Is that why we have historically unprecedented levels of immigration?
We have unprecedented levels because the current Government (sole qualification for membership, support BoZo and Brexit) are spectacularly incompetent.
Really, really bad at their job.
Useless.
Worthless.
They thank you for your vote...
I'm really looking forward to the immigration numbers under a Starmer government. If you think THIS lot are really, really bad at their job... At least they aren't riven by a faction wanting to effectively open the borders.
Our borders are open now. How would we tell the difference between now and this dystopian nightmare you predict?
Out of control immigration is a false narrative. The remedy to this confected scandal, will after yesterday be even bigger hospital crises and care homes closing like fury. Arses and elbows don't even come into it.
There is a significant proportion of the population who don't understand why we didn't send all these foreign workers home after Brexit so that all the jobs would rightly go to Brits. That this isn't possible is beyond their understanding. Hence the increasing wailing and gnashing about migration which is now at CRISIS ARGGHHHH levels in the Tory party.
Last week's revelations about cheaper wage hurdles for migrant workers just revealed how disingenuous the government are. They are happy to gaslight the "foreigners go home" contingent of their vote. Whilst understanding the economic need for foreign labour.
What I hope from Starmer is that we can have an honest conversation. The crank right will foam on about unchecked migration, but *they* have already given us that. We can have controlled migration or uncontrolled. Currently it is the latter. The former would be to everyone's benefit.
The rise of the salary threshold for migrants to £38k and the ban on their bringing in departments Cleverly has announced is precisely to bring migration under greater control
Fantastic! But who wipes your grannie's a*** now?
Think of this another way. Why are care workers paid so little? Because we can easily import people to work in care from abroad. Until we change that, care workers will continue to get paid very little. Will this increase the cost of care? Of course. But care is only cheap because we pay carers - I think most people can agree - an unreasonably small amount for a job which most of us would not want to do; and we only do that because we are importing carers from abroad. Immigration is very much the wrong answer to this particular problem.
And that is a valid conversation to have. We get what we pay for. Lets take care as an example: We don't want to pay for all the preventative measures to stop people sliding into care We don't want to be stuck caring for our own relatives We don't want to pay for care homes that aren't dangerously understaffed We don't want to pay salaries for the people who care for our relatives What the Tories and their handful of voters seem to want is for people to just die quickly and quietly and thus remove the problem. Not their relatives of course, the other people.
Caring is an much of a vocation as healthcare. We could and should elevate it as a priority. Brown proposed it in his dying months. Davey passionately advocates it. But the Tories and big media ensure that "why should I pay" is the prevalent mood. So we get what we pay for...
I don't recall whether this was controversial or seen as a statement of the obvious, but I recall about three years ago there was a book called 'hand, heart, head' - the argument of which was that over the last 60 years, those who work with their heads have done massively better than those who work with their hands or their hearts (a bit twee this, but basically carers and nurses - I suppose they were going for an alliteration), and that this was to a large extent the result of global demographic changes and consequently, in the west, of immigration; and that a rebalancing was due. I agreed with this quite a lot - it seems odd to me that someone who can do things that seem easy to me like write a convincing sentence or a massive spreadsheet seems to get rewarded so much more convincingly than someone who does something hard like look after someone with dementia or fix a central heating system.
And as a country, I don't think we would be poorer for taking this approach. There might be a change in the balance of wealth, but in GDP terms I'd have thought we'd come out neutral.
Is that why we have historically unprecedented levels of immigration?
We have unprecedented levels because the current Government (sole qualification for membership, support BoZo and Brexit) are spectacularly incompetent.
Really, really bad at their job.
Useless.
Worthless.
They thank you for your vote...
I'm really looking forward to the immigration numbers under a Starmer government. If you think THIS lot are really, really bad at their job... At least they aren't riven by a faction wanting to effectively open the borders.
Our borders are open now. How would we tell the difference between now and this dystopian nightmare you predict?
Out of control immigration is a false narrative. The remedy to this confected scandal, will after yesterday be even bigger hospital crises and care homes closing like fury. Arses and elbows don't even come into it.
There is a significant proportion of the population who don't understand why we didn't send all these foreign workers home after Brexit so that all the jobs would rightly go to Brits. That this isn't possible is beyond their understanding. Hence the increasing wailing and gnashing about migration which is now at CRISIS ARGGHHHH levels in the Tory party.
Last week's revelations about cheaper wage hurdles for migrant workers just revealed how disingenuous the government are. They are happy to gaslight the "foreigners go home" contingent of their vote. Whilst understanding the economic need for foreign labour.
What I hope from Starmer is that we can have an honest conversation. The crank right will foam on about unchecked migration, but *they* have already given us that. We can have controlled migration or uncontrolled. Currently it is the latter. The former would be to everyone's benefit.
The rise of the salary threshold for migrants to £38k and the ban on their bringing in departments Cleverly has announced is precisely to bring migration under greater control
Fantastic! But who wipes your grannie's a*** now?
Think of this another way. Why are care workers paid so little? Because we can easily import people to work in care from abroad. Until we change that, care workers will continue to get paid very little. Will this increase the cost of care? Of course. But care is only cheap because we pay carers - I think most people can agree - an unreasonably small amount for a job which most of us would not want to do; and we only do that because we are importing carers from abroad. Immigration is very much the wrong answer to this particular problem.
Care is cheap? The monthly average cost of residential care is £3290 and receiving nursing care in a care home costs on average £4160.per month.
An extraordinary figure, when you consider that a premier inn, usually better staffed, and absolutely better furnished, can be had for under a hundred a night.
Is it extraordinary?
Last time I checked residential care homes don't require residents to check out every morning.
I mean, what could possibly go wrong? Presumably using a VPN with end point in another country would easily circumvent this (and sites would have no incentive to cut down on such use - quite the opposite). If something like this is to be done, it makes more sense to enforce it at the ISP/DNS provider level, surely? Sure, switching DNS provider is not hard, but something that can fairly easily be locked down on computer/router level by default.
ETA: Afterall, if kids must watch porn, we can at least use it to induce them to increase their computer literacy skills, by working around the protections in place
It's not just local news. I often wonder how many promising online content providers are smothered at birth by the existence of the BBC online behemoth.
Is that why we have historically unprecedented levels of immigration?
We have unprecedented levels because the current Government (sole qualification for membership, support BoZo and Brexit) are spectacularly incompetent.
Really, really bad at their job.
Useless.
Worthless.
They thank you for your vote...
I'm really looking forward to the immigration numbers under a Starmer government. If you think THIS lot are really, really bad at their job... At least they aren't riven by a faction wanting to effectively open the borders.
Our borders are open now. How would we tell the difference between now and this dystopian nightmare you predict?
Out of control immigration is a false narrative. The remedy to this confected scandal, will after yesterday be even bigger hospital crises and care homes closing like fury. Arses and elbows don't even come into it.
There is a significant proportion of the population who don't understand why we didn't send all these foreign workers home after Brexit so that all the jobs would rightly go to Brits. That this isn't possible is beyond their understanding. Hence the increasing wailing and gnashing about migration which is now at CRISIS ARGGHHHH levels in the Tory party.
Last week's revelations about cheaper wage hurdles for migrant workers just revealed how disingenuous the government are. They are happy to gaslight the "foreigners go home" contingent of their vote. Whilst understanding the economic need for foreign labour.
What I hope from Starmer is that we can have an honest conversation. The crank right will foam on about unchecked migration, but *they* have already given us that. We can have controlled migration or uncontrolled. Currently it is the latter. The former would be to everyone's benefit.
Johnson understood that we would need overseas Labour when all the Poles went home after Brexit. He stated that the UK could cover any shortfall by inviting over "our friends from the Indian subcontinent". I am not sure that was the Brexit bought by fans of Mark Francois and Peter Bone.
Yes it looks like we have exchanged hundreds of thousands of well educated young Europeans anxious to work and learn the language for extremely large families often with just one productive worker. Equally disappointing is the way this attractive army of young people anxious to learn the culture and languages of Europe now rarely includes the English
Is that why we have historically unprecedented levels of immigration?
We have unprecedented levels because the current Government (sole qualification for membership, support BoZo and Brexit) are spectacularly incompetent.
Really, really bad at their job.
Useless.
Worthless.
They thank you for your vote...
I'm really looking forward to the immigration numbers under a Starmer government. If you think THIS lot are really, really bad at their job... At least they aren't riven by a faction wanting to effectively open the borders.
Our borders are open now. How would we tell the difference between now and this dystopian nightmare you predict?
Out of control immigration is a false narrative. The remedy to this confected scandal, will after yesterday be even bigger hospital crises and care homes closing like fury. Arses and elbows don't even come into it.
There is a significant proportion of the population who don't understand why we didn't send all these foreign workers home after Brexit so that all the jobs would rightly go to Brits. That this isn't possible is beyond their understanding. Hence the increasing wailing and gnashing about migration which is now at CRISIS ARGGHHHH levels in the Tory party.
Last week's revelations about cheaper wage hurdles for migrant workers just revealed how disingenuous the government are. They are happy to gaslight the "foreigners go home" contingent of their vote. Whilst understanding the economic need for foreign labour.
What I hope from Starmer is that we can have an honest conversation. The crank right will foam on about unchecked migration, but *they* have already given us that. We can have controlled migration or uncontrolled. Currently it is the latter. The former would be to everyone's benefit.
The rise of the salary threshold for migrants to £38k and the ban on their bringing in departments Cleverly has announced is precisely to bring migration under greater control
Fantastic! But who wipes your grannie's a*** now?
Think of this another way. Why are care workers paid so little? Because we can easily import people to work in care from abroad. Until we change that, care workers will continue to get paid very little. Will this increase the cost of care? Of course. But care is only cheap because we pay carers - I think most people can agree - an unreasonably small amount for a job which most of us would not want to do; and we only do that because we are importing carers from abroad. Immigration is very much the wrong answer to this particular problem.
And that is a valid conversation to have. We get what we pay for. Lets take care as an example: We don't want to pay for all the preventative measures to stop people sliding into care We don't want to be stuck caring for our own relatives We don't want to pay for care homes that aren't dangerously understaffed We don't want to pay salaries for the people who care for our relatives What the Tories and their handful of voters seem to want is for people to just die quickly and quietly and thus remove the problem. Not their relatives of course, the other people.
Caring is an much of a vocation as healthcare. We could and should elevate it as a priority. Brown proposed it in his dying months. Davey passionately advocates it. But the Tories and big media ensure that "why should I pay" is the prevalent mood. So we get what we pay for...
I think May advocated it in 2017 and that was one of the key reasons she did not get a majority.
Exactly, it was May who advocated taking all a deceased person who had dementia's estate (including their former home) to pay for their care costs, at home as well as residential, with the family only able to keep £100,000.
Labour under Jeremy Corbyn trashed the plan as a 'dementia tax' and May lost her majority as a result.
Boris won a majority on a plan to cap care costs at £86,000 by contrast in 2019 but still has not been implemented
Mr. Cookie, I once worked for a small online news outlet that ended up dying because Google altered the rates they paid for smaller news agencies (unsure of the specifics, I was just a writer). While the BBC may well crowd out competition, other big beasts can cause hits too (see also YouTube's Adpocalypse).
I can see that the voters want to be rid of the Tories but I can't see them being happy drifting in in Sunak's slipstream indefinitely. It can only be a matter of time till the first 48 sheet with Starmer dressed as Maggie arrives........
Hello BJO, is that you?
You are forgetting that in order to elicit change elections have to be won first.
I'm starting to worry that this isn't a Wooden Horse of Troy operation but something altogether more permanent. Will the REAL Keir Starmer please give his followers a sign however fleeting or small....
Is that why we have historically unprecedented levels of immigration?
We have unprecedented levels because the current Government (sole qualification for membership, support BoZo and Brexit) are spectacularly incompetent.
Really, really bad at their job.
Useless.
Worthless.
They thank you for your vote...
I'm really looking forward to the immigration numbers under a Starmer government. If you think THIS lot are really, really bad at their job... At least they aren't riven by a faction wanting to effectively open the borders.
Our borders are open now. How would we tell the difference between now and this dystopian nightmare you predict?
Out of control immigration is a false narrative. The remedy to this confected scandal, will after yesterday be even bigger hospital crises and care homes closing like fury. Arses and elbows don't even come into it.
There is a significant proportion of the population who don't understand why we didn't send all these foreign workers home after Brexit so that all the jobs would rightly go to Brits. That this isn't possible is beyond their understanding. Hence the increasing wailing and gnashing about migration which is now at CRISIS ARGGHHHH levels in the Tory party.
Last week's revelations about cheaper wage hurdles for migrant workers just revealed how disingenuous the government are. They are happy to gaslight the "foreigners go home" contingent of their vote. Whilst understanding the economic need for foreign labour.
What I hope from Starmer is that we can have an honest conversation. The crank right will foam on about unchecked migration, but *they* have already given us that. We can have controlled migration or uncontrolled. Currently it is the latter. The former would be to everyone's benefit.
The rise of the salary threshold for migrants to £38k and the ban on their bringing in departments Cleverly has announced is precisely to bring migration under greater control
Fantastic! But who wipes your grannie's a*** now?
Think of this another way. Why are care workers paid so little? Because we can easily import people to work in care from abroad. Until we change that, care workers will continue to get paid very little. Will this increase the cost of care? Of course. But care is only cheap because we pay carers - I think most people can agree - an unreasonably small amount for a job which most of us would not want to do; and we only do that because we are importing carers from abroad. Immigration is very much the wrong answer to this particular problem.
And that is a valid conversation to have. We get what we pay for. Lets take care as an example: We don't want to pay for all the preventative measures to stop people sliding into care We don't want to be stuck caring for our own relatives We don't want to pay for care homes that aren't dangerously understaffed We don't want to pay salaries for the people who care for our relatives What the Tories and their handful of voters seem to want is for people to just die quickly and quietly and thus remove the problem. Not their relatives of course, the other people.
Caring is an much of a vocation as healthcare. We could and should elevate it as a priority. Brown proposed it in his dying months. Davey passionately advocates it. But the Tories and big media ensure that "why should I pay" is the prevalent mood. So we get what we pay for...
It was Theresa May who as Tory PM in 2017 came closest to bringing forward a plan for increased funding of social care, Corbyn Labour trashed it as a 'dementia tax' and she lost her majority and had to abandon it.
I don't think Starmer is going to set the world on fire, but to be fair the Tories have slotted a hospital pass to Labour. The upside is that the Tories should be out of government and that is enough for now. The years 2010 to 2024 will surely go down as the worst set of governments in the history of the country, and I say that after having thought that honour was Brown's.
Telling its readers the UK economy is actually doing OK, Brexit is not a disaster, in some ways the EU is worse off = no way Rejoin will ever be a thing
"Keir Starmer is broadly offering continuity Rishi Sunak."
But with a large side-order of early disappointment...
Larry Elliot alway was the Guardian's tame Lexiteer, wasn't he? The EU stops socialism in one country, so it is bad, that sort of thing.
From his perspective, Starmer and Sunak probably do look indistinguishable.
No, that’s a gross mischaracterisation
He believes the EU enforces a neo-liberal orthodoxy and infringes political sovereignty. He also makes the interesting point that Brexit may be the reason the UK is now almost alone, in Europe, in not suffering a hard right swing
You didn’t bother to read the data in the lead, clearly.
Quite.
Braverman et al are regarded as extreme right even by the right in most European Countries.
The funny thing is that the UK right wingers demand even more extreme policies "otherwise we get Farage". Actually it is probably the Conservatives who "get Farage", if they continue down that rabbit hole, and with a similar number of seats.
The Far Right may be a chimera when it comes to Farage, but clearly not when we examine the policies of even a so-called "moderate" like Sunak. The Tories ARE the far right.
Whatever his own instincts may have been, Sunak panders to the far right, as long as they are in his own party, while many Tory members pander to the far right, whether or not they are Conservatives, as we saw with the lionising of Farage at the Tory conference.
It matters not, the punishment for the Tories at the next election will be brutal, even as it stands, and another six months of Faragist cosplay will raise the coming disaster to an ELE for the Tories.
We have all had enough...
"You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. In the name of God, go!"
Listen to yourself
“The Tories ARE the Far Right”. Is that why we have historically unprecedented levels of immigration? Get a grip
They have that in Italy too. What do you see as the big differences between the Braverman/Rees Mogg Tories and, say, Meloni in Italy or Wilders in the Netherlands?
They haven't yet proposed banning same sex couples from having children by surrogate like Meloni or to ban Muslim headscarfs and close Mosques like Wilders
Meloni is in a same sex partnership, and had kids via a surrogate ? Respect.
Is that why we have historically unprecedented levels of immigration?
We have unprecedented levels because the current Government (sole qualification for membership, support BoZo and Brexit) are spectacularly incompetent.
Really, really bad at their job.
Useless.
Worthless.
They thank you for your vote...
I'm really looking forward to the immigration numbers under a Starmer government. If you think THIS lot are really, really bad at their job... At least they aren't riven by a faction wanting to effectively open the borders.
When we had more or less open borders (ie when we were in the EU) immigration was a third the level it is now.
This is the reality. So many millions voted to Take Back Control of the border so that they saw less foreigners. Don't tell me I am wrong on their motivations, go back to 2016 and look at what they said.
So we have left the EU, ended the right to live and work, and yet there are way more people now than there were then. Yes the Tories are incompetent, but there is a reality that few want to face up to:
We have too many economically inactive people unable to fill the jobs that we need doing. I am not blaming the inactive - many can't take the work on offer because of lack of childcare / transport / wrong part of the country etc etc etc. So we need migrants. We did before, we do now, we will in the future.
Or, we take an axe to things we need. Lets have a heavily downsized NHS because we don't want foreigners but we won't pay to train our own people. Lets have elderly care based in the family home rather than a care home which we can't find staff for. Lets have less hotels and coffee shops and food production and all the other things that rely on foreign labour.
A grown up conversation to hold reality up to the people whose natural parochial bigotry has been gaslit to terrifying levels for the benefit of right wing politicians. You can have what you want. Are you willing to pay the price for getting it?
So let’s discuss the NHS
Since 2009 the number of FTEs has increased by 25% to more than 1.4 million
What additional services are being delivered by those additional 300,000 employees?
The root problem we have is horrifically poor productivity. If we could redeploy even a small percentage of that staff for other roles, for example, then hiring pressures would be massively reduced in other sectors. Alternatively we might choose to significant enhance delivery of health outcomes using the additional resources
@Foxy is the expert on the mechanics inside the NHS. Have the government not scrapped the funding for a whole load of preventative healthcare? So instead of spending £1 preventing someone getting ill we now need to spend £10 on treating the inevitable result. We're pouring record amounts into the NHS and simultaneously starving front line healthcare. So what are we spending the money on?
That’s always been my question. And no one has had a good answer - it usually gets responses of “well don’t you want cancer patients to live!” Or “evil drug companies!”
Neither of which are true or helpful remarks
You are forgetting "Sack All The Managers And Admin Staff!". Because the laundry just does itself, and paperclips buy themselves.
Laundry should be outsourced and paper clips should be centrally procured on a website rather than having a local procurement function
Laundry is often outsourced. But someone has to actually monitor the contract etc. Unless you want @Foxy doing it. I think he has some kind of "healing the sick" gag he wants to waste his time on, not laundry.
The suggestion about central procurement works for some items (see drug buying). And is used. But is often the poster child for how to spend far too much in a stupid, inflexible contract.
For example, years ago, my wife worked for a company that had done a deal with BT for broadband for home working. Usage of the system was mandated. A huge, fixed price contract had been negotiated. So they were stuck, after a couple of years, with an expensive, low performance offering.
It is actually better and cheaper for many simple items, for the hospital to negotiate its own toilet paper supply etc.
Good Management and Admin are utterly vital to the performance of an organisation.
Actually for the basics you should organise a national or regional contract from someone like Bunzl and then have local ordering.
(Or simply negotiate a national volume rebate)
Local contract negotiations for staple goods are a waste of time. Obviously anything with a medical angle should be procured locally.
I can see that the voters want to be rid of the Tories but I can't see them being happy drifting in in Sunak's slipstream indefinitely. It can only be a matter of time till the first 48 sheet with Starmer dressed as Maggie arrives........
Hello BJO, is that you?
You are forgetting that in order to elicit change elections have to be won first.
I'm starting to worry that this isn't a Wooden Horse of Troy operation but something altogether more permanent. Will the REAL Keir Starmer please give his followers a sign however fleeting or small....
I don't think Starmer is going to set the world on fire, but to be fair the Tories have slotted a hospital pass to Labour. The upside is that the Tories should be out of government and that is enough for now. The years 2010 to 2024 will surely go down as the worst set of governments in the history of the country, and I say that after having thought that honour was Brown's.
The Conservatives became a rabble, once May lost her majority.
At the same time, all governments would have struggled with the fallout from the GFC, Covid, and Ukraine. These three are the equivalent of fighting a prolonged war, in fiscal terms.
Is that why we have historically unprecedented levels of immigration?
We have unprecedented levels because the current Government (sole qualification for membership, support BoZo and Brexit) are spectacularly incompetent.
Really, really bad at their job.
Useless.
Worthless.
They thank you for your vote...
I'm really looking forward to the immigration numbers under a Starmer government. If you think THIS lot are really, really bad at their job... At least they aren't riven by a faction wanting to effectively open the borders.
Our borders are open now. How would we tell the difference between now and this dystopian nightmare you predict?
Out of control immigration is a false narrative. The remedy to this confected scandal, will after yesterday be even bigger hospital crises and care homes closing like fury. Arses and elbows don't even come into it.
There is a significant proportion of the population who don't understand why we didn't send all these foreign workers home after Brexit so that all the jobs would rightly go to Brits. That this isn't possible is beyond their understanding. Hence the increasing wailing and gnashing about migration which is now at CRISIS ARGGHHHH levels in the Tory party.
Last week's revelations about cheaper wage hurdles for migrant workers just revealed how disingenuous the government are. They are happy to gaslight the "foreigners go home" contingent of their vote. Whilst understanding the economic need for foreign labour.
What I hope from Starmer is that we can have an honest conversation. The crank right will foam on about unchecked migration, but *they* have already given us that. We can have controlled migration or uncontrolled. Currently it is the latter. The former would be to everyone's benefit.
The rise of the salary threshold for migrants to £38k and the ban on their bringing in departments Cleverly has announced is precisely to bring migration under greater control
Fantastic! But who wipes your grannie's a*** now?
Think of this another way. Why are care workers paid so little? Because we can easily import people to work in care from abroad. Until we change that, care workers will continue to get paid very little. Will this increase the cost of care? Of course. But care is only cheap because we pay carers - I think most people can agree - an unreasonably small amount for a job which most of us would not want to do; and we only do that because we are importing carers from abroad. Immigration is very much the wrong answer to this particular problem.
And that is a valid conversation to have. We get what we pay for. Lets take care as an example: We don't want to pay for all the preventative measures to stop people sliding into care We don't want to be stuck caring for our own relatives We don't want to pay for care homes that aren't dangerously understaffed We don't want to pay salaries for the people who care for our relatives What the Tories and their handful of voters seem to want is for people to just die quickly and quietly and thus remove the problem. Not their relatives of course, the other people.
Caring is an much of a vocation as healthcare. We could and should elevate it as a priority. Brown proposed it in his dying months. Davey passionately advocates it. But the Tories and big media ensure that "why should I pay" is the prevalent mood. So we get what we pay for...
I think May advocated it in 2017 and that was one of the key reasons she did not get a majority.
Exactly, it was May who advocated taking all a deceased person who had dementia's estate (including their former home) to pay for their care costs, at home as well as residential, with the family only able to keep £100,000.
Labour under Jeremy Corbyn trashed the plan as a 'dementia tax' and May lost her majority as a result.
Boris won a majority on a plan to cap care costs at £86,000 by contrast in 2019 but still has not been implemented
May’s plans were actually quite fair, but mid-election was not the time to announce them.
BREAKING: Joe Biden received direct monthly payments beginning in 2018 from Hunter Biden's LLC Owasco PC, which received millions of dollars of CCP linked payments, according to redacted bank records released today by @GOPoversight. https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1731722442475712724
Reality.
So, these three payments of $1,380 each (totaling $4,140) appear to be Hunter Biden paying his dad back for truck loan/lease payments that his dad paid on his son's behalf when Hunter was low on cash.
Is that why we have historically unprecedented levels of immigration?
We have unprecedented levels because the current Government (sole qualification for membership, support BoZo and Brexit) are spectacularly incompetent.
Really, really bad at their job.
Useless.
Worthless.
They thank you for your vote...
I'm really looking forward to the immigration numbers under a Starmer government. If you think THIS lot are really, really bad at their job... At least they aren't riven by a faction wanting to effectively open the borders.
Our borders are open now. How would we tell the difference between now and this dystopian nightmare you predict?
Out of control immigration is a false narrative. The remedy to this confected scandal, will after yesterday be even bigger hospital crises and care homes closing like fury. Arses and elbows don't even come into it.
There is a significant proportion of the population who don't understand why we didn't send all these foreign workers home after Brexit so that all the jobs would rightly go to Brits. That this isn't possible is beyond their understanding. Hence the increasing wailing and gnashing about migration which is now at CRISIS ARGGHHHH levels in the Tory party.
Last week's revelations about cheaper wage hurdles for migrant workers just revealed how disingenuous the government are. They are happy to gaslight the "foreigners go home" contingent of their vote. Whilst understanding the economic need for foreign labour.
What I hope from Starmer is that we can have an honest conversation. The crank right will foam on about unchecked migration, but *they* have already given us that. We can have controlled migration or uncontrolled. Currently it is the latter. The former would be to everyone's benefit.
The rise of the salary threshold for migrants to £38k and the ban on their bringing in departments Cleverly has announced is precisely to bring migration under greater control
Fantastic! But who wipes your grannie's a*** now?
Think of this another way. Why are care workers paid so little? Because we can easily import people to work in care from abroad. Until we change that, care workers will continue to get paid very little. Will this increase the cost of care? Of course. But care is only cheap because we pay carers - I think most people can agree - an unreasonably small amount for a job which most of us would not want to do; and we only do that because we are importing carers from abroad. Immigration is very much the wrong answer to this particular problem.
And that is a valid conversation to have. We get what we pay for. Lets take care as an example: We don't want to pay for all the preventative measures to stop people sliding into care We don't want to be stuck caring for our own relatives We don't want to pay for care homes that aren't dangerously understaffed We don't want to pay salaries for the people who care for our relatives What the Tories and their handful of voters seem to want is for people to just die quickly and quietly and thus remove the problem. Not their relatives of course, the other people.
Caring is an much of a vocation as healthcare. We could and should elevate it as a priority. Brown proposed it in his dying months. Davey passionately advocates it. But the Tories and big media ensure that "why should I pay" is the prevalent mood. So we get what we pay for...
I think May advocated it in 2017 and that was one of the key reasons she did not get a majority.
Exactly, it was May who advocated taking all a deceased person who had dementia's estate (including their former home) to pay for their care costs, at home as well as residential, with the family only able to keep £100,000.
Labour under Jeremy Corbyn trashed the plan as a 'dementia tax' and May lost her majority as a result.
Boris won a majority on a plan to cap care costs at £86,000 by contrast in 2019 but still has not been implemented
The whole discussion about a “cap” is unhelpful. Fundamentally it means that the state is providing catastrophe insurance.
Which is a reasonable use of the state’s resources (and potentially could even be underwritten by a reinsurer although I’m not sure why you would bother as the state).
But essentially people should save for their old age and not expect that state to pay for them
I don't think Starmer is going to set the world on fire, but to be fair the Tories have slotted a hospital pass to Labour. The upside is that the Tories should be out of government and that is enough for now. The years 2010 to 2024 will surely go down as the worst set of governments in the history of the country, and I say that after having thought that honour was Brown's.
The Conservatives became a rabble, once May lost her majority.
At the same time, all governments would have struggled with the fallout from the GFC, Covid, and Ukraine. These three are the equivalent of fighting a prolonged war, in fiscal terms.
People do forget the impact Covid had, tens of millions of people were paid to stay at home for months amd months. Nothing like that has ever happened before. In reality the economy has recovered well from that incredible shock.
I can see that the voters want to be rid of the Tories but I can't see them being happy drifting in in Sunak's slipstream indefinitely. It can only be a matter of time till the first 48 sheet with Starmer dressed as Maggie arrives........
Hello BJO, is that you?
You are forgetting that in order to elicit change elections have to be won first.
I'm starting to worry that this isn't a Wooden Horse of Troy operation but something altogether more permanent. Will the REAL Keir Starmer please give his followers a sign however fleeting or small....
Will the real slim shady please stand up
Yes even an affair with Britney Spears would do
That sort of image creation should be against the Geneva conventions
I don't think Starmer is going to set the world on fire, but to be fair the Tories have slotted a hospital pass to Labour. The upside is that the Tories should be out of government and that is enough for now. The years 2010 to 2024 will surely go down as the worst set of governments in the history of the country, and I say that after having thought that honour was Brown's.
The Conservatives became a rabble, once May lost her majority.
At the same time, all governments would have struggled with the fallout from the GFC, Covid, and Ukraine. These three are the equivalent of fighting a prolonged war, in fiscal terms.
That's not really a valid excuse. Absolutely it was a challenging era, but the Tories just weren't up to the task. Are Tories only able to govern effectively when the sun is shining?
Is that why we have historically unprecedented levels of immigration?
We have unprecedented levels because the current Government (sole qualification for membership, support BoZo and Brexit) are spectacularly incompetent.
Really, really bad at their job.
Useless.
Worthless.
They thank you for your vote...
I'm really looking forward to the immigration numbers under a Starmer government. If you think THIS lot are really, really bad at their job... At least they aren't riven by a faction wanting to effectively open the borders.
Our borders are open now. How would we tell the difference between now and this dystopian nightmare you predict?
Out of control immigration is a false narrative. The remedy to this confected scandal, will after yesterday be even bigger hospital crises and care homes closing like fury. Arses and elbows don't even come into it.
There is a significant proportion of the population who don't understand why we didn't send all these foreign workers home after Brexit so that all the jobs would rightly go to Brits. That this isn't possible is beyond their understanding. Hence the increasing wailing and gnashing about migration which is now at CRISIS ARGGHHHH levels in the Tory party.
Last week's revelations about cheaper wage hurdles for migrant workers just revealed how disingenuous the government are. They are happy to gaslight the "foreigners go home" contingent of their vote. Whilst understanding the economic need for foreign labour.
What I hope from Starmer is that we can have an honest conversation. The crank right will foam on about unchecked migration, but *they* have already given us that. We can have controlled migration or uncontrolled. Currently it is the latter. The former would be to everyone's benefit.
The rise of the salary threshold for migrants to £38k and the ban on their bringing in departments Cleverly has announced is precisely to bring migration under greater control
Fantastic! But who wipes your grannie's a*** now?
Think of this another way. Why are care workers paid so little? Because we can easily import people to work in care from abroad. Until we change that, care workers will continue to get paid very little. Will this increase the cost of care? Of course. But care is only cheap because we pay carers - I think most people can agree - an unreasonably small amount for a job which most of us would not want to do; and we only do that because we are importing carers from abroad. Immigration is very much the wrong answer to this particular problem.
Care is cheap? The monthly average cost of residential care is £3290 and receiving nursing care in a care home costs on average £4160.per month.
An extraordinary figure, when you consider that a premier inn, usually better staffed, and absolutely better furnished, can be had for under a hundred a night.
Is it extraordinary?
Last time I checked residential care homes don't require residents to check out every morning.
Preposterous figure for care imho. In the South its impossible to find at that rate. My father in was paying at the same rate for regular care when he went in for respite care @ 50000 in Horsham area. My mother in Surrey s on 78000 and its virtually impossible to find anywhere fir less that is adequate imho.
On topic, "calling a General Election in the next six months" means an election before October next year, which is hardly something to oppose given it could only go another 3 months at most anyway (and no more than 2 months in reality).
An election called 6 months today wouldn't be held until mid-July. The next 6 weeks are out because of summer holidays (and in practice, early July probably would be out too given Scotland's earlier holidays). Likewise, you can't really call an election in August, so a Sept dissolution is the next earliest practical alternative, with polling day in mid-Oct.
I mean, what could possibly go wrong? Presumably using a VPN with end point in another country would easily circumvent this (and sites would have no incentive to cut down on such use - quite the opposite). If something like this is to be done, it makes more sense to enforce it at the ISP/DNS provider level, surely? Sure, switching DNS provider is not hard, but something that can fairly easily be locked down on computer/router level by default.
ETA: Afterall, if kids must watch porn, we can at least use it to induce them to increase their computer literacy skills, by working around the protections in place
Politicians trying to think they have a way to stop teenage boys from looking at naked women online, are just as bad as those who think they can ban mathematics, or put processing power back in its box.
Telling its readers the UK economy is actually doing OK, Brexit is not a disaster, in some ways the EU is worse off = no way Rejoin will ever be a thing
"Keir Starmer is broadly offering continuity Rishi Sunak."
But with a large side-order of early disappointment...
Larry Elliot alway was the Guardian's tame Lexiteer, wasn't he? The EU stops socialism in one country, so it is bad, that sort of thing.
From his perspective, Starmer and Sunak probably do look indistinguishable.
No, that’s a gross mischaracterisation
He believes the EU enforces a neo-liberal orthodoxy and infringes political sovereignty. He also makes the interesting point that Brexit may be the reason the UK is now almost alone, in Europe, in not suffering a hard right swing
You didn’t bother to read the data in the lead, clearly.
Quite.
Braverman et al are regarded as extreme right even by the right in most European Countries.
The funny thing is that the UK right wingers demand even more extreme policies "otherwise we get Farage". Actually it is probably the Conservatives who "get Farage", if they continue down that rabbit hole, and with a similar number of seats.
The Far Right may be a chimera when it comes to Farage, but clearly not when we examine the policies of even a so-called "moderate" like Sunak. The Tories ARE the far right.
Whatever his own instincts may have been, Sunak panders to the far right, as long as they are in his own party, while many Tory members pander to the far right, whether or not they are Conservatives, as we saw with the lionising of Farage at the Tory conference.
It matters not, the punishment for the Tories at the next election will be brutal, even as it stands, and another six months of Faragist cosplay will raise the coming disaster to an ELE for the Tories.
We have all had enough...
"You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. In the name of God, go!"
Listen to yourself
“The Tories ARE the Far Right”. Is that why we have historically unprecedented levels of immigration? Get a grip
They have that in Italy too. What do you see as the big differences between the Braverman/Rees Mogg Tories and, say, Meloni in Italy or Wilders in the Netherlands?
They haven't yet proposed banning same sex couples from having children by surrogate like Meloni or to ban Muslim headscarfs and close Mosques like Wilders
Meloni is in a same sex partnership, and had kids via a surrogate ? Respect.
Is that why we have historically unprecedented levels of immigration?
We have unprecedented levels because the current Government (sole qualification for membership, support BoZo and Brexit) are spectacularly incompetent.
Really, really bad at their job.
Useless.
Worthless.
They thank you for your vote...
I'm really looking forward to the immigration numbers under a Starmer government. If you think THIS lot are really, really bad at their job... At least they aren't riven by a faction wanting to effectively open the borders.
Our borders are open now. How would we tell the difference between now and this dystopian nightmare you predict?
Out of control immigration is a false narrative. The remedy to this confected scandal, will after yesterday be even bigger hospital crises and care homes closing like fury. Arses and elbows don't even come into it.
There is a significant proportion of the population who don't understand why we didn't send all these foreign workers home after Brexit so that all the jobs would rightly go to Brits. That this isn't possible is beyond their understanding. Hence the increasing wailing and gnashing about migration which is now at CRISIS ARGGHHHH levels in the Tory party.
Last week's revelations about cheaper wage hurdles for migrant workers just revealed how disingenuous the government are. They are happy to gaslight the "foreigners go home" contingent of their vote. Whilst understanding the economic need for foreign labour.
What I hope from Starmer is that we can have an honest conversation. The crank right will foam on about unchecked migration, but *they* have already given us that. We can have controlled migration or uncontrolled. Currently it is the latter. The former would be to everyone's benefit.
The rise of the salary threshold for migrants to £38k and the ban on their bringing in departments Cleverly has announced is precisely to bring migration under greater control
Fantastic! But who wipes your grannie's a*** now?
Think of this another way. Why are care workers paid so little? Because we can easily import people to work in care from abroad. Until we change that, care workers will continue to get paid very little. Will this increase the cost of care? Of course. But care is only cheap because we pay carers - I think most people can agree - an unreasonably small amount for a job which most of us would not want to do; and we only do that because we are importing carers from abroad. Immigration is very much the wrong answer to this particular problem.
And that is a valid conversation to have. We get what we pay for. Lets take care as an example: We don't want to pay for all the preventative measures to stop people sliding into care We don't want to be stuck caring for our own relatives We don't want to pay for care homes that aren't dangerously understaffed We don't want to pay salaries for the people who care for our relatives What the Tories and their handful of voters seem to want is for people to just die quickly and quietly and thus remove the problem. Not their relatives of course, the other people.
Caring is an much of a vocation as healthcare. We could and should elevate it as a priority. Brown proposed it in his dying months. Davey passionately advocates it. But the Tories and big media ensure that "why should I pay" is the prevalent mood. So we get what we pay for...
I think May advocated it in 2017 and that was one of the key reasons she did not get a majority.
Exactly, it was May who advocated taking all a deceased person who had dementia's estate (including their former home) to pay for their care costs, at home as well as residential, with the family only able to keep £100,000.
Labour under Jeremy Corbyn trashed the plan as a 'dementia tax' and May lost her majority as a result.
Boris won a majority on a plan to cap care costs at £86,000 by contrast in 2019 but still has not been implemented
The whole discussion about a “cap” is unhelpful. Fundamentally it means that the state is providing catastrophe insurance.
Which is a reasonable use of the state’s resources (and potentially could even be underwritten by a reinsurer although I’m not sure why you would bother as the state).
But essentially people should save for their old age and not expect that state to pay for them
Which is what May proposed in 2017 and the voters rejected when she lost her majority.
The voters gave Boris a majority for his care costs cap in 2019 however
I mean, what could possibly go wrong? Presumably using a VPN with end point in another country would easily circumvent this (and sites would have no incentive to cut down on such use - quite the opposite). If something like this is to be done, it makes more sense to enforce it at the ISP/DNS provider level, surely? Sure, switching DNS provider is not hard, but something that can fairly easily be locked down on computer/router level by default.
ETA: Afterall, if kids must watch porn, we can at least use it to induce them to increase their computer literacy skills, by working around the protections in place
From your link:- "The potential consequences of data being leaked are catastrophic and could include blackmail, fraud, relationship damage, and the outing of people's sexual preferences in very vulnerable circumstances," https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67615719
Is that why we have historically unprecedented levels of immigration?
We have unprecedented levels because the current Government (sole qualification for membership, support BoZo and Brexit) are spectacularly incompetent.
Really, really bad at their job.
Useless.
Worthless.
They thank you for your vote...
I'm really looking forward to the immigration numbers under a Starmer government. If you think THIS lot are really, really bad at their job... At least they aren't riven by a faction wanting to effectively open the borders.
Our borders are open now. How would we tell the difference between now and this dystopian nightmare you predict?
Out of control immigration is a false narrative. The remedy to this confected scandal, will after yesterday be even bigger hospital crises and care homes closing like fury. Arses and elbows don't even come into it.
There is a significant proportion of the population who don't understand why we didn't send all these foreign workers home after Brexit so that all the jobs would rightly go to Brits. That this isn't possible is beyond their understanding. Hence the increasing wailing and gnashing about migration which is now at CRISIS ARGGHHHH levels in the Tory party.
Last week's revelations about cheaper wage hurdles for migrant workers just revealed how disingenuous the government are. They are happy to gaslight the "foreigners go home" contingent of their vote. Whilst understanding the economic need for foreign labour.
What I hope from Starmer is that we can have an honest conversation. The crank right will foam on about unchecked migration, but *they* have already given us that. We can have controlled migration or uncontrolled. Currently it is the latter. The former would be to everyone's benefit.
The rise of the salary threshold for migrants to £38k and the ban on their bringing in departments Cleverly has announced is precisely to bring migration under greater control
Fantastic! But who wipes your grannie's a*** now?
Think of this another way. Why are care workers paid so little? Because we can easily import people to work in care from abroad. Until we change that, care workers will continue to get paid very little. Will this increase the cost of care? Of course. But care is only cheap because we pay carers - I think most people can agree - an unreasonably small amount for a job which most of us would not want to do; and we only do that because we are importing carers from abroad. Immigration is very much the wrong answer to this particular problem.
And that is a valid conversation to have. We get what we pay for. Lets take care as an example: We don't want to pay for all the preventative measures to stop people sliding into care We don't want to be stuck caring for our own relatives We don't want to pay for care homes that aren't dangerously understaffed We don't want to pay salaries for the people who care for our relatives What the Tories and their handful of voters seem to want is for people to just die quickly and quietly and thus remove the problem. Not their relatives of course, the other people.
Caring is an much of a vocation as healthcare. We could and should elevate it as a priority. Brown proposed it in his dying months. Davey passionately advocates it. But the Tories and big media ensure that "why should I pay" is the prevalent mood. So we get what we pay for...
I think May advocated it in 2017 and that was one of the key reasons she did not get a majority.
Exactly, it was May who advocated taking all a deceased person who had dementia's estate (including their former home) to pay for their care costs, at home as well as residential, with the family only able to keep £100,000.
Labour under Jeremy Corbyn trashed the plan as a 'dementia tax' and May lost her majority as a result.
Boris won a majority on a plan to cap care costs at £86,000 by contrast in 2019 but still has not been implemented
The whole discussion about a “cap” is unhelpful. Fundamentally it means that the state is providing catastrophe insurance.
Which is a reasonable use of the state’s resources (and potentially could even be underwritten by a reinsurer although I’m not sure why you would bother as the state).
But essentially people should save for their old age and not expect that state to pay for them
Good idea, but in a welfare state it needs modification. The potential and possible costs of care range from Zero to more than the great majority of estates possess. Where the welfare state is a safety net (and this is non negotiable in our Overton window) it is rational for people faced with a catastrophic possibility to: insure, hide/spend/give away assets and/or not save in the first place. This is a terrible social policy where the market for private insurance has failed or does not exist.
The failure of government to act on Dilnot etc, despite repeated promises is a major fail.
Is that why we have historically unprecedented levels of immigration?
We have unprecedented levels because the current Government (sole qualification for membership, support BoZo and Brexit) are spectacularly incompetent.
Really, really bad at their job.
Useless.
Worthless.
They thank you for your vote...
I'm really looking forward to the immigration numbers under a Starmer government. If you think THIS lot are really, really bad at their job... At least they aren't riven by a faction wanting to effectively open the borders.
Our borders are open now. How would we tell the difference between now and this dystopian nightmare you predict?
Out of control immigration is a false narrative. The remedy to this confected scandal, will after yesterday be even bigger hospital crises and care homes closing like fury. Arses and elbows don't even come into it.
There is a significant proportion of the population who don't understand why we didn't send all these foreign workers home after Brexit so that all the jobs would rightly go to Brits. That this isn't possible is beyond their understanding. Hence the increasing wailing and gnashing about migration which is now at CRISIS ARGGHHHH levels in the Tory party.
Last week's revelations about cheaper wage hurdles for migrant workers just revealed how disingenuous the government are. They are happy to gaslight the "foreigners go home" contingent of their vote. Whilst understanding the economic need for foreign labour.
What I hope from Starmer is that we can have an honest conversation. The crank right will foam on about unchecked migration, but *they* have already given us that. We can have controlled migration or uncontrolled. Currently it is the latter. The former would be to everyone's benefit.
The rise of the salary threshold for migrants to £38k and the ban on their bringing in departments Cleverly has announced is precisely to bring migration under greater control
Fantastic! But who wipes your grannie's a*** now?
Think of this another way. Why are care workers paid so little? Because we can easily import people to work in care from abroad. Until we change that, care workers will continue to get paid very little. Will this increase the cost of care? Of course. But care is only cheap because we pay carers - I think most people can agree - an unreasonably small amount for a job which most of us would not want to do; and we only do that because we are importing carers from abroad. Immigration is very much the wrong answer to this particular problem.
And that is a valid conversation to have. We get what we pay for. Lets take care as an example: We don't want to pay for all the preventative measures to stop people sliding into care We don't want to be stuck caring for our own relatives We don't want to pay for care homes that aren't dangerously understaffed We don't want to pay salaries for the people who care for our relatives What the Tories and their handful of voters seem to want is for people to just die quickly and quietly and thus remove the problem. Not their relatives of course, the other people.
Caring is an much of a vocation as healthcare. We could and should elevate it as a priority. Brown proposed it in his dying months. Davey passionately advocates it. But the Tories and big media ensure that "why should I pay" is the prevalent mood. So we get what we pay for...
It was Theresa May who as Tory PM in 2017 came closest to bringing forward a plan for increased funding of social care, Corbyn Labour trashed it as a 'dementia tax' and she lost her majority and had to abandon it.
Yes. Its all Labour's fault. And when you say Corbyn you really mean his main appeaser - STARMER.
Why hasn't Starmer fixed this issue? He has had 13 years and he has done NOTHING.
Vote Conservative to eradicate 13 years of Starmer failure.
I mean, what could possibly go wrong? Presumably using a VPN with end point in another country would easily circumvent this (and sites would have no incentive to cut down on such use - quite the opposite). If something like this is to be done, it makes more sense to enforce it at the ISP/DNS provider level, surely? Sure, switching DNS provider is not hard, but something that can fairly easily be locked down on computer/router level by default.
ETA: Afterall, if kids must watch porn, we can at least use it to induce them to increase their computer literacy skills, by working around the protections in place
Politicians trying to think they have a way to stop teenage boys from looking at naked women online, are just as bad as those who think they can ban mathematics, or put processing power back in its box.
Not happening.
They weren’t trying to ban mathematics, they were just making sure that mathematics understood that it had to obey the laws the politicians passed.
I don't think Starmer is going to set the world on fire, but to be fair the Tories have slotted a hospital pass to Labour. The upside is that the Tories should be out of government and that is enough for now. The years 2010 to 2024 will surely go down as the worst set of governments in the history of the country, and I say that after having thought that honour was Brown's.
The Conservatives became a rabble, once May lost her majority.
At the same time, all governments would have struggled with the fallout from the GFC, Covid, and Ukraine. These three are the equivalent of fighting a prolonged war, in fiscal terms.
That's not really a valid excuse. Absolutely it was a challenging era, but the Tories just weren't up to the task. Are Tories only able to govern effectively when the sun is shining?
We are in a 'glass half empty' mode as a nation; and I think there are political reasons for this, which means that a new government (Labour nor Rishi, though he is trying) has an opportunity to turn it into a glass half full.
By this time (13 years) if a government is to survive scrutiny it needs to be easy and clear how to answer these questions in relation to it, in a way which excludes the opposition from the same or better ones:
Where are we How did we get here What do we stand for Where are we going How shall we get there What are our non negotiable principles and values.
My answers to questions 3-6 are that I have no idea. Unless (always possible) Labour looks even worse at the GE, they will win.
I don't think Starmer is going to set the world on fire, but to be fair the Tories have slotted a hospital pass to Labour. The upside is that the Tories should be out of government and that is enough for now. The years 2010 to 2024 will surely go down as the worst set of governments in the history of the country, and I say that after having thought that honour was Brown's.
The Conservatives became a rabble, once May lost her majority.
At the same time, all governments would have struggled with the fallout from the GFC, Covid, and Ukraine. These three are the equivalent of fighting a prolonged war, in fiscal terms.
You conveniently missed out the Conservatives keystone master plan of Brexit.
I mean, what could possibly go wrong? Presumably using a VPN with end point in another country would easily circumvent this (and sites would have no incentive to cut down on such use - quite the opposite). If something like this is to be done, it makes more sense to enforce it at the ISP/DNS provider level, surely? Sure, switching DNS provider is not hard, but something that can fairly easily be locked down on computer/router level by default.
ETA: Afterall, if kids must watch porn, we can at least use it to induce them to increase their computer literacy skills, by working around the protections in place
Politicians trying to think they have a way to stop teenage boys from looking at naked women online, are just as bad as those who think they can ban mathematics, or put processing power back in its box.
Is that why we have historically unprecedented levels of immigration?
We have unprecedented levels because the current Government (sole qualification for membership, support BoZo and Brexit) are spectacularly incompetent.
Really, really bad at their job.
Useless.
Worthless.
They thank you for your vote...
I'm really looking forward to the immigration numbers under a Starmer government. If you think THIS lot are really, really bad at their job... At least they aren't riven by a faction wanting to effectively open the borders.
Our borders are open now. How would we tell the difference between now and this dystopian nightmare you predict?
Out of control immigration is a false narrative. The remedy to this confected scandal, will after yesterday be even bigger hospital crises and care homes closing like fury. Arses and elbows don't even come into it.
There is a significant proportion of the population who don't understand why we didn't send all these foreign workers home after Brexit so that all the jobs would rightly go to Brits. That this isn't possible is beyond their understanding. Hence the increasing wailing and gnashing about migration which is now at CRISIS ARGGHHHH levels in the Tory party.
Last week's revelations about cheaper wage hurdles for migrant workers just revealed how disingenuous the government are. They are happy to gaslight the "foreigners go home" contingent of their vote. Whilst understanding the economic need for foreign labour.
What I hope from Starmer is that we can have an honest conversation. The crank right will foam on about unchecked migration, but *they* have already given us that. We can have controlled migration or uncontrolled. Currently it is the latter. The former would be to everyone's benefit.
The rise of the salary threshold for migrants to £38k and the ban on their bringing in departments Cleverly has announced is precisely to bring migration under greater control
Fantastic! But who wipes your grannie's a*** now?
Think of this another way. Why are care workers paid so little? Because we can easily import people to work in care from abroad. Until we change that, care workers will continue to get paid very little. Will this increase the cost of care? Of course. But care is only cheap because we pay carers - I think most people can agree - an unreasonably small amount for a job which most of us would not want to do; and we only do that because we are importing carers from abroad. Immigration is very much the wrong answer to this particular problem.
And that is a valid conversation to have. We get what we pay for. Lets take care as an example: We don't want to pay for all the preventative measures to stop people sliding into care We don't want to be stuck caring for our own relatives We don't want to pay for care homes that aren't dangerously understaffed We don't want to pay salaries for the people who care for our relatives What the Tories and their handful of voters seem to want is for people to just die quickly and quietly and thus remove the problem. Not their relatives of course, the other people.
Caring is an much of a vocation as healthcare. We could and should elevate it as a priority. Brown proposed it in his dying months. Davey passionately advocates it. But the Tories and big media ensure that "why should I pay" is the prevalent mood. So we get what we pay for...
It was Theresa May who as Tory PM in 2017 came closest to bringing forward a plan for increased funding of social care, Corbyn Labour trashed it as a 'dementia tax' and she lost her majority and had to abandon it.
Yes. Its all Labour's fault. And when you say Corbyn you really mean his main appeaser - STARMER.
Why hasn't Starmer fixed this issue? He has had 13 years and he has done NOTHING.
Vote Conservative to eradicate 13 years of Starmer failure.
It isn't Starmer's fault either but he is not going to commit electoral suicide by rehashing May's 'dementia tax' idea is he.
The fact is May was the only PM who had the courage to put forward radical plans to fund social care by making all the estate of a dementia patient over £100k liable for care costs and the voters resoundingly rejected it.
Thus the 2017 election result killed off any politician touching serious reform of social care for a generation or more, certainly any which costs the voters more
Is that why we have historically unprecedented levels of immigration?
We have unprecedented levels because the current Government (sole qualification for membership, support BoZo and Brexit) are spectacularly incompetent.
Really, really bad at their job.
Useless.
Worthless.
They thank you for your vote...
I'm really looking forward to the immigration numbers under a Starmer government. If you think THIS lot are really, really bad at their job... At least they aren't riven by a faction wanting to effectively open the borders.
Our borders are open now. How would we tell the difference between now and this dystopian nightmare you predict?
Out of control immigration is a false narrative. The remedy to this confected scandal, will after yesterday be even bigger hospital crises and care homes closing like fury. Arses and elbows don't even come into it.
There is a significant proportion of the population who don't understand why we didn't send all these foreign workers home after Brexit so that all the jobs would rightly go to Brits. That this isn't possible is beyond their understanding. Hence the increasing wailing and gnashing about migration which is now at CRISIS ARGGHHHH levels in the Tory party.
Last week's revelations about cheaper wage hurdles for migrant workers just revealed how disingenuous the government are. They are happy to gaslight the "foreigners go home" contingent of their vote. Whilst understanding the economic need for foreign labour.
What I hope from Starmer is that we can have an honest conversation. The crank right will foam on about unchecked migration, but *they* have already given us that. We can have controlled migration or uncontrolled. Currently it is the latter. The former would be to everyone's benefit.
The rise of the salary threshold for migrants to £38k and the ban on their bringing in departments Cleverly has announced is precisely to bring migration under greater control
Fantastic! But who wipes your grannie's a*** now?
Think of this another way. Why are care workers paid so little? Because we can easily import people to work in care from abroad. Until we change that, care workers will continue to get paid very little. Will this increase the cost of care? Of course. But care is only cheap because we pay carers - I think most people can agree - an unreasonably small amount for a job which most of us would not want to do; and we only do that because we are importing carers from abroad. Immigration is very much the wrong answer to this particular problem.
And that is a valid conversation to have. We get what we pay for. Lets take care as an example: We don't want to pay for all the preventative measures to stop people sliding into care We don't want to be stuck caring for our own relatives We don't want to pay for care homes that aren't dangerously understaffed We don't want to pay salaries for the people who care for our relatives What the Tories and their handful of voters seem to want is for people to just die quickly and quietly and thus remove the problem. Not their relatives of course, the other people.
Caring is an much of a vocation as healthcare. We could and should elevate it as a priority. Brown proposed it in his dying months. Davey passionately advocates it. But the Tories and big media ensure that "why should I pay" is the prevalent mood. So we get what we pay for...
It was Theresa May who as Tory PM in 2017 came closest to bringing forward a plan for increased funding of social care, Corbyn Labour trashed it as a 'dementia tax' and she lost her majority and had to abandon it.
Yes. Its all Labour's fault. And when you say Corbyn you really mean his main appeaser - STARMER.
Why hasn't Starmer fixed this issue? He has had 13 years and he has done NOTHING.
Vote Conservative to eradicate 13 years of Starmer failure.
It isn't Starmer's fault either but he is not going to commit electoral suicide by rehashing May's 'dementia tax' idea is he.
The fact is May was the only PM who had the courage to put forward radical plans to fund social care by making all the estate of a dementia patient over £100k liable for care costs and the voters resoundingly rejected it.
Thus the 2017 election result killed off any politician touching serious reform of social care for a generation or more, certainly any which costs the voters more
If it isn't Starmer's fault then why does Sunak keep saying it is all Starmer's fault? Like everything, on any issue. Including his howler over the Greek PM snub.
If you haven't noticed, your party is in office. We both know they are no longer in government, but they have been for what feels like an eternity. So everything that is wrong is your fault. Either your doing, or your lack of fixing.
The public aren't as stupid as you assume. I know that so many of your 2019 voters are thick as mince, but they aren't an example of the general public...
I mean I yield to no one in my estimation of Boris as a solipsistic, lazy, useless twat. Albeit a loveable, electable one.
That said, I think when the history books are written they will look, much as they did with the GFC, as this and several years hence as the Covid Era and will cut many economies and the handling of them quite some slack.
Of course Brexit bound one leg to the other so it was always going to be difficult to win the 110m hurdles but nevertheless we are still appreciating the malign effects Covid had on all parts of society.
I don't think Starmer is going to set the world on fire, but to be fair the Tories have slotted a hospital pass to Labour. The upside is that the Tories should be out of government and that is enough for now. The years 2010 to 2024 will surely go down as the worst set of governments in the history of the country, and I say that after having thought that honour was Brown's.
The Conservatives became a rabble, once May lost her majority.
At the same time, all governments would have struggled with the fallout from the GFC, Covid, and Ukraine. These three are the equivalent of fighting a prolonged war, in fiscal terms.
That's not really a valid excuse. Absolutely it was a challenging era, but the Tories just weren't up to the task. Are Tories only able to govern effectively when the sun is shining?
I agree they weren't up to the task. Not many are.
I don't think Starmer is going to set the world on fire, but to be fair the Tories have slotted a hospital pass to Labour. The upside is that the Tories should be out of government and that is enough for now. The years 2010 to 2024 will surely go down as the worst set of governments in the history of the country, and I say that after having thought that honour was Brown's.
The Conservatives became a rabble, once May lost her majority.
At the same time, all governments would have struggled with the fallout from the GFC, Covid, and Ukraine. These three are the equivalent of fighting a prolonged war, in fiscal terms.
You conveniently missed out the Conservatives keystone master plan of Brexit.
Well, in fiscal terms, it's of far less significance than the other three.
Interesting thread on the PISA scores and why the attitude to immigrants in the U.K. may be different to other European countries:
Here's the most important chart. It shows the UK is the *only* country in Europe where second generation immigrants outperform non-immigrant students. (And first generation don't do much worse)…..
What it shows is that our immigration is much more like English speaking countries outside Europe (Canada, Australia, NZ) and not at all like other Western European countries. And that our immigration is *actively improving* our education system (due to peer effects).
In other words, in the U.K. second generation immigrants do better than non- immigrants, while first generation are pretty close. In France, first generation immigrants do very much worse (20 points is about equivalent to a years teaching) than non- immigrants - and still lag far behind in the second generation. It’s a picture repeated across continental Europe. Only Ireland doesn’t do quite as badly.
Telling its readers the UK economy is actually doing OK, Brexit is not a disaster, in some ways the EU is worse off = no way Rejoin will ever be a thing
"Keir Starmer is broadly offering continuity Rishi Sunak."
But with a large side-order of early disappointment...
Larry Elliot alway was the Guardian's tame Lexiteer, wasn't he? The EU stops socialism in one country, so it is bad, that sort of thing.
From his perspective, Starmer and Sunak probably do look indistinguishable.
No, that’s a gross mischaracterisation
He believes the EU enforces a neo-liberal orthodoxy and infringes political sovereignty. He also makes the interesting point that Brexit may be the reason the UK is now almost alone, in Europe, in not suffering a hard right swing
You didn’t bother to read the data in the lead, clearly.
Quite.
Braverman et al are regarded as extreme right even by the right in most European Countries.
The funny thing is that the UK right wingers demand even more extreme policies "otherwise we get Farage". Actually it is probably the Conservatives who "get Farage", if they continue down that rabbit hole, and with a similar number of seats.
The Far Right may be a chimera when it comes to Farage, but clearly not when we examine the policies of even a so-called "moderate" like Sunak. The Tories ARE the far right.
Whatever his own instincts may have been, Sunak panders to the far right, as long as they are in his own party, while many Tory members pander to the far right, whether or not they are Conservatives, as we saw with the lionising of Farage at the Tory conference.
It matters not, the punishment for the Tories at the next election will be brutal, even as it stands, and another six months of Faragist cosplay will raise the coming disaster to an ELE for the Tories.
We have all had enough...
"You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. In the name of God, go!"
Listen to yourself
“The Tories ARE the Far Right”. Is that why we have historically unprecedented levels of immigration? Get a grip
They have that in Italy too. What do you see as the big differences between the Braverman/Rees Mogg Tories and, say, Meloni in Italy or Wilders in the Netherlands?
They haven't yet proposed banning same sex couples from having children by surrogate like Meloni or to ban Muslim headscarfs and close Mosques like Wilders
Meloni is in a same sex partnership, and had kids via a surrogate ? Respect.
Is that why we have historically unprecedented levels of immigration?
We have unprecedented levels because the current Government (sole qualification for membership, support BoZo and Brexit) are spectacularly incompetent.
Really, really bad at their job.
Useless.
Worthless.
They thank you for your vote...
I'm really looking forward to the immigration numbers under a Starmer government. If you think THIS lot are really, really bad at their job... At least they aren't riven by a faction wanting to effectively open the borders.
Our borders are open now. How would we tell the difference between now and this dystopian nightmare you predict?
Out of control immigration is a false narrative. The remedy to this confected scandal, will after yesterday be even bigger hospital crises and care homes closing like fury. Arses and elbows don't even come into it.
There is a significant proportion of the population who don't understand why we didn't send all these foreign workers home after Brexit so that all the jobs would rightly go to Brits. That this isn't possible is beyond their understanding. Hence the increasing wailing and gnashing about migration which is now at CRISIS ARGGHHHH levels in the Tory party.
Last week's revelations about cheaper wage hurdles for migrant workers just revealed how disingenuous the government are. They are happy to gaslight the "foreigners go home" contingent of their vote. Whilst understanding the economic need for foreign labour.
What I hope from Starmer is that we can have an honest conversation. The crank right will foam on about unchecked migration, but *they* have already given us that. We can have controlled migration or uncontrolled. Currently it is the latter. The former would be to everyone's benefit.
The rise of the salary threshold for migrants to £38k and the ban on their bringing in departments Cleverly has announced is precisely to bring migration under greater control
Fantastic! But who wipes your grannie's a*** now?
Think of this another way. Why are care workers paid so little? Because we can easily import people to work in care from abroad. Until we change that, care workers will continue to get paid very little. Will this increase the cost of care? Of course. But care is only cheap because we pay carers - I think most people can agree - an unreasonably small amount for a job which most of us would not want to do; and we only do that because we are importing carers from abroad. Immigration is very much the wrong answer to this particular problem.
Care is cheap? The monthly average cost of residential care is £3290 and receiving nursing care in a care home costs on average £4160.per month.
An extraordinary figure, when you consider that a premier inn, usually better staffed, and absolutely better furnished, can be had for under a hundred a night.
Is it extraordinary?
Last time I checked residential care homes don't require residents to check out every morning.
Preposterous figure for care imho. In the South its impossible to find at that rate. My father in was paying at the same rate for regular care when he went in for respite care @ 50000 in Horsham area. My mother in Surrey s on 78000 and its virtually impossible to find anywhere fir less that is adequate imho.
I'd say the numbers quoted are somewhat low (5% low?), and that London (+25%)/ SE (+10-15%) are outliers. Here's a regional survey from Nov 2023.
I don't think Starmer is going to set the world on fire, but to be fair the Tories have slotted a hospital pass to Labour. The upside is that the Tories should be out of government and that is enough for now. The years 2010 to 2024 will surely go down as the worst set of governments in the history of the country, and I say that after having thought that honour was Brown's.
The Conservatives became a rabble, once May lost her majority.
At the same time, all governments would have struggled with the fallout from the GFC, Covid, and Ukraine. These three are the equivalent of fighting a prolonged war, in fiscal terms.
You conveniently missed out the Conservatives keystone master plan of Brexit.
Well, in fiscal terms, it's of far less significance than the other three.
For the last decade and more, England and Scotland have been running a controlled experiment in education. The PISA results yet again make it clear which of those approaches has worked. And it's not the SNP's.
Is that why we have historically unprecedented levels of immigration?
We have unprecedented levels because the current Government (sole qualification for membership, support BoZo and Brexit) are spectacularly incompetent.
Really, really bad at their job.
Useless.
Worthless.
They thank you for your vote...
I'm really looking forward to the immigration numbers under a Starmer government. If you think THIS lot are really, really bad at their job... At least they aren't riven by a faction wanting to effectively open the borders.
Our borders are open now. How would we tell the difference between now and this dystopian nightmare you predict?
Out of control immigration is a false narrative. The remedy to this confected scandal, will after yesterday be even bigger hospital crises and care homes closing like fury. Arses and elbows don't even come into it.
There is a significant proportion of the population who don't understand why we didn't send all these foreign workers home after Brexit so that all the jobs would rightly go to Brits. That this isn't possible is beyond their understanding. Hence the increasing wailing and gnashing about migration which is now at CRISIS ARGGHHHH levels in the Tory party.
Last week's revelations about cheaper wage hurdles for migrant workers just revealed how disingenuous the government are. They are happy to gaslight the "foreigners go home" contingent of their vote. Whilst understanding the economic need for foreign labour.
What I hope from Starmer is that we can have an honest conversation. The crank right will foam on about unchecked migration, but *they* have already given us that. We can have controlled migration or uncontrolled. Currently it is the latter. The former would be to everyone's benefit.
The rise of the salary threshold for migrants to £38k and the ban on their bringing in departments Cleverly has announced is precisely to bring migration under greater control
Fantastic! But who wipes your grannie's a*** now?
Think of this another way. Why are care workers paid so little? Because we can easily import people to work in care from abroad. Until we change that, care workers will continue to get paid very little. Will this increase the cost of care? Of course. But care is only cheap because we pay carers - I think most people can agree - an unreasonably small amount for a job which most of us would not want to do; and we only do that because we are importing carers from abroad. Immigration is very much the wrong answer to this particular problem.
And that is a valid conversation to have. We get what we pay for. Lets take care as an example: We don't want to pay for all the preventative measures to stop people sliding into care We don't want to be stuck caring for our own relatives We don't want to pay for care homes that aren't dangerously understaffed We don't want to pay salaries for the people who care for our relatives What the Tories and their handful of voters seem to want is for people to just die quickly and quietly and thus remove the problem. Not their relatives of course, the other people.
Caring is an much of a vocation as healthcare. We could and should elevate it as a priority. Brown proposed it in his dying months. Davey passionately advocates it. But the Tories and big media ensure that "why should I pay" is the prevalent mood. So we get what we pay for...
It was Theresa May who as Tory PM in 2017 came closest to bringing forward a plan for increased funding of social care, Corbyn Labour trashed it as a 'dementia tax' and she lost her majority and had to abandon it.
Yes. Its all Labour's fault. And when you say Corbyn you really mean his main appeaser - STARMER.
Why hasn't Starmer fixed this issue? He has had 13 years and he has done NOTHING.
Vote Conservative to eradicate 13 years of Starmer failure.
It isn't Starmer's fault either but he is not going to commit electoral suicide by rehashing May's 'dementia tax' idea is he.
The fact is May was the only PM who had the courage to put forward radical plans to fund social care by making all the estate of a dementia patient over £100k liable for care costs and the voters resoundingly rejected it.
Thus the 2017 election result killed off any politician touching serious reform of social care for a generation or more, certainly any which costs the voters more
Is that why we have historically unprecedented levels of immigration?
We have unprecedented levels because the current Government (sole qualification for membership, support BoZo and Brexit) are spectacularly incompetent.
Really, really bad at their job.
Useless.
Worthless.
They thank you for your vote...
I'm really looking forward to the immigration numbers under a Starmer government. If you think THIS lot are really, really bad at their job... At least they aren't riven by a faction wanting to effectively open the borders.
Our borders are open now. How would we tell the difference between now and this dystopian nightmare you predict?
Out of control immigration is a false narrative. The remedy to this confected scandal, will after yesterday be even bigger hospital crises and care homes closing like fury. Arses and elbows don't even come into it.
There is a significant proportion of the population who don't understand why we didn't send all these foreign workers home after Brexit so that all the jobs would rightly go to Brits. That this isn't possible is beyond their understanding. Hence the increasing wailing and gnashing about migration which is now at CRISIS ARGGHHHH levels in the Tory party.
Last week's revelations about cheaper wage hurdles for migrant workers just revealed how disingenuous the government are. They are happy to gaslight the "foreigners go home" contingent of their vote. Whilst understanding the economic need for foreign labour.
What I hope from Starmer is that we can have an honest conversation. The crank right will foam on about unchecked migration, but *they* have already given us that. We can have controlled migration or uncontrolled. Currently it is the latter. The former would be to everyone's benefit.
The rise of the salary threshold for migrants to £38k and the ban on their bringing in departments Cleverly has announced is precisely to bring migration under greater control
Fantastic! But who wipes your grannie's a*** now?
Think of this another way. Why are care workers paid so little? Because we can easily import people to work in care from abroad. Until we change that, care workers will continue to get paid very little. Will this increase the cost of care? Of course. But care is only cheap because we pay carers - I think most people can agree - an unreasonably small amount for a job which most of us would not want to do; and we only do that because we are importing carers from abroad. Immigration is very much the wrong answer to this particular problem.
And that is a valid conversation to have. We get what we pay for. Lets take care as an example: We don't want to pay for all the preventative measures to stop people sliding into care We don't want to be stuck caring for our own relatives We don't want to pay for care homes that aren't dangerously understaffed We don't want to pay salaries for the people who care for our relatives What the Tories and their handful of voters seem to want is for people to just die quickly and quietly and thus remove the problem. Not their relatives of course, the other people.
Caring is an much of a vocation as healthcare. We could and should elevate it as a priority. Brown proposed it in his dying months. Davey passionately advocates it. But the Tories and big media ensure that "why should I pay" is the prevalent mood. So we get what we pay for...
It was Theresa May who as Tory PM in 2017 came closest to bringing forward a plan for increased funding of social care, Corbyn Labour trashed it as a 'dementia tax' and she lost her majority and had to abandon it.
Yes. Its all Labour's fault. And when you say Corbyn you really mean his main appeaser - STARMER.
Why hasn't Starmer fixed this issue? He has had 13 years and he has done NOTHING.
Vote Conservative to eradicate 13 years of Starmer failure.
Robert Jenrick is your man to undo all this Labour chaos. A nastier, more disingenuous populist would be difficult to manufacture. He makes Priti and Suella look like rank amateurs. Future PM?
I don't think Starmer is going to set the world on fire, but to be fair the Tories have slotted a hospital pass to Labour. The upside is that the Tories should be out of government and that is enough for now. The years 2010 to 2024 will surely go down as the worst set of governments in the history of the country, and I say that after having thought that honour was Brown's.
The Conservatives became a rabble, once May lost her majority.
At the same time, all governments would have struggled with the fallout from the GFC, Covid, and Ukraine. These three are the equivalent of fighting a prolonged war, in fiscal terms.
That's not really a valid excuse. Absolutely it was a challenging era, but the Tories just weren't up to the task. Are Tories only able to govern effectively when the sun is shining?
We are in a 'glass half empty' mode as a nation; and I think there are political reasons for this, which means that a new government (Labour nor Rishi, though he is trying) has an opportunity to turn it into a glass half full.
By this time (13 years) if a government is to survive scrutiny it needs to be easy and clear how to answer these questions in relation to it, in a way which excludes the opposition from the same or better ones:
Where are we How did we get here What do we stand for Where are we going How shall we get there What are our non negotiable principles and values.
My answers to questions 3-6 are that I have no idea. Unless (always possible) Labour looks even worse at the GE, they will win.
The glass isn't half-empty; it's three-quarters empty, at most.
How we describe the glass is of considerably less import than what's in it.
Interesting thread on the PISA scores and why the attitude to immigrants in the U.K. may be different to other European countries:
Here's the most important chart. It shows the UK is the *only* country in Europe where second generation immigrants outperform non-immigrant students. (And first generation don't do much worse)…..
What it shows is that our immigration is much more like English speaking countries outside Europe (Canada, Australia, NZ) and not at all like other Western European countries. And that our immigration is *actively improving* our education system (due to peer effects).
In other words, in the U.K. second generation immigrants do better than non- immigrants, while first generation are pretty close. In France, first generation immigrants do very much worse (20 points is about equivalent to a years teaching) than non- immigrants - and still lag far behind in the second generation. It’s a picture repeated across continental Europe. Only Ireland doesn’t do quite as badly.
So we import students that are smarter than me from abroad into my classroom. They do better than me and I improve due to competition. Yay! I then graduate but they take my job and I have to get a worse job for less pay. So I got better but am paid worse.
I mean I yield to no one in my estimation of Boris as a solipsistic, lazy, useless twat. Albeit a loveable, electable one.
That said, I think when the history books are written they will look, much as they did with the GFC, as this and several years hence as the Covid Era and will cut many economies and the handling of them quite some slack.
Of course Brexit bound one leg to the other so it was always going to be difficult to win the 110m hurdles but nevertheless we are still appreciating the malign effects Covid had on all parts of society.
It's a myth that Johnson was lovable or electable. His ratings at every point in the 2019 election were worse than those of May's at any point in the 2017 one. The difference was that (1) Corbyn had been exposed by that point and was both disliked and feared, and (2) Brexit really did need doing and for all that Johnson's plan was a fraud, it *was* a plan, of sorts; Labour, by contrast, were all over the shop.
His electability was purely a function of facing the most unpopular LotO ever.
I don't think Starmer is going to set the world on fire, but to be fair the Tories have slotted a hospital pass to Labour. The upside is that the Tories should be out of government and that is enough for now. The years 2010 to 2024 will surely go down as the worst set of governments in the history of the country, and I say that after having thought that honour was Brown's.
The Conservatives became a rabble, once May lost her majority.
At the same time, all governments would have struggled with the fallout from the GFC, Covid, and Ukraine. These three are the equivalent of fighting a prolonged war, in fiscal terms.
That's not really a valid excuse. Absolutely it was a challenging era, but the Tories just weren't up to the task. Are Tories only able to govern effectively when the sun is shining?
We are in a 'glass half empty' mode as a nation; and I think there are political reasons for this, which means that a new government (Labour nor Rishi, though he is trying) has an opportunity to turn it into a glass half full.
By this time (13 years) if a government is to survive scrutiny it needs to be easy and clear how to answer these questions in relation to it, in a way which excludes the opposition from the same or better ones:
Where are we How did we get here What do we stand for Where are we going How shall we get there What are our non negotiable principles and values.
My answers to questions 3-6 are that I have no idea. Unless (always possible) Labour looks even worse at the GE, they will win.
The glass isn't half-empty; it's three-quarters empty, at most.
How we describe the glass is of considerably less import than what's in it.
Interesting thread on the PISA scores and why the attitude to immigrants in the U.K. may be different to other European countries:
Here's the most important chart. It shows the UK is the *only* country in Europe where second generation immigrants outperform non-immigrant students. (And first generation don't do much worse)…..
What it shows is that our immigration is much more like English speaking countries outside Europe (Canada, Australia, NZ) and not at all like other Western European countries. And that our immigration is *actively improving* our education system (due to peer effects).
In other words, in the U.K. second generation immigrants do better than non- immigrants, while first generation are pretty close. In France, first generation immigrants do very much worse (20 points is about equivalent to a years teaching) than non- immigrants - and still lag far behind in the second generation. It’s a picture repeated across continental Europe. Only Ireland doesn’t do quite as badly.
So we import students that are smarter than me from abroad into my classroom. They do better than me and I improve due to competition. Yay! I then graduate but they take my job and I have to get a worse job for less pay. So I got better but am paid worse.
Mr. Herdson, indeed. Contrast colours perception immensely. Darius wasn't incompetent or stupid, but up against Alexander the Great he was found wanting (as was everyone else...).
I don't think Starmer is going to set the world on fire, but to be fair the Tories have slotted a hospital pass to Labour. The upside is that the Tories should be out of government and that is enough for now. The years 2010 to 2024 will surely go down as the worst set of governments in the history of the country, and I say that after having thought that honour was Brown's.
The Conservatives became a rabble, once May lost her majority.
At the same time, all governments would have struggled with the fallout from the GFC, Covid, and Ukraine. These three are the equivalent of fighting a prolonged war, in fiscal terms.
That's not really a valid excuse. Absolutely it was a challenging era, but the Tories just weren't up to the task. Are Tories only able to govern effectively when the sun is shining?
We are in a 'glass half empty' mode as a nation; and I think there are political reasons for this, which means that a new government (Labour nor Rishi, though he is trying) has an opportunity to turn it into a glass half full.
By this time (13 years) if a government is to survive scrutiny it needs to be easy and clear how to answer these questions in relation to it, in a way which excludes the opposition from the same or better ones:
Where are we How did we get here What do we stand for Where are we going How shall we get there What are our non negotiable principles and values.
My answers to questions 3-6 are that I have no idea. Unless (always possible) Labour looks even worse at the GE, they will win.
The glass isn't half-empty; it's three-quarters empty, at most.
How we describe the glass is of considerably less import than what's in it.
Are the current government so totally inept, or are they smarter than we give them credit for? Have they given up on election 2024 and the programme is now to salt the earth for the next government to ensure a swift return?
Is that why we have historically unprecedented levels of immigration?
We have unprecedented levels because the current Government (sole qualification for membership, support BoZo and Brexit) are spectacularly incompetent.
Really, really bad at their job.
Useless.
Worthless.
They thank you for your vote...
I'm really looking forward to the immigration numbers under a Starmer government. If you think THIS lot are really, really bad at their job... At least they aren't riven by a faction wanting to effectively open the borders.
Our borders are open now. How would we tell the difference between now and this dystopian nightmare you predict?
Out of control immigration is a false narrative. The remedy to this confected scandal, will after yesterday be even bigger hospital crises and care homes closing like fury. Arses and elbows don't even come into it.
There is a significant proportion of the population who don't understand why we didn't send all these foreign workers home after Brexit so that all the jobs would rightly go to Brits. That this isn't possible is beyond their understanding. Hence the increasing wailing and gnashing about migration which is now at CRISIS ARGGHHHH levels in the Tory party.
Last week's revelations about cheaper wage hurdles for migrant workers just revealed how disingenuous the government are. They are happy to gaslight the "foreigners go home" contingent of their vote. Whilst understanding the economic need for foreign labour.
What I hope from Starmer is that we can have an honest conversation. The crank right will foam on about unchecked migration, but *they* have already given us that. We can have controlled migration or uncontrolled. Currently it is the latter. The former would be to everyone's benefit.
The rise of the salary threshold for migrants to £38k and the ban on their bringing in departments Cleverly has announced is precisely to bring migration under greater control
Fantastic! But who wipes your grannie's a*** now?
Think of this another way. Why are care workers paid so little? Because we can easily import people to work in care from abroad. Until we change that, care workers will continue to get paid very little. Will this increase the cost of care? Of course. But care is only cheap because we pay carers - I think most people can agree - an unreasonably small amount for a job which most of us would not want to do; and we only do that because we are importing carers from abroad. Immigration is very much the wrong answer to this particular problem.
And that is a valid conversation to have. We get what we pay for. Lets take care as an example: We don't want to pay for all the preventative measures to stop people sliding into care We don't want to be stuck caring for our own relatives We don't want to pay for care homes that aren't dangerously understaffed We don't want to pay salaries for the people who care for our relatives What the Tories and their handful of voters seem to want is for people to just die quickly and quietly and thus remove the problem. Not their relatives of course, the other people.
Caring is an much of a vocation as healthcare. We could and should elevate it as a priority. Brown proposed it in his dying months. Davey passionately advocates it. But the Tories and big media ensure that "why should I pay" is the prevalent mood. So we get what we pay for...
It was Theresa May who as Tory PM in 2017 came closest to bringing forward a plan for increased funding of social care, Corbyn Labour trashed it as a 'dementia tax' and she lost her majority and had to abandon it.
Yes. Its all Labour's fault. And when you say Corbyn you really mean his main appeaser - STARMER.
Why hasn't Starmer fixed this issue? He has had 13 years and he has done NOTHING.
Vote Conservative to eradicate 13 years of Starmer failure.
It isn't Starmer's fault either but he is not going to commit electoral suicide by rehashing May's 'dementia tax' idea is he.
The fact is May was the only PM who had the courage to put forward radical plans to fund social care by making all the estate of a dementia patient over £100k liable for care costs and the voters resoundingly rejected it.
Thus the 2017 election result killed off any politician touching serious reform of social care for a generation or more, certainly any which costs the voters more
I’m currently having ‘care’ due to my current, and probably permanent, inability to do much for myself. This in itself is a result of a malformation of the vertebrae in my neck affecting my spine. I’ve had an operation, and am slowly improving from where I was but the prognosis isn’t good, even for an optimist! Essex County will pay, AIUI, £20 per hour for carers, but because of my total pension income, I’m too well off to get anything! Consequently we’re paying £40 per hour for what seems to me to be quite acceptable assistance. This is provided partly by a mix of experienced middle-aged women, and one man, most of whom are ‘native Brits’, and partly by a group of 20 somethings, male and female, all of whom are using this as income prior to new careers in the ‘care industry’. It’s very interesting talking to them and learning of their different routes into this, and their hopes for the future. All of them make it clear that they’ve plenty to do and hope their employers don’t take on too many more clients. Among their main grouses is that they have to travel between clients, often for quite a distance. They get paid mileage, AIUI, but the time they have to spend driving is the issue.
Interesting thread on the PISA scores and why the attitude to immigrants in the U.K. may be different to other European countries:
Here's the most important chart. It shows the UK is the *only* country in Europe where second generation immigrants outperform non-immigrant students. (And first generation don't do much worse)…..
What it shows is that our immigration is much more like English speaking countries outside Europe (Canada, Australia, NZ) and not at all like other Western European countries. And that our immigration is *actively improving* our education system (due to peer effects).
In other words, in the U.K. second generation immigrants do better than non- immigrants, while first generation are pretty close. In France, first generation immigrants do very much worse (20 points is about equivalent to a years teaching) than non- immigrants - and still lag far behind in the second generation. It’s a picture repeated across continental Europe. Only Ireland doesn’t do quite as badly.
So we import students that are smarter than me from abroad into my classroom. They do better than me and I improve due to competition. Yay! I then graduate but they take my job and I have to get a worse job for less pay. So I got better but am paid worse.
Pause
Did anyone think this through?
It suggests that productivity growth would've been even worse without immigration.
An interesting piece in the Guardian to gladden the hearts of Brexiters, and I'd guess @Leon would take some pleasure from seeing some of his observations repeated.
Will Trump’s Supreme Court Justices Stick to Their Word? https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/05/trump-supreme-court-justices-taxes-00129912 ...If the Trump appointees join a conservative majority to blow up the existing constitutional consensus, however, they will be turning their backs on the passionate defenses of originalism they made before the Senate Judiciary Committee. They will also be raising fundamental questions about their commitment to democratic principles: What gives nine unelected justices the authority to protect the rich when a democratically elected president and Congress decide that progressive taxation is in the public interest?
When it comes to adhering to originalist principles, the history is clear — as long as it’s not cherry-picked.
Quite simply, the Founders were not opposed to wealth taxes. Indeed, the Supreme Court unanimously approved the first wealth tax in 1793. Its successors consistently followed this precedent over the next century and upheld every tax statute that required the rich to pay more than the poor. Given these historical foundations, the Trump-appointed justices will destroy the credibility of their professed commitment to originalism if they vote to prohibit a wealth tax...
I don't think Starmer is going to set the world on fire, but to be fair the Tories have slotted a hospital pass to Labour. The upside is that the Tories should be out of government and that is enough for now. The years 2010 to 2024 will surely go down as the worst set of governments in the history of the country, and I say that after having thought that honour was Brown's.
The Brown government seemed like an absolute disaster zone at the time, but I'm struggling now to think of anything it actually did that was terrible. Did they do terrible things that I've simply forgotten about, or was it more that Gordon looked like a bit of a maniac towards the end?
Interesting thread on the PISA scores and why the attitude to immigrants in the U.K. may be different to other European countries:
Here's the most important chart. It shows the UK is the *only* country in Europe where second generation immigrants outperform non-immigrant students. (And first generation don't do much worse)…..
What it shows is that our immigration is much more like English speaking countries outside Europe (Canada, Australia, NZ) and not at all like other Western European countries. And that our immigration is *actively improving* our education system (due to peer effects).
In other words, in the U.K. second generation immigrants do better than non- immigrants, while first generation are pretty close. In France, first generation immigrants do very much worse (20 points is about equivalent to a years teaching) than non- immigrants - and still lag far behind in the second generation. It’s a picture repeated across continental Europe. Only Ireland doesn’t do quite as badly.
So we import students that are smarter than me from abroad into my classroom. They do better than me and I improve due to competition. Yay! I then graduate but they take my job and I have to get a worse job for less pay. So I got better but am paid worse.
Pause
Did anyone think this through?
Yes. It's not a zero sum game.
But I am not the sum of the set. I am an individual within the set. An action that may improve the set overall may disimprove the individuals within the set (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox).
Even worse, you are creating a situation where all the members of the original set are worse off and the new members of the set are better off.
Why would anybody in the original set agree to this? And what do you think they'll do when they find out?
Interesting thread on the PISA scores and why the attitude to immigrants in the U.K. may be different to other European countries:
Here's the most important chart. It shows the UK is the *only* country in Europe where second generation immigrants outperform non-immigrant students. (And first generation don't do much worse)…..
What it shows is that our immigration is much more like English speaking countries outside Europe (Canada, Australia, NZ) and not at all like other Western European countries. And that our immigration is *actively improving* our education system (due to peer effects).
In other words, in the U.K. second generation immigrants do better than non- immigrants, while first generation are pretty close. In France, first generation immigrants do very much worse (20 points is about equivalent to a years teaching) than non- immigrants - and still lag far behind in the second generation. It’s a picture repeated across continental Europe. Only Ireland doesn’t do quite as badly.
So we import students that are smarter than me from abroad into my classroom. They do better than me and I improve due to competition. Yay! I then graduate but they take my job and I have to get a worse job for less pay. So I got better but am paid worse.
Pause
Did anyone think this through?
Yes. It's not a zero sum game.
But I am not the sum of the set. I am an individual within the set. An action that may improve the set overall may disimprove the individuals within the set (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox).
Even worse, you are creating a situation where all the members of the original set are worse off and the new members of the set are better off.
Why would anybody in the original set agree to this? And what do you think they'll do when they find out?
Interesting thread on the PISA scores and why the attitude to immigrants in the U.K. may be different to other European countries:
Here's the most important chart. It shows the UK is the *only* country in Europe where second generation immigrants outperform non-immigrant students. (And first generation don't do much worse)…..
What it shows is that our immigration is much more like English speaking countries outside Europe (Canada, Australia, NZ) and not at all like other Western European countries. And that our immigration is *actively improving* our education system (due to peer effects).
In other words, in the U.K. second generation immigrants do better than non- immigrants, while first generation are pretty close. In France, first generation immigrants do very much worse (20 points is about equivalent to a years teaching) than non- immigrants - and still lag far behind in the second generation. It’s a picture repeated across continental Europe. Only Ireland doesn’t do quite as badly.
So we import students that are smarter than me from abroad into my classroom. They do better than me and I improve due to competition. Yay! I then graduate but they take my job and I have to get a worse job for less pay. So I got better but am paid worse.
Pause
Did anyone think this through?
It suggests that productivity growth would've been even worse without immigration.
Again we are back to the problem I noted before: the use of growth as the metric of merit. "Growth" is a quality of "the economy", but "the economy" is an abstract noun. It is made up of people - individual human beings. If the individual human beings suffer but "the economy" benefits, then what is the morality of this course?
This lesson was the lesson of Brexit and it is a lesson that Biden has refused to learn: high growth does not lead to high happiness nor contentment. And people wonder why Sunak is unpopular?
Is that why we have historically unprecedented levels of immigration?
We have unprecedented levels because the current Government (sole qualification for membership, support BoZo and Brexit) are spectacularly incompetent.
Really, really bad at their job.
Useless.
Worthless.
They thank you for your vote...
I'm really looking forward to the immigration numbers under a Starmer government. If you think THIS lot are really, really bad at their job... At least they aren't riven by a faction wanting to effectively open the borders.
When we had more or less open borders (ie when we were in the EU) immigration was a third the level it is now.
This is the reality. So many millions voted to Take Back Control of the border so that they saw less foreigners. Don't tell me I am wrong on their motivations, go back to 2016 and look at what they said.
So we have left the EU, ended the right to live and work, and yet there are way more people now than there were then. Yes the Tories are incompetent, but there is a reality that few want to face up to:
We have too many economically inactive people unable to fill the jobs that we need doing. I am not blaming the inactive - many can't take the work on offer because of lack of childcare / transport / wrong part of the country etc etc etc. So we need migrants. We did before, we do now, we will in the future.
Or, we take an axe to things we need. Lets have a heavily downsized NHS because we don't want foreigners but we won't pay to train our own people. Lets have elderly care based in the family home rather than a care home which we can't find staff for. Lets have less hotels and coffee shops and food production and all the other things that rely on foreign labour.
A grown up conversation to hold reality up to the people whose natural parochial bigotry has been gaslit to terrifying levels for the benefit of right wing politicians. You can have what you want. Are you willing to pay the price for getting it?
So let’s discuss the NHS
Since 2009 the number of FTEs has increased by 25% to more than 1.4 million
What additional services are being delivered by those additional 300,000 employees?
The root problem we have is horrifically poor productivity. If we could redeploy even a small percentage of that staff for other roles, for example, then hiring pressures would be massively reduced in other sectors. Alternatively we might choose to significant enhance delivery of health outcomes using the additional resources
@Foxy is the expert on the mechanics inside the NHS. Have the government not scrapped the funding for a whole load of preventative healthcare? So instead of spending £1 preventing someone getting ill we now need to spend £10 on treating the inevitable result. We're pouring record amounts into the NHS and simultaneously starving front line healthcare. So what are we spending the money on?
One big area of cost is agency staff. We can’t recruit and retain enough permanent staff, so we end up having to fill vacancies with expensive agency staff.
Interesting thread on the PISA scores and why the attitude to immigrants in the U.K. may be different to other European countries:
Here's the most important chart. It shows the UK is the *only* country in Europe where second generation immigrants outperform non-immigrant students. (And first generation don't do much worse)…..
What it shows is that our immigration is much more like English speaking countries outside Europe (Canada, Australia, NZ) and not at all like other Western European countries. And that our immigration is *actively improving* our education system (due to peer effects).
In other words, in the U.K. second generation immigrants do better than non- immigrants, while first generation are pretty close. In France, first generation immigrants do very much worse (20 points is about equivalent to a years teaching) than non- immigrants - and still lag far behind in the second generation. It’s a picture repeated across continental Europe. Only Ireland doesn’t do quite as badly.
So we import students that are smarter than me from abroad into my classroom. They do better than me and I improve due to competition. Yay! I then graduate but they take my job and I have to get a worse job for less pay. So I got better but am paid worse.
Pause
Did anyone think this through?
Yes. It's not a zero sum game.
But I am not the sum of the set. I am an individual within the set. An action that may improve the set overall may disimprove the individuals within the set (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox).
Even worse, you are creating a situation where all the members of the original set are worse off and the new members of the set are better off.
Why would anybody in the original set agree to this? And what do you think they'll do when they find out?
I mean I yield to no one in my estimation of Boris as a solipsistic, lazy, useless twat. Albeit a loveable, electable one.
That said, I think when the history books are written they will look, much as they did with the GFC, as this and several years hence as the Covid Era and will cut many economies and the handling of them quite some slack.
Of course Brexit bound one leg to the other so it was always going to be difficult to win the 110m hurdles but nevertheless we are still appreciating the malign effects Covid had on all parts of society.
It's a myth that Johnson was lovable or electable. His ratings at every point in the 2019 election were worse than those of May's at any point in the 2017 one. The difference was that (1) Corbyn had been exposed by that point and was both disliked and feared, and (2) Brexit really did need doing and for all that Johnson's plan was a fraud, it *was* a plan, of sorts; Labour, by contrast, were all over the shop.
His electability was purely a function of facing the most unpopular LotO ever.
There’s another factor apart from likeability. Johnson was good at politics in a way that May and Sunak aren’t.
An interesting piece in the Guardian to gladden the hearts of Brexiters, and I'd guess @Leon would take some pleasure from seeing some of his observations repeated.
Interesting thread on the PISA scores and why the attitude to immigrants in the U.K. may be different to other European countries:
Here's the most important chart. It shows the UK is the *only* country in Europe where second generation immigrants outperform non-immigrant students. (And first generation don't do much worse)…..
What it shows is that our immigration is much more like English speaking countries outside Europe (Canada, Australia, NZ) and not at all like other Western European countries. And that our immigration is *actively improving* our education system (due to peer effects).
In other words, in the U.K. second generation immigrants do better than non- immigrants, while first generation are pretty close. In France, first generation immigrants do very much worse (20 points is about equivalent to a years teaching) than non- immigrants - and still lag far behind in the second generation. It’s a picture repeated across continental Europe. Only Ireland doesn’t do quite as badly.
So we import students that are smarter than me from abroad into my classroom. They do better than me and I improve due to competition. Yay! I then graduate but they take my job and I have to get a worse job for less pay. So I got better but am paid worse.
Pause
Did anyone think this through?
It's not about innate ability though is it? Despite Leon's attempts to put a race spin on everything, people the world over are on average of the same intelligence.
The difference here is motivation and support.
We shouldn't be surprised that people who have had the gumption, ambition, and nous to up sticks and move to a strange country to better themselves and their family, are more likely to be motivated to make the most of their opportunities, and more likely to encourage and support their children to do the same.
I think that one of the reasons the US became the world's richest economy and leading power in the 20th century is because its population had a large proportion of such people, similarly motivated.
I’m currently having ‘care’ due to my current, and probably permanent, inability to do much for myself. This in itself is a result of a malformation of the vertebrae in my neck affecting my spine. I’ve had an operation, and am slowly improving from where I was but the prognosis isn’t good, even for an optimist! Essex County will pay, AIUI, £20 per hour for carers, but because of my total pension income, I’m too well off to get anything! Consequently we’re paying £40 per hour for what seems to me to be quite acceptable assistance. This is provided partly by a mix of experienced middle-aged women, and one man, most of whom are ‘native Brits’, and partly by a group of 20 somethings, male and female, all of whom are using this as income prior to new careers in the ‘care industry’. It’s very interesting talking to them and learning of their different routes into this, and their hopes for the future. All of them make it clear that they’ve plenty to do and hope their employers don’t take on too many more clients. Among their main grouses is that they have to travel between clients, often for quite a distance. They get paid mileage, AIUI, but the time they have to spend driving is the issue.
That's interesting - are they medically or therapy qualified?
We had twice a day social care from a small provider (who viewed it as a vocation) back in 2019 for my mum in her last months for personal care (dressing, toileting and so on), and our hourly rate was roughly minimum wage + 20%. That is in Ashfield / Mansfield area, and locally we have a good range of care-providers.
The provider only had about 15 staff on their books, and it included a few East Europeans who had come over, school mums wanting flexible working hours, and a few middle aged women. When heavy lift was required, the business owner's husband was called in.
Interesting thread on the PISA scores and why the attitude to immigrants in the U.K. may be different to other European countries:
Here's the most important chart. It shows the UK is the *only* country in Europe where second generation immigrants outperform non-immigrant students. (And first generation don't do much worse)…..
What it shows is that our immigration is much more like English speaking countries outside Europe (Canada, Australia, NZ) and not at all like other Western European countries. And that our immigration is *actively improving* our education system (due to peer effects).
In other words, in the U.K. second generation immigrants do better than non- immigrants, while first generation are pretty close. In France, first generation immigrants do very much worse (20 points is about equivalent to a years teaching) than non- immigrants - and still lag far behind in the second generation. It’s a picture repeated across continental Europe. Only Ireland doesn’t do quite as badly.
So we import students that are smarter than me from abroad into my classroom. They do better than me and I improve due to competition. Yay! I then graduate but they take my job and I have to get a worse job for less pay. So I got better but am paid worse.
Pause
Did anyone think this through?
Yes. It's not a zero sum game.
But I am not the sum of the set. I am an individual within the set. An action that may improve the set overall may disimprove the individuals within the set (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox).
Even worse, you are creating a situation where all the members of the original set are worse off and the new members of the set are better off.
Why would anybody in the original set agree to this? And what do you think they'll do when they find out?
You would prefer France’s situation where immigrants do significantly worse than their local peers?
All change brings upsides and downsides - I’d much rather be in the UK’s position of successfully educating immigrants than France’s of creating a substantial underclass of the poorly educated.
Will Trump’s Supreme Court Justices Stick to Their Word? https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/05/trump-supreme-court-justices-taxes-00129912 ...If the Trump appointees join a conservative majority to blow up the existing constitutional consensus, however, they will be turning their backs on the passionate defenses of originalism they made before the Senate Judiciary Committee. They will also be raising fundamental questions about their commitment to democratic principles: What gives nine unelected justices the authority to protect the rich when a democratically elected president and Congress decide that progressive taxation is in the public interest?
When it comes to adhering to originalist principles, the history is clear — as long as it’s not cherry-picked.
Quite simply, the Founders were not opposed to wealth taxes. Indeed, the Supreme Court unanimously approved the first wealth tax in 1793. Its successors consistently followed this precedent over the next century and upheld every tax statute that required the rich to pay more than the poor. Given these historical foundations, the Trump-appointed justices will destroy the credibility of their professed commitment to originalism if they vote to prohibit a wealth tax...
I think there is a significant Conservative vs Trumpite distinction to note here.
I’m currently having ‘care’ due to my current, and probably permanent, inability to do much for myself. This in itself is a result of a malformation of the vertebrae in my neck affecting my spine. I’ve had an operation, and am slowly improving from where I was but the prognosis isn’t good, even for an optimist! Essex County will pay, AIUI, £20 per hour for carers, but because of my total pension income, I’m too well off to get anything! Consequently we’re paying £40 per hour for what seems to me to be quite acceptable assistance. This is provided partly by a mix of experienced middle-aged women, and one man, most of whom are ‘native Brits’, and partly by a group of 20 somethings, male and female, all of whom are using this as income prior to new careers in the ‘care industry’. It’s very interesting talking to them and learning of their different routes into this, and their hopes for the future. All of them make it clear that they’ve plenty to do and hope their employers don’t take on too many more clients. Among their main grouses is that they have to travel between clients, often for quite a distance. They get paid mileage, AIUI, but the time they have to spend driving is the issue.
Sorry to hear about your situation OKC.
Your positivity despite your challenges is inspirational - and I say that as a full-time wheelchair user for 44 years.
Interesting thread on the PISA scores and why the attitude to immigrants in the U.K. may be different to other European countries:
Here's the most important chart. It shows the UK is the *only* country in Europe where second generation immigrants outperform non-immigrant students. (And first generation don't do much worse)…..
What it shows is that our immigration is much more like English speaking countries outside Europe (Canada, Australia, NZ) and not at all like other Western European countries. And that our immigration is *actively improving* our education system (due to peer effects).
In other words, in the U.K. second generation immigrants do better than non- immigrants, while first generation are pretty close. In France, first generation immigrants do very much worse (20 points is about equivalent to a years teaching) than non- immigrants - and still lag far behind in the second generation. It’s a picture repeated across continental Europe. Only Ireland doesn’t do quite as badly.
So we import students that are smarter than me from abroad into my classroom. They do better than me and I improve due to competition. Yay! I then graduate but they take my job and I have to get a worse job for less pay. So I got better but am paid worse.
Pause
Did anyone think this through?
It suggests that productivity growth would've been even worse without immigration.
Again we are back to the problem I noted before: the use of growth as the metric of merit. "Growth" is a quality of "the economy", but "the economy" is an abstract noun. It is made up of people - individual human beings. If the individual human beings suffer but "the economy" benefits, then what is the morality of this course?
This lesson was the lesson of Brexit and it is a lesson that Biden has refused to learn: high growth does not lead to high happiness nor contentment. And people wonder why Sunak is unpopular?
Is that why we have historically unprecedented levels of immigration?
We have unprecedented levels because the current Government (sole qualification for membership, support BoZo and Brexit) are spectacularly incompetent.
Really, really bad at their job.
Useless.
Worthless.
They thank you for your vote...
I'm really looking forward to the immigration numbers under a Starmer government. If you think THIS lot are really, really bad at their job... At least they aren't riven by a faction wanting to effectively open the borders.
Our borders are open now. How would we tell the difference between now and this dystopian nightmare you predict?
Out of control immigration is a false narrative. The remedy to this confected scandal, will after yesterday be even bigger hospital crises and care homes closing like fury. Arses and elbows don't even come into it.
There is a significant proportion of the population who don't understand why we didn't send all these foreign workers home after Brexit so that all the jobs would rightly go to Brits. That this isn't possible is beyond their understanding. Hence the increasing wailing and gnashing about migration which is now at CRISIS ARGGHHHH levels in the Tory party.
Last week's revelations about cheaper wage hurdles for migrant workers just revealed how disingenuous the government are. They are happy to gaslight the "foreigners go home" contingent of their vote. Whilst understanding the economic need for foreign labour.
What I hope from Starmer is that we can have an honest conversation. The crank right will foam on about unchecked migration, but *they* have already given us that. We can have controlled migration or uncontrolled. Currently it is the latter. The former would be to everyone's benefit.
The rise of the salary threshold for migrants to £38k and the ban on their bringing in departments Cleverly has announced is precisely to bring migration under greater control
Fantastic! But who wipes your grannie's a*** now?
Think of this another way. Why are care workers paid so little? Because we can easily import people to work in care from abroad. Until we change that, care workers will continue to get paid very little. Will this increase the cost of care? Of course. But care is only cheap because we pay carers - I think most people can agree - an unreasonably small amount for a job which most of us would not want to do; and we only do that because we are importing carers from abroad. Immigration is very much the wrong answer to this particular problem.
And that is a valid conversation to have. We get what we pay for. Lets take care as an example: We don't want to pay for all the preventative measures to stop people sliding into care We don't want to be stuck caring for our own relatives We don't want to pay for care homes that aren't dangerously understaffed We don't want to pay salaries for the people who care for our relatives What the Tories and their handful of voters seem to want is for people to just die quickly and quietly and thus remove the problem. Not their relatives of course, the other people.
Caring is an much of a vocation as healthcare. We could and should elevate it as a priority. Brown proposed it in his dying months. Davey passionately advocates it. But the Tories and big media ensure that "why should I pay" is the prevalent mood. So we get what we pay for...
It was Theresa May who as Tory PM in 2017 came closest to bringing forward a plan for increased funding of social care, Corbyn Labour trashed it as a 'dementia tax' and she lost her majority and had to abandon it.
Yes. Its all Labour's fault. And when you say Corbyn you really mean his main appeaser - STARMER.
Why hasn't Starmer fixed this issue? He has had 13 years and he has done NOTHING.
Vote Conservative to eradicate 13 years of Starmer failure.
It isn't Starmer's fault either but he is not going to commit electoral suicide by rehashing May's 'dementia tax' idea is he.
The fact is May was the only PM who had the courage to put forward radical plans to fund social care by making all the estate of a dementia patient over £100k liable for care costs and the voters resoundingly rejected it.
Thus the 2017 election result killed off any politician touching serious reform of social care for a generation or more, certainly any which costs the voters more
Boris proposed to cap care costs at £86k for residential and domestic care ie a giveaway to cut costs for dementia patients and their families not making them pay more for care as May proposed
I mean I yield to no one in my estimation of Boris as a solipsistic, lazy, useless twat. Albeit a loveable, electable one.
That said, I think when the history books are written they will look, much as they did with the GFC, as this and several years hence as the Covid Era and will cut many economies and the handling of them quite some slack.
Of course Brexit bound one leg to the other so it was always going to be difficult to win the 110m hurdles but nevertheless we are still appreciating the malign effects Covid had on all parts of society.
It's a myth that Johnson was lovable or electable. His ratings at every point in the 2019 election were worse than those of May's at any point in the 2017 one. The difference was that (1) Corbyn had been exposed by that point and was both disliked and feared, and (2) Brexit really did need doing and for all that Johnson's plan was a fraud, it *was* a plan, of sorts; Labour, by contrast, were all over the shop.
His electability was purely a function of facing the most unpopular LotO ever.
I still think that his Brexit Actually film was the best PPB ever.
Is that why we have historically unprecedented levels of immigration?
We have unprecedented levels because the current Government (sole qualification for membership, support BoZo and Brexit) are spectacularly incompetent.
Really, really bad at their job.
Useless.
Worthless.
They thank you for your vote...
I'm really looking forward to the immigration numbers under a Starmer government. If you think THIS lot are really, really bad at their job... At least they aren't riven by a faction wanting to effectively open the borders.
When we had more or less open borders (ie when we were in the EU) immigration was a third the level it is now.
This is the reality. So many millions voted to Take Back Control of the border so that they saw less foreigners. Don't tell me I am wrong on their motivations, go back to 2016 and look at what they said.
So we have left the EU, ended the right to live and work, and yet there are way more people now than there were then. Yes the Tories are incompetent, but there is a reality that few want to face up to:
We have too many economically inactive people unable to fill the jobs that we need doing. I am not blaming the inactive - many can't take the work on offer because of lack of childcare / transport / wrong part of the country etc etc etc. So we need migrants. We did before, we do now, we will in the future.
Or, we take an axe to things we need. Lets have a heavily downsized NHS because we don't want foreigners but we won't pay to train our own people. Lets have elderly care based in the family home rather than a care home which we can't find staff for. Lets have less hotels and coffee shops and food production and all the other things that rely on foreign labour.
A grown up conversation to hold reality up to the people whose natural parochial bigotry has been gaslit to terrifying levels for the benefit of right wing politicians. You can have what you want. Are you willing to pay the price for getting it?
So let’s discuss the NHS
Since 2009 the number of FTEs has increased by 25% to more than 1.4 million
What additional services are being delivered by those additional 300,000 employees?
The root problem we have is horrifically poor productivity. If we could redeploy even a small percentage of that staff for other roles, for example, then hiring pressures would be massively reduced in other sectors. Alternatively we might choose to significant enhance delivery of health outcomes using the additional resources
@Foxy is the expert on the mechanics inside the NHS. Have the government not scrapped the funding for a whole load of preventative healthcare? So instead of spending £1 preventing someone getting ill we now need to spend £10 on treating the inevitable result. We're pouring record amounts into the NHS and simultaneously starving front line healthcare. So what are we spending the money on?
One big area of cost is agency staff. We can’t recruit and retain enough permanent staff, so we end up having to fill vacancies with expensive agency staff.
Is that why we have historically unprecedented levels of immigration?
We have unprecedented levels because the current Government (sole qualification for membership, support BoZo and Brexit) are spectacularly incompetent.
Really, really bad at their job.
Useless.
Worthless.
They thank you for your vote...
I'm really looking forward to the immigration numbers under a Starmer government. If you think THIS lot are really, really bad at their job... At least they aren't riven by a faction wanting to effectively open the borders.
When we had more or less open borders (ie when we were in the EU) immigration was a third the level it is now.
This is the reality. So many millions voted to Take Back Control of the border so that they saw less foreigners. Don't tell me I am wrong on their motivations, go back to 2016 and look at what they said.
So we have left the EU, ended the right to live and work, and yet there are way more people now than there were then. Yes the Tories are incompetent, but there is a reality that few want to face up to:
We have too many economically inactive people unable to fill the jobs that we need doing. I am not blaming the inactive - many can't take the work on offer because of lack of childcare / transport / wrong part of the country etc etc etc. So we need migrants. We did before, we do now, we will in the future.
Or, we take an axe to things we need. Lets have a heavily downsized NHS because we don't want foreigners but we won't pay to train our own people. Lets have elderly care based in the family home rather than a care home which we can't find staff for. Lets have less hotels and coffee shops and food production and all the other things that rely on foreign labour.
A grown up conversation to hold reality up to the people whose natural parochial bigotry has been gaslit to terrifying levels for the benefit of right wing politicians. You can have what you want. Are you willing to pay the price for getting it?
So let’s discuss the NHS
Since 2009 the number of FTEs has increased by 25% to more than 1.4 million
What additional services are being delivered by those additional 300,000 employees?
The root problem we have is horrifically poor productivity. If we could redeploy even a small percentage of that staff for other roles, for example, then hiring pressures would be massively reduced in other sectors. Alternatively we might choose to significant enhance delivery of health outcomes using the additional resources
@Foxy is the expert on the mechanics inside the NHS. Have the government not scrapped the funding for a whole load of preventative healthcare? So instead of spending £1 preventing someone getting ill we now need to spend £10 on treating the inevitable result. We're pouring record amounts into the NHS and simultaneously starving front line healthcare. So what are we spending the money on?
One big area of cost is agency staff. We can’t recruit and retain enough permanent staff, so we end up having to fill vacancies with expensive agency staff.
The agency staff can be staff from a neighbouring hospital ‘moonlighting’ on the day off. Trying to top up their wages.
Interesting thread on the PISA scores and why the attitude to immigrants in the U.K. may be different to other European countries:
Here's the most important chart. It shows the UK is the *only* country in Europe where second generation immigrants outperform non-immigrant students. (And first generation don't do much worse)…..
What it shows is that our immigration is much more like English speaking countries outside Europe (Canada, Australia, NZ) and not at all like other Western European countries. And that our immigration is *actively improving* our education system (due to peer effects).
In other words, in the U.K. second generation immigrants do better than non- immigrants, while first generation are pretty close. In France, first generation immigrants do very much worse (20 points is about equivalent to a years teaching) than non- immigrants - and still lag far behind in the second generation. It’s a picture repeated across continental Europe. Only Ireland doesn’t do quite as badly.
So we import students that are smarter than me from abroad into my classroom. They do better than me and I improve due to competition. Yay! I then graduate but they take my job and I have to get a worse job for less pay. So I got better but am paid worse.
Pause
Did anyone think this through?
Yes. It's not a zero sum game.
But I am not the sum of the set. I am an individual within the set. An action that may improve the set overall may disimprove the individuals within the set (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox).
Even worse, you are creating a situation where all the members of the original set are worse off and the new members of the set are better off.
Why would anybody in the original set agree to this? And what do you think they'll do when they find out?
You would prefer France’s situation where immigrants do significantly worse than their local peers?
All change brings upsides and downsides - I’d much rather be in the UK’s position of successfully educating immigrants than France’s of creating a substantial underclass of the poorly educated.
No. i would prefer a situation where the actions of the Government are geared to improving the lives of the people of the country (a concrete noun) instead of the economy (an abstract noun). Why do you think the entire Western world is pissed off at the moment?
Why are we impoverishing our people to lay larger and larger sacrifices to Moloch? Pyramids are a fine thing, but improving neonatal care is far better.
I’m currently having ‘care’ due to my current, and probably permanent, inability to do much for myself. This in itself is a result of a malformation of the vertebrae in my neck affecting my spine. I’ve had an operation, and am slowly improving from where I was but the prognosis isn’t good, even for an optimist! Essex County will pay, AIUI, £20 per hour for carers, but because of my total pension income, I’m too well off to get anything! Consequently we’re paying £40 per hour for what seems to me to be quite acceptable assistance. This is provided partly by a mix of experienced middle-aged women, and one man, most of whom are ‘native Brits’, and partly by a group of 20 somethings, male and female, all of whom are using this as income prior to new careers in the ‘care industry’. It’s very interesting talking to them and learning of their different routes into this, and their hopes for the future. All of them make it clear that they’ve plenty to do and hope their employers don’t take on too many more clients. Among their main grouses is that they have to travel between clients, often for quite a distance. They get paid mileage, AIUI, but the time they have to spend driving is the issue.
Sorry to hear about your situation OKC.
Your positivity despite your challenges is inspirational - and I say that as a full-time wheelchair user for 44 years.
Thank you; much appreciated. As one who did some care home inspection work, I’m learning quite a lot!
I’m currently having ‘care’ due to my current, and probably permanent, inability to do much for myself. This in itself is a result of a malformation of the vertebrae in my neck affecting my spine. I’ve had an operation, and am slowly improving from where I was but the prognosis isn’t good, even for an optimist! Essex County will pay, AIUI, £20 per hour for carers, but because of my total pension income, I’m too well off to get anything! Consequently we’re paying £40 per hour for what seems to me to be quite acceptable assistance. This is provided partly by a mix of experienced middle-aged women, and one man, most of whom are ‘native Brits’, and partly by a group of 20 somethings, male and female, all of whom are using this as income prior to new careers in the ‘care industry’. It’s very interesting talking to them and learning of their different routes into this, and their hopes for the future. All of them make it clear that they’ve plenty to do and hope their employers don’t take on too many more clients. Among their main grouses is that they have to travel between clients, often for quite a distance. They get paid mileage, AIUI, but the time they have to spend driving is the issue.
That's interesting - are they medically or therapy qualified?
We had twice a day social care from a small provider (who viewed it as a vocation) back in 2019 for my mum in her last months for personal care (dressing, toileting and so on), and our hourly rate was roughly minimum wage + 20%. That is in Ashfield / Mansfield area, and locally we have a good range of care-providers.
The provider only had about 15 staff on their books, and it included a few East Europeans who had come over, school mums wanting flexible working hours, and a few middle aged women. When heavy lift was required, the business owner's husband was called in.
Yours may be more medically qualified.
Except minimum wage +20% isn’t enough to cover costs
Holiday pay and employer NI alone would add 25% on top of the minimum wage.
Add overhead costs, sick pay and travel time and it’s easy to see why the minimum rate needed is £23 an hour and even that doesn’t give you much margin
Are there any plans for a new opera house to be built there? Probably not a priority for the country right now but if not a new opera house where will they perform?
Interesting call on LBC this morning re Care & immigration. Caller phoned up reckoned big "care" agencies got hold of loads of visas but then the people they gave them to were effectively on zero hour contracts (Or close to) and didn't always get work. Home Office so big/incompetent it had never really cracked down on the abuse*. Add in dependants of such people and you've got quite the cost to the taxpayer whilst not actually solving care staff numbers. Sounded like a proper watchdog on care/visas needed which wasn't happening at the moment.
*Don't forget there's a nice big fee for each visa issued whilst the wider costs of the person (Housing, education, infrastructure for their kids) isn't immediately the Home Office's cost/problem.
Interesting thread on the PISA scores and why the attitude to immigrants in the U.K. may be different to other European countries:
Here's the most important chart. It shows the UK is the *only* country in Europe where second generation immigrants outperform non-immigrant students. (And first generation don't do much worse)…..
What it shows is that our immigration is much more like English speaking countries outside Europe (Canada, Australia, NZ) and not at all like other Western European countries. And that our immigration is *actively improving* our education system (due to peer effects).
In other words, in the U.K. second generation immigrants do better than non- immigrants, while first generation are pretty close. In France, first generation immigrants do very much worse (20 points is about equivalent to a years teaching) than non- immigrants - and still lag far behind in the second generation. It’s a picture repeated across continental Europe. Only Ireland doesn’t do quite as badly.
So we import students that are smarter than me from abroad into my classroom. They do better than me and I improve due to competition. Yay! I then graduate but they take my job and I have to get a worse job for less pay. So I got better but am paid worse.
Pause
Did anyone think this through?
It suggests that productivity growth would've been even worse without immigration.
Again we are back to the problem I noted before: the use of growth as the metric of merit. "Growth" is a quality of "the economy", but "the economy" is an abstract noun. It is made up of people - individual human beings. If the individual human beings suffer but "the economy" benefits, then what is the morality of this course?
This lesson was the lesson of Brexit and it is a lesson that Biden has refused to learn: high growth does not lead to high happiness nor contentment. And people wonder why Sunak is unpopular?
You are Patrick Harvie and I claim my £5.
I googled Patrick Harvie. I am pleased to announce that I am not he.
Incidentally, while I'm here, I should point out that if you had voted for Labour in 2010 you'd've gotten a National Care Service by now. It was one of Gordon Brown's promises (yes, I know).
But now it's thirteen years later and - entirely predictably - we have lots of old people and we don't really know how to look after them. We really planned that well, didn't we?
Is that why we have historically unprecedented levels of immigration?
We have unprecedented levels because the current Government (sole qualification for membership, support BoZo and Brexit) are spectacularly incompetent.
Really, really bad at their job.
Useless.
Worthless.
They thank you for your vote...
I'm really looking forward to the immigration numbers under a Starmer government. If you think THIS lot are really, really bad at their job... At least they aren't riven by a faction wanting to effectively open the borders.
Our borders are open now. How would we tell the difference between now and this dystopian nightmare you predict?
Out of control immigration is a false narrative. The remedy to this confected scandal, will after yesterday be even bigger hospital crises and care homes closing like fury. Arses and elbows don't even come into it.
There is a significant proportion of the population who don't understand why we didn't send all these foreign workers home after Brexit so that all the jobs would rightly go to Brits. That this isn't possible is beyond their understanding. Hence the increasing wailing and gnashing about migration which is now at CRISIS ARGGHHHH levels in the Tory party.
Last week's revelations about cheaper wage hurdles for migrant workers just revealed how disingenuous the government are. They are happy to gaslight the "foreigners go home" contingent of their vote. Whilst understanding the economic need for foreign labour.
What I hope from Starmer is that we can have an honest conversation. The crank right will foam on about unchecked migration, but *they* have already given us that. We can have controlled migration or uncontrolled. Currently it is the latter. The former would be to everyone's benefit.
The rise of the salary threshold for migrants to £38k and the ban on their bringing in departments Cleverly has announced is precisely to bring migration under greater control
Fantastic! But who wipes your grannie's a*** now?
Think of this another way. Why are care workers paid so little? Because we can easily import people to work in care from abroad. Until we change that, care workers will continue to get paid very little. Will this increase the cost of care? Of course. But care is only cheap because we pay carers - I think most people can agree - an unreasonably small amount for a job which most of us would not want to do; and we only do that because we are importing carers from abroad. Immigration is very much the wrong answer to this particular problem.
And that is a valid conversation to have. We get what we pay for. Lets take care as an example: We don't want to pay for all the preventative measures to stop people sliding into care We don't want to be stuck caring for our own relatives We don't want to pay for care homes that aren't dangerously understaffed We don't want to pay salaries for the people who care for our relatives What the Tories and their handful of voters seem to want is for people to just die quickly and quietly and thus remove the problem. Not their relatives of course, the other people.
Caring is an much of a vocation as healthcare. We could and should elevate it as a priority. Brown proposed it in his dying months. Davey passionately advocates it. But the Tories and big media ensure that "why should I pay" is the prevalent mood. So we get what we pay for...
I think May advocated it in 2017 and that was one of the key reasons she did not get a majority.
Exactly, it was May who advocated taking all a deceased person who had dementia's estate (including their former home) to pay for their care costs, at home as well as residential, with the family only able to keep £100,000.
Labour under Jeremy Corbyn trashed the plan as a 'dementia tax' and May lost her majority as a result.
Boris won a majority on a plan to cap care costs at £86,000 by contrast in 2019 but still has not been implemented
The whole discussion about a “cap” is unhelpful. Fundamentally it means that the state is providing catastrophe insurance.
Which is a reasonable use of the state’s resources (and potentially could even be underwritten by a reinsurer although I’m not sure why you would bother as the state).
But essentially people should save for their old age and not expect that state to pay for them
Which is what May proposed in 2017 and the voters rejected when she lost her majority.
The voters gave Boris a majority for his care costs cap in 2019 however
The voters also gave Boris a majority for retaining the 0.7% GDP spend on overseas aid.
Is that why we have historically unprecedented levels of immigration?
We have unprecedented levels because the current Government (sole qualification for membership, support BoZo and Brexit) are spectacularly incompetent.
Really, really bad at their job.
Useless.
Worthless.
They thank you for your vote...
I'm really looking forward to the immigration numbers under a Starmer government. If you think THIS lot are really, really bad at their job... At least they aren't riven by a faction wanting to effectively open the borders.
Our borders are open now. How would we tell the difference between now and this dystopian nightmare you predict?
Out of control immigration is a false narrative. The remedy to this confected scandal, will after yesterday be even bigger hospital crises and care homes closing like fury. Arses and elbows don't even come into it.
There is a significant proportion of the population who don't understand why we didn't send all these foreign workers home after Brexit so that all the jobs would rightly go to Brits. That this isn't possible is beyond their understanding. Hence the increasing wailing and gnashing about migration which is now at CRISIS ARGGHHHH levels in the Tory party.
Last week's revelations about cheaper wage hurdles for migrant workers just revealed how disingenuous the government are. They are happy to gaslight the "foreigners go home" contingent of their vote. Whilst understanding the economic need for foreign labour.
What I hope from Starmer is that we can have an honest conversation. The crank right will foam on about unchecked migration, but *they* have already given us that. We can have controlled migration or uncontrolled. Currently it is the latter. The former would be to everyone's benefit.
The rise of the salary threshold for migrants to £38k and the ban on their bringing in departments Cleverly has announced is precisely to bring migration under greater control
Fantastic! But who wipes your grannie's a*** now?
Think of this another way. Why are care workers paid so little? Because we can easily import people to work in care from abroad. Until we change that, care workers will continue to get paid very little. Will this increase the cost of care? Of course. But care is only cheap because we pay carers - I think most people can agree - an unreasonably small amount for a job which most of us would not want to do; and we only do that because we are importing carers from abroad. Immigration is very much the wrong answer to this particular problem.
Care is cheap? The monthly average cost of residential care is £3290 and receiving nursing care in a care home costs on average £4160.per month.
An extraordinary figure, when you consider that a premier inn, usually better staffed, and absolutely better furnished, can be had for under a hundred a night.
Is it extraordinary?
Last time I checked residential care homes don't require residents to check out every morning.
Preposterous figure for care imho. In the South its impossible to find at that rate. My father in was paying at the same rate for regular care when he went in for respite care @ 50000 in Horsham area. My mother in Surrey s on 78000 and its virtually impossible to find anywhere fir less that is adequate imho.
Local authority rates about £850-900 per week so around £45k per year.
Is that why we have historically unprecedented levels of immigration?
We have unprecedented levels because the current Government (sole qualification for membership, support BoZo and Brexit) are spectacularly incompetent.
Really, really bad at their job.
Useless.
Worthless.
They thank you for your vote...
I'm really looking forward to the immigration numbers under a Starmer government. If you think THIS lot are really, really bad at their job... At least they aren't riven by a faction wanting to effectively open the borders.
Our borders are open now. How would we tell the difference between now and this dystopian nightmare you predict?
Out of control immigration is a false narrative. The remedy to this confected scandal, will after yesterday be even bigger hospital crises and care homes closing like fury. Arses and elbows don't even come into it.
There is a significant proportion of the population who don't understand why we didn't send all these foreign workers home after Brexit so that all the jobs would rightly go to Brits. That this isn't possible is beyond their understanding. Hence the increasing wailing and gnashing about migration which is now at CRISIS ARGGHHHH levels in the Tory party.
Last week's revelations about cheaper wage hurdles for migrant workers just revealed how disingenuous the government are. They are happy to gaslight the "foreigners go home" contingent of their vote. Whilst understanding the economic need for foreign labour.
What I hope from Starmer is that we can have an honest conversation. The crank right will foam on about unchecked migration, but *they* have already given us that. We can have controlled migration or uncontrolled. Currently it is the latter. The former would be to everyone's benefit.
The rise of the salary threshold for migrants to £38k and the ban on their bringing in departments Cleverly has announced is precisely to bring migration under greater control
Fantastic! But who wipes your grannie's a*** now?
Think of this another way. Why are care workers paid so little? Because we can easily import people to work in care from abroad. Until we change that, care workers will continue to get paid very little. Will this increase the cost of care? Of course. But care is only cheap because we pay carers - I think most people can agree - an unreasonably small amount for a job which most of us would not want to do; and we only do that because we are importing carers from abroad. Immigration is very much the wrong answer to this particular problem.
And that is a valid conversation to have. We get what we pay for. Lets take care as an example: We don't want to pay for all the preventative measures to stop people sliding into care We don't want to be stuck caring for our own relatives We don't want to pay for care homes that aren't dangerously understaffed We don't want to pay salaries for the people who care for our relatives What the Tories and their handful of voters seem to want is for people to just die quickly and quietly and thus remove the problem. Not their relatives of course, the other people.
Caring is an much of a vocation as healthcare. We could and should elevate it as a priority. Brown proposed it in his dying months. Davey passionately advocates it. But the Tories and big media ensure that "why should I pay" is the prevalent mood. So we get what we pay for...
I think May advocated it in 2017 and that was one of the key reasons she did not get a majority.
Exactly, it was May who advocated taking all a deceased person who had dementia's estate (including their former home) to pay for their care costs, at home as well as residential, with the family only able to keep £100,000.
Labour under Jeremy Corbyn trashed the plan as a 'dementia tax' and May lost her majority as a result.
Boris won a majority on a plan to cap care costs at £86,000 by contrast in 2019 but still has not been implemented
The whole discussion about a “cap” is unhelpful. Fundamentally it means that the state is providing catastrophe insurance.
Which is a reasonable use of the state’s resources (and potentially could even be underwritten by a reinsurer although I’m not sure why you would bother as the state).
But essentially people should save for their old age and not expect that state to pay for them
Which is what May proposed in 2017 and the voters rejected when she lost her majority.
The voters gave Boris a majority for his care costs cap in 2019 however
You are missing the point.
They are the same thing.
And most voters didn’t vote in 2019 based on care policy
But right back to Osborne characterising the Dilnott proposals as a “death tax” politics has screwed up social care policy.
I mean I yield to no one in my estimation of Boris as a solipsistic, lazy, useless twat. Albeit a loveable, electable one.
That said, I think when the history books are written they will look, much as they did with the GFC, as this and several years hence as the Covid Era and will cut many economies and the handling of them quite some slack.
Of course Brexit bound one leg to the other so it was always going to be difficult to win the 110m hurdles but nevertheless we are still appreciating the malign effects Covid had on all parts of society.
It's a myth that Johnson was lovable or electable. His ratings at every point in the 2019 election were worse than those of May's at any point in the 2017 one. The difference was that (1) Corbyn had been exposed by that point and was both disliked and feared, and (2) Brexit really did need doing and for all that Johnson's plan was a fraud, it *was* a plan, of sorts; Labour, by contrast, were all over the shop.
His electability was purely a function of facing the most unpopular LotO ever.
I still think that his Brexit Actually film was the best PPB ever.
Interesting thread on the PISA scores and why the attitude to immigrants in the U.K. may be different to other European countries:
Here's the most important chart. It shows the UK is the *only* country in Europe where second generation immigrants outperform non-immigrant students. (And first generation don't do much worse)…..
What it shows is that our immigration is much more like English speaking countries outside Europe (Canada, Australia, NZ) and not at all like other Western European countries. And that our immigration is *actively improving* our education system (due to peer effects).
In other words, in the U.K. second generation immigrants do better than non- immigrants, while first generation are pretty close. In France, first generation immigrants do very much worse (20 points is about equivalent to a years teaching) than non- immigrants - and still lag far behind in the second generation. It’s a picture repeated across continental Europe. Only Ireland doesn’t do quite as badly.
This speaks to what I was saying the other day about the limits to attainment in less developed economies, or industries, so that everyone looks about the same. If you are on a production line fitting 30 flanged angle brackets an hour, your performance can only be the same as every other flanged angle bracket fitter. You cannot go faster, or be more efficient, than the production line as a whole. Likewise in largely agrarian economies overseas. The opportunities to exploit talent depend on moving to advanced economies. It is the same, of course, as the mass entry of women into the workforce.
The point about Boris is that he was super Marmite
Those who hated him, hated him. But he had a loyal personal vote that REALLY liked him and would come out to vote for him, which they won’t do for any other Tory
It was possibly 20-25% of the electorate, often in lower social classes
The Tories threw all that away when they dumped bojo
For the last decade and more, England and Scotland have been running a controlled experiment in education. The PISA results yet again make it clear which of those approaches has worked. And it's not the SNP's.
The point about Boris is that he was super Marmite
Those who hated him, hated him. But he had a loyal personal vote that REALLY liked him and would come out to vote for him, which they won’t do for any other Tory
It was possibly 20-25% of the electorate, often in lower social classes
The Tories threw all that away when they dumped bojo
If he had behaved himself he would still be in post. He was "dumped" because his behaviour was outrageous.
The point about Boris is that he was super Marmite
Those who hated him, hated him. But he had a loyal personal vote that REALLY liked him and would come out to vote for him, which they won’t do for any other Tory
It was possibly 20-25% of the electorate, often in lower social classes
The Tories threw all that away when they dumped bojo
That wasn't true when he was mayor of London, when he reached far beyond the Brexit classes (different role, granted, and one he was much more suited to).
Problem 1 though is that you can't win an election with a marmite leader that only ~25% love;
Problem 2 is that between them, Johnson and Truss did the Tory brand so much damage (and, in Johnson's case, changed the nature of the party too), that attempting to revert to the norm of boring but competent men in grey suits doesn't work either. And Sunak isn't particularly competent either.
Putting aside the mechanics of this, my immediate thought is whether the Democrat machinery uses this to lever Biden out. Obviously not by siding with the Republicans but more by dropping hints that ‘there is a case to answer etc’
Why do this? Biden’s poll numbers remain poor. The number one issue electors have with him is his age / seeming fragility and there is nothing he can do about that. At the same time, Biden doesn’t look as though he will step down willingly. At this stage, as people like Sean Trende have argued, you would say Trump has a strong chance of winning.
Does that happen now? No. But it may do in a few months if the poll numbers don’t improve. My guess is, if a move is to be made, it will be done post any cut in interest rates in the US to see if there is any political boost.
For the last decade and more, England and Scotland have been running a controlled experiment in education. The PISA results yet again make it clear which of those approaches has worked. And it's not the SNP's.
Stunned at this. Just like the SNP's health policies.
No doubt the SNP's very own HYUFD, in these parts, will be along to defend the ineptitude.
It feels like it SHOULD be the final blow for the Nats. They’ve had total control of education: a true test for Indy. And they comprehensively fucked it up
They can’t blame funding - they get more per person than the rUK
It’s a very basic failure. Scotch voters need to do the necessary
The point about Boris is that he was super Marmite
Those who hated him, hated him. But he had a loyal personal vote that REALLY liked him and would come out to vote for him, which they won’t do for any other Tory
It was possibly 20-25% of the electorate, often in lower social classes
The Tories threw all that away when they dumped bojo
Perhaps but a lot depended on Boris "levelling up" Red Wall towns and Boris was never likely to deliver that on his own and he sacked Cummings who was the only other true believer.
I’m currently having ‘care’ due to my current, and probably permanent, inability to do much for myself. This in itself is a result of a malformation of the vertebrae in my neck affecting my spine. I’ve had an operation, and am slowly improving from where I was but the prognosis isn’t good, even for an optimist! Essex County will pay, AIUI, £20 per hour for carers, but because of my total pension income, I’m too well off to get anything! Consequently we’re paying £40 per hour for what seems to me to be quite acceptable assistance. This is provided partly by a mix of experienced middle-aged women, and one man, most of whom are ‘native Brits’, and partly by a group of 20 somethings, male and female, all of whom are using this as income prior to new careers in the ‘care industry’. It’s very interesting talking to them and learning of their different routes into this, and their hopes for the future. All of them make it clear that they’ve plenty to do and hope their employers don’t take on too many more clients. Among their main grouses is that they have to travel between clients, often for quite a distance. They get paid mileage, AIUI, but the time they have to spend driving is the issue.
Sorry to hear about your situation OKC.
Your positivity despite your challenges is inspirational - and I say that as a full-time wheelchair user for 44 years.
If you don’t mind me asking, how come? You must have been in you 20s then?
Feel free to ignore me or tell me to sod off if I am prying
The point about Boris is that he was super Marmite
Those who hated him, hated him. But he had a loyal personal vote that REALLY liked him and would come out to vote for him, which they won’t do for any other Tory
It was possibly 20-25% of the electorate, often in lower social classes
The Tories threw all that away when they dumped bojo
That wasn't true when he was mayor of London, when he reached far beyond the Brexit classes (different role, granted, and one he was much more suited to).
Problem 1 though is that you can't win an election with a marmite leader that only ~25% love;
Problem 2 is that between them, Johnson and Truss did the Tory brand so much damage (and, in Johnson's case, changed the nature of the party too), that attempting to revert to the norm of boring but competent men in grey suits doesn't work either. And Sunak isn't particularly competent either.
What you can do is use that 25% as a base and find another 10-15% of Tory sympathetic voters and build a winning coalition
Anyway it’s all medieval history now. He’s gone. All the Tories can do is hope to stay above 200 seats as they get pounded next year
The 2020s are gonna be hugely volatile. I can see the Tories surging back in one term if Starmer gravely disappoints. But to do that they need to avoid extinction
Comments
And as a country, I don't think we would be poorer for taking this approach. There might be a change in the balance of wealth, but in GDP terms I'd have thought we'd come out neutral.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/the-bbc-evil-in-the-wrong-hands/ar-AA1kZqdF?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=5422563cf651400cb7b75da9ae59c523&ei=13
Last time I checked residential care homes don't require residents to check out every morning.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67615719
'UK porn watchers could have faces scanned'
I mean, what could possibly go wrong? Presumably using a VPN with end point in another country would easily circumvent this (and sites would have no incentive to cut down on such use - quite the opposite). If something like this is to be done, it makes more sense to enforce it at the ISP/DNS provider level, surely? Sure, switching DNS provider is not hard, but something that can fairly easily be locked down on computer/router level by default.
ETA: Afterall, if kids must watch porn, we can at least use it to induce them to increase their computer literacy skills, by working around the protections in place
Labour under Jeremy Corbyn trashed the plan as a 'dementia tax' and May lost her majority as a result.
Boris won a majority on a plan to cap care costs at £86,000 by contrast in 2019 but still has not been implemented
The years 2010 to 2024 will surely go down as the worst set of governments in the history of the country, and I say that after having thought that honour was Brown's.
Respect.
(Or simply negotiate a national volume rebate)
Local contract negotiations for staple goods are a waste of time. Obviously anything with a medical angle should be procured locally.
At the same time, all governments would have struggled with the fallout from the GFC, Covid, and Ukraine. These three are the equivalent of fighting a prolonged war, in fiscal terms.
BREAKING: Joe Biden received direct monthly payments beginning in 2018 from Hunter Biden's LLC Owasco PC, which received millions of dollars of CCP linked payments, according to redacted bank records released today by @GOPoversight.
https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1731722442475712724
Reality.
So, these three payments of $1,380 each (totaling $4,140) appear to be Hunter Biden paying his dad back for truck loan/lease payments that his dad paid on his son's behalf when Hunter was low on cash.
My source is an NY Post article about Hunter's finances and emails from the Hunter Biden email archive.
https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1731735230627914022
The tw@t arguing this is grounds for impeachment.
Comer: When my son needs help or my daughter I just give her money, nobody ever pays me back
https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1731833504063803821
.What outcome was expected?
It is only noteworthy if the answer is contrary to what might have been generally thought.
Which is a reasonable use of the state’s resources (and potentially could even be underwritten by a reinsurer although I’m not sure why you would bother as the state).
But essentially people should save for their old age and not expect that state to pay for them
An election called 6 months today wouldn't be held until mid-July. The next 6 weeks are out because of summer holidays (and in practice, early July probably would be out too given Scotland's earlier holidays). Likewise, you can't really call an election in August, so a Sept dissolution is the next earliest practical alternative, with polling day in mid-Oct.
It's not a very meaningful question.
Not happening.
The voters gave Boris a majority for his care costs cap in 2019 however
"The potential consequences of data being leaked are catastrophic and could include blackmail, fraud, relationship damage, and the outing of people's sexual preferences in very vulnerable circumstances,"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67615719
The failure of government to act on Dilnot etc, despite repeated promises is a major fail.
(Does Labour have a policy on this?)
Why hasn't Starmer fixed this issue? He has had 13 years and he has done NOTHING.
Vote Conservative to eradicate 13 years of Starmer failure.
By this time (13 years) if a government is to survive scrutiny it needs to be easy and clear how to answer these questions in relation to it, in a way which excludes the opposition from the same or better ones:
Where are we
How did we get here
What do we stand for
Where are we going
How shall we get there
What are our non negotiable principles and values.
My answers to questions 3-6 are that I have no idea. Unless (always possible) Labour looks even worse at the GE, they will win.
The fact is May was the only PM who had the courage to put forward radical plans to fund social care by making all the estate of a dementia patient over £100k liable for care costs and the voters resoundingly rejected it.
Thus the 2017 election result killed off any politician touching serious reform of social care for a generation or more, certainly any which costs the voters more
If you haven't noticed, your party is in office. We both know they are no longer in government, but they have been for what feels like an eternity. So everything that is wrong is your fault. Either your doing, or your lack of fixing.
The public aren't as stupid as you assume. I know that so many of your 2019 voters are thick as mince, but they aren't an example of the general public...
That said, I think when the history books are written they will look, much as they did with the GFC, as this and several years hence as the Covid Era and will cut many economies and the handling of them quite some slack.
Of course Brexit bound one leg to the other so it was always going to be difficult to win the 110m hurdles but nevertheless we are still appreciating the malign effects Covid had on all parts of society.
Here's the most important chart. It shows the UK is the *only* country in Europe where second generation immigrants outperform non-immigrant students. (And first generation don't do much worse)…..
What it shows is that our immigration is much more like English speaking countries outside Europe (Canada, Australia, NZ) and not at all like other Western European countries. And that our immigration is *actively improving* our education system (due to peer effects).
https://x.com/samfr/status/1731989813253857642?s=46&t=DAL2KhM-jGR2dcWuPR0SEg
For example, mean maths scores,
Immigrants vs non- immigrant
Second gen/First Gen
U.K.: +13 / -11
France: -47 / -60
In other words, in the U.K. second generation immigrants do better than non- immigrants, while first generation are pretty close. In France, first generation immigrants do very much worse (20 points is about equivalent to a years teaching) than non- immigrants - and still lag far behind in the second generation. It’s a picture repeated across continental Europe. Only Ireland doesn’t do quite as badly.
IMO it's like residential rents but rather less so - London is a distortion on nearly everywhere else.
https://lottie.org/fees-funding/care-home-costs/
I'm not trying to evaluate your personal experience - I've done this in the last few years, and IO know how variable it is on a small scale.
https://x.com/rcolvile/status/1731996519832641606?
I distinctly remember this, a couple of years later.
https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/aug/01/promising-to-fix-social-care-could-cost-boris-johnson-dearly
...“And so I am announcing now – on the steps of Downing Street – that we will fix the crisis in social care once and for all, and with a clear plan we have prepared to give every older person the dignity and security they deserve.”..
How we describe the glass is of considerably less import than what's in it.
Pause
Did anyone think this through?
His electability was purely a function of facing the most unpopular LotO ever.
I’m currently having ‘care’ due to my current, and probably permanent, inability to do much for myself. This in itself is a result of a malformation of the vertebrae in my neck affecting my spine. I’ve had an operation, and am slowly improving from where I was but the prognosis isn’t good, even for an optimist!
Essex County will pay, AIUI, £20 per hour for carers, but because of my total pension income, I’m too well off to get anything! Consequently we’re paying £40 per hour for what seems to me to be quite acceptable assistance. This is provided partly by a mix of experienced middle-aged women, and one man, most of whom are ‘native Brits’, and partly by a group of 20 somethings, male and female, all of whom are using this as income prior to new careers in the ‘care industry’.
It’s very interesting talking to them and learning of their different routes into this, and their hopes for the future. All of them make it clear that they’ve plenty to do and hope their employers don’t take on too many more clients. Among their main grouses is that they have to travel between clients, often for quite a distance. They get paid mileage, AIUI, but the time they have to spend driving is the issue.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/05/brexit-disaster-rejoining-channel-europe-economy
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/05/trump-supreme-court-justices-taxes-00129912
...If the Trump appointees join a conservative majority to blow up the existing constitutional consensus, however, they will be turning their backs on the passionate defenses of originalism they made before the Senate Judiciary Committee. They will also be raising fundamental questions about their commitment to democratic principles: What gives nine unelected justices the authority to protect the rich when a democratically elected president and Congress decide that progressive taxation is in the public interest?
When it comes to adhering to originalist principles, the history is clear — as long as it’s not cherry-picked.
Quite simply, the Founders were not opposed to wealth taxes. Indeed, the Supreme Court unanimously approved the first wealth tax in 1793. Its successors consistently followed this precedent over the next century and upheld every tax statute that required the rich to pay more than the poor. Given these historical foundations, the Trump-appointed justices will destroy the credibility of their professed commitment to originalism if they vote to prohibit a wealth tax...
Even worse, you are creating a situation where all the members of the original set are worse off and the new members of the set are better off.
Why would anybody in the original set agree to this? And what do you think they'll do when they find out?
This lesson was the lesson of Brexit and it is a lesson that Biden has refused to learn: high growth does not lead to high happiness nor contentment. And people wonder why Sunak is unpopular?
Twice.
The difference here is motivation and support.
We shouldn't be surprised that people who have had the gumption, ambition, and nous to up sticks and move to a strange country to better themselves and their family, are more likely to be motivated to make the most of their opportunities, and more likely to encourage and support their children to do the same.
I think that one of the reasons the US became the world's richest economy and leading power in the 20th century is because its population had a large proportion of such people, similarly motivated.
We had twice a day social care from a small provider (who viewed it as a vocation) back in 2019 for my mum in her last months for personal care (dressing, toileting and so on), and our hourly rate was roughly minimum wage + 20%. That is in Ashfield / Mansfield area, and locally we have a good range of care-providers.
The provider only had about 15 staff on their books, and it included a few East Europeans who had come over, school mums wanting flexible working hours, and a few middle aged women. When heavy lift was required, the business owner's husband was called in.
Yours may be more medically qualified.
All change brings upsides and downsides - I’d much rather be in the UK’s position of successfully educating immigrants than France’s of creating a substantial underclass of the poorly educated.
Your positivity despite your challenges is inspirational - and I say that as a full-time wheelchair user for 44 years.
Why are we impoverishing our people to lay larger and larger sacrifices to Moloch? Pyramids are a fine thing, but improving neonatal care is far better.
Holiday pay and employer NI alone would add 25% on top of the minimum wage.
Add overhead costs, sick pay and travel time and it’s easy to see why the minimum rate needed is £23 an hour and even that doesn’t give you much margin
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/dec/05/english-national-opera-announces-greater-manchester-will-be-its-new-home
Are there any plans for a new opera house to be built there? Probably not a priority for the country right now but if not a new opera house where will they perform?
Sounded like a proper watchdog on care/visas needed which wasn't happening at the moment.
*Don't forget there's a nice big fee for each visa issued whilst the wider costs of the person (Housing, education, infrastructure for their kids) isn't immediately the Home Office's cost/problem.
But now it's thirteen years later and - entirely predictably - we have lots of old people and we don't really know how to look after them. We really planned that well, didn't we?
A school and a childcare centre have been placed in lockdown
https://news.sky.com/story/armed-officers-at-scene-of-serious-assault-in-aberfan-south-wales-police-say-13023339
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/initial-2m-investment-sparked-climate-loss-and-damage-debate-claims-yousaf/ar-AA1l1Qfe?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=f9ebed6f2433427bbb9da4287234dfa5&ei=16
Private can be much more
They are the same thing.
And most voters didn’t vote in 2019 based on care policy
But right back to Osborne characterising the Dilnott proposals as a “death tax” politics has screwed up social care policy.
We need it. We need to pay for it.
793
They just called me
Those who hated him, hated him. But he had a loyal personal vote that REALLY liked him and would come out to vote for him, which they won’t do for any other Tory
It was possibly 20-25% of the electorate, often in lower social classes
The Tories threw all that away when they dumped bojo
No doubt the SNP's very own HYUFD, in these parts, will be along to defend the ineptitude.
Even Johnson lovers grew tired of the bullshit.
Problem 1 though is that you can't win an election with a marmite leader that only ~25% love;
Problem 2 is that between them, Johnson and Truss did the Tory brand so much damage (and, in Johnson's case, changed the nature of the party too), that attempting to revert to the norm of boring but competent men in grey suits doesn't work either. And Sunak isn't particularly competent either.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-hunter-biden-saga-continues-impeachment-inquiry-politics-c38ccce8?reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink
Putting aside the mechanics of this, my immediate thought is whether the Democrat machinery uses this to lever Biden out. Obviously not by siding with the Republicans but more by dropping hints that ‘there is a case to answer etc’
Why do this? Biden’s poll numbers remain poor. The number one issue electors have with him is his age / seeming fragility and there is nothing he can do about that. At the same time, Biden doesn’t look as though he will step down willingly. At this stage, as people like Sean Trende have argued, you would say Trump has a strong chance of winning.
Does that happen now? No. But it may do in a few months if the poll numbers don’t improve. My guess is, if a move is to be made, it will be done post any cut in interest rates in the US to see if there is any political boost.
They can’t blame funding - they get more per person than the rUK
It’s a very basic failure. Scotch voters need to do the necessary
Feel free to ignore me or tell me to sod off if I am prying
Anyway it’s all medieval history now. He’s gone. All the Tories can do is hope to stay above 200 seats as they get pounded next year
The 2020s are gonna be hugely volatile. I can see the Tories surging back in one term if Starmer gravely disappoints. But to do that they need to avoid extinction