulez and low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs). Hallam criticised supporters of the schemes for a “total lack of sensitivity and self-awareness”, claiming it showed a “myopic privilege”.”
"Impossible" is an infinitely high bar. Let's settle for "impracticable"
It is impracticable to build the houses, roads, schools, sewers and hospitals for that number in that time. From memory, England and Wales have about 25-30 million households (from studio rooms up to mansions). We cannot build a million more per year, we just don't have the money to employ that number of workers and buy the resources to do it.
We do not have the money to send a man to Pluto, we do not have the money to invade China, and we do not have the money to accommodate a million people per year in a manner we would accept for themselves. We could create shanty towns and favelas in which children play in rubbish tips and raw sewage, yes, but I think you would not like that.
We really need to stop indulging in fantasy politics.
We accepted 600,000 net migrants last year. On top of about 60,000 illegals?
That's 2/3 of a million. 660,000. Not far from the "million" which you - correctly - describe as completely impracticable
And we then wonder why services are strained, the NHS creaks, the roads are pot-holed, the rivers become sewers, and rents are out of control. This is not quantum thermodynamics. We are accepting too many people into a crowded island, which slowly diminishes the quality of life for everyone on it
Imagine if you lived in a two bed house then eight people came to stay. After a while it would look like a tip, even if everyone did their scrupulous best to keep it tidy
If we ARE going to accept 1m a year or more then we need to get with my plan to level Luton and turn it into a forest of elegant skyscrapers like Hong Kong. We could do the same with Slough, Swindon, Portsmouth, and Coventry
The highest number of dwellings built by a large European country is France (our size population) with 370k per annum give or take.
That is approx. 50% more than here.
380k would be 500k->750k people, allowing for larger households of migrants, and HMOs etc.
And France has vast areas of surplus housing which is almost impossible to sell, but the new building is in high demand economically active areas around Île de France and other growth poles. Which shows that building needs to happen where there is demand, ie London and the SE. No point building loads of housing where property is already cheap and available,
Do have to ask PB Tories - when this week's big push on immigration has unravelled into such an embarrassing farce, how do you manage to attack everyone else for the situation rather than yourselves?
The barge was patently stupid from start to finish. It was hardly a surprise that it was a fiasco. And that would provide a solution for only a small fraction of the people you need to intern.
So your "plan" (writ in crayon as it is) wouldn't deliver even if it was executed competently. Which it wasn't and never will be. Yet you send out like likes of Jenrick who appear to be Labour party implants doing their best to kill the Tory vote.
Why?
Who are these “PB Tories”? As far as I can tell almost every PB-er of the right has abandoned the government in despair at their incompetence. Perhaps only @HYUFD and maybe @Big_G_NorthWales remain loyal (and I’m not sure of the latter)
You for starters. You're pro Tory. You're pro right wing. You're voting Tory. Whereas I suspect i am one of the "PB Leftoids" you referred to even though I can categorically confirm that I am not voting Labour.
"Lavatory" is a word I haven't heard used since Margot Leadbetter. Do Southerners still use the term? Presumably. Have they any idea how ludicrous Lavatory Tsar sounds up here?
Sounds pretty ludicrous here in Hampstead too tbf. Although we are well served so I don't think the Tsar will be directing any budget here. Won't need to spend a penny.
Not surprising though from the party that thinks calling food banks ‘community pantries’ is a goer.
Oh god really? I hadn't seen that.
The latest diaphanously talented (my God, there’ve been a lot) contender for Tory leadership.
Is out of the question that tories in opposition reach for the emotional support animal of Big Lee Anderson as leader?
No it isn't. They might just realise Rees-Mogg is the wrong look to show they've learned their lesson, but overstep too much towards the other performative extreme.
"Impossible" is an infinitely high bar. Let's settle for "impracticable"
It is impracticable to build the houses, roads, schools, sewers and hospitals for that number in that time. From memory, England and Wales have about 25-30 million households (from studio rooms up to mansions). We cannot build a million more per year, we just don't have the money to employ that number of workers and buy the resources to do it.
We do not have the money to send a man to Pluto, we do not have the money to invade China, and we do not have the money to accommodate a million people per year in a manner we would accept for themselves. We could create shanty towns and favelas in which children play in rubbish tips and raw sewage, yes, but I think you would not like that.
We really need to stop indulging in fantasy politics.
We accepted 600,000 net migrants last year. On top of about 60,000 illegals?
That's 2/3 of a million. 660,000. Not far from the "million" which you - correctly - describe as completely impracticable
And we then wonder why services are strained, the NHS creaks, the roads are pot-holed, the rivers become sewers, and rents are out of control. This is not quantum thermodynamics. We are accepting too many people into a crowded island, which slowly diminishes the quality of life for everyone on it
Imagine if you lived in a two bed house then eight people came to stay. After a while it would look like a tip, even if everyone did their scrupulous best to keep it tidy
If we ARE going to accept 1m a year or more then we need to get with my plan to level Luton and turn it into a forest of elegant skyscrapers like Hong Kong. We could do the same with Slough, Swindon, Portsmouth, and Coventry
The highest number of dwellings built by a large European country is France (our size population) with 370k per annum give or take.
That is approx. 50% more than here.
380k would be 500k->750k people, allowing for larger households of migrants, and HMOs etc.
Well, I haven’t posted on this thread yet but I’m happy to join the list of those who see no solution to the U.K. housing crisis if properties such as this were to become residential… nor any connection between this very narrow aspect of National Park planning policy and asylum policy…
Looks ripe to build a town there.
Possibly not. Look at that hillslope. Looks as if it could be a fossil landslip from periglacial times. Then you start digging arouind the base with a JCB, and hey presto it's not fossil any more.
Edit: and possibly deep peat in that silted up valley-let.
Anyone who is fleeing from persecution in France should be allowed to stay. Everyone else arriving in a small boat should be compelled to f off back to France.
"Lavatory" is a word I haven't heard used since Margot Leadbetter. Do Southerners still use the term? Presumably. Have they any idea how ludicrous Lavatory Tsar sounds up here?
Sounds pretty ludicrous here in Hampstead too tbf. Although we are well served so I don't think the Tsar will be directing any budget here. Won't need to spend a penny.
Not surprising though from the party that thinks calling food banks ‘community pantries’ is a goer.
Oh god really? I hadn't seen that.
The latest diaphanously talented (my God, there’ve been a lot) contender for Tory leadership.
Is that…a new Tory euphemism for food bank?
No no. Food banks are for scroungers who can't be bothered to cook and will only spend the money saved on fags and booze. Whereas a community pantry is where the nice people can get the ingredients to make a nice family supper.
"Impossible" is an infinitely high bar. Let's settle for "impracticable"
It is impracticable to build the houses, roads, schools, sewers and hospitals for that number in that time. From memory, England and Wales have about 25-30 million households (from studio rooms up to mansions). We cannot build a million more per year, we just don't have the money to employ that number of workers and buy the resources to do it.
We do not have the money to send a man to Pluto, we do not have the money to invade China, and we do not have the money to accommodate a million people per year in a manner we would accept for themselves. We could create shanty towns and favelas in which children play in rubbish tips and raw sewage, yes, but I think you would not like that.
We really need to stop indulging in fantasy politics.
We accepted 600,000 net migrants last year. On top of about 60,000 illegals?
That's 2/3 of a million. 660,000. Not far from the "million" which you - correctly - describe as completely impracticable
And we then wonder why services are strained, the NHS creaks, the roads are pot-holed, the rivers become sewers, and rents are out of control. This is not quantum thermodynamics. We are accepting too many people into a crowded island, which slowly diminishes the quality of life for everyone on it
Imagine if you lived in a two bed house then eight people came to stay. After a while it would look like a tip, even if everyone did their scrupulous best to keep it tidy
If we ARE going to accept 1m a year or more then we need to get with my plan to level Luton and turn it into a forest of elegant skyscrapers like Hong Kong. We could do the same with Slough, Swindon, Portsmouth, and Coventry
The highest number of dwellings built by a large European country is France (our size population) with 370k per annum give or take.
That is approx. 50% more than here.
380k would be 500k->750k people, allowing for larger households of migrants, and HMOs etc.
“The founder of Extinction Rebellion has hit out at Sadiq Khan’s ultra-low emissions zone (Ulez) as “intrusive” and “regressive” for the lowest-paid Londoners.
“Roger Hallam made the comments in a thread on social media site X, in which he also attacked “urban middle-class neo-liberal Left” thinkers behind the Mayor’s road charge.
“He was responding to a Guardian column by Prof Devi Sridhar that argued in favour of Ulez and low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs). Hallam criticised supporters of the schemes for a “total lack of sensitivity and self-awareness”, claiming it showed a “myopic privilege”.”
He's a one to talk about myopic privilege, given some of XRs actions and members.
And what's the neo-liberal left? Is it better or worse than the liberal left?
"Lavatory" is a word I haven't heard used since Margot Leadbetter. Do Southerners still use the term? Presumably. Have they any idea how ludicrous Lavatory Tsar sounds up here?
Sounds pretty ludicrous here in Hampstead too tbf. Although we are well served so I don't think the Tsar will be directing any budget here. Won't need to spend a penny.
Not surprising though from the party that thinks calling food banks ‘community pantries’ is a goer.
Oh god really? I hadn't seen that.
The latest diaphanously talented (my God, there’ve been a lot) contender for Tory leadership.
Is that…a new Tory euphemism for food bank?
I doubt it. Community fridges are a thing, maybe it's a variation on that.
Excuse my ignorance, as ever, but do the UK gov or civil service release figures on the tax benefit of legal immigrants.
For example if in 2023 the gov issued work visas to 300,000 people and once a cost for educating any dependents and a rough NHS charge was factored in then there was a nice net gain to the economy then it would surely make people more open to continued legal migration.
The gov could then calculate how many visas it could issue to essential staff who are unlikely to end up in the net tax positive set without scaring the horses and even really stupid people, like me, would say “ fair enough this legal immigration is a positive, it washes its own face”.
At the moment the general reaction can be that immigrants are just draining the country but if you can show that it’s a financial benefit as well as covering the shortfall in carers to look after your granny so you don’t have to wipe her arse it would be easier.
Over here there is a sizeable objection to those who are allowed to live here if they have certain wealth and pay a very beneficial, for them, tax rate. The gov are careful to release the total tax take from this cohort each year to demonstrate that while it’s not ideal there is a net positive which helps lance the boil.
"Impossible" is an infinitely high bar. Let's settle for "impracticable"
It is impracticable to build the houses, roads, schools, sewers and hospitals for that number in that time. From memory, England and Wales have about 25-30 million households (from studio rooms up to mansions). We cannot build a million more per year, we just don't have the money to employ that number of workers and buy the resources to do it.
We do not have the money to send a man to Pluto, we do not have the money to invade China, and we do not have the money to accommodate a million people per year in a manner we would accept for themselves. We could create shanty towns and favelas in which children play in rubbish tips and raw sewage, yes, but I think you would not like that.
We really need to stop indulging in fantasy politics.
We accepted 600,000 net migrants last year. On top of about 60,000 illegals?
That's 2/3 of a million. 660,000. Not far from the "million" which you - correctly - describe as completely impracticable
And we then wonder why services are strained, the NHS creaks, the roads are pot-holed, the rivers become sewers, and rents are out of control. This is not quantum thermodynamics. We are accepting too many people into a crowded island, which slowly diminishes the quality of life for everyone on it
Imagine if you lived in a two bed house then eight people came to stay. After a while it would look like a tip, even if everyone did their scrupulous best to keep it tidy
If we ARE going to accept 1m a year or more then we need to get with my plan to level Luton and turn it into a forest of elegant skyscrapers like Hong Kong. We could do the same with Slough, Swindon, Portsmouth, and Coventry
The highest number of dwellings built by a large European country is France (our size population) with 370k per annum give or take.
That is approx. 50% more than here.
380k would be 500k->750k people, allowing for larger households of migrants, and HMOs etc.
"Lavatory" is a word I haven't heard used since Margot Leadbetter. Do Southerners still use the term? Presumably. Have they any idea how ludicrous Lavatory Tsar sounds up here?
Sounds pretty ludicrous here in Hampstead too tbf. Although we are well served so I don't think the Tsar will be directing any budget here. Won't need to spend a penny.
Not surprising though from the party that thinks calling food banks ‘community pantries’ is a goer.
Oh god really? I hadn't seen that.
The latest diaphanously talented (my God, there’ve been a lot) contender for Tory leadership.
Is that…a new Tory euphemism for food bank?
No no. Food banks are for scroungers who can't be bothered to cook and will only spend the money saved on fags and booze. Whereas a community pantry is where the nice people can get the ingredients to make a nice family supper.
With a gingham cap ribbon-tied on top of every jar of Tesco Economy Pasta Sauce.
On the small boats, we could Stop The Boats. Allow the dead afghans to come legally. You know Afghans? We broke their country, abandoned them to the Taliban whilst the Foreign Secretary couldn't be arsed to get off his sun lounger.
When Tories say Stop The Boats what they really mean is stop the migrants. The desired number of asylum seekers and refugees is zero. None. We're full. We're fed up with paying for them when we have so many of our own we don't want to pay for either.
It seems likely that the Tories and RefUKformKIP will be battling to win the ignorant racist vote. I genuinely can see the government saying "no migrants" as a policy. Then when Labour point out that is impossible, illegal, immortal they will scream SEE LABOUR WANT TO LET 14bn IN TO TAKE ALL YOUR MONEY.
What is even more depressing is that some otherwise sensible people - a few of this parish - will still find an excuse what they are voting for *that*.
I'm not seeing that the attitude in your second paragraph is racist. It may be ungenerous but that is a different criticism.
Racist? No. Although all the actual racists bang on about Muslims and non-whites. As we have seen in the past, there is as much anger aimed at white christian Europeans - Romanians as an example - as there is aimed at people with a "funny tinge".
So it's not racism. It's exceptionalism. Jingoism. Basic "we don't want anyone who isn't us" bigotry.
At the low end, wage suppression from migration was, quite definitely used by a range of businesses. Which is why they supported it.
So inflation was low (house prices don’t count, you see), Deliveroo was cheap. All good. For middle class people like me. Awesome that I’ve got the cuisine of 109 countries within a 30 min of my doorstep.
For those whose hobs went down to minimum wage, not so much. When you add in the steady, sustained refusal to build infrastructure to match the increase in population… well, something has got to give.
I advocate high skilled migration and high infrastructure build as well. For those, the other day, whining about barn conversions on the Yorkshire Moors - times have changed. Already.
We need 8 million more properties in the U.K. for the people who are here, right now. And you have two choices - one, go with it, build some nice towns. Or fight until the bulldozers will be coming for the bits of the countryside you like.
Personally, I’m quite taken with idea of a town on piles on Coniston Water. Do you want to wait until people start agreeing with me?
Idiots say "Britain is full". It really isn't. And flying over the southern English midlands on my way down to Luton last week it was visible just how much open and empty land there is .
Milton Keynes was outside my window. Build another three of them. One in Lincolnshire, one in East Yorkshire. One in the south west. Maybe more.
But actually plan the things. Where will people live. Shop. Eat. Go to school. How will they get about. MK works and that's quite old. Improve that and it'll be good.
An amazing opportunity. Not just another 300k homes but all those new businesses. All of the buildings need to be constructed plus utilities and transport links. Don't contract it out to Australians or offshore consortia. Form BritBuild and do it ourselves.
A vast amount of money tipped into the immediate economy as people have jobs building it all. Then the long term economic benefits.
Or, maintain the "we're full" line to provide succour to racists and morons.
Watching the conflict between “immigration is good” and “all the works of humans are evil” - the modern progressive default - is of interest.
You can sometimes see fear. In the realisation that the contradiction must end. Each year the population grows faster than the increase in infrastructure.
Buy shares in JCB.
Because people like me see an empty horizon. And want to put a town and some villages there. Because I *like* the better works of man.
Yes. The cognitive dissonance is palpable in the sewage debate. Our seas and rivers are full of shit (and they are, and it is bad). But some of the people who get most worked up about this are those most pro-immigration and “let them all in”
And it is getting harder and harder to ignore the obvious causal connection between “adding millions of people to our population every year” and “oh god all our services are collapsing under the sheer weight of numbers”
600,000 net migrants last year. 600,000. Plus the boat people
Is there a kind of exotic new logic whereby if you don't approve of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda it means you're happy for the whole world to come and live in the UK?
No but the ultimate questions are:
1) How many migrants should be accepted ?
2) Which migrants should be accepted ?
3) What do you do with any extra migrants ?
4) How should the country be changed to deal with the migrants that are accepted ?
1) all of them 2) all of them 3) admit them 4) build nothing, change nothing.
This is the policy that some advocate. People who can dress themselves, even.
I am a Neon Fascist Imperialist - so I think we should build a bedroom per migrant, school class places, hospitals, roads etc in proportion. This is apparently an extreme position. But hey, extremism *is* the Nu Kool.
Fuck The Green Belt.
If you could please introduce us to this wanker you're railing against we could maybe join in. Is he there now?
Go look at the pearl clutching at the thought of a a few thousand barns being converted in Yorkshire. Then compare the names on this thread.
Yorkshire Dales barn conversions are nailed on to be second homes. It is in the national interest for national parks to look like national parks.
The right for people to have a home is a higher national interest. Please lie down in front of the bulldozers.
Yes. You are being silly. We should be building new towns, but not in national parks.
True, though where should we build them? Open countryside and people will act like it's national park, not many villages want to become the next Milton Keynes, and we know people hate expansions on the edge of smaller market towns.
The latter is easier despite being disliked which us presumably why it happens the most.
I see the government is to appoint a “lavatories tsar” to encourage councils to re-open the 10% of public lavatories that remain shut after the pandemic.
Oh great. Cones Hotline, 2023 Edition.
On topic, the one wildcard I could potentially see working for Sunak is to announce ID cards. Compulsory for claiming benefit or entering employment. Do it under the guise of a “national emergency” of a wave of boats etc. etc. If you’re being really cynical, throw in a dog-whistle unattributed rumour about recording birth gender on the card.
Labour couldn’t follow without splitting the party. Which is a problem in itself for Starmer, whose approach has basically been to shadow the Tories on most domestic issues and just fight on competence instead. It would be the clear blue water the Tories need.
To be clear I don’t know if it would work, and I don’t support ID cards myself, but as a last-throw-of-the-dice political strategy it has some gruesome merit.
That's actually a good idea, but the competent execution of such a scheme is so far beyond the capacities of this government that it's laughable. Every card issued would have a photo of Alistair Jack's ringpiece on it instead of the card holder. Or somesuch tragi-comic balls up.
Yep, ID Cards are the impossible dream. Similar applied to Vaxports in the pandemic. You just can't see us pulling this sort of thing off.
Which is why I actually don't sneer at Garden Walker's original idea of focusing on public lavs. There is an issue there (you often can't find one in an emergency) and ok it's not sexy, it won't ignite either the red wall or the blue wall, but the solution (build more toilets and make sure they always have paper) is easy to get your head round and implement, ie it's exactly the sort of issue we need Rishi Sunak to concentrate on in his final year as PM.
It'll be good for him too since it will generate a legacy. Like David Cameron with his Gay Marriage he'll have something to point to when people ask him what of real lasting benefit there is to show for his time in office.
Seriously, Sunak should concentrate on delivering low key bread and butter improvements rather than seeking headlines on wedge issues that seem to damage him more than his opposition. Firstly because sorting stuff out gives him a track record he won't otherwise have. Secondly it's a marker for a more sensible Conservative Party for when they do eventually become serious again.
Yep, I was being semi-serious and this sentiment is the half that was. Plus 'lavs' IS an issue and it's not trivial. People (esp older ones) ought to have confidence they'll be able to find one (which is clean and works properly) when they need to. If not they won't go out.
Do have to ask PB Tories - when this week's big push on immigration has unravelled into such an embarrassing farce, how do you manage to attack everyone else for the situation rather than yourselves?
The barge was patently stupid from start to finish. It was hardly a surprise that it was a fiasco. And that would provide a solution for only a small fraction of the people you need to intern.
So your "plan" (writ in crayon as it is) wouldn't deliver even if it was executed competently. Which it wasn't and never will be. Yet you send out like likes of Jenrick who appear to be Labour party implants doing their best to kill the Tory vote.
Why?
The barge solution is a better one that housing migrants in hotels, which is deeply unpopular with local residents and also is an alternative to sending them to Rwanda
"Lavatory" is a word I haven't heard used since Margot Leadbetter. Do Southerners still use the term? Presumably. Have they any idea how ludicrous Lavatory Tsar sounds up here?
Sounds pretty ludicrous here in Hampstead too tbf. Although we are well served so I don't think the Tsar will be directing any budget here. Won't need to spend a penny.
Not surprising though from the party that thinks calling food banks ‘community pantries’ is a goer.
Oh god really? I hadn't seen that.
The latest diaphanously talented (my God, there’ve been a lot) contender for Tory leadership.
Ah Penny. I should have guessed. Right in the frame for next leader and tbf far from the worst outcome when you look at the other likelies.
"Lavatory" is a word I haven't heard used since Margot Leadbetter. Do Southerners still use the term? Presumably. Have they any idea how ludicrous Lavatory Tsar sounds up here?
They could have a very cool throne though. High cistern job with mahogany steps up to it.
Comments
Given your great respect for traffic regulations of all kinds.
His suggestions are that we sabotage disused railway lines, and assassinate people in hospices
This is happening, folks
If your party actually had a workable policy on migration that might be one thing. But you don't...
{Calling Vladimiro Lenin Montesinos Torres to the red courtesy phone. Vladimiro Lenin Montesinos Torres to the red courtesy phone}
Manager - What is the "Wichser" boolean field in the database records?
German IT dev - It's to identify people we really, really like.
Only Londoners are supportive of the boat migrants being given UK citizenship by a narrow 47% to 42% margin
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2023/03/06/9e23f/2
My first recruit. We are already planning to hide muskets in the thatch
The barge was patently stupid from start to finish. It was hardly a surprise that it was a fiasco. And that would provide a solution for only a small fraction of the people you need to intern.
So your "plan" (writ in crayon as it is) wouldn't deliver even if it was executed competently. Which it wasn't and never will be. Yet you send out like likes of Jenrick who appear to be Labour party implants doing their best to kill the Tory vote.
Why?
Yes, it's complicated because it cuts across a whole lot of policy areas so implementing a solution (if there were one which worked, it would have been by now) impacts the whole economy and society.
The truth is we want immigration sometimes and usually when we need cheap labour to power the economy. We will always need certain forms of immigration - specialists for example - and we have always provided an education environment for those to come here, learn the best and hopefully right way of doing things and return to their countries to impart their wisdom.
The other truth of migration is not "build it and they will come" but that people go where the money is so whether that's London, the Rhineland or Dubai, the possibility of enriching oneself (and one's family) especially if no such possibility exists where you are or to earn amounts of money which to us may seem trivial but to someone from Eritrea, Niger or Afghanistan seem like vast sums is not to be underestimated.
Go on most cruise ships and you'll hear the crew talk about sending a big part of their wages home so the work we provide enriches other countries and other societies.
So we're back to @another_richard's questions which promote the wider questions and arguments on housing provision. Whether it's 8 million homes as @Malmesbury claims or some other number, building houses isn't just about building houses - it's about building communities and mitigating the pressure on pre-existing networks whether it be sewage, transport or health services.
There are other questions about our post-colonial engagement in some parts of the world - the Chinese for example, have happily exploited resources in many areas but that exploitation has brought investment for improved transport infrastructure and work for many. Still, one might argue that is better than nothing.
"People should go through the right channels". There was no legal channel those dead Afghans could have used. And they were used, by us, then abandoned and cut off.
"Why not simply bus irregular arrivals" - because Take Back Control doesn't allow us to dictate terms to the French about how they run their border.
English exceptionalism boggles the mind. Well, boggles mine anyway.
not sure of the latter)
Edit: now if they actually gave councils proper money, ringfenced if need be, to do something about public latrines. If it was good enough for the Victorians ... but we are receding from Victorian values towards barbarism.
Then a chap, who'd really read Mao, educated them.
And Paul thought: How little the universe knows about the nature of real cruelty.
And even if they did really care enough for this to be a top 3 voting issue, the incumbent lot are so grossly incompetent as for it to be a vote loser.
As always back to basics. Under any system we will need to be able to process asylum claims and some of those claimants we will want to intern whilst we decide.
Which means we can't sustain the idiocy of the Home Office and the lunacy of "the barge, the barge" as a solution. And yet anyone who points out that one barge isn't a solution, that you can't practically stick triple the safe number on there and there aren't enough barges anyway is accused of wanting the entire population of China to arrive tomorrow.
Shithouse Shah
Etc.
But don’t just talk it. Do it
As a group they are afraid of inflation, still think distance doesn't matter, taxes should not be raised, an infinite number of immigrants is achievable, globalisation will provide the best possible answer, and still think we can run a global military.
But the realities on the ground speak against this: we have run up an enormous amount of debt which we cannot deflate away, we cannot police our borders whilst equipping to fight a war in the Pacific, we are planning on suppressing wages by importing replacements, and we can no longer rely on goods from China.
In short: Boomer's wisdom is outdated, unrealistic, and will only create problems, not solve them
That is approx. 50% more than here.
380k would be 500k->750k people, allowing for larger households of migrants, and HMOs etc.
Edit: and possibly deep peat in that silted up valley-let.
Try dealing with the world as it is, not your figments of imagination.
I think the government agree hence things like future high street funding, but thr solutions are thinly spread or ineffective.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/13/extinction-rebellion-founder-ulez-tyres-slashed/
“The founder of Extinction Rebellion has hit out at Sadiq Khan’s ultra-low emissions zone (Ulez) as “intrusive” and “regressive” for the lowest-paid Londoners.
“Roger Hallam made the comments in a thread on social media site X, in which he also attacked “urban middle-class neo-liberal Left” thinkers behind the Mayor’s road charge.
“He was responding to a Guardian column by Prof Devi Sridhar that argued in favour of Ulez and low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs). Hallam criticised supporters of the schemes for a “total lack of sensitivity and self-awareness”, claiming it showed a “myopic privilege”.”
Year Population Increase
2019 67,012,883 93,942
2018 66,918,941 109,125
2017 66,809,816 171,425
2016 66,638,391 180,238
2015 66,458,153 292,173
2014 66,165,980 565,630
2013 65,600,350 323,367
2012 65,276,983 298,262
2011 64,978,721 319,865
2010 64,658,856 308,630
2009 64,350,226 343,033
2008 64,007,193 362,128
2007 63,645,065 415,430
2006 63,229,635 456,765
2005 62,772,870 480,629
2004 62,292,241 428,153
2003 61,864,088 440,052
2002 61,424,036 444,721
2001 60,979,315 434,293
2000 60,545,022 386,489
So they are building faster than the population is increasing. Excellent work by French society.
NEW THREAD
And what's the neo-liberal left? Is it better or worse than the liberal left?
Excuse my ignorance, as ever, but do the UK gov or civil service release figures on the tax benefit of legal immigrants.
For example if in 2023 the gov issued work visas to 300,000 people and once a cost for educating any dependents and a rough NHS charge was factored in then there was a nice net gain to the economy then it would surely make people more open to continued legal migration.
The gov could then calculate how many visas it could issue to essential staff who are unlikely to end up in the net tax positive set without scaring the horses and even really stupid people, like me, would say “ fair enough this legal immigration is a positive, it washes its own face”.
At the moment the general reaction can be that immigrants are just draining the country but if you can show that it’s a financial benefit as well as covering the shortfall in carers to look after your granny so you don’t have to wipe her arse it would be easier.
Over here there is a sizeable objection to those who are allowed to live here if they have certain wealth and pay a very beneficial, for them, tax rate. The gov are careful to release the total tax take from this cohort each year to demonstrate that while it’s not ideal there is a net positive which helps lance the boil.
The latter is easier despite being disliked which us presumably why it happens the most.