At this point, who hasn’t actively considered emigration?
You're the first one to bang on about how everything is going to change because of AI and tech. Do you think that nothing invented after 1997 should be regulated? If someone was handing out photocopied flyers on the high street inciting violence against mosques then they'd be hauled before a judge in 10 minutes. Why should it be any different online where thousands more are going to see it?
Enjoy your new Labour police state, your ugly cities and your terrible weather, your degraded culture and your helpless decline. I shall be elsewhere
For the moment, that is: having a shower and a coffee
So you are going to be fleeing a police state taking up hotel rooms badly needed by the locals?
What are you talking about?
Tommy Robinson.
Katie Price ?
I can't believe they arrested her. I thought she was untouchable. I had this image of her doing worse and worse plastic surgery until something exploded.
Her appearance reminded me of a puppet off Stingray.
41,000 replies, all bitterly mocking the UK Government. This is hugely damaging to our international image. They are now trying to stop people replying
Have you seen the kinds of people doing the replying? They're mostly Qanon obsessed American nutters who don't have a positive view of anyone who's surname isn't Trump.
lol. They have now removed the ability to reply
What a triumph for Gov.UK. Write a tweet to really send a message, then realise the tweet is so madly offensive and unpopular it gets bitterly mocked, worldwide, and now the government is actively trying to hide the tweet. They’ll probably end up deleting it. Brilliant way to send the message. Gold star for PR
Farcical morons
Its not offensive to write what the law is.
Getting mocked by trolls online is irrelevant.
David Cameron was right when he said that Twitter isn't Britain. Foreign trolls on Twitter are even less Britain.
But the UKG govt clearly does care about Twitter, hence the hysterical calls to ban it or restrict it
What does the devastatingly bad tweet actually say? (I'm not on Twatter)
UKGOV: Think before you post.
CPS: Think before you post! 📲✋ Content that incites violence or hatred isn't just harmful - it can be illegal.
The CPS takes online violence seriously and will prosecute when the legal test is met. Remind those close to you to share responsibly or face the consequences.
41,000 replies, all bitterly mocking the UK Government. This is hugely damaging to our international image. They are now trying to stop people replying
Have you seen the kinds of people doing the replying? They're mostly Qanon obsessed American nutters who don't have a positive view of anyone who's surname isn't Trump.
lol. They have now removed the ability to reply
What a triumph for Gov.UK. Write a tweet to really send a message, then realise the tweet is so madly offensive and unpopular it gets bitterly mocked, worldwide, and now the government is actively trying to hide the tweet. They’ll probably end up deleting it. Brilliant way to send the message. Gold star for PR
Farcical morons
Its not offensive to write what the law is.
Getting mocked by trolls online is irrelevant.
David Cameron was right when he said that Twitter isn't Britain. Foreign trolls on Twitter are even less Britain.
But the UKG govt clearly does care about Twitter, hence the hysterical calls to ban it or restrict it
What does the devastatingly bad tweet actually say? (I'm not on Twatter)
It says if you incite violence on Twitter you'll get your collar felt.
People should take the traditional and consequence free route of becoming a columnist for the Spectator.
Sunder Katwala @sundersays "The public will have to go in, & the public will have to sort this out themselves, & it'll be very, very brutal. I don't want them here. I don't want them to live here. They came under false pretences" - Douglas Murray widespread violence
41,000 replies, all bitterly mocking the UK Government. This is hugely damaging to our international image. They are now trying to stop people replying
Have you seen the kinds of people doing the replying? They're mostly Qanon obsessed American nutters who don't have a positive view of anyone who's surname isn't Trump.
lol. They have now removed the ability to reply
What a triumph for Gov.UK. Write a tweet to really send a message, then realise the tweet is so madly offensive and unpopular it gets bitterly mocked, worldwide, and now the government is actively trying to hide the tweet. They’ll probably end up deleting it. Brilliant way to send the message. Gold star for PR
Farcical morons
Its not offensive to write what the law is.
Getting mocked by trolls online is irrelevant.
David Cameron was right when he said that Twitter isn't Britain. Foreign trolls on Twitter are even less Britain.
But the UKG govt clearly does care about Twitter, hence the hysterical calls to ban it or restrict it
41,000 replies, all bitterly mocking the UK Government. This is hugely damaging to our international image. They are now trying to stop people replying
Have you seen the kinds of people doing the replying? They're mostly Qanon obsessed American nutters who don't have a positive view of anyone who's surname isn't Trump.
lol. They have now removed the ability to reply
What a triumph for Gov.UK. Write a tweet to really send a message, then realise the tweet is so madly offensive and unpopular it gets bitterly mocked, worldwide, and now the government is actively trying to hide the tweet. They’ll probably end up deleting it. Brilliant way to send the message. Gold star for PR
Farcical morons
Its not offensive to write what the law is.
Getting mocked by trolls online is irrelevant.
David Cameron was right when he said that Twitter isn't Britain. Foreign trolls on Twitter are even less Britain.
But the UKG govt clearly does care about Twitter, hence the hysterical calls to ban it or restrict it
What does the devastatingly bad tweet actually say? (I'm not on Twatter)
It says if you incite violence on Twitter you'll get your collar felt.
It does make you ashamed to be British, doesn't it?
Anyway, has anyone considered the option of simply saying that anything that Twitter or Facebook etc publish that is seen by more than say 1,000 people, Twitter are liable for like any other publisher?
At this point, who hasn’t actively considered emigration?
You're the first one to bang on about how everything is going to change because of AI and tech. Do you think that nothing invented after 1997 should be regulated? If someone was handing out photocopied flyers on the high street inciting violence against mosques then they'd be hauled before a judge in 10 minutes. Why should it be any different online where thousands more are going to see it?
Enjoy your new Labour police state, your ugly cities and your terrible weather, your degraded culture and your helpless decline. I shall be elsewhere
For the moment, that is: having a shower and a coffee
So you are going to be fleeing a police state taking up hotel rooms badly needed by the locals?
What are you talking about?
Tommy Robinson.
Katie Price ?
I can't believe they arrested her. I thought she was untouchable. I had this image of her doing worse and worse plastic surgery until something exploded.
A case of what ifs for KJT . She needed a bit more in the 200m and long jump .
I can’t see Thiam underperforming in the javelin . Regardless as long as KJT is on the podium that would be a very good result given her heartaches from previous Olympics .
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.
The Guardian reckons net immigration will come down to around 350,000 a year by 2030
Like this is some major achievement. 350,000 is still an insane and almost unprecedented number, it’s just that the Tories managed to triple it “by accident”
It still means rapid transformation. It still means incredible strains on society. On top of what we already have. Then add in the boat people…
It’s not good
The guardian is wrong and they don't know how to do simple maths. The number of people applying for visas currently is down by something like 80% compared to 2022 and the students that arrived in 2022 are all having to find jobs at £39k or go home which means most of them (and their dependents) are going home over the next year because companies aren't going to hire them for that kind of salary. I think 2025 and 2026 will see a period of net emigration. And then it will stabilise in 2027.
If it does happen it means Labour will get the credit for it and, perversely, that will help keep them in office despite them having no real interest in controlling immigration.
It makes Sunak's choices pre-election unfathomable.
The person most to blame in Johnson, because he was PM when the initial post Brexit visa regulations were put in place. But it was then ignored by Truss and Sunak, until it was too late.
Yes, I agree
There is a lot of blame to go around. The OBR will castrate anyone's growth forecasts who says they will being immigration down, leaving no headroom in budgets. That prevented Truss doing anything, and Sunak would never have got his NI cut etc. past them if he'd pledged to get it down to 10s of 000s or anything like.
But it's the dependents issue that has made immigration a problem for the Tories, changing those rules make no difference to GDP because dependents are economically inactive and overall a net drain.
But if the dependents are children who will join the workforce later, surely it's a net gain?
41,000 replies, all bitterly mocking the UK Government. This is hugely damaging to our international image. They are now trying to stop people replying
Have you seen the kinds of people doing the replying? They're mostly Qanon obsessed American nutters who don't have a positive view of anyone who's surname isn't Trump.
lol. They have now removed the ability to reply
What a triumph for Gov.UK. Write a tweet to really send a message, then realise the tweet is so madly offensive and unpopular it gets bitterly mocked, worldwide, and now the government is actively trying to hide the tweet. They’ll probably end up deleting it. Brilliant way to send the message. Gold star for PR
Farcical morons
Its not offensive to write what the law is.
Getting mocked by trolls online is irrelevant.
David Cameron was right when he said that Twitter isn't Britain. Foreign trolls on Twitter are even less Britain.
But the UKG govt clearly does care about Twitter, hence the hysterical calls to ban it or restrict it
What does the devastatingly bad tweet actually say? (I'm not on Twatter)
It says if you incite violence on Twitter you'll get your collar felt.
It does make you ashamed to be British, doesn't it?
Anyway, has anyone considered the option of simply saying that anything that Twitter or Facebook etc publish that is seen by more than say 1,000 people, Twitter are liable for like any other publisher?
That could have some interesting side effects. To avoid falling foul of it, they'd have to limit the number of impressions each tweet could have, so for a tweet to go viral it would have to spread by a form of online samizdat, being copied and pasted before the limit was reached.
This is Russian commentary on the convoy of Russian reinforcements hit in Kursk.
"Just watched a video from the scene. 13 military Urals and KAMAZ covered trucks with infantry. Many dead, some of the vehicles burned to the ground. It looks like the entire column was carrying infantry. They were armed, most likely a platoon per vehicle. 3-4 companies - an entire battalion was destroyed. Judging by the appearance of the column, about half were killed. This is one of the bloodiest and most massive strikes (most likely HIMARS) in the entire war."
Also reports that the Ukrainians are digging in to defend the gains they've made. Looks like they've decided they can cause more damage to the Russian army in a fight in Kursk, than in defending longer-established frontlines in Donetsk.
It does seem as though the Ukrainian advantage in training is used most when the battlefield is more fluid, while a largely static frontline favours the Russian advantage in artillery.
We might see the Ukrainians withdraw after a period of causing mayhem to Russian efforts to bring up artillery and other reinforcements to Kursk.
Clearly this move into Kursk has got the Russians worried. However without wanting to put a dampner on things there is concern about the Ukrainian frontline in the east. Switching their resources to the north is a somewhat risky strategy.
41,000 replies, all bitterly mocking the UK Government. This is hugely damaging to our international image. They are now trying to stop people replying
Have you seen the kinds of people doing the replying? They're mostly Qanon obsessed American nutters who don't have a positive view of anyone who's surname isn't Trump.
lol. They have now removed the ability to reply
What a triumph for Gov.UK. Write a tweet to really send a message, then realise the tweet is so madly offensive and unpopular it gets bitterly mocked, worldwide, and now the government is actively trying to hide the tweet. They’ll probably end up deleting it. Brilliant way to send the message. Gold star for PR
Farcical morons
Its not offensive to write what the law is.
Getting mocked by trolls online is irrelevant.
David Cameron was right when he said that Twitter isn't Britain. Foreign trolls on Twitter are even less Britain.
But the UKG govt clearly does care about Twitter, hence the hysterical calls to ban it or restrict it
What does the devastatingly bad tweet actually say? (I'm not on Twatter)
It says if you incite violence on Twitter you'll get your collar felt.
It does make you ashamed to be British, doesn't it?
Anyway, has anyone considered the option of simply saying that anything that Twitter or Facebook etc publish that is seen by more than say 1,000 people, Twitter are liable for like any other publisher?
No because that would be stupid? Elon is responsible for Elon's speech, he's not responsible for mine.
And in a properly functioning internet you wouldn't be able to measure how many people heard a speech act in the first place, the law definitely shouldn't be locking in the awful design of Twitter and Facebook.
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.
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.
The Guardian reckons net immigration will come down to around 350,000 a year by 2030
Like this is some major achievement. 350,000 is still an insane and almost unprecedented number, it’s just that the Tories managed to triple it “by accident”
It still means rapid transformation. It still means incredible strains on society. On top of what we already have. Then add in the boat people…
It’s not good
The guardian is wrong and they don't know how to do simple maths. The number of people applying for visas currently is down by something like 80% compared to 2022 and the students that arrived in 2022 are all having to find jobs at £39k or go home which means most of them (and their dependents) are going home over the next year because companies aren't going to hire them for that kind of salary. I think 2025 and 2026 will see a period of net emigration. And then it will stabilise in 2027.
If it does happen it means Labour will get the credit for it and, perversely, that will help keep them in office despite them having no real interest in controlling immigration.
It makes Sunak's choices pre-election unfathomable.
The person most to blame in Johnson, because he was PM when the initial post Brexit visa regulations were put in place. But it was then ignored by Truss and Sunak, until it was too late.
Yes, I agree
There is a lot of blame to go around. The OBR will castrate anyone's growth forecasts who says they will being immigration down, leaving no headroom in budgets. That prevented Truss doing anything, and Sunak would never have got his NI cut etc. past them if he'd pledged to get it down to 10s of 000s or anything like.
But it's the dependents issue that has made immigration a problem for the Tories, changing those rules make no difference to GDP because dependents are economically inactive and overall a net drain.
If you just look at the number of dependent visas for students and care workers, it was something like 300,000 last year. Which is quite astonishing. That's the same - on its own - as the annual net migration numbers to the UK from 2004 to 2016.
I also suspect that - when people bring their wife and kids over - they are much more likely to want to stay long term. So, you probably have fewer people wanting to return home at the end of their period of study or work. Now, whether that is positive or negative is up for debate, but it certainly has an impact on long-term net migration numbers.
I think the difference now is that they had the opportunity to stay when the rules were such that they only needed a £27k per year job after their two year freebie, now they need to get a £39k per year job (£51k for software development or other tech roles) which makes it much less likely they'll get a skilled worker visa after the two years.
Labour are also consulting industry on raising those levels, I've heard £45k is now going to be the national minimum and regional and sector based minimums are going to be higher still, for software engineers in London it could be ~£60k minimum income level to sponsor an overseas worker and they're talking about tightening the sponsorship licencing process too so that fewer companies are able to sponsor workers especially bigger ones who should find it easier to recruit from the existing pool of talent.
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.
The Guardian reckons net immigration will come down to around 350,000 a year by 2030
Like this is some major achievement. 350,000 is still an insane and almost unprecedented number, it’s just that the Tories managed to triple it “by accident”
It still means rapid transformation. It still means incredible strains on society. On top of what we already have. Then add in the boat people…
It’s not good
The guardian is wrong and they don't know how to do simple maths. The number of people applying for visas currently is down by something like 80% compared to 2022 and the students that arrived in 2022 are all having to find jobs at £39k or go home which means most of them (and their dependents) are going home over the next year because companies aren't going to hire them for that kind of salary. I think 2025 and 2026 will see a period of net emigration. And then it will stabilise in 2027.
If it does happen it means Labour will get the credit for it and, perversely, that will help keep them in office despite them having no real interest in controlling immigration.
It makes Sunak's choices pre-election unfathomable.
The person most to blame in Johnson, because he was PM when the initial post Brexit visa regulations were put in place. But it was then ignored by Truss and Sunak, until it was too late.
Yes, I agree
There is a lot of blame to go around. The OBR will castrate anyone's growth forecasts who says they will being immigration down, leaving no headroom in budgets. That prevented Truss doing anything, and Sunak would never have got his NI cut etc. past them if he'd pledged to get it down to 10s of 000s or anything like.
But it's the dependents issue that has made immigration a problem for the Tories, changing those rules make no difference to GDP because dependents are economically inactive and overall a net drain.
But if the dependents are children who will join the workforce later, surely it's a net gain?
Only if they'll be joining the workforce above median wages.
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?
You don't always need to win from the centre, especially if the government is unpopular. Thatcher was considered hard right in 1975 when she replaced the centrist Heath as Conservative leader but the centrist Callaghan's government ran the economy so poorly she still won in 1979
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.
The Guardian reckons net immigration will come down to around 350,000 a year by 2030
Like this is some major achievement. 350,000 is still an insane and almost unprecedented number, it’s just that the Tories managed to triple it “by accident”
It still means rapid transformation. It still means incredible strains on society. On top of what we already have. Then add in the boat people…
It’s not good
The guardian is wrong and they don't know how to do simple maths. The number of people applying for visas currently is down by something like 80% compared to 2022 and the students that arrived in 2022 are all having to find jobs at £39k or go home which means most of them (and their dependents) are going home over the next year because companies aren't going to hire them for that kind of salary. I think 2025 and 2026 will see a period of net emigration. And then it will stabilise in 2027.
If it does happen it means Labour will get the credit for it and, perversely, that will help keep them in office despite them having no real interest in controlling immigration.
It makes Sunak's choices pre-election unfathomable.
The person most to blame in Johnson, because he was PM when the initial post Brexit visa regulations were put in place. But it was then ignored by Truss and Sunak, until it was too late.
Yes, I agree
There is a lot of blame to go around. The OBR will castrate anyone's growth forecasts who says they will being immigration down, leaving no headroom in budgets. That prevented Truss doing anything, and Sunak would never have got his NI cut etc. past them if he'd pledged to get it down to 10s of 000s or anything like.
But it's the dependents issue that has made immigration a problem for the Tories, changing those rules make no difference to GDP because dependents are economically inactive and overall a net drain.
I agree, but my impression is (and it could be wrong) that the OBR's models aren't that sophisticated.
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.
41,000 replies, all bitterly mocking the UK Government. This is hugely damaging to our international image. They are now trying to stop people replying
Have you seen the kinds of people doing the replying? They're mostly Qanon obsessed American nutters who don't have a positive view of anyone who's surname isn't Trump.
lol. They have now removed the ability to reply
What a triumph for Gov.UK. Write a tweet to really send a message, then realise the tweet is so madly offensive and unpopular it gets bitterly mocked, worldwide, and now the government is actively trying to hide the tweet. They’ll probably end up deleting it. Brilliant way to send the message. Gold star for PR
Farcical morons
Its not offensive to write what the law is.
Getting mocked by trolls online is irrelevant.
David Cameron was right when he said that Twitter isn't Britain. Foreign trolls on Twitter are even less Britain.
But the UKG govt clearly does care about Twitter, hence the hysterical calls to ban it or restrict it
41,000 replies, all bitterly mocking the UK Government. This is hugely damaging to our international image. They are now trying to stop people replying
Have you seen the kinds of people doing the replying? They're mostly Qanon obsessed American nutters who don't have a positive view of anyone who's surname isn't Trump.
lol. They have now removed the ability to reply
What a triumph for Gov.UK. Write a tweet to really send a message, then realise the tweet is so madly offensive and unpopular it gets bitterly mocked, worldwide, and now the government is actively trying to hide the tweet. They’ll probably end up deleting it. Brilliant way to send the message. Gold star for PR
Farcical morons
Its not offensive to write what the law is.
Getting mocked by trolls online is irrelevant.
David Cameron was right when he said that Twitter isn't Britain. Foreign trolls on Twitter are even less Britain.
But the UKG govt clearly does care about Twitter, hence the hysterical calls to ban it or restrict it
What does the devastatingly bad tweet actually say? (I'm not on Twatter)
It says if you incite violence on Twitter you'll get your collar felt.
No, it doesn't, it simply says THINK BEFORE YOU POST
It is exactly the kind of thing you might see on posters in Soviet Russia, or a country at war
THINK BEFORE YOU TALK
WE ARE READING YOU
THE HILLS HAVE EYES
GET THE FUCK OUT OF BRITAIN BEFORE WE ARREST YOU
You talk constantly about how clever you are but are referring to an ominous voice on a video with no audio, and then says it simply says THINK BEFORE YOU POST when it explicitly says violence in writing.
To be honest, those complaining about a security surveillance state in 2024 must have been asleep for the better part of 50 years. The Prevention of Terrorism Act, more accurately the Reaction to Terrorism Act (passed with huge acclaim in the aftermath of the Birmingham pub bombings) is as repressive as anything Orwell could have imagined giving the Police huge powers if they "suspect terrorism".
Stretch that 50 years and an afternoon at the bingo becomes the precursor for terrorism.
Every outrage since 1974 has triggered some form of response from the Home Secretary and the Security Services, as fine an example of shutting the stable door after the horse has cleared over the horizon as you could wish.
When a terrible event happens, there's an immediate clamour to "do something" and politicians are too scared of public opinion not to be seen to be "doing something" however stupid or repressive that "something" is. We know people will happily surrender their freedoms, rights and even their right to vote in a democratic society just to feel "safe". Normally sensible people just go silly when it comes to notions of security and stability - I've heard people call for the mass deportation of Britain's Islamic community - what next, some form of identification to mark out Muslims from the rest of society?
There's the more positive side of surveillance - lower level crime prevention, it's irrefutable evidence of wrongdoing (to a point). Surveillance and other video can be used to bring offenders to justice but if abused and edited maliciously, it can also promote injustice as we've seen.
Finally, we have the old chestnut of ID cards - let's not go there.
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.
The Guardian reckons net immigration will come down to around 350,000 a year by 2030
Like this is some major achievement. 350,000 is still an insane and almost unprecedented number, it’s just that the Tories managed to triple it “by accident”
It still means rapid transformation. It still means incredible strains on society. On top of what we already have. Then add in the boat people…
It’s not good
The guardian is wrong and they don't know how to do simple maths. The number of people applying for visas currently is down by something like 80% compared to 2022 and the students that arrived in 2022 are all having to find jobs at £39k or go home which means most of them (and their dependents) are going home over the next year because companies aren't going to hire them for that kind of salary. I think 2025 and 2026 will see a period of net emigration. And then it will stabilise in 2027.
If it does happen it means Labour will get the credit for it and, perversely, that will help keep them in office despite them having no real interest in controlling immigration.
It makes Sunak's choices pre-election unfathomable.
The person most to blame in Johnson, because he was PM when the initial post Brexit visa regulations were put in place. But it was then ignored by Truss and Sunak, until it was too late.
Yes, I agree
There is a lot of blame to go around. The OBR will castrate anyone's growth forecasts who says they will being immigration down, leaving no headroom in budgets. That prevented Truss doing anything, and Sunak would never have got his NI cut etc. past them if he'd pledged to get it down to 10s of 000s or anything like.
But it's the dependents issue that has made immigration a problem for the Tories, changing those rules make no difference to GDP because dependents are economically inactive and overall a net drain.
But if the dependents are children who will join the workforce later, surely it's a net gain?
Only if they'll be joining the workforce above median wages.
You're not thinking straight. Otherwise you could make the country richer by deporting all the cleaners, all the people in hospitality and food, all the young people at the start of their careers.
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.
The Guardian reckons net immigration will come down to around 350,000 a year by 2030
Like this is some major achievement. 350,000 is still an insane and almost unprecedented number, it’s just that the Tories managed to triple it “by accident”
It still means rapid transformation. It still means incredible strains on society. On top of what we already have. Then add in the boat people…
It’s not good
The guardian is wrong and they don't know how to do simple maths. The number of people applying for visas currently is down by something like 80% compared to 2022 and the students that arrived in 2022 are all having to find jobs at £39k or go home which means most of them (and their dependents) are going home over the next year because companies aren't going to hire them for that kind of salary. I think 2025 and 2026 will see a period of net emigration. And then it will stabilise in 2027.
If it does happen it means Labour will get the credit for it and, perversely, that will help keep them in office despite them having no real interest in controlling immigration.
It makes Sunak's choices pre-election unfathomable.
The person most to blame in Johnson, because he was PM when the initial post Brexit visa regulations were put in place. But it was then ignored by Truss and Sunak, until it was too late.
Yes, I agree
There is a lot of blame to go around. The OBR will castrate anyone's growth forecasts who says they will being immigration down, leaving no headroom in budgets. That prevented Truss doing anything, and Sunak would never have got his NI cut etc. past them if he'd pledged to get it down to 10s of 000s or anything like.
But it's the dependents issue that has made immigration a problem for the Tories, changing those rules make no difference to GDP because dependents are economically inactive and overall a net drain.
I agree, but my impression is (and it could be wrong) that the OBR's models aren't that sophisticated.
Well the Tories made the changes and there was no GDP reduction applied by the OBR when they did it. It was down to Boris, Truss and Rishi for allowing dependents in the first place.
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).
Jenrick's father was a gas fitter who started a fireplace business and his mother a secretary, he is hardly posh. Yet he got to Cambridge and worked at big multi national corporate law firms before being elected.
Indeed he grew up in Wolverhampton, Starmer grew up in Surrey, so he is arguably even less posh by background than the PM
41,000 replies, all bitterly mocking the UK Government. This is hugely damaging to our international image. They are now trying to stop people replying
Have you seen the kinds of people doing the replying? They're mostly Qanon obsessed American nutters who don't have a positive view of anyone who's surname isn't Trump.
lol. They have now removed the ability to reply
What a triumph for Gov.UK. Write a tweet to really send a message, then realise the tweet is so madly offensive and unpopular it gets bitterly mocked, worldwide, and now the government is actively trying to hide the tweet. They’ll probably end up deleting it. Brilliant way to send the message. Gold star for PR
Farcical morons
Its not offensive to write what the law is.
Getting mocked by trolls online is irrelevant.
David Cameron was right when he said that Twitter isn't Britain. Foreign trolls on Twitter are even less Britain.
But the UKG govt clearly does care about Twitter, hence the hysterical calls to ban it or restrict it
What does the devastatingly bad tweet actually say? (I'm not on Twatter)
It says if you incite violence on Twitter you'll get your collar felt.
No, it doesn't, it simply says THINK BEFORE YOU POST
It is exactly the kind of thing you might see on posters in Soviet Russia, or a country at war
THINK BEFORE YOU TALK
WE ARE READING YOU
THE HILLS HAVE EYES
GET THE FUCK OUT OF BRITAIN BEFORE WE ARREST YOU
You talk constantly about how clever you are but are referring to an ominous voice on a video with no audio, and then says it simply says THINK BEFORE YOU POST when it explicitly says violence in writing.
Are you sure you're smart?
Or literate?
Do you understand how TwiX works? The tweet I am referring to says THINK BEFORE YOU POST. That's it. Go and have a look at it
Nested within that is another tweet from the CPS
But the actual tweet, which is provoking this debate?
It says THINK BEFORE YOU POST. And that's it. Nothing else
41,000 replies, all bitterly mocking the UK Government. This is hugely damaging to our international image. They are now trying to stop people replying
Have you seen the kinds of people doing the replying? They're mostly Qanon obsessed American nutters who don't have a positive view of anyone who's surname isn't Trump.
lol. They have now removed the ability to reply
What a triumph for Gov.UK. Write a tweet to really send a message, then realise the tweet is so madly offensive and unpopular it gets bitterly mocked, worldwide, and now the government is actively trying to hide the tweet. They’ll probably end up deleting it. Brilliant way to send the message. Gold star for PR
Farcical morons
Its not offensive to write what the law is.
Getting mocked by trolls online is irrelevant.
David Cameron was right when he said that Twitter isn't Britain. Foreign trolls on Twitter are even less Britain.
But the UKG govt clearly does care about Twitter, hence the hysterical calls to ban it or restrict it
What does the devastatingly bad tweet actually say? (I'm not on Twatter)
It says if you incite violence on Twitter you'll get your collar felt.
It does make you ashamed to be British, doesn't it?
Anyway, has anyone considered the option of simply saying that anything that Twitter or Facebook etc publish that is seen by more than say 1,000 people, Twitter are liable for like any other publisher?
No because that would be stupid? Elon is responsible for Elon's speech, he's not responsible for mine.
And in a properly functioning internet you wouldn't be able to measure how many people heard a speech act in the first place, the law definitely shouldn't be locking in the awful design of Twitter and Facebook.
You might be right, but usually publishers are also liable, or are you saying publishers of newspapers and books should also have no liability?
This is Russian commentary on the convoy of Russian reinforcements hit in Kursk.
"Just watched a video from the scene. 13 military Urals and KAMAZ covered trucks with infantry. Many dead, some of the vehicles burned to the ground. It looks like the entire column was carrying infantry. They were armed, most likely a platoon per vehicle. 3-4 companies - an entire battalion was destroyed. Judging by the appearance of the column, about half were killed. This is one of the bloodiest and most massive strikes (most likely HIMARS) in the entire war."
Also reports that the Ukrainians are digging in to defend the gains they've made. Looks like they've decided they can cause more damage to the Russian army in a fight in Kursk, than in defending longer-established frontlines in Donetsk.
It does seem as though the Ukrainian advantage in training is used most when the battlefield is more fluid, while a largely static frontline favours the Russian advantage in artillery.
We might see the Ukrainians withdraw after a period of causing mayhem to Russian efforts to bring up artillery and other reinforcements to Kursk.
Clearly this move into Kursk has got the Russians worried. However without wanting to put a dampner on things there is concern about the Ukrainian frontline in the east. Switching their resources to the north is a somewhat risky strategy.
A traxler attack. Precise play will be required from both sides.
41,000 replies, all bitterly mocking the UK Government. This is hugely damaging to our international image. They are now trying to stop people replying
Have you seen the kinds of people doing the replying? They're mostly Qanon obsessed American nutters who don't have a positive view of anyone who's surname isn't Trump.
lol. They have now removed the ability to reply
What a triumph for Gov.UK. Write a tweet to really send a message, then realise the tweet is so madly offensive and unpopular it gets bitterly mocked, worldwide, and now the government is actively trying to hide the tweet. They’ll probably end up deleting it. Brilliant way to send the message. Gold star for PR
Farcical morons
Its not offensive to write what the law is.
Getting mocked by trolls online is irrelevant.
David Cameron was right when he said that Twitter isn't Britain. Foreign trolls on Twitter are even less Britain.
But the UKG govt clearly does care about Twitter, hence the hysterical calls to ban it or restrict it
41,000 replies, all bitterly mocking the UK Government. This is hugely damaging to our international image. They are now trying to stop people replying
Have you seen the kinds of people doing the replying? They're mostly Qanon obsessed American nutters who don't have a positive view of anyone who's surname isn't Trump.
lol. They have now removed the ability to reply
What a triumph for Gov.UK. Write a tweet to really send a message, then realise the tweet is so madly offensive and unpopular it gets bitterly mocked, worldwide, and now the government is actively trying to hide the tweet. They’ll probably end up deleting it. Brilliant way to send the message. Gold star for PR
Farcical morons
Its not offensive to write what the law is.
Getting mocked by trolls online is irrelevant.
David Cameron was right when he said that Twitter isn't Britain. Foreign trolls on Twitter are even less Britain.
But the UKG govt clearly does care about Twitter, hence the hysterical calls to ban it or restrict it
What does the devastatingly bad tweet actually say? (I'm not on Twatter)
UKGOV: Think before you post.
CPS: Think before you post! 📲✋ Content that incites violence or hatred isn't just harmful - it can be illegal.
The CPS takes online violence seriously and will prosecute when the legal test is met. Remind those close to you to share responsibly or face the consequences.
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).
Jenrick's father was a gas fitter who started a fireplace business and his mother a secretary, he is hardly posh. Yet he got to Cambridge and worked at big multi national corporate law firms before being elected.
Indeed he grew up in Wolverhampton, Starmer grew up in Surrey, so he is arguably even less posh by background than the PM
There's also a good case to be made that his dad was an even bigger tool maker than Starmer's.
Someone shared a video of a police officer stamping on and kicking a man in the head that lead to serious disorder in Rochdale. It was completely without the full context of the situation and designed to be incendiary. And we're not just talking about something that went viral, we're talking about a number one news item on the TV. Even if they hadn't filmed the whole altercation they might have pointed out it was only a partial reflection of what had happened.
How do they feel about the consequences of it. Are they sorry? Apologetic? What was their motive? Has anyone asked any questions of them?
41,000 replies, all bitterly mocking the UK Government. This is hugely damaging to our international image. They are now trying to stop people replying
Have you seen the kinds of people doing the replying? They're mostly Qanon obsessed American nutters who don't have a positive view of anyone who's surname isn't Trump.
lol. They have now removed the ability to reply
What a triumph for Gov.UK. Write a tweet to really send a message, then realise the tweet is so madly offensive and unpopular it gets bitterly mocked, worldwide, and now the government is actively trying to hide the tweet. They’ll probably end up deleting it. Brilliant way to send the message. Gold star for PR
Farcical morons
Its not offensive to write what the law is.
Getting mocked by trolls online is irrelevant.
David Cameron was right when he said that Twitter isn't Britain. Foreign trolls on Twitter are even less Britain.
But the UKG govt clearly does care about Twitter, hence the hysterical calls to ban it or restrict it
What does the devastatingly bad tweet actually say? (I'm not on Twatter)
It says if you incite violence on Twitter you'll get your collar felt.
No, it doesn't, it simply says THINK BEFORE YOU POST
It is exactly the kind of thing you might see on posters in Soviet Russia, or a country at war
THINK BEFORE YOU TALK
WE ARE READING YOU
THE HILLS HAVE EYES
GET THE FUCK OUT OF BRITAIN BEFORE WE ARREST YOU
You talk constantly about how clever you are but are referring to an ominous voice on a video with no audio, and then says it simply says THINK BEFORE YOU POST when it explicitly says violence in writing.
Are you sure you're smart?
Or literate?
Do you understand how TwiX works? The tweet I am referring to says THINK BEFORE YOU POST. That's it. Go and have a look at it
Nested within that is another tweet from the CPS
But the actual tweet, which is provoking this debate?
It says THINK BEFORE YOU POST. And that's it. Nothing else
It's almost as if they are tailoring their advice just for you!
This is Russian commentary on the convoy of Russian reinforcements hit in Kursk.
"Just watched a video from the scene. 13 military Urals and KAMAZ covered trucks with infantry. Many dead, some of the vehicles burned to the ground. It looks like the entire column was carrying infantry. They were armed, most likely a platoon per vehicle. 3-4 companies - an entire battalion was destroyed. Judging by the appearance of the column, about half were killed. This is one of the bloodiest and most massive strikes (most likely HIMARS) in the entire war."
Also reports that the Ukrainians are digging in to defend the gains they've made. Looks like they've decided they can cause more damage to the Russian army in a fight in Kursk, than in defending longer-established frontlines in Donetsk.
It does seem as though the Ukrainian advantage in training is used most when the battlefield is more fluid, while a largely static frontline favours the Russian advantage in artillery.
We might see the Ukrainians withdraw after a period of causing mayhem to Russian efforts to bring up artillery and other reinforcements to Kursk.
Clearly this move into Kursk has got the Russians worried. However without wanting to put a dampner on things there is concern about the Ukrainian frontline in the east. Switching their resources to the north is a somewhat risky strategy.
Ukraine has certainly be under pressure in the East, but it is worth remembering that the Russian pace of advance has been absolutely glacial and at significant cost.
I think Ukraine's tactics are simple here: make things more expensive for the Russians, force them to keep soldiers away from the frontline, and to inflict damage on supply chains and the like.
What happens next is anyone's guess: Ukraine failed in its offensives to take back its own territory. On the other hand, Russian losses of men and materiel are not insignificant, and there have been cases of Russian units refusing to attach: does the come a point where they can no longer advance? And if so, what's their plan? Holding Ukrainian territory is not without cost, and brings very little benefit to them: it's certainly not generating a bunch of GDP.
This is Russian commentary on the convoy of Russian reinforcements hit in Kursk.
"Just watched a video from the scene. 13 military Urals and KAMAZ covered trucks with infantry. Many dead, some of the vehicles burned to the ground. It looks like the entire column was carrying infantry. They were armed, most likely a platoon per vehicle. 3-4 companies - an entire battalion was destroyed. Judging by the appearance of the column, about half were killed. This is one of the bloodiest and most massive strikes (most likely HIMARS) in the entire war."
Also reports that the Ukrainians are digging in to defend the gains they've made. Looks like they've decided they can cause more damage to the Russian army in a fight in Kursk, than in defending longer-established frontlines in Donetsk.
It does seem as though the Ukrainian advantage in training is used most when the battlefield is more fluid, while a largely static frontline favours the Russian advantage in artillery.
We might see the Ukrainians withdraw after a period of causing mayhem to Russian efforts to bring up artillery and other reinforcements to Kursk.
Clearly this move into Kursk has got the Russians worried. However without wanting to put a dampner on things there is concern about the Ukrainian frontline in the east. Switching their resources to the north is a somewhat risky strategy.
Yes, there are risks to every strategy, and there are a few different ways in which the Kursk offensive could become a monumental disaster for Ukraine. Right now, with large numbers of Russians taken prisoner, heavy casualties inflicted on the Russians, and the propaganda win of occupying Russian territory, it looks like a net positive.
Someone shared a video of a police officer stamping on and kicking a man in the head that lead to serious disorder in Rochdale. It was completely without the full context of the situation and designed to be incendiary. And we're not just talking about something that went viral, we're talking about a number one news item on the TV. Even if they hadn't filmed the whole altercation they might have pointed out it was only a partial reflection of what had happened.
How do they feel about the consequences of it. Are they sorry? Apologetic? What was their motive? Has anyone asked any questions of them?
41,000 replies, all bitterly mocking the UK Government. This is hugely damaging to our international image. They are now trying to stop people replying
It's a reminder that you are responsible for what you post online.
Do you think you can get away with libel just because you do it on X ? It's no different for (eg) incitement.
That's not "lawfare", or a change in what UK law says; it's just a matter of fact.
Someone shared a video of a police officer stamping on and kicking a man in the head that lead to serious disorder in Rochdale. It was completely without the full context of the situation and designed to be incendiary. And we're not just talking about something that went viral, we're talking about a number one news item on the TV. Even if they hadn't filmed the whole altercation they might have pointed out it was only a partial reflection of what had happened.
How do they feel about the consequences of it. Are they sorry? Apologetic? What was their motive? Has anyone asked any questions of them?
So, you're saying "think before you post"?
In a way yes. But are the government publishing this advice with that person in mind? So far as I'm aware their motives haven't once been questioned over the last couple of weeks.
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.
The Guardian reckons net immigration will come down to around 350,000 a year by 2030
Like this is some major achievement. 350,000 is still an insane and almost unprecedented number, it’s just that the Tories managed to triple it “by accident”
It still means rapid transformation. It still means incredible strains on society. On top of what we already have. Then add in the boat people…
It’s not good
The guardian is wrong and they don't know how to do simple maths. The number of people applying for visas currently is down by something like 80% compared to 2022 and the students that arrived in 2022 are all having to find jobs at £39k or go home which means most of them (and their dependents) are going home over the next year because companies aren't going to hire them for that kind of salary. I think 2025 and 2026 will see a period of net emigration. And then it will stabilise in 2027.
If it does happen it means Labour will get the credit for it and, perversely, that will help keep them in office despite them having no real interest in controlling immigration.
It makes Sunak's choices pre-election unfathomable.
The person most to blame in Johnson, because he was PM when the initial post Brexit visa regulations were put in place. But it was then ignored by Truss and Sunak, until it was too late.
Yes, I agree
There is a lot of blame to go around. The OBR will castrate anyone's growth forecasts who says they will being immigration down, leaving no headroom in budgets. That prevented Truss doing anything, and Sunak would never have got his NI cut etc. past them if he'd pledged to get it down to 10s of 000s or anything like.
But it's the dependents issue that has made immigration a problem for the Tories, changing those rules make no difference to GDP because dependents are economically inactive and overall a net drain.
But if the dependents are children who will join the workforce later, surely it's a net gain?
Only if they'll be joining the workforce above median wages.
You're not thinking straight. Otherwise you could make the country richer by deporting all the cleaners, all the people in hospitality and food, all the young people at the start of their careers.
Getting rid of minimum wage jobs by automating them etc absolutely does make our country richer, yes.
Unskilled jobs do need doing, but extra people doing them for minimum wage deflates our GDP per capita it doesn't inflate it. Even the unskilled should be on a good wage and being as efficient and productive as possible and bringing in extra people so that firms don't need to invest in training or productivity doesn't boost our GDP per capita one iota.
To be honest, those complaining about a security surveillance state in 2024 must have been asleep for the better part of 50 years. The Prevention of Terrorism Act, more accurately the Reaction to Terrorism Act (passed with huge acclaim in the aftermath of the Birmingham pub bombings) is as repressive as anything Orwell could have imagined giving the Police huge powers if they "suspect terrorism".
Stretch that 50 years and an afternoon at the bingo becomes the precursor for terrorism.
Every outrage since 1974 has triggered some form of response from the Home Secretary and the Security Services, as fine an example of shutting the stable door after the horse has cleared over the horizon as you could wish.
When a terrible event happens, there's an immediate clamour to "do something" and politicians are too scared of public opinion not to be seen to be "doing something" however stupid or repressive that "something" is. We know people will happily surrender their freedoms, rights and even their right to vote in a democratic society just to feel "safe". Normally sensible people just go silly when it comes to notions of security and stability - I've heard people call for the mass deportation of Britain's Islamic community - what next, some form of identification to mark out Muslims from the rest of society?
There's the more positive side of surveillance - lower level crime prevention, it's irrefutable evidence of wrongdoing (to a point). Surveillance and other video can be used to bring offenders to justice but if abused and edited maliciously, it can also promote injustice as we've seen.
Finally, we have the old chestnut of ID cards - let's not go there.
Re ID cards, couldn't agree more.
In an age where we can just implant people with ID chips, they are completely outdated.
At this point, who hasn’t actively considered emigration?
You're the first one to bang on about how everything is going to change because of AI and tech. Do you think that nothing invented after 1997 should be regulated? If someone was handing out photocopied flyers on the high street inciting violence against mosques then they'd be hauled before a judge in 10 minutes. Why should it be any different online where thousands more are going to see it?
Enjoy your new Labour police state, your ugly cities and your terrible weather, your degraded culture and your helpless decline. I shall be elsewhere
For the moment, that is: having a shower and a coffee
So you are going to be fleeing a police state taking up hotel rooms badly needed by the locals?
What are you talking about?
Tommy Robinson.
Katie Price ?
I can't believe they arrested her. I thought she was untouchable. I had this image of her doing worse and worse plastic surgery until something exploded.
what, expecting he to go full Lolo Ferrari?
No, but I think there are limits on - say - how many facelifts you can have before something goes wrong. You end up trying to close wounds where one side is just scar tissue from the previous ops, and healing takes longer. She's already had complaints from fellow tourists about partially unclosed wounds and pus. She's doing too much too fast.
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?
You don't always need to win from the centre, especially if the government is unpopular. Thatcher was considered hard right in 1975 when she replaced the centrist Heath as Conservative leader but the centrist Callaghan's government ran the economy so poorly she still won in 1979
The 1970 election manifesto, on which Heath won and overturned a Labour majority in the 90s, was a much more radical document than the 1979 Manifesto. Heath tried to implement it but failed, tried to reverse course but his weakness was ruthlessly exploited by the Unions to bring him down in 1974.
Arguably, his one achievement was to take the UK into the EEC for which it seems he got little thanks from the Party in hindsight though Thatcher was a big supporter of the Common Market and campaigned strongly for a "YES" vote in the 1975 Referendum (the EEC cardigan?).
What aided Thatcher was the disastrous decision by Callaghan NOT to go for an election in October 1978 - the following winter was a nightmare for the country and made Thatcher's victory inevitable.
Thatcher and Keith Joseph wanted to continue and develop the 1970 Manifesto ideas - the likes of Whitelaw wanted to return to a more traditional "One Nation" platform but the Unions over reached and the public was ready for a radical and dramatic response.
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.
The Guardian reckons net immigration will come down to around 350,000 a year by 2030
Like this is some major achievement. 350,000 is still an insane and almost unprecedented number, it’s just that the Tories managed to triple it “by accident”
It still means rapid transformation. It still means incredible strains on society. On top of what we already have. Then add in the boat people…
It’s not good
The guardian is wrong and they don't know how to do simple maths. The number of people applying for visas currently is down by something like 80% compared to 2022 and the students that arrived in 2022 are all having to find jobs at £39k or go home which means most of them (and their dependents) are going home over the next year because companies aren't going to hire them for that kind of salary. I think 2025 and 2026 will see a period of net emigration. And then it will stabilise in 2027.
If it does happen it means Labour will get the credit for it and, perversely, that will help keep them in office despite them having no real interest in controlling immigration.
It makes Sunak's choices pre-election unfathomable.
The person most to blame in Johnson, because he was PM when the initial post Brexit visa regulations were put in place. But it was then ignored by Truss and Sunak, until it was too late.
Yes, I agree
There is a lot of blame to go around. The OBR will castrate anyone's growth forecasts who says they will being immigration down, leaving no headroom in budgets. That prevented Truss doing anything, and Sunak would never have got his NI cut etc. past them if he'd pledged to get it down to 10s of 000s or anything like.
But it's the dependents issue that has made immigration a problem for the Tories, changing those rules make no difference to GDP because dependents are economically inactive and overall a net drain.
But if the dependents are children who will join the workforce later, surely it's a net gain?
Only if they'll be joining the workforce above median wages.
You're not thinking straight. Otherwise you could make the country richer by deporting all the cleaners, all the people in hospitality and food, all the young people at the start of their careers.
Getting rid of minimum wage jobs by automating them etc absolutely does make our country richer, yes.
Unskilled jobs do need doing, but extra people doing them for minimum wage deflates our GDP per capita it doesn't inflate it. Even the unskilled should be on a good wage and being as efficient and productive as possible and bringing in extra people so that firms don't need to invest in training or productivity doesn't boost our GDP per capita one iota.
...The FTSE 100 owner of the Drax power plant made profits of £500m over the first half of this year, helped by biomass subsidies of almost £400m over this period. It handed its shareholders a windfall of £300m for the first half of the year...
There's a potential spending cut, right there.
..The government is considering the company’s request for billpayers to foot the cost of supporting its power plant beyond the subsidy scheme’s deadline in 2027 so it can keep burning wood for power until the end of the decade...
Someone shared a video of a police officer stamping on and kicking a man in the head that lead to serious disorder in Rochdale. It was completely without the full context of the situation and designed to be incendiary. And we're not just talking about something that went viral, we're talking about a number one news item on the TV. Even if they hadn't filmed the whole altercation they might have pointed out it was only a partial reflection of what had happened.
How do they feel about the consequences of it. Are they sorry? Apologetic? What was their motive? Has anyone asked any questions of them?
Sharing something that actually happened is one thing. Posting on a forum the completely false information that someone had been stabbed by Muslims in Stoke recklessly is quite another.
For example the Reform Councillor that shared the Ali name claimed to have been told that name from eye-witnesses to the stabbing. That gave it the aura of authority which we now know to have been entirely false. Elon Musk sharing the Falkland Island internment story should have thought about checking if it was true before stirring the pot to his 193m followers. Some of the 2m that read that tweet when it was up will still believe that the UK is going to send the right wing to a Falkland Island gulag. That's a problem.
41,000 replies, all bitterly mocking the UK Government. This is hugely damaging to our international image. They are now trying to stop people replying
It's a reminder that you are responsible for what you post online.
Do you think you can get away with libel just because you do it on X ? It's no different for (eg) incitement.
That's not "lawfare", or a change in what UK law says; it's just a matter of fact.
41k numpties (or bots). Plus you.
It's also a reminder that the law isn't equal but rather 'two tier'. You can freely incite hatred against some groups but not others.
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.
The Guardian reckons net immigration will come down to around 350,000 a year by 2030
Like this is some major achievement. 350,000 is still an insane and almost unprecedented number, it’s just that the Tories managed to triple it “by accident”
It still means rapid transformation. It still means incredible strains on society. On top of what we already have. Then add in the boat people…
It’s not good
The guardian is wrong and they don't know how to do simple maths. The number of people applying for visas currently is down by something like 80% compared to 2022 and the students that arrived in 2022 are all having to find jobs at £39k or go home which means most of them (and their dependents) are going home over the next year because companies aren't going to hire them for that kind of salary. I think 2025 and 2026 will see a period of net emigration. And then it will stabilise in 2027.
If it does happen it means Labour will get the credit for it and, perversely, that will help keep them in office despite them having no real interest in controlling immigration.
It makes Sunak's choices pre-election unfathomable.
The person most to blame in Johnson, because he was PM when the initial post Brexit visa regulations were put in place. But it was then ignored by Truss and Sunak, until it was too late.
Yes, I agree
There is a lot of blame to go around. The OBR will castrate anyone's growth forecasts who says they will being immigration down, leaving no headroom in budgets. That prevented Truss doing anything, and Sunak would never have got his NI cut etc. past them if he'd pledged to get it down to 10s of 000s or anything like.
But it's the dependents issue that has made immigration a problem for the Tories, changing those rules make no difference to GDP because dependents are economically inactive and overall a net drain.
But if the dependents are children who will join the workforce later, surely it's a net gain?
Only if they'll be joining the workforce above median wages.
You're not thinking straight. Otherwise you could make the country richer by deporting all the cleaners, all the people in hospitality and food, all the young people at the start of their careers.
Getting rid of minimum wage jobs by automating them etc absolutely does make our country richer, yes.
Unskilled jobs do need doing, but extra people doing them for minimum wage deflates our GDP per capita it doesn't inflate it. Even the unskilled should be on a good wage and being as efficient and productive as possible and bringing in extra people so that firms don't need to invest in training or productivity doesn't boost our GDP per capita one iota.
Get rid of all children for a richer Britain!
You're bonkers.
I never said get rid of children.
But its GDP per capita that matters, not GDP.
If we added 80 million children to the country every one of them destined to do minimum wage work, then would we be "richer" as a result? No of course not.
We should be investing in our children to have a good education and have as many skilled jobs as possible. And ensuring that migrants we bring over are skilled too.
Unskilled jobs we can leave for our own unskilled children that for some reason can't or won't learn during school, which should be as few as possible. We shouldn't be aiming to not give skills to our kids while at school, nor should we be importing people without skills.
41,000 replies, all bitterly mocking the UK Government. This is hugely damaging to our international image. They are now trying to stop people replying
Have you seen the kinds of people doing the replying? They're mostly Qanon obsessed American nutters who don't have a positive view of anyone who's surname isn't Trump.
lol. They have now removed the ability to reply
What a triumph for Gov.UK. Write a tweet to really send a message, then realise the tweet is so madly offensive and unpopular it gets bitterly mocked, worldwide, and now the government is actively trying to hide the tweet. They’ll probably end up deleting it. Brilliant way to send the message. Gold star for PR
Farcical morons
Its not offensive to write what the law is.
Getting mocked by trolls online is irrelevant.
David Cameron was right when he said that Twitter isn't Britain. Foreign trolls on Twitter are even less Britain.
But the UKG govt clearly does care about Twitter, hence the hysterical calls to ban it or restrict it
What does the devastatingly bad tweet actually say? (I'm not on Twatter)
It says if you incite violence on Twitter you'll get your collar felt.
It does make you ashamed to be British, doesn't it?
Anyway, has anyone considered the option of simply saying that anything that Twitter or Facebook etc publish that is seen by more than say 1,000 people, Twitter are liable for like any other publisher?
No because that would be stupid? Elon is responsible for Elon's speech, he's not responsible for mine.
And in a properly functioning internet you wouldn't be able to measure how many people heard a speech act in the first place, the law definitely shouldn't be locking in the awful design of Twitter and Facebook.
You might be right, but usually publishers are also liable, or are you saying publishers of newspapers and books should also have no liability?
Well, there's a good reason why the world settled on the current regime for user-generated content.
The way we got where we are was that it seemed like if you left content completely unmoderated you could reasonably claim that you were just a carrier of information like the phone company or the post office, but if you applied any kind of responsibility and started moderating it you were then exercising control and you became responsible for it. If the goal is to prevent certain bad kinds of speech (eg incitement to violence) this seems like a perverse result.
So non-stupid jurisdictions have gone with your comments being your responsibility, even if the site is doing moderation in accordance with its own principles, for example banning people for posting sc0ttish subs@mples.
..The government is considering the company’s request for billpayers to foot the cost of supporting its power plant beyond the subsidy scheme’s deadline in 2027 so it can keep burning wood for power until the end of the decade...
The new Labour government has had a mixed beginning, to be sure. As a supporter of Keir Starmer, I confess I am perplexed by some of their actions, the anti-growth economics, the attack on pensioners, the prohibition on chuckling, the hounding of people that say things in rooms to other people
However I believe I have worked out the overarching thesis. They are recreating Theresa May's controversial Hostile Environment policy, except this time - quite cleverly - that are making Britain a "Hostile Environment" FOR BRITONS
The idea is they will make Britain so dismally poor, ugly and depressing about 20 million of us will leave, thereby solving the housing problam, the NHS crisis, the overburdended infrastructure, all in one neat move
Its actually very smart and I'm glad they got my vote
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.
The Guardian reckons net immigration will come down to around 350,000 a year by 2030
Like this is some major achievement. 350,000 is still an insane and almost unprecedented number, it’s just that the Tories managed to triple it “by accident”
It still means rapid transformation. It still means incredible strains on society. On top of what we already have. Then add in the boat people…
It’s not good
What would be the net annual change in our population with immigration at 350k ?
Someone shared a video of a police officer stamping on and kicking a man in the head that lead to serious disorder in Rochdale. It was completely without the full context of the situation and designed to be incendiary. And we're not just talking about something that went viral, we're talking about a number one news item on the TV. Even if they hadn't filmed the whole altercation they might have pointed out it was only a partial reflection of what had happened.
How do they feel about the consequences of it. Are they sorry? Apologetic? What was their motive? Has anyone asked any questions of them?
Sharing something that actually happened is one thing. Posting on a forum the completely false information that someone had been stabbed by Muslims in Stoke recklessly is quite another.
For example the Reform Councillor that shared the Ali name claimed to have been told that name from eye-witnesses to the stabbing. That gave it the aura of authority which we now know to have been entirely false. Elon Musk sharing the Falkland Island internment story should have thought about checking if it was true before stirring the pot to his 193m followers. Some of the 2m that read that tweet when it was up will still believe that the UK is going to send the right wing to a Falkland Island gulag. That's a problem.
That's fair. However we now have the added problem that fake news is sometimes so convincing anyone can honestly say "I had no idea"
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.
The Guardian reckons net immigration will come down to around 350,000 a year by 2030
Like this is some major achievement. 350,000 is still an insane and almost unprecedented number, it’s just that the Tories managed to triple it “by accident”
It still means rapid transformation. It still means incredible strains on society. On top of what we already have. Then add in the boat people…
It’s not good
What would be the net annual change in our population with immigration at 350k ?
Based on recent years between 365k and 500k.
Births have exceeded deaths every single year except for 1976 and 2021 - and there ought to be an asterisk next to 2021's data.
Prior to 2020 births exceeded deaths by six figures a year.
Keely is already odds-on for SPotY which imo is a dangerous bet because it involves second-guessing the BBC's SPotY shortlist and some of us have had our fingers burnt in previous Olympics years when obvious contenders have been spurned by the panel. That said, I wish I'd lumped on Keely at odds-against because I think she is the most likely winner.
Someone shared a video of a police officer stamping on and kicking a man in the head that lead to serious disorder in Rochdale. It was completely without the full context of the situation and designed to be incendiary. And we're not just talking about something that went viral, we're talking about a number one news item on the TV. Even if they hadn't filmed the whole altercation they might have pointed out it was only a partial reflection of what had happened.
How do they feel about the consequences of it. Are they sorry? Apologetic? What was their motive? Has anyone asked any questions of them?
Sharing something that actually happened is one thing. Posting on a forum the completely false information that someone had been stabbed by Muslims in Stoke recklessly is quite another.
For example the Reform Councillor that shared the Ali name claimed to have been told that name from eye-witnesses to the stabbing. That gave it the aura of authority which we now know to have been entirely false. Elon Musk sharing the Falkland Island internment story should have thought about checking if it was true before stirring the pot to his 193m followers. Some of the 2m that read that tweet when it was up will still believe that the UK is going to send the right wing to a Falkland Island gulag. That's a problem.
You wouldn't question the motive of the person who did it? And isn't it strange that no-one has thus far wanted to do that?
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.
The Guardian reckons net immigration will come down to around 350,000 a year by 2030
Like this is some major achievement. 350,000 is still an insane and almost unprecedented number, it’s just that the Tories managed to triple it “by accident”
It still means rapid transformation. It still means incredible strains on society. On top of what we already have. Then add in the boat people…
It’s not good
The guardian is wrong and they don't know how to do simple maths. The number of people applying for visas currently is down by something like 80% compared to 2022 and the students that arrived in 2022 are all having to find jobs at £39k or go home which means most of them (and their dependents) are going home over the next year because companies aren't going to hire them for that kind of salary. I think 2025 and 2026 will see a period of net emigration. And then it will stabilise in 2027.
If it does happen it means Labour will get the credit for it and, perversely, that will help keep them in office despite them having no real interest in controlling immigration.
It makes Sunak's choices pre-election unfathomable.
The person most to blame in Johnson, because he was PM when the initial post Brexit visa regulations were put in place. But it was then ignored by Truss and Sunak, until it was too late.
Yes, I agree
There is a lot of blame to go around. The OBR will castrate anyone's growth forecasts who says they will being immigration down, leaving no headroom in budgets. That prevented Truss doing anything, and Sunak would never have got his NI cut etc. past them if he'd pledged to get it down to 10s of 000s or anything like.
But it's the dependents issue that has made immigration a problem for the Tories, changing those rules make no difference to GDP because dependents are economically inactive and overall a net drain.
But if the dependents are children who will join the workforce later, surely it's a net gain?
Only if they'll be joining the workforce above median wages.
You're not thinking straight. Otherwise you could make the country richer by deporting all the cleaners, all the people in hospitality and food, all the young people at the start of their careers.
Getting rid of minimum wage jobs by automating them etc absolutely does make our country richer, yes.
Unskilled jobs do need doing, but extra people doing them for minimum wage deflates our GDP per capita it doesn't inflate it. Even the unskilled should be on a good wage and being as efficient and productive as possible and bringing in extra people so that firms don't need to invest in training or productivity doesn't boost our GDP per capita one iota.
Get rid of all children for a richer Britain!
You're bonkers.
I never said get rid of children.
But its GDP per capita that matters, not GDP.
If we added 80 million children to the country every one of them destined to do minimum wage work, then would we be "richer" as a result? No of course not.
We should be investing in our children to have a good education and have as many skilled jobs as possible. And ensuring that migrants we bring over are skilled too.
Unskilled jobs we can leave for our own unskilled children that for some reason can't or won't learn during school, which should be as few as possible. We shouldn't be aiming to not give skills to our kids while at school, nor should we be importing people without skills.
I refer you to the comment I was originally replying to
"But it's the dependents issue that has made immigration a problem for the Tories, changing those rules make no difference to GDP because dependents are economically inactive and overall a net drain."
And I suspect few young people are "joining the workforce above median wages" which was your criterion.
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.
Most of these people will be coming from countries that don't have reciprocal agreements for benefits, and so will have no recourse to public funds.
That means they can still access free school education, but not benefits such as free school meals or uniform grants. They'll pay full overseas tuition rates for university, with no student loans available.
Similarly, primary NHS treatment (GPs and A&E) will be free, but not secondary (consultants, specialists, and hospital treatment other than A&E) or community care (health visitors, etc).
They'll be paying full NICs but will receive no benefit for them - no access to universal credit, no JSA, and accruing no state pension rights.
Even at minimum wage, I would be very surprised if they didn't pay their way.
At this point, who hasn’t actively considered emigration?
Just as a matter of style, I'm not sure Big Brother is the most persuasive comparison. I'd go for Russia or a similar quasi-dictatorship. Actually it might be interesting to compare prosecutions for TwiX posts in Britain and Russia, not least because the KGB does not always use the court system.
Keely is already odds-on for SPotY which imo is a dangerous bet because it involves second-guessing the BBC's SPotY shortlist and some of us have had our fingers burnt in previous Olympics years when obvious contenders have been spurned by the panel. That said, I wish I'd lumped on Keely at odds-against because I think she is the most likely winner.
Kerr was a danger but he didn't win gold so out the running.
41,000 replies, all bitterly mocking the UK Government. This is hugely damaging to our international image. They are now trying to stop people replying
Have you seen the kinds of people doing the replying? They're mostly Qanon obsessed American nutters who don't have a positive view of anyone who's surname isn't Trump.
lol. They have now removed the ability to reply
What a triumph for Gov.UK. Write a tweet to really send a message, then realise the tweet is so madly offensive and unpopular it gets bitterly mocked, worldwide, and now the government is actively trying to hide the tweet. They’ll probably end up deleting it. Brilliant way to send the message. Gold star for PR
Farcical morons
Its not offensive to write what the law is.
Getting mocked by trolls online is irrelevant.
David Cameron was right when he said that Twitter isn't Britain. Foreign trolls on Twitter are even less Britain.
But the UKG govt clearly does care about Twitter, hence the hysterical calls to ban it or restrict it
What does the devastatingly bad tweet actually say? (I'm not on Twatter)
It says if you incite violence on Twitter you'll get your collar felt.
It says if you incite violence or hatred on Twitter you get your collar felt. The second concept is a vast gulf away from the first, so I'm puzzled you didn’t feel it worthy of mention.
41,000 replies, all bitterly mocking the UK Government. This is hugely damaging to our international image. They are now trying to stop people replying
It's a reminder that you are responsible for what you post online.
Do you think you can get away with libel just because you do it on X ? It's no different for (eg) incitement.
That's not "lawfare", or a change in what UK law says; it's just a matter of fact.
41k numpties (or bots). Plus you.
It's also a reminder that the law isn't equal but rather 'two tier'. You can freely incite hatred against some groups but not others.
I look forward to the single tier Police we have in this country will also be taking action over people who retweeted this false information.
Keely is already odds-on for SPotY which imo is a dangerous bet because it involves second-guessing the BBC's SPotY shortlist and some of us have had our fingers burnt in previous Olympics years when obvious contenders have been spurned by the panel. That said, I wish I'd lumped on Keely at odds-against because I think she is the most likely winner.
She will be nominated, that is not in doubt. The risk is something left field like happened with Raducanu winning the US Open. Cavendish and Littler are short-ish prices. Either could be a threat if they are nominated, but I'd still expect Keely to win comfortably.
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.
The Guardian reckons net immigration will come down to around 350,000 a year by 2030
Like this is some major achievement. 350,000 is still an insane and almost unprecedented number, it’s just that the Tories managed to triple it “by accident”
It still means rapid transformation. It still means incredible strains on society. On top of what we already have. Then add in the boat people…
It’s not good
The guardian is wrong and they don't know how to do simple maths. The number of people applying for visas currently is down by something like 80% compared to 2022 and the students that arrived in 2022 are all having to find jobs at £39k or go home which means most of them (and their dependents) are going home over the next year because companies aren't going to hire them for that kind of salary. I think 2025 and 2026 will see a period of net emigration. And then it will stabilise in 2027.
If it does happen it means Labour will get the credit for it and, perversely, that will help keep them in office despite them having no real interest in controlling immigration.
It makes Sunak's choices pre-election unfathomable.
The person most to blame in Johnson, because he was PM when the initial post Brexit visa regulations were put in place. But it was then ignored by Truss and Sunak, until it was too late.
Yes, I agree
There is a lot of blame to go around. The OBR will castrate anyone's growth forecasts who says they will being immigration down, leaving no headroom in budgets. That prevented Truss doing anything, and Sunak would never have got his NI cut etc. past them if he'd pledged to get it down to 10s of 000s or anything like.
But it's the dependents issue that has made immigration a problem for the Tories, changing those rules make no difference to GDP because dependents are economically inactive and overall a net drain.
But if the dependents are children who will join the workforce later, surely it's a net gain?
Only if they'll be joining the workforce above median wages.
You're not thinking straight. Otherwise you could make the country richer by deporting all the cleaners, all the people in hospitality and food, all the young people at the start of their careers.
Getting rid of minimum wage jobs by automating them etc absolutely does make our country richer, yes.
Unskilled jobs do need doing, but extra people doing them for minimum wage deflates our GDP per capita it doesn't inflate it. Even the unskilled should be on a good wage and being as efficient and productive as possible and bringing in extra people so that firms don't need to invest in training or productivity doesn't boost our GDP per capita one iota.
Get rid of all children for a richer Britain!
You're bonkers.
I never said get rid of children.
But its GDP per capita that matters, not GDP.
If we added 80 million children to the country every one of them destined to do minimum wage work, then would we be "richer" as a result? No of course not.
We should be investing in our children to have a good education and have as many skilled jobs as possible. And ensuring that migrants we bring over are skilled too.
Unskilled jobs we can leave for our own unskilled children that for some reason can't or won't learn during school, which should be as few as possible. We shouldn't be aiming to not give skills to our kids while at school, nor should we be importing people without skills.
I refer you to the comment I was originally replying to
"But it's the dependents issue that has made immigration a problem for the Tories, changing those rules make no difference to GDP because dependents are economically inactive and overall a net drain."
And I suspect few young people are "joining the workforce above median wages" which was your criterion.
THINK BEFORE YOU POST!
You're the one who needs to THINK BEFORE YOU POST!
You were claiming future earnings from when the children have grown up as being a positive. Future earnings if we're going to claim the future as relevant would incorporate their entire future career - and future obligations from when they are requiring a pension and a care home of their own.
You can't claim future earnings and not future obligations. Either include the whole amount, or neither.
Dependents are economically inactive today. In the future they're only boosting our GDP per capita if their future earnings are above median.
Someone shared a video of a police officer stamping on and kicking a man in the head that lead to serious disorder in Rochdale. It was completely without the full context of the situation and designed to be incendiary. And we're not just talking about something that went viral, we're talking about a number one news item on the TV. Even if they hadn't filmed the whole altercation they might have pointed out it was only a partial reflection of what had happened.
How do they feel about the consequences of it. Are they sorry? Apologetic? What was their motive? Has anyone asked any questions of them?
Sharing something that actually happened is one thing. Posting on a forum the completely false information that someone had been stabbed by Muslims in Stoke recklessly is quite another.
For example the Reform Councillor that shared the Ali name claimed to have been told that name from eye-witnesses to the stabbing. That gave it the aura of authority which we now know to have been entirely false. Elon Musk sharing the Falkland Island internment story should have thought about checking if it was true before stirring the pot to his 193m followers. Some of the 2m that read that tweet when it was up will still believe that the UK is going to send the right wing to a Falkland Island gulag. That's a problem.
That's fair. However we now have the added problem that fake news is sometimes so convincing anyone can honestly say "I had no idea"
It is very easy to just hit share or copy/paste something that feels true to me. I try, can't swear that I always follow my rule but I try to check the sources. For example on Sunday, the Guardian live blog reported that Staffordshire Police had said that there was no stabbing. I went to the Staffordshire Police website to look at their full statement rather than rely on a second hand paraphrase. It meant that I was scooped on posting that information to this board but at least I linked to the original statement.
For balance, posting that a Church in Liverpool was being attacked because it helped asylum seekers on Wednesday evening is equally reckless. We should all think before we post, it helps increase knowledge for all of us.
Do you really NEED that thought? Is it an *acceptable* thought? Might your unspoken and silent opinion cause offence to someone with a protected characteristic anywhere in the world, or anyone else, in history, ever? Or could your time be better spent not thinking at all, and let US do the thinking for you?
Tell us YOUR half-formed thoughts first, here at the Home Office, before you think them
At this point, who hasn’t actively considered emigration?
Just as a matter of style, I'm not sure Big Brother is the most persuasive comparison. I'd go for Russia or a similar quasi-dictatorship. Actually it might be interesting to compare prosecutions for TwiX posts in Britain and Russia, not least because the KGB does not always use the court system.
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.
The Guardian reckons net immigration will come down to around 350,000 a year by 2030
Like this is some major achievement. 350,000 is still an insane and almost unprecedented number, it’s just that the Tories managed to triple it “by accident”
It still means rapid transformation. It still means incredible strains on society. On top of what we already have. Then add in the boat people…
It’s not good
The guardian is wrong and they don't know how to do simple maths. The number of people applying for visas currently is down by something like 80% compared to 2022 and the students that arrived in 2022 are all having to find jobs at £39k or go home which means most of them (and their dependents) are going home over the next year because companies aren't going to hire them for that kind of salary. I think 2025 and 2026 will see a period of net emigration. And then it will stabilise in 2027.
If it does happen it means Labour will get the credit for it and, perversely, that will help keep them in office despite them having no real interest in controlling immigration.
It makes Sunak's choices pre-election unfathomable.
The person most to blame in Johnson, because he was PM when the initial post Brexit visa regulations were put in place. But it was then ignored by Truss and Sunak, until it was too late.
Yes, I agree
There is a lot of blame to go around. The OBR will castrate anyone's growth forecasts who says they will being immigration down, leaving no headroom in budgets. That prevented Truss doing anything, and Sunak would never have got his NI cut etc. past them if he'd pledged to get it down to 10s of 000s or anything like.
But it's the dependents issue that has made immigration a problem for the Tories, changing those rules make no difference to GDP because dependents are economically inactive and overall a net drain.
But if the dependents are children who will join the workforce later, surely it's a net gain?
Only if they'll be joining the workforce above median wages.
You're not thinking straight. Otherwise you could make the country richer by deporting all the cleaners, all the people in hospitality and food, all the young people at the start of their careers.
Getting rid of minimum wage jobs by automating them etc absolutely does make our country richer, yes.
Unskilled jobs do need doing, but extra people doing them for minimum wage deflates our GDP per capita it doesn't inflate it. Even the unskilled should be on a good wage and being as efficient and productive as possible and bringing in extra people so that firms don't need to invest in training or productivity doesn't boost our GDP per capita one iota.
Get rid of all children for a richer Britain!
You're bonkers.
I never said get rid of children.
But its GDP per capita that matters, not GDP.
If we added 80 million children to the country every one of them destined to do minimum wage work, then would we be "richer" as a result? No of course not.
We should be investing in our children to have a good education and have as many skilled jobs as possible. And ensuring that migrants we bring over are skilled too.
Unskilled jobs we can leave for our own unskilled children that for some reason can't or won't learn during school, which should be as few as possible. We shouldn't be aiming to not give skills to our kids while at school, nor should we be importing people without skills.
It's not even GDP per capita that matters. If you allow a load of poor people into the country to do menial work, then their lives have improved (or less they wouldn't be here) and the lives of those already here are also better (because they don't have to do shit work). So everyone's personally better off even though GDP per capita may have fallen. People sometimes find this hard to grasp.
..The government is considering the company’s request for billpayers to foot the cost of supporting its power plant beyond the subsidy scheme’s deadline in 2027 so it can keep burning wood for power until the end of the decade...
Just no.
Locked in till 2027 judging by your edit though ?
We probably can't remove that retrospectively (though it would be interesting to check, if we could see the detail of the scheme). But we certainly can cancel it beyond 2027 - which is a budget saving - and more pertinently we should cut massively the plans for CCS for fossil fuel and/or biomass power stations.
It's a dead end, expensive and probably unnecessary technology, with unproven benefits. The £20bn plus allocated for this could far better be spent on modernising our electricity generation, rather than kludging a fix for obsolete technology.
You could, for example, tell RR to put pedal to the metal on their SMR plans. Or pay for the entirety of the Xilinx N Africa project.
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.
Most of these people will be coming from countries that don't have reciprocal agreements for benefits, and so will have no recourse to public funds.
That means they can still access free school education, but not benefits such as free school meals or uniform grants. They'll pay full overseas tuition rates for university, with no student loans available.
Similarly, primary NHS treatment (GPs and A&E) will be free, but not secondary (consultants, specialists, and hospital treatment other than A&E) or community care (health visitors, etc).
They'll be paying full NICs but will receive no benefit for them - no access to universal credit, no JSA, and accruing no state pension rights.
Even at minimum wage, I would be very surprised if they didn't pay their way.
After five years living here they can get citizenship which includes all those things you claim that they don't get, so that's really not the case.
Quite rightly too, people who come here to work ought to get pensions - and rightly do. But we need to be honest and record both sides of the ledger not just one.
41,000 replies, all bitterly mocking the UK Government. This is hugely damaging to our international image. They are now trying to stop people replying
Have you seen the kinds of people doing the replying? They're mostly Qanon obsessed American nutters who don't have a positive view of anyone who's surname isn't Trump.
lol. They have now removed the ability to reply
What a triumph for Gov.UK. Write a tweet to really send a message, then realise the tweet is so madly offensive and unpopular it gets bitterly mocked, worldwide, and now the government is actively trying to hide the tweet. They’ll probably end up deleting it. Brilliant way to send the message. Gold star for PR
Farcical morons
Its not offensive to write what the law is.
Getting mocked by trolls online is irrelevant.
David Cameron was right when he said that Twitter isn't Britain. Foreign trolls on Twitter are even less Britain.
But the UKG govt clearly does care about Twitter, hence the hysterical calls to ban it or restrict it
What does the devastatingly bad tweet actually say? (I'm not on Twatter)
It says if you incite violence on Twitter you'll get your collar felt.
It does make you ashamed to be British, doesn't it?
Anyway, has anyone considered the option of simply saying that anything that Twitter or Facebook etc publish that is seen by more than say 1,000 people, Twitter are liable for like any other publisher?
Maybe pre-Brexit. If the government tries to rein in an American corporation, it will likely find itself facing off against the American government.
Someone shared a video of a police officer stamping on and kicking a man in the head that lead to serious disorder in Rochdale. It was completely without the full context of the situation and designed to be incendiary. And we're not just talking about something that went viral, we're talking about a number one news item on the TV. Even if they hadn't filmed the whole altercation they might have pointed out it was only a partial reflection of what had happened.
How do they feel about the consequences of it. Are they sorry? Apologetic? What was their motive? Has anyone asked any questions of them?
Sharing something that actually happened is one thing. Posting on a forum the completely false information that someone had been stabbed by Muslims in Stoke recklessly is quite another.
For example the Reform Councillor that shared the Ali name claimed to have been told that name from eye-witnesses to the stabbing. That gave it the aura of authority which we now know to have been entirely false. Elon Musk sharing the Falkland Island internment story should have thought about checking if it was true before stirring the pot to his 193m followers. Some of the 2m that read that tweet when it was up will still believe that the UK is going to send the right wing to a Falkland Island gulag. That's a problem.
You wouldn't question the motive of the person who did it? And isn't it strange that no-one has thus far wanted to do that?
I can't imagine what would lead someone to go to a dance class full of young girls and stab as many of them as possible. I don't feel the need to speculate on what that motive might be and even if I did, there's no benefit to anyone else to hear what uninformed ideas I might come up with.
Do you really NEED that thought? Is it an *acceptable* thought? Might your unspoken and silent opinion cause offence to someone with a protected characteristic anywhere in the world, or anyone else, in history, ever? Or could your time be better spent not thinking at all, and let US do the thinking for you?
Tell us YOUR half-formed thoughts first, here at the Home Office, before you think them
THINK BEFORE YOU THINK
This is nearly as dull as the time you discovered what three words a decade after the rest of the world.
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.
The Guardian reckons net immigration will come down to around 350,000 a year by 2030
Like this is some major achievement. 350,000 is still an insane and almost unprecedented number, it’s just that the Tories managed to triple it “by accident”
It still means rapid transformation. It still means incredible strains on society. On top of what we already have. Then add in the boat people…
It’s not good
The guardian is wrong and they don't know how to do simple maths. The number of people applying for visas currently is down by something like 80% compared to 2022 and the students that arrived in 2022 are all having to find jobs at £39k or go home which means most of them (and their dependents) are going home over the next year because companies aren't going to hire them for that kind of salary. I think 2025 and 2026 will see a period of net emigration. And then it will stabilise in 2027.
If it does happen it means Labour will get the credit for it and, perversely, that will help keep them in office despite them having no real interest in controlling immigration.
It makes Sunak's choices pre-election unfathomable.
The person most to blame in Johnson, because he was PM when the initial post Brexit visa regulations were put in place. But it was then ignored by Truss and Sunak, until it was too late.
Yes, I agree
There is a lot of blame to go around. The OBR will castrate anyone's growth forecasts who says they will being immigration down, leaving no headroom in budgets. That prevented Truss doing anything, and Sunak would never have got his NI cut etc. past them if he'd pledged to get it down to 10s of 000s or anything like.
But it's the dependents issue that has made immigration a problem for the Tories, changing those rules make no difference to GDP because dependents are economically inactive and overall a net drain.
But if the dependents are children who will join the workforce later, surely it's a net gain?
Only if they'll be joining the workforce above median wages.
You're not thinking straight. Otherwise you could make the country richer by deporting all the cleaners, all the people in hospitality and food, all the young people at the start of their careers.
Getting rid of minimum wage jobs by automating them etc absolutely does make our country richer, yes.
Unskilled jobs do need doing, but extra people doing them for minimum wage deflates our GDP per capita it doesn't inflate it. Even the unskilled should be on a good wage and being as efficient and productive as possible and bringing in extra people so that firms don't need to invest in training or productivity doesn't boost our GDP per capita one iota.
Get rid of all children for a richer Britain!
You're bonkers.
I never said get rid of children.
But its GDP per capita that matters, not GDP.
If we added 80 million children to the country every one of them destined to do minimum wage work, then would we be "richer" as a result? No of course not.
We should be investing in our children to have a good education and have as many skilled jobs as possible. And ensuring that migrants we bring over are skilled too.
Unskilled jobs we can leave for our own unskilled children that for some reason can't or won't learn during school, which should be as few as possible. We shouldn't be aiming to not give skills to our kids while at school, nor should we be importing people without skills.
It's not even GDP per capita that matters. If you allow a load of poor people into the country to do menial work, then their lives have improved (or less they wouldn't be here) and the lives of those already here are also better (because they don't have to do shit work). So everyone's personally better off even though GDP per capita may have fallen. People sometimes find this hard to grasp.
That's nonsense that's why.
The solution to menial work is to ensure that menial work is paid well, so that those who are doing it are rewarded for doing it.
Not importing unskilled people to do it. We have enough people in this country already who can do menial work and those doing it should be paid appropriately.
Importing unskilled people to be paid less to do menial work both deflates our skills, upending what we should be doing, making us poorer, and means that those who are doing menial work are paid less for it as the minimum wage becomes a floor so they're worse off.
41,000 replies, all bitterly mocking the UK Government. This is hugely damaging to our international image. They are now trying to stop people replying
Have you seen the kinds of people doing the replying? They're mostly Qanon obsessed American nutters who don't have a positive view of anyone who's surname isn't Trump.
lol. They have now removed the ability to reply
What a triumph for Gov.UK. Write a tweet to really send a message, then realise the tweet is so madly offensive and unpopular it gets bitterly mocked, worldwide, and now the government is actively trying to hide the tweet. They’ll probably end up deleting it. Brilliant way to send the message. Gold star for PR
Farcical morons
Its not offensive to write what the law is.
Getting mocked by trolls online is irrelevant.
David Cameron was right when he said that Twitter isn't Britain. Foreign trolls on Twitter are even less Britain.
But the UKG govt clearly does care about Twitter, hence the hysterical calls to ban it or restrict it
What does the devastatingly bad tweet actually say? (I'm not on Twatter)
It says if you incite violence on Twitter you'll get your collar felt.
People should take the traditional and consequence free route of becoming a columnist for the Spectator.
Sunder Katwala @sundersays "The public will have to go in, & the public will have to sort this out themselves, & it'll be very, very brutal. I don't want them here. I don't want them to live here. They came under false pretences" - Douglas Murray widespread violence
At this point, who hasn’t actively considered emigration?
Just as a matter of style, I'm not sure Big Brother is the most persuasive comparison. I'd go for Russia or a similar quasi-dictatorship. Actually it might be interesting to compare prosecutions for TwiX posts in Britain and Russia, not least because the KGB does not always use the court system.
Someone has made the comparison
"In the last five years; arrests for social media posts:
Putin’s Russia - 400
UK (since the Communication Act 2003) - 3,300
The English invented the concept of free speech and decrying the governing orthodoxy - now we’re a global embarrassment."
41,000 replies, all bitterly mocking the UK Government. This is hugely damaging to our international image. They are now trying to stop people replying
I think that just confirms what a cesspit twitter is. It's perfectly reasonable government communications during a period of violence, highlighting what the law is and bringing attention to a tweet by E&W's independent prosecution service.
This kind of violent threat has driven a number of active travel advocates off social media (including me to an extent, after I was warned by the police that someone had my address). It stifles the kind of free speech you wish to defend.
You may have missed it - the other day I recommended a book "Record, Retreat, Report", about Active Travel Advocacy Online through the lens of a history of cycle cammers, interspersed with accounts of interviews and good commentary. Mine arrived yesterday and I would recommend.
At this point, who hasn’t actively considered emigration?
Just as a matter of style, I'm not sure Big Brother is the most persuasive comparison. I'd go for Russia or a similar quasi-dictatorship. Actually it might be interesting to compare prosecutions for TwiX posts in Britain and Russia, not least because the KGB does not always use the court system.
This is just the most recent example of fairly frequent such stores from Russia.
At this point, who hasn’t actively considered emigration?
Just as a matter of style, I'm not sure Big Brother is the most persuasive comparison. I'd go for Russia or a similar quasi-dictatorship. Actually it might be interesting to compare prosecutions for TwiX posts in Britain and Russia, not least because the KGB does not always use the court system.
Someone has made the comparison
"In the last five years; arrests for social media posts:
Putin’s Russia - 400
UK (since the Communication Act 2003) - 3,300
The English invented the concept of free speech and decrying the governing orthodoxy - now we’re a global embarrassment."
At this point, who hasn’t actively considered emigration?
Just as a matter of style, I'm not sure Big Brother is the most persuasive comparison. I'd go for Russia or a similar quasi-dictatorship. Actually it might be interesting to compare prosecutions for TwiX posts in Britain and Russia, not least because the KGB does not always use the court system.
Someone has made the comparison
"In the last five years; arrests for social media posts:
Putin’s Russia - 400
UK (since the Communication Act 2003) - 3,300
The English invented the concept of free speech and decrying the governing orthodoxy - now we’re a global embarrassment."
Someone shared a video of a police officer stamping on and kicking a man in the head that lead to serious disorder in Rochdale. It was completely without the full context of the situation and designed to be incendiary. And we're not just talking about something that went viral, we're talking about a number one news item on the TV. Even if they hadn't filmed the whole altercation they might have pointed out it was only a partial reflection of what had happened.
How do they feel about the consequences of it. Are they sorry? Apologetic? What was their motive? Has anyone asked any questions of them?
Sharing something that actually happened is one thing. Posting on a forum the completely false information that someone had been stabbed by Muslims in Stoke recklessly is quite another.
For example the Reform Councillor that shared the Ali name claimed to have been told that name from eye-witnesses to the stabbing. That gave it the aura of authority which we now know to have been entirely false. Elon Musk sharing the Falkland Island internment story should have thought about checking if it was true before stirring the pot to his 193m followers. Some of the 2m that read that tweet when it was up will still believe that the UK is going to send the right wing to a Falkland Island gulag. That's a problem.
You wouldn't question the motive of the person who did it? And isn't it strange that no-one has thus far wanted to do that?
I can't imagine what would lead someone to go to a dance class full of young girls and stab as many of them as possible. I don't feel the need to speculate on what that motive might be and even if I did, there's no benefit to anyone else to hear what uninformed ideas I might come up with.
So if someone posted a brief video of a muslim man kicking and stamping on a white man's head that incited serious disorder in a town only for it later to emerge that the white men had assaulted the muslims first, you wouldn't question the motive of the individual sharer? Fair enough. But I suspect many in our media would. They like to talk about motive a lot. Particularly if they think it is racism.
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.
The Guardian reckons net immigration will come down to around 350,000 a year by 2030
Like this is some major achievement. 350,000 is still an insane and almost unprecedented number, it’s just that the Tories managed to triple it “by accident”
It still means rapid transformation. It still means incredible strains on society. On top of what we already have. Then add in the boat people…
It’s not good
The guardian is wrong and they don't know how to do simple maths. The number of people applying for visas currently is down by something like 80% compared to 2022 and the students that arrived in 2022 are all having to find jobs at £39k or go home which means most of them (and their dependents) are going home over the next year because companies aren't going to hire them for that kind of salary. I think 2025 and 2026 will see a period of net emigration. And then it will stabilise in 2027.
If it does happen it means Labour will get the credit for it and, perversely, that will help keep them in office despite them having no real interest in controlling immigration.
It makes Sunak's choices pre-election unfathomable.
The person most to blame in Johnson, because he was PM when the initial post Brexit visa regulations were put in place. But it was then ignored by Truss and Sunak, until it was too late.
Yes, I agree
There is a lot of blame to go around. The OBR will castrate anyone's growth forecasts who says they will being immigration down, leaving no headroom in budgets. That prevented Truss doing anything, and Sunak would never have got his NI cut etc. past them if he'd pledged to get it down to 10s of 000s or anything like.
But it's the dependents issue that has made immigration a problem for the Tories, changing those rules make no difference to GDP because dependents are economically inactive and overall a net drain.
But if the dependents are children who will join the workforce later, surely it's a net gain?
Only if they'll be joining the workforce above median wages.
You're not thinking straight. Otherwise you could make the country richer by deporting all the cleaners, all the people in hospitality and food, all the young people at the start of their careers.
Getting rid of minimum wage jobs by automating them etc absolutely does make our country richer, yes.
Unskilled jobs do need doing, but extra people doing them for minimum wage deflates our GDP per capita it doesn't inflate it. Even the unskilled should be on a good wage and being as efficient and productive as possible and bringing in extra people so that firms don't need to invest in training or productivity doesn't boost our GDP per capita one iota.
Get rid of all children for a richer Britain!
You're bonkers.
I never said get rid of children.
But its GDP per capita that matters, not GDP.
If we added 80 million children to the country every one of them destined to do minimum wage work, then would we be "richer" as a result? No of course not.
We should be investing in our children to have a good education and have as many skilled jobs as possible. And ensuring that migrants we bring over are skilled too.
Unskilled jobs we can leave for our own unskilled children that for some reason can't or won't learn during school, which should be as few as possible. We shouldn't be aiming to not give skills to our kids while at school, nor should we be importing people without skills.
It's not even GDP per capita that matters. If you allow a load of poor people into the country to do menial work, then their lives have improved (or less they wouldn't be here) and the lives of those already here are also better (because they don't have to do shit work). So everyone's personally better off even though GDP per capita may have fallen. People sometimes find this hard to grasp.
That's nonsense that's why.
The solution to menial work is to ensure that menial work is paid well, so that those who are doing it are rewarded for doing it.
Not importing unskilled people to do it. We have enough people in this country already who can do menial work and those doing it should be paid appropriately.
Importing unskilled people to be paid less to do menial work both deflates our skills, upending what we should be doing, making us poorer, and means that those who are doing menial work are paid less for it as the minimum wage becomes a floor so they're worse off.
Import skills, not unskilled.
It's simply an unintuitive but correct mathematical fact. It's possible to have migration than makes every individual better off but reduces overall GDP per capita. Whether it's a good idea or not is a different question.
Keely is already odds-on for SPotY which imo is a dangerous bet because it involves second-guessing the BBC's SPotY shortlist and some of us have had our fingers burnt in previous Olympics years when obvious contenders have been spurned by the panel. That said, I wish I'd lumped on Keely at odds-against because I think she is the most likely winner.
She will be nominated, that is not in doubt. The risk is something left field like happened with Raducanu winning the US Open. Cavendish and Littler are short-ish prices. Either could be a threat if they are nominated, but I'd still expect Keely to win comfortably.
Finucane might be a bit of a threat, but I think she needed three golds to have a chance.
At this point, who hasn’t actively considered emigration?
Just as a matter of style, I'm not sure Big Brother is the most persuasive comparison. I'd go for Russia or a similar quasi-dictatorship. Actually it might be interesting to compare prosecutions for TwiX posts in Britain and Russia, not least because the KGB does not always use the court system.
Someone has made the comparison
"In the last five years; arrests for social media posts:
Putin’s Russia - 400
UK (since the Communication Act 2003) - 3,300
The English invented the concept of free speech and decrying the governing orthodoxy - now we’re a global embarrassment."
41,000 replies, all bitterly mocking the UK Government. This is hugely damaging to our international image. They are now trying to stop people replying
Have you seen the kinds of people doing the replying? They're mostly Qanon obsessed American nutters who don't have a positive view of anyone who's surname isn't Trump.
lol. They have now removed the ability to reply
What a triumph for Gov.UK. Write a tweet to really send a message, then realise the tweet is so madly offensive and unpopular it gets bitterly mocked, worldwide, and now the government is actively trying to hide the tweet. They’ll probably end up deleting it. Brilliant way to send the message. Gold star for PR
Farcical morons
Its not offensive to write what the law is.
Getting mocked by trolls online is irrelevant.
David Cameron was right when he said that Twitter isn't Britain. Foreign trolls on Twitter are even less Britain.
But the UKG govt clearly does care about Twitter, hence the hysterical calls to ban it or restrict it
What does the devastatingly bad tweet actually say? (I'm not on Twatter)
It says if you incite violence on Twitter you'll get your collar felt.
It says if you incite violence or hatred on Twitter you get your collar felt. The second concept is a vast gulf away from the first, so I'm puzzled you didn’t feel it worthy of mention.
Violence and hatred aren't the same but there's hardly a 'vast gulf' between them.
Something like 'violence and cornflakes' - there'd be a vast gulf there.
Keely is already odds-on for SPotY which imo is a dangerous bet because it involves second-guessing the BBC's SPotY shortlist and some of us have had our fingers burnt in previous Olympics years when obvious contenders have been spurned by the panel. That said, I wish I'd lumped on Keely at odds-against because I think she is the most likely winner.
The BBC pretty much has to nominate someone from the Track & Field, and right now Keely is the most obvious nominee.
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.
The Guardian reckons net immigration will come down to around 350,000 a year by 2030
Like this is some major achievement. 350,000 is still an insane and almost unprecedented number, it’s just that the Tories managed to triple it “by accident”
It still means rapid transformation. It still means incredible strains on society. On top of what we already have. Then add in the boat people…
It’s not good
The guardian is wrong and they don't know how to do simple maths. The number of people applying for visas currently is down by something like 80% compared to 2022 and the students that arrived in 2022 are all having to find jobs at £39k or go home which means most of them (and their dependents) are going home over the next year because companies aren't going to hire them for that kind of salary. I think 2025 and 2026 will see a period of net emigration. And then it will stabilise in 2027.
If it does happen it means Labour will get the credit for it and, perversely, that will help keep them in office despite them having no real interest in controlling immigration.
It makes Sunak's choices pre-election unfathomable.
The person most to blame in Johnson, because he was PM when the initial post Brexit visa regulations were put in place. But it was then ignored by Truss and Sunak, until it was too late.
Yes, I agree
There is a lot of blame to go around. The OBR will castrate anyone's growth forecasts who says they will being immigration down, leaving no headroom in budgets. That prevented Truss doing anything, and Sunak would never have got his NI cut etc. past them if he'd pledged to get it down to 10s of 000s or anything like.
But it's the dependents issue that has made immigration a problem for the Tories, changing those rules make no difference to GDP because dependents are economically inactive and overall a net drain.
But if the dependents are children who will join the workforce later, surely it's a net gain?
Only if they'll be joining the workforce above median wages.
You're not thinking straight. Otherwise you could make the country richer by deporting all the cleaners, all the people in hospitality and food, all the young people at the start of their careers.
Getting rid of minimum wage jobs by automating them etc absolutely does make our country richer, yes.
Unskilled jobs do need doing, but extra people doing them for minimum wage deflates our GDP per capita it doesn't inflate it. Even the unskilled should be on a good wage and being as efficient and productive as possible and bringing in extra people so that firms don't need to invest in training or productivity doesn't boost our GDP per capita one iota.
Get rid of all children for a richer Britain!
You're bonkers.
I never said get rid of children.
But its GDP per capita that matters, not GDP.
If we added 80 million children to the country every one of them destined to do minimum wage work, then would we be "richer" as a result? No of course not.
We should be investing in our children to have a good education and have as many skilled jobs as possible. And ensuring that migrants we bring over are skilled too.
Unskilled jobs we can leave for our own unskilled children that for some reason can't or won't learn during school, which should be as few as possible. We shouldn't be aiming to not give skills to our kids while at school, nor should we be importing people without skills.
It's not even GDP per capita that matters. If you allow a load of poor people into the country to do menial work, then their lives have improved (or less they wouldn't be here) and the lives of those already here are also better (because they don't have to do shit work). So everyone's personally better off even though GDP per capita may have fallen. People sometimes find this hard to grasp.
That's nonsense that's why.
The solution to menial work is to ensure that menial work is paid well, so that those who are doing it are rewarded for doing it.
Not importing unskilled people to do it. We have enough people in this country already who can do menial work and those doing it should be paid appropriately.
Importing unskilled people to be paid less to do menial work both deflates our skills, upending what we should be doing, making us poorer, and means that those who are doing menial work are paid less for it as the minimum wage becomes a floor so they're worse off.
Import skills, not unskilled.
It's simply an unintuitive but correct mathematical fact. It's possible to have migration than makes every individual better off but reduces overall GDP per capita. Whether it's a good idea or not is a different question.
Lowering GDP per capita means we're poorer per capita, not richer.
Especially since investment in infrastructure (which is needed for population growth) is capital-heavy so needs outsized funding.
Migration needs to significantly boost GDP per capita to pay its way. It absolutely can and should happen, but it can and should happen via skilled migration, not unskilled.
Someone shared a video of a police officer stamping on and kicking a man in the head that lead to serious disorder in Rochdale. It was completely without the full context of the situation and designed to be incendiary. And we're not just talking about something that went viral, we're talking about a number one news item on the TV. Even if they hadn't filmed the whole altercation they might have pointed out it was only a partial reflection of what had happened.
How do they feel about the consequences of it. Are they sorry? Apologetic? What was their motive? Has anyone asked any questions of them?
Sharing something that actually happened is one thing. Posting on a forum the completely false information that someone had been stabbed by Muslims in Stoke recklessly is quite another.
For example the Reform Councillor that shared the Ali name claimed to have been told that name from eye-witnesses to the stabbing. That gave it the aura of authority which we now know to have been entirely false. Elon Musk sharing the Falkland Island internment story should have thought about checking if it was true before stirring the pot to his 193m followers. Some of the 2m that read that tweet when it was up will still believe that the UK is going to send the right wing to a Falkland Island gulag. That's a problem.
You wouldn't question the motive of the person who did it? And isn't it strange that no-one has thus far wanted to do that?
I can't imagine what would lead someone to go to a dance class full of young girls and stab as many of them as possible. I don't feel the need to speculate on what that motive might be and even if I did, there's no benefit to anyone else to hear what uninformed ideas I might come up with.
So if someone posted a brief video of a muslim man kicking and stamping on a white man's head that incited serious disorder in a town only for it later to emerge that the white men had assaulted the muslims first, you wouldn't question the motive of the individual sharer? Fair enough. But I suspect many in our media would. They like to talk about motive a lot. Particularly if they think it is racism.
As I posted upthread there were false claims of an acid attack on a Muslim woman in Middlesbrough which were repeated by people who should really know better and there was alot of trouble in Middlesbrough at the time.
I cannot recall on the news, local or national, anyone having their collars felt for it from our single tier Police force.
Someone shared a video of a police officer stamping on and kicking a man in the head that lead to serious disorder in Rochdale. It was completely without the full context of the situation and designed to be incendiary. And we're not just talking about something that went viral, we're talking about a number one news item on the TV. Even if they hadn't filmed the whole altercation they might have pointed out it was only a partial reflection of what had happened.
How do they feel about the consequences of it. Are they sorry? Apologetic? What was their motive? Has anyone asked any questions of them?
Sharing something that actually happened is one thing. Posting on a forum the completely false information that someone had been stabbed by Muslims in Stoke recklessly is quite another.
For example the Reform Councillor that shared the Ali name claimed to have been told that name from eye-witnesses to the stabbing. That gave it the aura of authority which we now know to have been entirely false. Elon Musk sharing the Falkland Island internment story should have thought about checking if it was true before stirring the pot to his 193m followers. Some of the 2m that read that tweet when it was up will still believe that the UK is going to send the right wing to a Falkland Island gulag. That's a problem.
That's fair. However we now have the added problem that fake news is sometimes so convincing anyone can honestly say "I had no idea"
It is very easy to just hit share or copy/paste something that feels true to me. I try, can't swear that I always follow my rule but I try to check the sources. For example on Sunday, the Guardian live blog reported that Staffordshire Police had said that there was no stabbing. I went to the Staffordshire Police website to look at their full statement rather than rely on a second hand paraphrase. It meant that I was scooped on posting that information to this board but at least I linked to the original statement.
For balance, posting that a Church in Liverpool was being attacked because it helped asylum seekers on Wednesday evening is equally reckless. We should all think before we post, it helps increase knowledge for all of us.
Couldn't agree more. It is not perfect, but it is only reasonable you at least do a brief check before reposting something that could be damaging. A quick check on who is posting stuff is probably all is needed to determine whether it might be dodgy. But I had this argument over the last few days here with @moonshine who didn't think she had any responsibility to check the veracity of anything she linked to.
...The FTSE 100 owner of the Drax power plant made profits of £500m over the first half of this year, helped by biomass subsidies of almost £400m over this period. It handed its shareholders a windfall of £300m for the first half of the year...
There's a potential spending cut, right there.
..The government is considering the company’s request for billpayers to foot the cost of supporting its power plant beyond the subsidy scheme’s deadline in 2027 so it can keep burning wood for power until the end of the decade...
Just no.
Drax's clever switch to American wood pellets (which I deplore in principle) is the only thing that has allowed it to stay open, and by extension keep the UK's lights on. Condemning it is remarkably stupid.
41,000 replies, all bitterly mocking the UK Government. This is hugely damaging to our international image. They are now trying to stop people replying
I think that just confirms what a cesspit twitter is. It's perfectly reasonable government communications during a period of violence, highlighting what the law is and bringing attention to a tweet by E&W's independent prosecution service.
This kind of violent threat has driven a number of active travel advocates off social media (including me to an extent, after I was warned by the police that someone had my address). It stifles the kind of free speech you wish to defend.
You may have missed it - the other day I recommended a book "Record, Retreat, Report", about Active Travel Advocacy Online through the lens of a history of cycle cammers, interspersed with accounts of interviews and good commentary. Mine arrived yesterday and I would recommend.
Comments
CPS: Think before you post! 📲✋ Content that incites violence or hatred isn't just harmful - it can be illegal.
The CPS takes online violence seriously and will prosecute when the legal test is met. Remind those close to you to share responsibly or face the consequences.
Sunder Katwala
@sundersays
"The public will have to go in, & the public will have to sort this out themselves, & it'll be very, very brutal. I don't want them here. I don't want them to live here. They came under false pretences" - Douglas Murray widespread violence
https://x.com/sundersays/status/1821800537311891952
Anyway, has anyone considered the option of simply saying that anything that Twitter or Facebook etc publish that is seen by more than say 1,000 people, Twitter are liable for like any other publisher?
I can’t see Thiam underperforming in the javelin . Regardless as long as KJT is on the podium that would be a very good result given her heartaches from previous Olympics .
And in a properly functioning internet you wouldn't be able to measure how many people heard a speech act in the first place, the law definitely shouldn't be locking in the awful design of Twitter and Facebook.
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/50253-how-have-britons-reacted-to-rachel-reeves-spending-audit
Labour are also consulting industry on raising those levels, I've heard £45k is now going to be the national minimum and regional and sector based minimums are going to be higher still, for software engineers in London it could be ~£60k minimum income level to sponsor an overseas worker and they're talking about tightening the sponsorship licencing process too so that fewer companies are able to sponsor workers especially bigger ones who should find it easier to recruit from the existing pool of talent.
Go cry me a river.
It's not a good use of our taxes.
It is exactly the kind of thing you might see on posters in Soviet Russia, or a country at war
THINK BEFORE YOU TALK
WE ARE READING YOU
THE HILLS HAVE EYES
GET THE FUCK OUT OF BRITAIN BEFORE WE ARREST YOU
Are you sure you're smart?
Or literate?
Stretch that 50 years and an afternoon at the bingo becomes the precursor for terrorism.
Every outrage since 1974 has triggered some form of response from the Home Secretary and the Security Services, as fine an example of shutting the stable door after the horse has cleared over the horizon as you could wish.
When a terrible event happens, there's an immediate clamour to "do something" and politicians are too scared of public opinion not to be seen to be "doing something" however stupid or repressive that "something" is. We know people will happily surrender their freedoms, rights and even their right to vote in a democratic society just to feel "safe". Normally sensible people just go silly when it comes to notions of security and stability - I've heard people call for the mass deportation of Britain's Islamic community - what next, some form of identification to mark out Muslims from the rest of society?
There's the more positive side of surveillance - lower level crime prevention, it's irrefutable evidence of wrongdoing (to a point). Surveillance and other video can be used to bring offenders to justice but if abused and edited maliciously, it can also promote injustice as we've seen.
Finally, we have the old chestnut of ID cards - let's not go there.
Indeed he grew up in Wolverhampton, Starmer grew up in Surrey, so he is arguably even less posh by background than the PM
Do you understand how TwiX works? The tweet I am referring to says THINK BEFORE YOU POST. That's it. Go and have a look at it
Nested within that is another tweet from the CPS
But the actual tweet, which is provoking this debate?
It says THINK BEFORE YOU POST. And that's it. Nothing else
THINK BEFORE YOU POST
What is the world coming to? If that were to happen what would become of us?
Someone shared a video of a police officer stamping on and kicking a man in the head that lead to serious disorder in Rochdale. It was completely without the full context of the situation and designed to be incendiary. And we're not just talking about something that went viral, we're talking about a number one news item on the TV. Even if they hadn't filmed the whole altercation they might have pointed out it was only a partial reflection of what had happened.
How do they feel about the consequences of it. Are they sorry? Apologetic? What was their motive? Has anyone asked any questions of them?
I think Ukraine's tactics are simple here: make things more expensive for the Russians, force them to keep soldiers away from the frontline, and to inflict damage on supply chains and the like.
What happens next is anyone's guess: Ukraine failed in its offensives to take back its own territory. On the other hand, Russian losses of men and materiel are not insignificant, and there have been cases of Russian units refusing to attach: does the come a point where they can no longer advance? And if so, what's their plan? Holding Ukrainian territory is not without cost, and brings very little benefit to them: it's certainly not generating a bunch of GDP.
Do you think you can get away with libel just because you do it on X ?
It's no different for (eg) incitement.
That's not "lawfare", or a change in what UK law says; it's just a matter of fact.
41k numpties (or bots). Plus you.
Unskilled jobs do need doing, but extra people doing them for minimum wage deflates our GDP per capita it doesn't inflate it. Even the unskilled should be on a good wage and being as efficient and productive as possible and bringing in extra people so that firms don't need to invest in training or productivity doesn't boost our GDP per capita one iota.
In an age where we can just implant people with ID chips, they are completely outdated.
And every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
We'll be watching you
Arguably, his one achievement was to take the UK into the EEC for which it seems he got little thanks from the Party in hindsight though Thatcher was a big supporter of the Common Market and campaigned strongly for a "YES" vote in the 1975 Referendum (the EEC cardigan?).
What aided Thatcher was the disastrous decision by Callaghan NOT to go for an election in October 1978 - the following winter was a nightmare for the country and made Thatcher's victory inevitable.
Thatcher and Keith Joseph wanted to continue and develop the 1970 Manifesto ideas - the likes of Whitelaw wanted to return to a more traditional "One Nation" platform but the Unions over reached and the public was ready for a radical and dramatic response.
You're bonkers.
Drax received £22bn in subsidies despite being UK’s largest emitter in 2023, though company rejects ‘flawed’ research
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/09/biomass-power-station-produced-four-times-emissions-of-uk-coal-plant-says-report
...The FTSE 100 owner of the Drax power plant made profits of £500m over the first half of this year, helped by biomass subsidies of almost £400m over this period. It handed its shareholders a windfall of £300m for the first half of the year...
There's a potential spending cut, right there.
..The government is considering the company’s request for billpayers to foot the cost of supporting its power plant beyond the subsidy scheme’s deadline in 2027 so it can keep burning wood for power until the end of the decade...
Just no.
For example the Reform Councillor that shared the Ali name claimed to have been told that name from eye-witnesses to the stabbing. That gave it the aura of authority which we now know to have been entirely false. Elon Musk sharing the Falkland Island internment story should have thought about checking if it was true before stirring the pot to his 193m followers. Some of the 2m that read that tweet when it was up will still believe that the UK is going to send the right wing to a Falkland Island gulag. That's a problem.
But its GDP per capita that matters, not GDP.
If we added 80 million children to the country every one of them destined to do minimum wage work, then would we be "richer" as a result? No of course not.
We should be investing in our children to have a good education and have as many skilled jobs as possible. And ensuring that migrants we bring over are skilled too.
Unskilled jobs we can leave for our own unskilled children that for some reason can't or won't learn during school, which should be as few as possible. We shouldn't be aiming to not give skills to our kids while at school, nor should we be importing people without skills.
The way we got where we are was that it seemed like if you left content completely unmoderated you could reasonably claim that you were just a carrier of information like the phone company or the post office, but if you applied any kind of responsibility and started moderating it you were then exercising control and you became responsible for it. If the goal is to prevent certain bad kinds of speech (eg incitement to violence) this seems like a perverse result.
So non-stupid jurisdictions have gone with your comments being your responsibility, even if the site is doing moderation in accordance with its own principles, for example banning people for posting sc0ttish subs@mples.
However I believe I have worked out the overarching thesis. They are recreating Theresa May's controversial Hostile Environment policy, except this time - quite cleverly - that are making Britain a "Hostile Environment" FOR BRITONS
The idea is they will make Britain so dismally poor, ugly and depressing about 20 million of us will leave, thereby solving the housing problam, the NHS crisis, the overburdended infrastructure, all in one neat move
Its actually very smart and I'm glad they got my vote
Too much I'm afraid.
KJT will beat her but probably by 4-5 seconds.
Poor long jump killed her.
Births have exceeded deaths every single year except for 1976 and 2021 - and there ought to be an asterisk next to 2021's data.
Prior to 2020 births exceeded deaths by six figures a year.
"But it's the dependents issue that has made immigration a problem for the Tories, changing those rules make no difference to GDP because dependents are economically inactive and overall a net drain."
And I suspect few young people are "joining the workforce above median wages" which was your criterion.
THINK BEFORE YOU POST!
That means they can still access free school education, but not benefits such as free school meals or uniform grants. They'll pay full overseas tuition rates for university, with no student loans available.
Similarly, primary NHS treatment (GPs and A&E) will be free, but not secondary (consultants, specialists, and hospital treatment other than A&E) or community care (health visitors, etc).
They'll be paying full NICs but will receive no benefit for them - no access to universal credit, no JSA, and accruing no state pension rights.
Even at minimum wage, I would be very surprised if they didn't pay their way.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/hope-not-hate-boss-apologises-for-false-acid-attack-on-muslim-woman-tweet/ar-AA1oh1I7
You were claiming future earnings from when the children have grown up as being a positive. Future earnings if we're going to claim the future as relevant would incorporate their entire future career - and future obligations from when they are requiring a pension and a care home of their own.
You can't claim future earnings and not future obligations. Either include the whole amount, or neither.
Dependents are economically inactive today. In the future they're only boosting our GDP per capita if their future earnings are above median.
Who watches the watchmen themselves? Whoever it is report them so we can arrest them.
For balance, posting that a Church in Liverpool was being attacked because it helped asylum seekers on Wednesday evening is equally reckless. We should all think before we post, it helps increase knowledge for all of us.
Do you really NEED that thought? Is it an *acceptable* thought? Might your unspoken and silent opinion cause offence to someone with a protected characteristic anywhere in the world, or anyone else, in history, ever? Or could your time be better spent not thinking at all, and let US do the thinking for you?
Tell us YOUR half-formed thoughts first, here at the Home Office, before you think them
THINK BEFORE YOU THINK
But we certainly can cancel it beyond 2027 - which is a budget saving - and more pertinently we should cut massively the plans for CCS for fossil fuel and/or biomass power stations.
It's a dead end, expensive and probably unnecessary technology, with unproven benefits. The £20bn plus allocated for this could far better be spent on modernising our electricity generation, rather than kludging a fix for obsolete technology.
You could, for example, tell RR to put pedal to the metal on their SMR plans.
Or pay for the entirety of the Xilinx N Africa project.
Quite rightly too, people who come here to work ought to get pensions - and rightly do. But we need to be honest and record both sides of the ledger not just one.
The solution to menial work is to ensure that menial work is paid well, so that those who are doing it are rewarded for doing it.
Not importing unskilled people to do it. We have enough people in this country already who can do menial work and those doing it should be paid appropriately.
Importing unskilled people to be paid less to do menial work both deflates our skills, upending what we should be doing, making us poorer, and means that those who are doing menial work are paid less for it as the minimum wage becomes a floor so they're worse off.
Import skills, not unskilled.
I had him down as a member of the 'racists with table manners' demographic. It looks like the manners are slipping.
"In the last five years; arrests for social media posts:
Putin’s Russia - 400
UK (since the Communication Act 2003) - 3,300
The English invented the concept of free speech and decrying the governing orthodoxy - now we’re a global embarrassment."
https://x.com/mephistomatt4/status/1821686383271972934
Written by Lukasz Marek Sielski, who is https://x.com/phonekills .
Book, including sample chapters, here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0D6VV5821
Russian pianist dies in jail after criticizing Moscow’s action in Ukraine
https://apnews.com/article/russia-kushnir-pianist-death-crackdown-ukraine-war-dbe96de25e272a6d2aea886e4c9c9b64#
And incitement to violence is illegal in every country, AFAIK.
I mean how thick are you?/
Something like 'violence and cornflakes' - there'd be a vast gulf there.
It doesn't.
It's a response to recent events, and is in the context of what seems to be a widespread belief, that you're not responsible for what you post online.
You, of course, are much more sophisticated in your knowledge of the world than that. A lot of folk aren't.
Especially since investment in infrastructure (which is needed for population growth) is capital-heavy so needs outsized funding.
Migration needs to significantly boost GDP per capita to pay its way. It absolutely can and should happen, but it can and should happen via skilled migration, not unskilled.
I cannot recall on the news, local or national, anyone having their collars felt for it from our single tier Police force.