Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
Maybe France.
Meloni in Italy is also trying and with VP elect Vance's jibe against childless cat ladies and the GOP moves to restrict abortion and support the family I suspect they will try as well
Many places try. Few succeed. Because the only way you can encourage future birth rates is to divert resources, whether private or public, towards the young. And noone has those resources to spend on the future anymore because, private or public, they're all going on post-retirement old people in the present.
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
Maybe France.
Meloni in Italy is also trying and with VP elect Vance's jibe against childless cat ladies and the GOP moves to restrict abortion and support the family I suspect they will try as well
France got the fertility rate up to 2.00 in 2014 but it's now down to 1.79.
Neil Henderson @hendopolis · 10m MAIL: Reeves: we can’t boost UK defence without making cuts #TomorrowsPapersToday
I despise this government
The other option is 3p on income tax - willing to pay a £1000 extra in tax.
Or they could slash train drivers pay and cut GPs pay
You've just knocked the income tax increase to 2.9p better find a lot more savings (which don't exist)..
In your ideological view, there is much overspend in the NHS that could be cut back too and more use made of private health insurance
Your are not addressing the real problem that income tax needs to rise and NI reduce for everyone in work
Additionally the triple lock is unsustainable as Stride honestly said, and by the next election it needs to go and be replaced with inflation plus 1 or 2%
Plus corporation tax needs to come down to 20% or less
Where I have an issue with Labour is the awards to doctors, and especially train drivers, were unconditional and should have had improved productivity as a condition
Higher council tax bands are needed plus an increase in fuel duty and some form of wealth tax
Now, you will not agree at all but change has to come and it starts with honesty, not a Ming vase strategy
No it doesn't, NI should be ringfenced for contributory unemployment benefits and state pension as intended and some social care.
The Tories would commit politicial suicide if they scrapped the triple lock, then lost their pensioner core vote to the LDs and Reform as a result. Corporations are hardly the first target for tax cuts.
No we dont't need a wealth tax either and council tax is the responsibility of local authorities
Predictable response
It is good politics for Stride to raise it now for 2029 as by that time no party will be able to afford it
Indeed it is highly likely the pension age will have to rise to 70 in the next few years
The LDs will certainly keep their commitment to the triple lock and if the Tories lose most of their pensioner vote to them and Reform there will never be a Tory government again.
As for raising state pension age, life expectancy has stalled
You have no idea what the Lib Dem policy will be in 2029 but they like everyone else knows the triple lock is unaffordable
And your last sentence has no effect on the need to increase pension age or even means tested
This is the future longer term for pensions
Says the over 80 year old already having enjoyed his near 2 decade retirement
HYUFD, I'm in my late 40s and I recognise that the only way to address tge issue of how to afford our post-retirement population is to shorten that post-retirement period. Given killing people off at the top end of that might be electorally difficult to sell, delaying the start point seems the only way. I'll happily work another few years if it implies a future for my children. I don't see why this logic shouldn't extend to the population as a whole.
No, we could increase our birthrate for starters so we don't have such a top heavy population
There's no way of increasing the birthrate, having one or two kids (or none) is a lifestyle choice for people. If we want people to start breeding earlier, we need to make house prices cheaper so people can afford a family-sized house in their twenties. This means building shit loads of houses all over the South East, which I would presume you are opposed to.
There is, more funding for mothers, more tax breaks for those who choose to work part time and be with their children.
Part of the reason for house prices being so expensive is so many women working full time and 2 incomes being used for mortgages. Plus most of the UK population does not live in the more expensive London and home counties anyway even if more affordable homes built there.
Of course if we ended up with global Islam under Sharia law homosexuality would likely be illegal again and women would be restricted from many employment roles and expected to have more children
Well yes, birth rates are a problem - but the immediate reason we are spending so much on our old people is that our old people are living much longer than when the pension age was set. 100 years ago, the average number of pension years claimed was, what, -6? It is now +16. It's great that people are living longer. But if they are living longer at the expense of the state, that's a problem. Perhaps we ought to have another lock on pensions - that pensionable age rises with life ex pectancy. Backdated to about 30 years ago when we could last afford pensions.
Neil Henderson @hendopolis · 10m MAIL: Reeves: we can’t boost UK defence without making cuts #TomorrowsPapersToday
I despise this government
The other option is 3p on income tax - willing to pay a £1000 extra in tax.
Or they could slash train drivers pay and cut GPs pay
You've just knocked the income tax increase to 2.9p better find a lot more savings (which don't exist)..
In your ideological view, there is much overspend in the NHS that could be cut back too and more use made of private health insurance
Your are not addressing the real problem that income tax needs to rise and NI reduce for everyone in work
Additionally the triple lock is unsustainable as Stride honestly said, and by the next election it needs to go and be replaced with inflation plus 1 or 2%
Plus corporation tax needs to come down to 20% or less
Where I have an issue with Labour is the awards to doctors, and especially train drivers, were unconditional and should have had improved productivity as a condition
Higher council tax bands are needed plus an increase in fuel duty and some form of wealth tax
Now, you will not agree at all but change has to come and it starts with honesty, not a Ming vase strategy
No it doesn't, NI should be ringfenced for contributory unemployment benefits and state pension as intended and some social care.
The Tories would commit politicial suicide if they scrapped the triple lock, then lost their pensioner core vote to the LDs and Reform as a result. Corporations are hardly the first target for tax cuts.
No we dont't need a wealth tax either and council tax is the responsibility of local authorities
Predictable response
It is good politics for Stride to raise it now for 2029 as by that time no party will be able to afford it
Indeed it is highly likely the pension age will have to rise to 70 in the next few years
The LDs will certainly keep their commitment to the triple lock and if the Tories lose most of their pensioner vote to them and Reform there will never be a Tory government again.
As for raising state pension age, life expectancy has stalled
You have no idea what the Lib Dem policy will be in 2029 but they like everyone else knows the triple lock is unaffordable
And your last sentence has no effect on the need to increase pension age or even means tested
This is the future longer term for pensions
Says the over 80 year old already having enjoyed his near 2 decade retirement
HYUFD, I'm in my late 40s and I recognise that the only way to address tge issue of how to afford our post-retirement population is to shorten that post-retirement period. Given killing people off at the top end of that might be electorally difficult to sell, delaying the start point seems the only way. I'll happily work another few years if it implies a future for my children. I don't see why this logic shouldn't extend to the population as a whole.
No, we could increase our birthrate for starters so we don't have such a top heavy population
There's no way of increasing the birthrate, having one or two kids (or none) is a lifestyle choice for people. If we want people to start breeding earlier, we need to make house prices cheaper so people can afford a family-sized house in their twenties. This means building shit loads of houses all over the South East, which I would presume you are opposed to.
There is, more funding for mothers, more tax breaks for those who choose to work part time and be with their children.
Part of the reason for house prices being so expensive is so many women working full time and 2 incomes being used for mortgages. Plus most of the UK population does not live in the more expensive London and home counties anyway even if more affordable homes built there.
Of course if we ended up with global Islam under Sharia law homosexuality would likely be illegal again and women would be restricted from many employment roles and expected to have more children
So you propose tax breaks that will, necessarily, end up with poorer people subsidising richer people.
No, as poor people have children too and rich people often don't
My experience is that there may well be a cause and effect thing going on here
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
Maybe France.
Meloni in Italy is also trying and with VP elect Vance's jibe against childless cat ladies and the GOP moves to restrict abortion and support the family I suspect they will try as well
France got the fertility rate up to 2.00 in 2014 but it's now down to 1.79.
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
Maybe France.
Meloni in Italy is also trying and with VP elect Vance's jibe against childless cat ladies and the GOP moves to restrict abortion and support the family I suspect they will try as well
Many places try. Few succeed. Because the only way you can encourage future birth rates is to divert resources, whether private or public, towards the young. And noone has those resources to spend on the future anymore because, private or public, they're all going on post-retirement old people in the present.
Hardly, the government has just slashed WFA.
If fewer women worked full time, marriage was encouraged and grew, abortions became less common etc then birthrates would also rise accordingly
One thing policy makers seemed to underestimate in the 20th century was how swift a decline in fertility rate can be. From the above semi random sample looks like France went up for a bit but is dropping again, and Hungary might be approaching the same thing. https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
I think the answer to your question is no. The nearest that I can find is Israel.
In 1992 the fertility rate in Israel had declined to 2.7, but the most recent figure is 2.89 (for 2022). This increase is far too small to stabilise the population in most of the countries where the fertility rate is below replacement level, but it is an increase, and Israel's fertility rate is notably above the replacement level.
One large part of it is that ultra-orthodox women have an average of 6.6 children each, but secular women still have an average of 2.0, well above rates in other developed countries. A person might reasonably argue that humanity will die out unless it can find its religious belief again. Which would be an uncomfortable conclusion for an atheist father of one to come to.
I agree - in part - with @HYUFD’s realpolitik take. Assad is a horrendous c*nt but it it arguable that those most likely to replace him - extreme jihadis like ISIS 2.0 - will be even worse. Especially for women in Syria
We must be careful what we wish for. If ISIS & co do seize the whole country that is likely to destabilise the entire region even more than it is already as they will seek to export their violent revolution to neighbouring countries and to use Syria as a launchpad to attack the west
I can foresee more regional wars in MENA and western troops back in Syria to crush ISIS
Or we will pay Israel to level the entire country
It also means millions more Syrian refugees fleeing a new Taliban
People fled Syria to escape the Assad regime in far greater numbers than they are to escape the advance of the HTS rebels. So far the only people fleeing the HTS advance have been Alawites in Homs. Turkey, for example, may believe that a defeat for Assad would enable many of the Syrian refugees in Turkey to return to Syria.
It’s gonna be the Taliban but in Syria
I really really really hope I’m wrong
If you are wrong it will likely only be because they make the Taliban look like mild tea drinkers in radical Islam terms
Neil Henderson @hendopolis · 10m MAIL: Reeves: we can’t boost UK defence without making cuts #TomorrowsPapersToday
I despise this government
The other option is 3p on income tax - willing to pay a £1000 extra in tax.
Or they could slash train drivers pay and cut GPs pay
You've just knocked the income tax increase to 2.9p better find a lot more savings (which don't exist)..
In your ideological view, there is much overspend in the NHS that could be cut back too and more use made of private health insurance
Your are not addressing the real problem that income tax needs to rise and NI reduce for everyone in work
Additionally the triple lock is unsustainable as Stride honestly said, and by the next election it needs to go and be replaced with inflation plus 1 or 2%
Plus corporation tax needs to come down to 20% or less
Where I have an issue with Labour is the awards to doctors, and especially train drivers, were unconditional and should have had improved productivity as a condition
Higher council tax bands are needed plus an increase in fuel duty and some form of wealth tax
Now, you will not agree at all but change has to come and it starts with honesty, not a Ming vase strategy
No it doesn't, NI should be ringfenced for contributory unemployment benefits and state pension as intended and some social care.
The Tories would commit politicial suicide if they scrapped the triple lock, then lost their pensioner core vote to the LDs and Reform as a result. Corporations are hardly the first target for tax cuts.
No we dont't need a wealth tax either and council tax is the responsibility of local authorities
Predictable response
It is good politics for Stride to raise it now for 2029 as by that time no party will be able to afford it
Indeed it is highly likely the pension age will have to rise to 70 in the next few years
The LDs will certainly keep their commitment to the triple lock and if the Tories lose most of their pensioner vote to them and Reform there will never be a Tory government again.
As for raising state pension age, life expectancy has stalled
You have no idea what the Lib Dem policy will be in 2029 but they like everyone else knows the triple lock is unaffordable
And your last sentence has no effect on the need to increase pension age or even means tested
This is the future longer term for pensions
Says the over 80 year old already having enjoyed his near 2 decade retirement
What a nasty comment and it is 15 years next May
It doesn't change the reality facing politicians of all parties
A true comment and near 2 decades as I said
I suppose with your flawed use of statistics 15 years is near 20 but 5 years is a long extra time in retirement
And still nasty and unnecessarily personal
As opposed to your loving and generous comment that those of us significantly younger than you must work to an age when you and your peers were ordering large G and Ts from the cruise liner lounge!!!
I have never drunk G and T in my life
The odd Welsh cider and my wife is teetotal
And you do not need to be nasty and personal when discussing an issue that is a very real problem that will need addressing and no doubt long after my wife and I are happily together in the next life
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
I think the answer to your question is no. The nearest that I can find is Israel.
In 1992 the fertility rate in Israel had declined to 2.7, but the most recent figure is 2.89 (for 2022). This increase is far too small to stabilise the population in most of the countries where the fertility rate is below replacement level, but it is an increase, and Israel's fertility rate is notably above the replacement level.
One large part of it is that ultra-orthodox women have an average of 6.6 children each, but secular women still have an average of 2.0, well above rates in other developed countries. A person might reasonably argue that humanity will die out unless it can find its religious belief again. Which would be an uncomfortable conclusion for an atheist father of one to come to.
Except that even quite religious countries are seeing birth rate declines
Iran, Malaysia, etc. All of Latin America
Religion is part of the explanation but there is much more at work
I agree - in part - with @HYUFD’s realpolitik take. Assad is a horrendous c*nt but it it arguable that those most likely to replace him - extreme jihadis like ISIS 2.0 - will be even worse. Especially for women in Syria
We must be careful what we wish for. If ISIS & co do seize the whole country that is likely to destabilise the entire region even more than it is already as they will seek to export their violent revolution to neighbouring countries and to use Syria as a launchpad to attack the west
I can foresee more regional wars in MENA and western troops back in Syria to crush ISIS
Or we will pay Israel to level the entire country
It also means millions more Syrian refugees fleeing a new Taliban
People fled Syria to escape the Assad regime in far greater numbers than they are to escape the advance of the HTS rebels. So far the only people fleeing the HTS advance have been Alawites in Homs. Turkey, for example, may believe that a defeat for Assad would enable many of the Syrian refugees in Turkey to return to Syria.
It’s gonna be the Taliban but in Syria
I really really really hope I’m wrong
Yup. The Middle East appears to be entirely populated by nutters. Every time a murderous despot is removed, someone even more murderous appears in their place.
There was some American senator asked gow he would solve the problem of the Middle East who, only half in jest, suggested carpet bombing from the Jordan to the Indus. At the very least, you can see why. You just want to shout at these places "Just be normal!"
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
Maybe France.
Meloni in Italy is also trying and with VP elect Vance's jibe against childless cat ladies and the GOP moves to restrict abortion and support the family I suspect they will try as well
France got the fertility rate up to 2.00 in 2014 but it's now down to 1.79.
Still more than ours
It's been above ours since the mid 90s it seems (and was below for most of the preceding decades too), though our population is now above theirs.
But if Our World in Data is correct ours have been between 1.56-1.58 in the last 4 years, whilst there's has dropped from 1.80-1.64. They will hope last year was a real off year, since if it is a trend then they could shortly be below us.
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
Maybe France.
Meloni in Italy is also trying and with VP elect Vance's jibe against childless cat ladies and the GOP moves to restrict abortion and support the family I suspect they will try as well
Many places try. Few succeed. Because the only way you can encourage future birth rates is to divert resources, whether private or public, towards the young. And noone has those resources to spend on the future anymore because, private or public, they're all going on post-retirement old people in the present.
Hardly, the government has just slashed WFA.
If fewer women worked full time, marriage was encouraged and grew, abortions became less common etc then birthrates would also rise accordingly
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
I think the answer to your question is no. The nearest that I can find is Israel.
In 1992 the fertility rate in Israel had declined to 2.7, but the most recent figure is 2.89 (for 2022). This increase is far too small to stabilise the population in most of the countries where the fertility rate is below replacement level, but it is an increase, and Israel's fertility rate is notably above the replacement level.
One large part of it is that ultra-orthodox women have an average of 6.6 children each, but secular women still have an average of 2.0, well above rates in other developed countries. A person might reasonably argue that humanity will die out unless it can find its religious belief again. Which would be an uncomfortable conclusion for an atheist father of one to come to.
Globally evangelical Christians, Muslims, Orthodox Jews tend to have the most children, then Roman Catholics and then Hindus and Sikhs and mainline Protestants and agnostics, then last, right at the back are miserable whining atheists.
So ultimately far from becoming a secular rational left liberal global world as the latter want, we may end up reverting to hardline traditional religious values just by force of numbers and who is giving birth
The collapse in fertility feels like a part of something bigger. Humanity is exiting stage left because…
We're all fans of The Naked Sun?
The book focuses on the unusual traditions, customs, and culture of Solarian society. The planet has a rigidly controlled population of 20,000, and all work is done by robots, which outnumber humans ten thousand to one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naked_Sun
In all honesty there is a bit of a misanthropic streak in many societies too, which see humans as awful. I think humans are pretty amazing and would like there to be as much as can be managed, without literally trashing the entire planet.
"Starmer is repeating Tory mistakes by picking on the blob The first Labour premier in 14 years sounds like he's been listening to the Jacob Rees-Mogg playbook. Jenny Hjul"
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
Its easy to do, look at footballers, married & children by 25-30. The UK's declining opportunity and increasing precarity does not incentivise children.
"Starmer is repeating Tory mistakes by picking on the blob The first Labour premier in 14 years sounds like he's been listening to the Jacob Rees-Mogg playbook. Jenny Hjul"
And all the others are trending down strongly and will soon also be below replacement level
Yes, it might be comforting to some people to think if people were more religious that would deal with the problem, but the global trends pretty much across the board don't seem to support that.
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
I think the answer to your question is no. The nearest that I can find is Israel.
In 1992 the fertility rate in Israel had declined to 2.7, but the most recent figure is 2.89 (for 2022). This increase is far too small to stabilise the population in most of the countries where the fertility rate is below replacement level, but it is an increase, and Israel's fertility rate is notably above the replacement level.
One large part of it is that ultra-orthodox women have an average of 6.6 children each, but secular women still have an average of 2.0, well above rates in other developed countries. A person might reasonably argue that humanity will die out unless it can find its religious belief again. Which would be an uncomfortable conclusion for an atheist father of one to come to.
Globally evangelical Christians, Muslims, Orthodox Jews tend to have the most children, then Roman Catholics and then Hindus and Sikhs and mainline Protestants and agnostics, then last, right at the back are miserable whining atheists.
So ultimately far from becoming a secular rational liberal global world as the latter want, we may end up reverting to hardline traditional religious values just by force of numbers and who is giving birth
Many people who are born into religious families become atheists. If this was not the case, there would be no atheists.
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
Its easy to do, look at footballers, married & children by 25-30. The UK's declining opportunity and increasing precarity does not incentivise children.
And yet most places who have tried to do it have failed. Assuming we cannot turn everyone into a professional footballer, what else might be tried when tax breaks and incentives seem to cause temporary blips only?
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
Maybe France.
Meloni in Italy is also trying and with VP elect Vance's jibe against childless cat ladies and the GOP moves to restrict abortion and support the family I suspect they will try as well
Many places try. Few succeed. Because the only way you can encourage future birth rates is to divert resources, whether private or public, towards the young. And noone has those resources to spend on the future anymore because, private or public, they're all going on post-retirement old people in the present.
Hardly, the government has just slashed WFA.
If fewer women worked full time, marriage was encouraged and grew, abortions became less common etc then birthrates would also rise accordingly
Well yes. But kept the triple lock, and house prices continue to increase. We are still seeing a transfer of wealth from young to old. But that's not the point: regardless of state micromanagement, we have far more old people alive, who, if they are not working, must be provided for. This can be done throigh the state or through their own savings or through family support. Different models exist. But all of them entail resources not being put into enabling the next generation. It's not a matter of government policy. It's that so many more pensioners exist than was previously the case. That is common to every society on earth, whether collectivist or individualist, secular or religious. And on every single society on earth, birth rates are falling. It is simlle cause and effect: more pensioners results in fewer babies.
Doctors in general get paid absolutely nothing in this country. Similar to the Civil Service I would be increasing salaries substantially and we’d get better people.
£100K a year or more for a junior doctor would be a good start.
You have no idea. No clue. Why should a junior doctor just put if training earn that much? In the NHS pay increments on a regular basis. That's why starting salaries are used by the unions, as the reality is different after a few years. And no doubt doctors get better with experience. We all do. We have consistently failed to train enough doctors in the UK for a number of reasons. Firstly training them needs training places and that means doctors in hospitals. It's not just uni places. And the doctors have always been careful to keep numbers down too, after all keep supply down keeps the wages high. And no doubt there is an attraction to moving overseas to Aussie or NZ for instance, but higher salaries aren't everything. Taxes, pensions etc are different. So its not as simple as just paying doctors more.
I have a clue thank you, as friends have recently emigrated because the salaries in the NHS are so awful. They get far more abroad.
If we’d have paid them more, they’d have stayed.
It's not just pay though is it? Moving overseas means a different pension and tax system. And for sure working in the NHS right now can be pretty shit. But the answer isn't a ridiculous 300 percent jump in junior doctors starting salary, it's sorting out the NHS. That's fixing infrastructure, getting staffing levels up and all the basics. The Tories have proven over the years that they cannot be trusted to do these basics. But the answer isn't just more pay
Funding is up 20% in real terms and staffing is up 25% in 5 years....productivity is through the floor.
My father has diabetic eye checkups. He also has a cataract which means that their normal camera doesn't work.
The hospital send an appointment for their normal camera, I tell them it won't work, they say come in anyway, we traipse in (I have to book half a day off to get him there) and, Pikachu surprised face, two weeks later I get a letter saying it didn't work and please book an appointment for the more specialised camera.
He's also on the ophthalmology list as he has some macular degeneration, but it turns out they don't share images or results with the diabetic people so even though they use the same specialised camera, they each have to take their own image.
So, 3 visits instead of 1, and also (not that the NHS seem to care) 1 day of my time lost.
Woe betide you if you refuse to play this stupid game, though, as you are then discharged.
I can only imagine that these inefficiencies are absolutely everywhere.
I hear you. This is what my mother wrote in a recent email:
"I have no idea what is happening with cataract surgery. I have short sight, glaucoma, cataracts, and the beginnings of macular. Also Parkinsons affects the small muscles that pull on the lens to focus. The medics I see are highly trained, highly skilled in their areas. And overworked . and fed-up. and they do not talk to one another and I sit in the middle and they appear to contradict one another. All hell breaks out if I dare to ask a question. That is where we are at the moment. There is supposed to be a letter in the post."
Luckily my brother was able to go with her to an appointment and so there seems to be some movement on cataract surgery.
I remember some description of hell being a place where you would sit down for a feast, but you would only have enormous long cutlery to eat with, and so you couldn't feed yourself anything. Heaven would be the same, except that the people at the table would feed each other, with the hilariously long party cutlery. The NHS sounds like hell. Like people frantically trying to race up a down escalator, while tripping each other up and barging each other out of the way.
I call it the National Health *Prevention* Service.
The individuals nearly all have good intent.
The system turns the results of their endeavours into chaos and sometimes malignity.
In any organisation’s is easy to lose sight of the ends. The large it is, the more the means become those ends.
I agree - in part - with @HYUFD’s realpolitik take. Assad is a horrendous c*nt but it it arguable that those most likely to replace him - extreme jihadis like ISIS 2.0 - will be even worse. Especially for women in Syria
We must be careful what we wish for. If ISIS & co do seize the whole country that is likely to destabilise the entire region even more than it is already as they will seek to export their violent revolution to neighbouring countries and to use Syria as a launchpad to attack the west
I can foresee more regional wars in MENA and western troops back in Syria to crush ISIS
Or we will pay Israel to level the entire country
It also means millions more Syrian refugees fleeing a new Taliban
People fled Syria to escape the Assad regime in far greater numbers than they are to escape the advance of the HTS rebels. So far the only people fleeing the HTS advance have been Alawites in Homs. Turkey, for example, may believe that a defeat for Assad would enable many of the Syrian refugees in Turkey to return to Syria.
It’s gonna be the Taliban but in Syria
I really really really hope I’m wrong
Yup. The Middle East appears to be entirely populated by nutters. Every time a murderous despot is removed, someone even more murderous appears in their place.
There was some American senator asked gow he would solve the problem of the Middle East who, only half in jest, suggested carpet bombing from the Jordan to the Indus. At the very least, you can see why. You just want to shout at these places "Just be normal!"
Which is why Israel is doing what it’s doing. They’ve decided that they can no longer co-exist with nutters - no more than you flatshare with a neurotic grizzly bear
So they’re gonna level Gaza and make it uninhabitable, annexe the West Bank and drive out the Palestinians over time, and thereby secure a defensible Israel behind very very hard borders
And they’re gonna say Fuck you, we’ve got nukes, take us on and you die
This means that tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have died and will die and the rest will be driven into another exile. It’s a tragedy for the ages but you can see the cold brutal horrible logic of what Israel proposes
I agree - in part - with @HYUFD’s realpolitik take. Assad is a horrendous c*nt but it it arguable that those most likely to replace him - extreme jihadis like ISIS 2.0 - will be even worse. Especially for women in Syria
We must be careful what we wish for. If ISIS & co do seize the whole country that is likely to destabilise the entire region even more than it is already as they will seek to export their violent revolution to neighbouring countries and to use Syria as a launchpad to attack the west
I can foresee more regional wars in MENA and western troops back in Syria to crush ISIS
Or we will pay Israel to level the entire country
It also means millions more Syrian refugees fleeing a new Taliban
People fled Syria to escape the Assad regime in far greater numbers than they are to escape the advance of the HTS rebels. So far the only people fleeing the HTS advance have been Alawites in Homs. Turkey, for example, may believe that a defeat for Assad would enable many of the Syrian refugees in Turkey to return to Syria.
It’s gonna be the Taliban but in Syria
I really really really hope I’m wrong
Yup. The Middle East appears to be entirely populated by nutters. Every time a murderous despot is removed, someone even more murderous appears in their place.
There was some American senator asked gow he would solve the problem of the Middle East who, only half in jest, suggested carpet bombing from the Jordan to the Indus. At the very least, you can see why. You just want to shout at these places "Just be normal!"
Understanding that most of the 20th/21st century ME despots were created, armed and supported in their despotism by some combination of us the US or France.
I agree - in part - with @HYUFD’s realpolitik take. Assad is a horrendous c*nt but it it arguable that those most likely to replace him - extreme jihadis like ISIS 2.0 - will be even worse. Especially for women in Syria
We must be careful what we wish for. If ISIS & co do seize the whole country that is likely to destabilise the entire region even more than it is already as they will seek to export their violent revolution to neighbouring countries and to use Syria as a launchpad to attack the west
I can foresee more regional wars in MENA and western troops back in Syria to crush ISIS
Or we will pay Israel to level the entire country
It also means millions more Syrian refugees fleeing a new Taliban
People fled Syria to escape the Assad regime in far greater numbers than they are to escape the advance of the HTS rebels. So far the only people fleeing the HTS advance have been Alawites in Homs. Turkey, for example, may believe that a defeat for Assad would enable many of the Syrian refugees in Turkey to return to Syria.
It’s gonna be the Taliban but in Syria
I really really really hope I’m wrong
Yup. The Middle East appears to be entirely populated by nutters. Every time a murderous despot is removed, someone even more murderous appears in their place.
There was some American senator asked gow he would solve the problem of the Middle East who, only half in jest, suggested carpet bombing from the Jordan to the Indus. At the very least, you can see why. You just want to shout at these places "Just be normal!"
Which is why Israel is doing what it’s doing. They’ve decided that they can no longer co-exist with nutters - no more than you flatshare with a neurotic grizzly bear
So they’re gonna level Gaza and make it uninhabitable, annexe the West Bank and drive out the Palestinians over time, and thereby secure a defensible Israel behind very very hard borders
And they’re gonna say Fuck you, we’ve got nukes, take us on and you die
This means that tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have died and will die and the rest will be driven into another exile. It’s a tragedy for the ages but you can see the cold brutal horrible logic of what Israel proposes
To an extent but it also risks the young in the West Bank turning to terrorism as those in Gaza have, they won't all retreat to exile in Jordan and Egypt
I agree - in part - with @HYUFD’s realpolitik take. Assad is a horrendous c*nt but it it arguable that those most likely to replace him - extreme jihadis like ISIS 2.0 - will be even worse. Especially for women in Syria
We must be careful what we wish for. If ISIS & co do seize the whole country that is likely to destabilise the entire region even more than it is already as they will seek to export their violent revolution to neighbouring countries and to use Syria as a launchpad to attack the west
I can foresee more regional wars in MENA and western troops back in Syria to crush ISIS
Or we will pay Israel to level the entire country
It also means millions more Syrian refugees fleeing a new Taliban
People fled Syria to escape the Assad regime in far greater numbers than they are to escape the advance of the HTS rebels. So far the only people fleeing the HTS advance have been Alawites in Homs. Turkey, for example, may believe that a defeat for Assad would enable many of the Syrian refugees in Turkey to return to Syria.
It’s gonna be the Taliban but in Syria
I really really really hope I’m wrong
Yup. The Middle East appears to be entirely populated by nutters. Every time a murderous despot is removed, someone even more murderous appears in their place.
There was some American senator asked gow he would solve the problem of the Middle East who, only half in jest, suggested carpet bombing from the Jordan to the Indus. At the very least, you can see why. You just want to shout at these places "Just be normal!"
Understanding that most of the 20th/21st century ME despots were created, armed and supported in their despotism by some combination of us the US or France.
Islam has been violently aggressive since its inception. It is the religion of conquest and the sword. Literally of jihad
It didn’t expand from a few tribes near Mecca to taking over Arabia and half of north Africa and then chunks of Europe and Asia in about two centuries by the gentle use of missionaries
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
Its easy to do, look at footballers, married & children by 25-30. The UK's declining opportunity and increasing precarity does not incentivise children.
And yet most places who have tried to do it have failed. Assuming we cannot turn everyone into a professional footballer, what else might be tried when tax breaks and incentives seem to cause temporary blips only?
All I mean to say is the instinct to procreate is there its just squashed. Give people security in their lives, reasonable working conditions and a home and children will come. Make them live in a flat share till their thirties and what do we expect?
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
Its easy to do, look at footballers, married & children by 25-30. The UK's declining opportunity and increasing precarity does not incentivise children.
And yet most places who have tried to do it have failed. Assuming we cannot turn everyone into a professional footballer, what else might be tried when tax breaks and incentives seem to cause temporary blips only?
I would provide baby bonuses to dating websites.
At the moment their incentives are all wrong - if they find you a great match that you stay together with for life then they've lost a customer. Provide them with the incentive to find people lifelong partners they want to start a family with, and then, if anyone can find a way to increase the birth rate, they will.
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
Maybe France.
Meloni in Italy is also trying and with VP elect Vance's jibe against childless cat ladies and the GOP moves to restrict abortion and support the family I suspect they will try as well
Many places try. Few succeed. Because the only way you can encourage future birth rates is to divert resources, whether private or public, towards the young. And noone has those resources to spend on the future anymore because, private or public, they're all going on post-retirement old people in the present.
Hardly, the government has just slashed WFA.
If fewer women worked full time, marriage was encouraged and grew, abortions became less common etc then birthrates would also rise accordingly
Well yes. But kept the triple lock, and house prices continue to increase. We are still seeing a transfer of wealth from young to old. But that's not the point: regardless of state micromanagement, we have far more old people alive, who, if they are not working, must be provided for. This can be done throigh the state or through their own savings or through family support. Different models exist. But all of them entail resources not being put into enabling the next generation. It's not a matter of government policy. It's that so many more pensioners exist than was previously the case. That is common to every society on earth, whether collectivist or individualist, secular or religious. And on every single society on earth, birth rates are falling. It is simlle cause and effect: more pensioners results in fewer babies.
As I already said house prices are linked to the high number of women working full time (making more joint incomes for mortgages), plus excess immigration as much as homes built.
Pensioners did their duty, worked and had their 2.4 children and more of their women looked after the children and fewer worked full time so often only the husband's salary was needed to buy the home. If the younger generation don't so much it is their fault not pensioners .
I agree - in part - with @HYUFD’s realpolitik take. Assad is a horrendous c*nt but it it arguable that those most likely to replace him - extreme jihadis like ISIS 2.0 - will be even worse. Especially for women in Syria
We must be careful what we wish for. If ISIS & co do seize the whole country that is likely to destabilise the entire region even more than it is already as they will seek to export their violent revolution to neighbouring countries and to use Syria as a launchpad to attack the west
I can foresee more regional wars in MENA and western troops back in Syria to crush ISIS
Or we will pay Israel to level the entire country
It also means millions more Syrian refugees fleeing a new Taliban
People fled Syria to escape the Assad regime in far greater numbers than they are to escape the advance of the HTS rebels. So far the only people fleeing the HTS advance have been Alawites in Homs. Turkey, for example, may believe that a defeat for Assad would enable many of the Syrian refugees in Turkey to return to Syria.
It’s gonna be the Taliban but in Syria
I really really really hope I’m wrong
Yup. The Middle East appears to be entirely populated by nutters. Every time a murderous despot is removed, someone even more murderous appears in their place.
There was some American senator asked gow he would solve the problem of the Middle East who, only half in jest, suggested carpet bombing from the Jordan to the Indus. At the very least, you can see why. You just want to shout at these places "Just be normal!"
Which is why Israel is doing what it’s doing. They’ve decided that they can no longer co-exist with nutters - no more than you flatshare with a neurotic grizzly bear
So they’re gonna level Gaza and make it uninhabitable, annexe the West Bank and drive out the Palestinians over time, and thereby secure a defensible Israel behind very very hard borders
And they’re gonna say Fuck you, we’ve got nukes, take us on and you die
This means that tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have died and will die and the rest will be driven into another exile. It’s a tragedy for the ages but you can see the cold brutal horrible logic of what Israel proposes
To an extent but it also risks the young in the West Bank turning to terrorism as those in Gaza have, they won't all retreat to exile in Jordan and Egypt
Where did I ever say it will work? I’m not at all sure it will work
I’m saying this is the rationale behind their fairly monstrous behaviour. Following the true and utter horror of October 7 they’ve decided it’s “kill or be killed” when it comes to Palestinians so they’ve opted to kill. And I can see how they reached that state of mind
The jihadis of october 7 made it plain they would murder any jew they could find - baby mother or granny - and rape the cute young women first. How can you “coexist” with that? You can’t. So Israel has stopped pretending
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
Its easy to do, look at footballers, married & children by 25-30. The UK's declining opportunity and increasing precarity does not incentivise children.
And yet most places who have tried to do it have failed. Assuming we cannot turn everyone into a professional footballer, what else might be tried when tax breaks and incentives seem to cause temporary blips only?
Well you could make women working full time illegal from 25 to 50, albeit that would be very illiberal and would never happen it would certainly raise the birthrate
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
I think the answer to your question is no. The nearest that I can find is Israel.
In 1992 the fertility rate in Israel had declined to 2.7, but the most recent figure is 2.89 (for 2022). This increase is far too small to stabilise the population in most of the countries where the fertility rate is below replacement level, but it is an increase, and Israel's fertility rate is notably above the replacement level.
One large part of it is that ultra-orthodox women have an average of 6.6 children each, but secular women still have an average of 2.0, well above rates in other developed countries. A person might reasonably argue that humanity will die out unless it can find its religious belief again. Which would be an uncomfortable conclusion for an atheist father of one to come to.
Globally evangelical Christians, Muslims, Orthodox Jews tend to have the most children, then Roman Catholics and then Hindus and Sikhs and mainline Protestants and agnostics, then last, right at the back are miserable whining atheists.
So ultimately far from becoming a secular rational liberal global world as the latter want, we may end up reverting to hardline traditional religious values just by force of numbers and who is giving birth
Many people who are born into religious families become atheists. If this was not the case, there would be no atheists.
And most religious parents produce religious children and you even occasionally get atheists parents producing religious children too
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
Maybe France.
Meloni in Italy is also trying and with VP elect Vance's jibe against childless cat ladies and the GOP moves to restrict abortion and support the family I suspect they will try as well
Many places try. Few succeed. Because the only way you can encourage future birth rates is to divert resources, whether private or public, towards the young. And noone has those resources to spend on the future anymore because, private or public, they're all going on post-retirement old people in the present.
Hardly, the government has just slashed WFA.
If fewer women worked full time, marriage was encouraged and grew, abortions became less common etc then birthrates would also rise accordingly
Well yes. But kept the triple lock, and house prices continue to increase. We are still seeing a transfer of wealth from young to old. But that's not the point: regardless of state micromanagement, we have far more old people alive, who, if they are not working, must be provided for. This can be done throigh the state or through their own savings or through family support. Different models exist. But all of them entail resources not being put into enabling the next generation. It's not a matter of government policy. It's that so many more pensioners exist than was previously the case. That is common to every society on earth, whether collectivist or individualist, secular or religious. And on every single society on earth, birth rates are falling. It is simlle cause and effect: more pensioners results in fewer babies.
As I already said house prices are linked to the high number of women working full time (making more joint incomes for mortgages), plus excess immigration as much as homes built.
Pensioners did their duty, worked and had their 2.4 children and more of their women looked after the children and fewer worked full time so often only the husband's salary was needed to buy the home. If the younger generation don't so much it is their fault not pensioners .
You describe my wife and I exactly in your last paragraph having had 3 children but then you attack me for pointing out the reality of today's pension crisis. !!!!
Killer of diabetics. Convinced his course participants to put themselves in pre-insulin days, when Type I was a death sentence. Ooof. :
An alternative healer has been jailed for 10 years for the manslaughter of a 71-year-old diabetic woman who stopped taking insulin at his slapping therapy workshop.
Danielle Carr-Gomm died in October 2016 while taking part in the Paida Lajin therapy event, which sees patients being slapped or slapping themselves repeatedly.
Hongchi Xiao, of Cloudbreak, California, was convicted by a jury in July at Winchester Crown Court of manslaughter by gross negligence after he failed to get medical help for Ms Carr-Gomm at the event in Wiltshire.
He was also sentenced to a further five years on extended licence after his time in prison.
The 61-year-old was extradited for the trial from Australia, where he had previously been prosecuted after a six-year-old boy also died when his parents withdrew his insulin medication after attending the defendant's workshop in Sydney.
Mr Justice Bright added Xiao will be liable to be deported to America after serving his sentence. ... Ms Carr-Gomm believed it worked and delivered glowing testimonials, the court previously heard.
The court heard that Xiao said "well done" to Ms Carr-Gomm, after she told the participants that she had stopped taking her insulin at the week-long retreat.
By the third day "she was vomiting, tired and weak, and by the evening she was howling in pain and unable to respond to questions", prosecutor Duncan Atkinson KC said.
Ms Carr-Gomm, who was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 1999, was "howling in pain" and "frothing at the mouth" as she became seriously ill before she died on the fourth day of the workshop. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1el71pq2e1o
What could have caused that? Coming off insulin is dangerous for a Type 1 diabetic - eventually it will cause diabetic ketoacidosis, but howling in pain and foaming at the mouth after being off insulin for less than a week seems odd.
It's worth a read of the longish piece.
By leading her to stop her treatment, he put her back in the situation she was in at diagnosis. Eating food, but no insulin being generated to metabolise it, so potentially extreme hyperglycaemia and DKA.
Desperate thirst, vomiting, tiredness, incoherence are normal symptoms. Pain can also be a symptom.
When I was diagnosed I was fortunately in a studio flat in the attic of a shared house, but I was stubborn and lasted about 4-5 days. By the end I was drinking 4 or 5 litres of water, and could not keep that or food down. It was just a stomach bug that happened to attack the pancreas. But I had other people there, who called an ambulance when I finally said I needed one.
Medically she was off insulin for several days, and (I assume) eating fairly normally, it would go really high. By several days, most people would have called an ambulance and be in an acute or intensive care ward, and take days or a week to stabilise.
She was also in an abusive, cultish situation, thoroughly brainwashed and vulnerable - more so because of her needle-phobia, with a 'therapist' (ie self-believing guru) who had lead her to stop the insulin, who was running a course where the therapy was to slap and beat the toxins out of the body. In that setup, calling emergency medics would be resisted, and the mindset may have been "we're not trying hard enough" - that is, more slapping and stretching.
She was also 71, having been diagnosed at age 46, and possibly physically weak - so less resilient. Falling off the diabetic wagon is always a descending spiral which is hard to recognise and to stop. Her phobia and the abusive situation would make it psychologically really difficult - no one there willing or equipped to call halt or bullshit.
Doctors in general get paid absolutely nothing in this country. Similar to the Civil Service I would be increasing salaries substantially and we’d get better people.
£100K a year or more for a junior doctor would be a good start.
You have no idea. No clue. Why should a junior doctor just put if training earn that much? In the NHS pay increments on a regular basis. That's why starting salaries are used by the unions, as the reality is different after a few years. And no doubt doctors get better with experience. We all do. We have consistently failed to train enough doctors in the UK for a number of reasons. Firstly training them needs training places and that means doctors in hospitals. It's not just uni places. And the doctors have always been careful to keep numbers down too, after all keep supply down keeps the wages high. And no doubt there is an attraction to moving overseas to Aussie or NZ for instance, but higher salaries aren't everything. Taxes, pensions etc are different. So its not as simple as just paying doctors more.
I have a clue thank you, as friends have recently emigrated because the salaries in the NHS are so awful. They get far more abroad.
If we’d have paid them more, they’d have stayed.
It's not just pay though is it? Moving overseas means a different pension and tax system. And for sure working in the NHS right now can be pretty shit. But the answer isn't a ridiculous 300 percent jump in junior doctors starting salary, it's sorting out the NHS. That's fixing infrastructure, getting staffing levels up and all the basics. The Tories have proven over the years that they cannot be trusted to do these basics. But the answer isn't just more pay
Funding is up 20% in real terms and staffing is up 25% in 5 years....productivity is through the floor.
My father has diabetic eye checkups. He also has a cataract which means that their normal camera doesn't work.
The hospital send an appointment for their normal camera, I tell them it won't work, they say come in anyway, we traipse in (I have to book half a day off to get him there) and, Pikachu surprised face, two weeks later I get a letter saying it didn't work and please book an appointment for the more specialised camera.
He's also on the ophthalmology list as he has some macular degeneration, but it turns out they don't share images or results with the diabetic people so even though they use the same specialised camera, they each have to take their own image.
So, 3 visits instead of 1, and also (not that the NHS seem to care) 1 day of my time lost.
Woe betide you if you refuse to play this stupid game, though, as you are then discharged.
I can only imagine that these inefficiencies are absolutely everywhere.
I hear you. This is what my mother wrote in a recent email:
"I have no idea what is happening with cataract surgery. I have short sight, glaucoma, cataracts, and the beginnings of macular. Also Parkinsons affects the small muscles that pull on the lens to focus. The medics I see are highly trained, highly skilled in their areas. And overworked . and fed-up. and they do not talk to one another and I sit in the middle and they appear to contradict one another. All hell breaks out if I dare to ask a question. That is where we are at the moment. There is supposed to be a letter in the post."
Luckily my brother was able to go with her to an appointment and so there seems to be some movement on cataract surgery.
I remember some description of hell being a place where you would sit down for a feast, but you would only have enormous long cutlery to eat with, and so you couldn't feed yourself anything. Heaven would be the same, except that the people at the table would feed each other, with the hilariously long party cutlery. The NHS sounds like hell. Like people frantically trying to race up a down escalator, while tripping each other up and barging each other out of the way.
I call it the National Health *Prevention* Service.
The individuals nearly all have good intent.
The system turns the results of their endeavours into chaos and sometimes malignity.
In any organisation’s is easy to lose sight of the ends. The large it is, the more the means become those ends.
“Patient pinball”
Everyone gets paid. Everyone thinks they’ve done a great job. But the care is crap and the system is inefficient.
Problem is that we won’t have end to end patient tracking, just individual patient episodes which aren’t connected together. Would never happen at Toyota. Can you imagine it?
The flag of Mompox is the same as Switzerland. Interesting.
I’m really tempted to come back for, say, a month. I wonder what it would do to me
In some ways it is utterly boring. All you do is sit in rocking chairs and stare at the river. Or you get on the river and go look at the very beautiful birdlife in the wetlands - then you come back and grab a beer or a lulo juice or a fat gin and tonic - and you sit in a rocking chair and stare at the river
There’s nothing else to do. The food is pleasant but no more. The fruit is sensational. You can buy a decent Malbec in the one super market
There’s a massive fucking owl in the main square next to the motherfucking ginormous iguana by the church
I agree - in part - with @HYUFD’s realpolitik take. Assad is a horrendous c*nt but it it arguable that those most likely to replace him - extreme jihadis like ISIS 2.0 - will be even worse. Especially for women in Syria
We must be careful what we wish for. If ISIS & co do seize the whole country that is likely to destabilise the entire region even more than it is already as they will seek to export their violent revolution to neighbouring countries and to use Syria as a launchpad to attack the west
I can foresee more regional wars in MENA and western troops back in Syria to crush ISIS
Or we will pay Israel to level the entire country
It also means millions more Syrian refugees fleeing a new Taliban
People fled Syria to escape the Assad regime in far greater numbers than they are to escape the advance of the HTS rebels. So far the only people fleeing the HTS advance have been Alawites in Homs. Turkey, for example, may believe that a defeat for Assad would enable many of the Syrian refugees in Turkey to return to Syria.
It’s gonna be the Taliban but in Syria
I really really really hope I’m wrong
Yup. The Middle East appears to be entirely populated by nutters. Every time a murderous despot is removed, someone even more murderous appears in their place.
There was some American senator asked gow he would solve the problem of the Middle East who, only half in jest, suggested carpet bombing from the Jordan to the Indus. At the very least, you can see why. You just want to shout at these places "Just be normal!"
Understanding that most of the 20th/21st century ME despots were created, armed and supported in their despotism by some combination of us the US or France.
Islam has been violently aggressive since its inception. It is the religion of conquest and the sword. Literally of jihad
It didn’t expand from a few tribes near Mecca to taking over Arabia and half of north Africa and then chunks of Europe and Asia in about two centuries by the gentle use of missionaries
It wasn't in the mid 20th century what it is today.
Pan Arab nationalism was a moderating force, Iran was a moderate-ish force. Afghanistan's communist government was yes communist but also moderate. Iraq pre-Bathists was moderate. Syria had a 'democracy' etc. Yes I'm cherry picking.
Robert Fisk seemed to think the extreme religiosity rose out of the political impotence of the masses. I agree with this. Arab nationalism came first to the 20th century but was squashed in favour of pliant despots so now we get extremism. Some of which we trained, armed and inflicted on the continent.
I agree - in part - with @HYUFD’s realpolitik take. Assad is a horrendous c*nt but it it arguable that those most likely to replace him - extreme jihadis like ISIS 2.0 - will be even worse. Especially for women in Syria
We must be careful what we wish for. If ISIS & co do seize the whole country that is likely to destabilise the entire region even more than it is already as they will seek to export their violent revolution to neighbouring countries and to use Syria as a launchpad to attack the west
I can foresee more regional wars in MENA and western troops back in Syria to crush ISIS
Or we will pay Israel to level the entire country
It also means millions more Syrian refugees fleeing a new Taliban
People fled Syria to escape the Assad regime in far greater numbers than they are to escape the advance of the HTS rebels. So far the only people fleeing the HTS advance have been Alawites in Homs. Turkey, for example, may believe that a defeat for Assad would enable many of the Syrian refugees in Turkey to return to Syria.
It’s gonna be the Taliban but in Syria
I really really really hope I’m wrong
Yup. The Middle East appears to be entirely populated by nutters. Every time a murderous despot is removed, someone even more murderous appears in their place.
There was some American senator asked gow he would solve the problem of the Middle East who, only half in jest, suggested carpet bombing from the Jordan to the Indus. At the very least, you can see why. You just want to shout at these places "Just be normal!"
Understanding that most of the 20th/21st century ME despots were created, armed and supported in their despotism by some combination of us the US or France.
Islam has been violently aggressive since its inception. It is the religion of conquest and the sword. Literally of jihad
It didn’t expand from a few tribes near Mecca to taking over Arabia and half of north Africa and then chunks of Europe and Asia in about two centuries by the gentle use of missionaries
It wasn't in the mid 20th century what it is today.
Pan Arab nationalism was a moderating force, Iran was a moderate-ish force. Afghanistan's communist government was yes communist but also moderate. Iraq pre-Bathists was moderate. Syria had a 'democracy' etc. Yes I'm cherry picking.
Robert Fisk seemed to think the extreme religiosity rose out of the political impotence of the masses. I agree with this. Arab nationalism came first to the 20th century but was squashed in favour of pliant despots so now we get extremism. Some of which we trained, armed and inflicted on the continent.
So of course it’s all our fault. No it’s bollocks. Islam was born in violence has always been violent and has now found a new way to be violent. The west is almost incidental. It wasn’t the west which told the Mughals to invade India and build enormous pyramids of Hindi skulls - hence the great hatred for Islam in much of India today
Doctors in general get paid absolutely nothing in this country. Similar to the Civil Service I would be increasing salaries substantially and we’d get better people.
£100K a year or more for a junior doctor would be a good start.
Why on earth should taxpayers pay a junior doctor starting out £100k a year? If you did that salaried GPs would end up on £500k a year
We’d get much better people if these kinds of roles paid more.
As another example, in the Civil Service I’d have a software engineering role at £100K a year or more, that’s more in line with the private sector.
Same for politicians, I would pay them a lot more.
Taxpayers should not be forking out a fortune for public servants, if they want to earn top dollar they can go into the private sector and face the full pressures of the free market and try and get to the top of the tree there and earn it
Problem is you just don't get enough people to do sometimes vital jobs otherwise. It's all very well telling them to bugger off, and you can manage that for quite some time, but in specialist roles you will eventually end up with not enough people who are do it, especially in things like councils where they compete with one another for limited pools of social workers etc.
The average public sector worker still earns more than the average private sector worker
That's an example of a misleading statistic. Consider a hospital. To cut costs the hospital outsources its cleaning and catering services to private contractors. So we now have a hospital that directly employs doctors (paid £££), nurses (paid ££) and administration staff (paid £) who are considered public sector workers, and private contractors who employ cleaners and cooks (paid £). On average the public sector staff are paid more than the private sector staff - but of course they are.
What is relevant is to do a like-for-like comparison. How much are teachers paid in private schools compared to state schools? What about nurses in private or state hospitals? Or, as much discussed recently, IT professionals in the civil service compared to the private sector?
Those sorts of comparisons show a different picture to the overall averages, and of course they do, because we can see there is a recruitment crisis in many of these sorts of public sector jobs.
Back when I worked in the public sector our union would respond to irate members unhappy with the latest pay offer by pointing out that management didn't think that the organisation had a recruitment and retention problem, and so revealed preference demonstrated that pay was good enough, making it difficult to achieve better pay. Bluntly, they said that they wouldn't be able to achieve better pay deals until more employees voted with their feet and left for better pay elsewhere.
That has happened in some areas of the public sector. In those cases you don't really have any option but to pay more. Now, there's a whole heap of arguments about how you'd raise the money to pay for it, and how best to organise the staff you'd recruit with higher wages to get the most out of them. But if you want the state to perform certain functions, then you have to pay enough to recruit qualified staff to do that.
The public sector could of course follow the private sector with more performance related pay, easier firings if they don't perform and no final salary pensions at all but I doubt that would be all that popular
Assuming that performance related pay for adequate performance would match or exceed inflation, with above inflation pay rises for the high performing, then i suspect the vast majority of the public sector would lap it up.
Final salary pensions haven’t existed for a few years now.
I agree with this on sacking people (try sacking a crap doctor - impossible!) but this is also true in large organisations. I heard similar stories from friends who work for Shell for example
I agree - in part - with @HYUFD’s realpolitik take. Assad is a horrendous c*nt but it it arguable that those most likely to replace him - extreme jihadis like ISIS 2.0 - will be even worse. Especially for women in Syria
We must be careful what we wish for. If ISIS & co do seize the whole country that is likely to destabilise the entire region even more than it is already as they will seek to export their violent revolution to neighbouring countries and to use Syria as a launchpad to attack the west
I can foresee more regional wars in MENA and western troops back in Syria to crush ISIS
Or we will pay Israel to level the entire country
It also means millions more Syrian refugees fleeing a new Taliban
People fled Syria to escape the Assad regime in far greater numbers than they are to escape the advance of the HTS rebels. So far the only people fleeing the HTS advance have been Alawites in Homs. Turkey, for example, may believe that a defeat for Assad would enable many of the Syrian refugees in Turkey to return to Syria.
It’s gonna be the Taliban but in Syria
I really really really hope I’m wrong
Yup. The Middle East appears to be entirely populated by nutters. Every time a murderous despot is removed, someone even more murderous appears in their place.
There was some American senator asked gow he would solve the problem of the Middle East who, only half in jest, suggested carpet bombing from the Jordan to the Indus. At the very least, you can see why. You just want to shout at these places "Just be normal!"
Understanding that most of the 20th/21st century ME despots were created, armed and supported in their despotism by some combination of us the US or France.
Islam has been violently aggressive since its inception. It is the religion of conquest and the sword. Literally of jihad
It didn’t expand from a few tribes near Mecca to taking over Arabia and half of north Africa and then chunks of Europe and Asia in about two centuries by the gentle use of missionaries
It wasn't in the mid 20th century what it is today.
Pan Arab nationalism was a moderating force, Iran was a moderate-ish force. Afghanistan's communist government was yes communist but also moderate. Iraq pre-Bathists was moderate. Syria had a 'democracy' etc. Yes I'm cherry picking.
Robert Fisk seemed to think the extreme religiosity rose out of the political impotence of the masses. I agree with this. Arab nationalism came first to the 20th century but was squashed in favour of pliant despots so now we get extremism. Some of which we trained, armed and inflicted on the continent.
So of course it’s all our fault. No it’s bollocks. Islam was born in violence has always been violent and has now found a new way to be violent. The west is almost incidental. It wasn’t the west which told the Mughals to invade India and build enormous pyramids of Hindi skulls - hence the great hatred for Islam in much of India today
You get what you put in. Repress a population in the ME and they will turn to extremism to resist. We've seen it in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan etc the rebels turn to extreme ideologies.
That Islam is an outlet for the oppressed and it is something the west has cultivated, both can be true.
Believe what you want about Islam but I'd wager Christian nations have killed significantly more over the last century. And this happens to be the one we're living in.
The flag of Mompox is the same as Switzerland. Interesting.
I’m really tempted to come back for, say, a month. I wonder what it would do to me
In some ways it is utterly boring. All you do is sit in rocking chairs and stare at the river. Or you get on the river and go look at the very beautiful birdlife in the wetlands - then you come back and grab a beer or a lulo juice or a fat gin and tonic - and you sit in a rocking chair and stare at the river
There’s nothing else to do. The food is pleasant but no more. The fruit is sensational. You can buy a decent Malbec in the one super market
There’s a massive fucking owl in the main square next to the motherfucking ginormous iguana by the church
Doctors in general get paid absolutely nothing in this country. Similar to the Civil Service I would be increasing salaries substantially and we’d get better people.
£100K a year or more for a junior doctor would be a good start.
Why on earth should taxpayers pay a junior doctor starting out £100k a year? If you did that salaried GPs would end up on £500k a year
We’d get much better people if these kinds of roles paid more.
As another example, in the Civil Service I’d have a software engineering role at £100K a year or more, that’s more in line with the private sector.
Same for politicians, I would pay them a lot more.
Taxpayers should not be forking out a fortune for public servants, if they want to earn top dollar they can go into the private sector and face the full pressures of the free market and try and get to the top of the tree there and earn it
Problem is you just don't get enough people to do sometimes vital jobs otherwise. It's all very well telling them to bugger off, and you can manage that for quite some time, but in specialist roles you will eventually end up with not enough people who are do it, especially in things like councils where they compete with one another for limited pools of social workers etc.
The average public sector worker still earns more than the average private sector worker
That's an example of a misleading statistic. Consider a hospital. To cut costs the hospital outsources its cleaning and catering services to private contractors. So we now have a hospital that directly employs doctors (paid £££), nurses (paid ££) and administration staff (paid £) who are considered public sector workers, and private contractors who employ cleaners and cooks (paid £). On average the public sector staff are paid more than the private sector staff - but of course they are.
What is relevant is to do a like-for-like comparison. How much are teachers paid in private schools compared to state schools? What about nurses in private or state hospitals? Or, as much discussed recently, IT professionals in the civil service compared to the private sector?
Those sorts of comparisons show a different picture to the overall averages, and of course they do, because we can see there is a recruitment crisis in many of these sorts of public sector jobs.
Back when I worked in the public sector our union would respond to irate members unhappy with the latest pay offer by pointing out that management didn't think that the organisation had a recruitment and retention problem, and so revealed preference demonstrated that pay was good enough, making it difficult to achieve better pay. Bluntly, they said that they wouldn't be able to achieve better pay deals until more employees voted with their feet and left for better pay elsewhere.
That has happened in some areas of the public sector. In those cases you don't really have any option but to pay more. Now, there's a whole heap of arguments about how you'd raise the money to pay for it, and how best to organise the staff you'd recruit with higher wages to get the most out of them. But if you want the state to perform certain functions, then you have to pay enough to recruit qualified staff to do that.
The public sector could of course follow the private sector with more performance related pay, easier firings if they don't perform and no final salary pensions at all but I doubt that would be all that popular
Once again you betray your crass ignorance of how “the public sector” works. PRP is quite common in local councils but budget constraints often mean there’s little or no reward for going above and beyond. Indeed, most local councils rely on unpaid overtime (“goodwill”) to keep essential services running.
The old chestnut that public sector workers can’t be fired rears its ugly head. Restructuring in local Government is almost continuous - it often means jobs are lost or “downgraded” which is in effect a pay cut as you are expected to do more for less.
As for pensions, it’s another old chestnut. It’s been long regarded as part of recruitment and retention in local Government.
The flag of Mompox is the same as Switzerland. Interesting.
I’m really tempted to come back for, say, a month. I wonder what it would do to me
In some ways it is utterly boring. All you do is sit in rocking chairs and stare at the river. Or you get on the river and go look at the very beautiful birdlife in the wetlands - then you come back and grab a beer or a lulo juice or a fat gin and tonic - and you sit in a rocking chair and stare at the river
There’s nothing else to do. The food is pleasant but no more. The fruit is sensational. You can buy a decent Malbec in the one super market
There’s a massive fucking owl in the main square next to the motherfucking ginormous iguana by the church
Killer of diabetics. Convinced his course participants to put themselves in pre-insulin days, when Type I was a death sentence. Ooof. :
An alternative healer has been jailed for 10 years for the manslaughter of a 71-year-old diabetic woman who stopped taking insulin at his slapping therapy workshop.
Danielle Carr-Gomm died in October 2016 while taking part in the Paida Lajin therapy event, which sees patients being slapped or slapping themselves repeatedly.
Hongchi Xiao, of Cloudbreak, California, was convicted by a jury in July at Winchester Crown Court of manslaughter by gross negligence after he failed to get medical help for Ms Carr-Gomm at the event in Wiltshire.
He was also sentenced to a further five years on extended licence after his time in prison.
The 61-year-old was extradited for the trial from Australia, where he had previously been prosecuted after a six-year-old boy also died when his parents withdrew his insulin medication after attending the defendant's workshop in Sydney.
Mr Justice Bright added Xiao will be liable to be deported to America after serving his sentence. ... Ms Carr-Gomm believed it worked and delivered glowing testimonials, the court previously heard.
The court heard that Xiao said "well done" to Ms Carr-Gomm, after she told the participants that she had stopped taking her insulin at the week-long retreat.
By the third day "she was vomiting, tired and weak, and by the evening she was howling in pain and unable to respond to questions", prosecutor Duncan Atkinson KC said.
Ms Carr-Gomm, who was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 1999, was "howling in pain" and "frothing at the mouth" as she became seriously ill before she died on the fourth day of the workshop. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1el71pq2e1o
What could have caused that? Coming off insulin is dangerous for a Type 1 diabetic - eventually it will cause diabetic ketoacidosis, but howling in pain and foaming at the mouth after being off insulin for less than a week seems odd.
It's worth a read of the longish piece.
By leading her to stop her treatment, he put her back in the situation she was in at diagnosis. Eating food, but no insulin being generated to metabolise it, so potentially extreme hyperglycaemia and DKA.
Desperate thirst, vomiting, tiredness, incoherence are normal symptoms. Pain can also be a symptom.
When I was diagnosed I was fortunately in a studio flat in the attic of a shared house, but I was stubborn and lasted about 4-5 days. By the end I was drinking 4 or 5 litres of water, and could not keep that or food down. It was just a stomach bug that happened to attack the pancreas. But I had other people there, who called an ambulance when I finally said I needed one.
Medically she was off insulin for several days, and (I assume) eating fairly normally, it would go really high. By several days, most people would have called an ambulance and be in an acute or intensive care ward, and take days or a week to stabilise.
She was also in an abusive, cultish situation, thoroughly brainwashed and vulnerable - more so because of her needle-phobia, with a 'therapist' (ie self-believing guru) who had lead her to stop the insulin, who was running a course where the therapy was to slap and beat the toxins out of the body. In that setup, calling emergency medics would be resisted, and the mindset may have been "we're not trying hard enough" - that is, more slapping and stretching.
She was also 71, having been diagnosed at age 46, and possibly physically weak - so less resilient. Falling off the diabetic wagon is always a descending spiral which is hard to recognise and to stop. Her phobia and the abusive situation would make it psychologically really difficult - no one there willing or equipped to call halt or bullshit.
One of the saddest stories I have heard.
Here's an account of someone from the BBC who did one of these slapping and stretching sessions, called Paida Lajin.
I agree - in part - with @HYUFD’s realpolitik take. Assad is a horrendous c*nt but it it arguable that those most likely to replace him - extreme jihadis like ISIS 2.0 - will be even worse. Especially for women in Syria
We must be careful what we wish for. If ISIS & co do seize the whole country that is likely to destabilise the entire region even more than it is already as they will seek to export their violent revolution to neighbouring countries and to use Syria as a launchpad to attack the west
I can foresee more regional wars in MENA and western troops back in Syria to crush ISIS
Or we will pay Israel to level the entire country
It also means millions more Syrian refugees fleeing a new Taliban
People fled Syria to escape the Assad regime in far greater numbers than they are to escape the advance of the HTS rebels. So far the only people fleeing the HTS advance have been Alawites in Homs. Turkey, for example, may believe that a defeat for Assad would enable many of the Syrian refugees in Turkey to return to Syria.
It’s gonna be the Taliban but in Syria
I really really really hope I’m wrong
Yup. The Middle East appears to be entirely populated by nutters. Every time a murderous despot is removed, someone even more murderous appears in their place.
There was some American senator asked gow he would solve the problem of the Middle East who, only half in jest, suggested carpet bombing from the Jordan to the Indus. At the very least, you can see why. You just want to shout at these places "Just be normal!"
Understanding that most of the 20th/21st century ME despots were created, armed and supported in their despotism by some combination of us the US or France.
Islam has been violently aggressive since its inception. It is the religion of conquest and the sword. Literally of jihad
It didn’t expand from a few tribes near Mecca to taking over Arabia and half of north Africa and then chunks of Europe and Asia in about two centuries by the gentle use of missionaries
It wasn't in the mid 20th century what it is today.
Pan Arab nationalism was a moderating force, Iran was a moderate-ish force. Afghanistan's communist government was yes communist but also moderate. Iraq pre-Bathists was moderate. Syria had a 'democracy' etc. Yes I'm cherry picking.
Robert Fisk seemed to think the extreme religiosity rose out of the political impotence of the masses. I agree with this. Arab nationalism came first to the 20th century but was squashed in favour of pliant despots so now we get extremism. Some of which we trained, armed and inflicted on the continent.
So of course it’s all our fault. No it’s bollocks. Islam was born in violence has always been violent and has now found a new way to be violent. The west is almost incidental. It wasn’t the west which told the Mughals to invade India and build enormous pyramids of Hindi skulls - hence the great hatred for Islam in much of India today
You get what you put in. Repress a population in the ME and they will turn to extremism to resist. We've seen it in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan etc the rebels turn to extreme ideologies.
That Islam is an outlet for the oppressed and it is something the west has cultivated, both can be true.
Believe what you want about Islam but I'd wager Christian nations have killed significantly more over the last century. And this happens to be the one we're living in.
There are people who tip their time into that sort of argument. It's as useful as counting how many baked beans are in a tin.
It also runs into the objections from the Dawkinsite and similar lobbies of teenage logic-choppers that the West is secular not Christian since some ill-determined date in the past when church attendance fell below 50% .
I agree - in part - with @HYUFD’s realpolitik take. Assad is a horrendous c*nt but it it arguable that those most likely to replace him - extreme jihadis like ISIS 2.0 - will be even worse. Especially for women in Syria
We must be careful what we wish for. If ISIS & co do seize the whole country that is likely to destabilise the entire region even more than it is already as they will seek to export their violent revolution to neighbouring countries and to use Syria as a launchpad to attack the west
I can foresee more regional wars in MENA and western troops back in Syria to crush ISIS
Or we will pay Israel to level the entire country
It also means millions more Syrian refugees fleeing a new Taliban
People fled Syria to escape the Assad regime in far greater numbers than they are to escape the advance of the HTS rebels. So far the only people fleeing the HTS advance have been Alawites in Homs. Turkey, for example, may believe that a defeat for Assad would enable many of the Syrian refugees in Turkey to return to Syria.
It’s gonna be the Taliban but in Syria
I really really really hope I’m wrong
Yup. The Middle East appears to be entirely populated by nutters. Every time a murderous despot is removed, someone even more murderous appears in their place.
There was some American senator asked gow he would solve the problem of the Middle East who, only half in jest, suggested carpet bombing from the Jordan to the Indus. At the very least, you can see why. You just want to shout at these places "Just be normal!"
Understanding that most of the 20th/21st century ME despots were created, armed and supported in their despotism by some combination of us the US or France.
Islam has been violently aggressive since its inception. It is the religion of conquest and the sword. Literally of jihad
It didn’t expand from a few tribes near Mecca to taking over Arabia and half of north Africa and then chunks of Europe and Asia in about two centuries by the gentle use of missionaries
It wasn't in the mid 20th century what it is today.
Pan Arab nationalism was a moderating force, Iran was a moderate-ish force. Afghanistan's communist government was yes communist but also moderate. Iraq pre-Bathists was moderate. Syria had a 'democracy' etc. Yes I'm cherry picking.
Robert Fisk seemed to think the extreme religiosity rose out of the political impotence of the masses. I agree with this. Arab nationalism came first to the 20th century but was squashed in favour of pliant despots so now we get extremism. Some of which we trained, armed and inflicted on the continent.
So of course it’s all our fault. No it’s bollocks. Islam was born in violence has always been violent and has now found a new way to be violent. The west is almost incidental. It wasn’t the west which told the Mughals to invade India and build enormous pyramids of Hindi skulls - hence the great hatred for Islam in much of India today
You get what you put in. Repress a population in the ME and they will turn to extremism to resist. We've seen it in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan etc the rebels turn to extreme ideologies.
That Islam is an outlet for the oppressed and it is something the west has cultivated, both can be true.
Believe what you want about Islam but I'd wager Christian nations have killed significantly more over the last century. And this happens to be the one we're living in.
Jihadist Islam has been around for centuries, idiots like you will only learn once you are living under Sharia law
Doctors in general get paid absolutely nothing in this country. Similar to the Civil Service I would be increasing salaries substantially and we’d get better people.
£100K a year or more for a junior doctor would be a good start.
Why on earth should taxpayers pay a junior doctor starting out £100k a year? If you did that salaried GPs would end up on £500k a year
We’d get much better people if these kinds of roles paid more.
As another example, in the Civil Service I’d have a software engineering role at £100K a year or more, that’s more in line with the private sector.
Same for politicians, I would pay them a lot more.
Taxpayers should not be forking out a fortune for public servants, if they want to earn top dollar they can go into the private sector and face the full pressures of the free market and try and get to the top of the tree there and earn it
Problem is you just don't get enough people to do sometimes vital jobs otherwise. It's all very well telling them to bugger off, and you can manage that for quite some time, but in specialist roles you will eventually end up with not enough people who are do it, especially in things like councils where they compete with one another for limited pools of social workers etc.
The average public sector worker still earns more than the average private sector worker
That's an example of a misleading statistic. Consider a hospital. To cut costs the hospital outsources its cleaning and catering services to private contractors. So we now have a hospital that directly employs doctors (paid £££), nurses (paid ££) and administration staff (paid £) who are considered public sector workers, and private contractors who employ cleaners and cooks (paid £). On average the public sector staff are paid more than the private sector staff - but of course they are.
What is relevant is to do a like-for-like comparison. How much are teachers paid in private schools compared to state schools? What about nurses in private or state hospitals? Or, as much discussed recently, IT professionals in the civil service compared to the private sector?
Those sorts of comparisons show a different picture to the overall averages, and of course they do, because we can see there is a recruitment crisis in many of these sorts of public sector jobs.
Back when I worked in the public sector our union would respond to irate members unhappy with the latest pay offer by pointing out that management didn't think that the organisation had a recruitment and retention problem, and so revealed preference demonstrated that pay was good enough, making it difficult to achieve better pay. Bluntly, they said that they wouldn't be able to achieve better pay deals until more employees voted with their feet and left for better pay elsewhere.
That has happened in some areas of the public sector. In those cases you don't really have any option but to pay more. Now, there's a whole heap of arguments about how you'd raise the money to pay for it, and how best to organise the staff you'd recruit with higher wages to get the most out of them. But if you want the state to perform certain functions, then you have to pay enough to recruit qualified staff to do that.
The public sector could of course follow the private sector with more performance related pay, easier firings if they don't perform and no final salary pensions at all but I doubt that would be all that popular
Assuming that performance related pay for adequate performance would match or exceed inflation, with above inflation pay rises for the high performing, then i suspect the vast majority of the public sector would lap it up.
Final salary pensions haven’t existed for a few years now.
I agree with this on sacking people (try sacking a crap doctor - impossible!) but this is also true in large organisations. I heard similar stories from friends who work for Shell for example
For those not performing pay would not rise with inflation but stay the same.
There are plenty still working in the public sector with final salary pensions.
England piling on the runs in Wellington having bowled out the home side for 125 this morning.
Currently lead approaching 320 so may be a declaration at say 500 ahead and the Kiwis will have to perform far better with the bat to see out three full days.
I agree - in part - with @HYUFD’s realpolitik take. Assad is a horrendous c*nt but it it arguable that those most likely to replace him - extreme jihadis like ISIS 2.0 - will be even worse. Especially for women in Syria
We must be careful what we wish for. If ISIS & co do seize the whole country that is likely to destabilise the entire region even more than it is already as they will seek to export their violent revolution to neighbouring countries and to use Syria as a launchpad to attack the west
I can foresee more regional wars in MENA and western troops back in Syria to crush ISIS
Or we will pay Israel to level the entire country
It also means millions more Syrian refugees fleeing a new Taliban
People fled Syria to escape the Assad regime in far greater numbers than they are to escape the advance of the HTS rebels. So far the only people fleeing the HTS advance have been Alawites in Homs. Turkey, for example, may believe that a defeat for Assad would enable many of the Syrian refugees in Turkey to return to Syria.
It’s gonna be the Taliban but in Syria
I really really really hope I’m wrong
Yup. The Middle East appears to be entirely populated by nutters. Every time a murderous despot is removed, someone even more murderous appears in their place.
There was some American senator asked gow he would solve the problem of the Middle East who, only half in jest, suggested carpet bombing from the Jordan to the Indus. At the very least, you can see why. You just want to shout at these places "Just be normal!"
Understanding that most of the 20th/21st century ME despots were created, armed and supported in their despotism by some combination of us the US or France.
Islam has been violently aggressive since its inception. It is the religion of conquest and the sword. Literally of jihad
It didn’t expand from a few tribes near Mecca to taking over Arabia and half of north Africa and then chunks of Europe and Asia in about two centuries by the gentle use of missionaries
It wasn't in the mid 20th century what it is today.
Pan Arab nationalism was a moderating force, Iran was a moderate-ish force. Afghanistan's communist government was yes communist but also moderate. Iraq pre-Bathists was moderate. Syria had a 'democracy' etc. Yes I'm cherry picking.
Robert Fisk seemed to think the extreme religiosity rose out of the political impotence of the masses. I agree with this. Arab nationalism came first to the 20th century but was squashed in favour of pliant despots so now we get extremism. Some of which we trained, armed and inflicted on the continent.
So of course it’s all our fault. No it’s bollocks. Islam was born in violence has always been violent and has now found a new way to be violent. The west is almost incidental. It wasn’t the west which told the Mughals to invade India and build enormous pyramids of Hindi skulls - hence the great hatred for Islam in much of India today
You get what you put in. Repress a population in the ME and they will turn to extremism to resist. We've seen it in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan etc the rebels turn to extreme ideologies.
That Islam is an outlet for the oppressed and it is something the west has cultivated, both can be true.
Believe what you want about Islam but I'd wager Christian nations have killed significantly more over the last century. And this happens to be the one we're living in.
There are people who tip their time into that sort of argument. It's as useful as counting how many baked beans are in a tin.
It also runs into the objections from the Dawkinsite and similar lobbies of teenage logic-choppers that the West is secular not Christian since some ill-determined date in the past when church attendance fell below 50% .
Interesting though. How do we separate the intrinsic nature of an ideology from the environment and needs of the believer?
Didn't Cameron claim we're still a Christian nation? I'm not sure he showed his workings.
The flag of Mompox is the same as Switzerland. Interesting.
I’m really tempted to come back for, say, a month. I wonder what it would do to me
In some ways it is utterly boring. All you do is sit in rocking chairs and stare at the river. Or you get on the river and go look at the very beautiful birdlife in the wetlands - then you come back and grab a beer or a lulo juice or a fat gin and tonic - and you sit in a rocking chair and stare at the river
There’s nothing else to do. The food is pleasant but no more. The fruit is sensational. You can buy a decent Malbec in the one super market
There’s a massive fucking owl in the main square next to the motherfucking ginormous iguana by the church
I guess I’d rent a rocking chair for a month?
I bet if you stayed that long you would probably catch Mompox
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
I think the answer to your question is no. The nearest that I can find is Israel.
In 1992 the fertility rate in Israel had declined to 2.7, but the most recent figure is 2.89 (for 2022). This increase is far too small to stabilise the population in most of the countries where the fertility rate is below replacement level, but it is an increase, and Israel's fertility rate is notably above the replacement level.
One large part of it is that ultra-orthodox women have an average of 6.6 children each, but secular women still have an average of 2.0, well above rates in other developed countries. A person might reasonably argue that humanity will die out unless it can find its religious belief again. Which would be an uncomfortable conclusion for an atheist father of one to come to.
Except that even quite religious countries are seeing birth rate declines
Iran, Malaysia, etc. All of Latin America
Religion is part of the explanation but there is much more at work
Some decades ago, when I studied demography at Cambridge, the academics’ favoured theory was that it mostly came down to economics. If having an extra child was a net economic benefit to the parents (as was often the case, for example, in pre-mechanisation farming communities) then they would have more children, and if it was a net economic cost, they wouldn’t.
I remember ploughing through lots of historical examples and recall a particular article that mostly consisted of formulae.
Whether this is still the favoured theory, I don’t know, but when you look at the costs that many parents take on my having a child in the modern world - from childcare through student fees and eventually helping them onto the housing market - perhaps it isn’t surprising that they are going out of fashion?
Snake oil extends beyond slapping for diabetes, but this line stands out: She had been diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a hormonal condition that affects about one in 10 women, but she struggled to get medical help.
It does not help that both the cause and cure are unknown.
MPs claim £300,000 for energy bills amid winter fuel payment cut ... Thirty-six current Labour ministers – including the Chancellor Rachel Reeves – have claimed for their gas and electricity costs on expenses, according to analysis. https://inews.co.uk/news/winter-fuel-payment-mps-claim-energy-bills-3413344 (£££)
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
Maybe France.
Meloni in Italy is also trying and with VP elect Vance's jibe against childless cat ladies and the GOP moves to restrict abortion and support the family I suspect they will try as well
Many places try. Few succeed. Because the only way you can encourage future birth rates is to divert resources, whether private or public, towards the young. And noone has those resources to spend on the future anymore because, private or public, they're all going on post-retirement old people in the present.
Hardly, the government has just slashed WFA.
If fewer women worked full time, marriage was encouraged and grew, abortions became less common etc then birthrates would also rise accordingly
Well yes. But kept the triple lock, and house prices continue to increase. We are still seeing a transfer of wealth from young to old. But that's not the point: regardless of state micromanagement, we have far more old people alive, who, if they are not working, must be provided for. This can be done throigh the state or through their own savings or through family support. Different models exist. But all of them entail resources not being put into enabling the next generation. It's not a matter of government policy. It's that so many more pensioners exist than was previously the case. That is common to every society on earth, whether collectivist or individualist, secular or religious. And on every single society on earth, birth rates are falling. It is simlle cause and effect: more pensioners results in fewer babies.
As I already said house prices are linked to the high number of women working full time (making more joint incomes for mortgages), plus excess immigration as much as homes built.
Pensioners did their duty, worked and had their 2.4 children and more of their women looked after the children and fewer worked full time so often only the husband's salary was needed to buy the home. If the younger generation don't so much it is their fault not pensioners .
So yet again in this thread, you think it is the fault, and responsibility, of women. Women are not having enough babies, and they should be forced to.
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
I think the answer to your question is no. The nearest that I can find is Israel.
In 1992 the fertility rate in Israel had declined to 2.7, but the most recent figure is 2.89 (for 2022). This increase is far too small to stabilise the population in most of the countries where the fertility rate is below replacement level, but it is an increase, and Israel's fertility rate is notably above the replacement level.
One large part of it is that ultra-orthodox women have an average of 6.6 children each, but secular women still have an average of 2.0, well above rates in other developed countries. A person might reasonably argue that humanity will die out unless it can find its religious belief again. Which would be an uncomfortable conclusion for an atheist father of one to come to.
Except that even quite religious countries are seeing birth rate declines
Iran, Malaysia, etc. All of Latin America
Religion is part of the explanation but there is much more at work
Some decades ago, when I studied demography at Cambridge, the academics’ favoured theory was that it mostly came down to economics. If having an extra child was a net economic benefit to the parents (as was often the case, for example, in pre-mechanisation farming communities) then they would have more children, and if it was a net economic cost, they wouldn’t.
I remember ploughing through lots of historical examples and recall a particular article that mostly consisted of formulae.
Whether this is still the favoured theory, I don’t know, but when you look at the costs that many parents take on my having a child in the modern world - from childcare through student fees and eventually helping them onto the housing market - perhaps it isn’t surprising that they are going out of fashion?
I suspect there is much truth in this. My wife and I have three children, because we are well off and can afford it easily. I'm not sure we would have had three otherwise. My parents had three by accident (I was the accident!) and it was always hard for them financially. Of course there are other factors at work. Children are hard work (I'm up before 6 to drive two hours to pick up my daughter and all her stuff after her first term at university) and not everyone wants that kind of grind for twenty-odd years. The payoffs are spectacular though, if you want to put the work in.
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
Maybe France.
Meloni in Italy is also trying and with VP elect Vance's jibe against childless cat ladies and the GOP moves to restrict abortion and support the family I suspect they will try as well
Many places try. Few succeed. Because the only way you can encourage future birth rates is to divert resources, whether private or public, towards the young. And noone has those resources to spend on the future anymore because, private or public, they're all going on post-retirement old people in the present.
Hardly, the government has just slashed WFA.
If fewer women worked full time, marriage was encouraged and grew, abortions became less common etc then birthrates would also rise accordingly
Well yes. But kept the triple lock, and house prices continue to increase. We are still seeing a transfer of wealth from young to old. But that's not the point: regardless of state micromanagement, we have far more old people alive, who, if they are not working, must be provided for. This can be done throigh the state or through their own savings or through family support. Different models exist. But all of them entail resources not being put into enabling the next generation. It's not a matter of government policy. It's that so many more pensioners exist than was previously the case. That is common to every society on earth, whether collectivist or individualist, secular or religious. And on every single society on earth, birth rates are falling. It is simlle cause and effect: more pensioners results in fewer babies.
As I already said house prices are linked to the high number of women working full time (making more joint incomes for mortgages), plus excess immigration as much as homes built.
Pensioners did their duty, worked and had their 2.4 children and more of their women looked after the children and fewer worked full time so often only the husband's salary was needed to buy the home. If the younger generation don't so much it is their fault not pensioners .
So yet again in this thread, you think it is the fault, and responsibility, of women. Women are not having enough babies, and they should be forced to.
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
Its easy to do, look at footballers, married & children by 25-30. The UK's declining opportunity and increasing precarity does not incentivise children.
And yet most places who have tried to do it have failed. Assuming we cannot turn everyone into a professional footballer, what else might be tried when tax breaks and incentives seem to cause temporary blips only?
I would provide baby bonuses to dating websites.
At the moment their incentives are all wrong - if they find you a great match that you stay together with for life then they've lost a customer. Provide them with the incentive to find people lifelong partners they want to start a family with, and then, if anyone can find a way to increase the birth rate, they will.
The problem is then they'd just concentrate on men who just want to impregnate women.
We really need men to change their attitudes: we are not going back to the bad old days when men ruled the family with an iron fist; where there was no contraception, and abortions were available but very dangerous (*). However much some may want that. So men need to man up and take their responsibilities seriously.
(*) Yes, they were. Ban abortion, and you will get the back-street abortionist popping up again, and many women dying.
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
Its easy to do, look at footballers, married & children by 25-30. The UK's declining opportunity and increasing precarity does not incentivise children.
And yet most places who have tried to do it have failed. Assuming we cannot turn everyone into a professional footballer, what else might be tried when tax breaks and incentives seem to cause temporary blips only?
Well you could make women working full time illegal from 25 to 50, albeit that would be very illiberal and would never happen it would certainly raise the birthrate
Why not make men working full time illegal from 25 to 50, so they can look after their kids?
To the posters who seem to think this is a problem: @HYUFD ; @Leon ; @Casino_Royale : how many kids do you have, and how much parenting did you do for all of them?
I agree - in part - with @HYUFD’s realpolitik take. Assad is a horrendous c*nt but it it arguable that those most likely to replace him - extreme jihadis like ISIS 2.0 - will be even worse. Especially for women in Syria
We must be careful what we wish for. If ISIS & co do seize the whole country that is likely to destabilise the entire region even more than it is already as they will seek to export their violent revolution to neighbouring countries and to use Syria as a launchpad to attack the west
I can foresee more regional wars in MENA and western troops back in Syria to crush ISIS
Or we will pay Israel to level the entire country
It also means millions more Syrian refugees fleeing a new Taliban
People fled Syria to escape the Assad regime in far greater numbers than they are to escape the advance of the HTS rebels. So far the only people fleeing the HTS advance have been Alawites in Homs. Turkey, for example, may believe that a defeat for Assad would enable many of the Syrian refugees in Turkey to return to Syria.
It’s gonna be the Taliban but in Syria
I really really really hope I’m wrong
Yup. The Middle East appears to be entirely populated by nutters. Every time a murderous despot is removed, someone even more murderous appears in their place.
There was some American senator asked gow he would solve the problem of the Middle East who, only half in jest, suggested carpet bombing from the Jordan to the Indus. At the very least, you can see why. You just want to shout at these places "Just be normal!"
Understanding that most of the 20th/21st century ME despots were created, armed and supported in their despotism by some combination of us the US or France.
Islam has been violently aggressive since its inception. It is the religion of conquest and the sword. Literally of jihad
It didn’t expand from a few tribes near Mecca to taking over Arabia and half of north Africa and then chunks of Europe and Asia in about two centuries by the gentle use of missionaries
It wasn't in the mid 20th century what it is today.
Pan Arab nationalism was a moderating force, Iran was a moderate-ish force. Afghanistan's communist government was yes communist but also moderate. Iraq pre-Bathists was moderate. Syria had a 'democracy' etc. Yes I'm cherry picking.
Robert Fisk seemed to think the extreme religiosity rose out of the political impotence of the masses. I agree with this. Arab nationalism came first to the 20th century but was squashed in favour of pliant despots so now we get extremism. Some of which we trained, armed and inflicted on the continent.
So of course it’s all our fault. No it’s bollocks. Islam was born in violence has always been violent and has now found a new way to be violent. The west is almost incidental. It wasn’t the west which told the Mughals to invade India and build enormous pyramids of Hindi skulls - hence the great hatred for Islam in much of India today
The Amritsar massacre says hello.
My religious martyr is your devilish murderer... Across history Islam is not noticeably more violent than -say- the Christian conquistadores- but don't let the facts get in the way of an ignorant Islamaphobic rant.
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
I think the answer to your question is no. The nearest that I can find is Israel.
In 1992 the fertility rate in Israel had declined to 2.7, but the most recent figure is 2.89 (for 2022). This increase is far too small to stabilise the population in most of the countries where the fertility rate is below replacement level, but it is an increase, and Israel's fertility rate is notably above the replacement level.
One large part of it is that ultra-orthodox women have an average of 6.6 children each, but secular women still have an average of 2.0, well above rates in other developed countries. A person might reasonably argue that humanity will die out unless it can find its religious belief again. Which would be an uncomfortable conclusion for an atheist father of one to come to.
Except that even quite religious countries are seeing birth rate declines
Iran, Malaysia, etc. All of Latin America
Religion is part of the explanation but there is much more at work
Some decades ago, when I studied demography at Cambridge, the academics’ favoured theory was that it mostly came down to economics. If having an extra child was a net economic benefit to the parents (as was often the case, for example, in pre-mechanisation farming communities) then they would have more children, and if it was a net economic cost, they wouldn’t.
I remember ploughing through lots of historical examples and recall a particular article that mostly consisted of formulae.
Whether this is still the favoured theory, I don’t know, but when you look at the costs that many parents take on my having a child in the modern world - from childcare through student fees and eventually helping them onto the housing market - perhaps it isn’t surprising that they are going out of fashion?
I suspect there is much truth in this. My wife and I have three children, because we are well off and can afford it easily. I'm not sure we would have had three otherwise. My parents had three by accident (I was the accident!) and it was always hard for them financially. Of course there are other factors at work. Children are hard work (I'm up before 6 to drive two hours to pick up my daughter and all her stuff after her first term at university) and not everyone wants that kind of grind for twenty-odd years. The payoffs are spectacular though, if you want to put the work in.
Thinking about ‘affording’ it is the wrong way about, though. If it were a question of affording it, then wealthier families would have more children - and farm their care out to staff as used to be the historical practice - and poorer families would be childless. Whereas the reality we see is the opposite.
The analysis looks at costs and benefits, across a whole lifetime, in a dispassionate economic way. The myriad costs of having children are mostly obvious. The benefits arise from help around the house, free labour for the farm or business particularly during the teenage years, and care and support during later life. And ultimately having someone to pass property and wealth on to, to keep it in the family. In many societies there is also a benefit in terms of social status (through marriages with other families, for example), and there is an ‘insurance’ benefit from having a large extended family in cultures where they would support a relative who, for example, becomes disabled in the prime of life, and more directly when infant mortality means that having children survive to adulthood is a lottery that encourages people to try for more entries. Theres also a knock-on benefit of the grandchildren in later life, both socially but in many societies economically as well, as another opportunity for free labour or social care.
It’s worth thinking about why it is that in developed societies, poorer families are commonly larger.
As a starter for ten, I’d posit that the lifetime costs of having children are greater for what we would call a middle-class lifestyle, both directly (particularly education, from nursery to university, but also arising from many lifestyle factors) and also indirectly through things like impact on career progression. Whereas the economic benefits are lower, because social norms no longer extract so much free labour from the young - the children of the wealthy will themselves have jobs and careers and won’t be so focused on supporting parents and grandparents - and because society has removed or covered many of the risks that people used large families to ‘insure’ against.
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
Maybe France.
Meloni in Italy is also trying and with VP elect Vance's jibe against childless cat ladies and the GOP moves to restrict abortion and support the family I suspect they will try as well
Many places try. Few succeed. Because the only way you can encourage future birth rates is to divert resources, whether private or public, towards the young. And noone has those resources to spend on the future anymore because, private or public, they're all going on post-retirement old people in the present.
Hardly, the government has just slashed WFA.
If fewer women worked full time, marriage was encouraged and grew, abortions became less common etc then birthrates would also rise accordingly
Well yes. But kept the triple lock, and house prices continue to increase. We are still seeing a transfer of wealth from young to old. But that's not the point: regardless of state micromanagement, we have far more old people alive, who, if they are not working, must be provided for. This can be done throigh the state or through their own savings or through family support. Different models exist. But all of them entail resources not being put into enabling the next generation. It's not a matter of government policy. It's that so many more pensioners exist than was previously the case. That is common to every society on earth, whether collectivist or individualist, secular or religious. And on every single society on earth, birth rates are falling. It is simlle cause and effect: more pensioners results in fewer babies.
As I already said house prices are linked to the high number of women working full time (making more joint incomes for mortgages), plus excess immigration as much as homes built.
Pensioners did their duty, worked and had their 2.4 children and more of their women looked after the children and fewer worked full time so often only the husband's salary was needed to buy the home. If the younger generation don't so much it is their fault not pensioners .
So yet again in this thread, you think it is the fault, and responsibility, of women. Women are not having enough babies, and they should be forced to.
It's perhaps useful to look at TFR by State in the USA to assess the Gilead approach, as we are looking at very similar people's with very similar stages of economic development.
So for example the great number of restrictions on abortion in Texas or Mississipi have not stopped a decline in TFR, which has also occurred in more liberal states like Massachussets. Neither has cheaper house prices done so in places like West Virginia..
I think the decline is mostly down to people having other options in life and choosing those. The decline in percentages of people in romantic or sexual relationships in recent years has also been dramatic, particularly in places like South Korea. More and more people are living atomised lives not relating in any way to others, apart from Social Media.
A total ban on smartphones and Internet might do more for fertility rates than banning abortion or women working outside the home.
Why would a *managed* decline in population be bad? Yes, it somewhat upends existing systems, and the mirage of economic growth would be harder to sustain. But if people end up happier, why would a gentle decline in population be bad?
(You also need to factor in the consequences of an unmanaged decline, forcing women to have more kids (the @HYUFS approach), and importing immigrants as alternatives.)
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
I think the answer to your question is no. The nearest that I can find is Israel.
In 1992 the fertility rate in Israel had declined to 2.7, but the most recent figure is 2.89 (for 2022). This increase is far too small to stabilise the population in most of the countries where the fertility rate is below replacement level, but it is an increase, and Israel's fertility rate is notably above the replacement level.
One large part of it is that ultra-orthodox women have an average of 6.6 children each, but secular women still have an average of 2.0, well above rates in other developed countries. A person might reasonably argue that humanity will die out unless it can find its religious belief again. Which would be an uncomfortable conclusion for an atheist father of one to come to.
Except that even quite religious countries are seeing birth rate declines
Iran, Malaysia, etc. All of Latin America
Religion is part of the explanation but there is much more at work
Some decades ago, when I studied demography at Cambridge, the academics’ favoured theory was that it mostly came down to economics. If having an extra child was a net economic benefit to the parents (as was often the case, for example, in pre-mechanisation farming communities) then they would have more children, and if it was a net economic cost, they wouldn’t.
I remember ploughing through lots of historical examples and recall a particular article that mostly consisted of formulae.
Whether this is still the favoured theory, I don’t know, but when you look at the costs that many parents take on my having a child in the modern world - from childcare through student fees and eventually helping them onto the housing market - perhaps it isn’t surprising that they are going out of fashion?
I suspect there is much truth in this. My wife and I have three children, because we are well off and can afford it easily. I'm not sure we would have had three otherwise. My parents had three by accident (I was the accident!) and it was always hard for them financially. Of course there are other factors at work. Children are hard work (I'm up before 6 to drive two hours to pick up my daughter and all her stuff after her first term at university) and not everyone wants that kind of grind for twenty-odd years. The payoffs are spectacular though, if you want to put the work in.
Thinking about ‘affording’ it is the wrong way about, though. If it were a question of affording it, then wealthier families would have more children - and farm their care out to staff as used to be the historical practice - and poorer families would be childless. Whereas the reality we see is the opposite.
The analysis looks at costs and benefits, across a whole lifetime, in a dispassionate economic way. The myriad costs of having children are mostly obvious. The benefits arise from help around the house, free labour for the farm or business particularly during the teenage years, and care and support during later life. And ultimately having someone to pass property and wealth on to, to keep it in the family. In many societies there is also a benefit in terms of social status (through marriages with other families, for example), and there is an ‘insurance’ benefit from having a large extended family in cultures where they would support a relative who, for example, becomes disabled in the prime of life, and more directly when infant mortality means that having children survive to adulthood is a lottery that encourages people to try for more entries. Theres also a knock-on benefit of the grandchildren in later life, both socially but in many societies economically as well, as another opportunity for free labour or social care.
It’s worth thinking about why it is that in developed societies, poorer families are commonly larger.
As a starter for ten, I’d posit that the lifetime costs of having children are greater for what we would call a middle-class lifestyle, both directly (particularly education, from nursery to university, but also arising from many lifestyle factors) and also indirectly through things like impact on career progression. Whereas the economic benefits are lower, because social norms no longer extract so much free labour from the young - the children of the wealthy will themselves have jobs and careers and won’t be so focused on supporting parents and grandparents - and because society has removed or covered many of the risks that people used large families to ‘insure’ against.
I’d then add a p.s. about the benefits. It’s noticeable that in western economies, it’s the poorer and more vulnerable communities that often retain the sort of extended family networks that middle class folk have lost, atomised in our single or two person households. The term ‘extended family networks’ makes you think of poorer ethnic communities, but the same is true more broadly of the ‘white working class’. If your economic situation is precarious then there is a quantifiable benefit in having connections with a larger number of people who can potentially offer support; there’s also the physical benefit of having younger male relatives on hand as protection against violence or exploitation.
Whereas for richer folk, nowadays they make money from brain work, rather than building up family businesses or estates that benefit from an army of for and strong children and grandchildren. Having children nowadays reduces or inhibits wealth creation for many of the better off, diverting time and resources and holding back careers, particularly by making people more reluctant to move location or take on career or business risk. And the social and financial benefits that the powerful would once have received by marrying off their children well have disappeared, now that children can’t be married off to order.
I agree - in part - with @HYUFD’s realpolitik take. Assad is a horrendous c*nt but it it arguable that those most likely to replace him - extreme jihadis like ISIS 2.0 - will be even worse. Especially for women in Syria
We must be careful what we wish for. If ISIS & co do seize the whole country that is likely to destabilise the entire region even more than it is already as they will seek to export their violent revolution to neighbouring countries and to use Syria as a launchpad to attack the west
I can foresee more regional wars in MENA and western troops back in Syria to crush ISIS
Or we will pay Israel to level the entire country
It also means millions more Syrian refugees fleeing a new Taliban
Except it’s not realpolitik.
HYUFD is literally ignoring the evidence of what’s happening in favour of his own model of what he believes.
Why would a *managed* decline in population be bad? Yes, it somewhat upends existing systems, and the mirage of economic growth would be harder to sustain. But if people end up happier, why would a gentle decline in population be bad?
(You also need to factor in the consequences of an unmanaged decline, forcing women to have more kids (the @HYUFS approach), and importing immigrants as alternatives.)
There are clear implications for how we work and retire, and on economic activity, but overall a declining population stresses the planet less.
A declining fertility rate in the short term does boost economic growth as there are more younger women working full time, at least for a couple of decades. I think this is true of the tiger economies of Asia for example.
Personally, I would like some grandchildren though.
I agree - in part - with @HYUFD’s realpolitik take. Assad is a horrendous c*nt but it it arguable that those most likely to replace him - extreme jihadis like ISIS 2.0 - will be even worse. Especially for women in Syria
We must be careful what we wish for. If ISIS & co do seize the whole country that is likely to destabilise the entire region even more than it is already as they will seek to export their violent revolution to neighbouring countries and to use Syria as a launchpad to attack the west
I can foresee more regional wars in MENA and western troops back in Syria to crush ISIS
Or we will pay Israel to level the entire country
It also means millions more Syrian refugees fleeing a new Taliban
People fled Syria to escape the Assad regime in far greater numbers than they are to escape the advance of the HTS rebels. So far the only people fleeing the HTS advance have been Alawites in Homs. Turkey, for example, may believe that a defeat for Assad would enable many of the Syrian refugees in Turkey to return to Syria.
It’s gonna be the Taliban but in Syria
I really really really hope I’m wrong
Yup. The Middle East appears to be entirely populated by nutters. Every time a murderous despot is removed, someone even more murderous appears in their place.
There was some American senator asked gow he would solve the problem of the Middle East who, only half in jest, suggested carpet bombing from the Jordan to the Indus. At the very least, you can see why. You just want to shout at these places "Just be normal!"
Understanding that most of the 20th/21st century ME despots were created, armed and supported in their despotism by some combination of us the US or France.
Islam has been violently aggressive since its inception. It is the religion of conquest and the sword. Literally of jihad
It didn’t expand from a few tribes near Mecca to taking over Arabia and half of north Africa and then chunks of Europe and Asia in about two centuries by the gentle use of missionaries
It wasn't in the mid 20th century what it is today.
Pan Arab nationalism was a moderating force, Iran was a moderate-ish force. Afghanistan's communist government was yes communist but also moderate. Iraq pre-Bathists was moderate. Syria had a 'democracy' etc. Yes I'm cherry picking.
Robert Fisk seemed to think the extreme religiosity rose out of the political impotence of the masses. I agree with this. Arab nationalism came first to the 20th century but was squashed in favour of pliant despots so now we get extremism. Some of which we trained, armed and inflicted on the continent.
So of course it’s all our fault. No it’s bollocks. Islam was born in violence has always been violent and has now found a new way to be violent. The west is almost incidental. It wasn’t the west which told the Mughals to invade India and build enormous pyramids of Hindi skulls - hence the great hatred for Islam in much of India today
The Amritsar massacre says hello.
My religious martyr is your devilish murderer... Across history Islam is not noticeably more violent than -say- the Christian conquistadores- but don't let the facts get in the way of an ignorant Islamaphobic rant.
All major religions are as much about control as they are about faith. People pretending to represent and talk for God(s), whilst gaining power from controlling the believers.
Some strands of Christianity have moved slightly away from this, but it is still true for many. And the men (and it is nearly always men...) who become the top dog in their religion are therefore those who crave power. And wars are about power.
I agree - in part - with @HYUFD’s realpolitik take. Assad is a horrendous c*nt but it it arguable that those most likely to replace him - extreme jihadis like ISIS 2.0 - will be even worse. Especially for women in Syria
We must be careful what we wish for. If ISIS & co do seize the whole country that is likely to destabilise the entire region even more than it is already as they will seek to export their violent revolution to neighbouring countries and to use Syria as a launchpad to attack the west
I can foresee more regional wars in MENA and western troops back in Syria to crush ISIS
Or we will pay Israel to level the entire country
It also means millions more Syrian refugees fleeing a new Taliban
Except it’s not realpolitik.
HYUFD is literally ignoring the evidence of what’s happening in favour of his own model of what he believes.
It's not as if we can influence what is going on in Syria much in any case, we just need to deal with whatever new regime comes about.
I would suggest positive engagement, at least in the first instance. Any new government (even if Islamist) is likely to need to rebuild the country and want to concentrate on that rather than exporting ideology. It's a rather Faustian bit of Realpolitic to help them, provided they don't support or encourage terrorism on our shores.
Members of the Druze community are tearing down the symbols of the Assad rule in Syria‘s Suwayda province. It is coming to an end here as well. https://x.com/Tendar/status/1865062193659519429
Shortly afterwards, they emphasised they still oppose his impeachment.
The ruling People Power Party leader Han Dong-hoon said President Yoon is no longer eligible to lead the administration and his resignation is inevitable right after the President's public address. https://x.com/yejinjgim/status/1865204637592150082
We’ll find out later this morning how this goes down.
Doctors in general get paid absolutely nothing in this country. Similar to the Civil Service I would be increasing salaries substantially and we’d get better people.
£100K a year or more for a junior doctor would be a good start.
You have no idea. No clue. Why should a junior doctor just put if training earn that much? In the NHS pay increments on a regular basis. That's why starting salaries are used by the unions, as the reality is different after a few years. And no doubt doctors get better with experience. We all do. We have consistently failed to train enough doctors in the UK for a number of reasons. Firstly training them needs training places and that means doctors in hospitals. It's not just uni places. And the doctors have always been careful to keep numbers down too, after all keep supply down keeps the wages high. And no doubt there is an attraction to moving overseas to Aussie or NZ for instance, but higher salaries aren't everything. Taxes, pensions etc are different. So its not as simple as just paying doctors more.
I have a clue thank you, as friends have recently emigrated because the salaries in the NHS are so awful. They get far more abroad.
If we’d have paid them more, they’d have stayed.
It's not just pay though is it? Moving overseas means a different pension and tax system. And for sure working in the NHS right now can be pretty shit. But the answer isn't a ridiculous 300 percent jump in junior doctors starting salary, it's sorting out the NHS. That's fixing infrastructure, getting staffing levels up and all the basics. The Tories have proven over the years that they cannot be trusted to do these basics. But the answer isn't just more pay
Funding is up 20% in real terms and staffing is up 25% in 5 years....productivity is through the floor.
My father has diabetic eye checkups. He also has a cataract which means that their normal camera doesn't work.
The hospital send an appointment for their normal camera, I tell them it won't work, they say come in anyway, we traipse in (I have to book half a day off to get him there) and, Pikachu surprised face, two weeks later I get a letter saying it didn't work and please book an appointment for the more specialised camera.
He's also on the ophthalmology list as he has some macular degeneration, but it turns out they don't share images or results with the diabetic people so even though they use the same specialised camera, they each have to take their own image.
So, 3 visits instead of 1, and also (not that the NHS seem to care) 1 day of my time lost.
Woe betide you if you refuse to play this stupid game, though, as you are then discharged.
I can only imagine that these inefficiencies are absolutely everywhere.
I hear you. This is what my mother wrote in a recent email:
"I have no idea what is happening with cataract surgery. I have short sight, glaucoma, cataracts, and the beginnings of macular. Also Parkinsons affects the small muscles that pull on the lens to focus. The medics I see are highly trained, highly skilled in their areas. And overworked . and fed-up. and they do not talk to one another and I sit in the middle and they appear to contradict one another. All hell breaks out if I dare to ask a question. That is where we are at the moment. There is supposed to be a letter in the post."
Luckily my brother was able to go with her to an appointment and so there seems to be some movement on cataract surgery.
I remember some description of hell being a place where you would sit down for a feast, but you would only have enormous long cutlery to eat with, and so you couldn't feed yourself anything. Heaven would be the same, except that the people at the table would feed each other, with the hilariously long party cutlery. The NHS sounds like hell. Like people frantically trying to race up a down escalator, while tripping each other up and barging each other out of the way.
What the issue is here is not NHS vs Private care, it is medical complexity with multiple long term conditions impacting on one another. Certainly in systems that pay fee for service intervention rates are higher, but that isn't necessarily a good thing, For example cataract surgery could impact on the progression of the macular disease and glaucoma, delivering short term benefit but long term decline. Iatrogenic* disease is not at all unusual.
This is a problem for modern medicine however it is economically structured and delivered. Increasingly the population have multiple conditions simultaneously.
*Iatrogenic disease is that which is caused by medical action, typically 10-15% of hospital admissions and deaths. This occurs everywhere that there is healthcare. Around a quarter of a million deaths per year are iatrogenic in the USA for example, out of 3 million annual deaths.
Why would a *managed* decline in population be bad? Yes, it somewhat upends existing systems, and the mirage of economic growth would be harder to sustain. But if people end up happier, why would a gentle decline in population be bad?
(You also need to factor in the consequences of an unmanaged decline, forcing women to have more kids (the @HYUFS approach), and importing immigrants as alternatives.)
The world as a whole is likely now at ‘peak child’, and global population will level off in coming decades and then may indeed start to drift down.
For the planet, and probably for societies, this is likely to be a good thing. The temporary problem we have is that all the children are in Africa and all the old people are in the developed west. And that relocating the surplus people from the former to the latter doesnt seem to be a popular solution
So we’ve been relocating work from the latter to the former. But that’s now becoming unpopular, too.
I agree - in part - with @HYUFD’s realpolitik take. Assad is a horrendous c*nt but it it arguable that those most likely to replace him - extreme jihadis like ISIS 2.0 - will be even worse. Especially for women in Syria
We must be careful what we wish for. If ISIS & co do seize the whole country that is likely to destabilise the entire region even more than it is already as they will seek to export their violent revolution to neighbouring countries and to use Syria as a launchpad to attack the west
I can foresee more regional wars in MENA and western troops back in Syria to crush ISIS
Or we will pay Israel to level the entire country
It also means millions more Syrian refugees fleeing a new Taliban
Except it’s not realpolitik.
HYUFD is literally ignoring the evidence of what’s happening in favour of his own model of what he believes.
It's not as if we can influence what is going on in Syria much in any case, we just need to deal with whatever new regime comes about.
I would suggest positive engagement, at least in the first instance. Any new government (even if Islamist) is likely to need to rebuild the country and want to concentrate on that rather than exporting ideology. It's a rather Faustian bit of Realpolitic to help them, provided they don't support or encourage terrorism on our shores.
As I said last night, I don't think there will be a singular Syrian government; the various fighting coalitions are too different. There is a common enemy at the moment (now Assad has pi**ed off the Turks), but once Assad has gone, there will be more that divides the groups than unites them. A united Syria would require the men at the top of the groups to agree.
Certainly, I can see the Kurds and others in AANES not wanting to give up their hard-won autonomy. IMV it's probable that AANES splits off from Syria to form a fledgling Kurdistan, with all the problems that would cause.
Though looking at AANES, in my western eyes it seems a better model for the future government of Syria than the other rebel options.
I agree - in part - with @HYUFD’s realpolitik take. Assad is a horrendous c*nt but it it arguable that those most likely to replace him - extreme jihadis like ISIS 2.0 - will be even worse. Especially for women in Syria
We must be careful what we wish for. If ISIS & co do seize the whole country that is likely to destabilise the entire region even more than it is already as they will seek to export their violent revolution to neighbouring countries and to use Syria as a launchpad to attack the west
I can foresee more regional wars in MENA and western troops back in Syria to crush ISIS
Or we will pay Israel to level the entire country
It also means millions more Syrian refugees fleeing a new Taliban
Except it’s not realpolitik.
HYUFD is literally ignoring the evidence of what’s happening in favour of his own model of what he believes.
It's not as if we can influence what is going on in Syria much in any case, we just need to deal with whatever new regime comes about.
I would suggest positive engagement, at least in the first instance. Any new government (even if Islamist) is likely to need to rebuild the country and want to concentrate on that rather than exporting ideology. It's a rather Faustian bit of Realpolitic to help them, provided they don't support or encourage terrorism on our shores.
A point I’ve also made.
Though I note both Israel and the US have intervened against both Iranian and Hezbollah forces in Syria, in the last couple of days, in favour of the insurgency.
One area of potential cooperation with any new government would be against the ISIS remnants, who seem to have rebuilt to some extent, as the Assad regime has weakened..
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
Maybe France.
Meloni in Italy is also trying and with VP elect Vance's jibe against childless cat ladies and the GOP moves to restrict abortion and support the family I suspect they will try as well
Many places try. Few succeed. Because the only way you can encourage future birth rates is to divert resources, whether private or public, towards the young. And noone has those resources to spend on the future anymore because, private or public, they're all going on post-retirement old people in the present.
Hardly, the government has just slashed WFA.
If fewer women worked full time, marriage was encouraged and grew, abortions became less common etc then birthrates would also rise accordingly
Well yes. But kept the triple lock, and house prices continue to increase. We are still seeing a transfer of wealth from young to old. But that's not the point: regardless of state micromanagement, we have far more old people alive, who, if they are not working, must be provided for. This can be done throigh the state or through their own savings or through family support. Different models exist. But all of them entail resources not being put into enabling the next generation. It's not a matter of government policy. It's that so many more pensioners exist than was previously the case. That is common to every society on earth, whether collectivist or individualist, secular or religious. And on every single society on earth, birth rates are falling. It is simlle cause and effect: more pensioners results in fewer babies.
As I already said house prices are linked to the high number of women working full time (making more joint incomes for mortgages), plus excess immigration as much as homes built.
Pensioners did their duty, worked and had their 2.4 children and more of their women looked after the children and fewer worked full time so often only the husband's salary was needed to buy the home. If the younger generation don't so much it is their fault not pensioners .
So yet again in this thread, you think it is the fault, and responsibility, of women. Women are not having enough babies, and they should be forced to.
It's perhaps useful to look at TFR by State in the USA to assess the Gilead approach, as we are looking at very similar people's with very similar stages of economic development.
So for example the great number of restrictions on abortion in Texas or Mississipi have not stopped a decline in TFR, which has also occurred in more liberal states like Massachussets. Neither has cheaper house prices done so in places like West Virginia..
I think the decline is mostly down to people having other options in life and choosing those. The decline in percentages of people in romantic or sexual relationships in recent years has also been dramatic, particularly in places like South Korea. More and more people are living atomised lives not relating in any way to others, apart from Social Media.
A total ban on smartphones and Internet might do more for fertility rates than banning abortion or women working outside the home.
S Korea has its own cultural peculiarities.
At the same time as women have become economically independent, and society has liberalised, a large proportion of young men have conservative patriarchical attitudes that make HYUFD look woke.
They were also among the earliest adopters of the smartphone revolution, so you could still be right.
Along with that, housing costs are brutal, education is high pressure, and work expectations considerably exceed ours.
Has anywhere successfully increased their birthrate in a meaningful and sustained way with political measures?
Genuine question. I know many places are trying to do it, but if ones like China and South Korea are an indication it often does not work.
Maybe France.
Meloni in Italy is also trying and with VP elect Vance's jibe against childless cat ladies and the GOP moves to restrict abortion and support the family I suspect they will try as well
Many places try. Few succeed. Because the only way you can encourage future birth rates is to divert resources, whether private or public, towards the young. And noone has those resources to spend on the future anymore because, private or public, they're all going on post-retirement old people in the present.
Hardly, the government has just slashed WFA.
If fewer women worked full time, marriage was encouraged and grew, abortions became less common etc then birthrates would also rise accordingly
Well yes. But kept the triple lock, and house prices continue to increase. We are still seeing a transfer of wealth from young to old. But that's not the point: regardless of state micromanagement, we have far more old people alive, who, if they are not working, must be provided for. This can be done throigh the state or through their own savings or through family support. Different models exist. But all of them entail resources not being put into enabling the next generation. It's not a matter of government policy. It's that so many more pensioners exist than was previously the case. That is common to every society on earth, whether collectivist or individualist, secular or religious. And on every single society on earth, birth rates are falling. It is simlle cause and effect: more pensioners results in fewer babies.
As I already said house prices are linked to the high number of women working full time (making more joint incomes for mortgages), plus excess immigration as much as homes built.
Pensioners did their duty, worked and had their 2.4 children and more of their women looked after the children and fewer worked full time so often only the husband's salary was needed to buy the home. If the younger generation don't so much it is their fault not pensioners .
So yet again in this thread, you think it is the fault, and responsibility, of women. Women are not having enough babies, and they should be forced to.
It's perhaps useful to look at TFR by State in the USA to assess the Gilead approach, as we are looking at very similar people's with very similar stages of economic development.
So for example the great number of restrictions on abortion in Texas or Mississipi have not stopped a decline in TFR, which has also occurred in more liberal states like Massachussets. Neither has cheaper house prices done so in places like West Virginia..
I think the decline is mostly down to people having other options in life and choosing those. The decline in percentages of people in romantic or sexual relationships in recent years has also been dramatic, particularly in places like South Korea. More and more people are living atomised lives not relating in any way to others, apart from Social Media.
A total ban on smartphones and Internet might do more for fertility rates than banning abortion or women working outside the home.
S Korea has its own cultural peculiarities.
At the same time as women have become economically independent, and society has liberalised, a large proportion of young men have conservative patriarchical attitudes that make HYUFD look woke. They were also among the earliest adopters of the smartphone revolution, so you could still be right.
Hard to tease out cause and effect.
Yes, I can see the perspective of South Korean women. Voluntary enslavement is an unpopular choice.
I have recently read Haidts excellent book: "The Anxious Generation" about the influence of Smartphones on childhood. The evidence of harm is very strong, but I think equally or more so on older folk. The fact that I can lie in bed with a cup of tea arguing social policy with strangers around the world is an option that simply didn't exist 3 decades ago. Instead I would have probably have listened to the radio, or started on the household chores or both.
Connecting online is both the privilege and curse of our modern age. I don't think we have yet learned to se it wisely or critically, hence the influence of drug-addled billionaires and Russian Trolls on our political life.
Despite many of the same political divisions we have, there’s still a strong cultural belief in the “will of the people”, which I don’t think we have to anything like the same extent. This is arguably an expression of it.
Even as national populations decline, the number living in major cities will continue to trend upwards. See Japan for an example.
And countries with a history of migration will grow even as birth rates fall and global populations start to decline. See the UK.
Overall somewhere like London, and its suburbs, will continue to grow in a world where populations are falling. Whereas smaller industrial towns will only prosper if they are within the orbit of another major city )e.g. Manchester). Small towns in Bulgaria will have no people left.
I still think there is policy merit in properly connecting multiple north western cities with the aim of creating something which feels like a single metropolitan area.
The collapse in fertility feels like a part of something bigger. Humanity is exiting stage left because…
Modern gods are no replacement for actual God? I'm not particularly religious but I have always noted that my atheist friends are slightly more miserable than religious or agnostic ones. There's also a lot more childlessness among them than the rest which I think adds to their misery, children, despite the effort, have brought so much joy to my life and to my wife's.
I always wonder what process goes through someone's head that they rule out the idea of God. The universe is such a vast place, filled with infinite wonders, for me, a tiny speck of dust in that great cosmos to say - "I know for a fact that there's nothing out there in this entire universe that could be God" feels completely arrogant and I think that's always been my issue with atheists and I also think that lack of, for better or worse, creativity in their minds makes them dull people.
The world as a whole is likely now at ‘peak child’, and global population will level off in coming decades and then may indeed start to drift down.
For the planet, and probably for societies, this is likely to be a good thing. The temporary problem we have is that all the children are in Africa and all the old people are in the developed west. And that relocating the surplus people from the former to the latter doesnt seem to be a popular solution
So we’ve been relocating work from the latter to the former. But that’s now becoming unpopular, too.
Perhaps we could look at the possibilities of relocating the surplus old people from the latter to the former, then? :-)
Mr. Max, a drunkard may be happier than a sober man. That does not mean whisky is made of wisdom.
The argument of a god is one that must be made by those who believe, not proven false by those who do not. For example, I like F1. I do not watch hockey. I don't have to justify not watching hockey, it's for (if they want to) hockey fans to persuade me it's great. It's entirely legitimate for people ambivalent or who dislike F1 to ask me why I actually like it.
The collapse in fertility feels like a part of something bigger. Humanity is exiting stage left because…
Modern gods are no replacement for actual God? I'm not particularly religious but I have always noted that my atheist friends are slightly more miserable than religious or agnostic ones. There's also a lot more childlessness among them than the rest which I think adds to their misery, children, despite the effort, have brought so much joy to my life and to my wife's.
I always wonder what process goes through someone's head that they rule out the idea of God. The universe is such a vast place, filled with infinite wonders, for me, a tiny speck of dust in that great cosmos to say - "I know for a fact that there's nothing out there in this entire universe that could be God" feels completely arrogant and I think that's always been my issue with atheists and I also think that lack of, for better or worse, creativity in their minds makes them dull people.
I'm atheist, very happy and had two children by the age of 33, just to provide some counterbalance. My wife is similarly atheist.
Also atheism is not about knowing for a fact nothing in the universe that could be considered God. That is a misrepresentation. It means my belief is that is overwhelmingly the most likely outcome. In a similar way someone can be religious but not know that God exists as a fact. You don't call every religious person who admits there is a 0.01% change they are wrong agnostic, not should you with atheists.
Mr. Max, a drunkard may be happier than a sober man. That does not mean whisky is made of wisdom.
The argument of a god is one that must be made by those who believe, not proven false by those who do not. For example, I like F1. I do not watch hockey. I don't have to justify not watching hockey, it's for (if they want to) hockey fans to persuade me it's great. It's entirely legitimate for people ambivalent or who dislike F1 to ask me why I actually like it.
The British teams often get Olympic medals for hockey, so it’s fun to watch for a week or two every four years.
Meanwhile, the last F1 qualifying session of 24 for this season is this afternoon! (14:00GMT).
The world as a whole is likely now at ‘peak child’, and global population will level off in coming decades and then may indeed start to drift down.
For the planet, and probably for societies, this is likely to be a good thing. The temporary problem we have is that all the children are in Africa and all the old people are in the developed west. And that relocating the surplus people from the former to the latter doesnt seem to be a popular solution
So we’ve been relocating work from the latter to the former. But that’s now becoming unpopular, too.
Perhaps we could look at the possibilities of relocating the surplus old people from the latter to the former, then? :-)
I have been musing on retiring to Africa, so perhaps the Golden Marigold Hotel is not such a bad Idea.
A great article here on the decline of dating, which presumably is upstream of fertility for most of us:
Mr. Max, a drunkard may be happier than a sober man. That does not mean whisky is made of wisdom.
The argument of a god is one that must be made by those who believe, not proven false by those who do not. For example, I like F1. I do not watch hockey. I don't have to justify not watching hockey, it's for (if they want to) hockey fans to persuade me it's great. It's entirely legitimate for people ambivalent or who dislike F1 to ask me why I actually like it.
The British teams often get Olympic medals for hockey, so it’s fun to watch for a week or two every four years.
Meanwhile, the last F1 qualifying session of 24 for this season is this afternoon! (14:00GMT).
It'll be interesting to see how the teams stack up. Leclerc's 10 place grid penalty is pretty unlucky, although he had to change batteries way back in Bahrain, so the fact his current set lasted so long is impressive.
And all the others are trending down strongly and will soon also be below replacement level
The UAE and Qatar figures will be a lot higher than those stats for the local Emirati and Qatari populations, are distorted by a lot of temporary immigrant single women who are either young and unmarried, or may have had children in other countries such as India or Philippines.
I’ve seen four children per woman given as an average for Emiratis, which sounds about right.
Comments
If fewer women worked full time, marriage was encouraged and grew, abortions became less common etc then birthrates would also rise accordingly
From the above semi random sample looks like France went up for a bit but is dropping again, and Hungary might be approaching the same thing.
https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate
In 1992 the fertility rate in Israel had declined to 2.7, but the most recent figure is 2.89 (for 2022). This increase is far too small to stabilise the population in most of the countries where the fertility rate is below replacement level, but it is an increase, and Israel's fertility rate is notably above the replacement level.
The Times of Israel has an article from earlier this year (on the midsummer solstice, no less) about it: https://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-birth-rate-remains-highest-in-oecd-by-far-at-2-9-children-per-woman/
One large part of it is that ultra-orthodox women have an average of 6.6 children each, but secular women still have an average of 2.0, well above rates in other developed countries. A person might reasonably argue that humanity will die out unless it can find its religious belief again. Which would be an uncomfortable conclusion for an atheist father of one to come to.
The odd Welsh cider and my wife is teetotal
And you do not need to be nasty and personal when discussing an issue that is a very real problem that will need addressing and no doubt long after my wife and I are happily together in the next life
Iran, Malaysia, etc. All of Latin America
Religion is part of the explanation but there is much more at work
Also known as the Tiger Owl.
Make sure it doesn't eat your face.
The Middle East appears to be entirely populated by nutters. Every time a murderous despot is removed, someone even more murderous appears in their place.
There was some American senator asked gow he would solve the problem of the Middle East who, only half in jest, suggested carpet bombing from the Jordan to the Indus. At the very least, you can see why.
You just want to shout at these places "Just be normal!"
But if Our World in Data is correct ours have been between 1.56-1.58 in the last 4 years, whilst there's has dropped from 1.80-1.64. They will hope last year was a real off year, since if it is a trend then they could shortly be below us.
So ultimately far from becoming a secular rational left liberal global world as the latter want, we may end up reverting to hardline traditional religious values just by force of numbers and who is giving birth
The book focuses on the unusual traditions, customs, and culture of Solarian society. The planet has a rigidly controlled population of 20,000, and all work is done by robots, which outnumber humans ten thousand to one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naked_Sun
In all honesty there is a bit of a misanthropic streak in many societies too, which see humans as awful. I think humans are pretty amazing and would like there to be as much as can be managed, without literally trashing the entire planet.
The first Labour premier in 14 years sounds like he's been listening to the Jacob Rees-Mogg playbook.
Jenny Hjul"
https://www.reaction.life/p/starmer-is-repeating-tory-mistakes
Iran: 1.64
Turkey: 1.88
UAE: 1.44 (!!)
Qatar: 1.78
Lebanon: 2.08 (just below replacement level)
And all the others are trending down strongly and will soon also be below replacement level
Somehow I don’t think we’re in East Ham any more.
But that's not the point: regardless of state micromanagement, we have far more old people alive, who, if they are not working, must be provided for. This can be done throigh the state or through their own savings or through family support. Different models exist. But all of them entail resources not being put into enabling the next generation.
It's not a matter of government policy. It's that so many more pensioners exist than was previously the case. That is common to every society on earth, whether collectivist or individualist, secular or religious. And on every single society on earth, birth rates are falling. It is simlle cause and effect: more pensioners results in fewer babies.
The individuals nearly all have good intent.
The system turns the results of their endeavours into chaos and sometimes malignity.
In any organisation’s is easy to lose sight of the ends. The large it is, the more the means become those ends.
So they’re gonna level Gaza and make it uninhabitable, annexe the West Bank and drive out the Palestinians over time, and thereby secure a defensible Israel behind very very hard borders
And they’re gonna say Fuck you, we’ve got nukes, take us on and you die
This means that tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have died and will die and the rest will be driven into another exile. It’s a tragedy for the ages but you can see the cold brutal horrible logic of what Israel proposes
It didn’t expand from a few tribes near Mecca to taking over Arabia and half of north Africa and then chunks of Europe and Asia in about two centuries by the gentle use of missionaries
At the moment their incentives are all wrong - if they find you a great match that you stay together with for life then they've lost a customer. Provide them with the incentive to find people lifelong partners they want to start a family with, and then, if anyone can find a way to increase the birth rate, they will.
Pensioners did their duty, worked and had their 2.4 children and more of their women looked after the children and fewer worked full time so often only the husband's salary was needed to buy the home. If the younger generation don't so much it is their fault not pensioners .
I’m saying this is the rationale behind their fairly monstrous behaviour. Following the true and utter horror of October 7 they’ve decided it’s “kill or be killed” when it comes to Palestinians so they’ve opted
to kill. And I can see how they reached that state of mind
The jihadis of october 7 made it plain they would murder any jew they could find - baby mother or granny - and rape the cute young women first. How can you “coexist” with that? You can’t. So Israel has stopped pretending
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Total_Fertility_Rate_Map_by_Country.svg
I love this town - Mompox - more than I have loved any town in many years of travel. It is monumentally special
If you ever get the chance: go to Santa Cruz de Mompox
Theres a famous quote by Gabriel García Márquez about Mompox, it is:
“Mompox no existe. A veces soñamos con ella, pero no existe.”
(“Mompox does not exist. Sometimes we dream of it, but it does not exist.”)
And yet, she does
By leading her to stop her treatment, he put her back in the situation she was in at diagnosis. Eating food, but no insulin being generated to metabolise it, so potentially extreme hyperglycaemia and DKA.
Desperate thirst, vomiting, tiredness, incoherence are normal symptoms. Pain can also be a symptom.
When I was diagnosed I was fortunately in a studio flat in the attic of a shared house, but I was stubborn and lasted about 4-5 days. By the end I was drinking 4 or 5 litres of water, and could not keep that or food down. It was just a stomach bug that happened to attack the pancreas. But I had other people there, who called an ambulance when I finally said I needed one.
Medically she was off insulin for several days, and (I assume) eating fairly normally, it would go really high. By several days, most people would have called an ambulance and be in an acute or intensive care ward, and take days or a week to stabilise.
She was also in an abusive, cultish situation, thoroughly brainwashed and vulnerable - more so because of her needle-phobia, with a 'therapist' (ie self-believing guru) who had lead her to stop the insulin, who was running a course where the therapy was to slap and beat the toxins out of the body. In that setup, calling emergency medics would be resisted, and the mindset may have been "we're not trying hard enough" - that is, more slapping and stretching.
She was also 71, having been diagnosed at age 46, and possibly physically weak - so less resilient. Falling off the diabetic wagon is always a descending spiral which is hard to recognise and to stop. Her phobia and the abusive situation would make it psychologically really difficult - no one there willing or equipped to call halt or bullshit.
One of the saddest stories I have heard.
Everyone gets paid. Everyone thinks they’ve done a great job. But the care is crap and the system is inefficient.
Problem is that we won’t have end to end patient tracking, just individual patient episodes which aren’t connected together. Would never happen at Toyota. Can you imagine it?
In some ways it is utterly boring. All you do is sit in rocking chairs and stare at the river. Or you get on the river and go look at the very beautiful birdlife in the wetlands - then you come back and grab a beer or a lulo juice or a fat gin and tonic - and you sit in a rocking chair and stare at the river
There’s nothing else to do. The food is pleasant but no more. The fruit is sensational. You can buy a decent Malbec in the one super market
There’s a massive fucking owl in the main square next to the motherfucking ginormous iguana by the church
I guess I’d rent a rocking chair for a month?
Pan Arab nationalism was a moderating force, Iran was a moderate-ish force. Afghanistan's communist government was yes communist but also moderate. Iraq pre-Bathists was moderate. Syria had a 'democracy' etc. Yes I'm cherry picking.
Robert Fisk seemed to think the extreme religiosity rose out of the political impotence of the masses. I agree with this. Arab nationalism came first to the 20th century but was squashed in favour of pliant despots so now we get extremism. Some of which we trained, armed and inflicted on the continent.
Final salary pensions haven’t existed for a few years now.
I agree with this on sacking people (try sacking a crap doctor - impossible!) but this is also true in large organisations. I heard similar stories from friends who work for Shell for example
That Islam is an outlet for the oppressed and it is something the west has cultivated, both can be true.
Believe what you want about Islam but I'd wager Christian nations have killed significantly more over the last century. And this happens to be the one we're living in.
https://www.birdingplaces.eu/en/birdingplaces/serbia/the-long-eared-owl-roost-in-kikinda
Doubt the town is as pleasant though.
The old chestnut that public sector workers can’t be fired rears its ugly head. Restructuring in local Government is almost continuous - it often means jobs are lost or “downgraded” which is in effect a pay cut as you are expected to do more for less.
As for pensions, it’s another old chestnut. It’s been long regarded as part of recruitment and retention in local Government.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-32545591
As I call it, her believed his own words, and did not know his limits.
It also runs into the objections from the Dawkinsite and similar lobbies of teenage logic-choppers that the West is secular not Christian since some ill-determined date in the past when church attendance fell below 50%
There are plenty still working in the public sector with final salary pensions.
Currently lead approaching 320 so may be a declaration at say 500 ahead and the Kiwis will have to perform far better with the bat to see out three full days.
Didn't Cameron claim we're still a Christian nation? I'm not sure he showed his workings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States
This graph shows the history, from 1820 to 2016: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fertility_rate_of_the_United_States_from_1820_to_2016.svg
(One should remember the death rate in childhood was much higher in the early decades of that period, with about 1 in 3 dying before their 5th birthday.)
I remember ploughing through lots of historical examples and recall a particular article that mostly consisted of formulae.
Whether this is still the favoured theory, I don’t know, but when you look at the costs that many parents take on my having a child in the modern world - from childcare through student fees and eventually helping them onto the housing market - perhaps it isn’t surprising that they are going out of fashion?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgz2p0999yo
Snake oil extends beyond slapping for diabetes, but this line stands out: She had been diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a hormonal condition that affects about one in 10 women, but she struggled to get medical help.
It does not help that both the cause and cure are unknown.
...
Thirty-six current Labour ministers – including the Chancellor Rachel Reeves – have claimed for their gas and electricity costs on expenses, according to analysis.
https://inews.co.uk/news/winter-fuel-payment-mps-claim-energy-bills-3413344 (£££)
Pull up the tailgate, Jack – I'm all right.
Of course there are other factors at work. Children are hard work (I'm up before 6 to drive two hours to pick up my daughter and all her stuff after her first term at university) and not everyone wants that kind of grind for twenty-odd years. The payoffs are spectacular though, if you want to put the work in.
We really need men to change their attitudes: we are not going back to the bad old days when men ruled the family with an iron fist; where there was no contraception, and abortions were available but very dangerous (*). However much some may want that. So men need to man up and take their responsibilities seriously.
(*) Yes, they were. Ban abortion, and you will get the back-street abortionist popping up again, and many women dying.
My religious martyr is your devilish murderer... Across history Islam is not noticeably more violent than -say- the Christian conquistadores- but don't let the facts get in the way of an ignorant Islamaphobic rant.
The analysis looks at costs and benefits, across a whole lifetime, in a dispassionate economic way. The myriad costs of having children are mostly obvious. The benefits arise from help around the house, free labour for the farm or business particularly during the teenage years, and care and support during later life. And ultimately having someone to pass property and wealth on to, to keep it in the family. In many societies there is also a benefit in terms of social status (through marriages with other families, for example), and there is an ‘insurance’ benefit from having a large extended family in cultures where they would support a relative who, for example, becomes disabled in the prime of life, and more directly when infant mortality means that having children survive to adulthood is a lottery that encourages people to try for more entries. Theres also a knock-on benefit of the grandchildren in later life, both socially but in many societies economically as well, as another opportunity for free labour or social care.
It’s worth thinking about why it is that in developed societies, poorer families are commonly larger.
As a starter for ten, I’d posit that the lifetime costs of having children are greater for what we would call a middle-class lifestyle, both directly (particularly education, from nursery to university, but also arising from many lifestyle factors) and also indirectly through things like impact on career progression. Whereas the economic benefits are lower, because social norms no longer extract so much free labour from the young - the children of the wealthy will themselves have jobs and careers and won’t be so focused on supporting parents and grandparents - and because society has removed or covered many of the risks that people used large families to ‘insure’ against.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_fertility_rate
So for example the great number of restrictions on abortion in Texas or Mississipi have not stopped a decline in TFR, which has also occurred in more liberal states like Massachussets. Neither has cheaper house prices done so in places like West Virginia..
I think the decline is mostly down to people having other options in life and choosing those. The decline in percentages of people in romantic or sexual relationships in recent years has also been dramatic, particularly in places like South Korea. More and more people are living atomised lives not relating in any way to others, apart from Social Media.
A total ban on smartphones and Internet might do more for fertility rates than banning abortion or women working outside the home.
Why would a *managed* decline in population be bad? Yes, it somewhat upends existing systems, and the mirage of economic growth would be harder to sustain. But if people end up happier, why would a gentle decline in population be bad?
(You also need to factor in the consequences of an unmanaged decline, forcing women to have more kids (the @HYUFS approach), and importing immigrants as alternatives.)
Whereas for richer folk, nowadays they make money from brain work, rather than building up family businesses or estates that benefit from an army of for and strong children and grandchildren. Having children nowadays reduces or inhibits wealth creation for many of the better off, diverting time and resources and holding back careers, particularly by making people more reluctant to move location or take on career or business risk. And the social and financial benefits that the powerful would once have received by marrying off their children well have disappeared, now that children can’t be married off to order.
HYUFD is literally ignoring the evidence of what’s happening in favour of his own model of what he believes.
A declining fertility rate in the short term does boost economic growth as there are more younger women working full time, at least for a couple of decades. I think this is true of the tiger economies of Asia for example.
Personally, I would like some grandchildren though.
Some strands of Christianity have moved slightly away from this, but it is still true for many. And the men (and it is nearly always men...) who become the top dog in their religion are therefore those who crave power. And wars are about power.
I would suggest positive engagement, at least in the first instance. Any new government (even if Islamist) is likely to need to rebuild the country and want to concentrate on that rather than exporting ideology. It's a rather Faustian bit of Realpolitic to help them, provided they don't support or encourage terrorism on our shores.
https://x.com/Tendar/status/1865062193659519429
Neither Islamic nor Christian, of course.
The ruling People Power Party leader Han Dong-hoon said President Yoon is no longer eligible to lead the administration and his resignation is inevitable right after the President's public address.
https://x.com/yejinjgim/status/1865204637592150082
We’ll find out later this morning how this goes down.
This is a problem for modern medicine however it is economically structured and delivered. Increasingly the population have multiple conditions simultaneously.
*Iatrogenic disease is that which is caused by medical action, typically 10-15% of hospital admissions and deaths. This occurs everywhere that there is healthcare. Around a quarter of a million deaths per year are iatrogenic in the USA for example, out of 3 million annual deaths.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iatrogenesis#:~:text=An earlier Institute of Medicine,to 284,000 iatrogenic deaths annually.
For the planet, and probably for societies, this is likely to be a good thing. The temporary problem we have is that all the children are in Africa and all the old people are in the developed west. And that relocating the surplus people from the former to the latter doesnt seem to be a popular solution
So we’ve been relocating work from the latter to the former. But that’s now becoming unpopular, too.
Certainly, I can see the Kurds and others in AANES not wanting to give up their hard-won autonomy. IMV it's probable that AANES splits off from Syria to form a fledgling Kurdistan, with all the problems that would cause.
Though looking at AANES, in my western eyes it seems a better model for the future government of Syria than the other rebel options.
Though I note both Israel and the US have intervened against both Iranian and Hezbollah forces in Syria, in the last couple of days, in favour of the insurgency.
One area of potential cooperation with any new government would be against the ISIS remnants, who seem to have rebuilt to some extent, as the Assad regime has weakened..
At the same time as women have become economically independent, and society has liberalised, a large proportion of young men have conservative patriarchical attitudes that make HYUFD look woke.
They were also among the earliest adopters of the smartphone revolution, so you could still be right.
Along with that, housing costs are brutal, education is high pressure, and work expectations considerably exceed ours.
Hard to tease out cause and effect.
I have recently read Haidts excellent book: "The Anxious Generation" about the influence of Smartphones on childhood. The evidence of harm is very strong, but I think equally or more so on older folk. The fact that I can lie in bed with a cup of tea arguing social policy with strangers around the world is an option that simply didn't exist 3 decades ago. Instead I would have probably have listened to the radio, or started on the household chores or both.
Connecting online is both the privilege and curse of our modern age. I don't think we have yet learned to se it wisely or critically, hence the influence of drug-addled billionaires and Russian Trolls on our political life.
They sit down in big groups, hold up identical placards, and chant organised slogans.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c205634nw13t
Despite many of the same political divisions we have, there’s still a strong cultural belief in the “will of the people”, which I don’t think we have to anything like the same extent.
This is arguably an expression of it.
And countries with a history of migration will grow even as birth rates fall and global populations start to decline. See the UK.
Overall somewhere like London, and its suburbs, will continue to grow in a world where populations are falling. Whereas smaller industrial towns will only prosper if they are within the orbit of another major city )e.g. Manchester). Small towns in Bulgaria will have no people left.
I still think there is policy merit in properly connecting multiple north western cities with the aim of creating something which feels like a single metropolitan area.
I always wonder what process goes through someone's head that they rule out the idea of God. The universe is such a vast place, filled with infinite wonders, for me, a tiny speck of dust in that great cosmos to say - "I know for a fact that there's nothing out there in this entire universe that could be God" feels completely arrogant and I think that's always been my issue with atheists and I also think that lack of, for better or worse, creativity in their minds makes them dull people.
Mr. Max, a drunkard may be happier than a sober man. That does not mean whisky is made of wisdom.
The argument of a god is one that must be made by those who believe, not proven false by those who do not. For example, I like F1. I do not watch hockey. I don't have to justify not watching hockey, it's for (if they want to) hockey fans to persuade me it's great. It's entirely legitimate for people ambivalent or who dislike F1 to ask me why I actually like it.
Also atheism is not about knowing for a fact nothing in the universe that could be considered God. That is a misrepresentation. It means my belief is that is overwhelmingly the most likely outcome. In a similar way someone can be religious but not know that God exists as a fact. You don't call every religious person who admits there is a 0.01% change they are wrong agnostic, not should you with atheists.
Meanwhile, the last F1 qualifying session of 24 for this season is this afternoon! (14:00GMT).
A great article here on the decline of dating, which presumably is upstream of fertility for most of us:
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2024/12/4b-sex-strike-american-dating/680770/?gift=Q2xxhS27Csx4yHsp7QhJgU0zew64tIzUUlb21dyV4vk&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
I’ve seen four children per woman given as an average for Emiratis, which sounds about right.