Mr. NorthWales, yikes. Hope that can be gotten quickly.
While I dislike the dripping, it is less horrendous (for now...) than when I went downstairs one morning last year and found the kitchen countertops soaking wet, with the water an inch or so from going onto the floor... that was less than splendid.
We had that problem around this time last year. It required a small plastic part to be replaced. They make them out of plastic to save money, but they get worn out more quickly resulting in leakage.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
It's not just the rivers that are full of shit. Anyway, I await the water companies coming along and saying that "the sewage problems aren't our fault, guv, it's all those immigrants what caused it".
Meanwhile, the government more or less ignores the large scale of legal migration to focus on the poor buggers trying to cross the Channel in this freezing weather, who constitute a small proportion of incomers. You couldn't make it up.
The focus on illegal migration is intentional and designed to ensure there is zero focus on the level of legal migration - and the lack of preparation we are doing to cope with that number of people
Fixing Fujitsu software bugs in the Horizon IT system was too expensive. Flaws known since 1998. Fujitsu and Post Office gave false evidence to courts and let innocent people be convicted of fraud. Boosted profits and exec pay by destroying lives."
Why did Fujitsu need to have a fraud and litigation department? Litigation, I can understand. But fraud? What fraud and by whom was this department expecting to deal with?
The stuff coming out of Fujitsu - particularly the known bugs that they didn't tell the PO about and didn't bother to fix - will put that company firmly in the frame. This guy giving evidence now, who's a strange but seemingly honest fellow, told the inquiry yesterday that one bug generated errors if a subpostmaster was working on their terminal at 7pm, because at that time every day the central server ran some sort of housekeeping routine, and that the system couldn't tell whether a repeated entry from a subpostmaster's terminal was a separate transaction or duplicates. As details like this come out, the pattern of shortfalls that subpostmasters experienced becomes more understandable.
Boiler's decided now is a good time to start dripping water. *sighs*
My son tells me his boiler died yesterday and needs an immediate replacement, especially with a 12, 10 and 18 month year old family
The chap who fitted my boiler said that the habit of switching off heating systems for part of the year is responsible for the tide of dead boilers in a cold snap.
Had the British Gas insurance thing for a while - they were very good at prioritising up for problems, when we had small children/elderly people staying with us.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
Part of the problem is that no one is saying, in politics, "For each head of net immigration, we need to build a bedroom, x percent of a hospital bed (staffed), y percent of a school place, z percent of pubic transport, alpha percent of road investment etc etc."
If you have a growing population, then you need more stuff. Because everyone needs a share.
That is obviously correct and a lot of people do say this, political parties are reluctant to though. The blame lies with the Tories for weaponising immigration when they knew it was coming and even have acted to increase it sharply through searching for foreign students and having very low pay thresholds for visa post Brexit. In turn Labour have become scared to state this obvious truth.
Oh yes. The Tories are absolutely culpable. It’s one reason they deserve the electoral thrashing coming their way
But once the voters have taken their righteous revenge, the problem will still be there, and with an even feebler Labour government - in terms of attitudes to migration - trying to handle it
-4 here. Very frosty. The light across the estuary is magnificent. I am sitting in my drawing room, bathed in sunshine.
-4 here, too, remarkably. Gloriously bright and clear. The radiator in the room where I work has mysteriously packed up. I have tried all the youtube fixes without success. So I am working in the kitchen.
Fixing Fujitsu software bugs in the Horizon IT system was too expensive. Flaws known since 1998. Fujitsu and Post Office gave false evidence to courts and let innocent people be convicted of fraud. Boosted profits and exec pay by destroying lives."
Why did Fujitsu need to have a fraud and litigation department? Litigation, I can understand. But fraud? What fraud and by whom was this department expecting to deal with?
“By God, this Department is well-named!” - with apologies to Sir Henry Esson
@{The East Midlands Serious Crime Squad has entered the chat, beaten a confession out of @kinabalu and robbed a couple of banks}
Surely the West Midlands one? Or was East Midlands at it as well?
Mr. NorthWales, yikes. Hope that can be gotten quickly.
While I dislike the dripping, it is less horrendous (for now...) than when I went downstairs one morning last year and found the kitchen countertops soaking wet, with the water an inch or so from going onto the floor... that was less than splendid.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
The difficulty is turning the sentiment into a politics and policy rather than right wing words. Four massive facts.
One. We already have a hugely multi ethnic/multi cultural community and a population which has grown by millions in a couple of decades, and 4 million in 10 years.
Two. Housing crisis
Three. Huge reliance in HE sector (students - HE sector goes bankrupt without them), NHS, service sector, and many others including agriculture and food on migration.
Four. Our birthrate has recently fallen fast.
In Germany (! of all places) a discussion is already turning at the far extremes to mass deportations. The right wing AfD is careful to separate itself from such talk.
The problem is identifying and implementing a policy which isn't a fascist one but delivers what Matt Goodwin keeps telling us most people want. What does it do? What does it look like?
'The right wing AfD is careful to separate itself from such talk.'
When you say separate itself do you mean trying to pretend their reps who say the quiet part out loud are nothing to do with them?
'Among MPs to publicly express their support for the ideas discussed at the meeting was René Springer, a representative for the state of Brandenburg in the federal government. On X, he stated that far from being a secret, the plan was a promise the AfD would fulfil should it get into power. “We will send foreigners back to their homelands. Millions of them. That is not a #secret plan. That is a promise,” he wrote.'
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
A simple law that caps immigration to the number of new properties (+ increase in school places and hospital beds) would solve a lot of problems.
If you think the NIMBYs are bad now, wait until you tell them that blocking new housing will *keep out immigrants*.
How does that work ?
Isn't this a bit like claiming Joseph and Mary's travel plans would have been stopped were there no room at the Inn ?
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
It's not just the rivers that are full of shit. Anyway, I await the water companies coming along and saying that "the sewage problems aren't our fault, guv, it's all those immigrants what caused it".
Meanwhile, the government more or less ignores the large scale of legal migration to focus on the poor buggers trying to cross the Channel in this freezing weather, who constitute a small proportion of incomers. You couldn't make it up.
The focus on illegal migration is intentional and designed to ensure there is zero focus on the level of legal migration - and the lack of preparation we are doing to cope with that number of people
Yes, there was a very good FT piece on this theme recently - and it pointed out that this is not just a British thing: western governments everywhere are doing it
Focusing on illegal migration so voters don’t notice huge amounts of legal migration; but voters - as the FT noted - are cottoning on
Fixing Fujitsu software bugs in the Horizon IT system was too expensive. Flaws known since 1998. Fujitsu and Post Office gave false evidence to courts and let innocent people be convicted of fraud. Boosted profits and exec pay by destroying lives."
Why did Fujitsu need to have a fraud and litigation department? Litigation, I can understand. But fraud? What fraud and by whom was this department expecting to deal with?
“By God, this Department is well-named!” - with apologies to Sir Henry Esson
@{The East Midlands Serious Crime Squad has entered the chat, beaten a confession out of @kinabalu and robbed a couple of banks}
Surely the West Midlands one? Or was East Midlands at it as well?
Morning brain. Thank you for the correction.
But the idea that the Fraud Department organises the frauds seems about right.
Bit like the compliance officer in Boiler Room organising the nuts and bolts of the scheme.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
The difficulty is turning the sentiment into a politics and policy rather than right wing words. Four massive facts.
One. We already have a hugely multi ethnic/multi cultural community and a population which has grown by millions in a couple of decades, and 4 million in 10 years.
Two. Housing crisis
Three. Huge reliance in HE sector (students - HE sector goes bankrupt without them), NHS, service sector, and many others including agriculture and food on migration.
Four. Our birthrate has recently fallen fast.
In Germany (! of all places) a discussion is already turning at the far extremes to mass deportations. The right wing AfD is careful to separate itself from such talk.
The problem is identifying and implementing a policy which isn't a fascist one but delivers what Matt Goodwin keeps telling us most people want. What does it do? What does it look like?
Good questions
I’m not sure there is an agreeable answer; in some countries the problem will culminate with civil strife and actual fascism
Issues which have no agreeable answers can, if sticking within the constraints of democracy, civilization and human rights, only be politically managed. Which is exactly what we are seeing.
Thus the 'right wing' talk, including that of the D Tel and Speccie and Matt Goodwin, consists only and exclusively of talk, not of hard policy and practice.
Note just yesterday the collapse of the 'right wing' Tory rebellion over the Rwanda (Paddington Bear Deportation) Bill yesterday. The Bill attempts to stay within the limits of civilized law, and of course can't work. In the end they nearly all voted for it.
Essentially, Ethiopia wants a port. It's landlocked, despite having a large population, and this means fees charged by Dijibouti[sp] for handling the imports/exports by sea are very costly. Recognition of Somaliland in return for leasing a port would be an interesting move, but obviously Somalia's less than delighted.
Another possibility I've heard, not in this article, is a potential invasion of Eritrea to reclaim coastal territories (and ports) previously part of Ethiopia.
Yes, I've been collecting notes on that little mess. Ordinarily I'd back the smaller guy on this (and particularly with respect to the right of self-determination), but Eritrea has not been exactly the most democratic place since independence. In fact, they haven't had one election since independence, and make North Korea look like a democratic, civilised state.
But that doesn't mean Ethiopia should just grab the bits it wants. IIRC, Ethiopia is the largest land-locked country in the world, which is why it's desperate for a port or two.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
We have a shortage of housing because we refuse to let people build houses to cope with our population growth.
There's absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with immigration, so long as we have sufficient investment to keep up with population growth.
The problem is when we have rising population and no investment.
So you don’t think 1.3 million in 2 years is too many? (Plus illegals, of course)
How many is too many then? 2 million a year? 5 million? Or is fhere no limit in your eyes, and all immigration of any levels is good and fine?
No limit in my eyes so long as investment and infrastructure grows correspondingly.
I couldn't care less if our population in England by the end of the century is 60 million, 100 million or a billion, so long as we invest accordingly and have growing living standards what bloody difference does it make?
Fixing Fujitsu software bugs in the Horizon IT system was too expensive. Flaws known since 1998. Fujitsu and Post Office gave false evidence to courts and let innocent people be convicted of fraud. Boosted profits and exec pay by destroying lives."
Why did Fujitsu need to have a fraud and litigation department? Litigation, I can understand. But fraud? What fraud and by whom was this department expecting to deal with?
My guess is that Fujitsu sells services, and did back then. If you sell services, people can defraud you.
I know one of the companies selling IC design software as a service (with a multi-billion revenue) has a rather busy fraud department. Because other multi-billion dollar companies can't be ar*ed paying...
That would normally be dealt with by a litigation department. Not paying contractual sums due is not fraud. Just curious at why the word "fraud" was used because that implies something criminal to me. Interested in its scope and how that might interact with what the PO was doing and Fujitsu's knowledge of this - and involvement in it.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
A simple law that caps immigration to the number of new properties (+ increase in school places and hospital beds) would solve a lot of problems.
If you think the NIMBYs are bad now, wait until you tell them that blocking new housing will *keep out immigrants*.
How does that work ?
Isn't this a bit like claiming Joseph and Mary's travel plans would have been stopped were there no room at the Inn ?
Hypothetically - "Sorry, no visas. At all. Until someone builds another house"
Think the 1970s and waiting for a mortgage from the bank, because they were rationed.
On immigration, I think it's fairly simple in theory.
Set a total net migration level, forecast a decade into the future. Let councils and utilities know how the country will grow, and plan for it. Then let in people up to that level per year, and no more. Let the parties campaign at election time with that number.
(Yes, I know there are massive practical problems with this...)
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
We have a shortage of housing because we refuse to let people build houses to cope with our population growth.
There's absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with immigration, so long as we have sufficient investment to keep up with population growth.
The problem is when we have rising population and no investment.
So you don’t think 1.3 million in 2 years is too many? (Plus illegals, of course)
How many is too many then? 2 million a year? 5 million? Or is fhere no limit in your eyes, and all immigration of any levels is good and fine?
No limit in my eyes so long as investment and infrastructure grows correspondingly.
I couldn't care less if our population in England by the end of the century is 60 million, 100 million or a billion, so long as we invest accordingly and have growing living standards what bloody difference does it make?
Because most of us don’t want to see England’s green and pleasant land finally and completely covered with your fucking hideous Barratt Home red brick semis
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
We have a shortage of housing because we refuse to let people build houses to cope with our population growth.
There's absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with immigration, so long as we have sufficient investment to keep up with population growth.
The problem is when we have rising population and no investment.
So you don’t think 1.3 million in 2 years is too many? (Plus illegals, of course)
How many is too many then? 2 million a year? 5 million? Or is fhere no limit in your eyes, and all immigration of any levels is good and fine?
No limit in my eyes so long as investment and infrastructure grows correspondingly.
I couldn't care less if our population in England by the end of the century is 60 million, 100 million or a billion, so long as we invest accordingly and have growing living standards what bloody difference does it make?
Slacker. We should be aiming for a population of 10 billion.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
We have a shortage of housing because we refuse to let people build houses to cope with our population growth.
There's absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with immigration, so long as we have sufficient investment to keep up with population growth.
The problem is when we have rising population and no investment.
So you don’t think 1.3 million in 2 years is too many? (Plus illegals, of course)
How many is too many then? 2 million a year? 5 million? Or is fhere no limit in your eyes, and all immigration of any levels is good and fine?
No limit in my eyes so long as investment and infrastructure grows correspondingly.
I couldn't care less if our population in England by the end of the century is 60 million, 100 million or a billion, so long as we invest accordingly and have growing living standards what bloody difference does it make?
Because most of us don’t want to see England’s green and pleasant land finally and completely covered with your fucking hideous Barratt Home red brick semis
You really are quite crazy. You know that, right?
No, you just lack perspective.
Not even 5% of the country is housing - and that includes peoples gardens etc
We could double our housing stock and it'd barely make a dent in our nation's "green and pleasant land".
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
The difficulty is turning the sentiment into a politics and policy rather than right wing words. Four massive facts.
One. We already have a hugely multi ethnic/multi cultural community and a population which has grown by millions in a couple of decades, and 4 million in 10 years.
Two. Housing crisis
Three. Huge reliance in HE sector (students - HE sector goes bankrupt without them), NHS, service sector, and many others including agriculture and food on migration.
Four. Our birthrate has recently fallen fast.
In Germany (! of all places) a discussion is already turning at the far extremes to mass deportations. The right wing AfD is careful to separate itself from such talk.
The problem is identifying and implementing a policy which isn't a fascist one but delivers what Matt Goodwin keeps telling us most people want. What does it do? What does it look like?
'The right wing AfD is careful to separate itself from such talk.'
When you say separate itself do you mean trying to pretend their reps who say the quiet part out loud are nothing to do with them?
'Among MPs to publicly express their support for the ideas discussed at the meeting was René Springer, a representative for the state of Brandenburg in the federal government. On X, he stated that far from being a secret, the plan was a promise the AfD would fulfil should it get into power. “We will send foreigners back to their homelands. Millions of them. That is not a #secret plan. That is a promise,” he wrote.'
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
It's not just the rivers that are full of shit. Anyway, I await the water companies coming along and saying that "the sewage problems aren't our fault, guv, it's all those immigrants what caused it".
Meanwhile, the government more or less ignores the large scale of legal migration to focus on the poor buggers trying to cross the Channel in this freezing weather, who constitute a small proportion of incomers. You couldn't make it up.
The focus on illegal migration is intentional and designed to ensure there is zero focus on the level of legal migration - and the lack of preparation we are doing to cope with that number of people
net (legal) migration was unusually high in 2022 due to the war in Ukraine, the humanitarian route for Hong Kong British National Overseas (BNO) status holders, an increase in international student numbers and high demand for workers in the health and care sector. These factors are to some extent temporary and so it is expected that net migration will fall over the next year or two, regardless of the progress or otherwise of the Rwanda plan.
Tories on 20%. Fukkers on 12% pre Farage. Sunak to give triumphant presser about how thanks to his canny skills in the Commons he will now Stop The Boats.
Tories. The abyss becons.
2024 is lining up to be the most spectacular general election since 1945. It's entirely plausible that Labour could end up with a 200+ majority. The Tories could end sub-100. Neither is anything like guaranteed but we ought to consider it a realistic possibility.
Sunak has got himself into a position where he isn't trusted as either a populist or a managerial type; he's chasing the RefUK vote but not getting it because he's merely highlighting their arguments without sorting them; driving right will consolidate the anti-Tory tactical vote on the left (which is in any case twice the size of the combined Con+RefUK vote); and meanwhile, the economic squeeze is still on for a lot of people, strikes are rife and the NHS cannot cope with demand, backlog and strikes.
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
The difficulty is turning the sentiment into a politics and policy rather than right wing words. Four massive facts.
One. We already have a hugely multi ethnic/multi cultural community and a population which has grown by millions in a couple of decades, and 4 million in 10 years.
Two. Housing crisis
Three. Huge reliance in HE sector (students - HE sector goes bankrupt without them), NHS, service sector, and many others including agriculture and food on migration.
Four. Our birthrate has recently fallen fast.
In Germany (! of all places) a discussion is already turning at the far extremes to mass deportations. The right wing AfD is careful to separate itself from such talk.
The problem is identifying and implementing a policy which isn't a fascist one but delivers what Matt Goodwin keeps telling us most people want. What does it do? What does it look like?
Good questions
I’m not sure there is an agreeable answer; in some countries the problem will culminate with civil strife and actual fascism
Example: Sweden used to be regarded as one of the most moderate countries in the world, and now they have a hard-right party in government.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
Part of the problem is that no one is saying, in politics, "For each head of net immigration, we need to build a bedroom, x percent of a hospital bed (staffed), y percent of a school place, z percent of pubic transport, alpha percent of road investment etc etc."
If you have a growing population, then you need more stuff. Because everyone needs a share.
And that should be balanced out by the other side of the equation: immigrants provide us with labour and services that help our country grow. Sadly, I fear we're well out of balance.
What is the point of the country growing if the existing population do not share in the proceeds of growth?
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
I don’t even understand your points any more. I believe the technical description of your commentary is, in PB terms, “vapid bilge”
Really? I didn't think I was being obtuse. The far right thrive on anti-immigrant sentiment. Their agenda is to exploit the (genuine) issue of immigration to increase this sentiment amongst the public. You agree with that, I'd have thought?
And it's relevant to a discussion on immigration. Why wouldn't it be? You yourself were just highlighting the risk of the far right surfing to power on the back of anti-immigrant sentiment. Ok, so I quibbled with your wording. You said the far right were certain to triumph, which is hyperbole, so I replaced with "risk".
That's a bit clearer now, I hope. So what's your point anyway?
Essentially, Ethiopia wants a port. It's landlocked, despite having a large population, and this means fees charged by Dijibouti[sp] for handling the imports/exports by sea are very costly. Recognition of Somaliland in return for leasing a port would be an interesting move, but obviously Somalia's less than delighted.
Another possibility I've heard, not in this article, is a potential invasion of Eritrea to reclaim coastal territories (and ports) previously part of Ethiopia.
Yes, I've been collecting notes on that little mess. Ordinarily I'd back the smaller guy on this (and particularly with respect to the right of self-determination), but Eritrea has not been exactly the most democratic place since independence. In fact, they haven't had one election since independence, and make North Korea look like a democratic, civilised state.
But that doesn't mean Ethiopia should just grab the bits it wants. IIRC, Ethiopia is the largest land-locked country in the world, which is why it's desperate for a port or two.
Perhaps we need a practical view on this. Which country is least likely to join Yemen with their red sea nonsense.
Tories on 20%. Fukkers on 12% pre Farage. Sunak to give triumphant presser about how thanks to his canny skills in the Commons he will now Stop The Boats.
Tories. The abyss becons.
2024 is lining up to be the most spectacular general election since 1945. It's entirely plausible that Labour could end up with a 200+ majority. The Tories could end sub-100. Neither is anything like guaranteed but we ought to consider it a realistic possibility.
Sunak has got himself into a position where he isn't trusted as either a populist or a managerial type; he's chasing the RefUK vote but not getting it because he's merely highlighting their arguments without sorting them; driving right will consolidate the anti-Tory tactical vote on the left (which is in any case twice the size of the combined Con+RefUK vote); and meanwhile, the economic squeeze is still on for a lot of people, strikes are rife and the NHS cannot cope with demand, backlog and strikes.
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
Sunak is a huge part of the problem. He's been Chancellor or PM for all but a relative handful of days in nearly four years.
And its not just that the buck stops with him, its what he's chosen to do and his priorities.
Hunt is far, far better. Despite Sunak, not because of him.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
It's not just the rivers that are full of shit. Anyway, I await the water companies coming along and saying that "the sewage problems aren't our fault, guv, it's all those immigrants what caused it".
Meanwhile, the government more or less ignores the large scale of legal migration to focus on the poor buggers trying to cross the Channel in this freezing weather, who constitute a small proportion of incomers. You couldn't make it up.
The focus on illegal migration is intentional and designed to ensure there is zero focus on the level of legal migration - and the lack of preparation we are doing to cope with that number of people
net (legal) migration was unusually high in 2022 due to the war in Ukraine, the humanitarian route for Hong Kong British National Overseas (BNO) status holders, an increase in international student numbers and high demand for workers in the health and care sector. These factors are to some extent temporary and so it is expected that net migration will fall over the next year or two, regardless of the progress or otherwise of the Rwanda plan.
True on 1 level (Hong Kong, Ukraine) but beyond that I have a bridge to sell you.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
The difficulty is turning the sentiment into a politics and policy rather than right wing words. Four massive facts.
One. We already have a hugely multi ethnic/multi cultural community and a population which has grown by millions in a couple of decades, and 4 million in 10 years.
Two. Housing crisis
Three. Huge reliance in HE sector (students - HE sector goes bankrupt without them), NHS, service sector, and many others including agriculture and food on migration.
Four. Our birthrate has recently fallen fast.
In Germany (! of all places) a discussion is already turning at the far extremes to mass deportations. The right wing AfD is careful to separate itself from such talk.
The problem is identifying and implementing a policy which isn't a fascist one but delivers what Matt Goodwin keeps telling us most people want. What does it do? What does it look like?
'The right wing AfD is careful to separate itself from such talk.'
When you say separate itself do you mean trying to pretend their reps who say the quiet part out loud are nothing to do with them?
'Among MPs to publicly express their support for the ideas discussed at the meeting was René Springer, a representative for the state of Brandenburg in the federal government. On X, he stated that far from being a secret, the plan was a promise the AfD would fulfil should it get into power. “We will send foreigners back to their homelands. Millions of them. That is not a #secret plan. That is a promise,” he wrote.'
Thanks. Yes, we both have a hold of parts of a complicated political dance.
Intrigued to see that this second Wansee conference took place in chichi Potsdam (just along the road from Wansee, I wonder if that was in the organisers' minds?). Potsdam and its environs are the epitome of affluent Germany, very far from the post industrial hellholes that are supposed to be the base for AfD.
Gives me an excuse to reproduce one of my current fave paintings, Evening Over Potsdam painted by a Jew in 1930. This is full of authentic portent and meaning unlike that pishy prize winning AI generated photo everyone was discussing a year ago.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
Part of the problem is that no one is saying, in politics, "For each head of net immigration, we need to build a bedroom, x percent of a hospital bed (staffed), y percent of a school place, z percent of pubic transport, alpha percent of road investment etc etc."
If you have a growing population, then you need more stuff. Because everyone needs a share.
And that should be balanced out by the other side of the equation: immigrants provide us with labour and services that help our country grow. Sadly, I fear we're well out of balance.
What is the point of the country growing if the existing population do not share in the proceeds of growth?
The age old problem - people look at GDP and not GDP per capita
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
I don’t even understand your points any more. I believe the technical description of your commentary is, in PB terms, “vapid bilge”
Really? I didn't think I was being obtuse. The far right thrive on anti-immigrant sentiment. Their agenda is to exploit the (genuine) issue of immigration to increase this sentiment amongst the public. You agree with that, I'd have thought?
And it's relevant to a discussion on immigration. Why wouldn't it be? You yourself were just highlighting the risk of the far right surfing to power on the back of anti-immigrant sentiment. Ok, so I quibbled with your wording. You said the far right were certain to triumph, which is hyperbole, so I replaced with "risk".
That's a bit clearer now, I hope. So what's your point anyway?
Just more vapid bilge, I’m afraid
But it is interesting how bewildered and confounded you are, by this issue: dwindling into incoherence like the robot in Kubrick’s 2001
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
It's not just the rivers that are full of shit. Anyway, I await the water companies coming along and saying that "the sewage problems aren't our fault, guv, it's all those immigrants what caused it".
Meanwhile, the government more or less ignores the large scale of legal migration to focus on the poor buggers trying to cross the Channel in this freezing weather, who constitute a small proportion of incomers. You couldn't make it up.
The focus on illegal migration is intentional and designed to ensure there is zero focus on the level of legal migration - and the lack of preparation we are doing to cope with that number of people
net (legal) migration was unusually high in 2022 due to the war in Ukraine, the humanitarian route for Hong Kong British National Overseas (BNO) status holders, an increase in international student numbers and high demand for workers in the health and care sector. These factors are to some extent temporary and so it is expected that net migration will fall over the next year or two, regardless of the progress or otherwise of the Rwanda plan.
True on 1 level (Hong Kong, Ukraine) but beyond that I have a bridge to sell you.
This analysis does a pretty good job of explaining why net migration levels are unlike to remain at their current high level:
The only question is whether the drop will come soon enough for the government to take the credit for it. Perhaps a reason for Sunak to hang on for a bit longer?
Tories on 20%. Fukkers on 12% pre Farage. Sunak to give triumphant presser about how thanks to his canny skills in the Commons he will now Stop The Boats.
Tories. The abyss becons.
2024 is lining up to be the most spectacular general election since 1945. It's entirely plausible that Labour could end up with a 200+ majority. The Tories could end sub-100. Neither is anything like guaranteed but we ought to consider it a realistic possibility.
Sunak has got himself into a position where he isn't trusted as either a populist or a managerial type; he's chasing the RefUK vote but not getting it because he's merely highlighting their arguments without sorting them; driving right will consolidate the anti-Tory tactical vote on the left (which is in any case twice the size of the combined Con+RefUK vote); and meanwhile, the economic squeeze is still on for a lot of people, strikes are rife and the NHS cannot cope with demand, backlog and strikes.
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
Sunak is a huge part of the problem. He's been Chancellor or PM for all but a relative handful of days in nearly four years.
And its not just that the buck stops with him, its what he's chosen to do and his priorities.
Hunt is far, far better. Despite Sunak, not because of him.
Sunak went off the rails in the summer/early autumn.
The broad strategy, embodied by Hunt and initially adopted by Sunak, of being rather boringly steady, setting and meeting some modest objectives, and projecting a general air of calm after the storm, was pretty good. I'm not sure it was ever enough, but it had every chance of leading to a reasonable recovery over time if he'd kept to it.
But it wasn't shifting the polls, Uxbridge gave a tantalising if illusory vision of a bolder way to break out, the Rwanda sop to the right was clearly running into the sand, and Sunak simply panicked. Since then, he has been flailing, and you don't know which Sunak will turn up. He cannot realistically go back to the Hunt strategy as he's already blown it - you can't return to being Steady Eddie having proved you're not.
In fairness, it's all rather easier for Hunt sat in the Treasury. Sunak has to deal with the broad range of policy, and events as they come up. Hunt has something of a hiding place from it. Nevertheless, Sunak has blown what chance he had.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
I'm not sure I follow. Your logic appears to be 'we mustn't be against immigration or the far right will get in.' Which seems to be not only the wrong way around, but also counter-productive.
The logic goes: 1 - Voters are really concerned about such really quite large and noticeable numbers of immigration. (Almost always they won't have an issue with individual immigrants, but they don't want to import quite so many people, for many reasons e.g. impact on housing, impact on their kids schools.) 2 - Most parties either refuse to talk about immigration or talk about it but don't actually do anything about it. 3 - The only parties which appear to care about the issue are far right ones. 4 - Therefore people vote far right.
Most people aren't particularly far right in any sense. But most people don't see the risk of inflaming far right sentiment as a worse bogey than all others. If the far right are the only parties who will address the issue they care about, people will vote for them.
Step 3 doesn't always go that way. There is that far left party in Germany which is also against immigration. And people are voting for that party too.
That isn't my logic. Immigration is a genuine issue. Esp in a time of large people movements. We need policies to control it and address people's reasonable concerns.
This is perfectly compatible with recognizing the need to not pander to far right talking points about the country being 'swamped' and 'ruined' and a 'soft touch for foreigners' etc.
Too much of that emotive b/s and Leon's fears (that the far right will gain real traction here) might be realised.
Tories on 20%. Fukkers on 12% pre Farage. Sunak to give triumphant presser about how thanks to his canny skills in the Commons he will now Stop The Boats.
Tories. The abyss becons.
2024 is lining up to be the most spectacular general election since 1945. It's entirely plausible that Labour could end up with a 200+ majority. The Tories could end sub-100. Neither is anything like guaranteed but we ought to consider it a realistic possibility.
Sunak has got himself into a position where he isn't trusted as either a populist or a managerial type; he's chasing the RefUK vote but not getting it because he's merely highlighting their arguments without sorting them; driving right will consolidate the anti-Tory tactical vote on the left (which is in any case twice the size of the combined Con+RefUK vote); and meanwhile, the economic squeeze is still on for a lot of people, strikes are rife and the NHS cannot cope with demand, backlog and strikes.
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
Sunak is a huge part of the problem. He's been Chancellor or PM for all but a relative handful of days in nearly four years.
And its not just that the buck stops with him, its what he's chosen to do and his priorities.
Hunt is far, far better. Despite Sunak, not because of him.
Sunak went off the rails in the summer/early autumn.
The broad strategy, embodied by Hunt and initially adopted by Sunak, of being rather boringly steady, setting and meeting some modest objectives, and projecting a general air of calm after the storm, was pretty good. I'm not sure it was ever enough, but it had every chance of leading to a reasonable recovery over time if he'd kept to it.
But it wasn't shifting the polls, Uxbridge gave a tantalising if illusory vision of a bolder way to break out, the Rwanda sop to the right was clearly running into the sand, and Sunak simply panicked. Since then, he has been flailing, and you don't know which Sunak will turn up. He cannot realistically go back to the Hunt strategy as he's already blown it - you can't return to being Steady Eddie having proved you're not.
In fairness, it's all rather easier for Hunt sat in the Treasury. Sunak has to deal with the broad range of policy, and events as they come up. Hunt has something of a hiding place from it. Nevertheless, Sunak has blown what chance he had.
Sunak is completely out of touch and so has little clue as to what he is doing, hence the chaos and hence the major misjudgements he's made.
Truss as PM with Hunt as Chancellor would be a better government than this.
To get back on topic, I’d like it noted that my ferocious new consumption regimen - sporadic fasting, calorific deficit, restricted booze intake - is having an effect. I have lost almost 10kg in 6 weeks
No doubt experts will say that is too fast but wow it is fast. I can face myself in the mirror. I can see RIBS
I am about 5kg from my target weight. Then - god willing - I will have FINALLY lost all the Covid blob and be back to where I was from 2005-2020
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
We have a shortage of housing because we refuse to let people build houses to cope with our population growth.
There's absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with immigration, so long as we have sufficient investment to keep up with population growth.
The problem is when we have rising population and no investment.
So you don’t think 1.3 million in 2 years is too many? (Plus illegals, of course)
How many is too many then? 2 million a year? 5 million? Or is fhere no limit in your eyes, and all immigration of any levels is good and fine?
No limit in my eyes so long as investment and infrastructure grows correspondingly.
I couldn't care less if our population in England by the end of the century is 60 million, 100 million or a billion, so long as we invest accordingly and have growing living standards what bloody difference does it make?
Because most of us don’t want to see England’s green and pleasant land finally and completely covered with your fucking hideous Barratt Home red brick semis
You really are quite crazy. You know that, right?
If we increased the number of people living in apartments to French levels we could increase both housing provision and the size our green spaces at the same time.
Fixing Fujitsu software bugs in the Horizon IT system was too expensive. Flaws known since 1998. Fujitsu and Post Office gave false evidence to courts and let innocent people be convicted of fraud. Boosted profits and exec pay by destroying lives."
Why did Fujitsu need to have a fraud and litigation department? Litigation, I can understand. But fraud? What fraud and by whom was this department expecting to deal with?
“By God, this Department is well-named!” - with apologies to Sir Henry Esson
@{The East Midlands Serious Crime Squad has entered the chat, beaten a confession out of @kinabalu and robbed a couple of banks}
It'd have to be the Met with me.
On the PO thing, I started the itv drama yesterday. It had a scene where a Fujitsu bod remotely accessed a postie's accounts and deliberately frigged then to generate a loss - which the postie's wife was then convicted of stealing. It was to punish the guy (the postie) for being too bolshie apparently.
True or dramatic licence? If the former we'll be looking at criminal prosecutions surely.
To get back on topic, I’d like it noted that my ferocious new consumption regimen - sporadic fasting, calorific deficit, restricted booze intake - is having an effect. I have lost almost 10kg in 6 weeks
No doubt experts will say that is too fast but wow it is fast. I can face myself in the mirror. I can see RIBS
I am about 5kg from my target weight. Then - god willing - I will have FINALLY lost all the Covid blob and be back to where I was from 2005-2020
You have the fun and games of buying a whole new wardrobe....
Fixing Fujitsu software bugs in the Horizon IT system was too expensive. Flaws known since 1998. Fujitsu and Post Office gave false evidence to courts and let innocent people be convicted of fraud. Boosted profits and exec pay by destroying lives."
Why did Fujitsu need to have a fraud and litigation department? Litigation, I can understand. But fraud? What fraud and by whom was this department expecting to deal with?
“By God, this Department is well-named!” - with apologies to Sir Henry Esson
@{The East Midlands Serious Crime Squad has entered the chat, beaten a confession out of @kinabalu and robbed a couple of banks}
It'd have to be the Met with me.
On the PO thing, I started the itv drama yesterday. It had a scene where a Fujitsu bod remotely accessed a postie's accounts and deliberately frigged then to generate a loss - which the postie's wife was then convicted of stealing. It was to punish the guy (the postie) for being too bolshie apparently.
True or dramatic licence? If the former we'll be looking at criminal prosecutions surely.
Fixing Fujitsu software bugs in the Horizon IT system was too expensive. Flaws known since 1998. Fujitsu and Post Office gave false evidence to courts and let innocent people be convicted of fraud. Boosted profits and exec pay by destroying lives."
Why did Fujitsu need to have a fraud and litigation department? Litigation, I can understand. But fraud? What fraud and by whom was this department expecting to deal with?
“By God, this Department is well-named!” - with apologies to Sir Henry Esson
@{The East Midlands Serious Crime Squad has entered the chat, beaten a confession out of @kinabalu and robbed a couple of banks}
It'd have to be the Met with me.
On the PO thing, I started the itv drama yesterday. It had a scene where a Fujitsu bod remotely accessed a postie's accounts and deliberately frigged then to generate a loss - which the postie was then convicted of stealing. It was to punish this guy for being too bolshie apparently.
True or dramatic licence? If the former we'll be looking at criminal prosecutions surely.
I'd like to see Fujitsu prove it couldn't happen. Basic issue with computer evidence is whether sysadmin can monkey around, and whether this can be hidden - or has even been checked for at all.
To get back on topic, I’d like it noted that my ferocious new consumption regimen - sporadic fasting, calorific deficit, restricted booze intake - is having an effect. I have lost almost 10kg in 6 weeks
No doubt experts will say that is too fast but wow it is fast. I can face myself in the mirror. I can see RIBS
I am about 5kg from my target weight. Then - god willing - I will have FINALLY lost all the Covid blob and be back to where I was from 2005-2020
You have the fun and games of buying a whole new wardrobe....
Or indeed being able to fit in my old clothes again
I have lovely and extremely expensive jackets, bought in 2019, that I have barely worn, or not worn at all: because first covid rendered posh clothes pointless and we all wore hoodies for a year, and after that year I was too fat in fit in them
Fixing Fujitsu software bugs in the Horizon IT system was too expensive. Flaws known since 1998. Fujitsu and Post Office gave false evidence to courts and let innocent people be convicted of fraud. Boosted profits and exec pay by destroying lives."
Why did Fujitsu need to have a fraud and litigation department? Litigation, I can understand. But fraud? What fraud and by whom was this department expecting to deal with?
“By God, this Department is well-named!” - with apologies to Sir Henry Esson
@{The East Midlands Serious Crime Squad has entered the chat, beaten a confession out of @kinabalu and robbed a couple of banks}
It'd have to be the Met with me.
On the PO thing, I started the itv drama yesterday. It had a scene where a Fujitsu bod remotely accessed a postie's accounts and deliberately frigged then to generate a loss - which the postie's wife was then convicted of stealing. It was to punish the guy (the postie) for being too bolshie apparently.
True or dramatic licence? If the former we'll be looking at criminal prosecutions surely.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
It's not just the rivers that are full of shit. Anyway, I await the water companies coming along and saying that "the sewage problems aren't our fault, guv, it's all those immigrants what caused it".
Meanwhile, the government more or less ignores the large scale of legal migration to focus on the poor buggers trying to cross the Channel in this freezing weather, who constitute a small proportion of incomers. You couldn't make it up.
The focus on illegal migration is intentional and designed to ensure there is zero focus on the level of legal migration - and the lack of preparation we are doing to cope with that number of people
net (legal) migration was unusually high in 2022 due to the war in Ukraine, the humanitarian route for Hong Kong British National Overseas (BNO) status holders, an increase in international student numbers and high demand for workers in the health and care sector. These factors are to some extent temporary and so it is expected that net migration will fall over the next year or two, regardless of the progress or otherwise of the Rwanda plan.
True on 1 level (Hong Kong, Ukraine) but beyond that I have a bridge to sell you.
This analysis does a pretty good job of explaining why net migration levels are unlike to remain at their current high level:
The only question is whether the drop will come soon enough for the government to take the credit for it. Perhaps a reason for Sunak to hang on for a bit longer?
We get the 2023 figures in the autumn.
It will probably show a drop but it won’t show 0 which means for most people it will be way too high.
So yep the story may change but only to Tories have reduced numbers but not by enough..
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
Brexit has completely destroyed whatever managerial and economic credentials they have so they may as well commit to full fat culture wars populism. However, Sunak is about as well equipped to sell that cauchemardesque vision as I am to sell the shit bikes in Halfords. There's no vibe.
Farage is answer for them but there is no feasible route to make it happen.
To get back on topic, I’d like it noted that my ferocious new consumption regimen - sporadic fasting, calorific deficit, restricted booze intake - is having an effect. I have lost almost 10kg in 6 weeks
No doubt experts will say that is too fast but wow it is fast. I can face myself in the mirror. I can see RIBS
I am about 5kg from my target weight. Then - god willing - I will have FINALLY lost all the Covid blob and be back to where I was from 2005-2020
You have the fun and games of buying a whole new wardrobe....
Or indeed being able to fit in my old clothes again
I have lovely and extremely expensive jackets, bought in 2019, that I have barely worn, or not worn at all: because first covid rendered posh clothes pointless and we all wore hoodies for a year, and after that year I was too fat in fit in them
If you want some fun shirts - of superb quality - to go with them, check out Blake Mill:
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
It's not just the rivers that are full of shit. Anyway, I await the water companies coming along and saying that "the sewage problems aren't our fault, guv, it's all those immigrants what caused it".
Meanwhile, the government more or less ignores the large scale of legal migration to focus on the poor buggers trying to cross the Channel in this freezing weather, who constitute a small proportion of incomers. You couldn't make it up.
The focus on illegal migration is intentional and designed to ensure there is zero focus on the level of legal migration - and the lack of preparation we are doing to cope with that number of people
net (legal) migration was unusually high in 2022 due to the war in Ukraine, the humanitarian route for Hong Kong British National Overseas (BNO) status holders, an increase in international student numbers and high demand for workers in the health and care sector. These factors are to some extent temporary and so it is expected that net migration will fall over the next year or two, regardless of the progress or otherwise of the Rwanda plan.
True on 1 level (Hong Kong, Ukraine) but beyond that I have a bridge to sell you.
This analysis does a pretty good job of explaining why net migration levels are unlike to remain at their current high level:
The only question is whether the drop will come soon enough for the government to take the credit for it. Perhaps a reason for Sunak to hang on for a bit longer?
We get the 2023 figures in the autumn.
It will probably show a drop but it won’t show 0 which means for most people it will be way too high.
So yep the story may change but only to Tories have reduced numbers but not by enough..
Even if it dropped by 300,000 it would still be 300,000-400,000 a year - which are themselves historically unprecedented numbers
That’s how big the migration surge has been. Even if you halve it, it is still record-breaking
Tories on 20%. Fukkers on 12% pre Farage. Sunak to give triumphant presser about how thanks to his canny skills in the Commons he will now Stop The Boats.
Tories. The abyss becons.
2024 is lining up to be the most spectacular general election since 1945. It's entirely plausible that Labour could end up with a 200+ majority. The Tories could end sub-100. Neither is anything like guaranteed but we ought to consider it a realistic possibility.
Sunak has got himself into a position where he isn't trusted as either a populist or a managerial type; he's chasing the RefUK vote but not getting it because he's merely highlighting their arguments without sorting them; driving right will consolidate the anti-Tory tactical vote on the left (which is in any case twice the size of the combined Con+RefUK vote); and meanwhile, the economic squeeze is still on for a lot of people, strikes are rife and the NHS cannot cope with demand, backlog and strikes.
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
Sunak is a huge part of the problem. He's been Chancellor or PM for all but a relative handful of days in nearly four years.
And its not just that the buck stops with him, its what he's chosen to do and his priorities.
Hunt is far, far better. Despite Sunak, not because of him.
Sunak went off the rails in the summer/early autumn.
The broad strategy, embodied by Hunt and initially adopted by Sunak, of being rather boringly steady, setting and meeting some modest objectives, and projecting a general air of calm after the storm, was pretty good. I'm not sure it was ever enough, but it had every chance of leading to a reasonable recovery over time if he'd kept to it.
But it wasn't shifting the polls, Uxbridge gave a tantalising if illusory vision of a bolder way to break out, the Rwanda sop to the right was clearly running into the sand, and Sunak simply panicked. Since then, he has been flailing, and you don't know which Sunak will turn up. He cannot realistically go back to the Hunt strategy as he's already blown it - you can't return to being Steady Eddie having proved you're not.
In fairness, it's all rather easier for Hunt sat in the Treasury. Sunak has to deal with the broad range of policy, and events as they come up. Hunt has something of a hiding place from it. Nevertheless, Sunak has blown what chance he had.
Sunak is completely out of touch and so has little clue as to what he is doing, hence the chaos and hence the major misjudgements he's made.
Truss as PM with Hunt as Chancellor would be a better government than this.
Well, we had that for eleven days. Very much a Golden Age.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
We have a shortage of housing because we refuse to let people build houses to cope with our population growth.
There's absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with immigration, so long as we have sufficient investment to keep up with population growth.
The problem is when we have rising population and no investment.
So you don’t think 1.3 million in 2 years is too many? (Plus illegals, of course)
How many is too many then? 2 million a year? 5 million? Or is fhere no limit in your eyes, and all immigration of any levels is good and fine?
No limit in my eyes so long as investment and infrastructure grows correspondingly.
I couldn't care less if our population in England by the end of the century is 60 million, 100 million or a billion, so long as we invest accordingly and have growing living standards what bloody difference does it make?
Because most of us don’t want to see England’s green and pleasant land finally and completely covered with your fucking hideous Barratt Home red brick semis
You really are quite crazy. You know that, right?
If we increased the number of people living in apartments to French levels we could increase both housing provision and the size our green spaces at the same time.
No need for this kind of bickering at all.
Screw that.
Unless the people moving into apartments WANT to. Rather than being forced to do so as they can't afford the alternative.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
The difficulty is turning the sentiment into a politics and policy rather than right wing words. Four massive facts.
One. We already have a hugely multi ethnic/multi cultural community and a population which has grown by millions in a couple of decades, and 4 million in 10 years.
Two. Housing crisis
Three. Huge reliance in HE sector (students - HE sector goes bankrupt without them), NHS, service sector, and many others including agriculture and food on migration.
Four. Our birthrate has recently fallen fast.
In Germany (! of all places) a discussion is already turning at the far extremes to mass deportations. The right wing AfD is careful to separate itself from such talk.
The problem is identifying and implementing a policy which isn't a fascist one but delivers what Matt Goodwin keeps telling us most people want. What does it do? What does it look like?
Good questions
I’m not sure there is an agreeable answer; in some countries the problem will culminate with civil strife and actual fascism
Example: Sweden used to be regarded as one of the most moderate countries in the world, and now they have a hard-right party in government.
No cabinet posts - my understanding is that it's less than a coalition, but perhaps a bit more than confidence and supply. Not really more troubling than the DUP propping up the Cons here under May, to my eyes. I should note that I did find that troubling!
SD get to contribute to some agreed policies (the four leaders meet to agree some common things they can pursue) and don't bring down the government, is that correct?
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
It's not just the rivers that are full of shit. Anyway, I await the water companies coming along and saying that "the sewage problems aren't our fault, guv, it's all those immigrants what caused it".
Meanwhile, the government more or less ignores the large scale of legal migration to focus on the poor buggers trying to cross the Channel in this freezing weather, who constitute a small proportion of incomers. You couldn't make it up.
The focus on illegal migration is intentional and designed to ensure there is zero focus on the level of legal migration - and the lack of preparation we are doing to cope with that number of people
net (legal) migration was unusually high in 2022 due to the war in Ukraine, the humanitarian route for Hong Kong British National Overseas (BNO) status holders, an increase in international student numbers and high demand for workers in the health and care sector. These factors are to some extent temporary and so it is expected that net migration will fall over the next year or two, regardless of the progress or otherwise of the Rwanda plan.
True on 1 level (Hong Kong, Ukraine) but beyond that I have a bridge to sell you.
This analysis does a pretty good job of explaining why net migration levels are unlike to remain at their current high level:
The only question is whether the drop will come soon enough for the government to take the credit for it. Perhaps a reason for Sunak to hang on for a bit longer?
Lets say it drops to 350-400k net migration per year as forecast?
Is there anyone at all in the country who is going to give the government credit for that?
To many it is simply too many regardless. To others, it would be fine if we built the houses and infrastructure which we are not doing. To others, the negative mood and approach around migration is the turn off - not the numbers.
I have yet to meet a single person who says what we really need on immigration is 350-400k per year but lets scrimp on related housing and infrastructure and demonise those who do arrive.
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
Brexit has completely destroyed whatever managerial and economic credentials they have so they may as well commit to full fat culture wars populism. However, Sunak is about as well equipped to sell that cauchemardesque vision as I am to sell the shit bikes in Halfords. There's no vibe.
Farage is answer for them but there is no feasible route to make it happen.
Yes, it’s way too late now for the Tories re GE24
However if the polls verify, and the Tories are reduced below 100 seats to some desperate rump, then I can definitely see a Farage takeover
Indeed it would probably be desirable for them, and for British politics
The one nation Remainery Tories belong with the Lib Dems. The actual right wing Tories need to kick them out and own their right wingness. Then the British voters will actually have a choice. An actual right wing party which will actually do right wing things, rather than talking tough and doing left wing things
Of course the voters may reject the opportunity, as is their right. But the voters should have the option
Fixing Fujitsu software bugs in the Horizon IT system was too expensive. Flaws known since 1998. Fujitsu and Post Office gave false evidence to courts and let innocent people be convicted of fraud. Boosted profits and exec pay by destroying lives."
Why did Fujitsu need to have a fraud and litigation department? Litigation, I can understand. But fraud? What fraud and by whom was this department expecting to deal with?
Well what else would you call the department that commits all the fraud?
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
It's not just the rivers that are full of shit. Anyway, I await the water companies coming along and saying that "the sewage problems aren't our fault, guv, it's all those immigrants what caused it".
Meanwhile, the government more or less ignores the large scale of legal migration to focus on the poor buggers trying to cross the Channel in this freezing weather, who constitute a small proportion of incomers. You couldn't make it up.
The focus on illegal migration is intentional and designed to ensure there is zero focus on the level of legal migration - and the lack of preparation we are doing to cope with that number of people
net (legal) migration was unusually high in 2022 due to the war in Ukraine, the humanitarian route for Hong Kong British National Overseas (BNO) status holders, an increase in international student numbers and high demand for workers in the health and care sector. These factors are to some extent temporary and so it is expected that net migration will fall over the next year or two, regardless of the progress or otherwise of the Rwanda plan.
True on 1 level (Hong Kong, Ukraine) but beyond that I have a bridge to sell you.
This analysis does a pretty good job of explaining why net migration levels are unlike to remain at their current high level:
The only question is whether the drop will come soon enough for the government to take the credit for it. Perhaps a reason for Sunak to hang on for a bit longer?
We get the 2023 figures in the autumn.
It will probably show a drop but it won’t show 0 which means for most people it will be way too high.
So yep the story may change but only to Tories have reduced numbers but not by enough..
Even if it dropped by 300,000 it would still be 300,000-400,000 a year - which are themselves historically unprecedented numbers
That’s how big the migration surge has been. Even if you halve it, it is still record-breaking
One of the big drivers seems to have been the replacement of EU with non-EU immigration after Brexit. EU migrants would typically come here alone to work, sending money back to their families and, after a few years, often returning to their native land. Non-EU immigrants are more likely to bring their family with them and then stay here permanently, although this will be more difficult in the future following the government's changes to family migration rules.
Fixing Fujitsu software bugs in the Horizon IT system was too expensive. Flaws known since 1998. Fujitsu and Post Office gave false evidence to courts and let innocent people be convicted of fraud. Boosted profits and exec pay by destroying lives."
Why did Fujitsu need to have a fraud and litigation department? Litigation, I can understand. But fraud? What fraud and by whom was this department expecting to deal with?
The stuff coming out of Fujitsu - particularly the known bugs that they didn't tell the PO about and didn't bother to fix - will put that company firmly in the frame. This guy giving evidence now, who's a strange but seemingly honest fellow, told the inquiry yesterday that one bug generated errors if a subpostmaster was working on their terminal at 7pm, because at that time every day the central server ran some sort of housekeeping routine, and that the system couldn't tell whether a repeated entry from a subpostmaster's terminal was a separate transaction or duplicates. As details like this come out, the pattern of shortfalls that subpostmasters experienced becomes more understandable.
It’s as if they just invented transactional posing of sale systems specifically for the post office, because retail definitely hasn’t already been using them for several decades.
I mean, server routines running at 7pm, instead of in the middle of the night as everyone else does!
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
Brexit has completely destroyed whatever managerial and economic credentials they have so they may as well commit to full fat culture wars populism. However, Sunak is about as well equipped to sell that cauchemardesque vision as I am to sell the shit bikes in Halfords. There's no vibe.
Farage is answer for them but there is no feasible route to make it happen.
Yes, it’s way too late now for the Tories re GE24
However if the polls verify, and the Tories are reduced below 100 seats to some desperate rump, then I can definitely see a Farage takeover
Indeed it would probably be desirable for them, and for British politics
The one nation Remainery Tories belong with the Lib Dems. The actual right wing Tories need to kick them out and own their right wingness. Then the British voters will actually have a choice. An actual right wing party which will actually do right wing things, rather than talking tough and doing left wing things
Of course the voters may reject the opportunity, as is their right. But the voters should have the option
Remain is dead and buried. Brexit is done already.
The One Nation Tories kicking out the xenophobes (which is not leavers) would be better for our democracy.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
It's not just the rivers that are full of shit. Anyway, I await the water companies coming along and saying that "the sewage problems aren't our fault, guv, it's all those immigrants what caused it".
Meanwhile, the government more or less ignores the large scale of legal migration to focus on the poor buggers trying to cross the Channel in this freezing weather, who constitute a small proportion of incomers. You couldn't make it up.
The focus on illegal migration is intentional and designed to ensure there is zero focus on the level of legal migration - and the lack of preparation we are doing to cope with that number of people
net (legal) migration was unusually high in 2022 due to the war in Ukraine, the humanitarian route for Hong Kong British National Overseas (BNO) status holders, an increase in international student numbers and high demand for workers in the health and care sector. These factors are to some extent temporary and so it is expected that net migration will fall over the next year or two, regardless of the progress or otherwise of the Rwanda plan.
True on 1 level (Hong Kong, Ukraine) but beyond that I have a bridge to sell you.
This analysis does a pretty good job of explaining why net migration levels are unlike to remain at their current high level:
The only question is whether the drop will come soon enough for the government to take the credit for it. Perhaps a reason for Sunak to hang on for a bit longer?
We get the 2023 figures in the autumn.
It will probably show a drop but it won’t show 0 which means for most people it will be way too high.
So yep the story may change but only to Tories have reduced numbers but not by enough..
There are a few areas of UK performance where PM Starmer could potentially be a lucky general, and unlike with Blair in 1997 the Tories won't be in a position to talk about golden legacies. None of these are by any means guaranteed but they are possible, and luck is an important variable in politics:
- Migration: both small boat and legal migration figures could well come down from their current high levels for purely organic reasons, and much of that could take place on Labour's watch. Biggest uncertainty here: wider conflict in the Middle East, and GBP-EUR FX rate (which has suppressed skilled EU migration since Brexit) - Inflation: Even though this is already well down, if it gets lower and stays there it'll be easier for Labour than the current government to take credit even though neither has much actual influence on the number - Government debt and deficit: if interest rates fall then the interest burden falls which could open up scope for more spending or holding taxes down - Economic growth: even a mini-rebound to 1.5%+ growth might be enough to feel like a turnaround - Wage growth: already started to happen and tends to lag commodity inflation. Could mean the real-terms cost of living squeeze starts to reverse - NHS waiting lists: even if Labour do nothing, I assume strike action will simmer down for a bit and any policies put in place to get through the post-Covid backlog by the current government may well only really bear fruit in the next parliament
Of course it quite possibly all go to shit particularly because of the fiscal deficit and those unrealistic spending cuts in Treasury forecasts, and then the Tories get to blame Labour unfairly.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
We have a shortage of housing because we refuse to let people build houses to cope with our population growth.
There's absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with immigration, so long as we have sufficient investment to keep up with population growth.
The problem is when we have rising population and no investment.
So you don’t think 1.3 million in 2 years is too many? (Plus illegals, of course)
How many is too many then? 2 million a year? 5 million? Or is fhere no limit in your eyes, and all immigration of any levels is good and fine?
No limit in my eyes so long as investment and infrastructure grows correspondingly.
I couldn't care less if our population in England by the end of the century is 60 million, 100 million or a billion, so long as we invest accordingly and have growing living standards what bloody difference does it make?
Because most of us don’t want to see England’s green and pleasant land finally and completely covered with your fucking hideous Barratt Home red brick semis
You really are quite crazy. You know that, right?
If we increased the number of people living in apartments to French levels we could increase both housing provision and the size our green spaces at the same time.
No need for this kind of bickering at all.
Screw that.
Unless the people moving into apartments WANT to. Rather than being forced to do so as they can't afford the alternative.
The housing shortage is largely affecting young individuals and couples who cannot get on the property ladder, especially in the larger cities, and they are almost as a matter of course looking for apartments unless they live somewhere very cheap.
I didn't move from flat to house until I was on my 3rd move 11 years after buying my first flat, and I'm a lucky GenXer who could actually afford to be a first time buyer in 2000.
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
Brexit has completely destroyed whatever managerial and economic credentials they have so they may as well commit to full fat culture wars populism. However, Sunak is about as well equipped to sell that cauchemardesque vision as I am to sell the shit bikes in Halfords. There's no vibe.
Farage is answer for them but there is no feasible route to make it happen.
Yes, it’s way too late now for the Tories re GE24
However if the polls verify, and the Tories are reduced below 100 seats to some desperate rump, then I can definitely see a Farage takeover
Indeed it would probably be desirable for them, and for British politics
The one nation Remainery Tories belong with the Lib Dems. The actual right wing Tories need to kick them out and own their right wingness. Then the British voters will actually have a choice. An actual right wing party which will actually do right wing things, rather than talking tough and doing left wing things
Of course the voters may reject the opportunity, as is their right. But the voters should have the option
Remain is dead and buried. Brexit is done already.
The One Nation Tories kicking out the xenophobes (which is not leavers) would be better for our democracy.
A split then. Do it
I’m not a Tory so I don’t give a fuck what happens to the Tory party. I do care what happens to British democracy and I’d like British voters to have a real choice
This also applies to the left. Labour is equally divided and incoherent - look at their internal rows on Gaza and tax and the NHS. They are merely benefiting from anti Tory loathing
This is one issue where I have entirely changed my mind and it is largely thanks to PB. I used to be absolutely pro FPTP, on the basis it delivers properly powerful governments able to make sensible or radical changes
That now seems utterly laughable. Comically absurd. So bring on electoral reform, and let a thousand flowers bloom
Tories on 20%. Fukkers on 12% pre Farage. Sunak to give triumphant presser about how thanks to his canny skills in the Commons he will now Stop The Boats.
Tories. The abyss becons.
2024 is lining up to be the most spectacular general election since 1945. It's entirely plausible that Labour could end up with a 200+ majority. The Tories could end sub-100. Neither is anything like guaranteed but we ought to consider it a realistic possibility.
Sunak has got himself into a position where he isn't trusted as either a populist or a managerial type; he's chasing the RefUK vote but not getting it because he's merely highlighting their arguments without sorting them; driving right will consolidate the anti-Tory tactical vote on the left (which is in any case twice the size of the combined Con+RefUK vote); and meanwhile, the economic squeeze is still on for a lot of people, strikes are rife and the NHS cannot cope with demand, backlog and strikes.
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
Sunak is a huge part of the problem. He's been Chancellor or PM for all but a relative handful of days in nearly four years.
And its not just that the buck stops with him, its what he's chosen to do and his priorities.
Hunt is far, far better. Despite Sunak, not because of him.
Hunt is basically the same - and as a long-serving Health Sec would be blamed personally for many of the current NHS problems (not without some justification). I don't see much more of a spark of the front-man to him than there is to Sunak. Anyway, Hunt finished last with only 18 votes out of 357 in the summer 2022 leadership election; he has little personal support and I don't see the MPs dumping Sunak to replace him with what they hope might be a slightly better version of the same, in order to lose less badly.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
We have a shortage of housing because we refuse to let people build houses to cope with our population growth.
There's absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with immigration, so long as we have sufficient investment to keep up with population growth.
The problem is when we have rising population and no investment.
So you don’t think 1.3 million in 2 years is too many? (Plus illegals, of course)
How many is too many then? 2 million a year? 5 million? Or is fhere no limit in your eyes, and all immigration of any levels is good and fine?
No limit in my eyes so long as investment and infrastructure grows correspondingly.
I couldn't care less if our population in England by the end of the century is 60 million, 100 million or a billion, so long as we invest accordingly and have growing living standards what bloody difference does it make?
Because most of us don’t want to see England’s green and pleasant land finally and completely covered with your fucking hideous Barratt Home red brick semis
You really are quite crazy. You know that, right?
If we increased the number of people living in apartments to French levels we could increase both housing provision and the size our green spaces at the same time.
No need for this kind of bickering at all.
Screw that.
Unless the people moving into apartments WANT to. Rather than being forced to do so as they can't afford the alternative.
The housing shortage is largely affecting young individuals and couples who cannot get on the property ladder, especially in the larger cities, and they are almost as a matter of course looking for apartments unless they live somewhere very cheap.
I didn't move from flat to house until I was on my 3rd move 11 years after buying my first flat, and I'm a lucky GenXer who could actually afford to be a first time buyer in 2000.
Which is why we need to enable people to build more houses (almost) anywhere they want. Or apartments if they want that.
Let people choose what they want, don't artificially constrain the market.
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
Brexit has completely destroyed whatever managerial and economic credentials they have so they may as well commit to full fat culture wars populism. However, Sunak is about as well equipped to sell that cauchemardesque vision as I am to sell the shit bikes in Halfords. There's no vibe.
Farage is answer for them but there is no feasible route to make it happen.
Not this side of the election. It could happen afterwards.
We should be very worried though about a full-fat populist-right become to the primary (or only) alternative to Labour though. They would take an opinion poll lead at some point.
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
Brexit has completely destroyed whatever managerial and economic credentials they have so they may as well commit to full fat culture wars populism. However, Sunak is about as well equipped to sell that cauchemardesque vision as I am to sell the shit bikes in Halfords. There's no vibe.
Farage is answer for them but there is no feasible route to make it happen.
Yes, it’s way too late now for the Tories re GE24
However if the polls verify, and the Tories are reduced below 100 seats to some desperate rump, then I can definitely see a Farage takeover
Indeed it would probably be desirable for them, and for British politics
The one nation Remainery Tories belong with the Lib Dems. The actual right wing Tories need to kick them out and own their right wingness. Then the British voters will actually have a choice. An actual right wing party which will actually do right wing things, rather than talking tough and doing left wing things
Of course the voters may reject the opportunity, as is their right. But the voters should have the option
Remain is dead and buried. Brexit is done already.
The One Nation Tories kicking out the xenophobes (which is not leavers) would be better for our democracy.
Xenophobe does not equal Leaver - I agree with that.
However how many of the 68 Braverman Rwanda 'rebels' are Remainers, do we think?
I heard from an old friend earlier. Apparently the reason his house was on the market a few years ago was because the previous occupier couldn't keep up the mortgage payments. And the reason she couldn't keep up the payments was because her husband had been convicted and jailed for defrauding the Post Office. So if this guy gets pardoned does that mean they can get their house back?
Fixing Fujitsu software bugs in the Horizon IT system was too expensive. Flaws known since 1998. Fujitsu and Post Office gave false evidence to courts and let innocent people be convicted of fraud. Boosted profits and exec pay by destroying lives."
Why did Fujitsu need to have a fraud and litigation department? Litigation, I can understand. But fraud? What fraud and by whom was this department expecting to deal with?
The stuff coming out of Fujitsu - particularly the known bugs that they didn't tell the PO about and didn't bother to fix - will put that company firmly in the frame. This guy giving evidence now, who's a strange but seemingly honest fellow, told the inquiry yesterday that one bug generated errors if a subpostmaster was working on their terminal at 7pm, because at that time every day the central server ran some sort of housekeeping routine, and that the system couldn't tell whether a repeated entry from a subpostmaster's terminal was a separate transaction or duplicates. As details like this come out, the pattern of shortfalls that subpostmasters experienced becomes more understandable.
It’s as if they just invented transactional posing of sale systems specifically for the post office, because retail definitely hasn’t already been using them for several decades.
I mean, server routines running at 7pm, instead of in the middle of the night as everyone else does!
I made a fair bit of money at uni (at least it *felt* like a lot of money...) 'fixing' data on a computer system that did batch jobs at two or three in the morning. When they failed, I'd get called in across London (once by a taxi beeping outside) to work out why the batch had failed. Had to be done before first trading in the morning.
This was for an organisation that made virtually all its income from data, yet treated the date itself, and the computers that ran it, as though they were unimportant. A DB system a couple of decades old, held together by spit and sawdust.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
It's not just the rivers that are full of shit. Anyway, I await the water companies coming along and saying that "the sewage problems aren't our fault, guv, it's all those immigrants what caused it".
Meanwhile, the government more or less ignores the large scale of legal migration to focus on the poor buggers trying to cross the Channel in this freezing weather, who constitute a small proportion of incomers. You couldn't make it up.
The focus on illegal migration is intentional and designed to ensure there is zero focus on the level of legal migration - and the lack of preparation we are doing to cope with that number of people
net (legal) migration was unusually high in 2022 due to the war in Ukraine, the humanitarian route for Hong Kong British National Overseas (BNO) status holders, an increase in international student numbers and high demand for workers in the health and care sector. These factors are to some extent temporary and so it is expected that net migration will fall over the next year or two, regardless of the progress or otherwise of the Rwanda plan.
True on 1 level (Hong Kong, Ukraine) but beyond that I have a bridge to sell you.
This analysis does a pretty good job of explaining why net migration levels are unlike to remain at their current high level:
The only question is whether the drop will come soon enough for the government to take the credit for it. Perhaps a reason for Sunak to hang on for a bit longer?
Lets say it drops to 350-400k net migration per year as forecast?
Is there anyone at all in the country who is going to give the government credit for that?
To many it is simply too many regardless. To others, it would be fine if we built the houses and infrastructure which we are not doing. To others, the negative mood and approach around migration is the turn off - not the numbers.
I have yet to meet a single person who says what we really need on immigration is 350-400k per year but lets scrimp on related housing and infrastructure and demonise those who do arrive.
350,000 per year is 3,500,000 million in 10 years. At 2.4 occupiers per dwelling that's 1,460,000 new dwellings by 2034, or 146,000 per year just to meet new demand. In the year to March 2023, 210,000 dwellings were built, from which must be deducted a number I don't know of dwellings going out of use.
We already have 1.2 million households on social housing waiting lists.
None of this stacks up. Of the homes being built (gross figure) about 60,000 would, once you have removed the migrant demand, meet the already resident demand. None of this seems to resolve the current crisis.
Tories on 20%. Fukkers on 12% pre Farage. Sunak to give triumphant presser about how thanks to his canny skills in the Commons he will now Stop The Boats.
Tories. The abyss becons.
2024 is lining up to be the most spectacular general election since 1945. It's entirely plausible that Labour could end up with a 200+ majority. The Tories could end sub-100. Neither is anything like guaranteed but we ought to consider it a realistic possibility.
Sunak has got himself into a position where he isn't trusted as either a populist or a managerial type; he's chasing the RefUK vote but not getting it because he's merely highlighting their arguments without sorting them; driving right will consolidate the anti-Tory tactical vote on the left (which is in any case twice the size of the combined Con+RefUK vote); and meanwhile, the economic squeeze is still on for a lot of people, strikes are rife and the NHS cannot cope with demand, backlog and strikes.
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
Sunak is a huge part of the problem. He's been Chancellor or PM for all but a relative handful of days in nearly four years.
And its not just that the buck stops with him, its what he's chosen to do and his priorities.
Hunt is far, far better. Despite Sunak, not because of him.
Hunt is basically the same - and as a long-serving Health Sec would be blamed personally for many of the current NHS problems (not without some justification). I don't see much more of a spark of the front-man to him than there is to Sunak. Anyway, Hunt finished last with only 18 votes out of 357 in the summer 2022 leadership election; he has little personal support and I don't see the MPs dumping Sunak to replace him with what they hope might be a slightly better version of the same, in order to lose less badly.
Question for non-Tories and former Tory voters who have fallen out of love with the party. Who of the current crop of MPs with leadership ambitions would you want to see as future leader? Not in terms of who's most beatable, but who would be most tolerable as a future PM?
I know who TSE would go for (though he's in the Lords), but others? I struggle with this. Would probably opt for whoever looks most presentable on the global stage. Until a few weeks ago I thought that was Cleverly (LOL).
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
It's not just the rivers that are full of shit. Anyway, I await the water companies coming along and saying that "the sewage problems aren't our fault, guv, it's all those immigrants what caused it".
Meanwhile, the government more or less ignores the large scale of legal migration to focus on the poor buggers trying to cross the Channel in this freezing weather, who constitute a small proportion of incomers. You couldn't make it up.
The focus on illegal migration is intentional and designed to ensure there is zero focus on the level of legal migration - and the lack of preparation we are doing to cope with that number of people
net (legal) migration was unusually high in 2022 due to the war in Ukraine, the humanitarian route for Hong Kong British National Overseas (BNO) status holders, an increase in international student numbers and high demand for workers in the health and care sector. These factors are to some extent temporary and so it is expected that net migration will fall over the next year or two, regardless of the progress or otherwise of the Rwanda plan.
True on 1 level (Hong Kong, Ukraine) but beyond that I have a bridge to sell you.
This analysis does a pretty good job of explaining why net migration levels are unlike to remain at their current high level:
The only question is whether the drop will come soon enough for the government to take the credit for it. Perhaps a reason for Sunak to hang on for a bit longer?
Lets say it drops to 350-400k net migration per year as forecast?
Is there anyone at all in the country who is going to give the government credit for that?
To many it is simply too many regardless. To others, it would be fine if we built the houses and infrastructure which we are not doing. To others, the negative mood and approach around migration is the turn off - not the numbers.
I have yet to meet a single person who says what we really need on immigration is 350-400k per year but lets scrimp on related housing and infrastructure and demonise those who do arrive.
350,000 per year is 3,500,000 million in 10 years. At 2.4 occupiers per dwelling that's 1,460,000 new dwellings by 2034, or 146,000 per year just to meet new demand. In the year to March 2023, 210,000 dwellings were built, from which must be deducted a number I don't know of dwellings going out of use.
We already have 1.2 million households on social housing waiting lists.
None of this stacks up. Of the homes being built (gross figure) about 60,000 would, once you have removed the migrant demand, meet the already resident demand. None of this seems to resolve the current crisis.
We need to be building a million homes a year to resolve our housing shortage within a decade.
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
Brexit has completely destroyed whatever managerial and economic credentials they have so they may as well commit to full fat culture wars populism. However, Sunak is about as well equipped to sell that cauchemardesque vision as I am to sell the shit bikes in Halfords. There's no vibe.
Farage is answer for them but there is no feasible route to make it happen.
What about Simon 'Up Periscope' Clarke?
Perhaps the most impeccably right-wing tory on the reservation.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
We have a shortage of housing because we refuse to let people build houses to cope with our population growth.
There's absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with immigration, so long as we have sufficient investment to keep up with population growth.
The problem is when we have rising population and no investment.
So you don’t think 1.3 million in 2 years is too many? (Plus illegals, of course)
How many is too many then? 2 million a year? 5 million? Or is fhere no limit in your eyes, and all immigration of any levels is good and fine?
No limit in my eyes so long as investment and infrastructure grows correspondingly.
I couldn't care less if our population in England by the end of the century is 60 million, 100 million or a billion, so long as we invest accordingly and have growing living standards what bloody difference does it make?
Because most of us don’t want to see England’s green and pleasant land finally and completely covered with your fucking hideous Barratt Home red brick semis
You really are quite crazy. You know that, right?
If we increased the number of people living in apartments to French levels we could increase both housing provision and the size our green spaces at the same time.
No need for this kind of bickering at all.
Screw that.
Unless the people moving into apartments WANT to. Rather than being forced to do so as they can't afford the alternative.
The housing shortage is largely affecting young individuals and couples who cannot get on the property ladder, especially in the larger cities, and they are almost as a matter of course looking for apartments unless they live somewhere very cheap.
I didn't move from flat to house until I was on my 3rd move 11 years after buying my first flat, and I'm a lucky GenXer who could actually afford to be a first time buyer in 2000.
Just invert the argument to show how silly it is. Would knocking down Edinburgh's tenements and replacing them with Barratts worsen or improve the city's housing crisis?
To get back on topic, I’d like it noted that my ferocious new consumption regimen - sporadic fasting, calorific deficit, restricted booze intake - is having an effect. I have lost almost 10kg in 6 weeks
No doubt experts will say that is too fast but wow it is fast. I can face myself in the mirror. I can see RIBS
I am about 5kg from my target weight. Then - god willing - I will have FINALLY lost all the Covid blob and be back to where I was from 2005-2020
I'm down 4kg since Christmas - no booze, 40 mins light cardio every day, desire to binge eat gone when I'm not drunk / hungover.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
We have a shortage of housing because we refuse to let people build houses to cope with our population growth.
There's absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with immigration, so long as we have sufficient investment to keep up with population growth.
The problem is when we have rising population and no investment.
So you don’t think 1.3 million in 2 years is too many? (Plus illegals, of course)
How many is too many then? 2 million a year? 5 million? Or is fhere no limit in your eyes, and all immigration of any levels is good and fine?
No limit in my eyes so long as investment and infrastructure grows correspondingly.
I couldn't care less if our population in England by the end of the century is 60 million, 100 million or a billion, so long as we invest accordingly and have growing living standards what bloody difference does it make?
Because most of us don’t want to see England’s green and pleasant land finally and completely covered with your fucking hideous Barratt Home red brick semis
You really are quite crazy. You know that, right?
If we increased the number of people living in apartments to French levels we could increase both housing provision and the size our green spaces at the same time.
No need for this kind of bickering at all.
Screw that.
Unless the people moving into apartments WANT to. Rather than being forced to do so as they can't afford the alternative.
The housing shortage is largely affecting young individuals and couples who cannot get on the property ladder, especially in the larger cities, and they are almost as a matter of course looking for apartments unless they live somewhere very cheap.
I didn't move from flat to house until I was on my 3rd move 11 years after buying my first flat, and I'm a lucky GenXer who could actually afford to be a first time buyer in 2000.
Which is why we need to enable people to build more houses (almost) anywhere they want. Or apartments if they want that.
Let people choose what they want, don't artificially constrain the market.
But it's been shown on PB that small builders are hopelessly inefficient at using the skills of bricklayers of whom we are already short. So only large developments using bricklayers efficiently are realistic. The Barratts of this world. And we shoudl therefore restrict piecemeal development to ensure efficient use of labour. Ditto sewerage, power, etc. You want lots of houses, you want lots of sewerage, ypou need huge monolithic developments, it's the only way. Not this 1930s bungaloid growth.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
We have a shortage of housing because we refuse to let people build houses to cope with our population growth.
There's absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with immigration, so long as we have sufficient investment to keep up with population growth.
The problem is when we have rising population and no investment.
So you don’t think 1.3 million in 2 years is too many? (Plus illegals, of course)
How many is too many then? 2 million a year? 5 million? Or is fhere no limit in your eyes, and all immigration of any levels is good and fine?
No limit in my eyes so long as investment and infrastructure grows correspondingly.
I couldn't care less if our population in England by the end of the century is 60 million, 100 million or a billion, so long as we invest accordingly and have growing living standards what bloody difference does it make?
Because most of us don’t want to see England’s green and pleasant land finally and completely covered with your fucking hideous Barratt Home red brick semis
You really are quite crazy. You know that, right?
If we increased the number of people living in apartments to French levels we could increase both housing provision and the size our green spaces at the same time.
No need for this kind of bickering at all.
Screw that.
Unless the people moving into apartments WANT to. Rather than being forced to do so as they can't afford the alternative.
The housing shortage is largely affecting young individuals and couples who cannot get on the property ladder, especially in the larger cities, and they are almost as a matter of course looking for apartments unless they live somewhere very cheap.
I didn't move from flat to house until I was on my 3rd move 11 years after buying my first flat, and I'm a lucky GenXer who could actually afford to be a first time buyer in 2000.
Which is why we need to enable people to build more houses (almost) anywhere they want. Or apartments if they want that.
Let people choose what they want, don't artificially constrain the market.
That combined with a land value tax to replace some of our income tax burden would work nicely - financial reason not to be too profligate with land.
Remove some of the height restrictions in London by closing City Airport and liberalising planning and we could add several million units here by turning the whole of East London into a British Kowloon.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
We have a shortage of housing because we refuse to let people build houses to cope with our population growth.
There's absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with immigration, so long as we have sufficient investment to keep up with population growth.
The problem is when we have rising population and no investment.
So you don’t think 1.3 million in 2 years is too many? (Plus illegals, of course)
How many is too many then? 2 million a year? 5 million? Or is fhere no limit in your eyes, and all immigration of any levels is good and fine?
No limit in my eyes so long as investment and infrastructure grows correspondingly.
I couldn't care less if our population in England by the end of the century is 60 million, 100 million or a billion, so long as we invest accordingly and have growing living standards what bloody difference does it make?
Because most of us don’t want to see England’s green and pleasant land finally and completely covered with your fucking hideous Barratt Home red brick semis
You really are quite crazy. You know that, right?
If we increased the number of people living in apartments to French levels we could increase both housing provision and the size our green spaces at the same time.
No need for this kind of bickering at all.
Screw that.
Unless the people moving into apartments WANT to. Rather than being forced to do so as they can't afford the alternative.
The housing shortage is largely affecting young individuals and couples who cannot get on the property ladder, especially in the larger cities, and they are almost as a matter of course looking for apartments unless they live somewhere very cheap.
I didn't move from flat to house until I was on my 3rd move 11 years after buying my first flat, and I'm a lucky GenXer who could actually afford to be a first time buyer in 2000.
Just invert the argument to show how silly it is. Would knocking down Edinburgh's tenements and replacing them with Barratts worsen or improve the city's housing crisis?
That's not an inversion.
This country has an abundance of undeveloped land to build housing on, less than 5% of our country is developed for housing even including green spaces like gardens etc - we can easily build many more houses and barely affect how much greenery there is in this country. That includes every town and city, house and apartment, in the entire country.
There is no shortage of land, just a shortage of willpower to fix the problem. Its not about houses versus apartments, its about construction versus refusal to do so.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
I'm not sure I follow. Your logic appears to be 'we mustn't be against immigration or the far right will get in.' Which seems to be not only the wrong way around, but also counter-productive.
The logic goes: 1 - Voters are really concerned about such really quite large and noticeable numbers of immigration. (Almost always they won't have an issue with individual immigrants, but they don't want to import quite so many people, for many reasons e.g. impact on housing, impact on their kids schools.) 2 - Most parties either refuse to talk about immigration or talk about it but don't actually do anything about it. 3 - The only parties which appear to care about the issue are far right ones. 4 - Therefore people vote far right.
Most people aren't particularly far right in any sense. But most people don't see the risk of inflaming far right sentiment as a worse bogey than all others. If the far right are the only parties who will address the issue they care about, people will vote for them.
Step 3 doesn't always go that way. There is that far left party in Germany which is also against immigration. And people are voting for that party too.
That isn't my logic. Immigration is a genuine issue. Esp in a time of large people movements. We need policies to control it and address people's reasonable concerns.
This is perfectly compatible with recognizing the need to not pander to far right talking points about the country being 'swamped' and 'ruined' and a 'soft touch for foreigners' etc.
Too much of that emotive b/s and Leon's fears (that the far right will gain real traction here) might be realised.
Well swamped is clearly an emotive word. But how would you describe what is happening? There are clearly an awful lot of new people arriving. More than at any time in history, in either absolute or relative terms.
You appear to be suggesting that talking about immigration is a bigger problem than immigration, because the former plays into the hands of the far right. I would argue the opposite - that not talking about immigration plays into the hands of the far right.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
It's not just the rivers that are full of shit. Anyway, I await the water companies coming along and saying that "the sewage problems aren't our fault, guv, it's all those immigrants what caused it".
Meanwhile, the government more or less ignores the large scale of legal migration to focus on the poor buggers trying to cross the Channel in this freezing weather, who constitute a small proportion of incomers. You couldn't make it up.
The focus on illegal migration is intentional and designed to ensure there is zero focus on the level of legal migration - and the lack of preparation we are doing to cope with that number of people
net (legal) migration was unusually high in 2022 due to the war in Ukraine, the humanitarian route for Hong Kong British National Overseas (BNO) status holders, an increase in international student numbers and high demand for workers in the health and care sector. These factors are to some extent temporary and so it is expected that net migration will fall over the next year or two, regardless of the progress or otherwise of the Rwanda plan.
True on 1 level (Hong Kong, Ukraine) but beyond that I have a bridge to sell you.
This analysis does a pretty good job of explaining why net migration levels are unlike to remain at their current high level:
The only question is whether the drop will come soon enough for the government to take the credit for it. Perhaps a reason for Sunak to hang on for a bit longer?
Lets say it drops to 350-400k net migration per year as forecast?
Is there anyone at all in the country who is going to give the government credit for that?
To many it is simply too many regardless. To others, it would be fine if we built the houses and infrastructure which we are not doing. To others, the negative mood and approach around migration is the turn off - not the numbers.
I have yet to meet a single person who says what we really need on immigration is 350-400k per year but lets scrimp on related housing and infrastructure and demonise those who do arrive.
350,000 per year is 3,500,000 million in 10 years. At 2.4 occupiers per dwelling that's 1,460,000 new dwellings by 2034, or 146,000 per year just to meet new demand. In the year to March 2023, 210,000 dwellings were built, from which must be deducted a number I don't know of dwellings going out of use.
We already have 1.2 million households on social housing waiting lists.
None of this stacks up. Of the homes being built (gross figure) about 60,000 would, once you have removed the migrant demand, meet the already resident demand. None of this seems to resolve the current crisis.
We should be building somewhere between 350-500k homes per year, not 210k.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
We have a shortage of housing because we refuse to let people build houses to cope with our population growth.
There's absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with immigration, so long as we have sufficient investment to keep up with population growth.
The problem is when we have rising population and no investment.
So you don’t think 1.3 million in 2 years is too many? (Plus illegals, of course)
How many is too many then? 2 million a year? 5 million? Or is fhere no limit in your eyes, and all immigration of any levels is good and fine?
No limit in my eyes so long as investment and infrastructure grows correspondingly.
I couldn't care less if our population in England by the end of the century is 60 million, 100 million or a billion, so long as we invest accordingly and have growing living standards what bloody difference does it make?
Because most of us don’t want to see England’s green and pleasant land finally and completely covered with your fucking hideous Barratt Home red brick semis
You really are quite crazy. You know that, right?
If we increased the number of people living in apartments to French levels we could increase both housing provision and the size our green spaces at the same time.
No need for this kind of bickering at all.
Screw that.
Unless the people moving into apartments WANT to. Rather than being forced to do so as they can't afford the alternative.
The housing shortage is largely affecting young individuals and couples who cannot get on the property ladder, especially in the larger cities, and they are almost as a matter of course looking for apartments unless they live somewhere very cheap.
I didn't move from flat to house until I was on my 3rd move 11 years after buying my first flat, and I'm a lucky GenXer who could actually afford to be a first time buyer in 2000.
Just invert the argument to show how silly it is. Would knocking down Edinburgh's tenements and replacing them with Barratts worsen or improve the city's housing crisis?
That's not an inversion.
This country has an abundance of undeveloped land to build housing on, less than 5% of our country is developed for housing even including green spaces like gardens etc - we can easily build many more houses and barely affect how much greenery there is in this country.
There is no shortage of land, just a shortage of willpower to fix the problem. Its not about houses versus apartments, its about construction versus refusal to do so.
"Undeveloped" = farmland competing with Australian meat farmers, presuimably.
We need food here - and produced here - not imported from overseas.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
We have a shortage of housing because we refuse to let people build houses to cope with our population growth.
There's absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with immigration, so long as we have sufficient investment to keep up with population growth.
The problem is when we have rising population and no investment.
So you don’t think 1.3 million in 2 years is too many? (Plus illegals, of course)
How many is too many then? 2 million a year? 5 million? Or is fhere no limit in your eyes, and all immigration of any levels is good and fine?
No limit in my eyes so long as investment and infrastructure grows correspondingly.
I couldn't care less if our population in England by the end of the century is 60 million, 100 million or a billion, so long as we invest accordingly and have growing living standards what bloody difference does it make?
Because most of us don’t want to see England’s green and pleasant land finally and completely covered with your fucking hideous Barratt Home red brick semis
You really are quite crazy. You know that, right?
If we increased the number of people living in apartments to French levels we could increase both housing provision and the size our green spaces at the same time.
No need for this kind of bickering at all.
Screw that.
Unless the people moving into apartments WANT to. Rather than being forced to do so as they can't afford the alternative.
The housing shortage is largely affecting young individuals and couples who cannot get on the property ladder, especially in the larger cities, and they are almost as a matter of course looking for apartments unless they live somewhere very cheap.
I didn't move from flat to house until I was on my 3rd move 11 years after buying my first flat, and I'm a lucky GenXer who could actually afford to be a first time buyer in 2000.
Which is why we need to enable people to build more houses (almost) anywhere they want. Or apartments if they want that.
Let people choose what they want, don't artificially constrain the market.
But it's been shown on PB that small builders are hopelessly inefficient at using the skills of bricklayers of whom we are already short. So only large developments using bricklayers efficiently are realistic. The Barratts of this world. And we shoudl therefore restrict piecemeal development to ensure efficient use of labour. Ditto sewerage, power, etc. You want lots of houses, you want lots of sewerage, ypou need huge monolithic developments, it's the only way. Not this 1930s bungaloid growth.
Its not remotely been shown.
Around the world houses are built, efficiently, and quickly, piecemeal.
Monoliths tend to be less efficient, not more. Let the monoliths compete against nimble developers by taking the planning powers out of the hands of the monoliths being the only ones to get planning permission.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
It's not just the rivers that are full of shit. Anyway, I await the water companies coming along and saying that "the sewage problems aren't our fault, guv, it's all those immigrants what caused it".
Meanwhile, the government more or less ignores the large scale of legal migration to focus on the poor buggers trying to cross the Channel in this freezing weather, who constitute a small proportion of incomers. You couldn't make it up.
The focus on illegal migration is intentional and designed to ensure there is zero focus on the level of legal migration - and the lack of preparation we are doing to cope with that number of people
net (legal) migration was unusually high in 2022 due to the war in Ukraine, the humanitarian route for Hong Kong British National Overseas (BNO) status holders, an increase in international student numbers and high demand for workers in the health and care sector. These factors are to some extent temporary and so it is expected that net migration will fall over the next year or two, regardless of the progress or otherwise of the Rwanda plan.
True on 1 level (Hong Kong, Ukraine) but beyond that I have a bridge to sell you.
This analysis does a pretty good job of explaining why net migration levels are unlike to remain at their current high level:
The only question is whether the drop will come soon enough for the government to take the credit for it. Perhaps a reason for Sunak to hang on for a bit longer?
We get the 2023 figures in the autumn.
It will probably show a drop but it won’t show 0 which means for most people it will be way too high.
So yep the story may change but only to Tories have reduced numbers but not by enough..
There are a few areas of UK performance where PM Starmer could potentially be a lucky general, and unlike with Blair in 1997 the Tories won't be in a position to talk about golden legacies. None of these are by any means guaranteed but they are possible, and luck is an important variable in politics:
- Migration: both small boat and legal migration figures could well come down from their current high levels for purely organic reasons, and much of that could take place on Labour's watch. Biggest uncertainty here: wider conflict in the Middle East, and GBP-EUR FX rate (which has suppressed skilled EU migration since Brexit) - Inflation: Even though this is already well down, if it gets lower and stays there it'll be easier for Labour than the current government to take credit even though neither has much actual influence on the number - Government debt and deficit: if interest rates fall then the interest burden falls which could open up scope for more spending or holding taxes down - Economic growth: even a mini-rebound to 1.5%+ growth might be enough to feel like a turnaround - Wage growth: already started to happen and tends to lag commodity inflation. Could mean the real-terms cost of living squeeze starts to reverse - NHS waiting lists: even if Labour do nothing, I assume strike action will simmer down for a bit and any policies put in place to get through the post-Covid backlog by the current government may well only really bear fruit in the next parliament
Of course it quite possibly all go to shit particularly because of the fiscal deficit and those unrealistic spending cuts in Treasury forecasts, and then the Tories get to blame Labour unfairly.
I am trying to think what there is about the Middle East or the northern half of Africa or the Islamic world which suggests a reduction either in the supply of people with a lawful claim to asylum or a reduction in their preference for taking their chance of living somewhere in the more prosperous parts of the world.
Thus far I can think of nothing. There are 100s of millions of people from all those regions with a proper claim in the international law which the UK still entirely recognises.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
I don’t even understand your points any more. I believe the technical description of your commentary is, in PB terms, “vapid bilge”
Really? I didn't think I was being obtuse. The far right thrive on anti-immigrant sentiment. Their agenda is to exploit the (genuine) issue of immigration to increase this sentiment amongst the public. You agree with that, I'd have thought?
And it's relevant to a discussion on immigration. Why wouldn't it be? You yourself were just highlighting the risk of the far right surfing to power on the back of anti-immigrant sentiment. Ok, so I quibbled with your wording. You said the far right were certain to triumph, which is hyperbole, so I replaced with "risk".
That's a bit clearer now, I hope. So what's your point anyway?
Just more vapid bilge, I’m afraid
But it is interesting how bewildered and confounded you are, by this issue: dwindling into incoherence like the robot in Kubrick’s 2001
Yawn. But ok, you just want to bang on and not engage with other viewpoints. I guess I can't stop you.
Tories on 20%. Fukkers on 12% pre Farage. Sunak to give triumphant presser about how thanks to his canny skills in the Commons he will now Stop The Boats.
Tories. The abyss becons.
2024 is lining up to be the most spectacular general election since 1945. It's entirely plausible that Labour could end up with a 200+ majority. The Tories could end sub-100. Neither is anything like guaranteed but we ought to consider it a realistic possibility.
Sunak has got himself into a position where he isn't trusted as either a populist or a managerial type; he's chasing the RefUK vote but not getting it because he's merely highlighting their arguments without sorting them; driving right will consolidate the anti-Tory tactical vote on the left (which is in any case twice the size of the combined Con+RefUK vote); and meanwhile, the economic squeeze is still on for a lot of people, strikes are rife and the NHS cannot cope with demand, backlog and strikes.
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
Sunak is a huge part of the problem. He's been Chancellor or PM for all but a relative handful of days in nearly four years.
And its not just that the buck stops with him, its what he's chosen to do and his priorities.
Hunt is far, far better. Despite Sunak, not because of him.
Hunt is basically the same - and as a long-serving Health Sec would be blamed personally for many of the current NHS problems (not without some justification). I don't see much more of a spark of the front-man to him than there is to Sunak. Anyway, Hunt finished last with only 18 votes out of 357 in the summer 2022 leadership election; he has little personal support and I don't see the MPs dumping Sunak to replace him with what they hope might be a slightly better version of the same, in order to lose less badly.
Question for non-Tories and former Tory voters who have fallen out of love with the party. Who of the current crop of MPs with leadership ambitions would you want to see as future leader? Not in terms of who's most beatable, but who would be most tolerable as a future PM?
I know who TSE would go for (though he's in the Lords), but others? I struggle with this. Would probably opt for whoever looks most presentable on the global stage. Until a few weeks ago I thought that was Cleverly (LOL).
Hunt is the best of a bad lot.
I think he understands the countries problems especially in the NHS. His problem as CoE is that we are a high tax country that nonetheless is skint in terms of funding the NHS or indeed anything else.
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
We have a shortage of housing because we refuse to let people build houses to cope with our population growth.
There's absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with immigration, so long as we have sufficient investment to keep up with population growth.
The problem is when we have rising population and no investment.
So you don’t think 1.3 million in 2 years is too many? (Plus illegals, of course)
How many is too many then? 2 million a year? 5 million? Or is fhere no limit in your eyes, and all immigration of any levels is good and fine?
No limit in my eyes so long as investment and infrastructure grows correspondingly.
I couldn't care less if our population in England by the end of the century is 60 million, 100 million or a billion, so long as we invest accordingly and have growing living standards what bloody difference does it make?
Because most of us don’t want to see England’s green and pleasant land finally and completely covered with your fucking hideous Barratt Home red brick semis
You really are quite crazy. You know that, right?
If we increased the number of people living in apartments to French levels we could increase both housing provision and the size our green spaces at the same time.
No need for this kind of bickering at all.
Screw that.
Unless the people moving into apartments WANT to. Rather than being forced to do so as they can't afford the alternative.
The housing shortage is largely affecting young individuals and couples who cannot get on the property ladder, especially in the larger cities, and they are almost as a matter of course looking for apartments unless they live somewhere very cheap.
I didn't move from flat to house until I was on my 3rd move 11 years after buying my first flat, and I'm a lucky GenXer who could actually afford to be a first time buyer in 2000.
Just invert the argument to show how silly it is. Would knocking down Edinburgh's tenements and replacing them with Barratts worsen or improve the city's housing crisis?
That's not an inversion.
This country has an abundance of undeveloped land to build housing on, less than 5% of our country is developed for housing even including green spaces like gardens etc - we can easily build many more houses and barely affect how much greenery there is in this country.
There is no shortage of land, just a shortage of willpower to fix the problem. Its not about houses versus apartments, its about construction versus refusal to do so.
"Undeveloped" = farmland competing with Australian meat farmers, presuimably.
We need food here - and produced here - not imported from overseas.
Why?
Why do we need 70% of our land dedicated to food and 5% dedicated to housing?
If we were to treble let alone marginally increase our land dedicated to housing we could still have 60% of our land dedicated to food. Why is that insufficient?
How about our farmers just become more intensive and competitive?
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
Oh do be quiet
This country has imported 1.3 million people in two years. Voters are noticing. See @Cookie’s comments above
This level of immigration is literally unprecedented in our history. It has never happened before. People didn’t ask for it, polls show they don’t want it, Brexit was driven - in large part - by people trying to stop it
And your pitiful answer to all this is “just stop talking about it”
I'm not saying stop talking about it. That would be you with your "do be quiet".
Why does immigration being a genuine issue mean people should be able to bang on unchallenged about how we have to embrace far right talking points or they'll end up in power?
I don’t even understand your points any more. I believe the technical description of your commentary is, in PB terms, “vapid bilge”
Really? I didn't think I was being obtuse. The far right thrive on anti-immigrant sentiment. Their agenda is to exploit the (genuine) issue of immigration to increase this sentiment amongst the public. You agree with that, I'd have thought?
And it's relevant to a discussion on immigration. Why wouldn't it be? You yourself were just highlighting the risk of the far right surfing to power on the back of anti-immigrant sentiment. Ok, so I quibbled with your wording. You said the far right were certain to triumph, which is hyperbole, so I replaced with "risk".
That's a bit clearer now, I hope. So what's your point anyway?
Does it not follow that if your overwhelming concern is the rise of the far right, you ought to want immigration to be as low as possible?
Fixing Fujitsu software bugs in the Horizon IT system was too expensive. Flaws known since 1998. Fujitsu and Post Office gave false evidence to courts and let innocent people be convicted of fraud. Boosted profits and exec pay by destroying lives."
Why did Fujitsu need to have a fraud and litigation department? Litigation, I can understand. But fraud? What fraud and by whom was this department expecting to deal with?
The stuff coming out of Fujitsu - particularly the known bugs that they didn't tell the PO about and didn't bother to fix - will put that company firmly in the frame. This guy giving evidence now, who's a strange but seemingly honest fellow, told the inquiry yesterday that one bug generated errors if a subpostmaster was working on their terminal at 7pm, because at that time every day the central server ran some sort of housekeeping routine, and that the system couldn't tell whether a repeated entry from a subpostmaster's terminal was a separate transaction or duplicates. As details like this come out, the pattern of shortfalls that subpostmasters experienced becomes more understandable.
It’s as if they just invented transactional posing of sale systems specifically for the post office, because retail definitely hasn’t already been using them for several decades.
I mean, server routines running at 7pm, instead of in the middle of the night as everyone else does!
Please tell me it's not because 7pm in the UK is the middle of the night in Japan!
A governing party would be happy with that mid term. Of course, it's probably not all Rishi's fault - the Truss was also a brand-destroying moment. But if Boris had remained there would have been no Truss. So the only question is now: would the Boris magic have persisted to the current time?
Reform could actually overtake the Tories. Esp if they get Nige on the case
Conversation at primary school door this morning from normally apolitical friend: "we [the school] has gone from less than 5% English as a foreign language to around 25%. You wouldn't think it would happen with a Tory government, would you?" I don't think this was a furious rant against immigration, more an expression of astonishment that the Tories of all people were letting what feels like such massive numbers into the country.
One lad has started this week. On Saturday, he was in Saudi Arabia; on Tuesday he saw his first ever snow. Anecdotally, he is frighteningly obedient and somewhat baffled when 'stop talking and get on with your work' isn't instantly complied with by everyone as multiple 9-year-old conversations are sotto voce brought to a close.
Immigration is going to overwhelm most polities in the west, sending them to the hard or far right
Britain will follow, with a delay
Anyone with eyes can see this. A tipping point is being reached - from Stockholm to Berlin, from Arizona to Warsaw to Rome
I'd rephrase slightly. The far right thrive on 'our country is being swamped and ruined by immigrants' sentiment. Therefore anyone with eyes can see the risk of feeding that sentiment.
The problem is a lack of discussion about the consequences of the various options. And the slight conflict between "Mass immigration is wonderful" and "To protect the environment and keep everyone happy, we must build no houses or places of employment."
See also
The NHS is overwhelmed Our rivers are full of shit as the sewage system can’t cope We have a national housing shortage crisis
And so on, and so forth
And yet at the same time we are told this has nothing to do with mass immigration and the population of the UK rising by 1.3 million people in just two years. Even the dumbest voter no longer buys this bollocks
We have a shortage of housing because we refuse to let people build houses to cope with our population growth.
There's absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with immigration, so long as we have sufficient investment to keep up with population growth.
The problem is when we have rising population and no investment.
So you don’t think 1.3 million in 2 years is too many? (Plus illegals, of course)
How many is too many then? 2 million a year? 5 million? Or is fhere no limit in your eyes, and all immigration of any levels is good and fine?
No limit in my eyes so long as investment and infrastructure grows correspondingly.
I couldn't care less if our population in England by the end of the century is 60 million, 100 million or a billion, so long as we invest accordingly and have growing living standards what bloody difference does it make?
Because most of us don’t want to see England’s green and pleasant land finally and completely covered with your fucking hideous Barratt Home red brick semis
You really are quite crazy. You know that, right?
If we increased the number of people living in apartments to French levels we could increase both housing provision and the size our green spaces at the same time.
No need for this kind of bickering at all.
Screw that.
Unless the people moving into apartments WANT to. Rather than being forced to do so as they can't afford the alternative.
The housing shortage is largely affecting young individuals and couples who cannot get on the property ladder, especially in the larger cities, and they are almost as a matter of course looking for apartments unless they live somewhere very cheap.
I didn't move from flat to house until I was on my 3rd move 11 years after buying my first flat, and I'm a lucky GenXer who could actually afford to be a first time buyer in 2000.
Just invert the argument to show how silly it is. Would knocking down Edinburgh's tenements and replacing them with Barratts worsen or improve the city's housing crisis?
That's not an inversion.
This country has an abundance of undeveloped land to build housing on, less than 5% of our country is developed for housing even including green spaces like gardens etc - we can easily build many more houses and barely affect how much greenery there is in this country.
There is no shortage of land, just a shortage of willpower to fix the problem. Its not about houses versus apartments, its about construction versus refusal to do so.
"Undeveloped" = farmland competing with Australian meat farmers, presuimably.
We need food here - and produced here - not imported from overseas.
Why?
Why do we need 70% of our land dedicated to food and 5% dedicated to housing?
If we were to treble let alone marginally increase our land dedicated to housing we could still have 60% of our land dedicated to food. Why is that insufficient?
How about our farmers just become more intensive and competitive?
Reasons:
Our preference for meat, which involves a lot of land use.
Our new and correct regard for food security. Don't you know there's a war on?
Our new and correct regard for environmental land management; linnets and reed buntings matter, and if we lose sight of this we lose our soul.
Ag and fish is, in terms of economics, trivial compared to the expensive consumerist economy of froth and trash. In price it is trivial, but in value it is central to our landscape and our survival.
Our farming is already efficient and has decent welfare standards.
To get back on topic, I’d like it noted that my ferocious new consumption regimen - sporadic fasting, calorific deficit, restricted booze intake - is having an effect. I have lost almost 10kg in 6 weeks
No doubt experts will say that is too fast but wow it is fast. I can face myself in the mirror. I can see RIBS
I am about 5kg from my target weight. Then - god willing - I will have FINALLY lost all the Covid blob and be back to where I was from 2005-2020
I'm down 4kg since Christmas - no booze, 40 mins light cardio every day, desire to binge eat gone when I'm not drunk / hungover.
Watch me put it all back on next month...
Dude. Bro. Mate. Well done!!
Don’t stop now. It’s all worth it. I suggest we team up together and egg each other on. I am determined to hit my target weight by Feb 8th (when I’m flying again probably). That gives me 3 weeks to lose about 5kg. Do-able!!
Tories on 20%. Fukkers on 12% pre Farage. Sunak to give triumphant presser about how thanks to his canny skills in the Commons he will now Stop The Boats.
Tories. The abyss becons.
2024 is lining up to be the most spectacular general election since 1945. It's entirely plausible that Labour could end up with a 200+ majority. The Tories could end sub-100. Neither is anything like guaranteed but we ought to consider it a realistic possibility.
Sunak has got himself into a position where he isn't trusted as either a populist or a managerial type; he's chasing the RefUK vote but not getting it because he's merely highlighting their arguments without sorting them; driving right will consolidate the anti-Tory tactical vote on the left (which is in any case twice the size of the combined Con+RefUK vote); and meanwhile, the economic squeeze is still on for a lot of people, strikes are rife and the NHS cannot cope with demand, backlog and strikes.
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
Sunak is a huge part of the problem. He's been Chancellor or PM for all but a relative handful of days in nearly four years.
And its not just that the buck stops with him, its what he's chosen to do and his priorities.
Hunt is far, far better. Despite Sunak, not because of him.
Hunt is basically the same - and as a long-serving Health Sec would be blamed personally for many of the current NHS problems (not without some justification). I don't see much more of a spark of the front-man to him than there is to Sunak. Anyway, Hunt finished last with only 18 votes out of 357 in the summer 2022 leadership election; he has little personal support and I don't see the MPs dumping Sunak to replace him with what they hope might be a slightly better version of the same, in order to lose less badly.
Question for non-Tories and former Tory voters who have fallen out of love with the party. Who of the current crop of MPs with leadership ambitions would you want to see as future leader? Not in terms of who's most beatable, but who would be most tolerable as a future PM?
I know who TSE would go for (though he's in the Lords), but others? I struggle with this. Would probably opt for whoever looks most presentable on the global stage. Until a few weeks ago I thought that was Cleverly (LOL).
Sunak himself is tolerably adequate, if a bit naff. Certainly better than either Johnson or Truss. If not him, Hunt or Gove could do the job. Both would be better PMs than party leaders though, particularly in the current climate, so stand no chance of winning.
Frankly, it's probably only 10 months to the election at most. The Tories have had more than enough chances and there's no-one who could entice me back this side of an election, and it'd take an almighty culture change to tempt me back afterwards, one I don't expect for a minimum of 7 years.
There's a whole wide world we can import food from. I have steaks in my freezer that are labelled "product of Uruguay". As I'm currently on a carnivore diet, I recently started bulk-ordering meat from online and they're both cheaper and better quality than the British ones that I was previously buying from the supermarket.
There is not a whole wide world we can import houses from to put roofs over people's heads.
In a hierarchy of needs, putting our land to good use in housing should come well before food. Everyone needs both but food can be imported, houses can't.
I'd rather someone have food imported and put in their freezer, within their own home, than for someone to be homeless and freezing themselves.
Under 50s, mind. Not under 30s or 18-25s. Not only are the Conservatives at a level that requires heroic changing of minds as these generations age, but RefCon combined is only 15% showing that appealing to RefUKers is unlikely to win them back anyone other than their pensioner vote.
Always funny how Lib Dem support is essentially the same at all ages.
Comments
Had the British Gas insurance thing for a while - they were very good at prioritising up for problems, when we had small children/elderly people staying with us.
But once the voters have taken their righteous revenge, the problem will still be there, and with an even feebler Labour government - in terms of attitudes to migration - trying to handle it
Not good. Not good at all
Hope your boiler is ok
When you say separate itself do you mean trying to pretend their reps who say the quiet part out loud are nothing to do with them?
'Among MPs to publicly express their support for the ideas discussed at the meeting was René Springer, a representative for the state of Brandenburg in the federal government. On X, he stated that far from being a secret, the plan was a promise the AfD would fulfil should it get into power. “We will send foreigners back to their homelands. Millions of them. That is not a #secret plan. That is a promise,” he wrote.'
http://tinyurl.com/mtermptp
Isn't this a bit like claiming Joseph and Mary's travel plans would have been stopped were there no room at the Inn ?
Focusing on illegal migration so voters don’t notice huge amounts of legal migration; but voters - as the FT noted - are cottoning on
But the idea that the Fraud Department organises the frauds seems about right.
Bit like the compliance officer in Boiler Room organising the nuts and bolts of the scheme.
Thus the 'right wing' talk, including that of the D Tel and Speccie and Matt Goodwin, consists only and exclusively of talk, not of hard policy and practice.
Note just yesterday the collapse of the 'right wing' Tory rebellion over the Rwanda (Paddington Bear Deportation) Bill yesterday. The Bill attempts to stay within the limits of civilized law, and of course can't work. In the end they nearly all voted for it.
But that doesn't mean Ethiopia should just grab the bits it wants. IIRC, Ethiopia is the largest land-locked country in the world, which is why it's desperate for a port or two.
I couldn't care less if our population in England by the end of the century is 60 million, 100 million or a billion, so long as we invest accordingly and have growing living standards what bloody difference does it make?
Think the 1970s and waiting for a mortgage from the bank, because they were rationed.
Set a total net migration level, forecast a decade into the future. Let councils and utilities know how the country will grow, and plan for it. Then let in people up to that level per year, and no more. Let the parties campaign at election time with that number.
(Yes, I know there are massive practical problems with this...)
You really are quite crazy. You know that, right?
Not even 5% of the country is housing - and that includes peoples gardens etc
We could double our housing stock and it'd barely make a dent in our nation's "green and pleasant land".
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/long-term-international-migration-flows-to-and-from-the-uk/
net (legal) migration was unusually high in 2022 due to the war in Ukraine, the humanitarian route for Hong Kong British National Overseas (BNO) status holders, an increase in international student numbers and high demand for workers in the health and care sector. These factors are to some extent temporary and so it is expected that net migration will fall over the next year or two, regardless of the progress or otherwise of the Rwanda plan.
Sunak has got himself into a position where he isn't trusted as either a populist or a managerial type; he's chasing the RefUK vote but not getting it because he's merely highlighting their arguments without sorting them; driving right will consolidate the anti-Tory tactical vote on the left (which is in any case twice the size of the combined Con+RefUK vote); and meanwhile, the economic squeeze is still on for a lot of people, strikes are rife and the NHS cannot cope with demand, backlog and strikes.
But the problem for the Tories isn't Sunak (or not just him). The problem is their party and its record. Changing leaders yet again (for who?) isn't going to solve that and may make it even worse.
And it's relevant to a discussion on immigration. Why wouldn't it be? You yourself were just highlighting the risk of the far right surfing to power on the back of anti-immigrant sentiment. Ok, so I quibbled with your wording. You said the far right were certain to triumph, which is hyperbole, so I replaced with "risk".
That's a bit clearer now, I hope. So what's your point anyway?
And its not just that the buck stops with him, its what he's chosen to do and his priorities.
Hunt is far, far better. Despite Sunak, not because of him.
Gives me an excuse to reproduce one of my current fave paintings, Evening Over Potsdam painted by a Jew in 1930. This is full of authentic portent and meaning unlike that pishy prize winning AI generated photo everyone was discussing a year ago.
But it is interesting how bewildered and confounded you are, by this issue: dwindling into incoherence like the robot in Kubrick’s 2001
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/reports/why-are-the-latest-net-migration-figures-not-a-reliable-guide-to-future-trends/
The only question is whether the drop will come soon enough for the government to take the credit for it. Perhaps a reason for Sunak to hang on for a bit longer?
The broad strategy, embodied by Hunt and initially adopted by Sunak, of being rather boringly steady, setting and meeting some modest objectives, and projecting a general air of calm after the storm, was pretty good. I'm not sure it was ever enough, but it had every chance of leading to a reasonable recovery over time if he'd kept to it.
But it wasn't shifting the polls, Uxbridge gave a tantalising if illusory vision of a bolder way to break out, the Rwanda sop to the right was clearly running into the sand, and Sunak simply panicked. Since then, he has been flailing, and you don't know which Sunak will turn up. He cannot realistically go back to the Hunt strategy as he's already blown it - you can't return to being Steady Eddie having proved you're not.
In fairness, it's all rather easier for Hunt sat in the Treasury. Sunak has to deal with the broad range of policy, and events as they come up. Hunt has something of a hiding place from it. Nevertheless, Sunak has blown what chance he had.
This is perfectly compatible with recognizing the need to not pander to far right talking points about the country being 'swamped' and 'ruined' and a 'soft touch for foreigners' etc.
Too much of that emotive b/s and Leon's fears (that the far right will gain real traction here) might be realised.
Truss as PM with Hunt as Chancellor would be a better government than this.
No doubt experts will say that is too fast but wow it is fast. I can face myself in the mirror. I can see RIBS
I am about 5kg from my target weight. Then - god willing - I will have FINALLY lost all the Covid blob and be back to where I was from 2005-2020
No need for this kind of bickering at all.
On the PO thing, I started the itv drama yesterday. It had a scene where a Fujitsu bod remotely accessed a postie's accounts and deliberately frigged then to generate a loss - which the postie's wife was then convicted of stealing. It was to punish the guy (the postie) for being too bolshie apparently.
True or dramatic licence? If the former we'll be looking at criminal prosecutions surely.
I have lovely and extremely expensive jackets, bought in 2019, that I have barely worn, or not worn at all: because first covid rendered posh clothes pointless and we all wore hoodies for a year, and after that year I was too fat in fit in them
It will probably show a drop but it won’t show 0 which means for most people it will be way too high.
So yep the story may change but only to Tories have reduced numbers but not by enough..
Farage is answer for them but there is no feasible route to make it happen.
https://blakemill.co.uk/collections/all
Beware, they do come up VERY fitted. That said, they will send you the next size if it is just too damned snug.
That’s how big the migration surge has been. Even if you halve it, it is still record-breaking
Unless the people moving into apartments WANT to. Rather than being forced to do so as they can't afford the alternative.
SD get to contribute to some agreed policies (the four leaders meet to agree some common things they can pursue) and don't bring down the government, is that correct?
Is there anyone at all in the country who is going to give the government credit for that?
To many it is simply too many regardless.
To others, it would be fine if we built the houses and infrastructure which we are not doing.
To others, the negative mood and approach around migration is the turn off - not the numbers.
I have yet to meet a single person who says what we really need on immigration is 350-400k per year but lets scrimp on related housing and infrastructure and demonise those who do arrive.
However if the polls verify, and the Tories are reduced below 100 seats to some desperate rump, then I can definitely see a Farage takeover
Indeed it would probably be desirable for them, and for British politics
The one nation Remainery Tories belong with the Lib Dems. The actual right wing Tories need to kick them out and own their right wingness. Then the British voters will actually have a choice. An actual right wing party which will actually do right wing things, rather than talking tough and doing left wing things
Of course the voters may reject the opportunity, as is their right. But the voters should have the option
Rolls-Royce confirm Cardiff as site for potential new hub creating thousands of new jobs
https://www.business-live.co.uk/manufacturing/rolls-royce-confirm-cardiff-site-28459795
I mean, server routines running at 7pm, instead of in the middle of the night as everyone else does!
The One Nation Tories kicking out the xenophobes (which is not leavers) would be better for our democracy.
- Migration: both small boat and legal migration figures could well come down from their current high levels for purely organic reasons, and much of that could take place on Labour's watch. Biggest uncertainty here: wider conflict in the Middle East, and GBP-EUR FX rate (which has suppressed skilled EU migration since Brexit)
- Inflation: Even though this is already well down, if it gets lower and stays there it'll be easier for Labour than the current government to take credit even though neither has much actual influence on the number
- Government debt and deficit: if interest rates fall then the interest burden falls which could open up scope for more spending or holding taxes down
- Economic growth: even a mini-rebound to 1.5%+ growth might be enough to feel like a turnaround
- Wage growth: already started to happen and tends to lag commodity inflation. Could mean the real-terms cost of living squeeze starts to reverse
- NHS waiting lists: even if Labour do nothing, I assume strike action will simmer down for a bit and any policies put in place to get through the post-Covid backlog by the current government may well only really bear fruit in the next parliament
Of course it quite possibly all go to shit particularly because of the fiscal deficit and those unrealistic spending cuts in Treasury forecasts, and then the Tories get to blame Labour unfairly.
I didn't move from flat to house until I was on my 3rd move 11 years after buying my first flat, and I'm a lucky GenXer who could actually afford to be a first time buyer in 2000.
I’m not a Tory so I don’t give a fuck what happens to the Tory party. I do care what happens to British democracy and I’d like British voters to have a real choice
This also applies to the left. Labour is equally divided and incoherent - look at their internal rows on Gaza and tax and the NHS. They are merely benefiting from anti Tory loathing
This is one issue where I have entirely changed my mind and it is largely thanks to PB. I used to be absolutely pro FPTP, on the basis it delivers properly powerful governments able to make sensible or radical changes
That now seems utterly laughable. Comically absurd. So bring on electoral reform, and let a thousand flowers bloom
Let people choose what they want, don't artificially constrain the market.
We should be very worried though about a full-fat populist-right become to the primary (or only) alternative to Labour though. They would take an opinion poll lead at some point.
However how many of the 68 Braverman Rwanda 'rebels' are Remainers, do we think?
This was for an organisation that made virtually all its income from data, yet treated the date itself, and the computers that ran it, as though they were unimportant. A DB system a couple of decades old, held together by spit and sawdust.
We already have 1.2 million households on social housing waiting lists.
None of this stacks up. Of the homes being built (gross figure) about 60,000 would, once you have removed the migrant demand, meet the already resident demand. None of this seems to resolve the current crisis.
I know who TSE would go for (though he's in the Lords), but others? I struggle with this. Would probably opt for whoever looks most presentable on the global stage. Until a few weeks ago I thought that was Cleverly (LOL).
That's before considering immigration.
https://x.com/richardmarcj/status/1747914692771676279
This was the last YouGov poll released before Rishi Sunak resigned as Chancellor to bring down Boris Johnson in July 2022...
Labour: 36%
Conservatives: 33%
Lib Dems: 13%
Green: 6%
Reform: 3%
Labour's 3 point lead has become a 27 point lead.
Perhaps the most impeccably right-wing tory on the reservation.
Watch me put it all back on next month...
Remove some of the height restrictions in London by closing City Airport and liberalising planning and we could add several million units here by turning the whole of East London into a British Kowloon.
This country has an abundance of undeveloped land to build housing on, less than 5% of our country is developed for housing even including green spaces like gardens etc - we can easily build many more houses and barely affect how much greenery there is in this country. That includes every town and city, house and apartment, in the entire country.
There is no shortage of land, just a shortage of willpower to fix the problem. Its not about houses versus apartments, its about construction versus refusal to do so.
You appear to be suggesting that talking about immigration is a bigger problem than immigration, because the former plays into the hands of the far right. I would argue the opposite - that not talking about immigration plays into the hands of the far right.
We need food here - and produced here - not imported from overseas.
Around the world houses are built, efficiently, and quickly, piecemeal.
Monoliths tend to be less efficient, not more. Let the monoliths compete against nimble developers by taking the planning powers out of the hands of the monoliths being the only ones to get planning permission.
Thus far I can think of nothing. There are 100s of millions of people from all those regions with a proper claim in the international law which the UK still entirely recognises.
I think he understands the countries problems especially in the NHS. His problem as CoE is that we are a high tax country that nonetheless is skint in terms of funding the NHS or indeed anything else.
Why do we need 70% of our land dedicated to food and 5% dedicated to housing?
If we were to treble let alone marginally increase our land dedicated to housing we could still have 60% of our land dedicated to food. Why is that insufficient?
How about our farmers just become more intensive and competitive?
Our preference for meat, which involves a lot of land use.
Our new and correct regard for food security. Don't you know there's a war on?
Our new and correct regard for environmental land management; linnets and reed buntings matter, and if we lose sight of this we lose our soul.
Ag and fish is, in terms of economics, trivial compared to the expensive consumerist economy of froth and trash. In price it is trivial, but in value it is central to our landscape and our survival.
Our farming is already efficient and has decent welfare standards.
Don’t stop now. It’s all worth it. I suggest we team up together and egg each other on. I am determined to hit my target weight by Feb 8th (when I’m flying again probably). That gives me 3 weeks to lose about 5kg. Do-able!!
Let’s be weight watcher buddies
Frankly, it's probably only 10 months to the election at most. The Tories have had more than enough chances and there's no-one who could entice me back this side of an election, and it'd take an almighty culture change to tempt me back afterwards, one I don't expect for a minimum of 7 years.
There is not a whole wide world we can import houses from to put roofs over people's heads.
In a hierarchy of needs, putting our land to good use in housing should come well before food. Everyone needs both but food can be imported, houses can't.
I'd rather someone have food imported and put in their freezer, within their own home, than for someone to be homeless and freezing themselves.
"For people under 50 today's YouGov poll is:
Lab 60%
Con 10%
Green 10%
LD 9%
Reform 5%
SNP 3%"
https://x.com/Samfr/status/1747923991744979007?s=20
Under 50s, mind. Not under 30s or 18-25s. Not only are the Conservatives at a level that requires heroic changing of minds as these generations age, but RefCon combined is only 15% showing that appealing to RefUKers is unlikely to win them back anyone other than their pensioner vote.
Always funny how Lib Dem support is essentially the same at all ages.