Would be excellent trolling to hold a referendum in the area of Russia they’ve captured and ask if they want to join Ukraine…
It might. But since in a free and fair referendum the answer would be a resounding 'no' and any other sort would piss NATO off, it isn't happening.
What did strike me as interesting are the number of furious evacuees begging Putin for help, still loudly supporting what they call the 'SMO' and yet blaming him as much as the Ukrainians for their plight.
Exactly what the Ukrainians want still isn't clear (at least to me) but I'm sure they will count making Putin look very stupid as a definite win.
Zelensky says he doesn't know what is going on in Kursk either...
Leicestershire County Council plans to build 2,750 homes and lots of new warehouses on fields (they let to tenant farmers) to the East of J20 of the M1 have hit a problem - They can't get anyone to build the houses because of the slump in the housing market. They want to reduce the 40% affordable home condition and now want to build the warehouses first.
The plan was mad - the noise from the motorway would make it too noisy to sit in your garden.
That sounds manageable, and afaik can be mitigated in umpteen different ways, from belts of trees or a woodland nature reserve to block sounds or diffuse prevailing wind, to sound barriers, to embankments, to modestly reducing the speed limit on the motorway.
TBH that sounds like one for whatever new approach the Government are bringing forward. There's plenty of history of LA lead development. And tipping the market away from large developers a little could be beneficial.
The strategic things imo are around making a sustainable community.
Looking, Lutterworth just the other side of the motorway at J20 has much housing close to the motorway. In a large development a solution should be possible. The whole thing sounds as if it covers half a square mile or so.
James Heale @JAHeale · 40m Kemi Badenoch way out in front according to ConHome’s members’ poll.
Robert Jenrick in second again with little to separate Tom Tugendhat, James Cleverly and Priti Patel for third.
It will be Badenoch v. Jenrick, I think.
If if was just down to the members it would be but MPs get the final say on the last 2.
There are more than enough Tory MPs from the liberal One Nation wing now to get Tugendhat or Stride in the last 2 against one of Badenoch or Jenrick. Remember the Tory parliamentary party is much more southern than it was in 2019 and there are now more Tory MPs from Scotland (who are also largely from the One Nation wing) than the North East, North West and Wales combined and the same number of Tory MPs from London as Yorkshire and Humber (Rishi doing relatively well in the capital compared to Boris on 4th July but much worse in the rest of the country)
Interesting point. The few remaining Conservative MPs are disproportionately at threat from Lib Dems. Most of those facing a bigger Reform threat were voted out a month ago.
It's a start, I suppose, but I can't help thinking converting it into housing would be better.
There needs to be severely escalating business rates charged on empty retail space.
The basic underlying issue is that landlords won’t reduce rents in line with market expectations, because that means having to mark down the value of the asset on their books. They would rather the units stay empty, often for years, than be revalued.
That’s the stick. The carrot can be that turning retail space into housing doesn’t require planning permission.
We have a lot of retail space in Dundee city centre that has been empty for more than 20 years. The problem with converting it is that planning permission for housing requires them to provide parking etc for residents which simply cannot be done in city centres at an economic cost. So we sit surrounded by dilapidating buildings making the High Street and associated streets ever less desirable. Its a negative spiral we really need to break.
Well you’ve got at least four options there. 1. Knock down one of the units and use for parking. 2. Lease parking spaces in a council-owned car park somewhere close by. 3. Allow residents to buy season tickets for on-street parking in the centre zone. 4. Just sell the units with no parking, and let the residents find somewhere to park on the street.
As always, the issue is planning, and the inability of everyone to think outside the box in persuance of the goal of using the space for housing.
Nope - not full Planning.
Planning Permission has not been required for retail to residential conversions since 2021, and before then it was only Change of Use and Building Regs, which was not onerous.
I should know - I looked at a project around 2017 for my own family's rental shop, but mum popped her clogs first so we sold it quickly at auction.
The issue will be what it was when Cameron & Co introduced Permitted Development Office -> Housing conversions in ~2013, which has generated a *lot* of housing units but also a lot a miserably substandard shoebox flats, and a crop of scandals.
The problem is quality / liveability and enforcement of adequate quality, and the only way to do that is through more capacity and professionalism in the Building Control departments of Local Authorities.
The main issue is that the owners of the empty units don’t want to have anyone question the value of them, preferring to leave them empty than see them revalued.
I wonder if they are scared of valuation going up, or down. That sounds like Mr Trump's problems in NY - telling different things to different people.
So regular revaluations perhaps required, to avoid the dodge.
Would be excellent trolling to hold a referendum in the area of Russia they’ve captured and ask if they want to join Ukraine…
It might. But since in a free and fair referendum the answer would be a resounding 'no' and any other sort would piss NATO off, it isn't happening.
What did strike me as interesting are the number of furious evacuees begging Putin for help, still loudly supporting what they call the 'SMO' and yet blaming him as much as the Ukrainians for their plight.
Exactly what the Ukrainians want still isn't clear (at least to me) but I'm sure they will count making Putin look very stupid as a definite win.
Zelensky says he doesn't know what is going on in Kursk either...
Heptathlon long jump about to start. One of KJT’s better events, but that factors into the overall score and she still needs to get close to a PB here.
The multi-discipline events are some of the favourites to watch, seeing athletes of varying shapes and sizes all compete to be the best overall.
Katerina did really well with a huge PB in the shot put, not her best event, yesterday to lead overnight.
Leicestershire County Council plans to build 2,750 homes and lots of new warehouses on fields (they let to tenant farmers) to the East of J20 of the M1 have hit a problem - They can't get anyone to build the houses because of the slump in the housing market. They want to reduce the 40% affordable home condition and now want to build the warehouses first.
The plan was mad - the noise from the motorway would make it too noisy to sit in your garden.
Not only the noise, I would imagine the air quality would be somewhat lacking.
Leicestershire County Council plans to build 2,750 homes and lots of new warehouses on fields (they let to tenant farmers) to the East of J20 of the M1 have hit a problem - They can't get anyone to build the houses because of the slump in the housing market. They want to reduce the 40% affordable home condition and now want to build the warehouses first.
The plan was mad - the noise from the motorway would make it too noisy to sit in your garden.
Though pretty standard for developers to get permission first, promising affordable homes, then suddenly find the project unviable unless they build 4 bed "executive" houses on tiny plots instead of their commitment. It's developer's gamesmanship.
Good, what's wrong with that?
Build ten million 4 bed homes across the country, instead of shitty "affordable" flats, and the housing crisis would be over and 4 bed homes could become the default for people to have. What exactly is your problem?
And people moving out of pre-existing affordable 3 beds or flats into better, newer, 4 bed houses frees up the older stock for those who want something affordable.
Its odd, we often have people complaining that UK homes are smaller than those in other countries.
Then they complain when someone wants to build four bed detached houses instead of one bed flats.
Would be excellent trolling to hold a referendum in the area of Russia they’ve captured and ask if they want to join Ukraine…
It might. But since in a free and fair referendum the answer would be a resounding 'no' and any other sort would piss NATO off, it isn't happening.
What did strike me as interesting are the number of furious evacuees begging Putin for help, still loudly supporting what they call the 'SMO' and yet blaming him as much as the Ukrainians for their plight.
Exactly what the Ukrainians want still isn't clear (at least to me) but I'm sure they will count making Putin look very stupid as a definite win.
Zelensky says he doesn't know what is going on in Kursk either...
Leicestershire County Council plans to build 2,750 homes and lots of new warehouses on fields (they let to tenant farmers) to the East of J20 of the M1 have hit a problem - They can't get anyone to build the houses because of the slump in the housing market. They want to reduce the 40% affordable home condition and now want to build the warehouses first.
The plan was mad - the noise from the motorway would make it too noisy to sit in your garden.
Though pretty standard for developers to get permission first, promising affordable homes, then suddenly find the project unviable unless they build 4 bed "executive" houses on tiny plots instead of their commitment. It's developer's gamesmanship.
Good, what's wrong with that?
Build ten million 4 bed homes across the country, instead of shitty "affordable" flats, and the housing crisis would be over and 4 bed homes could become the default for people to have. What exactly is your problem?
And people moving out of pre-existing affordable 3 beds or flats into better, newer, 4 bed houses frees up the older stock for those who want something affordable.
You know those 4 bed homes will be smaller than you typical 3 bed 1950's semi
And the cost of 4 bed house meeting current building regs is outside the purchase power of most people...
James Heale @JAHeale · 40m Kemi Badenoch way out in front according to ConHome’s members’ poll.
Robert Jenrick in second again with little to separate Tom Tugendhat, James Cleverly and Priti Patel for third.
It will be Badenoch v. Jenrick, I think.
If if was just down to the members it would be but MPs get the final say on the last 2.
There are more than enough Tory MPs from the liberal One Nation wing now to get Tugendhat or Stride in the last 2 against one of Badenoch or Jenrick. Remember the Tory parliamentary party is much more southern than it was in 2019 and there are now more Tory MPs from Scotland (who are also largely from the One Nation wing) than the North East, North West and Wales combined and the same number of Tory MPs from London as Yorkshire and Humber (Rishi doing relatively well in the capital compared to Boris on 4th July but much worse in the rest of the country)
Interesting point. The few remaining Conservative MPs are disproportionately at threat from Lib Dems. Most of those facing a bigger Reform threat were voted out a month ago.
To an extent. We have 4 Tory MPs in Leics who have quite split oppositions, and significant REFUK votes. The tactical choice to evict them is more clear, so some are vulnerable next GE. Should they try to suck up the REFUK vote, or fight for the centre ground? It's not that obvious.
Leicestershire County Council plans to build 2,750 homes and lots of new warehouses on fields (they let to tenant farmers) to the East of J20 of the M1 have hit a problem - They can't get anyone to build the houses because of the slump in the housing market. They want to reduce the 40% affordable home condition and now want to build the warehouses first.
The plan was mad - the noise from the motorway would make it too noisy to sit in your garden.
Though pretty standard for developers to get permission first, promising affordable homes, then suddenly find the project unviable unless they build 4 bed "executive" houses on tiny plots instead of their commitment. It's developer's gamesmanship.
Good, what's wrong with that?
Build ten million 4 bed homes across the country, instead of shitty "affordable" flats, and the housing crisis would be over and 4 bed homes could become the default for people to have. What exactly is your problem?
And people moving out of pre-existing affordable 3 beds or flats into better, newer, 4 bed houses frees up the older stock for those who want something affordable.
Its odd, we often have people complaining that UK homes are smaller than those in other countries.
Then they complain when someone wants to build four bed detached houses instead of one bed flats.
Indeed - and around here there's plenty of new build 4 bed houses going up, with the 4th bedroom typically being on a third story rather than a more traditional 2 story building.
So we can "build up" with houses even in towns, not just cities, and then people object?
Indeed a new build 4 bed house takes no more land, or even less land actually, than my grandparents 1 bed bungalow - its just building up rather than across. That surely is a good thing?
Wont most of Cleverly's go over to Tugendhat if it is him vs Jenrick?
They will likely split, Cleverly is more from the centre of the party than the liberal One Nation wing of the party like Tugendhat. Jenrick is also more from the centre of the party relative to Badenoch and Patel who are the main candidates of the ERG right, though some of that wing will still back Jenrick
Would be excellent trolling to hold a referendum in the area of Russia they’ve captured and ask if they want to join Ukraine…
It might. But since in a free and fair referendum the answer would be a resounding 'no' and any other sort would piss NATO off, it isn't happening.
What did strike me as interesting are the number of furious evacuees begging Putin for help, still loudly supporting what they call the 'SMO' and yet blaming him as much as the Ukrainians for their plight.
Exactly what the Ukrainians want still isn't clear (at least to me) but I'm sure they will count making Putin look very stupid as a definite win.
I presume the Ukrainians invaded Russia because it was easier than pushing against well defended Russian lines within Ukraine itself.
It's a start, I suppose, but I can't help thinking converting it into housing would be better.
There needs to be severely escalating business rates charged on empty retail space.
The basic underlying issue is that landlords won’t reduce rents in line with market expectations, because that means having to mark down the value of the asset on their books. They would rather the units stay empty, often for years, than be revalued.
That’s the stick. The carrot can be that turning retail space into housing doesn’t require planning permission.
We have a lot of retail space in Dundee city centre that has been empty for more than 20 years. The problem with converting it is that planning permission for housing requires them to provide parking etc for residents which simply cannot be done in city centres at an economic cost. So we sit surrounded by dilapidating buildings making the High Street and associated streets ever less desirable. Its a negative spiral we really need to break.
Well you’ve got at least four options there. 1. Knock down one of the units and use for parking. 2. Lease parking spaces in a council-owned car park somewhere close by. 3. Allow residents to buy season tickets for on-street parking in the centre zone. 4. Just sell the units with no parking, and let the residents find somewhere to park on the street.
As always, the issue is planning, and the inability of everyone to think outside the box in persuance of the goal of using the space for housing.
Nope - not full Planning.
Planning Permission has not been required for retail to residential conversions since 2021, and before then it was only Change of Use and Building Regs, which was not onerous.
I should know - I looked at a project around 2017 for my own family's rental shop, but mum popped her clogs first so we sold it quickly at auction.
The issue will be what it was when Cameron & Co introduced Permitted Development Office -> Housing conversions in ~2013, which has generated a *lot* of housing units but also a lot a miserably substandard shoebox flats, and a crop of scandals.
The problem is quality / liveability and enforcement of adequate quality, and the only way to do that is through more capacity and professionalism in the Building Control departments of Local Authorities.
The main issue is that the owners of the empty units don’t want to have anyone question the value of them, preferring to leave them empty than see them revalued.
I wonder if they are scared of valuation going up, or down. That sounds like Mr Trump's problems in NY - telling different things to different people.
So regular revaluations perhaps required, to avoid the dodge.
It’s all financial leverage. The book value of a property is based on rental value and interest rates. The landlords would rather leave retail properties empty than have to mark down their value by dropping the rent.
Leicestershire County Council plans to build 2,750 homes and lots of new warehouses on fields (they let to tenant farmers) to the East of J20 of the M1 have hit a problem - They can't get anyone to build the houses because of the slump in the housing market. They want to reduce the 40% affordable home condition and now want to build the warehouses first.
The plan was mad - the noise from the motorway would make it too noisy to sit in your garden.
Though pretty standard for developers to get permission first, promising affordable homes, then suddenly find the project unviable unless they build 4 bed "executive" houses on tiny plots instead of their commitment. It's developer's gamesmanship.
Good, what's wrong with that?
Build ten million 4 bed homes across the country, instead of shitty "affordable" flats, and the housing crisis would be over and 4 bed homes could become the default for people to have. What exactly is your problem?
And people moving out of pre-existing affordable 3 beds or flats into better, newer, 4 bed houses frees up the older stock for those who want something affordable.
You know those 4 bed homes will be smaller than you typical 3 bed 1950's semi
And the cost of 4 bed house meeting current building regs is outside the purchase power of most people...
That's not what's on offer though, is it, I'd rather a 4 bed executive home than a 1-3 bed "affordable" home. And a new build is of a much better quality in many respects eg insulation etc
The building cost isn't that significant, you can build a new build for no more than the cost of a pre-existing building, even including the inflated cost of land (which is artificially inflated by our planning system) and the cost of getting planning permission itself too.
Prior to requiring planning permission the cost of land was 2-3% of the cost of a house, and that was with building regs nowhere near as strict as they are today.
Today the cost of land is more like 33% of the cost of a house. Get that back down to 2-3% by reforming our planning system, keep the regs, and houses can be built quite affordably.
Leicestershire County Council plans to build 2,750 homes and lots of new warehouses on fields (they let to tenant farmers) to the East of J20 of the M1 have hit a problem - They can't get anyone to build the houses because of the slump in the housing market. They want to reduce the 40% affordable home condition and now want to build the warehouses first.
The plan was mad - the noise from the motorway would make it too noisy to sit in your garden.
That sounds manageable, and afaik can be mitigated in umpteen different ways, from belts of trees or a woodland nature reserve to block sounds or diffuse prevailing wind, to sound barriers, to embankments, to modestly reducing the speed limit on the motorway.
TBH that sounds like one for whatever new approach the Government are bringing forward. There's plenty of history of LA lead development. And tipping the market away from large developers a little could be beneficial.
The strategic things imo are around making a sustainable community.
Looking, Lutterworth just the other side of the motorway at J20 has much housing close to the motorway. In a large development a solution should be possible. The whole thing sounds as if it covers half a square mile or so.
Royal Mail's old management college - originally the home of Frank Whittle who invented the jet engine - and now sold off, I believe, to some private equity owners, is right there, so I know that area well. You don't have to get that far from the motorway before you can't really hear the traffic, except perhaps as a very faint hum in the distance.
Leicestershire County Council plans to build 2,750 homes and lots of new warehouses on fields (they let to tenant farmers) to the East of J20 of the M1 have hit a problem - They can't get anyone to build the houses because of the slump in the housing market. They want to reduce the 40% affordable home condition and now want to build the warehouses first.
The plan was mad - the noise from the motorway would make it too noisy to sit in your garden.
Though pretty standard for developers to get permission first, promising affordable homes, then suddenly find the project unviable unless they build 4 bed "executive" houses on tiny plots instead of their commitment. It's developer's gamesmanship.
Good, what's wrong with that?
Build ten million 4 bed homes across the country, instead of shitty "affordable" flats, and the housing crisis would be over and 4 bed homes could become the default for people to have. What exactly is your problem?
And people moving out of pre-existing affordable 3 beds or flats into better, newer, 4 bed houses frees up the older stock for those who want something affordable.
You know those 4 bed homes will be smaller than you typical 3 bed 1950's semi
And the cost of 4 bed house meeting current building regs is outside the purchase power of most people...
There is a strange obsession in Britain in labelling houses by number of bedrooms, even when some rooms are barely bigger than a closet. In most countries real estate is marketed by floor area with fewer and bigger rooms.
The Migration Observatory suggesting that the annual run rate for net migration will drop to under 200k by the end of the year. I really wouldn't be surprised if next year we get net emigration because the arrivals from student visas are much lower than the students + dependents leaving at the end of their freebie 2 years and new care worker visa arrivals not getting dependant rights as the previous batch going home on the old scheme which did have them.
Personally, I think that's wishful thinking.
But it does seem incredulous that Sunak didn't do this a year earlier, soon after he took office, because if he'd gone into the election with this story he'd have saved dozens and dozens of seats from Reform.
How did it happen that in one year overseas students were suddenly allowed to bring their families with them, a couple of hundred thousand extra people requiring housing and public services?
At the time I think there was a desperation for H&SC workers.
But, yes, astonishingly naïve since it's a huge and obvious backdoor migration route to the UK.
As I might have said dozens of times, if they want to recruit H&SC workers all they need to do is set up a recruitment centre in Manila. They’d have tens of thousands of young ladies, without dependents, queuing around the block to sign up.
But how many of those young ladies would pay the sponsoring company thousands for the visa?
There are close to 3m economically inactive people of working age. It's time to get tough on benefits and push people into work.
Agree to a degree, surely it also relates to how UC is structured as well where for some people it is not worth working, or working extra hours, due to what they lose. Pretty sure @BartholomewRoberts knows a fair bit about this.
Hoovering in cheap labour from Africa and Asia to wipe old people's bums for minimum wage while they bring over economically inactive dependents is what is dire. Especially when they are being brought over to help suppress pay.
Also they can Increase pay if people won't do the jobs. It may cost a little bit extra but then we do not have the burden of the economically inactive dependents. Like this mug.
James Heale @JAHeale · 40m Kemi Badenoch way out in front according to ConHome’s members’ poll.
Robert Jenrick in second again with little to separate Tom Tugendhat, James Cleverly and Priti Patel for third.
It will be Badenoch v. Jenrick, I think.
If if was just down to the members it would be but MPs get the final say on the last 2.
There are more than enough Tory MPs from the liberal One Nation wing now to get Tugendhat or Stride in the last 2 against one of Badenoch or Jenrick. Remember the Tory parliamentary party is much more southern than it was in 2019 and there are now more Tory MPs from Scotland (who are also largely from the One Nation wing) than the North East, North West and Wales combined and the same number of Tory MPs from London as Yorkshire and Humber (Rishi doing relatively well in the capital compared to Boris on 4th July but much worse in the rest of the country)
Interesting point. The few remaining Conservative MPs are disproportionately at threat from Lib Dems. Most of those facing a bigger Reform threat were voted out a month ago.
I'm not sure about that - the LibDems won almost all of their targets against the Tories, such that I believe their stronghold of Sevenoaks is something like number eight on the LibDem list based on straight swing, that list including the handful of prospects against Labour. Aside from a few seats where voters didn't sort out which of Labour and LibDems to back, such as East Grinstead, and Fareham, there aren't too many potential LD gains around any more, unless the Tories plunge themselves further down the toilet.
Yet the Tories don't have that many large majorities left - and only Rishi topped half of the vote, I think? - so they must presumably be vulnerable to Labour?
There are close to 3m economically inactive people of working age. It's time to get tough on benefits and push people into work.
Just let supply and demand do its job and let prices adjust to the point that vacancies are filled by wages being the market rate. If you want to hire people, you need to pay whatever it costs to hire them.
If I were an unskilled worker looking for minimum wage work would I want to wipe people's bums in a care home for minimum wage, or make coffee in a café, or wait on tables in a restaurant for minimum wage plus tips?
No brainer, I would not be choosing to wipe people's bums.
It's a start, I suppose, but I can't help thinking converting it into housing would be better.
There needs to be severely escalating business rates charged on empty retail space.
The basic underlying issue is that landlords won’t reduce rents in line with market expectations, because that means having to mark down the value of the asset on their books. They would rather the units stay empty, often for years, than be revalued.
That’s the stick. The carrot can be that turning retail space into housing doesn’t require planning permission.
We have a lot of retail space in Dundee city centre that has been empty for more than 20 years. The problem with converting it is that planning permission for housing requires them to provide parking etc for residents which simply cannot be done in city centres at an economic cost. So we sit surrounded by dilapidating buildings making the High Street and associated streets ever less desirable. Its a negative spiral we really need to break.
Well you’ve got at least four options there. 1. Knock down one of the units and use for parking. 2. Lease parking spaces in a council-owned car park somewhere close by. 3. Allow residents to buy season tickets for on-street parking in the centre zone. 4. Just sell the units with no parking, and let the residents find somewhere to park on the street.
As always, the issue is planning, and the inability of everyone to think outside the box in persuance of the goal of using the space for housing.
Nope - not full Planning.
Planning Permission has not been required for retail to residential conversions since 2021, and before then it was only Change of Use and Building Regs, which was not onerous.
I should know - I looked at a project around 2017 for my own family's rental shop, but mum popped her clogs first so we sold it quickly at auction.
The issue will be what it was when Cameron & Co introduced Permitted Development Office -> Housing conversions in ~2013, which has generated a *lot* of housing units but also a lot a miserably substandard shoebox flats, and a crop of scandals.
The problem is quality / liveability and enforcement of adequate quality, and the only way to do that is through more capacity and professionalism in the Building Control departments of Local Authorities.
Interesting, I did not know that. How come it is so difficult to convert a pub to a house? E.g. this place would be worth 2-3 times as much as a house:
Re DavidL's comments on Dundee - a number of the local shops where I live have been converted one or two at a time to houses without any requirement for offstreet parking that I can see, over the last 20 years or so, though the bigger developments (converting a Co-op and demolishing an old shop/house to make room for flats) do have associated parking in their original backyards.
There are close to 3m economically inactive people of working age. It's time to get tough on benefits and push people into work.
If that is the solution then it wont happen overnight. Needs to be a proper process where one figure falls as the other rises. Otherwise no one will be picking granny off the care home floor soon.
There are close to 3m economically inactive people of working age. It's time to get tough on benefits and push people into work.
If that is the solution then it wont happen overnight. Needs to be a proper process where one figure falls as the other rises. Otherwise no one will be picking granny off the care home floor soon.
The care home is obligated to have staff, or they will be shut down, so if they can't find the staff they'll simply have to pay more.
If they pay more, they'll find staff.
It isn't rocket science, its the first thing they teach you in Economics - Supply and Demand.
This video is a stunning indictment on the political press. It’s honestly embarrassing. After complaining about press access to Harris, she does a press gaggle and every single question is about Trump. Zero policy. Zero substance. https://x.com/mattmfm/status/1821736437626094065
There are close to 3m economically inactive people of working age. It's time to get tough on benefits and push people into work.
If that is the solution then it wont happen overnight. Needs to be a proper process where one figure falls as the other rises. Otherwise no one will be picking granny off the care home floor soon.
The majority of those working in the sector are from the U.K.
There are close to 3m economically inactive people of working age. It's time to get tough on benefits and push people into work.
There's a scam going on with care worker visas.
Agency A applies for a thousand care worker visas from the Home Office. Home office grants it without any checks on agency A because they're 'not fit for purpose' as Lord Reid once put it. Agency tells people abroad they can get a care worker visa if they pay £x,000 to the agency. Person B pays said money, comes over. Care home C might or might not have a job for person B, in the meantime Person B brings over dependants E, F and G. Happens there's no job at care home C - so now B, E, F and G are all living off the taxpayer. Agency A doesn't care as they've got £x,000 off person B.
There are close to 3m economically inactive people of working age. It's time to get tough on benefits and push people into work.
Just let supply and demand do its job and let prices adjust to the point that vacancies are filled by wages being the market rate. If you want to hire people, you need to pay whatever it costs to hire them.
If I were an unskilled worker looking for minimum wage work would I want to wipe people's bums in a care home for minimum wage, or make coffee in a café, or wait on tables in a restaurant for minimum wage plus tips?
No brainer, I would not be choosing to wipe people's bums.
To some extent that's true, though it is time to get much tougher with benefits. They are too easy to access and too generous for people who claim to be unable to work for whatever reason. Labour brought in much tougher work fitness tests when they were in power last time and Theresa May unwound a lot of that, I think that was stupid and the won't works who were forced into working under Labour and the first Tory government are now back to their default setting of gaming the system and not working.
There are close to 3m economically inactive people of working age. It's time to get tough on benefits and push people into work.
Agree to a degree, surely it also relates to how UC is structured as well where for some people it is not worth working, or working extra hours, due to what they lose. Pretty sure @BartholomewRoberts knows a fair bit about this.
Hoovering in cheap labour from Africa and Asia to wipe old people's bums for minimum wage while they bring over economically inactive dependents is what is dire. Especially when they are being brought over to help suppress pay.
Also they can Increase pay if people won't do the jobs. It may cost a little bit extra but then we do not have the burden of the economically inactive dependents. Like this mug.
Yes, the dependents rule was the most ridiculous thing that the last government did. 4 kids in school, NHS cover for all of them isn't free and whatever job he takes won't come close to the outlay the state has in supporting that family. The rule changes on dependents were necessary and as new arrivals without dependents arrive and those with dependents leave we will be entering intona period of net emigration for care worker visas and student visas.
The Migration Observatory suggesting that the annual run rate for net migration will drop to under 200k by the end of the year. I really wouldn't be surprised if next year we get net emigration because the arrivals from student visas are much lower than the students + dependents leaving at the end of their freebie 2 years and new care worker visa arrivals not getting dependant rights as the previous batch going home on the old scheme which did have them.
Personally, I think that's wishful thinking.
But it does seem incredulous that Sunak didn't do this a year earlier, soon after he took office, because if he'd gone into the election with this story he'd have saved dozens and dozens of seats from Reform.
How did it happen that in one year overseas students were suddenly allowed to bring their families with them, a couple of hundred thousand extra people requiring housing and public services?
At the time I think there was a desperation for H&SC workers.
But, yes, astonishingly naïve since it's a huge and obvious backdoor migration route to the UK.
As I might have said dozens of times, if they want to recruit H&SC workers all they need to do is set up a recruitment centre in Manila. They’d have tens of thousands of young ladies, without dependents, queuing around the block to sign up.
Conversely, you could increase UK wages until enough UK workers volunteered to do it. People are not fuses to be thrown away if cheaper ones can be imported.
There are close to 3m economically inactive people of working age. It's time to get tough on benefits and push people into work.
Just let supply and demand do its job and let prices adjust to the point that vacancies are filled by wages being the market rate. If you want to hire people, you need to pay whatever it costs to hire them.
If I were an unskilled worker looking for minimum wage work would I want to wipe people's bums in a care home for minimum wage, or make coffee in a café, or wait on tables in a restaurant for minimum wage plus tips?
No brainer, I would not be choosing to wipe people's bums.
To some extent that's true, though it is time to get much tougher with benefits. They are too easy to access and too generous for people who claim to be unable to work for whatever reason. Labour brought in much tougher work fitness tests when they were in power last time and Theresa May unwound a lot of that, I think that was stupid and the won't works who were forced into working under Labour and the first Tory government are now back to their default setting of gaming the system and not working.
"Just let supply and demand do its job and let prices adjust to the point that vacancies are filled by wages being the market rate. "
Can't happen in the care sector as the councils - being the by far the major buyer in the market - are capped as to their funds for social care.
Labour claim they have a plan to sort that out and get wages in the sector up but all I have seen so far is some waffle about making it the first sector to have national bargaining again.
Let's hope there is more to it than that back of fag packet stuff.
Especially after Reeves has pulled the existing reforms for Oct 2025 which were not just about personal cost caps
There are close to 3m economically inactive people of working age. It's time to get tough on benefits and push people into work.
There's a scam going on with care worker visas.
Agency A applies for a thousand care worker visas from the Home Office. Home office grants it without any checks on agency A because they're 'not fit for purpose' as Lord Reid once put it. Agency tells people abroad they can get a care worker visa if they pay £x,000 to the agency. Person B pays said money, comes over. Care home C might or might not have a job for person B, in the meantime Person B brings over dependants E, F and G. Happens there's no job at care home C - so now B, E, F and G are all living off the taxpayer. Agency A doesn't care as they've got £x,000 off person B.
Then that worker has to show employment or go home, in very short order people who are paying the thousands to these dodgy visa agents will dry up as it becomes known that there's no chance of actually staying and working becomes part of the visa terms.
The Migration Observatory suggesting that the annual run rate for net migration will drop to under 200k by the end of the year. I really wouldn't be surprised if next year we get net emigration because the arrivals from student visas are much lower than the students + dependents leaving at the end of their freebie 2 years and new care worker visa arrivals not getting dependant rights as the previous batch going home on the old scheme which did have them.
Personally, I think that's wishful thinking.
But it does seem incredulous that Sunak didn't do this a year earlier, soon after he took office, because if he'd gone into the election with this story he'd have saved dozens and dozens of seats from Reform.
How did it happen that in one year overseas students were suddenly allowed to bring their families with them, a couple of hundred thousand extra people requiring housing and public services?
At the time I think there was a desperation for H&SC workers.
But, yes, astonishingly naïve since it's a huge and obvious backdoor migration route to the UK.
As I might have said dozens of times, if they want to recruit H&SC workers all they need to do is set up a recruitment centre in Manila. They’d have tens of thousands of young ladies, without dependents, queuing around the block to sign up.
Conversely, you could increase UK wages until enough UK workers volunteered to do it. People are not fuses to be thrown away if cheaper ones can be imported.
How do you increase UK wages in the social care sector?
The key is who do the 121 conservative mps put through ?
Hopefully with an awareness of the risks of any association with Reform they will look to Tugendhat and Cleverly as the safest hands and certainly keep the Trump supporting Jenrick well away
The Migration Observatory suggesting that the annual run rate for net migration will drop to under 200k by the end of the year. I really wouldn't be surprised if next year we get net emigration because the arrivals from student visas are much lower than the students + dependents leaving at the end of their freebie 2 years and new care worker visa arrivals not getting dependant rights as the previous batch going home on the old scheme which did have them.
Personally, I think that's wishful thinking.
But it does seem incredulous that Sunak didn't do this a year earlier, soon after he took office, because if he'd gone into the election with this story he'd have saved dozens and dozens of seats from Reform.
How did it happen that in one year overseas students were suddenly allowed to bring their families with them, a couple of hundred thousand extra people requiring housing and public services?
At the time I think there was a desperation for H&SC workers.
But, yes, astonishingly naïve since it's a huge and obvious backdoor migration route to the UK.
As I might have said dozens of times, if they want to recruit H&SC workers all they need to do is set up a recruitment centre in Manila. They’d have tens of thousands of young ladies, without dependents, queuing around the block to sign up.
But how many of those young ladies would pay the sponsoring company thousands for the visa?
Exactly. All this recruitment agent sh!t got outlawed in the sandpit more than a decade ago.
I’d seriously have the UK government set up a popup recruitment shop around the corner from their embassy in Manila. Find people with local nursing qualifications, bring them over as care workers and let them study to be UK nurses. They’re going to be overwhelmingly young ladies with no dependents and no ‘integration’ issues.
The company I used to work for, a well-known sandpit hotelier with more than 10,000 employees, would do recruitment roadshows in Asian counties all the time.
The Migration Observatory suggesting that the annual run rate for net migration will drop to under 200k by the end of the year. I really wouldn't be surprised if next year we get net emigration because the arrivals from student visas are much lower than the students + dependents leaving at the end of their freebie 2 years and new care worker visa arrivals not getting dependant rights as the previous batch going home on the old scheme which did have them.
Personally, I think that's wishful thinking.
But it does seem incredulous that Sunak didn't do this a year earlier, soon after he took office, because if he'd gone into the election with this story he'd have saved dozens and dozens of seats from Reform.
How did it happen that in one year overseas students were suddenly allowed to bring their families with them, a couple of hundred thousand extra people requiring housing and public services?
At the time I think there was a desperation for H&SC workers.
But, yes, astonishingly naïve since it's a huge and obvious backdoor migration route to the UK.
As I might have said dozens of times, if they want to recruit H&SC workers all they need to do is set up a recruitment centre in Manila. They’d have tens of thousands of young ladies, without dependents, queuing around the block to sign up.
Conversely, you could increase UK wages until enough UK workers volunteered to do it. People are not fuses to be thrown away if cheaper ones can be imported.
How do you increase UK wages in the social care sector?
There are close to 3m economically inactive people of working age. It's time to get tough on benefits and push people into work.
Just let supply and demand do its job and let prices adjust to the point that vacancies are filled by wages being the market rate. If you want to hire people, you need to pay whatever it costs to hire them.
If I were an unskilled worker looking for minimum wage work would I want to wipe people's bums in a care home for minimum wage, or make coffee in a café, or wait on tables in a restaurant for minimum wage plus tips?
No brainer, I would not be choosing to wipe people's bums.
To some extent that's true, though it is time to get much tougher with benefits. They are too easy to access and too generous for people who claim to be unable to work for whatever reason. Labour brought in much tougher work fitness tests when they were in power last time and Theresa May unwound a lot of that, I think that was stupid and the won't works who were forced into working under Labour and the first Tory government are now back to their default setting of gaming the system and not working.
"Just let supply and demand do its job and let prices adjust to the point that vacancies are filled by wages being the market rate. "
Can't happen in the care sector as the councils - being the by far the major buyer in the market - are capped as to their funds for social care.
Labour claim they have a plan to sort that out and get wages in the sector up but all I have seen so far is some waffle about making it the first sector to have national bargaining again.
Let's hope there is more to it than that back of fag packet stuff.
Especially after Reeves has pulled the existing reforms for Oct 2025 which were not just about personal cost caps
You are categorically wrong, there is absolutely no reason why it can't happen.
If the costs rise, the costs have to be paid and if caps for funds need reviewing they'll need reviewing.
But the one thing that is absolutely true is that care homes are required to have a ratio of staff to residents in, or face safeguarding. If they can't find them through their own staff they can and do pay more already to agencies to get agency workers in.
If they need to pay more to hire their own staff, or more to agencies that no longer have access to cheap serfs, then tough shit. They have to pay what they have to pay, or they'll be safeguarded.
The Migration Observatory suggesting that the annual run rate for net migration will drop to under 200k by the end of the year. I really wouldn't be surprised if next year we get net emigration because the arrivals from student visas are much lower than the students + dependents leaving at the end of their freebie 2 years and new care worker visa arrivals not getting dependant rights as the previous batch going home on the old scheme which did have them.
Personally, I think that's wishful thinking.
But it does seem incredulous that Sunak didn't do this a year earlier, soon after he took office, because if he'd gone into the election with this story he'd have saved dozens and dozens of seats from Reform.
How did it happen that in one year overseas students were suddenly allowed to bring their families with them, a couple of hundred thousand extra people requiring housing and public services?
At the time I think there was a desperation for H&SC workers.
But, yes, astonishingly naïve since it's a huge and obvious backdoor migration route to the UK.
As I might have said dozens of times, if they want to recruit H&SC workers all they need to do is set up a recruitment centre in Manila. They’d have tens of thousands of young ladies, without dependents, queuing around the block to sign up.
Conversely, you could increase UK wages until enough UK workers volunteered to do it. People are not fuses to be thrown away if cheaper ones can be imported.
How do you increase UK wages in the social care sector?
Rayner wants a £2 an hour increase for all care workers
The Migration Observatory suggesting that the annual run rate for net migration will drop to under 200k by the end of the year. I really wouldn't be surprised if next year we get net emigration because the arrivals from student visas are much lower than the students + dependents leaving at the end of their freebie 2 years and new care worker visa arrivals not getting dependant rights as the previous batch going home on the old scheme which did have them.
Personally, I think that's wishful thinking.
But it does seem incredulous that Sunak didn't do this a year earlier, soon after he took office, because if he'd gone into the election with this story he'd have saved dozens and dozens of seats from Reform.
How did it happen that in one year overseas students were suddenly allowed to bring their families with them, a couple of hundred thousand extra people requiring housing and public services?
At the time I think there was a desperation for H&SC workers.
But, yes, astonishingly naïve since it's a huge and obvious backdoor migration route to the UK.
As I might have said dozens of times, if they want to recruit H&SC workers all they need to do is set up a recruitment centre in Manila. They’d have tens of thousands of young ladies, without dependents, queuing around the block to sign up.
Conversely, you could increase UK wages until enough UK workers volunteered to do it. People are not fuses to be thrown away if cheaper ones can be imported.
How do you increase UK wages in the social care sector?
Leicestershire County Council plans to build 2,750 homes and lots of new warehouses on fields (they let to tenant farmers) to the East of J20 of the M1 have hit a problem - They can't get anyone to build the houses because of the slump in the housing market. They want to reduce the 40% affordable home condition and now want to build the warehouses first.
The plan was mad - the noise from the motorway would make it too noisy to sit in your garden.
That sounds manageable, and afaik can be mitigated in umpteen different ways, from belts of trees or a woodland nature reserve to block sounds or diffuse prevailing wind, to sound barriers, to embankments, to modestly reducing the speed limit on the motorway.
TBH that sounds like one for whatever new approach the Government are bringing forward. There's plenty of history of LA lead development. And tipping the market away from large developers a little could be beneficial.
The strategic things imo are around making a sustainable community.
Looking, Lutterworth just the other side of the motorway at J20 has much housing close to the motorway. In a large development a solution should be possible. The whole thing sounds as if it covers half a square mile or so.
Royal Mail's old management college - originally the home of Frank Whittle who invented the jet engine - and now sold off, I believe, to some private equity owners, is right there, so I know that area well. You don't have to get that far from the motorway before you can't really hear the traffic, except perhaps as a very faint hum in the distance.
Indeed. My family (and then again later) home bedroom window for about 25 years was 150m from the M1 in Derbyshire. I could see the vehicles driving past side on.
The village 500m the other side had more noise just because of wind direction; these things are maneagable.
In a mixed development one way would be a sound barrier then a commercial belt by the motorway, then a Ukraine field boundary style wooded belt, then the housing. The amount of open space required has been 10% of development area for a very long time, so it's nothing unusual - just considered rather than free-for-all design.
The Migration Observatory suggesting that the annual run rate for net migration will drop to under 200k by the end of the year. I really wouldn't be surprised if next year we get net emigration because the arrivals from student visas are much lower than the students + dependents leaving at the end of their freebie 2 years and new care worker visa arrivals not getting dependant rights as the previous batch going home on the old scheme which did have them.
Personally, I think that's wishful thinking.
But it does seem incredulous that Sunak didn't do this a year earlier, soon after he took office, because if he'd gone into the election with this story he'd have saved dozens and dozens of seats from Reform.
How did it happen that in one year overseas students were suddenly allowed to bring their families with them, a couple of hundred thousand extra people requiring housing and public services?
At the time I think there was a desperation for H&SC workers.
But, yes, astonishingly naïve since it's a huge and obvious backdoor migration route to the UK.
As I might have said dozens of times, if they want to recruit H&SC workers all they need to do is set up a recruitment centre in Manila. They’d have tens of thousands of young ladies, without dependents, queuing around the block to sign up.
Conversely, you could increase UK wages until enough UK workers volunteered to do it. People are not fuses to be thrown away if cheaper ones can be imported.
How do you increase UK wages in the social care sector?
Find a way for councils to be able to afford it...
Whatever problems the Olympics has, its' certainly going better than the crossfit games. An athlete, Lazar Đukić has drowned in the "lake day" event which is a 3.5 mile run followed by a half mile swim. There's a reason the swims are always first in regular triathlons ! Judging by the videos (No attempted rescue with him in difficulty) his family is going to sue them to kingdom come.
There are close to 3m economically inactive people of working age. It's time to get tough on benefits and push people into work.
There's a scam going on with care worker visas.
Agency A applies for a thousand care worker visas from the Home Office. Home office grants it without any checks on agency A because they're 'not fit for purpose' as Lord Reid once put it. Agency tells people abroad they can get a care worker visa if they pay £x,000 to the agency. Person B pays said money, comes over. Care home C might or might not have a job for person B, in the meantime Person B brings over dependants E, F and G. Happens there's no job at care home C - so now B, E, F and G are all living off the taxpayer. Agency A doesn't care as they've got £x,000 off person B.
Plus, after paying £x,000 - probably borrowed from the rest of the family - they are very, very keen on getting a different job to minimum wage bum polishing.
The Migration Observatory suggesting that the annual run rate for net migration will drop to under 200k by the end of the year. I really wouldn't be surprised if next year we get net emigration because the arrivals from student visas are much lower than the students + dependents leaving at the end of their freebie 2 years and new care worker visa arrivals not getting dependant rights as the previous batch going home on the old scheme which did have them.
Personally, I think that's wishful thinking.
But it does seem incredulous that Sunak didn't do this a year earlier, soon after he took office, because if he'd gone into the election with this story he'd have saved dozens and dozens of seats from Reform.
It's not wishful thinking from @MaxPB, it's simple math. And while we can discuss what the exact numbers are going to be, it's inevitable that net immigration numbers are going to fall for Labour in the next two years, and all thanks to Sunak.
There are three basic reasons for this: (1) student visa numbers are well down (and it is much harder to bring dependents in); (2) in 2020 and 2021, you had very few people who came in on students visas and therefore you had very few returning in 2023 and 2024, while in 2022, you had a very large number of people arriving on student visas, many of whom will be returning; (3) the income threshold has risen significantly.
None of these things are anything to do with the Labour Party, but they inevitably mean that - for the next three years, until the student numbers wash out - the net immigration number is going to look pretty good.
Yes, the final pair will be Culture Warrior vs One Nation, with the Culture Warrior winning the membership.
One Nation may have the MPs but certainly don't have the membership. Expect Jenrick vs Tugenhadt though.
And if Jenrick wins I fully expect him to tack to the centre over time.
Another couple of massive election defeats should do it?
That is what it took last time. I can't see this time being any different. In spite of PB Tories views on SKS I think he has had a decent start and will get the bad stuff out of the way in the next two years with a view to winning in 2029.
So any Tory delusion that 2029 will be 2024 in reverse will be misplaced.
There are close to 3m economically inactive people of working age. It's time to get tough on benefits and push people into work.
If that is the solution then it wont happen overnight. Needs to be a proper process where one figure falls as the other rises. Otherwise no one will be picking granny off the care home floor soon.
The care home is obligated to have staff, or they will be shut down, so if they can't find the staff they'll simply have to pay more.
If they pay more, they'll find staff.
It isn't rocket science, its the first thing they teach you in Economics - Supply and Demand.
Yes to a large degree that is true, which is why healthcare staff need a payrise in order to fill the many vacancies too.
The problem is that most Social Care costs are staff related, so a payrise means higher charges, and as much SC is council funded that means council budgets need to increase. Ultimately the residents family or state get the extra costs.
Personally I favour tackling the issue upstream, as preventive care, public health interventions and timely medical intervention can keep a lot of older folk out of the SC trap in the first place. It isn't a quick payoff though.
Leicestershire County Council plans to build 2,750 homes and lots of new warehouses on fields (they let to tenant farmers) to the East of J20 of the M1 have hit a problem - They can't get anyone to build the houses because of the slump in the housing market. They want to reduce the 40% affordable home condition and now want to build the warehouses first.
The plan was mad - the noise from the motorway would make it too noisy to sit in your garden.
Though pretty standard for developers to get permission first, promising affordable homes, then suddenly find the project unviable unless they build 4 bed "executive" houses on tiny plots instead of their commitment. It's developer's gamesmanship.
Good, what's wrong with that?
Build ten million 4 bed homes across the country, instead of shitty "affordable" flats, and the housing crisis would be over and 4 bed homes could become the default for people to have. What exactly is your problem?
And people moving out of pre-existing affordable 3 beds or flats into better, newer, 4 bed houses frees up the older stock for those who want something affordable.
You know those 4 bed homes will be smaller than you typical 3 bed 1950's semi
And the cost of 4 bed house meeting current building regs is outside the purchase power of most people...
There is a strange obsession in Britain in labelling houses by number of bedrooms, even when some rooms are barely bigger than a closet. In most countries real estate is marketed by floor area with fewer and bigger rooms.
Are you sure about this? France and Switzerland it’s very much marketing by number of rooms - they often aren’t even explicit about how many of those rooms are bedrooms until you get into the details.
Number of bedrooms weirdly is pretty important as to whether that house will work for people.
There are close to 3m economically inactive people of working age. It's time to get tough on benefits and push people into work.
There's a scam going on with care worker visas.
Agency A applies for a thousand care worker visas from the Home Office. Home office grants it without any checks on agency A because they're 'not fit for purpose' as Lord Reid once put it. Agency tells people abroad they can get a care worker visa if they pay £x,000 to the agency. Person B pays said money, comes over. Care home C might or might not have a job for person B, in the meantime Person B brings over dependants E, F and G. Happens there's no job at care home C - so now B, E, F and G are all living off the taxpayer. Agency A doesn't care as they've got £x,000 off person B.
Then that worker has to show employment or go home, in very short order people who are paying the thousands to these dodgy visa agents will dry up as it becomes known that there's no chance of actually staying and working becomes part of the visa terms.
Yes, but we all know how it actually (doesn't) work lol.
There are close to 3m economically inactive people of working age. It's time to get tough on benefits and push people into work.
Just let supply and demand do its job and let prices adjust to the point that vacancies are filled by wages being the market rate. If you want to hire people, you need to pay whatever it costs to hire them.
If I were an unskilled worker looking for minimum wage work would I want to wipe people's bums in a care home for minimum wage, or make coffee in a café, or wait on tables in a restaurant for minimum wage plus tips?
No brainer, I would not be choosing to wipe people's bums.
To some extent that's true, though it is time to get much tougher with benefits. They are too easy to access and too generous for people who claim to be unable to work for whatever reason. Labour brought in much tougher work fitness tests when they were in power last time and Theresa May unwound a lot of that, I think that was stupid and the won't works who were forced into working under Labour and the first Tory government are now back to their default setting of gaming the system and not working.
Bart's point is completely true, and your gripe about benefits claimants is not relevant to it. Even if we did cut benefits, are those people going to be wiping bums? Of course not. Care work is responsible work - do you want you ageing mum looked after by some reprobate who is being forced into a job? And anyway, as Bart points out, there are far easier ways of earning minimum wage.
No, the fundamental issue is that care work is hard work, and the only way you'll get people to do it is by paying them sufficient wages to make the job attractive. And this means more money for care, which either means higher taxes or some other system for care provision. There's no way of dodging this, and demographics means that the problem is only going to get worse.
There are close to 3m economically inactive people of working age. It's time to get tough on benefits and push people into work.
There's a scam going on with care worker visas.
Agency A applies for a thousand care worker visas from the Home Office. Home office grants it without any checks on agency A because they're 'not fit for purpose' as Lord Reid once put it. Agency tells people abroad they can get a care worker visa if they pay £x,000 to the agency. Person B pays said money, comes over. Care home C might or might not have a job for person B, in the meantime Person B brings over dependants E, F and G. Happens there's no job at care home C - so now B, E, F and G are all living off the taxpayer. Agency A doesn't care as they've got £x,000 off person B.
Then that worker has to show employment or go home, in very short order people who are paying the thousands to these dodgy visa agents will dry up as it becomes known that there's no chance of actually staying and working becomes part of the visa terms.
But the government needs to actually show the ability to deport people, otherwise the pull factors willl continue.
The real problem is the recruitment agencies. Just have the government open recruitment centres at or near embassies, it costs almost nothing.
Recruitment agencies were banned in the sandpit more than a decade ago, as they’re parasites who abuse workers and their families.
The Migration Observatory suggesting that the annual run rate for net migration will drop to under 200k by the end of the year. I really wouldn't be surprised if next year we get net emigration because the arrivals from student visas are much lower than the students + dependents leaving at the end of their freebie 2 years and new care worker visa arrivals not getting dependant rights as the previous batch going home on the old scheme which did have them.
So are the care workers who come here, bringing multiple economically inactive dependents, only short term ?
I've posted the numbers before, but care workers are a relatively small share of the total number of work visas issued in a year. And with the removal of dependent rights, it will cut it even further.
There are close to 3m economically inactive people of working age. It's time to get tough on benefits and push people into work.
There's a scam going on with care worker visas.
Agency A applies for a thousand care worker visas from the Home Office. Home office grants it without any checks on agency A because they're 'not fit for purpose' as Lord Reid once put it. Agency tells people abroad they can get a care worker visa if they pay £x,000 to the agency. Person B pays said money, comes over. Care home C might or might not have a job for person B, in the meantime Person B brings over dependants E, F and G. Happens there's no job at care home C - so now B, E, F and G are all living off the taxpayer. Agency A doesn't care as they've got £x,000 off person B.
I don't know if you saw the article I linked, copy below, but you are absolutely right. Total scam.
Leicestershire County Council plans to build 2,750 homes and lots of new warehouses on fields (they let to tenant farmers) to the East of J20 of the M1 have hit a problem - They can't get anyone to build the houses because of the slump in the housing market. They want to reduce the 40% affordable home condition and now want to build the warehouses first.
The plan was mad - the noise from the motorway would make it too noisy to sit in your garden.
Though pretty standard for developers to get permission first, promising affordable homes, then suddenly find the project unviable unless they build 4 bed "executive" houses on tiny plots instead of their commitment. It's developer's gamesmanship.
Good, what's wrong with that?
Build ten million 4 bed homes across the country, instead of shitty "affordable" flats, and the housing crisis would be over and 4 bed homes could become the default for people to have. What exactly is your problem?
And people moving out of pre-existing affordable 3 beds or flats into better, newer, 4 bed houses frees up the older stock for those who want something affordable.
You know those 4 bed homes will be smaller than you typical 3 bed 1950's semi
And the cost of 4 bed house meeting current building regs is outside the purchase power of most people...
There is a strange obsession in Britain in labelling houses by number of bedrooms, even when some rooms are barely bigger than a closet. In most countries real estate is marketed by floor area with fewer and bigger rooms.
Are you sure about this? France and Switzerland it’s very much marketing by number of rooms - they often aren’t even explicit about how many of those rooms are bedrooms until you get into the details.
Number of bedrooms weirdly is pretty important as to whether that house will work for people.
It's certainly the case in Germany that the headline info for a house is its floor area. The number and type of rooms comes second.
The Migration Observatory suggesting that the annual run rate for net migration will drop to under 200k by the end of the year. I really wouldn't be surprised if next year we get net emigration because the arrivals from student visas are much lower than the students + dependents leaving at the end of their freebie 2 years and new care worker visa arrivals not getting dependant rights as the previous batch going home on the old scheme which did have them.
Personally, I think that's wishful thinking.
But it does seem incredulous that Sunak didn't do this a year earlier, soon after he took office, because if he'd gone into the election with this story he'd have saved dozens and dozens of seats from Reform.
How did it happen that in one year overseas students were suddenly allowed to bring their families with them, a couple of hundred thousand extra people requiring housing and public services?
At the time I think there was a desperation for H&SC workers.
But, yes, astonishingly naïve since it's a huge and obvious backdoor migration route to the UK.
As I might have said dozens of times, if they want to recruit H&SC workers all they need to do is set up a recruitment centre in Manila. They’d have tens of thousands of young ladies, without dependents, queuing around the block to sign up.
Conversely, you could increase UK wages until enough UK workers volunteered to do it. People are not fuses to be thrown away if cheaper ones can be imported.
How do you increase UK wages in the social care sector?
Pay more money.
Same as any other sector ever.
Obvs.
But where is the money to come from?
Reeves isn't handing any over. She's just pulled the reforms carefully prepared and voted on several times since Cameron in 2010.
There are close to 3m economically inactive people of working age. It's time to get tough on benefits and push people into work.
There's a scam going on with care worker visas.
Agency A applies for a thousand care worker visas from the Home Office. Home office grants it without any checks on agency A because they're 'not fit for purpose' as Lord Reid once put it. Agency tells people abroad they can get a care worker visa if they pay £x,000 to the agency. Person B pays said money, comes over. Care home C might or might not have a job for person B, in the meantime Person B brings over dependants E, F and G. Happens there's no job at care home C - so now B, E, F and G are all living off the taxpayer. Agency A doesn't care as they've got £x,000 off person B.
Then that worker has to show employment or go home, in very short order people who are paying the thousands to these dodgy visa agents will dry up as it becomes known that there's no chance of actually staying and working becomes part of the visa terms.
But the government needs to actually show the ability to deport people, otherwise the pull factors willl continue.
The real problem is the recruitment agencies. Just have the government open recruitment centres at or near embassies, it costs almost nothing.
Recruitment agencies were banned in the sandpit more than a decade ago, as they’re parasites who abuse workers and their families.
That's easy, if they don't have contributions under PAYE then get them on the plane home.
And agreed about recruitment agents, I wouldn't allow them in the system at all. I think it's part of the corruption sphere. By keeping them in I'm sure politicians and home office workers are benefitting somehow.
The Migration Observatory suggesting that the annual run rate for net migration will drop to under 200k by the end of the year. I really wouldn't be surprised if next year we get net emigration because the arrivals from student visas are much lower than the students + dependents leaving at the end of their freebie 2 years and new care worker visa arrivals not getting dependant rights as the previous batch going home on the old scheme which did have them.
Personally, I think that's wishful thinking.
But it does seem incredulous that Sunak didn't do this a year earlier, soon after he took office, because if he'd gone into the election with this story he'd have saved dozens and dozens of seats from Reform.
How did it happen that in one year overseas students were suddenly allowed to bring their families with them, a couple of hundred thousand extra people requiring housing and public services?
At the time I think there was a desperation for H&SC workers.
But, yes, astonishingly naïve since it's a huge and obvious backdoor migration route to the UK.
As I might have said dozens of times, if they want to recruit H&SC workers all they need to do is set up a recruitment centre in Manila. They’d have tens of thousands of young ladies, without dependents, queuing around the block to sign up.
Conversely, you could increase UK wages until enough UK workers volunteered to do it. People are not fuses to be thrown away if cheaper ones can be imported.
How do you increase UK wages in the social care sector?
Find a way for councils to be able to afford it...
Overhaul council tax by adding many more upper bands or apply an annual percentage charge on the homes value
There are close to 3m economically inactive people of working age. It's time to get tough on benefits and push people into work.
There's a scam going on with care worker visas.
Agency A applies for a thousand care worker visas from the Home Office. Home office grants it without any checks on agency A because they're 'not fit for purpose' as Lord Reid once put it. Agency tells people abroad they can get a care worker visa if they pay £x,000 to the agency. Person B pays said money, comes over. Care home C might or might not have a job for person B, in the meantime Person B brings over dependants E, F and G. Happens there's no job at care home C - so now B, E, F and G are all living off the taxpayer. Agency A doesn't care as they've got £x,000 off person B.
Then that worker has to show employment or go home, in very short order people who are paying the thousands to these dodgy visa agents will dry up as it becomes known that there's no chance of actually staying and working becomes part of the visa terms.
But the government needs to actually show the ability to deport people, otherwise the pull factors willl continue.
The real problem is the recruitment agencies. Just have the government open recruitment centres at or near embassies, it costs almost nothing.
Recruitment agencies were banned in the sandpit more than a decade ago, as they’re parasites who abuse workers and their families.
That's easy, if they don't have contributions under PAYE then get them on the plane home.
But they have a cat, and a girlfriend, and a taxpayer-funded lawyer who can draw out the process for as long as it takes them to have a baby and a wife…
The Migration Observatory suggesting that the annual run rate for net migration will drop to under 200k by the end of the year. I really wouldn't be surprised if next year we get net emigration because the arrivals from student visas are much lower than the students + dependents leaving at the end of their freebie 2 years and new care worker visa arrivals not getting dependant rights as the previous batch going home on the old scheme which did have them.
Personally, I think that's wishful thinking.
But it does seem incredulous that Sunak didn't do this a year earlier, soon after he took office, because if he'd gone into the election with this story he'd have saved dozens and dozens of seats from Reform.
How did it happen that in one year overseas students were suddenly allowed to bring their families with them, a couple of hundred thousand extra people requiring housing and public services?
At the time I think there was a desperation for H&SC workers.
But, yes, astonishingly naïve since it's a huge and obvious backdoor migration route to the UK.
As I might have said dozens of times, if they want to recruit H&SC workers all they need to do is set up a recruitment centre in Manila. They’d have tens of thousands of young ladies, without dependents, queuing around the block to sign up.
Conversely, you could increase UK wages until enough UK workers volunteered to do it. People are not fuses to be thrown away if cheaper ones can be imported.
How do you increase UK wages in the social care sector?
Pay more money.
Same as any other sector ever.
Obvs.
But where is the money to come from?
Reeves isn't handing any over. She's just pulled the reforms carefully prepared and voted on several times since Cameron in 2010.
There are close to 3m economically inactive people of working age. It's time to get tough on benefits and push people into work.
If that is the solution then it wont happen overnight. Needs to be a proper process where one figure falls as the other rises. Otherwise no one will be picking granny off the care home floor soon.
The care home is obligated to have staff, or they will be shut down, so if they can't find the staff they'll simply have to pay more.
If they pay more, they'll find staff.
It isn't rocket science, its the first thing they teach you in Economics - Supply and Demand.
Yes to a large degree that is true, which is why healthcare staff need a payrise in order to fill the many vacancies too.
The problem is that most Social Care costs are staff related, so a payrise means higher charges, and as much SC is council funded that means council budgets need to increase. Ultimately the residents family or state get the extra costs.
Personally I favour tackling the issue upstream, as preventive care, public health interventions and timely medical intervention can keep a lot of older folk out of the SC trap in the first place. It isn't a quick payoff though.
Tough shit if it costs more.
The tail doesn't get to wag the dog. Just because you want something to be cheap doesn't mean you get to demand it is, supply and demand exists.
Care homes are obligated to have the staff. If they don't, they'll get safeguarded. They have no choice. Councils are obligated to find homes for those who need it.
Let the market sort it out and pay will rise and Councils/families will just have to find the money, whether they want to or not. Trying to wait until the Councils/families find the money and volunteer to pay extra is never going to fix it, it needs to come the other direction.
There are close to 3m economically inactive people of working age. It's time to get tough on benefits and push people into work.
There's a scam going on with care worker visas.
Agency A applies for a thousand care worker visas from the Home Office. Home office grants it without any checks on agency A because they're 'not fit for purpose' as Lord Reid once put it. Agency tells people abroad they can get a care worker visa if they pay £x,000 to the agency. Person B pays said money, comes over. Care home C might or might not have a job for person B, in the meantime Person B brings over dependants E, F and G. Happens there's no job at care home C - so now B, E, F and G are all living off the taxpayer. Agency A doesn't care as they've got £x,000 off person B.
Then that worker has to show employment or go home, in very short order people who are paying the thousands to these dodgy visa agents will dry up as it becomes known that there's no chance of actually staying and working becomes part of the visa terms.
But the government needs to actually show the ability to deport people, otherwise the pull factors willl continue.
The real problem is the recruitment agencies. Just have the government open recruitment centres at or near embassies, it costs almost nothing.
Recruitment agencies were banned in the sandpit more than a decade ago, as they’re parasites who abuse workers and their families.
That's easy, if they don't have contributions under PAYE then get them on the plane home.
But they have a cat, and a girlfriend, and a taxpayer-funded lawyer who can draw out the process for as long as it takes them to have a baby and a wife…
Make it part of the visa terms that you need constant PAYE contributions from day one or face deportation. People on visas should be very easy to deport. It's asylum seekers and refugees that are much more difficult to do so. Also remove legal aid from visa overstayers. That's another very easy reform.
The Migration Observatory suggesting that the annual run rate for net migration will drop to under 200k by the end of the year. I really wouldn't be surprised if next year we get net emigration because the arrivals from student visas are much lower than the students + dependents leaving at the end of their freebie 2 years and new care worker visa arrivals not getting dependant rights as the previous batch going home on the old scheme which did have them.
Personally, I think that's wishful thinking.
But it does seem incredulous that Sunak didn't do this a year earlier, soon after he took office, because if he'd gone into the election with this story he'd have saved dozens and dozens of seats from Reform.
How did it happen that in one year overseas students were suddenly allowed to bring their families with them, a couple of hundred thousand extra people requiring housing and public services?
At the time I think there was a desperation for H&SC workers.
But, yes, astonishingly naïve since it's a huge and obvious backdoor migration route to the UK.
As I might have said dozens of times, if they want to recruit H&SC workers all they need to do is set up a recruitment centre in Manila. They’d have tens of thousands of young ladies, without dependents, queuing around the block to sign up.
Conversely, you could increase UK wages until enough UK workers volunteered to do it. People are not fuses to be thrown away if cheaper ones can be imported.
How do you increase UK wages in the social care sector?
Pay more money.
Same as any other sector ever.
Obvs.
But where is the money to come from?
Reeves isn't handing any over. She's just pulled the reforms carefully prepared and voted on several times since Cameron in 2010.
Nothing is going to change now for years.
Good that she pulled the reforms, the reforms were awful introducing a cap on costs. There is no cap, it costs what it costs.
Finding the money is the final step, not the first. Care homes need to charge whatever they need to charge to fill their vacancies, no more and no less, then the money will have to be found. You can't find the money first then offer it, that's not supply and demand.
The Migration Observatory suggesting that the annual run rate for net migration will drop to under 200k by the end of the year. I really wouldn't be surprised if next year we get net emigration because the arrivals from student visas are much lower than the students + dependents leaving at the end of their freebie 2 years and new care worker visa arrivals not getting dependant rights as the previous batch going home on the old scheme which did have them.
Personally, I think that's wishful thinking.
But it does seem incredulous that Sunak didn't do this a year earlier, soon after he took office, because if he'd gone into the election with this story he'd have saved dozens and dozens of seats from Reform.
How did it happen that in one year overseas students were suddenly allowed to bring their families with them, a couple of hundred thousand extra people requiring housing and public services?
At the time I think there was a desperation for H&SC workers.
But, yes, astonishingly naïve since it's a huge and obvious backdoor migration route to the UK.
As I might have said dozens of times, if they want to recruit H&SC workers all they need to do is set up a recruitment centre in Manila. They’d have tens of thousands of young ladies, without dependents, queuing around the block to sign up.
But how many of those young ladies would pay the sponsoring company thousands for the visa?
Exactly. All this recruitment agent sh!t got outlawed in the sandpit more than a decade ago.
I’d seriously have the UK government set up a popup recruitment shop around the corner from their embassy in Manila. Find people with local nursing qualifications, bring them over as care workers and let them study to be UK nurses. They’re going to be overwhelmingly young ladies with no dependents and no ‘integration’ issues.
The company I used to work for, a well-known sandpit hotelier with more than 10,000 employees, would do recruitment roadshows in Asian counties all the time.
I work with a lot of Filipino staff. Indeed the Filipino diaspora in Britain now numbers 200 000, one of Britain's less recognised minorities, not least as quite widely dispersed. Lovely people to work with in the main, well trained, professional and willing. Increasingly there is chain migration and many have brought family members with them.
We have a lot of Keralan and African staff that are great too.
James Heale @JAHeale · 40m Kemi Badenoch way out in front according to ConHome’s members’ poll.
Robert Jenrick in second again with little to separate Tom Tugendhat, James Cleverly and Priti Patel for third.
don't like Badenoch much, but she'd be a far better leader than Jenrick.
He'll only be leader for two or three years if they opt for him. Public will never go for him: just another rich smoothy over promoted public school type with a oxbridge degree and little in public life to show for it.
(NB: Yes I know he actually went to a grammar school but not how public will see it).
Wolverhampton Grammar School is actually a private school with fees and everything, including a misleading name.
The Migration Observatory suggesting that the annual run rate for net migration will drop to under 200k by the end of the year. I really wouldn't be surprised if next year we get net emigration because the arrivals from student visas are much lower than the students + dependents leaving at the end of their freebie 2 years and new care worker visa arrivals not getting dependant rights as the previous batch going home on the old scheme which did have them.
Personally, I think that's wishful thinking.
But it does seem incredulous that Sunak didn't do this a year earlier, soon after he took office, because if he'd gone into the election with this story he'd have saved dozens and dozens of seats from Reform.
How did it happen that in one year overseas students were suddenly allowed to bring their families with them, a couple of hundred thousand extra people requiring housing and public services?
At the time I think there was a desperation for H&SC workers.
But, yes, astonishingly naïve since it's a huge and obvious backdoor migration route to the UK.
As I might have said dozens of times, if they want to recruit H&SC workers all they need to do is set up a recruitment centre in Manila. They’d have tens of thousands of young ladies, without dependents, queuing around the block to sign up.
Conversely, you could increase UK wages until enough UK workers volunteered to do it. People are not fuses to be thrown away if cheaper ones can be imported.
How do you increase UK wages in the social care sector?
Pay more money.
Same as any other sector ever.
Obvs.
But where is the money to come from?
Reeves isn't handing any over. She's just pulled the reforms carefully prepared and voted on several times since Cameron in 2010.
Nothing is going to change now for years.
Good that she pulled the reforms, the reforms were awful introducing a cap on costs. There is no cap, it costs what it costs.
Finding the money is the final step, not the first. Care homes need to charge whatever they need to charge to fill their vacancies, no more and no less, then the money will have to be found. You can't find the money first then offer it, that's not supply and demand.
The Migration Observatory suggesting that the annual run rate for net migration will drop to under 200k by the end of the year. I really wouldn't be surprised if next year we get net emigration because the arrivals from student visas are much lower than the students + dependents leaving at the end of their freebie 2 years and new care worker visa arrivals not getting dependant rights as the previous batch going home on the old scheme which did have them.
Personally, I think that's wishful thinking.
But it does seem incredulous that Sunak didn't do this a year earlier, soon after he took office, because if he'd gone into the election with this story he'd have saved dozens and dozens of seats from Reform.
How did it happen that in one year overseas students were suddenly allowed to bring their families with them, a couple of hundred thousand extra people requiring housing and public services?
At the time I think there was a desperation for H&SC workers.
But, yes, astonishingly naïve since it's a huge and obvious backdoor migration route to the UK.
As I might have said dozens of times, if they want to recruit H&SC workers all they need to do is set up a recruitment centre in Manila. They’d have tens of thousands of young ladies, without dependents, queuing around the block to sign up.
Conversely, you could increase UK wages until enough UK workers volunteered to do it. People are not fuses to be thrown away if cheaper ones can be imported.
How do you increase UK wages in the social care sector?
Pay more money.
Same as any other sector ever.
Obvs.
But where is the money to come from?
Reeves isn't handing any over. She's just pulled the reforms carefully prepared and voted on several times since Cameron in 2010.
Nothing is going to change now for years.
Good that she pulled the reforms, the reforms were awful introducing a cap on costs. There is no cap, it costs what it costs.
Finding the money is the final step, not the first. Care homes need to charge whatever they need to charge to fill their vacancies, no more and no less, then the money will have to be found. You can't find the money first then offer it, that's not supply and demand.
IHT on pensions to fund it.
Would only impact pensions where the person who died is under 75 - after that it's subject to income tax which is higher than IHT...
The Migration Observatory suggesting that the annual run rate for net migration will drop to under 200k by the end of the year. I really wouldn't be surprised if next year we get net emigration because the arrivals from student visas are much lower than the students + dependents leaving at the end of their freebie 2 years and new care worker visa arrivals not getting dependant rights as the previous batch going home on the old scheme which did have them.
Personally, I think that's wishful thinking.
But it does seem incredulous that Sunak didn't do this a year earlier, soon after he took office, because if he'd gone into the election with this story he'd have saved dozens and dozens of seats from Reform.
How did it happen that in one year overseas students were suddenly allowed to bring their families with them, a couple of hundred thousand extra people requiring housing and public services?
At the time I think there was a desperation for H&SC workers.
But, yes, astonishingly naïve since it's a huge and obvious backdoor migration route to the UK.
As I might have said dozens of times, if they want to recruit H&SC workers all they need to do is set up a recruitment centre in Manila. They’d have tens of thousands of young ladies, without dependents, queuing around the block to sign up.
Conversely, you could increase UK wages until enough UK workers volunteered to do it. People are not fuses to be thrown away if cheaper ones can be imported.
How do you increase UK wages in the social care sector?
Pay more money.
Same as any other sector ever.
Obvs.
But where is the money to come from?
Reeves isn't handing any over. She's just pulled the reforms carefully prepared and voted on several times since Cameron in 2010.
Nothing is going to change now for years.
Good that she pulled the reforms, the reforms were awful introducing a cap on costs. There is no cap, it costs what it costs.
Finding the money is the final step, not the first. Care homes need to charge whatever they need to charge to fill their vacancies, no more and no less, then the money will have to be found. You can't find the money first then offer it, that's not supply and demand.
IHT on pensions to fund it.
Yes, another easy one to justify. Pensions are an asset class like any other and should be subject to IHT when passed on to descendants.
There are close to 3m economically inactive people of working age. It's time to get tough on benefits and push people into work.
There's a scam going on with care worker visas.
Agency A applies for a thousand care worker visas from the Home Office. Home office grants it without any checks on agency A because they're 'not fit for purpose' as Lord Reid once put it. Agency tells people abroad they can get a care worker visa if they pay £x,000 to the agency. Person B pays said money, comes over. Care home C might or might not have a job for person B, in the meantime Person B brings over dependants E, F and G. Happens there's no job at care home C - so now B, E, F and G are all living off the taxpayer. Agency A doesn't care as they've got £x,000 off person B.
Then that worker has to show employment or go home, in very short order people who are paying the thousands to these dodgy visa agents will dry up as it becomes known that there's no chance of actually staying and working becomes part of the visa terms.
But the government needs to actually show the ability to deport people, otherwise the pull factors willl continue.
The real problem is the recruitment agencies. Just have the government open recruitment centres at or near embassies, it costs almost nothing.
Recruitment agencies were banned in the sandpit more than a decade ago, as they’re parasites who abuse workers and their families.
Deportations dropped significantly after 2015, with an obvious blip at the pandemic, but returns are still lower than under the last Labour government.
The Migration Observatory suggesting that the annual run rate for net migration will drop to under 200k by the end of the year. I really wouldn't be surprised if next year we get net emigration because the arrivals from student visas are much lower than the students + dependents leaving at the end of their freebie 2 years and new care worker visa arrivals not getting dependant rights as the previous batch going home on the old scheme which did have them.
Personally, I think that's wishful thinking.
But it does seem incredulous that Sunak didn't do this a year earlier, soon after he took office, because if he'd gone into the election with this story he'd have saved dozens and dozens of seats from Reform.
How did it happen that in one year overseas students were suddenly allowed to bring their families with them, a couple of hundred thousand extra people requiring housing and public services?
At the time I think there was a desperation for H&SC workers.
But, yes, astonishingly naïve since it's a huge and obvious backdoor migration route to the UK.
As I might have said dozens of times, if they want to recruit H&SC workers all they need to do is set up a recruitment centre in Manila. They’d have tens of thousands of young ladies, without dependents, queuing around the block to sign up.
But how many of those young ladies would pay the sponsoring company thousands for the visa?
Exactly. All this recruitment agent sh!t got outlawed in the sandpit more than a decade ago.
I’d seriously have the UK government set up a popup recruitment shop around the corner from their embassy in Manila. Find people with local nursing qualifications, bring them over as care workers and let them study to be UK nurses. They’re going to be overwhelmingly young ladies with no dependents and no ‘integration’ issues.
The company I used to work for, a well-known sandpit hotelier with more than 10,000 employees, would do recruitment roadshows in Asian counties all the time.
I work with a lot of Filipino staff. Indeed the Filipino diaspora in Britain now numbers 200 000, one of Britain's less recognised minorities, not least as quite widely dispersed. Lovely people to work with in the main, well trained, professional and willing. Increasingly there is chain migration and many have brought family members with them.
We have a lot of Keralan and African staff that are great too.
Oh absolutely. In the sandpit there’s hundreds of thousands of Filipinos, pretty much all lovely people and working in a variety of service jobs. Including the barman who just poured me a pint!
One of Britain’s less recognised minorities, because they’re spread out, all speak English, don’t form ghettos, go to church on Sunday, don’t have politicians, generally they just ‘fit in’.
The only downside of Filipinos to the UK, is that they live very frugally and send lots of money ‘home’ to family, which the Chancellor won’t like too much.
Also a big up to Kenyans and Nigerians, loads of those in the sandpit at well.
James Heale @JAHeale · 40m Kemi Badenoch way out in front according to ConHome’s members’ poll.
Robert Jenrick in second again with little to separate Tom Tugendhat, James Cleverly and Priti Patel for third.
don't like Badenoch much, but she'd be a far better leader than Jenrick.
He'll only be leader for two or three years if they opt for him. Public will never go for him: just another rich smoothy over promoted public school type with a oxbridge degree and little in public life to show for it.
(NB: Yes I know he actually went to a grammar school but not how public will see it).
Wolverhampton Grammar School is actually a private school with fees and everything, including a misleading name.
Might have changed status, as SKS's school did (with much misleading shite from Tories about it). And on checking, it was indeed local authority and free till the first fee payers came in in 1978. Which is well before Mr Jenrick was born, so yoru comment is valid.
James Heale @JAHeale · 40m Kemi Badenoch way out in front according to ConHome’s members’ poll.
Robert Jenrick in second again with little to separate Tom Tugendhat, James Cleverly and Priti Patel for third.
don't like Badenoch much, but she'd be a far better leader than Jenrick.
He'll only be leader for two or three years if they opt for him. Public will never go for him: just another rich smoothy over promoted public school type with a oxbridge degree and little in public life to show for it.
(NB: Yes I know he actually went to a grammar school but not how public will see it).
Wolverhampton Grammar School is actually a private school with fees and everything, including a misleading name.
It is, to be fair, easily confused with the Royal School Wolverhampton which is on the next street, has very similar buildings and is a Free School.
The Migration Observatory suggesting that the annual run rate for net migration will drop to under 200k by the end of the year. I really wouldn't be surprised if next year we get net emigration because the arrivals from student visas are much lower than the students + dependents leaving at the end of their freebie 2 years and new care worker visa arrivals not getting dependant rights as the previous batch going home on the old scheme which did have them.
So are the care workers who come here, bringing multiple economically inactive dependents, only short term ?
I've posted the numbers before, but care workers are a relatively small share of the total number of work visas issued in a year. And with the removal of dependent rights, it will cut it even further.
The Migration Observatory suggesting that the annual run rate for net migration will drop to under 200k by the end of the year. I really wouldn't be surprised if next year we get net emigration because the arrivals from student visas are much lower than the students + dependents leaving at the end of their freebie 2 years and new care worker visa arrivals not getting dependant rights as the previous batch going home on the old scheme which did have them.
Personally, I think that's wishful thinking.
But it does seem incredulous that Sunak didn't do this a year earlier, soon after he took office, because if he'd gone into the election with this story he'd have saved dozens and dozens of seats from Reform.
How did it happen that in one year overseas students were suddenly allowed to bring their families with them, a couple of hundred thousand extra people requiring housing and public services?
At the time I think there was a desperation for H&SC workers.
But, yes, astonishingly naïve since it's a huge and obvious backdoor migration route to the UK.
As I might have said dozens of times, if they want to recruit H&SC workers all they need to do is set up a recruitment centre in Manila. They’d have tens of thousands of young ladies, without dependents, queuing around the block to sign up.
Conversely, you could increase UK wages until enough UK workers volunteered to do it. People are not fuses to be thrown away if cheaper ones can be imported.
How do you increase UK wages in the social care sector?
Pay more money.
Same as any other sector ever.
Obvs.
But where is the money to come from?
Reeves isn't handing any over. She's just pulled the reforms carefully prepared and voted on several times since Cameron in 2010.
Nothing is going to change now for years.
Good that she pulled the reforms, the reforms were awful introducing a cap on costs. There is no cap, it costs what it costs.
Finding the money is the final step, not the first. Care homes need to charge whatever they need to charge to fill their vacancies, no more and no less, then the money will have to be found. You can't find the money first then offer it, that's not supply and demand.
IHT on pensions to fund it.
Would only impact pensions where the person who died is under 75 - after that it's subject to income tax which is higher than IHT...
My Dad mentioned something about having to "take" a pension or some such before 75, he's 73.
Again if we're talking big changes to how care is funded then mandatory annual insurance from age 50 for everyone is the best way to do it. For people on low or no incomes they can have big government funded discounts. That way the risk is diffused, the insurance companies will figure out how to price individual risk within the bounds of regulatory maximums and for probably a few hundred pounds per year in insurance for over 50s we get a fully funded care sector.
If we start this now for everyone aged between 50 and 60 then in 10 years everyone aged 50-70 will have insurance and the sector will be generating billions per year in premiums to fund the entire care sector for every generation for people aged 70 under. We could even have people aged 60-70 be able to opt in with slightly higher annual payments as defined by regulations and the insurance sector so we get them all covered too.
What it also does is it gives people a full health MOT at age 50 when the insurance companies are assessing risk factors which I think will be of huge benefit to the nation.
So let's talk about the important things of the day. On breakfast TV they were talking to some farmers and talking about how quickly they freeze peas and that frozen peas taste like fresh peas. It is a story often told and I heard a top chef saying the same thing a week or so ago.
Now I find frozen peas and in particular frozen broad beans tasteless, yet I love fresh one. For me there is no comparison and I always buy fresh if I can get them, which is a challenge (pick your own is the best opportunity). This year I decided to grow my own and they are wonderful. Up until now I have only grown fruit and tend to restrict myself to stuff that I can't get in Sainsburys, or if I can, only in very small quantities without a mortgage. So stuff I grow or forage are damsons, blackberries, medlars, blackcurrants, gooseberries, elderberries, etc.
So is it just me or do others agree that fresh peas and broad beans are miles better than frozen ones (contrary to perceived wisdom or marketing hype).
The Migration Observatory suggesting that the annual run rate for net migration will drop to under 200k by the end of the year. I really wouldn't be surprised if next year we get net emigration because the arrivals from student visas are much lower than the students + dependents leaving at the end of their freebie 2 years and new care worker visa arrivals not getting dependant rights as the previous batch going home on the old scheme which did have them.
Personally, I think that's wishful thinking.
But it does seem incredulous that Sunak didn't do this a year earlier, soon after he took office, because if he'd gone into the election with this story he'd have saved dozens and dozens of seats from Reform.
How did it happen that in one year overseas students were suddenly allowed to bring their families with them, a couple of hundred thousand extra people requiring housing and public services?
At the time I think there was a desperation for H&SC workers.
But, yes, astonishingly naïve since it's a huge and obvious backdoor migration route to the UK.
As I might have said dozens of times, if they want to recruit H&SC workers all they need to do is set up a recruitment centre in Manila. They’d have tens of thousands of young ladies, without dependents, queuing around the block to sign up.
Conversely, you could increase UK wages until enough UK workers volunteered to do it. People are not fuses to be thrown away if cheaper ones can be imported.
How do you increase UK wages in the social care sector?
Pay more money.
Same as any other sector ever.
Obvs.
But where is the money to come from?
Reeves isn't handing any over. She's just pulled the reforms carefully prepared and voted on several times since Cameron in 2010.
Nothing is going to change now for years.
Good that she pulled the reforms, the reforms were awful introducing a cap on costs. There is no cap, it costs what it costs.
Finding the money is the final step, not the first. Care homes need to charge whatever they need to charge to fill their vacancies, no more and no less, then the money will have to be found. You can't find the money first then offer it, that's not supply and demand.
IHT on pensions to fund it.
Would only impact pensions where the person who died is under 75 - after that it's subject to income tax which is higher than IHT...
My Dad mentioned something about having to "take" a pension or some such before 75, he's 73.
The Migration Observatory suggesting that the annual run rate for net migration will drop to under 200k by the end of the year. I really wouldn't be surprised if next year we get net emigration because the arrivals from student visas are much lower than the students + dependents leaving at the end of their freebie 2 years and new care worker visa arrivals not getting dependant rights as the previous batch going home on the old scheme which did have them.
So are the care workers who come here, bringing multiple economically inactive dependents, only short term ?
I've posted the numbers before, but care workers are a relatively small share of the total number of work visas issued in a year. And with the removal of dependent rights, it will cut it even further.
Yep: the significant diminution of the right of health and social care visas holders to bring in dependents will have a really significant impact on visa numbers: I think it'll probably knock about 100k off annual immigration numbers on its own.
But it's the student numbers that will be the biggest single swing factor in 2024 and 2025, I reckon. Lots leaving, and far fewer coming: it's likely to be a net negative over the next two years, rather than merely a diminished positive.
Comments
https://x.com/eat_your_lasers/status/1821695116891087182?t=DLjsXwKtPvjWTwoF6mE2mw&s=19
So regular revaluations perhaps required, to avoid the dodge.
The multi-discipline events are some of the favourites to watch, seeing athletes of varying shapes and sizes all compete to be the best overall.
Katerina did really well with a huge PB in the shot put, not her best event, yesterday to lead overnight.
2 jumps left
Then they complain when someone wants to build four bed detached houses instead of one bed flats.
And the cost of 4 bed house meeting current building regs is outside the purchase power of most people...
https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1821597721582551209
Can't promise it's genuine of course, but if it is, it's striking.
Badenoch 33%, Jenrick 19%, Tugendhat 10%, Cleverly 10%, Patel 8%, Stride 2%.
So if Badenoch gets through to the members she probably wins, if she doesn't then it looks like Jenrick will win
https://conservativehome.com/2024/08/09/our-survey-the-leadership-members-back-the-1922-committees-timetable-as-badenoch-and-jenrick-surge-and-tugendhat-falls-back/
So we can "build up" with houses even in towns, not just cities, and then people object?
Indeed a new build 4 bed house takes no more land, or even less land actually, than my grandparents 1 bed bungalow - its just building up rather than across. That surely is a good thing?
There may not be anything more to it than that.
One Nation may have the MPs but certainly don't have the membership. Expect Jenrick vs Tugenhadt though.
The building cost isn't that significant, you can build a new build for no more than the cost of a pre-existing building, even including the inflated cost of land (which is artificially inflated by our planning system) and the cost of getting planning permission itself too.
Prior to requiring planning permission the cost of land was 2-3% of the cost of a house, and that was with building regs nowhere near as strict as they are today.
Today the cost of land is more like 33% of the cost of a house. Get that back down to 2-3% by reforming our planning system, keep the regs, and houses can be built quite affordably.
1 jump left to stay in hunt for gold
Ran through on the first attempt, got 6m in the second but left 32cm on the board.
Hoovering in cheap labour from Africa and Asia to wipe old people's bums for minimum wage while they bring over economically inactive dependents is what is dire. Especially when they are being brought over to help suppress pay.
Also they can Increase pay if people won't do the jobs. It may cost a little bit extra but then we do not have the burden of the economically inactive dependents. Like this mug.
https://news.sky.com/story/more-than-100-migrants-face-being-in-uk-illegally-as-care-agency-is-stripped-of-ability-to-endorse-visas-13178490
I'm not sure about that - the LibDems won almost all of their targets against the Tories, such that I believe their stronghold of Sevenoaks is something like number eight on the LibDem list based on straight swing, that list including the handful of prospects against Labour. Aside from a few seats where voters didn't sort out which of Labour and LibDems to back, such as East Grinstead, and Fareham, there aren't too many potential LD gains around any more, unless the Tories plunge themselves further down the toilet.
Yet the Tories don't have that many large majorities left - and only Rishi topped half of the vote, I think? - so they must presumably be vulnerable to Labour?
If I were an unskilled worker looking for minimum wage work would I want to wipe people's bums in a care home for minimum wage, or make coffee in a café, or wait on tables in a restaurant for minimum wage plus tips?
No brainer, I would not be choosing to wipe people's bums.
If they pay more, they'll find staff.
It isn't rocket science, its the first thing they teach you in Economics - Supply and Demand.
https://x.com/mattmfm/status/1821736437626094065
Agency A applies for a thousand care worker visas from the Home Office. Home office grants it without any checks on agency A because they're 'not fit for purpose' as Lord Reid once put it.
Agency tells people abroad they can get a care worker visa if they pay £x,000 to the agency. Person B pays said money, comes over. Care home C might or might not have a job for person B, in the meantime Person B brings over dependants E, F and G. Happens there's no job at care home C - so now B, E, F and G are all living off the taxpayer. Agency A doesn't care as they've got £x,000 off person B.
If she doesnt improve may not even get a medal of any colour.
An extra 50cm to 6.50 and she is still in hunt for Gold
Can't happen in the care sector as the councils - being the by far the major buyer in the market - are capped as to their funds for social care.
Labour claim they have a plan to sort that out and get wages in the sector up but all I have seen so far is some waffle about making it the first sector to have national bargaining again.
Let's hope there is more to it than that back of fag packet stuff.
Especially after Reeves has pulled the existing reforms for Oct 2025 which were not just about personal cost caps
Hopefully with an awareness of the risks of any association with Reform they will look to Tugendhat and Cleverly as the safest hands and certainly keep the Trump supporting Jenrick well away
I’d seriously have the UK government set up a popup recruitment shop around the corner from their embassy in Manila. Find people with local nursing qualifications, bring them over as care workers and let them study to be UK nurses. They’re going to be overwhelmingly young ladies with no dependents and no ‘integration’ issues.
The company I used to work for, a well-known sandpit hotelier with more than 10,000 employees, would do recruitment roadshows in Asian counties all the time.
If the costs rise, the costs have to be paid and if caps for funds need reviewing they'll need reviewing.
But the one thing that is absolutely true is that care homes are required to have a ratio of staff to residents in, or face safeguarding. If they can't find them through their own staff they can and do pay more already to agencies to get agency workers in.
If they need to pay more to hire their own staff, or more to agencies that no longer have access to cheap serfs, then tough shit. They have to pay what they have to pay, or they'll be safeguarded.
Same as any other sector ever.
The village 500m the other side had more noise just because of wind direction; these things are maneagable.
In a mixed development one way would be a sound barrier then a commercial belt by the motorway, then a Ukraine field boundary style wooded belt, then the housing. The amount of open space required has been 10% of development area for a very long time, so it's nothing unusual - just considered rather than free-for-all design.
There's a reason the swims are always first in regular triathlons ! Judging by the videos (No attempted rescue with him in difficulty) his family is going to sue them to kingdom come.
There are three basic reasons for this: (1) student visa numbers are well down (and it is much harder to bring dependents in); (2) in 2020 and 2021, you had very few people who came in on students visas and therefore you had very few returning in 2023 and 2024, while in 2022, you had a very large number of people arriving on student visas, many of whom will be returning; (3) the income threshold has risen significantly.
None of these things are anything to do with the Labour Party, but they inevitably mean that - for the next three years, until the student numbers wash out - the net immigration number is going to look pretty good.
So any Tory delusion that 2029 will be 2024 in reverse will be misplaced.
The problem is that most Social Care costs are staff related, so a payrise means higher charges, and as much SC is council funded that means council budgets need to increase. Ultimately the residents family or state get the extra costs.
Personally I favour tackling the issue upstream, as preventive care, public health interventions and timely medical intervention can keep a lot of older folk out of the SC trap in the first place. It isn't a quick payoff though.
She needed to be at her best in the long jump and to beat Thiam by a long way .
At least her 6.40 m salvages her hopes for silver or bronze .
Number of bedrooms weirdly is pretty important as to whether that house will work for people.
No, the fundamental issue is that care work is hard work, and the only way you'll get people to do it is by paying them sufficient wages to make the job attractive. And this means more money for care, which either means higher taxes or some other system for care provision. There's no way of dodging this, and demographics means that the problem is only going to get worse.
The real problem is the recruitment agencies. Just have the government open recruitment centres at or near embassies, it costs almost nothing.
Recruitment agencies were banned in the sandpit more than a decade ago, as they’re parasites who abuse workers and their families.
https://news.sky.com/story/more-than-100-migrants-face-being-in-uk-illegally-as-care-agency-is-stripped-of-ability-to-endorse-visas-13178490
But where is the money to come from?
Reeves isn't handing any over. She's just pulled the reforms carefully prepared and voted on several times since Cameron in 2010.
Nothing is going to change now for years.
And agreed about recruitment agents, I wouldn't allow them in the system at all. I think it's part of the corruption sphere. By keeping them in I'm sure politicians and home office workers are benefitting somehow.
The tail doesn't get to wag the dog. Just because you want something to be cheap doesn't mean you get to demand it is, supply and demand exists.
Care homes are obligated to have the staff. If they don't, they'll get safeguarded. They have no choice.
Councils are obligated to find homes for those who need it.
Let the market sort it out and pay will rise and Councils/families will just have to find the money, whether they want to or not. Trying to wait until the Councils/families find the money and volunteer to pay extra is never going to fix it, it needs to come the other direction.
https://x.com/govuk/status/1821502879590494358?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
At this point, who hasn’t actively considered emigration?
Finding the money is the final step, not the first. Care homes need to charge whatever they need to charge to fill their vacancies, no more and no less, then the money will have to be found. You can't find the money first then offer it, that's not supply and demand.
We have a lot of Keralan and African staff that are great too.
One more item on the long list of Tory failures.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-system-statistics-year-ending-march-2024/how-many-people-are-detained-or-returned
One of Britain’s less recognised minorities, because they’re spread out, all speak English, don’t form ghettos, go to church on Sunday, don’t have politicians, generally they just ‘fit in’.
The only downside of Filipinos to the UK, is that they live very frugally and send lots of money ‘home’ to family, which the Chancellor won’t like too much.
Also a big up to Kenyans and Nigerians, loads of those in the sandpit at well.
If we start this now for everyone aged between 50 and 60 then in 10 years everyone aged 50-70 will have insurance and the sector will be generating billions per year in premiums to fund the entire care sector for every generation for people aged 70 under. We could even have people aged 60-70 be able to opt in with slightly higher annual payments as defined by regulations and the insurance sector so we get them all covered too.
What it also does is it gives people a full health MOT at age 50 when the insurance companies are assessing risk factors which I think will be of huge benefit to the nation.
Now I find frozen peas and in particular frozen broad beans tasteless, yet I love fresh one. For me there is no comparison and I always buy fresh if I can get them, which is a challenge (pick your own is the best opportunity). This year I decided to grow my own and they are wonderful. Up until now I have only grown fruit and tend to restrict myself to stuff that I can't get in Sainsburys, or if I can, only in very small quantities without a mortgage. So stuff I grow or forage are damsons, blackberries, medlars, blackcurrants, gooseberries, elderberries, etc.
So is it just me or do others agree that fresh peas and broad beans are miles better than frozen ones (contrary to perceived wisdom or marketing hype).
https://www.thepensionplanner.co.uk/everything-you-need-to-know-about-your-pension-at-age-75/
But it's the student numbers that will be the biggest single swing factor in 2024 and 2025, I reckon. Lots leaving, and far fewer coming: it's likely to be a net negative over the next two years, rather than merely a diminished positive.