I do have a question, what should net migration actually be?
And if it fell to that level, assuming it stayed there would people actually be happy or will it always be too high?
The same it was in the early/mid 1990s.
In the early/mid 1990s the elderly (65+) were 16% of the population. Now they are 20%, by the middle of the century they will be 25%, and by the end of the century 31%. Either more old people work, or we have much more automation, or we accept that our labour market will keep on demanding more workers from abroad.
Or younger British people have more babies
Be careful what you wish for though.
I was trying to help a woman last week: in her late 20s, single, 3 children, eldest two both have issues, eldest receives DLA, she's been told to apply for DLA for child 2. They're on UC, in (unsatisfactory) social housing, she hasn't worked for 9 years, has lots of debt she can never pay...
On the bright side, she's having another baby, due next month. So that should help the demographics.
More younger people getting married and then having children especially.
Though even that woman is at least more invested in the future and had children, even if she does not have a high flying career.
The reality is uber feminism spreads the lie most women can have high flying professional and managerial careers and can put that even above motherhood. The reality is most can't but most women can be mothers and have children.
VP elect Vance could have been more diplomatic about childless cat ladies but his point more women need to have more children was correct
The world will need women to have more babies if we want to avoid demographic collapse. Yes.
There are broadly two ways in which you might attempt to achieve that.
1. You could reduce personal freedom and choice for women so that they had no option but to give birth to babies.
2. You could make having children an easier or more attractive choice so that more women would choose to have more babies and have the babies they want to have, but aren't able to for whatever reason.
The problem I have with cultural Conservatives is that their approach is all (1) with a does of anti-(2) for class war reasons.
There's an air of using the demographic situation as a means to refight the battles the right lost on freedom for women, and having much less interest in demography itself.
Yes. We see this with Musk ad his ilk. America can hold more people. But (the wrong sort of) immigrants are bad. Therefore we need existing women to have more kids. And we shall do this by restricting abortions and access to contraceptives.
A distinctly anti-woman agenda.
Well the Vatican and evangelical Christians and many conservative Muslims and Orthodox Jews will like it too
They like all sorts of stuff that sane humans wouldn't give the time of day to. We don't need religion making policy. You'll be wanting blasphemy laws next!
Not so long, in the great scheme of things, that Unitarians could be accused of treason because they didn't follow C of E doctrine on the Trinity.
As with @OldKingCole - something I learned from genealogical work. (A common confusion arises because they had to call themselves Presbyterian for sasfety.)
Lot's of my ancestors, on both sides, were Non-Conformists, but I've not come across that one. Interesting. Although even though they were not CoE members they often married in Church.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
Even St Andrew's?
Overseas travel is also, of course, almost entirely "unnecessary". But I hardly expect it to disappear.
Overseas travel and gap years will REPLACE universities. Why get £70,000 in debt for a useless degree ‘just to socialise’ when you can do all your socializing in a sunny cheap place in the tropics (and learn remotely from expert 24/7 tutors if you insist)?
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
It needs thinking through what 'doomed' might mean. What is doomed? It may well be some current model is doomed; you might properly describe Oxford as it was in 1300 as doomed from the POV of how the future was going to pan out; but there it is, a more or less different thing trading under a good number of the same names - like 'Oxford' and 'Merton'.
So ignore names and continuities for a moment. Two things will carry on (pace Leon): the need to qualify by knowing stuff and having skills; and that desire to study and know stuff like the use of the optative in Sanskrit epic poetry just because you do and because it's there.
I hope much of the current model is doomed because it provides for far too many people who are defrauded by the system and far too much study which are none of these good things. How it will work and what we will call it is an open question. Perhaps Newman's 'The idea of a university' should be rediscovered.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
But they cost far too much for the student and increasingly the degrees are useless and pointless. Cheaper ways of nourishing the 18 year old brain will be found
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
A great place to meet a life partner too, as we keep reminding our eldest daughter (7 weeks into her first term)!
Lol, I bet she's loving hearing that.
I met my wife at uni. Got together and then married many years later, though.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Why do you think the current model of teaching is doomed? I'm intrigued. What do you think the time at Uni is adding to students? It certainly isn't just 3/4 years of facts (facts can be googled). What do Pharmacy students learn over 4 years? Arguably they learn to be a pharmacist and thats a lot more than most people realise.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
A friend, who did a PhD in art history, argued for a version of the Grand Tour. Spend 8 months, each, in 6 different major cultural cities. Work as a barista or similar, spend your spare time sketching in the museums. At the end of the 4 years, you would have a chunk of the language, friends, a knowledge of the culture and how to navigate it.
Exactly what I'd do if I had my time again. As it is I majored on where to get the best kebabs after midnight in South Kensington. Not a particularly transferable skill.
I do have a question, what should net migration actually be?
And if it fell to that level, assuming it stayed there would people actually be happy or will it always be too high?
The same it was in the early/mid 1990s.
In the early/mid 1990s the elderly (65+) were 16% of the population. Now they are 20%, by the middle of the century they will be 25%, and by the end of the century 31%. Either more old people work, or we have much more automation, or we accept that our labour market will keep on demanding more workers from abroad.
Or younger British people have more babies
Be careful what you wish for though.
I was trying to help a woman last week: in her late 20s, single, 3 children, eldest two both have issues, eldest receives DLA, she's been told to apply for DLA for child 2. They're on UC, in (unsatisfactory) social housing, she hasn't worked for 9 years, has lots of debt she can never pay...
On the bright side, she's having another baby, due next month. So that should help the demographics.
More younger people getting married and then having children especially.
Though even that woman is at least more invested in the future and had children, even if she does not have a high flying career.
The reality is uber feminism spreads the lie most women can have high flying professional and managerial careers and can put that even above motherhood. The reality is most can't but most women can be mothers and have children.
VP elect Vance could have been more diplomatic about childless cat ladies but his point more women need to have more children was correct
What's in it for them if they don't want to ?
Well uber liberal feminist professional career women may not want to but the average woman will want a family and children ultimately.
Wow. Just wow. You are just a short hop, skip and a jump from allowing husbands to rape their wives.
Hardly, uber liberal professional women don't support Trump or Meloni but they still win anyway.
The rightwing backlash against uber feminism across the western world is under way
You've got this bee in your bonnet about 'uber liberal professional women', and speak of them as though they are evil.
No. They are women. They do not want to be forced to have kids they do not want.
If people like you want women to have more kids, I'd suggest several broad approaches:
*) Men have to do *much* more to support kids and their wives. *) Treat women, and their personal choices, with respect. *) Spend a fuckload more supporting kids.
And women in turn need to be more willing to settle down earlier and not seek perfection in a husband
I don't think they do seek 'perfection'. I think women are desperate to find men who are not asshats who want them to pump out kid after kid, then leave them for a younger woman.
I'd really like to see people like you attacking such men, rather than women.
HYUFD does make a reasonable point, albeit in a rather clunky way.
Humans are actually quite good at decision making. We have, on average, a good understanding of stats. There is a good mathematical approach to optimising the selection of a mate, which is to reject the first x/e (where x is the total number of potential mates, and e is the natural logarithm, i.e. about 2.6) of potential mates and then settle for the next one which comes along which is better than the best one so far. Interestingly, the odds of this approach ACTUALLY selecting the best possible mate is 1/e. The eagle-eyed will instantly spot the flaw in this, which is how do you know x? How do you know how many potential mates you will meet? The answer is that you don't - but you are actually pretty good at guessing. And on average, humans have historically applied this pretty successfully. It's heavily dependent on your own self-perception, of course - if you think the opposite sex is unlikely to take an interest in you, you perceive your own potential pool of mates as far smaller. I'm sure we all can think of examples of people who were unsuccessful with the opposite sex throughout their youth, and therefore assumed that their own value of x was very low - who then applied this strategy and married the first person who took an interest. Now 500 years ago, everyone's value of x was pretty low. It basically amounted to anyone of the opposite sex who might conceivably take an interest in you and within walking distance. You therefore settled pretty quickly. Quite a lot of the time, people even ended up with the best person they were ever going to meet. Even 50 years ago, the pool of potential mates was relatively small. You just didn't meet new people that option.
Nowadays, however, quite literally, Millions of Women are Waiting to Meet You. If you are 18, living in an urban area and entering the dating market the number of potential partners is more than you could possibly get through in a lifetime. There are ALWAYS more people out there who might be a better choice, at least until you're long past your prime years of attractiveness to the opposite sex. It is a situation humans have yet to properly adapt to.
The sexes deal with this in very different ways, as you would expect of their characteristic mating behaviours. Men, who in biological history have been most genetically successful by mating widely and unfussily, behave - as Josias says - like asshats, reluctant to commit when there could always be a tasty morsel around the next corner. Women behave as HYUFD implies, by having impossibly high standards - because in a pool which appears to be infinite your brain tells you that the chances are there is someone better to wait for. This is not a recipe for happiness.
All generalised wildly, all on average of course. There are hundreds of exceptions at either end of the bell curve. But on average, I stand by my thesis and its conclusion.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
A great place to meet a life partner too, as we keep reminding our eldest daughter (7 weeks into her first term)!
Lol, I bet she's loving hearing that.
Yeah, she doesn't seem keen. Of course by this point her mother and I were already an item, although it took another 12 years for my daughter to appear owing to this new fangled invention called contraception. During this time my wife foolishly pursued her education and a career. No wonder we are overrun by immigrants!
I do have a question, what should net migration actually be?
And if it fell to that level, assuming it stayed there would people actually be happy or will it always be too high?
The same it was in the early/mid 1990s.
In the early/mid 1990s the elderly (65+) were 16% of the population. Now they are 20%, by the middle of the century they will be 25%, and by the end of the century 31%. Either more old people work, or we have much more automation, or we accept that our labour market will keep on demanding more workers from abroad.
Or younger British people have more babies
Be careful what you wish for though.
I was trying to help a woman last week: in her late 20s, single, 3 children, eldest two both have issues, eldest receives DLA, she's been told to apply for DLA for child 2. They're on UC, in (unsatisfactory) social housing, she hasn't worked for 9 years, has lots of debt she can never pay...
On the bright side, she's having another baby, due next month. So that should help the demographics.
More younger people getting married and then having children especially.
Though even that woman is at least more invested in the future and had children, even if she does not have a high flying career.
The reality is uber feminism spreads the lie most women can have high flying professional and managerial careers and can put that even above motherhood. The reality is most can't but most women can be mothers and have children.
VP elect Vance could have been more diplomatic about childless cat ladies but his point more women need to have more children was correct
The world will need women to have more babies if we want to avoid demographic collapse. Yes.
There are broadly two ways in which you might attempt to achieve that.
1. You could reduce personal freedom and choice for women so that they had no option but to give birth to babies.
2. You could make having children an easier or more attractive choice so that more women would choose to have more babies and have the babies they want to have, but aren't able to for whatever reason.
The problem I have with cultural Conservatives is that their approach is all (1) with a does of anti-(2) for class war reasons.
There's an air of using the demographic situation as a means to refight the battles the right lost on freedom for women, and having much less interest in demography itself.
Yes. We see this with Musk ad his ilk. America can hold more people. But (the wrong sort of) immigrants are bad. Therefore we need existing women to have more kids. And we shall do this by restricting abortions and access to contraceptives.
A distinctly anti-woman agenda.
Well the Vatican and evangelical Christians and many conservative Muslims and Orthodox Jews will like it too
They like all sorts of stuff that sane humans wouldn't give the time of day to. We don't need religion making policy. You'll be wanting blasphemy laws next!
Not so long, in the great scheme of things, that Unitarians could be accused of treason because they didn't follow C of E doctrine on the Trinity.
As with @OldKingCole - something I learned from genealogical work. (A common confusion arises because they had to call themselves Presbyterian for sasfety.)
Hmmm
Someone was talking about Blasphemy laws, earlier. How about we reintroduce Recusancy Fines? Anyone not attending a CoE church every Sunday gets a huge fine.
I mean, everyone is against offending religion, right? And the State Church has to be right, right? And the money can go to fund the NHS....
Yes, there will be a small problem with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. But that can be fixed with some tanks.
BREAKING: It will probably come as no surprise to anyone to hear former Tory Minister Dame Andrea Jenkyns has defected to Reform and will stand to be Greater Lincolnshire Mayor
I do have a question, what should net migration actually be?
And if it fell to that level, assuming it stayed there would people actually be happy or will it always be too high?
The same it was in the early/mid 1990s.
In the early/mid 1990s the elderly (65+) were 16% of the population. Now they are 20%, by the middle of the century they will be 25%, and by the end of the century 31%. Either more old people work, or we have much more automation, or we accept that our labour market will keep on demanding more workers from abroad.
Or younger British people have more babies
Be careful what you wish for though.
I was trying to help a woman last week: in her late 20s, single, 3 children, eldest two both have issues, eldest receives DLA, she's been told to apply for DLA for child 2. They're on UC, in (unsatisfactory) social housing, she hasn't worked for 9 years, has lots of debt she can never pay...
On the bright side, she's having another baby, due next month. So that should help the demographics.
More younger people getting married and then having children especially.
Though even that woman is at least more invested in the future and had children, even if she does not have a high flying career.
The reality is uber feminism spreads the lie most women can have high flying professional and managerial careers and can put that even above motherhood. The reality is most can't but most women can be mothers and have children.
VP elect Vance could have been more diplomatic about childless cat ladies but his point more women need to have more children was correct
What's in it for them if they don't want to ?
Well uber liberal feminist professional career women may not want to but the average woman will want a family and children ultimately.
Wow. Just wow. You are just a short hop, skip and a jump from allowing husbands to rape their wives.
Hardly, uber liberal professional women don't support Trump or Meloni but they still win anyway.
The rightwing backlash against uber feminism across the western world is under way
Uber feminism is clearly not working. I've never had a female Uber driver.
Nor me – nor a female builder or dustbin(wo)man. Only 1 in 10,000 builders are female: where did the Uber Feminists go?
Female building control inspector and electrician on our recent extension (both selected by the - male - main contractor) but definitely a minority!
There's a female plumber locally, although she's retired (by reason of age) now.
The numbers I see for female plumbers are 1-2%.
Yet I've known two. I had a colleague some years ago who retrained from IT Project Manager to be a plumber, and my current plumber is a woman who used to be a police officer.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
But they cost far too much for the student and increasingly the degrees are useless and pointless. Cheaper ways of nourishing the 18 year old brain will be found
Yes - but I'm just saying don't forget that bit. It's not all about research, teaching and jobs.
I have sent you a proposed article on assisted dying. It is approx 800 words long. It has had all the personal data removed. It is submitted to you on the condition that you do not breach my anonymity: please accept that or return it unpublished. I hope that you look kindly upon it.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
A friend, who did a PhD in art history, argued for a version of the Grand Tour. Spend 8 months, each, in 6 different major cultural cities. Work as a barista or similar, spend your spare time sketching in the museums. At the end of the 4 years, you would have a chunk of the language, friends, a knowledge of the culture and how to navigate it.
Exactly what I'd do if I had my time again. As it is I majored on where to get the best kebabs after midnight in South Kensington. Not a particularly transferable skill.
Ah, kebabs.
Long ago, Lenny Henry did a Christmas Special. As a genie who'd been trapped in the bottle since 0AD. On coming across a kebab street stall... "Ah, burnt dog meat is *still* in fashion!!"
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
Even St Andrew's?
Actually, probably not St Andrew’s - and that’s not because my eldest is there
I reckon a few elite universities around the world WILL likely survive as posh finishing schools/academies for the very bright. Generally those with great history or intrinsic charm or a fabulous reputation. So in the UK maybe Oxbridge, St Andrews, UCL, Imperial… after that I start to struggle. And even those will shrink
It’s going to be devastating for lots of towns and lots of careers, but I see no way around it. The financial maths is about to collapse as technology renders teachers and teaching obsolete and absurdly expensive
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
A great place to meet a life partner too, as we keep reminding our eldest daughter (7 weeks into her first term)!
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Why do you think the current model of teaching is doomed? I'm intrigued. What do you think the time at Uni is adding to students? It certainly isn't just 3/4 years of facts (facts can be googled). What do Pharmacy students learn over 4 years? Arguably they learn to be a pharmacist and thats a lot more than most people realise.
I do have a question, what should net migration actually be?
And if it fell to that level, assuming it stayed there would people actually be happy or will it always be too high?
The same it was in the early/mid 1990s.
In the early/mid 1990s the elderly (65+) were 16% of the population. Now they are 20%, by the middle of the century they will be 25%, and by the end of the century 31%. Either more old people work, or we have much more automation, or we accept that our labour market will keep on demanding more workers from abroad.
Or younger British people have more babies
Be careful what you wish for though.
I was trying to help a woman last week: in her late 20s, single, 3 children, eldest two both have issues, eldest receives DLA, she's been told to apply for DLA for child 2. They're on UC, in (unsatisfactory) social housing, she hasn't worked for 9 years, has lots of debt she can never pay...
On the bright side, she's having another baby, due next month. So that should help the demographics.
More younger people getting married and then having children especially.
Though even that woman is at least more invested in the future and had children, even if she does not have a high flying career.
The reality is uber feminism spreads the lie most women can have high flying professional and managerial careers and can put that even above motherhood. The reality is most can't but most women can be mothers and have children.
VP elect Vance could have been more diplomatic about childless cat ladies but his point more women need to have more children was correct
What's in it for them if they don't want to ?
Well uber liberal feminist professional career women may not want to but the average woman will want a family and children ultimately.
Wow. Just wow. You are just a short hop, skip and a jump from allowing husbands to rape their wives.
Hardly, uber liberal professional women don't support Trump or Meloni but they still win anyway.
The rightwing backlash against uber feminism across the western world is under way
Uber feminism is clearly not working. I've never had a female Uber driver.
Nor me – nor a female builder or dustbin(wo)man. Only 1 in 10,000 builders are female: where did the Uber Feminists go?
Female building control inspector and electrician on our recent extension (both selected by the - male - main contractor) but definitely a minority!
There's a female plumber locally, although she's retired (by reason of age) now.
The numbers I see for female plumbers are 1-2%.
Yet I've known two. I had a colleague some years ago who retrained from IT Project Manager to be a plumber, and my current plumber is a woman who used to be a police officer.
A lot of people with lower end degrees find that the jobs don't pay.
A skilled plumber can make far more than most graduates.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
A great place to meet a life partner too, as we keep reminding our eldest daughter (7 weeks into her first term)!
Lol, I bet she's loving hearing that.
I met my wife at uni. Got together and then married many years later, though.
Me too (my wife not yours). I was at Imperial, she was at QEC. We married soon after graduating, had a child, split and divorced shortly thereafter. One of us was too immature to make it work.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
A friend, who did a PhD in art history, argued for a version of the Grand Tour. Spend 8 months, each, in 6 different major cultural cities. Work as a barista or similar, spend your spare time sketching in the museums. At the end of the 4 years, you would have a chunk of the language, friends, a knowledge of the culture and how to navigate it.
Yes, exactly, as time passes something like that will be seen as vastly preferable to the university model - for 90% of kids
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
A great place to meet a life partner too, as we keep reminding our eldest daughter (7 weeks into her first term)!
True. Second bite for me though, as it were, met as PhD students rather than undergrads.
Re your daughter, that makes you sound a little like you're following HYUFD's principles!
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
A great place to meet a life partner too, as we keep reminding our eldest daughter (7 weeks into her first term)!
Lol, I bet she's loving hearing that.
I met my wife at uni. Got together and then married many years later, though.
Me too (my wife not yours). I was at Imperial, she was at QEC. We married soon after graduating, had a child, split and divorced shortly thereafter. One of us was too immature to make it work.
Neither of my sons, who both married in their 30's, met their partners at Uni. Nor did my daughter, who did articles and married an old school friend.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
Even St Andrew's?
Actually, probably not St Andrew’s - and that’s not because my eldest is there
I reckon a few elite universities around the world WILL likely survive as posh finishing schools/academies for the very bright. Generally those with great history or intrinsic charm or a fabulous reputation. So in the UK maybe Oxbridge, St Andrews, UCL, Imperial… after that I start to struggle. And even those will shrink
It’s going to be devastating for lots of towns and lots of careers, but I see no way around it. The financial maths is about to collapse as technology renders teachers and teaching obsolete and absurdly expensive
Okay I could let it slide the first time, I thought it might be an autocorrect fail. But St Andrews does not have an apostrophe!
BREAKING: It will probably come as no surprise to anyone to hear former Tory Minister Dame Andrea Jenkyns has defected to Reform and will stand to be Greater Lincolnshire Mayor
I do have a question, what should net migration actually be?
And if it fell to that level, assuming it stayed there would people actually be happy or will it always be too high?
The same it was in the early/mid 1990s.
In the early/mid 1990s the elderly (65+) were 16% of the population. Now they are 20%, by the middle of the century they will be 25%, and by the end of the century 31%. Either more old people work, or we have much more automation, or we accept that our labour market will keep on demanding more workers from abroad.
Or younger British people have more babies
Be careful what you wish for though.
I was trying to help a woman last week: in her late 20s, single, 3 children, eldest two both have issues, eldest receives DLA, she's been told to apply for DLA for child 2. They're on UC, in (unsatisfactory) social housing, she hasn't worked for 9 years, has lots of debt she can never pay...
On the bright side, she's having another baby, due next month. So that should help the demographics.
More younger people getting married and then having children especially.
Though even that woman is at least more invested in the future and had children, even if she does not have a high flying career.
The reality is uber feminism spreads the lie most women can have high flying professional and managerial careers and can put that even above motherhood. The reality is most can't but most women can be mothers and have children.
VP elect Vance could have been more diplomatic about childless cat ladies but his point more women need to have more children was correct
What's in it for them if they don't want to ?
Well uber liberal feminist professional career women may not want to but the average woman will want a family and children ultimately.
Wow. Just wow. You are just a short hop, skip and a jump from allowing husbands to rape their wives.
Hardly, uber liberal professional women don't support Trump or Meloni but they still win anyway.
The rightwing backlash against uber feminism across the western world is under way
You've got this bee in your bonnet about 'uber liberal professional women', and speak of them as though they are evil.
No. They are women. They do not want to be forced to have kids they do not want.
If people like you want women to have more kids, I'd suggest several broad approaches:
*) Men have to do *much* more to support kids and their wives. *) Treat women, and their personal choices, with respect. *) Spend a fuckload more supporting kids.
And women in turn need to be more willing to settle down earlier and not seek perfection in a husband
I don't think they do seek 'perfection'. I think women are desperate to find men who are not asshats who want them to pump out kid after kid, then leave them for a younger woman.
I'd really like to see people like you attacking such men, rather than women.
Yes, my step-daughter is a case in point. She's 23, a lovely girl, smart, attractive and sociable. She's had a series of boyfriends over the last few years, but always seems to end up dumped after around 6 months or so, usually with little warning. She's not seeking perfection by any means; I reckon she'd be quite happy with a man who satisfies basic social awareness, hygiene and solvency conditions if only he would stick around for more than a few months! I'm sure she'd love to have kids at some point, but she certainly isn't going to do so unless she's sure the father is in it for the long term.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
A great place to meet a life partner too, as we keep reminding our eldest daughter (7 weeks into her first term)!
True. Second bite for me though, as it were, met as PhD students rather than undergrads.
Re your daughter, that makes you sound a little like you're following HYUFD's principles!
Ha, no, I'm just winding her up, and enjoying her embarrassment at the thought of her parents' romantic entanglement.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
Even St Andrew's?
Actually, probably not St Andrew’s - and that’s not because my eldest is there
I reckon a few elite universities around the world WILL likely survive as posh finishing schools/academies for the very bright. Generally those with great history or intrinsic charm or a fabulous reputation. So in the UK maybe Oxbridge, St Andrews, UCL, Imperial… after that I start to struggle. And even those will shrink
It’s going to be devastating for lots of towns and lots of careers, but I see no way around it. The financial maths is about to collapse as technology renders teachers and teaching obsolete and absurdly expensive
If technology renders even teachers obsolete, a job less easily automated, then most permanent jobs will be doomed.
In which case most of us won't be working full time and will largely live off a UBI funded by a robot tax on the big corporations
BREAKING: It will probably come as no surprise to anyone to hear former Tory Minister Dame Andrea Jenkyns has defected to Reform and will stand to be Greater Lincolnshire Mayor
I do have a question, what should net migration actually be?
And if it fell to that level, assuming it stayed there would people actually be happy or will it always be too high?
The same it was in the early/mid 1990s.
In the early/mid 1990s the elderly (65+) were 16% of the population. Now they are 20%, by the middle of the century they will be 25%, and by the end of the century 31%. Either more old people work, or we have much more automation, or we accept that our labour market will keep on demanding more workers from abroad.
Or younger British people have more babies
Be careful what you wish for though.
I was trying to help a woman last week: in her late 20s, single, 3 children, eldest two both have issues, eldest receives DLA, she's been told to apply for DLA for child 2. They're on UC, in (unsatisfactory) social housing, she hasn't worked for 9 years, has lots of debt she can never pay...
On the bright side, she's having another baby, due next month. So that should help the demographics.
More younger people getting married and then having children especially.
Though even that woman is at least more invested in the future and had children, even if she does not have a high flying career.
The reality is uber feminism spreads the lie most women can have high flying professional and managerial careers and can put that even above motherhood. The reality is most can't but most women can be mothers and have children.
VP elect Vance could have been more diplomatic about childless cat ladies but his point more women need to have more children was correct
The world will need women to have more babies if we want to avoid demographic collapse. Yes.
There are broadly two ways in which you might attempt to achieve that.
1. You could reduce personal freedom and choice for women so that they had no option but to give birth to babies.
2. You could make having children an easier or more attractive choice so that more women would choose to have more babies and have the babies they want to have, but aren't able to for whatever reason.
The problem I have with cultural Conservatives is that their approach is all (1) with a does of anti-(2) for class war reasons.
There's an air of using the demographic situation as a means to refight the battles the right lost on freedom for women, and having much less interest in demography itself.
You can't just do it all with 2, you also need some of 1 in terms of supporting those women who want to be stay at home mothers and the traditional family.
Otherwise the culture still pushes women having careers first and libertarian lifestyle choices above motherhood
What do you mean by the words, "supporting those women who want to be stay at home mothers and the traditional family" and why do you think that is part of category 1 rather than 2?
For example, I would argue that if you address the housing crisis and reduce the cost of housing then you make it easier for a family to provide themselves with decent accommodation and living standards on a single income, enabling one parent to stay at home with children if they wish to do so. That fits into category 2.
As too often 2 pushes the self above the traditional family.
Housing costs themselves have risen in large part because more women work and so you get 2 couples getting a mortgage or renting increasing the prices that can be paid and leading to prices that will rise for housing costs as a result
So you'd solve the housing crisis and the demographic crisis by blocking women's careers?
BREAKING: It will probably come as no surprise to anyone to hear former Tory Minister Dame Andrea Jenkyns has defected to Reform and will stand to be Greater Lincolnshire Mayor
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
A friend, who did a PhD in art history, argued for a version of the Grand Tour. Spend 8 months, each, in 6 different major cultural cities. Work as a barista or similar, spend your spare time sketching in the museums. At the end of the 4 years, you would have a chunk of the language, friends, a knowledge of the culture and how to navigate it.
Exactly what I'd do if I had my time again. As it is I majored on where to get the best kebabs after midnight in South Kensington. Not a particularly transferable skill.
Ah, kebabs.
Long ago, Lenny Henry did a Christmas Special. As a genie who'd been trapped in the bottle since 0AD. On coming across a kebab street stall... "Ah, burnt dog meat is *still* in fashion!!"
You do have to be careful. A good one can be very very good though. I remain partial. Doner, obviously. None of the other precious nonsense.
I do have a question, what should net migration actually be?
And if it fell to that level, assuming it stayed there would people actually be happy or will it always be too high?
The same it was in the early/mid 1990s.
In the early/mid 1990s the elderly (65+) were 16% of the population. Now they are 20%, by the middle of the century they will be 25%, and by the end of the century 31%. Either more old people work, or we have much more automation, or we accept that our labour market will keep on demanding more workers from abroad.
Or younger British people have more babies
Be careful what you wish for though.
I was trying to help a woman last week: in her late 20s, single, 3 children, eldest two both have issues, eldest receives DLA, she's been told to apply for DLA for child 2. They're on UC, in (unsatisfactory) social housing, she hasn't worked for 9 years, has lots of debt she can never pay...
On the bright side, she's having another baby, due next month. So that should help the demographics.
More younger people getting married and then having children especially.
Though even that woman is at least more invested in the future and had children, even if she does not have a high flying career.
The reality is uber feminism spreads the lie most women can have high flying professional and managerial careers and can put that even above motherhood. The reality is most can't but most women can be mothers and have children.
VP elect Vance could have been more diplomatic about childless cat ladies but his point more women need to have more children was correct
What's in it for them if they don't want to ?
Well uber liberal feminist professional career women may not want to but the average woman will want a family and children ultimately.
Wow. Just wow. You are just a short hop, skip and a jump from allowing husbands to rape their wives.
Hardly, uber liberal professional women don't support Trump or Meloni but they still win anyway.
The rightwing backlash against uber feminism across the western world is under way
Uber feminism is clearly not working. I've never had a female Uber driver.
Nor me – nor a female builder or dustbin(wo)man. Only 1 in 10,000 builders are female: where did the Uber Feminists go?
Female building control inspector and electrician on our recent extension (both selected by the - male - main contractor) but definitely a minority!
There's a female plumber locally, although she's retired (by reason of age) now.
The numbers I see for female plumbers are 1-2%.
Yet I've known two. I had a colleague some years ago who retrained from IT Project Manager to be a plumber, and my current plumber is a woman who used to be a police officer.
Is physical strength that big a criterion in plumbing? I've done bits and it's involved craning my neck and twisting nuts (yes, I know) etc – but presumably that physical element can be mitigated with longer wrenches etc?
I do have a question, what should net migration actually be?
And if it fell to that level, assuming it stayed there would people actually be happy or will it always be too high?
The same it was in the early/mid 1990s.
In the early/mid 1990s the elderly (65+) were 16% of the population. Now they are 20%, by the middle of the century they will be 25%, and by the end of the century 31%. Either more old people work, or we have much more automation, or we accept that our labour market will keep on demanding more workers from abroad.
Or younger British people have more babies
Be careful what you wish for though.
I was trying to help a woman last week: in her late 20s, single, 3 children, eldest two both have issues, eldest receives DLA, she's been told to apply for DLA for child 2. They're on UC, in (unsatisfactory) social housing, she hasn't worked for 9 years, has lots of debt she can never pay...
On the bright side, she's having another baby, due next month. So that should help the demographics.
More younger people getting married and then having children especially.
Though even that woman is at least more invested in the future and had children, even if she does not have a high flying career.
The reality is uber feminism spreads the lie most women can have high flying professional and managerial careers and can put that even above motherhood. The reality is most can't but most women can be mothers and have children.
VP elect Vance could have been more diplomatic about childless cat ladies but his point more women need to have more children was correct
The world will need women to have more babies if we want to avoid demographic collapse. Yes.
There are broadly two ways in which you might attempt to achieve that.
1. You could reduce personal freedom and choice for women so that they had no option but to give birth to babies.
2. You could make having children an easier or more attractive choice so that more women would choose to have more babies and have the babies they want to have, but aren't able to for whatever reason.
The problem I have with cultural Conservatives is that their approach is all (1) with a does of anti-(2) for class war reasons.
There's an air of using the demographic situation as a means to refight the battles the right lost on freedom for women, and having much less interest in demography itself.
You can't just do it all with 2, you also need some of 1 in terms of supporting those women who want to be stay at home mothers and the traditional family.
Otherwise the culture still pushes women having careers first and libertarian lifestyle choices above motherhood
What do you mean by the words, "supporting those women who want to be stay at home mothers and the traditional family" and why do you think that is part of category 1 rather than 2?
For example, I would argue that if you address the housing crisis and reduce the cost of housing then you make it easier for a family to provide themselves with decent accommodation and living standards on a single income, enabling one parent to stay at home with children if they wish to do so. That fits into category 2.
As too often 2 pushes the self above the traditional family.
Housing costs themselves have risen in large part because more women work and so you get 2 couples getting a mortgage or renting increasing the prices that can be paid and leading to prices that will rise for housing costs as a result
So you'd solve the housing crisis and the demographic crisis by blocking women's careers?
Is there anything you won't blame on feminism?
Not blocking them but fewer women after 30 working full time and more being mothers with tax breaks and some financial support from the state for doing so would be a good thing
Overseas travel and gap years will REPLACE universities. Why get £70,000 in debt for a useless degree ‘just to socialise’ when you can do all your socializing in a sunny cheap place in the tropics (and learn remotely from expert 24/7 tutors if you insist)?
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
A great place to meet a life partner too, as we keep reminding our eldest daughter (7 weeks into her first term)!
Lol, I bet she's loving hearing that.
I met my wife at uni. Got together and then married many years later, though.
Me too (my wife not yours). I was at Imperial, she was at QEC. We married soon after graduating, had a child, split and divorced shortly thereafter. One of us was too immature to make it work.
I met my wife at Uni too. We were in the same friend group but paid very little attention to each other for the first 3 years.
The first 40 years have gone okay. I may be in this for the long term.
I do have a question, what should net migration actually be?
And if it fell to that level, assuming it stayed there would people actually be happy or will it always be too high?
The same it was in the early/mid 1990s.
In the early/mid 1990s the elderly (65+) were 16% of the population. Now they are 20%, by the middle of the century they will be 25%, and by the end of the century 31%. Either more old people work, or we have much more automation, or we accept that our labour market will keep on demanding more workers from abroad.
Or younger British people have more babies
Be careful what you wish for though.
I was trying to help a woman last week: in her late 20s, single, 3 children, eldest two both have issues, eldest receives DLA, she's been told to apply for DLA for child 2. They're on UC, in (unsatisfactory) social housing, she hasn't worked for 9 years, has lots of debt she can never pay...
On the bright side, she's having another baby, due next month. So that should help the demographics.
More younger people getting married and then having children especially.
Though even that woman is at least more invested in the future and had children, even if she does not have a high flying career.
The reality is uber feminism spreads the lie most women can have high flying professional and managerial careers and can put that even above motherhood. The reality is most can't but most women can be mothers and have children.
VP elect Vance could have been more diplomatic about childless cat ladies but his point more women need to have more children was correct
What's in it for them if they don't want to ?
Well uber liberal feminist professional career women may not want to but the average woman will want a family and children ultimately.
Wow. Just wow. You are just a short hop, skip and a jump from allowing husbands to rape their wives.
Hardly, uber liberal professional women don't support Trump or Meloni but they still win anyway.
The rightwing backlash against uber feminism across the western world is under way
You've got this bee in your bonnet about 'uber liberal professional women', and speak of them as though they are evil.
No. They are women. They do not want to be forced to have kids they do not want.
If people like you want women to have more kids, I'd suggest several broad approaches:
*) Men have to do *much* more to support kids and their wives. *) Treat women, and their personal choices, with respect. *) Spend a fuckload more supporting kids.
And women in turn need to be more willing to settle down earlier and not seek perfection in a husband
I don't think they do seek 'perfection'. I think women are desperate to find men who are not asshats who want them to pump out kid after kid, then leave them for a younger woman.
I'd really like to see people like you attacking such men, rather than women.
Yes, my step-daughter is a case in point. She's 23, a lovely girl, smart, attractive and sociable. She's had a series of boyfriends over the last few years, but always seems to end up dumped after around 6 months or so, usually with little warning. She's not seeking perfection by any means; I reckon she'd be quite happy with a man who satisfies basic social awareness, hygiene and solvency conditions if only he would stick around for more than a few months! I'm sure she'd love to have kids at some point, but she certainly isn't going to do so unless she's sure the father is in it for the long term.
The birth rate in Korea has just gone down, further, to 0.68
Relatedly, here are two quasi-autonomous robots folding towels, tirelessly, for 24 hours
I do have a question, what should net migration actually be?
And if it fell to that level, assuming it stayed there would people actually be happy or will it always be too high?
The same it was in the early/mid 1990s.
In the early/mid 1990s the elderly (65+) were 16% of the population. Now they are 20%, by the middle of the century they will be 25%, and by the end of the century 31%. Either more old people work, or we have much more automation, or we accept that our labour market will keep on demanding more workers from abroad.
Or younger British people have more babies
Be careful what you wish for though.
I was trying to help a woman last week: in her late 20s, single, 3 children, eldest two both have issues, eldest receives DLA, she's been told to apply for DLA for child 2. They're on UC, in (unsatisfactory) social housing, she hasn't worked for 9 years, has lots of debt she can never pay...
On the bright side, she's having another baby, due next month. So that should help the demographics.
More younger people getting married and then having children especially.
Though even that woman is at least more invested in the future and had children, even if she does not have a high flying career.
The reality is uber feminism spreads the lie most women can have high flying professional and managerial careers and can put that even above motherhood. The reality is most can't but most women can be mothers and have children.
VP elect Vance could have been more diplomatic about childless cat ladies but his point more women need to have more children was correct
What's in it for them if they don't want to ?
Well uber liberal feminist professional career women may not want to but the average woman will want a family and children ultimately.
Wow. Just wow. You are just a short hop, skip and a jump from allowing husbands to rape their wives.
Hardly, uber liberal professional women don't support Trump or Meloni but they still win anyway.
The rightwing backlash against uber feminism across the western world is under way
You've got this bee in your bonnet about 'uber liberal professional women', and speak of them as though they are evil.
No. They are women. They do not want to be forced to have kids they do not want.
If people like you want women to have more kids, I'd suggest several broad approaches:
*) Men have to do *much* more to support kids and their wives. *) Treat women, and their personal choices, with respect. *) Spend a fuckload more supporting kids.
And women in turn need to be more willing to settle down earlier and not seek perfection in a husband
I don't think they do seek 'perfection'. I think women are desperate to find men who are not asshats who want them to pump out kid after kid, then leave them for a younger woman.
I'd really like to see people like you attacking such men, rather than women.
Yes, my step-daughter is a case in point. She's 23, a lovely girl, smart, attractive and sociable. She's had a series of boyfriends over the last few years, but always seems to end up dumped after around 6 months or so, usually with little warning. She's not seeking perfection by any means; I reckon she'd be quite happy with a man who satisfies basic social awareness, hygiene and solvency conditions if only he would stick around for more than a few months! I'm sure she'd love to have kids at some point, but she certainly isn't going to do so unless she's sure the father is in it for the long term.
Emotional dynamics are strangecomplex.
I have one friend who is now single with 3 kids under 10, having thrown out ex-hubby who was given to laziness and drink. He is now on his third relationship, having remarried, having left the previous two women with children.
Yet my friend just will not make use of the Child Maintenance Service, which would get her perhaps 3-4k a year on top of the amount she currently receives direct.
BREAKING: It will probably come as no surprise to anyone to hear former Tory Minister Dame Andrea Jenkyns has defected to Reform and will stand to be Greater Lincolnshire Mayor
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
Even St Andrew's?
Actually, probably not St Andrew’s - and that’s not because my eldest is there
I reckon a few elite universities around the world WILL likely survive as posh finishing schools/academies for the very bright. Generally those with great history or intrinsic charm or a fabulous reputation. So in the UK maybe Oxbridge, St Andrews, UCL, Imperial… after that I start to struggle. And even those will shrink
It’s going to be devastating for lots of towns and lots of careers, but I see no way around it. The financial maths is about to collapse as technology renders teachers and teaching obsolete and absurdly expensive
If technology renders even teachers obsolete, a job less easily automated, then most permanent jobs will be doomed.
In which case most of us won't be working full time and will largely live off a UBI funded by a robot tax on the big corporations
Why is teaching not easily automated?! It’s just a face talking - these days over a screen, quite often. A robot teacher who is available 24/7 with endless empathy and an IQ of 350 and who is specifically bespoke-made, to your individual learning needs and desires, will be vastly superior to a flesh-and-blood teacher who takes maternity leave
BREAKING: It will probably come as no surprise to anyone to hear former Tory Minister Dame Andrea Jenkyns has defected to Reform and will stand to be Greater Lincolnshire Mayor
The Tories legacy is mind boggling bad. For the all their talk for 14 years on immigration it ends with 900k a year.
Hence Reform. If Boris Johnson destroyed the Tories, it wasn’t because he was a populist but because he was a liberal on immigration.
You could try to blame it all on Johnson, but Truss took over in September 2022, and Sunak in November 2022, so Sunak had nearly 8 months to implement policy that would affect the immigration numbers for the entirety of the year ending June 2024.
His choices led to net migration of 728,000.
Instead of implementing policies to reduce net migration he used a considerable amount of his time as Prime Minister, of the Home Office's time and of the whole government's time and legislative agenda to pass law on the Rwanda plan, that would address much less than 11.5% of the net migration that he presided over (not all asylum applicants arriving by small boats).
Net immigration has fallen on the latest figures today precisely as Sunak tightened visa requirements before he left office
Embarrassing spin. You campaigned to get the Tories elected on a promise of cutting it to the tens of thousands and now you're trying to claim net migration of 700k as an achievement.
Sweden tightened the rules and now they have net emigration, so it can be done, but clearly not by the Tories.
I've come to the conclusion that the Conservatives will never actually deliver what centre right voters want, unless another right wing party can hold their feet to the fire.
In this country, I think the Conservatives are as much a social club as a political party.
It explains why they despise their own members so much.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
Even St Andrew's?
Actually, probably not St Andrew’s - and that’s not because my eldest is there
I reckon a few elite universities around the world WILL likely survive as posh finishing schools/academies for the very bright. Generally those with great history or intrinsic charm or a fabulous reputation. So in the UK maybe Oxbridge, St Andrews, UCL, Imperial… after that I start to struggle. And even those will shrink
It’s going to be devastating for lots of towns and lots of careers, but I see no way around it. The financial maths is about to collapse as technology renders teachers and teaching obsolete and absurdly expensive
If technology renders even teachers obsolete, a job less easily automated, then most permanent jobs will be doomed.
In which case most of us won't be working full time and will largely live off a UBI funded by a robot tax on the big corporations
Why is teaching not easily automated?! It’s just a face talking - these days over a screen, quite often. A robot teacher who is available 24/7 with endless empathy and an IQ of 350 and who is specifically bespoke-made, to your individual learning needs and desires, will be vastly superior to a flesh-and-blood teacher who takes maternity leave
Er, because the qualities you cite remain squarely in the domain of science fiction.
I do have a question, what should net migration actually be?
And if it fell to that level, assuming it stayed there would people actually be happy or will it always be too high?
The same it was in the early/mid 1990s.
In the early/mid 1990s the elderly (65+) were 16% of the population. Now they are 20%, by the middle of the century they will be 25%, and by the end of the century 31%. Either more old people work, or we have much more automation, or we accept that our labour market will keep on demanding more workers from abroad.
Or younger British people have more babies
Be careful what you wish for though.
I was trying to help a woman last week: in her late 20s, single, 3 children, eldest two both have issues, eldest receives DLA, she's been told to apply for DLA for child 2. They're on UC, in (unsatisfactory) social housing, she hasn't worked for 9 years, has lots of debt she can never pay...
On the bright side, she's having another baby, due next month. So that should help the demographics.
More younger people getting married and then having children especially.
Though even that woman is at least more invested in the future and had children, even if she does not have a high flying career.
The reality is uber feminism spreads the lie most women can have high flying professional and managerial careers and can put that even above motherhood. The reality is most can't but most women can be mothers and have children.
VP elect Vance could have been more diplomatic about childless cat ladies but his point more women need to have more children was correct
The world will need women to have more babies if we want to avoid demographic collapse. Yes.
There are broadly two ways in which you might attempt to achieve that.
1. You could reduce personal freedom and choice for women so that they had no option but to give birth to babies.
2. You could make having children an easier or more attractive choice so that more women would choose to have more babies and have the babies they want to have, but aren't able to for whatever reason.
The problem I have with cultural Conservatives is that their approach is all (1) with a does of anti-(2) for class war reasons.
There's an air of using the demographic situation as a means to refight the battles the right lost on freedom for women, and having much less interest in demography itself.
Yes. We see this with Musk ad his ilk. America can hold more people. But (the wrong sort of) immigrants are bad. Therefore we need existing women to have more kids. And we shall do this by restricting abortions and access to contraceptives.
A distinctly anti-woman agenda.
Well the Vatican and evangelical Christians and many conservative Muslims and Orthodox Jews will like it too
They like all sorts of stuff that sane humans wouldn't give the time of day to. We don't need religion making policy. You'll be wanting blasphemy laws next!
Not so long, in the great scheme of things, that Unitarians could be accused of treason because they didn't follow C of E doctrine on the Trinity.
As with @OldKingCole - something I learned from genealogical work. (A common confusion arises because they had to call themselves Presbyterian for sasfety.)
Hmmm
Someone was talking about Blasphemy laws, earlier. How about we reintroduce Recusancy Fines? Anyone not attending a CoE church every Sunday gets a huge fine.
I mean, everyone is against offending religion, right? And the State Church has to be right, right? And the money can go to fund the NHS....
Yes, there will be a small problem with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. But that can be fixed with some tanks.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
Even St Andrew's?
Actually, probably not St Andrew’s - and that’s not because my eldest is there
I reckon a few elite universities around the world WILL likely survive as posh finishing schools/academies for the very bright. Generally those with great history or intrinsic charm or a fabulous reputation. So in the UK maybe Oxbridge, St Andrews, UCL, Imperial… after that I start to struggle. And even those will shrink
It’s going to be devastating for lots of towns and lots of careers, but I see no way around it. The financial maths is about to collapse as technology renders teachers and teaching obsolete and absurdly expensive
If technology renders even teachers obsolete, a job less easily automated, then most permanent jobs will be doomed.
In which case most of us won't be working full time and will largely live off a UBI funded by a robot tax on the big corporations
Why is teaching not easily automated?! It’s just a face talking - these days over a screen, quite often. A robot teacher who is available 24/7 with endless empathy and an IQ of 350 and who is specifically bespoke-made, to your individual learning needs and desires, will be vastly superior to a flesh-and-blood teacher who takes maternity leave
Er, because the qualities you describe below remain the domain of science fiction.
Duh.
I’m not sure if I’m allowed to prove my point without being banned, literally. You’ll just have to take it on trust that I’m right
A relatively unappreciated consequence of Russia's distraction in Ukraine.
The #DeterAggression operations room announces the liberation of key towns and villages in western #Aleppo countryside, including Sheikh Aqil, Bala, and Qubtan al-Jabal, after intense battles with regime forces and #Iranian backed militias... https://x.com/NavvarSaban/status/1861745720396501123
I do have a question, what should net migration actually be?
And if it fell to that level, assuming it stayed there would people actually be happy or will it always be too high?
The same it was in the early/mid 1990s.
In the early/mid 1990s the elderly (65+) were 16% of the population. Now they are 20%, by the middle of the century they will be 25%, and by the end of the century 31%. Either more old people work, or we have much more automation, or we accept that our labour market will keep on demanding more workers from abroad.
Or younger British people have more babies
Be careful what you wish for though.
I was trying to help a woman last week: in her late 20s, single, 3 children, eldest two both have issues, eldest receives DLA, she's been told to apply for DLA for child 2. They're on UC, in (unsatisfactory) social housing, she hasn't worked for 9 years, has lots of debt she can never pay...
On the bright side, she's having another baby, due next month. So that should help the demographics.
More younger people getting married and then having children especially.
Though even that woman is at least more invested in the future and had children, even if she does not have a high flying career.
The reality is uber feminism spreads the lie most women can have high flying professional and managerial careers and can put that even above motherhood. The reality is most can't but most women can be mothers and have children.
VP elect Vance could have been more diplomatic about childless cat ladies but his point more women need to have more children was correct
The world will need women to have more babies if we want to avoid demographic collapse. Yes.
There are broadly two ways in which you might attempt to achieve that.
1. You could reduce personal freedom and choice for women so that they had no option but to give birth to babies.
2. You could make having children an easier or more attractive choice so that more women would choose to have more babies and have the babies they want to have, but aren't able to for whatever reason.
The problem I have with cultural Conservatives is that their approach is all (1) with a does of anti-(2) for class war reasons.
There's an air of using the demographic situation as a means to refight the battles the right lost on freedom for women, and having much less interest in demography itself.
Yes. We see this with Musk ad his ilk. America can hold more people. But (the wrong sort of) immigrants are bad. Therefore we need existing women to have more kids. And we shall do this by restricting abortions and access to contraceptives.
A distinctly anti-woman agenda.
Well the Vatican and evangelical Christians and many conservative Muslims and Orthodox Jews will like it too
They like all sorts of stuff that sane humans wouldn't give the time of day to. We don't need religion making policy. You'll be wanting blasphemy laws next!
Not so long, in the great scheme of things, that Unitarians could be accused of treason because they didn't follow C of E doctrine on the Trinity.
As with @OldKingCole - something I learned from genealogical work. (A common confusion arises because they had to call themselves Presbyterian for sasfety.)
Lot's of my ancestors, on both sides, were Non-Conformists, but I've not come across that one. Interesting. Although even though they were not CoE members they often married in Church.
Not in Scotland - but that's because lots of Scots didn't marry in the Established kirk anyway, or bother with a minister of whatever variety, it being a contract and not a sacrament. Anoither trap for the genealogist assuming C of E type coverage!
Edit: the Presbyterian camouflage was I think in England - it being odd anyway ...
BREAKING: It will probably come as no surprise to anyone to hear former Tory Minister Dame Andrea Jenkyns has defected to Reform and will stand to be Greater Lincolnshire Mayor
The vast majority is for work and study, but for Starmer stopping the boats will remain key even though it is 30,000 as Farage goes full on Trump over the gross numbers as he has just done in a news conference
End Boats Qualify asylum (halve it) Safe & legal routes (dealer's choice, but continue with HK & Ukraine) Family (investigate, you shouldn't be able to import lots of dependents) Study (sham, 2/3rds of those) Work (ok, but too many for health & social care)
I get from 1.15million gross to 850k with that, which would be about 400k net immigration.
Still too high, but better. I'd prefer 200-250k long-term.
The previous government pursued an open-borders policy that the left of the Democratic Party could only dream of.
But, they lied to their voters that they were doing the opposite.
No wonder Reform polled so well.
Boris.
He was PM so yes the biggest culprit in terms of mixed inconsistent promises and failed delivery. But there were plenty of other pro immigration parts of the 2019 Tory coalition too. Not to mention the obvious warnings from many that they were promising contradictory things that were impossible to achieve, blithely ignored for the sake of temporarily winning elections.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
Even St Andrew's?
Actually, probably not St Andrew’s - and that’s not because my eldest is there
I reckon a few elite universities around the world WILL likely survive as posh finishing schools/academies for the very bright. Generally those with great history or intrinsic charm or a fabulous reputation. So in the UK maybe Oxbridge, St Andrews, UCL, Imperial… after that I start to struggle. And even those will shrink
It’s going to be devastating for lots of towns and lots of careers, but I see no way around it. The financial maths is about to collapse as technology renders teachers and teaching obsolete and absurdly expensive
If technology renders even teachers obsolete, a job less easily automated, then most permanent jobs will be doomed.
In which case most of us won't be working full time and will largely live off a UBI funded by a robot tax on the big corporations
Why is teaching not easily automated?! It’s just a face talking - these days over a screen, quite often. A robot teacher who is available 24/7 with endless empathy and an IQ of 350 and who is specifically bespoke-made, to your individual learning needs and desires, will be vastly superior to a flesh-and-blood teacher who takes maternity leave
Er, because the qualities you describe below remain the domain of science fiction.
Duh.
I’m not sure if I’m allowed to prove my point without being banned, literally. You’ll just have to take it on trust that I’m right
Like you were when you spammed PB about how what.three.words would change the world?
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Why do you think the current model of teaching is doomed? I'm intrigued. What do you think the time at Uni is adding to students? It certainly isn't just 3/4 years of facts (facts can be googled). What do Pharmacy students learn over 4 years? Arguably they learn to be a pharmacist and thats a lot more than most people realise.
It’s over. I’m sorry
And yet. Universities are run by many brilliant men and women and I don't see any of them panicking about the imminent end of Universities. Perhaps they have their heads in the sand? Perhaps they are all wrong and the great Leondamus, of what3words fame, is right. Time will tell. What is clear is that you have no concept of what universities actually do. Or how your proposed model of teaching would work. I have experience of trying remote teaching. It fails.
What would shake the foundations would be allowing Unis to charge differently for different courses with NO CAP. Genuinely when the fees level was raised to 9K the government expected to see different rates in different courses and unis, but everyone just went for the maximum. For some courses its enough for others it isn't.
In reality the degree from the better unis ought to be worth the same and have the same content as from the weaker ones, but in reality that isn't really true. So we see the jobs market favouring Russell group graduates etc (although the Russell group is nothing special, certainly its not uniformly high standards across all its members and degrees).
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Unis perform another function - a way for large cohorts of teenagers to leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit, generally transition into young adults. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent something similar.
But they cost far too much for the student and increasingly the degrees are useless and pointless. Cheaper ways of nourishing the 18 year old brain will be found
Yes - but I'm just saying don't forget that bit. It's not all about research, teaching and jobs.
I would argue that they could leave home, make new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults by ... leaving home, making new friends, expand and mature a bit and generally transition into young adults. My Dad did all that when he moved to London aged 18 to get a job (you couldn't do that nowadays, of course, but I would argue that you could still easily as an 18 year old move to Manchester or Leeds or Newcastle or Glasgow and have a splendid time, whether you were studying or working). Getting into debt to the tune of two years' salary in order to also know about glaciation and/or the Spanish civil war on top of that strikes me as a sub-optimal arrangement.
The advice I will give my daughters is only to go to university if you have very clear ideas about why you want to go.
Polish PM Donald Tusk said he wants to launch a “navy policing” program to secure the Baltic Sea against Russian threats. "If Europe is united, then Russia is a technological, financial & economic dwarf in relation to Europe.” This follows cutting of several data cables in the Baltic Sea. https://x.com/GlasnostGone/status/1861801948850094358
Now there is an operational requirement for the RN around our islands. Doesn't require carriers, obvs.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
Even St Andrew's?
Actually, probably not St Andrew’s - and that’s not because my eldest is there
I reckon a few elite universities around the world WILL likely survive as posh finishing schools/academies for the very bright. Generally those with great history or intrinsic charm or a fabulous reputation. So in the UK maybe Oxbridge, St Andrews, UCL, Imperial… after that I start to struggle. And even those will shrink
It’s going to be devastating for lots of towns and lots of careers, but I see no way around it. The financial maths is about to collapse as technology renders teachers and teaching obsolete and absurdly expensive
If technology renders even teachers obsolete, a job less easily automated, then most permanent jobs will be doomed.
In which case most of us won't be working full time and will largely live off a UBI funded by a robot tax on the big corporations
Why is teaching not easily automated?! It’s just a face talking - these days over a screen, quite often. A robot teacher who is available 24/7 with endless empathy and an IQ of 350 and who is specifically bespoke-made, to your individual learning needs and desires, will be vastly superior to a flesh-and-blood teacher who takes maternity leave
Er, because the qualities you describe below remain the domain of science fiction.
Duh.
I’m not sure if I’m allowed to prove my point without being banned, literally. You’ll just have to take it on trust that I’m right
It's okay, I can merely use the vast corpus of worldwide evidence that a robot with IQ 350 and endless empathy is nowhere near to being realised, except in the warped minds of you and Elon Musk.
On babies, it's probably not all explained by "survivability", economics and incentives.
There's probably been a change in values too. I expect decline in things like sense of duty, and religion, drives lower family size too, as does a rise in individualism, self-fulfillment and atheism.
Having lots of children is very hard work, and a lifelong sacred duty, as well as being expensive.
"At Westminster it's suspected that the procedural objections are a fig leaf for moral concerns."
What exactly is wrong with moral concerns ?
You shouldn't impose your moral concerns on others who don't share them. Assisted dying will not be obligatory. You can opt out if you have moral concerns! To oppose this bill is grossly illibersl.
The resources of the state should not be used to put citizens to death.
That upends the power relationship between the state and the citizen.
To support this bill is grossly illiberal
The state constantly imposes its moral concerns on people who don't share them - it's called the law.
The law are the rules agreed by the citizens (at least their selected representatives) not the state. The state merely enforces those rules.
That’s different to using the resources of the state to kill citizens (it’s why I am also opposed to the death penalty - the state has no right to end the life of its citizens)
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
Even St Andrew's?
Actually, probably not St Andrew’s - and that’s not because my eldest is there
I reckon a few elite universities around the world WILL likely survive as posh finishing schools/academies for the very bright. Generally those with great history or intrinsic charm or a fabulous reputation. So in the UK maybe Oxbridge, St Andrews, UCL, Imperial… after that I start to struggle. And even those will shrink
It’s going to be devastating for lots of towns and lots of careers, but I see no way around it. The financial maths is about to collapse as technology renders teachers and teaching obsolete and absurdly expensive
If technology renders even teachers obsolete, a job less easily automated, then most permanent jobs will be doomed.
In which case most of us won't be working full time and will largely live off a UBI funded by a robot tax on the big corporations
Why is teaching not easily automated?! It’s just a face talking - these days over a screen, quite often. A robot teacher who is available 24/7 with endless empathy and an IQ of 350 and who is specifically bespoke-made, to your individual learning needs and desires, will be vastly superior to a flesh-and-blood teacher who takes maternity leave
Er, because the qualities you describe below remain the domain of science fiction.
Duh.
I’m not sure if I’m allowed to prove my point without being banned, literally. You’ll just have to take it on trust that I’m right
Like you were when you spammed PB about how what.three.words would change the world?
LOL.
Or TRUSS surprising on the upside. Or religiosity in the UK being on the rise... or gap years replacing universities...
I do have a question, what should net migration actually be?
And if it fell to that level, assuming it stayed there would people actually be happy or will it always be too high?
The same it was in the early/mid 1990s.
In the early/mid 1990s the elderly (65+) were 16% of the population. Now they are 20%, by the middle of the century they will be 25%, and by the end of the century 31%. Either more old people work, or we have much more automation, or we accept that our labour market will keep on demanding more workers from abroad.
Or younger British people have more babies
Be careful what you wish for though.
I was trying to help a woman last week: in her late 20s, single, 3 children, eldest two both have issues, eldest receives DLA, she's been told to apply for DLA for child 2. They're on UC, in (unsatisfactory) social housing, she hasn't worked for 9 years, has lots of debt she can never pay...
On the bright side, she's having another baby, due next month. So that should help the demographics.
More younger people getting married and then having children especially.
Though even that woman is at least more invested in the future and had children, even if she does not have a high flying career.
The reality is uber feminism spreads the lie most women can have high flying professional and managerial careers and can put that even above motherhood. The reality is most can't but most women can be mothers and have children.
VP elect Vance could have been more diplomatic about childless cat ladies but his point more women need to have more children was correct
What's in it for them if they don't want to ?
Well uber liberal feminist professional career women may not want to but the average woman will want a family and children ultimately.
Wow. Just wow. You are just a short hop, skip and a jump from allowing husbands to rape their wives.
Hardly, uber liberal professional women don't support Trump or Meloni but they still win anyway.
The rightwing backlash against uber feminism across the western world is under way
You've got this bee in your bonnet about 'uber liberal professional women', and speak of them as though they are evil.
No. They are women. They do not want to be forced to have kids they do not want.
If people like you want women to have more kids, I'd suggest several broad approaches:
*) Men have to do *much* more to support kids and their wives. *) Treat women, and their personal choices, with respect. *) Spend a fuckload more supporting kids.
And women in turn need to be more willing to settle down earlier and not seek perfection in a husband
I don't think they do seek 'perfection'. I think women are desperate to find men who are not asshats who want them to pump out kid after kid, then leave them for a younger woman.
I'd really like to see people like you attacking such men, rather than women.
Yes, my step-daughter is a case in point. She's 23, a lovely girl, smart, attractive and sociable. She's had a series of boyfriends over the last few years, but always seems to end up dumped after around 6 months or so, usually with little warning. She's not seeking perfection by any means; I reckon she'd be quite happy with a man who satisfies basic social awareness, hygiene and solvency conditions if only he would stick around for more than a few months! I'm sure she'd love to have kids at some point, but she certainly isn't going to do so unless she's sure the father is in it for the long term.
Isn't 6 months when the initial oxytocin rush starts to wear off? The whole being madly in love that needs to mature into something else?
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
Even St Andrew's?
Actually, probably not St Andrew’s - and that’s not because my eldest is there
I reckon a few elite universities around the world WILL likely survive as posh finishing schools/academies for the very bright. Generally those with great history or intrinsic charm or a fabulous reputation. So in the UK maybe Oxbridge, St Andrews, UCL, Imperial… after that I start to struggle. And even those will shrink
It’s going to be devastating for lots of towns and lots of careers, but I see no way around it. The financial maths is about to collapse as technology renders teachers and teaching obsolete and absurdly expensive
Okay I could let it slide the first time, I thought it might be an autocorrect fail. But St Andrews does not have an apostrophe!
Pure Scottish affectation. In England there is no reason why it should not.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
Even St Andrew's?
Actually, probably not St Andrew’s - and that’s not because my eldest is there
I reckon a few elite universities around the world WILL likely survive as posh finishing schools/academies for the very bright. Generally those with great history or intrinsic charm or a fabulous reputation. So in the UK maybe Oxbridge, St Andrews, UCL, Imperial… after that I start to struggle. And even those will shrink
It’s going to be devastating for lots of towns and lots of careers, but I see no way around it. The financial maths is about to collapse as technology renders teachers and teaching obsolete and absurdly expensive
If technology renders even teachers obsolete, a job less easily automated, then most permanent jobs will be doomed.
In which case most of us won't be working full time and will largely live off a UBI funded by a robot tax on the big corporations
Why is teaching not easily automated?! It’s just a face talking - these days over a screen, quite often. A robot teacher who is available 24/7 with endless empathy and an IQ of 350 and who is specifically bespoke-made, to your individual learning needs and desires, will be vastly superior to a flesh-and-blood teacher who takes maternity leave
When robots can control a class of rowdy 14 year olds as well you may have a point
I do have a question, what should net migration actually be?
And if it fell to that level, assuming it stayed there would people actually be happy or will it always be too high?
The same it was in the early/mid 1990s.
In the early/mid 1990s the elderly (65+) were 16% of the population. Now they are 20%, by the middle of the century they will be 25%, and by the end of the century 31%. Either more old people work, or we have much more automation, or we accept that our labour market will keep on demanding more workers from abroad.
Or younger British people have more babies
Be careful what you wish for though.
I was trying to help a woman last week: in her late 20s, single, 3 children, eldest two both have issues, eldest receives DLA, she's been told to apply for DLA for child 2. They're on UC, in (unsatisfactory) social housing, she hasn't worked for 9 years, has lots of debt she can never pay...
On the bright side, she's having another baby, due next month. So that should help the demographics.
More younger people getting married and then having children especially.
Though even that woman is at least more invested in the future and had children, even if she does not have a high flying career.
The reality is uber feminism spreads the lie most women can have high flying professional and managerial careers and can put that even above motherhood. The reality is most can't but most women can be mothers and have children.
VP elect Vance could have been more diplomatic about childless cat ladies but his point more women need to have more children was correct
What's in it for them if they don't want to ?
Well uber liberal feminist professional career women may not want to but the average woman will want a family and children ultimately.
Wow. Just wow. You are just a short hop, skip and a jump from allowing husbands to rape their wives.
Hardly, uber liberal professional women don't support Trump or Meloni but they still win anyway.
The rightwing backlash against uber feminism across the western world is under way
You've got this bee in your bonnet about 'uber liberal professional women', and speak of them as though they are evil.
No. They are women. They do not want to be forced to have kids they do not want.
If people like you want women to have more kids, I'd suggest several broad approaches:
*) Men have to do *much* more to support kids and their wives. *) Treat women, and their personal choices, with respect. *) Spend a fuckload more supporting kids.
And women in turn need to be more willing to settle down earlier and not seek perfection in a husband
I don't think they do seek 'perfection'. I think women are desperate to find men who are not asshats who want them to pump out kid after kid, then leave them for a younger woman.
I'd really like to see people like you attacking such men, rather than women.
HYUFD does make a reasonable point, albeit in a rather clunky way.
Humans are actually quite good at decision making. We have, on average, a good understanding of stats. There is a good mathematical approach to optimising the selection of a mate, which is to reject the first x/e (where x is the total number of potential mates, and e is the natural logarithm, i.e. about 2.6) of potential mates and then settle for the next one which comes along which is better than the best one so far. Interestingly, the odds of this approach ACTUALLY selecting the best possible mate is 1/e. The eagle-eyed will instantly spot the flaw in this, which is how do you know x? How do you know how many potential mates you will meet? The answer is that you don't - but you are actually pretty good at guessing. And on average, humans have historically applied this pretty successfully. It's heavily dependent on your own self-perception, of course - if you think the opposite sex is unlikely to take an interest in you, you perceive your own potential pool of mates as far smaller. I'm sure we all can think of examples of people who were unsuccessful with the opposite sex throughout their youth, and therefore assumed that their own value of x was very low - who then applied this strategy and married the first person who took an interest. Now 500 years ago, everyone's value of x was pretty low. It basically amounted to anyone of the opposite sex who might conceivably take an interest in you and within walking distance. You therefore settled pretty quickly. Quite a lot of the time, people even ended up with the best person they were ever going to meet. Even 50 years ago, the pool of potential mates was relatively small. You just didn't meet new people that option.
Nowadays, however, quite literally, Millions of Women are Waiting to Meet You. If you are 18, living in an urban area and entering the dating market the number of potential partners is more than you could possibly get through in a lifetime. There are ALWAYS more people out there who might be a better choice, at least until you're long past your prime years of attractiveness to the opposite sex. It is a situation humans have yet to properly adapt to.
The sexes deal with this in very different ways, as you would expect of their characteristic mating behaviours. Men, who in biological history have been most genetically successful by mating widely and unfussily, behave - as Josias says - like asshats, reluctant to commit when there could always be a tasty morsel around the next corner. Women behave as HYUFD implies, by having impossibly high standards - because in a pool which appears to be infinite your brain tells you that the chances are there is someone better to wait for. This is not a recipe for happiness.
All generalised wildly, all on average of course. There are hundreds of exceptions at either end of the bell curve. But on average, I stand by my thesis and its conclusion.
I think it's simpler. The process of meeting people to find potential life partners is now to a great extent done through apps and websites who have an interest in you failing to find such a person, but to continue searching indefinitely.
If society changes the incentives for these apps, by making it more profitable to find people lifelong partners with whom they have children, then you'll see the design of them change and a difference in outcomes.
Instead of providing financial incentives for marrying and having children to the couples themselves, we should provide at least some of this to the websites and apps that brought them together.
The previous government pursued an open-borders policy that the left of the Democratic Party could only dream of.
But, they lied to their voters that they were doing the opposite.
No wonder Reform polled so well.
Boris.
He was PM so yes the biggest culprit in terms of mixed inconsistent promises and failed delivery. But there were plenty of other pro immigration parts of the 2019 Tory coalition too. Not to mention the obvious warnings from many that they were promising contradictory things that were impossible to achieve, blithely ignored for the sake of temporarily winning elections.
They help balance the books, and keep public services going on the cheap.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
Even St Andrew's?
Actually, probably not St Andrew’s - and that’s not because my eldest is there
I reckon a few elite universities around the world WILL likely survive as posh finishing schools/academies for the very bright. Generally those with great history or intrinsic charm or a fabulous reputation. So in the UK maybe Oxbridge, St Andrews, UCL, Imperial… after that I start to struggle. And even those will shrink
It’s going to be devastating for lots of towns and lots of careers, but I see no way around it. The financial maths is about to collapse as technology renders teachers and teaching obsolete and absurdly expensive
Okay I could let it slide the first time, I thought it might be an autocorrect fail. But St Andrews does not have an apostrophe!
Pure Scottish affectation. In England there is no reason why it should not.
Fake news. There is a clear rule of grammar here as to why it should not.
St Andrews is a proper noun – and institutions are entitled to name themselves.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
Even St Andrew's?
Actually, probably not St Andrew’s - and that’s not because my eldest is there
I reckon a few elite universities around the world WILL likely survive as posh finishing schools/academies for the very bright. Generally those with great history or intrinsic charm or a fabulous reputation. So in the UK maybe Oxbridge, St Andrews, UCL, Imperial… after that I start to struggle. And even those will shrink
It’s going to be devastating for lots of towns and lots of careers, but I see no way around it. The financial maths is about to collapse as technology renders teachers and teaching obsolete and absurdly expensive
If technology renders even teachers obsolete, a job less easily automated, then most permanent jobs will be doomed.
In which case most of us won't be working full time and will largely live off a UBI funded by a robot tax on the big corporations
Why is teaching not easily automated?! It’s just a face talking - these days over a screen, quite often. A robot teacher who is available 24/7 with endless empathy and an IQ of 350 and who is specifically bespoke-made, to your individual learning needs and desires, will be vastly superior to a flesh-and-blood teacher who takes maternity leave
Anything that can be taught by a robot can also be done by a robot. If universities disappear that will be the reason.
I do have a question, what should net migration actually be?
And if it fell to that level, assuming it stayed there would people actually be happy or will it always be too high?
The same it was in the early/mid 1990s.
In the early/mid 1990s the elderly (65+) were 16% of the population. Now they are 20%, by the middle of the century they will be 25%, and by the end of the century 31%. Either more old people work, or we have much more automation, or we accept that our labour market will keep on demanding more workers from abroad.
Or younger British people have more babies
Be careful what you wish for though.
I was trying to help a woman last week: in her late 20s, single, 3 children, eldest two both have issues, eldest receives DLA, she's been told to apply for DLA for child 2. They're on UC, in (unsatisfactory) social housing, she hasn't worked for 9 years, has lots of debt she can never pay...
On the bright side, she's having another baby, due next month. So that should help the demographics.
More younger people getting married and then having children especially.
Though even that woman is at least more invested in the future and had children, even if she does not have a high flying career.
The reality is uber feminism spreads the lie most women can have high flying professional and managerial careers and can put that even above motherhood. The reality is most can't but most women can be mothers and have children.
VP elect Vance could have been more diplomatic about childless cat ladies but his point more women need to have more children was correct
What's in it for them if they don't want to ?
Well uber liberal feminist professional career women may not want to but the average woman will want a family and children ultimately.
Wow. Just wow. You are just a short hop, skip and a jump from allowing husbands to rape their wives.
Hardly, uber liberal professional women don't support Trump or Meloni but they still win anyway.
The rightwing backlash against uber feminism across the western world is under way
You've got this bee in your bonnet about 'uber liberal professional women', and speak of them as though they are evil.
No. They are women. They do not want to be forced to have kids they do not want.
If people like you want women to have more kids, I'd suggest several broad approaches:
*) Men have to do *much* more to support kids and their wives. *) Treat women, and their personal choices, with respect. *) Spend a fuckload more supporting kids.
And women in turn need to be more willing to settle down earlier and not seek perfection in a husband
I don't think they do seek 'perfection'. I think women are desperate to find men who are not asshats who want them to pump out kid after kid, then leave them for a younger woman.
I'd really like to see people like you attacking such men, rather than women.
Yes, my step-daughter is a case in point. She's 23, a lovely girl, smart, attractive and sociable. She's had a series of boyfriends over the last few years, but always seems to end up dumped after around 6 months or so, usually with little warning. She's not seeking perfection by any means; I reckon she'd be quite happy with a man who satisfies basic social awareness, hygiene and solvency conditions if only he would stick around for more than a few months! I'm sure she'd love to have kids at some point, but she certainly isn't going to do so unless she's sure the father is in it for the long term.
Emotional dynamics are strangecomplex.
I have one friend who is now single with 3 kids under 10, having thrown out ex-hubby who was given to laziness and drink. He is now on his third relationship, having remarried, having left the previous two women with children.
Yet my friend just will not make use of the Child Maintenance Service, which would get her perhaps 3-4k a year on top of the amount she currently receives direct.
When I worked in a pub as a student I knew a woman who had two kids with her partner. Said partner had six kids (two each with two previous partners, both of whom he had left after the second child).
I honesty couldn't believe that this woman would let a man like that anywhere near her - I mean the track record is there, right?
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Why do you think the current model of teaching is doomed? I'm intrigued. What do you think the time at Uni is adding to students? It certainly isn't just 3/4 years of facts (facts can be googled). What do Pharmacy students learn over 4 years? Arguably they learn to be a pharmacist and thats a lot more than most people realise.
I'd say Pharmacy ought to be one of the relatively few things to survive. But come on, four years? It shouldn't really take four years and, what, £60k of debt to get into pharmacy. A friend of mine's son has just come back from Aberystwyth, where he did geography; he is now an apprentice pharmacist - which he will be for a year, before becoming a pharmacist. I would argue that this is a much more effective way of learning to become a pharmacist, and that it also shows that his geography degree was largely pointless (though no doubt there is some stuff in there of general relevance).
The vast majority is for work and study, but for Starmer stopping the boats will remain key even though it is 30,000 as Farage goes full on Trump over the gross numbers as he has just done in a news conference
"study"- most of them are paying essay mills to write their essays. Either that or using AI.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
Even St Andrew's?
Actually, probably not St Andrew’s - and that’s not because my eldest is there
I reckon a few elite universities around the world WILL likely survive as posh finishing schools/academies for the very bright. Generally those with great history or intrinsic charm or a fabulous reputation. So in the UK maybe Oxbridge, St Andrews, UCL, Imperial… after that I start to struggle. And even those will shrink
It’s going to be devastating for lots of towns and lots of careers, but I see no way around it. The financial maths is about to collapse as technology renders teachers and teaching obsolete and absurdly expensive
If technology renders even teachers obsolete, a job less easily automated, then most permanent jobs will be doomed.
In which case most of us won't be working full time and will largely live off a UBI funded by a robot tax on the big corporations
Why is teaching not easily automated?! It’s just a face talking - these days over a screen, quite often. A robot teacher who is available 24/7 with endless empathy and an IQ of 350 and who is specifically bespoke-made, to your individual learning needs and desires, will be vastly superior to a flesh-and-blood teacher who takes maternity leave
The knowledge bit can be automated, and (with effort) the "you made this mistake which reveals this misunderstanding" bit can be.
But there's a bit of teaching, the ghost in the machine, that is about one person interacting with another. Or, more commonly, twenty others at once. Keeping them thinking about the matter in hand. Knowing when to kick and when to cosset. Take that away, and you get the suckiness of lockdown learning, or the limited brilliance of something like the Open University.
Someone once said that the last careers would be priests and prostitutes. Pedagogues have a lot in common with both of them.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Why do you think the current model of teaching is doomed? I'm intrigued. What do you think the time at Uni is adding to students? It certainly isn't just 3/4 years of facts (facts can be googled). What do Pharmacy students learn over 4 years? Arguably they learn to be a pharmacist and thats a lot more than most people realise.
I'd say Pharmacy ought to be one of the relatively few things to survive. But come on, four years? It shouldn't really take four years and, what, £60k of debt to get into pharmacy. A friend of mine's son has just come back from Aberystwyth, where he did geography; he is now an apprentice pharmacist - which he will be for a year, before becoming a pharmacist. I would argue that this is a much more effective way of learning to become a pharmacist, and that it also shows that his geography degree was largely pointless (though no doubt there is some stuff in there of general relevance).
I very much doubt this "he is now an apprentice pharmacist - which he will be for a year, before becoming a pharmacist". As far as I know you need to have a GPHC registered pharmacy degree and then pass the pre-reg to be a pharmacist. Are you sure he is not training as a dispenser?
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
Even St Andrew's?
Actually, probably not St Andrew’s - and that’s not because my eldest is there
I reckon a few elite universities around the world WILL likely survive as posh finishing schools/academies for the very bright. Generally those with great history or intrinsic charm or a fabulous reputation. So in the UK maybe Oxbridge, St Andrews, UCL, Imperial… after that I start to struggle. And even those will shrink
It’s going to be devastating for lots of towns and lots of careers, but I see no way around it. The financial maths is about to collapse as technology renders teachers and teaching obsolete and absurdly expensive
If technology renders even teachers obsolete, a job less easily automated, then most permanent jobs will be doomed.
In which case most of us won't be working full time and will largely live off a UBI funded by a robot tax on the big corporations
Why is teaching not easily automated?! It’s just a face talking - these days over a screen, quite often. A robot teacher who is available 24/7 with endless empathy and an IQ of 350 and who is specifically bespoke-made, to your individual learning needs and desires, will be vastly superior to a flesh-and-blood teacher who takes maternity leave
Er, because the qualities you describe below remain the domain of science fiction.
Duh.
I’m not sure if I’m allowed to prove my point without being banned, literally. You’ll just have to take it on trust that I’m right
Like you were when you spammed PB about how what.three.words would change the world?
LOL.
Or TRUSS surprising on the upside. Or religiosity in the UK being on the rise... or gap years replacing universities...
"At Westminster it's suspected that the procedural objections are a fig leaf for moral concerns."
What exactly is wrong with moral concerns ?
You shouldn't impose your moral concerns on others who don't share them. Assisted dying will not be obligatory. You can opt out if you have moral concerns! To oppose this bill is grossly illibersl.
The resources of the state should not be used to put citizens to death.
That upends the power relationship between the state and the citizen.
To support this bill is grossly illiberal
This bill is analogous to the 1967 Abortion Act introduced by David Steel under a private member's bill. It gave permission to women to have help with abortion within safeguards. It supported personal autonomy of women. This bill is similar.
80% of abortions take place in the private sector. I assume assisted dying would be similar - a bit like a local Dignitas.
The resources of the state should not be used to put citizens to death. That upends the power relationship between the state and the citizen. is portentous hyperbole.
No it’s a philosophical position based on where sovereignty originated. The state is the servant of the people, not the master.
It’s why, once the Brexit referendum was held, it was essential to implement the decision and why it was so corrosive that so many MPs and public figures sought to overturn the result.
This is nothing like the abortion bill, which was about striking a balance between the rights of the mother and child. An entirely reasonable decision for society’s representatives to make
The previous government pursued an open-borders policy that the left of the Democratic Party could only dream of.
But, they lied to their voters that they were doing the opposite.
No wonder Reform polled so well.
Boris.
He was PM so yes the biggest culprit in terms of mixed inconsistent promises and failed delivery. But there were plenty of other pro immigration parts of the 2019 Tory coalition too. Not to mention the obvious warnings from many that they were promising contradictory things that were impossible to achieve, blithely ignored for the sake of temporarily winning elections.
They help balance the books, and keep public services going on the cheap.
That's why.
Of course, but politics should be choices and the modern Conservative party is incapable of making them because it is so divided and lacking in coherrent purpose. Cakeism gives a temporary electoral boost but brings inevitable disappointment, increasing lack of trust in politics and society.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Why do you think the current model of teaching is doomed? I'm intrigued. What do you think the time at Uni is adding to students? It certainly isn't just 3/4 years of facts (facts can be googled). What do Pharmacy students learn over 4 years? Arguably they learn to be a pharmacist and thats a lot more than most people realise.
I'd say Pharmacy ought to be one of the relatively few things to survive. But come on, four years? It shouldn't really take four years and, what, £60k of debt to get into pharmacy. A friend of mine's son has just come back from Aberystwyth, where he did geography; he is now an apprentice pharmacist - which he will be for a year, before becoming a pharmacist. I would argue that this is a much more effective way of learning to become a pharmacist, and that it also shows that his geography degree was largely pointless (though no doubt there is some stuff in there of general relevance).
What do you think a pharmacist does? If tou think its handing over pills then you couldn't be more wrong. Almost always you obtain your prescription from a dispenser, not a pharmacist. The students learn a huge amount over four years, not limited to becoming experts in drugs, drug metabolism, drug interactions, how to deal with patients, how to interact with other health professionals, how to prepare cytotoxic drugs for chemotherapy and on and on.
Would you say that doctors should only train for a year or two?
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
Even St Andrew's?
Actually, probably not St Andrew’s - and that’s not because my eldest is there
I reckon a few elite universities around the world WILL likely survive as posh finishing schools/academies for the very bright. Generally those with great history or intrinsic charm or a fabulous reputation. So in the UK maybe Oxbridge, St Andrews, UCL, Imperial… after that I start to struggle. And even those will shrink
It’s going to be devastating for lots of towns and lots of careers, but I see no way around it. The financial maths is about to collapse as technology renders teachers and teaching obsolete and absurdly expensive
Okay I could let it slide the first time, I thought it might be an autocorrect fail. But St Andrews does not have an apostrophe!
Pure Scottish affectation. In England there is no reason why it should not.
"At Westminster it's suspected that the procedural objections are a fig leaf for moral concerns."
What exactly is wrong with moral concerns ?
You shouldn't impose your moral concerns on others who don't share them. Assisted dying will not be obligatory. You can opt out if you have moral concerns! To oppose this bill is grossly illibersl.
The resources of the state should not be used to put citizens to death.
That upends the power relationship between the state and the citizen.
To support this bill is grossly illiberal
This bill is analogous to the 1967 Abortion Act introduced by David Steel under a private member's bill. It gave permission to women to have help with abortion within safeguards. It supported personal autonomy of women. This bill is similar.
80% of abortions take place in the private sector. I assume assisted dying would be similar - a bit like a local Dignitas.
The resources of the state should not be used to put citizens to death. That upends the power relationship between the state and the citizen. is portentous hyperbole.
No it’s a philosophical position based on where sovereignty originated. The state is the servant of the people, not the master.
It’s why, once the Brexit referendum was held, it was essential to implement the decision and why it was so corrosive that so many MPs and public figures sought to overturn the result.
This is nothing like the abortion bill, which was about striking a balance between the rights of the mother and child. An entirely reasonable decision for society’s representatives to make
So if the NHS weren't involved, if it were purely private enterprise- sort of Dignitas without the trip to Switzerland, would that be OK?
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
Even St Andrew's?
Actually, probably not St Andrew’s - and that’s not because my eldest is there
I reckon a few elite universities around the world WILL likely survive as posh finishing schools/academies for the very bright. Generally those with great history or intrinsic charm or a fabulous reputation. So in the UK maybe Oxbridge, St Andrews, UCL, Imperial… after that I start to struggle. And even those will shrink
It’s going to be devastating for lots of towns and lots of careers, but I see no way around it. The financial maths is about to collapse as technology renders teachers and teaching obsolete and absurdly expensive
If technology renders even teachers obsolete, a job less easily automated, then most permanent jobs will be doomed.
In which case most of us won't be working full time and will largely live off a UBI funded by a robot tax on the big corporations
Why is teaching not easily automated?! It’s just a face talking - these days over a screen, quite often. A robot teacher who is available 24/7 with endless empathy and an IQ of 350 and who is specifically bespoke-made, to your individual learning needs and desires, will be vastly superior to a flesh-and-blood teacher who takes maternity leave
When robots can control a class of rowdy 14 year olds as well you may have a point
Rowdy 14 year old are probably easier for a robot to control than mischievous 7 year olds.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
Even St Andrew's?
Overseas travel is also, of course, almost entirely "unnecessary". But I hardly expect it to disappear.
Overseas travel and gap years will REPLACE universities. Why get £70,000 in debt for a useless degree ‘just to socialise’ when you can do all your socializing in a sunny cheap place in the tropics (and learn remotely from expert 24/7 tutors if you insist)?
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
Even St Andrew's?
Overseas travel is also, of course, almost entirely "unnecessary". But I hardly expect it to disappear.
Overseas travel and gap years will REPLACE universities. Why get £70,000 in debt for a useless degree ‘just to socialise’ when you can do all your socializing in a sunny cheap place in the tropics (and learn remotely from expert 24/7 tutors if you insist)?
Might have struggled to do all my lab work.
Lab work is quite a significant part of what a pharmacy student does. Or at least was when I was one. Mind' that was a LONG tmie ago.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
Even St Andrew's?
Actually, probably not St Andrew’s - and that’s not because my eldest is there
I reckon a few elite universities around the world WILL likely survive as posh finishing schools/academies for the very bright. Generally those with great history or intrinsic charm or a fabulous reputation. So in the UK maybe Oxbridge, St Andrews, UCL, Imperial… after that I start to struggle. And even those will shrink
It’s going to be devastating for lots of towns and lots of careers, but I see no way around it. The financial maths is about to collapse as technology renders teachers and teaching obsolete and absurdly expensive
If technology renders even teachers obsolete, a job less easily automated, then most permanent jobs will be doomed.
In which case most of us won't be working full time and will largely live off a UBI funded by a robot tax on the big corporations
Why is teaching not easily automated?! It’s just a face talking - these days over a screen, quite often. A robot teacher who is available 24/7 with endless empathy and an IQ of 350 and who is specifically bespoke-made, to your individual learning needs and desires, will be vastly superior to a flesh-and-blood teacher who takes maternity leave
Er, because the qualities you describe below remain the domain of science fiction.
Duh.
I’m not sure if I’m allowed to prove my point without being banned, literally. You’ll just have to take it on trust that I’m right
Like you were when you spammed PB about how what.three.words would change the world?
TBF to Leon, something rather more consequential is underway, and it's happening quite quickly. Whether his own "extrapolations" are particuaty accurate is another matter.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
Even St Andrew's?
Overseas travel is also, of course, almost entirely "unnecessary". But I hardly expect it to disappear.
Overseas travel and gap years will REPLACE universities. Why get £70,000 in debt for a useless degree ‘just to socialise’ when you can do all your socializing in a sunny cheap place in the tropics (and learn remotely from expert 24/7 tutors if you insist)?
Might have struggled to do all my lab work.
Lab work is quite a significant part of what a pharmacy student does. Or at least was when I was one. Mind' that was a LONG tmie ago.
Sadly it less (even that when I joined the Pharmacy department in 2005). Still a reasonable part, but we do much much more clinical training now, mainly because the NHS tells us to and they fund our placements,,,
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
Even St Andrew's?
Actually, probably not St Andrew’s - and that’s not because my eldest is there
I reckon a few elite universities around the world WILL likely survive as posh finishing schools/academies for the very bright. Generally those with great history or intrinsic charm or a fabulous reputation. So in the UK maybe Oxbridge, St Andrews, UCL, Imperial… after that I start to struggle. And even those will shrink
It’s going to be devastating for lots of towns and lots of careers, but I see no way around it. The financial maths is about to collapse as technology renders teachers and teaching obsolete and absurdly expensive
If technology renders even teachers obsolete, a job less easily automated, then most permanent jobs will be doomed.
In which case most of us won't be working full time and will largely live off a UBI funded by a robot tax on the big corporations
Why is teaching not easily automated?! It’s just a face talking - these days over a screen, quite often. A robot teacher who is available 24/7 with endless empathy and an IQ of 350 and who is specifically bespoke-made, to your individual learning needs and desires, will be vastly superior to a flesh-and-blood teacher who takes maternity leave
The knowledge bit can be automated, and (with effort) the "you made this mistake which reveals this misunderstanding" bit can be.
But there's a bit of teaching, the ghost in the machine, that is about one person interacting with another. Or, more commonly, twenty others at once. Keeping them thinking about the matter in hand. Knowing when to kick and when to cosset. Take that away, and you get the suckiness of lockdown learning, or the limited brilliance of something like the Open University.
Someone once said that the last careers would be priests and prostitutes. Pedagogues have a lot in common with both of them.
If I’m allowed to discuss this without being banned, I could show you stuff that would blow your mind it you really believe what you say. You are completely 100% wrong, and wrong in ways you probably don’t even imagine
But I don’t think I am allowed, so I’ll give up and talk about UFOs instead
The flap is ongoing and it gets weirder and weirder. There ARE now multiple videos but they are all hugely unimpressive. So WTF is going on? What’s got the RAF and USAF so freaked they are scrambling fighters and choppers? Mass hysteria?
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
Even St Andrew's?
Overseas travel is also, of course, almost entirely "unnecessary". But I hardly expect it to disappear.
Overseas travel and gap years will REPLACE universities. Why get £70,000 in debt for a useless degree ‘just to socialise’ when you can do all your socializing in a sunny cheap place in the tropics (and learn remotely from expert 24/7 tutors if you insist)?
Might have struggled to do all my lab work.
Lab work is quite a significant part of what a pharmacy student does. Or at least was when I was one. Mind' that was a LONG tmie ago.
Yup. As a physicist I was in 9-5, five days a week, two of which were in labs. The lectures were backed up with a lot of face to face time for queries, and of course we had access to all the post-grads and could play with the observatory and other kit.
Polish PM Donald Tusk said he wants to launch a “navy policing” program to secure the Baltic Sea against Russian threats. "If Europe is united, then Russia is a technological, financial & economic dwarf in relation to Europe.” This follows cutting of several data cables in the Baltic Sea. https://x.com/GlasnostGone/status/1861801948850094358
Now there is an operational requirement for the RN around our islands. Doesn't require carriers, obvs.
Actually, for sea control, carriers are vital. Flying from land involves longer distances, which means shorter times actually on station and huge resources to get aircraft there.
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
Even St Andrew's?
Overseas travel is also, of course, almost entirely "unnecessary". But I hardly expect it to disappear.
Overseas travel and gap years will REPLACE universities. Why get £70,000 in debt for a useless degree ‘just to socialise’ when you can do all your socializing in a sunny cheap place in the tropics (and learn remotely from expert 24/7 tutors if you insist)?
Might have struggled to do all my lab work.
Lab work is quite a significant part of what a pharmacy student does. Or at least was when I was one. Mind' that was a LONG tmie ago.
Sadly it less (even that when I joined the Pharmacy department in 2005). Still a reasonable part, but we do much much more clinical training now, mainly because the NHS tells us to and they fund our placements,,,
I would have liked more clinical work, TBH. Probably would have been more use to me for much of my career.
Polish PM Donald Tusk said he wants to launch a “navy policing” program to secure the Baltic Sea against Russian threats. "If Europe is united, then Russia is a technological, financial & economic dwarf in relation to Europe.” This follows cutting of several data cables in the Baltic Sea. https://x.com/GlasnostGone/status/1861801948850094358
Now there is an operational requirement for the RN around our islands. Doesn't require carriers, obvs.
Actually, for sea control, carriers are vital. Flying from land involves longer distances, which means shorter times actually on station and huge resources to get aircraft there.
And to reinforce Norway, absent US support, carrier aviation in the North Sea is vital.
As is the ability to land the Royal Marines in force. Ah….
I do have a question, what should net migration actually be?
And if it fell to that level, assuming it stayed there would people actually be happy or will it always be too high?
The same it was in the early/mid 1990s.
In the early/mid 1990s the elderly (65+) were 16% of the population. Now they are 20%, by the middle of the century they will be 25%, and by the end of the century 31%. Either more old people work, or we have much more automation, or we accept that our labour market will keep on demanding more workers from abroad.
Or younger British people have more babies
Be careful what you wish for though.
I was trying to help a woman last week: in her late 20s, single, 3 children, eldest two both have issues, eldest receives DLA, she's been told to apply for DLA for child 2. They're on UC, in (unsatisfactory) social housing, she hasn't worked for 9 years, has lots of debt she can never pay...
On the bright side, she's having another baby, due next month. So that should help the demographics.
More younger people getting married and then having children especially.
Though even that woman is at least more invested in the future and had children, even if she does not have a high flying career.
The reality is uber feminism spreads the lie most women can have high flying professional and managerial careers and can put that even above motherhood. The reality is most can't but most women can be mothers and have children.
VP elect Vance could have been more diplomatic about childless cat ladies but his point more women need to have more children was correct
What's in it for them if they don't want to ?
Well uber liberal feminist professional career women may not want to but the average woman will want a family and children ultimately.
Wow. Just wow. You are just a short hop, skip and a jump from allowing husbands to rape their wives.
Hardly, uber liberal professional women don't support Trump or Meloni but they still win anyway.
The rightwing backlash against uber feminism across the western world is under way
You've got this bee in your bonnet about 'uber liberal professional women', and speak of them as though they are evil.
No. They are women. They do not want to be forced to have kids they do not want.
If people like you want women to have more kids, I'd suggest several broad approaches:
*) Men have to do *much* more to support kids and their wives. *) Treat women, and their personal choices, with respect. *) Spend a fuckload more supporting kids.
And women in turn need to be more willing to settle down earlier and not seek perfection in a husband
I don't think they do seek 'perfection'. I think women are desperate to find men who are not asshats who want them to pump out kid after kid, then leave them for a younger woman.
I'd really like to see people like you attacking such men, rather than women.
Yes, my step-daughter is a case in point. She's 23, a lovely girl, smart, attractive and sociable. She's had a series of boyfriends over the last few years, but always seems to end up dumped after around 6 months or so, usually with little warning. She's not seeking perfection by any means; I reckon she'd be quite happy with a man who satisfies basic social awareness, hygiene and solvency conditions if only he would stick around for more than a few months! I'm sure she'd love to have kids at some point, but she certainly isn't going to do so unless she's sure the father is in it for the long term.
Isn't 6 months when the initial oxytocin rush starts to wear off? The whole being madly in love that needs to mature into something else?
I think it’s 18 months, which weirdly enough is the right amount of time for a bonking-every-day couple to conceive, have a baby, and start to wean
Fascinatingly, 18 months is often seen as the optimum duration for a consumer product before its built-in obsolescence requires a new model. Probably relying on the same human psychodynamics
The Invisible Man We see right through the unshowered soul living in a car by the beach, or by the Walmart, or by the side of the road. But he’s there, and he used to be somebody. He still is. A firsthand account of homelessness in America.
She doesn’t say who these “concerned” people are, but the only ones who can see me are the owners of large beachfront houses. Maybe they’re looking out their $3 million windows and seeing the consequences of their avarice.
“What are your plans for the day?” she says.
She’s trying to get me to move along, but the lot is open to the public from dawn to dusk. I have every right to be here.
“Write,” I say.
“What do you write?”
“Literary fiction. I was a reporter.”
“Anywhere I know?”
“The Boston Globe.”
Her eyes open wide and she tosses her head back in recognition. She realizes I’m not dissolute and not a threat. She asks for my license and calls it in. Dispatch lets her know I have no criminal record or outstanding warrants.
“Do you need anything?” she says.
“Do you know if the homeless shelter will let me take a shower?”
She asks dispatch to call the shelter. Dispatch comes back. She says, “Yes.”
“Good,” I say. “Thanks.”
“You can’t stay here at night,” she says. “You can stay at Walmart, in the back parking lot.”
“Okay.”
She gives me her card. She leaves. I stay. I have every right to be here.
I go to Walmart that night and will sleep there every night. But the police will continue to come as if I’m some kind of one-man crime wave. Before I’m chased out of Westerly, I will meet, stand my ground, and lose ground to a dozen different officers, often at night, banging on my window and waking me just to ask, “Are you all right?” The question begins to sound like a pretense.
The officers are civil, but every encounter causes me apprehension and stress. I’m innocent of any wrongdoing, but the interaction between a citizen and law enforcement is unbalanced by nature. They are part of an apparatus that can take away a person’s freedom. I know it, and they certainly know it...
I wonder how many of the people who like to see immigration reduced to roughly zero would be happy with the consequences of that change? Are they happy to pay increased process for food and care, as those sectors are forced to pay the going rate for staff rather than just import cheap workers? Ditto bar staff, restaurant and retail workers. Or much worse waiting lists for NHS treatment because there is a shortage of medical staff for the next 5-10 years while we train more up.
I suspect the same people would be screaming out against paying more personally or in tax for goods and services, or the inability to get NHS treatment.
Which explains why the previous government did nothing about immigration as setting a level involves quite a hard balancing act, you can't simply cut it without significant consequences.
FWIW I think foreign students is the obvious place to look, there were almost none when I was at Uni but that will mean a complete change to the current broken University funding model. Another one in the 'too hard' pile left behind by the outgoing government. There is no easy answer, whatever level you think is the 'right' one, including the status quo.
Universities are doomed, and, for the same reason, immigration will soon be entirely unnecessary
I thought you might jump in with that. On the whole I agree. There must be a role for them in the future for research but for teaching I'm coming to the conclusion you're right, or at least the model needs to be very different.
Why do you think the current model of teaching is doomed? I'm intrigued. What do you think the time at Uni is adding to students? It certainly isn't just 3/4 years of facts (facts can be googled). What do Pharmacy students learn over 4 years? Arguably they learn to be a pharmacist and thats a lot more than most people realise.
I'd say Pharmacy ought to be one of the relatively few things to survive. But come on, four years? It shouldn't really take four years and, what, £60k of debt to get into pharmacy. A friend of mine's son has just come back from Aberystwyth, where he did geography; he is now an apprentice pharmacist - which he will be for a year, before becoming a pharmacist. I would argue that this is a much more effective way of learning to become a pharmacist, and that it also shows that his geography degree was largely pointless (though no doubt there is some stuff in there of general relevance).
I very much doubt this "he is now an apprentice pharmacist - which he will be for a year, before becoming a pharmacist". As far as I know you need to have a GPHC registered pharmacy degree and then pass the pre-reg to be a pharmacist. Are you sure he is not training as a dispenser?
In all honesty I was rather taken aback by this. I'd assumed to get to this position he'd have taken a pharmacy degree, but, no, geography. So if you're telling me this is likely bollocks I'm not massively surprised.
On your other point: I don't want to be rude about your career, which is clearly one you need a lot of technical knowledge for - but I would have thought if a doctor could be one after 5 years of studenting, a pharmacist would need - what - half that? And that is still more than most professions: accountants, lawyers, town planners: the three years of whatever undergraduate degree they do before training in their particular profession is almost entirely superfluous. I would argue that, for example, the lawyer who does a three year history degree before doing a two year law conversion course could just as well have skipped the history degree. The expectation of some sort of generic degree is an expensive hangover from another era. Sadly it's not one I expect to see rectified before my daughters get to 18.
Comments
Interesting. Although even though they were not CoE members they often married in Church.
So ignore names and continuities for a moment. Two things will carry on (pace Leon): the need to qualify by knowing stuff and having skills; and that desire to study and know stuff like the use of the optative in Sanskrit epic poetry just because you do and because it's there.
I hope much of the current model is doomed because it provides for far too many people who are defrauded by the system and far too much study which are none of these good things. How it will work and what we will call it is an open question. Perhaps Newman's 'The idea of a university' should be rediscovered.
Humans are actually quite good at decision making. We have, on average, a good understanding of stats. There is a good mathematical approach to optimising the selection of a mate, which is to reject the first x/e (where x is the total number of potential mates, and e is the natural logarithm, i.e. about 2.6) of potential mates and then settle for the next one which comes along which is better than the best one so far. Interestingly, the odds of this approach ACTUALLY selecting the best possible mate is 1/e. The eagle-eyed will instantly spot the flaw in this, which is how do you know x? How do you know how many potential mates you will meet? The answer is that you don't - but you are actually pretty good at guessing. And on average, humans have historically applied this pretty successfully. It's heavily dependent on your own self-perception, of course - if you think the opposite sex is unlikely to take an interest in you, you perceive your own potential pool of mates as far smaller. I'm sure we all can think of examples of people who were unsuccessful with the opposite sex throughout their youth, and therefore assumed that their own value of x was very low - who then applied this strategy and married the first person who took an interest.
Now 500 years ago, everyone's value of x was pretty low. It basically amounted to anyone of the opposite sex who might conceivably take an interest in you and within walking distance. You therefore settled pretty quickly. Quite a lot of the time, people even ended up with the best person they were ever going to meet.
Even 50 years ago, the pool of potential mates was relatively small. You just didn't meet new people that option.
Nowadays, however, quite literally, Millions of Women are Waiting to Meet You. If you are 18, living in an urban area and entering the dating market the number of potential partners is more than you could possibly get through in a lifetime. There are ALWAYS more people out there who might be a better choice, at least until you're long past your prime years of attractiveness to the opposite sex. It is a situation humans have yet to properly adapt to.
The sexes deal with this in very different ways, as you would expect of their characteristic mating behaviours. Men, who in biological history have been most genetically successful by mating widely and unfussily, behave - as Josias says - like asshats, reluctant to commit when there could always be a tasty morsel around the next corner. Women behave as HYUFD implies, by having impossibly high standards - because in a pool which appears to be infinite your brain tells you that the chances are there is someone better to wait for. This is not a recipe for happiness.
All generalised wildly, all on average of course. There are hundreds of exceptions at either end of the bell curve. But on average, I stand by my thesis and its conclusion.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/entertainment/tv/gregg-wallace-to-step-away-from-masterchef-amid-external-review/ar-AA1uV3nf?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=5b481e86fa114731b0d738a2042353ff&ei=15
Someone was talking about Blasphemy laws, earlier. How about we reintroduce Recusancy Fines? Anyone not attending a CoE church every Sunday gets a huge fine.
I mean, everyone is against offending religion, right? And the State Church has to be right, right? And the money can go to fund the NHS....
Yes, there will be a small problem with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. But that can be fixed with some tanks.
NEW: Former Conservative MP Andrea Jenkyns has defected to Reform, saying she has "joined the party of the brave"
https://bsky.app/profile/josh-self.bsky.social/post/3lbyz52rwmc2m
BREAKING: It will probably come as no surprise to anyone to hear former Tory Minister Dame Andrea Jenkyns has defected to Reform and will stand to be Greater Lincolnshire Mayor
https://bsky.app/profile/peterstefanovic.bsky.social/post/3lbyzjcmpt225
Yet I've known two. I had a colleague some years ago who retrained from IT Project Manager to be a plumber, and my current plumber is a woman who used to be a police officer.
Good day to you both
I have sent you a proposed article on assisted dying. It is approx 800 words long. It has had all the personal data removed. It is submitted to you on the condition that you do not breach my anonymity: please accept that or return it unpublished. I hope that you look kindly upon it.
Regards, @viewcode
Long ago, Lenny Henry did a Christmas Special. As a genie who'd been trapped in the bottle since 0AD. On coming across a kebab street stall... "Ah, burnt dog meat is *still* in fashion!!"
I reckon a few elite universities around the world WILL likely survive as posh finishing schools/academies for the very bright. Generally those with great history or intrinsic charm or a fabulous reputation. So in the UK maybe Oxbridge, St Andrews, UCL, Imperial… after that I start to struggle. And even those will shrink
It’s going to be devastating for lots of towns and lots of careers, but I see no way around it. The financial maths is about to collapse as technology renders teachers and teaching obsolete and absurdly expensive
But not: "So, love, where are my grandchildren?"
A skilled plumber can make far more than most graduates.
Re your daughter, that makes you sound a little like you're following HYUFD's principles!
Nor did my daughter, who did articles and married an old school friend.
Bled Nearby vs Jaded Sneaky Manner.
In which case most of us won't be working full time and will largely live off a UBI funded by a robot tax on the big corporations
Is there anything you won't blame on feminism?
Oh... Not totally replaced then.
The first 40 years have gone okay. I may be in this for the long term.
Relatedly, here are two quasi-autonomous robots folding towels, tirelessly, for 24 hours
https://x.com/watneyrobotics/status/1861170411788226948?s=61&t=GGp3Vs1t1kTWDiyA-odnZg
I have one friend who is now single with 3 kids under 10, having thrown out ex-hubby who was given to laziness and drink. He is now on his third relationship, having remarried, having left the previous two women with children.
Yet my friend just will not make use of the Child Maintenance Service, which would get her perhaps 3-4k a year on top of the amount she currently receives direct.
It explains why they despise their own members so much.
Duh.
The #DeterAggression operations room announces the liberation of key towns and villages in western #Aleppo countryside, including Sheikh Aqil, Bala, and Qubtan al-Jabal, after intense battles with regime forces and #Iranian backed militias...
https://x.com/NavvarSaban/status/1861745720396501123
Edit: the Presbyterian camouflage was I think in England - it being odd anyway ...
https://swaine.london/products/bond-attache-3-5
Qualify asylum (halve it)
Safe & legal routes (dealer's choice, but continue with HK & Ukraine)
Family (investigate, you shouldn't be able to import lots of dependents)
Study (sham, 2/3rds of those)
Work (ok, but too many for health & social care)
I get from 1.15million gross to 850k with that, which would be about 400k net immigration.
Still too high, but better. I'd prefer 200-250k long-term.
What would shake the foundations would be allowing Unis to charge differently for different courses with NO CAP. Genuinely when the fees level was raised to 9K the government expected to see different rates in different courses and unis, but everyone just went for the maximum. For some courses its enough for others it isn't.
In reality the degree from the better unis ought to be worth the same and have the same content as from the weaker ones, but in reality that isn't really true. So we see the jobs market favouring Russell group graduates etc (although the Russell group is nothing special, certainly its not uniformly high standards across all its members and degrees).
The advice I will give my daughters is only to go to university if you have very clear ideas about why you want to go.
https://x.com/GlasnostGone/status/1861801948850094358
Now there is an operational requirement for the RN around our islands.
Doesn't require carriers, obvs.
There's probably been a change in values too. I expect decline in things like sense of duty, and religion, drives lower family size too, as does a rise in individualism, self-fulfillment and atheism.
Having lots of children is very hard work, and a lifelong sacred duty, as well as being expensive.
That’s different to using the resources of the state to kill citizens (it’s why I am also opposed to the death penalty - the state has no right to end the life of its citizens)
Or TRUSS surprising on the upside. Or religiosity in the UK being on the rise... or gap years replacing universities...
If society changes the incentives for these apps, by making it more profitable to find people lifelong partners with whom they have children, then you'll see the design of them change and a difference in outcomes.
Instead of providing financial incentives for marrying and having children to the couples themselves, we should provide at least some of this to the websites and apps that brought them together.
That's why.
St Andrews is a proper noun – and institutions are entitled to name themselves.
I honesty couldn't believe that this woman would let a man like that anywhere near her - I mean the track record is there, right?
A friend of mine's son has just come back from Aberystwyth, where he did geography; he is now an apprentice pharmacist - which he will be for a year, before becoming a pharmacist. I would argue that this is a much more effective way of learning to become a pharmacist, and that it also shows that his geography degree was largely pointless (though no doubt there is some stuff in there of general relevance).
But there's a bit of teaching, the ghost in the machine, that is about one person interacting with another. Or, more commonly, twenty others at once. Keeping them thinking about the matter in hand. Knowing when to kick and when to cosset. Take that away, and you get the suckiness of lockdown learning, or the limited brilliance of something like the Open University.
Someone once said that the last careers would be priests and prostitutes. Pedagogues have a lot in common with both of them.
He is PB’s best anti-tipster.
It’s why, once the Brexit referendum was held, it was essential to implement the decision and why it was so corrosive that so many MPs and public figures sought to overturn the result.
This is nothing like the abortion bill, which was about striking a balance between the rights of the mother and child. An entirely reasonable decision for society’s representatives to make
Would you say that doctors should only train for a year or two?
I see that there does not seem to be an APPG on Diabetes this time.
https://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/standards-and-financial-interests/parliamentary-commissioner-for-standards/registers-of-interests/register-of-all-party-party-parliamentary-groups/
BBC's Kirsty Wark and 12 others allege MasterChef’s Gregg Wallace made inappropriate sexual comments as he leaves show
Gregg Wallace has stepped away while allegations of historical misconduct by individuals are investigated, the BBC has said
https://www.ladbible.com/entertainment/tv/gregg-wallace-masterchef-kirsty-wark-allegations-bbc-624729-20241128
Whether his own "extrapolations" are particuaty accurate is another matter.
But I don’t think I am allowed, so I’ll give up and talk about UFOs instead
The flap is ongoing and it gets weirder and weirder. There ARE now multiple videos but they are all hugely unimpressive. So WTF is going on? What’s got the RAF and USAF so freaked they are scrambling fighters and choppers? Mass hysteria?
Hard to do that lot from a beach.
I personally just walk out of the office and say goodnight but if it works for Greg.
As is the ability to land the Royal Marines in force. Ah….
Fascinatingly, 18 months is often seen as the optimum duration for a consumer product before its built-in obsolescence requires a new model. Probably relying on the same human psychodynamics
The Invisible Man
We see right through the unshowered soul living in a car by the beach, or by the Walmart, or by the side of the road. But he’s there, and he used to be somebody. He still is. A firsthand account of homelessness in America.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a62875397/homelessness-in-america/?utm_campaign=trueanthemFBESQ&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook
...I’m parked in the public lot across from the beach, sitting in the front passenger seat, working on a novel. An SUV police cruiser pulls in front of me, parks close, at an angle, as if to block me from a would-be escape. This officer is a young blond woman in a bulletproof vest with a pistol strapped to her abdomen. She says, “We received some calls. People are concerned.”
“Yes?”
“They see you out here and are concerned.”
She doesn’t say who these “concerned” people are, but the only ones who can see me are the owners of large beachfront houses. Maybe they’re looking out their $3 million windows and seeing the consequences of their avarice.
“What are your plans for the day?” she says.
She’s trying to get me to move along, but the lot is open to the public from dawn to dusk. I have every right to be here.
“Write,” I say.
“What do you write?”
“Literary fiction. I was a reporter.”
“Anywhere I know?”
“The Boston Globe.”
Her eyes open wide and she tosses her head back in recognition. She realizes I’m not dissolute and not a threat. She asks for my license and calls it in. Dispatch lets her know I have no criminal record or outstanding warrants.
“Do you need anything?” she says.
“Do you know if the homeless shelter will let me take a shower?”
She asks dispatch to call the shelter. Dispatch comes back. She says, “Yes.”
“Good,” I say. “Thanks.”
“You can’t stay here at night,” she says. “You can stay at Walmart, in the back parking lot.”
“Okay.”
She gives me her card. She leaves. I stay. I have every right to be here.
I go to Walmart that night and will sleep there every night. But the police will continue to come as if I’m some kind of one-man crime wave. Before I’m chased out of Westerly, I will meet, stand my ground, and lose ground to a dozen different officers, often at night, banging on my window and waking me just to ask, “Are you all right?” The question begins to sound like a pretense.
The officers are civil, but every encounter causes me apprehension and stress. I’m innocent of any wrongdoing, but the interaction between a citizen and law enforcement is unbalanced by nature. They are part of an apparatus that can take away a person’s freedom. I know it, and they certainly know it...
On your other point: I don't want to be rude about your career, which is clearly one you need a lot of technical knowledge for - but I would have thought if a doctor could be one after 5 years of studenting, a pharmacist would need - what - half that? And that is still more than most professions: accountants, lawyers, town planners: the three years of whatever undergraduate degree they do before training in their particular profession is almost entirely superfluous. I would argue that, for example, the lawyer who does a three year history degree before doing a two year law conversion course could just as well have skipped the history degree. The expectation of some sort of generic degree is an expensive hangover from another era. Sadly it's not one I expect to see rectified before my daughters get to 18.