There’s no such thing as an economy with just high skilled high paid workers . And this latest guff from Bozo is just the new mantra from the government which has decided this is the best way of deflecting from their mess .
Effectively what will happen is prices will go up , firms will invest less and you could end up with a period of high inflation and wage growth never managing to overcome that .
The Cons have made this an all or nothing argument re what they perceive as low skilled immigration . They are simply ignoring the fact that there’s a section of the public who are unemployable and some Brits look down on certain jobs .
It’s not just about what salary is offered .
As always you've got this totally backwards.
If costs for people (wages) go up then firms are incentivised to invest more, not less. It becomes cheaper to have one person with a professional tool do the job, instead of four people with manual labour.
And as time goes on skills do go up. As much as some people think its fine to look down their noses at the "low skilled" in this country, the literacy rate in this nation is 99% and once upon a time every single one of those 99% would have been considered "skilled".
That's the reason we have universal education. There isn't really a section of the country that is employable, the people who are generally unemployable are a teeny tiny proportion of the sort living at care homes etc - and if people look down on certain jobs then those jobs will need to improve their pay and conditions to attract workers.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
It's not a Government scheme. It's basically, very simple economics - if you need staff, as Brexit has limited supply you need to pay more.
But the government need more staff? Or tell us they do? So what is their plan?
On one level, we know the government's plan, because the public sector spending envelope doesn't contain money for major pay rises.
And while the government is pretty much a monopoly employer of nurses, teachers and police officers etc, they can try "take it or leave it" with a reasonable degree of success.
But yes- the free market, which most Conservatives still acknowledge exists, says that if you don't offer enough pay for the work required, you won't get the quantity or quality of people you want.
Which is already happening at the edges. (There are quite a few schools where you shouldn't enquire too closely about the subject knowledge of your child's maths and science teachers.)
But there's a curious blindspot. People who are normally happy to let the free market set wages as high as necessary (see today's Telegraph) really don't like applying that principle to wages paid by the taxpayer.
It's not that curious. We all want to maximize our income and minimise our expenditure. It's just a bit galling seeing the government do it.
In a free market you would not be able to look up pay scales for teachers, NHS workers etc, each person would negotiate their own like a self employed IT expert does. We are miles from that in many fields.
An educated guess suggests that in that state led fields a decent proportion could, in a real free market (which would include unfettered sackability), negotiate more, a decent proportion, less; and a non insignificant minority could negotiate nothing at all.
Yes, I have no problem paying public sector workers more where we need to to attract good (or indeed any) people. That's just the free market working. (I'd pay teachers more, for example, to attract better ones and drive out the worse ones. And I'd also make it easier to pay better or more difficult-to-attract teachers more. I have no idea how this would work in practice, except to note that less monolithic professions don't seem to find it impossible to reward the best employees or most scarce skills in given fields.)
What I don't support is public sector pay being driven up by politics rather than economics.
Public sector pay is generally pretty comfortable - generally to a much greater extent than is realised. I reckon my public sector pension would need a 20% pay rise or more to compensate its loss if I moved into the private sector; I reckon I would also need 5-10% on top of that to compensate the additional hours I would, from experience, in practice end up working. There's also rather better job security in the public sector.
I think they should allow public sector workers to opt out of the pension scheme and the government up their pay by what it's worth. That might highlight the difference.
NHS anecdote. My wife took handover from the night nurse yesterday morning. She asked her if she was back in that night. "I'm meant to be but I'm not coming in". So that's a massive agency nurse bill for the NHS.
There’s no such thing as an economy with just high skilled high paid workers . And this latest guff from Bozo is just the new mantra from the government which has decided this is the best way of deflecting from their mess .
Effectively what will happen is prices will go up , firms will invest less and you could end up with a period of high inflation and wage growth never managing to overcome that .
The Cons have made this an all or nothing argument re what they perceive as low skilled immigration . They are simply ignoring the fact that there’s a section of the public who are unemployable and some Brits look down on certain jobs .
It’s not just about what salary is offered .
If so, explain why, in every single job category that data is available for, "Brits" are the vast majority of the workforce. Especially those jobs that they are supposed not to want to do....
PS. 'Blair and Brown' on TV was excellent. If Stamer needs a template it's there in plain sight. Be modern. Be outward looking and leave the Corbyns and the Johnsons in your wake.
Listening back on Beaker's interview with Nick Robinson - "Prime Minister. Stop. Talking". We really are about to see the splat of rhetoric against the wall of reality. What industry says is happening with detailed evidence vs waffle and hope.
I know that hope has been a powerful selling tool over the last 5 years. But it will be interesting to see how people cope with the reality when they are still being fed and wanting to believe the rhetoric.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
It's not a magic money tree. If the money is there in a free market then the money is there. If it isn't, it doesn't exist so pay can't sustainably rise regardless of industrial action or anything else.
If jobs go offshore then so be it. We should be dumping the least productive, least efficient jobs offshore and bringing the most productive, most efficient ones on shore. That's how we get better off.
Not bringing third world people over to do third world jobs on shore. That just deflates our entire economy.
You’ll get more Amazon drivers, but the high skilled, higher paid Amazon development work will go elsewhere. The reverse of your plans.
Meanwhile locally you’ll stoke inflation. In the end can’t get something for nothing.
No-one is suggesting that the cost of labour at the top end will rise, the Amazon engineers are competing in a global employment market.
What we will see, is a narrowing of the gap between the 10th percentile and the 90th percentile of wages across the economy. “Levelling Up”, if you want a catchy way of saying it.
To understand the difference in experience between the credentialed professions and those at the bottom, you have to understand the following.
In most credential professions (Engineers, Doctors, IT etc) there is a world wide shortage. A number of former "developing" countries are moving to larger and larger service sectors.
This means, that despite almost frantic efforts to expand the education system, worldwide, there will be a shortage of such skilled people for the foreseeable future.
So fo people in these groups, unlimited immigration is a positive - it means they can get enough colleagues to do the job...
There is no world wide shortage of people in lower skilled jobs.
So for people in those groups, unlimited immigration meant downward wage pressure.
This is basic supply and demand economics. And when we train an excess of HGV drivers, supply and demand will dictate that salaries are reduced. That is the simplified version, find me the suitable candidates for training first.
Coming down the line is this: we live in a world increasingly moving to mass demand for very high skills, from surgeons to civil engineers etc.
If you ask any (truthful) educationist they will tell you that though education is a fantastic tool of improvement and advance is just is not the case that everyone could be a neuro surgeon, top entrepreneur, Obama and all sorts of other things. Cognitive aptitude places limits on what is humanly possible.
Suppose that as a matter of evolutionary fact there just isn't in the human population enough of those top talents to fill demand? It is a demand there is no reason to think evolution thought it needed to meet.
The fact that the UK has imported, directly or indirectly, a massive proportion of our NHS staff may be more than a terrible moral error (we should be exporting to poorer countries instead), it may be a sign of limits.
My impression is that other similar countries to the UK (Germany or France, say) have much higher per capita numbers of domestically trained doctors and nurses.
I think rationing of training spaces due to Treasury penny-pinching is a better explanation for our imports of healthcare workers, than reaching an intrinsic limit on the number of people with the necessary potential.
FREE POLICY FOR STARMER
During the COVID epidemic, due to EvulToryStupidity, many universities increased their course sizes by 20%. In the medical courses, this means that in 3 years time there will be more medical graduates than training places in the NHS. We will literally be throwing doctors and nurses away. And there is a staff shortage in the NHS.
So...
1) Keep the expanded medical courses. 2) Fund the training places to match 3) Going forward, promise to create places for at least 95% of the predicted demand for NHS staff.
Watching the contortions on that one from opponents would be.... interesting.
On (3) shouldn't we be creating places for at least say 110% of the predicted demand for NHS staff?
It should be a minimum of 100% in order to satisfy demand, but not everyone completes their course and not everyone who completes their course ends up in the NHS so you should need over 100% to make up for dropout rates shouldn't you?
So Keir Starmer thought the best way of getting more HGV drivers was to offer 100k visas not improve pay and conditions.
Has there ever been a Labour politician so far out of touch with working class reality ?
Yes, Jeremy Corbyn. But your boys, the new working class political warriors are equally away with the fairies. I cite the JRM confrontation with the cerebral palsy guy again.
£52,000 for wallpaper, as an asdide, is not exactly down with the peasants now is it. Time to go and earn my shilling with the rest of the hoi polloi.
P.S. Johnson also went along with the temporary visas thing, and now only 127 have applied he's a soothsaying genius?
Its expected that the likes of Mogg are out of touch.
When Labour leaders are then that's a new factor - there's a clue in the name Labour.
For those celebrating the idea of pay freezes in the public sector this morning, go and look in to the point I raised recently about planning officers.
Current wage as public sector employee - £40k per year. Current wage as contractor to public sector - over £100k per year.
The contractor being self-employed, possibly inside IR35, having to pay their own Employer NI, with no holidays, pension and on short-term contracts so often without income.
In my field (IT), double the employee rate is a good ballpark, but IR35 effects are widening the gap.
All that is true but taken account of. The quoted hourly rates are £70+ per hour for long term contracts with standard 35 hour weeks.
Also, whilst the work is mostly in the south east, it is now largely remote so basically accessible to any location.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
In the big picture higher wages in London meaning that firms open up elsewhere is a classic example of free markets working. London already relies over heavily on the indirect protectionism of the assumption that all sorts of activities must have headquarters based in London.
Also, the UK population is now about 67m. In 30 years it has increased by 10m, without the birthrate being at or above replacement levels. Despite the increase loads of employers are saying 'we can't get the staff'.
When large numbers of people come in from elsewhere to fill those gaps, they then need the services of still more as demands on society increase with a larger population (ask the NHS).
As a model this is potentially without limit. Which means that at some point either the model explodes through recession and poverty, forcing the reverse process, or the politics means that someone like Boris has to apply a brake.
Yes.
The issue is (and was), I think, that an equilibrium wasn't reached. The UK model worked as long as there were large numbers of relatively low skilled people available to "conveyer" through the low paid/poor condition jobs.
What was interesting was the reaction when you asked things such as "what should the population of the UK be?"
Why would your average citizen have an instinctive good view of what the population of the UK should be.
If you asked it in 1520, 1720, 1820, 1920 and 2020 you would get very different answers. The only common bit being the average would probably be a bit below whatever the current population is.
I am unconvinced someone dedicating their lives to studying planning and demographics can come up with a "right" answer, let alone that we all somehow know it inately.
My answer: Zero
Sandy, you're a regular and straightforward man in many respects, and I often find myself agreeing with you. In this context, its always quite jarring to be reminded of your idiosyncratic keenness to see the end of the human race.
(To be clear, Cookie is generally in favour of the continuation of the human race.)
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
In the big picture higher wages in London meaning that firms open up elsewhere is a classic example of free markets working. London already relies over heavily on the indirect protectionism of the assumption that all sorts of activities must have headquarters based in London.
Also, the UK population is now about 67m. In 30 years it has increased by 10m, without the birthrate being at or above replacement levels. Despite the increase loads of employers are saying 'we can't get the staff'.
When large numbers of people come in from elsewhere to fill those gaps, they then need the services of still more as demands on society increase with a larger population (ask the NHS).
As a model this is potentially without limit. Which means that at some point either the model explodes through recession and poverty, forcing the reverse process, or the politics means that someone like Boris has to apply a brake.
Yes.
The issue is (and was), I think, that an equilibrium wasn't reached. The UK model worked as long as there were large numbers of relatively low skilled people available to "conveyer" through the low paid/poor condition jobs.
What was interesting was the reaction when you asked things such as "what should the population of the UK be?"
Why would your average citizen have an instinctive good view of what the population of the UK should be.
If you asked it in 1520, 1720, 1820, 1920 and 2020 you would get very different answers. The only common bit being the average would probably be a bit below whatever the current population is.
I am unconvinced someone dedicating their lives to studying planning and demographics can come up with a "right" answer, let alone that we all somehow know it inately.
Apparently, we have plans for the roads to be built, plans for the trains, plans for the hospitals.
For population we scratch our heads, and shrug. Then ban building more houses.....
Population isn't an unconstrained free market item.
Most of the other parameters in our lives are constrained and regulated.
On housing. If so many Europeans have left UK recently why isnt there an abundance of empty accommodation? Have they just been occupied by Brits at half the density?
According to the ONS the UK population has continued to grow at circa 0.5% each year since the EU Ref. Up 2.2% overall between mid-2016 and mid-2020.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
It's not a magic money tree. If the money is there in a free market then the money is there. If it isn't, it doesn't exist so pay can't sustainably rise regardless of industrial action or anything else.
If jobs go offshore then so be it. We should be dumping the least productive, least efficient jobs offshore and bringing the most productive, most efficient ones on shore. That's how we get better off.
Not bringing third world people over to do third world jobs on shore. That just deflates our entire economy.
You’ll get more Amazon drivers, but the high skilled, higher paid Amazon development work will go elsewhere. The reverse of your plans.
Meanwhile locally you’ll stoke inflation. In the end can’t get something for nothing.
No-one is suggesting that the cost of labour at the top end will rise, the Amazon engineers are competing in a global employment market.
What we will see, is a narrowing of the gap between the 10th percentile and the 90th percentile of wages across the economy. “Levelling Up”, if you want a catchy way of saying it.
To understand the difference in experience between the credentialed professions and those at the bottom, you have to understand the following.
In most credential professions (Engineers, Doctors, IT etc) there is a world wide shortage. A number of former "developing" countries are moving to larger and larger service sectors.
This means, that despite almost frantic efforts to expand the education system, worldwide, there will be a shortage of such skilled people for the foreseeable future.
So fo people in these groups, unlimited immigration is a positive - it means they can get enough colleagues to do the job...
There is no world wide shortage of people in lower skilled jobs.
So for people in those groups, unlimited immigration meant downward wage pressure.
This is basic supply and demand economics. And when we train an excess of HGV drivers, supply and demand will dictate that salaries are reduced. That is the simplified version, find me the suitable candidates for training first.
Coming down the line is this: we live in a world increasingly moving to mass demand for very high skills, from surgeons to civil engineers etc.
If you ask any (truthful) educationist they will tell you that though education is a fantastic tool of improvement and advance is just is not the case that everyone could be a neuro surgeon, top entrepreneur, Obama and all sorts of other things. Cognitive aptitude places limits on what is humanly possible.
Suppose that as a matter of evolutionary fact there just isn't in the human population enough of those top talents to fill demand? It is a demand there is no reason to think evolution thought it needed to meet.
The fact that the UK has imported, directly or indirectly, a massive proportion of our NHS staff may be more than a terrible moral error (we should be exporting to poorer countries instead), it may be a sign of limits.
My impression is that other similar countries to the UK (Germany or France, say) have much higher per capita numbers of domestically trained doctors and nurses.
I think rationing of training spaces due to Treasury penny-pinching is a better explanation for our imports of healthcare workers, than reaching an intrinsic limit on the number of people with the necessary potential.
FREE POLICY FOR STARMER
During the COVID epidemic, due to EvulToryStupidity, many universities increased their course sizes by 20%. In the medical courses, this means that in 3 years time there will be more medical graduates than training places in the NHS. We will literally be throwing doctors and nurses away. And there is a staff shortage in the NHS.
So...
1) Keep the expanded medical courses. 2) Fund the training places to match 3) Going forward, promise to create places for at least 95% of the predicted demand for NHS staff.
Watching the contortions on that one from opponents would be.... interesting.
On (3) shouldn't we be creating places for at least say 110% of the predicted demand for NHS staff?
It should be a minimum of 100% in order to satisfy demand, but not everyone completes their course and not everyone who completes their course ends up in the NHS so you should need over 100% to make up for dropout rates shouldn't you?
I have already been told by someone that 95% was nativist and racist (when I suggested it elsewhere)
Because it would mean reducing the number of places for immigrants....
100% or more would cause heads to explode - the BMA would probably be among them....
Robinson doing a robust job of combatting the PM's pitiful bluster on R4 this morning
We may be a few years yet before the public see through the bluster and the jokes and realise they have been totally had. But they will and the fall will be brutal.
I totally agree, that when the reckoning happens to the Tory party, it will be brutal, and they will go down to a drubbing, we have never seen before, but I have to add a but first, they need to win the next election first. Then the one after that they will be turned on, anyone but Tory party will walk it
I've been thinking along these lines too. I reckon the next election will be a good one to lose, as I can see the Tories managing to kick most of the cans far enough down the road to get re-elected. Then the chickens will all come home to roost. (Sorry for mixed metaphors).
If Labour win, they will get no credit from the actions they will have to take to clear up the mess (a bit like 1974).
As it happens, Labour have too big a mountain to climb to win in 2023/4. They might deprive the Tories of majority. That is entirely possible especially if the economic shit coming is as dire as I think it will be. So a minority Labour administration gets the blame for failing to clear up the mess. I can see some of the more thoughtful Tories thinking that might be a better way to go.
Once PB goes down I know we're really in the shit.
It's one of the signals for the submarine captain isn't it? PB going down?
Hah. Enjoyed Vigil which we had recorded and binge-watched.
I appreciate it's fictional bunkum but it did leave me slight queasy at the thought of 100 or so submarines with nuclear ICBMs dotted around the world... It only takes one sub commander to go mad.
Meanwhile ours is one of 3 carriers on exercise nearby.
It better not go down, for god's sake - they are very expensive.
We basically have had no wage growth in the past 10 years. It's lovely to see the conversion of Tory posters on here to thinking wage growth for low earners is a good thing, but Labour have been saying this for some time.
Can I be the first PB Nat to suggest that the Chinese invasion of Taiwan, and the ensuing global war which will wipe out maybe a third of humanity, rendering much of the globe uninhabitable, can only be good for the cause of Scottish independence? And will actually increase SNP representation at Holyrood?
No, they will still not get indyref2. Even if we face a nuclear holocaust if we Tories are in government and any of us are still alive we will still not give Sturgeon indyref2.
Indeed the loss of Taiwanese independence and return to unity with China would suggest a global trend in the opposite direction
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
It's not a magic money tree. If the money is there in a free market then the money is there. If it isn't, it doesn't exist so pay can't sustainably rise regardless of industrial action or anything else.
If jobs go offshore then so be it. We should be dumping the least productive, least efficient jobs offshore and bringing the most productive, most efficient ones on shore. That's how we get better off.
Not bringing third world people over to do third world jobs on shore. That just deflates our entire economy.
You’ll get more Amazon drivers, but the high skilled, higher paid Amazon development work will go elsewhere. The reverse of your plans.
Meanwhile locally you’ll stoke inflation. In the end can’t get something for nothing.
No-one is suggesting that the cost of labour at the top end will rise, the Amazon engineers are competing in a global employment market.
What we will see, is a narrowing of the gap between the 10th percentile and the 90th percentile of wages across the economy. “Levelling Up”, if you want a catchy way of saying it.
To understand the difference in experience between the credentialed professions and those at the bottom, you have to understand the following.
In most credential professions (Engineers, Doctors, IT etc) there is a world wide shortage. A number of former "developing" countries are moving to larger and larger service sectors.
This means, that despite almost frantic efforts to expand the education system, worldwide, there will be a shortage of such skilled people for the foreseeable future.
So fo people in these groups, unlimited immigration is a positive - it means they can get enough colleagues to do the job...
There is no world wide shortage of people in lower skilled jobs.
So for people in those groups, unlimited immigration meant downward wage pressure.
This is basic supply and demand economics. And when we train an excess of HGV drivers, supply and demand will dictate that salaries are reduced. That is the simplified version, find me the suitable candidates for training first.
Coming down the line is this: we live in a world increasingly moving to mass demand for very high skills, from surgeons to civil engineers etc.
If you ask any (truthful) educationist they will tell you that though education is a fantastic tool of improvement and advance is just is not the case that everyone could be a neuro surgeon, top entrepreneur, Obama and all sorts of other things. Cognitive aptitude places limits on what is humanly possible.
Suppose that as a matter of evolutionary fact there just isn't in the human population enough of those top talents to fill demand? It is a demand there is no reason to think evolution thought it needed to meet.
The fact that the UK has imported, directly or indirectly, a massive proportion of our NHS staff may be more than a terrible moral error (we should be exporting to poorer countries instead), it may be a sign of limits.
My impression is that other similar countries to the UK (Germany or France, say) have much higher per capita numbers of domestically trained doctors and nurses.
I think rationing of training spaces due to Treasury penny-pinching is a better explanation for our imports of healthcare workers, than reaching an intrinsic limit on the number of people with the necessary potential.
FREE POLICY FOR STARMER
During the COVID epidemic, due to EvulToryStupidity, many universities increased their course sizes by 20%. In the medical courses, this means that in 3 years time there will be more medical graduates than training places in the NHS. We will literally be throwing doctors and nurses away. And there is a staff shortage in the NHS.
So...
1) Keep the expanded medical courses. 2) Fund the training places to match 3) Going forward, promise to create places for at least 95% of the predicted demand for NHS staff.
Watching the contortions on that one from opponents would be.... interesting.
On (3) shouldn't we be creating places for at least say 110% of the predicted demand for NHS staff?
It should be a minimum of 100% in order to satisfy demand, but not everyone completes their course and not everyone who completes their course ends up in the NHS so you should need over 100% to make up for dropout rates shouldn't you?
I have already been told by someone that 95% was nativist and racist (when I suggested it elsewhere)
Because it would mean reducing the number of places for immigrants....
100% or more would cause heads to explode - the BMA would probably be among them....
Absolutely but should we be setting policy for the BMA?
If there's a 10% dropout rate then we'd need 111% of places in order to fill 99.9% of spaces. If there's a 20% dropout rate then we'd need 125% of places in order to fill 100% of spaces.
There’s no such thing as an economy with just high skilled high paid workers . And this latest guff from Bozo is just the new mantra from the government which has decided this is the best way of deflecting from their mess .
Effectively what will happen is prices will go up , firms will invest less and you could end up with a period of high inflation and wage growth never managing to overcome that .
The Cons have made this an all or nothing argument re what they perceive as low skilled immigration . They are simply ignoring the fact that there’s a section of the public who are unemployable and some Brits look down on certain jobs .
It’s not just about what salary is offered .
If so, explain why, in every single job category that data is available for, "Brits" are the vast majority of the workforce. Especially those jobs that they are supposed not to want to do....
As I said some Brits don’t want to do certain jobs . And wage growth which isn’t led by productivity won’t end well . The Tories have been in power for 11 years and didn’t seem that bothered before about wage growth . This latest no 10 mantra is yet more desperate polish being applied to the Brexit turd.
What the government seem to be doing at the moment is akin to the clever shifting of goalposts we see in the corporate world among the politically most astute employees.
We need to hold them to a small number of simple, easy to measure goals.
By the next election will the UK have performed better, or worse, than Germany, France and Italy across the following:
- GDP per capita growth (headline and PPP) - Median household income, inflation-adjusted - Increase or decrease of public sector net debt - Increase or decrease in private household debt
Only 27 fuel tanker drivers from the EU have applied to work in Britain under the government’s emergency scheme to tackle the petrol crisis, ministers have been told.
It means only a fraction of the 300 visas available for HGV drivers in the fuel industry are set to be taken up in a setback to efforts to replenish supplies.
We basically have had no wage growth in the past 10 years. It's lovely to see the conversion of Tory posters on here to thinking wage growth for low earners is a good thing, but Labour have been saying this for some time.
Short of increases in the minimum wage which only affects the lowest earners, the only way those on average incomes and below are going to see an increase in wages is a restriction of supply, which ending free movement has done and increasing productivity.
If companies have fewer lower skilled workers to choose from they will have to pay their lower skilled workers more and make them more productive to get more out of those lower wages
A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be an astonishing piece of self harm by China.
They would deeply disrupt the West as the supply of advanced computer chips was suddenly halted but that supply chain flows through China so they would be killing their own economy at the same time.
The West makes the Machines that outfit the Taiwanese (and Korean) Fabs who produce the Chips that get Assembled into the finished products in China that are sold throughout the world.
If China actually invades rather than soft take over then Taiwan would destroy the Fabs. The shockwave to the global economy would be high and China would feel the heat as much, if not more, than anyone.
Robinson doing a robust job of combatting the PM's pitiful bluster on R4 this morning
We may be a few years yet before the public see through the bluster and the jokes and realise they have been totally had. But they will and the fall will be brutal.
I totally agree, that when the reckoning happens to the Tory party, it will be brutal, and they will go down to a drubbing, we have never seen before, but I have to add a but first, they need to win the next election first. Then the one after that they will be turned on, anyone but Tory party will walk it
I've been thinking along these lines too. I reckon the next election will be a good one to lose, as I can see the Tories managing to kick most of the cans far enough down the road to get re-elected. Then the chickens will all come home to roost. (Sorry for mixed metaphors).
If Labour win, they will get no credit from the actions they will have to take to clear up the mess (a bit like 1974).
As it happens, Labour have too big a mountain to climb to win in 2023/4. They might deprive the Tories of majority. That is entirely possible especially if the economic shit coming is as dire as I think it will be. So a minority Labour administration gets the blame for failing to clear up the mess. I can see some of the more thoughtful Tories thinking that might be a better way to go.
It’s never a good election to lose
Except if you’re Ruth Davidson.
According to the media, she won every election she ever lost.
There’s no such thing as an economy with just high skilled high paid workers . And this latest guff from Bozo is just the new mantra from the government which has decided this is the best way of deflecting from their mess .
Effectively what will happen is prices will go up , firms will invest less and you could end up with a period of high inflation and wage growth never managing to overcome that .
The Cons have made this an all or nothing argument re what they perceive as low skilled immigration . They are simply ignoring the fact that there’s a section of the public who are unemployable and some Brits look down on certain jobs .
It’s not just about what salary is offered .
If so, explain why, in every single job category that data is available for, "Brits" are the vast majority of the workforce. Especially those jobs that they are supposed not to want to do....
Well we might have to do without the hand carwash industry.
Hopefully someone might invent a machine that washes cars thereby boosting productivity and ending exploitation in the sector.
On your wider point there's a very London-centric mindset that everyone in low paid sectors - hospitality, care homes, delivery drivers, cleaners, security guards for example - is an immigrant.
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
It's not a magic money tree. If the money is there in a free market then the money is there. If it isn't, it doesn't exist so pay can't sustainably rise regardless of industrial action or anything else.
If jobs go offshore then so be it. We should be dumping the least productive, least efficient jobs offshore and bringing the most productive, most efficient ones on shore. That's how we get better off.
Not bringing third world people over to do third world jobs on shore. That just deflates our entire economy.
You’ll get more Amazon drivers, but the high skilled, higher paid Amazon development work will go elsewhere. The reverse of your plans.
Meanwhile locally you’ll stoke inflation. In the end can’t get something for nothing.
No-one is suggesting that the cost of labour at the top end will rise, the Amazon engineers are competing in a global employment market.
What we will see, is a narrowing of the gap between the 10th percentile and the 90th percentile of wages across the economy. “Levelling Up”, if you want a catchy way of saying it.
Inflation will give the illusion of levelling up. The perfect Boris policy when you think about it.
Yes. The overall effect of making labour more expensive (by restricting movement from abroad) and imposing additional trading costs on businesses will be to make our economy less globally competitive and, utimately, all of us poorer. This will manifest itself as inflation outpacing wages for most of us.
There is an alternative to an economy based on cheap labour - capital investment.
Case in point: the Confederate states had more raw materials and unlimited free labour. But their economies sucked compared to the Union.
There’s no such thing as an economy with just high skilled high paid workers . And this latest guff from Bozo is just the new mantra from the government which has decided this is the best way of deflecting from their mess .
Effectively what will happen is prices will go up , firms will invest less and you could end up with a period of high inflation and wage growth never managing to overcome that .
The Cons have made this an all or nothing argument re what they perceive as low skilled immigration . They are simply ignoring the fact that there’s a section of the public who are unemployable and some Brits look down on certain jobs .
It’s not just about what salary is offered .
You either get high inflation / declining real wages = stagflation or more capital investment > higher productivity > sustainable increases in real wages.
Path 2 is better.
The lefts alternative of exploiting the poor is not acceptable
This government latest populist scheme ‘let’s just pay everyone more’ begs the question why didn’t any previous government think of that? All those battles in the 60s, 70s and 80s were a complete waste of time. There would have been no strikes at British Leyland or at the coal pits. Thatcher, Heath, Wilson must all be kicking themselves.
Because supply and demand is driving pay rates up and setting pay increase. Not strikes. Are you too silly to see the difference?
What I see is that in my sector wages in London are already higher than elsewhere in Europe so my firm are looking to open offices elsewhere.
This strategy doesn’t work for jobs that do not have to be based in the U.K. And even then the economics relies on a magic money tree. So it’s all a load of old cobblers. Classic populist Boris. Promising easy to solutions to complex problems. He’ll be selling you a garden bridge soon.
It's not a magic money tree. If the money is there in a free market then the money is there. If it isn't, it doesn't exist so pay can't sustainably rise regardless of industrial action or anything else.
If jobs go offshore then so be it. We should be dumping the least productive, least efficient jobs offshore and bringing the most productive, most efficient ones on shore. That's how we get better off.
Not bringing third world people over to do third world jobs on shore. That just deflates our entire economy.
You’ll get more Amazon drivers, but the high skilled, higher paid Amazon development work will go elsewhere. The reverse of your plans.
Meanwhile locally you’ll stoke inflation. In the end can’t get something for nothing.
No-one is suggesting that the cost of labour at the top end will rise, the Amazon engineers are competing in a global employment market.
What we will see, is a narrowing of the gap between the 10th percentile and the 90th percentile of wages across the economy. “Levelling Up”, if you want a catchy way of saying it.
To understand the difference in experience between the credentialed professions and those at the bottom, you have to understand the following.
In most credential professions (Engineers, Doctors, IT etc) there is a world wide shortage. A number of former "developing" countries are moving to larger and larger service sectors.
This means, that despite almost frantic efforts to expand the education system, worldwide, there will be a shortage of such skilled people for the foreseeable future.
So fo people in these groups, unlimited immigration is a positive - it means they can get enough colleagues to do the job...
There is no world wide shortage of people in lower skilled jobs.
So for people in those groups, unlimited immigration meant downward wage pressure.
This is basic supply and demand economics. And when we train an excess of HGV drivers, supply and demand will dictate that salaries are reduced. That is the simplified version, find me the suitable candidates for training first.
Coming down the line is this: we live in a world increasingly moving to mass demand for very high skills, from surgeons to civil engineers etc.
If you ask any (truthful) educationist they will tell you that though education is a fantastic tool of improvement and advance is just is not the case that everyone could be a neuro surgeon, top entrepreneur, Obama and all sorts of other things. Cognitive aptitude places limits on what is humanly possible.
Suppose that as a matter of evolutionary fact there just isn't in the human population enough of those top talents to fill demand? It is a demand there is no reason to think evolution thought it needed to meet.
The fact that the UK has imported, directly or indirectly, a massive proportion of our NHS staff may be more than a terrible moral error (we should be exporting to poorer countries instead), it may be a sign of limits.
My impression is that other similar countries to the UK (Germany or France, say) have much higher per capita numbers of domestically trained doctors and nurses.
I think rationing of training spaces due to Treasury penny-pinching is a better explanation for our imports of healthcare workers, than reaching an intrinsic limit on the number of people with the necessary potential.
FREE POLICY FOR STARMER
During the COVID epidemic, due to EvulToryStupidity, many universities increased their course sizes by 20%. In the medical courses, this means that in 3 years time there will be more medical graduates than training places in the NHS. We will literally be throwing doctors and nurses away. And there is a staff shortage in the NHS.
So...
1) Keep the expanded medical courses. 2) Fund the training places to match 3) Going forward, promise to create places for at least 95% of the predicted demand for NHS staff.
Watching the contortions on that one from opponents would be.... interesting.
On (3) shouldn't we be creating places for at least say 110% of the predicted demand for NHS staff?
It should be a minimum of 100% in order to satisfy demand, but not everyone completes their course and not everyone who completes their course ends up in the NHS so you should need over 100% to make up for dropout rates shouldn't you?
But the politics of a doctor who can’t find work is horrible. So you go for 95% and hire some from abroad
An obvious issue with the governments High Pay Raising Wages strategy is the countries biggest employer, HMG, has a wage freeze for most of its employees. If public sector pay restraint continues, and it probably will, that is a big section of the electorate who will face raising prices and feel very much left out, or worse, of a core part of the government policy and comms.
Though the public sector pay is higher than private sector pay as it stands, with the public sector budget running at a major deficit.
A rebalancing as private sector wages rise would see HMG gain tax rises as much of the increased pay goes to HMRC in increased NI, Income Tax and potentially reduced welfare. That increased tax revenues can support public sector salaries.
More realistically what we are likely to see is industrial action, continued underperformance in parts of the civil service and public sector and recruitment and retention failures.
Our rolling programme of operating theatre cancellations continues, due to staff shortages.
Those waiting lists are not coming down if there are no staff.
Morning Foxy, just wanted to say what an amazing difference a change of ward makes.. my mother is back.in hospital desperate to get home but with a highly infectious uti is now in isolation (along with other . Serious problems including CGH).. My impression of the staff was amazing, so kind, so patient, so understanding.. . Faith fully restored.
Yes, even adjacent wards can have very different quality of care, depending on the professionalism of the nursing staff.
Comments
If costs for people (wages) go up then firms are incentivised to invest more, not less. It becomes cheaper to have one person with a professional tool do the job, instead of four people with manual labour.
And as time goes on skills do go up. As much as some people think its fine to look down their noses at the "low skilled" in this country, the literacy rate in this nation is 99% and once upon a time every single one of those 99% would have been considered "skilled".
That's the reason we have universal education. There isn't really a section of the country that is employable, the people who are generally unemployable are a teeny tiny proportion of the sort living at care homes etc - and if people look down on certain jobs then those jobs will need to improve their pay and conditions to attract workers.
Keir Starmer opposes those.
NHS anecdote. My wife took handover from the night nurse yesterday morning. She asked her if she was back in that night. "I'm meant to be but I'm not coming in". So that's a massive agency nurse bill for the NHS.
I know that hope has been a powerful selling tool over the last 5 years. But it will be interesting to see how people cope with the reality when they are still being fed and wanting to believe the rhetoric.
It should be a minimum of 100% in order to satisfy demand, but not everyone completes their course and not everyone who completes their course ends up in the NHS so you should need over 100% to make up for dropout rates shouldn't you?
When Labour leaders are then that's a new factor - there's a clue in the name Labour.
Having said that, watching Mercedes v Audi v Porsche v Aston Martin v Ferrari will be good!
Also, whilst the work is mostly in the south east, it is now largely remote so basically accessible to any location.
(To be clear, Cookie is generally in favour of the continuation of the human race.)
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates
Because it would mean reducing the number of places for immigrants....
100% or more would cause heads to explode - the BMA would probably be among them....
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8456
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/sep/20/miliband-pledges-rise-poorest-workers-labour-uk
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-47149646
If there's a 10% dropout rate then we'd need 111% of places in order to fill 99.9% of spaces.
If there's a 20% dropout rate then we'd need 125% of places in order to fill 100% of spaces.
We need to hold them to a small number of simple, easy to measure goals.
By the next election will the UK have performed better, or worse, than Germany, France and Italy across the following:
- GDP per capita growth (headline and PPP)
- Median household income, inflation-adjusted
- Increase or decrease of public sector net debt
- Increase or decrease in private household debt
Only 27 fuel tanker drivers from the EU have applied to work in Britain under the government’s emergency scheme to tackle the petrol crisis, ministers have been told.
It means only a fraction of the 300 visas available for HGV drivers in the fuel industry are set to be taken up in a setback to efforts to replenish supplies.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/supply-crisis-military-moves-in-with-tanker-deliveries-to-petrol-stations-d00gls0bc
If companies have fewer lower skilled workers to choose from they will have to pay their lower skilled workers more and make them more productive to get more out of those lower wages
They would deeply disrupt the West as the supply of advanced computer chips was suddenly halted but that supply chain flows through China so they would be killing their own economy at the same time.
The West makes the Machines that outfit the Taiwanese (and Korean) Fabs who produce the Chips that get Assembled into the finished products in China that are sold throughout the world.
If China actually invades rather than soft take over then Taiwan would destroy the Fabs. The shockwave to the global economy would be high and China would feel the heat as much, if not more, than anyone.
According to the media, she won every election she ever lost.
Hopefully someone might invent a machine that washes cars thereby boosting productivity and ending exploitation in the sector.
On your wider point there's a very London-centric mindset that everyone in low paid sectors - hospitality, care homes, delivery drivers, cleaners, security guards for example - is an immigrant.
Case in point: the Confederate states had more raw materials and unlimited free labour. But their economies sucked compared to the Union.
Path 2 is better.
The lefts alternative of exploiting the poor is not acceptable
Glad to hear that she is getting good care now.