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OT - a follow on from Mr Meeks thread on automation and the challenges it may bring:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-war-on-ordinary-people?via=twitter_page
The perception is that New Labour didn't just increase immigration, it lost track of who it was letting in and who was overstaying.
Also some labour shortage areas e.g. basic health and social care are not what we would conventionally call "high" skilled. What about nannies/domestic service? I am not sure that trying to split everything into a high/low skills-based dichotomy is useful.
But I'm nitpicking. I think your basic point that the migration targets should be deaggregated is a solid one, and would have avoided a lot of the nonsense over student visas for example.
Not a good couple of days for Labour or Putin.
A large chunk of the western world appears to agree with the assessment of the evidence that Russia is the only plausible culprit in Salisbury.
It is gratifying that the use of chemical weapons garners a wide reaction. I suspect Putin is somewhat eyebrows raised and taken aback by the breadth of the action against Russia. The argument that he needs to be inserted in his box in a peaceful way is strong. I guess this is a first step.
This is an unhelpful development for Jeremy who is finding all his utterances over this contradicted by the Nations' allies from all over.
Combined with the outrageous insinuation by Jews that he may be Racist, I mean, how unimaginable that a member if the Labour party could be accused of Racism!
There is a lot of pretty accurate shovelling into the fan and the output isn't spreading, it's focussing on poor persecuted kind and honest Jezza
Bit sleepy, and clumsily discovered it's possible to put My Documents in the recycling bin.
Was quite relieved to also discover they can be retrieved.
Non-medical care work and domestic service seem like things highly suitable for training young Britih people into.
It's a shame we didn't react after Halabja or Ghouta, but hopefully a precedent for action has been made.
https://news.sky.com/story/live-trump-expels-60-russian-diplomats-over-salisbury-spy-poisoning-11304952
Thinking about it, it's pretty insane to actively encourage immigrants to take our best jobs whilst keeping them out of the dirtiest crappiest lowest paid ones that nobody wants to do.
All this is hot air anyway as there isn't much chance of meaningful barriers being put up to stop Europeans who want to work here. Best we can hope for is keeping the beggars and criminals out - I'd certainly settle for that.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/26/west-virginia-senate-don-blankenship-2018-217703
Don Blankenship went to prison after the deaths of 29 of his miners. For some Republicans, that’s the beginning of a successful Senate campaign....
https://twitter.com/simongerman600/status/978249963476893696
"High skilled family migrants should be classed as high skilled. If only for academic reasons we should at least record the data. We could also assess how many go into high skilled work" - collecting and verifying the full Monty of data would be expensive and an unnecessary inconvenience for those involved; for academic purposes, social surveys are probably enough. And "high skilled" is still tricky to pin down. I could find jobs in the £50k-100k range requiring nothing more than experience in recruitment or sales or jobs for £30k or below requiring MSc in a technical subject, so wage data isn't enough, but nor is academic level - think of top chefs, footballers, actors, artists etc.
Any new immigration rules are unlikely to be simply points-based (that has been rejected as too simplistic/easily gameable) so will likely involve a confusing morass of requirements involving different qualification/experience (maybe salary too?) requirements for different jobs, legal wrangling over whether a certain job description fits into a certain category, what the appropriate numbers allowed should be for each type ... governments are generally poor at planning economies in detail, and there's no reason to expect them to have better luck at planning the labour market. It's certainly unlikely to be as responsive to employer demands as simply letting high-skilled labour move freely over Europe - precisely because they are not being distinguished, in whatever complex ways, from low-skilled labour who are also allowed to move freely...
Nevertheless I can't see the public appetite for unskilled migration to be limited is inherently illegitimate. People seem to me to be at liberty to invite whom they like into their home. But restrictions do come with a cost.
https://twitter.com/ReutersJamie/status/978278718513741825
Anyhow, here's a counterpoint I often think about.
Failing to stay in the EU has social and economic costs. Therefore Brexit is wrong-headed, stupid, immoral and illegitimate.
Restricting migration has social and economic costs. Therefore such migration policy is wrong-headed, stupid, immoral and illegitimate.
Failing to join the USA has social and economic costs. Therefore eschewing 51st-statehood is wrong-headed, stupid, immoral and illegitimate.
Just in terms of economic convergence, one would expect a substantially higher GDP/capita from joining the USA as an integral state than from rejoining the EU. We have learned from watching people debating Brexit that even people we never previously suspected of thinking such things now fervently believe that economic growth and increased commercial trade are absolutely vital, the lifeblood of public services and so on, so anything that might shed a few percent of those things is therefore basically a conspiracy to kill frail people by reducing health and social care funding. Well there's a great hulking big pot of gold lying over the Atlantic, far stronger than the EU, and by this logic joining up with it will save thousands of lives so must be a Good Thing, and any opposition to it is basically evil. It would grant free movement to hundreds of millions of people. Plus we won't need to learn any foreign languages (well, kinda) and our votes would mean no more Trumpalikes, and more sensible policies on guns'n'wombs'n'healthcare. What is there not to like?
For me a points system can work well if well-designed. It is less prone to special interest lobbying than a sector-specific approach, which would also be more vulnerabke to your central planning criticisms. The best way to do it would be an either-or approach to salary earnings or academic achievement. More emphasis on the age component would also be sensible from a dependency ratio perspective.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/three-top-barristers-conclude-crime-committed-over-brexit-vote-a3799261.html
https://twitter.com/RusEmbUSA/status/978273613349556224
https://twitter.com/PolhomeEditor/status/978282040989831169
https://twitter.com/GideonSkinner/status/978281008805089280?s=20
https://twitter.com/jessphillips/status/978215333386481664
https://www.economicshelp.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/rail-80-10.png
https://www.economicshelp.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/cost-transport.png
More Watership Down than Watergate.
Neolithic MarqueeMark would no doubt have been growling about the Beaker People coming here and taking their women. The 21st century version is no more on the money than his ancestor.
No mention of all the advantages Remain had.
That's right. Because everyone loves living in tower blocks.
http://www.lifestuff.xyz/blog/everywhere-but-here
1) The threat of development near one's property really sticks in the craw.
2) The process of development (Bulldozers etc) is hideous if you're near it.
3) Once development has taken place and you have a few new builds near you - thats not as good as before, but definitely better than stages 1 and 2.
Oh Lord give us housing, just not near me...
150 years ago everyone dreamed of 3 acres and a cow. Tastes change with time and education.
https://dominiccummings.com/2018/03/24/on-the-referendum-24c-the-whistleblowers-and-channel-4-observer-accusations/
"UPDATE 26/3. It’s been suggested to me that I should put in a formal complaint about the lawyer @JolyonMaugham to the Bar Standards Board. His twitter feed alone is a disgrace to the bar. He has been guilty of at least reckless falsehood. Strikes me this would be a good public service so feel free to send evidence about him to my public email and I’ll send in a formal document with help from some barristers"
"A team will also be putting in formal complaints to the EC and ICO about the illegal conduct of the Remain campaign, Osborne, Blair, Cameron, Mandelson, Clegg, Craig Dre et al. Don’t start deleting emails guys, cos that would be illegal, but start saving for lawyers. Meanwhile, we will also be starting our own campaign for a second referendum — on the ECHR…"