The number of flight slots at Reagan airport actually gets discussed by the US Senate, with of course Senators from almost everywhere wanting more of them to the closest airport to their offices.
The UK equivalent would be the MPs demanding one flight a minute into LCY, from every little regional airport in a country with no motorways and no railway lines. Because they all think LHR is too far away.
Also, Republican politics and what happened to the ATCs. Reagan isn't in the current mix just because he has the airport named after him. Some people on Pprune are of the view that US ATC never recovered from the mass sackings at that time - culture and staffing levels changed. IANAE though.
Obviously it has nothing to do with Ronald Reagan, there’s no-one involved in ATC now who was there four decades ago when the President took the nuclear option to resolve a labour dispute. That option wouldn’t be there now, as the airspace is so much busier and there are a lot of more civvy and a lot fewer mil controllers to take over.
The allegations are that there has been racial and ‘gender’ profiling in recruitment in recent years, which has led to staff shortages, and in common with most Biden-era agencies there’s plenty of public documents and videos saying that “aviation has a white man problem” and similar sentiments.
The NTSB investigation isn’t going to go into the hiring policies of the FAA, but it is very much going to go into staffing levels, shift patterns, and work hours at Reagan Airport. There’s been suggestions that ATC have been working 10h days and 6d weeks, which would be totally illegal in pretty much every other Western country.
Isn't it true that all ATC recruits go though the same training and assessments before entering service?
And that both aircraft were being flown by white males?
Absolutely you don’t get to be an active ATC without passing all the exams and being certified for your position (same as a medical specialism or an aircraft type rating, ATC need to be certified for the specific piece of airspace they are working)
The political angle is that ATC couldn’t recruit enough people, because the recruiters wanted to have their employees “represent the makeup of the population”, or some such woke DEI bollocks. There are reports of potential recruits being turned down “because they were white men”. (Similar to stories around university admission in the US). So ATC ended up understaffed as they’re couldn’t find enough “minorities” who both applied, met the appliacation standard, and completed the course.
Is "political angle" the new "alternative fact"?
Here’s CNN reporting from a year ago, that they’re 3,100 ATC short (11,500 rather than 14,600, 21%), and struggling to recruit.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
As I said in the previous thread, the last Conservative government (and it may well be the *last* Conservative government), was lucky to get 24%. I think it was the worst government of my entire lifetime, worse even than Harold Wilson's final administration, in 1974-76. We'll see if the current lot are better or worse.
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I get the impression that the "normal" politicians in Germany are flailing around, a bit, as here. They don't know what to do. Which is ripe for stupid decisions.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
Thoughts?
The AfD are composed of the people Farage is trying, with varying degrees of success, to keep out of Reform.
But while performing the complicated manoeuvre of having them still vote for him.
Agreed, but that might still be better than having them vote for something else. To my mind there is a clear divide between Farage and fascists. We need to be genuinely vigilant against the latter and call them out because they are genuinely dangerous and on the march, and it doesn't help that effort to try to tar rightwingers like Farage with the same brush.
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I get the impression that the "normal" politicians in Germany are flailing around, a bit, as here. They don't know what to do. Which is ripe for stupid decisions.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
Thoughts?
The CDU will try to pass their 2nd bill this week relying on AfD support, this week is the first time that AfD support has been relied on. The German politics expert on R4 this morning (from Queens Uni, Belfast) said that this is only promoting the AfD. Though breaking news is that the Conservative coalition is having 2nd thoughts https://www.dw.com/en/german-lawmakers-set-to-vote-on-contentious-immigration-law/live-71465034
Any markets on Merz going?
(The Wednesday vote was just a motion rather than a bill.)
Even if the bill were passed in the Bundestag, it has zero chance of getting approval (which it needs) in the Bundesrat which is made up of delegates from the state governments. The CDU premiers of Schleswig Holstein and Berlin have already said their delegates would vote against any bill in the Bundesrat that only passed the Bundestag with AfD votes. In fact it's hard to see which of the 17 states would vote for it in the Bundesrat except Bavaria.
Things could theoretically change after the election, in the sense that Merz has said supporting the bill would be a condition for joining the coalition, and the SPD could get its state delegations to approve the bill. I don't think there's any chance whatsoever of the Green Party going into a coalition on the basis of supporting legislation it believes is unconstitutional and contravenes European treaties Germany is party to. The SPD, not really having any principles, is maybe a remote chance, though extremely doubtful.
So, as is usual in Germany, a compromise will have to be reached. But Merz has stupidly nailed his colours to the mast so when he does compromise it will be a further boost to the AfD.
Anyway, it does look like the bill will be postponed as the FDP are suddenly saying they want to send it back to committee. This would be a relief for many in the CDU too - at least the one or 2 people I know who are privately extremely unhappy with Merz's tactics.
A reminder, I am not entering the competition to give other people a chance of winning.
I am not entering the competition due to lack of predictive ability.
Ditto. For me, it's not potential embarrassment at failing or coming bottom; it's the fact that there is so much guesswork involved that, if I were to 'win', it would be a pure fluke, and I would feel pretty bad that my WAGs were in any way accurate. 'Winning' would mean nothing, as it said nothing about my ability to predict, just to guess.
Having said that thanks to @Benpointer for organising it.
Why would you feel bad about your wives and girlfriends being accurate? I never had you down as a misogynist
If I had wives (plural) *and* girlfriends, then any competition entry would be *way* down my list of priorities. Number one would be preventing them all from finding out about each other...
Pro tip, always call them darling or sweetheart.
Don’t be a hero and call them by their name because inevitability one day you’ll call them the wrong name and that’s when it all unravels.
Surely the trick is to have a mistress with the same name as one's wife?
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
To be fair to Rishi though he ended dependents being brought over before he left office unless the immigrant worker earnt enough to support them ie £38,700 or more
A tenth of British Farmland to be repurposed for net zero
Solar farms, tree planting and wildlife habitats to replace food production.
Meanwhile from 2022 to 2032 our population will grow by 5 Million people.
‘Brutal Budget has hurt farming’ Tom Bradshaw, president of the NFU, said it was “imperative this framework does not further restrict farmers’ ability to produce the nation’s food”. “Over the past 18 months, the UK farming industry has taken a battering,” he said. “Volatile input costs, commodity prices on the floor in some sectors, a reduction in direct payments, one of the wettest periods in decades, and a brutal Budget delivered by this Government. All have left their mark and have put homegrown food production under serious pressure.” The Government believes food production can be largely maintained at current levels by focusing on removing only the least productive land. About 20 per cent of England’s farmed land produces just 3 per cent of total calories, in areas where subsidies have historically accounted for 90 per cent of farm incomes.
Apparently, the crops benefit from windbreaks, so it makes perfect sense to use solar panels for that purpose. The crops grow just as well, and there is still access for machinery.
I guess the panels are cheap enough now that it's fine to have them in a suboptimal orientation, particularly if that means you can also use the land for agriculture.
My only concern is that this could restrict a new generation of Theresa Mays from running through farmers' fields - or at least, limit them to a single direction
Two directions ...
#PBpedantry#
You know, I even thought of that and thought, "no, that's too pedantic, even for here". Glad you've proved me wrong
A short post to make MAGA supporters froth: DEI (aka EDI) programs, if properly implemented (and there is the crux) increase the candidate pool rather than decrease it. Axing DEI programs is very unlikely to make skill shortages better and will most likely make them worse.
On DEI programs. And idiots.
A little while ago, we had a presentation at a meeting by the HR group in charge of Diversity. One lady actually got up and said that one way we could help increase diversity was to invite *friends and neighbours* children into the bank for open days and encourage them to apply for internships....
My guffaw at this attracted some negative looks.
My thought is that, for real DEI, we should invite the children of the cleaners and security guards in for open days and encourage them to apply for internships.
To be fair on the diversity teams I've spoken with, getting people in with parents who did not go to university is a big focus - and that's often white working class kids from the north of England etc. It's why the Sutton Trust's work is so important, and why we monitor such metrics.
DEI works both ways. If you bin it in the UK, it's probably going to adversely impact a higher proportion of low income white men than any other combination of ethnicity/gender/income, particularly if the focus is education background.
That's real DEI. As opposed to "we need DEI - quick, someone invent a PowerPoint pack...
My guesstimate is that the university barrier hits the white working class and long term UK origin Afro-Carribbean working class the most. You see every group in banking but those 2 - you see recent immigrants from African countries, but none from the long term black community. And the barrow boys are virtually extinct.
We have plenty of people from a Pakistani background, but very few from a British-Pakistani background. Always been curious about that.
I think the DEI in the right-wing mind is very different to that you experience in a corporate setting. It's either entirely inconsequential, or used effectively by senior partners to grab smart kids straight from school into non-grad programmes. They tend to be very high performers.
But Trump's DEI is very obviously a dog whistle for "the blacks, the gays, trans, women" etc etc.
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I get the impression that the "normal" politicians in Germany are flailing around, a bit, as here. They don't know what to do. Which is ripe for stupid decisions.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
Thoughts?
The CDU will try to pass their 2nd bill this week relying on AfD support, this week is the first time that AfD support has been relied on. The German politics expert on R4 this morning (from Queens Uni, Belfast) said that this is only promoting the AfD. Though breaking news is that the Conservative coalition is having 2nd thoughts https://www.dw.com/en/german-lawmakers-set-to-vote-on-contentious-immigration-law/live-71465034
Any markets on Merz going?
The FDP likely to vote for it too and zero chance of Merz going given he is odds on to be next Chancellor next month
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I get the impression that the "normal" politicians in Germany are flailing around, a bit, as here. They don't know what to do. Which is ripe for stupid decisions.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
Thoughts?
The CDU will try to pass their 2nd bill this week relying on AfD support, this week is the first time that AfD support has been relied on. The German politics expert on R4 this morning (from Queens Uni, Belfast) said that this is only promoting the AfD. Though breaking news is that the Conservative coalition is having 2nd thoughts https://www.dw.com/en/german-lawmakers-set-to-vote-on-contentious-immigration-law/live-71465034
Any markets on Merz going?
The FDP likely to vote for it too and zero chance of Merz going given he is odds on to be next Chancellor next month
Very close to being sent back to committee now, just waiting for an announcement from the Greens.
A tenth of British Farmland to be repurposed for net zero
Solar farms, tree planting and wildlife habitats to replace food production.
Meanwhile from 2022 to 2032 our population will grow by 5 Million people.
‘Brutal Budget has hurt farming’ Tom Bradshaw, president of the NFU, said it was “imperative this framework does not further restrict farmers’ ability to produce the nation’s food”. “Over the past 18 months, the UK farming industry has taken a battering,” he said. “Volatile input costs, commodity prices on the floor in some sectors, a reduction in direct payments, one of the wettest periods in decades, and a brutal Budget delivered by this Government. All have left their mark and have put homegrown food production under serious pressure.” The Government believes food production can be largely maintained at current levels by focusing on removing only the least productive land. About 20 per cent of England’s farmed land produces just 3 per cent of total calories, in areas where subsidies have historically accounted for 90 per cent of farm incomes.
Apparently, the crops benefit from windbreaks, so it makes perfect sense to use solar panels for that purpose. The crops grow just as well, and there is still access for machinery.
I guess the panels are cheap enough now that it's fine to have them in a suboptimal orientation, particularly if that means you can also use the land for agriculture.
My only concern is that this could restrict a new generation of Theresa Mays from running through farmers' fields - or at least, limit them to a single direction
It looks to me like those panels are mounted on a tilting mechanism, so they can be stored vertically whilst the combine is in, but turned to a better angle when being used for generation.
However, I'm not quite sure this is more efficient than a field of solar panels and a field of wheat. No doubt someone has the numbers...
When on train to London I'd look at fields of solar panels and wonder why they were fixed and didn't tilt in alignment with the sun, to make them produce more solar energy. Turns out the cost of the tracking systems is more than the solar panels. Imagine it would be cheaper to pay someone to tilt them manually.
In your example, would the dust and debris from the combine not cover the panels, having an effect on their productivity?
The coverage of the 5yr Brexit anniversary in today's papers is so muted you'd be forgiven for thinking it was an internationally-embarrassing fuck-up.
A short post to make MAGA supporters froth: DEI (aka EDI) programs, if properly implemented (and there is the crux) increase the candidate pool rather than decrease it. Axing DEI programs is very unlikely to make skill shortages better and will most likely make them worse.
On DEI programs. And idiots.
A little while ago, we had a presentation at a meeting by the HR group in charge of Diversity. One lady actually got up and said that one way we could help increase diversity was to invite *friends and neighbours* children into the bank for open days and encourage them to apply for internships....
My guffaw at this attracted some negative looks.
My thought is that, for real DEI, we should invite the children of the cleaners and security guards in for open days and encourage them to apply for internships.
To be fair on the diversity teams I've spoken with, getting people in with parents who did not go to university is a big focus - and that's often white working class kids from the north of England etc. It's why the Sutton Trust's work is so important, and why we monitor such metrics.
DEI works both ways. If you bin it in the UK, it's probably going to adversely impact a higher proportion of low income white men than any other combination of ethnicity/gender/income, particularly if the focus is education background.
That's real DEI. As opposed to "we need DEI - quick, someone invent a PowerPoint pack...
My guesstimate is that the university barrier hits the white working class and long term UK origin Afro-Carribbean working class the most. You see every group in banking but those 2 - you see recent immigrants from African countries, but none from the long term black community. And the barrow boys are virtually extinct.
We have plenty of people from a Pakistani background, but very few from a British-Pakistani background. Always been curious about that.
I think the DEI in the right-wing mind is very different to that you experience in a corporate setting. It's either entirely inconsequential, or used effectively by senior partners to grab smart kids straight from school into non-grad programmes. They tend to be very high performers.
But Trump's DEI is very obviously a dog whistle for "the blacks, the gays, trans, women" etc etc.
The older, poor, immigrant communities have (in part), become truly British working class. Expectations of "getting out" and improving yourself are very low.
From talking to this guy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moe_Sbihi - he described how the other kids in his class at school saw their future jobs as stacking shelves at Tesco. As the good outcome.
All the first generation immigrants I encounter are *desparate* for their children to move up the ladder. Or at least stay on the nice rungs, if they are already there.
Black boxes have been recovered from the aircraft involved in the accident yesterday. They’re likely to give investigators an idea of the beginning of the accident sequence and the relative positions of the two aircraft as they met each other.
Also starting to see names released of the victims, including the crews of both aircraft. A number of those on board were returning from an ice-skating competition in Kansas, including teens and young adults in an elite Washington-based training group.
RIP.
It is horrid - extremely sad for the victims' families.
I don't quite know why there is quite so much news and discussion about it though.
Because it’s Washington DC, and because it’s a mid-air between a civvy and a mil aircraft.
It’s an accident between two perfectly serviceable aircraft, that should quite simply never happen. The investigation is going to be 90% human factors, and we already have whistleblowers and journalists saying that Reagan Airport has been an accident waiting to happen for years.
Hundreds of political journalists have witnessed the accident and its aftermath first hand, and tens of thousands of the DC ‘blob’ have had their travel plans for the weekend ruined.
The UK equivalent would be a plane heading to LCY crashing into the Thames half a mile from Parliament, with 60 people all heading for Westminster on board.
If it had been a plane that went down after an engine failure in the middle of a field somewhere in Appalachia, it would have dropped off the news already.
"The investigation is going to be 90% human factors"
If so, then I fear it will be wrong - at least if those factors are the aircrew and controllers alone.
It looks as though there have been several (at least) near misses before. When you get different people making similar 'mistakes' on many different occasions, human factors become far less important than the processes and systems they were having to work under.
It might well be that the controllers, or one or both sets of aircrew, made mistakes on the night. But they would have been at the end of a long chain of causal factors that led to the incident. Much more attention needs to be paid to the processes that led to the decisions that caused the collision.
As mentioned yday, and having gone through every comment on PPrune (12 pages as was), it seems to have been an accident waiting to happen. Hugely congested, lights everywhere, different radio channels, different aircraft doing different things, the willingness of aircraft (as permitted by ATC) to fly on visuals (see, I'm an expert now), the seeming misidentification of aircraft (by the helicopter, who acknowledged they'd seen "a" plane, just not, it is likely, "the" plane), etc. And all underpinned by the need (?) to have that airport a hugely busy one given its location in Washington.
Everyone was doing the right thing (said one Apache guy on PPrune) to which another commentator said:
"If everyone is 'doing the right thing', then **** shouldn't happen, because the rules should be designed to avoid 100% of accidents if everyone follows those rules. So either somebody was not 'doing the right thing', or something is wrong with the rules. **** happens when there are unexpected circumstances. This was not an unexpected circumstance."
A short post to make MAGA supporters froth: DEI (aka EDI) programs, if properly implemented (and there is the crux) increase the candidate pool rather than decrease it. Axing DEI programs is very unlikely to make skill shortages better and will most likely make them worse.
Exactly. If you have a organisation and you aren't reaching a recruitment target and your workforce is mostly white middle-age men, then actually trying to expand the pool of people you recruit from (like the 50% of the population who aren't men) should 1. increase the chance of reaching your target, and 2. drive up standards as you aren't missing out on all the capable people outside of the pool you currently recruit from.
An organisation that is blaming DEI for failure to recruit and improve is almost certainly begrudgingly implementing programmes, and full of people who don't take them seriously and are prejudiced.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
They certainly should be all over this. All to save a few quid an hour. 10 dependents per person. What a crock. Absolute insanity. Well done Tory Party you deserve to be out of power for a long term. How much will these dependents cost the taxpayer.
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I get the impression that the "normal" politicians in Germany are flailing around, a bit, as here. They don't know what to do. Which is ripe for stupid decisions.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
Thoughts?
The AfD are composed of the people Farage is trying, with varying degrees of success, to keep out of Reform.
But while performing the complicated manoeuvre of having them still vote for him.
Agreed, but that might still be better than having them vote for something else. To my mind there is a clear divide between Farage and fascists. We need to be genuinely vigilant against the latter and call them out because they are genuinely dangerous and on the march, and it doesn't help that effort to try to tar rightwingers like Farage with the same brush.
I prefer fascist adjacent. I have no doubt that Farage would happily ‘work with’ AfD, Le Pen and whatever other horrors pop up on the political horizon. These people getting palsied fingers on the levers of power would be seen as a positive not a negative by him.
A tenth of British Farmland to be repurposed for net zero
Solar farms, tree planting and wildlife habitats to replace food production.
Meanwhile from 2022 to 2032 our population will grow by 5 Million people.
‘Brutal Budget has hurt farming’ Tom Bradshaw, president of the NFU, said it was “imperative this framework does not further restrict farmers’ ability to produce the nation’s food”. “Over the past 18 months, the UK farming industry has taken a battering,” he said. “Volatile input costs, commodity prices on the floor in some sectors, a reduction in direct payments, one of the wettest periods in decades, and a brutal Budget delivered by this Government. All have left their mark and have put homegrown food production under serious pressure.” The Government believes food production can be largely maintained at current levels by focusing on removing only the least productive land. About 20 per cent of England’s farmed land produces just 3 per cent of total calories, in areas where subsidies have historically accounted for 90 per cent of farm incomes.
Apparently, the crops benefit from windbreaks, so it makes perfect sense to use solar panels for that purpose. The crops grow just as well, and there is still access for machinery.
I guess the panels are cheap enough now that it's fine to have them in a suboptimal orientation, particularly if that means you can also use the land for agriculture.
My only concern is that this could restrict a new generation of Theresa Mays from running through farmers' fields - or at least, limit them to a single direction
It looks to me like those panels are mounted on a tilting mechanism, so they can be stored vertically whilst the combine is in, but turned to a better angle when being used for generation.
However, I'm not quite sure this is more efficient than a field of solar panels and a field of wheat. No doubt someone has the numbers...
When on train to London I'd look at fields of solar panels and wonder why they were fixed and didn't tilt in alignment with the sun, to make them produce more solar energy. Turns out the cost of the tracking systems is more than the solar panels. Imagine it would be cheaper to pay someone to tilt them manually.
In your example, would the dust and debris from the combine not cover the panels, having an effect on their productivity?
Rain tends to never be too far away in this country. The cost of cleaning likely outweighs the gains - the farmer might do it himself if he's got spare time but it wouldn't be a priority job.
The evidence base on PTSD from the military is that short term withdrawal from the front line, debriefing both individually and in small groups of peers then a return to the front is the most effective strategy. It's why there were fewer psychological casualties in WW2 than WW1.
In the depths of my PTSD experience, what I wanted more than anything else was to go to war again (still do to some extent, TBH). The certainty, structure and comradeship is very appealing compared to the ambiguities of civilian life.
In another life I could have been a Royal Navy Psychiatrist. That was my initial desire as a speciality, and I was accepted into the RN medical cadet scheme. In 1986
However, I met Mrs Foxy and my life turned in another direction.
From a unselfish and overpoweringly important perspective I'm glad you met Mrs F., however from a selfish perspective I wish it had been you treating me when I was diagnosed with Cotard's Syndrome (among other things).
However, you made the right call. The life of a junior naval officer is highly incompatible with being married. Some make it work, but lots more don't.
...The older, poor, immigrant communities have (in part), become truly British working class. Expectations of "getting out" and improving yourself are very low...
I think that's true of a lot of people now. Governments used to be based around the concept of advancing the working class, and even Boris tried to "level up" (insofar as he genuinely tried to do anything). But now? Not even close. Danny Dorling is despairing about this.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
They certainly should be all over this. All to save a few quid an hour. 10 dependents per person. What a crock. Absolute insanity. Well done Tory Party you deserve to be out of power for a long term. How much will these dependents cost the taxpayer.
What sort of system allows someone to bring in 10 dependents ?!?
A short post to make MAGA supporters froth: DEI (aka EDI) programs, if properly implemented (and there is the crux) increase the candidate pool rather than decrease it. Axing DEI programs is very unlikely to make skill shortages better and will most likely make them worse.
Exactly. If you have a organisation and you aren't reaching a recruitment target and your workforce is mostly white middle-age men, then actually trying to expand the pool of people you recruit from (like the 50% of the population who aren't men) should 1. increase the chance of reaching your target, and 2. drive up standards as you aren't missing out on all the capable people outside of the pool you currently recruit from.
An organisation that is blaming DEI for failure to recruit and improve is almost certainly begrudgingly implementing programmes, and full of people who don't take them seriously and are prejudiced.
From a brief trawl through the various online sources, the FAA tried to implement DEI in recruitment by creating a complicated process that made no sense. Then kept complicating it and twiddling the knobs to "fix" it. This was because no one tried a holistic approach. And they wanted instant results.
It's a very American solution - look at the output only. Keep adding random wiring - and wonder why the output is no better. Meanwhile, the rats nest of wiring is actually worse. And there are odd sparks....
The bit that makes me giggle is that there has been a shortage of air traffic controllers, in the US, since forever. As you say, DEI should be *adding* to the recruitment pool.
Black boxes have been recovered from the aircraft involved in the accident yesterday. They’re likely to give investigators an idea of the beginning of the accident sequence and the relative positions of the two aircraft as they met each other.
Also starting to see names released of the victims, including the crews of both aircraft. A number of those on board were returning from an ice-skating competition in Kansas, including teens and young adults in an elite Washington-based training group.
RIP.
It is horrid - extremely sad for the victims' families.
I don't quite know why there is quite so much news and discussion about it though.
Because it’s Washington DC, and because it’s a mid-air between a civvy and a mil aircraft.
It’s an accident between two perfectly serviceable aircraft, that should quite simply never happen. The investigation is going to be 90% human factors, and we already have whistleblowers and journalists saying that Reagan Airport has been an accident waiting to happen for years.
Hundreds of political journalists have witnessed the accident and its aftermath first hand, and tens of thousands of the DC ‘blob’ have had their travel plans for the weekend ruined.
The UK equivalent would be a plane heading to LCY crashing into the Thames half a mile from Parliament, with 60 people all heading for Westminster on board.
If it had been a plane that went down after an engine failure in the middle of a field somewhere in Appalachia, it would have dropped off the news already.
"The investigation is going to be 90% human factors"
If so, then I fear it will be wrong - at least if those factors are the aircrew and controllers alone.
It looks as though there have been several (at least) near misses before. When you get different people making similar 'mistakes' on many different occasions, human factors become far less important than the processes and systems they were having to work under.
It might well be that the controllers, or one or both sets of aircrew, made mistakes on the night. But they would have been at the end of a long chain of causal factors that led to the incident. Much more attention needs to be paid to the processes that led to the decisions that caused the collision.
As mentioned yday, and having gone through every comment on PPrune (12 pages as was), it seems to have been an accident waiting to happen. Hugely congested, lights everywhere, different radio channels, different aircraft doing different things, the willingness of aircraft (as permitted by ATC) to fly on visuals (see, I'm an expert now), the seeming misidentification of aircraft (by the helicopter, who acknowledged they'd seen "a" plane, just not, it is likely, "the" plane), etc. And all underpinned by the need (?) to have that airport a hugely busy one given its location in Washington.
Everyone was doing the right thing (said one Apache guy on PPrune) to which another commentator said:
"If everyone is 'doing the right thing', then **** shouldn't happen, because the rules should be designed to avoid 100% of accidents if everyone follows those rules. So either somebody was not 'doing the right thing', or something is wrong with the rules. **** happens when there are unexpected circumstances. This was not an unexpected circumstance."
Worst subject in school "science" makes the test more likely to be passed. Bonkers.
Imagine if learning stuff like aerodynamics or meteorology was seen to be a disadvantage when applying for an ATC job. 🙄
In the UK, NATS (National Air Traffic Services, state employer of air traffic controllers) certainly used to sponsor their controllers to get a private pilot’s licence in their spare time (if they didn’t have one already, which most of them did!).
A very different approach to what we see in the US.
I see Nigel is going with a 'Get Brexit Done' pledge. Will it gain traction or is that pitch irrevocably soiled?
See yesterday’s polling on Brexit.
Admitting you are pro-Brexit is like soiling yourself in public.
The largest support in that poll was for a closer relationship with the EU without rejoining the EU, which would still be Brexit just a softer Brexit
Few people who are ostensibly in favour of joining seem to have really thought about the difference between joining the EU today and never having left in 2016.
You see loads of them on here - often they work (and worked) with the EU, but only in one area like financial services, and have a limited concept of the implications of now joining the rest and which bits are linked together. Even the support in that poll for joining the Single Market will reflect the fact that most people seem to think the single market is about trade.
The evidence base on PTSD from the military is that short term withdrawal from the front line, debriefing both individually and in small groups of peers then a return to the front is the most effective strategy. It's why there were fewer psychological casualties in WW2 than WW1.
In the depths of my PTSD experience, what I wanted more than anything else was to go to war again (still do to some extent, TBH). The certainty, structure and comradeship is very appealing compared to the ambiguities of civilian life.
In another life I could have been a Royal Navy Psychiatrist. That was my initial desire as a speciality, and I was accepted into the RN medical cadet scheme. In 1986
However, I met Mrs Foxy and my life turned in another direction.
From a unselfish and overpoweringly important perspective I'm glad you met Mrs F., however from a selfish perspective I wish it had been you treating me when I was diagnosed with Cotard's Syndrome (among other things).
However, you made the right call. The life of a junior naval officer is highly incompatible with being married. Some make it work, but lots more don't.
Having looked that up, I will eschew further mention of my minor medial procedure.
A tenth of British Farmland to be repurposed for net zero
Solar farms, tree planting and wildlife habitats to replace food production.
Meanwhile from 2022 to 2032 our population will grow by 5 Million people.
‘Brutal Budget has hurt farming’ Tom Bradshaw, president of the NFU, said it was “imperative this framework does not further restrict farmers’ ability to produce the nation’s food”. “Over the past 18 months, the UK farming industry has taken a battering,” he said. “Volatile input costs, commodity prices on the floor in some sectors, a reduction in direct payments, one of the wettest periods in decades, and a brutal Budget delivered by this Government. All have left their mark and have put homegrown food production under serious pressure.” The Government believes food production can be largely maintained at current levels by focusing on removing only the least productive land. About 20 per cent of England’s farmed land produces just 3 per cent of total calories, in areas where subsidies have historically accounted for 90 per cent of farm incomes.
Apparently, the crops benefit from windbreaks, so it makes perfect sense to use solar panels for that purpose. The crops grow just as well, and there is still access for machinery.
I guess the panels are cheap enough now that it's fine to have them in a suboptimal orientation, particularly if that means you can also use the land for agriculture.
My only concern is that this could restrict a new generation of Theresa Mays from running through farmers' fields - or at least, limit them to a single direction
It looks to me like those panels are mounted on a tilting mechanism, so they can be stored vertically whilst the combine is in, but turned to a better angle when being used for generation.
However, I'm not quite sure this is more efficient than a field of solar panels and a field of wheat. No doubt someone has the numbers...
When on train to London I'd look at fields of solar panels and wonder why they were fixed and didn't tilt in alignment with the sun, to make them produce more solar energy. Turns out the cost of the tracking systems is more than the solar panels. Imagine it would be cheaper to pay someone to tilt them manually.
In your example, would the dust and debris from the combine not cover the panels, having an effect on their productivity?
Rain tends to never be too far away in this country. The cost of cleaning likely outweighs the gains - the farmer might do it himself if he's got spare time but it wouldn't be a priority job.
In this case, I think the panels are actually fixed in a vertical position, even though this is obviously suboptimal for light collection. They replace the windbreaks that were previously used to protect the crops from wind damage.
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I get the impression that the "normal" politicians in Germany are flailing around, a bit, as here. They don't know what to do. Which is ripe for stupid decisions.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
Thoughts?
The AfD are composed of the people Farage is trying, with varying degrees of success, to keep out of Reform.
But while performing the complicated manoeuvre of having them still vote for him.
Agreed, but that might still be better than having them vote for something else. To my mind there is a clear divide between Farage and fascists. We need to be genuinely vigilant against the latter and call them out because they are genuinely dangerous and on the march, and it doesn't help that effort to try to tar rightwingers like Farage with the same brush.
I prefer fascist adjacent. I have no doubt that Farage would happily ‘work with’ AfD, Le Pen and whatever other horrors pop up on the political horizon. These people getting palsied fingers on the levers of power would be seen as a positive not a negative by him.
Maybe we need make gradations, far right, far far right, extreme right, nazi? For example Marine Le Pen apparently thinks AfD is to far right.
@rcs1000 This is a very rare form of pancreatic cancer (only around 1% I think), but on the off chance it’s relevant, this treatment looks very promising indeed.
A short post to make MAGA supporters froth: DEI (aka EDI) programs, if properly implemented (and there is the crux) increase the candidate pool rather than decrease it. Axing DEI programs is very unlikely to make skill shortages better and will most likely make them worse.
On DEI programs. And idiots.
A little while ago, we had a presentation at a meeting by the HR group in charge of Diversity. One lady actually got up and said that one way we could help increase diversity was to invite *friends and neighbours* children into the bank for open days and encourage them to apply for internships....
My guffaw at this attracted some negative looks.
My thought is that, for real DEI, we should invite the children of the cleaners and security guards in for open days and encourage them to apply for internships.
Doesn't really sound like a DEI program, in fact sound the antithesis as I think you are implying. There are many elements of DEI that make for better companies, but it requires people who know what they are doing. Diversity is proven to create more creativity and improve broader understanding of a company's customer base as well as creating a larger talent pool. Where it goes wrong is if there is a "quota" system and (as in parts of the US) "affirmative action" is applied.
It sounds like you want the D without the EI, but that’s not how the laws that underpin DEI work.
Nope, try looking it up with an open mind. Equity is about trying to understand that not everyone starts from the same place, so it is perfectly acceptable to make an adjustment for this to ensure one ends up with a diverse workforce.
Where it goes wrong is when (as in so many things in life) the pendulum swings too far and people are discriminated against, causing someone who is brilliant to not be hired because they haven't ticked enough boxes.
The problem with the simplistic mentality of the populist is that they think it is better to axe things that are not working well and retreat to their own comfort zones of the past rather than look for amendment or improvement.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
What the actual f***?
Can’t they just set up a recruitment centre in Manila? There would be a queue around the block for UK visas for care workers, most of whom would be qualified nurses and could work towards UK certification.
I see Nigel is going with a 'Get Brexit Done' pledge. Will it gain traction or is that pitch irrevocably soiled?
See yesterday’s polling on Brexit.
Admitting you are pro-Brexit is like soiling yourself in public.
The largest support in that poll was for a closer relationship with the EU without rejoining the EU, which would still be Brexit just a softer Brexit
Few people who are ostensibly in favour of joining seem to have really thought about the difference between joining the EU today and never having left in 2016.
You see loads of them on here - often they work (and worked) with the EU, but only in one area like financial services, and have a limited concept of the implications of now joining the rest and which bits are linked together. Even the support in that poll for joining the Single Market will reflect the fact that most people seem to think the single market is about trade.
Tbf there seem to have been loads of folk who didn't think about the consequences of voting to leave the EU in 2015. To sum up, there are a lot of folk who don't really think.
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I get the impression that the "normal" politicians in Germany are flailing around, a bit, as here. They don't know what to do. Which is ripe for stupid decisions.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
Thoughts?
The CDU will try to pass their 2nd bill this week relying on AfD support, this week is the first time that AfD support has been relied on. The German politics expert on R4 this morning (from Queens Uni, Belfast) said that this is only promoting the AfD. Though breaking news is that the Conservative coalition is having 2nd thoughts https://www.dw.com/en/german-lawmakers-set-to-vote-on-contentious-immigration-law/live-71465034
Any markets on Merz going?
The FDP likely to vote for it too and zero chance of Merz going given he is odds on to be next Chancellor next month
The report is that the FDP want to delay it, noted that Merz is very short odds but his AfD flirtation seems to be unpopular in the CDU. Would laying him have value as a trading bet?
A tenth of British Farmland to be repurposed for net zero
Solar farms, tree planting and wildlife habitats to replace food production.
Meanwhile from 2022 to 2032 our population will grow by 5 Million people.
‘Brutal Budget has hurt farming’ Tom Bradshaw, president of the NFU, said it was “imperative this framework does not further restrict farmers’ ability to produce the nation’s food”. “Over the past 18 months, the UK farming industry has taken a battering,” he said. “Volatile input costs, commodity prices on the floor in some sectors, a reduction in direct payments, one of the wettest periods in decades, and a brutal Budget delivered by this Government. All have left their mark and have put homegrown food production under serious pressure.” The Government believes food production can be largely maintained at current levels by focusing on removing only the least productive land. About 20 per cent of England’s farmed land produces just 3 per cent of total calories, in areas where subsidies have historically accounted for 90 per cent of farm incomes.
Apparently, the crops benefit from windbreaks, so it makes perfect sense to use solar panels for that purpose. The crops grow just as well, and there is still access for machinery.
I guess the panels are cheap enough now that it's fine to have them in a suboptimal orientation, particularly if that means you can also use the land for agriculture.
My only concern is that this could restrict a new generation of Theresa Mays from running through farmers' fields - or at least, limit them to a single direction
It looks to me like those panels are mounted on a tilting mechanism, so they can be stored vertically whilst the combine is in, but turned to a better angle when being used for generation.
However, I'm not quite sure this is more efficient than a field of solar panels and a field of wheat. No doubt someone has the numbers...
When on train to London I'd look at fields of solar panels and wonder why they were fixed and didn't tilt in alignment with the sun, to make them produce more solar energy. Turns out the cost of the tracking systems is more than the solar panels. Imagine it would be cheaper to pay someone to tilt them manually.
In your example, would the dust and debris from the combine not cover the panels, having an effect on their productivity?
Rain tends to never be too far away in this country. The cost of cleaning likely outweighs the gains - the farmer might do it himself if he's got spare time but it wouldn't be a priority job.
In this case, I think the panels are actually fixed in a vertical position, even though this is obviously suboptimal for light collection. They replace the windbreaks that were previously used to protect the crops from wind damage.
Panels are getting cheap enough that they are actually competitive as "long lasting, rigid, water proof, not needing painting, sheets of stuff". The electricity generating thing is almost a freebie.
The real cost is in the electronics to turn the output into grid power.
1. Highest share of the vote in 2025 with a BPC registered pollster in a GB wide poll for each of Lab, Con, LD, Reform. 30.25;18;30 2. Lowest share of the vote in 2025 with a BPC registered pollster in a GB wide poll for each of Lab, Con, LD, Reform.25;18;10;20 3. Number of Reform MPs on 31/12/2025. 5 4. Number of Tory MP defectors to Reform in 2025. 0 5. Number of Westminster by-elections held in 2025. 2 6. Number of ministers to leave the Westminster cabinet during 2025. 3 7. Number of seats won by the AfD in the May 2025 German Federal Election. 125 8. UK CPI figure for November 2025 (Nov 2024 = 2.6%).1.9% 9. UK borrowing in the financial year-to-November 2025 (Year to Nov 2024 = £113.2bn). £125bn 10. UK GDP growth in the 12 months to October 2025 (Oct 23 to Oct 24 = 1.3%). 0.0% 11. US growth annualised rate in Q3 2025 (Q3 2024 = 3.1%). 3.0% 12. EU growth Q3 2024 to Q3 2025 (2024 = 1.0%). 0.0% 13. USD/Ruble exchange rate at London FOREX close on 31/12/2025 (31/12/2024 = 114 USD/RUB). 85 14. The result of the 2025-2026 Ashes series (2023 series: Drawn 2–2). 3-2 England
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
What the actual f***?
Can’t they just set up a recruitment centre in Manila? There would be a queue around the block for UK visas for care workers, most of whom would be qualified nurses and could work towards UK certification.
Charge £10k/year/dependent for visas.
They do recruit from Manila.
When my wife was in HR for the NHS she went, with a team, to the Phillipines to recruit nurses.
There was a queue round the block. People travelled for days from outer areas to get there.
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I get the impression that the "normal" politicians in Germany are flailing around, a bit, as here. They don't know what to do. Which is ripe for stupid decisions.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
Thoughts?
The AfD are composed of the people Farage is trying, with varying degrees of success, to keep out of Reform.
But while performing the complicated manoeuvre of having them still vote for him.
Agreed, but that might still be better than having them vote for something else. To my mind there is a clear divide between Farage and fascists. We need to be genuinely vigilant against the latter and call them out because they are genuinely dangerous and on the march, and it doesn't help that effort to try to tar rightwingers like Farage with the same brush.
I don't actually see much difference between Farage and the Braverman wing of the Tory party. He is closer in politics, to Starmer and Badenoch than Trump or the AfD despite his bromance with the orange one.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
This is the sort of thing that will lead to Farage being in government after the next election.
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I get the impression that the "normal" politicians in Germany are flailing around, a bit, as here. They don't know what to do. Which is ripe for stupid decisions.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
Thoughts?
The AfD are composed of the people Farage is trying, with varying degrees of success, to keep out of Reform.
But while performing the complicated manoeuvre of having them still vote for him.
Agreed, but that might still be better than having them vote for something else. To my mind there is a clear divide between Farage and fascists. We need to be genuinely vigilant against the latter and call them out because they are genuinely dangerous and on the march, and it doesn't help that effort to try to tar rightwingers like Farage with the same brush.
I prefer fascist adjacent. I have no doubt that Farage would happily ‘work with’ AfD, Le Pen and whatever other horrors pop up on the political horizon. These people getting palsied fingers on the levers of power would be seen as a positive not a negative by him.
Maybe we need make gradations, far right, far far right, extreme right, nazi? For example Marine Le Pen apparently thinks AfD is to far right.
There are inherent problems with assessing political parties along a single axis. My preference is for multiple axes or, ideally, group analysis. But people don't like that so we have tortured analogies like "horseshoe theory", which is what happens when you try to make a single axis behave like two.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
They certainly should be all over this. All to save a few quid an hour. 10 dependents per person. What a crock. Absolute insanity. Well done Tory Party you deserve to be out of power for a long term. How much will these dependents cost the taxpayer.
What sort of system allows someone to bring in 10 dependents ?!?
The one pioneered by the Tory party after Brexit. The one Priti Patel was defending so vigorously on an interview with Harry Cole.
10 dependents is an average so some will be considerably higher.
And after a few months they have access to all sorts of services
You cannot blame someone in Zimbabwe looking at the UK and coming over to wipe old peoples bums for minimum wage if they can bring a load of dependents to freeload off the nation at the taxpayers expense. If I lived there I'd probably do it. But it is mad. How many of these people are going to be economically inactive.
Care homes are able to issue Visa's. As long as they get the cheap labour they want what do they care about the burden to the taxpayer.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
This is the sort of thing that will lead to Farage being in government after the next election.
Sir Kier will simply give all of these freeloaders, and this is the tip of the iceberg, citizenship and the vote
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
They certainly should be all over this. All to save a few quid an hour. 10 dependents per person. What a crock. Absolute insanity. Well done Tory Party you deserve to be out of power for a long term. How much will these dependents cost the taxpayer.
What sort of system allows someone to bring in 10 dependents ?!?
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Inevitable is another word.
1) Take a complex issue - recruitment - add multiple agendas. All valid agendas, by the way 2) See that the output isn't what you want. 3) Add some complexity to the process, based on the recommendations of narrowly focused people. 4) Loop back to 2) 5) Repeat long enough, and you have the script for Brazil Part Deux
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
What the actual f***?
Can’t they just set up a recruitment centre in Manila? There would be a queue around the block for UK visas for care workers, most of whom would be qualified nurses and could work towards UK certification.
Charge £10k/year/dependent for visas.
They do recruit from Manila.
When my wife was in HR for the NHS she went, with a team, to the Phillipines to recruit nurses.
There was a queue round the block. People travelled for days from outer areas to get there.
Awesome! Something like 80% of the nurses in the sandpit are Filipinas, lovely people.
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I get the impression that the "normal" politicians in Germany are flailing around, a bit, as here. They don't know what to do. Which is ripe for stupid decisions.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
Thoughts?
The AfD are composed of the people Farage is trying, with varying degrees of success, to keep out of Reform.
But while performing the complicated manoeuvre of having them still vote for him.
Agreed, but that might still be better than having them vote for something else. To my mind there is a clear divide between Farage and fascists. We need to be genuinely vigilant against the latter and call them out because they are genuinely dangerous and on the march, and it doesn't help that effort to try to tar rightwingers like Farage with the same brush.
I don't actually see much difference between Farage and the Braverman wing of the Tory party. He is closer in politics, to Starmer and Badenoch than Trump or the AfD despite his bromance with the orange one.
Hmm, I am not sure. The founder of UKIP, Alan Sked has said that Farage is a racist. Farage doesn't care about whipping up divisive hatred. I would say he is very very close to Trump in many ways. How much farther to the right the AfD are, I am not able to judge. I am right of centre in most of my politics, but I see Farage as an odious egotistical crypto-fascist.
People may despise the man, but they shouldn't think him stupid. He absolutely knew this info going into the press conference, and couldn't resist jumping the gun, which wasn't appropriate, but now he looks 'prescient', and those yelling at him have massive egg on their face.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
They certainly should be all over this. All to save a few quid an hour. 10 dependents per person. What a crock. Absolute insanity. Well done Tory Party you deserve to be out of power for a long term. How much will these dependents cost the taxpayer.
What sort of system allows someone to bring in 10 dependents ?!?
The one pioneered by the Tory party after Brexit. The one Priti Patel was defending so vigorously on an interview with Harry Cole.
10 dependents is an average so some will be considerably higher.
And after a few months they have access to all sorts of services
You cannot blame someone in Zimbabwe looking at the UK and coming over to wipe old peoples bums for minimum wage if they can bring a load of dependents to freeload off the nation at the taxpayers expense. If I lived there I'd probably do it. But it is mad. How many of these people are going to be economically inactive.
Care homes are able to issue Visa's. As long as they get the cheap labour they want what do they care about the burden to the taxpayer.
And giving all kind of companies the right to (in effect) to issue work visas - what could go wrong.
It's not as if people aren't paying criminals 4 figures for a life threatening journey across the Channel for the opportunity to work illegally, after all. In a crazy world like that, how much would a legit work visa be worth, do you think?
Yes, companies have already been caught selling visas.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
What the actual f***?
Can’t they just set up a recruitment centre in Manila? There would be a queue around the block for UK visas for care workers, most of whom would be qualified nurses and could work towards UK certification.
Charge £10k/year/dependent for visas.
They do recruit from Manila.
When my wife was in HR for the NHS she went, with a team, to the Phillipines to recruit nurses.
There was a queue round the block. People travelled for days from outer areas to get there.
Awesome! Something like 80% of the nurses in the sandpit are Filipinas, lovely people.
They're great. They also recruit from India. The nurses have to commit to 3 years in the region. Problem it a fair few of the Indian ones then move off to Leicester, Brum, London and other places with a large diaspora. The Filipino's tend to put down roots and stay. The Phillipines trains more nurses than they need and get paid a fee for the ones we take.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
What the actual f***?
Can’t they just set up a recruitment centre in Manila? There would be a queue around the block for UK visas for care workers, most of whom would be qualified nurses and could work towards UK certification.
Charge £10k/year/dependent for visas.
They do recruit from Manila.
When my wife was in HR for the NHS she went, with a team, to the Phillipines to recruit nurses.
There was a queue round the block. People travelled for days from outer areas to get there.
Awesome! Something like 80% of the nurses in the sandpit are Filipinas, lovely people.
They're great. They also recruit from India. The nurses have to commit to 3 years in the region. Problem it a fair few of the Indian ones then move off to Leicester, Brum, London and other places with a large diaspora. The Filipino's tend to put down roots and stay. The Phillipines trains more nurses than they need and get paid a fee for the ones we take.
Works brilliantly and they are fantastic workers.
"The Philippines trains more nurses than they need" - hmmm. We have a shortage of training places for people who graduate with medical degrees.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
They certainly should be all over this. All to save a few quid an hour. 10 dependents per person. What a crock. Absolute insanity. Well done Tory Party you deserve to be out of power for a long term. How much will these dependents cost the taxpayer.
What sort of system allows someone to bring in 10 dependents ?!?
The one pioneered by the Tory party after Brexit. The one Priti Patel was defending so vigorously on an interview with Harry Cole.
10 dependents is an average so some will be considerably higher.
And after a few months they have access to all sorts of services
You cannot blame someone in Zimbabwe looking at the UK and coming over to wipe old peoples bums for minimum wage if they can bring a load of dependents to freeload off the nation at the taxpayers expense. If I lived there I'd probably do it. But it is mad. How many of these people are going to be economically inactive.
Care homes are able to issue Visa's. As long as they get the cheap labour they want what do they care about the burden to the taxpayer.
I can't remember critisicm of Patel for this sort of thing though. All the noise I remember about her (Prior to her Israeli adventures) was from those thinking she was far too harsh - essentially from a leftward direction if you like. Not for stuff like this, which was obviously going on on her watch. It's just bizzare.
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I get the impression that the "normal" politicians in Germany are flailing around, a bit, as here. They don't know what to do. Which is ripe for stupid decisions.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
Thoughts?
The AfD are composed of the people Farage is trying, with varying degrees of success, to keep out of Reform.
But while performing the complicated manoeuvre of having them still vote for him.
Agreed, but that might still be better than having them vote for something else. To my mind there is a clear divide between Farage and fascists. We need to be genuinely vigilant against the latter and call them out because they are genuinely dangerous and on the march, and it doesn't help that effort to try to tar rightwingers like Farage with the same brush.
I don't actually see much difference between Farage and the Braverman wing of the Tory party. He is closer in politics, to Starmer and Badenoch than Trump or the AfD despite his bromance with the orange one.
Hmm, I am not sure. The founder of UKIP, Alan Sked has said that Farage is a racist. Farage doesn't care about whipping up divisive hatred. I would say he is very very close to Trump in many ways. How much farther to the right the AfD are, I am not able to judge. I am right of centre in most of my politics, but I see Farage as an odious egotistical crypto-fascist.
How many of the following would Farage do:
Blatantly lie about an election result Encourage his supporters to attack the police Encourage his supporters to hang his deputy Blame minorities for an air crash within hours of it happening Threaten to invade Greenland
He is definitely unpleasant at times, likes a cheap shot, but that is true of plenty in all the established parties. He is closer to them than the likes of Trump.
Maybe there is something to froth about here, but before frothing, it is important to see the word "plaintiff" and accept that this is a class action by (most likely) contingent fee lawyers, who, particularly in the US, like to us PR techniques with selective evidence. I will be interested to see the adjudication at the end. BTW, I don't doubt that some EDI programs are abused, but that is not a reason to dispense with them entirely.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
What the actual f***?
Can’t they just set up a recruitment centre in Manila? There would be a queue around the block for UK visas for care workers, most of whom would be qualified nurses and could work towards UK certification.
Charge £10k/year/dependent for visas.
They do recruit from Manila.
When my wife was in HR for the NHS she went, with a team, to the Phillipines to recruit nurses.
There was a queue round the block. People travelled for days from outer areas to get there.
Awesome! Something like 80% of the nurses in the sandpit are Filipinas, lovely people.
They're great. They also recruit from India. The nurses have to commit to 3 years in the region. Problem it a fair few of the Indian ones then move off to Leicester, Brum, London and other places with a large diaspora. The Filipino's tend to put down roots and stay. The Phillipines trains more nurses than they need and get paid a fee for the ones we take.
Works brilliantly and they are fantastic workers.
That’s very well put. The Filipinas are a closer cultural match and tend to integrate much better, they’re generally Catholics and will aspire to either marry local Brits or stay for a few years and go back home with enough money to buy a house.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
What the actual f***?
Can’t they just set up a recruitment centre in Manila? There would be a queue around the block for UK visas for care workers, most of whom would be qualified nurses and could work towards UK certification.
Charge £10k/year/dependent for visas.
They do recruit from Manila.
When my wife was in HR for the NHS she went, with a team, to the Phillipines to recruit nurses.
There was a queue round the block. People travelled for days from outer areas to get there.
Awesome! Something like 80% of the nurses in the sandpit are Filipinas, lovely people.
They're great. They also recruit from India. The nurses have to commit to 3 years in the region. Problem it a fair few of the Indian ones then move off to Leicester, Brum, London and other places with a large diaspora. The Filipino's tend to put down roots and stay. The Phillipines trains more nurses than they need and get paid a fee for the ones we take.
Works brilliantly and they are fantastic workers.
"The Philippines trains more nurses than they need" - hmmm. We have a shortage of training places for people who graduate with medical degrees.
Perhaps we could do a deal.
I have just said that. We do. Well South Tyneside and Sunderland Trust do.
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I get the impression that the "normal" politicians in Germany are flailing around, a bit, as here. They don't know what to do. Which is ripe for stupid decisions.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
Thoughts?
The AfD are composed of the people Farage is trying, with varying degrees of success, to keep out of Reform.
But while performing the complicated manoeuvre of having them still vote for him.
Agreed, but that might still be better than having them vote for something else. To my mind there is a clear divide between Farage and fascists. We need to be genuinely vigilant against the latter and call them out because they are genuinely dangerous and on the march, and it doesn't help that effort to try to tar rightwingers like Farage with the same brush.
I don't actually see much difference between Farage and the Braverman wing of the Tory party. He is closer in politics, to Starmer and Badenoch than Trump or the AfD despite his bromance with the orange one.
Hmm, I am not sure. The founder of UKIP, Alan Sked has said that Farage is a racist. Farage doesn't care about whipping up divisive hatred. I would say he is very very close to Trump in many ways. How much farther to the right the AfD are, I am not able to judge. I am right of centre in most of my politics, but I see Farage as an odious egotistical crypto-fascist.
How many of the following would Farage do:
Blatantly lie about an election result Encourage his supporters to attack the police Encourage his supporters to hang his deputy Blame minorities for an air crash within hours of it happening Threaten to invade Greenland
He is definitely unpleasant at times, likes a cheap shot, but that is true of plenty in all the established parties. He is closer to them than the likes of Trump.
How often has he really challenged Trump on these things? Not much that I have noticed. He is also a recidivist apologist for Putin, which in my opinion makes him scum of the earth.
Maybe there is something to froth about here, but before frothing, it is important to see the word "plaintiff" and accept that this is a class action by (most likely) contingent fee lawyers, who, particularly in the US, like to us PR techniques with selective evidence. I will be interested to see the adjudication at the end. BTW, I don't doubt that some EDI programs are abused, but that is not a reason to dispense with them entirely.
Absolutely. I'd add that the problem looks like the approach of fixing problems by endless and stupid patching.
EDI is like a lot of HR. Often implemented by people who have no clue - "How hard can it be?"
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
They certainly should be all over this. All to save a few quid an hour. 10 dependents per person. What a crock. Absolute insanity. Well done Tory Party you deserve to be out of power for a long term. How much will these dependents cost the taxpayer.
What sort of system allows someone to bring in 10 dependents ?!?
The one pioneered by the Tory party after Brexit. The one Priti Patel was defending so vigorously on an interview with Harry Cole.
10 dependents is an average so some will be considerably higher.
And after a few months they have access to all sorts of services
You cannot blame someone in Zimbabwe looking at the UK and coming over to wipe old peoples bums for minimum wage if they can bring a load of dependents to freeload off the nation at the taxpayers expense. If I lived there I'd probably do it. But it is mad. How many of these people are going to be economically inactive.
Care homes are able to issue Visa's. As long as they get the cheap labour they want what do they care about the burden to the taxpayer.
I can't remember critisicm of Patel for this sort of thing though. All the noise I remember about her (Prior to her Israeli adventures) was from those thinking she was far too harsh - essentially from a leftward direction if you like. Not for stuff like this, which was obviously going on on her watch. It's just bizzare.
She was defending it on an interview with Harry Cole from The Sun so was copping the flak for it.
The Tories chopped and changed so much around that time it is hard to remember who dealt with what.
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I get the impression that the "normal" politicians in Germany are flailing around, a bit, as here. They don't know what to do. Which is ripe for stupid decisions.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
Thoughts?
The AfD are composed of the people Farage is trying, with varying degrees of success, to keep out of Reform.
But while performing the complicated manoeuvre of having them still vote for him.
Agreed, but that might still be better than having them vote for something else. To my mind there is a clear divide between Farage and fascists. We need to be genuinely vigilant against the latter and call them out because they are genuinely dangerous and on the march, and it doesn't help that effort to try to tar rightwingers like Farage with the same brush.
I don't actually see much difference between Farage and the Braverman wing of the Tory party. He is closer in politics, to Starmer and Badenoch than Trump or the AfD despite his bromance with the orange one.
Hmm, I am not sure. The founder of UKIP, Alan Sked has said that Farage is a racist. Farage doesn't care about whipping up divisive hatred. I would say he is very very close to Trump in many ways. How much farther to the right the AfD are, I am not able to judge. I am right of centre in most of my politics, but I see Farage as an odious egotistical crypto-fascist.
How many of the following would Farage do:
Blatantly lie about an election result Encourage his supporters to attack the police Encourage his supporters to hang his deputy Blame minorities for an air crash within hours of it happening Threaten to invade Greenland
He is definitely unpleasant at times, likes a cheap shot, but that is true of plenty in all the established parties. He is closer to them than the likes of Trump.
How often has he really challenged Trump on these things? Not much that I have noticed. He is also a recidivist apologist for Putin, which in my opinion makes him scum of the earth.
He wants the Trump bromance. So do Starmer, Lammy and Mandelson whilst they are in power.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
What the actual f***?
Can’t they just set up a recruitment centre in Manila? There would be a queue around the block for UK visas for care workers, most of whom would be qualified nurses and could work towards UK certification.
Charge £10k/year/dependent for visas.
They do recruit from Manila.
When my wife was in HR for the NHS she went, with a team, to the Phillipines to recruit nurses.
There was a queue round the block. People travelled for days from outer areas to get there.
Awesome! Something like 80% of the nurses in the sandpit are Filipinas, lovely people.
They're great. They also recruit from India. The nurses have to commit to 3 years in the region. Problem it a fair few of the Indian ones then move off to Leicester, Brum, London and other places with a large diaspora. The Filipino's tend to put down roots and stay. The Phillipines trains more nurses than they need and get paid a fee for the ones we take.
Works brilliantly and they are fantastic workers.
"The Philippines trains more nurses than they need" - hmmm. We have a shortage of training places for people who graduate with medical degrees.
Perhaps we could do a deal.
I’ve long said on here that the NHS should set up a full teaching hospital in Manila or Mumbai, with UK qualifications handed out and visas on offer for the graduates. Run it with senior NHS medical staff on a short secondment after retirement, but local adminstration, and offer treatment to locals at a fair price without upsetting their existing system too much. Even offer to treat the NHS backlog at what must be a ridiculously cheap price even with travel and hotels.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
They certainly should be all over this. All to save a few quid an hour. 10 dependents per person. What a crock. Absolute insanity. Well done Tory Party you deserve to be out of power for a long term. How much will these dependents cost the taxpayer.
What sort of system allows someone to bring in 10 dependents ?!?
The one pioneered by the Tory party after Brexit. The one Priti Patel was defending so vigorously on an interview with Harry Cole.
10 dependents is an average so some will be considerably higher.
And after a few months they have access to all sorts of services
You cannot blame someone in Zimbabwe looking at the UK and coming over to wipe old peoples bums for minimum wage if they can bring a load of dependents to freeload off the nation at the taxpayers expense. If I lived there I'd probably do it. But it is mad. How many of these people are going to be economically inactive.
Care homes are able to issue Visa's. As long as they get the cheap labour they want what do they care about the burden to the taxpayer.
I can't remember critisicm of Patel for this sort of thing though. All the noise I remember about her (Prior to her Israeli adventures) was from those thinking she was far too harsh - essentially from a leftward direction if you like. Not for stuff like this, which was obviously going on on her watch. It's just bizzare.
She was defending it on an interview with Harry Cole from The Sun so was copping the flak for it.
The Tories chopped and changed so much around that time it is hard to remember who dealt with what.
The entire UK care license system is systematically abused and not fit for purpose. All sorts of articles from all sorts of angles on this.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
What the actual f***?
Can’t they just set up a recruitment centre in Manila? There would be a queue around the block for UK visas for care workers, most of whom would be qualified nurses and could work towards UK certification.
Charge £10k/year/dependent for visas.
They do recruit from Manila.
When my wife was in HR for the NHS she went, with a team, to the Phillipines to recruit nurses.
There was a queue round the block. People travelled for days from outer areas to get there.
Awesome! Something like 80% of the nurses in the sandpit are Filipinas, lovely people.
They're great. They also recruit from India. The nurses have to commit to 3 years in the region. Problem it a fair few of the Indian ones then move off to Leicester, Brum, London and other places with a large diaspora. The Filipino's tend to put down roots and stay. The Phillipines trains more nurses than they need and get paid a fee for the ones we take.
Works brilliantly and they are fantastic workers.
"The Philippines trains more nurses than they need" - hmmm. We have a shortage of training places for people who graduate with medical degrees.
Perhaps we could do a deal.
I’ve long said on here that the NHS should set up a full teaching hospital in Manila or Mumbai, with UK qualifications handed out and visas on offer for the graduates. Run it with senior NHS medical staff on a short secondment after retirement, but local adminstration, and offer treatment to locals at a fair price without upsetting their existing system too much. Even offer to treat the NHS backlog at what must be a ridiculously cheap price even with travel and hotels.
Why not send UK grads there? The next bottleneck, after university, is training places in the UK.
Which is a blocker to training more UK origin staff.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
What the actual f***?
Can’t they just set up a recruitment centre in Manila? There would be a queue around the block for UK visas for care workers, most of whom would be qualified nurses and could work towards UK certification.
Charge £10k/year/dependent for visas.
They do recruit from Manila.
When my wife was in HR for the NHS she went, with a team, to the Phillipines to recruit nurses.
There was a queue round the block. People travelled for days from outer areas to get there.
Awesome! Something like 80% of the nurses in the sandpit are Filipinas, lovely people.
They're great. They also recruit from India. The nurses have to commit to 3 years in the region. Problem it a fair few of the Indian ones then move off to Leicester, Brum, London and other places with a large diaspora. The Filipino's tend to put down roots and stay. The Phillipines trains more nurses than they need and get paid a fee for the ones we take.
Works brilliantly and they are fantastic workers.
"The Philippines trains more nurses than they need" - hmmm. We have a shortage of training places for people who graduate with medical degrees.
Perhaps we could do a deal.
I have just said that. We do. Well South Tyneside and Sunderland Trust do.
Probably something other trusts could do as well.
My better half is a senior sister in A&E, she says the nurses from the Philippines are far better trained than nurses from other countries, including the UK. The only issue is we eventually lose them to the US where they will get far better pay.
People may despise the man, but they shouldn't think him stupid. He absolutely knew this info going into the press conference, and couldn't resist jumping the gun, which wasn't appropriate, but now he looks 'prescient', and those yelling at him have massive egg on their face.
He was not right and he doesn't now look prescient. The issue was his unseemly haste to politicise this tragedy with speculative pigeon-speak ramblings as to what caused it. It showed (as if it needed more showing) his unfitness for the presidency.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
What the actual f***?
Can’t they just set up a recruitment centre in Manila? There would be a queue around the block for UK visas for care workers, most of whom would be qualified nurses and could work towards UK certification.
Charge £10k/year/dependent for visas.
They do recruit from Manila.
When my wife was in HR for the NHS she went, with a team, to the Phillipines to recruit nurses.
There was a queue round the block. People travelled for days from outer areas to get there.
Awesome! Something like 80% of the nurses in the sandpit are Filipinas, lovely people.
They're great. They also recruit from India. The nurses have to commit to 3 years in the region. Problem it a fair few of the Indian ones then move off to Leicester, Brum, London and other places with a large diaspora. The Filipino's tend to put down roots and stay. The Phillipines trains more nurses than they need and get paid a fee for the ones we take.
Works brilliantly and they are fantastic workers.
"The Philippines trains more nurses than they need" - hmmm. We have a shortage of training places for people who graduate with medical degrees.
Perhaps we could do a deal.
I have just said that. We do. Well South Tyneside and Sunderland Trust do.
Probably something other trusts could do as well.
I meant sending UK graduates to train in the Philippines. We have the bizarre situation that with a growing population, and growing NHS, we have a cap on the number of university places for medical studies. Based on having places for the graduates to train, afterwards.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
What the actual f***?
Can’t they just set up a recruitment centre in Manila? There would be a queue around the block for UK visas for care workers, most of whom would be qualified nurses and could work towards UK certification.
Charge £10k/year/dependent for visas.
They do recruit from Manila.
When my wife was in HR for the NHS she went, with a team, to the Phillipines to recruit nurses.
There was a queue round the block. People travelled for days from outer areas to get there.
Awesome! Something like 80% of the nurses in the sandpit are Filipinas, lovely people.
They're great. They also recruit from India. The nurses have to commit to 3 years in the region. Problem it a fair few of the Indian ones then move off to Leicester, Brum, London and other places with a large diaspora. The Filipino's tend to put down roots and stay. The Phillipines trains more nurses than they need and get paid a fee for the ones we take.
Works brilliantly and they are fantastic workers.
"The Philippines trains more nurses than they need" - hmmm. We have a shortage of training places for people who graduate with medical degrees.
Perhaps we could do a deal.
I’ve long said on here that the NHS should set up a full teaching hospital in Manila or Mumbai, with UK qualifications handed out and visas on offer for the graduates. Run it with senior NHS medical staff on a short secondment after retirement, but local adminstration, and offer treatment to locals at a fair price without upsetting their existing system too much. Even offer to treat the NHS backlog at what must be a ridiculously cheap price even with travel and hotels.
Why not send UK grads there? The next bottleneck, after university, is training places in the UK.
Which is a blocker to training more UK origin staff.
Yes they need to think like the private sector, always look at the next block and work out how to deal with it.
Imagine if they should study in the Philippines for $2,000 a year…
1. Highest share of the vote in 2025 with a BPC registered pollster in a GB wide poll for each of Lab, Con, LD, Reform. 30.25;18;30 2. Lowest share of the vote in 2025 with a BPC registered pollster in a GB wide poll for each of Lab, Con, LD, Reform.25;18;10;20 3. Number of Reform MPs on 31/12/2025. 5 4. Number of Tory MP defectors to Reform in 2025. 0 5. Number of Westminster by-elections held in 2025. 2 6. Number of ministers to leave the Westminster cabinet during 2025. 3 7. Number of seats won by the AfD in the May 2025 German Federal Election. 125 8. UK CPI figure for November 2025 (Nov 2024 = 2.6%).1.9% 9. UK borrowing in the financial year-to-November 2025 (Year to Nov 2024 = £113.2bn). £125bn 10. UK GDP growth in the 12 months to October 2025 (Oct 23 to Oct 24 = 1.3%). 0.0% 11. US growth annualised rate in Q3 2025 (Q3 2024 = 3.1%). 3.0% 12. EU growth Q3 2024 to Q3 2025 (2024 = 1.0%). 0.0% 13. USD/Ruble exchange rate at London FOREX close on 31/12/2025 (31/12/2024 = 114 USD/RUB). 85 14. The result of the 2025-2026 Ashes series (2023 series: Drawn 2–2). 3-2 England
Pssst. I think your 1 and 2 are already wrong. Get in quick with the edit button.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
They certainly should be all over this. All to save a few quid an hour. 10 dependents per person. What a crock. Absolute insanity. Well done Tory Party you deserve to be out of power for a long term. How much will these dependents cost the taxpayer.
What sort of system allows someone to bring in 10 dependents ?!?
The one pioneered by the Tory party after Brexit. The one Priti Patel was defending so vigorously on an interview with Harry Cole.
10 dependents is an average so some will be considerably higher.
And after a few months they have access to all sorts of services
You cannot blame someone in Zimbabwe looking at the UK and coming over to wipe old peoples bums for minimum wage if they can bring a load of dependents to freeload off the nation at the taxpayers expense. If I lived there I'd probably do it. But it is mad. How many of these people are going to be economically inactive.
Care homes are able to issue Visa's. As long as they get the cheap labour they want what do they care about the burden to the taxpayer.
I can't remember critisicm of Patel for this sort of thing though. All the noise I remember about her (Prior to her Israeli adventures) was from those thinking she was far too harsh - essentially from a leftward direction if you like. Not for stuff like this, which was obviously going on on her watch. It's just bizzare.
She was defending it on an interview with Harry Cole from The Sun so was copping the flak for it.
The Tories chopped and changed so much around that time it is hard to remember who dealt with what.
The entire UK care license system is systematically abused and not fit for purpose. All sorts of articles from all sorts of angles on this.
Maybe a national care system would improve things, e.g. your Sunderland Trust/Manila relationship seems to work well.
I read a story on SKY News about a man in his late forties who came over from Pakistan with his 4 children and his wife, paid over £10K to an "agency" for the pleasure and ended up over here with no job in the care sector working for the agency.
It is hard not to have sympathy for people like this who have come here for a better life for him and for 5 economically inactive dependents only to have ended up out of pocket and in a job with the agency that got him here.
It is a poor situation for the country, the taxpayer and the people brought over here as well as where do we house them all. The only beneficiaries are the care homes who get cheap labour with no accountability for the problems it causes.
It is similar to this horrific story about Prison Wardens brought over from Nigeria, with family of course, only to realise accomodation was not also provided so some sleep in their cars, some sleep in the woods. In the middle of winter.
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I get the impression that the "normal" politicians in Germany are flailing around, a bit, as here. They don't know what to do. Which is ripe for stupid decisions.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
Thoughts?
The AfD are composed of the people Farage is trying, with varying degrees of success, to keep out of Reform.
But while performing the complicated manoeuvre of having them still vote for him.
Agreed, but that might still be better than having them vote for something else. To my mind there is a clear divide between Farage and fascists. We need to be genuinely vigilant against the latter and call them out because they are genuinely dangerous and on the march, and it doesn't help that effort to try to tar rightwingers like Farage with the same brush.
I don't actually see much difference between Farage and the Braverman wing of the Tory party. He is closer in politics, to Starmer and Badenoch than Trump or the AfD despite his bromance with the orange one.
Hmm, I am not sure. The founder of UKIP, Alan Sked has said that Farage is a racist. Farage doesn't care about whipping up divisive hatred. I would say he is very very close to Trump in many ways. How much farther to the right the AfD are, I am not able to judge. I am right of centre in most of my politics, but I see Farage as an odious egotistical crypto-fascist.
How many of the following would Farage do:
Blatantly lie about an election result Encourage his supporters to attack the police Encourage his supporters to hang his deputy Blame minorities for an air crash within hours of it happening Threaten to invade Greenland
He is definitely unpleasant at times, likes a cheap shot, but that is true of plenty in all the established parties. He is closer to them than the likes of Trump.
How often has he really challenged Trump on these things? Not much that I have noticed. He is also a recidivist apologist for Putin, which in my opinion makes him scum of the earth.
He wants the Trump bromance. So do Starmer, Lammy and Mandelson whilst they are in power.
There's no doubt he's kissed the Trump ring (a phrase almost as discomfiting as 'that' photograph). Despite that Farage didn't get an invite to the Trump inauguration ceremony which suggests DJT doesn't see him as rich or influential enough. Of course Boris was there..
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
What the actual f***?
Can’t they just set up a recruitment centre in Manila? There would be a queue around the block for UK visas for care workers, most of whom would be qualified nurses and could work towards UK certification.
Charge £10k/year/dependent for visas.
They do recruit from Manila.
When my wife was in HR for the NHS she went, with a team, to the Phillipines to recruit nurses.
There was a queue round the block. People travelled for days from outer areas to get there.
Awesome! Something like 80% of the nurses in the sandpit are Filipinas, lovely people.
They're great. They also recruit from India. The nurses have to commit to 3 years in the region. Problem it a fair few of the Indian ones then move off to Leicester, Brum, London and other places with a large diaspora. The Filipino's tend to put down roots and stay. The Phillipines trains more nurses than they need and get paid a fee for the ones we take.
Works brilliantly and they are fantastic workers.
"The Philippines trains more nurses than they need" - hmmm. We have a shortage of training places for people who graduate with medical degrees.
Perhaps we could do a deal.
I’ve long said on here that the NHS should set up a full teaching hospital in Manila or Mumbai, with UK qualifications handed out and visas on offer for the graduates. Run it with senior NHS medical staff on a short secondment after retirement, but local adminstration, and offer treatment to locals at a fair price without upsetting their existing system too much. Even offer to treat the NHS backlog at what must be a ridiculously cheap price even with travel and hotels.
Why not send UK grads there? The next bottleneck, after university, is training places in the UK.
Which is a blocker to training more UK origin staff.
Yes they need to think like the private sector, always look at the next block and work out how to deal with it.
Good old constraint management. Been working on this approach since the early nineties.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
What the actual f***?
Can’t they just set up a recruitment centre in Manila? There would be a queue around the block for UK visas for care workers, most of whom would be qualified nurses and could work towards UK certification.
Charge £10k/year/dependent for visas.
They do recruit from Manila.
When my wife was in HR for the NHS she went, with a team, to the Phillipines to recruit nurses.
There was a queue round the block. People travelled for days from outer areas to get there.
Awesome! Something like 80% of the nurses in the sandpit are Filipinas, lovely people.
They're great. They also recruit from India. The nurses have to commit to 3 years in the region. Problem it a fair few of the Indian ones then move off to Leicester, Brum, London and other places with a large diaspora. The Filipino's tend to put down roots and stay. The Phillipines trains more nurses than they need and get paid a fee for the ones we take.
Works brilliantly and they are fantastic workers.
"The Philippines trains more nurses than they need" - hmmm. We have a shortage of training places for people who graduate with medical degrees.
Perhaps we could do a deal.
I have just said that. We do. Well South Tyneside and Sunderland Trust do.
Probably something other trusts could do as well.
I meant sending UK graduates to train in the Philippines. We have the bizarre situation that with a growing population, and growing NHS, we have a cap on the number of university places for medical studies. Based on having places for the graduates to train, afterwards.
Ah, got you, yes, why not. It would make sense and give the graduates a great life experience to boot.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
What the actual f***?
Can’t they just set up a recruitment centre in Manila? There would be a queue around the block for UK visas for care workers, most of whom would be qualified nurses and could work towards UK certification.
Charge £10k/year/dependent for visas.
They do recruit from Manila.
When my wife was in HR for the NHS she went, with a team, to the Phillipines to recruit nurses.
There was a queue round the block. People travelled for days from outer areas to get there.
Awesome! Something like 80% of the nurses in the sandpit are Filipinas, lovely people.
They're great. They also recruit from India. The nurses have to commit to 3 years in the region. Problem it a fair few of the Indian ones then move off to Leicester, Brum, London and other places with a large diaspora. The Filipino's tend to put down roots and stay. The Phillipines trains more nurses than they need and get paid a fee for the ones we take.
Works brilliantly and they are fantastic workers.
"The Philippines trains more nurses than they need" - hmmm. We have a shortage of training places for people who graduate with medical degrees.
Perhaps we could do a deal.
I have just said that. We do. Well South Tyneside and Sunderland Trust do.
Probably something other trusts could do as well.
My better half is a senior sister in A&E, she says the nurses from the Philippines are far better trained than nurses from other countries, including the UK. The only issue is we eventually lose them to the US where they will get far better pay.
Nice people, too, from the patients point of view.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
They certainly should be all over this. All to save a few quid an hour. 10 dependents per person. What a crock. Absolute insanity. Well done Tory Party you deserve to be out of power for a long term. How much will these dependents cost the taxpayer.
What sort of system allows someone to bring in 10 dependents ?!?
Its worse than that, surely? That's the average.
Come on, you can't honestly believe that is true? It's so obviously false. How could the average person working in social care have 10 dependents.
Looking online, it's cherrypicked data from when there was a decline in visa applications due to new rules but a lag of dependent visas, the correct figure is <2 dependents per visa.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
What the actual f***?
Can’t they just set up a recruitment centre in Manila? There would be a queue around the block for UK visas for care workers, most of whom would be qualified nurses and could work towards UK certification.
Charge £10k/year/dependent for visas.
They do recruit from Manila.
When my wife was in HR for the NHS she went, with a team, to the Phillipines to recruit nurses.
There was a queue round the block. People travelled for days from outer areas to get there.
Awesome! Something like 80% of the nurses in the sandpit are Filipinas, lovely people.
They're great. They also recruit from India. The nurses have to commit to 3 years in the region. Problem it a fair few of the Indian ones then move off to Leicester, Brum, London and other places with a large diaspora. The Filipino's tend to put down roots and stay. The Phillipines trains more nurses than they need and get paid a fee for the ones we take.
Works brilliantly and they are fantastic workers.
"The Philippines trains more nurses than they need" - hmmm. We have a shortage of training places for people who graduate with medical degrees.
Perhaps we could do a deal.
I have just said that. We do. Well South Tyneside and Sunderland Trust do.
Probably something other trusts could do as well.
My better half is a senior sister in A&E, she says the nurses from the Philippines are far better trained than nurses from other countries, including the UK. The only issue is we eventually lose them to the US where they will get far better pay.
Hmmmmm.
So how much would they charge for a foreigner to take a place at their training hospitals?
Idea - send grads to the Philippines to be trained. Put the cost on the Overseas Aid budget.
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I get the impression that the "normal" politicians in Germany are flailing around, a bit, as here. They don't know what to do. Which is ripe for stupid decisions.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
Thoughts?
The AfD are composed of the people Farage is trying, with varying degrees of success, to keep out of Reform.
But while performing the complicated manoeuvre of having them still vote for him.
Agreed, but that might still be better than having them vote for something else. To my mind there is a clear divide between Farage and fascists. We need to be genuinely vigilant against the latter and call them out because they are genuinely dangerous and on the march, and it doesn't help that effort to try to tar rightwingers like Farage with the same brush.
I don't actually see much difference between Farage and the Braverman wing of the Tory party. He is closer in politics, to Starmer and Badenoch than Trump or the AfD despite his bromance with the orange one.
Hmm, I am not sure. The founder of UKIP, Alan Sked has said that Farage is a racist. Farage doesn't care about whipping up divisive hatred. I would say he is very very close to Trump in many ways. How much farther to the right the AfD are, I am not able to judge. I am right of centre in most of my politics, but I see Farage as an odious egotistical crypto-fascist.
How many of the following would Farage do:
Blatantly lie about an election result Encourage his supporters to attack the police Encourage his supporters to hang his deputy Blame minorities for an air crash within hours of it happening Threaten to invade Greenland
He is definitely unpleasant at times, likes a cheap shot, but that is true of plenty in all the established parties. He is closer to them than the likes of Trump.
Agree. There are real problems with trying to place him - just like Corbyn and Trump only different. Was Corbyn a pro ordinary people socialist, or an anti Jewish supporter of our sworn enemies. Or both. or neither. Is Trump on the side of small town regular guy or at the head of a plutocratic gangster regime. Or both.
Is Farage a 1950s social democrat + an extra dose of ultra cautious about inward migration or a fellow traveller with gangster plutocracy and warmongering dictators. Or both.
Like OFSTED judgments, single word descriptions don't suffice.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
What the actual f***?
Can’t they just set up a recruitment centre in Manila? There would be a queue around the block for UK visas for care workers, most of whom would be qualified nurses and could work towards UK certification.
Charge £10k/year/dependent for visas.
They do recruit from Manila.
When my wife was in HR for the NHS she went, with a team, to the Phillipines to recruit nurses.
There was a queue round the block. People travelled for days from outer areas to get there.
Awesome! Something like 80% of the nurses in the sandpit are Filipinas, lovely people.
They're great. They also recruit from India. The nurses have to commit to 3 years in the region. Problem it a fair few of the Indian ones then move off to Leicester, Brum, London and other places with a large diaspora. The Filipino's tend to put down roots and stay. The Phillipines trains more nurses than they need and get paid a fee for the ones we take.
Works brilliantly and they are fantastic workers.
"The Philippines trains more nurses than they need" - hmmm. We have a shortage of training places for people who graduate with medical degrees.
Perhaps we could do a deal.
I have just said that. We do. Well South Tyneside and Sunderland Trust do.
Probably something other trusts could do as well.
I meant sending UK graduates to train in the Philippines. We have the bizarre situation that with a growing population, and growing NHS, we have a cap on the number of university places for medical studies. Based on having places for the graduates to train, afterwards.
Ah, got you, yes, why not. It would make sense and give the graduates a great life experience to boot.
Cross cultural learning, deep immersion in other cultures, post colonial restitution... paying a developing country, doing real healthcare while there, making up for the strip mining of medical staff from such countries & establishing a real working relationship with the medical structures in that country, not just recruiting their staff.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
What the actual f***?
Can’t they just set up a recruitment centre in Manila? There would be a queue around the block for UK visas for care workers, most of whom would be qualified nurses and could work towards UK certification.
Charge £10k/year/dependent for visas.
They do recruit from Manila.
When my wife was in HR for the NHS she went, with a team, to the Phillipines to recruit nurses.
There was a queue round the block. People travelled for days from outer areas to get there.
Awesome! Something like 80% of the nurses in the sandpit are Filipinas, lovely people.
They're great. They also recruit from India. The nurses have to commit to 3 years in the region. Problem it a fair few of the Indian ones then move off to Leicester, Brum, London and other places with a large diaspora. The Filipino's tend to put down roots and stay. The Phillipines trains more nurses than they need and get paid a fee for the ones we take.
Works brilliantly and they are fantastic workers.
"The Philippines trains more nurses than they need" - hmmm. We have a shortage of training places for people who graduate with medical degrees.
Perhaps we could do a deal.
I have just said that. We do. Well South Tyneside and Sunderland Trust do.
Probably something other trusts could do as well.
I meant sending UK graduates to train in the Philippines. We have the bizarre situation that with a growing population, and growing NHS, we have a cap on the number of university places for medical studies. Based on having places for the graduates to train, afterwards.
Ah, got you, yes, why not. It would make sense and give the graduates a great life experience to boot.
Dare I say it, but it might sort out somewhat the marriage problem in the UK. Because half of British men spending a couple of years in Manila would come back married.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
What the actual f***?
Can’t they just set up a recruitment centre in Manila? There would be a queue around the block for UK visas for care workers, most of whom would be qualified nurses and could work towards UK certification.
Charge £10k/year/dependent for visas.
They do recruit from Manila.
When my wife was in HR for the NHS she went, with a team, to the Phillipines to recruit nurses.
There was a queue round the block. People travelled for days from outer areas to get there.
Awesome! Something like 80% of the nurses in the sandpit are Filipinas, lovely people.
They're great. They also recruit from India. The nurses have to commit to 3 years in the region. Problem it a fair few of the Indian ones then move off to Leicester, Brum, London and other places with a large diaspora. The Filipino's tend to put down roots and stay. The Phillipines trains more nurses than they need and get paid a fee for the ones we take.
Works brilliantly and they are fantastic workers.
"The Philippines trains more nurses than they need" - hmmm. We have a shortage of training places for people who graduate with medical degrees.
Perhaps we could do a deal.
I have just said that. We do. Well South Tyneside and Sunderland Trust do.
Probably something other trusts could do as well.
My better half is a senior sister in A&E, she says the nurses from the Philippines are far better trained than nurses from other countries, including the UK. The only issue is we eventually lose them to the US where they will get far better pay.
Nice people, too, from the patients point of view.
My wife had nothing but praise for them in her time dealing with them both in the Phillipines and when they got to the UK. Rarely any bother and integrate superbly.
Truly a really positive story for inward migration.
People may despise the man, but they shouldn't think him stupid. He absolutely knew this info going into the press conference, and couldn't resist jumping the gun, which wasn't appropriate, but now he looks 'prescient', and those yelling at him have massive egg on their face.
He was not right and he doesn't now look prescient. The issue was his unseemly haste to politicise this tragedy with speculative pigeon-speak ramblings as to what caused it. It showed (as if it needed more showing) his unfitness for the presidency.
He sticks to the facts, but it looks very much like most of the blame lies with the helicopter pilot or with the protocols in place. The helicopter pilot twice confirmed that he had the plane in sight, and was further told by ATC to pass behind the plane when they appeared to be on a possible collision course. I'm not sure what more ATC could have done in this situation.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
What the actual f***?
Can’t they just set up a recruitment centre in Manila? There would be a queue around the block for UK visas for care workers, most of whom would be qualified nurses and could work towards UK certification.
Charge £10k/year/dependent for visas.
They do recruit from Manila.
When my wife was in HR for the NHS she went, with a team, to the Phillipines to recruit nurses.
There was a queue round the block. People travelled for days from outer areas to get there.
Awesome! Something like 80% of the nurses in the sandpit are Filipinas, lovely people.
They're great. They also recruit from India. The nurses have to commit to 3 years in the region. Problem it a fair few of the Indian ones then move off to Leicester, Brum, London and other places with a large diaspora. The Filipino's tend to put down roots and stay. The Phillipines trains more nurses than they need and get paid a fee for the ones we take.
Works brilliantly and they are fantastic workers.
"The Philippines trains more nurses than they need" - hmmm. We have a shortage of training places for people who graduate with medical degrees.
Perhaps we could do a deal.
I have just said that. We do. Well South Tyneside and Sunderland Trust do.
Probably something other trusts could do as well.
I meant sending UK graduates to train in the Philippines. We have the bizarre situation that with a growing population, and growing NHS, we have a cap on the number of university places for medical studies. Based on having places for the graduates to train, afterwards.
Ah, got you, yes, why not. It would make sense and give the graduates a great life experience to boot.
Dare I say it, but it might sort out somewhat the marriage problem in the UK. Because half of British men spending a couple of years in Manila would come back married.
Even though these men would be over twice the age of their wives
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
What the actual f***?
Can’t they just set up a recruitment centre in Manila? There would be a queue around the block for UK visas for care workers, most of whom would be qualified nurses and could work towards UK certification.
Charge £10k/year/dependent for visas.
They do recruit from Manila.
When my wife was in HR for the NHS she went, with a team, to the Phillipines to recruit nurses.
There was a queue round the block. People travelled for days from outer areas to get there.
Awesome! Something like 80% of the nurses in the sandpit are Filipinas, lovely people.
They're great. They also recruit from India. The nurses have to commit to 3 years in the region. Problem it a fair few of the Indian ones then move off to Leicester, Brum, London and other places with a large diaspora. The Filipino's tend to put down roots and stay. The Phillipines trains more nurses than they need and get paid a fee for the ones we take.
Works brilliantly and they are fantastic workers.
"The Philippines trains more nurses than they need" - hmmm. We have a shortage of training places for people who graduate with medical degrees.
Perhaps we could do a deal.
I have just said that. We do. Well South Tyneside and Sunderland Trust do.
Probably something other trusts could do as well.
I meant sending UK graduates to train in the Philippines. We have the bizarre situation that with a growing population, and growing NHS, we have a cap on the number of university places for medical studies. Based on having places for the graduates to train, afterwards.
Ah, got you, yes, why not. It would make sense and give the graduates a great life experience to boot.
Alternatively, stop nursing being a graduate level training, and go back to what it was in the good old days.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
What the actual f***?
Can’t they just set up a recruitment centre in Manila? There would be a queue around the block for UK visas for care workers, most of whom would be qualified nurses and could work towards UK certification.
Charge £10k/year/dependent for visas.
They do recruit from Manila.
When my wife was in HR for the NHS she went, with a team, to the Phillipines to recruit nurses.
There was a queue round the block. People travelled for days from outer areas to get there.
Awesome! Something like 80% of the nurses in the sandpit are Filipinas, lovely people.
They're great. They also recruit from India. The nurses have to commit to 3 years in the region. Problem it a fair few of the Indian ones then move off to Leicester, Brum, London and other places with a large diaspora. The Filipino's tend to put down roots and stay. The Phillipines trains more nurses than they need and get paid a fee for the ones we take.
Works brilliantly and they are fantastic workers.
"The Philippines trains more nurses than they need" - hmmm. We have a shortage of training places for people who graduate with medical degrees.
Perhaps we could do a deal.
I have just said that. We do. Well South Tyneside and Sunderland Trust do.
Probably something other trusts could do as well.
I meant sending UK graduates to train in the Philippines. We have the bizarre situation that with a growing population, and growing NHS, we have a cap on the number of university places for medical studies. Based on having places for the graduates to train, afterwards.
Ah, got you, yes, why not. It would make sense and give the graduates a great life experience to boot.
Dare I say it, but it might sort out somewhat the marriage problem in the UK. Because half of British men spending a couple of years in Manila would come back married.
Even though these men would be over twice the age of their wives
I hope not, if we’re talking mostly about the medical students and not the retired consultants doing their training!
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
What the actual f***?
Can’t they just set up a recruitment centre in Manila? There would be a queue around the block for UK visas for care workers, most of whom would be qualified nurses and could work towards UK certification.
Charge £10k/year/dependent for visas.
They do recruit from Manila.
When my wife was in HR for the NHS she went, with a team, to the Phillipines to recruit nurses.
There was a queue round the block. People travelled for days from outer areas to get there.
Awesome! Something like 80% of the nurses in the sandpit are Filipinas, lovely people.
They're great. They also recruit from India. The nurses have to commit to 3 years in the region. Problem it a fair few of the Indian ones then move off to Leicester, Brum, London and other places with a large diaspora. The Filipino's tend to put down roots and stay. The Phillipines trains more nurses than they need and get paid a fee for the ones we take.
Works brilliantly and they are fantastic workers.
"The Philippines trains more nurses than they need" - hmmm. We have a shortage of training places for people who graduate with medical degrees.
Perhaps we could do a deal.
I have just said that. We do. Well South Tyneside and Sunderland Trust do.
Probably something other trusts could do as well.
I meant sending UK graduates to train in the Philippines. We have the bizarre situation that with a growing population, and growing NHS, we have a cap on the number of university places for medical studies. Based on having places for the graduates to train, afterwards.
Ah, got you, yes, why not. It would make sense and give the graduates a great life experience to boot.
Alternatively, stop nursing being a graduate level training, and go back to what it was in the good old days.
People may despise the man, but they shouldn't think him stupid. He absolutely knew this info going into the press conference, and couldn't resist jumping the gun, which wasn't appropriate, but now he looks 'prescient', and those yelling at him have massive egg on their face.
He was not right and he doesn't now look prescient. The issue was his unseemly haste to politicise this tragedy with speculative pigeon-speak ramblings as to what caused it. It showed (as if it needed more showing) his unfitness for the presidency.
He sticks to the facts, but it looks very much like most of the blame lies with the helicopter pilot or with the protocols in place. The helicopter pilot twice confirmed that he had the plane in sight, and was further told by ATC to pass behind the plane when they appeared to be on a possible collision course. I'm not sure what more ATC could have done in this situation.
It seems he was talking about the wrong plane, so ATC could have tried to confirm it.
People may despise the man, but they shouldn't think him stupid. He absolutely knew this info going into the press conference, and couldn't resist jumping the gun, which wasn't appropriate, but now he looks 'prescient', and those yelling at him have massive egg on their face.
He was not right and he doesn't now look prescient. The issue was his unseemly haste to politicise this tragedy with speculative pigeon-speak ramblings as to what caused it. It showed (as if it needed more showing) his unfitness for the presidency.
He sticks to the facts, but it looks very much like most of the blame lies with the helicopter pilot or with the protocols in place. The helicopter pilot twice confirmed that he had the plane in sight, and was further told by ATC to pass behind the plane when they appeared to be on a possible collision course. I'm not sure what more ATC could have done in this situation.
It seems he was talking about the wrong plane, so ATC could have tried to confirm it.
If there were two nearly planes, and ATC could see all three aircraft on radar, then it’s a communication failure.
“The conflict aircraft is at your 10 o’clock not your 2 o’clock” does the trick.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
What the actual f***?
Can’t they just set up a recruitment centre in Manila? There would be a queue around the block for UK visas for care workers, most of whom would be qualified nurses and could work towards UK certification.
Charge £10k/year/dependent for visas.
They do recruit from Manila.
When my wife was in HR for the NHS she went, with a team, to the Phillipines to recruit nurses.
There was a queue round the block. People travelled for days from outer areas to get there.
Awesome! Something like 80% of the nurses in the sandpit are Filipinas, lovely people.
They're great. They also recruit from India. The nurses have to commit to 3 years in the region. Problem it a fair few of the Indian ones then move off to Leicester, Brum, London and other places with a large diaspora. The Filipino's tend to put down roots and stay. The Phillipines trains more nurses than they need and get paid a fee for the ones we take.
Works brilliantly and they are fantastic workers.
"The Philippines trains more nurses than they need" - hmmm. We have a shortage of training places for people who graduate with medical degrees.
Perhaps we could do a deal.
I have just said that. We do. Well South Tyneside and Sunderland Trust do.
Probably something other trusts could do as well.
I meant sending UK graduates to train in the Philippines. We have the bizarre situation that with a growing population, and growing NHS, we have a cap on the number of university places for medical studies. Based on having places for the graduates to train, afterwards.
Ah, got you, yes, why not. It would make sense and give the graduates a great life experience to boot.
Alternatively, stop nursing being a graduate level training, and go back to what it was in the good old days.
1) Do x years and get a certificate saying you have completed the basic nursing qualification and are ready for the wards. 2) Do x years and get a degree certificate saying you have completed the basic nursing qualification and are ready for the wards.
Hint - the cost/issues is not in calling it a degree.
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I get the impression that the "normal" politicians in Germany are flailing around, a bit, as here. They don't know what to do. Which is ripe for stupid decisions.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
Thoughts?
The AfD are composed of the people Farage is trying, with varying degrees of success, to keep out of Reform.
But while performing the complicated manoeuvre of having them still vote for him.
Agreed, but that might still be better than having them vote for something else. To my mind there is a clear divide between Farage and fascists. We need to be genuinely vigilant against the latter and call them out because they are genuinely dangerous and on the march, and it doesn't help that effort to try to tar rightwingers like Farage with the same brush.
I don't actually see much difference between Farage and the Braverman wing of the Tory party. He is closer in politics, to Starmer and Badenoch than Trump or the AfD despite his bromance with the orange one.
Hmm, I am not sure. The founder of UKIP, Alan Sked has said that Farage is a racist. Farage doesn't care about whipping up divisive hatred. I would say he is very very close to Trump in many ways. How much farther to the right the AfD are, I am not able to judge. I am right of centre in most of my politics, but I see Farage as an odious egotistical crypto-fascist.
How many of the following would Farage do:
Blatantly lie about an election result Encourage his supporters to attack the police Encourage his supporters to hang his deputy Blame minorities for an air crash within hours of it happening Threaten to invade Greenland
He is definitely unpleasant at times, likes a cheap shot, but that is true of plenty in all the established parties. He is closer to them than the likes of Trump.
How often has he really challenged Trump on these things? Not much that I have noticed. He is also a recidivist apologist for Putin, which in my opinion makes him scum of the earth.
He wants the Trump bromance. So do Starmer, Lammy and Mandelson whilst they are in power.
There's no doubt he's kissed the Trump ring (a phrase almost as discomfiting as 'that' photograph). Despite that Farage didn't get an invite to the Trump inauguration ceremony which suggests DJT doesn't see him as rich or influential enough. Of course Boris was there..
Yes I'm seeing that phrase a little too often for my liking. Can we not substitute with "genuflected in abject fashion" or something similar.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
What the actual f***?
Can’t they just set up a recruitment centre in Manila? There would be a queue around the block for UK visas for care workers, most of whom would be qualified nurses and could work towards UK certification.
Charge £10k/year/dependent for visas.
They do recruit from Manila.
When my wife was in HR for the NHS she went, with a team, to the Phillipines to recruit nurses.
There was a queue round the block. People travelled for days from outer areas to get there.
Awesome! Something like 80% of the nurses in the sandpit are Filipinas, lovely people.
They're great. They also recruit from India. The nurses have to commit to 3 years in the region. Problem it a fair few of the Indian ones then move off to Leicester, Brum, London and other places with a large diaspora. The Filipino's tend to put down roots and stay. The Phillipines trains more nurses than they need and get paid a fee for the ones we take.
Works brilliantly and they are fantastic workers.
"The Philippines trains more nurses than they need" - hmmm. We have a shortage of training places for people who graduate with medical degrees.
Perhaps we could do a deal.
I have just said that. We do. Well South Tyneside and Sunderland Trust do.
Probably something other trusts could do as well.
I meant sending UK graduates to train in the Philippines. We have the bizarre situation that with a growing population, and growing NHS, we have a cap on the number of university places for medical studies. Based on having places for the graduates to train, afterwards.
Ah, got you, yes, why not. It would make sense and give the graduates a great life experience to boot.
Cross cultural learning, deep immersion in other cultures, post colonial restitution... paying a developing country, doing real healthcare while there, making up for the strip mining of medical staff from such countries & establishing a real working relationship with the medical structures in that country, not just recruiting their staff.
Sounds like DEI heaven, really.
It's not the daftest idea Sandpit has had. Well worth working out the detail of how it might operate.
From a Criminology lecturer at Kent, on Rudakubana.
(Yes, it's on UnHerd, but don't hold that against it.)
Not sure about the conclusion, that he was just evil all along, thought there was fairly strong evidence that people seek out more and more extreme content that excites them and that it transfers to their behaviour in real life. Can't imagine anyone sentient leaving their kids with one of those monkey-torture fans.
We tend to focus on individual polls which look interesting - but much more significant and easily missed - I think this is the first week when *every* poll released (from across 7 pollsters) has had the Reform ahead of the Conservatives.
(Note, that's a daily average, assuming the program remains frozen for 90 days. If it's resumed fairly soon, then the damage is likely to be considerably less.)
Comments
Even if the bill were passed in the Bundestag, it has zero chance of getting approval (which it needs) in the Bundesrat which is made up of delegates from the state governments. The CDU premiers of Schleswig Holstein and Berlin have already said their delegates would vote against any bill in the Bundesrat that only passed the Bundestag with AfD votes. In fact it's hard to see which of the 17 states would vote for it in the Bundesrat except Bavaria.
Things could theoretically change after the election, in the sense that Merz has said supporting the bill would be a condition for joining the coalition, and the SPD could get its state delegations to approve the bill. I don't think there's any chance whatsoever of the Green Party going into a coalition on the basis of supporting legislation it believes is unconstitutional and contravenes European treaties Germany is party to. The SPD, not really having any principles, is maybe a remote chance, though extremely doubtful.
So, as is usual in Germany, a compromise will have to be reached. But Merz has stupidly nailed his colours to the mast so when he does compromise it will be a further boost to the AfD.
Anyway, it does look like the bill will be postponed as the FDP are suddenly saying they want to send it back to committee. This would be a relief for many in the CDU too - at least the one or 2 people I know who are privately extremely unhappy with Merz's tactics.
https://x.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1752091831095939471
(Or, indeed, not to have a mistress!)
I think the DEI in the right-wing mind is very different to that you experience in a corporate setting. It's either entirely inconsequential, or used effectively by senior partners to grab smart kids straight from school into non-grad programmes. They tend to be very high performers.
But Trump's DEI is very obviously a dog whistle for "the blacks, the gays, trans, women" etc etc.
In your example, would the dust and debris from the combine not cover the panels, having an effect on their productivity?
The coverage of the 5yr Brexit anniversary in today's papers is so muted you'd be forgiven for thinking it was an internationally-embarrassing fuck-up.
From talking to this guy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moe_Sbihi - he described how the other kids in his class at school saw their future jobs as stacking shelves at Tesco. As the good outcome.
All the first generation immigrants I encounter are *desparate* for their children to move up the ladder. Or at least stay on the nice rungs, if they are already there.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120797/
An organisation that is blaming DEI for failure to recruit and improve is almost certainly begrudgingly implementing programmes, and full of people who don't take them seriously and are prejudiced.
However, you made the right call. The life of a junior naval officer is highly incompatible with being married. Some make it work, but lots more don't.
It's a very American solution - look at the output only. Keep adding random wiring - and wonder why the output is no better. Meanwhile, the rats nest of wiring is actually worse. And there are odd sparks....
The bit that makes me giggle is that there has been a shortage of air traffic controllers, in the US, since forever. As you say, DEI should be *adding* to the recruitment pool.
In the UK, NATS (National Air Traffic Services, state employer of air traffic controllers) certainly used to sponsor their controllers to get a private pilot’s licence in their spare time (if they didn’t have one already, which most of them did!).
A very different approach to what we see in the US.
Venue to be announced*
*they're looking for a room extended by knocking through the supporting wall without putting in any reinforcement.
You see loads of them on here - often they work (and worked) with the EU, but only in one area like financial services, and have a limited concept of the implications of now joining the rest and which bits are linked together. Even the support in that poll for joining the Single Market will reflect the fact that most people seem to think the single market is about trade.
*…among other things*
For example Marine Le Pen apparently thinks AfD is to far right.
This is a very rare form of pancreatic cancer (only around 1% I think), but on the off chance it’s relevant, this treatment looks very promising indeed.
Pan-RAS Inhibitor Shows Early, Deep Molecular Responses in PDAC
https://dailynews.ascopubs.org/do/pan-ras-inhibitor-shows-early-deep-molecular-responses-pdac
Where it goes wrong is when (as in so many things in life) the pendulum swings too far and people are discriminated against, causing someone who is brilliant to not be hired because they haven't ticked enough boxes.
The problem with the simplistic mentality of the populist is that they think it is better to axe things that are not working well and retreat to their own comfort zones of the past rather than look for amendment or improvement.
Can’t they just set up a recruitment centre in Manila? There would be a queue around the block for UK visas for care workers, most of whom would be qualified nurses and could work towards UK certification.
Charge £10k/year/dependent for visas.
To sum up, there are a lot of folk who don't really think.
Would laying him have value as a trading bet?
The real cost is in the electronics to turn the output into grid power.
2. Lowest share of the vote in 2025 with a BPC registered pollster in a GB wide poll for each of Lab, Con, LD, Reform.25;18;10;20
3. Number of Reform MPs on 31/12/2025. 5
4. Number of Tory MP defectors to Reform in 2025. 0
5. Number of Westminster by-elections held in 2025. 2
6. Number of ministers to leave the Westminster cabinet during 2025. 3
7. Number of seats won by the AfD in the May 2025 German Federal Election. 125
8. UK CPI figure for November 2025 (Nov 2024 = 2.6%).1.9%
9. UK borrowing in the financial year-to-November 2025 (Year to Nov 2024 = £113.2bn). £125bn
10. UK GDP growth in the 12 months to October 2025 (Oct 23 to Oct 24 = 1.3%). 0.0%
11. US growth annualised rate in Q3 2025 (Q3 2024 = 3.1%). 3.0%
12. EU growth Q3 2024 to Q3 2025 (2024 = 1.0%). 0.0%
13. USD/Ruble exchange rate at London FOREX close on 31/12/2025 (31/12/2024 = 114 USD/RUB). 85
14. The result of the 2025-2026 Ashes series (2023 series: Drawn 2–2). 3-2 England
When my wife was in HR for the NHS she went, with a team, to the Phillipines to recruit nurses.
There was a queue round the block. People travelled for days from outer areas to get there.
Here's my article: https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/01/07/classification/
10 dependents is an average so some will be considerably higher.
And after a few months they have access to all sorts of services
You cannot blame someone in Zimbabwe looking at the UK and coming over to wipe old peoples bums for minimum wage if they can bring a load of dependents to freeload off the nation at the taxpayers expense. If I lived there I'd probably do it. But it is mad. How many of these people are going to be economically inactive.
Care homes are able to issue Visa's. As long as they get the cheap labour they want what do they care about the burden to the taxpayer.
Here we go.
https://nursingabroad.net/uk-care-homes-offering-visa-sponsorship-a-guide-for-international-candidates/
Inevitable is another word.
1) Take a complex issue - recruitment - add multiple agendas. All valid agendas, by the way
2) See that the output isn't what you want.
3) Add some complexity to the process, based on the recommendations of narrowly focused people.
4) Loop back to 2)
5) Repeat long enough, and you have the script for Brazil Part Deux
People may despise the man, but they shouldn't think him stupid. He absolutely knew this info going into the press conference, and couldn't resist jumping the gun, which wasn't appropriate, but now he looks 'prescient', and those yelling at him have massive egg on their face.
It's not as if people aren't paying criminals 4 figures for a life threatening journey across the Channel for the opportunity to work illegally, after all. In a crazy world like that, how much would a legit work visa be worth, do you think?
Yes, companies have already been caught selling visas.
Works brilliantly and they are fantastic workers.
Perhaps we could do a deal.
Blatantly lie about an election result
Encourage his supporters to attack the police
Encourage his supporters to hang his deputy
Blame minorities for an air crash within hours of it happening
Threaten to invade Greenland
He is definitely unpleasant at times, likes a cheap shot, but that is true of plenty in all the established parties. He is closer to them than the likes of Trump.
Probably something other trusts could do as well.
EDI is like a lot of HR. Often implemented by people who have no clue - "How hard can it be?"
The Tories chopped and changed so much around that time it is hard to remember who dealt with what.
https://www.unseenuk.org/how-to-tackle-exploitation-of-migrant-care-workers-in-uk/
https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2024-05-11/one-hell-to-another-thousands-of-care-workers-risk-deportation-after-employers-breach-rules/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14080785/Daily-Mail-journalist-honoured-expose-cash-care-jobs-scam.html
Maybe a national care system would improve things, e.g. your Sunderland Trust/Manila relationship seems to work well.
Which is a blocker to training more UK origin staff.
More Trump nominee nonsense.
Imagine if they should study in the Philippines for $2,000 a year…
It is hard not to have sympathy for people like this who have come here for a better life for him and for 5 economically inactive dependents only to have ended up out of pocket and in a job with the agency that got him here.
It is a poor situation for the country, the taxpayer and the people brought over here as well as where do we house them all. The only beneficiaries are the care homes who get cheap labour with no accountability for the problems it causes.
It is similar to this horrific story about Prison Wardens brought over from Nigeria, with family of course, only to realise accomodation was not also provided so some sleep in their cars, some sleep in the woods. In the middle of winter.
https://www.pulse.ng/articles/news/local/nigerians-working-as-prison-officers-in-uk-sleep-in-their-cars-to-cut-housing-cost-2025011719550691054
Looking online, it's cherrypicked data from when there was a decline in visa applications due to new rules but a lag of dependent visas, the correct figure is <2 dependents per visa.
So how much would they charge for a foreigner to take a place at their training hospitals?
Idea - send grads to the Philippines to be trained. Put the cost on the Overseas Aid budget.
Is Farage a 1950s social democrat + an extra dose of ultra cautious about inward migration or a fellow traveller with gangster plutocracy and warmongering dictators. Or both.
Like OFSTED judgments, single word descriptions don't suffice.
Sounds like DEI heaven, really.
Truly a really positive story for inward migration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzQe6W7vcu4
He sticks to the facts, but it looks very much like most of the blame lies with the helicopter pilot or with the protocols in place. The helicopter pilot twice confirmed that he had the plane in sight, and was further told by ATC to pass behind the plane when they appeared to be on a possible collision course. I'm not sure what more ATC could have done in this situation.
From a Criminology lecturer at Kent, on Rudakubana.
(Yes, it's on UnHerd, but don't hold that against it.)
“The conflict aircraft is at your 10 o’clock not your 2 o’clock” does the trick.
1) Do x years and get a certificate saying you have completed the basic nursing qualification and are ready for the wards.
2) Do x years and get a degree certificate saying you have completed the basic nursing qualification and are ready for the wards.
Hint - the cost/issues is not in calling it a degree.
Well worth working out the detail of how it might operate.
Can't imagine anyone sentient leaving their kids with one of those monkey-torture fans.
Luke Tryl
@LukeTryl
We tend to focus on individual polls which look interesting - but much more significant and easily missed - I think this is the first week when *every* poll released (from across 7 pollsters) has had the Reform ahead of the Conservatives.
https://x.com/LukeTryl/status/1885272533269680266
AMFAR has published a report on how the foreign aid freeze affects PEPFAR, which actually still hasn't resumed.
They estimate that hundreds of thousands of people lose access to HIV antivirals and 1500 babies are expected to contract HIV — *each day*
https://x.com/salonium/status/1884847725298217131
(Note, that's a daily average, assuming the program remains frozen for 90 days.
If it's resumed fairly soon, then the damage is likely to be considerably less.)