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.
Off topic: where is best to find odds for when we'll have a new king? The candidness of the release of medical information, and the whole "Harry rushed back to see daddy" makes me think it wouldn't be unlikely we'll have a new one before Xmas. The only other theory I can think of is Charles is just much happier to release info than Lizzie was, but that doesn't seem likely. It also felt odd that Sunak felt the need to be like "King is fine" after his meeting with him this week.
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.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with growing old disgracefully. I intend to do it myself. Think of it as revenge for having to put up with our children's teenage years.
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.
I'm catching up, but I can also recommend the Storyville documentary on North Korea. It is simply brilliant (much like most of Storyville's output). However, one thing that did occur to me as I watched it was the fact that, in effect, I was cheering on a people smuggling racket. And being topical, the role of the organised church in supporting folk who cross borders.
One man's terrorist and all that, I guess - and quite frankly, I am a bit of a liberal on all that immigration stuff. So I wasn't too fussed that I was on the side of the smugglers.
I remember someone arguing that the two countries that don't have to deal with issues of asylum and immigration are North Korea and Iran. When I hear people wanging on about the problems of immigration, I half wonder if they want to join that axis of fun countries.
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.
There are no tanks in Baghdad
You're not coping well with Labour ascendency, are you? I hope you find a way because it might last a while.
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.
He didn’t taunt the dead person, he taunted Sir Keir for numerous U-turns including one which ended up with him saying that ‘99% of women don’t have a penis’.
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%
I'm catching up, but I can also recommend the Storyville documentary on North Korea. It is simply brilliant (much like most of Storyville's output). However, one thing that did occur to me as I watched it was the fact that, in effect, I was cheering on a people smuggling racket. And being topical, the role of the organised church in supporting folk who cross borders.
One man's terrorist and all that, I guess - and quite frankly, I am a bit of a liberal on all that immigration stuff. So I wasn't too fussed that I was on the side of the smugglers.
I remember someone arguing that the two countries that don't have to deal with issues of asylum and immigration are North Korea and Iran. When I hear people wanging on about the problems of immigration, I half wonder if they want to join that axis of fun countries.
I imagine houses are cheaper on North Korea. So theres that.
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%
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
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.
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.
There are no tanks in Baghdad
You're not coping well with Labour ascendency, are you? I hope you find a way because it might last a while.
Were swapping one dullard for another. There is nothing threatening in Labour. We need a bit of life about the place and wont get it. But there will be laughs along the way, it's just about biding one's times.
Off topic: where is best to find odds for when we'll have a new king? The candidness of the release of medical information, and the whole "Harry rushed back to see daddy" makes me think it wouldn't be unlikely we'll have a new one before Xmas. The only other theory I can think of is Charles is just much happier to release info than Lizzie was, but that doesn't seem likely. It also felt odd that Sunak felt the need to be like "King is fine" after his meeting with him this week.
I doubt you’ll find a bookmaker betting on when the King dies, and it’s never good to bet on what you want to happen because you want it to happen
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.
I think this is where people misunderstand Starmer. Starmer is a "respect for the office if not the person" guy - he was a lawyer and that is drummed into them. To Starmer the things that are wrong with the country are wrong because the Tories and Corbyn have, in his mind, brought them into disrepute. His job, then, is to make these things reputable again.
One of the things that many trans people have noted about this recent kerfuffle is a) it seems that it's fine to say transphobic dogwhistles when a murdered transgirl isn't a big news story and b) that the framing is all about respect for Brianna's mother and not the dignity of transpeople themselves. That's because, in the British discourse, transpeople are free to be disrespected; grieving mothers are not. So when the two come together, some people miss the marker.
We can see this with the political left and right all the time. Concerns about immigration are always "concerns of real people". Concerns about austerity are always "concerns of left wing activists". This isn't because cuts were popular - it's because people who are deemed "left wing" in the UK are not really respectable political actors. Similar for people who liked Corbyn/ism - they are not deserving of respect in the political arena, according to those within the political milieu, so you can lie to them as much as you want.
Hence Starmer. He ran to be Labour leader by appealing to the centre, by being the sensible man in the suit, and the left, by saying he would do Corbynism but sensibly and in a way your grandma would support. The thing is only centrists and the media are people worth respecting, so as soon as he won he had to defer to their needs and desires and not to the left any more. Transpeople and their rights is a great example of this - before all this Starmer only ever interacted with the transphobic side of this struggle; Mumsnetters, his transphobic MPs, talking about getting rid of Gillick and agreeing with the school guidance recently released. Now, in front of a grieving mother, he tries to walk this back.
I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
Off topic: where is best to find odds for when we'll have a new king? The candidness of the release of medical information, and the whole "Harry rushed back to see daddy" makes me think it wouldn't be unlikely we'll have a new one before Xmas. The only other theory I can think of is Charles is just much happier to release info than Lizzie was, but that doesn't seem likely. It also felt odd that Sunak felt the need to be like "King is fine" after his meeting with him this week.
I doubt you’ll find a bookmaker betting on when the King dies, and it’s never good to bet on what you want to happen because you want it to happen
As I've mentioned before, betting on the death of a monarch is legally very dubious and used to be out-and-out illegal: it was one of the situations where gambling law separated from insurance law.
I'm catching up, but I can also recommend the Storyville documentary on North Korea. It is simply brilliant (much like most of Storyville's output). However, one thing that did occur to me as I watched it was the fact that, in effect, I was cheering on a people smuggling racket. And being topical, the role of the organised church in supporting folk who cross borders.
One man's terrorist and all that, I guess - and quite frankly, I am a bit of a liberal on all that immigration stuff. So I wasn't too fussed that I was on the side of the smugglers.
I remember someone arguing that the two countries that don't have to deal with issues of asylum and immigration are North Korea and Iran. When I hear people wanging on about the problems of immigration, I half wonder if they want to join that axis of fun countries.
I imagine houses are cheaper on North Korea. So theres that.
‘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
‘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.
Very true. And it is quite possible to hold fast to all manner of things which you and other older people value, which seem to be neglected, while embracing the changed world and good things about it. It is also delightful just to keep spotting the perennial nature of things as they just keep recurring.
One effect of this government is that it makes it easy to drift slightly to the left in politics as one gets older, joining the younger trend.
If you focus on the small platoons - families, small groups, local organisations, the non politics world - a picture emerges of great positivity across generations.
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.
He didn’t taunt the dead person, he taunted Sir Keir for numerous U-turns including one which ended up with him saying that ‘99% of women don’t have a penis’.
‘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 have much to learn from casino about the art of the flounce.
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.
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.
He didn’t taunt the dead person, he taunted Sir Keir for numerous U-turns including one which ended up with him saying that ‘99% of women don’t have a penis’.
Here's the quote. Seems odd for this to get people all a'mocking and a'taunting.
Sir Keir said 99.9% of women "of course haven't got a penis" as he was asked about his stance on whether a person with a penis can be a woman.
He added that there is a "very small number" of people who identify as a different gender to the one they were born with as he called for an end to a "toxic divide" over trans issues.
"They need legal support and a framework. Most people don't disagree with that, and that's the framework within which we ought to look at these issues," he said.
"But simply turning it into a toxic divide advances the cause of no one - the cause of women or those that don't identify with the gender that they were born into."
‘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.
Bring back Brown and we'll happily have another crack at him.
Off topic: where is best to find odds for when we'll have a new king? The candidness of the release of medical information, and the whole "Harry rushed back to see daddy" makes me think it wouldn't be unlikely we'll have a new one before Xmas. The only other theory I can think of is Charles is just much happier to release info than Lizzie was, but that doesn't seem likely. It also felt odd that Sunak felt the need to be like "King is fine" after his meeting with him this week.
Don't go there. Not only about royals but about anyone.
Off topic: where is best to find odds for when we'll have a new king? The candidness of the release of medical information, and the whole "Harry rushed back to see daddy" makes me think it wouldn't be unlikely we'll have a new one before Xmas. The only other theory I can think of is Charles is just much happier to release info than Lizzie was, but that doesn't seem likely. It also felt odd that Sunak felt the need to be like "King is fine" after his meeting with him this week.
I doubt you’ll find a bookmaker betting on when the King dies, and it’s never good to bet on what you want to happen because you want it to happen
As I've mentioned before, betting on the death of a monarch is legally very dubious and used to be out-and-out illegal: it was one of the situations where gambling law separated from insurance law.
Another thing I can add to my esoteric list of anti monarchist arguments (I dislike using all the typical ones)
‘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 have much to learn from casino about the art of the flounce.
In fairness Leon has done some superb flounces in the past, although I grant you Casino's was a 10 out of 10.
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
As far as I'm concerned any sense of pity at Sunak's ineptitude has evaporated.
He's a nasty piece of work, as well as an incompetent one.
‘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
I found that post funny, FWIW.
And I supported your return when you were banned. We don't agree on much, I think, but this site really would be boring if we all had the same views. So I welcome the presence of you, Leon, Bart, LuckyGuy, Alanbrooke, TheKitchenCabinet and - when in residence - Casino_Royale as well as all the sensible () right of centre people, 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
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 have much to learn from casino about the art of the flounce.
A good writer would have written his piece so that his meaning with regard to the dystopian vision/queue was clear.
Off topic: where is best to find odds for when we'll have a new king? The candidness of the release of medical information, and the whole "Harry rushed back to see daddy" makes me think it wouldn't be unlikely we'll have a new one before Xmas. The only other theory I can think of is Charles is just much happier to release info than Lizzie was, but that doesn't seem likely. It also felt odd that Sunak felt the need to be like "King is fine" after his meeting with him this week.
Don't go there. Not only about royals but about anyone.
Surely there's a betting market for "next POTUS" that includes Kamala Harris as a relatively good bet, just because of the possibility Biden might die before he loses the election?
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
You have much to learn from casino about the art of the flounce.
In fairness @leon has done some superb flounces in the past.
Really? I think they've all been pathetic and predictable.
Personally I would be glad to see the back of the self-obsessed, alt-right, closet racist, snowflake, conspiracy theorist.
I say: flounce-off out of here and don't bother coming back.
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%
Off topic: where is best to find odds for when we'll have a new king? The candidness of the release of medical information, and the whole "Harry rushed back to see daddy" makes me think it wouldn't be unlikely we'll have a new one before Xmas. The only other theory I can think of is Charles is just much happier to release info than Lizzie was, but that doesn't seem likely. It also felt odd that Sunak felt the need to be like "King is fine" after his meeting with him this week.
Don't go there. Not only about royals but about anyone.
Surely there's a betting market for "next POTUS" that includes Kamala Harris as a relatively good bet, just because of the possibility Biden might die before he loses the election?
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.
...I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
‘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 have much to learn from casino about the art of the flounce.
In fairness @leon has done some superb flounces in the past.
Really? I think they've all been pathetic and predictable.
Personally I would be glad to see the back of the self-obsessed, alt-right, closet racist, snowflake, conspiracy theorist. I say, flounce-off out of here and don't bother coming back.
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.
...I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
I really hope not.
That is his platform. No material change, but at least I'm respectable.
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.
...I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
I really hope not.
That is his platform. No material change, but at least I'm respectable.
I'd rather suspect that you wouldn't actually like real change.
‘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 have much to learn from casino about the art of the flounce.
In fairness @leon has done some superb flounces in the past.
Really? I think they've all been pathetic and predictable.
Personally I would be glad to see the back of the self-obsessed, alt-right, closet racist, snowflake, conspiracy theorist.
I say: flounce-off out of here and don't bother coming back.
That at least is my nuanced opinion on the issue.
Come on @Benpointer stop sitting on the fence and tell us what you really think.
There is a good build up to a Leon flounce. It often takes days. I guess it all depends whether you prefer the long build up and eloquent posts beforehand or the quick threat of a fist fight and a f**k off preferred by Casino.
Off topic: where is best to find odds for when we'll have a new king? The candidness of the release of medical information, and the whole "Harry rushed back to see daddy" makes me think it wouldn't be unlikely we'll have a new one before Xmas. The only other theory I can think of is Charles is just much happier to release info than Lizzie was, but that doesn't seem likely. It also felt odd that Sunak felt the need to be like "King is fine" after his meeting with him this week.
Don't go there. Not only about royals but about anyone.
Surely there's a betting market for "next POTUS" that includes Kamala Harris as a relatively good bet, just because of the possibility Biden might die before he loses the election?
Nice try. See if bookmakers buy it. I suppose every bet imaginable involves contingencies such as 'X wins the Grand National because all the other jockeys were shot dead by snipers during the race'. I don't think that justifies a market which is essentially predicated on guessing exactly when person X will die.
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.
...I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
I really hope not.
That is his platform. No material change, but at least I'm respectable.
Confucius was a totalitarian dictator. Keep the people ignorant and they will be easy to govern. Now that's probably every politician's belief but to say it explicitly is quite something.
I'm sick to the back teeth of all this negativity towards Keir Starmer before he's even had the chance of a single day in charge. It's pathetic. Total lack of respect from a bunch of nobodies for a fine and capable man. Enough. Enough. I'm leaving the site until this evening.
Off topic: where is best to find odds for when we'll have a new king? The candidness of the release of medical information, and the whole "Harry rushed back to see daddy" makes me think it wouldn't be unlikely we'll have a new one before Xmas. The only other theory I can think of is Charles is just much happier to release info than Lizzie was, but that doesn't seem likely. It also felt odd that Sunak felt the need to be like "King is fine" after his meeting with him this week.
Don't go there. Not only about royals but about anyone.
Surely there's a betting market for "next POTUS" that includes Kamala Harris as a relatively good bet, just because of the possibility Biden might die before he loses the election?
Nice try. See if bookmakers buy it. I suppose every bet imaginable involves contingencies such as 'X wins the Grand National because all the other jockeys were shot dead by snipers during the race'. I don't think that justifies a market which is essentially predicated on guessing exactly when person X will die.
But wasn't much of PB discussing the GE dating betting market and including the unwished-for event in question as a factor only the other day?
I'm sick to the back teeth of all this negativity towards Keir Starmer before he's even had the chance of a single day in charge. It's pathetic. Total lack of respect from a bunch of nobodies for a fine and capable man. Enough. Enough. I'm leaving the site until this evening.
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.
...I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
I really hope not.
That is his platform. No material change, but at least I'm respectable.
Confucius was a totalitarian dictator. Keep the people ignorant and they will be easy to govern. Now that's probably every politician's belief but to say it explicitly is quite something.
Again, if we look at how Starmer has run the Labour party... that also fits.
I'm sick to the back teeth of all this negativity towards Keir Starmer before he's even had the chance of a single day in charge. It's pathetic. Total lack of respect from a bunch of nobodies for a fine and capable man. Enough. Enough. I'm leaving the site until this evening.
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.
...I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
I really hope not.
That is his platform. No material change, but at least I'm respectable.
I'd rather suspect that you wouldn't actually like real change.
I mean it depends. Real change to the right - no. Real change towards the left - I mean it won't be my utopian ideal, but it would be better then doing nothing.
I mean, he should, but the problem will then be Kamala (who is shit, although would do better on Gaza per reporting) and then she'd have to pick a VP (which would cause its own problems). I think if he really is unable to be POTUS the Dems will allow this to go to the convention and stitch it up there - that's the only way to avoid a long bloody primary and condense that into like a day of bloody primary fighting. Tbf, the GOP may do the same if Trump is ineligible / in jail.
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.
I think this is where people misunderstand Starmer. Starmer is a "respect for the office if not the person" guy - he was a lawyer and that is drummed into them. To Starmer the things that are wrong with the country are wrong because the Tories and Corbyn have, in his mind, brought them into disrepute. His job, then, is to make these things reputable again.
One of the things that many trans people have noted about this recent kerfuffle is a) it seems that it's fine to say transphobic dogwhistles when a murdered transgirl isn't a big news story and b) that the framing is all about respect for Brianna's mother and not the dignity of transpeople themselves. That's because, in the British discourse, transpeople are free to be disrespected; grieving mothers are not. So when the two come together, some people miss the marker.
We can see this with the political left and right all the time. Concerns about immigration are always "concerns of real people". Concerns about austerity are always "concerns of left wing activists". This isn't because cuts were popular - it's because people who are deemed "left wing" in the UK are not really respectable political actors. Similar for people who liked Corbyn/ism - they are not deserving of respect in the political arena, according to those within the political milieu, so you can lie to them as much as you want.
Hence Starmer. He ran to be Labour leader by appealing to the centre, by being the sensible man in the suit, and the left, by saying he would do Corbynism but sensibly and in a way your grandma would support. The thing is only centrists and the media are people worth respecting, so as soon as he won he had to defer to their needs and desires and not to the left any more. Transpeople and their rights is a great example of this - before all this Starmer only ever interacted with the transphobic side of this struggle; Mumsnetters, his transphobic MPs, talking about getting rid of Gillick and agreeing with the school guidance recently released. Now, in front of a grieving mother, he tries to walk this back.
I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
It's much simpler to understand Starmer thus: He is a perfectly decent man and has the protean qualities required in real politics. He campaigned to be leader in a manner to win the membership vote, and will campaign in the GE in a manner to win the general public vote. They are different. Losing both of these campaigns is much much easier than winning them. He has a very decent chance of winning both.
He will govern in accordance with the laws of political reality, things which neither the Labour membership, nor many voters are good at analysing.
Oh yes; respect for institutions, based on their actual excellence and merits, would be most welcome.
I mean, he should, but the problem will then be Kamala (who is shit, although would do better on Gaza per reporting) and then she'd have to pick a VP (which would cause its own problems). I think if he really is unable to be POTUS the Dems will allow this to go to the convention and stitch it up there - that's the only way to avoid a long bloody primary and condense that into like a day of bloody primary fighting. Tbf, the GOP may do the same if Trump is ineligible / in jail.
Did you see the news about the Houthis sentencing 13 people to death for homosexuality?
I'm sick to the back teeth of all this negativity towards Keir Starmer before he's even had the chance of a single day in charge. It's pathetic. Total lack of respect from a bunch of nobodies for a fine and capable man. Enough. Enough. I'm leaving the site until this evening.
Top parody. I hope @Leon gives you a like. It is deserved.
I mean, he should, but the problem will then be Kamala (who is shit, although would do better on Gaza per reporting) and then she'd have to pick a VP (which would cause its own problems). I think if he really is unable to be POTUS the Dems will allow this to go to the convention and stitch it up there - that's the only way to avoid a long bloody primary and condense that into like a day of bloody primary fighting. Tbf, the GOP may do the same if Trump is ineligible / in jail.
Did you see the news about the Houthis sentencing 13 people to death for homosexuality?
No. That's bad, they shouldn't do that. I dislike the Houthis. On the other hand, the blockade they did was good. These can both be things I believe, because bad groups / parties / individuals can do good things.
Off topic: where is best to find odds for when we'll have a new king? The candidness of the release of medical information, and the whole "Harry rushed back to see daddy" makes me think it wouldn't be unlikely we'll have a new one before Xmas. The only other theory I can think of is Charles is just much happier to release info than Lizzie was, but that doesn't seem likely. It also felt odd that Sunak felt the need to be like "King is fine" after his meeting with him this week.
Don't go there. Not only about royals but about anyone.
Surely there's a betting market for "next POTUS" that includes Kamala Harris as a relatively good bet, just because of the possibility Biden might die before he loses the election?
Nice try. See if bookmakers buy it. I suppose every bet imaginable involves contingencies such as 'X wins the Grand National because all the other jockeys were shot dead by snipers during the race'. I don't think that justifies a market which is essentially predicated on guessing exactly when person X will die.
But wasn't much of PB discussing the GE dating betting market and including the unwished-for event in question as a factor only the other day?
The site might have lost many of its finest contributors, but I don't think it has been reduced to the state where myself, and a handful of comments about changing the election date after dissolution, qualify as "much of PB".
I wouldn't set myself up as an arbiter of good taste, either, though I did apologise in advance if raising the issue was a bit off.
By the way, the 'Trump can/not stand for president' hearing is on at the SCOTUS right now. Worth watching out for potential signs as to which way it might go. Obviously, no result today.
Off topic: where is best to find odds for when we'll have a new king? The candidness of the release of medical information, and the whole "Harry rushed back to see daddy" makes me think it wouldn't be unlikely we'll have a new one before Xmas. The only other theory I can think of is Charles is just much happier to release info than Lizzie was, but that doesn't seem likely. It also felt odd that Sunak felt the need to be like "King is fine" after his meeting with him this week.
Harry just wanted to make the story about himself as usual, so flew 5,000 miles of his own volition for a 30-minute meeting, then flew 5,000 miles back again, delaying the king’s departure from London in the process.
You’re not going to find any reputable bookmaker offering bets on someone’s death, and I’ll take a guess that a lot of the US election markets will be declared void if either of the main candidates were to pass on.
QEII was 96, and managed good health until the last year or two. So many elderly people pass on very quickly after the death of their spouse.
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.
I think this is where people misunderstand Starmer. Starmer is a "respect for the office if not the person" guy - he was a lawyer and that is drummed into them. To Starmer the things that are wrong with the country are wrong because the Tories and Corbyn have, in his mind, brought them into disrepute. His job, then, is to make these things reputable again.
One of the things that many trans people have noted about this recent kerfuffle is a) it seems that it's fine to say transphobic dogwhistles when a murdered transgirl isn't a big news story and b) that the framing is all about respect for Brianna's mother and not the dignity of transpeople themselves. That's because, in the British discourse, transpeople are free to be disrespected; grieving mothers are not. So when the two come together, some people miss the marker.
We can see this with the political left and right all the time. Concerns about immigration are always "concerns of real people". Concerns about austerity are always "concerns of left wing activists". This isn't because cuts were popular - it's because people who are deemed "left wing" in the UK are not really respectable political actors. Similar for people who liked Corbyn/ism - they are not deserving of respect in the political arena, according to those within the political milieu, so you can lie to them as much as you want.
Hence Starmer. He ran to be Labour leader by appealing to the centre, by being the sensible man in the suit, and the left, by saying he would do Corbynism but sensibly and in a way your grandma would support. The thing is only centrists and the media are people worth respecting, so as soon as he won he had to defer to their needs and desires and not to the left any more. Transpeople and their rights is a great example of this - before all this Starmer only ever interacted with the transphobic side of this struggle; Mumsnetters, his transphobic MPs, talking about getting rid of Gillick and agreeing with the school guidance recently released. Now, in front of a grieving mother, he tries to walk this back.
I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
It's much simpler to understand Starmer thus: He is a perfectly decent man and has the protean qualities required in real politics. He campaigned to be leader in a manner to win the membership vote, and will campaign in the GE in a manner to win the general public vote. They are different. Losing both of these campaigns is much much easier than winning them. He has a very decent chance of winning both.
He will govern in accordance with the laws of political reality, things which neither the Labour membership, nor many voters are good at analysing.
Oh yes; respect for institutions, based on their actual excellence and merits, would be most welcome.
What are the laws of political reality? Because what I see is a country that has been starved of public sector funding for a very long time atrophying as it's essential public services become worse and the price of everything gets higher. And all the policies that would address that, which are actually somewhat popular with voters, being jettisoned out of some idea of what centrism is.
I mean, he should, but the problem will then be Kamala (who is shit, although would do better on Gaza per reporting) and then she'd have to pick a VP (which would cause its own problems). I think if he really is unable to be POTUS the Dems will allow this to go to the convention and stitch it up there - that's the only way to avoid a long bloody primary and condense that into like a day of bloody primary fighting. Tbf, the GOP may do the same if Trump is ineligible / in jail.
Did you see the news about the Houthis sentencing 13 people to death for homosexuality?
Off topic: where is best to find odds for when we'll have a new king? The candidness of the release of medical information, and the whole "Harry rushed back to see daddy" makes me think it wouldn't be unlikely we'll have a new one before Xmas. The only other theory I can think of is Charles is just much happier to release info than Lizzie was, but that doesn't seem likely. It also felt odd that Sunak felt the need to be like "King is fine" after his meeting with him this week.
Don't go there. Not only about royals but about anyone.
Surely there's a betting market for "next POTUS" that includes Kamala Harris as a relatively good bet, just because of the possibility Biden might die before he loses the election?
Nice try. See if bookmakers buy it. I suppose every bet imaginable involves contingencies such as 'X wins the Grand National because all the other jockeys were shot dead by snipers during the race'. I don't think that justifies a market which is essentially predicated on guessing exactly when person X will die.
But wasn't much of PB discussing the GE dating betting market and including the unwished-for event in question as a factor only the other day?
There is a subtle difference between reviewing all factors in any betting market, and setting a market which is essentially one i which you guess the date of death of person X. No doubt there are borderline cases. The date when we have a new monarch is not a borderline case. It is a 'linked contingency' as bookies put it.
Off topic: where is best to find odds for when we'll have a new king? The candidness of the release of medical information, and the whole "Harry rushed back to see daddy" makes me think it wouldn't be unlikely we'll have a new one before Xmas. The only other theory I can think of is Charles is just much happier to release info than Lizzie was, but that doesn't seem likely. It also felt odd that Sunak felt the need to be like "King is fine" after his meeting with him this week.
Don't go there. Not only about royals but about anyone.
Surely there's a betting market for "next POTUS" that includes Kamala Harris as a relatively good bet, just because of the possibility Biden might die before he loses the election?
Nice try. See if bookmakers buy it. I suppose every bet imaginable involves contingencies such as 'X wins the Grand National because all the other jockeys were shot dead by snipers during the race'. I don't think that justifies a market which is essentially predicated on guessing exactly when person X will die.
But wasn't much of PB discussing the GE dating betting market and including the unwished-for event in question as a factor only the other day?
The site might have lost many of its finest contributors, but I don't think it has been reduced to the state where myself, and a handful of comments about changing the election date after dissolution, qualify as "much of PB".
I wouldn't set myself up as an arbiter of good taste, either, though I did apologise in advance if raising the issue was a bit off.
I can remember when @JackW was young. PB has always been going to the dogs. Mind you, back then it was more going to the Pleistocene Wolves....
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.
I think this is where people misunderstand Starmer. Starmer is a "respect for the office if not the person" guy - he was a lawyer and that is drummed into them. To Starmer the things that are wrong with the country are wrong because the Tories and Corbyn have, in his mind, brought them into disrepute. His job, then, is to make these things reputable again.
One of the things that many trans people have noted about this recent kerfuffle is a) it seems that it's fine to say transphobic dogwhistles when a murdered transgirl isn't a big news story and b) that the framing is all about respect for Brianna's mother and not the dignity of transpeople themselves. That's because, in the British discourse, transpeople are free to be disrespected; grieving mothers are not. So when the two come together, some people miss the marker.
We can see this with the political left and right all the time. Concerns about immigration are always "concerns of real people". Concerns about austerity are always "concerns of left wing activists". This isn't because cuts were popular - it's because people who are deemed "left wing" in the UK are not really respectable political actors. Similar for people who liked Corbyn/ism - they are not deserving of respect in the political arena, according to those within the political milieu, so you can lie to them as much as you want.
Hence Starmer. He ran to be Labour leader by appealing to the centre, by being the sensible man in the suit, and the left, by saying he would do Corbynism but sensibly and in a way your grandma would support. The thing is only centrists and the media are people worth respecting, so as soon as he won he had to defer to their needs and desires and not to the left any more. Transpeople and their rights is a great example of this - before all this Starmer only ever interacted with the transphobic side of this struggle; Mumsnetters, his transphobic MPs, talking about getting rid of Gillick and agreeing with the school guidance recently released. Now, in front of a grieving mother, he tries to walk this back.
I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
It's much simpler to understand Starmer thus: He is a perfectly decent man and has the protean qualities required in real politics. He campaigned to be leader in a manner to win the membership vote, and will campaign in the GE in a manner to win the general public vote. They are different. Losing both of these campaigns is much much easier than winning them. He has a very decent chance of winning both.
He will govern in accordance with the laws of political reality, things which neither the Labour membership, nor many voters are good at analysing.
Oh yes; respect for institutions, based on their actual excellence and merits, would be most welcome.
What are the laws of political reality? Because what I see is a country that has been starved of public sector funding for a very long time atrophying as it's essential public services become worse and the price of everything gets higher. And all the policies that would address that, which are actually somewhat popular with voters, being jettisoned out of some idea of what centrism is.
Public spending as a percentage of GDP is higher than it was at any time while Tony Blair was PM.
By the way, the 'Trump can/not stand for president' hearing is on at the SCOTUS right now. Worth watching out for potential signs as to which way it might go. Obviously, no result today.
I like Elie Mystal: he's live tweeting the whole thing
‘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.
Out of curiosity, I've just had a look at the comments on there. I suspect those who hark back to the glory days of PB 10 and more years ago are indulging in wishful nostalgia - it doesn't look very different to me from now in either breadth or depth of comments. Lots of the same characters. Quite a lot of football chat. Plus ça change.
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.
I think this is where people misunderstand Starmer. Starmer is a "respect for the office if not the person" guy - he was a lawyer and that is drummed into them. To Starmer the things that are wrong with the country are wrong because the Tories and Corbyn have, in his mind, brought them into disrepute. His job, then, is to make these things reputable again.
One of the things that many trans people have noted about this recent kerfuffle is a) it seems that it's fine to say transphobic dogwhistles when a murdered transgirl isn't a big news story and b) that the framing is all about respect for Brianna's mother and not the dignity of transpeople themselves. That's because, in the British discourse, transpeople are free to be disrespected; grieving mothers are not. So when the two come together, some people miss the marker.
We can see this with the political left and right all the time. Concerns about immigration are always "concerns of real people". Concerns about austerity are always "concerns of left wing activists". This isn't because cuts were popular - it's because people who are deemed "left wing" in the UK are not really respectable political actors. Similar for people who liked Corbyn/ism - they are not deserving of respect in the political arena, according to those within the political milieu, so you can lie to them as much as you want.
Hence Starmer. He ran to be Labour leader by appealing to the centre, by being the sensible man in the suit, and the left, by saying he would do Corbynism but sensibly and in a way your grandma would support. The thing is only centrists and the media are people worth respecting, so as soon as he won he had to defer to their needs and desires and not to the left any more. Transpeople and their rights is a great example of this - before all this Starmer only ever interacted with the transphobic side of this struggle; Mumsnetters, his transphobic MPs, talking about getting rid of Gillick and agreeing with the school guidance recently released. Now, in front of a grieving mother, he tries to walk this back.
I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
It's much simpler to understand Starmer thus: He is a perfectly decent man and has the protean qualities required in real politics. He campaigned to be leader in a manner to win the membership vote, and will campaign in the GE in a manner to win the general public vote. They are different. Losing both of these campaigns is much much easier than winning them. He has a very decent chance of winning both.
He will govern in accordance with the laws of political reality, things which neither the Labour membership, nor many voters are good at analysing.
Oh yes; respect for institutions, based on their actual excellence and merits, would be most welcome.
What are the laws of political reality? Because what I see is a country that has been starved of public sector funding for a very long time atrophying as it's essential public services become worse and the price of everything gets higher. And all the policies that would address that, which are actually somewhat popular with voters, being jettisoned out of some idea of what centrism is.
Indeed. The parties are reading from a playbook that only worked in the neoliberal period. That era died 5-10 years ago and Boris's election put the lid on it. Boris, for all his inability to keep his dick in his pants, understood that spend, spend, spend and state intervention was what was required. Sunak (and I'd argue Starmer) have not internalized this, despite the fact that Eat Out To Help Out was an object lesson.
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.
I think this is where people misunderstand Starmer. Starmer is a "respect for the office if not the person" guy - he was a lawyer and that is drummed into them. To Starmer the things that are wrong with the country are wrong because the Tories and Corbyn have, in his mind, brought them into disrepute. His job, then, is to make these things reputable again.
One of the things that many trans people have noted about this recent kerfuffle is a) it seems that it's fine to say transphobic dogwhistles when a murdered transgirl isn't a big news story and b) that the framing is all about respect for Brianna's mother and not the dignity of transpeople themselves. That's because, in the British discourse, transpeople are free to be disrespected; grieving mothers are not. So when the two come together, some people miss the marker.
We can see this with the political left and right all the time. Concerns about immigration are always "concerns of real people". Concerns about austerity are always "concerns of left wing activists". This isn't because cuts were popular - it's because people who are deemed "left wing" in the UK are not really respectable political actors. Similar for people who liked Corbyn/ism - they are not deserving of respect in the political arena, according to those within the political milieu, so you can lie to them as much as you want.
Hence Starmer. He ran to be Labour leader by appealing to the centre, by being the sensible man in the suit, and the left, by saying he would do Corbynism but sensibly and in a way your grandma would support. The thing is only centrists and the media are people worth respecting, so as soon as he won he had to defer to their needs and desires and not to the left any more. Transpeople and their rights is a great example of this - before all this Starmer only ever interacted with the transphobic side of this struggle; Mumsnetters, his transphobic MPs, talking about getting rid of Gillick and agreeing with the school guidance recently released. Now, in front of a grieving mother, he tries to walk this back.
I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
It's much simpler to understand Starmer thus: He is a perfectly decent man and has the protean qualities required in real politics. He campaigned to be leader in a manner to win the membership vote, and will campaign in the GE in a manner to win the general public vote. They are different. Losing both of these campaigns is much much easier than winning them. He has a very decent chance of winning both.
He will govern in accordance with the laws of political reality, things which neither the Labour membership, nor many voters are good at analysing.
Oh yes; respect for institutions, based on their actual excellence and merits, would be most welcome.
What are the laws of political reality? Because what I see is a country that has been starved of public sector funding for a very long time atrophying as it's essential public services become worse and the price of everything gets higher. And all the policies that would address that, which are actually somewhat popular with voters, being jettisoned out of some idea of what centrism is.
Political reality is that most people won't vote for tax rises, but they tend to be more willing to accept the argument that tax rises are necessary from a government already in office.
Hence why none of the tax rises that have taken Britain to a record high tax take have followed a party campaigning on increasing taxes and winning an election on that platform.
I dislike the essential dishonesty in that, but I recognise the political reality. I think that, eventually, there will be consequences from such political dishonesty, and perhaps Brexit was one of them.
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.
I think this is where people misunderstand Starmer. Starmer is a "respect for the office if not the person" guy - he was a lawyer and that is drummed into them. To Starmer the things that are wrong with the country are wrong because the Tories and Corbyn have, in his mind, brought them into disrepute. His job, then, is to make these things reputable again.
One of the things that many trans people have noted about this recent kerfuffle is a) it seems that it's fine to say transphobic dogwhistles when a murdered transgirl isn't a big news story and b) that the framing is all about respect for Brianna's mother and not the dignity of transpeople themselves. That's because, in the British discourse, transpeople are free to be disrespected; grieving mothers are not. So when the two come together, some people miss the marker.
We can see this with the political left and right all the time. Concerns about immigration are always "concerns of real people". Concerns about austerity are always "concerns of left wing activists". This isn't because cuts were popular - it's because people who are deemed "left wing" in the UK are not really respectable political actors. Similar for people who liked Corbyn/ism - they are not deserving of respect in the political arena, according to those within the political milieu, so you can lie to them as much as you want.
Hence Starmer. He ran to be Labour leader by appealing to the centre, by being the sensible man in the suit, and the left, by saying he would do Corbynism but sensibly and in a way your grandma would support. The thing is only centrists and the media are people worth respecting, so as soon as he won he had to defer to their needs and desires and not to the left any more. Transpeople and their rights is a great example of this - before all this Starmer only ever interacted with the transphobic side of this struggle; Mumsnetters, his transphobic MPs, talking about getting rid of Gillick and agreeing with the school guidance recently released. Now, in front of a grieving mother, he tries to walk this back.
I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
It's much simpler to understand Starmer thus: He is a perfectly decent man and has the protean qualities required in real politics. He campaigned to be leader in a manner to win the membership vote, and will campaign in the GE in a manner to win the general public vote. They are different. Losing both of these campaigns is much much easier than winning them. He has a very decent chance of winning both.
He will govern in accordance with the laws of political reality, things which neither the Labour membership, nor many voters are good at analysing.
Oh yes; respect for institutions, based on their actual excellence and merits, would be most welcome.
What are the laws of political reality? Because what I see is a country that has been starved of public sector funding for a very long time atrophying as it's essential public services become worse and the price of everything gets higher. And all the policies that would address that, which are actually somewhat popular with voters, being jettisoned out of some idea of what centrism is.
Political reality is that most people won't vote for tax rises, but they tend to be more willing to accept the argument that tax rises are necessary from a government already in office.
Hence why no-one of the tax rises that have taken Britain to a record high tax take have followed a party campaigning on increasing taxes and winning an election on that platform.
I dislike the essential dishonesty in that, but I recognise the political reality. I think that, eventually, there will be consequences from such political dishonesty, and perhaps Brexit was one of them.
There's also a big difference between "we won't raise taxes"=>raises taxes and "we are not mentioning raising taxes"=>raises taxes. The Major government were the first I remember falling foul of this.
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.
I think this is where people misunderstand Starmer. Starmer is a "respect for the office if not the person" guy - he was a lawyer and that is drummed into them. To Starmer the things that are wrong with the country are wrong because the Tories and Corbyn have, in his mind, brought them into disrepute. His job, then, is to make these things reputable again.
One of the things that many trans people have noted about this recent kerfuffle is a) it seems that it's fine to say transphobic dogwhistles when a murdered transgirl isn't a big news story and b) that the framing is all about respect for Brianna's mother and not the dignity of transpeople themselves. That's because, in the British discourse, transpeople are free to be disrespected; grieving mothers are not. So when the two come together, some people miss the marker.
We can see this with the political left and right all the time. Concerns about immigration are always "concerns of real people". Concerns about austerity are always "concerns of left wing activists". This isn't because cuts were popular - it's because people who are deemed "left wing" in the UK are not really respectable political actors. Similar for people who liked Corbyn/ism - they are not deserving of respect in the political arena, according to those within the political milieu, so you can lie to them as much as you want.
Hence Starmer. He ran to be Labour leader by appealing to the centre, by being the sensible man in the suit, and the left, by saying he would do Corbynism but sensibly and in a way your grandma would support. The thing is only centrists and the media are people worth respecting, so as soon as he won he had to defer to their needs and desires and not to the left any more. Transpeople and their rights is a great example of this - before all this Starmer only ever interacted with the transphobic side of this struggle; Mumsnetters, his transphobic MPs, talking about getting rid of Gillick and agreeing with the school guidance recently released. Now, in front of a grieving mother, he tries to walk this back.
I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
It's much simpler to understand Starmer thus: He is a perfectly decent man and has the protean qualities required in real politics. He campaigned to be leader in a manner to win the membership vote, and will campaign in the GE in a manner to win the general public vote. They are different. Losing both of these campaigns is much much easier than winning them. He has a very decent chance of winning both.
He will govern in accordance with the laws of political reality, things which neither the Labour membership, nor many voters are good at analysing.
Oh yes; respect for institutions, based on their actual excellence and merits, would be most welcome.
What are the laws of political reality? Because what I see is a country that has been starved of public sector funding for a very long time atrophying as it's essential public services become worse and the price of everything gets higher. And all the policies that would address that, which are actually somewhat popular with voters, being jettisoned out of some idea of what centrism is.
Your question deserves a better book than I can write. But here are three suggestions:
The Overton window, a feature entirely based upon history, fixes limits to what is possible in a particular time and society.
Because of finitude anything can be done, but not everything can be done. So to govern is to choose.
Those who hold political power now generally wish to keep it next time, so governing involves doing so in a way which makes reelection maximally possible.
As to public sector funding, it has never been higher in modern peacetime. We are borrowing and taxing and spending (and running debt) at record levels. All proposals for spending have to deal with the fiscal realities. If Starmer shows signs of not understanding this he will lose the election.
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.
I think this is where people misunderstand Starmer. Starmer is a "respect for the office if not the person" guy - he was a lawyer and that is drummed into them. To Starmer the things that are wrong with the country are wrong because the Tories and Corbyn have, in his mind, brought them into disrepute. His job, then, is to make these things reputable again.
One of the things that many trans people have noted about this recent kerfuffle is a) it seems that it's fine to say transphobic dogwhistles when a murdered transgirl isn't a big news story and b) that the framing is all about respect for Brianna's mother and not the dignity of transpeople themselves. That's because, in the British discourse, transpeople are free to be disrespected; grieving mothers are not. So when the two come together, some people miss the marker.
We can see this with the political left and right all the time. Concerns about immigration are always "concerns of real people". Concerns about austerity are always "concerns of left wing activists". This isn't because cuts were popular - it's because people who are deemed "left wing" in the UK are not really respectable political actors. Similar for people who liked Corbyn/ism - they are not deserving of respect in the political arena, according to those within the political milieu, so you can lie to them as much as you want.
Hence Starmer. He ran to be Labour leader by appealing to the centre, by being the sensible man in the suit, and the left, by saying he would do Corbynism but sensibly and in a way your grandma would support. The thing is only centrists and the media are people worth respecting, so as soon as he won he had to defer to their needs and desires and not to the left any more. Transpeople and their rights is a great example of this - before all this Starmer only ever interacted with the transphobic side of this struggle; Mumsnetters, his transphobic MPs, talking about getting rid of Gillick and agreeing with the school guidance recently released. Now, in front of a grieving mother, he tries to walk this back.
I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
It's much simpler to understand Starmer thus: He is a perfectly decent man and has the protean qualities required in real politics. He campaigned to be leader in a manner to win the membership vote, and will campaign in the GE in a manner to win the general public vote. They are different. Losing both of these campaigns is much much easier than winning them. He has a very decent chance of winning both.
He will govern in accordance with the laws of political reality, things which neither the Labour membership, nor many voters are good at analysing.
Oh yes; respect for institutions, based on their actual excellence and merits, would be most welcome.
What are the laws of political reality? Because what I see is a country that has been starved of public sector funding for a very long time atrophying as it's essential public services become worse and the price of everything gets higher. And all the policies that would address that, which are actually somewhat popular with voters, being jettisoned out of some idea of what centrism is.
Indeed. The parties are reading from a playbook that only worked in the neoliberal period. That era died 5-10 years ago and Boris's election put the lid on it. Boris, for all his inability to keep his dick in his pants, understood that spend, spend, spend and state intervention was what was required. Sunak (and I'd argue Starmer) have not internalized this, despite the fact that Eat Out To Help Out was an object lesson.
But the problem isn't a lack of spending per se. What we need is a dose of Milei-style "afuera" so that we stop spending in ways that are simply a drain on our limited resources.
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.
I think this is where people misunderstand Starmer. Starmer is a "respect for the office if not the person" guy - he was a lawyer and that is drummed into them. To Starmer the things that are wrong with the country are wrong because the Tories and Corbyn have, in his mind, brought them into disrepute. His job, then, is to make these things reputable again.
One of the things that many trans people have noted about this recent kerfuffle is a) it seems that it's fine to say transphobic dogwhistles when a murdered transgirl isn't a big news story and b) that the framing is all about respect for Brianna's mother and not the dignity of transpeople themselves. That's because, in the British discourse, transpeople are free to be disrespected; grieving mothers are not. So when the two come together, some people miss the marker.
We can see this with the political left and right all the time. Concerns about immigration are always "concerns of real people". Concerns about austerity are always "concerns of left wing activists". This isn't because cuts were popular - it's because people who are deemed "left wing" in the UK are not really respectable political actors. Similar for people who liked Corbyn/ism - they are not deserving of respect in the political arena, according to those within the political milieu, so you can lie to them as much as you want.
Hence Starmer. He ran to be Labour leader by appealing to the centre, by being the sensible man in the suit, and the left, by saying he would do Corbynism but sensibly and in a way your grandma would support. The thing is only centrists and the media are people worth respecting, so as soon as he won he had to defer to their needs and desires and not to the left any more. Transpeople and their rights is a great example of this - before all this Starmer only ever interacted with the transphobic side of this struggle; Mumsnetters, his transphobic MPs, talking about getting rid of Gillick and agreeing with the school guidance recently released. Now, in front of a grieving mother, he tries to walk this back.
I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
It's much simpler to understand Starmer thus: He is a perfectly decent man and has the protean qualities required in real politics. He campaigned to be leader in a manner to win the membership vote, and will campaign in the GE in a manner to win the general public vote. They are different. Losing both of these campaigns is much much easier than winning them. He has a very decent chance of winning both.
He will govern in accordance with the laws of political reality, things which neither the Labour membership, nor many voters are good at analysing.
Oh yes; respect for institutions, based on their actual excellence and merits, would be most welcome.
What are the laws of political reality? Because what I see is a country that has been starved of public sector funding for a very long time atrophying as it's essential public services become worse and the price of everything gets higher. And all the policies that would address that, which are actually somewhat popular with voters, being jettisoned out of some idea of what centrism is.
Public spending as a percentage of GDP is higher than it was at any time while Tony Blair was PM.
The proportion of people beyond working age is massively greater now though. Fewer working age people footing the bill for vastly greater health and social care demand. I'd be interested in seeing someone adjust spending and tax numbers for demographics.
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.
I think this is where people misunderstand Starmer. Starmer is a "respect for the office if not the person" guy - he was a lawyer and that is drummed into them. To Starmer the things that are wrong with the country are wrong because the Tories and Corbyn have, in his mind, brought them into disrepute. His job, then, is to make these things reputable again.
One of the things that many trans people have noted about this recent kerfuffle is a) it seems that it's fine to say transphobic dogwhistles when a murdered transgirl isn't a big news story and b) that the framing is all about respect for Brianna's mother and not the dignity of transpeople themselves. That's because, in the British discourse, transpeople are free to be disrespected; grieving mothers are not. So when the two come together, some people miss the marker.
We can see this with the political left and right all the time. Concerns about immigration are always "concerns of real people". Concerns about austerity are always "concerns of left wing activists". This isn't because cuts were popular - it's because people who are deemed "left wing" in the UK are not really respectable political actors. Similar for people who liked Corbyn/ism - they are not deserving of respect in the political arena, according to those within the political milieu, so you can lie to them as much as you want.
Hence Starmer. He ran to be Labour leader by appealing to the centre, by being the sensible man in the suit, and the left, by saying he would do Corbynism but sensibly and in a way your grandma would support. The thing is only centrists and the media are people worth respecting, so as soon as he won he had to defer to their needs and desires and not to the left any more. Transpeople and their rights is a great example of this - before all this Starmer only ever interacted with the transphobic side of this struggle; Mumsnetters, his transphobic MPs, talking about getting rid of Gillick and agreeing with the school guidance recently released. Now, in front of a grieving mother, he tries to walk this back.
I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
It's much simpler to understand Starmer thus: He is a perfectly decent man and has the protean qualities required in real politics. He campaigned to be leader in a manner to win the membership vote, and will campaign in the GE in a manner to win the general public vote. They are different. Losing both of these campaigns is much much easier than winning them. He has a very decent chance of winning both.
He will govern in accordance with the laws of political reality, things which neither the Labour membership, nor many voters are good at analysing.
Oh yes; respect for institutions, based on their actual excellence and merits, would be most welcome.
What are the laws of political reality? Because what I see is a country that has been starved of public sector funding for a very long time atrophying as it's essential public services become worse and the price of everything gets higher. And all the policies that would address that, which are actually somewhat popular with voters, being jettisoned out of some idea of what centrism is.
Political reality is that most people won't vote for tax rises, but they tend to be more willing to accept the argument that tax rises are necessary from a government already in office.
Hence why none of the tax rises that have taken Britain to a record high tax take have followed a party campaigning on increasing taxes and winning an election on that platform.
I dislike the essential dishonesty in that, but I recognise the political reality. I think that, eventually, there will be consequences from such political dishonesty, and perhaps Brexit was one of them.
The other side of the problem is the inability to understand how to invest to control (and reduce) costs.
So infrastructure and essential services escalate in cost faster than inflation or GDP.
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.
I think this is where people misunderstand Starmer. Starmer is a "respect for the office if not the person" guy - he was a lawyer and that is drummed into them. To Starmer the things that are wrong with the country are wrong because the Tories and Corbyn have, in his mind, brought them into disrepute. His job, then, is to make these things reputable again.
One of the things that many trans people have noted about this recent kerfuffle is a) it seems that it's fine to say transphobic dogwhistles when a murdered transgirl isn't a big news story and b) that the framing is all about respect for Brianna's mother and not the dignity of transpeople themselves. That's because, in the British discourse, transpeople are free to be disrespected; grieving mothers are not. So when the two come together, some people miss the marker.
We can see this with the political left and right all the time. Concerns about immigration are always "concerns of real people". Concerns about austerity are always "concerns of left wing activists". This isn't because cuts were popular - it's because people who are deemed "left wing" in the UK are not really respectable political actors. Similar for people who liked Corbyn/ism - they are not deserving of respect in the political arena, according to those within the political milieu, so you can lie to them as much as you want.
Hence Starmer. He ran to be Labour leader by appealing to the centre, by being the sensible man in the suit, and the left, by saying he would do Corbynism but sensibly and in a way your grandma would support. The thing is only centrists and the media are people worth respecting, so as soon as he won he had to defer to their needs and desires and not to the left any more. Transpeople and their rights is a great example of this - before all this Starmer only ever interacted with the transphobic side of this struggle; Mumsnetters, his transphobic MPs, talking about getting rid of Gillick and agreeing with the school guidance recently released. Now, in front of a grieving mother, he tries to walk this back.
I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
It's much simpler to understand Starmer thus: He is a perfectly decent man and has the protean qualities required in real politics. He campaigned to be leader in a manner to win the membership vote, and will campaign in the GE in a manner to win the general public vote. They are different. Losing both of these campaigns is much much easier than winning them. He has a very decent chance of winning both.
He will govern in accordance with the laws of political reality, things which neither the Labour membership, nor many voters are good at analysing.
Oh yes; respect for institutions, based on their actual excellence and merits, would be most welcome.
What are the laws of political reality? Because what I see is a country that has been starved of public sector funding for a very long time atrophying as it's essential public services become worse and the price of everything gets higher. And all the policies that would address that, which are actually somewhat popular with voters, being jettisoned out of some idea of what centrism is.
Political reality is that most people won't vote for tax rises, but they tend to be more willing to accept the argument that tax rises are necessary from a government already in office.
Hence why none of the tax rises that have taken Britain to a record high tax take have followed a party campaigning on increasing taxes and winning an election on that platform.
I dislike the essential dishonesty in that, but I recognise the political reality. I think that, eventually, there will be consequences from such political dishonesty, and perhaps Brexit was one of them.
What? Most people are more than happy for there to be taxes on, like, the highest 10% of earners - because most people aren't in the top 10% of earners.
By the way, the 'Trump can/not stand for president' hearing is on at the SCOTUS right now. Worth watching out for potential signs as to which way it might go. Obviously, no result today.
Kagan: given that you don't have a lot of evidence that the founding generation that they thought a lot about officer versus offices, perhaps we should ask why they would have made such a thing?
‘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
I think some consideration was given. The Conservative Government chose Brexit and, with it, a shift from EU immigration to Commonwealth immigration. (Specific recent schemes then covered people from Ukraine and Hong Kong.) You may or may not agree with those choices, but they were choices that were made.
Off topic: where is best to find odds for when we'll have a new king? The candidness of the release of medical information, and the whole "Harry rushed back to see daddy" makes me think it wouldn't be unlikely we'll have a new one before Xmas. The only other theory I can think of is Charles is just much happier to release info than Lizzie was, but that doesn't seem likely. It also felt odd that Sunak felt the need to be like "King is fine" after his meeting with him this week.
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.
I think this is where people misunderstand Starmer. Starmer is a "respect for the office if not the person" guy - he was a lawyer and that is drummed into them. To Starmer the things that are wrong with the country are wrong because the Tories and Corbyn have, in his mind, brought them into disrepute. His job, then, is to make these things reputable again.
One of the things that many trans people have noted about this recent kerfuffle is a) it seems that it's fine to say transphobic dogwhistles when a murdered transgirl isn't a big news story and b) that the framing is all about respect for Brianna's mother and not the dignity of transpeople themselves. That's because, in the British discourse, transpeople are free to be disrespected; grieving mothers are not. So when the two come together, some people miss the marker.
We can see this with the political left and right all the time. Concerns about immigration are always "concerns of real people". Concerns about austerity are always "concerns of left wing activists". This isn't because cuts were popular - it's because people who are deemed "left wing" in the UK are not really respectable political actors. Similar for people who liked Corbyn/ism - they are not deserving of respect in the political arena, according to those within the political milieu, so you can lie to them as much as you want.
Hence Starmer. He ran to be Labour leader by appealing to the centre, by being the sensible man in the suit, and the left, by saying he would do Corbynism but sensibly and in a way your grandma would support. The thing is only centrists and the media are people worth respecting, so as soon as he won he had to defer to their needs and desires and not to the left any more. Transpeople and their rights is a great example of this - before all this Starmer only ever interacted with the transphobic side of this struggle; Mumsnetters, his transphobic MPs, talking about getting rid of Gillick and agreeing with the school guidance recently released. Now, in front of a grieving mother, he tries to walk this back.
I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
It's much simpler to understand Starmer thus: He is a perfectly decent man and has the protean qualities required in real politics. He campaigned to be leader in a manner to win the membership vote, and will campaign in the GE in a manner to win the general public vote. They are different. Losing both of these campaigns is much much easier than winning them. He has a very decent chance of winning both.
He will govern in accordance with the laws of political reality, things which neither the Labour membership, nor many voters are good at analysing.
Oh yes; respect for institutions, based on their actual excellence and merits, would be most welcome.
What are the laws of political reality? Because what I see is a country that has been starved of public sector funding for a very long time atrophying as it's essential public services become worse and the price of everything gets higher. And all the policies that would address that, which are actually somewhat popular with voters, being jettisoned out of some idea of what centrism is.
Political reality is that most people won't vote for tax rises, but they tend to be more willing to accept the argument that tax rises are necessary from a government already in office.
Hence why none of the tax rises that have taken Britain to a record high tax take have followed a party campaigning on increasing taxes and winning an election on that platform.
I dislike the essential dishonesty in that, but I recognise the political reality. I think that, eventually, there will be consequences from such political dishonesty, and perhaps Brexit was one of them.
The other side of the problem is the inability to understand how to invest to control (and reduce) costs.
So infrastructure and essential services escalate in cost faster than inflation or GDP.
Yes, there is that. And also, if Britain had not fallen so far behind so many of its European peers in terms of is per capita wealth, then the same proportion of national expenditure would go a lot further.
There's an extent to which the country has to first fix it's economic problems, before it can fix its public sector ones.
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.
I think this is where people misunderstand Starmer. Starmer is a "respect for the office if not the person" guy - he was a lawyer and that is drummed into them. To Starmer the things that are wrong with the country are wrong because the Tories and Corbyn have, in his mind, brought them into disrepute. His job, then, is to make these things reputable again.
One of the things that many trans people have noted about this recent kerfuffle is a) it seems that it's fine to say transphobic dogwhistles when a murdered transgirl isn't a big news story and b) that the framing is all about respect for Brianna's mother and not the dignity of transpeople themselves. That's because, in the British discourse, transpeople are free to be disrespected; grieving mothers are not. So when the two come together, some people miss the marker.
We can see this with the political left and right all the time. Concerns about immigration are always "concerns of real people". Concerns about austerity are always "concerns of left wing activists". This isn't because cuts were popular - it's because people who are deemed "left wing" in the UK are not really respectable political actors. Similar for people who liked Corbyn/ism - they are not deserving of respect in the political arena, according to those within the political milieu, so you can lie to them as much as you want.
Hence Starmer. He ran to be Labour leader by appealing to the centre, by being the sensible man in the suit, and the left, by saying he would do Corbynism but sensibly and in a way your grandma would support. The thing is only centrists and the media are people worth respecting, so as soon as he won he had to defer to their needs and desires and not to the left any more. Transpeople and their rights is a great example of this - before all this Starmer only ever interacted with the transphobic side of this struggle; Mumsnetters, his transphobic MPs, talking about getting rid of Gillick and agreeing with the school guidance recently released. Now, in front of a grieving mother, he tries to walk this back.
I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
It's much simpler to understand Starmer thus: He is a perfectly decent man and has the protean qualities required in real politics. He campaigned to be leader in a manner to win the membership vote, and will campaign in the GE in a manner to win the general public vote. They are different. Losing both of these campaigns is much much easier than winning them. He has a very decent chance of winning both.
He will govern in accordance with the laws of political reality, things which neither the Labour membership, nor many voters are good at analysing.
Oh yes; respect for institutions, based on their actual excellence and merits, would be most welcome.
What are the laws of political reality? Because what I see is a country that has been starved of public sector funding for a very long time atrophying as it's essential public services become worse and the price of everything gets higher. And all the policies that would address that, which are actually somewhat popular with voters, being jettisoned out of some idea of what centrism is.
Public spending as a percentage of GDP is higher than it was at any time while Tony Blair was PM.
The proportion of people beyond working age is massively greater now though. Fewer working age people footing the bill for vastly greater health and social care demand. I'd be interested in seeing someone adjust spending and tax numbers for demographics.
It’s easy to add population via immigration, but that can turn into a Ponzi scheme that simply gets worse and worse over time.
The correct way to do it, from my own observations elsewhere, is to limit primary immigration to high salaries and needed jobs, which does appear to be happening slowly, but also to allow a number of other immigrants on a “guest worker” basis, strictly time limited, a version of which has been agreed with Australia.
And no, students shouldn’t bring dependents, that’s the next big scandal and almost certainly an immigration scam running in countries such as Nigeria. Limit it to doctoral or post-doc studies.
‘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.
Out of curiosity, I've just had a look at the comments on there. I suspect those who hark back to the glory days of PB 10 and more years ago are indulging in wishful nostalgia - it doesn't look very different to me from now in either breadth or depth of comments. Lots of the same characters. Quite a lot of football chat. Plus ça change.
Well, I was there writing the same sort of nonsense I do now. So in that respect, little has changed....
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.
I think this is where people misunderstand Starmer. Starmer is a "respect for the office if not the person" guy - he was a lawyer and that is drummed into them. To Starmer the things that are wrong with the country are wrong because the Tories and Corbyn have, in his mind, brought them into disrepute. His job, then, is to make these things reputable again.
One of the things that many trans people have noted about this recent kerfuffle is a) it seems that it's fine to say transphobic dogwhistles when a murdered transgirl isn't a big news story and b) that the framing is all about respect for Brianna's mother and not the dignity of transpeople themselves. That's because, in the British discourse, transpeople are free to be disrespected; grieving mothers are not. So when the two come together, some people miss the marker.
We can see this with the political left and right all the time. Concerns about immigration are always "concerns of real people". Concerns about austerity are always "concerns of left wing activists". This isn't because cuts were popular - it's because people who are deemed "left wing" in the UK are not really respectable political actors. Similar for people who liked Corbyn/ism - they are not deserving of respect in the political arena, according to those within the political milieu, so you can lie to them as much as you want.
Hence Starmer. He ran to be Labour leader by appealing to the centre, by being the sensible man in the suit, and the left, by saying he would do Corbynism but sensibly and in a way your grandma would support. The thing is only centrists and the media are people worth respecting, so as soon as he won he had to defer to their needs and desires and not to the left any more. Transpeople and their rights is a great example of this - before all this Starmer only ever interacted with the transphobic side of this struggle; Mumsnetters, his transphobic MPs, talking about getting rid of Gillick and agreeing with the school guidance recently released. Now, in front of a grieving mother, he tries to walk this back.
I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
It's much simpler to understand Starmer thus: He is a perfectly decent man and has the protean qualities required in real politics. He campaigned to be leader in a manner to win the membership vote, and will campaign in the GE in a manner to win the general public vote. They are different. Losing both of these campaigns is much much easier than winning them. He has a very decent chance of winning both.
He will govern in accordance with the laws of political reality, things which neither the Labour membership, nor many voters are good at analysing.
Oh yes; respect for institutions, based on their actual excellence and merits, would be most welcome.
What are the laws of political reality? Because what I see is a country that has been starved of public sector funding for a very long time atrophying as it's essential public services become worse and the price of everything gets higher. And all the policies that would address that, which are actually somewhat popular with voters, being jettisoned out of some idea of what centrism is.
Public spending as a percentage of GDP is higher than it was at any time while Tony Blair was PM.
The proportion of people beyond working age is massively greater now though. Fewer working age people footing the bill for vastly greater health and social care demand. I'd be interested in seeing someone adjust spending and tax numbers for demographics.
Blair and Brown benefited from significant demographic tailwinds from 1997 until the financial crisis. Successive governments have had the opposite since. With the age dependency ratio going up so far in such a short time it would be almost impossible to maintain public services, especially healthcare, without significantly ramping up spending and therefore borrowing and/or tax.
We are far from alone in this of course and our age dependency ratio is by no means as bad as some countries. If you want to see what really fucked up demographics look like take a look at this:
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.
I think this is where people misunderstand Starmer. Starmer is a "respect for the office if not the person" guy - he was a lawyer and that is drummed into them. To Starmer the things that are wrong with the country are wrong because the Tories and Corbyn have, in his mind, brought them into disrepute. His job, then, is to make these things reputable again.
One of the things that many trans people have noted about this recent kerfuffle is a) it seems that it's fine to say transphobic dogwhistles when a murdered transgirl isn't a big news story and b) that the framing is all about respect for Brianna's mother and not the dignity of transpeople themselves. That's because, in the British discourse, transpeople are free to be disrespected; grieving mothers are not. So when the two come together, some people miss the marker.
We can see this with the political left and right all the time. Concerns about immigration are always "concerns of real people". Concerns about austerity are always "concerns of left wing activists". This isn't because cuts were popular - it's because people who are deemed "left wing" in the UK are not really respectable political actors. Similar for people who liked Corbyn/ism - they are not deserving of respect in the political arena, according to those within the political milieu, so you can lie to them as much as you want.
Hence Starmer. He ran to be Labour leader by appealing to the centre, by being the sensible man in the suit, and the left, by saying he would do Corbynism but sensibly and in a way your grandma would support. The thing is only centrists and the media are people worth respecting, so as soon as he won he had to defer to their needs and desires and not to the left any more. Transpeople and their rights is a great example of this - before all this Starmer only ever interacted with the transphobic side of this struggle; Mumsnetters, his transphobic MPs, talking about getting rid of Gillick and agreeing with the school guidance recently released. Now, in front of a grieving mother, he tries to walk this back.
I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
It's much simpler to understand Starmer thus: He is a perfectly decent man and has the protean qualities required in real politics. He campaigned to be leader in a manner to win the membership vote, and will campaign in the GE in a manner to win the general public vote. They are different. Losing both of these campaigns is much much easier than winning them. He has a very decent chance of winning both.
He will govern in accordance with the laws of political reality, things which neither the Labour membership, nor many voters are good at analysing.
Oh yes; respect for institutions, based on their actual excellence and merits, would be most welcome.
What are the laws of political reality? Because what I see is a country that has been starved of public sector funding for a very long time atrophying as it's essential public services become worse and the price of everything gets higher. And all the policies that would address that, which are actually somewhat popular with voters, being jettisoned out of some idea of what centrism is.
Public spending as a percentage of GDP is higher than it was at any time while Tony Blair was PM.
The proportion of people beyond working age is massively greater now though. Fewer working age people footing the bill for vastly greater health and social care demand. I'd be interested in seeing someone adjust spending and tax numbers for demographics.
It’s easy to add population via immigration, but that can turn into a Ponzi scheme that simply gets worse and worse over time.
The correct way to do it, from my own observations elsewhere, is to limit primary immigration to high salaries and needed jobs, which does appear to be happening slowly, but also to allow a number of other immigrants on a “guest worker” basis, strictly time limited, a version of which has been agreed with Australia.
And no, students shouldn’t bring dependents, that’s the next big scandal and almost certainly an immigration scam running in countries such as Nigeria. Limit it to doctoral or post-doc studies.
How is importing someone fully trained at 21 any different from someone having a baby, in terms of Ponzi-scheme-ness?
I mean, I understand it from a population-mix perspective and a changing society one. But from a straight long-term dependency ratio basis, then a baby and an imported person are identical, except you don't need to pay for the schooling of the imported person.
I mean, he should, but the problem will then be Kamala (who is shit, although would do better on Gaza per reporting) and then she'd have to pick a VP (which would cause its own problems). I think if he really is unable to be POTUS the Dems will allow this to go to the convention and stitch it up there - that's the only way to avoid a long bloody primary and condense that into like a day of bloody primary fighting. Tbf, the GOP may do the same if Trump is ineligible / in jail.
Did you see the news about the Houthis sentencing 13 people to death for homosexuality?
No. That's bad, they shouldn't do that. I dislike the Houthis. On the other hand, the blockade they did was good. These can both be things I believe, because bad groups / parties / individuals can do good things.
The blockade of ships going to Israel that only stopped ships not going to Israel?
‘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.
Out of curiosity, I've just had a look at the comments on there. I suspect those who hark back to the glory days of PB 10 and more years ago are indulging in wishful nostalgia - it doesn't look very different to me from now in either breadth or depth of comments. Lots of the same characters. Quite a lot of football chat. Plus ça change.
Long list of seats that UKIP might do well in from me… they didn’t win any of them! Clutching at straws, I wonder how those constituencies voted in the ref or if Kippers got many 2nd places
Anyone know when the last major reservoir was built in the UK?
Depends what you mean.
Abberton was expanded to the tune of more than doubling its size (the expansion alone being more than the median reservoir in England) in 2015. Usually reservoir expansions get glossed over, of course, because people want to make a point and anything happening fairly recently damages that point.
There's also a reservoir in construction in Havant (due to enter service in 2029)
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.
The Telegraph, the Mail, the Express, the Times, the Sun, The Spectator, GB News, BBC News (except Newsnight) TalkTV (is that even a thing) Guido Fawkes, Johnson, Delingpole, Andrew Neil, Fraser Nelson, Nick Ferrari and a whole raft of Sunak sycophants haven't yet taken Starmer on? And from the other side BJO, Steven Flynn, the Morning Star, Jeremy Corbyn, Momentum, the Canary and other assorted riff-raff.
And yet yesterday Sunak dropped a bollock bigger than he is and the wagons were circled by the first group listed above.
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.
I think this is where people misunderstand Starmer. Starmer is a "respect for the office if not the person" guy - he was a lawyer and that is drummed into them. To Starmer the things that are wrong with the country are wrong because the Tories and Corbyn have, in his mind, brought them into disrepute. His job, then, is to make these things reputable again.
One of the things that many trans people have noted about this recent kerfuffle is a) it seems that it's fine to say transphobic dogwhistles when a murdered transgirl isn't a big news story and b) that the framing is all about respect for Brianna's mother and not the dignity of transpeople themselves. That's because, in the British discourse, transpeople are free to be disrespected; grieving mothers are not. So when the two come together, some people miss the marker.
We can see this with the political left and right all the time. Concerns about immigration are always "concerns of real people". Concerns about austerity are always "concerns of left wing activists". This isn't because cuts were popular - it's because people who are deemed "left wing" in the UK are not really respectable political actors. Similar for people who liked Corbyn/ism - they are not deserving of respect in the political arena, according to those within the political milieu, so you can lie to them as much as you want.
Hence Starmer. He ran to be Labour leader by appealing to the centre, by being the sensible man in the suit, and the left, by saying he would do Corbynism but sensibly and in a way your grandma would support. The thing is only centrists and the media are people worth respecting, so as soon as he won he had to defer to their needs and desires and not to the left any more. Transpeople and their rights is a great example of this - before all this Starmer only ever interacted with the transphobic side of this struggle; Mumsnetters, his transphobic MPs, talking about getting rid of Gillick and agreeing with the school guidance recently released. Now, in front of a grieving mother, he tries to walk this back.
I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
It's much simpler to understand Starmer thus: He is a perfectly decent man and has the protean qualities required in real politics. He campaigned to be leader in a manner to win the membership vote, and will campaign in the GE in a manner to win the general public vote. They are different. Losing both of these campaigns is much much easier than winning them. He has a very decent chance of winning both.
He will govern in accordance with the laws of political reality, things which neither the Labour membership, nor many voters are good at analysing.
Oh yes; respect for institutions, based on their actual excellence and merits, would be most welcome.
What are the laws of political reality? Because what I see is a country that has been starved of public sector funding for a very long time atrophying as it's essential public services become worse and the price of everything gets higher. And all the policies that would address that, which are actually somewhat popular with voters, being jettisoned out of some idea of what centrism is.
Public spending as a percentage of GDP is higher than it was at any time while Tony Blair was PM.
The proportion of people beyond working age is massively greater now though. Fewer working age people footing the bill for vastly greater health and social care demand. I'd be interested in seeing someone adjust spending and tax numbers for demographics.
It’s easy to add population via immigration, but that can turn into a Ponzi scheme that simply gets worse and worse over time.
The correct way to do it, from my own observations elsewhere, is to limit primary immigration to high salaries and needed jobs, which does appear to be happening slowly, but also to allow a number of other immigrants on a “guest worker” basis, strictly time limited, a version of which has been agreed with Australia.
And no, students shouldn’t bring dependents, that’s the next big scandal and almost certainly an immigration scam running in countries such as Nigeria. Limit it to doctoral or post-doc studies.
We can't just fix it with demographics, either internal or migration. From my perspective an older country means we have to accept that each tax payer of working age needs to put aside a higher percentage of their income either in taxation or in paying privately for their own and their parents' old age. The trouble with doing so privately, aside from inequality effects, is that the bargaining power of one individual or even their insurance company against the health and social care industry is non-existent.
I know that the new thing for want to be strong men is to never apologise for anything, but this is just weak sauce. Like even I will hand it to Starmer - he did give his condolences about Brianna Ghey first and then Sunak responded with his prewritten comments. Like, it is clear that once the LOTO has mentioned the murdered trans girl you probably shouldn't include your transphobic dogwhistle:
"But, when asked today if he would apologise, Sunak said:
If you look at what I said, I was very clear, talking about Keir Starmer’s proven track record of U-turns on major policies because he doesn’t have a plan.
A point only proven by today’s reports that the Labour party and Keir Starmer are apparently planning to reverse on their signature economic green spending policy.
That just demonstrates the point I was making. He’s someone who has just consistently changed his mind on a whole range of major things.
I think that is an absolutely legitimate thing to point out and it demonstrates that he doesn’t have a plan for the country.
Sunak said he was “completely shocked” by the murder of Brianna, and he said he had “nothing but the most heartfelt sympathy for her entire family and friends”.
He went on:
But to use that tragedy to detract from the very separate and clear point I was making about Keir Starmer’s proven track record of multiple U-turns on major policies, because he doesn’t have a plan, I think is both sad and wrong, and it demonstrates the worst of politics."
Like, no one buys this. Even people who are happy he did a transphobia do not buy this. Why keep parroting this line that just means the press will keep asking him why he just won't apologise for being insensitive in front of a dead girl's mother. He could even make a half assed apology "I'm sorry that she found this offensive, but I was not talking about her child..." and it would go away. He just looks like an insensitive weirdo.
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.
I think this is where people misunderstand Starmer. Starmer is a "respect for the office if not the person" guy - he was a lawyer and that is drummed into them. To Starmer the things that are wrong with the country are wrong because the Tories and Corbyn have, in his mind, brought them into disrepute. His job, then, is to make these things reputable again.
One of the things that many trans people have noted about this recent kerfuffle is a) it seems that it's fine to say transphobic dogwhistles when a murdered transgirl isn't a big news story and b) that the framing is all about respect for Brianna's mother and not the dignity of transpeople themselves. That's because, in the British discourse, transpeople are free to be disrespected; grieving mothers are not. So when the two come together, some people miss the marker.
We can see this with the political left and right all the time. Concerns about immigration are always "concerns of real people". Concerns about austerity are always "concerns of left wing activists". This isn't because cuts were popular - it's because people who are deemed "left wing" in the UK are not really respectable political actors. Similar for people who liked Corbyn/ism - they are not deserving of respect in the political arena, according to those within the political milieu, so you can lie to them as much as you want.
Hence Starmer. He ran to be Labour leader by appealing to the centre, by being the sensible man in the suit, and the left, by saying he would do Corbynism but sensibly and in a way your grandma would support. The thing is only centrists and the media are people worth respecting, so as soon as he won he had to defer to their needs and desires and not to the left any more. Transpeople and their rights is a great example of this - before all this Starmer only ever interacted with the transphobic side of this struggle; Mumsnetters, his transphobic MPs, talking about getting rid of Gillick and agreeing with the school guidance recently released. Now, in front of a grieving mother, he tries to walk this back.
I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
It's much simpler to understand Starmer thus: He is a perfectly decent man and has the protean qualities required in real politics. He campaigned to be leader in a manner to win the membership vote, and will campaign in the GE in a manner to win the general public vote. They are different. Losing both of these campaigns is much much easier than winning them. He has a very decent chance of winning both.
He will govern in accordance with the laws of political reality, things which neither the Labour membership, nor many voters are good at analysing.
Oh yes; respect for institutions, based on their actual excellence and merits, would be most welcome.
What are the laws of political reality? Because what I see is a country that has been starved of public sector funding for a very long time atrophying as it's essential public services become worse and the price of everything gets higher. And all the policies that would address that, which are actually somewhat popular with voters, being jettisoned out of some idea of what centrism is.
Public spending as a percentage of GDP is higher than it was at any time while Tony Blair was PM.
The proportion of people beyond working age is massively greater now though. Fewer working age people footing the bill for vastly greater health and social care demand. I'd be interested in seeing someone adjust spending and tax numbers for demographics.
It’s easy to add population via immigration, but that can turn into a Ponzi scheme that simply gets worse and worse over time.
The correct way to do it, from my own observations elsewhere, is to limit primary immigration to high salaries and needed jobs, which does appear to be happening slowly, but also to allow a number of other immigrants on a “guest worker” basis, strictly time limited, a version of which has been agreed with Australia.
And no, students shouldn’t bring dependents, that’s the next big scandal and almost certainly an immigration scam running in countries such as Nigeria. Limit it to doctoral or post-doc studies.
There are already rules on students' dependants. This quote is from Cambridge's website:
"Your partner and children will be eligible to apply for a dependant visa if:
"Your course is a full-time postgraduate level research degree* which is at least 9 months long OR
"You are a government sponsored student on a full-time course that is 6 months or longer. This means you are receiving a funding award for your studies from the UK government or an overseas government. This is defined in policy guidance as a scholarship from a central government department covering full fees and living costs. There is no requirement for the dependant to be in receipt of an award from a government, but dependants will be required to meet the financial requirements for their application (as outlined in the information below)."
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.
I think this is where people misunderstand Starmer. Starmer is a "respect for the office if not the person" guy - he was a lawyer and that is drummed into them. To Starmer the things that are wrong with the country are wrong because the Tories and Corbyn have, in his mind, brought them into disrepute. His job, then, is to make these things reputable again.
One of the things that many trans people have noted about this recent kerfuffle is a) it seems that it's fine to say transphobic dogwhistles when a murdered transgirl isn't a big news story and b) that the framing is all about respect for Brianna's mother and not the dignity of transpeople themselves. That's because, in the British discourse, transpeople are free to be disrespected; grieving mothers are not. So when the two come together, some people miss the marker.
We can see this with the political left and right all the time. Concerns about immigration are always "concerns of real people". Concerns about austerity are always "concerns of left wing activists". This isn't because cuts were popular - it's because people who are deemed "left wing" in the UK are not really respectable political actors. Similar for people who liked Corbyn/ism - they are not deserving of respect in the political arena, according to those within the political milieu, so you can lie to them as much as you want.
Hence Starmer. He ran to be Labour leader by appealing to the centre, by being the sensible man in the suit, and the left, by saying he would do Corbynism but sensibly and in a way your grandma would support. The thing is only centrists and the media are people worth respecting, so as soon as he won he had to defer to their needs and desires and not to the left any more. Transpeople and their rights is a great example of this - before all this Starmer only ever interacted with the transphobic side of this struggle; Mumsnetters, his transphobic MPs, talking about getting rid of Gillick and agreeing with the school guidance recently released. Now, in front of a grieving mother, he tries to walk this back.
I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
It's much simpler to understand Starmer thus: He is a perfectly decent man and has the protean qualities required in real politics. He campaigned to be leader in a manner to win the membership vote, and will campaign in the GE in a manner to win the general public vote. They are different. Losing both of these campaigns is much much easier than winning them. He has a very decent chance of winning both.
He will govern in accordance with the laws of political reality, things which neither the Labour membership, nor many voters are good at analysing.
Oh yes; respect for institutions, based on their actual excellence and merits, would be most welcome.
What are the laws of political reality? Because what I see is a country that has been starved of public sector funding for a very long time atrophying as it's essential public services become worse and the price of everything gets higher. And all the policies that would address that, which are actually somewhat popular with voters, being jettisoned out of some idea of what centrism is.
Indeed. The parties are reading from a playbook that only worked in the neoliberal period. That era died 5-10 years ago and Boris's election put the lid on it. Boris, for all his inability to keep his dick in his pants, understood that spend, spend, spend and state intervention was what was required. Sunak (and I'd argue Starmer) have not internalized this, despite the fact that Eat Out To Help Out was an object lesson.
But the problem isn't a lack of spending per se. What we need is a dose of Milei-style "afuera" so that we stop spending in ways that are simply a drain on our limited resources.
I am actually sympathetic to this argument: the Government does too much and does it badly. So we need to stop doing some things and do what we need to do better. Milei calls it "afuera" but i suspect he will cut some necessary things: bone as well as fat. I will watch his career with some interest...
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.
I think this is where people misunderstand Starmer. Starmer is a "respect for the office if not the person" guy - he was a lawyer and that is drummed into them. To Starmer the things that are wrong with the country are wrong because the Tories and Corbyn have, in his mind, brought them into disrepute. His job, then, is to make these things reputable again.
One of the things that many trans people have noted about this recent kerfuffle is a) it seems that it's fine to say transphobic dogwhistles when a murdered transgirl isn't a big news story and b) that the framing is all about respect for Brianna's mother and not the dignity of transpeople themselves. That's because, in the British discourse, transpeople are free to be disrespected; grieving mothers are not. So when the two come together, some people miss the marker.
We can see this with the political left and right all the time. Concerns about immigration are always "concerns of real people". Concerns about austerity are always "concerns of left wing activists". This isn't because cuts were popular - it's because people who are deemed "left wing" in the UK are not really respectable political actors. Similar for people who liked Corbyn/ism - they are not deserving of respect in the political arena, according to those within the political milieu, so you can lie to them as much as you want.
Hence Starmer. He ran to be Labour leader by appealing to the centre, by being the sensible man in the suit, and the left, by saying he would do Corbynism but sensibly and in a way your grandma would support. The thing is only centrists and the media are people worth respecting, so as soon as he won he had to defer to their needs and desires and not to the left any more. Transpeople and their rights is a great example of this - before all this Starmer only ever interacted with the transphobic side of this struggle; Mumsnetters, his transphobic MPs, talking about getting rid of Gillick and agreeing with the school guidance recently released. Now, in front of a grieving mother, he tries to walk this back.
I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
It's much simpler to understand Starmer thus: He is a perfectly decent man and has the protean qualities required in real politics. He campaigned to be leader in a manner to win the membership vote, and will campaign in the GE in a manner to win the general public vote. They are different. Losing both of these campaigns is much much easier than winning them. He has a very decent chance of winning both.
He will govern in accordance with the laws of political reality, things which neither the Labour membership, nor many voters are good at analysing.
Oh yes; respect for institutions, based on their actual excellence and merits, would be most welcome.
What are the laws of political reality? Because what I see is a country that has been starved of public sector funding for a very long time atrophying as it's essential public services become worse and the price of everything gets higher. And all the policies that would address that, which are actually somewhat popular with voters, being jettisoned out of some idea of what centrism is.
Public spending as a percentage of GDP is higher than it was at any time while Tony Blair was PM.
The proportion of people beyond working age is massively greater now though. Fewer working age people footing the bill for vastly greater health and social care demand. I'd be interested in seeing someone adjust spending and tax numbers for demographics.
It’s easy to add population via immigration, but that can turn into a Ponzi scheme that simply gets worse and worse over time.
The correct way to do it, from my own observations elsewhere, is to limit primary immigration to high salaries and needed jobs, which does appear to be happening slowly, but also to allow a number of other immigrants on a “guest worker” basis, strictly time limited, a version of which has been agreed with Australia.
And no, students shouldn’t bring dependents, that’s the next big scandal and almost certainly an immigration scam running in countries such as Nigeria. Limit it to doctoral or post-doc studies.
How is importing someone fully trained at 21 any different from someone having a baby, in terms of Ponzi-scheme-ness?
I mean, I understand it from a population-mix perspective and a changing society one. But from a straight long-term dependency ratio basis, then a baby and an imported person are identical, except you don't need to pay for the schooling of the imported person.
It's a ponzi scheme in the sense that you need to keep on importing ever more people. It's not just a one-off fix to plug a demographic gap.
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.
I think this is where people misunderstand Starmer. Starmer is a "respect for the office if not the person" guy - he was a lawyer and that is drummed into them. To Starmer the things that are wrong with the country are wrong because the Tories and Corbyn have, in his mind, brought them into disrepute. His job, then, is to make these things reputable again.
One of the things that many trans people have noted about this recent kerfuffle is a) it seems that it's fine to say transphobic dogwhistles when a murdered transgirl isn't a big news story and b) that the framing is all about respect for Brianna's mother and not the dignity of transpeople themselves. That's because, in the British discourse, transpeople are free to be disrespected; grieving mothers are not. So when the two come together, some people miss the marker.
We can see this with the political left and right all the time. Concerns about immigration are always "concerns of real people". Concerns about austerity are always "concerns of left wing activists". This isn't because cuts were popular - it's because people who are deemed "left wing" in the UK are not really respectable political actors. Similar for people who liked Corbyn/ism - they are not deserving of respect in the political arena, according to those within the political milieu, so you can lie to them as much as you want.
Hence Starmer. He ran to be Labour leader by appealing to the centre, by being the sensible man in the suit, and the left, by saying he would do Corbynism but sensibly and in a way your grandma would support. The thing is only centrists and the media are people worth respecting, so as soon as he won he had to defer to their needs and desires and not to the left any more. Transpeople and their rights is a great example of this - before all this Starmer only ever interacted with the transphobic side of this struggle; Mumsnetters, his transphobic MPs, talking about getting rid of Gillick and agreeing with the school guidance recently released. Now, in front of a grieving mother, he tries to walk this back.
I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
It's much simpler to understand Starmer thus: He is a perfectly decent man and has the protean qualities required in real politics. He campaigned to be leader in a manner to win the membership vote, and will campaign in the GE in a manner to win the general public vote. They are different. Losing both of these campaigns is much much easier than winning them. He has a very decent chance of winning both.
He will govern in accordance with the laws of political reality, things which neither the Labour membership, nor many voters are good at analysing.
Oh yes; respect for institutions, based on their actual excellence and merits, would be most welcome.
What are the laws of political reality? Because what I see is a country that has been starved of public sector funding for a very long time atrophying as it's essential public services become worse and the price of everything gets higher. And all the policies that would address that, which are actually somewhat popular with voters, being jettisoned out of some idea of what centrism is.
Public spending as a percentage of GDP is higher than it was at any time while Tony Blair was PM.
The proportion of people beyond working age is massively greater now though. Fewer working age people footing the bill for vastly greater health and social care demand. I'd be interested in seeing someone adjust spending and tax numbers for demographics.
This should be so obvious, yet people can't seem to grasp it.
Considering the far more fundamental changes that are about to happen because of technological advances, it's worrying that people seem to cling so tenaciously to the idea that we can somehow turn the clock back a generation or more.
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.
I think this is where people misunderstand Starmer. Starmer is a "respect for the office if not the person" guy - he was a lawyer and that is drummed into them. To Starmer the things that are wrong with the country are wrong because the Tories and Corbyn have, in his mind, brought them into disrepute. His job, then, is to make these things reputable again.
One of the things that many trans people have noted about this recent kerfuffle is a) it seems that it's fine to say transphobic dogwhistles when a murdered transgirl isn't a big news story and b) that the framing is all about respect for Brianna's mother and not the dignity of transpeople themselves. That's because, in the British discourse, transpeople are free to be disrespected; grieving mothers are not. So when the two come together, some people miss the marker.
We can see this with the political left and right all the time. Concerns about immigration are always "concerns of real people". Concerns about austerity are always "concerns of left wing activists". This isn't because cuts were popular - it's because people who are deemed "left wing" in the UK are not really respectable political actors. Similar for people who liked Corbyn/ism - they are not deserving of respect in the political arena, according to those within the political milieu, so you can lie to them as much as you want.
Hence Starmer. He ran to be Labour leader by appealing to the centre, by being the sensible man in the suit, and the left, by saying he would do Corbynism but sensibly and in a way your grandma would support. The thing is only centrists and the media are people worth respecting, so as soon as he won he had to defer to their needs and desires and not to the left any more. Transpeople and their rights is a great example of this - before all this Starmer only ever interacted with the transphobic side of this struggle; Mumsnetters, his transphobic MPs, talking about getting rid of Gillick and agreeing with the school guidance recently released. Now, in front of a grieving mother, he tries to walk this back.
I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
It's much simpler to understand Starmer thus: He is a perfectly decent man and has the protean qualities required in real politics. He campaigned to be leader in a manner to win the membership vote, and will campaign in the GE in a manner to win the general public vote. They are different. Losing both of these campaigns is much much easier than winning them. He has a very decent chance of winning both.
He will govern in accordance with the laws of political reality, things which neither the Labour membership, nor many voters are good at analysing.
Oh yes; respect for institutions, based on their actual excellence and merits, would be most welcome.
What are the laws of political reality? Because what I see is a country that has been starved of public sector funding for a very long time atrophying as it's essential public services become worse and the price of everything gets higher. And all the policies that would address that, which are actually somewhat popular with voters, being jettisoned out of some idea of what centrism is.
Political reality is that most people won't vote for tax rises, but they tend to be more willing to accept the argument that tax rises are necessary from a government already in office.
Hence why none of the tax rises that have taken Britain to a record high tax take have followed a party campaigning on increasing taxes and winning an election on that platform.
I dislike the essential dishonesty in that, but I recognise the political reality. I think that, eventually, there will be consequences from such political dishonesty, and perhaps Brexit was one of them.
What? Most people are more than happy for there to be taxes on, like, the highest 10% of earners - because most people aren't in the top 10% of earners.
You would think so, but the election records do not support that. Most people are not in the top 10%, but a lot of people want to be, and they don't want to be heavily taxed when they make it there.
Now a political movement that sought to change political reality, rather than just confirm to it, would win the argument for the collective responsibility to pay for nice things. There have been a few glimpses over the years of the public's openness to that sort of argument - in the success of the "we're all in it together" political message, and the desire to pitch in and help out at the start of the pandemic - when HMG was inundated with volunteer offers.
But no political movement has put in the hard work to reverse the success of the right-wing in convincing the public of the contrary message - that all public spending tends inevitably to massive waste and therefore taxation should be cut as much as possible to avoid that waste.
So the present reality is where we are, and Starmer perhaps correctly recognises that the task is beyond his meagre political abilities.
Edit: And it is, alas, sadly beyond my even more threadbare capabilities.
Off topic: where is best to find odds for when we'll have a new king? The candidness of the release of medical information, and the whole "Harry rushed back to see daddy" makes me think it wouldn't be unlikely we'll have a new one before Xmas. The only other theory I can think of is Charles is just much happier to release info than Lizzie was, but that doesn't seem likely. It also felt odd that Sunak felt the need to be like "King is fine" after his meeting with him this week.
Betting on someone's death isn't allowed, is it?
The answer to that used to be simple: "not without insurable interest". That's why you can buy life assurance in your partner but not bet on the death of the monarch for fun. The Blair reforms blurred the edge but I'm pretty sure you still can't rock up at Ladbrokes and bet on when KCIII will die.
Comments
One man's terrorist and all that, I guess - and quite frankly, I am a bit of a liberal on all that immigration stuff. So I wasn't too fussed that I was on the side of the smugglers.
I remember someone arguing that the two countries that don't have to deal with issues of asylum and immigration are North Korea and Iran. When I hear people wanging on about the problems of immigration, I half wonder if they want to join that axis of fun countries.
One of the things that many trans people have noted about this recent kerfuffle is a) it seems that it's fine to say transphobic dogwhistles when a murdered transgirl isn't a big news story and b) that the framing is all about respect for Brianna's mother and not the dignity of transpeople themselves. That's because, in the British discourse, transpeople are free to be disrespected; grieving mothers are not. So when the two come together, some people miss the marker.
We can see this with the political left and right all the time. Concerns about immigration are always "concerns of real people". Concerns about austerity are always "concerns of left wing activists". This isn't because cuts were popular - it's because people who are deemed "left wing" in the UK are not really respectable political actors. Similar for people who liked Corbyn/ism - they are not deserving of respect in the political arena, according to those within the political milieu, so you can lie to them as much as you want.
Hence Starmer. He ran to be Labour leader by appealing to the centre, by being the sensible man in the suit, and the left, by saying he would do Corbynism but sensibly and in a way your grandma would support. The thing is only centrists and the media are people worth respecting, so as soon as he won he had to defer to their needs and desires and not to the left any more. Transpeople and their rights is a great example of this - before all this Starmer only ever interacted with the transphobic side of this struggle; Mumsnetters, his transphobic MPs, talking about getting rid of Gillick and agreeing with the school guidance recently released. Now, in front of a grieving mother, he tries to walk this back.
I remember listening to a podcast that described Starmer as a neo-Confucianist. That his entire platform is if we bring back respect of the institutions and the correct symbols and trappings of tradition, that everything will fix itself outside of the material reality we're in. I think that sums him up perfectly.
Just trying to help with your English.
One effect of this government is that it makes it easy to drift slightly to the left in politics as one gets older, joining the younger trend.
If you focus on the small platoons - families, small groups, local organisations, the non politics world - a picture emerges of great positivity across generations.
Sir Keir said 99.9% of women "of course haven't got a penis" as he was asked about his stance on whether a person with a penis can be a woman.
He added that there is a "very small number" of people who identify as a different gender to the one they were born with as he called for an end to a "toxic divide" over trans issues.
"They need legal support and a framework. Most people don't disagree with that, and that's the framework within which we ought to look at these issues," he said.
"But simply turning it into a toxic divide advances the cause of no one - the cause of women or those that don't identify with the gender that they were born into."
He's a nasty piece of work, as well as an incompetent one.
And I supported your return when you were banned. We don't agree on much, I think, but this site really would be boring if we all had the same views. So I welcome the presence of you, Leon, Bart, LuckyGuy, Alanbrooke, TheKitchenCabinet and - when in residence - Casino_Royale as well as all the sensible (
Personally I would be glad to see the back of the self-obsessed, alt-right, closet racist, snowflake, conspiracy theorist.
I say: flounce-off out of here and don't bother coming back.
That at least is my nuanced opinion on the issue.
https://x.com/metpoliceuk/status/1755561847241973915
https://www.forbes.com/sites/caileygleeson/2024/02/08/biden-mixes-up-angela-merkel-with-dead-german-leader-in-second-slip-up-this-week/
There is a good build up to a Leon flounce. It often takes days. I guess it all depends whether you prefer the long build up and eloquent posts beforehand or the quick threat of a fist fight and a f**k off preferred by Casino.
He will govern in accordance with the laws of political reality, things which neither the Labour membership, nor many voters are good at analysing.
Oh yes; respect for institutions, based on their actual excellence and merits, would be most welcome.
https://today.lorientlejour.com/article/1367225/13-sentenced-to-death-for-homosexuality-in-yemen-source.html
I wouldn't set myself up as an arbiter of good taste, either, though I did apologise in advance if raising the issue was a bit off.
You’re not going to find any reputable bookmaker offering bets on someone’s death, and I’ll take a guess that a lot of the US election markets will be declared void if either of the main candidates were to pass on.
QEII was 96, and managed good health until the last year or two. So many elderly people pass on very quickly after the death of their spouse.
The blighters would probably pass the port the wrong way, before massacring the more valuable servants, for a start.
https://ifs.org.uk/taxlab/taxlab-key-questions/what-does-government-spend-money
https://twitter.com/elienyc/status/1755600120358523077
Plus ça change.
Hence why none of the tax rises that have taken Britain to a record high tax take have followed a party campaigning on increasing taxes and winning an election on that platform.
I dislike the essential dishonesty in that, but I recognise the political reality. I think that, eventually, there will be consequences from such political dishonesty, and perhaps Brexit was one of them.
The Overton window, a feature entirely based upon history, fixes limits to what is possible in a particular time and society.
Because of finitude anything can be done, but not everything can be done. So to govern is to choose.
Those who hold political power now generally wish to keep it next time, so governing involves doing so in a way which makes reelection maximally possible.
As to public sector funding, it has never been higher in modern peacetime. We are borrowing and taxing and spending (and running debt) at record levels. All proposals for spending have to deal with the fiscal realities. If Starmer shows signs of not understanding this he will lose the election.
So infrastructure and essential services escalate in cost faster than inflation or GDP.
How does he keep doing this
https://twitter.com/elienyc/status/1755619854621585462
Kagan: given that you don't have a lot of evidence that the founding generation that they thought a lot about officer versus offices, perhaps we should ask why they would have made such a thing?
Mitchell: I don't have a good reason.
This is amazing-bad.
There's an extent to which the country has to first fix it's economic problems, before it can fix its public sector ones.
The correct way to do it, from my own observations elsewhere, is to limit primary immigration to high salaries and needed jobs, which does appear to be happening slowly, but also to allow a number of other immigrants on a “guest worker” basis, strictly time limited, a version of which has been agreed with Australia.
And no, students shouldn’t bring dependents, that’s the next big scandal and almost certainly an immigration scam running in countries such as Nigeria. Limit it to doctoral or post-doc studies.
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/age-dependency-ratio-percent-of-working-age-population-wb-data.html#:~:text=Age dependency ratio (% of working-age population) in,of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources.
Blair and Brown benefited from significant demographic tailwinds from 1997 until the financial crisis. Successive governments have had the opposite since. With the age dependency ratio going up so far in such a short time it would be almost impossible to maintain public services, especially healthcare, without significantly ramping up spending and therefore borrowing and/or tax.
We are far from alone in this of course and our age dependency ratio is by no means as bad as some countries. If you want to see what really fucked up demographics look like take a look at this:
https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/age-dependency-ratio-percent-of-working-age-population-wb-data.html
I mean, I understand it from a population-mix perspective and a changing society one. But from a straight long-term dependency ratio basis, then a baby and an imported person are identical, except you don't need to pay for the schooling of the imported person.
Abberton was expanded to the tune of more than doubling its size (the expansion alone being more than the median reservoir in England) in 2015.
Usually reservoir expansions get glossed over, of course, because people want to make a point and anything happening fairly recently damages that point.
There's also a reservoir in construction in Havant (due to enter service in 2029)
And yet yesterday Sunak dropped a bollock bigger than he is and the wagons were circled by the first group listed above.
"But, when asked today if he would apologise, Sunak said:
If you look at what I said, I was very clear, talking about Keir Starmer’s proven track record of U-turns on major policies because he doesn’t have a plan.
A point only proven by today’s reports that the Labour party and Keir Starmer are apparently planning to reverse on their signature economic green spending policy.
That just demonstrates the point I was making. He’s someone who has just consistently changed his mind on a whole range of major things.
I think that is an absolutely legitimate thing to point out and it demonstrates that he doesn’t have a plan for the country.
Sunak said he was “completely shocked” by the murder of Brianna, and he said he had “nothing but the most heartfelt sympathy for her entire family and friends”.
He went on:
But to use that tragedy to detract from the very separate and clear point I was making about Keir Starmer’s proven track record of multiple U-turns on major policies, because he doesn’t have a plan, I think is both sad and wrong, and it demonstrates the worst of politics."
Like, no one buys this. Even people who are happy he did a transphobia do not buy this. Why keep parroting this line that just means the press will keep asking him why he just won't apologise for being insensitive in front of a dead girl's mother. He could even make a half assed apology "I'm sorry that she found this offensive, but I was not talking about her child..." and it would go away. He just looks like an insensitive weirdo.
"Your partner and children will be eligible to apply for a dependant visa if:
"Your course is a full-time postgraduate level research degree* which is at least 9 months long OR
"You are a government sponsored student on a full-time course that is 6 months or longer. This means you are receiving a funding award for your studies from the UK government or an overseas government. This is defined in policy guidance as a scholarship from a central government department covering full fees and living costs. There is no requirement for the dependant to be in receipt of an award from a government, but dependants will be required to meet the financial requirements for their application (as outlined in the information below)."
Considering the far more fundamental changes that are about to happen because of technological advances, it's worrying that people seem to cling so tenaciously to the idea that we can somehow turn the clock back a generation or more.
Now a political movement that sought to change political reality, rather than just confirm to it, would win the argument for the collective responsibility to pay for nice things. There have been a few glimpses over the years of the public's openness to that sort of argument - in the success of the "we're all in it together" political message, and the desire to pitch in and help out at the start of the pandemic - when HMG was inundated with volunteer offers.
But no political movement has put in the hard work to reverse the success of the right-wing in convincing the public of the contrary message - that all public spending tends inevitably to massive waste and therefore taxation should be cut as much as possible to avoid that waste.
So the present reality is where we are, and Starmer perhaps correctly recognises that the task is beyond his meagre political abilities.
Edit: And it is, alas, sadly beyond my even more threadbare capabilities.