Good morning. Here is the nub of the issue. What sort of immigration is unpopular? Arguably it is the "illegal" sort - but how is this defined and how is it counted? It is far too easy to look at ever increasing gross numbers and project those onto the segment of immigrants we don't like. Anyway good news for the Tories in the figures quoted. Only 2% of those polled generally don't like the Government so 98% up for grabs.
"Immigration" is unpopular. "Illegal" is the "I'm not a racist" shield.
Immigration is unpopular.
Immigration for nurses is not unpopular. Immigration for care home workers is not unpopular. Immigration for highly skilled roles generally is not unpopular. Immigration for Ukrainians invaded by Russians is not unpopular Immigration for Hong Kongers escaping the Chinese is not unpopular. Immigration from students improves our already bad balance of payments by £40bn and saves the taxpayer a lot in university funding.
So yes immigration is unpopular but that doesn't mean stopping it would be popular either.
Oh, absolutely - that's exactly my point. It is *only* unpopular in the racism sense, not the practical sense.
I disagree with that - it is mostly unpopular because we don't build the infrastructure and houses at a rate that matches expected immigration. At best we build it to match the level of immigration the politicians promise which is very innaccurate and always too low for reality.
Do you have evidence that this is why? I think immigration is mostly unpopular because some voters have racist/xenophobic tendencies or just don’t like change, and because some politicians/commentators/newspapers blame immigration for numerous ills.
Concern around immigration in topic polling tends to be driven by the amount politicians are talking about immigration, I suggest.
Is lack of infrastructure was the problem, you’d expect anti-immigration polling to be higher in areas of high immigration and high housing costs, like London. But it isn’t.
Its obviously complicated and a lot of related factors mixed up together.
Yougov track negative impact of migration and the top 3 (currently all about the same) are:
Benefits Demand for Public Services Increasing Demand for Housing
Allowing people with extreme views and terrorist sympathisers is next, and at a similar level to the above. Damaging our culture and traditions, which would be the big racism/xenophobia marker is about half that level.
I think that ties in with experience that most of the country is not particularly racist, and its only a smallish group (5-10%?) that are strongly racist.
Bear in mind though many people arent honest with their views on this. And you wouldnt expect anti i.migration sentiment to be high in london as london is predoninantly full of ethnic minorities and the upper middle class who can insulate themselves from the problems.
Have you ever been to London?
Yes i have. I lived there for quite a few years too. The nice areas of london are basically a crescent running from richmond in the sw up the river to central london then out to north london primrose hill hampstead etc. Thats where the upper middle class live. Outside that is the real London a mix of semi third world shittiness intermixed with some better areas.
Yes, I pity the poor benighted people of Blackheath, Wimbledon, Chiselhurst, Buckhurst Hill etc, in their semi third world conditions. I'd deliver them food parcels were I not cowering in my home, fearful of Khan's hooded mobs of You Les Enforcers.
The olive oil is running low. I may have to brave the mean streets of north London this afternoon.
Prepare for a shock. The price of the last bottle of olive oil I bought was wince making. Not sure what has happened to the supply but there is clearly problems somewhere.
We have switched from extra virgin to plain. #itsgrimupnorthlondon
Never mind -just wait a few years. My decorative lollipop Olive Trees (snip at £20 from Morrisons) produced reasonable olives last summer - very bitter though.
I attempted to plant a mini olive grove at my vineyard: 25 small trees in 2 rows on a warm slope. They died due to a mixture of competition (I didn’t clear the vegetation around them enough) and deer attack (I didn’t protect them sufficiently).
But do politicians ever talk about what they’re doing to stop deer attacks?
Story should be Laurence Fox attempts to bribe election officials to overlook his invalid nomination by 'accidentally overpaying deposit'.
I always find that, when filling out important paperwork, it's best to avoid being coked up to your eyeballs.
Given I am absolutely certain dear Laurence would've followed that advice, though, I'm at a loss to explain the multiple basic errors.
If he himself is reasonably competent, as you suggest, then I suspect the answer is that he delegated the task to somebody else.
Do you have any evidence for this "reasonably competent" allegation? Sounds like a conspiracy theory - implausible idea directly contradicted by the observable facts.
No, I have no evidence at all really. I was just following up a previous comment that Fox would not have completed the nomination process while he was stoned up to the eyeballs. I accepted this assertion as true - benefit of the doubt, and all that - since no reasonably competent person would deal with the nomination process, while stoned up to the eyeballs.
Good morning. Here is the nub of the issue. What sort of immigration is unpopular? Arguably it is the "illegal" sort - but how is this defined and how is it counted? It is far too easy to look at ever increasing gross numbers and project those onto the segment of immigrants we don't like. Anyway good news for the Tories in the figures quoted. Only 2% of those polled generally don't like the Government so 98% up for grabs.
"Immigration" is unpopular. "Illegal" is the "I'm not a racist" shield.
Immigration is unpopular.
Immigration for nurses is not unpopular. Immigration for care home workers is not unpopular. Immigration for highly skilled roles generally is not unpopular. Immigration for Ukrainians invaded by Russians is not unpopular Immigration for Hong Kongers escaping the Chinese is not unpopular. Immigration from students improves our already bad balance of payments by £40bn and saves the taxpayer a lot in university funding.
So yes immigration is unpopular but that doesn't mean stopping it would be popular either.
Oh, absolutely - that's exactly my point. It is *only* unpopular in the racism sense, not the practical sense.
I disagree with that - it is mostly unpopular because we don't build the infrastructure and houses at a rate that matches expected immigration. At best we build it to match the level of immigration the politicians promise which is very innaccurate and always too low for reality.
Do you have evidence that this is why? I think immigration is mostly unpopular because some voters have racist/xenophobic tendencies or just don’t like change, and because some politicians/commentators/newspapers blame immigration for numerous ills.
Concern around immigration in topic polling tends to be driven by the amount politicians are talking about immigration, I suggest.
Is lack of infrastructure was the problem, you’d expect anti-immigration polling to be higher in areas of high immigration and high housing costs, like London. But it isn’t.
Its obviously complicated and a lot of related factors mixed up together.
Yougov track negative impact of migration and the top 3 (currently all about the same) are:
Benefits Demand for Public Services Increasing Demand for Housing
Allowing people with extreme views and terrorist sympathisers is next, and at a similar level to the above. Damaging our culture and traditions, which would be the big racism/xenophobia marker is about half that level.
I think that ties in with experience that most of the country is not particularly racist, and its only a smallish group (5-10%?) that are strongly racist.
Bear in mind though many people arent honest with their views on this. And you wouldnt expect anti i.migration sentiment to be high in london as london is predoninantly full of ethnic minorities and the upper middle class who can insulate themselves from the problems.
Have you ever been to London?
Yes i have. I lived there for quite a few years too. The nice areas of london are basically a crescent running from richmond in the sw up the river to central london then out to north london primrose hill hampstead etc. Thats where the upper middle class live. Outside that is the real London a mix of semi third world shittiness intermixed with some better areas.
Yes, I pity the poor benighted people of Blackheath, Wimbledon, Chiselhurst, Buckhurst Hill etc, in their semi third world conditions. I'd deliver them food parcels were I not cowering in my home, fearful of Khan's hooded mobs of You Les Enforcers.
The olive oil is running low. I may have to brave the mean streets of north London this afternoon.
If you need to go for the shaved parmesan in Islington, may I recommend
6 wheel drive, 4 wheel steering (turns like a London cab). The reverse is awesome - pull a lever and you get 6 speeds in reverse. 40 mph backwards is useful if the visit to the local Waitrose goes wrong.
Is this the new Range Rover?
The MoD have finally given up on Ajax and decided to go back to basics.
Story should be Laurence Fox attempts to bribe election officials to overlook his invalid nomination by 'accidentally overpaying deposit'.
I always find that, when filling out important paperwork, it's best to avoid being coked up to your eyeballs.
Given I am absolutely certain dear Laurence would've followed that advice, though, I'm at a loss to explain the multiple basic errors.
If he himself is reasonably competent, as you suggest, then I suspect the answer is that he delegated the task to somebody else.
Do you have any evidence for this "reasonably competent" allegation? Sounds like a conspiracy theory - implausible idea directly contradicted by the observable facts.
No, I have no evidence at all really. I was just following up a previous comment that Fox would not have completed the nomination process while he was stoned up to the eyeballs. I accepted this assertion as true - benefit of the doubt, and all that - since no reasonably competent person would deal with the nomination process, while stoned up to the eyeballs.
I just find the "reasonably competent" allegation extraordinary. No evidence to date suggests that Fox is reasonably competent at anything. Indeed, the reverse.
Good morning. Here is the nub of the issue. What sort of immigration is unpopular? Arguably it is the "illegal" sort - but how is this defined and how is it counted? It is far too easy to look at ever increasing gross numbers and project those onto the segment of immigrants we don't like. Anyway good news for the Tories in the figures quoted. Only 2% of those polled generally don't like the Government so 98% up for grabs.
"Immigration" is unpopular. "Illegal" is the "I'm not a racist" shield.
Immigration is unpopular.
Immigration for nurses is not unpopular. Immigration for care home workers is not unpopular. Immigration for highly skilled roles generally is not unpopular. Immigration for Ukrainians invaded by Russians is not unpopular Immigration for Hong Kongers escaping the Chinese is not unpopular. Immigration from students improves our already bad balance of payments by £40bn and saves the taxpayer a lot in university funding.
So yes immigration is unpopular but that doesn't mean stopping it would be popular either.
Oh, absolutely - that's exactly my point. It is *only* unpopular in the racism sense, not the practical sense.
I disagree with that - it is mostly unpopular because we don't build the infrastructure and houses at a rate that matches expected immigration. At best we build it to match the level of immigration the politicians promise which is very innaccurate and always too low for reality.
Do you have evidence that this is why? I think immigration is mostly unpopular because some voters have racist/xenophobic tendencies or just don’t like change, and because some politicians/commentators/newspapers blame immigration for numerous ills.
Concern around immigration in topic polling tends to be driven by the amount politicians are talking about immigration, I suggest.
Is lack of infrastructure was the problem, you’d expect anti-immigration polling to be higher in areas of high immigration and high housing costs, like London. But it isn’t.
Its obviously complicated and a lot of related factors mixed up together.
Yougov track negative impact of migration and the top 3 (currently all about the same) are:
Benefits Demand for Public Services Increasing Demand for Housing
Allowing people with extreme views and terrorist sympathisers is next, and at a similar level to the above. Damaging our culture and traditions, which would be the big racism/xenophobia marker is about half that level.
I think that ties in with experience that most of the country is not particularly racist, and its only a smallish group (5-10%?) that are strongly racist.
Bear in mind though many people arent honest with their views on this. And you wouldnt expect anti i.migration sentiment to be high in london as london is predoninantly full of ethnic minorities and the upper middle class who can insulate themselves from the problems.
Have you ever been to London?
Yes i have. I lived there for quite a few years too. The nice areas of london are basically a crescent running from richmond in the sw up the river to central london then out to north london primrose hill hampstead etc. Thats where the upper middle class live. Outside that is the real London a mix of semi third world shittiness intermixed with some better areas.
Yes, I pity the poor benighted people of Blackheath, Wimbledon, Chiselhurst, Buckhurst Hill etc, in their semi third world conditions. I'd deliver them food parcels were I not cowering in my home, fearful of Khan's hooded mobs of You Les Enforcers.
The olive oil is running low. I may have to brave the mean streets of north London this afternoon.
Prepare for a shock. The price of the last bottle of olive oil I bought was wince making. Not sure what has happened to the supply but there is clearly problems somewhere.
We have switched from extra virgin to plain. #itsgrimupnorthlondon
Never mind -just wait a few years. My decorative lollipop Olive Trees (snip at £20 from Morrisons) produced a couple of reasonable size olives last summer - very bitter though.
Don't olives have to be treated in brine and god knows what before being edible?
Good morning. Here is the nub of the issue. What sort of immigration is unpopular? Arguably it is the "illegal" sort - but how is this defined and how is it counted? It is far too easy to look at ever increasing gross numbers and project those onto the segment of immigrants we don't like. Anyway good news for the Tories in the figures quoted. Only 2% of those polled generally don't like the Government so 98% up for grabs.
"Immigration" is unpopular. "Illegal" is the "I'm not a racist" shield.
Immigration is unpopular.
Immigration for nurses is not unpopular. Immigration for care home workers is not unpopular. Immigration for highly skilled roles generally is not unpopular. Immigration for Ukrainians invaded by Russians is not unpopular Immigration for Hong Kongers escaping the Chinese is not unpopular. Immigration from students improves our already bad balance of payments by £40bn and saves the taxpayer a lot in university funding.
So yes immigration is unpopular but that doesn't mean stopping it would be popular either.
Oh, absolutely - that's exactly my point. It is *only* unpopular in the racism sense, not the practical sense.
I disagree with that - it is mostly unpopular because we don't build the infrastructure and houses at a rate that matches expected immigration. At best we build it to match the level of immigration the politicians promise which is very innaccurate and always too low for reality.
Do you have evidence that this is why? I think immigration is mostly unpopular because some voters have racist/xenophobic tendencies or just don’t like change, and because some politicians/commentators/newspapers blame immigration for numerous ills.
Concern around immigration in topic polling tends to be driven by the amount politicians are talking about immigration, I suggest.
Is lack of infrastructure was the problem, you’d expect anti-immigration polling to be higher in areas of high immigration and high housing costs, like London. But it isn’t.
If immigration were spread evenly across the country, it would be less of an issue. But it isn't. It is still uncommon to see a non-white person in the SW outside Bristol and to a lesser extent Exeter, where non-white faces are often students rather than family groups. It's further from London, very limited rented accommodation, fewer opportunities for black economy jobs ties for them to take advantage/be taken advantage of - and no familiar communities to be part of. Immigration is generally not a doorstep issue down here - housing is though, despite no pressure to compete with immigrants. Schools are far less affected, hospitals more so - but that is incoming oldies fighting for a hip or knee replacement with other incoming oldies.
The only time you hear it is people who have moved down here, usually from the West Midlands. Retirement migration to the SW has been going on for decades. They would have come anyway, but claiming Brum or the Black Country is "not what it was" gives some rationale for upping sticks. Whilst you will find the occasional out-and-out racist, most of those who feel edged out have no personal beef one-on-one with immigrants. Their beef is change, the rapid rate of that change, and the loss of what they knew before. It gives them a reason on their own terms for doing what they would have done anyway: move.
Yes, I think lots of people don’t like change. There’s plenty of change I don’t like. I’m not saying there’s anything necessarily wrong with not liking change.
Again, though, is the change experienced largely due to immigration, or is it due to diverse other factors and immigration is the convenient scapegoat? It’s easy to blame change on the people moving in.
It's a combination
1) Change 2) The repeated emphasis on "You are not allowed to stop the change. You are not allowed to oppose the change. If the change has any negative consequences, then that's your problem"
2) is especially the problem in a modern democracy.
That seems to me like a lopsided characterisation. A huge amount of modern democracy is directed at stopping change: see NIMBYs! The ruling party for the last 14 years has been a party called the Conservatives, a name that describes their feelings towards change.
But, yes, there is a lot of change, of multiple types, economic, social, and different political groups have differing views on what change is good or bad.
In thecae of immigration, there has been a definite attempt make any opposition, to any level of it, beyond political discourse.
Seeing as it is quite regularly the number one topic, it doesn't seem to have been a very effective or impactful attempt......
OK - How much immigration is too much? How much immigration should the government be targeting?
10m a year net is clearly too much, as is 5m, as is 2m. 0 is clearly not enough.
The optimum rate is going to be a mix between demand in core services, our need for profit from students and how much infrastructure and housing we can build. ONS predicting 4m over 10 years, which seems both a reasonable estimate based on last 10 years, and something we can manage if we are pro-active about it.
So currently I would say the answer to targeting is in the 250-500k per year range. And the current level is probably too much if sustained for a decade, much above the current rate would be too high.
Other opinions will of course differ and that is fine and part of political debate.
Very good - now try saying that in politics.
The problem is that rational debate has been removed.
Bit like the NHS, where a shouty match about "more" is all we ever seem to get. More of what?
Has this morning’s debate not been rational?
This is a somewhat unusual forum in exactly that respect.
Try challenging the triple lock in politics, in public, for example. You'll have death threats within the minute.
eg The Telegraph reporting "fury" that pensioners received no benefit from cutting National Insurance.
Well, that's because they don't pay it at all.
“Fury at” is one of those journalistic shorthand’s isn’t it, like “police quiz x”, “romp”, “beleaguered” / “embattled”, “Britons”.
My particular favourite is 'boffin'. Never met one (despite 30 years in science), don't know what one is, but the media love 'em.
Story should be Laurence Fox attempts to bribe election officials to overlook his invalid nomination by 'accidentally overpaying deposit'.
I always find that, when filling out important paperwork, it's best to avoid being coked up to your eyeballs.
Given I am absolutely certain dear Laurence would've followed that advice, though, I'm at a loss to explain the multiple basic errors.
If he himself is reasonably competent, as you suggest, then I suspect the answer is that he delegated the task to somebody else.
Do you have any evidence for this "reasonably competent" allegation? Sounds like a conspiracy theory - implausible idea directly contradicted by the observable facts.
No, I have no evidence at all really. I was just following up a previous comment that Fox would not have completed the nomination process while he was stoned up to the eyeballs. I accepted this assertion as true - benefit of the doubt, and all that - since no reasonably competent person would deal with the nomination process, while stoned up to the eyeballs.
I just find the "reasonably competent" allegation extraordinary. No evidence to date suggests that Fox is reasonably competent at anything. Indeed, the reverse.
Good morning. Here is the nub of the issue. What sort of immigration is unpopular? Arguably it is the "illegal" sort - but how is this defined and how is it counted? It is far too easy to look at ever increasing gross numbers and project those onto the segment of immigrants we don't like. Anyway good news for the Tories in the figures quoted. Only 2% of those polled generally don't like the Government so 98% up for grabs.
"Immigration" is unpopular. "Illegal" is the "I'm not a racist" shield.
Immigration is unpopular.
Immigration for nurses is not unpopular. Immigration for care home workers is not unpopular. Immigration for highly skilled roles generally is not unpopular. Immigration for Ukrainians invaded by Russians is not unpopular Immigration for Hong Kongers escaping the Chinese is not unpopular. Immigration from students improves our already bad balance of payments by £40bn and saves the taxpayer a lot in university funding.
So yes immigration is unpopular but that doesn't mean stopping it would be popular either.
Oh, absolutely - that's exactly my point. It is *only* unpopular in the racism sense, not the practical sense.
I disagree with that - it is mostly unpopular because we don't build the infrastructure and houses at a rate that matches expected immigration. At best we build it to match the level of immigration the politicians promise which is very innaccurate and always too low for reality.
Do you have evidence that this is why? I think immigration is mostly unpopular because some voters have racist/xenophobic tendencies or just don’t like change, and because some politicians/commentators/newspapers blame immigration for numerous ills.
Concern around immigration in topic polling tends to be driven by the amount politicians are talking about immigration, I suggest.
Is lack of infrastructure was the problem, you’d expect anti-immigration polling to be higher in areas of high immigration and high housing costs, like London. But it isn’t.
Its obviously complicated and a lot of related factors mixed up together.
Yougov track negative impact of migration and the top 3 (currently all about the same) are:
Benefits Demand for Public Services Increasing Demand for Housing
Allowing people with extreme views and terrorist sympathisers is next, and at a similar level to the above. Damaging our culture and traditions, which would be the big racism/xenophobia marker is about half that level.
I think that ties in with experience that most of the country is not particularly racist, and its only a smallish group (5-10%?) that are strongly racist.
Bear in mind though many people arent honest with their views on this. And you wouldnt expect anti i.migration sentiment to be high in london as london is predoninantly full of ethnic minorities and the upper middle class who can insulate themselves from the problems.
Have you ever been to London?
Yes i have. I lived there for quite a few years too. The nice areas of london are basically a crescent running from richmond in the sw up the river to central london then out to north london primrose hill hampstead etc. Thats where the upper middle class live. Outside that is the real London a mix of semi third world shittiness intermixed with some better areas.
Yes, I pity the poor benighted people of Blackheath, Wimbledon, Chiselhurst, Buckhurst Hill etc, in their semi third world conditions. I'd deliver them food parcels were I not cowering in my home, fearful of Khan's hooded mobs of You Les Enforcers.
The olive oil is running low. I may have to brave the mean streets of north London this afternoon.
Prepare for a shock. The price of the last bottle of olive oil I bought was wince making. Not sure what has happened to the supply but there is clearly problems somewhere.
We have switched from extra virgin to plain. #itsgrimupnorthlondon
Never mind -just wait a few years. My decorative lollipop Olive Trees (snip at £20 from Morrisons) produced reasonable olives last summer - very bitter though.
I attempted to plant a mini olive grove at my vineyard: 25 small trees in 2 rows on a warm slope. They died due to a mixture of competition (I didn’t clear the vegetation around them enough) and deer attack (I didn’t protect them sufficiently).
But do politicians ever talk about what they’re doing to stop deer attacks?
Here in the New Forest (gentlemen) gardeners are advised to pee on the deer tacks into the garden - which is meant to be a deterrent. Many would welcome Sir Desmond Swayne being put to some good use in his constituency
Good morning. Here is the nub of the issue. What sort of immigration is unpopular? Arguably it is the "illegal" sort - but how is this defined and how is it counted? It is far too easy to look at ever increasing gross numbers and project those onto the segment of immigrants we don't like. Anyway good news for the Tories in the figures quoted. Only 2% of those polled generally don't like the Government so 98% up for grabs.
"Immigration" is unpopular. "Illegal" is the "I'm not a racist" shield.
Immigration is unpopular.
Immigration for nurses is not unpopular. Immigration for care home workers is not unpopular. Immigration for highly skilled roles generally is not unpopular. Immigration for Ukrainians invaded by Russians is not unpopular Immigration for Hong Kongers escaping the Chinese is not unpopular. Immigration from students improves our already bad balance of payments by £40bn and saves the taxpayer a lot in university funding.
So yes immigration is unpopular but that doesn't mean stopping it would be popular either.
Oh, absolutely - that's exactly my point. It is *only* unpopular in the racism sense, not the practical sense.
I disagree with that - it is mostly unpopular because we don't build the infrastructure and houses at a rate that matches expected immigration. At best we build it to match the level of immigration the politicians promise which is very innaccurate and always too low for reality.
Do you have evidence that this is why? I think immigration is mostly unpopular because some voters have racist/xenophobic tendencies or just don’t like change, and because some politicians/commentators/newspapers blame immigration for numerous ills.
Concern around immigration in topic polling tends to be driven by the amount politicians are talking about immigration, I suggest.
Is lack of infrastructure was the problem, you’d expect anti-immigration polling to be higher in areas of high immigration and high housing costs, like London. But it isn’t.
If immigration were spread evenly across the country, it would be less of an issue. But it isn't. It is still uncommon to see a non-white person in the SW outside Bristol and to a lesser extent Exeter, where non-white faces are often students rather than family groups. It's further from London, very limited rented accommodation, fewer opportunities for black economy jobs ties for them to take advantage/be taken advantage of - and no familiar communities to be part of. Immigration is generally not a doorstep issue down here - housing is though, despite no pressure to compete with immigrants. Schools are far less affected, hospitals more so - but that is incoming oldies fighting for a hip or knee replacement with other incoming oldies.
The only time you hear it is people who have moved down here, usually from the West Midlands. Retirement migration to the SW has been going on for decades. They would have come anyway, but claiming Brum or the Black Country is "not what it was" gives some rationale for upping sticks. Whilst you will find the occasional out-and-out racist, most of those who feel edged out have no personal beef one-on-one with immigrants. Their beef is change, the rapid rate of that change, and the loss of what they knew before. It gives them a reason on their own terms for doing what they would have done anyway: move.
Yes, I think lots of people don’t like change. There’s plenty of change I don’t like. I’m not saying there’s anything necessarily wrong with not liking change.
Again, though, is the change experienced largely due to immigration, or is it due to diverse other factors and immigration is the convenient scapegoat? It’s easy to blame change on the people moving in.
It's a combination
1) Change 2) The repeated emphasis on "You are not allowed to stop the change. You are not allowed to oppose the change. If the change has any negative consequences, then that's your problem"
2) is especially the problem in a modern democracy.
That seems to me like a lopsided characterisation. A huge amount of modern democracy is directed at stopping change: see NIMBYs! The ruling party for the last 14 years has been a party called the Conservatives, a name that describes their feelings towards change.
But, yes, there is a lot of change, of multiple types, economic, social, and different political groups have differing views on what change is good or bad.
In thecae of immigration, there has been a definite attempt make any opposition, to any level of it, beyond political discourse.
Seeing as it is quite regularly the number one topic, it doesn't seem to have been a very effective or impactful attempt......
OK - How much immigration is too much? How much immigration should the government be targeting?
10m a year net is clearly too much, as is 5m, as is 2m. 0 is clearly not enough.
The optimum rate is going to be a mix between demand in core services, our need for profit from students and how much infrastructure and housing we can build. ONS predicting 4m over 10 years, which seems both a reasonable estimate based on last 10 years, and something we can manage if we are pro-active about it.
So currently I would say the answer to targeting is in the 250-500k per year range. And the current level is probably too much if sustained for a decade, much above the current rate would be too high.
Other opinions will of course differ and that is fine and part of political debate.
Very good - now try saying that in politics.
The problem is that rational debate has been removed.
Bit like the NHS, where a shouty match about "more" is all we ever seem to get. More of what?
Has this morning’s debate not been rational?
This is a somewhat unusual forum in exactly that respect.
Try challenging the triple lock in politics, in public, for example. You'll have death threats within the minute.
eg The Telegraph reporting "fury" that pensioners received no benefit from cutting National Insurance.
Well, that's because they don't pay it at all.
“Fury at” is one of those journalistic shorthand’s isn’t it, like “police quiz x”, “romp”, “beleaguered” / “embattled”, “Britons”.
My particular favourite is 'boffin'. Never met one (despite 30 years in science), don't know what one is, but the media love 'em.
Good morning. Here is the nub of the issue. What sort of immigration is unpopular? Arguably it is the "illegal" sort - but how is this defined and how is it counted? It is far too easy to look at ever increasing gross numbers and project those onto the segment of immigrants we don't like. Anyway good news for the Tories in the figures quoted. Only 2% of those polled generally don't like the Government so 98% up for grabs.
"Immigration" is unpopular. "Illegal" is the "I'm not a racist" shield.
Immigration is unpopular.
Immigration for nurses is not unpopular. Immigration for care home workers is not unpopular. Immigration for highly skilled roles generally is not unpopular. Immigration for Ukrainians invaded by Russians is not unpopular Immigration for Hong Kongers escaping the Chinese is not unpopular. Immigration from students improves our already bad balance of payments by £40bn and saves the taxpayer a lot in university funding.
So yes immigration is unpopular but that doesn't mean stopping it would be popular either.
Oh, absolutely - that's exactly my point. It is *only* unpopular in the racism sense, not the practical sense.
I disagree with that - it is mostly unpopular because we don't build the infrastructure and houses at a rate that matches expected immigration. At best we build it to match the level of immigration the politicians promise which is very innaccurate and always too low for reality.
Do you have evidence that this is why? I think immigration is mostly unpopular because some voters have racist/xenophobic tendencies or just don’t like change, and because some politicians/commentators/newspapers blame immigration for numerous ills.
Concern around immigration in topic polling tends to be driven by the amount politicians are talking about immigration, I suggest.
Is lack of infrastructure was the problem, you’d expect anti-immigration polling to be higher in areas of high immigration and high housing costs, like London. But it isn’t.
Its obviously complicated and a lot of related factors mixed up together.
Yougov track negative impact of migration and the top 3 (currently all about the same) are:
Benefits Demand for Public Services Increasing Demand for Housing
Allowing people with extreme views and terrorist sympathisers is next, and at a similar level to the above. Damaging our culture and traditions, which would be the big racism/xenophobia marker is about half that level.
I think that ties in with experience that most of the country is not particularly racist, and its only a smallish group (5-10%?) that are strongly racist.
Bear in mind though many people arent honest with their views on this. And you wouldnt expect anti i.migration sentiment to be high in london as london is predoninantly full of ethnic minorities and the upper middle class who can insulate themselves from the problems.
Have you ever been to London?
Yes i have. I lived there for quite a few years too. The nice areas of london are basically a crescent running from richmond in the sw up the river to central london then out to north london primrose hill hampstead etc. Thats where the upper middle class live. Outside that is the real London a mix of semi third world shittiness intermixed with some better areas.
Yes, I pity the poor benighted people of Blackheath, Wimbledon, Chiselhurst, Buckhurst Hill etc, in their semi third world conditions. I'd deliver them food parcels were I not cowering in my home, fearful of Khan's hooded mobs of You Les Enforcers.
The olive oil is running low. I may have to brave the mean streets of north London this afternoon.
Prepare for a shock. The price of the last bottle of olive oil I bought was wince making. Not sure what has happened to the supply but there is clearly problems somewhere.
We have switched from extra virgin to plain. #itsgrimupnorthlondon
Never mind -just wait a few years. My decorative lollipop Olive Trees (snip at £20 from Morrisons) produced reasonable olives last summer - very bitter though.
I attempted to plant a mini olive grove at my vineyard: 25 small trees in 2 rows on a warm slope. They died due to a mixture of competition (I didn’t clear the vegetation around them enough) and deer attack (I didn’t protect them sufficiently).
Are you sure it wasn't Manon des Sources style sabotage by the neighbours?
May 2020 51/20 =+31 Mar 2022 33/43 =-10 Sep 2023 29/51 = -22 Mar 2024 29/55 =-26
SKS fans please explain
Fortunately for SKS, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
55% have seen the light
It could mean that his government becomes unpopular quite quickly.
I'm actually fairly upbeat about the UK's economic prospects for the rest of the decade (unless we really do get involved in a big war). That should give him some room to manouvere. OTOH, a lot of extra money has to be spent, on things like Health, Pensions, Defence, just to stand still, due to demographics, and increasing danger. He may find himself, like Biden, presiding over an economy that is doing quite well, but receiving little credit for it.
Story should be Laurence Fox attempts to bribe election officials to overlook his invalid nomination by 'accidentally overpaying deposit'.
I always find that, when filling out important paperwork, it's best to avoid being coked up to your eyeballs.
Given I am absolutely certain dear Laurence would've followed that advice, though, I'm at a loss to explain the multiple basic errors.
If he himself is reasonably competent, as you suggest, then I suspect the answer is that he delegated the task to somebody else.
Do you have any evidence for this "reasonably competent" allegation? Sounds like a conspiracy theory - implausible idea directly contradicted by the observable facts.
No, I have no evidence at all really. I was just following up a previous comment that Fox would not have completed the nomination process while he was stoned up to the eyeballs. I accepted this assertion as true - benefit of the doubt, and all that - since no reasonably competent person would deal with the nomination process, while stoned up to the eyeballs.
I just find the "reasonably competent" allegation extraordinary. No evidence to date suggests that Fox is reasonably competent at anything. Indeed, the reverse.
Story should be Laurence Fox attempts to bribe election officials to overlook his invalid nomination by 'accidentally overpaying deposit'.
I always find that, when filling out important paperwork, it's best to avoid being coked up to your eyeballs.
Given I am absolutely certain dear Laurence would've followed that advice, though, I'm at a loss to explain the multiple basic errors.
If he himself is reasonably competent, as you suggest, then I suspect the answer is that he delegated the task to somebody else.
Do you have any evidence for this "reasonably competent" allegation? Sounds like a conspiracy theory - implausible idea directly contradicted by the observable facts.
No, I have no evidence at all really. I was just following up a previous comment that Fox would not have completed the nomination process while he was stoned up to the eyeballs. I accepted this assertion as true - benefit of the doubt, and all that - since no reasonably competent person would deal with the nomination process, while stoned up to the eyeballs.
I just find the "reasonably competent" allegation extraordinary. No evidence to date suggests that Fox is reasonably competent at anything. Indeed, the reverse.
He did a solid turn as Hathaway.
Just as Morse begat Lewis it would have been logical for tv bosses to have commissioned a follow-on series (Hathaway) starring him in the role. That they didn't would have bitterly disappointed him and in all likelihood is what triggered his descent into hard right political extremism.
On such random events does the sweep of history sometimes turn. One thinks of Hitler being thwarted in his ambitions as a painter of watercolours.
Go to the poll of polls. Starting in 2022, draw a trend line through labour and conservative ratings and get back to me about trends. FYI, one poll is not a trend
Good morning. Here is the nub of the issue. What sort of immigration is unpopular? Arguably it is the "illegal" sort - but how is this defined and how is it counted? It is far too easy to look at ever increasing gross numbers and project those onto the segment of immigrants we don't like. Anyway good news for the Tories in the figures quoted. Only 2% of those polled generally don't like the Government so 98% up for grabs.
"Immigration" is unpopular. "Illegal" is the "I'm not a racist" shield.
Immigration is unpopular.
Immigration for nurses is not unpopular. Immigration for care home workers is not unpopular. Immigration for highly skilled roles generally is not unpopular. Immigration for Ukrainians invaded by Russians is not unpopular Immigration for Hong Kongers escaping the Chinese is not unpopular. Immigration from students improves our already bad balance of payments by £40bn and saves the taxpayer a lot in university funding.
So yes immigration is unpopular but that doesn't mean stopping it would be popular either.
Oh, absolutely - that's exactly my point. It is *only* unpopular in the racism sense, not the practical sense.
I disagree with that - it is mostly unpopular because we don't build the infrastructure and houses at a rate that matches expected immigration. At best we build it to match the level of immigration the politicians promise which is very innaccurate and always too low for reality.
Do you have evidence that this is why? I think immigration is mostly unpopular because some voters have racist/xenophobic tendencies or just don’t like change, and because some politicians/commentators/newspapers blame immigration for numerous ills.
Concern around immigration in topic polling tends to be driven by the amount politicians are talking about immigration, I suggest.
Is lack of infrastructure was the problem, you’d expect anti-immigration polling to be higher in areas of high immigration and high housing costs, like London. But it isn’t.
If immigration were spread evenly across the country, it would be less of an issue. But it isn't. It is still uncommon to see a non-white person in the SW outside Bristol and to a lesser extent Exeter, where non-white faces are often students rather than family groups. It's further from London, very limited rented accommodation, fewer opportunities for black economy jobs ties for them to take advantage/be taken advantage of - and no familiar communities to be part of. Immigration is generally not a doorstep issue down here - housing is though, despite no pressure to compete with immigrants. Schools are far less affected, hospitals more so - but that is incoming oldies fighting for a hip or knee replacement with other incoming oldies.
The only time you hear it is people who have moved down here, usually from the West Midlands. Retirement migration to the SW has been going on for decades. They would have come anyway, but claiming Brum or the Black Country is "not what it was" gives some rationale for upping sticks. Whilst you will find the occasional out-and-out racist, most of those who feel edged out have no personal beef one-on-one with immigrants. Their beef is change, the rapid rate of that change, and the loss of what they knew before. It gives them a reason on their own terms for doing what they would have done anyway: move.
Yes, I think lots of people don’t like change. There’s plenty of change I don’t like. I’m not saying there’s anything necessarily wrong with not liking change.
Again, though, is the change experienced largely due to immigration, or is it due to diverse other factors and immigration is the convenient scapegoat? It’s easy to blame change on the people moving in.
It's a combination
1) Change 2) The repeated emphasis on "You are not allowed to stop the change. You are not allowed to oppose the change. If the change has any negative consequences, then that's your problem"
2) is especially the problem in a modern democracy.
That seems to me like a lopsided characterisation. A huge amount of modern democracy is directed at stopping change: see NIMBYs! The ruling party for the last 14 years has been a party called the Conservatives, a name that describes their feelings towards change.
But, yes, there is a lot of change, of multiple types, economic, social, and different political groups have differing views on what change is good or bad.
In thecae of immigration, there has been a definite attempt make any opposition, to any level of it, beyond political discourse.
Seeing as it is quite regularly the number one topic, it doesn't seem to have been a very effective or impactful attempt......
OK - How much immigration is too much? How much immigration should the government be targeting?
10m a year net is clearly too much, as is 5m, as is 2m. 0 is clearly not enough.
The optimum rate is going to be a mix between demand in core services, our need for profit from students and how much infrastructure and housing we can build. ONS predicting 4m over 10 years, which seems both a reasonable estimate based on last 10 years, and something we can manage if we are pro-active about it.
So currently I would say the answer to targeting is in the 250-500k per year range. And the current level is probably too much if sustained for a decade, much above the current rate would be too high.
Other opinions will of course differ and that is fine and part of political debate.
Very good - now try saying that in politics.
The problem is that rational debate has been removed.
Bit like the NHS, where a shouty match about "more" is all we ever seem to get. More of what?
Has this morning’s debate not been rational?
This is a somewhat unusual forum in exactly that respect.
Try challenging the triple lock in politics, in public, for example. You'll have death threats within the minute.
eg The Telegraph reporting "fury" that pensioners received no benefit from cutting National Insurance.
Well, that's because they don't pay it at all.
“Fury at” is one of those journalistic shorthand’s isn’t it, like “police quiz x”, “romp”, “beleaguered” / “embattled”, “Britons”.
My particular favourite is 'boffin'. Never met one (despite 30 years in science), don't know what one is, but the media love 'em.
I thought you were a boffin?
Key moment for me at school, that. Y7, I think (1st year secondary school). Group of fellow Y7s accosts me in classroom, sniggering a bit - "Are you a boff?". I said something like "Dunno, what's a boff?", which ruined the moment for them a bit and, after it being explained as well as they could, agreed that yes, I probably was. Just instinct as I didn't really see anything wrong with the definition, so it seemed to make sense to agree, but left them all looking a bit sheepish ("Oh, right"/"Well, at least he admits it") and moving off to find another victim. The intention presumably was for me to be hurt/deny it and then to be teased about being a boff.
Looking back, it was definitely the right response, but I didn't really think about it at the time, I just genuinely didn't find the term offensive. I was a fairly tall lad and a pugnacious little shit (squared up to a - shorter - Y8 who shoved me in the corridor in first week at the school) so I never really had anyone physically trying to bully me, but had I been hurt by and reacted to 'boff' it would no doubt have followed me for years.
I'm definitely one of the boffins now, I guess. As is Turbo
Good morning. Here is the nub of the issue. What sort of immigration is unpopular? Arguably it is the "illegal" sort - but how is this defined and how is it counted? It is far too easy to look at ever increasing gross numbers and project those onto the segment of immigrants we don't like. Anyway good news for the Tories in the figures quoted. Only 2% of those polled generally don't like the Government so 98% up for grabs.
"Immigration" is unpopular. "Illegal" is the "I'm not a racist" shield.
Immigration is unpopular.
Immigration for nurses is not unpopular. Immigration for care home workers is not unpopular. Immigration for highly skilled roles generally is not unpopular. Immigration for Ukrainians invaded by Russians is not unpopular Immigration for Hong Kongers escaping the Chinese is not unpopular. Immigration from students improves our already bad balance of payments by £40bn and saves the taxpayer a lot in university funding.
So yes immigration is unpopular but that doesn't mean stopping it would be popular either.
Oh, absolutely - that's exactly my point. It is *only* unpopular in the racism sense, not the practical sense.
I disagree with that - it is mostly unpopular because we don't build the infrastructure and houses at a rate that matches expected immigration. At best we build it to match the level of immigration the politicians promise which is very innaccurate and always too low for reality.
Do you have evidence that this is why? I think immigration is mostly unpopular because some voters have racist/xenophobic tendencies or just don’t like change, and because some politicians/commentators/newspapers blame immigration for numerous ills.
Concern around immigration in topic polling tends to be driven by the amount politicians are talking about immigration, I suggest.
Is lack of infrastructure was the problem, you’d expect anti-immigration polling to be higher in areas of high immigration and high housing costs, like London. But it isn’t.
If immigration were spread evenly across the country, it would be less of an issue. But it isn't. It is still uncommon to see a non-white person in the SW outside Bristol and to a lesser extent Exeter, where non-white faces are often students rather than family groups. It's further from London, very limited rented accommodation, fewer opportunities for black economy jobs ties for them to take advantage/be taken advantage of - and no familiar communities to be part of. Immigration is generally not a doorstep issue down here - housing is though, despite no pressure to compete with immigrants. Schools are far less affected, hospitals more so - but that is incoming oldies fighting for a hip or knee replacement with other incoming oldies.
The only time you hear it is people who have moved down here, usually from the West Midlands. Retirement migration to the SW has been going on for decades. They would have come anyway, but claiming Brum or the Black Country is "not what it was" gives some rationale for upping sticks. Whilst you will find the occasional out-and-out racist, most of those who feel edged out have no personal beef one-on-one with immigrants. Their beef is change, the rapid rate of that change, and the loss of what they knew before. It gives them a reason on their own terms for doing what they would have done anyway: move.
Yes, I think lots of people don’t like change. There’s plenty of change I don’t like. I’m not saying there’s anything necessarily wrong with not liking change.
Again, though, is the change experienced largely due to immigration, or is it due to diverse other factors and immigration is the convenient scapegoat? It’s easy to blame change on the people moving in.
It's a combination
1) Change 2) The repeated emphasis on "You are not allowed to stop the change. You are not allowed to oppose the change. If the change has any negative consequences, then that's your problem"
2) is especially the problem in a modern democracy.
That seems to me like a lopsided characterisation. A huge amount of modern democracy is directed at stopping change: see NIMBYs! The ruling party for the last 14 years has been a party called the Conservatives, a name that describes their feelings towards change.
But, yes, there is a lot of change, of multiple types, economic, social, and different political groups have differing views on what change is good or bad.
In thecae of immigration, there has been a definite attempt make any opposition, to any level of it, beyond political discourse.
Seeing as it is quite regularly the number one topic, it doesn't seem to have been a very effective or impactful attempt......
OK - How much immigration is too much? How much immigration should the government be targeting?
10m a year net is clearly too much, as is 5m, as is 2m. 0 is clearly not enough.
The optimum rate is going to be a mix between demand in core services, our need for profit from students and how much infrastructure and housing we can build. ONS predicting 4m over 10 years, which seems both a reasonable estimate based on last 10 years, and something we can manage if we are pro-active about it.
So currently I would say the answer to targeting is in the 250-500k per year range. And the current level is probably too much if sustained for a decade, much above the current rate would be too high.
Other opinions will of course differ and that is fine and part of political debate.
Very good - now try saying that in politics.
The problem is that rational debate has been removed.
Bit like the NHS, where a shouty match about "more" is all we ever seem to get. More of what?
Has this morning’s debate not been rational?
This is a somewhat unusual forum in exactly that respect.
Try challenging the triple lock in politics, in public, for example. You'll have death threats within the minute.
eg The Telegraph reporting "fury" that pensioners received no benefit from cutting National Insurance.
Well, that's because they don't pay it at all.
“Fury at” is one of those journalistic shorthand’s isn’t it, like “police quiz x”, “romp”, “beleaguered” / “embattled”, “Britons”.
My particular favourite is 'boffin'. Never met one (despite 30 years in science), don't know what one is, but the media love 'em.
I thought you were a boffin?
Definitely not. I'm a scientician
Ah ok. So this begs the question, what is a boffin? Eg my brother is a Maths Prof. Is he a boffin? I've always thought so but it's only now, because of this exchange, that I'm giving it some proper thought.
I don't think Labour would have any objection to a result along those lines.
Trend says 38/33 type result imo
I think SKS would take that.
I'd take anything that gives a labour majority, as thats what my betfair account needs...
NOM nailed on 😃
Assuming NOM = nailed on majority, I agree
(Mind you, I've got a few lost stranded £ on NOM from ages ago, so the result would be nice financially - and, indeed politically for me if it led to stable Lab-Lib coalition. But I won't be holding my breath for it!)
I don't think Labour would have any objection to a result along those lines.
Trend says 38/33 type result imo
I think SKS would take that.
I'd take anything that gives a labour majority, as thats what my betfair account needs...
NOM nailed on 😃
Assuming NOM = nailed on majority, I agree
(Mind you, I've got a few lost stranded £ on NOM from ages ago, so the result would be nice financially - and, indeed politically for me if it led to stable Lab-Lib coalition. But I won't be holding my breath for it!)
Wouldn't 'nailed on majority nailed on' be a tautology?
Good morning. Here is the nub of the issue. What sort of immigration is unpopular? Arguably it is the "illegal" sort - but how is this defined and how is it counted? It is far too easy to look at ever increasing gross numbers and project those onto the segment of immigrants we don't like. Anyway good news for the Tories in the figures quoted. Only 2% of those polled generally don't like the Government so 98% up for grabs.
"Immigration" is unpopular. "Illegal" is the "I'm not a racist" shield.
Immigration is unpopular.
Immigration for nurses is not unpopular. Immigration for care home workers is not unpopular. Immigration for highly skilled roles generally is not unpopular. Immigration for Ukrainians invaded by Russians is not unpopular Immigration for Hong Kongers escaping the Chinese is not unpopular. Immigration from students improves our already bad balance of payments by £40bn and saves the taxpayer a lot in university funding.
So yes immigration is unpopular but that doesn't mean stopping it would be popular either.
Oh, absolutely - that's exactly my point. It is *only* unpopular in the racism sense, not the practical sense.
I disagree with that - it is mostly unpopular because we don't build the infrastructure and houses at a rate that matches expected immigration. At best we build it to match the level of immigration the politicians promise which is very innaccurate and always too low for reality.
Do you have evidence that this is why? I think immigration is mostly unpopular because some voters have racist/xenophobic tendencies or just don’t like change, and because some politicians/commentators/newspapers blame immigration for numerous ills.
Concern around immigration in topic polling tends to be driven by the amount politicians are talking about immigration, I suggest.
Is lack of infrastructure was the problem, you’d expect anti-immigration polling to be higher in areas of high immigration and high housing costs, like London. But it isn’t.
If immigration were spread evenly across the country, it would be less of an issue. But it isn't. It is still uncommon to see a non-white person in the SW outside Bristol and to a lesser extent Exeter, where non-white faces are often students rather than family groups. It's further from London, very limited rented accommodation, fewer opportunities for black economy jobs ties for them to take advantage/be taken advantage of - and no familiar communities to be part of. Immigration is generally not a doorstep issue down here - housing is though, despite no pressure to compete with immigrants. Schools are far less affected, hospitals more so - but that is incoming oldies fighting for a hip or knee replacement with other incoming oldies.
The only time you hear it is people who have moved down here, usually from the West Midlands. Retirement migration to the SW has been going on for decades. They would have come anyway, but claiming Brum or the Black Country is "not what it was" gives some rationale for upping sticks. Whilst you will find the occasional out-and-out racist, most of those who feel edged out have no personal beef one-on-one with immigrants. Their beef is change, the rapid rate of that change, and the loss of what they knew before. It gives them a reason on their own terms for doing what they would have done anyway: move.
Yes, I think lots of people don’t like change. There’s plenty of change I don’t like. I’m not saying there’s anything necessarily wrong with not liking change.
Again, though, is the change experienced largely due to immigration, or is it due to diverse other factors and immigration is the convenient scapegoat? It’s easy to blame change on the people moving in.
It's a combination
1) Change 2) The repeated emphasis on "You are not allowed to stop the change. You are not allowed to oppose the change. If the change has any negative consequences, then that's your problem"
2) is especially the problem in a modern democracy.
That seems to me like a lopsided characterisation. A huge amount of modern democracy is directed at stopping change: see NIMBYs! The ruling party for the last 14 years has been a party called the Conservatives, a name that describes their feelings towards change.
But, yes, there is a lot of change, of multiple types, economic, social, and different political groups have differing views on what change is good or bad.
In thecae of immigration, there has been a definite attempt make any opposition, to any level of it, beyond political discourse.
Seeing as it is quite regularly the number one topic, it doesn't seem to have been a very effective or impactful attempt......
OK - How much immigration is too much? How much immigration should the government be targeting?
10m a year net is clearly too much, as is 5m, as is 2m. 0 is clearly not enough.
The optimum rate is going to be a mix between demand in core services, our need for profit from students and how much infrastructure and housing we can build. ONS predicting 4m over 10 years, which seems both a reasonable estimate based on last 10 years, and something we can manage if we are pro-active about it.
So currently I would say the answer to targeting is in the 250-500k per year range. And the current level is probably too much if sustained for a decade, much above the current rate would be too high.
Other opinions will of course differ and that is fine and part of political debate.
Very good - now try saying that in politics.
The problem is that rational debate has been removed.
Bit like the NHS, where a shouty match about "more" is all we ever seem to get. More of what?
Has this morning’s debate not been rational?
This is a somewhat unusual forum in exactly that respect.
Try challenging the triple lock in politics, in public, for example. You'll have death threats within the minute.
eg The Telegraph reporting "fury" that pensioners received no benefit from cutting National Insurance.
Well, that's because they don't pay it at all.
“Fury at” is one of those journalistic shorthand’s isn’t it, like “police quiz x”, “romp”, “beleaguered” / “embattled”, “Britons”.
My particular favourite is 'boffin'. Never met one (despite 30 years in science), don't know what one is, but the media love 'em.
I thought you were a boffin?
Definitely not. I'm a scientician
Ah ok. So this begs the question, what is a boffin? Eg my brother is a Maths Prof. Is he a boffin? I've always thought so but it's only now, because of this exchange, that I'm giving it some proper thought.
I 'think' the term boffin relates to scientists that are rather detached from the real world (perhaps the scientist in the Simpsons, for instance). All the scientists I know and work with are not at all like that. Most are complex souls with families and hobbies the same as the rest of the population.
Of course the really good profs can be a bit extreme. To make it in academia you often need to put in a lot of out of hours work (evenings and weekends writing grants, papers etc). Those who are really driven excel at doing this and reach the top. They often find it hard to retire, as they have less outside interests. But even for them, most are thoroughly grounded.
I once had a conversation with a lay person (a neighbour) about creativity. I told her I think the scientists are some of the most creative people I know. New discoveries don't just happen.
5% according to Deltapoll (Lab-2 Con+3) 6% according to YG (Lab -4 Con +2) 6% according to R&W (Lab -5 Con +1)
SKS fans the trend is not your friend
A trend is a trend is a trend, But the question is, will it bend? Will it alter its course through some unforeseen force and come to a premature end?
And whilst there are very few Starmer Fans, that doesn't matter, as long as there are sufficient people willing to say "he'll have to do". And as long as his ratings are better than those of Sunak, Mordaunt, Johnson and Corbyn, that will be the case.
Good morning. Here is the nub of the issue. What sort of immigration is unpopular? Arguably it is the "illegal" sort - but how is this defined and how is it counted? It is far too easy to look at ever increasing gross numbers and project those onto the segment of immigrants we don't like. Anyway good news for the Tories in the figures quoted. Only 2% of those polled generally don't like the Government so 98% up for grabs.
"Immigration" is unpopular. "Illegal" is the "I'm not a racist" shield.
Immigration is unpopular.
Immigration for nurses is not unpopular. Immigration for care home workers is not unpopular. Immigration for highly skilled roles generally is not unpopular. Immigration for Ukrainians invaded by Russians is not unpopular Immigration for Hong Kongers escaping the Chinese is not unpopular. Immigration from students improves our already bad balance of payments by £40bn and saves the taxpayer a lot in university funding.
So yes immigration is unpopular but that doesn't mean stopping it would be popular either.
Oh, absolutely - that's exactly my point. It is *only* unpopular in the racism sense, not the practical sense.
I disagree with that - it is mostly unpopular because we don't build the infrastructure and houses at a rate that matches expected immigration. At best we build it to match the level of immigration the politicians promise which is very innaccurate and always too low for reality.
Do you have evidence that this is why? I think immigration is mostly unpopular because some voters have racist/xenophobic tendencies or just don’t like change, and because some politicians/commentators/newspapers blame immigration for numerous ills.
Concern around immigration in topic polling tends to be driven by the amount politicians are talking about immigration, I suggest.
Is lack of infrastructure was the problem, you’d expect anti-immigration polling to be higher in areas of high immigration and high housing costs, like London. But it isn’t.
Its obviously complicated and a lot of related factors mixed up together.
Yougov track negative impact of migration and the top 3 (currently all about the same) are:
Benefits Demand for Public Services Increasing Demand for Housing
Allowing people with extreme views and terrorist sympathisers is next, and at a similar level to the above. Damaging our culture and traditions, which would be the big racism/xenophobia marker is about half that level.
I think that ties in with experience that most of the country is not particularly racist, and its only a smallish group (5-10%?) that are strongly racist.
Bear in mind though many people arent honest with their views on this. And you wouldnt expect anti i.migration sentiment to be high in london as london is predoninantly full of ethnic minorities and the upper middle class who can insulate themselves from the problems.
Have you ever been to London?
Yes i have. I lived there for quite a few years too. The nice areas of london are basically a crescent running from richmond in the sw up the river to central london then out to north london primrose hill hampstead etc. Thats where the upper middle class live. Outside that is the real London a mix of semi third world shittiness intermixed with some better areas.
Yes, I pity the poor benighted people of Blackheath, Wimbledon, Chiselhurst, Buckhurst Hill etc, in their semi third world conditions. I'd deliver them food parcels were I not cowering in my home, fearful of Khan's hooded mobs of You Les Enforcers.
The olive oil is running low. I may have to brave the mean streets of north London this afternoon.
Prepare for a shock. The price of the last bottle of olive oil I bought was wince making. Not sure what has happened to the supply but there is clearly problems somewhere.
We have switched from extra virgin to plain. #itsgrimupnorthlondon
Never mind -just wait a few years. My decorative lollipop Olive Trees (snip at £20 from Morrisons) produced reasonable olives last summer - very bitter though.
I attempted to plant a mini olive grove at my vineyard: 25 small trees in 2 rows on a warm slope. They died due to a mixture of competition (I didn’t clear the vegetation around them enough) and deer attack (I didn’t protect them sufficiently).
Are you sure it wasn't Manon des Sources style sabotage by the neighbours?
Funnily enough there’s an apparent example of that at our French place.
Our little cul de sac is called “Impasse de la source”, but there’s no obvious spring anywhere. But recently our next door neighbour, Camille (des sources), heard from a local that years ago there used to be a spring and a tap in her courtyard, well known to the village.
As if by magic the farmer’s field up the hill has a water trough for the cows that seems to be miraculously always topped up with fresh water.
Unlike Manon I don’t think Camille has any intention of going off into the hills to stay with a goat herder and plot her revenge on the local peasants.
I don't think Labour would have any objection to a result along those lines.
Trend says 38/33 type result imo
I think SKS would take that.
I'd take anything that gives a labour majority, as thats what my betfair account needs...
NOM nailed on 😃
Assuming NOM = nailed on majority, I agree
(Mind you, I've got a few lost stranded £ on NOM from ages ago, so the result would be nice financially - and, indeed politically for me if it led to stable Lab-Lib coalition. But I won't be holding my breath for it!)
Wouldn't 'nailed on majority nailed on' be a tautology?
Isn't BJO in Yorkshire? I don't know why I assume this - Owls a reference to Sheffield Wednesday? We like to repeat ourselves a bit in case people weren't listening.
Go to the poll of polls. Starting in 2022, draw a trend line through labour and conservative ratings and get back to me about trends. FYI, one poll is not a trend
Im sort of with BJO on this (the trend, not the rest of his ideological apparatus). There is I think a tightening between the blocs, and a decline in Labour favourability, that’s being hidden by the Reform rise.
Good morning. Here is the nub of the issue. What sort of immigration is unpopular? Arguably it is the "illegal" sort - but how is this defined and how is it counted? It is far too easy to look at ever increasing gross numbers and project those onto the segment of immigrants we don't like. Anyway good news for the Tories in the figures quoted. Only 2% of those polled generally don't like the Government so 98% up for grabs.
"Immigration" is unpopular. "Illegal" is the "I'm not a racist" shield.
Immigration is unpopular.
Immigration for nurses is not unpopular. Immigration for care home workers is not unpopular. Immigration for highly skilled roles generally is not unpopular. Immigration for Ukrainians invaded by Russians is not unpopular Immigration for Hong Kongers escaping the Chinese is not unpopular. Immigration from students improves our already bad balance of payments by £40bn and saves the taxpayer a lot in university funding.
So yes immigration is unpopular but that doesn't mean stopping it would be popular either.
Oh, absolutely - that's exactly my point. It is *only* unpopular in the racism sense, not the practical sense.
I disagree with that - it is mostly unpopular because we don't build the infrastructure and houses at a rate that matches expected immigration. At best we build it to match the level of immigration the politicians promise which is very innaccurate and always too low for reality.
Do you have evidence that this is why? I think immigration is mostly unpopular because some voters have racist/xenophobic tendencies or just don’t like change, and because some politicians/commentators/newspapers blame immigration for numerous ills.
Concern around immigration in topic polling tends to be driven by the amount politicians are talking about immigration, I suggest.
Is lack of infrastructure was the problem, you’d expect anti-immigration polling to be higher in areas of high immigration and high housing costs, like London. But it isn’t.
If immigration were spread evenly across the country, it would be less of an issue. But it isn't. It is still uncommon to see a non-white person in the SW outside Bristol and to a lesser extent Exeter, where non-white faces are often students rather than family groups. It's further from London, very limited rented accommodation, fewer opportunities for black economy jobs ties for them to take advantage/be taken advantage of - and no familiar communities to be part of. Immigration is generally not a doorstep issue down here - housing is though, despite no pressure to compete with immigrants. Schools are far less affected, hospitals more so - but that is incoming oldies fighting for a hip or knee replacement with other incoming oldies.
The only time you hear it is people who have moved down here, usually from the West Midlands. Retirement migration to the SW has been going on for decades. They would have come anyway, but claiming Brum or the Black Country is "not what it was" gives some rationale for upping sticks. Whilst you will find the occasional out-and-out racist, most of those who feel edged out have no personal beef one-on-one with immigrants. Their beef is change, the rapid rate of that change, and the loss of what they knew before. It gives them a reason on their own terms for doing what they would have done anyway: move.
Yes, I think lots of people don’t like change. There’s plenty of change I don’t like. I’m not saying there’s anything necessarily wrong with not liking change.
Again, though, is the change experienced largely due to immigration, or is it due to diverse other factors and immigration is the convenient scapegoat? It’s easy to blame change on the people moving in.
It's a combination
1) Change 2) The repeated emphasis on "You are not allowed to stop the change. You are not allowed to oppose the change. If the change has any negative consequences, then that's your problem"
2) is especially the problem in a modern democracy.
That seems to me like a lopsided characterisation. A huge amount of modern democracy is directed at stopping change: see NIMBYs! The ruling party for the last 14 years has been a party called the Conservatives, a name that describes their feelings towards change.
But, yes, there is a lot of change, of multiple types, economic, social, and different political groups have differing views on what change is good or bad.
In thecae of immigration, there has been a definite attempt make any opposition, to any level of it, beyond political discourse.
Seeing as it is quite regularly the number one topic, it doesn't seem to have been a very effective or impactful attempt......
OK - How much immigration is too much? How much immigration should the government be targeting?
10m a year net is clearly too much, as is 5m, as is 2m. 0 is clearly not enough.
The optimum rate is going to be a mix between demand in core services, our need for profit from students and how much infrastructure and housing we can build. ONS predicting 4m over 10 years, which seems both a reasonable estimate based on last 10 years, and something we can manage if we are pro-active about it.
So currently I would say the answer to targeting is in the 250-500k per year range. And the current level is probably too much if sustained for a decade, much above the current rate would be too high.
Other opinions will of course differ and that is fine and part of political debate.
Very good - now try saying that in politics.
The problem is that rational debate has been removed.
Bit like the NHS, where a shouty match about "more" is all we ever seem to get. More of what?
Has this morning’s debate not been rational?
This is a somewhat unusual forum in exactly that respect.
Try challenging the triple lock in politics, in public, for example. You'll have death threats within the minute.
eg The Telegraph reporting "fury" that pensioners received no benefit from cutting National Insurance.
Well, that's because they don't pay it at all.
“Fury at” is one of those journalistic shorthand’s isn’t it, like “police quiz x”, “romp”, “beleaguered” / “embattled”, “Britons”.
My particular favourite is 'boffin'. Never met one (despite 30 years in science), don't know what one is, but the media love 'em.
I thought you were a boffin?
Definitely not. I'm a scientician
Ah ok. So this begs the question, what is a boffin? Eg my brother is a Maths Prof. Is he a boffin? I've always thought so but it's only now, because of this exchange, that I'm giving it some proper thought.
I 'think' the term boffin relates to scientists that are rather detached from the real world (perhaps the scientist in the Simpsons, for instance). All the scientists I know and work with are not at all like that. Most are complex souls with families and hobbies the same as the rest of the population.
Of course the really good profs can be a bit extreme. To make it in academia you often need to put in a lot of out of hours work (evenings and weekends writing grants, papers etc). Those who are really driven excel at doing this and reach the top. They often find it hard to retire, as they have less outside interests. But even for them, most are thoroughly grounded.
I once had a conversation with a lay person (a neighbour) about creativity. I told her I think the scientists are some of the most creative people I know. New discoveries don't just happen.
Not sure of the boffin definition, but the description of academia and the types of academic is spot on.
Good morning. Here is the nub of the issue. What sort of immigration is unpopular? Arguably it is the "illegal" sort - but how is this defined and how is it counted? It is far too easy to look at ever increasing gross numbers and project those onto the segment of immigrants we don't like. Anyway good news for the Tories in the figures quoted. Only 2% of those polled generally don't like the Government so 98% up for grabs.
"Immigration" is unpopular. "Illegal" is the "I'm not a racist" shield.
Immigration is unpopular.
Immigration for nurses is not unpopular. Immigration for care home workers is not unpopular. Immigration for highly skilled roles generally is not unpopular. Immigration for Ukrainians invaded by Russians is not unpopular Immigration for Hong Kongers escaping the Chinese is not unpopular. Immigration from students improves our already bad balance of payments by £40bn and saves the taxpayer a lot in university funding.
So yes immigration is unpopular but that doesn't mean stopping it would be popular either.
Oh, absolutely - that's exactly my point. It is *only* unpopular in the racism sense, not the practical sense.
I disagree with that - it is mostly unpopular because we don't build the infrastructure and houses at a rate that matches expected immigration. At best we build it to match the level of immigration the politicians promise which is very innaccurate and always too low for reality.
Do you have evidence that this is why? I think immigration is mostly unpopular because some voters have racist/xenophobic tendencies or just don’t like change, and because some politicians/commentators/newspapers blame immigration for numerous ills.
Concern around immigration in topic polling tends to be driven by the amount politicians are talking about immigration, I suggest.
Is lack of infrastructure was the problem, you’d expect anti-immigration polling to be higher in areas of high immigration and high housing costs, like London. But it isn’t.
If immigration were spread evenly across the country, it would be less of an issue. But it isn't. It is still uncommon to see a non-white person in the SW outside Bristol and to a lesser extent Exeter, where non-white faces are often students rather than family groups. It's further from London, very limited rented accommodation, fewer opportunities for black economy jobs ties for them to take advantage/be taken advantage of - and no familiar communities to be part of. Immigration is generally not a doorstep issue down here - housing is though, despite no pressure to compete with immigrants. Schools are far less affected, hospitals more so - but that is incoming oldies fighting for a hip or knee replacement with other incoming oldies.
The only time you hear it is people who have moved down here, usually from the West Midlands. Retirement migration to the SW has been going on for decades. They would have come anyway, but claiming Brum or the Black Country is "not what it was" gives some rationale for upping sticks. Whilst you will find the occasional out-and-out racist, most of those who feel edged out have no personal beef one-on-one with immigrants. Their beef is change, the rapid rate of that change, and the loss of what they knew before. It gives them a reason on their own terms for doing what they would have done anyway: move.
Yes, I think lots of people don’t like change. There’s plenty of change I don’t like. I’m not saying there’s anything necessarily wrong with not liking change.
Again, though, is the change experienced largely due to immigration, or is it due to diverse other factors and immigration is the convenient scapegoat? It’s easy to blame change on the people moving in.
It's a combination
1) Change 2) The repeated emphasis on "You are not allowed to stop the change. You are not allowed to oppose the change. If the change has any negative consequences, then that's your problem"
2) is especially the problem in a modern democracy.
That seems to me like a lopsided characterisation. A huge amount of modern democracy is directed at stopping change: see NIMBYs! The ruling party for the last 14 years has been a party called the Conservatives, a name that describes their feelings towards change.
But, yes, there is a lot of change, of multiple types, economic, social, and different political groups have differing views on what change is good or bad.
In thecae of immigration, there has been a definite attempt make any opposition, to any level of it, beyond political discourse.
Seeing as it is quite regularly the number one topic, it doesn't seem to have been a very effective or impactful attempt......
OK - How much immigration is too much? How much immigration should the government be targeting?
10m a year net is clearly too much, as is 5m, as is 2m. 0 is clearly not enough.
The optimum rate is going to be a mix between demand in core services, our need for profit from students and how much infrastructure and housing we can build. ONS predicting 4m over 10 years, which seems both a reasonable estimate based on last 10 years, and something we can manage if we are pro-active about it.
So currently I would say the answer to targeting is in the 250-500k per year range. And the current level is probably too much if sustained for a decade, much above the current rate would be too high.
Other opinions will of course differ and that is fine and part of political debate.
Very good - now try saying that in politics.
The problem is that rational debate has been removed.
Bit like the NHS, where a shouty match about "more" is all we ever seem to get. More of what?
Has this morning’s debate not been rational?
This is a somewhat unusual forum in exactly that respect.
Try challenging the triple lock in politics, in public, for example. You'll have death threats within the minute.
eg The Telegraph reporting "fury" that pensioners received no benefit from cutting National Insurance.
Well, that's because they don't pay it at all.
“Fury at” is one of those journalistic shorthand’s isn’t it, like “police quiz x”, “romp”, “beleaguered” / “embattled”, “Britons”.
My particular favourite is 'boffin'. Never met one (despite 30 years in science), don't know what one is, but the media love 'em.
I thought you were a boffin?
Definitely not. I'm a scientician
Ah ok. So this begs the question, what is a boffin? Eg my brother is a Maths Prof. Is he a boffin? I've always thought so but it's only now, because of this exchange, that I'm giving it some proper thought.
WW2 slang for a scientist or engineer in R&D - RAE Farnborough, the radar developers at TRE, operational research in the navy, physiologists studying life support mechanics in aircraft and subs, and so on. Civilian, not uniformed. Overtones of strangeness/nerdiness/incomprehensible brainpower but also respect (when they came up with the goods).
But consider that one of the classic boffin images was Prof Peabody in the Eagle.
I don't think Labour would have any objection to a result along those lines.
Trend says 38/33 type result imo
I think SKS would take that.
I'd take anything that gives a labour majority, as thats what my betfair account needs...
NOM nailed on 😃
Assuming NOM = nailed on majority, I agree
(Mind you, I've got a few lost stranded £ on NOM from ages ago, so the result would be nice financially - and, indeed politically for me if it led to stable Lab-Lib coalition. But I won't be holding my breath for it!)
Wouldn't 'nailed on majority nailed on' be a tautology?
Isn't BJO in Yorkshire? I don't know why I assume this - Owls a reference to Sheffield Wednesday? We like to repeat ourselves a bit in case people weren't listening.
"Nailed on majority. Nailed on."
"Legendary modesty. Legendary."
He missed the full stop, but I can forgive that
Hmm, Sheffield… could BJO actually be Jared O’Mara?
I don't think Labour would have any objection to a result along those lines.
Trend says 38/33 type result imo
I think SKS would take that.
I'd take anything that gives a labour majority, as thats what my betfair account needs...
NOM nailed on 😃
Assuming NOM = nailed on majority, I agree
(Mind you, I've got a few lost stranded £ on NOM from ages ago, so the result would be nice financially - and, indeed politically for me if it led to stable Lab-Lib coalition. But I won't be holding my breath for it!)
Wouldn't 'nailed on majority nailed on' be a tautology?
Isn't BJO in Yorkshire? I don't know why I assume this - Owls a reference to Sheffield Wednesday? We like to repeat ourselves a bit in case people weren't listening.
"Nailed on majority. Nailed on."
"Legendary modesty. Legendary."
He missed the full stop, but I can forgive that
Hmm, Sheffield… could BJO actually be Jared O’Mara?
I don't think Labour would have any objection to a result along those lines.
Trend says 38/33 type result imo
I think SKS would take that.
I'd take anything that gives a labour majority, as thats what my betfair account needs...
NOM nailed on 😃
Assuming NOM = nailed on majority, I agree
(Mind you, I've got a few lost stranded £ on NOM from ages ago, so the result would be nice financially - and, indeed politically for me if it led to stable Lab-Lib coalition. But I won't be holding my breath for it!)
Wouldn't 'nailed on majority nailed on' be a tautology?
Isn't BJO in Yorkshire? I don't know why I assume this - Owls a reference to Sheffield Wednesday? We like to repeat ourselves a bit in case people weren't listening.
Good morning. Here is the nub of the issue. What sort of immigration is unpopular? Arguably it is the "illegal" sort - but how is this defined and how is it counted? It is far too easy to look at ever increasing gross numbers and project those onto the segment of immigrants we don't like. Anyway good news for the Tories in the figures quoted. Only 2% of those polled generally don't like the Government so 98% up for grabs.
"Immigration" is unpopular. "Illegal" is the "I'm not a racist" shield.
Immigration is unpopular.
Immigration for nurses is not unpopular. Immigration for care home workers is not unpopular. Immigration for highly skilled roles generally is not unpopular. Immigration for Ukrainians invaded by Russians is not unpopular Immigration for Hong Kongers escaping the Chinese is not unpopular. Immigration from students improves our already bad balance of payments by £40bn and saves the taxpayer a lot in university funding.
So yes immigration is unpopular but that doesn't mean stopping it would be popular either.
Oh, absolutely - that's exactly my point. It is *only* unpopular in the racism sense, not the practical sense.
I disagree with that - it is mostly unpopular because we don't build the infrastructure and houses at a rate that matches expected immigration. At best we build it to match the level of immigration the politicians promise which is very innaccurate and always too low for reality.
Do you have evidence that this is why? I think immigration is mostly unpopular because some voters have racist/xenophobic tendencies or just don’t like change, and because some politicians/commentators/newspapers blame immigration for numerous ills.
Concern around immigration in topic polling tends to be driven by the amount politicians are talking about immigration, I suggest.
Is lack of infrastructure was the problem, you’d expect anti-immigration polling to be higher in areas of high immigration and high housing costs, like London. But it isn’t.
If immigration were spread evenly across the country, it would be less of an issue. But it isn't. It is still uncommon to see a non-white person in the SW outside Bristol and to a lesser extent Exeter, where non-white faces are often students rather than family groups. It's further from London, very limited rented accommodation, fewer opportunities for black economy jobs ties for them to take advantage/be taken advantage of - and no familiar communities to be part of. Immigration is generally not a doorstep issue down here - housing is though, despite no pressure to compete with immigrants. Schools are far less affected, hospitals more so - but that is incoming oldies fighting for a hip or knee replacement with other incoming oldies.
The only time you hear it is people who have moved down here, usually from the West Midlands. Retirement migration to the SW has been going on for decades. They would have come anyway, but claiming Brum or the Black Country is "not what it was" gives some rationale for upping sticks. Whilst you will find the occasional out-and-out racist, most of those who feel edged out have no personal beef one-on-one with immigrants. Their beef is change, the rapid rate of that change, and the loss of what they knew before. It gives them a reason on their own terms for doing what they would have done anyway: move.
Yes, I think lots of people don’t like change. There’s plenty of change I don’t like. I’m not saying there’s anything necessarily wrong with not liking change.
Again, though, is the change experienced largely due to immigration, or is it due to diverse other factors and immigration is the convenient scapegoat? It’s easy to blame change on the people moving in.
It's a combination
1) Change 2) The repeated emphasis on "You are not allowed to stop the change. You are not allowed to oppose the change. If the change has any negative consequences, then that's your problem"
2) is especially the problem in a modern democracy.
That seems to me like a lopsided characterisation. A huge amount of modern democracy is directed at stopping change: see NIMBYs! The ruling party for the last 14 years has been a party called the Conservatives, a name that describes their feelings towards change.
But, yes, there is a lot of change, of multiple types, economic, social, and different political groups have differing views on what change is good or bad.
In thecae of immigration, there has been a definite attempt make any opposition, to any level of it, beyond political discourse.
Seeing as it is quite regularly the number one topic, it doesn't seem to have been a very effective or impactful attempt......
OK - How much immigration is too much? How much immigration should the government be targeting?
10m a year net is clearly too much, as is 5m, as is 2m. 0 is clearly not enough.
The optimum rate is going to be a mix between demand in core services, our need for profit from students and how much infrastructure and housing we can build. ONS predicting 4m over 10 years, which seems both a reasonable estimate based on last 10 years, and something we can manage if we are pro-active about it.
So currently I would say the answer to targeting is in the 250-500k per year range. And the current level is probably too much if sustained for a decade, much above the current rate would be too high.
Other opinions will of course differ and that is fine and part of political debate.
Very good - now try saying that in politics.
The problem is that rational debate has been removed.
Bit like the NHS, where a shouty match about "more" is all we ever seem to get. More of what?
Has this morning’s debate not been rational?
This is a somewhat unusual forum in exactly that respect.
Try challenging the triple lock in politics, in public, for example. You'll have death threats within the minute.
eg The Telegraph reporting "fury" that pensioners received no benefit from cutting National Insurance.
Well, that's because they don't pay it at all.
“Fury at” is one of those journalistic shorthand’s isn’t it, like “police quiz x”, “romp”, “beleaguered” / “embattled”, “Britons”.
My particular favourite is 'boffin'. Never met one (despite 30 years in science), don't know what one is, but the media love 'em.
I thought you were a boffin?
Definitely not. I'm a scientician
Ah ok. So this begs the question, what is a boffin? Eg my brother is a Maths Prof. Is he a boffin? I've always thought so but it's only now, because of this exchange, that I'm giving it some proper thought.
WW2 slang for a scientist or engineer in R&D - RAE Farnborough, the radar developers at TRE, operational research in the navy, physiologists studying life support mechanics in aircraft and subs, and so on. Civilian, not uniformed. Overtones of strangeness/nerdiness/incomprehensible brainpower but also respect (when they came up with the goods).
But consider that one of the classic boffin images was Prof Peabody in the Eagle.
Carried on into postwar usage and fossilised into a calcified cyst in the brains of tabloid journalists.
See Francis Spufford's "Backroom Boys". Interesting combination of eccentric and practical. And with an alarming tendency to know something about everything.
Good morning. Here is the nub of the issue. What sort of immigration is unpopular? Arguably it is the "illegal" sort - but how is this defined and how is it counted? It is far too easy to look at ever increasing gross numbers and project those onto the segment of immigrants we don't like. Anyway good news for the Tories in the figures quoted. Only 2% of those polled generally don't like the Government so 98% up for grabs.
"Immigration" is unpopular. "Illegal" is the "I'm not a racist" shield.
Immigration is unpopular.
Immigration for nurses is not unpopular. Immigration for care home workers is not unpopular. Immigration for highly skilled roles generally is not unpopular. Immigration for Ukrainians invaded by Russians is not unpopular Immigration for Hong Kongers escaping the Chinese is not unpopular. Immigration from students improves our already bad balance of payments by £40bn and saves the taxpayer a lot in university funding.
So yes immigration is unpopular but that doesn't mean stopping it would be popular either.
Oh, absolutely - that's exactly my point. It is *only* unpopular in the racism sense, not the practical sense.
I disagree with that - it is mostly unpopular because we don't build the infrastructure and houses at a rate that matches expected immigration. At best we build it to match the level of immigration the politicians promise which is very innaccurate and always too low for reality.
Do you have evidence that this is why? I think immigration is mostly unpopular because some voters have racist/xenophobic tendencies or just don’t like change, and because some politicians/commentators/newspapers blame immigration for numerous ills.
Concern around immigration in topic polling tends to be driven by the amount politicians are talking about immigration, I suggest.
Is lack of infrastructure was the problem, you’d expect anti-immigration polling to be higher in areas of high immigration and high housing costs, like London. But it isn’t.
If immigration were spread evenly across the country, it would be less of an issue. But it isn't. It is still uncommon to see a non-white person in the SW outside Bristol and to a lesser extent Exeter, where non-white faces are often students rather than family groups. It's further from London, very limited rented accommodation, fewer opportunities for black economy jobs ties for them to take advantage/be taken advantage of - and no familiar communities to be part of. Immigration is generally not a doorstep issue down here - housing is though, despite no pressure to compete with immigrants. Schools are far less affected, hospitals more so - but that is incoming oldies fighting for a hip or knee replacement with other incoming oldies.
The only time you hear it is people who have moved down here, usually from the West Midlands. Retirement migration to the SW has been going on for decades. They would have come anyway, but claiming Brum or the Black Country is "not what it was" gives some rationale for upping sticks. Whilst you will find the occasional out-and-out racist, most of those who feel edged out have no personal beef one-on-one with immigrants. Their beef is change, the rapid rate of that change, and the loss of what they knew before. It gives them a reason on their own terms for doing what they would have done anyway: move.
Yes, I think lots of people don’t like change. There’s plenty of change I don’t like. I’m not saying there’s anything necessarily wrong with not liking change.
Again, though, is the change experienced largely due to immigration, or is it due to diverse other factors and immigration is the convenient scapegoat? It’s easy to blame change on the people moving in.
It's a combination
1) Change 2) The repeated emphasis on "You are not allowed to stop the change. You are not allowed to oppose the change. If the change has any negative consequences, then that's your problem"
2) is especially the problem in a modern democracy.
That seems to me like a lopsided characterisation. A huge amount of modern democracy is directed at stopping change: see NIMBYs! The ruling party for the last 14 years has been a party called the Conservatives, a name that describes their feelings towards change.
But, yes, there is a lot of change, of multiple types, economic, social, and different political groups have differing views on what change is good or bad.
In thecae of immigration, there has been a definite attempt make any opposition, to any level of it, beyond political discourse.
Seeing as it is quite regularly the number one topic, it doesn't seem to have been a very effective or impactful attempt......
OK - How much immigration is too much? How much immigration should the government be targeting?
10m a year net is clearly too much, as is 5m, as is 2m. 0 is clearly not enough.
The optimum rate is going to be a mix between demand in core services, our need for profit from students and how much infrastructure and housing we can build. ONS predicting 4m over 10 years, which seems both a reasonable estimate based on last 10 years, and something we can manage if we are pro-active about it.
So currently I would say the answer to targeting is in the 250-500k per year range. And the current level is probably too much if sustained for a decade, much above the current rate would be too high.
Other opinions will of course differ and that is fine and part of political debate.
Very good - now try saying that in politics.
The problem is that rational debate has been removed.
Bit like the NHS, where a shouty match about "more" is all we ever seem to get. More of what?
Has this morning’s debate not been rational?
This is a somewhat unusual forum in exactly that respect.
Try challenging the triple lock in politics, in public, for example. You'll have death threats within the minute.
eg The Telegraph reporting "fury" that pensioners received no benefit from cutting National Insurance.
Well, that's because they don't pay it at all.
“Fury at” is one of those journalistic shorthand’s isn’t it, like “police quiz x”, “romp”, “beleaguered” / “embattled”, “Britons”.
My particular favourite is 'boffin'. Never met one (despite 30 years in science), don't know what one is, but the media love 'em.
I thought you were a boffin?
Definitely not. I'm a scientician
Ah ok. So this begs the question, what is a boffin? Eg my brother is a Maths Prof. Is he a boffin? I've always thought so but it's only now, because of this exchange, that I'm giving it some proper thought.
WW2 slang for a scientist or engineer in R&D - RAE Farnborough, the radar developers at TRE, operational research in the navy, physiologists studying life support mechanics in aircraft and subs, and so on. Civilian, not uniformed. Overtones of strangeness/nerdiness/incomprehensible brainpower but also respect (when they came up with the goods).
But consider that one of the classic boffin images was Prof Peabody in the Eagle.
Carried on into postwar usage and fossilised into a calcified cyst in the brains of tabloid journalists.
See Francis Spufford's "Backroom Boys". Interesting combination of eccentric and practical. And with an alarming tendency to know something about everything.
Snap! Just like Prof P in that cartoon excerpt, indeed.
I 'think' the term boffin relates to scientists that are rather detached from the real world (perhaps the scientist in the Simpsons, for instance). All the scientists I know and work with are not at all like that. Most are complex souls with families and hobbies the same as the rest of the population.
Of course the really good profs can be a bit extreme. To make it in academia you often need to put in a lot of out of hours work (evenings and weekends writing grants, papers etc). Those who are really driven excel at doing this and reach the top. They often find it hard to retire, as they have less outside interests. But even for them, most are thoroughly grounded.
I once had a conversation with a lay person (a neighbour) about creativity. I told her I think the scientists are some of the most creative people I know. New discoveries don't just happen.
Good morning. Here is the nub of the issue. What sort of immigration is unpopular? Arguably it is the "illegal" sort - but how is this defined and how is it counted? It is far too easy to look at ever increasing gross numbers and project those onto the segment of immigrants we don't like. Anyway good news for the Tories in the figures quoted. Only 2% of those polled generally don't like the Government so 98% up for grabs.
"Immigration" is unpopular. "Illegal" is the "I'm not a racist" shield.
Immigration is unpopular.
Immigration for nurses is not unpopular. Immigration for care home workers is not unpopular. Immigration for highly skilled roles generally is not unpopular. Immigration for Ukrainians invaded by Russians is not unpopular Immigration for Hong Kongers escaping the Chinese is not unpopular. Immigration from students improves our already bad balance of payments by £40bn and saves the taxpayer a lot in university funding.
So yes immigration is unpopular but that doesn't mean stopping it would be popular either.
Oh, absolutely - that's exactly my point. It is *only* unpopular in the racism sense, not the practical sense.
I disagree with that - it is mostly unpopular because we don't build the infrastructure and houses at a rate that matches expected immigration. At best we build it to match the level of immigration the politicians promise which is very innaccurate and always too low for reality.
Do you have evidence that this is why? I think immigration is mostly unpopular because some voters have racist/xenophobic tendencies or just don’t like change, and because some politicians/commentators/newspapers blame immigration for numerous ills.
Concern around immigration in topic polling tends to be driven by the amount politicians are talking about immigration, I suggest.
Is lack of infrastructure was the problem, you’d expect anti-immigration polling to be higher in areas of high immigration and high housing costs, like London. But it isn’t.
If immigration were spread evenly across the country, it would be less of an issue. But it isn't. It is still uncommon to see a non-white person in the SW outside Bristol and to a lesser extent Exeter, where non-white faces are often students rather than family groups. It's further from London, very limited rented accommodation, fewer opportunities for black economy jobs ties for them to take advantage/be taken advantage of - and no familiar communities to be part of. Immigration is generally not a doorstep issue down here - housing is though, despite no pressure to compete with immigrants. Schools are far less affected, hospitals more so - but that is incoming oldies fighting for a hip or knee replacement with other incoming oldies.
The only time you hear it is people who have moved down here, usually from the West Midlands. Retirement migration to the SW has been going on for decades. They would have come anyway, but claiming Brum or the Black Country is "not what it was" gives some rationale for upping sticks. Whilst you will find the occasional out-and-out racist, most of those who feel edged out have no personal beef one-on-one with immigrants. Their beef is change, the rapid rate of that change, and the loss of what they knew before. It gives them a reason on their own terms for doing what they would have done anyway: move.
Yes, I think lots of people don’t like change. There’s plenty of change I don’t like. I’m not saying there’s anything necessarily wrong with not liking change.
Again, though, is the change experienced largely due to immigration, or is it due to diverse other factors and immigration is the convenient scapegoat? It’s easy to blame change on the people moving in.
It's a combination
1) Change 2) The repeated emphasis on "You are not allowed to stop the change. You are not allowed to oppose the change. If the change has any negative consequences, then that's your problem"
2) is especially the problem in a modern democracy.
That seems to me like a lopsided characterisation. A huge amount of modern democracy is directed at stopping change: see NIMBYs! The ruling party for the last 14 years has been a party called the Conservatives, a name that describes their feelings towards change.
But, yes, there is a lot of change, of multiple types, economic, social, and different political groups have differing views on what change is good or bad.
In thecae of immigration, there has been a definite attempt make any opposition, to any level of it, beyond political discourse.
Seeing as it is quite regularly the number one topic, it doesn't seem to have been a very effective or impactful attempt......
OK - How much immigration is too much? How much immigration should the government be targeting?
10m a year net is clearly too much, as is 5m, as is 2m. 0 is clearly not enough.
The optimum rate is going to be a mix between demand in core services, our need for profit from students and how much infrastructure and housing we can build. ONS predicting 4m over 10 years, which seems both a reasonable estimate based on last 10 years, and something we can manage if we are pro-active about it.
So currently I would say the answer to targeting is in the 250-500k per year range. And the current level is probably too much if sustained for a decade, much above the current rate would be too high.
Other opinions will of course differ and that is fine and part of political debate.
Very good - now try saying that in politics.
The problem is that rational debate has been removed.
Bit like the NHS, where a shouty match about "more" is all we ever seem to get. More of what?
Has this morning’s debate not been rational?
This is a somewhat unusual forum in exactly that respect.
Try challenging the triple lock in politics, in public, for example. You'll have death threats within the minute.
eg The Telegraph reporting "fury" that pensioners received no benefit from cutting National Insurance.
Well, that's because they don't pay it at all.
“Fury at” is one of those journalistic shorthand’s isn’t it, like “police quiz x”, “romp”, “beleaguered” / “embattled”, “Britons”.
My particular favourite is 'boffin'. Never met one (despite 30 years in science), don't know what one is, but the media love 'em.
I thought you were a boffin?
Definitely not. I'm a scientician
Ah ok. So this begs the question, what is a boffin? Eg my brother is a Maths Prof. Is he a boffin? I've always thought so but it's only now, because of this exchange, that I'm giving it some proper thought.
I 'think' the term boffin relates to scientists that are rather detached from the real world (perhaps the scientist in the Simpsons, for instance). All the scientists I know and work with are not at all like that. Most are complex souls with families and hobbies the same as the rest of the population.
Of course the really good profs can be a bit extreme. To make it in academia you often need to put in a lot of out of hours work (evenings and weekends writing grants, papers etc). Those who are really driven excel at doing this and reach the top. They often find it hard to retire, as they have less outside interests. But even for them, most are thoroughly grounded.
I once had a conversation with a lay person (a neighbour) about creativity. I told her I think the scientists are some of the most creative people I know. New discoveries don't just happen.
I think boffin has the implication of physical hardware - theoretical maths, on it's own, isn't enough.
It's the combination of "beyond ordinary ken" theoretical knowledge and the ability to spanner up a death ray from a valve TV.
Good morning. Here is the nub of the issue. What sort of immigration is unpopular? Arguably it is the "illegal" sort - but how is this defined and how is it counted? It is far too easy to look at ever increasing gross numbers and project those onto the segment of immigrants we don't like. Anyway good news for the Tories in the figures quoted. Only 2% of those polled generally don't like the Government so 98% up for grabs.
"Immigration" is unpopular. "Illegal" is the "I'm not a racist" shield.
Immigration is unpopular.
Immigration for nurses is not unpopular. Immigration for care home workers is not unpopular. Immigration for highly skilled roles generally is not unpopular. Immigration for Ukrainians invaded by Russians is not unpopular Immigration for Hong Kongers escaping the Chinese is not unpopular. Immigration from students improves our already bad balance of payments by £40bn and saves the taxpayer a lot in university funding.
So yes immigration is unpopular but that doesn't mean stopping it would be popular either.
Oh, absolutely - that's exactly my point. It is *only* unpopular in the racism sense, not the practical sense.
I disagree with that - it is mostly unpopular because we don't build the infrastructure and houses at a rate that matches expected immigration. At best we build it to match the level of immigration the politicians promise which is very innaccurate and always too low for reality.
Do you have evidence that this is why? I think immigration is mostly unpopular because some voters have racist/xenophobic tendencies or just don’t like change, and because some politicians/commentators/newspapers blame immigration for numerous ills.
Concern around immigration in topic polling tends to be driven by the amount politicians are talking about immigration, I suggest.
Is lack of infrastructure was the problem, you’d expect anti-immigration polling to be higher in areas of high immigration and high housing costs, like London. But it isn’t.
If immigration were spread evenly across the country, it would be less of an issue. But it isn't. It is still uncommon to see a non-white person in the SW outside Bristol and to a lesser extent Exeter, where non-white faces are often students rather than family groups. It's further from London, very limited rented accommodation, fewer opportunities for black economy jobs ties for them to take advantage/be taken advantage of - and no familiar communities to be part of. Immigration is generally not a doorstep issue down here - housing is though, despite no pressure to compete with immigrants. Schools are far less affected, hospitals more so - but that is incoming oldies fighting for a hip or knee replacement with other incoming oldies.
The only time you hear it is people who have moved down here, usually from the West Midlands. Retirement migration to the SW has been going on for decades. They would have come anyway, but claiming Brum or the Black Country is "not what it was" gives some rationale for upping sticks. Whilst you will find the occasional out-and-out racist, most of those who feel edged out have no personal beef one-on-one with immigrants. Their beef is change, the rapid rate of that change, and the loss of what they knew before. It gives them a reason on their own terms for doing what they would have done anyway: move.
Yes, I think lots of people don’t like change. There’s plenty of change I don’t like. I’m not saying there’s anything necessarily wrong with not liking change.
Again, though, is the change experienced largely due to immigration, or is it due to diverse other factors and immigration is the convenient scapegoat? It’s easy to blame change on the people moving in.
It's a combination
1) Change 2) The repeated emphasis on "You are not allowed to stop the change. You are not allowed to oppose the change. If the change has any negative consequences, then that's your problem"
2) is especially the problem in a modern democracy.
That seems to me like a lopsided characterisation. A huge amount of modern democracy is directed at stopping change: see NIMBYs! The ruling party for the last 14 years has been a party called the Conservatives, a name that describes their feelings towards change.
But, yes, there is a lot of change, of multiple types, economic, social, and different political groups have differing views on what change is good or bad.
In thecae of immigration, there has been a definite attempt make any opposition, to any level of it, beyond political discourse.
Seeing as it is quite regularly the number one topic, it doesn't seem to have been a very effective or impactful attempt......
OK - How much immigration is too much? How much immigration should the government be targeting?
10m a year net is clearly too much, as is 5m, as is 2m. 0 is clearly not enough.
The optimum rate is going to be a mix between demand in core services, our need for profit from students and how much infrastructure and housing we can build. ONS predicting 4m over 10 years, which seems both a reasonable estimate based on last 10 years, and something we can manage if we are pro-active about it.
So currently I would say the answer to targeting is in the 250-500k per year range. And the current level is probably too much if sustained for a decade, much above the current rate would be too high.
Other opinions will of course differ and that is fine and part of political debate.
Very good - now try saying that in politics.
The problem is that rational debate has been removed.
Bit like the NHS, where a shouty match about "more" is all we ever seem to get. More of what?
Has this morning’s debate not been rational?
This is a somewhat unusual forum in exactly that respect.
Try challenging the triple lock in politics, in public, for example. You'll have death threats within the minute.
eg The Telegraph reporting "fury" that pensioners received no benefit from cutting National Insurance.
Well, that's because they don't pay it at all.
“Fury at” is one of those journalistic shorthand’s isn’t it, like “police quiz x”, “romp”, “beleaguered” / “embattled”, “Britons”.
My particular favourite is 'boffin'. Never met one (despite 30 years in science), don't know what one is, but the media love 'em.
I thought you were a boffin?
Key moment for me at school, that. Y7, I think (1st year secondary school). Group of fellow Y7s accosts me in classroom, sniggering a bit - "Are you a boff?". I said something like "Dunno, what's a boff?", which ruined the moment for them a bit and, after it being explained as well as they could, agreed that yes, I probably was. Just instinct as I didn't really see anything wrong with the definition, so it seemed to make sense to agree, but left them all looking a bit sheepish ("Oh, right"/"Well, at least he admits it") and moving off to find another victim. The intention presumably was for me to be hurt/deny it and then to be teased about being a boff.
Looking back, it was definitely the right response, but I didn't really think about it at the time, I just genuinely didn't find the term offensive. I was a fairly tall lad and a pugnacious little shit (squared up to a - shorter - Y8 who shoved me in the corridor in first week at the school) so I never really had anyone physically trying to bully me, but had I been hurt by and reacted to 'boff' it would no doubt have followed me for years.
I'm definitely one of the boffins now, I guess. As is Turbo
Owning your boffdom. Excellent. So did I. I was a swot at school but wasn't hassled because I hung out with the other swots. We stuck together. The bad boys were scared of our facility to bamboozle with numbers and to mock in Latin (we were academic all-rounders) so they left us alone.
I don't think Labour would have any objection to a result along those lines.
Trend says 38/33 type result imo
I think SKS would take that.
I'd take anything that gives a labour majority, as thats what my betfair account needs...
NOM nailed on 😃
Assuming NOM = nailed on majority, I agree
(Mind you, I've got a few lost stranded £ on NOM from ages ago, so the result would be nice financially - and, indeed politically for me if it led to stable Lab-Lib coalition. But I won't be holding my breath for it!)
Wouldn't 'nailed on majority nailed on' be a tautology?
Isn't BJO in Yorkshire? I don't know why I assume this - Owls a reference to Sheffield Wednesday? We like to repeat ourselves a bit in case people weren't listening.
"Nailed on majority. Nailed on."
"Legendary modesty. Legendary."
He missed the full stop, but I can forgive that
Hmm, Sheffield… could BJO actually be Jared O’Mara?
Or TSE's alter ego!
Come to think of it has anyone ever seen TSE and me in the same room
Apart from Cineworld and various other Centertainment / Meadowhall employees
I 'think' the term boffin relates to scientists that are rather detached from the real world (perhaps the scientist in the Simpsons, for instance). All the scientists I know and work with are not at all like that. Most are complex souls with families and hobbies the same as the rest of the population.
Of course the really good profs can be a bit extreme. To make it in academia you often need to put in a lot of out of hours work (evenings and weekends writing grants, papers etc). Those who are really driven excel at doing this and reach the top. They often find it hard to retire, as they have less outside interests. But even for them, most are thoroughly grounded.
I once had a conversation with a lay person (a neighbour) about creativity. I told her I think the scientists are some of the most creative people I know. New discoveries don't just happen.
Complete with involvement in Black Knight too! I hadn't realised. Definitely a boffin as you say.
And how the UK nearly had a start in tidal power:
'In 1982, after eight years of development under Salter’s direction at Edinburgh University, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) was asked by the government to see if the duck might be a cost-effective way of making large quantities of electricity. To the great surprise of Salter, and others, the UKAEA came to the conclusion that it was uneconomic, and that no further government funding should be given to the project.
A decade later it emerged that thanks to a misplaced decimal point, the review had made Salter’s duck look 10 times more expensive than the experiments showed it was likely to be. The UKAEA claimed this was just a mistake, but Salter, who had never been allowed to see the results of the secret evaluation, put it another way: asking the nuclear industry to evaluate an alternative source of energy was like putting King Herod in charge of a children’s home, he suggested.'
Go to the poll of polls. Starting in 2022, draw a trend line through labour and conservative ratings and get back to me about trends. FYI, one poll is not a trend
Im sort of with BJO on this (the trend, not the rest of his ideological apparatus). There is I think a tightening between the blocs, and a decline in Labour favourability, that’s being hidden by the Reform rise.
I am.just not seeing it the poll of polls. They regularly undulate back and forth. It would take a more decisive shift for me to call it. I guess I would have to do a t-test to prove it. But eyeballing the running average of tory and labour support I would say it is overall still widening.
Love the comedy heart at the end as you pray for a Tory win.
If BJO the last Tory backer here? @HYUFD seems to have gone off the boil. Or is that the radiator in his Covanenter?
I don't think Covenanter radiators were ever off the boil! (And, for those who don't know, neither was the poor driver who was put next to it in that awful travesty of a tank.)
Go to the poll of polls. Starting in 2022, draw a trend line through labour and conservative ratings and get back to me about trends. FYI, one poll is not a trend
Im sort of with BJO on this (the trend, not the rest of his ideological apparatus). There is I think a tightening between the blocs, and a decline in Labour favourability, that’s being hidden by the Reform rise.
I am.just not seeing it the poll of polls. They regularly undulate back and forth. It would take a more decisive shift for me to call it. I guess I would have to do a t-test to prove it. But eyeballing the running average of tory and labour support I would say it is overall still widening.
4th poll of the week this one shows a 3% drop in Lab lead to 15 confirms the trend
I don't think Labour would have any objection to a result along those lines.
Trend says 38/33 type result imo
I think SKS would take that.
I'd take anything that gives a labour majority, as thats what my betfair account needs...
NOM nailed on 😃
Assuming NOM = nailed on majority, I agree
(Mind you, I've got a few lost stranded £ on NOM from ages ago, so the result would be nice financially - and, indeed politically for me if it led to stable Lab-Lib coalition. But I won't be holding my breath for it!)
Wouldn't 'nailed on majority nailed on' be a tautology?
Isn't BJO in Yorkshire? I don't know why I assume this - Owls a reference to Sheffield Wednesday? We like to repeat ourselves a bit in case people weren't listening.
"Nailed on majority. Nailed on."
"Legendary modesty. Legendary."
He missed the full stop, but I can forgive that
Hmm, Sheffield… could BJO actually be Jared O’Mara?
Or TSE's alter ego!
Come to think of it has anyone ever seen TSE and me in the same room
Apart from Cineworld and various other Centertainment / Meadowhall employees
Good morning. Here is the nub of the issue. What sort of immigration is unpopular? Arguably it is the "illegal" sort - but how is this defined and how is it counted? It is far too easy to look at ever increasing gross numbers and project those onto the segment of immigrants we don't like. Anyway good news for the Tories in the figures quoted. Only 2% of those polled generally don't like the Government so 98% up for grabs.
"Immigration" is unpopular. "Illegal" is the "I'm not a racist" shield.
Immigration is unpopular.
Immigration for nurses is not unpopular. Immigration for care home workers is not unpopular. Immigration for highly skilled roles generally is not unpopular. Immigration for Ukrainians invaded by Russians is not unpopular Immigration for Hong Kongers escaping the Chinese is not unpopular. Immigration from students improves our already bad balance of payments by £40bn and saves the taxpayer a lot in university funding.
So yes immigration is unpopular but that doesn't mean stopping it would be popular either.
Oh, absolutely - that's exactly my point. It is *only* unpopular in the racism sense, not the practical sense.
I disagree with that - it is mostly unpopular because we don't build the infrastructure and houses at a rate that matches expected immigration. At best we build it to match the level of immigration the politicians promise which is very innaccurate and always too low for reality.
Do you have evidence that this is why? I think immigration is mostly unpopular because some voters have racist/xenophobic tendencies or just don’t like change, and because some politicians/commentators/newspapers blame immigration for numerous ills.
Concern around immigration in topic polling tends to be driven by the amount politicians are talking about immigration, I suggest.
Is lack of infrastructure was the problem, you’d expect anti-immigration polling to be higher in areas of high immigration and high housing costs, like London. But it isn’t.
If immigration were spread evenly across the country, it would be less of an issue. But it isn't. It is still uncommon to see a non-white person in the SW outside Bristol and to a lesser extent Exeter, where non-white faces are often students rather than family groups. It's further from London, very limited rented accommodation, fewer opportunities for black economy jobs ties for them to take advantage/be taken advantage of - and no familiar communities to be part of. Immigration is generally not a doorstep issue down here - housing is though, despite no pressure to compete with immigrants. Schools are far less affected, hospitals more so - but that is incoming oldies fighting for a hip or knee replacement with other incoming oldies.
The only time you hear it is people who have moved down here, usually from the West Midlands. Retirement migration to the SW has been going on for decades. They would have come anyway, but claiming Brum or the Black Country is "not what it was" gives some rationale for upping sticks. Whilst you will find the occasional out-and-out racist, most of those who feel edged out have no personal beef one-on-one with immigrants. Their beef is change, the rapid rate of that change, and the loss of what they knew before. It gives them a reason on their own terms for doing what they would have done anyway: move.
Yes, I think lots of people don’t like change. There’s plenty of change I don’t like. I’m not saying there’s anything necessarily wrong with not liking change.
Again, though, is the change experienced largely due to immigration, or is it due to diverse other factors and immigration is the convenient scapegoat? It’s easy to blame change on the people moving in.
It's a combination
1) Change 2) The repeated emphasis on "You are not allowed to stop the change. You are not allowed to oppose the change. If the change has any negative consequences, then that's your problem"
2) is especially the problem in a modern democracy.
That seems to me like a lopsided characterisation. A huge amount of modern democracy is directed at stopping change: see NIMBYs! The ruling party for the last 14 years has been a party called the Conservatives, a name that describes their feelings towards change.
But, yes, there is a lot of change, of multiple types, economic, social, and different political groups have differing views on what change is good or bad.
In thecae of immigration, there has been a definite attempt make any opposition, to any level of it, beyond political discourse.
Seeing as it is quite regularly the number one topic, it doesn't seem to have been a very effective or impactful attempt......
OK - How much immigration is too much? How much immigration should the government be targeting?
10m a year net is clearly too much, as is 5m, as is 2m. 0 is clearly not enough.
The optimum rate is going to be a mix between demand in core services, our need for profit from students and how much infrastructure and housing we can build. ONS predicting 4m over 10 years, which seems both a reasonable estimate based on last 10 years, and something we can manage if we are pro-active about it.
So currently I would say the answer to targeting is in the 250-500k per year range. And the current level is probably too much if sustained for a decade, much above the current rate would be too high.
Other opinions will of course differ and that is fine and part of political debate.
Very good - now try saying that in politics.
The problem is that rational debate has been removed.
Bit like the NHS, where a shouty match about "more" is all we ever seem to get. More of what?
Has this morning’s debate not been rational?
This is a somewhat unusual forum in exactly that respect.
Try challenging the triple lock in politics, in public, for example. You'll have death threats within the minute.
eg The Telegraph reporting "fury" that pensioners received no benefit from cutting National Insurance.
Well, that's because they don't pay it at all.
“Fury at” is one of those journalistic shorthand’s isn’t it, like “police quiz x”, “romp”, “beleaguered” / “embattled”, “Britons”.
My particular favourite is 'boffin'. Never met one (despite 30 years in science), don't know what one is, but the media love 'em.
I thought you were a boffin?
Key moment for me at school, that. Y7, I think (1st year secondary school). Group of fellow Y7s accosts me in classroom, sniggering a bit - "Are you a boff?". I said something like "Dunno, what's a boff?", which ruined the moment for them a bit and, after it being explained as well as they could, agreed that yes, I probably was. Just instinct as I didn't really see anything wrong with the definition, so it seemed to make sense to agree, but left them all looking a bit sheepish ("Oh, right"/"Well, at least he admits it") and moving off to find another victim. The intention presumably was for me to be hurt/deny it and then to be teased about being a boff.
Looking back, it was definitely the right response, but I didn't really think about it at the time, I just genuinely didn't find the term offensive. I was a fairly tall lad and a pugnacious little shit (squared up to a - shorter - Y8 who shoved me in the corridor in first week at the school) so I never really had anyone physically trying to bully me, but had I been hurt by and reacted to 'boff' it would no doubt have followed me for years.
I'm definitely one of the boffins now, I guess. As is Turbo
Owning your boffdom. Excellent. So did I. I was a swot at school but wasn't hassled because I hung out with the other swots. We stuck together. The bad boys were scared of our facility to bamboozle with numbers and to mock in Latin (we were academic all-rounders) so they left us alone.
I don't remember ever hearing anyone called a swot at school - one of those terms that had just passed out of use, I guess. I hung out with the bad kids, which also worked for me (lived on a street with a fair mix and we were all quite close growing up, from pre-school onwards). Not that it was exactly the badlands.
Go to the poll of polls. Starting in 2022, draw a trend line through labour and conservative ratings and get back to me about trends. FYI, one poll is not a trend
Im sort of with BJO on this (the trend, not the rest of his ideological apparatus). There is I think a tightening between the blocs, and a decline in Labour favourability, that’s being hidden by the Reform rise.
I am.just not seeing it the poll of polls. They regularly undulate back and forth. It would take a more decisive shift for me to call it. I guess I would have to do a t-test to prove it. But eyeballing the running average of tory and labour support I would say it is overall still widening.
The Starmer favourability stats have been closing in - still better than Tory front bench but less so. The Lab-Con gap has stayed pretty stable or even increased a bit but bear in mind that's at a time the Reform vote has jumped up by at least 5 or 6% and Tories have gone down by almost that much (while Green and LD stay fairly stable). If you unwound that very recent Reform surge wholly or partly you'd see the gap tightening.
Hence why I say Reform's high polling is hiding the small tightening.
Good morning. Here is the nub of the issue. What sort of immigration is unpopular? Arguably it is the "illegal" sort - but how is this defined and how is it counted? It is far too easy to look at ever increasing gross numbers and project those onto the segment of immigrants we don't like. Anyway good news for the Tories in the figures quoted. Only 2% of those polled generally don't like the Government so 98% up for grabs.
"Immigration" is unpopular. "Illegal" is the "I'm not a racist" shield.
Immigration is unpopular.
Immigration for nurses is not unpopular. Immigration for care home workers is not unpopular. Immigration for highly skilled roles generally is not unpopular. Immigration for Ukrainians invaded by Russians is not unpopular Immigration for Hong Kongers escaping the Chinese is not unpopular. Immigration from students improves our already bad balance of payments by £40bn and saves the taxpayer a lot in university funding.
So yes immigration is unpopular but that doesn't mean stopping it would be popular either.
Oh, absolutely - that's exactly my point. It is *only* unpopular in the racism sense, not the practical sense.
I disagree with that - it is mostly unpopular because we don't build the infrastructure and houses at a rate that matches expected immigration. At best we build it to match the level of immigration the politicians promise which is very innaccurate and always too low for reality.
Do you have evidence that this is why? I think immigration is mostly unpopular because some voters have racist/xenophobic tendencies or just don’t like change, and because some politicians/commentators/newspapers blame immigration for numerous ills.
Concern around immigration in topic polling tends to be driven by the amount politicians are talking about immigration, I suggest.
Is lack of infrastructure was the problem, you’d expect anti-immigration polling to be higher in areas of high immigration and high housing costs, like London. But it isn’t.
If immigration were spread evenly across the country, it would be less of an issue. But it isn't. It is still uncommon to see a non-white person in the SW outside Bristol and to a lesser extent Exeter, where non-white faces are often students rather than family groups. It's further from London, very limited rented accommodation, fewer opportunities for black economy jobs ties for them to take advantage/be taken advantage of - and no familiar communities to be part of. Immigration is generally not a doorstep issue down here - housing is though, despite no pressure to compete with immigrants. Schools are far less affected, hospitals more so - but that is incoming oldies fighting for a hip or knee replacement with other incoming oldies.
The only time you hear it is people who have moved down here, usually from the West Midlands. Retirement migration to the SW has been going on for decades. They would have come anyway, but claiming Brum or the Black Country is "not what it was" gives some rationale for upping sticks. Whilst you will find the occasional out-and-out racist, most of those who feel edged out have no personal beef one-on-one with immigrants. Their beef is change, the rapid rate of that change, and the loss of what they knew before. It gives them a reason on their own terms for doing what they would have done anyway: move.
Yes, I think lots of people don’t like change. There’s plenty of change I don’t like. I’m not saying there’s anything necessarily wrong with not liking change.
Again, though, is the change experienced largely due to immigration, or is it due to diverse other factors and immigration is the convenient scapegoat? It’s easy to blame change on the people moving in.
It's a combination
1) Change 2) The repeated emphasis on "You are not allowed to stop the change. You are not allowed to oppose the change. If the change has any negative consequences, then that's your problem"
2) is especially the problem in a modern democracy.
That seems to me like a lopsided characterisation. A huge amount of modern democracy is directed at stopping change: see NIMBYs! The ruling party for the last 14 years has been a party called the Conservatives, a name that describes their feelings towards change.
But, yes, there is a lot of change, of multiple types, economic, social, and different political groups have differing views on what change is good or bad.
In thecae of immigration, there has been a definite attempt make any opposition, to any level of it, beyond political discourse.
Seeing as it is quite regularly the number one topic, it doesn't seem to have been a very effective or impactful attempt......
OK - How much immigration is too much? How much immigration should the government be targeting?
10m a year net is clearly too much, as is 5m, as is 2m. 0 is clearly not enough.
The optimum rate is going to be a mix between demand in core services, our need for profit from students and how much infrastructure and housing we can build. ONS predicting 4m over 10 years, which seems both a reasonable estimate based on last 10 years, and something we can manage if we are pro-active about it.
So currently I would say the answer to targeting is in the 250-500k per year range. And the current level is probably too much if sustained for a decade, much above the current rate would be too high.
Other opinions will of course differ and that is fine and part of political debate.
Very good - now try saying that in politics.
The problem is that rational debate has been removed.
Bit like the NHS, where a shouty match about "more" is all we ever seem to get. More of what?
Has this morning’s debate not been rational?
This is a somewhat unusual forum in exactly that respect.
Try challenging the triple lock in politics, in public, for example. You'll have death threats within the minute.
eg The Telegraph reporting "fury" that pensioners received no benefit from cutting National Insurance.
Well, that's because they don't pay it at all.
“Fury at” is one of those journalistic shorthand’s isn’t it, like “police quiz x”, “romp”, “beleaguered” / “embattled”, “Britons”.
My particular favourite is 'boffin'. Never met one (despite 30 years in science), don't know what one is, but the media love 'em.
I thought you were a boffin?
Key moment for me at school, that. Y7, I think (1st year secondary school). Group of fellow Y7s accosts me in classroom, sniggering a bit - "Are you a boff?". I said something like "Dunno, what's a boff?", which ruined the moment for them a bit and, after it being explained as well as they could, agreed that yes, I probably was. Just instinct as I didn't really see anything wrong with the definition, so it seemed to make sense to agree, but left them all looking a bit sheepish ("Oh, right"/"Well, at least he admits it") and moving off to find another victim. The intention presumably was for me to be hurt/deny it and then to be teased about being a boff.
Looking back, it was definitely the right response, but I didn't really think about it at the time, I just genuinely didn't find the term offensive. I was a fairly tall lad and a pugnacious little shit (squared up to a - shorter - Y8 who shoved me in the corridor in first week at the school) so I never really had anyone physically trying to bully me, but had I been hurt by and reacted to 'boff' it would no doubt have followed me for years.
I'm definitely one of the boffins now, I guess. As is Turbo
Owning your boffdom. Excellent. So did I. I was a swot at school but wasn't hassled because I hung out with the other swots. We stuck together. The bad boys were scared of our facility to bamboozle with numbers and to mock in Latin (we were academic all-rounders) so they left us alone.
I don't remember ever hearing anyone called a swot at school - one of those terms that had just passed out of use, I guess. I hung out with the bad kids, which also worked for me (lived on a street with a fair mix and we were all quite close growing up, from pre-school onwards). Not that it was exactly the badlands.
Unless one is Boris Johnson? "Girly swot" was, on checking, 2019.
Go to the poll of polls. Starting in 2022, draw a trend line through labour and conservative ratings and get back to me about trends. FYI, one poll is not a trend
Im sort of with BJO on this (the trend, not the rest of his ideological apparatus). There is I think a tightening between the blocs, and a decline in Labour favourability, that’s being hidden by the Reform rise.
I am.just not seeing it the poll of polls. They regularly undulate back and forth. It would take a more decisive shift for me to call it. I guess I would have to do a t-test to prove it. But eyeballing the running average of tory and labour support I would say it is overall still widening.
4th poll of the week this one shows a 3% drop in Lab lead to 15 confirms the trend
Go to the poll of polls. Starting in 2022, draw a trend line through labour and conservative ratings and get back to me about trends. FYI, one poll is not a trend
Im sort of with BJO on this (the trend, not the rest of his ideological apparatus). There is I think a tightening between the blocs, and a decline in Labour favourability, that’s being hidden by the Reform rise.
I am.just not seeing it the poll of polls. They regularly undulate back and forth. It would take a more decisive shift for me to call it. I guess I would have to do a t-test to prove it. But eyeballing the running average of tory and labour support I would say it is overall still widening.
4th poll of the week this one shows a 3% drop in Lab lead to 15 confirms the trend
It's far too early to call it a trend but if it's not noise, I am intrigued about what might have caused it. (I am ruling out the possibility that the rest of the country have suddenly seen the BJO light.)
We still have a final weekend of Q1. For the purposes of the PB prediction competition question 1 will we see a new lowest Labour lead?
I very much doubt it: the lowest Labour lead in Q1 to date is the 11% lead from More in Common (7-11 Feb).
Love the comedy heart at the end as you pray for a Tory win.
If BJO the last Tory backer here? @HYUFD seems to have gone off the boil. Or is that the radiator in his Covanenter?
NOM backer and four figure winner if it happens. If not any Lab majority of less than the size of the Socialist Campaign group / Greens / Jezza / George will be a poor 2nd.
Go to the poll of polls. Starting in 2022, draw a trend line through labour and conservative ratings and get back to me about trends. FYI, one poll is not a trend
Im sort of with BJO on this (the trend, not the rest of his ideological apparatus). There is I think a tightening between the blocs, and a decline in Labour favourability, that’s being hidden by the Reform rise.
I am.just not seeing it the poll of polls. They regularly undulate back and forth. It would take a more decisive shift for me to call it. I guess I would have to do a t-test to prove it. But eyeballing the running average of tory and labour support I would say it is overall still widening.
4th poll of the week this one shows a 3% drop in Lab lead to 15 confirms the trend
It's far too early to call it a trend but if it's not noise, I am intrigued about what might have caused it. (I am ruling out the possibility that the rest of the country have suddenly seen the BJO light.)
We still have a final weekend of Q1. For the purposes of the PB prediction competition question 1 will we see a new lowest Labour lead? The current lowest Labour lead in Q1 is, I believe, the 11% lead from More in Common (7-11 Feb).
Can't say I am particularly optimistic about my 7% at this point.
Go to the poll of polls. Starting in 2022, draw a trend line through labour and conservative ratings and get back to me about trends. FYI, one poll is not a trend
Im sort of with BJO on this (the trend, not the rest of his ideological apparatus). There is I think a tightening between the blocs, and a decline in Labour favourability, that’s being hidden by the Reform rise.
I am.just not seeing it the poll of polls. They regularly undulate back and forth. It would take a more decisive shift for me to call it. I guess I would have to do a t-test to prove it. But eyeballing the running average of tory and labour support I would say it is overall still widening.
4th poll of the week this one shows a 3% drop in Lab lead to 15 confirms the trend
Love the comedy heart at the end as you pray for a Tory win.
Aren't all red and blue voters praying for a Tory win, of one of the varieties.
Us Greens want a couple of extra seats and a highest ever vote for the planet savers
You would rather the happy vindication of being proved right by a Tory victory at the next election, than the irritation of being proved wrong by a thumping Labour victory. Fair enough - vindication can be an intoxicating feeling, if you're comfortably enough off to afford it.
Go to the poll of polls. Starting in 2022, draw a trend line through labour and conservative ratings and get back to me about trends. FYI, one poll is not a trend
Im sort of with BJO on this (the trend, not the rest of his ideological apparatus). There is I think a tightening between the blocs, and a decline in Labour favourability, that’s being hidden by the Reform rise.
I am.just not seeing it the poll of polls. They regularly undulate back and forth. It would take a more decisive shift for me to call it. I guess I would have to do a t-test to prove it. But eyeballing the running average of tory and labour support I would say it is overall still widening.
4th poll of the week this one shows a 3% drop in Lab lead to 15 confirms the trend
It's far too early to call it a trend but if it's not noise, I am intrigued about what might have caused it. (I am ruling out the possibility that the rest of the country have suddenly seen the BJO light.)
We still have a final weekend of Q1. For the purposes of the PB prediction competition question 1 will we see a new lowest Labour lead? The current lowest Labour lead in Q1 is, I believe, the 11% lead from More in Common (7-11 Feb).
A lack of extra spectacular foot shooting by the government, leading to outer layer core vote Conservatives returning?
I don't think Labour would have any objection to a result along those lines.
Trend says 38/33 type result imo
I think SKS would take that.
I'd take anything that gives a labour majority, as thats what my betfair account needs...
NOM nailed on 😃
Assuming NOM = nailed on majority, I agree
(Mind you, I've got a few lost stranded £ on NOM from ages ago, so the result would be nice financially - and, indeed politically for me if it led to stable Lab-Lib coalition. But I won't be holding my breath for it!)
Wouldn't 'nailed on majority nailed on' be a tautology?
Good morning. Here is the nub of the issue. What sort of immigration is unpopular? Arguably it is the "illegal" sort - but how is this defined and how is it counted? It is far too easy to look at ever increasing gross numbers and project those onto the segment of immigrants we don't like. Anyway good news for the Tories in the figures quoted. Only 2% of those polled generally don't like the Government so 98% up for grabs.
"Immigration" is unpopular. "Illegal" is the "I'm not a racist" shield.
Immigration is unpopular.
Immigration for nurses is not unpopular. Immigration for care home workers is not unpopular. Immigration for highly skilled roles generally is not unpopular. Immigration for Ukrainians invaded by Russians is not unpopular Immigration for Hong Kongers escaping the Chinese is not unpopular. Immigration from students improves our already bad balance of payments by £40bn and saves the taxpayer a lot in university funding.
So yes immigration is unpopular but that doesn't mean stopping it would be popular either.
Oh, absolutely - that's exactly my point. It is *only* unpopular in the racism sense, not the practical sense.
I disagree with that - it is mostly unpopular because we don't build the infrastructure and houses at a rate that matches expected immigration. At best we build it to match the level of immigration the politicians promise which is very innaccurate and always too low for reality.
Do you have evidence that this is why? I think immigration is mostly unpopular because some voters have racist/xenophobic tendencies or just don’t like change, and because some politicians/commentators/newspapers blame immigration for numerous ills.
Concern around immigration in topic polling tends to be driven by the amount politicians are talking about immigration, I suggest.
Is lack of infrastructure was the problem, you’d expect anti-immigration polling to be higher in areas of high immigration and high housing costs, like London. But it isn’t.
If immigration were spread evenly across the country, it would be less of an issue. But it isn't. It is still uncommon to see a non-white person in the SW outside Bristol and to a lesser extent Exeter, where non-white faces are often students rather than family groups. It's further from London, very limited rented accommodation, fewer opportunities for black economy jobs ties for them to take advantage/be taken advantage of - and no familiar communities to be part of. Immigration is generally not a doorstep issue down here - housing is though, despite no pressure to compete with immigrants. Schools are far less affected, hospitals more so - but that is incoming oldies fighting for a hip or knee replacement with other incoming oldies.
The only time you hear it is people who have moved down here, usually from the West Midlands. Retirement migration to the SW has been going on for decades. They would have come anyway, but claiming Brum or the Black Country is "not what it was" gives some rationale for upping sticks. Whilst you will find the occasional out-and-out racist, most of those who feel edged out have no personal beef one-on-one with immigrants. Their beef is change, the rapid rate of that change, and the loss of what they knew before. It gives them a reason on their own terms for doing what they would have done anyway: move.
Yes, I think lots of people don’t like change. There’s plenty of change I don’t like. I’m not saying there’s anything necessarily wrong with not liking change.
Again, though, is the change experienced largely due to immigration, or is it due to diverse other factors and immigration is the convenient scapegoat? It’s easy to blame change on the people moving in.
It's a combination
1) Change 2) The repeated emphasis on "You are not allowed to stop the change. You are not allowed to oppose the change. If the change has any negative consequences, then that's your problem"
2) is especially the problem in a modern democracy.
That seems to me like a lopsided characterisation. A huge amount of modern democracy is directed at stopping change: see NIMBYs! The ruling party for the last 14 years has been a party called the Conservatives, a name that describes their feelings towards change.
But, yes, there is a lot of change, of multiple types, economic, social, and different political groups have differing views on what change is good or bad.
In thecae of immigration, there has been a definite attempt make any opposition, to any level of it, beyond political discourse.
Seeing as it is quite regularly the number one topic, it doesn't seem to have been a very effective or impactful attempt......
OK - How much immigration is too much? How much immigration should the government be targeting?
10m a year net is clearly too much, as is 5m, as is 2m. 0 is clearly not enough.
The optimum rate is going to be a mix between demand in core services, our need for profit from students and how much infrastructure and housing we can build. ONS predicting 4m over 10 years, which seems both a reasonable estimate based on last 10 years, and something we can manage if we are pro-active about it.
So currently I would say the answer to targeting is in the 250-500k per year range. And the current level is probably too much if sustained for a decade, much above the current rate would be too high.
Other opinions will of course differ and that is fine and part of political debate.
Very good - now try saying that in politics.
The problem is that rational debate has been removed.
Bit like the NHS, where a shouty match about "more" is all we ever seem to get. More of what?
Has this morning’s debate not been rational?
This is a somewhat unusual forum in exactly that respect.
Try challenging the triple lock in politics, in public, for example. You'll have death threats within the minute.
eg The Telegraph reporting "fury" that pensioners received no benefit from cutting National Insurance.
Well, that's because they don't pay it at all.
“Fury at” is one of those journalistic shorthand’s isn’t it, like “police quiz x”, “romp”, “beleaguered” / “embattled”, “Britons”.
My particular favourite is 'boffin'. Never met one (despite 30 years in science), don't know what one is, but the media love 'em.
I thought you were a boffin?
Key moment for me at school, that. Y7, I think (1st year secondary school). Group of fellow Y7s accosts me in classroom, sniggering a bit - "Are you a boff?". I said something like "Dunno, what's a boff?", which ruined the moment for them a bit and, after it being explained as well as they could, agreed that yes, I probably was. Just instinct as I didn't really see anything wrong with the definition, so it seemed to make sense to agree, but left them all looking a bit sheepish ("Oh, right"/"Well, at least he admits it") and moving off to find another victim. The intention presumably was for me to be hurt/deny it and then to be teased about being a boff.
Looking back, it was definitely the right response, but I didn't really think about it at the time, I just genuinely didn't find the term offensive. I was a fairly tall lad and a pugnacious little shit (squared up to a - shorter - Y8 who shoved me in the corridor in first week at the school) so I never really had anyone physically trying to bully me, but had I been hurt by and reacted to 'boff' it would no doubt have followed me for years.
I'm definitely one of the boffins now, I guess. As is Turbo
Owning your boffdom. Excellent. So did I. I was a swot at school but wasn't hassled because I hung out with the other swots. We stuck together. The bad boys were scared of our facility to bamboozle with numbers and to mock in Latin (we were academic all-rounders) so they left us alone.
I don't remember ever hearing anyone called a swot at school - one of those terms that had just passed out of use, I guess. I hung out with the bad kids, which also worked for me (lived on a street with a fair mix and we were all quite close growing up, from pre-school onwards). Not that it was exactly the badlands.
Unless one is Boris Johnson? "Girly swot" was, on checking, 2019.
Go to the poll of polls. Starting in 2022, draw a trend line through labour and conservative ratings and get back to me about trends. FYI, one poll is not a trend
Im sort of with BJO on this (the trend, not the rest of his ideological apparatus). There is I think a tightening between the blocs, and a decline in Labour favourability, that’s being hidden by the Reform rise.
I am.just not seeing it the poll of polls. They regularly undulate back and forth. It would take a more decisive shift for me to call it. I guess I would have to do a t-test to prove it. But eyeballing the running average of tory and labour support I would say it is overall still widening.
4th poll of the week this one shows a 3% drop in Lab lead to 15 confirms the trend
It's far too early to call it a trend but if it's not noise, I am intrigued about what might have caused it. (I am ruling out the possibility that the rest of the country have suddenly seen the BJO light.)
We still have a final weekend of Q1. For the purposes of the PB prediction competition question 1 will we see a new lowest Labour lead?
I very much doubt it: the lowest Labour lead in Q1 to date is the 11% lead from More in Common (7-11 Feb).
It's been a fairly quiet week, relatively speaking. The Tories creep up in the polls when they're off air. The things that have got us worked up in here, like the London video, won't have registered at all with the general public.
Good morning. Here is the nub of the issue. What sort of immigration is unpopular? Arguably it is the "illegal" sort - but how is this defined and how is it counted? It is far too easy to look at ever increasing gross numbers and project those onto the segment of immigrants we don't like. Anyway good news for the Tories in the figures quoted. Only 2% of those polled generally don't like the Government so 98% up for grabs.
"Immigration" is unpopular. "Illegal" is the "I'm not a racist" shield.
Immigration is unpopular.
Immigration for nurses is not unpopular. Immigration for care home workers is not unpopular. Immigration for highly skilled roles generally is not unpopular. Immigration for Ukrainians invaded by Russians is not unpopular Immigration for Hong Kongers escaping the Chinese is not unpopular. Immigration from students improves our already bad balance of payments by £40bn and saves the taxpayer a lot in university funding.
So yes immigration is unpopular but that doesn't mean stopping it would be popular either.
Oh, absolutely - that's exactly my point. It is *only* unpopular in the racism sense, not the practical sense.
I disagree with that - it is mostly unpopular because we don't build the infrastructure and houses at a rate that matches expected immigration. At best we build it to match the level of immigration the politicians promise which is very innaccurate and always too low for reality.
Do you have evidence that this is why? I think immigration is mostly unpopular because some voters have racist/xenophobic tendencies or just don’t like change, and because some politicians/commentators/newspapers blame immigration for numerous ills.
Concern around immigration in topic polling tends to be driven by the amount politicians are talking about immigration, I suggest.
Is lack of infrastructure was the problem, you’d expect anti-immigration polling to be higher in areas of high immigration and high housing costs, like London. But it isn’t.
If immigration were spread evenly across the country, it would be less of an issue. But it isn't. It is still uncommon to see a non-white person in the SW outside Bristol and to a lesser extent Exeter, where non-white faces are often students rather than family groups. It's further from London, very limited rented accommodation, fewer opportunities for black economy jobs ties for them to take advantage/be taken advantage of - and no familiar communities to be part of. Immigration is generally not a doorstep issue down here - housing is though, despite no pressure to compete with immigrants. Schools are far less affected, hospitals more so - but that is incoming oldies fighting for a hip or knee replacement with other incoming oldies.
The only time you hear it is people who have moved down here, usually from the West Midlands. Retirement migration to the SW has been going on for decades. They would have come anyway, but claiming Brum or the Black Country is "not what it was" gives some rationale for upping sticks. Whilst you will find the occasional out-and-out racist, most of those who feel edged out have no personal beef one-on-one with immigrants. Their beef is change, the rapid rate of that change, and the loss of what they knew before. It gives them a reason on their own terms for doing what they would have done anyway: move.
Yes, I think lots of people don’t like change. There’s plenty of change I don’t like. I’m not saying there’s anything necessarily wrong with not liking change.
Again, though, is the change experienced largely due to immigration, or is it due to diverse other factors and immigration is the convenient scapegoat? It’s easy to blame change on the people moving in.
It's a combination
1) Change 2) The repeated emphasis on "You are not allowed to stop the change. You are not allowed to oppose the change. If the change has any negative consequences, then that's your problem"
2) is especially the problem in a modern democracy.
That seems to me like a lopsided characterisation. A huge amount of modern democracy is directed at stopping change: see NIMBYs! The ruling party for the last 14 years has been a party called the Conservatives, a name that describes their feelings towards change.
But, yes, there is a lot of change, of multiple types, economic, social, and different political groups have differing views on what change is good or bad.
In thecae of immigration, there has been a definite attempt make any opposition, to any level of it, beyond political discourse.
Seeing as it is quite regularly the number one topic, it doesn't seem to have been a very effective or impactful attempt......
OK - How much immigration is too much? How much immigration should the government be targeting?
10m a year net is clearly too much, as is 5m, as is 2m. 0 is clearly not enough.
The optimum rate is going to be a mix between demand in core services, our need for profit from students and how much infrastructure and housing we can build. ONS predicting 4m over 10 years, which seems both a reasonable estimate based on last 10 years, and something we can manage if we are pro-active about it.
So currently I would say the answer to targeting is in the 250-500k per year range. And the current level is probably too much if sustained for a decade, much above the current rate would be too high.
Other opinions will of course differ and that is fine and part of political debate.
Very good - now try saying that in politics.
The problem is that rational debate has been removed.
Bit like the NHS, where a shouty match about "more" is all we ever seem to get. More of what?
Has this morning’s debate not been rational?
This is a somewhat unusual forum in exactly that respect.
Try challenging the triple lock in politics, in public, for example. You'll have death threats within the minute.
eg The Telegraph reporting "fury" that pensioners received no benefit from cutting National Insurance.
Well, that's because they don't pay it at all.
“Fury at” is one of those journalistic shorthand’s isn’t it, like “police quiz x”, “romp”, “beleaguered” / “embattled”, “Britons”.
My particular favourite is 'boffin'. Never met one (despite 30 years in science), don't know what one is, but the media love 'em.
I thought you were a boffin?
Definitely not. I'm a scientician
Ah ok. So this begs the question, what is a boffin? Eg my brother is a Maths Prof. Is he a boffin? I've always thought so but it's only now, because of this exchange, that I'm giving it some proper thought.
I 'think' the term boffin relates to scientists that are rather detached from the real world (perhaps the scientist in the Simpsons, for instance). All the scientists I know and work with are not at all like that. Most are complex souls with families and hobbies the same as the rest of the population.
Of course the really good profs can be a bit extreme. To make it in academia you often need to put in a lot of out of hours work (evenings and weekends writing grants, papers etc). Those who are really driven excel at doing this and reach the top. They often find it hard to retire, as they have less outside interests. But even for them, most are thoroughly grounded.
I once had a conversation with a lay person (a neighbour) about creativity. I told her I think the scientists are some of the most creative people I know. New discoveries don't just happen.
Not sure of the boffin definition, but the description of academia and the types of academic is spot on.
And I (and Turbo it seems) are not boffins by that definition. I'm reluctant to do work out of hours and I'll retire the moment I hit pension age, as long as Thames Water hasn't wiped out the USS by then
The Conservatives will not lose any councils seats in by-elections today - because they are not defending any. There is a Lab defence in Neath Port Talbot, an Ind defence in Orkney (there are 2 Ind candidates), and a Lib Dem defence in Somerset.
Go to the poll of polls. Starting in 2022, draw a trend line through labour and conservative ratings and get back to me about trends. FYI, one poll is not a trend
Im sort of with BJO on this (the trend, not the rest of his ideological apparatus). There is I think a tightening between the blocs, and a decline in Labour favourability, that’s being hidden by the Reform rise.
I am.just not seeing it the poll of polls. They regularly undulate back and forth. It would take a more decisive shift for me to call it. I guess I would have to do a t-test to prove it. But eyeballing the running average of tory and labour support I would say it is overall still widening.
4th poll of the week this one shows a 3% drop in Lab lead to 15 confirms the trend
It's far too early to call it a trend but if it's not noise, I am intrigued about what might have caused it. (I am ruling out the possibility that the rest of the country have suddenly seen the BJO light.)
We still have a final weekend of Q1. For the purposes of the PB prediction competition question 1 will we see a new lowest Labour lead? The current lowest Labour lead in Q1 is, I believe, the 11% lead from More in Common (7-11 Feb).
A lack of extra spectacular foot shooting by the government, leading to outer layer core vote Conservatives returning?
Well, I guess it could be. But... the spectacularly bad London attack ad? Appointing Gullis? Confirmation of the year starting in recession? Rumours of leadership challenges?
Fox News still have Trump 5% ahead on both the head to head and the 5 way split today. That is somewhat against the recent trend of a narrowing lead and will influence the RCP averages for a while.
I don't think Labour would have any objection to a result along those lines.
Trend says 38/33 type result imo
I think SKS would take that.
I'd take anything that gives a labour majority, as thats what my betfair account needs...
NOM nailed on 😃
Assuming NOM = nailed on majority, I agree
(Mind you, I've got a few lost stranded £ on NOM from ages ago, so the result would be nice financially - and, indeed politically for me if it led to stable Lab-Lib coalition. But I won't be holding my breath for it!)
Wouldn't 'nailed on majority nailed on' be a tautology?
See also GNU.
[adds some kind of joke about following the Hurd]
ETA: I guess that makes me more geek/nerd* than boffin.
*never really understood the definition/difference between those, either
Remember the PANIC 5% Labour lead poll a week and a bit before the 1997 election...?
No panic in 2017.
Things could only get better and the did.
2024 things can be exactly the same, but with worse austerity doesn't have the same ring to it
This hatred for the idea of defeating the Tories which inhabits the crank left truly is a thing of wonder. The Tories win more elections than not because they accept there is compromise in real life. No compromise for the crankies and thus no power and thus self-righteous whining which is all that keeps them going.
Your "they're all Tories analysis" only works if everyone to the right of Tony Benn is a "Tory". Which is pitiful more than it is laughable.
Go to the poll of polls. Starting in 2022, draw a trend line through labour and conservative ratings and get back to me about trends. FYI, one poll is not a trend
Im sort of with BJO on this (the trend, not the rest of his ideological apparatus). There is I think a tightening between the blocs, and a decline in Labour favourability, that’s being hidden by the Reform rise.
I am.just not seeing it the poll of polls. They regularly undulate back and forth. It would take a more decisive shift for me to call it. I guess I would have to do a t-test to prove it. But eyeballing the running average of tory and labour support I would say it is overall still widening.
4th poll of the week this one shows a 3% drop in Lab lead to 15 confirms the trend
It's far too early to call it a trend but if it's not noise, I am intrigued about what might have caused it. (I am ruling out the possibility that the rest of the country have suddenly seen the BJO light.)
We still have a final weekend of Q1. For the purposes of the PB prediction competition question 1 will we see a new lowest Labour lead?
I very much doubt it: the lowest Labour lead in Q1 to date is the 11% lead from More in Common (7-11 Feb).
It's been a fairly quiet week, relatively speaking. The Tories creep up in the polls when they're off air. The things that have got us worked up in here, like the London video, won't have registered at all with the general public.
The Tories should pass a law banning campaigning during the election - a complete politics news blackout. And then call the election.
Go to the poll of polls. Starting in 2022, draw a trend line through labour and conservative ratings and get back to me about trends. FYI, one poll is not a trend
Im sort of with BJO on this (the trend, not the rest of his ideological apparatus). There is I think a tightening between the blocs, and a decline in Labour favourability, that’s being hidden by the Reform rise.
I am.just not seeing it the poll of polls. They regularly undulate back and forth. It would take a more decisive shift for me to call it. I guess I would have to do a t-test to prove it. But eyeballing the running average of tory and labour support I would say it is overall still widening.
4th poll of the week this one shows a 3% drop in Lab lead to 15 confirms the trend
It's far too early to call it a trend but if it's not noise, I am intrigued about what might have caused it. (I am ruling out the possibility that the rest of the country have suddenly seen the BJO light.)
We still have a final weekend of Q1. For the purposes of the PB prediction competition question 1 will we see a new lowest Labour lead?
I very much doubt it: the lowest Labour lead in Q1 to date is the 11% lead from More in Common (7-11 Feb).
It's been a fairly quiet week, relatively speaking. The Tories creep up in the polls when they're off air. The things that have got us worked up in here, like the London video, won't have registered at all with the general public.
Election leafleting will also be kicking in for people in many regions. I don’t know how that might be affecting polling. It could benefit parties with good local campaigns.
The Conservatives will not lose any councils seats in by-elections today - because they are not defending any. There is a Lab defence in Neath Port Talbot, an Ind defence in Orkney (there are 2 Ind candidates), and a Lib Dem defence in Somerset.
Remember the PANIC 5% Labour lead poll a week and a bit before the 1997 election...?
No panic in 2017.
Things could only get better and the did.
2024 things can be exactly the same, but with worse austerity doesn't have the same ring to it
This hatred for the idea of defeating the Tories which inhabits the crank left truly is a thing of wonder. The Tories win more elections than not because they accept there is compromise in real life. No compromise for the crankies and thus no power and thus self-righteous whining which is all that keeps them going.
Your "they're all Tories analysis" only works if everyone to the right of Tony Benn is a "Tory". Which is pitiful more than it is laughable.
Indeed true. BJO is actively campaigning for Sunak to win and a max of two Green MPs - MPs who would completely be ignored by a returning Con government.
Go to the poll of polls. Starting in 2022, draw a trend line through labour and conservative ratings and get back to me about trends. FYI, one poll is not a trend
Im sort of with BJO on this (the trend, not the rest of his ideological apparatus). There is I think a tightening between the blocs, and a decline in Labour favourability, that’s being hidden by the Reform rise.
I am.just not seeing it the poll of polls. They regularly undulate back and forth. It would take a more decisive shift for me to call it. I guess I would have to do a t-test to prove it. But eyeballing the running average of tory and labour support I would say it is overall still widening.
4th poll of the week this one shows a 3% drop in Lab lead to 15 confirms the trend
Some lawyers' indulgence towards Trumpworld is running short, though.
A blistering line from John Eastman's disbarment recommendation:
The Bar finds that the "scale and egregiousness" of Eastman’s "unethical actions far surpasses the misconduct" by Nixon henchman Donald Segretti, who coined the word "ratf***ing" for political dirty tricks. https://twitter.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1773139009977368901
Go to the poll of polls. Starting in 2022, draw a trend line through labour and conservative ratings and get back to me about trends. FYI, one poll is not a trend
Im sort of with BJO on this (the trend, not the rest of his ideological apparatus). There is I think a tightening between the blocs, and a decline in Labour favourability, that’s being hidden by the Reform rise.
I am.just not seeing it the poll of polls. They regularly undulate back and forth. It would take a more decisive shift for me to call it. I guess I would have to do a t-test to prove it. But eyeballing the running average of tory and labour support I would say it is overall still widening.
4th poll of the week this one shows a 3% drop in Lab lead to 15 confirms the trend
It's far too early to call it a trend but if it's not noise, I am intrigued about what might have caused it. (I am ruling out the possibility that the rest of the country have suddenly seen the BJO light.)
We still have a final weekend of Q1. For the purposes of the PB prediction competition question 1 will we see a new lowest Labour lead?
I very much doubt it: the lowest Labour lead in Q1 to date is the 11% lead from More in Common (7-11 Feb).
It's been a fairly quiet week, relatively speaking. The Tories creep up in the polls when they're off air. The things that have got us worked up in here, like the London video, won't have registered at all with the general public.
The Tories should pass a law banning campaigning during the election - a complete politics news blackout. And then call the election.
It's their only hope.
The nuclear option. It's the only way to be sure. 😁
Go to the poll of polls. Starting in 2022, draw a trend line through labour and conservative ratings and get back to me about trends. FYI, one poll is not a trend
Im sort of with BJO on this (the trend, not the rest of his ideological apparatus). There is I think a tightening between the blocs, and a decline in Labour favourability, that’s being hidden by the Reform rise.
I am.just not seeing it the poll of polls. They regularly undulate back and forth. It would take a more decisive shift for me to call it. I guess I would have to do a t-test to prove it. But eyeballing the running average of tory and labour support I would say it is overall still widening.
4th poll of the week this one shows a 3% drop in Lab lead to 15 confirms the trend
It's far too early to call it a trend but if it's not noise, I am intrigued about what might have caused it. (I am ruling out the possibility that the rest of the country have suddenly seen the BJO light.)
We still have a final weekend of Q1. For the purposes of the PB prediction competition question 1 will we see a new lowest Labour lead?
I very much doubt it: the lowest Labour lead in Q1 to date is the 11% lead from More in Common (7-11 Feb).
It's been a fairly quiet week, relatively speaking. The Tories creep up in the polls when they're off air. The things that have got us worked up in here, like the London video, won't have registered at all with the general public.
The Tories should pass a law banning campaigning during the election - a complete politics news blackout. And then call the election.
It's their only hope.
Declare any seat where the winning party got over 52% in 2019 the 'settled will' of the constituency in perpetuity.
I don't think Labour would have any objection to a result along those lines.
Trend says 38/33 type result imo
I think SKS would take that.
I'd take anything that gives a labour majority, as thats what my betfair account needs...
NOM nailed on 😃
Assuming NOM = nailed on majority, I agree
(Mind you, I've got a few lost stranded £ on NOM from ages ago, so the result would be nice financially - and, indeed politically for me if it led to stable Lab-Lib coalition. But I won't be holding my breath for it!)
Wouldn't 'nailed on majority nailed on' be a tautology?
Isn't BJO in Yorkshire? I don't know why I assume this - Owls a reference to Sheffield Wednesday? We like to repeat ourselves a bit in case people weren't listening.
"Nailed on majority. Nailed on."
"Legendary modesty. Legendary."
He missed the full stop, but I can forgive that
Hmm, Sheffield… could BJO actually be Jared O’Mara?
Or TSE's alter ego!
Come to think of it has anyone ever seen TSE and me in the same room
Apart from Cineworld and various other Centertainment / Meadowhall employees
Good morning. Here is the nub of the issue. What sort of immigration is unpopular? Arguably it is the "illegal" sort - but how is this defined and how is it counted? It is far too easy to look at ever increasing gross numbers and project those onto the segment of immigrants we don't like. Anyway good news for the Tories in the figures quoted. Only 2% of those polled generally don't like the Government so 98% up for grabs.
"Immigration" is unpopular. "Illegal" is the "I'm not a racist" shield.
Immigration is unpopular.
Immigration for nurses is not unpopular. Immigration for care home workers is not unpopular. Immigration for highly skilled roles generally is not unpopular. Immigration for Ukrainians invaded by Russians is not unpopular Immigration for Hong Kongers escaping the Chinese is not unpopular. Immigration from students improves our already bad balance of payments by £40bn and saves the taxpayer a lot in university funding.
So yes immigration is unpopular but that doesn't mean stopping it would be popular either.
Oh, absolutely - that's exactly my point. It is *only* unpopular in the racism sense, not the practical sense.
I disagree with that - it is mostly unpopular because we don't build the infrastructure and houses at a rate that matches expected immigration. At best we build it to match the level of immigration the politicians promise which is very innaccurate and always too low for reality.
Do you have evidence that this is why? I think immigration is mostly unpopular because some voters have racist/xenophobic tendencies or just don’t like change, and because some politicians/commentators/newspapers blame immigration for numerous ills.
Concern around immigration in topic polling tends to be driven by the amount politicians are talking about immigration, I suggest.
Is lack of infrastructure was the problem, you’d expect anti-immigration polling to be higher in areas of high immigration and high housing costs, like London. But it isn’t.
If immigration were spread evenly across the country, it would be less of an issue. But it isn't. It is still uncommon to see a non-white person in the SW outside Bristol and to a lesser extent Exeter, where non-white faces are often students rather than family groups. It's further from London, very limited rented accommodation, fewer opportunities for black economy jobs ties for them to take advantage/be taken advantage of - and no familiar communities to be part of. Immigration is generally not a doorstep issue down here - housing is though, despite no pressure to compete with immigrants. Schools are far less affected, hospitals more so - but that is incoming oldies fighting for a hip or knee replacement with other incoming oldies.
The only time you hear it is people who have moved down here, usually from the West Midlands. Retirement migration to the SW has been going on for decades. They would have come anyway, but claiming Brum or the Black Country is "not what it was" gives some rationale for upping sticks. Whilst you will find the occasional out-and-out racist, most of those who feel edged out have no personal beef one-on-one with immigrants. Their beef is change, the rapid rate of that change, and the loss of what they knew before. It gives them a reason on their own terms for doing what they would have done anyway: move.
Yes, I think lots of people don’t like change. There’s plenty of change I don’t like. I’m not saying there’s anything necessarily wrong with not liking change.
Again, though, is the change experienced largely due to immigration, or is it due to diverse other factors and immigration is the convenient scapegoat? It’s easy to blame change on the people moving in.
It's a combination
1) Change 2) The repeated emphasis on "You are not allowed to stop the change. You are not allowed to oppose the change. If the change has any negative consequences, then that's your problem"
2) is especially the problem in a modern democracy.
That seems to me like a lopsided characterisation. A huge amount of modern democracy is directed at stopping change: see NIMBYs! The ruling party for the last 14 years has been a party called the Conservatives, a name that describes their feelings towards change.
But, yes, there is a lot of change, of multiple types, economic, social, and different political groups have differing views on what change is good or bad.
In thecae of immigration, there has been a definite attempt make any opposition, to any level of it, beyond political discourse.
Seeing as it is quite regularly the number one topic, it doesn't seem to have been a very effective or impactful attempt......
OK - How much immigration is too much? How much immigration should the government be targeting?
10m a year net is clearly too much, as is 5m, as is 2m. 0 is clearly not enough.
The optimum rate is going to be a mix between demand in core services, our need for profit from students and how much infrastructure and housing we can build. ONS predicting 4m over 10 years, which seems both a reasonable estimate based on last 10 years, and something we can manage if we are pro-active about it.
So currently I would say the answer to targeting is in the 250-500k per year range. And the current level is probably too much if sustained for a decade, much above the current rate would be too high.
Other opinions will of course differ and that is fine and part of political debate.
Very good - now try saying that in politics.
The problem is that rational debate has been removed.
Bit like the NHS, where a shouty match about "more" is all we ever seem to get. More of what?
Has this morning’s debate not been rational?
This is a somewhat unusual forum in exactly that respect.
Try challenging the triple lock in politics, in public, for example. You'll have death threats within the minute.
eg The Telegraph reporting "fury" that pensioners received no benefit from cutting National Insurance.
Well, that's because they don't pay it at all.
“Fury at” is one of those journalistic shorthand’s isn’t it, like “police quiz x”, “romp”, “beleaguered” / “embattled”, “Britons”.
My particular favourite is 'boffin'. Never met one (despite 30 years in science), don't know what one is, but the media love 'em.
I thought you were a boffin?
Definitely not. I'm a scientician
Ah ok. So this begs the question, what is a boffin? Eg my brother is a Maths Prof. Is he a boffin? I've always thought so but it's only now, because of this exchange, that I'm giving it some proper thought.
Definitely not a boffin. A boffin is someone who does something in STEM, who ALSO has occasion to wear a white coat at work
The white coat is indispensable. Picture a boffin in your mind. See? White coat
Comments
(They’re probably immigrant deer: https://bds.org.uk/information-advice/about-deer/deer-species/ )
Britain Elects
@BritainElects
·
28m
Labour lead at 18pts
Westminster voting intention:
LAB: 44% (-2)
CON: 26% (+3)
REF: 11% (-1)
LDEM: 9% (-)
GRN: 6% (+1)
via
@Deltapoll
The trend is your friend 🧡
I'm actually fairly upbeat about the UK's economic prospects for the rest of the decade (unless we really do get involved in a big war). That should give him some room to manouvere. OTOH, a lot of extra money has to be spent, on things like Health, Pensions, Defence, just to stand still, due to demographics, and increasing danger. He may find himself, like Biden, presiding over an economy that is doing quite well, but receiving little credit for it.
March 2024 40/49 =-9
May2023 48/37 = +11
SKS Fans The trend is not your friend
I mean, I wouldn't.
Just as Morse begat Lewis it would have been logical for tv bosses to have commissioned a follow-on series (Hathaway) starring him in the role. That they didn't would have bitterly disappointed him and in all likelihood is what triggered his descent into hard right political extremism.
On such random events does the sweep of history sometimes turn. One thinks of Hitler being thwarted in his ambitions as a painter of watercolours.
Lab lead down by
5% according to Deltapoll (Lab-2 Con+3)
6% according to YG (Lab -4 Con +2)
6% according to R&W (Lab -5 Con +1)
SKS fans the trend is not your friend
Looking back, it was definitely the right response, but I didn't really think about it at the time, I just genuinely didn't find the term offensive. I was a fairly tall lad and a pugnacious little shit (squared up to a - shorter - Y8 who shoved me in the corridor in first week at the school) so I never really had anyone physically trying to bully me, but had I been hurt by and reacted to 'boff' it would no doubt have followed me for years.
I'm definitely one of the boffins now, I guess. As is Turbo
(Mind you, I've got a few lost stranded £ on NOM from ages ago, so the result would be nice financially - and, indeed politically for me if it led to stable Lab-Lib coalition. But I won't be holding my breath for it!)
Is it noise? Probably, but if not what might be behind it?
In any event, it will give Tory rebels pause for thought and help Sunak a bit.
Of course the really good profs can be a bit extreme. To make it in academia you often need to put in a lot of out of hours work (evenings and weekends writing grants, papers etc). Those who are really driven excel at doing this and reach the top. They often find it hard to retire, as they have less outside interests. But even for them, most are thoroughly grounded.
I once had a conversation with a lay person (a neighbour) about creativity. I told her I think the scientists are some of the most creative people I know. New discoveries don't just happen.
But the question is, will it bend?
Will it alter its course
through some unforeseen force
and come to a premature end?
And whilst there are very few Starmer Fans, that doesn't matter, as long as there are sufficient people willing to say "he'll have to do". And as long as his ratings are better than those of Sunak, Mordaunt, Johnson and Corbyn, that will be the case.
Our little cul de sac is called “Impasse de la source”, but there’s no obvious spring anywhere. But recently our next door neighbour, Camille (des sources), heard from a local that years ago there used to be a spring and a tap in her courtyard, well known to the village.
As if by magic the farmer’s field up the hill has a water trough for the cows that seems to be miraculously always topped up with fresh water.
Unlike Manon I don’t think Camille has any intention of going off into the hills to stay with a goat herder and plot her revenge on the local peasants.
"Nailed on majority. Nailed on."
"Legendary modesty. Legendary."
He missed the full stop, but I can forgive that
That said, my current call is a majority of approx 125.
But consider that one of the classic boffin images was Prof Peabody in the Eagle.
https://melissaterras.org/2016/10/02/for-ada-lovelace-day-professor-jocelyn-mabel-peabody/
Carried on into postwar usage and fossilised into a calcified cyst in the brains of tabloid journalists.
So near, and yet sofa away...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election#/media/File:Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election_after_2019_(LOESS).svg
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Backroom-Boys-Secret-Return-British/dp/0571214975
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/mar/08/stephen-salter-obituary
And a damn fine engineer (and professor)
It's the combination of "beyond ordinary ken" theoretical knowledge and the ability to spanner up a death ray from a valve TV.
Come to think of it has anyone ever seen TSE and me in the same room
Apart from Cineworld and various other Centertainment / Meadowhall employees
And how the UK nearly had a start in tidal power:
'In 1982, after eight years of development under Salter’s direction at Edinburgh University, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) was asked by the government to see if the duck might be a cost-effective way of making large quantities of electricity. To the great surprise of Salter, and others, the UKAEA came to the conclusion that it was uneconomic, and that no further government funding should be given to the project.
A decade later it emerged that thanks to a misplaced decimal point, the review had made Salter’s duck look 10 times more expensive than the experiments showed it was likely to be. The UKAEA claimed this was just a mistake, but Salter, who had never been allowed to see the results of the secret evaluation, put it another way: asking the nuclear industry to evaluate an alternative source of energy was like putting King Herod in charge of a children’s home, he suggested.'
Voting Intention:
LAB: 42% (-1)
CON: 27% (+2)
RFM: 11% (=)
LDM: 10% (-1)
GRN: 5% (=)
Via
@Moreincommon_
, 23-24 Mar.
Changes w/ 19-20 Mar
Us Greens want a couple of extra seats and a highest ever vote for the planet savers
Hence why I say Reform's high polling is hiding the small tightening.
https://www.ft.com/content/5965eeb0-1c12-11ea-9186-7348c2f183af
We still have a final weekend of Q1. For the purposes of the PB prediction competition question 1 will we see a new lowest Labour lead?
I very much doubt it: the lowest Labour lead in Q1 to date is the 11% lead from More in Common (7-11 Feb).
Especially when there was a perceptible upblip last week, which I think got attributed to Racistdonorgate.
Things could only get better and the did.
2024 things can be exactly the same, but with worse austerity doesn't have the same ring to it
The lowest since mini Trusstastrophe is 10% thus far
Which bit of non-foot-shooting was it I wonder?
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-bond-reduced-hush-money-trial-rcna145018
ETA: I guess that makes me more geek/nerd* than boffin.
*never really understood the definition/difference between those, either
Your "they're all Tories analysis" only works if everyone to the right of Tony Benn is a "Tory". Which is pitiful more than it is laughable.
It's their only hope.
BREAK: Michael Gove has caved to Tory landlord backbenchers and watered down the Renters Reform Bill
The Bill will be returning to the Commons after Easter Recess
Just how stupid that is is utterly staggering.
Some lawyers' indulgence towards Trumpworld is running short, though.
A blistering line from John Eastman's disbarment recommendation:
The Bar finds that the "scale and egregiousness" of Eastman’s "unethical actions far surpasses the misconduct" by Nixon henchman Donald Segretti, who coined the word "ratf***ing" for political dirty tricks.
https://twitter.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1773139009977368901
The white coat is indispensable. Picture a boffin in your mind. See? White coat