If Mr Sunak wants to fight the next GE on the personalities of the two leaders then the Cons are really in trouble. Can he really think he is still popular? Doesn't he understand that once you spend that public goodwill it does not come back.
To rescue his party Sunak had to govern efficiently, quietly and with a deft touch. Even if the penny dropped now at No 10 it is much too late.
None of this week's events will move the needle much but if Mr Sunak repeats errors like this in a GE campaign then it will go very badly for the Cons, perhaps more badly than even they currently fear
So he should fight on his governments record rather than leaders personalities? Damn that wont work either so:
Fight on character and standards in public life? Nah
Unified party with a clear direction to take the country in? Nah
Quality of the cabinet team? Err lets not even go there.
They are more than in trouble.
You have identified that the Tories can’t run on their record, so yes, all they have left is doubt.
They need to sow as much doubt about Labour and Starmer as they can between now and the GE.
That is why I think this election is going to be the most negative campaign for some time. Probably since 2010, in which a large part of the Labour platform was to similarly try to sow doubt re Cameron and the Tories.
It’s quite strange being in a country as young as Cambodia. Everyone seems to be in their twenties BECAUSE THEY ARE. Median age is 27
Even stranger is that absolutely everyone is slim. Healthy looking. I’ve been here a month (and was here last year as well) and I’m not sure I’ve seen a single fat person. I’ve seen some portly-ish old people, but they are stout in the way older people can be or even should be. A bit of a tummy (men), chunky around the arse (the women) - I have not seen a single overweight person under 40, let alone obese. It means even average looking women are kinda sexy, due to being slender as a reed
And I’m not imagining it. Cambodia is the 4th least obese nation on Earth. 3.9%
Did Britain look like this in the 1930s or 1970s? What have we done to ourselves? It is disgusting
I hope Cambodia bans all processed food and any foodstuff made in America
I mean that is kinda what happens when your country gets bombed to bits by the US and then have a long civil war and genocide at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.
No, it’s an East Asian thing
They are generally much slimmer and eat better food - Singapore has a really low obesity rate and they were never bombed by America or had a genocide etc
‘A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state… [snip - see the link],
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth’
So the only actual report I can find (other than pieces in right wing media about the report) are in Danish, and I can't find anything discussing the report in English other than right wingers hailing it as the evidence they've always needed that immigrants are bad actually. That's not to say it is wrong, just that as someone who doesn't speak Danish I can't verify the actual findings of the report outside of places like unherd, who are not a source I trust.
I have found an OpenDemocracy article detailing essentially the argument I put forth yesterday - how if immigrants are a "drain" on an economy it is most likely the practices of the employers who abuse those workers and use them to under cut labour rights and labour costs, but I accept that could have nothing to do with what this report was exploring. If you have a link directly to the report in English, I'd be very interested to look at it, the methodology and such.
The comparison doesn't really work for a country whose average income is about 70% of that in the Netherlands.
The percentage of those on benefit who are not UK citizens was around 16% in 2019 (I can't quickly find a more recent figure); and migrants are more likely to be in work that native born Brits.
So whatever your feelings about the levels of immigration, the comparison with the Netherlands (assuming the capacity of your article) is anyway complete bunk.
And there we have it. Britain is so violently different to Netherlands none of this applies. Of course
That is, until a comparison with an eu country comes along of which you approve, then it totally applies
Honestly, this level of argumentation is quite depressing
It is obviously fair to look at the pros and cons of immigration from different parts of the world to the Netherlands and assume that it would be more or less the same in the UK. I linked to that research here a while ago, it is pretty much a slam dunk
The crazy thing is that is seems no consideration at all was given to which type of immigrant would suit/benefit us before we embarked on a policy of mass immigration. It’s like a football team just buying 10-12 players without doing any research on whether those players would gel with their existing squad; no team would do it now in the era of data & analytics, yet it’s controversial to suggest we do so as a country
Amazing that the police don't seem to have caught Ezedi hiding in plain sight in the likes of Tescos. Does everyone just assume someone else has called the police in situations like that ?
My assumption is that he has killed himself (jumped of a bridge into the Thames), hence the trail going cold on the evening of the attack.
I'd have thought it'd be pretty difficult to jump off a bridge in London without that being captured on CCTV. Finding the body may be trickier in such a case, but bridges in big cities are pretty heavily monitored for traffic and crime reasons.
I agree there is a pretty high chance he's dead, although also possible he has an accomplice.
Sadly, people fall/jump in the river, often from near or on bridges, a far bit in London. The drunk younguns... "Last seen near x bridge"
They don't seem to get caught on CCTV.
EDIT: I haven't seen a body, but most of the rowing coaches in the club have seen them or even found them, over the years.
I've always kind of assumed in these cases that there is CCTV and that Police are pretty confident as to what has happened - otherwise they'd not say "last seen near X bridge" - I mean, just about everywhere in central London is near a bridge.
But CCTV quality isn't brilliant, so you're not 100% whether it's the person who has been reported missing or some random person who happened to choose that night, and it doesn't tell you state of mind - so they still want a body and any witnesses to tie up loose ends and bring closure to the family.
Much of CCTV is unusable crap. Tons of people go missing in Central London - it's not Minority Report.
Sure, but my point is bridges and approaches to bridges in big cities have more CCTV than most places, and they have a pretty firm time lock on this.
So the Police will have looked to see if anything has gone in the river off a bridge, or if more people have gone onto than left a bridge at the relevant time. The quality doesn't need to be good.
It's rather different if I go missing. The timeframe in which I disappeared might well be quite broad, as might the location (particularly if I'm depressed rather than being chased by Police with an obvious injury - the fact I didn't show up to the pub at 7pm doesn't really narrow down the time that much). And, given there are quite a few people who go off bridges sadly, even you have evidence of someone going off one or other bridge at some in a 48 hour period, there's actually quite a good chance it isn't me.
Starmer's remorseless pursuit of GE victory continues apace, as he dismantles step by step every potential attack line that can be pursued against him. Today it's the turn of the £28 billion sum for the Green Prosperity Plan.
The mistake was, of course, putting a number on it back in 2021, at a time of low interest rates and when they had little idea what the state of the economy would be in 2024. Not sure why they did that - much better to establish the Green Prosperity Plan and GB Energy as policies, the financing of which would be revealed at the time of the GE.
By the time of the GE, the Tories will only be left with two attack lines: 1. This happily married father doesn't know what a woman is (I think he does), and 2. Starmer keeps changing his mind in the light of new evidence.
O/T I went to a dinner/seminar last night at which defence/ Ukraine issues were discussed at length by top analysts. The key takeaways were:-
1. Tactically, the performance of the Russian army is dreadful, no better than two years ago. But, it has always been. Operationally, it is a lot more capable, and it is getting artillery shells in much greater numbers than Ukraine. There are precisely two European companies that manufacture artillery shells. However, Ukraine has the advantage in terms of possession and production of drones.
2. Russians are willing to suffer hardship, to achieve military success, in ways we don’t fully appreciate in the West.
3. But even Russia can’t defy economic gravity for ever. Soviet oil exports have been hit hard in recent months, partly due to drone attacks, and the regime is burning through foreign exchange reserves at an incredible speed. If Ukraine can keep fighting for 2-3 years, then it will likely win, as Russia runs out of resources.
4. Germany’s commitment to Ukraine is now of vital importance. As well as aid, Germany is now training twice as many Ukrainian soldiers as the UK is.
5. The reduction of the UK’s military capability, starting in 2010, is of real concern, throughout NATO. Cameron, Osborne and their successors have acted as if the world is growing safer, rather than more dangerous.
6. Contrary to press reports, there is no shortage of people wishing to join the armed forces. The real problem is with Capita, taking up to 14 months to process applications, by which time, they’ve taken other jobs.
With (2) were the analysts saying it's something in the Russian 'soul' (or whatever) that makes them tolerate great hardship for the sake of military glory? Because I've heard that a lot and I'm a bit skeptical. Isn't it more that the people there are repressed under a dictatorship and subject to vast amounts of propaganda? Meaning they are (i) more likely to keep on believing in the cause and (ii) less likely to play up even if they don't.
They have a cultural obsession with war and dying in large numbers that makes the English undying fixation on WW2 look like a passing fancy.
Understanding of Russian culture, with a few exceptions, by Western commentators is meagre. It's impossible to have anything other than superficial, and probably erroneous, grasp on it if all you have is English language sources curated by Western media. Hence, the smug and staggering ignorance that our resident Russophobes wear with such pride as if it were the Order of Lenin.
And I duly have none. Happy to fess to that. But I'm definitely not a Russophobe. I put the war down to Putin not 'Russia'. It's just I have a general skepticism about national characteristics. Not all of them, and not in all contexts, but particularly those imputing 'personal type' qualities to a whole people. So things like diligent/lazy or brave/cowardly or jolly/dour. This sort of thing. It's largely bollocks imo.
The Japanese and the Germans, in their time, were considered (by some) to be incredibly resilient and far more capable of fighting to the death than "lesser breeds".
Turned out the death worship wasn't actually innate. Funny that.
Any more than ¡Viva la Muerte! is how Spaniards feel about pretty much anything.
Yes exactly. Personalising a people can have racist overtones. But it's more often than not just loose 'man of the world' discourse. Harmless enough, enjoyable even, although it can lead to mistakes in analysis.
It’s quite strange being in a country as young as Cambodia. Everyone seems to be in their twenties BECAUSE THEY ARE. Median age is 27
Even stranger is that absolutely everyone is slim. Healthy looking. I’ve been here a month (and was here last year as well) and I’m not sure I’ve seen a single fat person. I’ve seen some portly-ish old people, but they are stout in the way older people can be or even should be. A bit of a tummy (men), chunky around the arse (the women) - I have not seen a single overweight person under 40, let alone obese. It means even average looking women are kinda sexy, due to being slender as a reed
And I’m not imagining it. Cambodia is the 4th least obese nation on Earth. 3.9%
Did Britain look like this in the 1930s or 1970s? What have we done to ourselves? It is disgusting
I hope Cambodia bans all processed food and any foodstuff made in America
I mean that is kinda what happens when your country gets bombed to bits by the US and then have a long civil war and genocide at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.
Well, it's one way of dealing with the demographic transition. Not sure it's quite what I would recommend....
Starmer's remorseless pursuit of GE victory continues apace, as he dismantles step by step every potential attack line that can be pursued against him. Today it's the turn of the £28 billion sum for the Green Prosperity Plan.
The mistake was, of course, putting a number on it back in 2021, at a time of low interest rates and when they had little idea what the state of the economy would be in 2024. Not sure why they did that - much better to establish the Green Prosperity Plan and GB Energy as policies, the financing of which would be revealed at the time of the GE.
By the time of the GE, the Tories will only be left with two attack lines: 1. This happily married father doesn't know what a woman is (I think he does), and 2. Starmer keeps changing his mind in the light of new evidence.
This has been a Labour comms disaster, though. I agree that the number should never have been provided but when it was, backtracking from it can only look weak - especially in the long, drawn out way it has been done.
Er, you haven't noticed that we have discussed it several times on PB, including Labour's modification of the photo to a Britain Isn't Working-style election poster. But it is always good to remind ourselves that that is the way in which current government policy drills down to the ordinary punter on the street.
But the obvious BME over-representation in that queue
This is where you fucked up.
No, it isn't
It will be newcomers seeking dentists. Settled citizens (of any stripe) will already have dentists, in the main
For the last eight years the vast majority of migration into Britain - since Brexit - has been non-white, non-EU. You would therefore expect a queue of new people, presumably seeking a dentist, to be non-white
Not really. People move around, and will need a new dentist. Existing dental practices shut down and their patients need a new dentist. Plenty of people simply don't have a dentist because NHS dentists in their area won't take new patients. You just looked at a queue of non white people and said "they must be immigrants" on the basis of no information. Given that you live in Camden you have a surprisingly provincial and outdated view of British society.
St Paul's, Bristol, has one of the higher levels of non-UK-born inhabitants in the country. So, no, I didn't just presume, I looked at the data
St Paul's has had a large African/Caribbean population since the 1950s (it has had a carnival since the early 1960s and was where the Bristol Bus Boycott started) so will also be home to a significant non white population who are not immigrants and certainly not recent arrivals. I just don't know how one can judge whether the crowd outside the dental practice are recent immigrants or not based on their appearance. It all reminds me of some friends of my grandparents who congratulated my then girlfriend, now wife, on her beautiful English. Her parents are Sri Lankan but she was born in Margate and was studying at Cambridge University at the time so her English language skills were not really that surprising.
Suggesting that British born BAMEs aren’t really British is Goodwin’s latest slippery little trick. I suppose they’re an easy visible target towards which to direct the torch wielding mob.
"The Scots are as British as anyone," isn't your usual line.
We’re as British as any other person born in the UK. Polling suggests we don’t feel as strong an attachment to that identity as BAME folk, despite the best efforts of Goodwin and his fellow travellers to put them off.
Er, you haven't noticed that we have discussed it several times on PB, including Labour's modification of the photo to a Britain Isn't Working-style election poster. But it is always good to remind ourselves that that is the way in which current government policy drills down to the ordinary punter on the street.
But the obvious BME over-representation in that queue
This is where you fucked up.
No, it isn't
It will be newcomers seeking dentists. Settled citizens (of any stripe) will already have dentists, in the main
For the last eight years the vast majority of migration into Britain - since Brexit - has been non-white, non-EU. You would therefore expect a queue of new people, presumably seeking a dentist, to be non-white
I didn't see you travelling down this path tbh. What does it matter what colour people are. Plus I've no idea whether your "stat" is true. I haven't yet come across a black Polish plumber or Romanian bricklayer or indeed Albanian chippie but I'm sure some exist.
Or are you feeling a bit besieged on PB atm and are doubling down.
I am merely saying that the video is - arguably - a visual representation of the pressure mass migration is putting on the UK's public services and infra. This is hardly a new point from me, I am hardly going off on a new Nazi tangent, am I? I expect you've heard me make the point before
And yet there are PB-ers who deny this is an issue. Who deny that mass migration might be at least part of the reason we see such pressure on UK health, education, sewage, roads, &c
See below
i do feel slightly beseiged, but I quite enjoy it (for now). With @Casino_Royale gone I am like the last redcoat in Zulu, the drunken malingerer in the sick bay turned hero, shooting up at the thatch as the lefty hordes overwhelm the Drift. Hooky. That was his name. Hooky. Got a VC didn't he?
The drunken malingerer thing was bullshit, incidentally. He was a lay Methodist preacher and an exemplary soldier, IIRC.
Also, IIRC, his descendants protested at his portrayal
Great movie, tho. Really really great
I imagine it is barely showable now, as it is quite non-Woke
Apart from it being on woke Channel 4 at new year and on 4OD (maybe still is) it’s barely showable.
Yep. You can't get away from it. If you want to not watch it you have to make that a priority.
But if you change channel (to the only other channel), they are showing The Dam Busters on a loop. With the name of the dog* unbleeped.
*Dog not included for scale.
Time for a good book then, preferably one without any 'heroic' war nonsense. Eg I'm into a Japanese magical realist epic atm. I pick it up whenever I'm tempted to do something reprehensible.
Or fire up The Cruel Sea.
"Snorkers! Good oh!"
Train smash as it was known to my father, albeit when served with tomatoes.
Snorkers = very dubious tinned sausages Train Smash = everything available cooked together.
I *thought*
"It's the war. The whole, bloody war." - favourite Cruel Sea quote. Hawkins delivers it immaculately.
Yes - the comment from many Battle of The Atlantic veterans was that it was the film that spoke for them.
When I worked in the oil industry, they called in an ancient Norwegian retired tanker captain for some consultations. In the pub, afterwards, he reminisced a bit on WWII - he'd been a crewman on the Murmansk run. His stories put me in mind of this -
Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.
Robert Frost if I remember correctly. One of the few snatches of poetry I memorized in my youth, along with "to stand, to seek...", "we are the pilgrims, master,...", "for the ashes of his fathers...", and the one with the fork in the wood. Forgotten now, but I remember remembering them, the ghost of a ghost.
‘A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state… [snip - see the link],
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth’
So the only actual report I can find (other than pieces in right wing media about the report) are in Danish, and I can't find anything discussing the report in English other than right wingers hailing it as the evidence they've always needed that immigrants are bad actually. That's not to say it is wrong, just that as someone who doesn't speak Danish I can't verify the actual findings of the report outside of places like unherd, who are not a source I trust.
I have found an OpenDemocracy article detailing essentially the argument I put forth yesterday - how if immigrants are a "drain" on an economy it is most likely the practices of the employers who abuse those workers and use them to under cut labour rights and labour costs, but I accept that could have nothing to do with what this report was exploring. If you have a link directly to the report in English, I'd be very interested to look at it, the methodology and such.
The comparison doesn't really work for a country whose average income is about 70% of that in the Netherlands.
The percentage of those on benefit who are not UK citizens was around 16% in 2019 (I can't quickly find a more recent figure); and migrants are more likely to be in work that native born Brits.
So whatever your feelings about the levels of immigration, the comparison with the Netherlands (assuming the capacity of your article) is anyway complete bunk.
And there we have it. Britain is so violently different to Netherlands none of this applies. Of course
That is, until a comparison with an eu country comes along of which you approve, then it totally applies
Honestly, this level of argumentation is quite depressing
You first said "BME" which I believe stands for "Black [and] Minority Ethnic".
That was your error. You brought race into it. Many (most? who knows) black Britons have roots here that go back decades. But you fell into the trap (to put it kindly) of identifying people by their race, not their economic status.
Plus how many times do I have to tell you. The UK simply does not want fewer immigrants.
Because most new migrants into the UK, since Brexit, have been BME. St Paul’s has a major chunk of non UK born citizens. It will be incomers who desperately need a new dentist, not settled citizens of whatever ethnicity
I was using logic and combining these facts. I understand you’d prefer to resort to irrationality and call me a Nazi or whatever. I really don’t give a fuck and THIS IS BECOMING QUITE TIRESOME
OK SORRY PLEASE STAY WITH ME.
Do you have no understanding of what you are unleashing when you look at a bunch of immigrants and categorise them as "BME". You instantly lump in every eg black Briton into the "other", undesirable category.
Because you are using race to identify them. Not immigrants or asylum seekers but black people . You are saying, you literally said, "but the obvious black over-representation in that queue".
Now as you are an old hand at the writing game I'll allow that your meaning was ever so sophisticated but if our Nige stood up and said "look at all the black people queuing outside the dentist, it's intolerable" many people might be reminded of the "send them back" mantra of the '70s, now, mightn't they.
O/T I went to a dinner/seminar last night at which defence/ Ukraine issues were discussed at length by top analysts. The key takeaways were:-
1. Tactically, the performance of the Russian army is dreadful, no better than two years ago. But, it has always been. Operationally, it is a lot more capable, and it is getting artillery shells in much greater numbers than Ukraine. There are precisely two European companies that manufacture artillery shells. However, Ukraine has the advantage in terms of possession and production of drones.
2. Russians are willing to suffer hardship, to achieve military success, in ways we don’t fully appreciate in the West.
3. But even Russia can’t defy economic gravity for ever. Soviet oil exports have been hit hard in recent months, partly due to drone attacks, and the regime is burning through foreign exchange reserves at an incredible speed. If Ukraine can keep fighting for 2-3 years, then it will likely win, as Russia runs out of resources.
4. Germany’s commitment to Ukraine is now of vital importance. As well as aid, Germany is now training twice as many Ukrainian soldiers as the UK is.
5. The reduction of the UK’s military capability, starting in 2010, is of real concern, throughout NATO. Cameron, Osborne and their successors have acted as if the world is growing safer, rather than more dangerous.
6. Contrary to press reports, there is no shortage of people wishing to join the armed forces. The real problem is with Capita, taking up to 14 months to process applications, by which time, they’ve taken other jobs.
With (2) were the analysts saying it's something in the Russian 'soul' (or whatever) that makes them tolerate great hardship for the sake of military glory? Because I've heard that a lot and I'm a bit skeptical. Isn't it more that the people there are repressed under a dictatorship and subject to vast amounts of propaganda? Meaning they are (i) more likely to keep on believing in the cause and (ii) less likely to play up even if they don't.
From what ive seen of Russians on holiday they are generally tougher. They have to be living in a cold climate in a relatively poor country that has been subject to invasions and brutal dictatorships. With regards to propaganda we in the west are too subject to constant propoganda to justify a model that vastly benefits a privileged few but impoverishes many.
This was not my experience in Tenerife.
Great line.
kinabalu sizing up the Russian and German tourists in Tenerife so we don't have to!
Maybe Gran Canaria next year.
Which will be very different and thus broaden the mind yet further.
Starmer's remorseless pursuit of GE victory continues apace, as he dismantles step by step every potential attack line that can be pursued against him. Today it's the turn of the £28 billion sum for the Green Prosperity Plan.
The mistake was, of course, putting a number on it back in 2021, at a time of low interest rates and when they had little idea what the state of the economy would be in 2024. Not sure why they did that - much better to establish the Green Prosperity Plan and GB Energy as policies, the financing of which would be revealed at the time of the GE.
By the time of the GE, the Tories will only be left with two attack lines: 1. This happily married father doesn't know what a woman is (I think he does), and 2. Starmer keeps changing his mind in the light of new evidence.
There is danger in 2 though. I do think Labour’s dismantling of their policy program is too hasty and a risky decision to make. They may surprise with some innovative policies in the manifesto, but at the moment it is looking like they’re not actually sure what they want to do. Other than build houses. Which is a good policy, but it can’t be their only one.
It’s quite strange being in a country as young as Cambodia. Everyone seems to be in their twenties BECAUSE THEY ARE. Median age is 27
Even stranger is that absolutely everyone is slim. Healthy looking. I’ve been here a month (and was here last year as well) and I’m not sure I’ve seen a single fat person. I’ve seen some portly-ish old people, but they are stout in the way older people can be or even should be. A bit of a tummy (men), chunky around the arse (the women) - I have not seen a single overweight person under 40, let alone obese. It means even average looking women are kinda sexy, due to being slender as a reed
And I’m not imagining it. Cambodia is the 4th least obese nation on Earth. 3.9%
Did Britain look like this in the 1930s or 1970s? What have we done to ourselves? It is disgusting
I hope Cambodia bans all processed food and any foodstuff made in America
I mean that is kinda what happens when your country gets bombed to bits by the US and then have a long civil war and genocide at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.
No, it’s an East Asian thing
They are generally much slimmer and eat better food - Singapore has a really low obesity rate and they were never bombed by America or had a genocide etc
O/T I went to a dinner/seminar last night at which defence/ Ukraine issues were discussed at length by top analysts. The key takeaways were:-
1. Tactically, the performance of the Russian army is dreadful, no better than two years ago. But, it has always been. Operationally, it is a lot more capable, and it is getting artillery shells in much greater numbers than Ukraine. There are precisely two European companies that manufacture artillery shells. However, Ukraine has the advantage in terms of possession and production of drones.
2. Russians are willing to suffer hardship, to achieve military success, in ways we don’t fully appreciate in the West.
3. But even Russia can’t defy economic gravity for ever. Soviet oil exports have been hit hard in recent months, partly due to drone attacks, and the regime is burning through foreign exchange reserves at an incredible speed. If Ukraine can keep fighting for 2-3 years, then it will likely win, as Russia runs out of resources.
4. Germany’s commitment to Ukraine is now of vital importance. As well as aid, Germany is now training twice as many Ukrainian soldiers as the UK is.
5. The reduction of the UK’s military capability, starting in 2010, is of real concern, throughout NATO. Cameron, Osborne and their successors have acted as if the world is growing safer, rather than more dangerous.
6. Contrary to press reports, there is no shortage of people wishing to join the armed forces. The real problem is with Capita, taking up to 14 months to process applications, by which time, they’ve taken other jobs.
With (2) were the analysts saying it's something in the Russian 'soul' (or whatever) that makes them tolerate great hardship for the sake of military glory? Because I've heard that a lot and I'm a bit skeptical. Isn't it more that the people there are repressed under a dictatorship and subject to vast amounts of propaganda? Meaning they are (i) more likely to keep on believing in the cause and (ii) less likely to play up even if they don't.
They have a cultural obsession with war and dying in large numbers that makes the English undying fixation on WW2 look like a passing fancy.
Understanding of Russian culture, with a few exceptions, by Western commentators is meagre. It's impossible to have anything other than superficial, and probably erroneous, grasp on it if all you have is English language sources curated by Western media. Hence, the smug and staggering ignorance that our resident Russophobes wear with such pride as if it were the Order of Lenin.
You make it sound a pretty sick society.
1905 and 1917 showed there may be a limit to the Russians’ willingness to endure suffering.
It’s quite strange being in a country as young as Cambodia. Everyone seems to be in their twenties BECAUSE THEY ARE. Median age is 27
Even stranger is that absolutely everyone is slim. Healthy looking. I’ve been here a month (and was here last year as well) and I’m not sure I’ve seen a single fat person. I’ve seen some portly-ish old people, but they are stout in the way older people can be or even should be. A bit of a tummy (men), chunky around the arse (the women) - I have not seen a single overweight person under 40, let alone obese. It means even average looking women are kinda sexy, due to being slender as a reed
And I’m not imagining it. Cambodia is the 4th least obese nation on Earth. 3.9%
Er, you haven't noticed that we have discussed it several times on PB, including Labour's modification of the photo to a Britain Isn't Working-style election poster. But it is always good to remind ourselves that that is the way in which current government policy drills down to the ordinary punter on the street.
But the obvious BME over-representation in that queue
This is where you fucked up.
No, it isn't
It will be newcomers seeking dentists. Settled citizens (of any stripe) will already have dentists, in the main
For the last eight years the vast majority of migration into Britain - since Brexit - has been non-white, non-EU. You would therefore expect a queue of new people, presumably seeking a dentist, to be non-white
Not really. People move around, and will need a new dentist. Existing dental practices shut down and their patients need a new dentist. Plenty of people simply don't have a dentist because NHS dentists in their area won't take new patients. You just looked at a queue of non white people and said "they must be immigrants" on the basis of no information. Given that you live in Camden you have a surprisingly provincial and outdated view of British society.
St Paul's, Bristol, has one of the higher levels of non-UK-born inhabitants in the country. So, no, I didn't just presume, I looked at the data
St Paul's has had a large African/Caribbean population since the 1950s (it has had a carnival since the early 1960s and was where the Bristol Bus Boycott started) so will also be home to a significant non white population who are not immigrants and certainly not recent arrivals. I just don't know how one can judge whether the crowd outside the dental practice are recent immigrants or not based on their appearance. It all reminds me of some friends of my grandparents who congratulated my then girlfriend, now wife, on her beautiful English. Her parents are Sri Lankan but she was born in Margate and was studying at Cambridge University at the time so her English language skills were not really that surprising.
People who attended the University of Cambridge speak the best. Fact.
We also write the best.
If the young lady was brought up in Margate I’m surprised she spoke good English!
The thought did occur to me, but I instantly dismissed it on consideration, as essexist.
You’re not a man of Kent I take it.
No, nor even a Kentish man - geography a bit hazy.
[Edit] Quite right to correct that slip, so ignore the attempted joke. But doesn't the local dialect sound the same on both sides of the Estuary, as a matter of interest?
There's a whole range of accents in Essex - from the stereotypical TOWIE accent close to London to something quite different out towards the Suffolk borders. I grew up in Chelmsford (more or less in the middle of Essex) and most people through my life have not thought I have an Essex accent. I take more after my dad, who grew up near the Suffolk border, than my mum who grew up near Brentwood (more TOWIE-esque). People at school thought I sounded very posh (oddly enough as I was from one of the poorer families).
Kent is a pretty flat estuary accent, but mostly not the stereotypical Essex sound.
Of course, in both, as you get close to London it gets more similar, to my ears at least.
I lived much of my life on the North bank of the Thames, with two short periods in the North East and North West. In retirement I moved North of Chelmsford and although quite a few people still speak ‘Essex’ as described by Mr Selebian most of the younger folk sound as though they’re from Southend. Sadly.
Estuary English? Accents are moving East as old-fashioned London accents are being replaced by MLE (Multicultural London English).
Starmer's remorseless pursuit of GE victory continues apace, as he dismantles step by step every potential attack line that can be pursued against him. Today it's the turn of the £28 billion sum for the Green Prosperity Plan.
The mistake was, of course, putting a number on it back in 2021, at a time of low interest rates and when they had little idea what the state of the economy would be in 2024. Not sure why they did that - much better to establish the Green Prosperity Plan and GB Energy as policies, the financing of which would be revealed at the time of the GE.
By the time of the GE, the Tories will only be left with two attack lines: 1. This happily married father doesn't know what a woman is (I think he does), and 2. Starmer keeps changing his mind in the light of new evidence.
There is danger in 2 though. I do think Labour’s dismantling of their policy program is too hasty and a risky decision to make. They may surprise with some innovative policies in the manifesto, but at the moment it is looking like they’re not actually sure what they want to do. Other than build houses. Which is a good policy, but it can’t be their only one.
It’s quite strange being in a country as young as Cambodia. Everyone seems to be in their twenties BECAUSE THEY ARE. Median age is 27
Even stranger is that absolutely everyone is slim. Healthy looking. I’ve been here a month (and was here last year as well) and I’m not sure I’ve seen a single fat person. I’ve seen some portly-ish old people, but they are stout in the way older people can be or even should be. A bit of a tummy (men), chunky around the arse (the women) - I have not seen a single overweight person under 40, let alone obese. It means even average looking women are kinda sexy, due to being slender as a reed
And I’m not imagining it. Cambodia is the 4th least obese nation on Earth. 3.9%
Did Britain look like this in the 1930s or 1970s? What have we done to ourselves? It is disgusting
I hope Cambodia bans all processed food and any foodstuff made in America
I mean that is kinda what happens when your country gets bombed to bits by the US and then have a long civil war and genocide at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.
No, it’s an East Asian thing
They are generally much slimmer and eat better food - Singapore has a really low obesity rate and they were never bombed by America or had a genocide etc
They were occupied for over three years by Japan, however.
It’s quite strange being in a country as young as Cambodia. Everyone seems to be in their twenties BECAUSE THEY ARE. Median age is 27
Even stranger is that absolutely everyone is slim. Healthy looking. I’ve been here a month (and was here last year as well) and I’m not sure I’ve seen a single fat person. I’ve seen some portly-ish old people, but they are stout in the way older people can be or even should be. A bit of a tummy (men), chunky around the arse (the women) - I have not seen a single overweight person under 40, let alone obese. It means even average looking women are kinda sexy, due to being slender as a reed
And I’m not imagining it. Cambodia is the 4th least obese nation on Earth. 3.9%
Did Britain look like this in the 1930s or 1970s? What have we done to ourselves? It is disgusting
I hope Cambodia bans all processed food and any foodstuff made in America
I mean that is kinda what happens when your country gets bombed to bits by the US and then have a long civil war and genocide at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.
No, it’s an East Asian thing
They are generally much slimmer and eat better food - Singapore has a really low obesity rate and they were never bombed by America or had a genocide etc
Singapore is way more civilized than the uk now. They only allow in high quality immigrants.
‘A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state… [snip - see the link],
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth’
So the only actual report I can find (other than pieces in right wing media about the report) are in Danish, and I can't find anything discussing the report in English other than right wingers hailing it as the evidence they've always needed that immigrants are bad actually. That's not to say it is wrong, just that as someone who doesn't speak Danish I can't verify the actual findings of the report outside of places like unherd, who are not a source I trust.
I have found an OpenDemocracy article detailing essentially the argument I put forth yesterday - how if immigrants are a "drain" on an economy it is most likely the practices of the employers who abuse those workers and use them to under cut labour rights and labour costs, but I accept that could have nothing to do with what this report was exploring. If you have a link directly to the report in English, I'd be very interested to look at it, the methodology and such.
The comparison doesn't really work for a country whose average income is about 70% of that in the Netherlands.
The percentage of those on benefit who are not UK citizens was around 16% in 2019 (I can't quickly find a more recent figure); and migrants are more likely to be in work that native born Brits.
So whatever your feelings about the levels of immigration, the comparison with the Netherlands (assuming the capacity of your article) is anyway complete bunk.
And there we have it. Britain is so violently different to Netherlands none of this applies. Of course
That is, until a comparison with an eu country comes along of which you approve, then it totally applies
Honestly, this level of argumentation is quite depressing
It is obviously fair to look at the pros and cons of immigration from different parts of the world to the Netherlands and assume that it would be more or less the same in the UK. I linked to that research here a while ago, it is pretty much a slam dunk
The crazy thing is that is seems no consideration at all was given to which type of immigrant would suit/benefit us before we embarked on a policy of mass immigration. It’s like a football team just buying 10-12 players without doing any research on whether those players would gel with their existing squad; no team would do it now in the era of data & analytics, yet it’s controversial to suggest we do so as a country
Indeed. This site is now close to intolerable
The level of discourse is infantile, the herding is pathetic, it’s just a bunch of fucking TEDIOUS midwit lawyers, accountants and IT nerds wanking on about shite and denying anything uncomfortable. Everyone interesting has left
It’s come to something when the most engaged and interesting commenter - amongst the lefty dross - is an actual lunatic Marxist. @148grss
"Afternoon gents. I hope you are all keeping well. I remain banned, for reasons unknown. Can one or more of you ask why on the forum? If it's merely a technical issue, can @TheScreamingEagles or @rcs1000 please release me from this purgatory."
Guessing he refused to pay the monthly subscription in cash and was trying it on with one of these new fangled e-payment thingymajigs?
Ed Miliband last June. You can add two more to his ‘some’. Sir Keir said he was doubling down on the pledge in November, and that it was a matter of ‘trust’. Just like it was a ‘matter of principle’ to accept the referendum result & an ‘important point of principle’ to campaign for a second referendum…
Still, at least the rosette is red not blue
Some people don’t want Britain to borrow to invest in the green economy. They want us to back down.
But Keir, Rachel and I will never let that happen. Britain needs this £28bn a year plan and that is what we are committed to
‘A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state… [snip - see the link],
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth’
So the only actual report I can find (other than pieces in right wing media about the report) are in Danish, and I can't find anything discussing the report in English other than right wingers hailing it as the evidence they've always needed that immigrants are bad actually. That's not to say it is wrong, just that as someone who doesn't speak Danish I can't verify the actual findings of the report outside of places like unherd, who are not a source I trust.
I have found an OpenDemocracy article detailing essentially the argument I put forth yesterday - how if immigrants are a "drain" on an economy it is most likely the practices of the employers who abuse those workers and use them to under cut labour rights and labour costs, but I accept that could have nothing to do with what this report was exploring. If you have a link directly to the report in English, I'd be very interested to look at it, the methodology and such.
The comparison doesn't really work for a country whose average income is about 70% of that in the Netherlands.
The percentage of those on benefit who are not UK citizens was around 16% in 2019 (I can't quickly find a more recent figure); and migrants are more likely to be in work that native born Brits.
So whatever your feelings about the levels of immigration, the comparison with the Netherlands (assuming the capacity of your article) is anyway complete bunk.
And there we have it. Britain is so violently different to Netherlands none of this applies. Of course
That is, until a comparison with an eu country comes along of which you approve, then it totally applies
Honestly, this level of argumentation is quite depressing
You first said "BME" which I believe stands for "Black [and] Minority Ethnic".
That was your error. You brought race into it. Many (most? who knows) black Britons have roots here that go back decades. But you fell into the trap (to put it kindly) of identifying people by their race, not their economic status.
Plus how many times do I have to tell you. The UK simply does not want fewer immigrants.
Because most new migrants into the UK, since Brexit, have been BME. St Paul’s has a major chunk of non UK born citizens. It will be incomers who desperately need a new dentist, not settled citizens of whatever ethnicity
I was using logic and combining these facts. I understand you’d prefer to resort to irrationality and call me a Nazi or whatever. I really don’t give a fuck and THIS IS BECOMING QUITE TIRESOME
I remember that a friend of mine who worked in comms was at a big meeting of some Tory types who liked Brexit like 6 months after the referendum. He told me how he had to explain that obviously the UK would become less inviting to European, American and other (white) Commonwealth country migrants (because part of the benefit of coming to the UK to work was being able to easily travel in Europe whilst here) and that the UK would see more migration from Africa, India and East Asia. This... did not go down well.
Amazing that the police don't seem to have caught Ezedi hiding in plain sight in the likes of Tescos. Does everyone just assume someone else has called the police in situations like that ?
My assumption is that he has killed himself (jumped of a bridge into the Thames), hence the trail going cold on the evening of the attack.
I'd have thought it'd be pretty difficult to jump off a bridge in London without that being captured on CCTV. Finding the body may be trickier in such a case, but bridges in big cities are pretty heavily monitored for traffic and crime reasons.
I agree there is a pretty high chance he's dead, although also possible he has an accomplice.
Sadly, people fall/jump in the river, often from near or on bridges, a far bit in London. The drunk younguns... "Last seen near x bridge"
They don't seem to get caught on CCTV.
EDIT: I haven't seen a body, but most of the rowing coaches in the club have seen them or even found them, over the years.
I've always kind of assumed in these cases that there is CCTV and that Police are pretty confident as to what has happened - otherwise they'd not say "last seen near X bridge" - I mean, just about everywhere in central London is near a bridge.
But CCTV quality isn't brilliant, so you're not 100% whether it's the person who has been reported missing or some random person who happened to choose that night, and it doesn't tell you state of mind - so they still want a body and any witnesses to tie up loose ends and bring closure to the family. No family is really going to settle for, "there's a guy who might be your son dropping off a bridge on this grainy CCTV footage, so we're closing the file and going out for coffee and doughnuts".
Most bridges in central London have no CCTV on the bridge itself. So, at best, you might find footage of someone approaching the bridge, but not be able to find any sign of them on the other side. Enough to raise suspicions, but not much more than that...
I do wonder, though, if the Police are talking publicly about him having killed himself as a ruse intended to make him feel confident enough to leave wherever he's hiding.
O/T I went to a dinner/seminar last night at which defence/ Ukraine issues were discussed at length by top analysts. The key takeaways were:-
1. Tactically, the performance of the Russian army is dreadful, no better than two years ago. But, it has always been. Operationally, it is a lot more capable, and it is getting artillery shells in much greater numbers than Ukraine. There are precisely two European companies that manufacture artillery shells. However, Ukraine has the advantage in terms of possession and production of drones.
2. Russians are willing to suffer hardship, to achieve military success, in ways we don’t fully appreciate in the West.
3. But even Russia can’t defy economic gravity for ever. Soviet oil exports have been hit hard in recent months, partly due to drone attacks, and the regime is burning through foreign exchange reserves at an incredible speed. If Ukraine can keep fighting for 2-3 years, then it will likely win, as Russia runs out of resources.
4. Germany’s commitment to Ukraine is now of vital importance. As well as aid, Germany is now training twice as many Ukrainian soldiers as the UK is.
5. The reduction of the UK’s military capability, starting in 2010, is of real concern, throughout NATO. Cameron, Osborne and their successors have acted as if the world is growing safer, rather than more dangerous.
6. Contrary to press reports, there is no shortage of people wishing to join the armed forces. The real problem is with Capita, taking up to 14 months to process applications, by which time, they’ve taken other jobs.
With (2) were the analysts saying it's something in the Russian 'soul' (or whatever) that makes them tolerate great hardship for the sake of military glory? Because I've heard that a lot and I'm a bit skeptical. Isn't it more that the people there are repressed under a dictatorship and subject to vast amounts of propaganda? Meaning they are (i) more likely to keep on believing in the cause and (ii) less likely to play up even if they don't.
They have a cultural obsession with war and dying in large numbers that makes the English undying fixation on WW2 look like a passing fancy.
Understanding of Russian culture, with a few exceptions, by Western commentators is meagre. It's impossible to have anything other than superficial, and probably erroneous, grasp on it if all you have is English language sources curated by Western media. Hence, the smug and staggering ignorance that our resident Russophobes wear with such pride as if it were the Order of Lenin.
And I duly have none. Happy to fess to that. But I'm definitely not a Russophobe. I put the war down to Putin not 'Russia'. It's just I have a general skepticism about national characteristics. Not all of them, and not in all contexts, but particularly those imputing 'personal type' qualities to a whole people. So things like diligent/lazy or brave/cowardly or jolly/dour. This sort of thing. It's largely bollocks imo.
The Japanese and the Germans, in their time, were considered (by some) to be incredibly resilient and far more capable of fighting to the death than "lesser breeds".
Turned out the death worship wasn't actually innate. Funny that.
Any more than ¡Viva la Muerte! is how Spaniards feel about pretty much anything.
The same way the Confederates thought that their martial spirit would bring them victory over the effete Northerners.
O/T I went to a dinner/seminar last night at which defence/ Ukraine issues were discussed at length by top analysts. The key takeaways were:-
1. Tactically, the performance of the Russian army is dreadful, no better than two years ago. But, it has always been. Operationally, it is a lot more capable, and it is getting artillery shells in much greater numbers than Ukraine. There are precisely two European companies that manufacture artillery shells. However, Ukraine has the advantage in terms of possession and production of drones.
2. Russians are willing to suffer hardship, to achieve military success, in ways we don’t fully appreciate in the West.
3. But even Russia can’t defy economic gravity for ever. Soviet oil exports have been hit hard in recent months, partly due to drone attacks, and the regime is burning through foreign exchange reserves at an incredible speed. If Ukraine can keep fighting for 2-3 years, then it will likely win, as Russia runs out of resources.
4. Germany’s commitment to Ukraine is now of vital importance. As well as aid, Germany is now training twice as many Ukrainian soldiers as the UK is.
5. The reduction of the UK’s military capability, starting in 2010, is of real concern, throughout NATO. Cameron, Osborne and their successors have acted as if the world is growing safer, rather than more dangerous.
6. Contrary to press reports, there is no shortage of people wishing to join the armed forces. The real problem is with Capita, taking up to 14 months to process applications, by which time, they’ve taken other jobs.
With (2) were the analysts saying it's something in the Russian 'soul' (or whatever) that makes them tolerate great hardship for the sake of military glory? Because I've heard that a lot and I'm a bit skeptical. Isn't it more that the people there are repressed under a dictatorship and subject to vast amounts of propaganda? Meaning they are (i) more likely to keep on believing in the cause and (ii) less likely to play up even if they don't.
They have a cultural obsession with war and dying in large numbers that makes the English undying fixation on WW2 look like a passing fancy.
Understanding of Russian culture, with a few exceptions, by Western commentators is meagre. It's impossible to have anything other than superficial, and probably erroneous, grasp on it if all you have is English language sources curated by Western media. Hence, the smug and staggering ignorance that our resident Russophobes wear with such pride as if it were the Order of Lenin.
But you know what? If it comes to a choice between being a 'russophobe' in your eyes and being a full-on Russia apologist, please forgive me for choosing the former.
Have you considered that the Russian media that you slurp up might be even worse than ours for accuracy?
Have you considered it's possible to try to look at the situation dispassionately. We try to understand the motivations for actions and to avoid historical inevitablism. We don't want the Russians to succeed so they will fail. Why not look at facts on the ground.
And appreciate that we are a long way from knowing what on earth is going to happen but the old "one last push, this is it" PB mantra has not coincided with those facts on the ground, now, has it.
Yes, it is perfectly possible to view the situation dispassionately. The problem is, when he uses ethnic slurs against Ukrainians (e.g. Moskal from memory), DA isn't being dispassionate.
"Why not look at facts on the ground."
Indeed. But you know what? DA often reminds us of Ukrainian 'lies' - such as the Ghost of Kyiv. The problem is: Russia lies as well, and the 'facts on the ground' are rather thin on both sides.
As doe your last line, ISTR comments from the negativists in autumn 2022, just before Ukraine took back vast swathes of territory. Or a few months later, just before they took back most of Kherson.
If you accuse PB pro-Ukrainians of being too positive, I'd argue you're the other way.
I would be seriously worried if DA didn't use the vernacular to describe anyone. You should see how he describes Tories.
I am not accusing PB pro-Ukrainians of being too positive. I am accusing them of confusing what they want to happen with what might happen. They are engaging in historical inevitablism. Russia are the bad guys, bad guys lose, so Russia _will_ lose, and moreover if you don't also think Russia will lose you are a Putin apologist. It's bizarre.
Right from Day One people on here were showing youtube clips of platoon dismounts and crowing how this was proof if proof were needed of an imminent Ukrainian victory. Likewise talking about the "Spring Push". Likewise zillions of posts about this HIMARS deployment or that new Leopard 2 tank in theatre.
I understand that we in the UK are not used to losing (or we erase our losses from our history books, more usually - I mean how much does every schoolchild really know about 1776) but on PB it has grown into some bizarre psychological displacement process that "the good guys" can't lose and the bad guys must lose because (our own, highly selective) history.
I think you're missing that people are *laughing* at the Russian troops and their behaviour. When the Crimea Bridge was damaged, or the Moskva sunk; there was a lot of joking on here. Likewise, the new Russian sport of turret-tossing. Or the coup-that-was-a-mutiny-that-was-a-damp-squib last year.
And you know what? Given what the Russia is doing, a bit of pointing and laughing is fine IMV. Yes, there are young men being killed; but if Putin's regime want to stop that, they can just get the fuck out of Ukraine. All of it.
I think there's a great deal of acknowledgement that Ukraine can lose; and that things aren't going well at the moment - partly due to western not giving them stuff they need. But I'd argue on the other side, there's not enough discussion of what a Russian 'win' would be like - or how you define 'win'.
Did Britain look like this in the 1930s or 1970s? What have we done to ourselves? It is disgusting
I think that, to a first-order approximation, Britain was one of the countries that went directly from malnourished to porky without stopping on the way.
‘A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state… [snip - see the link],
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth’
So the only actual report I can find (other than pieces in right wing media about the report) are in Danish, and I can't find anything discussing the report in English other than right wingers hailing it as the evidence they've always needed that immigrants are bad actually. That's not to say it is wrong, just that as someone who doesn't speak Danish I can't verify the actual findings of the report outside of places like unherd, who are not a source I trust.
I have found an OpenDemocracy article detailing essentially the argument I put forth yesterday - how if immigrants are a "drain" on an economy it is most likely the practices of the employers who abuse those workers and use them to under cut labour rights and labour costs, but I accept that could have nothing to do with what this report was exploring. If you have a link directly to the report in English, I'd be very interested to look at it, the methodology and such.
The comparison doesn't really work for a country whose average income is about 70% of that in the Netherlands.
The percentage of those on benefit who are not UK citizens was around 16% in 2019 (I can't quickly find a more recent figure); and migrants are more likely to be in work that native born Brits.
So whatever your feelings about the levels of immigration, the comparison with the Netherlands (assuming the capacity of your article) is anyway complete bunk.
And there we have it. Britain is so violently different to Netherlands none of this applies. Of course
That is, until a comparison with an eu country comes along of which you approve, then it totally applies
Honestly, this level of argumentation is quite depressing
It is obviously fair to look at the pros and cons of immigration from different parts of the world to the Netherlands and assume that it would be more or less the same in the UK. I linked to that research here a while ago, it is pretty much a slam dunk
The crazy thing is that is seems no consideration at all was given to which type of immigrant would suit/benefit us before we embarked on a policy of mass immigration. It’s like a football team just buying 10-12 players without doing any research on whether those players would gel with their existing squad; no team would do it now in the era of data & analytics, yet it’s controversial to suggest we do so as a country
Indeed. This site is now close to intolerable
The level of discourse is infantile, the herding is pathetic, it’s just a bunch of fucking TEDIOUS midwit lawyers, accountants and IT nerds wanking on about shite and denying anything uncomfortable. Everyone interesting has left
It’s come to something when the most engaged and interesting commenter - amongst the lefty dross - is an actual lunatic Marxist. @148grss
PFFFFF
Isnt this just the cycle ? Righties will drift away when the the government is heading for the exit; then return in droves as Starmer fks up and the lefties will disappear as they cant think of anything worth defending.
It’s quite strange being in a country as young as Cambodia. Everyone seems to be in their twenties BECAUSE THEY ARE. Median age is 27
Even stranger is that absolutely everyone is slim. Healthy looking. I’ve been here a month (and was here last year as well) and I’m not sure I’ve seen a single fat person. I’ve seen some portly-ish old people, but they are stout in the way older people can be or even should be. A bit of a tummy (men), chunky around the arse (the women) - I have not seen a single overweight person under 40, let alone obese. It means even average looking women are kinda sexy, due to being slender as a reed
And I’m not imagining it. Cambodia is the 4th least obese nation on Earth. 3.9%
Did Britain look like this in the 1930s or 1970s? What have we done to ourselves? It is disgusting
I hope Cambodia bans all processed food and any foodstuff made in America
The fascinating thing about the fat end of that list is the top 10 are all Micronesia, 11th is the US, and then the next nine are all middle east / north african countries.
O/T I went to a dinner/seminar last night at which defence/ Ukraine issues were discussed at length by top analysts. The key takeaways were:-
1. Tactically, the performance of the Russian army is dreadful, no better than two years ago. But, it has always been. Operationally, it is a lot more capable, and it is getting artillery shells in much greater numbers than Ukraine. There are precisely two European companies that manufacture artillery shells. However, Ukraine has the advantage in terms of possession and production of drones.
2. Russians are willing to suffer hardship, to achieve military success, in ways we don’t fully appreciate in the West.
3. But even Russia can’t defy economic gravity for ever. Soviet oil exports have been hit hard in recent months, partly due to drone attacks, and the regime is burning through foreign exchange reserves at an incredible speed. If Ukraine can keep fighting for 2-3 years, then it will likely win, as Russia runs out of resources.
4. Germany’s commitment to Ukraine is now of vital importance. As well as aid, Germany is now training twice as many Ukrainian soldiers as the UK is.
5. The reduction of the UK’s military capability, starting in 2010, is of real concern, throughout NATO. Cameron, Osborne and their successors have acted as if the world is growing safer, rather than more dangerous.
6. Contrary to press reports, there is no shortage of people wishing to join the armed forces. The real problem is with Capita, taking up to 14 months to process applications, by which time, they’ve taken other jobs.
With (2) were the analysts saying it's something in the Russian 'soul' (or whatever) that makes them tolerate great hardship for the sake of military glory? Because I've heard that a lot and I'm a bit skeptical. Isn't it more that the people there are repressed under a dictatorship and subject to vast amounts of propaganda? Meaning they are (i) more likely to keep on believing in the cause and (ii) less likely to play up even if they don't.
They have a cultural obsession with war and dying in large numbers that makes the English undying fixation on WW2 look like a passing fancy.
Understanding of Russian culture, with a few exceptions, by Western commentators is meagre. It's impossible to have anything other than superficial, and probably erroneous, grasp on it if all you have is English language sources curated by Western media. Hence, the smug and staggering ignorance that our resident Russophobes wear with such pride as if it were the Order of Lenin.
But you know what? If it comes to a choice between being a 'russophobe' in your eyes and being a full-on Russia apologist, please forgive me for choosing the former.
Have you considered that the Russian media that you slurp up might be even worse than ours for accuracy?
Have you considered it's possible to try to look at the situation dispassionately. We try to understand the motivations for actions and to avoid historical inevitablism. We don't want the Russians to succeed so they will fail. Why not look at facts on the ground.
And appreciate that we are a long way from knowing what on earth is going to happen but the old "one last push, this is it" PB mantra has not coincided with those facts on the ground, now, has it.
Yes, it is perfectly possible to view the situation dispassionately. The problem is, when he uses ethnic slurs against Ukrainians (e.g. Moskal from memory), DA isn't being dispassionate.
"Why not look at facts on the ground."
Indeed. But you know what? DA often reminds us of Ukrainian 'lies' - such as the Ghost of Kyiv. The problem is: Russia lies as well, and the 'facts on the ground' are rather thin on both sides.
As doe your last line, ISTR comments from the negativists in autumn 2022, just before Ukraine took back vast swathes of territory. Or a few months later, just before they took back most of Kherson.
If you accuse PB pro-Ukrainians of being too positive, I'd argue you're the other way.
I would be seriously worried if DA didn't use the vernacular to describe anyone. You should see how he describes Tories.
I am not accusing PB pro-Ukrainians of being too positive. I am accusing them of confusing what they want to happen with what might happen. They are engaging in historical inevitablism. Russia are the bad guys, bad guys lose, so Russia _will_ lose, and moreover if you don't also think Russia will lose you are a Putin apologist. It's bizarre.
Right from Day One people on here were showing youtube clips of platoon dismounts and crowing how this was proof if proof were needed of an imminent Ukrainian victory. Likewise talking about the "Spring Push". Likewise zillions of posts about this HIMARS deployment or that new Leopard 2 tank in theatre.
I understand that we in the UK are not used to losing (or we erase our losses from our history books, more usually - I mean how much does every schoolchild really know about 1776) but on PB it has grown into some bizarre psychological displacement process that "the good guys" can't lose and the bad guys must lose because (our own, highly selective) history.
Indeed. And what is glossed over in uk history books is it was the red army at Stalingrad that dealt the fatal blow to Hitler. By d day ghe germans had basically already lost the war. Looking at the ukraine war dispassionately it is clear the russians are advancing and ukraine is retreating. And of course if ukrainian morale totally collapses things could change rapidly.
Starmer's remorseless pursuit of GE victory continues apace, as he dismantles step by step every potential attack line that can be pursued against him. Today it's the turn of the £28 billion sum for the Green Prosperity Plan.
The mistake was, of course, putting a number on it back in 2021, at a time of low interest rates and when they had little idea what the state of the economy would be in 2024. Not sure why they did that - much better to establish the Green Prosperity Plan and GB Energy as policies, the financing of which would be revealed at the time of the GE.
By the time of the GE, the Tories will only be left with two attack lines: 1. This happily married father doesn't know what a woman is (I think he does), and 2. Starmer keeps changing his mind in the light of new evidence.
The tories will almost certainly run a negative campaign against Starmer because what else do they have? Nothing.
However, for a negative campaign to work it has to resonate with something the voters already suspect or feel. Attacks portraying Starmer as a lying chancer are just going to bounce off his heavily shellacked hair
O/T I went to a dinner/seminar last night at which defence/ Ukraine issues were discussed at length by top analysts. The key takeaways were:-
1. Tactically, the performance of the Russian army is dreadful, no better than two years ago. But, it has always been. Operationally, it is a lot more capable, and it is getting artillery shells in much greater numbers than Ukraine. There are precisely two European companies that manufacture artillery shells. However, Ukraine has the advantage in terms of possession and production of drones.
2. Russians are willing to suffer hardship, to achieve military success, in ways we don’t fully appreciate in the West.
3. But even Russia can’t defy economic gravity for ever. Soviet oil exports have been hit hard in recent months, partly due to drone attacks, and the regime is burning through foreign exchange reserves at an incredible speed. If Ukraine can keep fighting for 2-3 years, then it will likely win, as Russia runs out of resources.
4. Germany’s commitment to Ukraine is now of vital importance. As well as aid, Germany is now training twice as many Ukrainian soldiers as the UK is.
5. The reduction of the UK’s military capability, starting in 2010, is of real concern, throughout NATO. Cameron, Osborne and their successors have acted as if the world is growing safer, rather than more dangerous.
6. Contrary to press reports, there is no shortage of people wishing to join the armed forces. The real problem is with Capita, taking up to 14 months to process applications, by which time, they’ve taken other jobs.
With (2) were the analysts saying it's something in the Russian 'soul' (or whatever) that makes them tolerate great hardship for the sake of military glory? Because I've heard that a lot and I'm a bit skeptical. Isn't it more that the people there are repressed under a dictatorship and subject to vast amounts of propaganda? Meaning they are (i) more likely to keep on believing in the cause and (ii) less likely to play up even if they don't.
They have a cultural obsession with war and dying in large numbers that makes the English undying fixation on WW2 look like a passing fancy.
Understanding of Russian culture, with a few exceptions, by Western commentators is meagre. It's impossible to have anything other than superficial, and probably erroneous, grasp on it if all you have is English language sources curated by Western media. Hence, the smug and staggering ignorance that our resident Russophobes wear with such pride as if it were the Order of Lenin.
But you know what? If it comes to a choice between being a 'russophobe' in your eyes and being a full-on Russia apologist, please forgive me for choosing the former.
Have you considered that the Russian media that you slurp up might be even worse than ours for accuracy?
Have you considered it's possible to try to look at the situation dispassionately. We try to understand the motivations for actions and to avoid historical inevitablism. We don't want the Russians to succeed so they will fail. Why not look at facts on the ground.
And appreciate that we are a long way from knowing what on earth is going to happen but the old "one last push, this is it" PB mantra has not coincided with those facts on the ground, now, has it.
Yes, it is perfectly possible to view the situation dispassionately. The problem is, when he uses ethnic slurs against Ukrainians (e.g. Moskal from memory), DA isn't being dispassionate.
"Why not look at facts on the ground."
Indeed. But you know what? DA often reminds us of Ukrainian 'lies' - such as the Ghost of Kyiv. The problem is: Russia lies as well, and the 'facts on the ground' are rather thin on both sides.
As doe your last line, ISTR comments from the negativists in autumn 2022, just before Ukraine took back vast swathes of territory. Or a few months later, just before they took back most of Kherson.
If you accuse PB pro-Ukrainians of being too positive, I'd argue you're the other way.
I would be seriously worried if DA didn't use the vernacular to describe anyone. You should see how he describes Tories.
I am not accusing PB pro-Ukrainians of being too positive. I am accusing them of confusing what they want to happen with what might happen. They are engaging in historical inevitablism. Russia are the bad guys, bad guys lose, so Russia _will_ lose, and moreover if you don't also think Russia will lose you are a Putin apologist. It's bizarre.
Right from Day One people on here were showing youtube clips of platoon dismounts and crowing how this was proof if proof were needed of an imminent Ukrainian victory. Likewise talking about the "Spring Push". Likewise zillions of posts about this HIMARS deployment or that new Leopard 2 tank in theatre.
I understand that we in the UK are not used to losing (or we erase our losses from our history books, more usually - I mean how much does every schoolchild really know about 1776) but on PB it has grown into some bizarre psychological displacement process that "the good guys" can't lose and the bad guys must lose because (our own, highly selective) history.
I think you're missing that people are *laughing* at the Russian troops and their behaviour. When the Crimea Bridge was damaged, or the Moskva sunk; there was a lot of joking on here. Likewise, the new Russian sport of turret-tossing. Or the coup-that-was-a-mutiny-that-was-a-damp-squib last year.
And you know what? Given what the Russia is doing, a bit of pointing and laughing is fine IMV. Yes, there are young men being killed; but if Putin's regime want to stop that, they can just get the fuck out of Ukraine. All of it.
I think there's a great deal of acknowledgement that Ukraine can lose; and that things aren't going well at the moment - partly due to western not giving them stuff they need. But I'd argue on the other side, there's not enough discussion of what a Russian 'win' would be like - or how you define 'win'.
All good questions and I don't think anyone disagrees with the contention that in many ways Russia has lost vs its initial war aims and much else besides. But you know what they say about no good plan survives first contact with the enemy so we shall have to wait and see what happens next.
@Sean_F's "2-3 years and then maybe..." seems quite a big ask but as ever, it is up to the Ukrainians to determine their response at every step.
Doesn't affect my point about the bizarre PB thinking that Russia should lose hence Russia will lose.
‘A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state… [snip - see the link],
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth’
So the only actual report I can find (other than pieces in right wing media about the report) are in Danish, and I can't find anything discussing the report in English other than right wingers hailing it as the evidence they've always needed that immigrants are bad actually. That's not to say it is wrong, just that as someone who doesn't speak Danish I can't verify the actual findings of the report outside of places like unherd, who are not a source I trust.
I have found an OpenDemocracy article detailing essentially the argument I put forth yesterday - how if immigrants are a "drain" on an economy it is most likely the practices of the employers who abuse those workers and use them to under cut labour rights and labour costs, but I accept that could have nothing to do with what this report was exploring. If you have a link directly to the report in English, I'd be very interested to look at it, the methodology and such.
The comparison doesn't really work for a country whose average income is about 70% of that in the Netherlands.
The percentage of those on benefit who are not UK citizens was around 16% in 2019 (I can't quickly find a more recent figure); and migrants are more likely to be in work that native born Brits.
So whatever your feelings about the levels of immigration, the comparison with the Netherlands (assuming the capacity of your article) is anyway complete bunk.
And there we have it. Britain is so violently different to Netherlands none of this applies. Of course
That is, until a comparison with an eu country comes along of which you approve, then it totally applies
Honestly, this level of argumentation is quite depressing
It is obviously fair to look at the pros and cons of immigration from different parts of the world to the Netherlands and assume that it would be more or less the same in the UK. I linked to that research here a while ago, it is pretty much a slam dunk
The crazy thing is that is seems no consideration at all was given to which type of immigrant would suit/benefit us before we embarked on a policy of mass immigration. It’s like a football team just buying 10-12 players without doing any research on whether those players would gel with their existing squad; no team would do it now in the era of data & analytics, yet it’s controversial to suggest we do so as a country
Indeed. This site is now close to intolerable
The level of discourse is infantile, the herding is pathetic, it’s just a bunch of fucking TEDIOUS midwit lawyers, accountants and IT nerds wanking on about shite and denying anything uncomfortable. Everyone interesting has left
It’s come to something when the most engaged and interesting commenter - amongst the lefty dross - is an actual lunatic Marxist. @148grss
PFFFFF
I mean I'm in favour of Marxist material theory, but politically (as I have said) I'm much more of an anarcho syndacalist. Kropotkin, Makhno, Bookchin, Graeber, Öcalan are my thinkers of choice. It may have been forgotten by some, but "libertarian" was originally a term used by and to refer to some early anarchists; and it wasn't until the right in the US saw how popular these leftist ideas of freedom were that they decided to poach it for their brand of "freedom".
Did Britain look like this in the 1930s or 1970s? What have we done to ourselves? It is disgusting
I think that, to a first-order approximation, Britain was one of the countries that went directly from malnourished to porky without stopping on the way.
A friend of a friend of mine, now sadly deceased, did a superb documentary based upon the footage shot from within the train that took Robert F Kennedy's body back from California to Washington. Almost the entire journey the track was lined with people who had come to pay their respects (a bit like the Queen's journey from Balmoral to Edinburgh). The majority of those who had come out were black but black and white together what is truly startling to the modern eye is that almost none of them are obese in any age group.
In 1968 the United States was like @Leon is describing Cambodia now. It is scary what has happened in our life times.
‘A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state… [snip - see the link],
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth’
So the only actual report I can find (other than pieces in right wing media about the report) are in Danish, and I can't find anything discussing the report in English other than right wingers hailing it as the evidence they've always needed that immigrants are bad actually. That's not to say it is wrong, just that as someone who doesn't speak Danish I can't verify the actual findings of the report outside of places like unherd, who are not a source I trust.
I have found an OpenDemocracy article detailing essentially the argument I put forth yesterday - how if immigrants are a "drain" on an economy it is most likely the practices of the employers who abuse those workers and use them to under cut labour rights and labour costs, but I accept that could have nothing to do with what this report was exploring. If you have a link directly to the report in English, I'd be very interested to look at it, the methodology and such.
The comparison doesn't really work for a country whose average income is about 70% of that in the Netherlands.
The percentage of those on benefit who are not UK citizens was around 16% in 2019 (I can't quickly find a more recent figure); and migrants are more likely to be in work that native born Brits.
So whatever your feelings about the levels of immigration, the comparison with the Netherlands (assuming the capacity of your article) is anyway complete bunk.
And there we have it. Britain is so violently different to Netherlands none of this applies. Of course
That is, until a comparison with an eu country comes along of which you approve, then it totally applies
Honestly, this level of argumentation is quite depressing
It is obviously fair to look at the pros and cons of immigration from different parts of the world to the Netherlands and assume that it would be more or less the same in the UK. I linked to that research here a while ago, it is pretty much a slam dunk
The crazy thing is that is seems no consideration at all was given to which type of immigrant would suit/benefit us before we embarked on a policy of mass immigration. It’s like a football team just buying 10-12 players without doing any research on whether those players would gel with their existing squad; no team would do it now in the era of data & analytics, yet it’s controversial to suggest we do so as a country
Indeed. This site is now close to intolerable
The level of discourse is infantile, the herding is pathetic, it’s just a bunch of fucking TEDIOUS midwit lawyers, accountants and IT nerds wanking on about shite and denying anything uncomfortable. Everyone interesting has left
It’s come to something when the most engaged and interesting commenter - amongst the lefty dross - is an actual lunatic Marxist. @148grss
PFFFFF
The heady days of the early to mid 2010s when Nabavi, Meeks, & tim were worthy adversaries seem a long time ago. They are I suppose.
A couple of days ago I linked to a ‘Who would do better, Sunak or Starmer?’ Poll, and commented that Sir Keir had come second in all but one, the joke being that where ‘Neither’ won them all.
Not that funny, but several people honestly thought I hadn’t noticed that Sunak had almost always came third and tried to ridicule me for it, when the whole point was a self deprecating acknowledgement that I’m always on the pretend vegetarian republican’s case
O/T I went to a dinner/seminar last night at which defence/ Ukraine issues were discussed at length by top analysts. The key takeaways were:-
1. Tactically, the performance of the Russian army is dreadful, no better than two years ago. But, it has always been. Operationally, it is a lot more capable, and it is getting artillery shells in much greater numbers than Ukraine. There are precisely two European companies that manufacture artillery shells. However, Ukraine has the advantage in terms of possession and production of drones.
2. Russians are willing to suffer hardship, to achieve military success, in ways we don’t fully appreciate in the West.
3. But even Russia can’t defy economic gravity for ever. Soviet oil exports have been hit hard in recent months, partly due to drone attacks, and the regime is burning through foreign exchange reserves at an incredible speed. If Ukraine can keep fighting for 2-3 years, then it will likely win, as Russia runs out of resources.
4. Germany’s commitment to Ukraine is now of vital importance. As well as aid, Germany is now training twice as many Ukrainian soldiers as the UK is.
5. The reduction of the UK’s military capability, starting in 2010, is of real concern, throughout NATO. Cameron, Osborne and their successors have acted as if the world is growing safer, rather than more dangerous.
6. Contrary to press reports, there is no shortage of people wishing to join the armed forces. The real problem is with Capita, taking up to 14 months to process applications, by which time, they’ve taken other jobs.
With (2) were the analysts saying it's something in the Russian 'soul' (or whatever) that makes them tolerate great hardship for the sake of military glory? Because I've heard that a lot and I'm a bit skeptical. Isn't it more that the people there are repressed under a dictatorship and subject to vast amounts of propaganda? Meaning they are (i) more likely to keep on believing in the cause and (ii) less likely to play up even if they don't.
From what ive seen of Russians on holiday they are generally tougher. They have to be living in a cold climate in a relatively poor country that has been subject to invasions and brutal dictatorships. With regards to propaganda we in the west are too subject to constant propoganda to justify a model that vastly benefits a privileged few but impoverishes many.
This was not my experience in Tenerife.
Great line.
kinabalu sizing up the Russian and German tourists in Tenerife so we don't have to!
Maybe Gran Canaria next year.
Which will be very different and thus broaden the mind yet further.
Try Maspalamos Kinabalu. There is a good scene there.
‘A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state… [snip - see the link],
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth’
So the only actual report I can find (other than pieces in right wing media about the report) are in Danish, and I can't find anything discussing the report in English other than right wingers hailing it as the evidence they've always needed that immigrants are bad actually. That's not to say it is wrong, just that as someone who doesn't speak Danish I can't verify the actual findings of the report outside of places like unherd, who are not a source I trust.
I have found an OpenDemocracy article detailing essentially the argument I put forth yesterday - how if immigrants are a "drain" on an economy it is most likely the practices of the employers who abuse those workers and use them to under cut labour rights and labour costs, but I accept that could have nothing to do with what this report was exploring. If you have a link directly to the report in English, I'd be very interested to look at it, the methodology and such.
The comparison doesn't really work for a country whose average income is about 70% of that in the Netherlands.
The percentage of those on benefit who are not UK citizens was around 16% in 2019 (I can't quickly find a more recent figure); and migrants are more likely to be in work that native born Brits.
So whatever your feelings about the levels of immigration, the comparison with the Netherlands (assuming the capacity of your article) is anyway complete bunk.
And there we have it. Britain is so violently different to Netherlands none of this applies. Of course
That is, until a comparison with an eu country comes along of which you approve, then it totally applies
Honestly, this level of argumentation is quite depressing
It is obviously fair to look at the pros and cons of immigration from different parts of the world to the Netherlands and assume that it would be more or less the same in the UK. I linked to that research here a while ago, it is pretty much a slam dunk
The crazy thing is that is seems no consideration at all was given to which type of immigrant would suit/benefit us before we embarked on a policy of mass immigration. It’s like a football team just buying 10-12 players without doing any research on whether those players would gel with their existing squad; no team would do it now in the era of data & analytics, yet it’s controversial to suggest we do so as a country
Indeed. This site is now close to intolerable
The level of discourse is infantile, the herding is pathetic, it’s just a bunch of fucking TEDIOUS midwit lawyers, accountants and IT nerds wanking on about shite and denying anything uncomfortable. Everyone interesting has left
It’s come to something when the most engaged and interesting commenter - amongst the lefty dross - is an actual lunatic Marxist. @148grss
PFFFFF
Isnt this just the cycle ? Righties will drift away when the the government is heading for the exit; then return in droves as Starmer fks up and the lefties will disappear as they cant think of anything worth defending.
I think if anything this site has a slight centre right leaning. It’s just so many have abandoned the Tories (because they’re useless, and went nuts) that is not very apparent.
But there will be something in what you say too. I remember this site in the dying days of Browns government, and it felt about 80% Cameroon then.
Nayib Bukele's speech after winning reelection is worth watching. El Salvador has become the country with the lowest muder rate in the western hemisphere:
The decline in murder rate is impressive but 7.8 per 100,000 is not the lowest. El Salvador has 6.5 million people, roughly the same population as Scotland which had 52 homicides for the whole country and that is without suspending habeus corpus and rounding up everyone remotely gang-adjacent. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqv9vzqvddwo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Salvador
That "western hemisphere" is doing some heavy duty ...
Haven't seen our rightwingers (who do like the western hemisphere, to put it politely) demanding that the SNP take over.
‘A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state… [snip - see the link],
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth’
So the only actual report I can find (other than pieces in right wing media about the report) are in Danish, and I can't find anything discussing the report in English other than right wingers hailing it as the evidence they've always needed that immigrants are bad actually. That's not to say it is wrong, just that as someone who doesn't speak Danish I can't verify the actual findings of the report outside of places like unherd, who are not a source I trust.
I have found an OpenDemocracy article detailing essentially the argument I put forth yesterday - how if immigrants are a "drain" on an economy it is most likely the practices of the employers who abuse those workers and use them to under cut labour rights and labour costs, but I accept that could have nothing to do with what this report was exploring. If you have a link directly to the report in English, I'd be very interested to look at it, the methodology and such.
The comparison doesn't really work for a country whose average income is about 70% of that in the Netherlands.
The percentage of those on benefit who are not UK citizens was around 16% in 2019 (I can't quickly find a more recent figure); and migrants are more likely to be in work that native born Brits.
So whatever your feelings about the levels of immigration, the comparison with the Netherlands (assuming the capacity of your article) is anyway complete bunk.
And there we have it. Britain is so violently different to Netherlands none of this applies. Of course
That is, until a comparison with an eu country comes along of which you approve, then it totally applies
Honestly, this level of argumentation is quite depressing
You first said "BME" which I believe stands for "Black [and] Minority Ethnic".
That was your error. You brought race into it. Many (most? who knows) black Britons have roots here that go back decades. But you fell into the trap (to put it kindly) of identifying people by their race, not their economic status.
Plus how many times do I have to tell you. The UK simply does not want fewer immigrants.
Because most new migrants into the UK, since Brexit, have been BME. St Paul’s has a major chunk of non UK born citizens. It will be incomers who desperately need a new dentist, not settled citizens of whatever ethnicity
I was using logic and combining these facts. I understand you’d prefer to resort to irrationality and call me a Nazi or whatever. I really don’t give a fuck and THIS IS BECOMING QUITE TIRESOME
There are almost no immigrants of any kind where I live except internal ones from other parts of England. Good luck getting an NHS dentist! Good luck getting a doctor's appointment in anything under three weeks, for that matter.
Reading Sean F and other comments - how are the Russians able to keep supplying the troops for these meat wave attacks? Through Crimea? It beggars belief they have not been given the capability to destroy the bridge and further damage Russian supplies. They are launching drone attacks inside Russia anyway. Why not provide some long range missiles?
Curious thing to watch is that a Chinese bank suspended transactions with Russia.
O/T I went to a dinner/seminar last night at which defence/ Ukraine issues were discussed at length by top analysts. The key takeaways were:-
1. Tactically, the performance of the Russian army is dreadful, no better than two years ago. But, it has always been. Operationally, it is a lot more capable, and it is getting artillery shells in much greater numbers than Ukraine. There are precisely two European companies that manufacture artillery shells. However, Ukraine has the advantage in terms of possession and production of drones.
2. Russians are willing to suffer hardship, to achieve military success, in ways we don’t fully appreciate in the West.
3. But even Russia can’t defy economic gravity for ever. Soviet oil exports have been hit hard in recent months, partly due to drone attacks, and the regime is burning through foreign exchange reserves at an incredible speed. If Ukraine can keep fighting for 2-3 years, then it will likely win, as Russia runs out of resources.
4. Germany’s commitment to Ukraine is now of vital importance. As well as aid, Germany is now training twice as many Ukrainian soldiers as the UK is.
5. The reduction of the UK’s military capability, starting in 2010, is of real concern, throughout NATO. Cameron, Osborne and their successors have acted as if the world is growing safer, rather than more dangerous.
6. Contrary to press reports, there is no shortage of people wishing to join the armed forces. The real problem is with Capita, taking up to 14 months to process applications, by which time, they’ve taken other jobs.
With (2) were the analysts saying it's something in the Russian 'soul' (or whatever) that makes them tolerate great hardship for the sake of military glory? Because I've heard that a lot and I'm a bit skeptical. Isn't it more that the people there are repressed under a dictatorship and subject to vast amounts of propaganda? Meaning they are (i) more likely to keep on believing in the cause and (ii) less likely to play up even if they don't.
They have a cultural obsession with war and dying in large numbers that makes the English undying fixation on WW2 look like a passing fancy.
Understanding of Russian culture, with a few exceptions, by Western commentators is meagre. It's impossible to have anything other than superficial, and probably erroneous, grasp on it if all you have is English language sources curated by Western media. Hence, the smug and staggering ignorance that our resident Russophobes wear with such pride as if it were the Order of Lenin.
But you know what? If it comes to a choice between being a 'russophobe' in your eyes and being a full-on Russia apologist, please forgive me for choosing the former.
Have you considered that the Russian media that you slurp up might be even worse than ours for accuracy?
Have you considered it's possible to try to look at the situation dispassionately. We try to understand the motivations for actions and to avoid historical inevitablism. We don't want the Russians to succeed so they will fail. Why not look at facts on the ground.
And appreciate that we are a long way from knowing what on earth is going to happen but the old "one last push, this is it" PB mantra has not coincided with those facts on the ground, now, has it.
Yes, it is perfectly possible to view the situation dispassionately. The problem is, when he uses ethnic slurs against Ukrainians (e.g. Moskal from memory), DA isn't being dispassionate.
"Why not look at facts on the ground."
Indeed. But you know what? DA often reminds us of Ukrainian 'lies' - such as the Ghost of Kyiv. The problem is: Russia lies as well, and the 'facts on the ground' are rather thin on both sides.
As doe your last line, ISTR comments from the negativists in autumn 2022, just before Ukraine took back vast swathes of territory. Or a few months later, just before they took back most of Kherson.
If you accuse PB pro-Ukrainians of being too positive, I'd argue you're the other way.
I would be seriously worried if DA didn't use the vernacular to describe anyone. You should see how he describes Tories.
I am not accusing PB pro-Ukrainians of being too positive. I am accusing them of confusing what they want to happen with what might happen. They are engaging in historical inevitablism. Russia are the bad guys, bad guys lose, so Russia _will_ lose, and moreover if you don't also think Russia will lose you are a Putin apologist. It's bizarre.
Right from Day One people on here were showing youtube clips of platoon dismounts and crowing how this was proof if proof were needed of an imminent Ukrainian victory. Likewise talking about the "Spring Push". Likewise zillions of posts about this HIMARS deployment or that new Leopard 2 tank in theatre.
I understand that we in the UK are not used to losing (or we erase our losses from our history books, more usually - I mean how much does every schoolchild really know about 1776) but on PB it has grown into some bizarre psychological displacement process that "the good guys" can't lose and the bad guys must lose because (our own, highly selective) history.
Indeed. And what is glossed over in uk history books is it was the red army at Stalingrad that dealt the fatal blow to Hitler. By d day ghe germans had basically already lost the war. Looking at the ukraine war dispassionately it is clear the russians are advancing and ukraine is retreating. And of course if ukrainian morale totally collapses things could change rapidly.
And yet, the Germans won some impressive victories over the Red Army, during and after Stalingrad. The Soviets had hoped to destroy Army Group South, and were underwhelmed by the actual outcome.
Russia is burning up men (just like the Germans at Stalingrad), to advance metres.
It’s quite strange being in a country as young as Cambodia. Everyone seems to be in their twenties BECAUSE THEY ARE. Median age is 27
Even stranger is that absolutely everyone is slim. Healthy looking. I’ve been here a month (and was here last year as well) and I’m not sure I’ve seen a single fat person. I’ve seen some portly-ish old people, but they are stout in the way older people can be or even should be. A bit of a tummy (men), chunky around the arse (the women) - I have not seen a single overweight person under 40, let alone obese. It means even average looking women are kinda sexy, due to being slender as a reed
And I’m not imagining it. Cambodia is the 4th least obese nation on Earth. 3.9%
Starmer's remorseless pursuit of GE victory continues apace, as he dismantles step by step every potential attack line that can be pursued against him. Today it's the turn of the £28 billion sum for the Green Prosperity Plan.
The mistake was, of course, putting a number on it back in 2021, at a time of low interest rates and when they had little idea what the state of the economy would be in 2024. Not sure why they did that - much better to establish the Green Prosperity Plan and GB Energy as policies, the financing of which would be revealed at the time of the GE.
By the time of the GE, the Tories will only be left with two attack lines: 1. This happily married father doesn't know what a woman is (I think he does), and 2. Starmer keeps changing his mind in the light of new evidence.
The tories will almost certainly run a negative campaign against Starmer because what else do they have? Nothing.
However, for a negative campaign to work it has to resonate with something the voters already suspect or feel. Attacks portraying Starmer as a lying chancer are just going to bounce off his heavily shellacked hair
It is the only attack they have, but it is based in truth; he is a liar and a chancer, and there’s loads of video evidence of him at it, so it could work. The main problem is, he’s so dull it’s hard to believe he is the complete snide he is
Reading Sean F and other comments - how are the Russians able to keep supplying the troops for these meat wave attacks? Through Crimea? It beggars belief they have not been given the capability to destroy the bridge and further damage Russian supplies. They are launching drone attacks inside Russia anyway. Why not provide some long range missiles?
Curious thing to watch is that a Chinese bank suspended transactions with Russia.
That bridge was always going to be hard to 'destroy'; and as the attacks have gone on, the Russians have spent a great deal of resources in protecting it. It's now an even harder target; and there might be more productive targets for Ukraine to go for at the moment. Especially given their limited resources.
‘A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state… [snip - see the link],
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth’
So the only actual report I can find (other than pieces in right wing media about the report) are in Danish, and I can't find anything discussing the report in English other than right wingers hailing it as the evidence they've always needed that immigrants are bad actually. That's not to say it is wrong, just that as someone who doesn't speak Danish I can't verify the actual findings of the report outside of places like unherd, who are not a source I trust.
I have found an OpenDemocracy article detailing essentially the argument I put forth yesterday - how if immigrants are a "drain" on an economy it is most likely the practices of the employers who abuse those workers and use them to under cut labour rights and labour costs, but I accept that could have nothing to do with what this report was exploring. If you have a link directly to the report in English, I'd be very interested to look at it, the methodology and such.
The comparison doesn't really work for a country whose average income is about 70% of that in the Netherlands.
The percentage of those on benefit who are not UK citizens was around 16% in 2019 (I can't quickly find a more recent figure); and migrants are more likely to be in work that native born Brits.
So whatever your feelings about the levels of immigration, the comparison with the Netherlands (assuming the capacity of your article) is anyway complete bunk.
And there we have it. Britain is so violently different to Netherlands none of this applies. Of course
That is, until a comparison with an eu country comes along of which you approve, then it totally applies
Honestly, this level of argumentation is quite depressing
You first said "BME" which I believe stands for "Black [and] Minority Ethnic".
That was your error. You brought race into it. Many (most? who knows) black Britons have roots here that go back decades. But you fell into the trap (to put it kindly) of identifying people by their race, not their economic status.
Plus how many times do I have to tell you. The UK simply does not want fewer immigrants.
Because most new migrants into the UK, since Brexit, have been BME. St Paul’s has a major chunk of non UK born citizens. It will be incomers who desperately need a new dentist, not settled citizens of whatever ethnicity
I was using logic and combining these facts. I understand you’d prefer to resort to irrationality and call me a Nazi or whatever. I really don’t give a fuck and THIS IS BECOMING QUITE TIRESOME
There are almost no immigrants of any kind where I live except internal ones from other parts of England. Good luck getting an NHS dentist! Good luck getting a doctor's appointment in anything under three weeks, for that matter.
Is it really true that if you called the Doctor at 8am, they wouldn’t be able to see you for three weeks? I’ve never known anything like that. Next day is the worst I think.
And what about the Ukrainian refugees you have surely taken in? Don’t they count??
‘A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state… [snip - see the link],
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth’
So the only actual report I can find (other than pieces in right wing media about the report) are in Danish, and I can't find anything discussing the report in English other than right wingers hailing it as the evidence they've always needed that immigrants are bad actually. That's not to say it is wrong, just that as someone who doesn't speak Danish I can't verify the actual findings of the report outside of places like unherd, who are not a source I trust.
I have found an OpenDemocracy article detailing essentially the argument I put forth yesterday - how if immigrants are a "drain" on an economy it is most likely the practices of the employers who abuse those workers and use them to under cut labour rights and labour costs, but I accept that could have nothing to do with what this report was exploring. If you have a link directly to the report in English, I'd be very interested to look at it, the methodology and such.
The comparison doesn't really work for a country whose average income is about 70% of that in the Netherlands.
The percentage of those on benefit who are not UK citizens was around 16% in 2019 (I can't quickly find a more recent figure); and migrants are more likely to be in work that native born Brits.
So whatever your feelings about the levels of immigration, the comparison with the Netherlands (assuming the capacity of your article) is anyway complete bunk.
And there we have it. Britain is so violently different to Netherlands none of this applies. Of course
That is, until a comparison with an eu country comes along of which you approve, then it totally applies
Honestly, this level of argumentation is quite depressing
You first said "BME" which I believe stands for "Black [and] Minority Ethnic".
That was your error. You brought race into it. Many (most? who knows) black Britons have roots here that go back decades. But you fell into the trap (to put it kindly) of identifying people by their race, not their economic status.
Plus how many times do I have to tell you. The UK simply does not want fewer immigrants.
Because most new migrants into the UK, since Brexit, have been BME. St Paul’s has a major chunk of non UK born citizens. It will be incomers who desperately need a new dentist, not settled citizens of whatever ethnicity
I was using logic and combining these facts. I understand you’d prefer to resort to irrationality and call me a Nazi or whatever. I really don’t give a fuck and THIS IS BECOMING QUITE TIRESOME
OK SORRY PLEASE STAY WITH ME.
Do you have no understanding of what you are unleashing when you look at a bunch of immigrants and categorise them as "BME". You instantly lump in every eg black Briton into the "other", undesirable category.
Because you are using race to identify them. Not immigrants or asylum seekers but black people . You are saying, you literally said, "but the obvious black over-representation in that queue".
Now as you are an old hand at the writing game I'll allow that your meaning was ever so sophisticated but if our Nige stood up and said "look at all the black people queuing outside the dentist, it's intolerable" many people might be reminded of the "send them back" mantra of the '70s, now, mightn't they.
I am losing the will to care. It’s you that chose to misinterpret me, stop it, you twat. You’re smarter than this, or at least I presumed so
I am close to quitting. I don’t expect you to care, why should you. But constant and deliberate misconstrual can test anyone. Earlier on, someone accused me of actually saying ‘let’s expel all Romanian dentists’ presumably because I hate Romanians? Why the fuck would I hate Romanians, or any foreigners, when I spend my life wandering the world enjoying foreign cultures, peoples, cuisines, opinions, lifestyles?
Enough. If PB wants to become a tepid Woke thought-bubble then go right ahead, you are doing the exact right thing
The deeper irony is that my original remark about that video of the queue - ‘this is quite a dystopian vision of Britain’ - or something like that - actually had nothing to do with migration, race, anything like that - it was actually a comment on the combination of people desperate for a dentist, in an ugly place, covered with graffiti, under a grey sky. It looks like a poor South American or old soviet city but with even worse weather
It was only later I thought - hold on this might be an image capturing immigration pressure on public services
And with that I shall finish my gin and tonic and go and watch griselda
O/T I went to a dinner/seminar last night at which defence/ Ukraine issues were discussed at length by top analysts. The key takeaways were:-
1. Tactically, the performance of the Russian army is dreadful, no better than two years ago. But, it has always been. Operationally, it is a lot more capable, and it is getting artillery shells in much greater numbers than Ukraine. There are precisely two European companies that manufacture artillery shells. However, Ukraine has the advantage in terms of possession and production of drones.
2. Russians are willing to suffer hardship, to achieve military success, in ways we don’t fully appreciate in the West.
3. But even Russia can’t defy economic gravity for ever. Soviet oil exports have been hit hard in recent months, partly due to drone attacks, and the regime is burning through foreign exchange reserves at an incredible speed. If Ukraine can keep fighting for 2-3 years, then it will likely win, as Russia runs out of resources.
4. Germany’s commitment to Ukraine is now of vital importance. As well as aid, Germany is now training twice as many Ukrainian soldiers as the UK is.
5. The reduction of the UK’s military capability, starting in 2010, is of real concern, throughout NATO. Cameron, Osborne and their successors have acted as if the world is growing safer, rather than more dangerous.
6. Contrary to press reports, there is no shortage of people wishing to join the armed forces. The real problem is with Capita, taking up to 14 months to process applications, by which time, they’ve taken other jobs.
With (2) were the analysts saying it's something in the Russian 'soul' (or whatever) that makes them tolerate great hardship for the sake of military glory? Because I've heard that a lot and I'm a bit skeptical. Isn't it more that the people there are repressed under a dictatorship and subject to vast amounts of propaganda? Meaning they are (i) more likely to keep on believing in the cause and (ii) less likely to play up even if they don't.
They have a cultural obsession with war and dying in large numbers that makes the English undying fixation on WW2 look like a passing fancy.
Understanding of Russian culture, with a few exceptions, by Western commentators is meagre. It's impossible to have anything other than superficial, and probably erroneous, grasp on it if all you have is English language sources curated by Western media. Hence, the smug and staggering ignorance that our resident Russophobes wear with such pride as if it were the Order of Lenin.
And I duly have none. Happy to fess to that. But I'm definitely not a Russophobe. I put the war down to Putin not 'Russia'. It's just I have a general skepticism about national characteristics. Not all of them, and not in all contexts, but particularly those imputing 'personal type' qualities to a whole people. So things like diligent/lazy or brave/cowardly or jolly/dour. This sort of thing. It's largely bollocks imo.
The Japanese and the Germans, in their time, were considered (by some) to be incredibly resilient and far more capable of fighting to the death than "lesser breeds".
Turned out the death worship wasn't actually innate. Funny that.
Any more than ¡Viva la Muerte! is how Spaniards feel about pretty much anything.
The same way the Confederates thought that their martial spirit would bring them victory over the effete Northerners.
Martial ardour versus the side that can afford shoes.
And socks.
And rifles.
And ammunition....
"I'll call my article," meditated the war correspondent, "'Mankind versus Ironmongery,' and quote the old boy at the beginning."
And he was much too good a journalist to spoil his contrast by remarking that the half-dozen comparatively slender young men in blue pajamas who were standing about their victorious land ironclad, drinking coffee and eating biscuits, had also in their eyes and carriage something not altogether degraded below the level of a man.
Starmer's remorseless pursuit of GE victory continues apace, as he dismantles step by step every potential attack line that can be pursued against him. Today it's the turn of the £28 billion sum for the Green Prosperity Plan.
The mistake was, of course, putting a number on it back in 2021, at a time of low interest rates and when they had little idea what the state of the economy would be in 2024. Not sure why they did that - much better to establish the Green Prosperity Plan and GB Energy as policies, the financing of which would be revealed at the time of the GE.
By the time of the GE, the Tories will only be left with two attack lines: 1. This happily married father doesn't know what a woman is (I think he does), and 2. Starmer keeps changing his mind in the light of new evidence.
I think Starmer would be more popular if he stuck to his policy guns and said "yes, of course we're spending money, we need to fix everything you've broken and we can only do that by investing". That is a much more popular line and part of the pitch from BoJo that won him his election. The acceptance of Osbornomics despite the fact it has brought nothing but economic ruin is astounding (I mean it isn't, it benefits those who accumulate capital and those who accumulate capital have a class interest in perpetuating it, so media and politicians are more than happy to do that) but still.
‘A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state… [snip - see the link],
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth’
So the only actual report I can find (other than pieces in right wing media about the report) are in Danish, and I can't find anything discussing the report in English other than right wingers hailing it as the evidence they've always needed that immigrants are bad actually. That's not to say it is wrong, just that as someone who doesn't speak Danish I can't verify the actual findings of the report outside of places like unherd, who are not a source I trust.
I have found an OpenDemocracy article detailing essentially the argument I put forth yesterday - how if immigrants are a "drain" on an economy it is most likely the practices of the employers who abuse those workers and use them to under cut labour rights and labour costs, but I accept that could have nothing to do with what this report was exploring. If you have a link directly to the report in English, I'd be very interested to look at it, the methodology and such.
The comparison doesn't really work for a country whose average income is about 70% of that in the Netherlands.
The percentage of those on benefit who are not UK citizens was around 16% in 2019 (I can't quickly find a more recent figure); and migrants are more likely to be in work that native born Brits.
So whatever your feelings about the levels of immigration, the comparison with the Netherlands (assuming the capacity of your article) is anyway complete bunk.
And there we have it. Britain is so violently different to Netherlands none of this applies. Of course
That is, until a comparison with an eu country comes along of which you approve, then it totally applies
Honestly, this level of argumentation is quite depressing
It is obviously fair to look at the pros and cons of immigration from different parts of the world to the Netherlands and assume that it would be more or less the same in the UK. I linked to that research here a while ago, it is pretty much a slam dunk
The crazy thing is that is seems no consideration at all was given to which type of immigrant would suit/benefit us before we embarked on a policy of mass immigration. It’s like a football team just buying 10-12 players without doing any research on whether those players would gel with their existing squad; no team would do it now in the era of data & analytics, yet it’s controversial to suggest we do so as a country
Indeed. This site is now close to intolerable
The level of discourse is infantile, the herding is pathetic, it’s just a bunch of fucking TEDIOUS midwit lawyers, accountants and IT nerds wanking on about shite and denying anything uncomfortable. Everyone interesting has left
It’s come to something when the most engaged and interesting commenter - amongst the lefty dross - is an actual lunatic Marxist. @148grss
PFFFFF
The problem with the Dutch report you linked (other than the question of external validity to the UK, which is relevant - UK immigrants to the Netherlands are not super according to that report) is uncertainty over its internal validity. They don't report how they have calculated things in anywhere near enough detail to make a judgement on whether or not the results are valid (and how different they might be if some assumptions are tweaked).
It wouldn't (well, shouldn't) get published in a peer-reviewed journal in that form. That doesn't mean it is invalid - and there are reasons to do reports (it's long for a paper, faster than peer review etc etc) but it does mean that anyone with half a clue on the methods on this can't judge whether or not the findings are valid.
There is also an element of 'no shit sherlock' about it - high skilled immigrants from rich countries are net contributors, as another country paid for their unproductive/high cost childhood years. Lower skilled immigrants less so (although they ignore any economic benefits from lower skilled immigrants being cheaper to employ than Dutch natives, potentially - both directly if government employed and indirectly if private sector and boosting growth). It's much harder to calculate that, of course, but it's a factor in the need for immigration here. It appears that we'd be even further up shit creak on social care without immigrants taking low wage jobs in the sector.
It's also hard, where immigration is increasing and changing, to make too many sweeping assumptions about how new immigrants will compare to the studied old immigrants. Some of the source countries have seen big changes in GDP and education over the past 30-40 years, for example. If I was looking at this, for whole picture, I'd probably look at some diff-in-diffs or ITS across countries with and without larger amounts of immigration, particularly UK for the newer EU countries compared to those that had transitional rules.
It’s quite strange being in a country as young as Cambodia. Everyone seems to be in their twenties BECAUSE THEY ARE. Median age is 27
Even stranger is that absolutely everyone is slim. Healthy looking. I’ve been here a month (and was here last year as well) and I’m not sure I’ve seen a single fat person. I’ve seen some portly-ish old people, but they are stout in the way older people can be or even should be. A bit of a tummy (men), chunky around the arse (the women) - I have not seen a single overweight person under 40, let alone obese. It means even average looking women are kinda sexy, due to being slender as a reed
And I’m not imagining it. Cambodia is the 4th least obese nation on Earth. 3.9%
Did Britain look like this in the 1930s or 1970s? What have we done to ourselves? It is disgusting
I hope Cambodia bans all processed food and any foodstuff made in America
I mean that is kinda what happens when your country gets bombed to bits by the US and then have a long civil war and genocide at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.
No, it’s an East Asian thing
They are generally much slimmer and eat better food - Singapore has a really low obesity rate and they were never bombed by America or had a genocide etc
Singapore is way more civilized than the uk now. They only allow in high quality immigrants.
Starmer's remorseless pursuit of GE victory continues apace, as he dismantles step by step every potential attack line that can be pursued against him. Today it's the turn of the £28 billion sum for the Green Prosperity Plan.
The mistake was, of course, putting a number on it back in 2021, at a time of low interest rates and when they had little idea what the state of the economy would be in 2024. Not sure why they did that - much better to establish the Green Prosperity Plan and GB Energy as policies, the financing of which would be revealed at the time of the GE.
By the time of the GE, the Tories will only be left with two attack lines: 1. This happily married father doesn't know what a woman is (I think he does), and 2. Starmer keeps changing his mind in the light of new evidence.
The tories will almost certainly run a negative campaign against Starmer because what else do they have? Nothing.
However, for a negative campaign to work it has to resonate with something the voters already suspect or feel. Attacks portraying Starmer as a lying chancer are just going to bounce off his heavily shellacked hair
It is the only attack they have, but it is based in truth; he is a liar and a chancer, and there’s loads of video evidence of him at it, so it could work. The main problem is, he’s so dull it’s hard to believe he is the complete snide he is
Starmer's remorseless pursuit of GE victory continues apace, as he dismantles step by step every potential attack line that can be pursued against him. Today it's the turn of the £28 billion sum for the Green Prosperity Plan.
The mistake was, of course, putting a number on it back in 2021, at a time of low interest rates and when they had little idea what the state of the economy would be in 2024. Not sure why they did that - much better to establish the Green Prosperity Plan and GB Energy as policies, the financing of which would be revealed at the time of the GE.
By the time of the GE, the Tories will only be left with two attack lines: 1. This happily married father doesn't know what a woman is (I think he does), and 2. Starmer keeps changing his mind in the light of new evidence.
The tories will almost certainly run a negative campaign against Starmer because what else do they have? Nothing.
However, for a negative campaign to work it has to resonate with something the voters already suspect or feel. Attacks portraying Starmer as a lying chancer are just going to bounce off his heavily shellacked hair
The Tories' problem is that Starmer's negatives, which are a thing, don't help them. They basically boil down to Starmer not being different enough from the current lot.
‘A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state… [snip - see the link],
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth’
So the only actual report I can find (other than pieces in right wing media about the report) are in Danish, and I can't find anything discussing the report in English other than right wingers hailing it as the evidence they've always needed that immigrants are bad actually. That's not to say it is wrong, just that as someone who doesn't speak Danish I can't verify the actual findings of the report outside of places like unherd, who are not a source I trust.
I have found an OpenDemocracy article detailing essentially the argument I put forth yesterday - how if immigrants are a "drain" on an economy it is most likely the practices of the employers who abuse those workers and use them to under cut labour rights and labour costs, but I accept that could have nothing to do with what this report was exploring. If you have a link directly to the report in English, I'd be very interested to look at it, the methodology and such.
The comparison doesn't really work for a country whose average income is about 70% of that in the Netherlands.
The percentage of those on benefit who are not UK citizens was around 16% in 2019 (I can't quickly find a more recent figure); and migrants are more likely to be in work that native born Brits.
So whatever your feelings about the levels of immigration, the comparison with the Netherlands (assuming the capacity of your article) is anyway complete bunk.
And there we have it. Britain is so violently different to Netherlands none of this applies. Of course
That is, until a comparison with an eu country comes along of which you approve, then it totally applies
Honestly, this level of argumentation is quite depressing
You first said "BME" which I believe stands for "Black [and] Minority Ethnic".
That was your error. You brought race into it. Many (most? who knows) black Britons have roots here that go back decades. But you fell into the trap (to put it kindly) of identifying people by their race, not their economic status.
Plus how many times do I have to tell you. The UK simply does not want fewer immigrants.
Because most new migrants into the UK, since Brexit, have been BME. St Paul’s has a major chunk of non UK born citizens. It will be incomers who desperately need a new dentist, not settled citizens of whatever ethnicity
I was using logic and combining these facts. I understand you’d prefer to resort to irrationality and call me a Nazi or whatever. I really don’t give a fuck and THIS IS BECOMING QUITE TIRESOME
There are almost no immigrants of any kind where I live except internal ones from other parts of England. Good luck getting an NHS dentist! Good luck getting a doctor's appointment in anything under three weeks, for that matter.
Is it really true that if you called the Doctor at 8am, they wouldn’t be able to see you for three weeks? I’ve never known anything like that. Next day is the worst I think.
And what about the Ukrainian refugees you have surely taken in? Don’t they count??
I called the doctor's surgery in mid-December. I got an appointment in mid-January. Then they lost the test results I brought in with me. The issue is less demand than supply - there just aren't enough GPs, especially in many rural and semi-rural areas.
‘A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state… [snip - see the link],
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth’
So the only actual report I can find (other than pieces in right wing media about the report) are in Danish, and I can't find anything discussing the report in English other than right wingers hailing it as the evidence they've always needed that immigrants are bad actually. That's not to say it is wrong, just that as someone who doesn't speak Danish I can't verify the actual findings of the report outside of places like unherd, who are not a source I trust.
I have found an OpenDemocracy article detailing essentially the argument I put forth yesterday - how if immigrants are a "drain" on an economy it is most likely the practices of the employers who abuse those workers and use them to under cut labour rights and labour costs, but I accept that could have nothing to do with what this report was exploring. If you have a link directly to the report in English, I'd be very interested to look at it, the methodology and such.
The comparison doesn't really work for a country whose average income is about 70% of that in the Netherlands.
The percentage of those on benefit who are not UK citizens was around 16% in 2019 (I can't quickly find a more recent figure); and migrants are more likely to be in work that native born Brits.
So whatever your feelings about the levels of immigration, the comparison with the Netherlands (assuming the capacity of your article) is anyway complete bunk.
And there we have it. Britain is so violently different to Netherlands none of this applies. Of course
That is, until a comparison with an eu country comes along of which you approve, then it totally applies
Honestly, this level of argumentation is quite depressing
You first said "BME" which I believe stands for "Black [and] Minority Ethnic".
That was your error. You brought race into it. Many (most? who knows) black Britons have roots here that go back decades. But you fell into the trap (to put it kindly) of identifying people by their race, not their economic status.
Plus how many times do I have to tell you. The UK simply does not want fewer immigrants.
Because most new migrants into the UK, since Brexit, have been BME. St Paul’s has a major chunk of non UK born citizens. It will be incomers who desperately need a new dentist, not settled citizens of whatever ethnicity
I was using logic and combining these facts. I understand you’d prefer to resort to irrationality and call me a Nazi or whatever. I really don’t give a fuck and THIS IS BECOMING QUITE TIRESOME
OK SORRY PLEASE STAY WITH ME.
Do you have no understanding of what you are unleashing when you look at a bunch of immigrants and categorise them as "BME". You instantly lump in every eg black Briton into the "other", undesirable category.
Because you are using race to identify them. Not immigrants or asylum seekers but black people . You are saying, you literally said, "but the obvious black over-representation in that queue".
Now as you are an old hand at the writing game I'll allow that your meaning was ever so sophisticated but if our Nige stood up and said "look at all the black people queuing outside the dentist, it's intolerable" many people might be reminded of the "send them back" mantra of the '70s, now, mightn't they.
I am losing the will to care. It’s you that chose to misinterpret me, stop it, you twat. You’re smarter than this, or at least I presumed so
I am close to quitting. I don’t expect you to care, why should you. But constant and deliberate misconstrual can test anyone. Earlier on, someone accused me of actually saying ‘let’s expel all Romanian dentists’ presumably because I hate Romanians? Why the fuck would I hate Romanians, or any foreigners, when I spend my life wandering the world enjoying foreign cultures, peoples, cuisines, opinions, lifestyles?
Enough. If PB wants to become a tepid Woke thought-bubble then go right ahead, you are doing the exact right thing
The deeper irony is that my original remark about that video of the queue - ‘this is quite a dystopian vision of Britain’ - or something like that - actually had nothing to do with migration, race, anything like that - it was actually a comment on the combination of people desperate for a dentist, in an ugly place, covered with graffiti, under a grey sky. It looks like a poor South American or old soviet city but with even worse weather
It was only later I thought - hold on this might be an image capturing immigration pressure on public services
And with that I shall finish my gin and tonic and go and watch griselda
I find it interesting that your immediate jump is always to "this might capture the pressure caused by immigration" and not "this might capture the pressure caused by underfunding" when both have happened at the same time and we can look at periods of time when immigration and funding was high and those services seemed to manage and we can look at periods of time when immigration was high and funding wasn't and that's when the strains are more obvious.
Starmer's remorseless pursuit of GE victory continues apace, as he dismantles step by step every potential attack line that can be pursued against him. Today it's the turn of the £28 billion sum for the Green Prosperity Plan.
The mistake was, of course, putting a number on it back in 2021, at a time of low interest rates and when they had little idea what the state of the economy would be in 2024. Not sure why they did that - much better to establish the Green Prosperity Plan and GB Energy as policies, the financing of which would be revealed at the time of the GE.
By the time of the GE, the Tories will only be left with two attack lines: 1. This happily married father doesn't know what a woman is (I think he does), and 2. Starmer keeps changing his mind in the light of new evidence.
The tories will almost certainly run a negative campaign against Starmer because what else do they have? Nothing.
However, for a negative campaign to work it has to resonate with something the voters already suspect or feel. Attacks portraying Starmer as a lying chancer are just going to bounce off his heavily shellacked hair
The Tories' problem is that Starmer's negatives, which are a thing, don't help them. They basically boil down to Starmer not being different enough from the current lot.
Tory negatives will struggle to gain traction, they need to use humour and make him a laughing stock.
‘A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state… [snip - see the link],
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth’
So the only actual report I can find (other than pieces in right wing media about the report) are in Danish, and I can't find anything discussing the report in English other than right wingers hailing it as the evidence they've always needed that immigrants are bad actually. That's not to say it is wrong, just that as someone who doesn't speak Danish I can't verify the actual findings of the report outside of places like unherd, who are not a source I trust.
I have found an OpenDemocracy article detailing essentially the argument I put forth yesterday - how if immigrants are a "drain" on an economy it is most likely the practices of the employers who abuse those workers and use them to under cut labour rights and labour costs, but I accept that could have nothing to do with what this report was exploring. If you have a link directly to the report in English, I'd be very interested to look at it, the methodology and such.
The comparison doesn't really work for a country whose average income is about 70% of that in the Netherlands.
The percentage of those on benefit who are not UK citizens was around 16% in 2019 (I can't quickly find a more recent figure); and migrants are more likely to be in work that native born Brits.
So whatever your feelings about the levels of immigration, the comparison with the Netherlands (assuming the capacity of your article) is anyway complete bunk.
And there we have it. Britain is so violently different to Netherlands none of this applies. Of course
That is, until a comparison with an eu country comes along of which you approve, then it totally applies
Honestly, this level of argumentation is quite depressing
You first said "BME" which I believe stands for "Black [and] Minority Ethnic".
That was your error. You brought race into it. Many (most? who knows) black Britons have roots here that go back decades. But you fell into the trap (to put it kindly) of identifying people by their race, not their economic status.
Plus how many times do I have to tell you. The UK simply does not want fewer immigrants.
Because most new migrants into the UK, since Brexit, have been BME. St Paul’s has a major chunk of non UK born citizens. It will be incomers who desperately need a new dentist, not settled citizens of whatever ethnicity
I was using logic and combining these facts. I understand you’d prefer to resort to irrationality and call me a Nazi or whatever. I really don’t give a fuck and THIS IS BECOMING QUITE TIRESOME
OK SORRY PLEASE STAY WITH ME.
Do you have no understanding of what you are unleashing when you look at a bunch of immigrants and categorise them as "BME". You instantly lump in every eg black Briton into the "other", undesirable category.
Because you are using race to identify them. Not immigrants or asylum seekers but black people . You are saying, you literally said, "but the obvious black over-representation in that queue".
Now as you are an old hand at the writing game I'll allow that your meaning was ever so sophisticated but if our Nige stood up and said "look at all the black people queuing outside the dentist, it's intolerable" many people might be reminded of the "send them back" mantra of the '70s, now, mightn't they.
I am losing the will to care. It’s you that chose to misinterpret me, stop it, you twat. You’re smarter than this, or at least I presumed so
I am close to quitting. I don’t expect you to care, why should you. But constant and deliberate misconstrual can test anyone. Earlier on, someone accused me of actually saying ‘let’s expel all Romanian dentists’ presumably because I hate Romanians? Why the fuck would I hate Romanians, or any foreigners, when I spend my life wandering the world enjoying foreign cultures, peoples, cuisines, opinions, lifestyles?
Enough. If PB wants to become a tepid Woke thought-bubble then go right ahead, you are doing the exact right thing
The deeper irony is that my original remark about that video of the queue - ‘this is quite a dystopian vision of Britain’ - or something like that - actually had nothing to do with migration, race, anything like that - it was actually a comment on the combination of people desperate for a dentist, in an ugly place, covered with graffiti, under a grey sky. It looks like a poor South American or old soviet city but with even worse weather
It was only later I thought - hold on this might be an image capturing immigration pressure on public services
And with that I shall finish my gin and tonic and go and watch griselda
I find it interesting that your immediate jump is always to "this might capture the pressure caused by immigration" and not "this might capture the pressure caused by underfunding" when both have happened at the same time and we can look at periods of time when immigration and funding was high and those services seemed to manage and we can look at periods of time when immigration was high and funding wasn't and that's when the strains are more obvious.
Because it’s happening in an area with a very large non-uk population and known for its immigrant communities. St Paul’s, Bristol
‘A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state… [snip - see the link],
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth’
So the only actual report I can find (other than pieces in right wing media about the report) are in Danish, and I can't find anything discussing the report in English other than right wingers hailing it as the evidence they've always needed that immigrants are bad actually. That's not to say it is wrong, just that as someone who doesn't speak Danish I can't verify the actual findings of the report outside of places like unherd, who are not a source I trust.
I have found an OpenDemocracy article detailing essentially the argument I put forth yesterday - how if immigrants are a "drain" on an economy it is most likely the practices of the employers who abuse those workers and use them to under cut labour rights and labour costs, but I accept that could have nothing to do with what this report was exploring. If you have a link directly to the report in English, I'd be very interested to look at it, the methodology and such.
The comparison doesn't really work for a country whose average income is about 70% of that in the Netherlands.
The percentage of those on benefit who are not UK citizens was around 16% in 2019 (I can't quickly find a more recent figure); and migrants are more likely to be in work that native born Brits.
So whatever your feelings about the levels of immigration, the comparison with the Netherlands (assuming the capacity of your article) is anyway complete bunk.
And there we have it. Britain is so violently different to Netherlands none of this applies. Of course
That is, until a comparison with an eu country comes along of which you approve, then it totally applies
Honestly, this level of argumentation is quite depressing
It is obviously fair to look at the pros and cons of immigration from different parts of the world to the Netherlands and assume that it would be more or less the same in the UK. I linked to that research here a while ago, it is pretty much a slam dunk
The crazy thing is that is seems no consideration at all was given to which type of immigrant would suit/benefit us before we embarked on a policy of mass immigration. It’s like a football team just buying 10-12 players without doing any research on whether those players would gel with their existing squad; no team would do it now in the era of data & analytics, yet it’s controversial to suggest we do so as a country
Indeed. This site is now close to intolerable
The level of discourse is infantile, the herding is pathetic, it’s just a bunch of fucking TEDIOUS midwit lawyers, accountants and IT nerds wanking on about shite and denying anything uncomfortable. Everyone interesting has left
It’s come to something when the most engaged and interesting commenter - amongst the lefty dross - is an actual lunatic Marxist. @148grss
PFFFFF
The heady days of the early to mid 2010s when Nabavi, Meeks, & tim were worthy adversaries seem a long time ago. They are I suppose.
A couple of days ago I linked to a ‘Who would do better, Sunak or Starmer?’ Poll, and commented that Sir Keir had come second in all but one, the joke being that where ‘Neither’ won them all.
Not that funny, but several people honestly thought I hadn’t noticed that Sunak had almost always came third and tried to ridicule me for it, when the whole point was a self deprecating acknowledgement that I’m always on the pretend vegetarian republican’s case
Leon has a good point. All viewpoints should be welcome on here and the ban hammer should be reserved for instances of personal abuse. That way lies a better site.
‘A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state… [snip - see the link],
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth’
So the only actual report I can find (other than pieces in right wing media about the report) are in Danish, and I can't find anything discussing the report in English other than right wingers hailing it as the evidence they've always needed that immigrants are bad actually. That's not to say it is wrong, just that as someone who doesn't speak Danish I can't verify the actual findings of the report outside of places like unherd, who are not a source I trust.
I have found an OpenDemocracy article detailing essentially the argument I put forth yesterday - how if immigrants are a "drain" on an economy it is most likely the practices of the employers who abuse those workers and use them to under cut labour rights and labour costs, but I accept that could have nothing to do with what this report was exploring. If you have a link directly to the report in English, I'd be very interested to look at it, the methodology and such.
The comparison doesn't really work for a country whose average income is about 70% of that in the Netherlands.
The percentage of those on benefit who are not UK citizens was around 16% in 2019 (I can't quickly find a more recent figure); and migrants are more likely to be in work that native born Brits.
So whatever your feelings about the levels of immigration, the comparison with the Netherlands (assuming the capacity of your article) is anyway complete bunk.
And there we have it. Britain is so violently different to Netherlands none of this applies. Of course
That is, until a comparison with an eu country comes along of which you approve, then it totally applies
Honestly, this level of argumentation is quite depressing
It is obviously fair to look at the pros and cons of immigration from different parts of the world to the Netherlands and assume that it would be more or less the same in the UK. I linked to that research here a while ago, it is pretty much a slam dunk
The crazy thing is that is seems no consideration at all was given to which type of immigrant would suit/benefit us before we embarked on a policy of mass immigration. It’s like a football team just buying 10-12 players without doing any research on whether those players would gel with their existing squad; no team would do it now in the era of data & analytics, yet it’s controversial to suggest we do so as a country
Indeed. This site is now close to intolerable
The level of discourse is infantile, the herding is pathetic, it’s just a bunch of fucking TEDIOUS midwit lawyers, accountants and IT nerds wanking on about shite and denying anything uncomfortable. Everyone interesting has left
It’s come to something when the most engaged and interesting commenter - amongst the lefty dross - is an actual lunatic Marxist. @148grss
PFFFFF
Comments are a lot more tribal than they used to be, and therefore less interesting.
This is what the site was like exactly 10 years ago.
Starmer's remorseless pursuit of GE victory continues apace, as he dismantles step by step every potential attack line that can be pursued against him. Today it's the turn of the £28 billion sum for the Green Prosperity Plan.
The mistake was, of course, putting a number on it back in 2021, at a time of low interest rates and when they had little idea what the state of the economy would be in 2024. Not sure why they did that - much better to establish the Green Prosperity Plan and GB Energy as policies, the financing of which would be revealed at the time of the GE.
By the time of the GE, the Tories will only be left with two attack lines: 1. This happily married father doesn't know what a woman is (I think he does), and 2. Starmer keeps changing his mind in the light of new evidence.
The tories will almost certainly run a negative campaign against Starmer because what else do they have? Nothing.
However, for a negative campaign to work it has to resonate with something the voters already suspect or feel. Attacks portraying Starmer as a lying chancer are just going to bounce off his heavily shellacked hair
It is the only attack they have, but it is based in truth; he is a liar and a chancer, and there’s loads of video evidence of him at it, so it could work. The main problem is, he’s so dull it’s hard to believe he is the complete snide he is
One of the many problems that the tories have is that the voters know, with unalloyed certainty, that Rishi and the gang are liars, chancers and worse. So they have got their fucking work cut out persuading people that Starmer is going to be worse than whatever the fuck this government is now.
Starmer's remorseless pursuit of GE victory continues apace, as he dismantles step by step every potential attack line that can be pursued against him. Today it's the turn of the £28 billion sum for the Green Prosperity Plan.
The mistake was, of course, putting a number on it back in 2021, at a time of low interest rates and when they had little idea what the state of the economy would be in 2024. Not sure why they did that - much better to establish the Green Prosperity Plan and GB Energy as policies, the financing of which would be revealed at the time of the GE.
By the time of the GE, the Tories will only be left with two attack lines: 1. This happily married father doesn't know what a woman is (I think he does), and 2. Starmer keeps changing his mind in the light of new evidence.
The tories will almost certainly run a negative campaign against Starmer because what else do they have? Nothing.
However, for a negative campaign to work it has to resonate with something the voters already suspect or feel. Attacks portraying Starmer as a lying chancer are just going to bounce off his heavily shellacked hair
It is the only attack they have, but it is based in truth; he is a liar and a chancer, and there’s loads of video evidence of him at it, so it could work. The main problem is, he’s so dull it’s hard to believe he is the complete snide he is
2 incidents yesterday make me pause in that assessment. Firstly, the outrage on behalf of the mother of Brianna Ghey was instant and genuine. He may have developed it later into politics but he was genuinely appalled. Secondly, it was noted that at the end of PMQs he immediately went up to Elliot Cockburn, who had disclosed his attempted suicide, to lend him support and comfort.
Just 2 straws in the wind but for the moment I am willing to accept that Starmer is a genuinely decent man who doesn't seem to have fixed views on much other than he should be PM. I certainly don't think of him as a complete snide.
Starmer's remorseless pursuit of GE victory continues apace, as he dismantles step by step every potential attack line that can be pursued against him. Today it's the turn of the £28 billion sum for the Green Prosperity Plan.
The mistake was, of course, putting a number on it back in 2021, at a time of low interest rates and when they had little idea what the state of the economy would be in 2024. Not sure why they did that - much better to establish the Green Prosperity Plan and GB Energy as policies, the financing of which would be revealed at the time of the GE.
By the time of the GE, the Tories will only be left with two attack lines: 1. This happily married father doesn't know what a woman is (I think he does), and 2. Starmer keeps changing his mind in the light of new evidence.
I think Starmer would be more popular if he stuck to his policy guns and said "yes, of course we're spending money, we need to fix everything you've broken and we can only do that by investing". That is a much more popular line and part of the pitch from BoJo that won him his election. The acceptance of Osbornomics despite the fact it has brought nothing but economic ruin is astounding (I mean it isn't, it benefits those who accumulate capital and those who accumulate capital have a class interest in perpetuating it, so media and politicians are more than happy to do that) but still.
I was critical of Osbornomics because I didn't think it appropriate in the context of the time. However the UK government as is 2024 has pretty high borrowing and much more debt than in 2008. Inflation is now an issue to. What are you calling for? Spending increases from tax rises? From more borrowing?
Did Britain look like this in the 1930s or 1970s? What have we done to ourselves? It is disgusting
I think that, to a first-order approximation, Britain was one of the countries that went directly from malnourished to porky without stopping on the way.
A friend of a friend of mine, now sadly deceased, did a superb documentary based upon the footage shot from within the train that took Robert F Kennedy's body back from California to Washington. Almost the entire journey the track was lined with people who had come to pay their respects (a bit like the Queen's journey from Balmoral to Edinburgh). The majority of those who had come out were black but black and white together what is truly startling to the modern eye is that almost none of them are obese in any age group.
In 1968 the United States was like @Leon is describing Cambodia now. It is scary what has happened in our life times.
Starmer's remorseless pursuit of GE victory continues apace, as he dismantles step by step every potential attack line that can be pursued against him. Today it's the turn of the £28 billion sum for the Green Prosperity Plan.
The mistake was, of course, putting a number on it back in 2021, at a time of low interest rates and when they had little idea what the state of the economy would be in 2024. Not sure why they did that - much better to establish the Green Prosperity Plan and GB Energy as policies, the financing of which would be revealed at the time of the GE.
By the time of the GE, the Tories will only be left with two attack lines: 1. This happily married father doesn't know what a woman is (I think he does), and 2. Starmer keeps changing his mind in the light of new evidence.
This has been a Labour comms disaster, though. I agree that the number should never have been provided but when it was, backtracking from it can only look weak - especially in the long, drawn out way it has been done.
I don't think it has. The number was needed back then because the party was struggling to get attention. It was all "Boris" and Covid.
Now it's different. There's no struggle for attention, there's a huge poll lead, and the "£28b" was one of the few remaining hooks for the Tories, a potential opening for the "Labour profligate with your money" trope.
So, kill that. The policy's the same but without the magic marker number. It leaves the public with the notion that Labour plan to ramp up Green Investment but won't break the bank to do it.
And the timing (with the GE still 9 months away) is ok.
‘A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state… [snip - see the link],
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth’
So the only actual report I can find (other than pieces in right wing media about the report) are in Danish, and I can't find anything discussing the report in English other than right wingers hailing it as the evidence they've always needed that immigrants are bad actually. That's not to say it is wrong, just that as someone who doesn't speak Danish I can't verify the actual findings of the report outside of places like unherd, who are not a source I trust.
I have found an OpenDemocracy article detailing essentially the argument I put forth yesterday - how if immigrants are a "drain" on an economy it is most likely the practices of the employers who abuse those workers and use them to under cut labour rights and labour costs, but I accept that could have nothing to do with what this report was exploring. If you have a link directly to the report in English, I'd be very interested to look at it, the methodology and such.
The comparison doesn't really work for a country whose average income is about 70% of that in the Netherlands.
The percentage of those on benefit who are not UK citizens was around 16% in 2019 (I can't quickly find a more recent figure); and migrants are more likely to be in work that native born Brits.
So whatever your feelings about the levels of immigration, the comparison with the Netherlands (assuming the capacity of your article) is anyway complete bunk.
And there we have it. Britain is so violently different to Netherlands none of this applies. Of course
That is, until a comparison with an eu country comes along of which you approve, then it totally applies
Honestly, this level of argumentation is quite depressing
It is obviously fair to look at the pros and cons of immigration from different parts of the world to the Netherlands and assume that it would be more or less the same in the UK. I linked to that research here a while ago, it is pretty much a slam dunk
The crazy thing is that is seems no consideration at all was given to which type of immigrant would suit/benefit us before we embarked on a policy of mass immigration. It’s like a football team just buying 10-12 players without doing any research on whether those players would gel with their existing squad; no team would do it now in the era of data & analytics, yet it’s controversial to suggest we do so as a country
Indeed. This site is now close to intolerable
The level of discourse is infantile, the herding is pathetic, it’s just a bunch of fucking TEDIOUS midwit lawyers, accountants and IT nerds wanking on about shite and denying anything uncomfortable. Everyone interesting has left
It’s come to something when the most engaged and interesting commenter - amongst the lefty dross - is an actual lunatic Marxist. @148grss
PFFFFF
The heady days of the early to mid 2010s when Nabavi, Meeks, & tim were worthy adversaries seem a long time ago. They are I suppose.
A couple of days ago I linked to a ‘Who would do better, Sunak or Starmer?’ Poll, and commented that Sir Keir had come second in all but one, the joke being that where ‘Neither’ won them all.
Not that funny, but several people honestly thought I hadn’t noticed that Sunak had almost always came third and tried to ridicule me for it, when the whole point was a self deprecating acknowledgement that I’m always on the pretend vegetarian republican’s case
It’s just dull now. And full of quite dull people, as in ‘not very smart’ as well as quite boring
The Telegraph's Annabel Denham trotting out the No.10 line admirably describing Starmer as nothing but [said with disdain] "a human rights lawyer."
JoCo: "But you agree with them dropping the £28bn pledge, don't you."
AnDe: "Economically, absolutely."
The Tories in summary "I cannot BELIEVE that scurrilous scamp is doing what we have been demanding that he does for a year! What are we going to sling at him now? UNACCEPTABLE."
O/T I went to a dinner/seminar last night at which defence/ Ukraine issues were discussed at length by top analysts. The key takeaways were:-
1. Tactically, the performance of the Russian army is dreadful, no better than two years ago. But, it has always been. Operationally, it is a lot more capable, and it is getting artillery shells in much greater numbers than Ukraine. There are precisely two European companies that manufacture artillery shells. However, Ukraine has the advantage in terms of possession and production of drones.
2. Russians are willing to suffer hardship, to achieve military success, in ways we don’t fully appreciate in the West.
3. But even Russia can’t defy economic gravity for ever. Soviet oil exports have been hit hard in recent months, partly due to drone attacks, and the regime is burning through foreign exchange reserves at an incredible speed. If Ukraine can keep fighting for 2-3 years, then it will likely win, as Russia runs out of resources.
4. Germany’s commitment to Ukraine is now of vital importance. As well as aid, Germany is now training twice as many Ukrainian soldiers as the UK is.
5. The reduction of the UK’s military capability, starting in 2010, is of real concern, throughout NATO. Cameron, Osborne and their successors have acted as if the world is growing safer, rather than more dangerous.
6. Contrary to press reports, there is no shortage of people wishing to join the armed forces. The real problem is with Capita, taking up to 14 months to process applications, by which time, they’ve taken other jobs.
With (2) were the analysts saying it's something in the Russian 'soul' (or whatever) that makes them tolerate great hardship for the sake of military glory? Because I've heard that a lot and I'm a bit skeptical. Isn't it more that the people there are repressed under a dictatorship and subject to vast amounts of propaganda? Meaning they are (i) more likely to keep on believing in the cause and (ii) less likely to play up even if they don't.
From what ive seen of Russians on holiday they are generally tougher. They have to be living in a cold climate in a relatively poor country that has been subject to invasions and brutal dictatorships. With regards to propaganda we in the west are too subject to constant propoganda to justify a model that vastly benefits a privileged few but impoverishes many.
This was not my experience in Tenerife.
Great line.
kinabalu sizing up the Russian and German tourists in Tenerife so we don't have to!
Maybe Gran Canaria next year.
Which will be very different and thus broaden the mind yet further.
Try Maspalamos Kinabalu. There is a good scene there.
I might well. But what sort of a scene? I'm not looking for edgy.
‘A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state… [snip - see the link],
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth’
So the only actual report I can find (other than pieces in right wing media about the report) are in Danish, and I can't find anything discussing the report in English other than right wingers hailing it as the evidence they've always needed that immigrants are bad actually. That's not to say it is wrong, just that as someone who doesn't speak Danish I can't verify the actual findings of the report outside of places like unherd, who are not a source I trust.
I have found an OpenDemocracy article detailing essentially the argument I put forth yesterday - how if immigrants are a "drain" on an economy it is most likely the practices of the employers who abuse those workers and use them to under cut labour rights and labour costs, but I accept that could have nothing to do with what this report was exploring. If you have a link directly to the report in English, I'd be very interested to look at it, the methodology and such.
The comparison doesn't really work for a country whose average income is about 70% of that in the Netherlands.
The percentage of those on benefit who are not UK citizens was around 16% in 2019 (I can't quickly find a more recent figure); and migrants are more likely to be in work that native born Brits.
So whatever your feelings about the levels of immigration, the comparison with the Netherlands (assuming the capacity of your article) is anyway complete bunk.
And there we have it. Britain is so violently different to Netherlands none of this applies. Of course
That is, until a comparison with an eu country comes along of which you approve, then it totally applies
Honestly, this level of argumentation is quite depressing
It is obviously fair to look at the pros and cons of immigration from different parts of the world to the Netherlands and assume that it would be more or less the same in the UK. I linked to that research here a while ago, it is pretty much a slam dunk
The crazy thing is that is seems no consideration at all was given to which type of immigrant would suit/benefit us before we embarked on a policy of mass immigration. It’s like a football team just buying 10-12 players without doing any research on whether those players would gel with their existing squad; no team would do it now in the era of data & analytics, yet it’s controversial to suggest we do so as a country
Indeed. This site is now close to intolerable
The level of discourse is infantile, the herding is pathetic, it’s just a bunch of fucking TEDIOUS midwit lawyers, accountants and IT nerds wanking on about shite and denying anything uncomfortable. Everyone interesting has left
It’s come to something when the most engaged and interesting commenter - amongst the lefty dross - is an actual lunatic Marxist. @148grss
PFFFFF
Comments are a lot more tribal than they used to be, and therefore less interesting.
In 2010 comments were a lot more lively and still tribal. We've churned a lot of people and in the process developed a narrower profile . I think the Brexit debate is largely the catalyst as arguments reached the four legs good two legs bad level and there was little to stimulate the mind.
Did Britain look like this in the 1930s or 1970s? What have we done to ourselves? It is disgusting
I think that, to a first-order approximation, Britain was one of the countries that went directly from malnourished to porky without stopping on the way.
A friend of a friend of mine, now sadly deceased, did a superb documentary based upon the footage shot from within the train that took Robert F Kennedy's body back from California to Washington. Almost the entire journey the track was lined with people who had come to pay their respects (a bit like the Queen's journey from Balmoral to Edinburgh). The majority of those who had come out were black but black and white together what is truly startling to the modern eye is that almost none of them are obese in any age group.
In 1968 the United States was like @Leon is describing Cambodia now. It is scary what has happened in our life times.
I guess a lot depends on where you go. I spent several weeks last year in New England. I visited 7 States, but generally the 'nice' places. I was pleasantly shocked by the lack of obese people. I was probably the most portly person I saw. We also never saw a single smoker, not one, and only one vaper. The ratio of white to black was also quite large.
On the woke front, much as I hate to admit it to @Leon it was more woke than here, although nothing extreme, but there was a lot of rainbow flags (mainly on churches so it may have been something specific to the time) and one or two black lives matter posters in shops or on churches.
I got chatting to some people visiting from California and they were surprised by the number of US flags on houses (something I took for granted in America). They commented it was not done so much now in California because of the overlap with MAGA. A bit like the National Front here making the flying of the Union Jack negative a few decades ago.
‘A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state… [snip - see the link],
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth’
So the only actual report I can find (other than pieces in right wing media about the report) are in Danish, and I can't find anything discussing the report in English other than right wingers hailing it as the evidence they've always needed that immigrants are bad actually. That's not to say it is wrong, just that as someone who doesn't speak Danish I can't verify the actual findings of the report outside of places like unherd, who are not a source I trust.
I have found an OpenDemocracy article detailing essentially the argument I put forth yesterday - how if immigrants are a "drain" on an economy it is most likely the practices of the employers who abuse those workers and use them to under cut labour rights and labour costs, but I accept that could have nothing to do with what this report was exploring. If you have a link directly to the report in English, I'd be very interested to look at it, the methodology and such.
The comparison doesn't really work for a country whose average income is about 70% of that in the Netherlands.
The percentage of those on benefit who are not UK citizens was around 16% in 2019 (I can't quickly find a more recent figure); and migrants are more likely to be in work that native born Brits.
So whatever your feelings about the levels of immigration, the comparison with the Netherlands (assuming the capacity of your article) is anyway complete bunk.
And there we have it. Britain is so violently different to Netherlands none of this applies. Of course
That is, until a comparison with an eu country comes along of which you approve, then it totally applies
Honestly, this level of argumentation is quite depressing
It is obviously fair to look at the pros and cons of immigration from different parts of the world to the Netherlands and assume that it would be more or less the same in the UK. I linked to that research here a while ago, it is pretty much a slam dunk
The crazy thing is that is seems no consideration at all was given to which type of immigrant would suit/benefit us before we embarked on a policy of mass immigration. It’s like a football team just buying 10-12 players without doing any research on whether those players would gel with their existing squad; no team would do it now in the era of data & analytics, yet it’s controversial to suggest we do so as a country
Indeed. This site is now close to intolerable
The level of discourse is infantile, the herding is pathetic, it’s just a bunch of fucking TEDIOUS midwit lawyers, accountants and IT nerds wanking on about shite and denying anything uncomfortable. Everyone interesting has left
It’s come to something when the most engaged and interesting commenter - amongst the lefty dross - is an actual lunatic Marxist. @148grss
PFFFFF
I mean I'm in favour of Marxist material theory, but politically (as I have said) I'm much more of an anarcho syndacalist. Kropotkin, Makhno, Bookchin, Graeber, Öcalan are my thinkers of choice. It may have been forgotten by some, but "libertarian" was originally a term used by and to refer to some early anarchists; and it wasn't until the right in the US saw how popular these leftist ideas of freedom were that they decided to poach it for their brand of "freedom".
You are possibly the last reason I remain here. I hope that doesn’t unnerve you
@LucyMPowell Today I asked the Leader of the House if she would apologise to the family of Brianna Ghey and others for the Prime Minister's distasteful political point scoring at the expense of trans people.
. @PennyMordaunt replied that the PM should reflect on his actions and the impact they can have on families affected.
Starmer's remorseless pursuit of GE victory continues apace, as he dismantles step by step every potential attack line that can be pursued against him. Today it's the turn of the £28 billion sum for the Green Prosperity Plan.
The mistake was, of course, putting a number on it back in 2021, at a time of low interest rates and when they had little idea what the state of the economy would be in 2024. Not sure why they did that - much better to establish the Green Prosperity Plan and GB Energy as policies, the financing of which would be revealed at the time of the GE.
By the time of the GE, the Tories will only be left with two attack lines: 1. This happily married father doesn't know what a woman is (I think he does), and 2. Starmer keeps changing his mind in the light of new evidence.
This has been a Labour comms disaster, though. I agree that the number should never have been provided but when it was, backtracking from it can only look weak - especially in the long, drawn out way it has been done.
I don't think it has. The number was needed back then because the party was struggling to get attention. It was all "Boris" and Covid.
Now it's different. There's no struggle for attention, there's a huge poll lead, and the "£28b" was one of the few remaining hooks for the Tories, a potential opening for the "Labour profligate with your money" trope.
So, kill that. The policy's the same but without the magic marker number. It leaves the public with the notion that Labour plan to ramp up Green Investment but won't break the bank to do it.
And the timing (with the GE still 9 months away) is ok.
O/T I went to a dinner/seminar last night at which defence/ Ukraine issues were discussed at length by top analysts. The key takeaways were:-
1. Tactically, the performance of the Russian army is dreadful, no better than two years ago. But, it has always been. Operationally, it is a lot more capable, and it is getting artillery shells in much greater numbers than Ukraine. There are precisely two European companies that manufacture artillery shells. However, Ukraine has the advantage in terms of possession and production of drones.
2. Russians are willing to suffer hardship, to achieve military success, in ways we don’t fully appreciate in the West.
3. But even Russia can’t defy economic gravity for ever. Soviet oil exports have been hit hard in recent months, partly due to drone attacks, and the regime is burning through foreign exchange reserves at an incredible speed. If Ukraine can keep fighting for 2-3 years, then it will likely win, as Russia runs out of resources.
4. Germany’s commitment to Ukraine is now of vital importance. As well as aid, Germany is now training twice as many Ukrainian soldiers as the UK is.
5. The reduction of the UK’s military capability, starting in 2010, is of real concern, throughout NATO. Cameron, Osborne and their successors have acted as if the world is growing safer, rather than more dangerous.
6. Contrary to press reports, there is no shortage of people wishing to join the armed forces. The real problem is with Capita, taking up to 14 months to process applications, by which time, they’ve taken other jobs.
With (2) were the analysts saying it's something in the Russian 'soul' (or whatever) that makes them tolerate great hardship for the sake of military glory? Because I've heard that a lot and I'm a bit skeptical. Isn't it more that the people there are repressed under a dictatorship and subject to vast amounts of propaganda? Meaning they are (i) more likely to keep on believing in the cause and (ii) less likely to play up even if they don't.
They have a cultural obsession with war and dying in large numbers that makes the English undying fixation on WW2 look like a passing fancy.
Understanding of Russian culture, with a few exceptions, by Western commentators is meagre. It's impossible to have anything other than superficial, and probably erroneous, grasp on it if all you have is English language sources curated by Western media. Hence, the smug and staggering ignorance that our resident Russophobes wear with such pride as if it were the Order of Lenin.
But you know what? If it comes to a choice between being a 'russophobe' in your eyes and being a full-on Russia apologist, please forgive me for choosing the former.
Have you considered that the Russian media that you slurp up might be even worse than ours for accuracy?
Have you considered it's possible to try to look at the situation dispassionately. We try to understand the motivations for actions and to avoid historical inevitablism. We don't want the Russians to succeed so they will fail. Why not look at facts on the ground.
And appreciate that we are a long way from knowing what on earth is going to happen but the old "one last push, this is it" PB mantra has not coincided with those facts on the ground, now, has it.
Yes, it is perfectly possible to view the situation dispassionately. The problem is, when he uses ethnic slurs against Ukrainians (e.g. Moskal from memory), DA isn't being dispassionate.
"Why not look at facts on the ground."
Indeed. But you know what? DA often reminds us of Ukrainian 'lies' - such as the Ghost of Kyiv. The problem is: Russia lies as well, and the 'facts on the ground' are rather thin on both sides.
As doe your last line, ISTR comments from the negativists in autumn 2022, just before Ukraine took back vast swathes of territory. Or a few months later, just before they took back most of Kherson.
If you accuse PB pro-Ukrainians of being too positive, I'd argue you're the other way.
I would be seriously worried if DA didn't use the vernacular to describe anyone. You should see how he describes Tories.
I am not accusing PB pro-Ukrainians of being too positive. I am accusing them of confusing what they want to happen with what might happen. They are engaging in historical inevitablism. Russia are the bad guys, bad guys lose, so Russia _will_ lose, and moreover if you don't also think Russia will lose you are a Putin apologist. It's bizarre.
Right from Day One people on here were showing youtube clips of platoon dismounts and crowing how this was proof if proof were needed of an imminent Ukrainian victory. Likewise talking about the "Spring Push". Likewise zillions of posts about this HIMARS deployment or that new Leopard 2 tank in theatre.
I understand that we in the UK are not used to losing (or we erase our losses from our history books, more usually - I mean how much does every schoolchild really know about 1776) but on PB it has grown into some bizarre psychological displacement process that "the good guys" can't lose and the bad guys must lose because (our own, highly selective) history.
Indeed. And what is glossed over in uk history books is it was the red army at Stalingrad that dealt the fatal blow to Hitler. By d day ghe germans had basically already lost the war. Looking at the ukraine war dispassionately it is clear the russians are advancing and ukraine is retreating. And of course if ukrainian morale totally collapses things could change rapidly.
Looking at the Ukraine war dispassionately, it's bloody obvious that the lines are so congealed they are effectively frozen. Avdiivka is four kilometers wide. You can, after removing the rubble, walk from one side to another in a hour. It is about 10km from Donetsk and in the Donetsk Oblast, which was annexed into the Russian Federation eighteen months ago. It is the equivalent of annexing Hampshire in 2022, declaring Southampton the capital, and then in Feb 2024 boasting - boasting! - that you've taken Eastleigh. Southern Eastleigh.
I have frequently observed that the Ukranians aren't retaking land fast enough to make a difference. But that door swings both ways: the Russians aren't taking ground fast enough. In the battle of the Somme it took five months to move eight kilometers. Avdiivka is half as wide and has held out for nearly two years. I have had shits that moved faster than that. Get back to us when the Russians have taken something larger than Maidenhead.
‘A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state… [snip - see the link],
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth’
So the only actual report I can find (other than pieces in right wing media about the report) are in Danish, and I can't find anything discussing the report in English other than right wingers hailing it as the evidence they've always needed that immigrants are bad actually. That's not to say it is wrong, just that as someone who doesn't speak Danish I can't verify the actual findings of the report outside of places like unherd, who are not a source I trust.
I have found an OpenDemocracy article detailing essentially the argument I put forth yesterday - how if immigrants are a "drain" on an economy it is most likely the practices of the employers who abuse those workers and use them to under cut labour rights and labour costs, but I accept that could have nothing to do with what this report was exploring. If you have a link directly to the report in English, I'd be very interested to look at it, the methodology and such.
The comparison doesn't really work for a country whose average income is about 70% of that in the Netherlands.
The percentage of those on benefit who are not UK citizens was around 16% in 2019 (I can't quickly find a more recent figure); and migrants are more likely to be in work that native born Brits.
So whatever your feelings about the levels of immigration, the comparison with the Netherlands (assuming the capacity of your article) is anyway complete bunk.
And there we have it. Britain is so violently different to Netherlands none of this applies. Of course
That is, until a comparison with an eu country comes along of which you approve, then it totally applies
Honestly, this level of argumentation is quite depressing
You first said "BME" which I believe stands for "Black [and] Minority Ethnic".
That was your error. You brought race into it. Many (most? who knows) black Britons have roots here that go back decades. But you fell into the trap (to put it kindly) of identifying people by their race, not their economic status.
Plus how many times do I have to tell you. The UK simply does not want fewer immigrants.
Because most new migrants into the UK, since Brexit, have been BME. St Paul’s has a major chunk of non UK born citizens. It will be incomers who desperately need a new dentist, not settled citizens of whatever ethnicity
I was using logic and combining these facts. I understand you’d prefer to resort to irrationality and call me a Nazi or whatever. I really don’t give a fuck and THIS IS BECOMING QUITE TIRESOME
OK SORRY PLEASE STAY WITH ME.
Do you have no understanding of what you are unleashing when you look at a bunch of immigrants and categorise them as "BME". You instantly lump in every eg black Briton into the "other", undesirable category.
Because you are using race to identify them. Not immigrants or asylum seekers but black people . You are saying, you literally said, "but the obvious black over-representation in that queue".
Now as you are an old hand at the writing game I'll allow that your meaning was ever so sophisticated but if our Nige stood up and said "look at all the black people queuing outside the dentist, it's intolerable" many people might be reminded of the "send them back" mantra of the '70s, now, mightn't they.
I am losing the will to care. It’s you that chose to misinterpret me, stop it, you twat. You’re smarter than this, or at least I presumed so
I am close to quitting. I don’t expect you to care, why should you. But constant and deliberate misconstrual can test anyone. Earlier on, someone accused me of actually saying ‘let’s expel all Romanian dentists’ presumably because I hate Romanians? Why the fuck would I hate Romanians, or any foreigners, when I spend my life wandering the world enjoying foreign cultures, peoples, cuisines, opinions, lifestyles?
Enough. If PB wants to become a tepid Woke thought-bubble then go right ahead, you are doing the exact right thing
The deeper irony is that my original remark about that video of the queue - ‘this is quite a dystopian vision of Britain’ - or something like that - actually had nothing to do with migration, race, anything like that - it was actually a comment on the combination of people desperate for a dentist, in an ugly place, covered with graffiti, under a grey sky. It looks like a poor South American or old soviet city but with even worse weather
It was only later I thought - hold on this might be an image capturing immigration pressure on public services
And with that I shall finish my gin and tonic and go and watch griselda
You said the following about that queue:
"But the obvious BME over-representation in that queue (compared to national average) does suggest that part of the problem with our NHS (and much else)..."
But enjoy Griselda.
You know you don't have to leave the site just because you fail to win an argument or are caught out saying something you know you shouldn't have said.
Starmer's remorseless pursuit of GE victory continues apace, as he dismantles step by step every potential attack line that can be pursued against him. Today it's the turn of the £28 billion sum for the Green Prosperity Plan.
The mistake was, of course, putting a number on it back in 2021, at a time of low interest rates and when they had little idea what the state of the economy would be in 2024. Not sure why they did that - much better to establish the Green Prosperity Plan and GB Energy as policies, the financing of which would be revealed at the time of the GE.
By the time of the GE, the Tories will only be left with two attack lines: 1. This happily married father doesn't know what a woman is (I think he does), and 2. Starmer keeps changing his mind in the light of new evidence.
The tories will almost certainly run a negative campaign against Starmer because what else do they have? Nothing.
However, for a negative campaign to work it has to resonate with something the voters already suspect or feel. Attacks portraying Starmer as a lying chancer are just going to bounce off his heavily shellacked hair
It is the only attack they have, but it is based in truth; he is a liar and a chancer, and there’s loads of video evidence of him at it, so it could work. The main problem is, he’s so dull it’s hard to believe he is the complete snide he is
2 incidents yesterday make me pause in that assessment. Firstly, the outrage on behalf of the mother of Brianna Ghey was instant and genuine. He may have developed it later into politics but he was genuinely appalled. Secondly, it was noted that at the end of PMQs he immediately went up to Elliot Cockburn, who had disclosed his attempted suicide, to lend him support and comfort.
Just 2 straws in the wind but for the moment I am willing to accept that Starmer is a genuinely decent man who doesn't seem to have fixed views on much other than he should be PM. I certainly don't think of him as a complete snide.
if he was genuinely decent he wouldnt stand for PM.
‘A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state… [snip - see the link],
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth’
So the only actual report I can find (other than pieces in right wing media about the report) are in Danish, and I can't find anything discussing the report in English other than right wingers hailing it as the evidence they've always needed that immigrants are bad actually. That's not to say it is wrong, just that as someone who doesn't speak Danish I can't verify the actual findings of the report outside of places like unherd, who are not a source I trust.
I have found an OpenDemocracy article detailing essentially the argument I put forth yesterday - how if immigrants are a "drain" on an economy it is most likely the practices of the employers who abuse those workers and use them to under cut labour rights and labour costs, but I accept that could have nothing to do with what this report was exploring. If you have a link directly to the report in English, I'd be very interested to look at it, the methodology and such.
The comparison doesn't really work for a country whose average income is about 70% of that in the Netherlands.
The percentage of those on benefit who are not UK citizens was around 16% in 2019 (I can't quickly find a more recent figure); and migrants are more likely to be in work that native born Brits.
So whatever your feelings about the levels of immigration, the comparison with the Netherlands (assuming the capacity of your article) is anyway complete bunk.
And there we have it. Britain is so violently different to Netherlands none of this applies. Of course
That is, until a comparison with an eu country comes along of which you approve, then it totally applies
Honestly, this level of argumentation is quite depressing
It is obviously fair to look at the pros and cons of immigration from different parts of the world to the Netherlands and assume that it would be more or less the same in the UK. I linked to that research here a while ago, it is pretty much a slam dunk
The crazy thing is that is seems no consideration at all was given to which type of immigrant would suit/benefit us before we embarked on a policy of mass immigration. It’s like a football team just buying 10-12 players without doing any research on whether those players would gel with their existing squad; no team would do it now in the era of data & analytics, yet it’s controversial to suggest we do so as a country
Indeed. This site is now close to intolerable
The level of discourse is infantile, the herding is pathetic, it’s just a bunch of fucking TEDIOUS midwit lawyers, accountants and IT nerds wanking on about shite and denying anything uncomfortable. Everyone interesting has left
It’s come to something when the most engaged and interesting commenter - amongst the lefty dross - is an actual lunatic Marxist. @148grss
PFFFFF
Comments are a lot more tribal than they used to be, and therefore less interesting.
In 2010 comments were a lot more lively and still tribal. We've churned a lot of people and in the process developed a narrower profile . I think the Brexit debate is largely the catalyst as arguments reached the four legs good two legs bad level and there was little to stimulate the mind.
In 2010 the leading parties broadly all agreed with Nick. Hard to be overly tribal when a lot of consensus around.
The country has since been driven apart, like it or not mostly by Brexit and its impact on the shape of the Tory party.
Hence more divisive and bitter politics, which just gets reflected here too.
‘A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state… [snip - see the link],
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth’
So the only actual report I can find (other than pieces in right wing media about the report) are in Danish, and I can't find anything discussing the report in English other than right wingers hailing it as the evidence they've always needed that immigrants are bad actually. That's not to say it is wrong, just that as someone who doesn't speak Danish I can't verify the actual findings of the report outside of places like unherd, who are not a source I trust.
I have found an OpenDemocracy article detailing essentially the argument I put forth yesterday - how if immigrants are a "drain" on an economy it is most likely the practices of the employers who abuse those workers and use them to under cut labour rights and labour costs, but I accept that could have nothing to do with what this report was exploring. If you have a link directly to the report in English, I'd be very interested to look at it, the methodology and such.
The comparison doesn't really work for a country whose average income is about 70% of that in the Netherlands.
The percentage of those on benefit who are not UK citizens was around 16% in 2019 (I can't quickly find a more recent figure); and migrants are more likely to be in work that native born Brits.
So whatever your feelings about the levels of immigration, the comparison with the Netherlands (assuming the capacity of your article) is anyway complete bunk.
And there we have it. Britain is so violently different to Netherlands none of this applies. Of course
That is, until a comparison with an eu country comes along of which you approve, then it totally applies
Honestly, this level of argumentation is quite depressing
You first said "BME" which I believe stands for "Black [and] Minority Ethnic".
That was your error. You brought race into it. Many (most? who knows) black Britons have roots here that go back decades. But you fell into the trap (to put it kindly) of identifying people by their race, not their economic status.
Plus how many times do I have to tell you. The UK simply does not want fewer immigrants.
Because most new migrants into the UK, since Brexit, have been BME. St Paul’s has a major chunk of non UK born citizens. It will be incomers who desperately need a new dentist, not settled citizens of whatever ethnicity
I was using logic and combining these facts. I understand you’d prefer to resort to irrationality and call me a Nazi or whatever. I really don’t give a fuck and THIS IS BECOMING QUITE TIRESOME
There are almost no immigrants of any kind where I live except internal ones from other parts of England. Good luck getting an NHS dentist! Good luck getting a doctor's appointment in anything under three weeks, for that matter.
Is it really true that if you called the Doctor at 8am, they wouldn’t be able to see you for three weeks? I’ve never known anything like that. Next day is the worst I think.
And what about the Ukrainian refugees you have surely taken in? Don’t they count??
I called the doctor's surgery in mid-December. I got an appointment in mid-January. Then they lost the test results I brought in with me. The issue is less demand than supply - there just aren't enough GPs, especially in many rural and semi-rural areas.
That is unreal. Well I hope it’s nothing too serious
Starmer's remorseless pursuit of GE victory continues apace, as he dismantles step by step every potential attack line that can be pursued against him. Today it's the turn of the £28 billion sum for the Green Prosperity Plan.
The mistake was, of course, putting a number on it back in 2021, at a time of low interest rates and when they had little idea what the state of the economy would be in 2024. Not sure why they did that - much better to establish the Green Prosperity Plan and GB Energy as policies, the financing of which would be revealed at the time of the GE.
By the time of the GE, the Tories will only be left with two attack lines: 1. This happily married father doesn't know what a woman is (I think he does), and 2. Starmer keeps changing his mind in the light of new evidence.
The tories will almost certainly run a negative campaign against Starmer because what else do they have? Nothing.
However, for a negative campaign to work it has to resonate with something the voters already suspect or feel. Attacks portraying Starmer as a lying chancer are just going to bounce off his heavily shellacked hair
The Tories' problem is that Starmer's negatives, which are a thing, don't help them. They basically boil down to Starmer not being different enough from the current lot.
Tory negatives will struggle to gain traction, they need to use humour and make him a laughing stock.
Difficult, when they themselves are already the nation’s favourite laughing stock?
Starmer's remorseless pursuit of GE victory continues apace, as he dismantles step by step every potential attack line that can be pursued against him. Today it's the turn of the £28 billion sum for the Green Prosperity Plan.
The mistake was, of course, putting a number on it back in 2021, at a time of low interest rates and when they had little idea what the state of the economy would be in 2024. Not sure why they did that - much better to establish the Green Prosperity Plan and GB Energy as policies, the financing of which would be revealed at the time of the GE.
By the time of the GE, the Tories will only be left with two attack lines: 1. This happily married father doesn't know what a woman is (I think he does), and 2. Starmer keeps changing his mind in the light of new evidence.
The tories will almost certainly run a negative campaign against Starmer because what else do they have? Nothing.
However, for a negative campaign to work it has to resonate with something the voters already suspect or feel. Attacks portraying Starmer as a lying chancer are just going to bounce off his heavily shellacked hair
It is the only attack they have, but it is based in truth; he is a liar and a chancer, and there’s loads of video evidence of him at it, so it could work. The main problem is, he’s so dull it’s hard to believe he is the complete snide he is
Who SKS has legged over by lying to them is the Corbynite wing of his own party. That's unlikely to resonate much with the public.
‘A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state… [snip - see the link],
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth’
So the only actual report I can find (other than pieces in right wing media about the report) are in Danish, and I can't find anything discussing the report in English other than right wingers hailing it as the evidence they've always needed that immigrants are bad actually. That's not to say it is wrong, just that as someone who doesn't speak Danish I can't verify the actual findings of the report outside of places like unherd, who are not a source I trust.
I have found an OpenDemocracy article detailing essentially the argument I put forth yesterday - how if immigrants are a "drain" on an economy it is most likely the practices of the employers who abuse those workers and use them to under cut labour rights and labour costs, but I accept that could have nothing to do with what this report was exploring. If you have a link directly to the report in English, I'd be very interested to look at it, the methodology and such.
The comparison doesn't really work for a country whose average income is about 70% of that in the Netherlands.
The percentage of those on benefit who are not UK citizens was around 16% in 2019 (I can't quickly find a more recent figure); and migrants are more likely to be in work that native born Brits.
So whatever your feelings about the levels of immigration, the comparison with the Netherlands (assuming the capacity of your article) is anyway complete bunk.
And there we have it. Britain is so violently different to Netherlands none of this applies. Of course
That is, until a comparison with an eu country comes along of which you approve, then it totally applies
Honestly, this level of argumentation is quite depressing
You first said "BME" which I believe stands for "Black [and] Minority Ethnic".
That was your error. You brought race into it. Many (most? who knows) black Britons have roots here that go back decades. But you fell into the trap (to put it kindly) of identifying people by their race, not their economic status.
Plus how many times do I have to tell you. The UK simply does not want fewer immigrants.
Because most new migrants into the UK, since Brexit, have been BME. St Paul’s has a major chunk of non UK born citizens. It will be incomers who desperately need a new dentist, not settled citizens of whatever ethnicity
I was using logic and combining these facts. I understand you’d prefer to resort to irrationality and call me a Nazi or whatever. I really don’t give a fuck and THIS IS BECOMING QUITE TIRESOME
There are almost no immigrants of any kind where I live except internal ones from other parts of England. Good luck getting an NHS dentist! Good luck getting a doctor's appointment in anything under three weeks, for that matter.
Is it really true that if you called the Doctor at 8am, they wouldn’t be able to see you for three weeks? I’ve never known anything like that. Next day is the worst I think.
And what about the Ukrainian refugees you have surely taken in? Don’t they count??
I called the doctor's surgery in mid-December. I got an appointment in mid-January. Then they lost the test results I brought in with me. The issue is less demand than supply - there just aren't enough GPs, especially in many rural and semi-rural areas.
That is unreal. Well I hope it’s nothing too serious
Must have been after triage. There's probably not a GP surgery in the country that, if sufficiently serious, or even if you say it's serious, you couldn't have an appointment that day or the day after.
Starmer's remorseless pursuit of GE victory continues apace, as he dismantles step by step every potential attack line that can be pursued against him. Today it's the turn of the £28 billion sum for the Green Prosperity Plan.
The mistake was, of course, putting a number on it back in 2021, at a time of low interest rates and when they had little idea what the state of the economy would be in 2024. Not sure why they did that - much better to establish the Green Prosperity Plan and GB Energy as policies, the financing of which would be revealed at the time of the GE.
By the time of the GE, the Tories will only be left with two attack lines: 1. This happily married father doesn't know what a woman is (I think he does), and 2. Starmer keeps changing his mind in the light of new evidence.
The tories will almost certainly run a negative campaign against Starmer because what else do they have? Nothing.
However, for a negative campaign to work it has to resonate with something the voters already suspect or feel. Attacks portraying Starmer as a lying chancer are just going to bounce off his heavily shellacked hair
The Tories' problem is that Starmer's negatives, which are a thing, don't help them. They basically boil down to Starmer not being different enough from the current lot.
Tory negatives will struggle to gain traction, they need to use humour and make him a laughing stock.
Hard to see how they could do that, though.
SKS is generally seen as dull, decent, serious, a bit worthy. There's not much mileage to be had in making fun of him for being dull or serious - it just invites comparison with Boris or Truss, and people will very reasonably think that they prefer dullness to chaos.
So instead they're trying to make fun of him for being decent. I guess Sunak's "lol, trans" nonsense fits with that - but taunting a murdered girl's mother to her face is hardly very edifying. It's hard to see how they can push that much further than they have already.
‘A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state… [snip - see the link],
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth’
So the only actual report I can find (other than pieces in right wing media about the report) are in Danish, and I can't find anything discussing the report in English other than right wingers hailing it as the evidence they've always needed that immigrants are bad actually. That's not to say it is wrong, just that as someone who doesn't speak Danish I can't verify the actual findings of the report outside of places like unherd, who are not a source I trust.
I have found an OpenDemocracy article detailing essentially the argument I put forth yesterday - how if immigrants are a "drain" on an economy it is most likely the practices of the employers who abuse those workers and use them to under cut labour rights and labour costs, but I accept that could have nothing to do with what this report was exploring. If you have a link directly to the report in English, I'd be very interested to look at it, the methodology and such.
The comparison doesn't really work for a country whose average income is about 70% of that in the Netherlands.
The percentage of those on benefit who are not UK citizens was around 16% in 2019 (I can't quickly find a more recent figure); and migrants are more likely to be in work that native born Brits.
So whatever your feelings about the levels of immigration, the comparison with the Netherlands (assuming the capacity of your article) is anyway complete bunk.
And there we have it. Britain is so violently different to Netherlands none of this applies. Of course
That is, until a comparison with an eu country comes along of which you approve, then it totally applies
Honestly, this level of argumentation is quite depressing
It is obviously fair to look at the pros and cons of immigration from different parts of the world to the Netherlands and assume that it would be more or less the same in the UK. I linked to that research here a while ago, it is pretty much a slam dunk
The crazy thing is that is seems no consideration at all was given to which type of immigrant would suit/benefit us before we embarked on a policy of mass immigration. It’s like a football team just buying 10-12 players without doing any research on whether those players would gel with their existing squad; no team would do it now in the era of data & analytics, yet it’s controversial to suggest we do so as a country
Indeed. This site is now close to intolerable
The level of discourse is infantile, the herding is pathetic, it’s just a bunch of fucking TEDIOUS midwit lawyers, accountants and IT nerds wanking on about shite and denying anything uncomfortable. Everyone interesting has left
It’s come to something when the most engaged and interesting commenter - amongst the lefty dross - is an actual lunatic Marxist. @148grss
PFFFFF
I mean I'm in favour of Marxist material theory, but politically (as I have said) I'm much more of an anarcho syndacalist. Kropotkin, Makhno, Bookchin, Graeber, Öcalan are my thinkers of choice. It may have been forgotten by some, but "libertarian" was originally a term used by and to refer to some early anarchists; and it wasn't until the right in the US saw how popular these leftist ideas of freedom were that they decided to poach it for their brand of "freedom".
You are possibly the last reason I remain here. I hope that doesn’t unnerve you
Ok. Home, wine, sleep, work
I mean it does unnerve me. Like as well as all those things I am, in your terms, a signed up wokeist.
And as much as I respond to people of the right wing persuasion here - that isn't why I want to be here; it's just something to do in between the electoral analysis that I find interesting. It's weird - I am not in anyway an electoralist who believes in the value of any individual vote or election, but election watching has become one of my pastimes in the same way that I guess people who don't like sports enjoy talking about sport stats and tactics. I blame being youngish in 2008 and the explosion of 538 style political analysis... it got me in my teens and now I'm hooked.
Starmer's remorseless pursuit of GE victory continues apace, as he dismantles step by step every potential attack line that can be pursued against him. Today it's the turn of the £28 billion sum for the Green Prosperity Plan.
The mistake was, of course, putting a number on it back in 2021, at a time of low interest rates and when they had little idea what the state of the economy would be in 2024. Not sure why they did that - much better to establish the Green Prosperity Plan and GB Energy as policies, the financing of which would be revealed at the time of the GE.
By the time of the GE, the Tories will only be left with two attack lines: 1. This happily married father doesn't know what a woman is (I think he does), and 2. Starmer keeps changing his mind in the light of new evidence.
The tories will almost certainly run a negative campaign against Starmer because what else do they have? Nothing.
However, for a negative campaign to work it has to resonate with something the voters already suspect or feel. Attacks portraying Starmer as a lying chancer are just going to bounce off his heavily shellacked hair
It is the only attack they have, but it is based in truth; he is a liar and a chancer, and there’s loads of video evidence of him at it, so it could work. The main problem is, he’s so dull it’s hard to believe he is the complete snide he is
2 incidents yesterday make me pause in that assessment. Firstly, the outrage on behalf of the mother of Brianna Ghey was instant and genuine. He may have developed it later into politics but he was genuinely appalled. Secondly, it was noted that at the end of PMQs he immediately went up to Elliot Cockburn, who had disclosed his attempted suicide, to lend him support and comfort.
Just 2 straws in the wind but for the moment I am willing to accept that Starmer is a genuinely decent man who doesn't seem to have fixed views on much other than he should be PM. I certainly don't think of him as a complete snide.
if he was genuinely decent he wouldnt stand for PM.
It’s quite strange being in a country as young as Cambodia. Everyone seems to be in their twenties BECAUSE THEY ARE. Median age is 27
Even stranger is that absolutely everyone is slim. Healthy looking. I’ve been here a month (and was here last year as well) and I’m not sure I’ve seen a single fat person. I’ve seen some portly-ish old people, but they are stout in the way older people can be or even should be. A bit of a tummy (men), chunky around the arse (the women) - I have not seen a single overweight person under 40, let alone obese. It means even average looking women are kinda sexy, due to being slender as a reed
And I’m not imagining it. Cambodia is the 4th least obese nation on Earth. 3.9%
Starmer's remorseless pursuit of GE victory continues apace, as he dismantles step by step every potential attack line that can be pursued against him. Today it's the turn of the £28 billion sum for the Green Prosperity Plan.
The mistake was, of course, putting a number on it back in 2021, at a time of low interest rates and when they had little idea what the state of the economy would be in 2024. Not sure why they did that - much better to establish the Green Prosperity Plan and GB Energy as policies, the financing of which would be revealed at the time of the GE.
By the time of the GE, the Tories will only be left with two attack lines: 1. This happily married father doesn't know what a woman is (I think he does), and 2. Starmer keeps changing his mind in the light of new evidence.
The tories will almost certainly run a negative campaign against Starmer because what else do they have? Nothing.
However, for a negative campaign to work it has to resonate with something the voters already suspect or feel. Attacks portraying Starmer as a lying chancer are just going to bounce off his heavily shellacked hair
The Tories' problem is that Starmer's negatives, which are a thing, don't help them. They basically boil down to Starmer not being different enough from the current lot.
Tory negatives will struggle to gain traction, they need to use humour and make him a laughing stock.
Difficult, when they themselves are already the nation’s favourite laughing stock?
Different audiences innit? Sunak is fairly well exposed but nobody has really taken on Starmer yet. Make him Blairs sock puppet and see how it goes.
Starmer's remorseless pursuit of GE victory continues apace, as he dismantles step by step every potential attack line that can be pursued against him. Today it's the turn of the £28 billion sum for the Green Prosperity Plan.
The mistake was, of course, putting a number on it back in 2021, at a time of low interest rates and when they had little idea what the state of the economy would be in 2024. Not sure why they did that - much better to establish the Green Prosperity Plan and GB Energy as policies, the financing of which would be revealed at the time of the GE.
By the time of the GE, the Tories will only be left with two attack lines: 1. This happily married father doesn't know what a woman is (I think he does), and 2. Starmer keeps changing his mind in the light of new evidence.
The tories will almost certainly run a negative campaign against Starmer because what else do they have? Nothing.
However, for a negative campaign to work it has to resonate with something the voters already suspect or feel. Attacks portraying Starmer as a lying chancer are just going to bounce off his heavily shellacked hair
It is the only attack they have, but it is based in truth; he is a liar and a chancer, and there’s loads of video evidence of him at it, so it could work. The main problem is, he’s so dull it’s hard to believe he is the complete snide he is
2 incidents yesterday make me pause in that assessment. Firstly, the outrage on behalf of the mother of Brianna Ghey was instant and genuine. He may have developed it later into politics but he was genuinely appalled. Secondly, it was noted that at the end of PMQs he immediately went up to Elliot Cockburn, who had disclosed his attempted suicide, to lend him support and comfort.
Just 2 straws in the wind but for the moment I am willing to accept that Starmer is a genuinely decent man who doesn't seem to have fixed views on much other than he should be PM. I certainly don't think of him as a complete snide.
He probably just wanted to take attention away from the fact someone had listed a few of his u-turns and broken promises.
‘A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state… [snip - see the link],
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth’
So the only actual report I can find (other than pieces in right wing media about the report) are in Danish, and I can't find anything discussing the report in English other than right wingers hailing it as the evidence they've always needed that immigrants are bad actually. That's not to say it is wrong, just that as someone who doesn't speak Danish I can't verify the actual findings of the report outside of places like unherd, who are not a source I trust.
I have found an OpenDemocracy article detailing essentially the argument I put forth yesterday - how if immigrants are a "drain" on an economy it is most likely the practices of the employers who abuse those workers and use them to under cut labour rights and labour costs, but I accept that could have nothing to do with what this report was exploring. If you have a link directly to the report in English, I'd be very interested to look at it, the methodology and such.
The comparison doesn't really work for a country whose average income is about 70% of that in the Netherlands.
The percentage of those on benefit who are not UK citizens was around 16% in 2019 (I can't quickly find a more recent figure); and migrants are more likely to be in work that native born Brits.
So whatever your feelings about the levels of immigration, the comparison with the Netherlands (assuming the capacity of your article) is anyway complete bunk.
And there we have it. Britain is so violently different to Netherlands none of this applies. Of course
That is, until a comparison with an eu country comes along of which you approve, then it totally applies
Honestly, this level of argumentation is quite depressing
It is obviously fair to look at the pros and cons of immigration from different parts of the world to the Netherlands and assume that it would be more or less the same in the UK. I linked to that research here a while ago, it is pretty much a slam dunk
The crazy thing is that is seems no consideration at all was given to which type of immigrant would suit/benefit us before we embarked on a policy of mass immigration. It’s like a football team just buying 10-12 players without doing any research on whether those players would gel with their existing squad; no team would do it now in the era of data & analytics, yet it’s controversial to suggest we do so as a country
Indeed. This site is now close to intolerable
The level of discourse is infantile, the herding is pathetic, it’s just a bunch of fucking TEDIOUS midwit lawyers, accountants and IT nerds wanking on about shite and denying anything uncomfortable. Everyone interesting has left
It’s come to something when the most engaged and interesting commenter - amongst the lefty dross - is an actual lunatic Marxist. @148grss
PFFFFF
Comments are a lot more tribal than they used to be, and therefore less interesting.
In 2010 comments were a lot more lively and still tribal. We've churned a lot of people and in the process developed a narrower profile . I think the Brexit debate is largely the catalyst as arguments reached the four legs good two legs bad level and there was little to stimulate the mind.
In 2010 the leading parties broadly all agreed with Nick. Hard to be overly tribal when a lot of consensus around.
The country has since been driven apart, like it or not mostly by Brexit and its impact on the shape of the Tory party.
Hence more divisive and bitter politics, which just gets reflected here too.
2010 wasnt like that, We had some in the trenches arguments from tim, the site was hounding heavily on Gordon Brown and Nick wasnt an issue until the leaders debates.
O/T I went to a dinner/seminar last night at which defence/ Ukraine issues were discussed at length by top analysts. The key takeaways were:-
1. Tactically, the performance of the Russian army is dreadful, no better than two years ago. But, it has always been. Operationally, it is a lot more capable, and it is getting artillery shells in much greater numbers than Ukraine. There are precisely two European companies that manufacture artillery shells. However, Ukraine has the advantage in terms of possession and production of drones.
2. Russians are willing to suffer hardship, to achieve military success, in ways we don’t fully appreciate in the West.
3. But even Russia can’t defy economic gravity for ever. Soviet oil exports have been hit hard in recent months, partly due to drone attacks, and the regime is burning through foreign exchange reserves at an incredible speed. If Ukraine can keep fighting for 2-3 years, then it will likely win, as Russia runs out of resources.
4. Germany’s commitment to Ukraine is now of vital importance. As well as aid, Germany is now training twice as many Ukrainian soldiers as the UK is.
5. The reduction of the UK’s military capability, starting in 2010, is of real concern, throughout NATO. Cameron, Osborne and their successors have acted as if the world is growing safer, rather than more dangerous.
6. Contrary to press reports, there is no shortage of people wishing to join the armed forces. The real problem is with Capita, taking up to 14 months to process applications, by which time, they’ve taken other jobs.
With (2) were the analysts saying it's something in the Russian 'soul' (or whatever) that makes them tolerate great hardship for the sake of military glory? Because I've heard that a lot and I'm a bit skeptical. Isn't it more that the people there are repressed under a dictatorship and subject to vast amounts of propaganda? Meaning they are (i) more likely to keep on believing in the cause and (ii) less likely to play up even if they don't.
They have a cultural obsession with war and dying in large numbers that makes the English undying fixation on WW2 look like a passing fancy.
Understanding of Russian culture, with a few exceptions, by Western commentators is meagre. It's impossible to have anything other than superficial, and probably erroneous, grasp on it if all you have is English language sources curated by Western media. Hence, the smug and staggering ignorance that our resident Russophobes wear with such pride as if it were the Order of Lenin.
But you know what? If it comes to a choice between being a 'russophobe' in your eyes and being a full-on Russia apologist, please forgive me for choosing the former.
Have you considered that the Russian media that you slurp up might be even worse than ours for accuracy?
Have you considered it's possible to try to look at the situation dispassionately. We try to understand the motivations for actions and to avoid historical inevitablism. We don't want the Russians to succeed so they will fail. Why not look at facts on the ground.
And appreciate that we are a long way from knowing what on earth is going to happen but the old "one last push, this is it" PB mantra has not coincided with those facts on the ground, now, has it.
Yes, it is perfectly possible to view the situation dispassionately. The problem is, when he uses ethnic slurs against Ukrainians (e.g. Moskal from memory), DA isn't being dispassionate.
"Why not look at facts on the ground."
Indeed. But you know what? DA often reminds us of Ukrainian 'lies' - such as the Ghost of Kyiv. The problem is: Russia lies as well, and the 'facts on the ground' are rather thin on both sides.
As doe your last line, ISTR comments from the negativists in autumn 2022, just before Ukraine took back vast swathes of territory. Or a few months later, just before they took back most of Kherson.
If you accuse PB pro-Ukrainians of being too positive, I'd argue you're the other way.
I would be seriously worried if DA didn't use the vernacular to describe anyone. You should see how he describes Tories.
I am not accusing PB pro-Ukrainians of being too positive. I am accusing them of confusing what they want to happen with what might happen. They are engaging in historical inevitablism. Russia are the bad guys, bad guys lose, so Russia _will_ lose, and moreover if you don't also think Russia will lose you are a Putin apologist. It's bizarre.
Right from Day One people on here were showing youtube clips of platoon dismounts and crowing how this was proof if proof were needed of an imminent Ukrainian victory. Likewise talking about the "Spring Push". Likewise zillions of posts about this HIMARS deployment or that new Leopard 2 tank in theatre.
I understand that we in the UK are not used to losing (or we erase our losses from our history books, more usually - I mean how much does every schoolchild really know about 1776) but on PB it has grown into some bizarre psychological displacement process that "the good guys" can't lose and the bad guys must lose because (our own, highly selective) history.
Indeed. And what is glossed over in uk history books is it was the red army at Stalingrad that dealt the fatal blow to Hitler. By d day ghe germans had basically already lost the war. Looking at the ukraine war dispassionately it is clear the russians are advancing and ukraine is retreating. And of course if ukrainian morale totally collapses things could change rapidly.
Looking at the Ukraine war dispassionately, it's bloody obvious that the lines are so congealed they are effectively frozen. Avdiivka is four kilometers wide. You can, after removing the rubble, walk from one side to another in a hour. It is about 10km from Donetsk and in the Donetsk Oblast, which was annexed into the Russian Federation eighteen months ago. It is the equivalent of annexing Hampshire in 2022, declaring Southampton the capital, and then in Feb 2024 boasting - boasting! - that you've taken Eastleigh. Southern Eastleigh.
I have frequently observed that the Ukranians aren't retaking land fast enough to make a difference. But that door swings both ways: the Russians aren't taking ground fast enough. In the battle of the Somme it took five months to move eight kilometers. Avdiivka is half as wide and has held out for nearly two years. I have had shits that moved faster than that. Get back to us when the Russians have taken something larger than Maidenhead.
You feel to take account that collapses in a front can take place exponentially slowly then all at once. Things seem to be going slowly than boom as morale totally collapses for the defenders. I saw this yesterday on X.
Information is coming from different sectors of the front about multiple breakthroughs by the Russian Armed Forces along the entire line of combat contact. There is an operational crisis, and if the Ukrainian Armed Forces cannot stabilize the situation, the crisis could instantly develop into a strategic one. In the near future, American journalist Tucker Carlson will publish an interview with Putin. This is expected to be another blow to a weakened Biden and Zelensky, who has almost lost all hope.
SnowStorm | Ukrainians Are Running Away | Zircon HyperSonic Strike. Military Summary For 20204.02.07
It’s quite strange being in a country as young as Cambodia. Everyone seems to be in their twenties BECAUSE THEY ARE. Median age is 27
Even stranger is that absolutely everyone is slim. Healthy looking. I’ve been here a month (and was here last year as well) and I’m not sure I’ve seen a single fat person. I’ve seen some portly-ish old people, but they are stout in the way older people can be or even should be. A bit of a tummy (men), chunky around the arse (the women) - I have not seen a single overweight person under 40, let alone obese. It means even average looking women are kinda sexy, due to being slender as a reed
And I’m not imagining it. Cambodia is the 4th least obese nation on Earth. 3.9%
‘A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state… [snip - see the link],
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth’
So the only actual report I can find (other than pieces in right wing media about the report) are in Danish, and I can't find anything discussing the report in English other than right wingers hailing it as the evidence they've always needed that immigrants are bad actually. That's not to say it is wrong, just that as someone who doesn't speak Danish I can't verify the actual findings of the report outside of places like unherd, who are not a source I trust.
I have found an OpenDemocracy article detailing essentially the argument I put forth yesterday - how if immigrants are a "drain" on an economy it is most likely the practices of the employers who abuse those workers and use them to under cut labour rights and labour costs, but I accept that could have nothing to do with what this report was exploring. If you have a link directly to the report in English, I'd be very interested to look at it, the methodology and such.
The comparison doesn't really work for a country whose average income is about 70% of that in the Netherlands.
The percentage of those on benefit who are not UK citizens was around 16% in 2019 (I can't quickly find a more recent figure); and migrants are more likely to be in work that native born Brits.
So whatever your feelings about the levels of immigration, the comparison with the Netherlands (assuming the capacity of your article) is anyway complete bunk.
And there we have it. Britain is so violently different to Netherlands none of this applies. Of course
That is, until a comparison with an eu country comes along of which you approve, then it totally applies
Honestly, this level of argumentation is quite depressing
You first said "BME" which I believe stands for "Black [and] Minority Ethnic".
That was your error. You brought race into it. Many (most? who knows) black Britons have roots here that go back decades. But you fell into the trap (to put it kindly) of identifying people by their race, not their economic status.
Plus how many times do I have to tell you. The UK simply does not want fewer immigrants.
Because most new migrants into the UK, since Brexit, have been BME. St Paul’s has a major chunk of non UK born citizens. It will be incomers who desperately need a new dentist, not settled citizens of whatever ethnicity
I was using logic and combining these facts. I understand you’d prefer to resort to irrationality and call me a Nazi or whatever. I really don’t give a fuck and THIS IS BECOMING QUITE TIRESOME
OK SORRY PLEASE STAY WITH ME.
Do you have no understanding of what you are unleashing when you look at a bunch of immigrants and categorise them as "BME". You instantly lump in every eg black Briton into the "other", undesirable category.
Because you are using race to identify them. Not immigrants or asylum seekers but black people . You are saying, you literally said, "but the obvious black over-representation in that queue".
Now as you are an old hand at the writing game I'll allow that your meaning was ever so sophisticated but if our Nige stood up and said "look at all the black people queuing outside the dentist, it's intolerable" many people might be reminded of the "send them back" mantra of the '70s, now, mightn't they.
I am losing the will to care. It’s you that chose to misinterpret me, stop it, you twat. You’re smarter than this, or at least I presumed so
I am close to quitting. I don’t expect you to care, why should you. But constant and deliberate misconstrual can test anyone. Earlier on, someone accused me of actually saying ‘let’s expel all Romanian dentists’ presumably because I hate Romanians? Why the fuck would I hate Romanians, or any foreigners, when I spend my life wandering the world enjoying foreign cultures, peoples, cuisines, opinions, lifestyles?
Enough. If PB wants to become a tepid Woke thought-bubble then go right ahead, you are doing the exact right thing
The deeper irony is that my original remark about that video of the queue - ‘this is quite a dystopian vision of Britain’ - or something like that - actually had nothing to do with migration, race, anything like that - it was actually a comment on the combination of people desperate for a dentist, in an ugly place, covered with graffiti, under a grey sky. It looks like a poor South American or old soviet city but with even worse weather
It was only later I thought - hold on this might be an image capturing immigration pressure on public services
And with that I shall finish my gin and tonic and go and watch griselda
There comes a point where every ageing person on their way off the stage has to choose, between railing against everything that’s changing since their middle age, and so consigning themselves to an old age of frustration and irrelevance, or making an effort to perceive and understand the world as do those who are about to take control of our affairs. Which is, of course, what we all wished for, when we were back then, frustrated at the blinkered bigotry of so many of our elders.
Only the latter course offers any sort of peace and respect during retirement, but for those of limited insight the former course is all too often the one that is chosen.
Starmer's remorseless pursuit of GE victory continues apace, as he dismantles step by step every potential attack line that can be pursued against him. Today it's the turn of the £28 billion sum for the Green Prosperity Plan.
The mistake was, of course, putting a number on it back in 2021, at a time of low interest rates and when they had little idea what the state of the economy would be in 2024. Not sure why they did that - much better to establish the Green Prosperity Plan and GB Energy as policies, the financing of which would be revealed at the time of the GE.
By the time of the GE, the Tories will only be left with two attack lines: 1. This happily married father doesn't know what a woman is (I think he does), and 2. Starmer keeps changing his mind in the light of new evidence.
I think Starmer would be more popular if he stuck to his policy guns and said "yes, of course we're spending money, we need to fix everything you've broken and we can only do that by investing". That is a much more popular line and part of the pitch from BoJo that won him his election. The acceptance of Osbornomics despite the fact it has brought nothing but economic ruin is astounding (I mean it isn't, it benefits those who accumulate capital and those who accumulate capital have a class interest in perpetuating it, so media and politicians are more than happy to do that) but still.
I was critical of Osbornomics because I didn't think it appropriate in the context of the time. However the UK government as is 2024 has pretty high borrowing and much more debt than in 2008. Inflation is now an issue to. What are you calling for? Spending increases from tax rises? From more borrowing?
I mean we did waste the low interest rate period with low government spending, so yeah - higher taxes on those with the broadest shoulders; large corporations, those earning more than £100,000, etc etc. Although I am somewhat convinced by MMT (again, not an economist by any stretch of the imagination) that the main purpose of taxing and spending is to keep money moving and not sitting still. So even if you're taxing to take money out of circulation, that's fine by me. A big problem we have is very very rich people putting their money into assets that just sit there and don't do productive stuff (land and landlording, stocks and other financial system magic) rather than in productive things (infrastructure, new enterprises, and so on). That's because current taxation and economic policy rewards the former and less so the latter. Take money from rich people and give money to poor people and the money starts to move - rich people will spend it (because they loath paying taxes), those that don't can be taxed, and the poor will spend their money because they're the ones in immediate need of goods.
Starmer's remorseless pursuit of GE victory continues apace, as he dismantles step by step every potential attack line that can be pursued against him. Today it's the turn of the £28 billion sum for the Green Prosperity Plan.
The mistake was, of course, putting a number on it back in 2021, at a time of low interest rates and when they had little idea what the state of the economy would be in 2024. Not sure why they did that - much better to establish the Green Prosperity Plan and GB Energy as policies, the financing of which would be revealed at the time of the GE.
By the time of the GE, the Tories will only be left with two attack lines: 1. This happily married father doesn't know what a woman is (I think he does), and 2. Starmer keeps changing his mind in the light of new evidence.
The tories will almost certainly run a negative campaign against Starmer because what else do they have? Nothing.
However, for a negative campaign to work it has to resonate with something the voters already suspect or feel. Attacks portraying Starmer as a lying chancer are just going to bounce off his heavily shellacked hair
It is the only attack they have, but it is based in truth; he is a liar and a chancer, and there’s loads of video evidence of him at it, so it could work. The main problem is, he’s so dull it’s hard to believe he is the complete snide he is
2 incidents yesterday make me pause in that assessment. Firstly, the outrage on behalf of the mother of Brianna Ghey was instant and genuine. He may have developed it later into politics but he was genuinely appalled. Secondly, it was noted that at the end of PMQs he immediately went up to Elliot Cockburn, who had disclosed his attempted suicide, to lend him support and comfort.
Just 2 straws in the wind but for the moment I am willing to accept that Starmer is a genuinely decent man who doesn't seem to have fixed views on much other than he should be PM. I certainly don't think of him as a complete snide.
if he was genuinely decent he wouldnt stand for PM.
Why would you say that? I don't agree.
He has no known principles, he doesnt stick with anything and hasnt the personal profile to lead the country. He's Sunak redux.
‘A team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam estimates that the Dutch government spent approximately €17 billion per year on migration in the period between 1995 and 2019, meaning that more than one billion euros went to migration-related issues every month.
The study digs deeper still: annual net costs of non-Western immigration amount to €17 billion and the annual net benefits of Western immigration total one billion euros. Distinguishing between Western and non-Western migration patterns, the study comes to a startling conclusion: if immigration remains at 2015-2019 levels, the annual budget burden will increase from €17 billion in 2016 to about €50 billion. This is an increase that the welfare state would most likely not survive.
The Dutch findings are mirrored in a similar study conducted by the Danish Finance Ministry, which concludes that non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of public finances compared to their Western or native Danish peers. Meanwhile, the picture in Germany is not much different: about 45% of those who receive unemployment benefits are not German citizens, costing the taxpayers around €20 billion per year. Austria shows similar numbers, with almost 60% of recipients having a “migrant background”.
Van de Beek sees parts of the problem in the structure of the welfare state… [snip - see the link],
The emerging picture is a complex one that includes both cultural and economic factors, but the overall conclusion remains the same: the current conditions under which migration to Europe takes place are not sustainable and will bring the welfare systems ever closer to collapsing. The idea promoted by Folkerts-Landau and others turned out to be far too optimistic, and what makes matters worse is that politicians still refuse to face the facts.
Placing one’s head in the sand is, unfortunately, not the same as actual policymaking. Europe has ignored these issues for too long, and voters will make their discontent heard at the voting booth’
So the only actual report I can find (other than pieces in right wing media about the report) are in Danish, and I can't find anything discussing the report in English other than right wingers hailing it as the evidence they've always needed that immigrants are bad actually. That's not to say it is wrong, just that as someone who doesn't speak Danish I can't verify the actual findings of the report outside of places like unherd, who are not a source I trust.
I have found an OpenDemocracy article detailing essentially the argument I put forth yesterday - how if immigrants are a "drain" on an economy it is most likely the practices of the employers who abuse those workers and use them to under cut labour rights and labour costs, but I accept that could have nothing to do with what this report was exploring. If you have a link directly to the report in English, I'd be very interested to look at it, the methodology and such.
The comparison doesn't really work for a country whose average income is about 70% of that in the Netherlands.
The percentage of those on benefit who are not UK citizens was around 16% in 2019 (I can't quickly find a more recent figure); and migrants are more likely to be in work that native born Brits.
So whatever your feelings about the levels of immigration, the comparison with the Netherlands (assuming the capacity of your article) is anyway complete bunk.
And there we have it. Britain is so violently different to Netherlands none of this applies. Of course
That is, until a comparison with an eu country comes along of which you approve, then it totally applies
Honestly, this level of argumentation is quite depressing
It is obviously fair to look at the pros and cons of immigration from different parts of the world to the Netherlands and assume that it would be more or less the same in the UK. I linked to that research here a while ago, it is pretty much a slam dunk
The crazy thing is that is seems no consideration at all was given to which type of immigrant would suit/benefit us before we embarked on a policy of mass immigration. It’s like a football team just buying 10-12 players without doing any research on whether those players would gel with their existing squad; no team would do it now in the era of data & analytics, yet it’s controversial to suggest we do so as a country
Indeed. This site is now close to intolerable
The level of discourse is infantile, the herding is pathetic, it’s just a bunch of fucking TEDIOUS midwit lawyers, accountants and IT nerds wanking on about shite and denying anything uncomfortable. Everyone interesting has left
It’s come to something when the most engaged and interesting commenter - amongst the lefty dross - is an actual lunatic Marxist. @148grss
PFFFFF
The heady days of the early to mid 2010s when Nabavi, Meeks, & tim were worthy adversaries seem a long time ago. They are I suppose.
A couple of days ago I linked to a ‘Who would do better, Sunak or Starmer?’ Poll, and commented that Sir Keir had come second in all but one, the joke being that where ‘Neither’ won them all.
Not that funny, but several people honestly thought I hadn’t noticed that Sunak had almost always came third and tried to ridicule me for it, when the whole point was a self deprecating acknowledgement that I’m always on the pretend vegetarian republican’s case
It’s just dull now. And full of quite dull people, as in ‘not very smart’ as well as quite boring
Like I say Leon this is why banning policy should be restricted to accounts that personally abuse people. Noone should be banned due to their opinions.
Starmer's remorseless pursuit of GE victory continues apace, as he dismantles step by step every potential attack line that can be pursued against him. Today it's the turn of the £28 billion sum for the Green Prosperity Plan.
The mistake was, of course, putting a number on it back in 2021, at a time of low interest rates and when they had little idea what the state of the economy would be in 2024. Not sure why they did that - much better to establish the Green Prosperity Plan and GB Energy as policies, the financing of which would be revealed at the time of the GE.
By the time of the GE, the Tories will only be left with two attack lines: 1. This happily married father doesn't know what a woman is (I think he does), and 2. Starmer keeps changing his mind in the light of new evidence.
The tories will almost certainly run a negative campaign against Starmer because what else do they have? Nothing.
However, for a negative campaign to work it has to resonate with something the voters already suspect or feel. Attacks portraying Starmer as a lying chancer are just going to bounce off his heavily shellacked hair
The 'dullness' (which I like but I accept I'm in the minority) is what could perhaps have worked. This thing about him being ... well basically what the increasingly jumpy Leon says PB has become.
But that needed a Johnson v Starmer match-up. Rishi Sunak can't really deliver it for obvious reasons.
What was the system before that? Disqus? It came in at some point after the 2010 election, and I recall it being pretty temperamental - I drifted away from the site then, mostly because of being too busy at work but also partly because Disqus was so annoying.
Comments
They need to sow as much doubt about Labour and Starmer as they can between now and the GE.
That is why I think this election is going to be the most negative campaign for some time. Probably since 2010, in which a large part of the Labour platform was to similarly try to sow doubt re Cameron and the Tories.
They are generally much slimmer and eat better food - Singapore has a really low obesity rate and they were never bombed by America or had a genocide etc
The crazy thing is that is seems no consideration at all was given to which type of immigrant would suit/benefit us before we embarked on a policy of mass immigration. It’s like a football team just buying 10-12 players without doing any research on whether those players would gel with their existing squad; no team would do it now in the era of data & analytics, yet it’s controversial to suggest we do so as a country
So the Police will have looked to see if anything has gone in the river off a bridge, or if more people have gone onto than left a bridge at the relevant time. The quality doesn't need to be good.
It's rather different if I go missing. The timeframe in which I disappeared might well be quite broad, as might the location (particularly if I'm depressed rather than being chased by Police with an obvious injury - the fact I didn't show up to the pub at 7pm doesn't really narrow down the time that much). And, given there are quite a few people who go off bridges sadly, even you have evidence of someone going off one or other bridge at some in a 48 hour period, there's actually quite a good chance it isn't me.
The mistake was, of course, putting a number on it back in 2021, at a time of low interest rates and when they had little idea what the state of the economy would be in 2024. Not sure why they did that - much better to establish the Green Prosperity Plan and GB Energy as policies, the financing of which would be revealed at the time of the GE.
By the time of the GE, the Tories will only be left with two attack lines:
1. This happily married father doesn't know what a woman is (I think he does), and
2. Starmer keeps changing his mind in the light of new evidence.
Probably mainly remembered for the rather brilliant phrasing in the last couplet:
"I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference".
Do you have no understanding of what you are unleashing when you look at a bunch of immigrants and categorise them as "BME". You instantly lump in every eg black Briton into the "other", undesirable category.
Because you are using race to identify them. Not immigrants or asylum seekers but black people . You are saying, you literally said, "but the obvious black over-representation in that queue".
Now as you are an old hand at the writing game I'll allow that your meaning was ever so sophisticated but if our Nige stood up and said "look at all the black people queuing outside the dentist, it's intolerable" many people might be reminded of the "send them back" mantra of the '70s, now, mightn't they.
The level of discourse is infantile, the herding is pathetic, it’s just a bunch of fucking TEDIOUS midwit lawyers, accountants and IT nerds wanking on about shite and denying anything uncomfortable. Everyone interesting has left
It’s come to something when the most engaged and interesting commenter - amongst the lefty dross - is an actual lunatic Marxist. @148grss
PFFFFF
T
R
U
S
S
triggering the spamtrap!
Still, at least the rosette is red not blue
Some people don’t want Britain to borrow to invest in the green economy. They want us to back down.
But Keir, Rachel and I will never let that happen. Britain needs this £28bn a year plan and that is what we are committed to
https://x.com/ed_miliband/status/1667079092712226817?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
I do wonder, though, if the Police are talking publicly about him having killed himself as a ruse intended to make him feel confident enough to leave wherever he's hiding.
And you know what? Given what the Russia is doing, a bit of pointing and laughing is fine IMV. Yes, there are young men being killed; but if Putin's regime want to stop that, they can just get the fuck out of Ukraine. All of it.
I think there's a great deal of acknowledgement that Ukraine can lose; and that things aren't going well at the moment - partly due to western not giving them stuff they need. But I'd argue on the other side, there's not enough discussion of what a Russian 'win' would be like - or how you define 'win'.
Is it Nurture* or Nature at play here?
(*Perhaps culture rather than 'nurture').
SUCK IT UP
However, for a negative campaign to work it has to resonate with something the voters already suspect or feel. Attacks portraying Starmer as a lying chancer are just going to bounce off his heavily shellacked hair
@Sean_F's "2-3 years and then maybe..." seems quite a big ask but as ever, it is up to the Ukrainians to determine their response at every step.
Doesn't affect my point about the bizarre PB thinking that Russia should lose hence Russia will lose.
In 1968 the United States was like @Leon is describing Cambodia now. It is scary what has happened in our life times.
A couple of days ago I linked to a ‘Who would do better, Sunak or Starmer?’ Poll, and commented that Sir Keir had come second in all but one, the joke being that where ‘Neither’ won them all.
Not that funny, but several people honestly thought I hadn’t noticed that Sunak had almost always came third and tried to ridicule me for it, when the whole point was a self deprecating acknowledgement that I’m always on the pretend vegetarian republican’s case
But there will be something in what you say too. I remember this site in the dying days of Browns government, and it felt about 80% Cameroon then.
Haven't seen our rightwingers (who do like the western hemisphere, to put it politely) demanding that the SNP take over.
Curious thing to watch is that a Chinese bank suspended transactions with Russia.
Russia is burning up men (just like the Germans at Stalingrad), to advance metres.
And what about the Ukrainian refugees you have surely taken in? Don’t they count??
I am close to quitting. I don’t expect you to care, why should you. But constant and deliberate misconstrual can test anyone. Earlier on, someone accused me of actually saying ‘let’s expel all Romanian dentists’ presumably because I hate Romanians? Why the fuck would I hate Romanians, or any foreigners, when I spend my life wandering the world enjoying foreign cultures, peoples, cuisines, opinions, lifestyles?
Enough. If PB wants to become a tepid Woke thought-bubble then go right ahead, you are doing the exact right thing
The deeper irony is that my original remark about that video of the queue - ‘this is quite a dystopian vision of Britain’ - or something like that - actually had nothing to do with migration, race, anything like that - it was actually a comment on the combination of people desperate for a dentist, in an ugly place, covered with graffiti, under a grey sky. It looks like a poor South American or old soviet city but with even worse weather
It was only later I thought - hold on this might be an image capturing immigration pressure on public services
And with that I shall finish my gin and tonic and go and watch griselda
And socks.
And rifles.
And ammunition....
"I'll call my article," meditated the war correspondent, "'Mankind versus Ironmongery,' and quote the old boy at the beginning."
And he was much too good a journalist to spoil his contrast by remarking that the half-dozen comparatively slender young men in blue pajamas who were standing about their victorious land ironclad, drinking coffee and eating biscuits, had also in their eyes and carriage something not altogether degraded below the level of a man.
It wouldn't (well, shouldn't) get published in a peer-reviewed journal in that form. That doesn't mean it is invalid - and there are reasons to do reports (it's long for a paper, faster than peer review etc etc) but it does mean that anyone with half a clue on the methods on this can't judge whether or not the findings are valid.
There is also an element of 'no shit sherlock' about it - high skilled immigrants from rich countries are net contributors, as another country paid for their unproductive/high cost childhood years. Lower skilled immigrants less so (although they ignore any economic benefits from lower skilled immigrants being cheaper to employ than Dutch natives, potentially - both directly if government employed and indirectly if private sector and boosting growth). It's much harder to calculate that, of course, but it's a factor in the need for immigration here. It appears that we'd be even further up shit creak on social care without immigrants taking low wage jobs in the sector.
It's also hard, where immigration is increasing and changing, to make too many sweeping assumptions about how new immigrants will compare to the studied old immigrants. Some of the source countries have seen big changes in GDP and education over the past 30-40 years, for example. If I was looking at this, for whole picture, I'd probably look at some diff-in-diffs or ITS across countries with and without larger amounts of immigration, particularly UK for the newer EU countries compared to those that had transitional rules.
This is what the site was like exactly 10 years ago.
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2014/02/08/swing-voters-havent-stopped-swinging-theyre-just-doing-it-differently/
Just 2 straws in the wind but for the moment I am willing to accept that Starmer is a genuinely decent man who doesn't seem to have fixed views on much other than he should be PM. I certainly don't think of him as a complete snide.
Now it's different. There's no struggle for attention, there's a huge poll lead, and the "£28b" was one of the few remaining hooks for the Tories, a potential opening for the "Labour profligate with your money" trope.
So, kill that. The policy's the same but without the magic marker number. It leaves the public with the notion that Labour plan to ramp up Green Investment but won't break the bank to do it.
And the timing (with the GE still 9 months away) is ok.
I mean, @DougSeal lol
The Telegraph's Annabel Denham trotting out the No.10 line admirably describing Starmer as nothing but [said with disdain] "a human rights lawyer."
JoCo: "But you agree with them dropping the £28bn pledge, don't you."
AnDe: "Economically, absolutely."
The Tories in summary "I cannot BELIEVE that scurrilous scamp is doing what we have been demanding that he does for a year! What are we going to sling at him now? UNACCEPTABLE."
On the woke front, much as I hate to admit it to @Leon it was more woke than here, although nothing extreme, but there was a lot of rainbow flags (mainly on churches so it may have been something specific to the time) and one or two black lives matter posters in shops or on churches.
I got chatting to some people visiting from California and they were surprised by the number of US flags on houses (something I took for granted in America). They commented it was not done so much now in California because of the overlap with MAGA. A bit like the National Front here making the flying of the Union Jack negative a few decades ago.
Ok. Home, wine, sleep, work
Today I asked the Leader of the House if she would apologise to the family of Brianna Ghey and others for the Prime Minister's distasteful political point scoring at the expense of trans people.
.
@PennyMordaunt
replied that the PM should reflect on his actions and the impact they can have on families affected.
I have frequently observed that the Ukranians aren't retaking land fast enough to make a difference. But that door swings both ways: the Russians aren't taking ground fast enough. In the battle of the Somme it took five months to move eight kilometers. Avdiivka is half as wide and has held out for nearly two years. I have had shits that moved faster than that. Get back to us when the Russians have taken something larger than Maidenhead.
"But the obvious BME over-representation in that queue (compared to national average) does suggest that part of the problem with our NHS (and much else)..."
But enjoy Griselda.
You know you don't have to leave the site just because you fail to win an argument or are caught out saying something you know you shouldn't have said.
The country has since been driven apart, like it or not mostly by Brexit and its impact on the shape of the Tory party.
Hence more divisive and bitter politics, which just gets reflected here too.
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2013/03/21/about-to-change-our-commenting-system/
SKS is generally seen as dull, decent, serious, a bit worthy. There's not much mileage to be had in making fun of him for being dull or serious - it just invites comparison with Boris or Truss, and people will very reasonably think that they prefer dullness to chaos.
So instead they're trying to make fun of him for being decent. I guess Sunak's "lol, trans" nonsense fits with that - but taunting a murdered girl's mother to her face is hardly very edifying. It's hard to see how they can push that much further than they have already.
And as much as I respond to people of the right wing persuasion here - that isn't why I want to be here; it's just something to do in between the electoral analysis that I find interesting. It's weird - I am not in anyway an electoralist who believes in the value of any individual vote or election, but election watching has become one of my pastimes in the same way that I guess people who don't like sports enjoy talking about sport stats and tactics. I blame being youngish in 2008 and the explosion of 538 style political analysis... it got me in my teens and now I'm hooked.
Information is coming from different sectors of the front about multiple breakthroughs by the Russian Armed Forces along the entire line of combat contact. There is an operational crisis, and if the Ukrainian Armed Forces cannot stabilize the situation, the crisis could instantly develop into a strategic one.
In the near future, American journalist Tucker Carlson will publish an interview with Putin. This is expected to be another blow to a weakened Biden and Zelensky, who has almost lost all hope.
SnowStorm | Ukrainians Are Running Away | Zircon HyperSonic Strike. Military Summary For 20204.02.07
https://x.com/MilitarySummary/status/1755326516471140449?s=20
Only the latter course offers any sort of peace and respect during retirement, but for those of limited insight the former course is all too often the one that is chosen.
But that needed a Johnson v Starmer match-up. Rishi Sunak can't really deliver it for obvious reasons.