Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I wonder if the Norman invasion was over 1%?
I've heard 1-5% of the then population, over a period of years - the initial invasion was 10K or so, but then families and retainers were brought over.
I remember doing some research on this. The Huguenots were quite large, as was the Windward generation. Meaningful statistics are not available for the Viking or Angels/Jutes invasions but they were presumably significant. But I don't think we have ever seen anything like this.
The worst was when the bloody Saxons came over. The place has been going to the dogs ever since.
Be interesting to see what the % figures were for 1914 when 250,000 Belgians turned up in just a few months. I suppose it depends on whther we count all those British troops going the other way as emigrating
A lot was permanent emigration too, sadly.
Hercule Poirot harrumphs.
"It provided the Empire with the finest little grey cells in the world!"
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Alternatively you could increase taxation on things affluent oldies spend their money on = cruises and carveries for example.
Banning the age discrimination where oldies get things cheaper than younger people is another idea.
That's just tinkering. They need to be encouraged to work for longer. Alternatively we can stop moaning about immigration and acting like the immigrants are problem.
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I wonder if the Norman invasion was over 1%?
I've heard 1-5% of the then population, over a period of years - the initial invasion was 10K or so, but then families and retainers were brought over.
I remember doing some research on this. The Huguenots were quite large, as was the Windward generation. Meaningful statistics are not available for the Viking or Angels/Jutes invasions but they were presumably significant. But I don't think we have ever seen anything like this.
The worst was when the bloody Saxons came over. The place has been going to the dogs ever since.
Be interesting to see what the % figures were for 1914 when 250,000 Belgians turned up in just a few months. I suppose it depends on whther we count all those British troops going the other way as emigrating
A lot was permanent emigration too, sadly.
Hercule Poirot harrumphs.
"It provided the Empire with the finest little grey cells in the world!"
I was talking about the Tommies heading to Flanders!
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
Another option is fewer oldies.
Let them emigrate to places where the labour costs are cheaper and the winters are warmer.
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
Another option is fewer oldies.
Let them emigrate to places where the labour costs are cheaper and the winters are warmer.
it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
It is notable how, by design or accident, the tories have managed to get the anti-immigration ire focused on the Channel boats rather than the massive inward movements that are totally within the ambit of their control and enabled by them.
I have absolutely no doubt that that is deliberate.
The biggest driver by far of immigration are foreign students who in aggregate are keeping our Universities and colleges afloat. The government is reluctant to talk about that although it is one of our few successful growth export industries of recent years. The next biggest is family members of those who are already here. Awkward to deny that, creates lots of unsympathetic headlines.
And now we have the skills or labour shortage exemptions which don't say much good about the way our economy has been run in recent decades either. So let's talk about the boats, it was supposed to be easier until the Supreme Court took away the pretence.
What is ironic is the Conservatives and their client media weaponised immigration (at the time specifically EU migration) to their electoral advantage. Trans-EU migration was pretty much a confected "scandal". So Johnny Foreigner used our health and education services, but they paid their taxes too and assimilated into our society. If it were not for Brexit, I would be troubling the French or Spanish health service not ours, so you'd have needed less imported carers for my sort.
As a celt whose forebears have scratched a living on this island since the dawn of time I welcomed Suella Fernandez and her family onto my land. Why is she so determined to pull up the drawer bridge now it's her country?
The small boats and land crossings to Europe are leading us all down a very unpleasant dark alley. The EU genuinely needs to get a grip. Easier said than done.
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
More over 65’s need to work (my own parents are now working past 80, as they think they’d go senile in retirement).
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
Another option is fewer oldies.
Let them emigrate to places where the labour costs are cheaper and the winters are warmer.
Easier before Brexit.
Or the NHS stops chasing life expectancy increases.
I think 745,000 is an extraordinary number. Thank goodness it was all under our control.
When oh when will the public realise that the government does not want to do anything about immigration.
The deceit by both parties is laughable - the Cons: tens of thousands; Lab: the Cons have failed by not controlling immigration.
But what was that definition of insanity again?
The UK does not want to bring down immigration. I think plenty of Brexit voters, as an example, were sold a pup but their relative intelligence was done to death yesterday so I won't bang on about that again today.
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
Given that both life expectancy and healthy life expectancy have increased significantly post war, I see no reason why we should not be expecting people to work longer in old age. The retirement age in Norway has been 67 for decades.
It is interesting that alcohol got the lowest approval rate. We've moved a long way from a pub on every street corner.
Pubs, alcohol and cultural drinking are like football. There is an assumption that it is part of a universal way of UK life. It isn't. 37% of people go to pubs at least fortnightly. Nearly two thirds don't. Same with football. Most people never or almost never watch it.
Also, drinking at home is now a relatively inexpensive thing, especially when compared with either pubs or smoking.
(ONS says 20 king size filter are now £15. Can this be true?)
The pendulum will swing again. Alcohol isn’t going anywhere
I think that’s the biggest anti migrant race riot Europe has seen in many decades. And it was in Ireland, of all places
It was still mostly scallies looking for trouble, and it escalated as riots do, fuelled in part by misinformation as well (with special thanks in this regard to the despicable Conor McGregor). The group psychology of these things is interesting but tbh I don't think it says much more about anti-immigration sentiment in Ireland than the protests earlier this year.
Ireland is no more free of bigotry, idiocy and violence than anywhere else in Europe.
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Alternatively you could increase taxation on things affluent oldies spend their money on = cruises and carveries for example.
Banning the age discrimination where oldies get things cheaper than younger people is another idea.
That's just tinkering. They need to be encouraged to work for longer. Alternatively we can stop moaning about immigration and acting like the immigrants are problem.
Unless you significantly cut the value of the state pension then increasing the retirement age will only have a marginal effect.
Everyone I know assumes its going to be raised to 70 in any case.
Friend's uncle died recently. Sepsis. Had been bedridden for ages, in and out of hospital. It was missed by all the doctors in hospital. The only surprise would be if anyone was surprised that you can go into an NHS hospital with a reasonable chance of never getting out of it.
What was that Times front page the other day about the NHS being "toxic". It was literally toxic in the case of my mate's uncle. And many thousands of other cases also.
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
You can't solve a labour shortage by immigration any more than the myth of immigrants "taking our jobs".
Yes immigrants add to labour supply, but they also create new demand - and that demand includes structural demand on housing, school places etc and other things that don't exist yet, so need to be created and not just their demand for basic services.
Immigration is relatively neutral for supply and demand, labour shortages or unemployment is caused by an imbalance of prices and supply and demand, adding more immigrants adds both more supply and more demand so it cancels out.
If you want to solve labour shortages, then we need to see wages rise to the point that inefficient jobs are no longer affordable and inefficient businesses go out of business resulting in demand falling and the labour shortage is resolved that way. Its also how we can afford real terms pay rises and a better standard of living too.
I think that’s the biggest anti migrant race riot Europe has seen in many decades. And it was in Ireland, of all places
Sorry you missed it.
I was on an amazing foodie tuk tuk tour of Phnom Penh. Turns out Khmer food is brilliant and delicious - a mix of Thai Chinese and Vietnamese but with a herbal and umami quality all its own
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Alternatively you could increase taxation on things affluent oldies spend their money on = cruises and carveries for example.
Banning the age discrimination where oldies get things cheaper than younger people is another idea.
That's just tinkering. They need to be encouraged to work for longer. Alternatively we can stop moaning about immigration and acting like the immigrants are problem.
The problem is housing.
Build enough houses for an expanding population, and there’s much less of a problem with the immigration numbers.
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Alternatively you could increase taxation on things affluent oldies spend their money on = cruises and carveries for example.
Banning the age discrimination where oldies get things cheaper than younger people is another idea.
How about you must do 2 years work in social care after you turn 50 to qualify for the state pension (replacing the NICs nonsense).
Call it "National Service" to confuse everyone.
The problem being that skilled workers will no longer be doing their skilled work but work which is lower skilled and which they're probably not very good at.
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
More over 65’s need to work (my own parents are now working past 80, as they think they’d go senile in retirement).
I retired 2 years ago at 55, and sure as hell never going to work another second in my life. I've got far more important stuff to do.
I think that’s the biggest anti migrant race riot Europe has seen in many decades. And it was in Ireland, of all places
It was still mostly scallies looking for trouble, and it escalated as riots do, fuelled in part by misinformation as well (with special thanks in this regard to the despicable Conor McGregor). The group psychology of these things is interesting but tbh I don't think it says much more about anti-immigration sentiment in Ireland than the protests earlier this year.
Ireland is no more free of bigotry, idiocy and violence than anywhere else in Europe.
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I wonder if the Norman invasion was over 1%?
Remember, the Vikings also arrived in small boats.
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
You can't solve a labour shortage by immigration any more than the myth of immigrants "taking our jobs".
Yes immigrants add to labour supply, but they also create new demand - and that demand includes structural demand on housing, school places etc and other things that don't exist yet, so need to be created and not just their demand for basic services.
Immigration is relatively neutral for supply and demand, labour shortages or unemployment is caused by an imbalance of prices and supply and demand, adding more immigrants adds both more supply and more demand so it cancels out.
If you want to solve labour shortages, then we need to see wages rise to the point that inefficient jobs are no longer affordable and inefficient businesses go out of business resulting in demand falling and the labour shortage is resolved that way. Its also how we can afford real terms pay rises and a better standard of living too.
Depends what age the immigrants are. The ideal migration strategy would be to import at 22 (or 18 if you want that tuition income), export at 60.
Friend's uncle died recently. Sepsis. Had been bedridden for ages, in and out of hospital. It was missed by all the doctors in hospital. The only surprise would be if anyone was surprised that you can go into an NHS hospital with a reasonable chance of never getting out of it.
What was that Times front page the other day about the NHS being "toxic". It was literally toxic in the case of my mate's uncle. And many thousands of other cases also.
Friend's uncle died recently. Sepsis. Had been bedridden for ages, in and out of hospital. It was missed by all the doctors in hospital. The only surprise would be if anyone was surprised that you can go into an NHS hospital with a reasonable chance of never getting out of it.
What was that Times front page the other day about the NHS being "toxic". It was literally toxic in the case of my mate's uncle. And many thousands of other cases also.
Similar story of my elderly neighbour who went in with severe skin rashes and was given pain killers which made her constipated. No one in hospital noticed she was becoming severely distended and last week her bowel burst and she died.
The hospital are currently spending far more time trying to avoid responsibility than they did actually trying to help her.
I think that’s the biggest anti migrant race riot Europe has seen in many decades. And it was in Ireland, of all places
It was still mostly scallies looking for trouble, and it escalated as riots do, fuelled in part by misinformation as well (with special thanks in this regard to the despicable Conor McGregor). The group psychology of these things is interesting but tbh I don't think it says much more about anti-immigration sentiment in Ireland than the protests earlier this year.
Ireland is no more free of bigotry, idiocy and violence than anywhere else in Europe.
Perhaps. Not sure I agree - feels bigger than that
It is however quite amusing to see all the rabid Irish Remoaners on Twitter - who have spent seven years sneering at the racist Brexity Brits - suddenly looking decidedly awkward when confronted with racist Ireland
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
Another option is fewer oldies.
Let them emigrate to places where the labour costs are cheaper and the winters are warmer.
Easier before Brexit.
Or the NHS stops chasing life expectancy increases.
There's some rather interesting medical technology coming down the road.
If you reverse bone density loss, muscle mass loss... And/or we come up with a dementia cure (or rather cures for some of the forms of dementia), the landscape changes quite rapidly.
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
You can't solve a labour shortage by immigration any more than the myth of immigrants "taking our jobs".
Yes immigrants add to labour supply, but they also create new demand - and that demand includes structural demand on housing, school places etc and other things that don't exist yet, so need to be created and not just their demand for basic services.
Immigration is relatively neutral for supply and demand, labour shortages or unemployment is caused by an imbalance of prices and supply and demand, adding more immigrants adds both more supply and more demand so it cancels out.
If you want to solve labour shortages, then we need to see wages rise to the point that inefficient jobs are no longer affordable and inefficient businesses go out of business resulting in demand falling and the labour shortage is resolved that way. Its also how we can afford real terms pay rises and a better standard of living too.
Rather like the trivia of small boats, it was odd how so much of the debate on Brexit focused on how would farmers be able to get people to work for a pittance.
Endless focus on the marginal, while ignoring the important.
But the problem is that the Government is still massively increasing taxes by fiscal drag.
Giving small tax cuts funded by much bigger tax rises, isn't anything to be proud of.
Still, for the longer term rebalancing of the economy and taxes, I would be OK with another five years of fiscal drag if the next five years saw a further 2% per year cut in National Insurance - though Employers National Insurance needs dealing with too.
Yes, agree with this. Using fiscal drag to reduce NI is a good policy as it shifts the burden of tax from working people to non-working people. I'd like to see another 2% cut in NI next autumn and to continue until Employees NI is abolished. The fact that income from work attracts a higher rate of tax than income from idleness shows just how awful the nations priorities have been for the past 50 years. This move only addresses a small portion of it.
Absolutely not, we should be ringfencing NI to fund the JSA, state pension and some healthcare as it was created to do
On a far more important topic I am teaching my dog the 3 card trick using kibble under one of 3 cups which I move around. After two sessions I have got him to tap one cup with his paw to get the treat and have just introduced a second cup with nothing under it. Not moving anything yet.
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
Hence the government is raising the threshold of salary to £30k for skilled migrants who want to come to the UK
You don't get many 'skilled' workers for £30k currently.
Jenrick has this morning suggested £35k which is above the average salary
Friend's uncle died recently. Sepsis. Had been bedridden for ages, in and out of hospital. It was missed by all the doctors in hospital. The only surprise would be if anyone was surprised that you can go into an NHS hospital with a reasonable chance of never getting out of it.
What was that Times front page the other day about the NHS being "toxic". It was literally toxic in the case of my mate's uncle. And many thousands of other cases also.
Similar story of my elderly neighbour who went in with severe skin rashes and was given pain killers which made her constipated. No one in hospital noticed she was becoming severely distended and last week her bowel burst and she died.
The hospital are currently spending far more time trying to avoid responsibility than they did actually trying to help her.
Your last sentence is a perfect description of one of the major problems within the NHS.
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
You can't solve a labour shortage by immigration any more than the myth of immigrants "taking our jobs".
Yes immigrants add to labour supply, but they also create new demand - and that demand includes structural demand on housing, school places etc and other things that don't exist yet, so need to be created and not just their demand for basic services.
Immigration is relatively neutral for supply and demand, labour shortages or unemployment is caused by an imbalance of prices and supply and demand, adding more immigrants adds both more supply and more demand so it cancels out.
If you want to solve labour shortages, then we need to see wages rise to the point that inefficient jobs are no longer affordable and inefficient businesses go out of business resulting in demand falling and the labour shortage is resolved that way. Its also how we can afford real terms pay rises and a better standard of living too.
Depends what age the immigrants are. The ideal migration strategy would be to import at 22 (or 18 if you want that tuition income), export at 50.
Yes and no.
Some countries do that, they say you can come to work but have no right to settle and will have to emigrate afterwards. Wouldn't fit with our standards of human rights though.
But either way 18/22 year olds coming are going to need somewhere to live (housing), they're going to probably be fertile (maternity is one of the leading NHS costs for young people), and they're going to need schools for children etc, etc, etc
All that new demand needs satiating, and which means extra labour going to providing those things. The only way to have immigration not create that demand is if its netted off against what would be population decline, but we're not having population decline, we have births exceeding deaths anyway.
If you want to solve labour shortages, we need more efficiency, which means higher pay and no longer doing inefficient work. Immigration to solve the shortage is as futile as a dog chasing its tail (and it goes both ways for those who claim immigration causes unemployment, they're wrong too).
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
Another option is fewer oldies.
Let them emigrate to places where the labour costs are cheaper and the winters are warmer.
Easier before Brexit.
Or the NHS stops chasing life expectancy increases.
I note that the Irish Times was super keen to racially identify the Brazilian hero who whacked the knife man (and, indeed, well done him) yet in the very same article it refused to racially identify the actual knife man - merely saying he is a “naturalised Irish citizen who has been in Ireland for 20 years”. No mention that he is - it seems -Algerian
Its these lies and double standards which drive people nuts and make everything worse
More over 65’s need to work (my own parents are now working past 80, as they think they’d go senile in retirement).
I retired 2 years ago at 55, and sure as hell never going to work another second in my life. I've got far more important stuff to do.
Those of us in office jobs tend to underestimate the sheer wear and tear of 40 years of rushing about. I'm planning to retire by the end of next year when I'll be 74, because like you I've more interesting things to do, but I do think it's important to have a focus - a potential research degree in my case. Just "retire and put your feet up" is bad advice unless you're not well enough to do anything.
Friend's uncle died recently. Sepsis. Had been bedridden for ages, in and out of hospital. It was missed by all the doctors in hospital. The only surprise would be if anyone was surprised that you can go into an NHS hospital with a reasonable chance of never getting out of it.
What was that Times front page the other day about the NHS being "toxic". It was literally toxic in the case of my mate's uncle. And many thousands of other cases also.
Similar story of my elderly neighbour who went in with severe skin rashes and was given pain killers which made her constipated. No one in hospital noticed she was becoming severely distended and last week her bowel burst and she died.
The hospital are currently spending far more time trying to avoid responsibility than they did actually trying to help her.
The scary thing is that as soon as someone relates a story about the NHS such as yours or mine then instantly the person being told will respond with a similar story.
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Alternatively you could increase taxation on things affluent oldies spend their money on = cruises and carveries for example.
Banning the age discrimination where oldies get things cheaper than younger people is another idea.
That's just tinkering. They need to be encouraged to work for longer. Alternatively we can stop moaning about immigration and acting like the immigrants are problem.
The problem is housing.
Build enough houses for an expanding population, and there’s much less of a problem with the immigration numbers.
Yes but too much of that and you erode the greenbelt if you have more immigrants than needed
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
You can't solve a labour shortage by immigration any more than the myth of immigrants "taking our jobs".
Yes immigrants add to labour supply, but they also create new demand - and that demand includes structural demand on housing, school places etc and other things that don't exist yet, so need to be created and not just their demand for basic services.
Immigration is relatively neutral for supply and demand, labour shortages or unemployment is caused by an imbalance of prices and supply and demand, adding more immigrants adds both more supply and more demand so it cancels out.
If you want to solve labour shortages, then we need to see wages rise to the point that inefficient jobs are no longer affordable and inefficient businesses go out of business resulting in demand falling and the labour shortage is resolved that way. Its also how we can afford real terms pay rises and a better standard of living too.
Depends what age the immigrants are. The ideal migration strategy would be to import at 22 (or 18 if you want that tuition income), export at 50.
Yes and no.
Some countries do that, they say you can come to work but have no right to settle and will have to emigrate afterwards. Wouldn't fit with our standards of human rights though.
But either way 18/22 year olds coming are going to need somewhere to live (housing), they're going to probably be fertile (maternity is one of the leading NHS costs for young people), and they're going to need schools for children etc, etc, etc
All that new demand needs satiating, and which means extra labour going to providing those things. The only way to have immigration not create that demand is if its netted off against what would be population decline, but we're not having population decline, we have births exceeding deaths anyway.
If you want to solve labour shortages, we need more efficiency, which means higher pay and no longer doing inefficient work. Immigration to solve the shortage is as futile as a dog chasing its tail (and it goes both ways for those who claim immigration causes unemployment, they're wrong too).
Yet another comment which completely ignores the impending A.I. revolution - when the problem is likely to be too little work and too many idle workers
This is not a dig at @BartholomewRoberts - everyone on PB does this. It’s like A.I. isn’t happening
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
Given that both life expectancy and healthy life expectancy have increased significantly post war, I see no reason why we should not be expecting people to work longer in old age. The retirement age in Norway has been 67 for decades.
Friend's uncle died recently. Sepsis. Had been bedridden for ages, in and out of hospital. It was missed by all the doctors in hospital. The only surprise would be if anyone was surprised that you can go into an NHS hospital with a reasonable chance of never getting out of it.
What was that Times front page the other day about the NHS being "toxic". It was literally toxic in the case of my mate's uncle. And many thousands of other cases also.
How can people with learning disabilities be more at risk, physiologically? In terms of not being able to communicate symptoms I get it but how otherwise?
I note that the Irish Times was super keen to racially identify the Brazilian hero who whacked the knife man (and, indeed, well done him) yet in the very same article it refused to racially identify the actual knife man - merely saying he is a “naturalised Irish citizen who has been in Ireland for 20 years”. No mention that he is - it seems -Algerian
Its these lies and double standards which drive people nuts and make everything worse
Yeah that's really terrible, being alert to what might trigger far right rancids to whip up race hate.
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
Another option is fewer oldies.
Let them emigrate to places where the labour costs are cheaper and the winters are warmer.
Easier before Brexit.
Southern Europe isn't cheap enough.
Parts of Africa, Asia and maybe Latin America could be developed as 'retirement countries'.
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
You can't solve a labour shortage by immigration any more than the myth of immigrants "taking our jobs".
Yes immigrants add to labour supply, but they also create new demand - and that demand includes structural demand on housing, school places etc and other things that don't exist yet, so need to be created and not just their demand for basic services.
Immigration is relatively neutral for supply and demand, labour shortages or unemployment is caused by an imbalance of prices and supply and demand, adding more immigrants adds both more supply and more demand so it cancels out.
If you want to solve labour shortages, then we need to see wages rise to the point that inefficient jobs are no longer affordable and inefficient businesses go out of business resulting in demand falling and the labour shortage is resolved that way. Its also how we can afford real terms pay rises and a better standard of living too.
Depends what age the immigrants are. The ideal migration strategy would be to import at 22 (or 18 if you want that tuition income), export at 50.
Yes and no.
Some countries do that, they say you can come to work but have no right to settle and will have to emigrate afterwards. Wouldn't fit with our standards of human rights though.
But either way 18/22 year olds coming are going to need somewhere to live (housing), they're going to probably be fertile (maternity is one of the leading NHS costs for young people), and they're going to need schools for children etc, etc, etc
All that new demand needs satiating, and which means extra labour going to providing those things. The only way to have immigration not create that demand is if its netted off against what would be population decline, but we're not having population decline, we have births exceeding deaths anyway.
If you want to solve labour shortages, we need more efficiency, which means higher pay and no longer doing inefficient work. Immigration to solve the shortage is as futile as a dog chasing its tail (and it goes both ways for those who claim immigration causes unemployment, they're wrong too).
I meant rejoin the EU and give £1,000 to everyone who relocates to Spain at age 60.
Given old people live in empty houses with lots of spare bedrooms, you'd end up with a net increase in housing supply.
Maternity is super expensive but is nothing on 10+ years of social care.
A 25% voteshare, 5% below the 1997 total, is not a springboard for a May general election.
Sunak will want more time to narrow the gap and even if he doesn't is unlikely to want to cut 6 months from his premiership unnecessarily
Until the Autumn Statement I would have agreed with you. But the starting gun has been fired, and we're hearing that the ScotCon election machine is already being resourced.
The cat is out of the bag, and you can expect the media now to push a May election as the plan. Should Rishi turn frit again and bottle it, you won't get a better result in the autumn, it will be worse.
The lesson from so many past elections is that an early election is almost always better than a late election...
I still agree with HYUFD, though the Tories clearly want to keep both options open. If they're still 10-15 points behind in March, they certainly won't call a May election. The risk for them is as you say that a spring election will become the default, and they'll then look scared if they delay, like Callaghan.
I note that the Irish Times was super keen to racially identify the Brazilian hero who whacked the knife man (and, indeed, well done him) yet in the very same article it refused to racially identify the actual knife man - merely saying he is a “naturalised Irish citizen who has been in Ireland for 20 years”. No mention that he is - it seems -Algerian
Its these lies and double standards which drive people nuts and make everything worse
Yeah that's really terrible, being alert to what might trigger far right rancids to whip up race hate.
Either you mention race, or you don’t. Either it is significant, or it isn’t
This paper twisted the news - deliberately - so that the hero’s race was deemed important - Brazilian, yay! - and yet the villain’s race - Algerian, yikes - had to be hidden
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
Another option is fewer oldies.
Let them emigrate to places where the labour costs are cheaper and the winters are warmer.
Easier before Brexit.
Southern Europe isn't cheap enough.
Parts of Africa, Asia and maybe Latin America could be developed as 'retirement countries'.
I note that the Irish Times was super keen to racially identify the Brazilian hero who whacked the knife man (and, indeed, well done him) yet in the very same article it refused to racially identify the actual knife man - merely saying he is a “naturalised Irish citizen who has been in Ireland for 20 years”. No mention that he is - it seems -Algerian
Its these lies and double standards which drive people nuts and make everything worse
Yeah that's really terrible, being alert to what might trigger far right rancids to whip up race hate.
Its the denial and cover up which leads to distrust in the system.
it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
It is notable how, by design or accident, the tories have managed to get the anti-immigration ire focused on the Channel boats rather than the massive inward movements that are totally within the ambit of their control and enabled by them.
I have absolutely no doubt that that is deliberate.
The biggest driver by far of immigration are foreign students who in aggregate are keeping our Universities and colleges afloat. The government is reluctant to talk about that although it is one of our few successful growth export industries of recent years. The next biggest is family members of those who are already here. Awkward to deny that, creates lots of unsympathetic headlines.
And now we have the skills or labour shortage exemptions which don't say much good about the way our economy has been run in recent decades either. So let's talk about the boats, it was supposed to be easier until the Supreme Court took away the pretence.
How long are these students staying in University - if it truly is student migration then shouldn't there be broadly equal emigration and thus a net zero effect over time ?
Either i) Our universities are growing and growing and growing and growing with ever more students in each year OR ii) "Students" are staying forever - so in fact they're not really student immigrants for the stats if they spend 4 years studying and then 40 years working here
Or a post-COVID effect, with those who would have departed in 2023 not turning up in the the first place.
The flaw in this line of argument is that if all the students went home and weren't replaced we should have probably seen net emigration during the pandemic. (Spolier - we didn't).
We did see reduced immigration during the pandemic, as per the graph above. There are multiple different routes, so just because overseas student numbers dropped sharply doesn't mean other flows of immigration were affected similarly.
Their shipbuilding in particular will be highly competitive with other western offerings.
All of the RFA's Tide class tankers were built in South Korea. They went from order to being in service in about 5 years. Very impressive, but it would be politically impossible to have them built outside the UK now - see the Fleet Solid Support fiasco which has now been going on for 8 years without any steel being cut.
Of course - but we're now unlikely to build any surface ships for anyone else in the future.
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
Another option is fewer oldies.
Let them emigrate to places where the labour costs are cheaper and the winters are warmer.
Easier before Brexit.
Or the NHS stops chasing life expectancy increases.
The amount of money spent on forcing sick oldies to live a few weeks longer is out of all proportion to how useful that money would be if spent earlier in their lives.
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
You can't solve a labour shortage by immigration any more than the myth of immigrants "taking our jobs".
Yes immigrants add to labour supply, but they also create new demand - and that demand includes structural demand on housing, school places etc and other things that don't exist yet, so need to be created and not just their demand for basic services.
Immigration is relatively neutral for supply and demand, labour shortages or unemployment is caused by an imbalance of prices and supply and demand, adding more immigrants adds both more supply and more demand so it cancels out.
If you want to solve labour shortages, then we need to see wages rise to the point that inefficient jobs are no longer affordable and inefficient businesses go out of business resulting in demand falling and the labour shortage is resolved that way. Its also how we can afford real terms pay rises and a better standard of living too.
Depends what age the immigrants are. The ideal migration strategy would be to import at 22 (or 18 if you want that tuition income), export at 50.
Yes and no.
Some countries do that, they say you can come to work but have no right to settle and will have to emigrate afterwards. Wouldn't fit with our standards of human rights though.
But either way 18/22 year olds coming are going to need somewhere to live (housing), they're going to probably be fertile (maternity is one of the leading NHS costs for young people), and they're going to need schools for children etc, etc, etc
All that new demand needs satiating, and which means extra labour going to providing those things. The only way to have immigration not create that demand is if its netted off against what would be population decline, but we're not having population decline, we have births exceeding deaths anyway.
If you want to solve labour shortages, we need more efficiency, which means higher pay and no longer doing inefficient work. Immigration to solve the shortage is as futile as a dog chasing its tail (and it goes both ways for those who claim immigration causes unemployment, they're wrong too).
Yet another comment which completely ignores the impending A.I. revolution - when the problem is likely to be too little work and too many idle workers
This is not a dig at @BartholomewRoberts - everyone on PB does this. It’s like A.I. isn’t happening
Because its not.
Its evolution not revolution.
For centuries some old jobs have been automated, and people find new jobs to do instead. AI is no different to robotics, machinery, assembly lines or any other form of technology we've had since the industrial revolution began.
I note that the Irish Times was super keen to racially identify the Brazilian hero who whacked the knife man (and, indeed, well done him) yet in the very same article it refused to racially identify the actual knife man - merely saying he is a “naturalised Irish citizen who has been in Ireland for 20 years”. No mention that he is - it seems -Algerian
Its these lies and double standards which drive people nuts and make everything worse
Yeah that's really terrible, being alert to what might trigger far right rancids to whip up race hate.
Either you mention race, or you don’t. Either it is significant, or it isn’t
This paper twisted the news - deliberately - so that the hero’s race was deemed important - Brazilian, yay! - and yet the villain’s race - Algerian, yikes - had to be hidden
Just report the damn news
On the BBC
Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) Micheál Martin has just spoken to the press in Dublin.
He condemns the rioting and pays tribute to the work of the police, saying that the scenes in the Irish capital are not "who we are as a people".
"Ireland has built a modern and inclusive society," he says.
"It is something precious that we should all work to hold and we understand the need to respect other, the need to respect difference, and the need to respect the dignity of every human being.
"This is something we should hold precious and we should collectively as a society come together to recommit to those fundamental values."
I mean, I very strongly agree with him but boy does this have echoes of simply not listening to those at the sharper end of the practical consequences of immigration.
It is interesting that alcohol got the lowest approval rate. We've moved a long way from a pub on every street corner.
Pubs, alcohol and cultural drinking are like football. There is an assumption that it is part of a universal way of UK life. It isn't. 37% of people go to pubs at least fortnightly. Nearly two thirds don't. Same with football. Most people never or almost never watch it.
Also, drinking at home is now a relatively inexpensive thing, especially when compared with either pubs or smoking.
(ONS says 20 king size filter are now £15. Can this be true?)
More like £17 in London. I've finally kicked them for vaping (a cheat but still) and it's saving me a packet.
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
You can't solve a labour shortage by immigration any more than the myth of immigrants "taking our jobs".
Yes immigrants add to labour supply, but they also create new demand - and that demand includes structural demand on housing, school places etc and other things that don't exist yet, so need to be created and not just their demand for basic services.
Immigration is relatively neutral for supply and demand, labour shortages or unemployment is caused by an imbalance of prices and supply and demand, adding more immigrants adds both more supply and more demand so it cancels out.
If you want to solve labour shortages, then we need to see wages rise to the point that inefficient jobs are no longer affordable and inefficient businesses go out of business resulting in demand falling and the labour shortage is resolved that way. Its also how we can afford real terms pay rises and a better standard of living too.
Depends what age the immigrants are. The ideal migration strategy would be to import at 22 (or 18 if you want that tuition income), export at 50.
Yes and no.
Some countries do that, they say you can come to work but have no right to settle and will have to emigrate afterwards. Wouldn't fit with our standards of human rights though.
But either way 18/22 year olds coming are going to need somewhere to live (housing), they're going to probably be fertile (maternity is one of the leading NHS costs for young people), and they're going to need schools for children etc, etc, etc
All that new demand needs satiating, and which means extra labour going to providing those things. The only way to have immigration not create that demand is if its netted off against what would be population decline, but we're not having population decline, we have births exceeding deaths anyway.
If you want to solve labour shortages, we need more efficiency, which means higher pay and no longer doing inefficient work. Immigration to solve the shortage is as futile as a dog chasing its tail (and it goes both ways for those who claim immigration causes unemployment, they're wrong too).
Yet another comment which completely ignores the impending A.I. revolution - when the problem is likely to be too little work and too many idle workers
This is not a dig at @BartholomewRoberts - everyone on PB does this. It’s like A.I. isn’t happening
Isn't this what people said about the Agricultural revolution too? And the industrial revolution?
Massive disruption in the labour market, the movement of people to cities, productivity gains and so on. But ultimately people carried on working. But now only 1% of people on farms.
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
Another option is fewer oldies.
Let them emigrate to places where the labour costs are cheaper and the winters are warmer.
A 25% voteshare, 5% below the 1997 total, is not a springboard for a May general election.
Sunak will want more time to narrow the gap and even if he doesn't is unlikely to want to cut 6 months from his premiership unnecessarily
Until the Autumn Statement I would have agreed with you. But the starting gun has been fired, and we're hearing that the ScotCon election machine is already being resourced.
The cat is out of the bag, and you can expect the media now to push a May election as the plan. Should Rishi turn frit again and bottle it, you won't get a better result in the autumn, it will be worse.
The lesson from so many past elections is that an early election is almost always better than a late election...
I still agree with HYUFD, though the Tories clearly want to keep both options open. If they're still 10-15 points behind in March, they certainly won't call a May election. The risk for them is as you say that a spring election will become the default, and they'll then look scared if they delay, like Callaghan.
And Brown. It is a very easy trap for a government to fall into.
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
You can't solve a labour shortage by immigration any more than the myth of immigrants "taking our jobs".
Yes immigrants add to labour supply, but they also create new demand - and that demand includes structural demand on housing, school places etc and other things that don't exist yet, so need to be created and not just their demand for basic services.
Immigration is relatively neutral for supply and demand, labour shortages or unemployment is caused by an imbalance of prices and supply and demand, adding more immigrants adds both more supply and more demand so it cancels out.
If you want to solve labour shortages, then we need to see wages rise to the point that inefficient jobs are no longer affordable and inefficient businesses go out of business resulting in demand falling and the labour shortage is resolved that way. Its also how we can afford real terms pay rises and a better standard of living too.
For sure immigrants create additional demand, so for each vacant position you need to have 3 immigrants or whatever. But as long as the immigrants have a far higher propensity to work than the domestic population owing to their age structure then eventually you will have enough immigrants to solve the problem created by demographics plus the pensions system. The alternative is to raise the retirement age. The wage rise required to restore equilibrium would make social care and large parts of the public sector unviable. There are no easy solutions - population ageing is a really tricky problem. But at least let's acknowledge what our underlying problem is, instead of acting like the surge in immigration is some kind of invasion that has no roots in our chronic labour shortage.
I note that the Irish Times was super keen to racially identify the Brazilian hero who whacked the knife man (and, indeed, well done him) yet in the very same article it refused to racially identify the actual knife man - merely saying he is a “naturalised Irish citizen who has been in Ireland for 20 years”. No mention that he is - it seems -Algerian
Its these lies and double standards which drive people nuts and make everything worse
Yeah that's really terrible, being alert to what might trigger far right rancids to whip up race hate.
What they are doing plays to the "far right rancids" - who use the obfustication as Proof of The Conspiracy.
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
You can't solve a labour shortage by immigration any more than the myth of immigrants "taking our jobs".
Yes immigrants add to labour supply, but they also create new demand - and that demand includes structural demand on housing, school places etc and other things that don't exist yet, so need to be created and not just their demand for basic services.
Immigration is relatively neutral for supply and demand, labour shortages or unemployment is caused by an imbalance of prices and supply and demand, adding more immigrants adds both more supply and more demand so it cancels out.
If you want to solve labour shortages, then we need to see wages rise to the point that inefficient jobs are no longer affordable and inefficient businesses go out of business resulting in demand falling and the labour shortage is resolved that way. Its also how we can afford real terms pay rises and a better standard of living too.
Depends what age the immigrants are. The ideal migration strategy would be to import at 22 (or 18 if you want that tuition income), export at 50.
Yes and no.
Some countries do that, they say you can come to work but have no right to settle and will have to emigrate afterwards. Wouldn't fit with our standards of human rights though.
But either way 18/22 year olds coming are going to need somewhere to live (housing), they're going to probably be fertile (maternity is one of the leading NHS costs for young people), and they're going to need schools for children etc, etc, etc
All that new demand needs satiating, and which means extra labour going to providing those things. The only way to have immigration not create that demand is if its netted off against what would be population decline, but we're not having population decline, we have births exceeding deaths anyway.
If you want to solve labour shortages, we need more efficiency, which means higher pay and no longer doing inefficient work. Immigration to solve the shortage is as futile as a dog chasing its tail (and it goes both ways for those who claim immigration causes unemployment, they're wrong too).
I meant rejoin the EU and give £1,000 to everyone who relocates to Spain at age 60.
Given old people live in empty houses with lots of spare bedrooms, you'd end up with a net increase in housing supply.
Maternity is super expensive but is nothing on 10+ years of social care.
Though for many people the ideal way to deal with Spain was to retire at 60, spend ten to twenty healthy years in Spain enjoying the sun and pool (often while keeping a second home in the UK), and enjoy your free time etc there, then return back to the UK when your health deteriorates and you need care.
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
You can't solve a labour shortage by immigration any more than the myth of immigrants "taking our jobs".
Yes immigrants add to labour supply, but they also create new demand - and that demand includes structural demand on housing, school places etc and other things that don't exist yet, so need to be created and not just their demand for basic services.
Immigration is relatively neutral for supply and demand, labour shortages or unemployment is caused by an imbalance of prices and supply and demand, adding more immigrants adds both more supply and more demand so it cancels out.
If you want to solve labour shortages, then we need to see wages rise to the point that inefficient jobs are no longer affordable and inefficient businesses go out of business resulting in demand falling and the labour shortage is resolved that way. Its also how we can afford real terms pay rises and a better standard of living too.
Depends what age the immigrants are. The ideal migration strategy would be to import at 22 (or 18 if you want that tuition income), export at 50.
Yes and no.
Some countries do that, they say you can come to work but have no right to settle and will have to emigrate afterwards. Wouldn't fit with our standards of human rights though.
But either way 18/22 year olds coming are going to need somewhere to live (housing), they're going to probably be fertile (maternity is one of the leading NHS costs for young people), and they're going to need schools for children etc, etc, etc
All that new demand needs satiating, and which means extra labour going to providing those things. The only way to have immigration not create that demand is if its netted off against what would be population decline, but we're not having population decline, we have births exceeding deaths anyway.
If you want to solve labour shortages, we need more efficiency, which means higher pay and no longer doing inefficient work. Immigration to solve the shortage is as futile as a dog chasing its tail (and it goes both ways for those who claim immigration causes unemployment, they're wrong too).
Yet another comment which completely ignores the impending A.I. revolution - when the problem is likely to be too little work and too many idle workers
This is not a dig at @BartholomewRoberts - everyone on PB does this. It’s like A.I. isn’t happening
Because its not.
Its evolution not revolution.
For centuries some old jobs have been automated, and people find new jobs to do instead. AI is no different to robotics, machinery, assembly lines or any other form of technology we've had since the industrial revolution began.
No, AI is going to be much closer to revolution than evolution. Much more like the Industrial Revolution - but likely even faster
And that utterly transformed life and patterns of work, for everyone
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
Another option is fewer oldies.
Let them emigrate to places where the labour costs are cheaper and the winters are warmer.
Easier before Brexit.
Or the NHS stops chasing life expectancy increases.
Quite a lot of these students end up staying here.
The idea then that they somehow shouldn't be counted as some suggest strikes me as absurd
I'm a statistician (sometimes). I'm all for counting.
We could present the numbers differently, so present the students number separately and only count those who stay in the long-term immigration number. But that would only scratch the surface of the problem. The problem is that right-wing governments and media often seek to misrepresent immigration, which gives the public the idea that these immigration figures are mostly people coming over in small boats when they're not.
The public are generally supportive of overseas students studying in the UK, of immigrants coming to work in the health and social care sector, and of highly-paid immigrants coming over. They're fairly supportive of people bringing some family with them. Those all make up the bulk of these figures. But public discourse is undermined if people are wrongly led to believe that most immigrants are asylum seekers or, indeed, "fake" asylum seeking "scroungers".
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
You can't solve a labour shortage by immigration any more than the myth of immigrants "taking our jobs".
Yes immigrants add to labour supply, but they also create new demand - and that demand includes structural demand on housing, school places etc and other things that don't exist yet, so need to be created and not just their demand for basic services.
Immigration is relatively neutral for supply and demand, labour shortages or unemployment is caused by an imbalance of prices and supply and demand, adding more immigrants adds both more supply and more demand so it cancels out.
If you want to solve labour shortages, then we need to see wages rise to the point that inefficient jobs are no longer affordable and inefficient businesses go out of business resulting in demand falling and the labour shortage is resolved that way. Its also how we can afford real terms pay rises and a better standard of living too.
Depends what age the immigrants are. The ideal migration strategy would be to import at 22 (or 18 if you want that tuition income), export at 50.
Yes and no.
Some countries do that, they say you can come to work but have no right to settle and will have to emigrate afterwards. Wouldn't fit with our standards of human rights though.
But either way 18/22 year olds coming are going to need somewhere to live (housing), they're going to probably be fertile (maternity is one of the leading NHS costs for young people), and they're going to need schools for children etc, etc, etc
All that new demand needs satiating, and which means extra labour going to providing those things. The only way to have immigration not create that demand is if its netted off against what would be population decline, but we're not having population decline, we have births exceeding deaths anyway.
If you want to solve labour shortages, we need more efficiency, which means higher pay and no longer doing inefficient work. Immigration to solve the shortage is as futile as a dog chasing its tail (and it goes both ways for those who claim immigration causes unemployment, they're wrong too).
I meant rejoin the EU and give £1,000 to everyone who relocates to Spain at age 60.
Given old people live in empty houses with lots of spare bedrooms, you'd end up with a net increase in housing supply.
Maternity is super expensive but is nothing on 10+ years of social care.
Several countries (including New Zealand) have already enacted measures to prevent immigration there becoming what they term social dumping.
It's like selling risk on the financial markets. Assuming you can sell it, the buyers either have to be insane, or will charge you the same effective cost as keeping it.
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
More over 65’s need to work (my own parents are now working past 80, as they think they’d go senile in retirement).
I retired 2 years ago at 55, and sure as hell never going to work another second in my life. I've got far more important stuff to do.
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
Immigration is just trying to keep the Ponzi scheme afloat. It just can kicks to create even more old people in the future.
The problem of people spending more over a lifetime than their economic output isn't a problem which can be solved by immigration in the long term.
Quite a lot of these students end up staying here.
The idea then that they somehow shouldn't be counted as some suggest strikes me as absurd
I'm a statistician (sometimes). I'm all for counting.
We could present the numbers differently, so present the students number separately and only count those who stay in the long-term immigration number. But that would only scratch the surface of the problem. The problem is that right-wing governments and media often seek to misrepresent immigration, which gives the public the idea that these immigration figures are mostly people coming over in small boats when they're not.
The public are generally supportive of overseas students studying in the UK, of immigrants coming to work in the health and social care sector, and of highly-paid immigrants coming over. They're fairly supportive of people bringing some family with them. Those all make up the bulk of these figures. But public discourse is undermined if people are wrongly led to believe that most immigrants are asylum seekers or, indeed, "fake" asylum seeking "scroungers".
Who scrounge because we don't let them work. Its a bloody mess.
I think 745,000 is an extraordinary number. Thank goodness it was all under our control.
When oh when will the public realise that the government does not want to do anything about immigration.
The deceit by both parties is laughable - the Cons: tens of thousands; Lab: the Cons have failed by not controlling immigration.
But what was that definition of insanity again?
The UK does not want to bring down immigration. I think plenty of Brexit voters, as an example, were sold a pup but their relative intelligence was done to death yesterday so I won't bang on about that again today.
Where the immigrants come from and where they go to needs to be know.
An ending of Eastern European migration into the Leave areas of the Midlands and North with an increase of none European migrants to the cities should satisfy most people on both sides.
The first aspect has certainly happened according to the data and my 'voices at the supermarket' test.
I note that the Irish Times was super keen to racially identify the Brazilian hero who whacked the knife man (and, indeed, well done him) yet in the very same article it refused to racially identify the actual knife man - merely saying he is a “naturalised Irish citizen who has been in Ireland for 20 years”. No mention that he is - it seems -Algerian
Its these lies and double standards which drive people nuts and make everything worse
Yeah that's really terrible, being alert to what might trigger far right rancids to whip up race hate.
Its the denial and cover up which leads to distrust in the system.
Or more prosaically it's racists looking for an excuse to 'race'.
Friend's uncle died recently. Sepsis. Had been bedridden for ages, in and out of hospital. It was missed by all the doctors in hospital. The only surprise would be if anyone was surprised that you can go into an NHS hospital with a reasonable chance of never getting out of it.
What was that Times front page the other day about the NHS being "toxic". It was literally toxic in the case of my mate's uncle. And many thousands of other cases also.
How can people with learning disabilities be more at risk, physiologically? In terms of not being able to communicate symptoms I get it but how otherwise?
I think (but do not know) they are more likely to suffer an injury, and therefore more likely to develop sepsis from that injury.
I note that the Irish Times was super keen to racially identify the Brazilian hero who whacked the knife man (and, indeed, well done him) yet in the very same article it refused to racially identify the actual knife man - merely saying he is a “naturalised Irish citizen who has been in Ireland for 20 years”. No mention that he is - it seems -Algerian
Its these lies and double standards which drive people nuts and make everything worse
Yeah that's really terrible, being alert to what might trigger far right rancids to whip up race hate.
Either you mention race, or you don’t. Either it is significant, or it isn’t
This paper twisted the news - deliberately - so that the hero’s race was deemed important - Brazilian, yay! - and yet the villain’s race - Algerian, yikes - had to be hidden
Just report the damn news
On the BBC
Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) Micheál Martin has just spoken to the press in Dublin.
He condemns the rioting and pays tribute to the work of the police, saying that the scenes in the Irish capital are not "who we are as a people".
"Ireland has built a modern and inclusive society," he says.
"It is something precious that we should all work to hold and we understand the need to respect other, the need to respect difference, and the need to respect the dignity of every human being.
"This is something we should hold precious and we should collectively as a society come together to recommit to those fundamental values."
I mean, I very strongly agree with him but boy does this have echoes of simply not listening to those at the sharper end of the practical consequences of immigration.
I’m not even sure I agree with him
One of the problems of recent immigration into Europe is that some of the migrants don’t actually want to be “included”
They want to live in their own cultures, with their own laws and values, even as they benefit from the prosperity and generosity of the host nations, even as they sometimes actively despise the mores of the host nations
Of course this is not all migrants. It is not even a majority. But it is a large enough minority to be a massive problem which is getting worse
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
You can't solve a labour shortage by immigration any more than the myth of immigrants "taking our jobs".
Yes immigrants add to labour supply, but they also create new demand - and that demand includes structural demand on housing, school places etc and other things that don't exist yet, so need to be created and not just their demand for basic services.
Immigration is relatively neutral for supply and demand, labour shortages or unemployment is caused by an imbalance of prices and supply and demand, adding more immigrants adds both more supply and more demand so it cancels out.
If you want to solve labour shortages, then we need to see wages rise to the point that inefficient jobs are no longer affordable and inefficient businesses go out of business resulting in demand falling and the labour shortage is resolved that way. Its also how we can afford real terms pay rises and a better standard of living too.
Depends what age the immigrants are. The ideal migration strategy would be to import at 22 (or 18 if you want that tuition income), export at 50.
Yes and no.
Some countries do that, they say you can come to work but have no right to settle and will have to emigrate afterwards. Wouldn't fit with our standards of human rights though.
But either way 18/22 year olds coming are going to need somewhere to live (housing), they're going to probably be fertile (maternity is one of the leading NHS costs for young people), and they're going to need schools for children etc, etc, etc
All that new demand needs satiating, and which means extra labour going to providing those things. The only way to have immigration not create that demand is if its netted off against what would be population decline, but we're not having population decline, we have births exceeding deaths anyway.
If you want to solve labour shortages, we need more efficiency, which means higher pay and no longer doing inefficient work. Immigration to solve the shortage is as futile as a dog chasing its tail (and it goes both ways for those who claim immigration causes unemployment, they're wrong too).
Yet another comment which completely ignores the impending A.I. revolution - when the problem is likely to be too little work and too many idle workers
This is not a dig at @BartholomewRoberts - everyone on PB does this. It’s like A.I. isn’t happening
Because its not.
Its evolution not revolution.
For centuries some old jobs have been automated, and people find new jobs to do instead. AI is no different to robotics, machinery, assembly lines or any other form of technology we've had since the industrial revolution began.
No, AI is going to be much closer to revolution than evolution. Much more like the Industrial Revolution - but likely even faster
And that utterly transformed life and patterns of work, for everyone
Didn't hunter gatherers spend most of their time lounging around? And then some idiot invented farming and it's all been downhill from there.
Agricultural Revolution > Herring Fishing Industrial Revolution > child labour and losing your fingers in a mill Computers > Microsoft Excel Internet > interminable Teams calls
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
You can't solve a labour shortage by immigration any more than the myth of immigrants "taking our jobs".
Yes immigrants add to labour supply, but they also create new demand - and that demand includes structural demand on housing, school places etc and other things that don't exist yet, so need to be created and not just their demand for basic services.
Immigration is relatively neutral for supply and demand, labour shortages or unemployment is caused by an imbalance of prices and supply and demand, adding more immigrants adds both more supply and more demand so it cancels out.
If you want to solve labour shortages, then we need to see wages rise to the point that inefficient jobs are no longer affordable and inefficient businesses go out of business resulting in demand falling and the labour shortage is resolved that way. Its also how we can afford real terms pay rises and a better standard of living too.
For sure immigrants create additional demand, so for each vacant position you need to have 3 immigrants or whatever. But as long as the immigrants have a far higher propensity to work than the domestic population owing to their age structure then eventually you will have enough immigrants to solve the problem created by demographics plus the pensions system. The alternative is to raise the retirement age. The wage rise required to restore equilibrium would make social care and large parts of the public sector unviable. There are no easy solutions - population ageing is a really tricky problem. But at least let's acknowledge what our underlying problem is, instead of acting like the surge in immigration is some kind of invasion that has no roots in our chronic labour shortage.
Except you're not looking at the structural demand element.
Yes migrants have a higher propensity to work than the domestic population owing to their age structure, but they will retire eventually themselves, so you are just time-shifting that demand.
However there is also the structural demand element. A stable population doesn't need anywhere near as much growth in investment in housing, roads, hospitals, schools and everything else. A growing population does - or it leads to a collapse in standards and efficiency.
If the entire net benefit of a growing population is absorbed by the entire net cost of a growing population, then you can never solve a shortage by growing the population. Whether you import 1, 3, or 1000 people for the job.
And that is evidenced by the fact that developed countries across the planet, regardless of how much their population is, their density is etc have full employment - or if not full employment, its due to imbalances between supply and demand for other structural reasons, not population growth.
I note that the Irish Times was super keen to racially identify the Brazilian hero who whacked the knife man (and, indeed, well done him) yet in the very same article it refused to racially identify the actual knife man - merely saying he is a “naturalised Irish citizen who has been in Ireland for 20 years”. No mention that he is - it seems -Algerian
Its these lies and double standards which drive people nuts and make everything worse
Yeah that's really terrible, being alert to what might trigger far right rancids to whip up race hate.
What they are doing plays to the "far right rancids" - who use the obfustication as Proof of The Conspiracy.
Time to get in front of the problem.
Anyone who doubts the problem should watch BBC's Hometown documentary:
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
You can't solve a labour shortage by immigration any more than the myth of immigrants "taking our jobs".
Yes immigrants add to labour supply, but they also create new demand - and that demand includes structural demand on housing, school places etc and other things that don't exist yet, so need to be created and not just their demand for basic services.
Immigration is relatively neutral for supply and demand, labour shortages or unemployment is caused by an imbalance of prices and supply and demand, adding more immigrants adds both more supply and more demand so it cancels out.
If you want to solve labour shortages, then we need to see wages rise to the point that inefficient jobs are no longer affordable and inefficient businesses go out of business resulting in demand falling and the labour shortage is resolved that way. Its also how we can afford real terms pay rises and a better standard of living too.
Depends what age the immigrants are. The ideal migration strategy would be to import at 22 (or 18 if you want that tuition income), export at 50.
Yes and no.
Some countries do that, they say you can come to work but have no right to settle and will have to emigrate afterwards. Wouldn't fit with our standards of human rights though.
But either way 18/22 year olds coming are going to need somewhere to live (housing), they're going to probably be fertile (maternity is one of the leading NHS costs for young people), and they're going to need schools for children etc, etc, etc
All that new demand needs satiating, and which means extra labour going to providing those things. The only way to have immigration not create that demand is if its netted off against what would be population decline, but we're not having population decline, we have births exceeding deaths anyway.
If you want to solve labour shortages, we need more efficiency, which means higher pay and no longer doing inefficient work. Immigration to solve the shortage is as futile as a dog chasing its tail (and it goes both ways for those who claim immigration causes unemployment, they're wrong too).
Yet another comment which completely ignores the impending A.I. revolution - when the problem is likely to be too little work and too many idle workers
This is not a dig at @BartholomewRoberts - everyone on PB does this. It’s like A.I. isn’t happening
Because its not.
Its evolution not revolution.
For centuries some old jobs have been automated, and people find new jobs to do instead. AI is no different to robotics, machinery, assembly lines or any other form of technology we've had since the industrial revolution began.
No, AI is going to be much closer to revolution than evolution. Much more like the Industrial Revolution - but likely even faster
And that utterly transformed life and patterns of work, for everyone
Didn't hunter gatherers spend most of their time lounging around? And then some idiot invented farming and it's all been downhill from there.
Agricultural Revolution > Herring Fishing Industrial Revolution > child labour and losing your fingers in a mill Computers > Microsoft Excel Internet > interminable Teams calls
According to archaeological evidence, and the remaining hunter gatherer tribes, they spent their days in warfare, murder, rape....
I note that the Irish Times was super keen to racially identify the Brazilian hero who whacked the knife man (and, indeed, well done him) yet in the very same article it refused to racially identify the actual knife man - merely saying he is a “naturalised Irish citizen who has been in Ireland for 20 years”. No mention that he is - it seems -Algerian
Its these lies and double standards which drive people nuts and make everything worse
Yeah that's really terrible, being alert to what might trigger far right rancids to whip up race hate.
I note that the Irish Times was super keen to racially identify the Brazilian hero who whacked the knife man (and, indeed, well done him) yet in the very same article it refused to racially identify the actual knife man - merely saying he is a “naturalised Irish citizen who has been in Ireland for 20 years”. No mention that he is - it seems -Algerian
Its these lies and double standards which drive people nuts and make everything worse
Yeah that's really terrible, being alert to what might trigger far right rancids to whip up race hate.
Its the denial and cover up which leads to distrust in the system.
Or more prosaically it's racists looking for an excuse to 'race'.
Possibly.
But if there's less to 'race' then that reduces the problem to begin with.
There also happens to have been a newsworthy murder trial involving an immigrant recently:
The immigration numbers are made up. There may be a chance of recording inward immigration -though am not sure how they differentiate between tourists and immigrants. However emigrants are only recorded by asking people in airports to fill in a survey. Both my children have emigrated -to Australia and Spain, my late brother lived in Budapest but was "resident" in the UK despite not having visited for 5 years. None are recorded as leaving the UK.
Looking at the violence in Dublin last night, and the “election” of Wilders, it’s hard not to think Europe is heading for some major crisis centred on migration and culture wars and terror and all that jazz
It’s very cynical, but the Tories might calculate that the longer they wait the greater the chance some catastrophic black swan will break the arm of history - and give them a fighting chance
Yes, the Tories should run an election on their record on immigration...
@EdConwaySky Hard to put into words just how enormous the recent flows of migration into UK are, so this chart 👇 is prob a better place to start. This country has NEVER seen net migration as high as this. Look at the population-adjusted figures going back to 1850. It’s totally unprecedented.
@PickardJE it is objectively quite funny that the biggest surge in immigration in British history came *after* Brexit
I am not desperate to go down this road once again but does it ever cross your mind that with freedom of movement we simply had no idea how many people were coming here, not even to the nearest million, and what we are now seeing is the underlying picture being exposed with slightly better statistics?
As the three countries of origin which dominate the list for the most recent figures are India, Nigeria and China, it does not.
But the millions of east Europeans that came here during freedom of movement has slowed markedly creating demand for other sources.
There is only one reliable way of cutting immigration, and that is to raise the retirement age. An ever increasing number of non-working pensioners with high disposable incomes demanding labour intensive services creates an insatiable demand for working age labour. High immigration and high numbers of pensioners are two sides of the same coin.
Tax wealth not work.
Part of the solution, but in the next 20 years we are going to see the number of over 65s rise from 13mn to 18mn. Immigration is only going one way. There really are only two solutions - immigration or more over 65s working. If you have an ever increasing % of your population out of the labour force, you are going to create ever stronger pressure on the labour force to grow from some other source. It's not rocket science.
You can't solve a labour shortage by immigration any more than the myth of immigrants "taking our jobs".
Yes immigrants add to labour supply, but they also create new demand - and that demand includes structural demand on housing, school places etc and other things that don't exist yet, so need to be created and not just their demand for basic services.
Immigration is relatively neutral for supply and demand, labour shortages or unemployment is caused by an imbalance of prices and supply and demand, adding more immigrants adds both more supply and more demand so it cancels out.
If you want to solve labour shortages, then we need to see wages rise to the point that inefficient jobs are no longer affordable and inefficient businesses go out of business resulting in demand falling and the labour shortage is resolved that way. Its also how we can afford real terms pay rises and a better standard of living too.
Depends what age the immigrants are. The ideal migration strategy would be to import at 22 (or 18 if you want that tuition income), export at 50.
Yes and no.
Some countries do that, they say you can come to work but have no right to settle and will have to emigrate afterwards. Wouldn't fit with our standards of human rights though.
But either way 18/22 year olds coming are going to need somewhere to live (housing), they're going to probably be fertile (maternity is one of the leading NHS costs for young people), and they're going to need schools for children etc, etc, etc
All that new demand needs satiating, and which means extra labour going to providing those things. The only way to have immigration not create that demand is if its netted off against what would be population decline, but we're not having population decline, we have births exceeding deaths anyway.
If you want to solve labour shortages, we need more efficiency, which means higher pay and no longer doing inefficient work. Immigration to solve the shortage is as futile as a dog chasing its tail (and it goes both ways for those who claim immigration causes unemployment, they're wrong too).
Yet another comment which completely ignores the impending A.I. revolution - when the problem is likely to be too little work and too many idle workers
This is not a dig at @BartholomewRoberts - everyone on PB does this. It’s like A.I. isn’t happening
Because its not.
Its evolution not revolution.
For centuries some old jobs have been automated, and people find new jobs to do instead. AI is no different to robotics, machinery, assembly lines or any other form of technology we've had since the industrial revolution began.
No, AI is going to be much closer to revolution than evolution. Much more like the Industrial Revolution - but likely even faster
And that utterly transformed life and patterns of work, for everyone
Didn't hunter gatherers spend most of their time lounging around? And then some idiot invented farming and it's all been downhill from there.
Agricultural Revolution > Herring Fishing Industrial Revolution > child labour and losing your fingers in a mill Computers > Microsoft Excel Internet > interminable Teams calls
According to archaeological evidence, and the remaining hunter gatherer tribes, they spent their days in warfare, murder, rape....
But the problem is that the Government is still massively increasing taxes by fiscal drag.
Giving small tax cuts funded by much bigger tax rises, isn't anything to be proud of.
Still, for the longer term rebalancing of the economy and taxes, I would be OK with another five years of fiscal drag if the next five years saw a further 2% per year cut in National Insurance - though Employers National Insurance needs dealing with too.
Yes, agree with this. Using fiscal drag to reduce NI is a good policy as it shifts the burden of tax from working people to non-working people. I'd like to see another 2% cut in NI next autumn and to continue until Employees NI is abolished. The fact that income from work attracts a higher rate of tax than income from idleness shows just how awful the nations priorities have been for the past 50 years. This move only addresses a small portion of it.
Absolutely not, we should be ringfencing NI to fund the JSA, state pension and some healthcare as it was created to do
It is interesting that alcohol got the lowest approval rate. We've moved a long way from a pub on every street corner.
Pubs, alcohol and cultural drinking are like football. There is an assumption that it is part of a universal way of UK life. It isn't. 37% of people go to pubs at least fortnightly. Nearly two thirds don't. Same with football. Most people never or almost never watch it.
Also, drinking at home is now a relatively inexpensive thing, especially when compared with either pubs or smoking.
(ONS says 20 king size filter are now £15. Can this be true?)
More like £17 in London. I've finally kicked them for vaping (a cheat but still) and it's saving me a packet.
In my smoking days, 50+ years ago now, 20 cigarettes was approximately one tenth the price of a bottle of whisky (30p - £3).
Quite a lot of these students end up staying here.
The idea then that they somehow shouldn't be counted as some suggest strikes me as absurd
I'm a statistician (sometimes). I'm all for counting.
We could present the numbers differently, so present the students number separately and only count those who stay in the long-term immigration number. But that would only scratch the surface of the problem. The problem is that right-wing governments and media often seek to misrepresent immigration, which gives the public the idea that these immigration figures are mostly people coming over in small boats when they're not.
The public are generally supportive of overseas students studying in the UK, of immigrants coming to work in the health and social care sector, and of highly-paid immigrants coming over. They're fairly supportive of people bringing some family with them. Those all make up the bulk of these figures. But public discourse is undermined if people are wrongly led to believe that most immigrants are asylum seekers or, indeed, "fake" asylum seeking "scroungers".
How people are personally affected is important.
The 'Polish plumber' affected many working class earnings the Philippina care worker likely much less so.
The immigration numbers are made up. There may be a chance of recording inward immigration -though am not sure how they differentiate between tourists and immigrants. However emigrants are only recorded by asking people in airports to fill in a survey. Both my children have emigrated -to Australia and Spain, my late brother lived in Budapest but was "resident" in the UK despite not having visited for 5 years. None are recorded as leaving the UK.
Think of it like an opinion poll. Sample enough people and you get a reasonable idea what fraction of people are going on holiday vs emigrating. You don’t need to ask everyone.
Friend's uncle died recently. Sepsis. Had been bedridden for ages, in and out of hospital. It was missed by all the doctors in hospital. The only surprise would be if anyone was surprised that you can go into an NHS hospital with a reasonable chance of never getting out of it.
What was that Times front page the other day about the NHS being "toxic". It was literally toxic in the case of my mate's uncle. And many thousands of other cases also.
How can people with learning disabilities be more at risk, physiologically? In terms of not being able to communicate symptoms I get it but how otherwise?
It could be around not communicating early symptoms. It could be around worse healthcare going back years leaving them physiologically more susceptible. Some learning disabilities are associated with congenital conditions that also have physiological effects. For example, Down syndrome is associated with congenital heart disease.
I note that the Irish Times was super keen to racially identify the Brazilian hero who whacked the knife man (and, indeed, well done him) yet in the very same article it refused to racially identify the actual knife man - merely saying he is a “naturalised Irish citizen who has been in Ireland for 20 years”. No mention that he is - it seems -Algerian
Its these lies and double standards which drive people nuts and make everything worse
Yeah that's really terrible, being alert to what might trigger far right rancids to whip up race hate.
Either you mention race, or you don’t. Either it is significant, or it isn’t
This paper twisted the news - deliberately - so that the hero’s race was deemed important - Brazilian, yay! - and yet the villain’s race - Algerian, yikes - had to be hidden
Just report the damn news
It's no scandal (indeed it's the opposite of one) for a media outlet to be sensitive to provoking racial violence in their output. There's no such thing as THE news let alone the 'damn' news. Every story in every medium is influenced by decisions taken as to what to include, exclude, highlight, not highlight. You know this.
A 25% voteshare, 5% below the 1997 total, is not a springboard for a May general election.
Sunak will want more time to narrow the gap and even if he doesn't is unlikely to want to cut 6 months from his premiership unnecessarily
Until the Autumn Statement I would have agreed with you. But the starting gun has been fired, and we're hearing that the ScotCon election machine is already being resourced.
The cat is out of the bag, and you can expect the media now to push a May election as the plan. Should Rishi turn frit again and bottle it, you won't get a better result in the autumn, it will be worse.
The lesson from so many past elections is that an early election is almost always better than a late election...
I still agree with HYUFD, though the Tories clearly want to keep both options open. If they're still 10-15 points behind in March, they certainly won't call a May election. The risk for them is as you say that a spring election will become the default, and they'll then look scared if they delay, like Callaghan.
And Brown. It is a very easy trap for a government to fall into.
There is a difficultly in this strategy. The party has both pushed through expensive economic measures - and will be talking up the next phase for the budget - and is spending money resourcing and building towards an election on 2nd May.
If we get to mid March and there is a change of plan - the polls still look dire - then pulling the brake and postponing it is both expensive and costly politically.
So yes, they could delay. But once you start down the path to an election, people tend to expect it will happen, and don't like it when you faff around and lie to them about how there was never a plan for an early election.
The immigration numbers are made up. There may be a chance of recording inward immigration -though am not sure how they differentiate between tourists and immigrants. However emigrants are only recorded by asking people in airports to fill in a survey. Both my children have emigrated -to Australia and Spain, my late brother lived in Budapest but was "resident" in the UK despite not having visited for 5 years. None are recorded as leaving the UK.
Think of it like an opinion poll. Sample enough people and you get a reasonable idea what fraction of people are going on holiday vs emigrating. You don’t need to ask everyone.
My son didn't know that he was emigrating when he went to Australia!! Had he been asked would have said going on holiday.
Friend's uncle died recently. Sepsis. Had been bedridden for ages, in and out of hospital. It was missed by all the doctors in hospital. The only surprise would be if anyone was surprised that you can go into an NHS hospital with a reasonable chance of never getting out of it.
What was that Times front page the other day about the NHS being "toxic". It was literally toxic in the case of my mate's uncle. And many thousands of other cases also.
Similar story of my elderly neighbour who went in with severe skin rashes and was given pain killers which made her constipated. No one in hospital noticed she was becoming severely distended and last week her bowel burst and she died.
The hospital are currently spending far more time trying to avoid responsibility than they did actually trying to help her.
The scary thing is that as soon as someone relates a story about the NHS such as yours or mine then instantly the person being told will respond with a similar story.
Just went and looked and the most recent figures show that there are more than 20,000 deaths a year due to identified hospital errors.
The really scary one is that there are more than 230 million medication errors made each year in England. Though thankfully the vast majority of these don't lead to deaths.
Comments
"It provided the Empire with the finest little grey cells in the world!"
Let them emigrate to places where the labour costs are cheaper and the winters are warmer.
Foreigner used our health and education services, but they paid their taxes too and assimilated into our society. If it were not for Brexit, I would be troubling the French or Spanish health service not ours, so you'd have needed less imported carers for my sort.
As a celt whose forebears have scratched a living on this island since the dawn of time I welcomed Suella Fernandez and her family onto my land. Why is she so determined to pull up the drawer bridge now it's her country?
The small boats and land crossings to Europe are leading us all down a very unpleasant dark alley. The EU genuinely needs to get a grip. Easier said than done.
If Council were up for election now Labour would undoubtedly lose Newham
https://twitter.com/search?q=NEWHAM BY ELECTION&src=typed_query
When oh when will the public realise that the government does not want to do anything about immigration.
The deceit by both parties is laughable - the Cons: tens of thousands; Lab: the Cons have failed by not controlling immigration.
But what was that definition of insanity again?
The UK does not want to bring down immigration. I think plenty of Brexit voters, as an example, were sold a pup but their relative intelligence was done to death yesterday so I won't bang on about that again today.
Ireland is no more free of bigotry, idiocy and violence than anywhere else in Europe.
Everyone I know assumes its going to be raised to 70 in any case.
https://www.thejournal.ie/motorcyclist-hero-stops-school-stabbing-6231383-Nov2023/
What was that Times front page the other day about the NHS being "toxic". It was literally toxic in the case of my mate's uncle. And many thousands of other cases also.
Yes immigrants add to labour supply, but they also create new demand - and that demand includes structural demand on housing, school places etc and other things that don't exist yet, so need to be created and not just their demand for basic services.
Immigration is relatively neutral for supply and demand, labour shortages or unemployment is caused by an imbalance of prices and supply and demand, adding more immigrants adds both more supply and more demand so it cancels out.
If you want to solve labour shortages, then we need to see wages rise to the point that inefficient jobs are no longer affordable and inefficient businesses go out of business resulting in demand falling and the labour shortage is resolved that way. Its also how we can afford real terms pay rises and a better standard of living too.
And PP at night is a total buzz
Build enough houses for an expanding population, and there’s much less of a problem with the immigration numbers.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/longterminternationalmigrationprovisional/yearendingjune2023
For the YE June 2018 cohort 83% of international students have now emigrated.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/health/24832896/sepsis-death-are-you-at-risk/
The hospital are currently spending far more time trying to avoid responsibility than they did actually trying to help her.
It is however quite amusing to see all the rabid Irish Remoaners on Twitter - who have spent seven years sneering at the racist Brexity Brits - suddenly looking decidedly awkward when confronted with racist Ireland
If you reverse bone density loss, muscle mass loss... And/or we come up with a dementia cure (or rather cures for some of the forms of dementia), the landscape changes quite rapidly.
Endless focus on the marginal, while ignoring the important.
This is my priority for today.
Some countries do that, they say you can come to work but have no right to settle and will have to emigrate afterwards. Wouldn't fit with our standards of human rights though.
But either way 18/22 year olds coming are going to need somewhere to live (housing), they're going to probably be fertile (maternity is one of the leading NHS costs for young people), and they're going to need schools for children etc, etc, etc
All that new demand needs satiating, and which means extra labour going to providing those things. The only way to have immigration not create that demand is if its netted off against what would be population decline, but we're not having population decline, we have births exceeding deaths anyway.
If you want to solve labour shortages, we need more efficiency, which means higher pay and no longer doing inefficient work. Immigration to solve the shortage is as futile as a dog chasing its tail (and it goes both ways for those who claim immigration causes unemployment, they're wrong too).
Its these lies and double standards which drive people nuts and make everything worse
This is not a dig at @BartholomewRoberts - everyone on PB does this. It’s like A.I. isn’t happening
"UK life expectancy growing at slower rate than rest of G7, research shows | Life expectancy | The Guardian" https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/16/life-expectancy-in-uk-growing-at-slower-rate-to-comparable-g7-countries
Parts of Africa, Asia and maybe Latin America could be developed as 'retirement countries'.
Given old people live in empty houses with lots of spare bedrooms, you'd end up with a net increase in housing supply.
Maternity is super expensive but is nothing on 10+ years of social care.
https://twitter.com/Savanta_UK/status/1727979878874505558
🚨NEW Westminster Voting Intention
📈17pt Labour lead
🌹Lab 44 (-2)
🌳Con 27 (-1)
🔶LD 11 (+1)
➡️Reform 7 (+1)
🌍Green 5 (+1)
🎗️SNP 3 (+1)
⬜️Other 4 (=)
2,263 UK adults, 17-19 November
(chg 10-12 November)
Note that Savanta do not prompt initially for Green and Reform; respondents need to click through Another Party.
https://twitter.com/ChrisHopkins92
This paper twisted the news - deliberately - so that the hero’s race was deemed important - Brazilian, yay! - and yet the villain’s race - Algerian, yikes - had to be hidden
Just report the damn news
Its evolution not revolution.
For centuries some old jobs have been automated, and people find new jobs to do instead. AI is no different to robotics, machinery, assembly lines or any other form of technology we've had since the industrial revolution began.
Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) Micheál Martin has just spoken to the press in Dublin.
He condemns the rioting and pays tribute to the work of the police, saying that the scenes in the Irish capital are not "who we are as a people".
"Ireland has built a modern and inclusive society," he says.
"It is something precious that we should all work to hold and we understand the need to respect other, the need to respect difference, and the need to respect the dignity of every human being.
"This is something we should hold precious and we should collectively as a society come together to recommit to those fundamental values."
I mean, I very strongly agree with him but boy does this have echoes of simply not listening to those at the sharper end of the practical consequences of immigration.
Massive disruption in the labour market, the movement of people to cities, productivity gains and so on. But ultimately people carried on working. But now only 1% of people on farms.
Time to get in front of the problem.
In which case it doesn't really solve anything.
And that utterly transformed life and patterns of work, for everyone
We could present the numbers differently, so present the students number separately and only count those who stay in the long-term immigration number. But that would only scratch the surface of the problem. The problem is that right-wing governments and media often seek to misrepresent immigration, which gives the public the idea that these immigration figures are mostly people coming over in small boats when they're not.
The public are generally supportive of overseas students studying in the UK, of immigrants coming to work in the health and social care sector, and of highly-paid immigrants coming over. They're fairly supportive of people bringing some family with them. Those all make up the bulk of these figures. But public discourse is undermined if people are wrongly led to believe that most immigrants are asylum seekers or, indeed, "fake" asylum seeking "scroungers".
It's like selling risk on the financial markets. Assuming you can sell it, the buyers either have to be insane, or will charge you the same effective cost as keeping it.
The problem of people spending more over a lifetime than their economic output isn't a problem which can be solved by immigration in the long term.
An ending of Eastern European migration into the Leave areas of the Midlands and North with an increase of none European migrants to the cities should satisfy most people on both sides.
The first aspect has certainly happened according to the data and my 'voices at the supermarket' test.
One of the problems of recent immigration into Europe is that some of the migrants don’t actually want to be “included”
They want to live in their own cultures, with their own laws and values, even as they benefit from the prosperity and generosity of the host nations, even as they sometimes actively despise the mores of the host nations
Of course this is not all migrants. It is not even a majority. But it is a large enough minority to be a massive problem which is getting worse
Agricultural Revolution > Herring Fishing
Industrial Revolution > child labour and losing your fingers in a mill
Computers > Microsoft Excel
Internet > interminable Teams calls
Yes migrants have a higher propensity to work than the domestic population owing to their age structure, but they will retire eventually themselves, so you are just time-shifting that demand.
However there is also the structural demand element. A stable population doesn't need anywhere near as much growth in investment in housing, roads, hospitals, schools and everything else. A growing population does - or it leads to a collapse in standards and efficiency.
If the entire net benefit of a growing population is absorbed by the entire net cost of a growing population, then you can never solve a shortage by growing the population. Whether you import 1, 3, or 1000 people for the job.
And that is evidenced by the fact that developed countries across the planet, regardless of how much their population is, their density is etc have full employment - or if not full employment, its due to imbalances between supply and demand for other structural reasons, not population growth.
https://www.ft.com/content/36294408-8d04-11e9-a24d-b42f641eca37
But if there's less to 'race' then that reduces the problem to begin with.
There also happens to have been a newsworthy murder trial involving an immigrant recently:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/09/jozef-puska-found-guilty-murdering-ashling-murphy-primary-school-teacher-ireland
The 'Polish plumber' affected many working class earnings the Philippina care worker likely much less so.
If we get to mid March and there is a change of plan - the polls still look dire - then pulling the brake and postponing it is both expensive and costly politically.
So yes, they could delay. But once you start down the path to an election, people tend to expect it will happen, and don't like it when you faff around and lie to them about how there was never a plan for an early election.
The really scary one is that there are more than 230 million medication errors made each year in England. Though thankfully the vast majority of these don't lead to deaths.
The Lucid Air Sapphire Does 0 To 150 To 0 Four Seconds Quicker Than A 911 Turbo S
https://www.motor1.com/news/697499/lucid-air-sapphire-acceleration-braking/
The Tesla Model S Plaid is half a second slower, but also trashes the Porsche.