This 35% for Reform could be their Boris in Hartlepool moment.
Let me give you the scenario - the rise of Advance UK.
RetardUK was founded by Ben "Nigel was mean" Habib and now has Rock-on Tommeh as a member and Elon Musk as cheerleader.
We haven't yet seen which way Rupert Lowe goes, but he seems to be heading to join Retard as well.
Reform - Farage - knows that to get elected they can't go full fascist. So they are throwing out soundbites and genius tribe-building moves like the football shirt, but when pressed on policy detail they equivocate.
If Muskbaby amplifies the fascist cause then they will find a way to build a tribe which is more effective than a football shirt.
In this scenario, if we are lucky then the Fukker and the Retard mobs cancel each other out. If we are unlucky? Tommy Robinson as LOTO shouting DEPORT THE PAKIS NOW across the dispatch box at PM Nigel Farage.
Advance UK may be yet another damp squib. We will see. But they are far more dangerous than Farage. For all of his endless faults SYL is a very effective agitator. Give him a BIG platform and who knows what damage he could do to our electoral system.
Can this be translated into English ?
Farage is smart enough not to be outwardly racist if he wants to be PM but a lot of his support would prefer the outwardly racist option.
More importantly, up to now, Farage has broadly been able to take the racist vote for granted. He hasn't had to give them anything really.
Now he is at risk of having to fight on two fronts, which tends to end badly.
Oh well.
The problem with the centrist mindset is that it always assumes people will 'come around to it'; 'it' being whatever often barking proposal is currently being pursued by the process state, often at the behest of the Treasury Mindset. The 'it' of the moment is mass immigration.
The reality is that mass immigration - a very very new experiment in a welfare state - is simply not popular, and almost certainly too expensive. For too long too many people have put up with the negative externalities of it, and/or been too scared to oppose it. That has now ended.
If nothing really changes, I think @RochdalePioneers scenario of a Faragist govt with an opposition of even more strident views on immigration is more likely than the current supposed 'centre' holding.
This description doesn't seem to have much to do with reality.
Immigration is well down on the Johnson/Sunak years. Figures for 2025 will probably be further reduced.
I've just realised that your response is in fact the perfect encapsulation of my description of the 'centrist mindset'. Unspoofable.
Does 'centrist' just mean skeptical of populist nonsense now?
Even more unspoofable
Really?
How about "the Centrist Mindset is to assume that everybody will come around to the latest mad idea being proposed by the NU10k Process State at the behest of the Treasury Mindset"?
You could try that. That should get a laugh. It's good.
Those who keep being dismissive of the views of the majority will continue to tank in the polls
Politics doesn’t work like that.
Margaret Thatcher, even when faced with polls showing a majority disagreed with her (Poll Tax) went out and argued her case. She would use interviews, speeches, whatever to put her argument to the British people.
I’ve always believed a majority is the largest number of people wrong about any given issue at any given time. Argument and debate are how ideas are advanced and evolve. Simply saying “the people want this. We must do it” is absurd. That’s the politics of the mob. That’s how you end up with a crowd burning down a house which they think is full of asylum seekers and killing an innocent family - that is literally where you end up if you appease populism.
Before anyone gets upset, that hasn’t happened here YET. I honestly think it will if we don’t tell the “patriots” who think they control the streets the facts of life.
Yes, well if you think about it, that's a remarkably stupid view to take really isn't it? It is every bit as lacking in nuance and heedless of the actual issue as the ignorance you accuse others of, but more so, because it is fundamentally anti-logical.
Very clever people will tell you that our asylum and immigration policy is a piece of toss. They can do the sums to show you. But it has taken the public (in their wisdom) showing their displeasure to get them to do anything about it. The public have been the wise ones - the politicians have been the stupid ones.
You may be surprised but I don’t wholly accept your line.
Immigration has been good for this country in the past - the coming of Freedom of Movement changed that as did other geopolitical changes which basically allowed millions who were trapped within their own borders to “escape” to other parts of the world and naturally they came to a) where the money was and b) where they could reach.
The other aspect has been the socio-cultural. Not for the first time, incomers have found a degree of comfort by sticking together - people like people like themselves. The inevitability of concentrations of ethnic groups partly gives the economic lie to multi-culturalism though I suspect enough money will buy you place anywhere.
I live in an area where white British people are a minority and in places like Green Street and Forest Gate, a tiny minority (5%). Yet it’s my experience the one thing which unites everyone is capitalism. Making enough money via working hard for the family and children and wanting them to have a better life - what’s wrong with that? It’s no different to when people left the fields for the factories.
Are there, among the illegals, bad apples? Yes, as there were among those who came under Freedom of Movement and when incidents occur involving immigrants, the perpetrators need to be found and deported. Those who seek to enter Britain illegally need to be found and deported - I think most have always supported that line but the debate about the 4% of illegals is driving the debate about the benefits or otherwise of the 96% who come here legally but it suits those with an agenda hostile to all who are not “British” by their definition to treat all migrants, both legal and illegal, the same.
Interesting dissertation and bits I agree with - but I'd query 'immigration has been good for the country economically' - I think we need to distinguish between 'good for Britain' and 'good for British workers' - historically, my understanding is tbat the British masses have done best when their labour is most valuable, which corresponds to when there is least competition for it.
The problem is that there are lots of second and third order effects (in both directions) which are hard to control for.
Yes, I recognise that there is a bit more to it - and yet historically, time and time again: the more workers there are, the worse off workers are. (I'm talking about workers in the sense of 'anyone who works for a living' sense rather than a class war sense here.) My concern is we focus too much on the headline figure for the whole economy, which doesn't necessarily reflect how well off most individuals are.
In which case Japan would be booming, with rising wages, and everyone happy.
Which is not the case.
And Singapore and Switzerland would be skint with sullen workers.
It's not a zero sum game. Indeed the correlation is that successful economies with high standards of living for their workers attract immigrants keen to improve themselves.
So why are they coming here then?
Well: there's essentially no labour black market in Switzerland. (And the same is true of Norway.)
In both countries, people who enable the undocumented (whether through employing them, housing them, etc.) are subject to harsh penalties. The consequence of which is that it is very hard to be an illegal immigrant there. (There are no Albanian car washes in either country.)
One of the real pulls of the UK is how easy it is to work without documentation, so even if your asylum application looks like it's going to get rejected you can disappear into the black market. That makes the UK a very attractive destination.
And fixing those black market issues would inconvenience us, so we don't want to do them. We don't want our identity questioned and quite like cheap food delivery.
(Probably an interesting forced choice for a pollster. ID Cards or a border as leaky as it is- choose one.)
Much easier to think we can get what we want with a nation-sized velvet rope and some ex-nightclub bouncers.
This 35% for Reform could be their Boris in Hartlepool moment.
Let me give you the scenario - the rise of Advance UK.
RetardUK was founded by Ben "Nigel was mean" Habib and now has Rock-on Tommeh as a member and Elon Musk as cheerleader.
We haven't yet seen which way Rupert Lowe goes, but he seems to be heading to join Retard as well.
Reform - Farage - knows that to get elected they can't go full fascist. So they are throwing out soundbites and genius tribe-building moves like the football shirt, but when pressed on policy detail they equivocate.
If Muskbaby amplifies the fascist cause then they will find a way to build a tribe which is more effective than a football shirt.
In this scenario, if we are lucky then the Fukker and the Retard mobs cancel each other out. If we are unlucky? Tommy Robinson as LOTO shouting DEPORT THE PAKIS NOW across the dispatch box at PM Nigel Farage.
Advance UK may be yet another damp squib. We will see. But they are far more dangerous than Farage. For all of his endless faults SYL is a very effective agitator. Give him a BIG platform and who knows what damage he could do to our electoral system.
Can this be translated into English ?
Farage is smart enough not to be outwardly racist if he wants to be PM but a lot of his support would prefer the outwardly racist option.
More importantly, up to now, Farage has broadly been able to take the racist vote for granted. He hasn't had to give them anything really.
Now he is at risk of having to fight on two fronts, which tends to end badly.
Oh well.
The problem with the centrist mindset is that it always assumes people will 'come around to it'; 'it' being whatever often barking proposal is currently being pursued by the process state, often at the behest of the Treasury Mindset. The 'it' of the moment is mass immigration.
The reality is that mass immigration - a very very new experiment in a welfare state - is simply not popular, and almost certainly too expensive. For too long too many people have put up with the negative externalities of it, and/or been too scared to oppose it. That has now ended.
If nothing really changes, I think @RochdalePioneers scenario of a Faragist govt with an opposition of even more strident views on immigration is more likely than the current supposed 'centre' holding.
This description doesn't seem to have much to do with reality.
Immigration is well down on the Johnson/Sunak years. Figures for 2025 will probably be further reduced.
I've just realised that your response is in fact the perfect encapsulation of my description of the 'centrist mindset'. Unspoofable.
Does 'centrist' just mean skeptical of populist nonsense now?
Even more unspoofable
Really?
How about "the Centrist Mindset is to assume that everybody will come around to the latest mad idea being proposed by the NU10k Process State at the behest of the Treasury Mindset"?
You could try that. That should get a laugh. It's good.
Those who keep being dismissive of the views of the majority will continue to tank in the polls
Politics doesn’t work like that.
Margaret Thatcher, even when faced with polls showing a majority disagreed with her (Poll Tax) went out and argued her case. She would use interviews, speeches, whatever to put her argument to the British people.
I’ve always believed a majority is the largest number of people wrong about any given issue at any given time. Argument and debate are how ideas are advanced and evolve. Simply saying “the people want this. We must do it” is absurd. That’s the politics of the mob. That’s how you end up with a crowd burning down a house which they think is full of asylum seekers and killing an innocent family - that is literally where you end up if you appease populism.
Before anyone gets upset, that hasn’t happened here YET. I honestly think it will if we don’t tell the “patriots” who think they control the streets the facts of life.
Yes, well if you think about it, that's a remarkably stupid view to take really isn't it? It is every bit as lacking in nuance and heedless of the actual issue as the ignorance you accuse others of, but more so, because it is fundamentally anti-logical.
Very clever people will tell you that our asylum and immigration policy is a piece of toss. They can do the sums to show you. But it has taken the public (in their wisdom) showing their displeasure to get them to do anything about it. The public have been the wise ones - the politicians have been the stupid ones.
You may be surprised but I don’t wholly accept your line.
Immigration has been good for this country in the past - the coming of Freedom of Movement changed that as did other geopolitical changes which basically allowed millions who were trapped within their own borders to “escape” to other parts of the world and naturally they came to a) where the money was and b) where they could reach.
The other aspect has been the socio-cultural. Not for the first time, incomers have found a degree of comfort by sticking together - people like people like themselves. The inevitability of concentrations of ethnic groups partly gives the economic lie to multi-culturalism though I suspect enough money will buy you place anywhere.
I live in an area where white British people are a minority and in places like Green Street and Forest Gate, a tiny minority (5%). Yet it’s my experience the one thing which unites everyone is capitalism. Making enough money via working hard for the family and children and wanting them to have a better life - what’s wrong with that? It’s no different to when people left the fields for the factories.
Are there, among the illegals, bad apples? Yes, as there were among those who came under Freedom of Movement and when incidents occur involving immigrants, the perpetrators need to be found and deported. Those who seek to enter Britain illegally need to be found and deported - I think most have always supported that line but the debate about the 4% of illegals is driving the debate about the benefits or otherwise of the 96% who come here legally but it suits those with an agenda hostile to all who are not “British” by their definition to treat all migrants, both legal and illegal, the same.
Interesting dissertation and bits I agree with - but I'd query 'immigration has been good for the country economically' - I think we need to distinguish between 'good for Britain' and 'good for British workers' - historically, my understanding is tbat the British masses have done best when their labour is most valuable, which corresponds to when there is least competition for it.
The problem is that there are lots of second and third order effects (in both directions) which are hard to control for.
Yes, I recognise that there is a bit more to it - and yet historically, time and time again: the more workers there are, the worse off workers are. (I'm talking about workers in the sense of 'anyone who works for a living' sense rather than a class war sense here.) My concern is we focus too much on the headline figure for the whole economy, which doesn't necessarily reflect how well off most individuals are.
In which case Japan would be booming, with rising wages, and everyone happy.
Which is not the case.
And Singapore and Switzerland would be skint with sullen workers.
It's not a zero sum game. Indeed the correlation is that successful economies with high standards of living for their workers attract immigrants keen to improve themselves.
So why are they coming here then?
Well: there's essentially no labour black market in Switzerland. (And the same is true of Norway.)
In both countries, people who enable the undocumented (whether through employing them, housing them, etc.) are subject to harsh penalties. The consequence of which is that it is very hard to be an illegal immigrant there. (There are no Albanian car washes in either country.)
One of the real pulls of the UK is how easy it is to work without documentation, so even if your asylum application looks like it's going to get rejected you can disappear into the black market. That makes the UK a very attractive destination.
And of course both countries prioritise high skilled migration for their regular migration, unlike the UK.
Switzerland only has high skilled migration routes besides EU free movement. The Swiss have a considerably higher proportion of migrants with tertiary education than we do.
Singapore exclusively offers regular migration to high skilled migration routes.
Singapore does offer low skilled migrant visas but on shockingly poor human rights standards. They're forbidden from marrying a Singaporean, forbidden from bringing dependents and forbidden from getting on a pathway to permanent residency or citizenship.
Where I encountered this unusual little narrow gauge train
If anyone can guess the role of the special Styrian “flask wagon” Railway - NICHT DE GOOGLE I shall send them a glass of Schilcher sweet rose wine in a parallel universe
Picture quiz: I was here yesterday - where is this?
Is this a trap? The answer is verboten.
Very good and well done!
For clarity, it's the Forbidden Corner in North Yorkshire. We went yesterday, around 6 years after our first visit. Essentially it's a folly and its grounds. You won't learn anything - though at first glance it looks ancient, it isn't: the main tower was built in 2022, replacing an only slightly olderone which, to the chagrin of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, was built without planning permission. But worth a visit if you're passing, even without children. It's fun.
Where I encountered this unusual little narrow gauge train
If anyone can guess the role of the special Styrian “flask wagon” Railway - NICHT DE GOOGLE I shall send them a glass of Schilcher sweet rose wine in a parallel universe
This 35% for Reform could be their Boris in Hartlepool moment.
Let me give you the scenario - the rise of Advance UK.
RetardUK was founded by Ben "Nigel was mean" Habib and now has Rock-on Tommeh as a member and Elon Musk as cheerleader.
We haven't yet seen which way Rupert Lowe goes, but he seems to be heading to join Retard as well.
Reform - Farage - knows that to get elected they can't go full fascist. So they are throwing out soundbites and genius tribe-building moves like the football shirt, but when pressed on policy detail they equivocate.
If Muskbaby amplifies the fascist cause then they will find a way to build a tribe which is more effective than a football shirt.
In this scenario, if we are lucky then the Fukker and the Retard mobs cancel each other out. If we are unlucky? Tommy Robinson as LOTO shouting DEPORT THE PAKIS NOW across the dispatch box at PM Nigel Farage.
Advance UK may be yet another damp squib. We will see. But they are far more dangerous than Farage. For all of his endless faults SYL is a very effective agitator. Give him a BIG platform and who knows what damage he could do to our electoral system.
Can this be translated into English ?
Farage is smart enough not to be outwardly racist if he wants to be PM but a lot of his support would prefer the outwardly racist option.
More importantly, up to now, Farage has broadly been able to take the racist vote for granted. He hasn't had to give them anything really.
Now he is at risk of having to fight on two fronts, which tends to end badly.
Oh well.
The problem with the centrist mindset is that it always assumes people will 'come around to it'; 'it' being whatever often barking proposal is currently being pursued by the process state, often at the behest of the Treasury Mindset. The 'it' of the moment is mass immigration.
The reality is that mass immigration - a very very new experiment in a welfare state - is simply not popular, and almost certainly too expensive. For too long too many people have put up with the negative externalities of it, and/or been too scared to oppose it. That has now ended.
If nothing really changes, I think @RochdalePioneers scenario of a Faragist govt with an opposition of even more strident views on immigration is more likely than the current supposed 'centre' holding.
This description doesn't seem to have much to do with reality.
Immigration is well down on the Johnson/Sunak years. Figures for 2025 will probably be further reduced.
I've just realised that your response is in fact the perfect encapsulation of my description of the 'centrist mindset'. Unspoofable.
Does 'centrist' just mean skeptical of populist nonsense now?
Even more unspoofable
Really?
How about "the Centrist Mindset is to assume that everybody will come around to the latest mad idea being proposed by the NU10k Process State at the behest of the Treasury Mindset"?
You could try that. That should get a laugh. It's good.
Those who keep being dismissive of the views of the majority will continue to tank in the polls
Politics doesn’t work like that.
Margaret Thatcher, even when faced with polls showing a majority disagreed with her (Poll Tax) went out and argued her case. She would use interviews, speeches, whatever to put her argument to the British people.
I’ve always believed a majority is the largest number of people wrong about any given issue at any given time. Argument and debate are how ideas are advanced and evolve. Simply saying “the people want this. We must do it” is absurd. That’s the politics of the mob. That’s how you end up with a crowd burning down a house which they think is full of asylum seekers and killing an innocent family - that is literally where you end up if you appease populism.
Before anyone gets upset, that hasn’t happened here YET. I honestly think it will if we don’t tell the “patriots” who think they control the streets the facts of life.
Yes, well if you think about it, that's a remarkably stupid view to take really isn't it? It is every bit as lacking in nuance and heedless of the actual issue as the ignorance you accuse others of, but more so, because it is fundamentally anti-logical.
Very clever people will tell you that our asylum and immigration policy is a piece of toss. They can do the sums to show you. But it has taken the public (in their wisdom) showing their displeasure to get them to do anything about it. The public have been the wise ones - the politicians have been the stupid ones.
You may be surprised but I don’t wholly accept your line.
Immigration has been good for this country in the past - the coming of Freedom of Movement changed that as did other geopolitical changes which basically allowed millions who were trapped within their own borders to “escape” to other parts of the world and naturally they came to a) where the money was and b) where they could reach.
The other aspect has been the socio-cultural. Not for the first time, incomers have found a degree of comfort by sticking together - people like people like themselves. The inevitability of concentrations of ethnic groups partly gives the economic lie to multi-culturalism though I suspect enough money will buy you place anywhere.
I live in an area where white British people are a minority and in places like Green Street and Forest Gate, a tiny minority (5%). Yet it’s my experience the one thing which unites everyone is capitalism. Making enough money via working hard for the family and children and wanting them to have a better life - what’s wrong with that? It’s no different to when people left the fields for the factories.
Are there, among the illegals, bad apples? Yes, as there were among those who came under Freedom of Movement and when incidents occur involving immigrants, the perpetrators need to be found and deported. Those who seek to enter Britain illegally need to be found and deported - I think most have always supported that line but the debate about the 4% of illegals is driving the debate about the benefits or otherwise of the 96% who come here legally but it suits those with an agenda hostile to all who are not “British” by their definition to treat all migrants, both legal and illegal, the same.
Interesting dissertation and bits I agree with - but I'd query 'immigration has been good for the country economically' - I think we need to distinguish between 'good for Britain' and 'good for British workers' - historically, my understanding is tbat the British masses have done best when their labour is most valuable, which corresponds to when there is least competition for it.
The problem is that there are lots of second and third order effects (in both directions) which are hard to control for.
Yes, I recognise that there is a bit more to it - and yet historically, time and time again: the more workers there are, the worse off workers are. (I'm talking about workers in the sense of 'anyone who works for a living' sense rather than a class war sense here.) My concern is we focus too much on the headline figure for the whole economy, which doesn't necessarily reflect how well off most individuals are.
In which case Japan would be booming, with rising wages, and everyone happy.
Which is not the case.
And Singapore and Switzerland would be skint with sullen workers.
It's not a zero sum game. Indeed the correlation is that successful economies with high standards of living for their workers attract immigrants keen to improve themselves.
So why are they coming here then?
Well: there's essentially no labour black market in Switzerland. (And the same is true of Norway.)
In both countries, people who enable the undocumented (whether through employing them, housing them, etc.) are subject to harsh penalties. The consequence of which is that it is very hard to be an illegal immigrant there. (There are no Albanian car washes in either country.)
One of the real pulls of the UK is how easy it is to work without documentation, so even if your asylum application looks like it's going to get rejected you can disappear into the black market. That makes the UK a very attractive destination.
And of course both countries prioritise high skilled migration for their regular migration, unlike the UK.
Switzerland only has high skilled migration routes besides EU free movement. The Swiss have a considerably higher proportion of migrants with tertiary education than we do.
Singapore exclusively offers regular migration to high skilled migration routes.
Singapore does offer low skilled migrant visas but on shockingly poor human rights standards. They're forbidden from marrying a Singaporean, forbidden from bringing dependents and forbidden from getting on a pathway to permanent residency or citizenship.
The Swiss do, though, have full free market migration with the EU. And the highest wages in Europe.
This 35% for Reform could be their Boris in Hartlepool moment.
Let me give you the scenario - the rise of Advance UK.
RetardUK was founded by Ben "Nigel was mean" Habib and now has Rock-on Tommeh as a member and Elon Musk as cheerleader.
We haven't yet seen which way Rupert Lowe goes, but he seems to be heading to join Retard as well.
Reform - Farage - knows that to get elected they can't go full fascist. So they are throwing out soundbites and genius tribe-building moves like the football shirt, but when pressed on policy detail they equivocate.
If Muskbaby amplifies the fascist cause then they will find a way to build a tribe which is more effective than a football shirt.
In this scenario, if we are lucky then the Fukker and the Retard mobs cancel each other out. If we are unlucky? Tommy Robinson as LOTO shouting DEPORT THE PAKIS NOW across the dispatch box at PM Nigel Farage.
Advance UK may be yet another damp squib. We will see. But they are far more dangerous than Farage. For all of his endless faults SYL is a very effective agitator. Give him a BIG platform and who knows what damage he could do to our electoral system.
Can this be translated into English ?
Farage is smart enough not to be outwardly racist if he wants to be PM but a lot of his support would prefer the outwardly racist option.
More importantly, up to now, Farage has broadly been able to take the racist vote for granted. He hasn't had to give them anything really.
Now he is at risk of having to fight on two fronts, which tends to end badly.
Oh well.
The problem with the centrist mindset is that it always assumes people will 'come around to it'; 'it' being whatever often barking proposal is currently being pursued by the process state, often at the behest of the Treasury Mindset. The 'it' of the moment is mass immigration.
The reality is that mass immigration - a very very new experiment in a welfare state - is simply not popular, and almost certainly too expensive. For too long too many people have put up with the negative externalities of it, and/or been too scared to oppose it. That has now ended.
If nothing really changes, I think @RochdalePioneers scenario of a Faragist govt with an opposition of even more strident views on immigration is more likely than the current supposed 'centre' holding.
This description doesn't seem to have much to do with reality.
Immigration is well down on the Johnson/Sunak years. Figures for 2025 will probably be further reduced.
I've just realised that your response is in fact the perfect encapsulation of my description of the 'centrist mindset'. Unspoofable.
Does 'centrist' just mean skeptical of populist nonsense now?
Even more unspoofable
Really?
How about "the Centrist Mindset is to assume that everybody will come around to the latest mad idea being proposed by the NU10k Process State at the behest of the Treasury Mindset"?
You could try that. That should get a laugh. It's good.
Those who keep being dismissive of the views of the majority will continue to tank in the polls
Politics doesn’t work like that.
Margaret Thatcher, even when faced with polls showing a majority disagreed with her (Poll Tax) went out and argued her case. She would use interviews, speeches, whatever to put her argument to the British people.
I’ve always believed a majority is the largest number of people wrong about any given issue at any given time. Argument and debate are how ideas are advanced and evolve. Simply saying “the people want this. We must do it” is absurd. That’s the politics of the mob. That’s how you end up with a crowd burning down a house which they think is full of asylum seekers and killing an innocent family - that is literally where you end up if you appease populism.
Before anyone gets upset, that hasn’t happened here YET. I honestly think it will if we don’t tell the “patriots” who think they control the streets the facts of life.
Yes, well if you think about it, that's a remarkably stupid view to take really isn't it? It is every bit as lacking in nuance and heedless of the actual issue as the ignorance you accuse others of, but more so, because it is fundamentally anti-logical.
Very clever people will tell you that our asylum and immigration policy is a piece of toss. They can do the sums to show you. But it has taken the public (in their wisdom) showing their displeasure to get them to do anything about it. The public have been the wise ones - the politicians have been the stupid ones.
You may be surprised but I don’t wholly accept your line.
Immigration has been good for this country in the past - the coming of Freedom of Movement changed that as did other geopolitical changes which basically allowed millions who were trapped within their own borders to “escape” to other parts of the world and naturally they came to a) where the money was and b) where they could reach.
The other aspect has been the socio-cultural. Not for the first time, incomers have found a degree of comfort by sticking together - people like people like themselves. The inevitability of concentrations of ethnic groups partly gives the economic lie to multi-culturalism though I suspect enough money will buy you place anywhere.
I live in an area where white British people are a minority and in places like Green Street and Forest Gate, a tiny minority (5%). Yet it’s my experience the one thing which unites everyone is capitalism. Making enough money via working hard for the family and children and wanting them to have a better life - what’s wrong with that? It’s no different to when people left the fields for the factories.
Are there, among the illegals, bad apples? Yes, as there were among those who came under Freedom of Movement and when incidents occur involving immigrants, the perpetrators need to be found and deported. Those who seek to enter Britain illegally need to be found and deported - I think most have always supported that line but the debate about the 4% of illegals is driving the debate about the benefits or otherwise of the 96% who come here legally but it suits those with an agenda hostile to all who are not “British” by their definition to treat all migrants, both legal and illegal, the same.
Interesting dissertation and bits I agree with - but I'd query 'immigration has been good for the country economically' - I think we need to distinguish between 'good for Britain' and 'good for British workers' - historically, my understanding is tbat the British masses have done best when their labour is most valuable, which corresponds to when there is least competition for it.
The problem is that there are lots of second and third order effects (in both directions) which are hard to control for.
Yes, I recognise that there is a bit more to it - and yet historically, time and time again: the more workers there are, the worse off workers are. (I'm talking about workers in the sense of 'anyone who works for a living' sense rather than a class war sense here.) My concern is we focus too much on the headline figure for the whole economy, which doesn't necessarily reflect how well off most individuals are.
In which case Japan would be booming, with rising wages, and everyone happy.
Which is not the case.
And Singapore and Switzerland would be skint with sullen workers.
It's not a zero sum game. Indeed the correlation is that successful economies with high standards of living for their workers attract immigrants keen to improve themselves.
So why are they coming here then?
Well: there's essentially no labour black market in Switzerland. (And the same is true of Norway.)
In both countries, people who enable the undocumented (whether through employing them, housing them, etc.) are subject to harsh penalties. The consequence of which is that it is very hard to be an illegal immigrant there. (There are no Albanian car washes in either country.)
One of the real pulls of the UK is how easy it is to work without documentation, so even if your asylum application looks like it's going to get rejected you can disappear into the black market. That makes the UK a very attractive destination.
And of course both countries prioritise high skilled migration for their regular migration, unlike the UK.
Switzerland only has high skilled migration routes besides EU free movement. The Swiss have a considerably higher proportion of migrants with tertiary education than we do.
Singapore exclusively offers regular migration to high skilled migration routes.
Singapore does offer low skilled migrant visas but on shockingly poor human rights standards. They're forbidden from marrying a Singaporean, forbidden from bringing dependents and forbidden from getting on a pathway to permanent residency or citizenship.
The Swiss do, though, have full free market migration with the EU. And the highest wages in Europe.
The Swiss deliberately use their language barriers to limit job access. It’s a requirement for the all jobs.
Where I encountered this unusual little narrow gauge train
If anyone can guess the role of the special Styrian “flask wagon” Railway - NICHT DE GOOGLE I shall send them a glass of Schilcher sweet rose wine in a parallel universe
Is this the one which was used for bringing weapons to the front?
Where I encountered this unusual little narrow gauge train
If anyone can guess the role of the special Styrian “flask wagon” Railway - NICHT DE GOOGLE I shall send them a glass of Schilcher sweet rose wine in a parallel universe
Is this the one which was used for bringing weapons to the front?
This 35% for Reform could be their Boris in Hartlepool moment.
Let me give you the scenario - the rise of Advance UK.
RetardUK was founded by Ben "Nigel was mean" Habib and now has Rock-on Tommeh as a member and Elon Musk as cheerleader.
We haven't yet seen which way Rupert Lowe goes, but he seems to be heading to join Retard as well.
Reform - Farage - knows that to get elected they can't go full fascist. So they are throwing out soundbites and genius tribe-building moves like the football shirt, but when pressed on policy detail they equivocate.
If Muskbaby amplifies the fascist cause then they will find a way to build a tribe which is more effective than a football shirt.
In this scenario, if we are lucky then the Fukker and the Retard mobs cancel each other out. If we are unlucky? Tommy Robinson as LOTO shouting DEPORT THE PAKIS NOW across the dispatch box at PM Nigel Farage.
Advance UK may be yet another damp squib. We will see. But they are far more dangerous than Farage. For all of his endless faults SYL is a very effective agitator. Give him a BIG platform and who knows what damage he could do to our electoral system.
Can this be translated into English ?
Farage is smart enough not to be outwardly racist if he wants to be PM but a lot of his support would prefer the outwardly racist option.
More importantly, up to now, Farage has broadly been able to take the racist vote for granted. He hasn't had to give them anything really.
Now he is at risk of having to fight on two fronts, which tends to end badly.
Oh well.
The problem with the centrist mindset is that it always assumes people will 'come around to it'; 'it' being whatever often barking proposal is currently being pursued by the process state, often at the behest of the Treasury Mindset. The 'it' of the moment is mass immigration.
The reality is that mass immigration - a very very new experiment in a welfare state - is simply not popular, and almost certainly too expensive. For too long too many people have put up with the negative externalities of it, and/or been too scared to oppose it. That has now ended.
If nothing really changes, I think @RochdalePioneers scenario of a Faragist govt with an opposition of even more strident views on immigration is more likely than the current supposed 'centre' holding.
This description doesn't seem to have much to do with reality.
Immigration is well down on the Johnson/Sunak years. Figures for 2025 will probably be further reduced.
I've just realised that your response is in fact the perfect encapsulation of my description of the 'centrist mindset'. Unspoofable.
Does 'centrist' just mean skeptical of populist nonsense now?
Even more unspoofable
Really?
How about "the Centrist Mindset is to assume that everybody will come around to the latest mad idea being proposed by the NU10k Process State at the behest of the Treasury Mindset"?
You could try that. That should get a laugh. It's good.
Those who keep being dismissive of the views of the majority will continue to tank in the polls
Politics doesn’t work like that.
Margaret Thatcher, even when faced with polls showing a majority disagreed with her (Poll Tax) went out and argued her case. She would use interviews, speeches, whatever to put her argument to the British people.
I’ve always believed a majority is the largest number of people wrong about any given issue at any given time. Argument and debate are how ideas are advanced and evolve. Simply saying “the people want this. We must do it” is absurd. That’s the politics of the mob. That’s how you end up with a crowd burning down a house which they think is full of asylum seekers and killing an innocent family - that is literally where you end up if you appease populism.
Before anyone gets upset, that hasn’t happened here YET. I honestly think it will if we don’t tell the “patriots” who think they control the streets the facts of life.
Yes, well if you think about it, that's a remarkably stupid view to take really isn't it? It is every bit as lacking in nuance and heedless of the actual issue as the ignorance you accuse others of, but more so, because it is fundamentally anti-logical.
Very clever people will tell you that our asylum and immigration policy is a piece of toss. They can do the sums to show you. But it has taken the public (in their wisdom) showing their displeasure to get them to do anything about it. The public have been the wise ones - the politicians have been the stupid ones.
You may be surprised but I don’t wholly accept your line.
Immigration has been good for this country in the past - the coming of Freedom of Movement changed that as did other geopolitical changes which basically allowed millions who were trapped within their own borders to “escape” to other parts of the world and naturally they came to a) where the money was and b) where they could reach.
The other aspect has been the socio-cultural. Not for the first time, incomers have found a degree of comfort by sticking together - people like people like themselves. The inevitability of concentrations of ethnic groups partly gives the economic lie to multi-culturalism though I suspect enough money will buy you place anywhere.
I live in an area where white British people are a minority and in places like Green Street and Forest Gate, a tiny minority (5%). Yet it’s my experience the one thing which unites everyone is capitalism. Making enough money via working hard for the family and children and wanting them to have a better life - what’s wrong with that? It’s no different to when people left the fields for the factories.
Are there, among the illegals, bad apples? Yes, as there were among those who came under Freedom of Movement and when incidents occur involving immigrants, the perpetrators need to be found and deported. Those who seek to enter Britain illegally need to be found and deported - I think most have always supported that line but the debate about the 4% of illegals is driving the debate about the benefits or otherwise of the 96% who come here legally but it suits those with an agenda hostile to all who are not “British” by their definition to treat all migrants, both legal and illegal, the same.
Interesting dissertation and bits I agree with - but I'd query 'immigration has been good for the country economically' - I think we need to distinguish between 'good for Britain' and 'good for British workers' - historically, my understanding is tbat the British masses have done best when their labour is most valuable, which corresponds to when there is least competition for it.
The problem is that there are lots of second and third order effects (in both directions) which are hard to control for.
Yes, I recognise that there is a bit more to it - and yet historically, time and time again: the more workers there are, the worse off workers are. (I'm talking about workers in the sense of 'anyone who works for a living' sense rather than a class war sense here.) My concern is we focus too much on the headline figure for the whole economy, which doesn't necessarily reflect how well off most individuals are.
In which case Japan would be booming, with rising wages, and everyone happy.
Which is not the case.
And Singapore and Switzerland would be skint with sullen workers.
It's not a zero sum game. Indeed the correlation is that successful economies with high standards of living for their workers attract immigrants keen to improve themselves.
So why are they coming here then?
Well: there's essentially no labour black market in Switzerland. (And the same is true of Norway.)
In both countries, people who enable the undocumented (whether through employing them, housing them, etc.) are subject to harsh penalties. The consequence of which is that it is very hard to be an illegal immigrant there. (There are no Albanian car washes in either country.)
One of the real pulls of the UK is how easy it is to work without documentation, so even if your asylum application looks like it's going to get rejected you can disappear into the black market. That makes the UK a very attractive destination.
And of course both countries prioritise high skilled migration for their regular migration, unlike the UK.
Switzerland only has high skilled migration routes besides EU free movement. The Swiss have a considerably higher proportion of migrants with tertiary education than we do.
Singapore exclusively offers regular migration to high skilled migration routes.
Singapore does offer low skilled migrant visas but on shockingly poor human rights standards. They're forbidden from marrying a Singaporean, forbidden from bringing dependents and forbidden from getting on a pathway to permanent residency or citizenship.
The Swiss do, though, have full free market migration with the EU. And the highest wages in Europe.
Indeed, they begrudgingly do, but they seek to ensure even with full movement that they prioritise high skilled migration - which they do quite successfully discouraging low skilled migrants from going there.
It makes sense for a developed country to have a high skilled populace, and regular migrants are becoming a part of your populace. That's why it makes sense to have universal education, and why it makes sense to prioritise high skilled immigration as the Swiss do so successfully, and as the Singaporeans ensure that only high skilled migrants can properly immigrate into and become a part of the country, longer-term.
This 35% for Reform could be their Boris in Hartlepool moment.
Let me give you the scenario - the rise of Advance UK.
RetardUK was founded by Ben "Nigel was mean" Habib and now has Rock-on Tommeh as a member and Elon Musk as cheerleader.
We haven't yet seen which way Rupert Lowe goes, but he seems to be heading to join Retard as well.
Reform - Farage - knows that to get elected they can't go full fascist. So they are throwing out soundbites and genius tribe-building moves like the football shirt, but when pressed on policy detail they equivocate.
If Muskbaby amplifies the fascist cause then they will find a way to build a tribe which is more effective than a football shirt.
In this scenario, if we are lucky then the Fukker and the Retard mobs cancel each other out. If we are unlucky? Tommy Robinson as LOTO shouting DEPORT THE PAKIS NOW across the dispatch box at PM Nigel Farage.
Advance UK may be yet another damp squib. We will see. But they are far more dangerous than Farage. For all of his endless faults SYL is a very effective agitator. Give him a BIG platform and who knows what damage he could do to our electoral system.
Can this be translated into English ?
Farage is smart enough not to be outwardly racist if he wants to be PM but a lot of his support would prefer the outwardly racist option.
More importantly, up to now, Farage has broadly been able to take the racist vote for granted. He hasn't had to give them anything really.
Now he is at risk of having to fight on two fronts, which tends to end badly.
Oh well.
The problem with the centrist mindset is that it always assumes people will 'come around to it'; 'it' being whatever often barking proposal is currently being pursued by the process state, often at the behest of the Treasury Mindset. The 'it' of the moment is mass immigration.
The reality is that mass immigration - a very very new experiment in a welfare state - is simply not popular, and almost certainly too expensive. For too long too many people have put up with the negative externalities of it, and/or been too scared to oppose it. That has now ended.
If nothing really changes, I think @RochdalePioneers scenario of a Faragist govt with an opposition of even more strident views on immigration is more likely than the current supposed 'centre' holding.
This description doesn't seem to have much to do with reality.
Immigration is well down on the Johnson/Sunak years. Figures for 2025 will probably be further reduced.
I've just realised that your response is in fact the perfect encapsulation of my description of the 'centrist mindset'. Unspoofable.
Does 'centrist' just mean skeptical of populist nonsense now?
Even more unspoofable
Really?
How about "the Centrist Mindset is to assume that everybody will come around to the latest mad idea being proposed by the NU10k Process State at the behest of the Treasury Mindset"?
You could try that. That should get a laugh. It's good.
Those who keep being dismissive of the views of the majority will continue to tank in the polls
Politics doesn’t work like that.
Margaret Thatcher, even when faced with polls showing a majority disagreed with her (Poll Tax) went out and argued her case. She would use interviews, speeches, whatever to put her argument to the British people.
I’ve always believed a majority is the largest number of people wrong about any given issue at any given time. Argument and debate are how ideas are advanced and evolve. Simply saying “the people want this. We must do it” is absurd. That’s the politics of the mob. That’s how you end up with a crowd burning down a house which they think is full of asylum seekers and killing an innocent family - that is literally where you end up if you appease populism.
Before anyone gets upset, that hasn’t happened here YET. I honestly think it will if we don’t tell the “patriots” who think they control the streets the facts of life.
Yes, well if you think about it, that's a remarkably stupid view to take really isn't it? It is every bit as lacking in nuance and heedless of the actual issue as the ignorance you accuse others of, but more so, because it is fundamentally anti-logical.
Very clever people will tell you that our asylum and immigration policy is a piece of toss. They can do the sums to show you. But it has taken the public (in their wisdom) showing their displeasure to get them to do anything about it. The public have been the wise ones - the politicians have been the stupid ones.
You may be surprised but I don’t wholly accept your line.
Immigration has been good for this country in the past - the coming of Freedom of Movement changed that as did other geopolitical changes which basically allowed millions who were trapped within their own borders to “escape” to other parts of the world and naturally they came to a) where the money was and b) where they could reach.
The other aspect has been the socio-cultural. Not for the first time, incomers have found a degree of comfort by sticking together - people like people like themselves. The inevitability of concentrations of ethnic groups partly gives the economic lie to multi-culturalism though I suspect enough money will buy you place anywhere.
I live in an area where white British people are a minority and in places like Green Street and Forest Gate, a tiny minority (5%). Yet it’s my experience the one thing which unites everyone is capitalism. Making enough money via working hard for the family and children and wanting them to have a better life - what’s wrong with that? It’s no different to when people left the fields for the factories.
Are there, among the illegals, bad apples? Yes, as there were among those who came under Freedom of Movement and when incidents occur involving immigrants, the perpetrators need to be found and deported. Those who seek to enter Britain illegally need to be found and deported - I think most have always supported that line but the debate about the 4% of illegals is driving the debate about the benefits or otherwise of the 96% who come here legally but it suits those with an agenda hostile to all who are not “British” by their definition to treat all migrants, both legal and illegal, the same.
Interesting dissertation and bits I agree with - but I'd query 'immigration has been good for the country economically' - I think we need to distinguish between 'good for Britain' and 'good for British workers' - historically, my understanding is tbat the British masses have done best when their labour is most valuable, which corresponds to when there is least competition for it.
The problem is that there are lots of second and third order effects (in both directions) which are hard to control for.
Yes, I recognise that there is a bit more to it - and yet historically, time and time again: the more workers there are, the worse off workers are. (I'm talking about workers in the sense of 'anyone who works for a living' sense rather than a class war sense here.) My concern is we focus too much on the headline figure for the whole economy, which doesn't necessarily reflect how well off most individuals are.
In which case Japan would be booming, with rising wages, and everyone happy.
Which is not the case.
And Singapore and Switzerland would be skint with sullen workers.
It's not a zero sum game. Indeed the correlation is that successful economies with high standards of living for their workers attract immigrants keen to improve themselves.
So why are they coming here then?
Well: there's essentially no labour black market in Switzerland. (And the same is true of Norway.)
In both countries, people who enable the undocumented (whether through employing them, housing them, etc.) are subject to harsh penalties. The consequence of which is that it is very hard to be an illegal immigrant there. (There are no Albanian car washes in either country.)
One of the real pulls of the UK is how easy it is to work without documentation, so even if your asylum application looks like it's going to get rejected you can disappear into the black market. That makes the UK a very attractive destination.
And fixing those black market issues would inconvenience us, so we don't want to do them. We don't want our identity questioned and quite like cheap food delivery.
(Probably an interesting forced choice for a pollster. ID Cards or a border as leaky as it is- choose one.)
Much easier to think we can get what we want with a nation-sized velvet rope and some ex-nightclub bouncers.
Picture quiz: I was here yesterday - where is this?
Is this a trap? The answer is verboten.
Very good and well done!
For clarity, it's the Forbidden Corner in North Yorkshire. We went yesterday, around 6 years after our first visit. Essentially it's a folly and its grounds. You won't learn anything - though at first glance it looks ancient, it isn't: the main tower was built in 2022, replacing an only slightly olderone which, to the chagrin of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, was built without planning permission. But worth a visit if you're passing, even without children. It's fun.
Nearby Middleham Castle is a different kind of folly which is well worth a visit too.
This 35% for Reform could be their Boris in Hartlepool moment.
Let me give you the scenario - the rise of Advance UK.
RetardUK was founded by Ben "Nigel was mean" Habib and now has Rock-on Tommeh as a member and Elon Musk as cheerleader.
We haven't yet seen which way Rupert Lowe goes, but he seems to be heading to join Retard as well.
Reform - Farage - knows that to get elected they can't go full fascist. So they are throwing out soundbites and genius tribe-building moves like the football shirt, but when pressed on policy detail they equivocate.
If Muskbaby amplifies the fascist cause then they will find a way to build a tribe which is more effective than a football shirt.
In this scenario, if we are lucky then the Fukker and the Retard mobs cancel each other out. If we are unlucky? Tommy Robinson as LOTO shouting DEPORT THE PAKIS NOW across the dispatch box at PM Nigel Farage.
Advance UK may be yet another damp squib. We will see. But they are far more dangerous than Farage. For all of his endless faults SYL is a very effective agitator. Give him a BIG platform and who knows what damage he could do to our electoral system.
Can this be translated into English ?
Farage is smart enough not to be outwardly racist if he wants to be PM but a lot of his support would prefer the outwardly racist option.
More importantly, up to now, Farage has broadly been able to take the racist vote for granted. He hasn't had to give them anything really.
Now he is at risk of having to fight on two fronts, which tends to end badly.
Oh well.
The problem with the centrist mindset is that it always assumes people will 'come around to it'; 'it' being whatever often barking proposal is currently being pursued by the process state, often at the behest of the Treasury Mindset. The 'it' of the moment is mass immigration.
The reality is that mass immigration - a very very new experiment in a welfare state - is simply not popular, and almost certainly too expensive. For too long too many people have put up with the negative externalities of it, and/or been too scared to oppose it. That has now ended.
If nothing really changes, I think @RochdalePioneers scenario of a Faragist govt with an opposition of even more strident views on immigration is more likely than the current supposed 'centre' holding.
This description doesn't seem to have much to do with reality.
Immigration is well down on the Johnson/Sunak years. Figures for 2025 will probably be further reduced.
I've just realised that your response is in fact the perfect encapsulation of my description of the 'centrist mindset'. Unspoofable.
Does 'centrist' just mean skeptical of populist nonsense now?
Even more unspoofable
Really?
How about "the Centrist Mindset is to assume that everybody will come around to the latest mad idea being proposed by the NU10k Process State at the behest of the Treasury Mindset"?
You could try that. That should get a laugh. It's good.
Those who keep being dismissive of the views of the majority will continue to tank in the polls
Politics doesn’t work like that.
Margaret Thatcher, even when faced with polls showing a majority disagreed with her (Poll Tax) went out and argued her case. She would use interviews, speeches, whatever to put her argument to the British people.
I’ve always believed a majority is the largest number of people wrong about any given issue at any given time. Argument and debate are how ideas are advanced and evolve. Simply saying “the people want this. We must do it” is absurd. That’s the politics of the mob. That’s how you end up with a crowd burning down a house which they think is full of asylum seekers and killing an innocent family - that is literally where you end up if you appease populism.
Before anyone gets upset, that hasn’t happened here YET. I honestly think it will if we don’t tell the “patriots” who think they control the streets the facts of life.
Yes, well if you think about it, that's a remarkably stupid view to take really isn't it? It is every bit as lacking in nuance and heedless of the actual issue as the ignorance you accuse others of, but more so, because it is fundamentally anti-logical.
Very clever people will tell you that our asylum and immigration policy is a piece of toss. They can do the sums to show you. But it has taken the public (in their wisdom) showing their displeasure to get them to do anything about it. The public have been the wise ones - the politicians have been the stupid ones.
You may be surprised but I don’t wholly accept your line.
Immigration has been good for this country in the past - the coming of Freedom of Movement changed that as did other geopolitical changes which basically allowed millions who were trapped within their own borders to “escape” to other parts of the world and naturally they came to a) where the money was and b) where they could reach.
The other aspect has been the socio-cultural. Not for the first time, incomers have found a degree of comfort by sticking together - people like people like themselves. The inevitability of concentrations of ethnic groups partly gives the economic lie to multi-culturalism though I suspect enough money will buy you place anywhere.
I live in an area where white British people are a minority and in places like Green Street and Forest Gate, a tiny minority (5%). Yet it’s my experience the one thing which unites everyone is capitalism. Making enough money via working hard for the family and children and wanting them to have a better life - what’s wrong with that? It’s no different to when people left the fields for the factories.
Are there, among the illegals, bad apples? Yes, as there were among those who came under Freedom of Movement and when incidents occur involving immigrants, the perpetrators need to be found and deported. Those who seek to enter Britain illegally need to be found and deported - I think most have always supported that line but the debate about the 4% of illegals is driving the debate about the benefits or otherwise of the 96% who come here legally but it suits those with an agenda hostile to all who are not “British” by their definition to treat all migrants, both legal and illegal, the same.
Interesting dissertation and bits I agree with - but I'd query 'immigration has been good for the country economically' - I think we need to distinguish between 'good for Britain' and 'good for British workers' - historically, my understanding is tbat the British masses have done best when their labour is most valuable, which corresponds to when there is least competition for it.
The problem is that there are lots of second and third order effects (in both directions) which are hard to control for.
Yes, I recognise that there is a bit more to it - and yet historically, time and time again: the more workers there are, the worse off workers are. (I'm talking about workers in the sense of 'anyone who works for a living' sense rather than a class war sense here.) My concern is we focus too much on the headline figure for the whole economy, which doesn't necessarily reflect how well off most individuals are.
In which case Japan would be booming, with rising wages, and everyone happy.
Which is not the case.
And Singapore and Switzerland would be skint with sullen workers.
It's not a zero sum game. Indeed the correlation is that successful economies with high standards of living for their workers attract immigrants keen to improve themselves.
So why are they coming here then?
Well: there's essentially no labour black market in Switzerland. (And the same is true of Norway.)
In both countries, people who enable the undocumented (whether through employing them, housing them, etc.) are subject to harsh penalties. The consequence of which is that it is very hard to be an illegal immigrant there. (There are no Albanian car washes in either country.)
One of the real pulls of the UK is how easy it is to work without documentation, so even if your asylum application looks like it's going to get rejected you can disappear into the black market. That makes the UK a very attractive destination.
And of course both countries prioritise high skilled migration for their regular migration, unlike the UK.
Switzerland only has high skilled migration routes besides EU free movement. The Swiss have a considerably higher proportion of migrants with tertiary education than we do.
Singapore exclusively offers regular migration to high skilled migration routes.
Singapore does offer low skilled migrant visas but on shockingly poor human rights standards. They're forbidden from marrying a Singaporean, forbidden from bringing dependents and forbidden from getting on a pathway to permanent residency or citizenship.
The Swiss do, though, have full free market migration with the EU. And the highest wages in Europe.
Indeed, they begrudgingly do, but they seek to ensure even with full movement that they prioritise high skilled migration - which they do quite successfully discouraging low skilled migrants from going there.
It makes sense for a developed country to have a high skilled populace, and regular migrants are becoming a part of your populace. That's why it makes sense to have universal education, and why it makes sense to prioritise high skilled immigration as the Swiss do so successfully, and as the Singaporeans ensure that only high skilled migrants can properly immigrate into and become a part of the country, longer-term.
I think the Swiss situation is a little different to what you think: there are about 9 million people in Switzerland, of which just under a third are foreign born.
A lot of these are low skilled immigrants: the vast majority of cleanesr and nannys are immigrants; as is the dishwasher in the local restaurant.
Where the Swiss have done an incredible job, though, is that the skilled blue collar trades - like bricklaying - pretty much all require certifcation. And Swiss people get that certification through the education system, while immigrants do not. (Although immigrants can -and do- get those qualification - it's just that it's easier for a Polish electrician to work in a country that does not require him to sit a whole bunch of exams.)
They have lots of low skilled immigration from outside the EU. I was staggered, for example, to discover that 5% of the foreign born population is from Kosovo. And I think we can be reasonable assured that those aren't people with advanced degrees.
Where I encountered this unusual little narrow gauge train
If anyone can guess the role of the special Styrian “flask wagon” Railway - NICHT DE GOOGLE I shall send them a glass of Schilcher sweet rose wine in a parallel universe
Is this the one which was used for bringing weapons to the front?
Where I encountered this unusual little narrow gauge train
If anyone can guess the role of the special Styrian “flask wagon” Railway - NICHT DE GOOGLE I shall send them a glass of Schilcher sweet rose wine in a parallel universe
Ok here’s the insane answer
This is possibly the earliest train line in Austria. A local entrepreneur heard about these new fangled British railways and imported one here in the 1840s
Then in the 1900s a local doctor/charlatan in the hills, known as Höllerhansl. claimed he could diagnose illnesses just by looking at your urine. And he got famous for it. So people flocked to him via this narrow gauge train, all carrying little bottles (“Flascherl”) of their pee
And today it is known as the Wee Flask Railway, tho it suffers from competition with the high speed Urine Gourd SuperExpress just down the road
This 35% for Reform could be their Boris in Hartlepool moment.
Let me give you the scenario - the rise of Advance UK.
RetardUK was founded by Ben "Nigel was mean" Habib and now has Rock-on Tommeh as a member and Elon Musk as cheerleader.
We haven't yet seen which way Rupert Lowe goes, but he seems to be heading to join Retard as well.
Reform - Farage - knows that to get elected they can't go full fascist. So they are throwing out soundbites and genius tribe-building moves like the football shirt, but when pressed on policy detail they equivocate.
If Muskbaby amplifies the fascist cause then they will find a way to build a tribe which is more effective than a football shirt.
In this scenario, if we are lucky then the Fukker and the Retard mobs cancel each other out. If we are unlucky? Tommy Robinson as LOTO shouting DEPORT THE PAKIS NOW across the dispatch box at PM Nigel Farage.
Advance UK may be yet another damp squib. We will see. But they are far more dangerous than Farage. For all of his endless faults SYL is a very effective agitator. Give him a BIG platform and who knows what damage he could do to our electoral system.
Can this be translated into English ?
Farage is smart enough not to be outwardly racist if he wants to be PM but a lot of his support would prefer the outwardly racist option.
More importantly, up to now, Farage has broadly been able to take the racist vote for granted. He hasn't had to give them anything really.
Now he is at risk of having to fight on two fronts, which tends to end badly.
Oh well.
The problem with the centrist mindset is that it always assumes people will 'come around to it'; 'it' being whatever often barking proposal is currently being pursued by the process state, often at the behest of the Treasury Mindset. The 'it' of the moment is mass immigration.
The reality is that mass immigration - a very very new experiment in a welfare state - is simply not popular, and almost certainly too expensive. For too long too many people have put up with the negative externalities of it, and/or been too scared to oppose it. That has now ended.
If nothing really changes, I think @RochdalePioneers scenario of a Faragist govt with an opposition of even more strident views on immigration is more likely than the current supposed 'centre' holding.
This description doesn't seem to have much to do with reality.
Immigration is well down on the Johnson/Sunak years. Figures for 2025 will probably be further reduced.
I've just realised that your response is in fact the perfect encapsulation of my description of the 'centrist mindset'. Unspoofable.
Does 'centrist' just mean skeptical of populist nonsense now?
Even more unspoofable
Really?
How about "the Centrist Mindset is to assume that everybody will come around to the latest mad idea being proposed by the NU10k Process State at the behest of the Treasury Mindset"?
You could try that. That should get a laugh. It's good.
Those who keep being dismissive of the views of the majority will continue to tank in the polls
Politics doesn’t work like that.
Margaret Thatcher, even when faced with polls showing a majority disagreed with her (Poll Tax) went out and argued her case. She would use interviews, speeches, whatever to put her argument to the British people.
I’ve always believed a majority is the largest number of people wrong about any given issue at any given time. Argument and debate are how ideas are advanced and evolve. Simply saying “the people want this. We must do it” is absurd. That’s the politics of the mob. That’s how you end up with a crowd burning down a house which they think is full of asylum seekers and killing an innocent family - that is literally where you end up if you appease populism.
Before anyone gets upset, that hasn’t happened here YET. I honestly think it will if we don’t tell the “patriots” who think they control the streets the facts of life.
Yes, well if you think about it, that's a remarkably stupid view to take really isn't it? It is every bit as lacking in nuance and heedless of the actual issue as the ignorance you accuse others of, but more so, because it is fundamentally anti-logical.
Very clever people will tell you that our asylum and immigration policy is a piece of toss. They can do the sums to show you. But it has taken the public (in their wisdom) showing their displeasure to get them to do anything about it. The public have been the wise ones - the politicians have been the stupid ones.
You may be surprised but I don’t wholly accept your line.
Immigration has been good for this country in the past - the coming of Freedom of Movement changed that as did other geopolitical changes which basically allowed millions who were trapped within their own borders to “escape” to other parts of the world and naturally they came to a) where the money was and b) where they could reach.
The other aspect has been the socio-cultural. Not for the first time, incomers have found a degree of comfort by sticking together - people like people like themselves. The inevitability of concentrations of ethnic groups partly gives the economic lie to multi-culturalism though I suspect enough money will buy you place anywhere.
I live in an area where white British people are a minority and in places like Green Street and Forest Gate, a tiny minority (5%). Yet it’s my experience the one thing which unites everyone is capitalism. Making enough money via working hard for the family and children and wanting them to have a better life - what’s wrong with that? It’s no different to when people left the fields for the factories.
Are there, among the illegals, bad apples? Yes, as there were among those who came under Freedom of Movement and when incidents occur involving immigrants, the perpetrators need to be found and deported. Those who seek to enter Britain illegally need to be found and deported - I think most have always supported that line but the debate about the 4% of illegals is driving the debate about the benefits or otherwise of the 96% who come here legally but it suits those with an agenda hostile to all who are not “British” by their definition to treat all migrants, both legal and illegal, the same.
Interesting dissertation and bits I agree with - but I'd query 'immigration has been good for the country economically' - I think we need to distinguish between 'good for Britain' and 'good for British workers' - historically, my understanding is tbat the British masses have done best when their labour is most valuable, which corresponds to when there is least competition for it.
The problem is that there are lots of second and third order effects (in both directions) which are hard to control for.
Yes, I recognise that there is a bit more to it - and yet historically, time and time again: the more workers there are, the worse off workers are. (I'm talking about workers in the sense of 'anyone who works for a living' sense rather than a class war sense here.) My concern is we focus too much on the headline figure for the whole economy, which doesn't necessarily reflect how well off most individuals are.
In which case Japan would be booming, with rising wages, and everyone happy.
Which is not the case.
And Singapore and Switzerland would be skint with sullen workers.
It's not a zero sum game. Indeed the correlation is that successful economies with high standards of living for their workers attract immigrants keen to improve themselves.
So why are they coming here then?
Well: there's essentially no labour black market in Switzerland. (And the same is true of Norway.)
In both countries, people who enable the undocumented (whether through employing them, housing them, etc.) are subject to harsh penalties. The consequence of which is that it is very hard to be an illegal immigrant there. (There are no Albanian car washes in either country.)
One of the real pulls of the UK is how easy it is to work without documentation, so even if your asylum application looks like it's going to get rejected you can disappear into the black market. That makes the UK a very attractive destination.
And of course both countries prioritise high skilled migration for their regular migration, unlike the UK.
Switzerland only has high skilled migration routes besides EU free movement. The Swiss have a considerably higher proportion of migrants with tertiary education than we do.
Singapore exclusively offers regular migration to high skilled migration routes.
Singapore does offer low skilled migrant visas but on shockingly poor human rights standards. They're forbidden from marrying a Singaporean, forbidden from bringing dependents and forbidden from getting on a pathway to permanent residency or citizenship.
The Swiss do, though, have full free market migration with the EU. And the highest wages in Europe.
Indeed, they begrudgingly do, but they seek to ensure even with full movement that they prioritise high skilled migration - which they do quite successfully discouraging low skilled migrants from going there.
It makes sense for a developed country to have a high skilled populace, and regular migrants are becoming a part of your populace. That's why it makes sense to have universal education, and why it makes sense to prioritise high skilled immigration as the Swiss do so successfully, and as the Singaporeans ensure that only high skilled migrants can properly immigrate into and become a part of the country, longer-term.
I think the Swiss situation is a little different to what you think: there are about 9 million people in Switzerland, of which just under a third are foreign born.
A lot of these are low skilled immigrants: the vast majority of cleanesr and nannys are immigrants; as is the dishwasher in the local restaurant.
Where the Swiss have done an incredible job, though, is that the skilled blue collar trades - like bricklaying - pretty much all require certifcation. And Swiss people get that certification through the education system, while immigrants do not. (Although immigrants can -and do- get those qualification - it's just that it's easier for a Polish electrician to work in a country that does not require him to sit a whole bunch of exams.)
They have lots of low skilled immigration from outside the EU. I was staggered, for example, to discover that 5% of the foreign born population is from Kosovo. And I think we can be reasonable assured that those aren't people with advanced degrees.
There are some low skilled migrants in Switzerland, of course there are, with free movement its not possible to prevent them. However Switzerland as a matter of policy aims to get high skilled migrants, which is logical and sensible, since a country should seek to have a high skill base to be productive.
However even with free movement the majority of migrants to Switzerland have tertiary education. In the UK it is a minority.
As for Kosovo, yes, you're right. Switzerland took a lot of refugees from Kosovo in the 1990s. Switzerland also formerly had looser non-EU migration rules which many from former Yugoslavia took advantage of. Those routes are now closed.
This 35% for Reform could be their Boris in Hartlepool moment.
Let me give you the scenario - the rise of Advance UK.
RetardUK was founded by Ben "Nigel was mean" Habib and now has Rock-on Tommeh as a member and Elon Musk as cheerleader.
We haven't yet seen which way Rupert Lowe goes, but he seems to be heading to join Retard as well.
Reform - Farage - knows that to get elected they can't go full fascist. So they are throwing out soundbites and genius tribe-building moves like the football shirt, but when pressed on policy detail they equivocate.
If Muskbaby amplifies the fascist cause then they will find a way to build a tribe which is more effective than a football shirt.
In this scenario, if we are lucky then the Fukker and the Retard mobs cancel each other out. If we are unlucky? Tommy Robinson as LOTO shouting DEPORT THE PAKIS NOW across the dispatch box at PM Nigel Farage.
Advance UK may be yet another damp squib. We will see. But they are far more dangerous than Farage. For all of his endless faults SYL is a very effective agitator. Give him a BIG platform and who knows what damage he could do to our electoral system.
Can this be translated into English ?
Farage is smart enough not to be outwardly racist if he wants to be PM but a lot of his support would prefer the outwardly racist option.
More importantly, up to now, Farage has broadly been able to take the racist vote for granted. He hasn't had to give them anything really.
Now he is at risk of having to fight on two fronts, which tends to end badly.
Oh well.
The problem with the centrist mindset is that it always assumes people will 'come around to it'; 'it' being whatever often barking proposal is currently being pursued by the process state, often at the behest of the Treasury Mindset. The 'it' of the moment is mass immigration.
The reality is that mass immigration - a very very new experiment in a welfare state - is simply not popular, and almost certainly too expensive. For too long too many people have put up with the negative externalities of it, and/or been too scared to oppose it. That has now ended.
If nothing really changes, I think @RochdalePioneers scenario of a Faragist govt with an opposition of even more strident views on immigration is more likely than the current supposed 'centre' holding.
This description doesn't seem to have much to do with reality.
Immigration is well down on the Johnson/Sunak years. Figures for 2025 will probably be further reduced.
I've just realised that your response is in fact the perfect encapsulation of my description of the 'centrist mindset'. Unspoofable.
Does 'centrist' just mean skeptical of populist nonsense now?
Even more unspoofable
Really?
How about "the Centrist Mindset is to assume that everybody will come around to the latest mad idea being proposed by the NU10k Process State at the behest of the Treasury Mindset"?
You could try that. That should get a laugh. It's good.
Those who keep being dismissive of the views of the majority will continue to tank in the polls
Politics doesn’t work like that.
Margaret Thatcher, even when faced with polls showing a majority disagreed with her (Poll Tax) went out and argued her case. She would use interviews, speeches, whatever to put her argument to the British people.
I’ve always believed a majority is the largest number of people wrong about any given issue at any given time. Argument and debate are how ideas are advanced and evolve. Simply saying “the people want this. We must do it” is absurd. That’s the politics of the mob. That’s how you end up with a crowd burning down a house which they think is full of asylum seekers and killing an innocent family - that is literally where you end up if you appease populism.
Before anyone gets upset, that hasn’t happened here YET. I honestly think it will if we don’t tell the “patriots” who think they control the streets the facts of life.
Yes, well if you think about it, that's a remarkably stupid view to take really isn't it? It is every bit as lacking in nuance and heedless of the actual issue as the ignorance you accuse others of, but more so, because it is fundamentally anti-logical.
Very clever people will tell you that our asylum and immigration policy is a piece of toss. They can do the sums to show you. But it has taken the public (in their wisdom) showing their displeasure to get them to do anything about it. The public have been the wise ones - the politicians have been the stupid ones.
You may be surprised but I don’t wholly accept your line.
Immigration has been good for this country in the past - the coming of Freedom of Movement changed that as did other geopolitical changes which basically allowed millions who were trapped within their own borders to “escape” to other parts of the world and naturally they came to a) where the money was and b) where they could reach.
The other aspect has been the socio-cultural. Not for the first time, incomers have found a degree of comfort by sticking together - people like people like themselves. The inevitability of concentrations of ethnic groups partly gives the economic lie to multi-culturalism though I suspect enough money will buy you place anywhere.
I live in an area where white British people are a minority and in places like Green Street and Forest Gate, a tiny minority (5%). Yet it’s my experience the one thing which unites everyone is capitalism. Making enough money via working hard for the family and children and wanting them to have a better life - what’s wrong with that? It’s no different to when people left the fields for the factories.
Are there, among the illegals, bad apples? Yes, as there were among those who came under Freedom of Movement and when incidents occur involving immigrants, the perpetrators need to be found and deported. Those who seek to enter Britain illegally need to be found and deported - I think most have always supported that line but the debate about the 4% of illegals is driving the debate about the benefits or otherwise of the 96% who come here legally but it suits those with an agenda hostile to all who are not “British” by their definition to treat all migrants, both legal and illegal, the same.
Interesting dissertation and bits I agree with - but I'd query 'immigration has been good for the country economically' - I think we need to distinguish between 'good for Britain' and 'good for British workers' - historically, my understanding is tbat the British masses have done best when their labour is most valuable, which corresponds to when there is least competition for it.
The problem is that there are lots of second and third order effects (in both directions) which are hard to control for.
Yes, I recognise that there is a bit more to it - and yet historically, time and time again: the more workers there are, the worse off workers are. (I'm talking about workers in the sense of 'anyone who works for a living' sense rather than a class war sense here.) My concern is we focus too much on the headline figure for the whole economy, which doesn't necessarily reflect how well off most individuals are.
In which case Japan would be booming, with rising wages, and everyone happy.
Which is not the case.
And Singapore and Switzerland would be skint with sullen workers.
It's not a zero sum game. Indeed the correlation is that successful economies with high standards of living for their workers attract immigrants keen to improve themselves.
So why are they coming here then?
Well: there's essentially no labour black market in Switzerland. (And the same is true of Norway.)
In both countries, people who enable the undocumented (whether through employing them, housing them, etc.) are subject to harsh penalties. The consequence of which is that it is very hard to be an illegal immigrant there. (There are no Albanian car washes in either country.)
One of the real pulls of the UK is how easy it is to work without documentation, so even if your asylum application looks like it's going to get rejected you can disappear into the black market. That makes the UK a very attractive destination.
And of course both countries prioritise high skilled migration for their regular migration, unlike the UK.
Switzerland only has high skilled migration routes besides EU free movement. The Swiss have a considerably higher proportion of migrants with tertiary education than we do.
Singapore exclusively offers regular migration to high skilled migration routes.
Singapore does offer low skilled migrant visas but on shockingly poor human rights standards. They're forbidden from marrying a Singaporean, forbidden from bringing dependents and forbidden from getting on a pathway to permanent residency or citizenship.
The Swiss do, though, have full free market migration with the EU. And the highest wages in Europe.
Indeed, they begrudgingly do, but they seek to ensure even with full movement that they prioritise high skilled migration - which they do quite successfully discouraging low skilled migrants from going there.
It makes sense for a developed country to have a high skilled populace, and regular migrants are becoming a part of your populace. That's why it makes sense to have universal education, and why it makes sense to prioritise high skilled immigration as the Swiss do so successfully, and as the Singaporeans ensure that only high skilled migrants can properly immigrate into and become a part of the country, longer-term.
I think the Swiss situation is a little different to what you think: there are about 9 million people in Switzerland, of which just under a third are foreign born.
A lot of these are low skilled immigrants: the vast majority of cleanesr and nannys are immigrants; as is the dishwasher in the local restaurant.
Where the Swiss have done an incredible job, though, is that the skilled blue collar trades - like bricklaying - pretty much all require certifcation. And Swiss people get that certification through the education system, while immigrants do not. (Although immigrants can -and do- get those qualification - it's just that it's easier for a Polish electrician to work in a country that does not require him to sit a whole bunch of exams.)
They have lots of low skilled immigration from outside the EU. I was staggered, for example, to discover that 5% of the foreign born population is from Kosovo. And I think we can be reasonable assured that those aren't people with advanced degrees.
There are some low skilled migrants in Switzerland, of course there are, with free movement its not possible to prevent them.
However even with free movement the majority of migrants to Switzerland have tertiary education. In the UK it is a minority.
As for Kosovo, yes, you're right. Switzerland took a lot of refugees from Kosovo in the 1990s. Switzerland also formerly had looser non-EU migration rules which many from former Yugoslavia took advantage of. Those routes are now closed.
My point, though, is that a higher proportion of Switzerland's population is low skilled immigrants than the UK.
About 11% of the Swiss population is foreign born without tertiary education. In the UK, it's about 9%.
And this is because although a greater proportion of Swiss immigrants have tertiary education (70% vs 44%), they have so many more immigrants (32% v 16%).
This 35% for Reform could be their Boris in Hartlepool moment.
Let me give you the scenario - the rise of Advance UK.
RetardUK was founded by Ben "Nigel was mean" Habib and now has Rock-on Tommeh as a member and Elon Musk as cheerleader.
We haven't yet seen which way Rupert Lowe goes, but he seems to be heading to join Retard as well.
Reform - Farage - knows that to get elected they can't go full fascist. So they are throwing out soundbites and genius tribe-building moves like the football shirt, but when pressed on policy detail they equivocate.
If Muskbaby amplifies the fascist cause then they will find a way to build a tribe which is more effective than a football shirt.
In this scenario, if we are lucky then the Fukker and the Retard mobs cancel each other out. If we are unlucky? Tommy Robinson as LOTO shouting DEPORT THE PAKIS NOW across the dispatch box at PM Nigel Farage.
Advance UK may be yet another damp squib. We will see. But they are far more dangerous than Farage. For all of his endless faults SYL is a very effective agitator. Give him a BIG platform and who knows what damage he could do to our electoral system.
Can this be translated into English ?
Farage is smart enough not to be outwardly racist if he wants to be PM but a lot of his support would prefer the outwardly racist option.
More importantly, up to now, Farage has broadly been able to take the racist vote for granted. He hasn't had to give them anything really.
Now he is at risk of having to fight on two fronts, which tends to end badly.
Oh well.
The problem with the centrist mindset is that it always assumes people will 'come around to it'; 'it' being whatever often barking proposal is currently being pursued by the process state, often at the behest of the Treasury Mindset. The 'it' of the moment is mass immigration.
The reality is that mass immigration - a very very new experiment in a welfare state - is simply not popular, and almost certainly too expensive. For too long too many people have put up with the negative externalities of it, and/or been too scared to oppose it. That has now ended.
If nothing really changes, I think @RochdalePioneers scenario of a Faragist govt with an opposition of even more strident views on immigration is more likely than the current supposed 'centre' holding.
This description doesn't seem to have much to do with reality.
Immigration is well down on the Johnson/Sunak years. Figures for 2025 will probably be further reduced.
I've just realised that your response is in fact the perfect encapsulation of my description of the 'centrist mindset'. Unspoofable.
Does 'centrist' just mean skeptical of populist nonsense now?
Even more unspoofable
Really?
How about "the Centrist Mindset is to assume that everybody will come around to the latest mad idea being proposed by the NU10k Process State at the behest of the Treasury Mindset"?
You could try that. That should get a laugh. It's good.
Those who keep being dismissive of the views of the majority will continue to tank in the polls
Politics doesn’t work like that.
Margaret Thatcher, even when faced with polls showing a majority disagreed with her (Poll Tax) went out and argued her case. She would use interviews, speeches, whatever to put her argument to the British people.
I’ve always believed a majority is the largest number of people wrong about any given issue at any given time. Argument and debate are how ideas are advanced and evolve. Simply saying “the people want this. We must do it” is absurd. That’s the politics of the mob. That’s how you end up with a crowd burning down a house which they think is full of asylum seekers and killing an innocent family - that is literally where you end up if you appease populism.
Before anyone gets upset, that hasn’t happened here YET. I honestly think it will if we don’t tell the “patriots” who think they control the streets the facts of life.
Yes, well if you think about it, that's a remarkably stupid view to take really isn't it? It is every bit as lacking in nuance and heedless of the actual issue as the ignorance you accuse others of, but more so, because it is fundamentally anti-logical.
Very clever people will tell you that our asylum and immigration policy is a piece of toss. They can do the sums to show you. But it has taken the public (in their wisdom) showing their displeasure to get them to do anything about it. The public have been the wise ones - the politicians have been the stupid ones.
You may be surprised but I don’t wholly accept your line.
Immigration has been good for this country in the past - the coming of Freedom of Movement changed that as did other geopolitical changes which basically allowed millions who were trapped within their own borders to “escape” to other parts of the world and naturally they came to a) where the money was and b) where they could reach.
The other aspect has been the socio-cultural. Not for the first time, incomers have found a degree of comfort by sticking together - people like people like themselves. The inevitability of concentrations of ethnic groups partly gives the economic lie to multi-culturalism though I suspect enough money will buy you place anywhere.
I live in an area where white British people are a minority and in places like Green Street and Forest Gate, a tiny minority (5%). Yet it’s my experience the one thing which unites everyone is capitalism. Making enough money via working hard for the family and children and wanting them to have a better life - what’s wrong with that? It’s no different to when people left the fields for the factories.
Are there, among the illegals, bad apples? Yes, as there were among those who came under Freedom of Movement and when incidents occur involving immigrants, the perpetrators need to be found and deported. Those who seek to enter Britain illegally need to be found and deported - I think most have always supported that line but the debate about the 4% of illegals is driving the debate about the benefits or otherwise of the 96% who come here legally but it suits those with an agenda hostile to all who are not “British” by their definition to treat all migrants, both legal and illegal, the same.
Interesting dissertation and bits I agree with - but I'd query 'immigration has been good for the country economically' - I think we need to distinguish between 'good for Britain' and 'good for British workers' - historically, my understanding is tbat the British masses have done best when their labour is most valuable, which corresponds to when there is least competition for it.
The problem is that there are lots of second and third order effects (in both directions) which are hard to control for.
Yes, I recognise that there is a bit more to it - and yet historically, time and time again: the more workers there are, the worse off workers are. (I'm talking about workers in the sense of 'anyone who works for a living' sense rather than a class war sense here.) My concern is we focus too much on the headline figure for the whole economy, which doesn't necessarily reflect how well off most individuals are.
In which case Japan would be booming, with rising wages, and everyone happy.
Which is not the case.
And Singapore and Switzerland would be skint with sullen workers.
It's not a zero sum game. Indeed the correlation is that successful economies with high standards of living for their workers attract immigrants keen to improve themselves.
So why are they coming here then?
Well: there's essentially no labour black market in Switzerland. (And the same is true of Norway.)
In both countries, people who enable the undocumented (whether through employing them, housing them, etc.) are subject to harsh penalties. The consequence of which is that it is very hard to be an illegal immigrant there. (There are no Albanian car washes in either country.)
One of the real pulls of the UK is how easy it is to work without documentation, so even if your asylum application looks like it's going to get rejected you can disappear into the black market. That makes the UK a very attractive destination.
And of course both countries prioritise high skilled migration for their regular migration, unlike the UK.
Switzerland only has high skilled migration routes besides EU free movement. The Swiss have a considerably higher proportion of migrants with tertiary education than we do.
Singapore exclusively offers regular migration to high skilled migration routes.
Singapore does offer low skilled migrant visas but on shockingly poor human rights standards. They're forbidden from marrying a Singaporean, forbidden from bringing dependents and forbidden from getting on a pathway to permanent residency or citizenship.
The Swiss do, though, have full free market migration with the EU. And the highest wages in Europe.
Indeed, they begrudgingly do, but they seek to ensure even with full movement that they prioritise high skilled migration - which they do quite successfully discouraging low skilled migrants from going there.
It makes sense for a developed country to have a high skilled populace, and regular migrants are becoming a part of your populace. That's why it makes sense to have universal education, and why it makes sense to prioritise high skilled immigration as the Swiss do so successfully, and as the Singaporeans ensure that only high skilled migrants can properly immigrate into and become a part of the country, longer-term.
I think the Swiss situation is a little different to what you think: there are about 9 million people in Switzerland, of which just under a third are foreign born.
A lot of these are low skilled immigrants: the vast majority of cleanesr and nannys are immigrants; as is the dishwasher in the local restaurant.
Where the Swiss have done an incredible job, though, is that the skilled blue collar trades - like bricklaying - pretty much all require certifcation. And Swiss people get that certification through the education system, while immigrants do not. (Although immigrants can -and do- get those qualification - it's just that it's easier for a Polish electrician to work in a country that does not require him to sit a whole bunch of exams.)
They have lots of low skilled immigration from outside the EU. I was staggered, for example, to discover that 5% of the foreign born population is from Kosovo. And I think we can be reasonable assured that those aren't people with advanced degrees.
There are some low skilled migrants in Switzerland, of course there are, with free movement its not possible to prevent them.
However even with free movement the majority of migrants to Switzerland have tertiary education. In the UK it is a minority.
As for Kosovo, yes, you're right. Switzerland took a lot of refugees from Kosovo in the 1990s. Switzerland also formerly had looser non-EU migration rules which many from former Yugoslavia took advantage of. Those routes are now closed.
My point, though, is that a higher proportion of Switzerland's population is low skilled immigrants than the UK.
About 11% of the Swiss population is foreign born without tertiary education. In the UK, it's about 9%.
And this is because although a greater proportion of Swiss immigrants have tertiary education (70% vs 44%), they have so many more immigrants (32% v 16%).
Switzerland has a higher rate of immigration, yes, but that works for them as they prioritise skilled migrants.
If we want to be more like Switzerland then we need to prioritise, as they do, high skilled migration. Because we should be striving for a high skilled population.
Where I encountered this unusual little narrow gauge train
If anyone can guess the role of the special Styrian “flask wagon” Railway - NICHT DE GOOGLE I shall send them a glass of Schilcher sweet rose wine in a parallel universe
Is this the one which was used for bringing weapons to the front?
This 35% for Reform could be their Boris in Hartlepool moment.
Let me give you the scenario - the rise of Advance UK.
RetardUK was founded by Ben "Nigel was mean" Habib and now has Rock-on Tommeh as a member and Elon Musk as cheerleader.
We haven't yet seen which way Rupert Lowe goes, but he seems to be heading to join Retard as well.
Reform - Farage - knows that to get elected they can't go full fascist. So they are throwing out soundbites and genius tribe-building moves like the football shirt, but when pressed on policy detail they equivocate.
If Muskbaby amplifies the fascist cause then they will find a way to build a tribe which is more effective than a football shirt.
In this scenario, if we are lucky then the Fukker and the Retard mobs cancel each other out. If we are unlucky? Tommy Robinson as LOTO shouting DEPORT THE PAKIS NOW across the dispatch box at PM Nigel Farage.
Advance UK may be yet another damp squib. We will see. But they are far more dangerous than Farage. For all of his endless faults SYL is a very effective agitator. Give him a BIG platform and who knows what damage he could do to our electoral system.
Can this be translated into English ?
Farage is smart enough not to be outwardly racist if he wants to be PM but a lot of his support would prefer the outwardly racist option.
More importantly, up to now, Farage has broadly been able to take the racist vote for granted. He hasn't had to give them anything really.
Now he is at risk of having to fight on two fronts, which tends to end badly.
Oh well.
The problem with the centrist mindset is that it always assumes people will 'come around to it'; 'it' being whatever often barking proposal is currently being pursued by the process state, often at the behest of the Treasury Mindset. The 'it' of the moment is mass immigration.
The reality is that mass immigration - a very very new experiment in a welfare state - is simply not popular, and almost certainly too expensive. For too long too many people have put up with the negative externalities of it, and/or been too scared to oppose it. That has now ended.
If nothing really changes, I think @RochdalePioneers scenario of a Faragist govt with an opposition of even more strident views on immigration is more likely than the current supposed 'centre' holding.
This description doesn't seem to have much to do with reality.
Immigration is well down on the Johnson/Sunak years. Figures for 2025 will probably be further reduced.
I've just realised that your response is in fact the perfect encapsulation of my description of the 'centrist mindset'. Unspoofable.
Does 'centrist' just mean skeptical of populist nonsense now?
Even more unspoofable
Really?
How about "the Centrist Mindset is to assume that everybody will come around to the latest mad idea being proposed by the NU10k Process State at the behest of the Treasury Mindset"?
You could try that. That should get a laugh. It's good.
Those who keep being dismissive of the views of the majority will continue to tank in the polls
Politics doesn’t work like that.
Margaret Thatcher, even when faced with polls showing a majority disagreed with her (Poll Tax) went out and argued her case. She would use interviews, speeches, whatever to put her argument to the British people.
I’ve always believed a majority is the largest number of people wrong about any given issue at any given time. Argument and debate are how ideas are advanced and evolve. Simply saying “the people want this. We must do it” is absurd. That’s the politics of the mob. That’s how you end up with a crowd burning down a house which they think is full of asylum seekers and killing an innocent family - that is literally where you end up if you appease populism.
Before anyone gets upset, that hasn’t happened here YET. I honestly think it will if we don’t tell the “patriots” who think they control the streets the facts of life.
Yes, well if you think about it, that's a remarkably stupid view to take really isn't it? It is every bit as lacking in nuance and heedless of the actual issue as the ignorance you accuse others of, but more so, because it is fundamentally anti-logical.
Very clever people will tell you that our asylum and immigration policy is a piece of toss. They can do the sums to show you. But it has taken the public (in their wisdom) showing their displeasure to get them to do anything about it. The public have been the wise ones - the politicians have been the stupid ones.
You may be surprised but I don’t wholly accept your line.
Immigration has been good for this country in the past - the coming of Freedom of Movement changed that as did other geopolitical changes which basically allowed millions who were trapped within their own borders to “escape” to other parts of the world and naturally they came to a) where the money was and b) where they could reach.
The other aspect has been the socio-cultural. Not for the first time, incomers have found a degree of comfort by sticking together - people like people like themselves. The inevitability of concentrations of ethnic groups partly gives the economic lie to multi-culturalism though I suspect enough money will buy you place anywhere.
I live in an area where white British people are a minority and in places like Green Street and Forest Gate, a tiny minority (5%). Yet it’s my experience the one thing which unites everyone is capitalism. Making enough money via working hard for the family and children and wanting them to have a better life - what’s wrong with that? It’s no different to when people left the fields for the factories.
Are there, among the illegals, bad apples? Yes, as there were among those who came under Freedom of Movement and when incidents occur involving immigrants, the perpetrators need to be found and deported. Those who seek to enter Britain illegally need to be found and deported - I think most have always supported that line but the debate about the 4% of illegals is driving the debate about the benefits or otherwise of the 96% who come here legally but it suits those with an agenda hostile to all who are not “British” by their definition to treat all migrants, both legal and illegal, the same.
Interesting dissertation and bits I agree with - but I'd query 'immigration has been good for the country economically' - I think we need to distinguish between 'good for Britain' and 'good for British workers' - historically, my understanding is tbat the British masses have done best when their labour is most valuable, which corresponds to when there is least competition for it.
The problem is that there are lots of second and third order effects (in both directions) which are hard to control for.
Yes, I recognise that there is a bit more to it - and yet historically, time and time again: the more workers there are, the worse off workers are. (I'm talking about workers in the sense of 'anyone who works for a living' sense rather than a class war sense here.) My concern is we focus too much on the headline figure for the whole economy, which doesn't necessarily reflect how well off most individuals are.
In which case Japan would be booming, with rising wages, and everyone happy.
Which is not the case.
And Singapore and Switzerland would be skint with sullen workers.
It's not a zero sum game. Indeed the correlation is that successful economies with high standards of living for their workers attract immigrants keen to improve themselves.
So why are they coming here then?
Well: there's essentially no labour black market in Switzerland. (And the same is true of Norway.)
In both countries, people who enable the undocumented (whether through employing them, housing them, etc.) are subject to harsh penalties. The consequence of which is that it is very hard to be an illegal immigrant there. (There are no Albanian car washes in either country.)
One of the real pulls of the UK is how easy it is to work without documentation, so even if your asylum application looks like it's going to get rejected you can disappear into the black market. That makes the UK a very attractive destination.
And of course both countries prioritise high skilled migration for their regular migration, unlike the UK.
Switzerland only has high skilled migration routes besides EU free movement. The Swiss have a considerably higher proportion of migrants with tertiary education than we do.
Singapore exclusively offers regular migration to high skilled migration routes.
Singapore does offer low skilled migrant visas but on shockingly poor human rights standards. They're forbidden from marrying a Singaporean, forbidden from bringing dependents and forbidden from getting on a pathway to permanent residency or citizenship.
The Swiss do, though, have full free market migration with the EU. And the highest wages in Europe.
Indeed, they begrudgingly do, but they seek to ensure even with full movement that they prioritise high skilled migration - which they do quite successfully discouraging low skilled migrants from going there.
It makes sense for a developed country to have a high skilled populace, and regular migrants are becoming a part of your populace. That's why it makes sense to have universal education, and why it makes sense to prioritise high skilled immigration as the Swiss do so successfully, and as the Singaporeans ensure that only high skilled migrants can properly immigrate into and become a part of the country, longer-term.
I think the Swiss situation is a little different to what you think: there are about 9 million people in Switzerland, of which just under a third are foreign born.
A lot of these are low skilled immigrants: the vast majority of cleanesr and nannys are immigrants; as is the dishwasher in the local restaurant.
Where the Swiss have done an incredible job, though, is that the skilled blue collar trades - like bricklaying - pretty much all require certifcation. And Swiss people get that certification through the education system, while immigrants do not. (Although immigrants can -and do- get those qualification - it's just that it's easier for a Polish electrician to work in a country that does not require him to sit a whole bunch of exams.)
They have lots of low skilled immigration from outside the EU. I was staggered, for example, to discover that 5% of the foreign born population is from Kosovo. And I think we can be reasonable assured that those aren't people with advanced degrees.
There are some low skilled migrants in Switzerland, of course there are, with free movement its not possible to prevent them.
However even with free movement the majority of migrants to Switzerland have tertiary education. In the UK it is a minority.
As for Kosovo, yes, you're right. Switzerland took a lot of refugees from Kosovo in the 1990s. Switzerland also formerly had looser non-EU migration rules which many from former Yugoslavia took advantage of. Those routes are now closed.
My point, though, is that a higher proportion of Switzerland's population is low skilled immigrants than the UK.
About 11% of the Swiss population is foreign born without tertiary education. In the UK, it's about 9%.
And this is because although a greater proportion of Swiss immigrants have tertiary education (70% vs 44%), they have so many more immigrants (32% v 16%).
Switzerland has a higher rate of immigration, yes, but that works for them as they prioritise skilled migrants.
If we want to be more like Switzerland then we need to prioritise, as they do, high skilled migration. Because we should be striving for a high skilled population.
So: you're saying we could import more low skilled people, if only we also imported even more high skilled people?
This 35% for Reform could be their Boris in Hartlepool moment.
Let me give you the scenario - the rise of Advance UK.
RetardUK was founded by Ben "Nigel was mean" Habib and now has Rock-on Tommeh as a member and Elon Musk as cheerleader.
We haven't yet seen which way Rupert Lowe goes, but he seems to be heading to join Retard as well.
Reform - Farage - knows that to get elected they can't go full fascist. So they are throwing out soundbites and genius tribe-building moves like the football shirt, but when pressed on policy detail they equivocate.
If Muskbaby amplifies the fascist cause then they will find a way to build a tribe which is more effective than a football shirt.
In this scenario, if we are lucky then the Fukker and the Retard mobs cancel each other out. If we are unlucky? Tommy Robinson as LOTO shouting DEPORT THE PAKIS NOW across the dispatch box at PM Nigel Farage.
Advance UK may be yet another damp squib. We will see. But they are far more dangerous than Farage. For all of his endless faults SYL is a very effective agitator. Give him a BIG platform and who knows what damage he could do to our electoral system.
Can this be translated into English ?
Farage is smart enough not to be outwardly racist if he wants to be PM but a lot of his support would prefer the outwardly racist option.
More importantly, up to now, Farage has broadly been able to take the racist vote for granted. He hasn't had to give them anything really.
Now he is at risk of having to fight on two fronts, which tends to end badly.
Oh well.
The problem with the centrist mindset is that it always assumes people will 'come around to it'; 'it' being whatever often barking proposal is currently being pursued by the process state, often at the behest of the Treasury Mindset. The 'it' of the moment is mass immigration.
The reality is that mass immigration - a very very new experiment in a welfare state - is simply not popular, and almost certainly too expensive. For too long too many people have put up with the negative externalities of it, and/or been too scared to oppose it. That has now ended.
If nothing really changes, I think @RochdalePioneers scenario of a Faragist govt with an opposition of even more strident views on immigration is more likely than the current supposed 'centre' holding.
This description doesn't seem to have much to do with reality.
Immigration is well down on the Johnson/Sunak years. Figures for 2025 will probably be further reduced.
I've just realised that your response is in fact the perfect encapsulation of my description of the 'centrist mindset'. Unspoofable.
Does 'centrist' just mean skeptical of populist nonsense now?
Even more unspoofable
Really?
How about "the Centrist Mindset is to assume that everybody will come around to the latest mad idea being proposed by the NU10k Process State at the behest of the Treasury Mindset"?
You could try that. That should get a laugh. It's good.
Those who keep being dismissive of the views of the majority will continue to tank in the polls
Politics doesn’t work like that.
Margaret Thatcher, even when faced with polls showing a majority disagreed with her (Poll Tax) went out and argued her case. She would use interviews, speeches, whatever to put her argument to the British people.
I’ve always believed a majority is the largest number of people wrong about any given issue at any given time. Argument and debate are how ideas are advanced and evolve. Simply saying “the people want this. We must do it” is absurd. That’s the politics of the mob. That’s how you end up with a crowd burning down a house which they think is full of asylum seekers and killing an innocent family - that is literally where you end up if you appease populism.
Before anyone gets upset, that hasn’t happened here YET. I honestly think it will if we don’t tell the “patriots” who think they control the streets the facts of life.
Yes, well if you think about it, that's a remarkably stupid view to take really isn't it? It is every bit as lacking in nuance and heedless of the actual issue as the ignorance you accuse others of, but more so, because it is fundamentally anti-logical.
Very clever people will tell you that our asylum and immigration policy is a piece of toss. They can do the sums to show you. But it has taken the public (in their wisdom) showing their displeasure to get them to do anything about it. The public have been the wise ones - the politicians have been the stupid ones.
You may be surprised but I don’t wholly accept your line.
Immigration has been good for this country in the past - the coming of Freedom of Movement changed that as did other geopolitical changes which basically allowed millions who were trapped within their own borders to “escape” to other parts of the world and naturally they came to a) where the money was and b) where they could reach.
The other aspect has been the socio-cultural. Not for the first time, incomers have found a degree of comfort by sticking together - people like people like themselves. The inevitability of concentrations of ethnic groups partly gives the economic lie to multi-culturalism though I suspect enough money will buy you place anywhere.
I live in an area where white British people are a minority and in places like Green Street and Forest Gate, a tiny minority (5%). Yet it’s my experience the one thing which unites everyone is capitalism. Making enough money via working hard for the family and children and wanting them to have a better life - what’s wrong with that? It’s no different to when people left the fields for the factories.
Are there, among the illegals, bad apples? Yes, as there were among those who came under Freedom of Movement and when incidents occur involving immigrants, the perpetrators need to be found and deported. Those who seek to enter Britain illegally need to be found and deported - I think most have always supported that line but the debate about the 4% of illegals is driving the debate about the benefits or otherwise of the 96% who come here legally but it suits those with an agenda hostile to all who are not “British” by their definition to treat all migrants, both legal and illegal, the same.
Interesting dissertation and bits I agree with - but I'd query 'immigration has been good for the country economically' - I think we need to distinguish between 'good for Britain' and 'good for British workers' - historically, my understanding is tbat the British masses have done best when their labour is most valuable, which corresponds to when there is least competition for it.
The problem is that there are lots of second and third order effects (in both directions) which are hard to control for.
Yes, I recognise that there is a bit more to it - and yet historically, time and time again: the more workers there are, the worse off workers are. (I'm talking about workers in the sense of 'anyone who works for a living' sense rather than a class war sense here.) My concern is we focus too much on the headline figure for the whole economy, which doesn't necessarily reflect how well off most individuals are.
In which case Japan would be booming, with rising wages, and everyone happy.
Which is not the case.
And Singapore and Switzerland would be skint with sullen workers.
It's not a zero sum game. Indeed the correlation is that successful economies with high standards of living for their workers attract immigrants keen to improve themselves.
So why are they coming here then?
Well: there's essentially no labour black market in Switzerland. (And the same is true of Norway.)
In both countries, people who enable the undocumented (whether through employing them, housing them, etc.) are subject to harsh penalties. The consequence of which is that it is very hard to be an illegal immigrant there. (There are no Albanian car washes in either country.)
One of the real pulls of the UK is how easy it is to work without documentation, so even if your asylum application looks like it's going to get rejected you can disappear into the black market. That makes the UK a very attractive destination.
And of course both countries prioritise high skilled migration for their regular migration, unlike the UK.
Switzerland only has high skilled migration routes besides EU free movement. The Swiss have a considerably higher proportion of migrants with tertiary education than we do.
Singapore exclusively offers regular migration to high skilled migration routes.
Singapore does offer low skilled migrant visas but on shockingly poor human rights standards. They're forbidden from marrying a Singaporean, forbidden from bringing dependents and forbidden from getting on a pathway to permanent residency or citizenship.
The Swiss do, though, have full free market migration with the EU. And the highest wages in Europe.
Indeed, they begrudgingly do, but they seek to ensure even with full movement that they prioritise high skilled migration - which they do quite successfully discouraging low skilled migrants from going there.
It makes sense for a developed country to have a high skilled populace, and regular migrants are becoming a part of your populace. That's why it makes sense to have universal education, and why it makes sense to prioritise high skilled immigration as the Swiss do so successfully, and as the Singaporeans ensure that only high skilled migrants can properly immigrate into and become a part of the country, longer-term.
I think the Swiss situation is a little different to what you think: there are about 9 million people in Switzerland, of which just under a third are foreign born.
A lot of these are low skilled immigrants: the vast majority of cleanesr and nannys are immigrants; as is the dishwasher in the local restaurant.
Where the Swiss have done an incredible job, though, is that the skilled blue collar trades - like bricklaying - pretty much all require certifcation. And Swiss people get that certification through the education system, while immigrants do not. (Although immigrants can -and do- get those qualification - it's just that it's easier for a Polish electrician to work in a country that does not require him to sit a whole bunch of exams.)
They have lots of low skilled immigration from outside the EU. I was staggered, for example, to discover that 5% of the foreign born population is from Kosovo. And I think we can be reasonable assured that those aren't people with advanced degrees.
There are some low skilled migrants in Switzerland, of course there are, with free movement its not possible to prevent them.
However even with free movement the majority of migrants to Switzerland have tertiary education. In the UK it is a minority.
As for Kosovo, yes, you're right. Switzerland took a lot of refugees from Kosovo in the 1990s. Switzerland also formerly had looser non-EU migration rules which many from former Yugoslavia took advantage of. Those routes are now closed.
My point, though, is that a higher proportion of Switzerland's population is low skilled immigrants than the UK.
About 11% of the Swiss population is foreign born without tertiary education. In the UK, it's about 9%.
And this is because although a greater proportion of Swiss immigrants have tertiary education (70% vs 44%), they have so many more immigrants (32% v 16%).
Switzerland has a higher rate of immigration, yes, but that works for them as they prioritise skilled migrants.
If we want to be more like Switzerland then we need to prioritise, as they do, high skilled migration. Because we should be striving for a high skilled population.
So: you're saying we could import more low skilled people, if only we also imported even more high skilled people?
Of course, lump of labour is a fallacy.
What matters is the proportion that are skilled, both domestically, and from migration.
Switzerland works hard to ensure even with free movement that they get a far higher proportion being skilled migration and skilled populace. A well educated populace is a more productive one.
We let ourselves down by viewing migration as a way to solve low skill shortages, which is a fallacy as lump of labour, so the demand surges and we end up just devaluing our education and deflating our skill base without any productive growth.
I couldn't care less the number of people who come here, so long as it works for us, what matters is that we prioritise getting skilled people here as the highest proportion of them, as the Swiss do so successfully.
As a matter of interest, Switzerland gets about 30 000 asylum applications per year, from a similar range of countries as us. I think the rate would be similar to 240 000 per year here. They have a 47% approval rate, with a further percent granted leave to stay, so a fairly similar rate to us.
So it seems that the rules on employment are not a major disincentive. A lot of the issues seem similar. They do deport afghan males to Afghanistan, but only if they comit crimes it seems.
This 35% for Reform could be their Boris in Hartlepool moment.
Let me give you the scenario - the rise of Advance UK.
RetardUK was founded by Ben "Nigel was mean" Habib and now has Rock-on Tommeh as a member and Elon Musk as cheerleader.
We haven't yet seen which way Rupert Lowe goes, but he seems to be heading to join Retard as well.
Reform - Farage - knows that to get elected they can't go full fascist. So they are throwing out soundbites and genius tribe-building moves like the football shirt, but when pressed on policy detail they equivocate.
If Muskbaby amplifies the fascist cause then they will find a way to build a tribe which is more effective than a football shirt.
In this scenario, if we are lucky then the Fukker and the Retard mobs cancel each other out. If we are unlucky? Tommy Robinson as LOTO shouting DEPORT THE PAKIS NOW across the dispatch box at PM Nigel Farage.
Advance UK may be yet another damp squib. We will see. But they are far more dangerous than Farage. For all of his endless faults SYL is a very effective agitator. Give him a BIG platform and who knows what damage he could do to our electoral system.
Can this be translated into English ?
Farage is smart enough not to be outwardly racist if he wants to be PM but a lot of his support would prefer the outwardly racist option.
More importantly, up to now, Farage has broadly been able to take the racist vote for granted. He hasn't had to give them anything really.
Now he is at risk of having to fight on two fronts, which tends to end badly.
Oh well.
The problem with the centrist mindset is that it always assumes people will 'come around to it'; 'it' being whatever often barking proposal is currently being pursued by the process state, often at the behest of the Treasury Mindset. The 'it' of the moment is mass immigration.
The reality is that mass immigration - a very very new experiment in a welfare state - is simply not popular, and almost certainly too expensive. For too long too many people have put up with the negative externalities of it, and/or been too scared to oppose it. That has now ended.
If nothing really changes, I think @RochdalePioneers scenario of a Faragist govt with an opposition of even more strident views on immigration is more likely than the current supposed 'centre' holding.
This description doesn't seem to have much to do with reality.
Immigration is well down on the Johnson/Sunak years. Figures for 2025 will probably be further reduced.
I've just realised that your response is in fact the perfect encapsulation of my description of the 'centrist mindset'. Unspoofable.
Does 'centrist' just mean skeptical of populist nonsense now?
Even more unspoofable
Really?
How about "the Centrist Mindset is to assume that everybody will come around to the latest mad idea being proposed by the NU10k Process State at the behest of the Treasury Mindset"?
You could try that. That should get a laugh. It's good.
Those who keep being dismissive of the views of the majority will continue to tank in the polls
Politics doesn’t work like that.
Margaret Thatcher, even when faced with polls showing a majority disagreed with her (Poll Tax) went out and argued her case. She would use interviews, speeches, whatever to put her argument to the British people.
I’ve always believed a majority is the largest number of people wrong about any given issue at any given time. Argument and debate are how ideas are advanced and evolve. Simply saying “the people want this. We must do it” is absurd. That’s the politics of the mob. That’s how you end up with a crowd burning down a house which they think is full of asylum seekers and killing an innocent family - that is literally where you end up if you appease populism.
Before anyone gets upset, that hasn’t happened here YET. I honestly think it will if we don’t tell the “patriots” who think they control the streets the facts of life.
Yes, well if you think about it, that's a remarkably stupid view to take really isn't it? It is every bit as lacking in nuance and heedless of the actual issue as the ignorance you accuse others of, but more so, because it is fundamentally anti-logical.
Very clever people will tell you that our asylum and immigration policy is a piece of toss. They can do the sums to show you. But it has taken the public (in their wisdom) showing their displeasure to get them to do anything about it. The public have been the wise ones - the politicians have been the stupid ones.
You may be surprised but I don’t wholly accept your line.
Immigration has been good for this country in the past - the coming of Freedom of Movement changed that as did other geopolitical changes which basically allowed millions who were trapped within their own borders to “escape” to other parts of the world and naturally they came to a) where the money was and b) where they could reach.
The other aspect has been the socio-cultural. Not for the first time, incomers have found a degree of comfort by sticking together - people like people like themselves. The inevitability of concentrations of ethnic groups partly gives the economic lie to multi-culturalism though I suspect enough money will buy you place anywhere.
I live in an area where white British people are a minority and in places like Green Street and Forest Gate, a tiny minority (5%). Yet it’s my experience the one thing which unites everyone is capitalism. Making enough money via working hard for the family and children and wanting them to have a better life - what’s wrong with that? It’s no different to when people left the fields for the factories.
Are there, among the illegals, bad apples? Yes, as there were among those who came under Freedom of Movement and when incidents occur involving immigrants, the perpetrators need to be found and deported. Those who seek to enter Britain illegally need to be found and deported - I think most have always supported that line but the debate about the 4% of illegals is driving the debate about the benefits or otherwise of the 96% who come here legally but it suits those with an agenda hostile to all who are not “British” by their definition to treat all migrants, both legal and illegal, the same.
Interesting dissertation and bits I agree with - but I'd query 'immigration has been good for the country economically' - I think we need to distinguish between 'good for Britain' and 'good for British workers' - historically, my understanding is tbat the British masses have done best when their labour is most valuable, which corresponds to when there is least competition for it.
The problem is that there are lots of second and third order effects (in both directions) which are hard to control for.
Yes, I recognise that there is a bit more to it - and yet historically, time and time again: the more workers there are, the worse off workers are. (I'm talking about workers in the sense of 'anyone who works for a living' sense rather than a class war sense here.) My concern is we focus too much on the headline figure for the whole economy, which doesn't necessarily reflect how well off most individuals are.
In which case Japan would be booming, with rising wages, and everyone happy.
Which is not the case.
And Singapore and Switzerland would be skint with sullen workers.
It's not a zero sum game. Indeed the correlation is that successful economies with high standards of living for their workers attract immigrants keen to improve themselves.
So why are they coming here then?
Well: there's essentially no labour black market in Switzerland. (And the same is true of Norway.)
In both countries, people who enable the undocumented (whether through employing them, housing them, etc.) are subject to harsh penalties. The consequence of which is that it is very hard to be an illegal immigrant there. (There are no Albanian car washes in either country.)
One of the real pulls of the UK is how easy it is to work without documentation, so even if your asylum application looks like it's going to get rejected you can disappear into the black market. That makes the UK a very attractive destination.
And of course both countries prioritise high skilled migration for their regular migration, unlike the UK.
Switzerland only has high skilled migration routes besides EU free movement. The Swiss have a considerably higher proportion of migrants with tertiary education than we do.
Singapore exclusively offers regular migration to high skilled migration routes.
Singapore does offer low skilled migrant visas but on shockingly poor human rights standards. They're forbidden from marrying a Singaporean, forbidden from bringing dependents and forbidden from getting on a pathway to permanent residency or citizenship.
The Swiss do, though, have full free market migration with the EU. And the highest wages in Europe.
Indeed, they begrudgingly do, but they seek to ensure even with full movement that they prioritise high skilled migration - which they do quite successfully discouraging low skilled migrants from going there.
It makes sense for a developed country to have a high skilled populace, and regular migrants are becoming a part of your populace. That's why it makes sense to have universal education, and why it makes sense to prioritise high skilled immigration as the Swiss do so successfully, and as the Singaporeans ensure that only high skilled migrants can properly immigrate into and become a part of the country, longer-term.
I think the Swiss situation is a little different to what you think: there are about 9 million people in Switzerland, of which just under a third are foreign born.
A lot of these are low skilled immigrants: the vast majority of cleanesr and nannys are immigrants; as is the dishwasher in the local restaurant.
Where the Swiss have done an incredible job, though, is that the skilled blue collar trades - like bricklaying - pretty much all require certifcation. And Swiss people get that certification through the education system, while immigrants do not. (Although immigrants can -and do- get those qualification - it's just that it's easier for a Polish electrician to work in a country that does not require him to sit a whole bunch of exams.)
They have lots of low skilled immigration from outside the EU. I was staggered, for example, to discover that 5% of the foreign born population is from Kosovo. And I think we can be reasonable assured that those aren't people with advanced degrees.
There are some low skilled migrants in Switzerland, of course there are, with free movement its not possible to prevent them.
However even with free movement the majority of migrants to Switzerland have tertiary education. In the UK it is a minority.
As for Kosovo, yes, you're right. Switzerland took a lot of refugees from Kosovo in the 1990s. Switzerland also formerly had looser non-EU migration rules which many from former Yugoslavia took advantage of. Those routes are now closed.
My point, though, is that a higher proportion of Switzerland's population is low skilled immigrants than the UK.
About 11% of the Swiss population is foreign born without tertiary education. In the UK, it's about 9%.
And this is because although a greater proportion of Swiss immigrants have tertiary education (70% vs 44%), they have so many more immigrants (32% v 16%).
Switzerland has a higher rate of immigration, yes, but that works for them as they prioritise skilled migrants.
If we want to be more like Switzerland then we need to prioritise, as they do, high skilled migration. Because we should be striving for a high skilled population.
So: you're saying we could import more low skilled people, if only we also imported even more high skilled people?
Of course, lump of labour is a fallacy.
What matters is the proportion that are skilled, both domestically, and from migration.
Switzerland works hard to ensure even with free movement that they get a far higher proportion being skilled migration and skilled populace. A well educated populace is a more productive one.
We let ourselves down by viewing migration as a way to solve low skill shortages, which is a fallacy as lump of labour, so the demand surges and we end up just devaluing our education and deflating our skill base without any productive growth.
I couldn't care less the number of people who come here, so long as it works for us, what matters is that we prioritise getting skilled people here as the highest proportion of them, as the Swiss do so successfully.
Personally, I think you're barking up the wrong tree. Switzerland works because they ensure their local population leaves school extremely ready for work. If you're not going down the university route, then you will have vocational qualifications and you will almost certainly have worked as an apprentice between 18 and 20.
This means that you are highly employable: either to the place where you did your apprenticeship or to another firm.
This 35% for Reform could be their Boris in Hartlepool moment.
Let me give you the scenario - the rise of Advance UK.
RetardUK was founded by Ben "Nigel was mean" Habib and now has Rock-on Tommeh as a member and Elon Musk as cheerleader.
We haven't yet seen which way Rupert Lowe goes, but he seems to be heading to join Retard as well.
Reform - Farage - knows that to get elected they can't go full fascist. So they are throwing out soundbites and genius tribe-building moves like the football shirt, but when pressed on policy detail they equivocate.
If Muskbaby amplifies the fascist cause then they will find a way to build a tribe which is more effective than a football shirt.
In this scenario, if we are lucky then the Fukker and the Retard mobs cancel each other out. If we are unlucky? Tommy Robinson as LOTO shouting DEPORT THE PAKIS NOW across the dispatch box at PM Nigel Farage.
Advance UK may be yet another damp squib. We will see. But they are far more dangerous than Farage. For all of his endless faults SYL is a very effective agitator. Give him a BIG platform and who knows what damage he could do to our electoral system.
Can this be translated into English ?
Farage is smart enough not to be outwardly racist if he wants to be PM but a lot of his support would prefer the outwardly racist option.
More importantly, up to now, Farage has broadly been able to take the racist vote for granted. He hasn't had to give them anything really.
Now he is at risk of having to fight on two fronts, which tends to end badly.
Oh well.
The problem with the centrist mindset is that it always assumes people will 'come around to it'; 'it' being whatever often barking proposal is currently being pursued by the process state, often at the behest of the Treasury Mindset. The 'it' of the moment is mass immigration.
The reality is that mass immigration - a very very new experiment in a welfare state - is simply not popular, and almost certainly too expensive. For too long too many people have put up with the negative externalities of it, and/or been too scared to oppose it. That has now ended.
If nothing really changes, I think @RochdalePioneers scenario of a Faragist govt with an opposition of even more strident views on immigration is more likely than the current supposed 'centre' holding.
This description doesn't seem to have much to do with reality.
Immigration is well down on the Johnson/Sunak years. Figures for 2025 will probably be further reduced.
I've just realised that your response is in fact the perfect encapsulation of my description of the 'centrist mindset'. Unspoofable.
Does 'centrist' just mean skeptical of populist nonsense now?
Even more unspoofable
Really?
How about "the Centrist Mindset is to assume that everybody will come around to the latest mad idea being proposed by the NU10k Process State at the behest of the Treasury Mindset"?
You could try that. That should get a laugh. It's good.
Those who keep being dismissive of the views of the majority will continue to tank in the polls
Politics doesn’t work like that.
Margaret Thatcher, even when faced with polls showing a majority disagreed with her (Poll Tax) went out and argued her case. She would use interviews, speeches, whatever to put her argument to the British people.
I’ve always believed a majority is the largest number of people wrong about any given issue at any given time. Argument and debate are how ideas are advanced and evolve. Simply saying “the people want this. We must do it” is absurd. That’s the politics of the mob. That’s how you end up with a crowd burning down a house which they think is full of asylum seekers and killing an innocent family - that is literally where you end up if you appease populism.
Before anyone gets upset, that hasn’t happened here YET. I honestly think it will if we don’t tell the “patriots” who think they control the streets the facts of life.
Yes, well if you think about it, that's a remarkably stupid view to take really isn't it? It is every bit as lacking in nuance and heedless of the actual issue as the ignorance you accuse others of, but more so, because it is fundamentally anti-logical.
Very clever people will tell you that our asylum and immigration policy is a piece of toss. They can do the sums to show you. But it has taken the public (in their wisdom) showing their displeasure to get them to do anything about it. The public have been the wise ones - the politicians have been the stupid ones.
You may be surprised but I don’t wholly accept your line.
Immigration has been good for this country in the past - the coming of Freedom of Movement changed that as did other geopolitical changes which basically allowed millions who were trapped within their own borders to “escape” to other parts of the world and naturally they came to a) where the money was and b) where they could reach.
The other aspect has been the socio-cultural. Not for the first time, incomers have found a degree of comfort by sticking together - people like people like themselves. The inevitability of concentrations of ethnic groups partly gives the economic lie to multi-culturalism though I suspect enough money will buy you place anywhere.
I live in an area where white British people are a minority and in places like Green Street and Forest Gate, a tiny minority (5%). Yet it’s my experience the one thing which unites everyone is capitalism. Making enough money via working hard for the family and children and wanting them to have a better life - what’s wrong with that? It’s no different to when people left the fields for the factories.
Are there, among the illegals, bad apples? Yes, as there were among those who came under Freedom of Movement and when incidents occur involving immigrants, the perpetrators need to be found and deported. Those who seek to enter Britain illegally need to be found and deported - I think most have always supported that line but the debate about the 4% of illegals is driving the debate about the benefits or otherwise of the 96% who come here legally but it suits those with an agenda hostile to all who are not “British” by their definition to treat all migrants, both legal and illegal, the same.
Interesting dissertation and bits I agree with - but I'd query 'immigration has been good for the country economically' - I think we need to distinguish between 'good for Britain' and 'good for British workers' - historically, my understanding is tbat the British masses have done best when their labour is most valuable, which corresponds to when there is least competition for it.
The problem is that there are lots of second and third order effects (in both directions) which are hard to control for.
Yes, I recognise that there is a bit more to it - and yet historically, time and time again: the more workers there are, the worse off workers are. (I'm talking about workers in the sense of 'anyone who works for a living' sense rather than a class war sense here.) My concern is we focus too much on the headline figure for the whole economy, which doesn't necessarily reflect how well off most individuals are.
In which case Japan would be booming, with rising wages, and everyone happy.
Which is not the case.
And Singapore and Switzerland would be skint with sullen workers.
It's not a zero sum game. Indeed the correlation is that successful economies with high standards of living for their workers attract immigrants keen to improve themselves.
So why are they coming here then?
Well: there's essentially no labour black market in Switzerland. (And the same is true of Norway.)
In both countries, people who enable the undocumented (whether through employing them, housing them, etc.) are subject to harsh penalties. The consequence of which is that it is very hard to be an illegal immigrant there. (There are no Albanian car washes in either country.)
One of the real pulls of the UK is how easy it is to work without documentation, so even if your asylum application looks like it's going to get rejected you can disappear into the black market. That makes the UK a very attractive destination.
And of course both countries prioritise high skilled migration for their regular migration, unlike the UK.
Switzerland only has high skilled migration routes besides EU free movement. The Swiss have a considerably higher proportion of migrants with tertiary education than we do.
Singapore exclusively offers regular migration to high skilled migration routes.
Singapore does offer low skilled migrant visas but on shockingly poor human rights standards. They're forbidden from marrying a Singaporean, forbidden from bringing dependents and forbidden from getting on a pathway to permanent residency or citizenship.
The Swiss do, though, have full free market migration with the EU. And the highest wages in Europe.
Indeed, they begrudgingly do, but they seek to ensure even with full movement that they prioritise high skilled migration - which they do quite successfully discouraging low skilled migrants from going there.
It makes sense for a developed country to have a high skilled populace, and regular migrants are becoming a part of your populace. That's why it makes sense to have universal education, and why it makes sense to prioritise high skilled immigration as the Swiss do so successfully, and as the Singaporeans ensure that only high skilled migrants can properly immigrate into and become a part of the country, longer-term.
I think the Swiss situation is a little different to what you think: there are about 9 million people in Switzerland, of which just under a third are foreign born.
A lot of these are low skilled immigrants: the vast majority of cleanesr and nannys are immigrants; as is the dishwasher in the local restaurant.
Where the Swiss have done an incredible job, though, is that the skilled blue collar trades - like bricklaying - pretty much all require certifcation. And Swiss people get that certification through the education system, while immigrants do not. (Although immigrants can -and do- get those qualification - it's just that it's easier for a Polish electrician to work in a country that does not require him to sit a whole bunch of exams.)
They have lots of low skilled immigration from outside the EU. I was staggered, for example, to discover that 5% of the foreign born population is from Kosovo. And I think we can be reasonable assured that those aren't people with advanced degrees.
There are some low skilled migrants in Switzerland, of course there are, with free movement its not possible to prevent them.
However even with free movement the majority of migrants to Switzerland have tertiary education. In the UK it is a minority.
As for Kosovo, yes, you're right. Switzerland took a lot of refugees from Kosovo in the 1990s. Switzerland also formerly had looser non-EU migration rules which many from former Yugoslavia took advantage of. Those routes are now closed.
My point, though, is that a higher proportion of Switzerland's population is low skilled immigrants than the UK.
About 11% of the Swiss population is foreign born without tertiary education. In the UK, it's about 9%.
And this is because although a greater proportion of Swiss immigrants have tertiary education (70% vs 44%), they have so many more immigrants (32% v 16%).
Switzerland has a higher rate of immigration, yes, but that works for them as they prioritise skilled migrants.
If we want to be more like Switzerland then we need to prioritise, as they do, high skilled migration. Because we should be striving for a high skilled population.
So: you're saying we could import more low skilled people, if only we also imported even more high skilled people?
Of course, lump of labour is a fallacy.
What matters is the proportion that are skilled, both domestically, and from migration.
Switzerland works hard to ensure even with free movement that they get a far higher proportion being skilled migration and skilled populace. A well educated populace is a more productive one.
We let ourselves down by viewing migration as a way to solve low skill shortages, which is a fallacy as lump of labour, so the demand surges and we end up just devaluing our education and deflating our skill base without any productive growth.
I couldn't care less the number of people who come here, so long as it works for us, what matters is that we prioritise getting skilled people here as the highest proportion of them, as the Swiss do so successfully.
Personally, I think you're barking up the wrong tree. Switzerland works because they ensure their local population leaves school extremely ready for work. If you're not going down the university route, then you will have vocational qualifications and you will almost certainly have worked as an apprentice between 18 and 20.
This means that you are highly employable: either to the place where you did your apprenticeship or to another firm.
We really fail our young people.
Actually, that's precisely the point.
Switzerland works hard to ensure they have a skilled populace - both those who grew up there, and those who migrate there.
Some people seem to think only educating those born here makes a difference, that we can rely upon a class of unskilled migrants to serve us. That only works if you intend that class never to settle down and be kicked out (as Singapore does) or as a class of untouchables or slaves that will never settle down as full citizens with the vote, but even then it doesn't work well as the North of America discovered two centuries ago.
Having a skilled populace works well. Skilled natives, and skilled migrants, working together. The more skilled everyone is, the better.
That doesn't explain how happy the Scandinavians are though. They have relatively low household income due to all the tax.
I was 18 years in Denmark - there are certainly people who don't like the high level of taxation (hence the relative success of the far right), but it was much less of a talking point than in Britain, and generally society was felt to be working quite well, which on the whole (I think) isn't the case in Britain.
There is an American view that Western Europeans are blindly complacent about their systems given the persistently higher GDP per head in the US. However, even allowing for the selectivity of reporting (bad news is much preferred by the press), it doesn't seem true that the US has generally higher satisfaction levels.
Not just an American view - many Europeans think it too.
Of course there is the usual irritating and fatuous American view of "Europe" as one place, instead of three dozen, and also that GDP statistics conceal as much as they reveal. As I have shown on here several times, America's lead in GDP/head over say us or the Krauts is partially an illusion due to an unusually strong dollar, partially due to much working longer hours, and partly because of their insanely overpriced healthcare system that no-one would wish on anyone, just as Denmark's economic outperformance in the last few years is due to a flexible labour market without a minimum wage and a one-off boost from Ozempic similar to Finland's from Nokia twenty years ago,
I don't think comparing "Europe" - wherever that is, including European Turkey? Georgia? Russia? Montenegro? Switzerland? Us? - with the less ambiguous United States gets us very far anyway as far as economics is concerned. The circumstances are too different. Of course many European countries could benefit from American labour market flexibility and entrepreneurial culture while America would doubtless benefit from a European (or indeed virtually any other) healthcare system. But there isn't the slightest chance of either being acceptable politically in the foreseeable future.
If we want to boost our economic performance, there are plenty of obvious ways to do so, starting with introducing a French or Swiss style zoning system to increase our number of dwellings from 450 per 1000 to the French level of 570 per 1000 people. Then taking an axe to ballooning disability benefits and getting NEETs into work. Then cutting business taxes so that entrepreneurship actually pays. None of which are remotely likely under the current government unfortunately.
This 35% for Reform could be their Boris in Hartlepool moment.
Let me give you the scenario - the rise of Advance UK.
RetardUK was founded by Ben "Nigel was mean" Habib and now has Rock-on Tommeh as a member and Elon Musk as cheerleader.
We haven't yet seen which way Rupert Lowe goes, but he seems to be heading to join Retard as well.
Reform - Farage - knows that to get elected they can't go full fascist. So they are throwing out soundbites and genius tribe-building moves like the football shirt, but when pressed on policy detail they equivocate.
If Muskbaby amplifies the fascist cause then they will find a way to build a tribe which is more effective than a football shirt.
In this scenario, if we are lucky then the Fukker and the Retard mobs cancel each other out. If we are unlucky? Tommy Robinson as LOTO shouting DEPORT THE PAKIS NOW across the dispatch box at PM Nigel Farage.
Advance UK may be yet another damp squib. We will see. But they are far more dangerous than Farage. For all of his endless faults SYL is a very effective agitator. Give him a BIG platform and who knows what damage he could do to our electoral system.
Can this be translated into English ?
Farage is smart enough not to be outwardly racist if he wants to be PM but a lot of his support would prefer the outwardly racist option.
More importantly, up to now, Farage has broadly been able to take the racist vote for granted. He hasn't had to give them anything really.
Now he is at risk of having to fight on two fronts, which tends to end badly.
Oh well.
The problem with the centrist mindset is that it always assumes people will 'come around to it'; 'it' being whatever often barking proposal is currently being pursued by the process state, often at the behest of the Treasury Mindset. The 'it' of the moment is mass immigration.
The reality is that mass immigration - a very very new experiment in a welfare state - is simply not popular, and almost certainly too expensive. For too long too many people have put up with the negative externalities of it, and/or been too scared to oppose it. That has now ended.
If nothing really changes, I think @RochdalePioneers scenario of a Faragist govt with an opposition of even more strident views on immigration is more likely than the current supposed 'centre' holding.
This description doesn't seem to have much to do with reality.
Immigration is well down on the Johnson/Sunak years. Figures for 2025 will probably be further reduced.
I've just realised that your response is in fact the perfect encapsulation of my description of the 'centrist mindset'. Unspoofable.
Does 'centrist' just mean skeptical of populist nonsense now?
Even more unspoofable
Really?
How about "the Centrist Mindset is to assume that everybody will come around to the latest mad idea being proposed by the NU10k Process State at the behest of the Treasury Mindset"?
You could try that. That should get a laugh. It's good.
Those who keep being dismissive of the views of the majority will continue to tank in the polls
Politics doesn’t work like that.
Margaret Thatcher, even when faced with polls showing a majority disagreed with her (Poll Tax) went out and argued her case. She would use interviews, speeches, whatever to put her argument to the British people.
I’ve always believed a majority is the largest number of people wrong about any given issue at any given time. Argument and debate are how ideas are advanced and evolve. Simply saying “the people want this. We must do it” is absurd. That’s the politics of the mob. That’s how you end up with a crowd burning down a house which they think is full of asylum seekers and killing an innocent family - that is literally where you end up if you appease populism.
Before anyone gets upset, that hasn’t happened here YET. I honestly think it will if we don’t tell the “patriots” who think they control the streets the facts of life.
Yes, well if you think about it, that's a remarkably stupid view to take really isn't it? It is every bit as lacking in nuance and heedless of the actual issue as the ignorance you accuse others of, but more so, because it is fundamentally anti-logical.
Very clever people will tell you that our asylum and immigration policy is a piece of toss. They can do the sums to show you. But it has taken the public (in their wisdom) showing their displeasure to get them to do anything about it. The public have been the wise ones - the politicians have been the stupid ones.
You may be surprised but I don’t wholly accept your line.
Immigration has been good for this country in the past - the coming of Freedom of Movement changed that as did other geopolitical changes which basically allowed millions who were trapped within their own borders to “escape” to other parts of the world and naturally they came to a) where the money was and b) where they could reach.
The other aspect has been the socio-cultural. Not for the first time, incomers have found a degree of comfort by sticking together - people like people like themselves. The inevitability of concentrations of ethnic groups partly gives the economic lie to multi-culturalism though I suspect enough money will buy you place anywhere.
I live in an area where white British people are a minority and in places like Green Street and Forest Gate, a tiny minority (5%). Yet it’s my experience the one thing which unites everyone is capitalism. Making enough money via working hard for the family and children and wanting them to have a better life - what’s wrong with that? It’s no different to when people left the fields for the factories.
Are there, among the illegals, bad apples? Yes, as there were among those who came under Freedom of Movement and when incidents occur involving immigrants, the perpetrators need to be found and deported. Those who seek to enter Britain illegally need to be found and deported - I think most have always supported that line but the debate about the 4% of illegals is driving the debate about the benefits or otherwise of the 96% who come here legally but it suits those with an agenda hostile to all who are not “British” by their definition to treat all migrants, both legal and illegal, the same.
Interesting dissertation and bits I agree with - but I'd query 'immigration has been good for the country economically' - I think we need to distinguish between 'good for Britain' and 'good for British workers' - historically, my understanding is tbat the British masses have done best when their labour is most valuable, which corresponds to when there is least competition for it.
The problem is that there are lots of second and third order effects (in both directions) which are hard to control for.
Yes, I recognise that there is a bit more to it - and yet historically, time and time again: the more workers there are, the worse off workers are. (I'm talking about workers in the sense of 'anyone who works for a living' sense rather than a class war sense here.) My concern is we focus too much on the headline figure for the whole economy, which doesn't necessarily reflect how well off most individuals are.
In which case Japan would be booming, with rising wages, and everyone happy.
Which is not the case.
And Singapore and Switzerland would be skint with sullen workers.
It's not a zero sum game. Indeed the correlation is that successful economies with high standards of living for their workers attract immigrants keen to improve themselves.
So why are they coming here then?
Well: there's essentially no labour black market in Switzerland. (And the same is true of Norway.)
In both countries, people who enable the undocumented (whether through employing them, housing them, etc.) are subject to harsh penalties. The consequence of which is that it is very hard to be an illegal immigrant there. (There are no Albanian car washes in either country.)
One of the real pulls of the UK is how easy it is to work without documentation, so even if your asylum application looks like it's going to get rejected you can disappear into the black market. That makes the UK a very attractive destination.
And of course both countries prioritise high skilled migration for their regular migration, unlike the UK.
Switzerland only has high skilled migration routes besides EU free movement. The Swiss have a considerably higher proportion of migrants with tertiary education than we do.
Singapore exclusively offers regular migration to high skilled migration routes.
Singapore does offer low skilled migrant visas but on shockingly poor human rights standards. They're forbidden from marrying a Singaporean, forbidden from bringing dependents and forbidden from getting on a pathway to permanent residency or citizenship.
The Swiss do, though, have full free market migration with the EU. And the highest wages in Europe.
Indeed, they begrudgingly do, but they seek to ensure even with full movement that they prioritise high skilled migration - which they do quite successfully discouraging low skilled migrants from going there.
It makes sense for a developed country to have a high skilled populace, and regular migrants are becoming a part of your populace. That's why it makes sense to have universal education, and why it makes sense to prioritise high skilled immigration as the Swiss do so successfully, and as the Singaporeans ensure that only high skilled migrants can properly immigrate into and become a part of the country, longer-term.
I think the Swiss situation is a little different to what you think: there are about 9 million people in Switzerland, of which just under a third are foreign born.
A lot of these are low skilled immigrants: the vast majority of cleanesr and nannys are immigrants; as is the dishwasher in the local restaurant.
Where the Swiss have done an incredible job, though, is that the skilled blue collar trades - like bricklaying - pretty much all require certifcation. And Swiss people get that certification through the education system, while immigrants do not. (Although immigrants can -and do- get those qualification - it's just that it's easier for a Polish electrician to work in a country that does not require him to sit a whole bunch of exams.)
They have lots of low skilled immigration from outside the EU. I was staggered, for example, to discover that 5% of the foreign born population is from Kosovo. And I think we can be reasonable assured that those aren't people with advanced degrees.
There are some low skilled migrants in Switzerland, of course there are, with free movement its not possible to prevent them.
However even with free movement the majority of migrants to Switzerland have tertiary education. In the UK it is a minority.
As for Kosovo, yes, you're right. Switzerland took a lot of refugees from Kosovo in the 1990s. Switzerland also formerly had looser non-EU migration rules which many from former Yugoslavia took advantage of. Those routes are now closed.
My point, though, is that a higher proportion of Switzerland's population is low skilled immigrants than the UK.
About 11% of the Swiss population is foreign born without tertiary education. In the UK, it's about 9%.
And this is because although a greater proportion of Swiss immigrants have tertiary education (70% vs 44%), they have so many more immigrants (32% v 16%).
Switzerland has a higher rate of immigration, yes, but that works for them as they prioritise skilled migrants.
If we want to be more like Switzerland then we need to prioritise, as they do, high skilled migration. Because we should be striving for a high skilled population.
So: you're saying we could import more low skilled people, if only we also imported even more high skilled people?
Of course, lump of labour is a fallacy.
What matters is the proportion that are skilled, both domestically, and from migration.
Switzerland works hard to ensure even with free movement that they get a far higher proportion being skilled migration and skilled populace. A well educated populace is a more productive one.
We let ourselves down by viewing migration as a way to solve low skill shortages, which is a fallacy as lump of labour, so the demand surges and we end up just devaluing our education and deflating our skill base without any productive growth.
I couldn't care less the number of people who come here, so long as it works for us, what matters is that we prioritise getting skilled people here as the highest proportion of them, as the Swiss do so successfully.
Personally, I think you're barking up the wrong tree. Switzerland works because they ensure their local population leaves school extremely ready for work. If you're not going down the university route, then you will have vocational qualifications and you will almost certainly have worked as an apprentice between 18 and 20.
This means that you are highly employable: either to the place where you did your apprenticeship or to another firm.
We really fail our young people.
There is also the contributory benefits system where there is absolutely no incentive for a Swissy to leave education and ride the benefits train. Without having contributed for the minimum period (I seem to recall it was 12 months in last 18 months or similar) you would be entitled to a pittance and in expensive Switzerland that’s impossible to do anything on.
So Swiss kids and parents make sure they leave education with a good qualification so they definitely get a job because the alternative is utterly crap.
Even the lazy ones who might plan to do the bare minimum and then take the Chomage (unemployment benefit) find that once they are in work then it’s not actually that bad making work friends and earning money so they stay in work.
So the contributory system encourages children to get qualifications before they leave education or work anyway as no incentive not to plus by “forcing” Swiss into work it ensures jobs are filled that aren’t initially attractive and so reduce the need for immigrants to fill as many of those jobs.
As a matter of interest, Switzerland gets about 30 000 asylum applications per year, from a similar range of countries as us. I think the rate would be similar to 240 000 per year here. They have a 47% approval rate, with a further percent granted leave to stay, so a fairly similar rate to us.
So it seems that the rules on employment are not a major disincentive. A lot of the issues seem similar. They do deport afghan males to Afghanistan, but only if they comit crimes it seems.
An odd one. I thought that international laws on refoulment didn't have an exception for character.
This 35% for Reform could be their Boris in Hartlepool moment.
Let me give you the scenario - the rise of Advance UK.
RetardUK was founded by Ben "Nigel was mean" Habib and now has Rock-on Tommeh as a member and Elon Musk as cheerleader.
We haven't yet seen which way Rupert Lowe goes, but he seems to be heading to join Retard as well.
Reform - Farage - knows that to get elected they can't go full fascist. So they are throwing out soundbites and genius tribe-building moves like the football shirt, but when pressed on policy detail they equivocate.
If Muskbaby amplifies the fascist cause then they will find a way to build a tribe which is more effective than a football shirt.
In this scenario, if we are lucky then the Fukker and the Retard mobs cancel each other out. If we are unlucky? Tommy Robinson as LOTO shouting DEPORT THE PAKIS NOW across the dispatch box at PM Nigel Farage.
Advance UK may be yet another damp squib. We will see. But they are far more dangerous than Farage. For all of his endless faults SYL is a very effective agitator. Give him a BIG platform and who knows what damage he could do to our electoral system.
Can this be translated into English ?
Farage is smart enough not to be outwardly racist if he wants to be PM but a lot of his support would prefer the outwardly racist option.
More importantly, up to now, Farage has broadly been able to take the racist vote for granted. He hasn't had to give them anything really.
Now he is at risk of having to fight on two fronts, which tends to end badly.
Oh well.
The problem with the centrist mindset is that it always assumes people will 'come around to it'; 'it' being whatever often barking proposal is currently being pursued by the process state, often at the behest of the Treasury Mindset. The 'it' of the moment is mass immigration.
The reality is that mass immigration - a very very new experiment in a welfare state - is simply not popular, and almost certainly too expensive. For too long too many people have put up with the negative externalities of it, and/or been too scared to oppose it. That has now ended.
If nothing really changes, I think @RochdalePioneers scenario of a Faragist govt with an opposition of even more strident views on immigration is more likely than the current supposed 'centre' holding.
This description doesn't seem to have much to do with reality.
Immigration is well down on the Johnson/Sunak years. Figures for 2025 will probably be further reduced.
I've just realised that your response is in fact the perfect encapsulation of my description of the 'centrist mindset'. Unspoofable.
Does 'centrist' just mean skeptical of populist nonsense now?
Even more unspoofable
Really?
How about "the Centrist Mindset is to assume that everybody will come around to the latest mad idea being proposed by the NU10k Process State at the behest of the Treasury Mindset"?
You could try that. That should get a laugh. It's good.
Those who keep being dismissive of the views of the majority will continue to tank in the polls
Politics doesn’t work like that.
Margaret Thatcher, even when faced with polls showing a majority disagreed with her (Poll Tax) went out and argued her case. She would use interviews, speeches, whatever to put her argument to the British people.
I’ve always believed a majority is the largest number of people wrong about any given issue at any given time. Argument and debate are how ideas are advanced and evolve. Simply saying “the people want this. We must do it” is absurd. That’s the politics of the mob. That’s how you end up with a crowd burning down a house which they think is full of asylum seekers and killing an innocent family - that is literally where you end up if you appease populism.
Before anyone gets upset, that hasn’t happened here YET. I honestly think it will if we don’t tell the “patriots” who think they control the streets the facts of life.
Yes, well if you think about it, that's a remarkably stupid view to take really isn't it? It is every bit as lacking in nuance and heedless of the actual issue as the ignorance you accuse others of, but more so, because it is fundamentally anti-logical.
Very clever people will tell you that our asylum and immigration policy is a piece of toss. They can do the sums to show you. But it has taken the public (in their wisdom) showing their displeasure to get them to do anything about it. The public have been the wise ones - the politicians have been the stupid ones.
You may be surprised but I don’t wholly accept your line.
Immigration has been good for this country in the past - the coming of Freedom of Movement changed that as did other geopolitical changes which basically allowed millions who were trapped within their own borders to “escape” to other parts of the world and naturally they came to a) where the money was and b) where they could reach.
The other aspect has been the socio-cultural. Not for the first time, incomers have found a degree of comfort by sticking together - people like people like themselves. The inevitability of concentrations of ethnic groups partly gives the economic lie to multi-culturalism though I suspect enough money will buy you place anywhere.
I live in an area where white British people are a minority and in places like Green Street and Forest Gate, a tiny minority (5%). Yet it’s my experience the one thing which unites everyone is capitalism. Making enough money via working hard for the family and children and wanting them to have a better life - what’s wrong with that? It’s no different to when people left the fields for the factories.
Are there, among the illegals, bad apples? Yes, as there were among those who came under Freedom of Movement and when incidents occur involving immigrants, the perpetrators need to be found and deported. Those who seek to enter Britain illegally need to be found and deported - I think most have always supported that line but the debate about the 4% of illegals is driving the debate about the benefits or otherwise of the 96% who come here legally but it suits those with an agenda hostile to all who are not “British” by their definition to treat all migrants, both legal and illegal, the same.
Interesting dissertation and bits I agree with - but I'd query 'immigration has been good for the country economically' - I think we need to distinguish between 'good for Britain' and 'good for British workers' - historically, my understanding is tbat the British masses have done best when their labour is most valuable, which corresponds to when there is least competition for it.
The problem is that there are lots of second and third order effects (in both directions) which are hard to control for.
Yes, I recognise that there is a bit more to it - and yet historically, time and time again: the more workers there are, the worse off workers are. (I'm talking about workers in the sense of 'anyone who works for a living' sense rather than a class war sense here.) My concern is we focus too much on the headline figure for the whole economy, which doesn't necessarily reflect how well off most individuals are.
In which case Japan would be booming, with rising wages, and everyone happy.
Which is not the case.
And Singapore and Switzerland would be skint with sullen workers.
It's not a zero sum game. Indeed the correlation is that successful economies with high standards of living for their workers attract immigrants keen to improve themselves.
So why are they coming here then?
Well: there's essentially no labour black market in Switzerland. (And the same is true of Norway.)
In both countries, people who enable the undocumented (whether through employing them, housing them, etc.) are subject to harsh penalties. The consequence of which is that it is very hard to be an illegal immigrant there. (There are no Albanian car washes in either country.)
One of the real pulls of the UK is how easy it is to work without documentation, so even if your asylum application looks like it's going to get rejected you can disappear into the black market. That makes the UK a very attractive destination.
And of course both countries prioritise high skilled migration for their regular migration, unlike the UK.
Switzerland only has high skilled migration routes besides EU free movement. The Swiss have a considerably higher proportion of migrants with tertiary education than we do.
Singapore exclusively offers regular migration to high skilled migration routes.
Singapore does offer low skilled migrant visas but on shockingly poor human rights standards. They're forbidden from marrying a Singaporean, forbidden from bringing dependents and forbidden from getting on a pathway to permanent residency or citizenship.
The Swiss do, though, have full free market migration with the EU. And the highest wages in Europe.
Indeed, they begrudgingly do, but they seek to ensure even with full movement that they prioritise high skilled migration - which they do quite successfully discouraging low skilled migrants from going there.
It makes sense for a developed country to have a high skilled populace, and regular migrants are becoming a part of your populace. That's why it makes sense to have universal education, and why it makes sense to prioritise high skilled immigration as the Swiss do so successfully, and as the Singaporeans ensure that only high skilled migrants can properly immigrate into and become a part of the country, longer-term.
I think the Swiss situation is a little different to what you think: there are about 9 million people in Switzerland, of which just under a third are foreign born.
A lot of these are low skilled immigrants: the vast majority of cleanesr and nannys are immigrants; as is the dishwasher in the local restaurant.
Where the Swiss have done an incredible job, though, is that the skilled blue collar trades - like bricklaying - pretty much all require certifcation. And Swiss people get that certification through the education system, while immigrants do not. (Although immigrants can -and do- get those qualification - it's just that it's easier for a Polish electrician to work in a country that does not require him to sit a whole bunch of exams.)
They have lots of low skilled immigration from outside the EU. I was staggered, for example, to discover that 5% of the foreign born population is from Kosovo. And I think we can be reasonable assured that those aren't people with advanced degrees.
There are some low skilled migrants in Switzerland, of course there are, with free movement its not possible to prevent them.
However even with free movement the majority of migrants to Switzerland have tertiary education. In the UK it is a minority.
As for Kosovo, yes, you're right. Switzerland took a lot of refugees from Kosovo in the 1990s. Switzerland also formerly had looser non-EU migration rules which many from former Yugoslavia took advantage of. Those routes are now closed.
My point, though, is that a higher proportion of Switzerland's population is low skilled immigrants than the UK.
About 11% of the Swiss population is foreign born without tertiary education. In the UK, it's about 9%.
And this is because although a greater proportion of Swiss immigrants have tertiary education (70% vs 44%), they have so many more immigrants (32% v 16%).
Switzerland has a higher rate of immigration, yes, but that works for them as they prioritise skilled migrants.
If we want to be more like Switzerland then we need to prioritise, as they do, high skilled migration. Because we should be striving for a high skilled population.
So: you're saying we could import more low skilled people, if only we also imported even more high skilled people?
Of course, lump of labour is a fallacy.
What matters is the proportion that are skilled, both domestically, and from migration.
Switzerland works hard to ensure even with free movement that they get a far higher proportion being skilled migration and skilled populace. A well educated populace is a more productive one.
We let ourselves down by viewing migration as a way to solve low skill shortages, which is a fallacy as lump of labour, so the demand surges and we end up just devaluing our education and deflating our skill base without any productive growth.
I couldn't care less the number of people who come here, so long as it works for us, what matters is that we prioritise getting skilled people here as the highest proportion of them, as the Swiss do so successfully.
Personally, I think you're barking up the wrong tree. Switzerland works because they ensure their local population leaves school extremely ready for work. If you're not going down the university route, then you will have vocational qualifications and you will almost certainly have worked as an apprentice between 18 and 20.
This means that you are highly employable: either to the place where you did your apprenticeship or to another firm.
We really fail our young people.
There is also the contributory benefits system where there is absolutely no incentive for a Swissy to leave education and ride the benefits train. Without having contributed for the minimum period (I seem to recall it was 12 months in last 18 months or similar) you would be entitled to a pittance and in expensive Switzerland that’s impossible to do anything on.
So Swiss kids and parents make sure they leave education with a good qualification so they definitely get a job because the alternative is utterly crap.
Even the lazy ones who might plan to do the bare minimum and then take the Chomage (unemployment benefit) find that once they are in work then it’s not actually that bad making work friends and earning money so they stay in work.
So the contributory system encourages children to get qualifications before they leave education or work anyway as no incentive not to plus by “forcing” Swiss into work it ensures jobs are filled that aren’t initially attractive and so reduce the need for immigrants to fill as many of those jobs.
They once tried to make parents responsible until 25:
In Italy, IIRC it's even later. Late parental responsibility is another bulwark against the school-to-welfare conveyor. Having said that, I don't want it for us. But it is a benefit.
This 35% for Reform could be their Boris in Hartlepool moment.
Let me give you the scenario - the rise of Advance UK.
RetardUK was founded by Ben "Nigel was mean" Habib and now has Rock-on Tommeh as a member and Elon Musk as cheerleader.
We haven't yet seen which way Rupert Lowe goes, but he seems to be heading to join Retard as well.
Reform - Farage - knows that to get elected they can't go full fascist. So they are throwing out soundbites and genius tribe-building moves like the football shirt, but when pressed on policy detail they equivocate.
If Muskbaby amplifies the fascist cause then they will find a way to build a tribe which is more effective than a football shirt.
In this scenario, if we are lucky then the Fukker and the Retard mobs cancel each other out. If we are unlucky? Tommy Robinson as LOTO shouting DEPORT THE PAKIS NOW across the dispatch box at PM Nigel Farage.
Advance UK may be yet another damp squib. We will see. But they are far more dangerous than Farage. For all of his endless faults SYL is a very effective agitator. Give him a BIG platform and who knows what damage he could do to our electoral system.
Can this be translated into English ?
Farage is smart enough not to be outwardly racist if he wants to be PM but a lot of his support would prefer the outwardly racist option.
More importantly, up to now, Farage has broadly been able to take the racist vote for granted. He hasn't had to give them anything really.
Now he is at risk of having to fight on two fronts, which tends to end badly.
Oh well.
The problem with the centrist mindset is that it always assumes people will 'come around to it'; 'it' being whatever often barking proposal is currently being pursued by the process state, often at the behest of the Treasury Mindset. The 'it' of the moment is mass immigration.
The reality is that mass immigration - a very very new experiment in a welfare state - is simply not popular, and almost certainly too expensive. For too long too many people have put up with the negative externalities of it, and/or been too scared to oppose it. That has now ended.
If nothing really changes, I think @RochdalePioneers scenario of a Faragist govt with an opposition of even more strident views on immigration is more likely than the current supposed 'centre' holding.
This description doesn't seem to have much to do with reality.
Immigration is well down on the Johnson/Sunak years. Figures for 2025 will probably be further reduced.
I've just realised that your response is in fact the perfect encapsulation of my description of the 'centrist mindset'. Unspoofable.
Does 'centrist' just mean skeptical of populist nonsense now?
Even more unspoofable
Really?
How about "the Centrist Mindset is to assume that everybody will come around to the latest mad idea being proposed by the NU10k Process State at the behest of the Treasury Mindset"?
You could try that. That should get a laugh. It's good.
Those who keep being dismissive of the views of the majority will continue to tank in the polls
Politics doesn’t work like that.
Margaret Thatcher, even when faced with polls showing a majority disagreed with her (Poll Tax) went out and argued her case. She would use interviews, speeches, whatever to put her argument to the British people.
I’ve always believed a majority is the largest number of people wrong about any given issue at any given time. Argument and debate are how ideas are advanced and evolve. Simply saying “the people want this. We must do it” is absurd. That’s the politics of the mob. That’s how you end up with a crowd burning down a house which they think is full of asylum seekers and killing an innocent family - that is literally where you end up if you appease populism.
Before anyone gets upset, that hasn’t happened here YET. I honestly think it will if we don’t tell the “patriots” who think they control the streets the facts of life.
Yes, well if you think about it, that's a remarkably stupid view to take really isn't it? It is every bit as lacking in nuance and heedless of the actual issue as the ignorance you accuse others of, but more so, because it is fundamentally anti-logical.
Very clever people will tell you that our asylum and immigration policy is a piece of toss. They can do the sums to show you. But it has taken the public (in their wisdom) showing their displeasure to get them to do anything about it. The public have been the wise ones - the politicians have been the stupid ones.
You may be surprised but I don’t wholly accept your line.
Immigration has been good for this country in the past - the coming of Freedom of Movement changed that as did other geopolitical changes which basically allowed millions who were trapped within their own borders to “escape” to other parts of the world and naturally they came to a) where the money was and b) where they could reach.
The other aspect has been the socio-cultural. Not for the first time, incomers have found a degree of comfort by sticking together - people like people like themselves. The inevitability of concentrations of ethnic groups partly gives the economic lie to multi-culturalism though I suspect enough money will buy you place anywhere.
I live in an area where white British people are a minority and in places like Green Street and Forest Gate, a tiny minority (5%). Yet it’s my experience the one thing which unites everyone is capitalism. Making enough money via working hard for the family and children and wanting them to have a better life - what’s wrong with that? It’s no different to when people left the fields for the factories.
Are there, among the illegals, bad apples? Yes, as there were among those who came under Freedom of Movement and when incidents occur involving immigrants, the perpetrators need to be found and deported. Those who seek to enter Britain illegally need to be found and deported - I think most have always supported that line but the debate about the 4% of illegals is driving the debate about the benefits or otherwise of the 96% who come here legally but it suits those with an agenda hostile to all who are not “British” by their definition to treat all migrants, both legal and illegal, the same.
Interesting dissertation and bits I agree with - but I'd query 'immigration has been good for the country economically' - I think we need to distinguish between 'good for Britain' and 'good for British workers' - historically, my understanding is tbat the British masses have done best when their labour is most valuable, which corresponds to when there is least competition for it.
The problem is that there are lots of second and third order effects (in both directions) which are hard to control for.
Yes, I recognise that there is a bit more to it - and yet historically, time and time again: the more workers there are, the worse off workers are. (I'm talking about workers in the sense of 'anyone who works for a living' sense rather than a class war sense here.) My concern is we focus too much on the headline figure for the whole economy, which doesn't necessarily reflect how well off most individuals are.
In the literature on the recent Afghan War, it was pointed out that GDP is not a good index to promote quality of life and access loyalty to the state, but Net Household Income was. We concentrate on the former but not the latter.
That doesn't explain how happy the Scandinavians are though. They have relatively low household income due to all the tax.
Yes, but they get more covered by that income, so less individual expenditure on health, schools, even commuting. They tend to be less unequal too. Household inequality is a great driver of grievance and political discontent.
Yep, all I meant is that simple stats like that don't tell the whole story.
It's also why relative poverty measures are still valid to an extent; not only to they reflect a keen human instinct for fairness, but also the fact that the price of many goods and services is set by aggregate demand and therefore they increase even as the economy grows. There is some price differentiation (e.g. the value range at a supermarket), but that doesn't fully offset the fact 60% of median income is not a lot even in an economy that is vastly bigger than it was 50 years ago.
Where I encountered this unusual little narrow gauge train
If anyone can guess the role of the special Styrian “flask wagon” Railway - NICHT DE GOOGLE I shall send them a glass of Schilcher sweet rose wine in a parallel universe
Ok here’s the insane answer
This is possibly the earliest train line in Austria. A local entrepreneur heard about these new fangled British railways and imported one here in the 1840s
Then in the 1900s a local doctor/charlatan in the hills, known as Höllerhansl. claimed he could diagnose illnesses just by looking at your urine. And he got famous for it. So people flocked to him via this narrow gauge train, all carrying little bottles (“Flascherl”) of their pee
And today it is known as the Wee Flask Railway, tho it suffers from competition with the high speed Urine Gourd SuperExpress just down the road
The bus tingforawee sets off later but moves faster.
Our poll of over 1000 16/17 year olds for tomorrow’s Sunday Times shows how the newest additions to the electorate may vote. Including Your Party, it’s a virtual tie between Corbyn’s new Party, Labour & Reform Without Labour hold a 7 point lead over Reform. Read it all below!
No wonder that clown Carney caved in on tariffs earlier in the month. 😂😂😂😂
Personally, I think it's pretty awful that the US goes around buying it's neighbors.
I think it’s very shitty, have criticised it here plenty of time and during the US elections I posted here favouring Harris over Trump due to his idiotic tariffs policy.
I did post yesterday supporting India for telling Trump to do one,
But I have little time for Carney too. Posturing doesn’t help people’s lives.
I’m also really concerned at the politicisation of the fed. JPow may not be great but he’s apolitical.
Our poll of over 1000 16/17 year olds for tomorrow’s Sunday Times shows how the newest additions to the electorate may vote. Including Your Party, it’s a virtual tie between Corbyn’s new Party, Labour & Reform Without Labour hold a 7 point lead over Reform. Read it all below!
I'm coming round to votes for children, even if it has been done for nakedly partisan reasons. Granted, children are idiots. But for the last 30 years government has relentlessly shafted the young - tuition fees being only the most obvious example - because there are few electoral consequences of doing so. If by doing this we perhaps stop doing this quite si regularly, it will be worth it.
Our poll of over 1000 16/17 year olds for tomorrow’s Sunday Times shows how the newest additions to the electorate may vote. Including Your Party, it’s a virtual tie between Corbyn’s new Party, Labour & Reform Without Labour hold a 7 point lead over Reform. Read it all below!
Interesting how similar these figures are to the overall voting intention figures, with Labour being about 5 points higher and Reform about 5 points lower. All other parties within the margin of error. Not as much of a difference as I would have expected.
Off topic: But important, and a little surprising:
RIO DE JANEIRO — Volkswagen Brazil was found guilty on Friday of subjecting workers to conditions “analogous” to slavery between 1974 and 1986 on a vast cattle ranch in the Amazon and ordered to publicly acknowledge the abuses and pay more than $30 million in damages.
Our poll of over 1000 16/17 year olds for tomorrow’s Sunday Times shows how the newest additions to the electorate may vote. Including Your Party, it’s a virtual tie between Corbyn’s new Party, Labour & Reform Without Labour hold a 7 point lead over Reform. Read it all below!
Interesting how similar these figures are to the overall voting intention figures, with Labour being about 5 points higher and Reform about 5 points lower. All other parties within the margin of error. Not as much of a difference as I would have expected.
I think the Geens are worth watching across all age groups. Corbyn may eat their sandwiches.
Also, no sane LibDem leader is tacking left any time soon.
Our poll of over 1000 16/17 year olds for tomorrow’s Sunday Times shows how the newest additions to the electorate may vote. Including Your Party, it’s a virtual tie between Corbyn’s new Party, Labour & Reform Without Labour hold a 7 point lead over Reform. Read it all below!
Interesting how similar these figures are to the overall voting intention figures, with Labour being about 5 points higher and Reform about 5 points lower. All other parties within the margin of error. Not as much of a difference as I would have expected.
I think the Geens are worth watching across all age groups. Corbyn may eat their sandwiches.
Also, no sane LibDem leader is tacking left any time soon.
Greens face being hit by twin pincer - Proper left 'Your Sultana Party' comes into being just as they elect Watermelon Polanski.
Angela Rayner used a firm allegedly which had a division which specialised in wealth protection and then OMG she did the absolutely unbelievable dastardly deed of putting some of the equity in her constituency house in a trust for her 3 children !
I mean the horror of a parent looking out for their kids !
Our poll of over 1000 16/17 year olds for tomorrow’s Sunday Times shows how the newest additions to the electorate may vote. Including Your Party, it’s a virtual tie between Corbyn’s new Party, Labour & Reform Without Labour hold a 7 point lead over Reform. Read it all below!
Our poll of over 1000 16/17 year olds for tomorrow’s Sunday Times shows how the newest additions to the electorate may vote. Including Your Party, it’s a virtual tie between Corbyn’s new Party, Labour & Reform Without Labour hold a 7 point lead over Reform. Read it all below!
Interesting how similar these figures are to the overall voting intention figures, with Labour being about 5 points higher and Reform about 5 points lower. All other parties within the margin of error. Not as much of a difference as I would have expected.
Lib Dems remain highly stable between ages and social classes
Angela Rayner used a firm allegedly which had a division which specialised in wealth protection and then OMG she did the absolutely unbelievable dastardly deed of putting some of the equity in her constituency house in a trust for her 3 children !
I mean the horror of a parent looking out for their kids !
Sounds very tax efficient. I wonder if she’s made comments about others engaged in similar wealth management strategies?
Comments
(Probably an interesting forced choice for a pollster. ID Cards or a border as leaky as it is- choose one.)
Much easier to think we can get what we want with a nation-sized velvet rope and some ex-nightclub bouncers.
Switzerland only has high skilled migration routes besides EU free movement. The Swiss have a considerably higher proportion of migrants with tertiary education than we do.
Singapore exclusively offers regular migration to high skilled migration routes.
Singapore does offer low skilled migrant visas but on shockingly poor human rights standards. They're forbidden from marrying a Singaporean, forbidden from bringing dependents and forbidden from getting on a pathway to permanent residency or citizenship.
Where I encountered this unusual little narrow gauge train
If anyone can guess the role of the special Styrian “flask wagon” Railway - NICHT DE GOOGLE I shall send them a glass of Schilcher sweet rose wine in a parallel universe
The video of him is allegedly an old one.
It makes sense for a developed country to have a high skilled populace, and regular migrants are becoming a part of your populace. That's why it makes sense to have universal education, and why it makes sense to prioritise high skilled immigration as the Swiss do so successfully, and as the Singaporeans ensure that only high skilled migrants can properly immigrate into and become a part of the country, longer-term.
A lot of these are low skilled immigrants: the vast majority of cleanesr and nannys are immigrants; as is the dishwasher in the local restaurant.
Where the Swiss have done an incredible job, though, is that the skilled blue collar trades - like bricklaying - pretty much all require certifcation. And Swiss people get that certification through the education system, while immigrants do not. (Although immigrants can -and do- get those qualification - it's just that it's easier for a Polish electrician to work in a country that does not require him to sit a whole bunch of exams.)
They have lots of low skilled immigration from outside the EU. I was staggered, for example, to discover that 5% of the foreign born population is from Kosovo. And I think we can be reasonable assured that those aren't people with advanced degrees.
This is possibly the earliest train line in Austria. A local entrepreneur heard about these new fangled British railways and imported one here in the 1840s
Then in the 1900s a local doctor/charlatan in the hills, known as Höllerhansl. claimed he could diagnose illnesses just by looking at your urine. And he got famous for it. So people flocked to him via this narrow gauge train, all carrying little bottles (“Flascherl”) of their pee
And today it is known as the Wee Flask Railway, tho it suffers from competition with the high speed Urine Gourd SuperExpress just down the road
However even with free movement the majority of migrants to Switzerland have tertiary education. In the UK it is a minority.
As for Kosovo, yes, you're right. Switzerland took a lot of refugees from Kosovo in the 1990s. Switzerland also formerly had looser non-EU migration rules which many from former Yugoslavia took advantage of. Those routes are now closed.
About 11% of the Swiss population is foreign born without tertiary education. In the UK, it's about 9%.
And this is because although a greater proportion of Swiss immigrants have tertiary education (70% vs 44%), they have so many more immigrants (32% v 16%).
If we want to be more like Switzerland then we need to prioritise, as they do, high skilled migration. Because we should be striving for a high skilled population.
https://www.petittrainhautesomme.fr/all-you-need-to-know-about-us/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/live/cx2n7e62kzkt#player
What matters is the proportion that are skilled, both domestically, and from migration.
Switzerland works hard to ensure even with free movement that they get a far higher proportion being skilled migration and skilled populace. A well educated populace is a more productive one.
We let ourselves down by viewing migration as a way to solve low skill shortages, which is a fallacy as lump of labour, so the demand surges and we end up just devaluing our education and deflating our skill base without any productive growth.
I couldn't care less the number of people who come here, so long as it works for us, what matters is that we prioritise getting skilled people here as the highest proportion of them, as the Swiss do so successfully.
https://ecre.org/aida-country-report-on-switzerland-update-on-2024/#:~:text=Statistics: In 2024, 27,740 people,-merit cases was 69%.
So it seems that the rules on employment are not a major disincentive. A lot of the issues seem similar. They do deport afghan males to Afghanistan, but only if they comit crimes it seems.
This means that you are highly employable: either to the place where you did your apprenticeship or to another firm.
We really fail our young people.
Switzerland works hard to ensure they have a skilled populace - both those who grew up there, and those who migrate there.
Some people seem to think only educating those born here makes a difference, that we can rely upon a class of unskilled migrants to serve us. That only works if you intend that class never to settle down and be kicked out (as Singapore does) or as a class of untouchables or slaves that will never settle down as full citizens with the vote, but even then it doesn't work well as the North of America discovered two centuries ago.
Having a skilled populace works well. Skilled natives, and skilled migrants, working together. The more skilled everyone is, the better.
Of course there is the usual irritating and fatuous American view of "Europe" as one place, instead of three dozen, and also that GDP statistics conceal as much as they reveal. As I have shown on here several times, America's lead in GDP/head over say us or the Krauts is partially an illusion due to an unusually strong dollar, partially due to much working longer hours, and partly because of their insanely overpriced healthcare system that no-one would wish on anyone, just as Denmark's economic outperformance in the last few years is due to a flexible labour market without a minimum wage and a one-off boost from Ozempic similar to Finland's from Nokia twenty years ago,
I don't think comparing "Europe" - wherever that is, including European Turkey? Georgia? Russia? Montenegro? Switzerland? Us? - with the less ambiguous United States gets us very far anyway as far as economics is concerned. The circumstances are too different. Of course many European countries could benefit from American labour market flexibility and entrepreneurial culture while America would doubtless benefit from a European (or indeed virtually any other) healthcare system. But there isn't the slightest chance of either being acceptable politically in the foreseeable future.
If we want to boost our economic performance, there are plenty of obvious ways to do so, starting with introducing a French or Swiss style zoning system to increase our number of dwellings from 450 per 1000 to the French level of 570 per 1000 people. Then taking an axe to ballooning disability benefits and getting NEETs into work. Then cutting business taxes so that entrepreneurship actually pays. None of which are remotely likely under the current government unfortunately.
So Swiss kids and parents make sure they leave education with a good qualification so they definitely get a job because the alternative is utterly crap.
Even the lazy ones who might plan to do the bare minimum and then take the Chomage (unemployment benefit) find that once they are in work then it’s not actually that bad making work friends and earning money so they stay in work.
So the contributory system encourages children to get qualifications before they leave education or work anyway as no incentive not to plus by “forcing” Swiss into work it ensures jobs are filled that aren’t initially attractive and so reduce the need for immigrants to fill as many of those jobs.
https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/products/cuvee-royale-brut-nv-cremant-de-limoux/083926-42628-42629
Bought offer a while ago at about £11. But it's value even at the standard £14. Easily passes for basic competant champagne.
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/limited-support_swiss-parents-spared-extra-cost-of-supporting-destitute-offspring/44390870
In Italy, IIRC it's even later. Late parental responsibility is another bulwark against the school-to-welfare conveyor. Having said that, I don't want it for us. But it is a benefit.
Trials of baxdrostat have produced ‘exciting’ results for people whose hypertension has proved difficult to control
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/aug/30/drug-baxdrostat-gamechanger-high-blood-pressure-hypertension
It's also why relative poverty measures are still valid to an extent; not only to they reflect a keen human instinct for fairness, but also the fact that the price of many goods and services is set by aggregate demand and therefore they increase even as the economy grows. There is some price differentiation (e.g. the value range at a supermarket), but that doesn't fully offset the fact 60% of median income is not a lot even in an economy that is vastly bigger than it was 50 years ago.
EXCL: Angela Rayner's boyfriend Sam Tarry works for a political lobbying firm whose client got a £280k cash boost from the Labour government.
The bombshell revelation plunges the Deputy PM into a fresh hypocrisy storm ahead of Parliament's return on Monday.
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/canadas-economy-shrank-more-than-expected-in-q2-showing-the-trade-wars-spring-impact-155854927.html
@bondegezou @viewcode @ydoethur
I do apologise if I’ve omitted anyone
https://x.com/rewindtvuk/status/1961821213065707721?s=61
Including Your Party, it’s a virtual tie between Corbyn’s new Party, Labour & Reform
Without Labour hold a 7 point lead over Reform. Read it all below!
https://x.com/luketryl/status/1961873613310595118?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
Labour's own Bobby J.
I did post yesterday supporting India for telling Trump to do one,
But I have little time for Carney too. Posturing doesn’t help people’s lives.
I’m also really concerned at the politicisation of the fed. JPow may not be great but he’s apolitical.
https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/topic/calendar/
https://x.com/_johnbye/status/1961761256643125320?s=61
https://x.com/realdonkeith/status/1961864204660400638?s=61
Newsom: "who spends $200m on a new ballroom in their house and then leaves?"
https://x.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1961896802455605350
Also, no sane LibDem leader is tacking left any time soon.
Which I downloaded during lockdown thinking 'Oh! Haven't watched this for years!". It has not aged well.
Angela Rayner used a firm allegedly which had a division which specialised in wealth protection and then OMG she did the absolutely unbelievable dastardly deed of putting some of the equity in her constituency house in a trust for her 3 children !
I mean the horror of a parent looking out for their kids !
@Deana_CRO
·
Aug 29
UK Prime Minister 🇬🇧 Sir Keir Starmer is on summer holiday in Croatia,