My point was if remain win it doesn't settle the question amongst some because of the way the campaign has been fought in much the same way as it does not appear to have done north of the border.
I think that is an error on Cameron's part. He has taken the wrong lessons from Scotland. Granted if leave win, that's it.
Ah, I see. But again no. If Remain win, even by a single vote, we remain, and for at least 10-15 years.
Exactly. For ONLY 10 to 15 years.... And then another referendum. At least Wilson did it in a way that settled it for 41 years.
I think we should wait and see what happens on June 23rd, shouldn't we? My best guess is that the result will be Remain by something like 55-45 (almost identical to the Scottish result). Both Cameron and Salmond had agreed that that settled the matter of independence for a "generation" which is about 15 years or so.
So a narrow victory and a comfortable victory amount to the same thing.
Or are you contending that 55-45, or even 60-40 would mean no re-vote for 41 years?
My point is that if remain win, the leave side can call foul on so many issues. It would have to be a thumping win to put it off for more than 15 years.
That is not a good place to be, as the whole idea of the referendum was to settle the matter for good.
By the way, re the 1992 Election win the easy response is that we were never really going to put the Welsh Windbag into No.10. The papers did for him as they did for EdM and as they will do for Remain (Sorry to Mr Smithson you're plain wrong about the power of the press: it's all about the front pages).
But the bigger point is this: the win was a disaster for the Tories. It would have been far, far, better if they had lost in 1992, seen Kinnock screw up the ERM, and come back into power in 1997 for another 20 years.
And we'd never have had that prize pillock Tony Blair and the 1000 years of terror he and Bush have managed to unleash on the west thanks to their massive egos.
But it is a pyramid scheme. That increasing population to pay for the elderly will themselves get old and have to be paid for. So then you need more immigration or increased birth rate to pay for them. At some point you reach a point where it is unsustainable in terms of job creation, housing and services.
This is a claim the Greens make about economic growth, and it's mistaken.
All the things you mention, job creation, housing and services, are created by people and scale great with more people. If they didn't you'd see everyone moving from the cities to the countryside where you could get more jobs, houses and services.
Growing population continually for the forseeable future, with continually growing living standards, is actually perfectly plausible; Technology and infrastructure continually improve, people get better educated, and more people trading with each other produces more productivity so we can do more with less. The pattern may break in a few generations - for example, it may be that in a century or so more people want to leave Britain that want to come. But it's not really worth optimising for that time, as the circumstances will likely be too different to what we're used to for us to make sensible policies about it.
I disagree. On a world wide scale with technological advances, a general level of equality in living standards and life expectancy and absolute freedom of movement you may well be right. But as an economic model for an island with limited space, a rapidly increasing population and a dwindling resource base it is not a sustainable position to argue.
Hence the reason I agree with SO that we need a new model - though he and I might disagree on what that model should be.
Britain has plenty of room. There are vast, barely-productive spaces on the horizontal and minimal development on the vertical.
What resources specifically are you worried about running out of?
The John Major retrospective on here is hilarious. I wish I'd kept the threads in which posters now lambasting him previously stated he was a very underrated Prime Minister who did an impossible job very well and left a golden legacy which Labour threw away.
My guess is that Sir John's support for continued EU membership is leading a few folk on here to reassess their previous high opinion of him. Who'd have thought it? :-)
You won't find me amongst them. As far as I am concerned he was always a bad PM who caused his own downfall and deserved all he got.
Except of course for the post downfall adulation that he seems to receive from some Tories. Conveniently forgetting how much damage he did to the country,
Agreed - I can safely say that you have not changed your mind about him.
That was almost damning with faint praise :-)
Major was tremendous in 1992 .
Black Wednesday was 'tremendous' in the way that a large smelly turd tastes pleasant
Sorry for the graphic simile but I've scarce read such bunkum. As others have said, the 1992 ERM fiasco, for which he was co-responsible, shook this country to the foundations and put the Tories out of power for a generation.
Erm, highest number of votes ever secured for the Tory party?
By the way, re the 1992 Election win the easy response is that we were never really going to put the Welsh Windbag into No.10. The papers did for him as they did for EdM and as they will do for Remain (Sorry to Mr Smithson you're plain wrong about the power of the press: it's all about the front pages).
But the bigger point is this: the win was a disaster for the Tories. It would have been far, far, better if they had lost in 1992, seen Kinnock screw up the ERM, and come back into power in 1997 for another 20 years.
And we'd never have had that prize pillock Tony Blair and the 1000 years of terror he and Bush have managed to unleash on the west thanks to their massive egos.
But it is a pyramid scheme. That increasing population to pay for the elderly will themselves get old and have to be paid for. So then you need more immigration or increased birth rate to pay for them. At some point you reach a point where it is unsustainable in terms of job creation, housing and services.
This is a claim the Greens make about economic growth, and it's mistaken.
All the things you mention, job creation, housing and services, are created by people and scale great with more people. If they didn't you'd see everyone moving from the cities to the countryside where you could get more jobs, houses and services.
Growing population continually for the forseeable future, with continually growing living standards, is actually perfectly plausible; Technology and infrastructure continually improve, people get better educated, and more people trading with each other produces more productivity so we can do more with less. The pattern may break in a few generations - for example, it may be that in a century or so more people want to leave Britain that want to come. But it's not really worth optimising for that time, as the circumstances will likely be too different to what we're used to for us to make sensible policies about it.
I disagree. On a world wide scale with technological advances, a general level of equality in living standards and life expectancy and absolute freedom of movement you may well be right. But as an economic model for an island with limited space, a rapidly increasing population and a dwindling resource base it is not a sustainable position to argue.
Hence the reason I agree with SO that we need a new model - though he and I might disagree on what that model should be.
Britain has plenty of room. There are vast, barely-productive spaces on the horizontal and minimal development on the vertical.
What resources specifically are you worried about running out of?
Have you looked at the population density recently? Far higher than most of Europe.
The prize economically is to alter the growth pattern so that each job created is much higher in terms of real value. This means higher skilled immigration, with higher productivity the key factor. It will also mean that education in the UK has to be raised to an even higher standard, and modernised to fit the market in tech and industry.
It would also be of extreme value if we stopped pricing ourselves out of the industrial world with ridiculous energy costs, meaning that at least some manufacturing base were allowed to thrive, producing high value work for those with fewer academic skills.
But it is a pyramid scheme. That increasing population to pay for the elderly will themselves get old and have to be paid for. So then you need more immigration or increased birth rate to pay for them. At some point you reach a point where it is unsustainable in terms of job creation, housing and services.
This is a claim the Greens make about economic growth, and it's mistaken.
All the things you mention, job creation, housing and services, are created by people and scale great with more people. If they didn't you'd see everyone moving from the cities to the countryside where you could get more jobs, houses and services.
Growing population continually for the forseeable future, with continually growing living standards, is actually perfectly plausible; Technology and infrastructure continually improve, people get better educated, and more people trading with each other produces more productivity so we can do more with less. The pattern may break in a few generations - for example, it may be that in a century or so more people want to leave Britain that want to come. But it's not really worth optimising for that time, as the circumstances will likely be too different to what we're used to for us to make sensible policies about it.
I disagree. On a world wide scale with technological advances, a general level of equality in living standards and life expectancy and absolute freedom of movement you may well be right. But as an economic model for an island with limited space, a rapidly increasing population and a dwindling resource base it is not a sustainable position to argue.
Hence the reason I agree with SO that we need a new model - though he and I might disagree on what that model should be.
Britain has plenty of room. There are vast, barely-productive spaces on the horizontal and minimal development on the vertical.
What resources specifically are you worried about running out of?
Forbearance is the resource in shortest support at the moment, and likely to run out rapidly with only marginally unfortunate events.
On immigration, it's entirely what Roger quotes at the top of his piece:
"Facts aren't important. What matters is what the public believes."
Dave is reaping what he sowed.
The fact is we have over net migration of 330,000. Not sustainable.
Probably true - which means we need to change our economic model pronto. Right now our growth is predicated on high levels of immigration. And without growth we are going to have one hell of a problem funding everything from infrastructure through to care for our growing number of old people.
What's this "our...old people" ?
If we are importing immigrants like there is no tomorrow, then what makes you think they will regard old people as "theirs" in any sense?
That's the trouble with this generational analysis, it falls down if one generation doesn't generate the next.
We require enough people of working age to pay the taxes needed to fund government expenditure. Where they come from is not really the issue. If we want less immigrants, clearly we have to have a higher birth rate - though thanks to immigration the UK birth rate is higher than birth rates in most other European countries.
But a rising birth rate only works over the longer term. We have funding issues right here and right now, and a policy of moving to and then staying in surplus. That is not going to happen without continued high levels of immigration.
So we either continue to "import" workers, significantly decrease government spending by squeezing the services Leavers tell us they are fighting to save, substantially increase the tax burden or remodel our economic and fiscal approach. Which would you go for?
You cut your clothes according to your cloth.
A falling tax base means smaller Government.
All Ponzi schemes collapse in the end and that's what we are beginning to see in private pensions and socialised medicine.
A remodelling of our economic and fiscal approach is vastly overdue.
The real problem for Dave and the Remaindermen is that they can't talk about immigration. Can't even utter the word. And ironically, for the side playing Project Fear, it is the one fear they can't play. But their opponents can. And it is the Big One.
There was always a high likelihood that this vote would boil down to "Who controls our borders?" Because there's a large number of people worried that if you don't control your borders, you have ceased to become a sovereign unit. You can't plan for education, health, housing needs. All governments - Labour, Coalition, Tory - have for the past couple of decades refused to acknowledge this increased need, in spite of Osborne's future economic projections requiring it in the millions. But provision will have to be made, piecemeal, just keeping these services at a level of "teetering on the edge of failure". But if you have to provide Paul with health, education, housing, then do you have to rob Peter of say his pension payments? Something has to give. There is currently no honesty with the voters about this whole issue. Hasn't been since at least Blair.
People like to suggest this is about bashing Cameron. Certainly not in my case. I wish him well in most all of his ventures. But his handling of the "renegotiation" itself was woeful, compounded by the over-zealous selling of the turd he presented, and the ongoing ridiculous pronouncements on how if we don't buy his turd, WE"RE ALL GOING TO DIE....
Those who suggest Cameron is a repackaged Heath are wide of the mark, save in one respect. Heath called a vote, seeking clarification on "Who governs Britain?" The British people delivered their raspberry of "Not you!!" Cameron is at grave risk of getting the same resounding raspberry from the voters.
But it is a pyramid scheme. That increasing population to pay for the elderly will themselves get old and have to be paid for. So then you need more immigration or increased birth rate to pay for them. At some point you reach a point where it is unsustainable in terms of job creation, housing and services.
This is a claim the Greens make about economic growth, and it's mistaken.
All the things you mention, job creation, housing and services, are created by people and scale great with more people. If they didn't you'd see everyone moving from the cities to the countryside where you could get more jobs, houses and services.
Growing population continually for the forseeable future, with continually growing living standards, is actually perfectly plausible; Technology and infrastructure continually improve, people get better educated, and more people trading with each other produces more productivity so we can do more with less. The pattern may break in a few generations - for example, it may be that in a century or so more people want to leave Britain that want to come. But it's not really worth optimising for that time, as the circumstances will likely be too different to what we're used to for us to make sensible policies about it.
I disagree. On a world wide scale with technological advances, a general level of equality in living standards and life expectancy and absolute freedom of movement you may well be right. But as an economic model for an island with limited space, a rapidly increasing population and a dwindling resource base it is not a sustainable position to argue.
Hence the reason I agree with SO that we need a new model - though he and I might disagree on what that model should be.
Britain has plenty of room. There are vast, barely-productive spaces on the horizontal and minimal development on the vertical.
What resources specifically are you worried about running out of?
Have you looked at the population density recently? Far higher than most of Europe.
What resources specifically are you worried about running out of?
*Eurovision betting* Betfair have a country to score nul points at 7.2 currently. That looks value as considering both Germany and Austria got that score last year.
John Major was still in BBC news today about his insults aimed at specific conservative people. For example "The Justice Secretary should be "embarrassed and ashamed" at his "mischief making" in warning that future expansion of the 28-member bloc is set to heap strain on schools, the NHS and housing as well as raising security concerns."
Has there been a similar level of personal attack from a senior conservative LEAVE supporter against a senior conservative REMAIN supporter?
"Sir" John can be a very silly and petty man but the key thing to always remember is that he played his role in ousting a three time election winner, presided over a repossession crisis across Middle England and ended up taking his Party down it's worst defeat since 1832!
Major's brief but disastrous period as chancellor when he took us into the ERM accompanied by 15% interest rates sowed the seed for his failed premiership. THat early 90's recession was far more vicious in many ways to middle Britain than the 2008 financial meltdown
Indeed it was. In those days in September 1992 Major essentially threw Middle England to the wolves in an attempt this keep the euro dream alive.
As a result his Party was destroyed... And didn't lead an opinion poll for eight years (and didn't get an regular lead in the polls for 13 years)
Because of the way he accepted his defeat people feel inclined to go easy on him but the truth is he was a catastrophe for hit party and the country.
His attachment to the ERM was appalling for those directly effected [I was one], and destroyed the Tory's credibility for economics for almost two decades. No free pass from me.
Yeah, my family was badly damaged by that recession... Fortunately we did manage to keep a roof over our heads but my (late) father had many sleepless nights thinking we'd be put out at any moment.
It was brutal.
One for the historians here:
Is it true that the level of house repossessions in that recession was the greatest mass forced eviction in the UK since the Highland Clearances?
But it is a pyramid scheme. That increasing population to pay for the elderly will themselves get old and have to be paid for. So then you need more immigration or increased birth rate to pay for them. At some point you reach a point where it is unsustainable in terms of job creation, housing and services.
This is a claim the Greens make about economic growth, and it's mistaken.
All the things you mention, job creation, housing and services, are created by people and scale great with more people. If they didn't you'd see everyone moving from the cities to the countryside where you could get more jobs, houses and services.
Growing population continually for the forseeable future, with continually growing living standards, is actually perfectly plausible; Technology and infrastructure continually improve, people get better educated, and more people trading with each other produces more productivity so we can do more with less. The pattern may break in a few generations - for example, it may be that in a century or so more people want to leave Britain that want to come. But it's not really worth optimising for that time, as the circumstances will likely be too different to what we're used to for us to make sensible policies about it.
I disagree. On a world wide scale with technological advances, a general level of equality in living standards and life expectancy and absolute freedom of movement you may well be right. But as an economic model for an island with limited space, a rapidly increasing population and a dwindling resource base it is not a sustainable position to argue.
Hence the reason I agree with SO that we need a new model - though he and I might disagree on what that model should be.
Britain has plenty of room. There are vast, barely-productive spaces on the horizontal and minimal development on the vertical.
What resources specifically are you worried about running out of?
What we are running out of is the ability to administer public services and infrastructure for a growing population. Numbers are increasing, but productivity is not. Therefore each person is simply a mouth to feed at some point in statistical terms.
Unless you raise productivity, and by some distance, importing Labour (to increase GDP) is only delaying the inevitable collapse of public infrastructure.
Britain has plenty of room. There are vast, barely-productive spaces on the horizontal and minimal development on the vertical.
What resources specifically are you worried about running out of?
I disagree on the space issue. Whilst I agree that building up is a possibility it is not something that is at all popular with the public at large. And I certainly don't wish to see more building development across the countryside.
But the point is that whether we reach the point now, in 100 years or in 500 years, it is not s sustainable model indefinitely and we are surely better doing something about that now rather than when it becomes critical.
In terms of resources we are already screwed. The global slowdown over the last few years has masked it but the UK's vast reliance on imports for basic necessities is, again, not sustainable in the long term. It is one of the reasons that (in spite of my ridicule of the AGW crowd) I think renewables are so important. Oil is a wondrous substance and (particularly the North Sea stuff) is far too important to be burning when there are alternatives around.
Thanks. ComRes under Andrew Cooper IMHO has become a bit politically suspect since he returned from Govt. The man is very political for the "wet" Conservatives. Cooper is also the infamous Mr 0.5% chance of Conservatives winning.
Christ, you talk some bollocks. Andrew Cooper doesn't work for ComRes. Lord Cooper works for Populus. But apart from that, excellent post.
ooops. My mishtakessss
Sadly not atypical behaviour from Leavers. Inaccurately smear organisations and people you don't agree with.
I think you missed the ironic smiley from that post TSE, sir.....
I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to editing PB from May 30th through to the 20th of June
IIRC you became rather stressed out the last time you were left in charge for an extended period, indicating that you intended to have a good break from PB.com to enable you to get back into your stride.
[Commonwealth citizens voting in UK elections is] bonkers too.
Well, quite. I assume it's a relic of those countries being ruled from Westminster and nobody has found it politically worthwhile to strip voting rights.
What we are running out of is the ability to administer public services and infrastructure for a growing population.
This isn't true at all, administration scales fine. If you have a problem with it you can add a tier of government, but much of the UK hasn't bothered because there isn't an administrative problem to solve.
Numbers are increasing, but productivity is not. Therefore each person is simply a mouth to feed at some point in statistical terms.
Productivity is measured per person. As you have more people you have more total productivity. There are more mouths to feed, but more people feeding the mouths.
Unless you raise productivity, and by some distance, importing Labour (to increase GDP) is only delaying the inevitable collapse of public infrastructure.
No, public infrastructure generally has great network effects. More people paying for it and using it makes it better. For example, when a tube line is filling up, you can dig another tube line on a slightly different route, which is more convenient for some of the people using the original tube line.
But it is a pyramid scheme. That increasing population to pay for the elderly will themselves get old and have to be paid for. So then you need more immigration or increased birth rate to pay for them. At some point you reach a point where it is unsustainable in terms of job creation, housing and services.
This is a claim the Greens make about economic growth, and it's mistaken.
All the things you mention, job creation, housing and services, are created by people and scale great with more people. If they didn't you'd see everyone moving from the cities to the countryside where you could get more jobs, houses and services.
Growing population continually for the forseeable future, with continually growing living standards, is actually perfectly plausible; Technology and infrastructure continually improve, people get better educated, and more people trading with each other produces more productivity so we can do more with less. The pattern may break in a few generations - for example, it may be that in a century or so more people want to leave Britain that want to come. But it's not really worth optimising for that time, as the circumstances will likely be too different to what we're used to for us to make sensible policies about it.
I disagree. On a world wide scale with technological advances, a general level of equality in living standards and life expectancy and absolute freedom of movement you may well be right. But as an economic model for an island with limited space, a rapidly increasing population and a dwindling resource base it is not a sustainable position to argue.
Hence the reason I agree with SO that we need a new model - though he and I might disagree on what that model should be.
Britain has plenty of room. There are vast, barely-productive spaces on the horizontal and minimal development on the vertical.
What resources specifically are you worried about running out of?
I know people on here laugh at me about it, but the one that really concerns me is water. We got very close to a major meltdown a few years back with the sustained drought we had. If the rain had held back fro a few more months it could have got very bad. And we will get worse droughts in the future. Look at what is happening in California now. It's frightening.
The real problem for Dave and the Remaindermen is that they can't talk about immigration. Can't even utter the word. And ironically, for the side playing Project Fear, it is the one fear they can't play. But their opponents can. And it is the Big One.
There was always a high likelihood that this vote would boil down to "Who controls our borders?" Because there's a large number of people worried that if you don't control your borders, you have ceased to become a sovereign unit. You can't plan for education, health, housing needs. All governments - Labour, Coalition, Tory - have for the past couple of decades refused to acknowledge this increased need, in spite of Osborne's future economic projections requiring it in the millions. But provision will have to be made, piecemeal, just keeping these services at a level of "teetering on the edge of failure". But if you have to provide Paul with health, education, housing, then do you have to rob Peter of say his pension payments? Something has to give. There is currently no honesty with the voters about this whole issue. Hasn't been since at least Blair.
People like to suggest this is about bashing Cameron. Certainly not in my case. I wish him well in most all of his ventures. But his handling of the "renegotiation" itself was woeful, compounded by the over-zealous selling of the turd he presented, and the ongoing ridiculous pronouncements on how if we don't buy his turd, WE"RE ALL GOING TO DIE....
Those who suggest Cameron is a repackaged Heath are wide of the mark, save in one respect. Heath called a vote, seeking clarification on "Who governs Britain?" The British people delivered their raspberry of "Not you!!" Cameron is at grave risk of getting the same resounding raspberry from the voters.
Major tried to scare us yesterday with thinly disguised smears of Waycist!!! That's how desperate things have got. A former Tory PM calling his own names.
The prize economically is to alter the growth pattern so that each job created is much higher in terms of real value. This means higher skilled immigration, with higher productivity the key factor. It will also mean that education in the UK has to be raised to an even higher standard, and modernised to fit the market in tech and industry.
It would also be of extreme value if we stopped pricing ourselves out of the industrial world with ridiculous energy costs, meaning that at least some manufacturing base were allowed to thrive, producing high value work for those with fewer academic skills.
But it is a pyramid scheme. That increasing population to pay for the elderly will themselves get old and have to be paid for. So then you need more immigration or increased birth rate to pay for them. At some point you reach a point where it is unsustainable in terms of job creation, housing and services.
This is a claim the Greens make about economic growth, and it's mistaken.
All the things you mention, job creation, housing and services, are created by people and scale great with more people. If they didn't you'd see everyone moving from the cities to the countryside where you could get more jobs, houses and services.
Growing population continually for the forseeable future, with continually growing living standards, is actually perfectly plausible; Technology and infrastructure continually improve, people get better educated, and more people trading with each other produces more productivity so we can do more with less. The pattern may break in a few generations - for example, it may be that in a century or so more people want to leave Britain that want to come. But it's not really worth optimising for that time, as the circumstances will likely be too different to what we're used to for us to make sensible policies about it.
I disagree. On a world wide scale with technological advances, a general level of equality in living standards and life expectancy and absolute freedom of movement you may well be right. But as an economic model for an island with limited space, a rapidly increasing population and a dwindling resource base it is not a sustainable position to argue.
Hence the reason I agree with SO that we need a new model - though he and I might disagree on what that model should be.
Britain has plenty of room. There are vast, barely-productive spaces on the horizontal and minimal development on the vertical.
What resources specifically are you worried about running out of?
What we are running out of is the ability to administer public services and infrastructure for a growing population. Numbers are increasing, but productivity is not. Therefore each person is simply a mouth to feed at some point in statistical terms.
Unless you raise productivity, and by some distance, importing Labour (to increase GDP) is only delaying the inevitable collapse of public infrastructure.
GDP per head is increasing less quickly than GDP, if indeed GDP per head is increasing at all.
What we are running out of is the ability to administer public services and infrastructure for a growing population.
This isn't true at all, administration scales fine. If you have a problem with it you can add a tier of government, but much of the UK hasn't bothered because there isn't an administrative problem to solve.
Numbers are increasing, but productivity is not. Therefore each person is simply a mouth to feed at some point in statistical terms.
Productivity is measured per person. As you have more people you have more total productivity. There are more mouths to feed, but more people feeding the mouths.
Unless you raise productivity, and by some distance, importing Labour (to increase GDP) is only delaying the inevitable collapse of public infrastructure.
No, public infrastructure generally has great network effects. More people paying for it and using it makes it better. For example, when a tube line is filling up, you can dig another tube line on a slightly different route, which is more convenient for some of the people using the original tube line.
"More total productivity"? What are you talking about? Productivity is measured, by definition, on a per worker or a per worker hour basis. You only get more of it through immigration if the new migrants are more productive than the existing population. Some migrants will be. Some will not.
*Eurovision betting* Betfair have a country to score nul points at 7.2 currently. That looks value as considering both Germany and Austria got that score last year.
Though I believe now to score nul points a country needs fail to be in the top 10 of any country's jury vote and the top 10 of any country's televote. Which should in theory make it much harder to score nul points.
What we are running out of is the ability to administer public services and infrastructure for a growing population.
This isn't true at all, administration scales fine. If you have a problem with it you can add a tier of government, but much of the UK hasn't bothered because there isn't an administrative problem to solve.
Numbers are increasing, but productivity is not. Therefore each person is simply a mouth to feed at some point in statistical terms.
Productivity is measured per person. As you have more people you have more total productivity. There are more mouths to feed, but more people feeding the mouths.
Unless you raise productivity, and by some distance, importing Labour (to increase GDP) is only delaying the inevitable collapse of public infrastructure.
No, public infrastructure generally has great network effects. More people paying for it and using it makes it better. For example, when a tube line is filling up, you can dig another tube line on a slightly different route, which is more convenient for some of the people using the original tube line.
If each person coming in does not raise productivity, then the productivity per head falls. That also tends to suggest that with a progressive tax system then the tax per person falls. However, the public cost (maternity/NHS/Schools etc) does not necessarily fall. You also need to create more highly paid workers to create the infrastructure, but the tax take is not rising significantly enough to balance the extra requirements if the average wage is rising too slowly.
What we are running out of is the ability to administer public services and infrastructure for a growing population.
This isn't true at all, administration scales fine. If you have a problem with it you can add a tier of government, but much of the UK hasn't bothered because there isn't an administrative problem to solve.
Numbers are increasing, but productivity is not. Therefore each person is simply a mouth to feed at some point in statistical terms.
Productivity is measured per person. As you have more people you have more total productivity. There are more mouths to feed, but more people feeding the mouths.
Unless you raise productivity, and by some distance, importing Labour (to increase GDP) is only delaying the inevitable collapse of public infrastructure.
No, public infrastructure generally has great network effects. More people paying for it and using it makes it better. For example, when a tube line is filling up, you can dig another tube line on a slightly different route, which is more convenient for some of the people using the original tube line.
"More total productivity"? What are you talking about? Productivity is measured, by definition, on a per worker or a per worker hour basis. You only get more of it through immigration if the new migrants are more productive than the existing population. Some migrants will be. Some will not.
What I mean by that is that the country produces more stuff. TonyE seems to be fretting that there are going to be more mouths to feed. That's OK as long as there are also more people feeding the mouths, which there are.
Unless you raise productivity, and by some distance, importing Labour (to increase GDP) is only delaying the inevitable collapse of public infrastructure.
No, public infrastructure generally has great network effects. More people paying for it and using it makes it better. For example, when a tube line is filling up, you can dig another tube line on a slightly different route, which is more convenient for some of the people using the original tube line.
But that spending has to happen, and largely, doesn't. The increase in Education and Health provision (once you factor out pay rises) is derisory compared to population growth, we seem to want the supposed benefits of population growth, without paying the costs.
I know people on here laugh at me about it, but the one that really concerns me is water. We got very close to a major meltdown a few years back with the sustained drought we had. If the rain had held back fro a few more months it could have got very bad. And we will get worse droughts in the future. Look at what is happening in California now. It's frightening.
The really funny thing about that is it then rained for 18 months. Not guaranteed to happen again when we need it, but a hose pipe ban in the middle of one of the wettest summers was funny.
What we are running out of is the ability to administer public services and infrastructure for a growing population.
This isn't true at all, administration scales fine. If you have a problem with it you can add a tier of government, but much of the UK hasn't bothered because there isn't an administrative problem to solve.
Numbers are increasing, but productivity is not. Therefore each person is simply a mouth to feed at some point in statistical terms.
Productivity is measured per person. As you have more people you have more total productivity. There are more mouths to feed, but more people feeding the mouths.
Unless you raise productivity, and by some distance, importing Labour (to increase GDP) is only delaying the inevitable collapse of public infrastructure.
No, public infrastructure generally has great network effects. More people paying for it and using it makes it better. For example, when a tube line is filling up, you can dig another tube line on a slightly different route, which is more convenient for some of the people using the original tube line.
"More total productivity"? What are you talking about? Productivity is measured, by definition, on a per worker or a per worker hour basis. You only get more of it through immigration if the new migrants are more productive than the existing population. Some migrants will be. Some will not.
What I mean by that is that the country produces more stuff. TonyE seems to be fretting that there are going to be more mouths to feed. That's OK as long as there are also more people feeding the mouths, which there are.
Only if those more people generate enough economic activity to cover the total economic cost of those more mouths, does it ?
But it is a pyramid scheme. That increasing population to pay for the elderly will themselves get old and have to be paid for. So then you need more immigration or increased birth rate to pay for them. At some point you reach a point where it is unsustainable in terms of job creation, housing and services.
This is a claim the Greens make about economic growth, and it's mistaken.
All the things you mention, job creation, housing and services, are created by people and scale great with more people. If they didn't you'd see everyone moving from the cities to the countryside where you could get more jobs, houses and services.
Growing population continually for the forseeable future, with continually growing living standards, is actually perfectly plausible; Technology and infrastructure continually improve, people get better educated, and more people trading with each other produces more productivity so we can do more with less. The pattern may break in a few generations - for example, it may be that in a century or so more people want to leave Britain that want to come. But it's not really worth optimising for that time, as the circumstances will likely be too different to what we're used to for us to make sensible policies about it.
I disagree. On a world wide scale with technological advances, a general level of equality in living standards and life expectancy and absolute freedom of movement you may well be right. But as an economic model for an island with limited space, a rapidly increasing population and a dwindling resource base it is not a sustainable position to argue.
Hence the reason I agree with SO that we need a new model - though he and I might disagree on what that model should be.
Britain has plenty of room. There are vast, barely-productive spaces on the horizontal and minimal development on the vertical.
What resources specifically are you worried about running out of?
I know people on here laugh at me about it, but the one that really concerns me is water. We got very close to a major meltdown a few years back with the sustained drought we had. If the rain had held back fro a few more months it could have got very bad. And we will get worse droughts in the future. Look at what is happening in California now. It's frightening.
I agree. I have done a fair bit of consultancy work with water companies and the general lack of sustainable long term water resources is frightening. Sod the HS2. We should be building a water grid to take water from the North West to the South and East of the country.
What we are running out of is the ability to administer public services and infrastructure for a growing population.
This isn't true at all, administration scales fine. If you have a problem with it you can add a tier of government, but much of the UK hasn't bothered because there isn't an administrative problem to solve.
Numbers are increasing, but productivity is not. Therefore each person is simply a mouth to feed at some point in statistical terms.
Productivity is measured per person. As you have more people you have more total productivity. There are more mouths to feed, but more people feeding the mouths.
Unless you raise productivity, and by some distance, importing Labour (to increase GDP) is only delaying the inevitable collapse of public infrastructure.
No, public infrastructure generally has great network effects. More people paying for it and using it makes it better. For example, when a tube line is filling up, you can dig another tube line on a slightly different route, which is more convenient for some of the people using the original tube line.
To be honest Edmund, what you write often seems to make sense in theory. The sort of thing you might read in an economics textbook. But the real world is about what happens in practice; and because the real world is inhabited by humans, we have to take human views into account.
Digging a new tube line, to buy into your example, would take about 30 years.
And the money from more people being on an already bursting network will likely not be properly assigned to that project.
So by the time any new line was complete, we'd already need a new one and have probably taken on far too much debt.
Rinse and repeat. Therein lies the problem of the unlimited growth fallacy in modern liberal democracies.
Miss Plato, quite. Playing the race card over immigration is very New Labour. It's also the kind of bullshit that leads to things like cultural sensitivity ensuring nothing happened in Rotherham.
What we are running out of is the ability to administer public services and infrastructure for a growing population.
This isn't true at all, administration scales fine. If you have a problem with it you can add a tier of government, but much of the UK hasn't bothered because there isn't an administrative problem to solve.
Numbers are increasing, but productivity is not. Therefore each person is simply a mouth to feed at some point in statistical terms.
Productivity is measured per person. As you have more people you have more total productivity. There are more mouths to feed, but more people feeding the mouths.
Unless you raise productivity, and by some distance, importing Labour (to increase GDP) is only delaying the inevitable collapse of public infrastructure.
No, public infrastructure generally has great network effects. More people paying for it and using it makes it better. For example, when a tube line is filling up, you can dig another tube line on a slightly different route, which is more convenient for some of the people using the original tube line.
"More total productivity"? What are you talking about? Productivity is measured, by definition, on a per worker or a per worker hour basis. You only get more of it through immigration if the new migrants are more productive than the existing population. Some migrants will be. Some will not.
What I mean by that is that the country produces more stuff. TonyE seems to be fretting that there are going to be more mouths to feed. That's OK as long as there are also more people feeding the mouths, which there are.
Only if those more people generate enough economic activity to cover the total economic cost of those more mouths, does it ?
The real problem for Dave and the Remaindermen is that they can't talk about immigration. Can't even utter the word. And ironically, for the side playing Project Fear, it is the one fear they can't play. But their opponents can. And it is the Big One.
There was always a high likelihood that this vote would boil down to "Who controls our borders?" Because there's a large number of people worried that if you don't control your borders, you have ceased to become a sovereign unit. You can't plan for education, health, housing needs. All governments - Labour, Coalition, Tory - have for the past couple of decades refused to acknowledge this increased need, in spite of Osborne's future economic projections requiring it in the millions. But provision will have to be made, piecemeal, just keeping these services at a level of "teetering on the edge of failure". But if you have to provide Paul with health, education, housing, then do you have to rob Peter of say his pension payments? Something has to give. There is currently no honesty with the voters about this whole issue. Hasn't been since at least Blair.
People like to suggest this is about bashing Cameron. Certainly not in my case. I wish him well in most all of his ventures. But his handling of the "renegotiation" itself was woeful, compounded by the over-zealous selling of the turd he presented, and the ongoing ridiculous pronouncements on how if we don't buy his turd, WE"RE ALL GOING TO DIE....
Those who suggest Cameron is a repackaged Heath are wide of the mark, save in one respect. Heath called a vote, seeking clarification on "Who governs Britain?" The British people delivered their raspberry of "Not you!!" Cameron is at grave risk of getting the same resounding raspberry from the voters.
Once again MarqueeMark comes up with the post of the day. The upcoming polls could prove most interesting.
What we are running out of is the ability to administer public services and infrastructure for a growing population.
This isn't true at all, administration scales fine. If you have a problem with it you can add a tier of government, but much of the UK hasn't bothered because there isn't an administrative problem to solve.
Numbers are increasing, but productivity is not. Therefore each person is simply a mouth to feed at some point in statistical terms.
Productivity is measured per person. As you have more people you have more total productivity. There are more mouths to feed, but more people feeding the mouths.
Unless you raise productivity, and by some distance, importing Labour (to increase GDP) is only delaying the inevitable collapse of public infrastructure.
No, public infrastructure generally has great network effects. More people paying for it and using it makes it better. For example, when a tube line is filling up, you can dig another tube line on a slightly different route, which is more convenient for some of the people using the original tube line.
"More total productivity"? What are you talking about? Productivity is measured, by definition, on a per worker or a per worker hour basis. You only get more of it through immigration if the new migrants are more productive than the existing population. Some migrants will be. Some will not.
What I mean by that is that the country produces more stuff. TonyE seems to be fretting that there are going to be more mouths to feed. That's OK as long as there are also more people feeding the mouths, which there are.
Only if those more people generate enough economic activity to cover the total economic cost of those more mouths, does it ?
Correct. Which they do, and then some.
If productivity is falling then clearly they do not.
The real problem for Dave and the Remaindermen is that they can't talk about immigration. Can't even utter the word. And ironically, for the side playing Project Fear, it is the one fear they can't play. But their opponents can. And it is the Big One.
There was always a high likelihood that this vote would boil down to "Who controls our borders?" Because there's a large number of people worried that if you don't control your borders, you have ceased to become a sovereign unit. You can't plan for education, health, housing needs. All governments - Labour, Coalition, Tory - have for the past couple of decades refused to acknowledge this increased need, in spite of Osborne's future economic projections requiring it in the millions. But provision will have to be made, piecemeal, just keeping these services at a level of "teetering on the edge of failure". But if you have to provide Paul with health, education, housing, then do you have to rob Peter of say his pension payments? Something has to give. There is currently no honesty with the voters about this whole issue. Hasn't been since at least Blair.
People like to suggest this is about bashing Cameron. Certainly not in my case. I wish him well in most all of his ventures. But his handling of the "renegotiation" itself was woeful, compounded by the over-zealous selling of the turd he presented, and the ongoing ridiculous pronouncements on how if we don't buy his turd, WE"RE ALL GOING TO DIE....
Those who suggest Cameron is a repackaged Heath are wide of the mark, save in one respect. Heath called a vote, seeking clarification on "Who governs Britain?" The British people delivered their raspberry of "Not you!!" Cameron is at grave risk of getting the same resounding raspberry from the voters.
Once again MarqueeMark comes up with the post of the day. The upcoming polls could prove most interesting.
What we are running out of is the ability to administer public services and infrastructure for a growing population.
This isn't true at all, administration scales fine. If you have a problem with it you can add a tier of government, but much of the UK hasn't bothered because there isn't an administrative problem to solve.
Numbers are increasing, but productivity is not. Therefore each person is simply a mouth to feed at some point in statistical terms.
Productivity is measured per person. As you have more people you have more total productivity. There are more mouths to feed, but more people feeding the mouths.
Unless you raise productivity, and by some distance, importing Labour (to increase GDP) is only delaying the inevitable collapse of public infrastructure.
No, public infrastructure generally has great network effects. More people paying for it and using it makes it better. For example, when a tube line is filling up, you can dig another tube line on a slightly different route, which is more convenient for some of the people using the original tube line.
"More total productivity"? What are you talking about? Productivity is measured, by definition, on a per worker or a per worker hour basis. You only get more of it through immigration if the new migrants are more productive than the existing population. Some migrants will be. Some will not.
What I mean by that is that the country produces more stuff. TonyE seems to be fretting that there are going to be more mouths to feed. That's OK as long as there are also more people feeding the mouths, which there are.
Only if those more people generate enough economic activity to cover the total economic cost of those more mouths, does it ?
Correct. Which they do, and then some.
Including the health, education, benefits, state pensions etc, and other their non-earning dependents ?
Thanks. ComRes under Andrew Cooper IMHO has become a bit politically suspect since he returned from Govt. The man is very political for the "wet" Conservatives. Cooper is also the infamous Mr 0.5% chance of Conservatives winning.
Christ, you talk some bollocks. Andrew Cooper doesn't work for ComRes. Lord Cooper works for Populus. But apart from that, excellent post.
ooops. My mishtakessss
Sadly not atypical behaviour from Leavers. Inaccurately smear organisations and people you don't agree with.
I think you missed the ironic smiley from that post TSE, sir.....
I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to editing PB from May 30th through to the 20th of June
IIRC you became rather stressed out the last time you were left in charge for an extended period, indicating that you intended to have a good break from PB.com to enable you to get back into your stride.
Stressed wasn't the right word. Last major stint was covering Corbyn's election as leader.
That's something I still struggle to comprehend. I wanted to write threads like 'Dear Labour are you phuqing mad?'
This stint will cover the business end of the referendum campaign, which should be exciting.
That said I shall be fleeing the country shortly after the referendum for an overseas holiday, whatever the outcome.
What we are running out of is the ability to administer public services and infrastructure for a growing population.
This isn't true at all, administration scales fine. If you have a problem with it you can add a tier of government, but much of the UK hasn't bothered because there isn't an administrative problem to solve.
Numbers are increasing, but productivity is not. Therefore each person is simply a mouth to feed at some point in statistical terms.
Productivity is measured per person. As you have more people you have more total productivity. There are more mouths to feed, but more people feeding the mouths.
Unless you raise productivity, and by some distance, importing Labour (to increase GDP) is only delaying the inevitable collapse of public infrastructure.
No, public infrastructure generally has great network effects. More people paying for it and using it makes it better. For example, when a tube line is filling up, you can dig another tube line on a slightly different route, which is more convenient for some of the people using the original tube line.
"More total productivity"? What are you talking about? Productivity is measured, by definition, on a per worker or a per worker hour basis. You only get more of it through immigration if the new migrants are more productive than the existing population. Some migrants will be. Some will not.
What I mean by that is that the country produces more stuff. TonyE seems to be fretting that there are going to be more mouths to feed. That's OK as long as there are also more people feeding the mouths, which there are.
Only if those more people generate enough economic activity to cover the total economic cost of those more mouths, does it ?
This is the point at which the studies seem not to be conclusive - and I would suggest that the logic runs out very quickly after about 25-30 years (a second generation) -as the health of the noughties immigrant 'spike' declines and their cost increases. Then you have to import more 'GDP'.
Raise productivity and you can cope with the spike, but that means a higher skilled workforce .
What we are running out of is the ability to administer public services and infrastructure for a growing population.
This isn't true at all, administration scales fine. If you have a problem with it you can add a tier of government, but much of the UK hasn't bothered because there isn't an administrative problem to solve.
Numbers are increasing, but productivity is not. Therefore each person is simply a mouth to feed at some point in statistical terms.
Productivity is measured per person. As you have more people you have more total productivity. There are more mouths to feed, but more people feeding the mouths.
Unless you raise productivity, and by some distance, importing Labour (to increase GDP) is only delaying the inevitable collapse of public infrastructure.
No, public infrastructure generally has great network effects. More people paying for it and using it makes it better. For example, when a tube line is filling up, you can dig another tube line on a slightly different route, which is more convenient for some of the people using the original tube line.
"More total productivity"? What are you talking about? Productivity is measured, by definition, on a per worker or a per worker hour basis. You only get more of it through immigration if the new migrants are more productive than the existing population. Some migrants will be. Some will not.
What I mean by that is that the country produces more stuff. TonyE seems to be fretting that there are going to be more mouths to feed. That's OK as long as there are also more people feeding the mouths, which there are.
Only if those more people generate enough economic activity to cover the total economic cost of those more mouths, does it ?
Correct. Which they do, and then some.
No, they don't. Because there is no pension pot. Until we get into the position of having people provide for their own retirement, we'll forever be struggling to juggle the costs of past liabilities by short changing current investment.
You know, like not having enough money to build a tube line because we're paying the pensions of people who retire today.
What we are running out of is the ability to administer public services and infrastructure for a growing population.
This isn't true at all, administration scales fine. If you have a problem with it you can add a tier of government, but much of the UK hasn't bothered because there isn't an administrative problem to solve.
Numbers are increasing, but productivity is not. Therefore each person is simply a mouth to feed at some point in statistical terms.
Productivity is measured per person. As you have more people you have more total productivity. There are more mouths to feed, but more people feeding the mouths.
Unless you raise productivity, and by some distance, importing Labour (to increase GDP) is only delaying the inevitable collapse of public infrastructure.
No, public infrastructure generally has great network effects. More people paying for it and using it makes it better. For example, when a tube line is filling up, you can dig another tube line on a slightly different route, which is more convenient for some of the people using the original tube line.
"More total productivity"? What are you talking about? Productivity is measured, by definition, on a per worker or a per worker hour basis. You only get more of it through immigration if the new migrants are more productive than the existing population. Some migrants will be. Some will not.
What I mean by that is that the country produces more stuff. TonyE seems to be fretting that there are going to be more mouths to feed. That's OK as long as there are also more people feeding the mouths, which there are.
Only if those more people generate enough economic activity to cover the total economic cost of those more mouths, does it ?
Correct. Which they do, and then some.
Some do, some do not. The majority of people in this country are net takers, absorbing more in government services and benefits than they pay in taxes. A great many migrants are below the cut off.
But it is a pyramid scheme. That increasing population to pay for the elderly will themselves get old and have to be paid for. So then you need more immigration or increased birth rate to pay for them. At some point you reach a point where it is unsustainable in terms of job creation, housing and services.
This is a claim the Greens make about economic growth, and it's mistaken.
All the things you mention, job creation, housing and services, are created by people and scale great with more people. If they didn't you'd see everyone moving from the cities to the countryside where you could get more jobs, houses and services.
Growing population continually for the forseeable future, with continually growing living standards, is actually perfectly plausible; Technology and infrastructure continually improve, people get better educated, and more people trading with each other produces more productivity so we can do more with less. The pattern may break in a few generations - for example, it may be that in a century or so more people want to leave Britain that want to come. But it's not really worth optimising for that time, as the circumstances will likely be too different to what we're used to for us to make sensible policies about it.
I disagree. On a world wide scale with technological advances, a general level of equality in living standards and life expectancy and absolute freedom of movement you may well be right. But as an economic model for an island with limited space, a rapidly increasing population and a dwindling resource base it is not a sustainable position to argue.
Hence the reason I agree with SO that we need a new model - though he and I might disagree on what that model should be.
Britain has plenty of room. There are vast, barely-productive spaces on the horizontal and minimal development on the vertical.
What resources specifically are you worried about running out of?
Britain does indeed have plenty of space. Unfortunately it is concentrated in the hilly, wet and windy celtic fringes. Lowland England where most people live is becoming very crowded esp in the South East. Incidentally my solicitor reports that new build flats in a certain Kentish town are almost exclusively being acquired by people with foreign names.
Thanks. ComRes under Andrew Cooper IMHO has become a bit politically suspect since he returned from Govt. The man is very political for the "wet" Conservatives. Cooper is also the infamous Mr 0.5% chance of Conservatives winning.
Christ, you talk some bollocks. Andrew Cooper doesn't work for ComRes. Lord Cooper works for Populus. But apart from that, excellent post.
ooops. My mishtakessss
Sadly not atypical behaviour from Leavers. Inaccurately smear organisations and people you don't agree with.
I think you missed the ironic smiley from that post TSE, sir.....
I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to editing PB from May 30th through to the 20th of June
IIRC you became rather stressed out the last time you were left in charge for an extended period, indicating that you intended to have a good break from PB.com to enable you to get back into your stride.
Stressed wasn't the right word. Last major stint was covering Corbyn's election as leader.
That's something I still struggle to comprehend. I wanted to write threads like 'Dear Labour are you phuqing mad?'
This stint will cover the business end of the referendum campaign, which should be exciting.
That said I shall be fleeing the country shortly after the referendum for an overseas holiday, whatever the outcome.
I assume you expect not to come back in the event of a Leave victory as you would be returning to a cindered wasteland with emaciated blind children scrambling amongst the ruins in search of some poor scrap of food.
The real problem for Dave and the Remaindermen is that they can't talk about immigration. Can't even utter the word. And ironically, for the side playing Project Fear, it is the one fear they can't play. But their opponents can. And it is the Big One.
There was always a high likelihood that this vote would boil down to "Who controls our borders?" Because there's a large number of people worried that if you don't control your borders, you have ceased to become a sovereign unit. You can't plan for education, health, housing needs. All governments - Labour, Coalition, Tory - have for the past couple of decades refused to acknowledge this increased need, in spite of Osborne's future economic projections requiring it in the millions. But provision will have to be made, piecemeal, just keeping these services at a level of "teetering on the edge of failure". But if you have to provide Paul with health, education, housing, then do you have to rob Peter of say his pension payments? Something has to give. There is currently no honesty with the voters about this whole issue. Hasn't been since at least Blair.
People like to suggest this is about bashing Cameron. Certainly not in my case. I wish him well in most all of his ventures. But his handling of the "renegotiation" itself was woeful, compounded by the over-zealous selling of the turd he presented, and the ongoing ridiculous pronouncements on how if we don't buy his turd, WE"RE ALL GOING TO DIE....
Those who suggest Cameron is a repackaged Heath are wide of the mark, save in one respect. Heath called a vote, seeking clarification on "Who governs Britain?" The British people delivered their raspberry of "Not you!!" Cameron is at grave risk of getting the same resounding raspberry from the voters.
Cameron has spent six years preaching a narrative that high rates of immigration from the EU are destructive. No wonder, then, that people believe it is a real threat. The problem is that, as you observe, his government's entire economic policy - which has been cheered to the rafters by most posters on here - is predicated on high immigration. Cameron and his ministers - whether Remainers or Leavers - are hypocrites. He deserves all he is getting and all that he will get in the future.
Thanks. ComRes under Andrew Cooper IMHO has become a bit politically suspect since he returned from Govt. The man is very political for the "wet" Conservatives. Cooper is also the infamous Mr 0.5% chance of Conservatives winning.
Christ, you talk some bollocks. Andrew Cooper doesn't work for ComRes. Lord Cooper works for Populus. But apart from that, excellent post.
ooops. My mishtakessss
Sadly not atypical behaviour from Leavers. Inaccurately smear organisations and people you don't agree with.
I think you missed the ironic smiley from that post TSE, sir.....
I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to editing PB from May 30th through to the 20th of June
IIRC you became rather stressed out the last time you were left in charge for an extended period, indicating that you intended to have a good break from PB.com to enable you to get back into your stride.
Stressed wasn't the right word. Last major stint was covering Corbyn's election as leader.
That's something I still struggle to comprehend. I wanted to write threads like 'Dear Labour are you phuqing mad?'
This stint will cover the business end of the referendum campaign, which should be exciting.
That said I shall be fleeing the country shortly after the referendum for an overseas holiday, whatever the outcome.
You're obviously confident of there being a REMAIN vote since a LEAVE vote means you won't get let back in...!
The real problem for Dave and the Remaindermen is that they can't talk about immigration. Can't even utter the word. And ironically, for the side playing Project Fear, it is the one fear they can't play. But their opponents can. And it is the Big One.
There was always a high likelihood that this vote would boil down to "Who controls our borders?" Because there's a large number of people worried that if you don't control your borders, you have ceased to become a sovereign unit. You can't plan for education, health, housing needs. All governments - Labour, Coalition, Tory - have for the past couple of decades refused to acknowledge this increased need, in spite of Osborne's future economic projections requiring it in the millions. But provision will have to be made, piecemeal, just keeping these services at a level of "teetering on the edge of failure". But if you have to provide Paul with health, education, housing, then do you have to rob Peter of say his pension payments? Something has to give. There is currently no honesty with the voters about this whole issue. Hasn't been since at least Blair.
People like to suggest this is about bashing Cameron. Certainly not in my case. I wish him well in most all of his ventures. But his handling of the "renegotiation" itself was woeful, compounded by the over-zealous selling of the turd he presented, and the ongoing ridiculous pronouncements on how if we don't buy his turd, WE"RE ALL GOING TO DIE....
Those who suggest Cameron is a repackaged Heath are wide of the mark, save in one respect. Heath called a vote, seeking clarification on "Who governs Britain?" The British people delivered their raspberry of "Not you!!" Cameron is at grave risk of getting the same resounding raspberry from the voters.
Cameron has spent six years preaching a narrative that high rates of immigration from the EU are destructive. No wonder, then, that people believe it is a real threat. The problem is that, as you observe, his government's entire economic policy - which has been cheered to the rafters by most posters on here - is predicated on high immigration. Cameron and his ministers - whether Remainers or Leavers - are hypocrites. He deserves all he is getting and all that he will get in the future.
The problems seems to be that they have only recently had to come clean, finally, that their economic program requires another 3m+ immigrants over the next 15 years, I think that might have caused a certain amount of sputtering in the tea cups of middle England.
Thanks. ComRes under Andrew Cooper IMHO has become a bit politically suspect since he returned from Govt. The man is very political for the "wet" Conservatives. Cooper is also the infamous Mr 0.5% chance of Conservatives winning.
Christ, you talk some bollocks. Andrew Cooper doesn't work for ComRes. Lord Cooper works for Populus. But apart from that, excellent post.
ooops. My mishtakessss
Sadly not atypical behaviour from Leavers. Inaccurately smear organisations and people you don't agree with.
I think you missed the ironic smiley from that post TSE, sir.....
I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to editing PB from May 30th through to the 20th of June
IIRC you became rather stressed out the last time you were left in charge for an extended period, indicating that you intended to have a good break from PB.com to enable you to get back into your stride.
Stressed wasn't the right word. Last major stint was covering Corbyn's election as leader.
That's something I still struggle to comprehend. I wanted to write threads like 'Dear Labour are you phuqing mad?'
This stint will cover the business end of the referendum campaign, which should be exciting.
That said I shall be fleeing the country shortly after the referendum for an overseas holiday, whatever the outcome.
I assume you expect not to come back in the event of a Leave victory as you would be returning to a cindered wasteland with emaciated blind children scrambling amongst the ruins in search of some poor scrap of food.
Chortle.
Stepping back a bit, given the natural strengths of proponents (government resources, establishment resources, the status quo bias) it really shows how poor the remain strategy has been for us to be joking about things like this and seeing polls at pretty much level pegging.
But it is a pyramid scheme. That increasing population to pay for the elderly will themselves get old and have to be paid for. So then you need more immigration or increased birth rate to pay for them. At some point you reach a point where it is unsustainable in terms of job creation, housing and services.
This is a claim the Greens make about economic growth, and it's mistaken.
All the things you mention, job creation, housing and services, are created by people and scale great with more people. If they didn't you'd see everyone moving from the cities to the countryside where you could get more jobs, houses and services.
Growing population continually for the forseeable future, with continually growing living be too different to what we're used to for us to make sensible policies about it.
I disagree. On a world wide scale with technological advances, a general level of equality in living standards and life expectancy and absolute freedom of movement you may well be right. But as an economic model for an island with limited space, a rapidly increasing population and a dwindling resource base it is not a sustainable position to argue.
Hence the reason I agree with SO that we need a new model - though he and I might disagree on what that model should be.
Britain has plenty of room. There are vast, barely-productive spaces on the horizontal and minimal development on the vertical.
What resources specifically are you worried about running out of?
I know people on here laugh at me about it, but the one that really concerns me is water. We got very close to a major meltdown a few years back with the sustained drought we had. If the rain had held back fro a few more months it could have got very bad. And we will get worse droughts in the future. Look at what is happening in California now. It's frightening.
I agree. I have done a fair bit of consultancy work with water companies and the general lack of sustainable long term water resources is frightening. Sod the HS2. We should be building a water grid to take water from the North West to the South and East of the country.
Could not agree more. Lack of HS2 is not an existential problem. Lack of H20 is.
Thanks. ComRes under Andrew Cooper IMHO has become a bit politically suspect since he returned from Govt. The man is very political for the "wet" Conservatives. Cooper is also the infamous Mr 0.5% chance of Conservatives winning.
Christ, you talk some bollocks. Andrew Cooper doesn't work for ComRes. Lord Cooper works for Populus. But apart from that, excellent post.
ooops. My mishtakessss
Sadly not atypical behaviour from Leavers. Inaccurately smear organisations and people you don't agree with.
I think you missed the ironic smiley from that post TSE, sir.....
I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to editing PB from May 30th through to the 20th of June
IIRC you became rather stressed out the last time you were left in charge for an extended period, indicating that you intended to have a good break from PB.com to enable you to get back into your stride.
Stressed wasn't the right word. Last major stint was covering Corbyn's election as leader.
That's something I still struggle to comprehend. I wanted to write threads like 'Dear Labour are you phuqing mad?'
This stint will cover the business end of the referendum campaign, which should be exciting.
That said I shall be fleeing the country shortly after the referendum for an overseas holiday, whatever the outcome.
You're obviously confident of there being a REMAIN vote since a LEAVE vote means you won't get let back in...!
I said earlier on this week, I'm more confident of a Remain victory than I was of the Tories getting most seats last year.
If a Brexit UK won't let me back in, I shall use all my Francophile charm and move to France.
The real problem for Dave and the Remaindermen is that they can't talk about immigration. Can't even utter the word. And ironically, for the side playing Project Fear, it is the one fear they can't play. But their opponents can. And it is the Big One.
There was always a high likelihood that this vote would boil down to "Who controls our borders?" Because there's a large number of people worried that if you don't control your borders, you have ceased to become a sovereign unit. You can't plan for education, health, housing needs. All governments - Labour, Coalition, Tory - have for the past couple of decades refused to acknowledge this increased need, in spite of Osborne's future economic projections requiring it in the millions. But provision will have to be made, piecemeal, just keeping these services at a level of "teetering on the edge of failure". But if you have to provide Paul with health, education, housing, then do you have to rob Peter of say his pension payments? Something has to give. There is currently no honesty with the voters about this whole issue. Hasn't been since at least Blair.
People like to suggest this is about bashing Cameron. Certainly not in my case. I wish him well in most all of his ventures. But his handling of the "renegotiation" itself was woeful, compounded by the over-zealous selling of the turd he presented, and the ongoing ridiculous pronouncements on how if we don't buy his turd, WE"RE ALL GOING TO DIE....
Those who suggest Cameron is a repackaged Heath are wide of the mark, save in one respect. Heath called a vote, seeking clarification on "Who governs Britain?" The British people delivered their raspberry of "Not you!!" Cameron is at grave risk of getting the same resounding raspberry from the voters.
What we are running out of is the ability to administer public services and infrastructure for a growing population.
This isn't true at all, administration scales fine. If you have a problem with it you can add a tier of government, but much of the UK hasn't bothered because there isn't an administrative problem to solve.
Numbers are increasing, but productivity is not. Therefore each person is simply a mouth to feed at some point in statistical terms.
Productivity is measured per person. As you have more people you have more total productivity. There are more mouths to feed, but more people feeding the mouths.
Unless you raise productivity, and by some distance, importing Labour (to increase GDP) is only delaying the inevitable collapse of public infrastructure.
No, public infrastructure generally has great network effects. More people paying for it and using it makes it better. For example, when a tube line is filling up, you can dig another tube line on a slightly different route, which is more convenient for some of the people using the original tube line.
To be honest Edmund, what you write often seems to make sense in theory. The sort of thing you might read in an economics textbook. But the real world is about what happens in practice; and because the real world is inhabited by humans, we have to take human views into account.
Digging a new tube line, to buy into your example, would take about 30 years.
Britain isn't great at infrastructure but it's not remotely as bad as you make out. There are all kinds of infrastructure projects in the UK sit on hold for decades because there isn't enough money to build them, then once there's enough demand (and enough taxpayers to fund it) it gets built. Crossrail and its predecessors were discussed forever. There was never enough money to build it until the high-immigration 2000s. It is actually happening, and it is actually going to open.
What we are running out of is the ability to administer public services and infrastructure for a growing population.
This isn't true at all, administration scales fine. If you have a problem with it you can add a tier of government, but much of the UK hasn't bothered because there isn't an administrative problem to solve.
Numbers are increasing, but productivity is not. Therefore each person is simply a mouth to feed at some point in statistical terms.
Productivity is measured per person. As you have more people you have more total productivity. There are more mouths to feed, but more people feeding the mouths.
Unless you raise productivity, and by some distance, importing Labour (to increase GDP) is only delaying the inevitable collapse of public infrastructure.
No, public infrastructure generally has great network effects. More people paying for it and using it makes it better. For example, when a tube line is filling up, you can dig another tube line on a slightly different route, which is more convenient for some of the people using the original tube line.
"More total productivity"? What are you talking about? Productivity is measured, by definition, on a per worker or a per worker hour basis. You only get more of it through immigration if the new migrants are more productive than the existing population. Some migrants will be. Some will not.
What I mean by that is that the country produces more stuff. TonyE seems to be fretting that there are going to be more mouths to feed. That's OK as long as there are also more people feeding the mouths, which there are.
Only if those more people generate enough economic activity to cover the total economic cost of those more mouths, does it ?
Correct. Which they do, and then some.
Some do, some do not. The majority of people in this country are net takers, absorbing more in government services and benefits than they pay in taxes. A great many migrants are below the cut off.
Strangely, non-EU countries often use variations of a points system so that they end up with skilled, multi-lingual, useful, economically productive immigrants who are likely to integrate. For some strange reason the pro-EU tendency feels that bringing in vast numbers of badly educated, barely literate non-English speakers is a good idea to support our economic future.
What we are running out of is the ability to administer public services and infrastructure for a growing population.
This isn't true at all, administration scales fine. If you have a problem with it you can add a tier of government, but much of the UK hasn't bothered because there isn't an administrative problem to solve.
Unless you raise productivity, and by some distance, importing Labour (to increase GDP) is only delaying the inevitable collapse of public infrastructure.
No, public infrastructure generally has great network effects. More people paying for it and using it makes it better. For example, when a tube line is filling up, you can dig another tube line on a slightly different route, which is more convenient for some of the people using the original tube line.
To be honest Edmund, what you write often seems to make sense in theory. The sort of thing you might read in an economics textbook. But the real world is about what happens in practice; and because the real world is inhabited by humans, we have to take human views into account.
Digging a new tube line, to buy into your example, would take about 30 years.
And the money from more people being on an already bursting network will likely not be properly assigned to that project.
So by the time any new line was complete, we'd already need a new one and have probably taken on far too much debt.
Rinse and repeat. Therein lies the problem of the unlimited growth fallacy in modern liberal democracies.
The virtual monoculture of Japan makes for interesting theorising, and that's about it when it comes to life in Britain.
But it is a pyramid scheme. That increasing population to pay for the elderly will themselves get old and have to be paid for. So then you need more immigration or increased birth rate to pay for them. At some point you reach a point where it is unsustainable in terms of job creation, housing and services.
This is a claim the Greens make about economic growth, and it's mistaken.
All the things you mention, job creation, housing and services, are created by people and scale great with more people. If they didn't you'd see everyone moving from the cities to the countryside where you could get more jobs, houses and services.
Growing population continually for the forseeable future, with continually growing living be too different to what we're used to for us to make sensible policies about it.
I disagree. On a world wide scale with technological advances, a general level of equality in living standards and life expectancy and absolute freedom of movement you may well be right. But as an economic model for an island with limited space, a rapidly increasing population and a dwindling resource base it is not a sustainable position to argue.
Hence the reason I agree with SO that we need a new model - though he and I might disagree on what that model should be.
Britain has plenty of room. There are vast, barely-productive spaces on the horizontal and minimal development on the vertical.
What resources specifically are you worried about running out of?
I know people on here laugh at me about it, but the one that really concerns me is water. We got very close to a major meltdown a few years back with the sustained drought we had. If the rain had held back fro a few more months it could have got very bad. And we will get worse droughts in the future. Look at what is happening in California now. It's frightening.
I agree. I have done a fair bit of consultancy work with water companies and the general lack of sustainable long term water resources is frightening. Sod the HS2. We should be building a water grid to take water from the North West to the South and East of the country.
Could not agree more. Lack of HS2 is not an existential problem. Lack of H20 is.
I once read that a national water grid would be prohibitively expensive, and it makes more sense to build more reservoirs, or even desalinization plants, in the south.
The real problem for Dave and the Remaindermen is that they can't talk about immigration. Can't even utter the word. And ironically, for the side playing Project Fear, it is the one fear they can't play. But their opponents can. And it is the Big One.
There was always a high likelihood that this vote would boil down to "Who controls our rob Peter of say his pension payments? Something has to give. There is currently no honesty with the voters about this whole issue. Hasn't been since at least Blair.
People like to suggest this is about bashing Cameron. Certainly not in my case. I wish him well in most all of his ventures. But his handling of the "renegotiation" itself was woeful, compounded by the over-zealous selling of the turd he presented, and the ongoing ridiculous pronouncements on how if we don't buy his turd, WE"RE ALL GOING TO DIE....
Those who suggest Cameron is a repackaged Heath are wide of the mark, save in one respect. Heath called a vote, seeking clarification on "Who governs Britain?" The British people delivered their raspberry of "Not you!!" Cameron is at grave risk of getting the same resounding raspberry from the voters.
Cameron has spent six years preaching a narrative that high rates of immigration from the EU are destructive. No wonder, then, that people believe it is a real threat. The problem is that, as you observe, his government's entire economic policy - which has been cheered to the rafters by most posters on here - is predicated on high immigration. Cameron and his ministers - whether Remainers or Leavers - are hypocrites. He deserves all he is getting and all that he will get in the future.
The problems seems to be that they have only recently had to come clean, finally, that their economic program requires another 3m+ immigrants over the next 15 years, I think that might have caused a certain amount of sputtering in the tea cups of middle England.
It's been there in black and white since the beginning, as a few of us have pointed out. Another_Richard has been very vocal about it.
The real problem for Dave and the Remaindermen is that they can't talk about immigration. Can't even utter the word. And ironically, for the side playing Project Fear, it is the one fear they can't play. But their opponents can. And it is the Big One.
There was always a high likelihood that this vote would boil down to "Who controls our rob Peter of say his pension payments? Something has to give. There is currently no honesty with the voters about this whole issue. Hasn't been since at least Blair.
People like to suggest this is about bashing Cameron. Certainly not in my case. I wish him well in most all of his ventures. But his handling of the "renegotiation" itself was woeful, compounded by the over-zealous selling of the turd he presented, and the ongoing ridiculous pronouncements on how if we don't buy his turd, WE"RE ALL GOING TO DIE....
Those who suggest Cameron is a repackaged Heath are wide of the mark, save in one respect. Heath called a vote, seeking clarification on "Who governs Britain?" The British people delivered their raspberry of "Not you!!" Cameron is at grave risk of getting the same resounding raspberry from the voters.
Cameron has spent six years preaching a narrative that high rates of immigration from the EU are destructive. No wonder, then, that people believe it is a real threat. The problem is that, as you observe, his government's entire economic policy - which has been cheered to the rafters by most posters on here - is predicated on high immigration. Cameron and his ministers - whether Remainers or Leavers - are hypocrites. He deserves all he is getting and all that he will get in the future.
The problems seems to be that they have only recently had to come clean, finally, that their economic program requires another 3m+ immigrants over the next 15 years, I think that might have caused a certain amount of sputtering in the tea cups of middle England.
It's been there in black and white since the beginning, as a few of us have pointed out. Another_Richard has been very vocal about it.
Lots of people here knew about it, mostly the public only just found out... and the same week that they have started to suspect that the immigration figures are a huge lie... interesting times.
What we are running out of is the ability to administer public services and infrastructure for a growing population.
This isn't true at all, administration scales fine. If you have a problem with it you can add a tier of government, but much of the UK hasn't bothered because there isn't an administrative problem to solve.
Numbers are increasing, but productivity is not. Therefore each person is simply a mouth to feed at some point in statistical terms.
Productivity is measured per person. As you have more people you have more total productivity. There are more mouths to feed, but more people feeding the mouths.
Unless you raise productivity, and by some distance, importing Labour (to increase GDP) is only delaying the inevitable collapse of public infrastructure.
tube line.
"More total productivity"? What are you talking about? Productivity is measured, by definition, on a per worker or a per worker hour basis. You only get more of it through immigration if the new migrants are more productive than the existing population. Some migrants will be. Some will not.
What I mean by that is that the country produces more stuff. TonyE seems to be fretting that there are going to be more mouths to feed. That's OK as long as there are also more people feeding the mouths, which there are.
Only if those more people generate enough economic activity to cover the total economic cost of those more mouths, does it ?
Correct. Which they do, and then some.
Some do, some do not. The majority of people in this country are net takers, absorbing more in government services and benefits than they pay in taxes. A great many migrants are below the cut off.
Strangely, non-EU countries often use variations of a points system so that they end up with skilled, multi-lingual, useful, economically productive immigrants who are likely to integrate. For some strange reason the pro-EU tendency feels that bringing in vast numbers of badly educated, barely literate non-English speakers is a good idea to support our economic future.
Is there any evidence that EU immigrants do not integrate, do not speak English and are badly educated?
Mr. Indigo, I wonder if that's due to EU incompetence or an active desire from policymakers to try and diminish national sentiments by eroding distinctive national cultures (Labour's multi-cultural mass immigration approach).
Mr. Evershed, speak for yourself. I haven't died once yet.
Anyway, I'm off for a bit. Qualifying's in about 40 minutes.
The real problem for Dave and the Remaindermen is that they can't talk about immigration. Can't even utter the word. And ironically, for the side playing Project Fear, it is the one fear they can't play. But their opponents can. And it is the Big One.
There was always a high likelihood that this vote would boil down to "Who controls our borders?" Because there's a large number of people worried that if you don't control your borders, you have ceased to become a sovereign unit. You can't plan for education, health, housing needs. All governments - Labour, Coalition, Tory - have for the past couple of decades refused to acknowledge this increased need, in spite of Osborne's future economic projections requiring it in the millions. But provision will have to be made, piecemeal, just keeping these services at a level of "teetering on the edge of failure". But if you have to provide Paul with health, education, housing, then do you have to rob Peter of say his pension payments? Something has to give. There is currently no honesty with the voters about this whole issue. Hasn't been since at least Blair.
People like to suggest this is about bashing Cameron. Certainly not in my case. I wish him well in most all of his ventures. But his handling of the "renegotiation" itself was woeful, compounded by the over-zealous selling of the turd he presented, and the ongoing ridiculous pronouncements on how if we don't buy his turd, WE"RE ALL GOING TO DIE....
Those who suggest Cameron is a repackaged Heath are wide of the mark, save in one respect. Heath called a vote, seeking clarification on "Who governs Britain?" The British people delivered their raspberry of "Not you!!" Cameron is at grave risk of getting the same resounding raspberry from the voters.
Cameron has spent six years preaching a narrative that high rates of immigration from the EU are destructive. No wonder, then, that people believe it is a real threat. The problem is that, as you observe, his government's entire economic policy - which has been cheered to the rafters by most posters on here - is predicated on high immigration. Cameron and his ministers - whether Remainers or Leavers - are hypocrites. He deserves all he is getting and all that he will get in the future.
Has he? To be honest he avoids the subject most of the time. Immigration can have positives but it's the seeming lack of control on who is allowed to move to Britain that offends people.
I know people on here laugh at me about it, but the one that really concerns me is water. We got very close to a major meltdown a few years back with the sustained drought we had. If the rain had held back fro a few more months it could have got very bad. And we will get worse droughts in the future. Look at what is happening in California now. It's frightening.
I agree. I have done a fair bit of consultancy work with water companies and the general lack of sustainable long term water resources is frightening. Sod the HS2. We should be building a water grid to take water from the North West to the South and East of the country.
Could not agree more. Lack of HS2 is not an existential problem. Lack of H20 is.
I once read that a national water grid would be prohibitively expensive, and it makes more sense to build more reservoirs, or even desalinization plants, in the south.
I don't know who's right about this, but either way, it's not a "We don't have enough water to support the population" problem. It's a "We're gonna need to build some more stuff" problem.
Edit to add: Also partly a "We're gonna need to do better at maintaining the current stuff" problem, IIUC.
How do migrants arriving with virtually no knowledge of the language cope? One of largest growing immigrant groups is the estimated 150,000-strong Romanian community, based largely in north and east London.
Petru Clej, a Romanian interpreter working in London, says within these "standing communities" it's quite possible to live without English.
"They settle here in groups. There are whole neighbourhoods filled with Romanians. They have their own shops, their own churches, all of them have Romanian satellite TV and they work together on construction sites.
"I have encountered Romanians who have been here 10 years and don't speak a word of English. By and by they get along, though it's not a brilliant living. If they have children, they go to school, learn English and act as interpreters for the parents. So there's not always an incentive to learn."
I know people on here laugh at me about it, but the one that really concerns me is water. We got very close to a major meltdown a few years back with the sustained drought we had. If the rain had held back fro a few more months it could have got very bad. And we will get worse droughts in the future. Look at what is happening in California now. It's frightening.
I agree. I have done a fair bit of consultancy work with water companies and the general lack of sustainable long term water resources is frightening. Sod the HS2. We should be building a water grid to take water from the North West to the South and East of the country.
Could not agree more. Lack of HS2 is not an existential problem. Lack of H20 is.
I once read that a national water grid would be prohibitively expensive, and it makes more sense to build more reservoirs, or even desalinization plants, in the south.
I don't know who's right about this, but either way, it's not a "We don't have enough water to support the population" problem. It's a "We're gonna need to build some more stuff" problem.
I think thats a false dichotomy. Its a matter of increasing marginal cost. Supplying people from locally occurring rivers and reservoirs is clearly cheaper per person than massive engineering projects.
Numbers are increasing, but productivity is not. Therefore each person is simply a mouth to feed at some point in statistical terms.
Productivity is measured per person. As you have more people you have more total productivity. There are more mouths to feed, but more people feeding the mouths.
Unless you raise productivity, and by some distance, importing Labour (to increase GDP) is only delaying the inevitable collapse of public infrastructure.
tube line.
"More total productivity"? What are you talking about? Productivity is measured, by definition, on a per worker or a per worker hour basis. You only get more of it through immigration if the new migrants are more productive than the existing population. Some migrants will be. Some will not.
What I mean by that is that the country produces more stuff. TonyE seems to be fretting that there are going to be more mouths to feed. That's OK as long as there are also more people feeding the mouths, which there are.
Only if those more people generate enough economic activity to cover the total economic cost of those more mouths, does it ?
Correct. Which they do, and then some.
Some do, some do not. The majority of people in this country are net takers, absorbing more in government services and benefits than they pay in taxes. A great many migrants are below the cut off.
Strangely, non-EU countries often use variations of a points system so that they end up with skilled, multi-lingual, useful, economically productive immigrants who are likely to integrate. For some strange reason the pro-EU tendency feels that bringing in vast numbers of badly educated, barely literate non-English speakers is a good idea to support our economic future.
Is there any evidence that EU immigrants do not integrate, do not speak English and are badly educated?
The problem is that we haven't gone through a whole generation yet in the recent influx - so therefore we are only looking at short term outcomes and projecting. This is why the rate of influx is such an issue, because its a massive experiment in demographic shift, and it is not reversible. If we have got it wrong, then it's going to take a great deal of putting right.
Stepping back a bit, given the natural strengths of proponents (government resources, establishment resources, the status quo bias) it really shows how poor the remain strategy has been for us to be joking about things like this and seeing polls at pretty much level pegging.
I might have to write something about it...
Please do.
If I stick on my sales director hat [my earlier profession], I'd be seriously worried. I'm throwing everything at this - and it's not working.
I've taken our CEO in to impress my client, told tales to woe of how incompetent fellow bidders are, supplied testimonials from Big Names to prove we're better, I've offered discounts and invites to hobnob with celebrities - and he's still looking over my shoulder during meetings...
If I stick on my sales director hat [my earlier profession], I'd be seriously worried. I'm throwing everything at this - and it's not working.
I've taken our CEO in to impress my client, told tales to woe of how incompetent fellow bidders are, supplied testimonials from Big Names to prove we're better, I've offered discounts and invites to hobnob with celebrities - and he's still looking over my shoulder during meetings...
You also spent £9m of public money sending a mail shot to all his shareholders telling them how their company would go bust if they didn't buy your product.
What we are running out of is the ability to administer public services and infrastructure for a growing population.
This isn't true at all, administration scales fine. If you have a problem with it you can add a tier of government, but much of the UK hasn't bothered because there isn't an administrative problem to solve.
Numbers are increasing, but productivity is not. Therefore each person is simply a mouth to feed at some point in statistical terms.
Productivity is measured per person. As you have more people you have more total productivity. There are more mouths to feed, but more people feeding the mouths.
Unless you raise productivity, and by some distance, importing Labour (to increase GDP) is only delaying the inevitable collapse of public infrastructure.
tube line.
ve than the existing population. Some migrants will be. Some will not.
What I mean by that is that the country produces more stuff. TonyE seems to be fretting that there are going to be more mouths to feed. That's OK as long as there are also more people feeding the mouths, which there are.
Only if those more people generate enough economic activity to cover the total economic cost of those more mouths, does it ?
Correct. Which they do, and then some.
Some do, some do not. The majority of people in this country are net takers, absorbing more in government services and benefits than they pay in taxes. A great many migrants are below the cut off.
Strangely, non-EU countries often use variations of a points system so that they end up with skilled, multi-lingual, useful, economically productive immigrants who are likely to integrate. For some strange reason the pro-EU tendency feels that bringing in vast numbers of badly educated, barely literate non-English speakers is a good idea to support our economic future.
Is there any evidence that EU immigrants do not integrate, do not speak English and are badly educated?
Some are, some are not. But it is clear that people coming in via a points system requiring skills will be more skilled than those coming in without any clearances required. I believe three quarters of Eastern Europeans in the UK work in unskilled jobs.
The real problem for Dave and the Remaindermen is that they can't talk about immigration. Can't even utter the word. And ironically, for the side playing Project Fear, it is the one fear they can't play. But their opponents can. And it is the Big One.
.............
People like to suggest this is about bashing Cameron. Certainly not in my case. I wish him well in most all of his ventures. But his handling of the "renegotiation" itself was woeful, compounded by the over-zealous selling of the turd he presented, and the ongoing ridiculous pronouncements on how if we don't buy his turd, WE"RE ALL GOING TO DIE....
Those who suggest Cameron is a repackaged Heath are wide of the mark, save in one respect. Heath called a vote, seeking clarification on "Who governs Britain?" The British people delivered their raspberry of "Not you!!" Cameron is at grave risk of getting the same resounding raspberry from the voters.
Cameron has spent six years preaching a narrative that high rates of immigration from the EU are destructive. No wonder, then, that people believe it is a real threat. The problem is that, as you observe, his government's entire economic policy - which has been cheered to the rafters by most posters on here - is predicated on high immigration. Cameron and his ministers - whether Remainers or Leavers - are hypocrites. He deserves all he is getting and all that he will get in the future.
One thing puzzles me. How could intelligent people think that taxes will roll in with shrinking working age population and a growing pensioner population ? Add to that, there is some truth that low skilled immigrants [ plumbers etc. ] have kept costs reasonably steady.
It is all very well to say that otherwise wages would have risen. Yes, indeed ! Who would have to pay that ? In the domestic sector, people from their earnings and companies whose costs would be going up. What about their competitiveness ?
Well, if each Brit couple had produced 3 children on average, then perhaps immigrants would not have been needed. But I cannot see how Britain with its current demographic profile can grow without immigrants.
Compared to Europe, our demographic profile is actually a lot better due to the immigration in the last 15 years. In Europe it is dire ! Merkel needs the people whether the other Germans like it or not.
How do migrants arriving with virtually no knowledge of the language cope? One of largest growing immigrant groups is the estimated 150,000-strong Romanian community, based largely in north and east London.
Petru Clej, a Romanian interpreter working in London, says within these "standing communities" it's quite possible to live without English.
"They settle here in groups. There are whole neighbourhoods filled with Romanians. They have their own shops, their own churches, all of them have Romanian satellite TV and they work together on construction sites.
"I have encountered Romanians who have been here 10 years and don't speak a word of English. By and by they get along, though it's not a brilliant living. If they have children, they go to school, learn English and act as interpreters for the parents. So there's not always an incentive to learn."
That is not evidence. On the other side of the equation what we often hear about EU immigrants is that they are forcing locals out of jobs because they are brighter and smarter.
If I stick on my sales director hat [my earlier profession], I'd be seriously worried. I'm throwing everything at this - and it's not working.
I've taken our CEO in to impress my client, told tales to woe of how incompetent fellow bidders are, supplied testimonials from Big Names to prove we're better, I've offered discounts and invites to hobnob with celebrities - and he's still looking over my shoulder during meetings...
You also spent £9m of public money sending a mail shot to all his shareholders telling them how their company would go bust if they didn't buy your product.
Britain has plenty of room. There are vast, barely-productive spaces on the horizontal and minimal development on the vertical.
What resources specifically are you worried about running out of?
I disagree on the space issue. Whilst I agree that building up is a possibility it is not something that is at all popular with the public at large. And I certainly don't wish to see more building development across the countryside.
But the point is that whether we reach the point now, in 100 years or in 500 years, it is not s sustainable model indefinitely and we are surely better doing something about that now rather than when it becomes critical.
In terms of resources we are already screwed. The global slowdown over the last few years has masked it but the UK's vast reliance on imports for basic necessities is, again, not sustainable in the long term. It is one of the reasons that (in spite of my ridicule of the AGW crowd) I think renewables are so important. Oil is a wondrous substance and (particularly the North Sea stuff) is far too important to be burning when there are alternatives around.
The building thing is a fair point, although it's purely your aesthetic preference. You could keep building out at current rates for 500 years and Britain would _still_ have loads of open agricultural space, plenty of wilderness to walk in, etc etc. A lot of people share similar aesthetic preferences but when it comes to their actual, practical choices they tend to vote with their feet: People would rather live where there lots of other people to interact with, living and working in buildings.
The natural resource stuff isn't right, though. Oil is an internationally traded resource that you pay for by working, and you have to send the money you earn to buy it. It doesn't matter where you've migrated to when you burn it.
What we are running out of is the ability to administer public services and infrastructure for a growing population.
This isn't true at all, administration scales fine. If you have a problem with it you can add a tier of government, but much of the UK hasn't bothered because there isn't an administrative problem to solve.
Numbers are increasing, but productivity is not. Therefore each person is simply a mouth to feed at some point in statistical terms.
Productivity is measured per person. As you have more people you have more total productivity. There are more mouths to feed, but more people feeding the mouths.
Unless you raise productivity, and by some distance, importing Labour (to increase GDP) is only delaying the inevitable collapse of public infrastructure.
tube line.
ve than the existing population. Some migrants will be. Some will not.
What I mean by that is that the country produces more stuff. TonyE seems to be fretting that there are going to be more mouths to feed. That's OK as long as there are also more people feeding the mouths, which there are.
Only if those more people generate enough economic activity to cover the total economic cost of those more mouths, does it ?
Correct. Which they do, and then some.
Some do, some do not. The majority of people in this country are net takers, absorbing more in government services and benefits than they pay in taxes. A great many migrants are below the cut off.
Strangely, non-EU countries often use variations of a points system so that they end up with skilled, multi-lingual, useful, economically productive immigrants who are likely to integrate. For some strange reason the pro-EU tendency feels that bringing in vast numbers of badly educated, barely literate non-English speakers is a good idea to support our economic future.
Is there any evidence that EU immigrants do not integrate, do not speak English and are badly educated?
Some are, some are not. But it is clear that people coming in via a points system requiring skills will be more skilled than those coming in without any clearances required. I believe three quarters of Eastern Europeans in the UK work in unskilled jobs.
Stepping back a bit, given the natural strengths of proponents (government resources, establishment resources, the status quo bias) it really shows how poor the remain strategy has been for us to be joking about things like this and seeing polls at pretty much level pegging.
I might have to write something about it...
Please do.
If I stick on my sales director hat [my earlier profession], I'd be seriously worried. I'm throwing everything at this - and it's not working.
I've taken our CEO in to impress my client, told tales to woe of how incompetent fellow bidders are, supplied testimonials from Big Names to prove we're better, I've offered discounts and invites to hobnob with celebrities - and he's still looking over my shoulder during meetings...
The CEO was your favourite politician until very recently. Maybe your judgement is not so good ?
That is not evidence. On the other side of the equation what we often hear about EU immigrants is that they are forcing locals out of jobs because they are brighter and smarter.
I'll let you explain that to the waving EURef voters
(And its mostly not "brighter and smarter" its "cheaper")
Britain with its current demographic profile can grow without immigrants. Compared to Europe, our demographic profile is actually a lot better due to the immigration in the last 15 years. In Europe it is dire ! Merkel needs the people whether the other Germans like it or not.
That's puzzled me. Why did Germany restrict the number of Polish immigrants on Poland's accession to the EU, but welcome Syrian immigration 10 years later?
The real problem for Dave and the Remaindermen is that they can't talk about immigration. Can't even utter the word. And ironically, for the side playing Project Fear, it is the one fear they can't play. But their opponents can. And it is the Big One.
.........
People like to suggest this is about bashing Cameron. Certainly not in my case. I wish him well in most all of his ventures. But his handling of the "renegotiation" itself was woeful, compounded by the over-zealous selling of the turd he presented, and the ongoing ridiculous pronouncements on how if we don't buy his turd, WE"RE ALL GOING TO DIE....
Those who suggest Cameron is a repackaged Heath are wide of the mark, save in one respect. Heath called a vote, seeking clarification on "Who governs Britain?" The British people delivered their raspberry of "Not you!!" Cameron is at grave risk of getting the same resounding raspberry from the voters.
Cameron has spent six years preaching a narrative that high rates of immigration from the EU are destructive. No wonder, then, that people believe it is a real threat. The problem is that, as you observe, his government's entire economic policy - which has been cheered to the rafters by most posters on here - is predicated on high immigration. Cameron and his ministers - whether Remainers or Leavers - are hypocrites. He deserves all he is getting and all that he will get in the future.
Has he? To be honest he avoids the subject most of the time. Immigration can have positives but it's the seeming lack of control on who is allowed to move to Britain that offends people.
He and his party came up with the expression: "Immigration in tens of thousands rather than hundreds of thousands". No one forced them to. That kept the kippers in.
Compared to Europe, our demographic profile is actually a lot better due to the immigration in the last 15 years. In Europe it is dire ! Merkel needs the people whether the other Germans like it or not.
Labour’s performance in last week’s council elections suggests Jeremy Corbyn’s party is struggling to attract the working-class voters who traditionally formed the core of its support, according to a detailed analysis of the results.
“Labour’s performance in 2016 was squarely in line with what one might expect a year into a parliament where the opposition is not going to win the general election,” Baston said.
Britain with its current demographic profile can grow without immigrants. Compared to Europe, our demographic profile is actually a lot better due to the immigration in the last 15 years. In Europe it is dire ! Merkel needs the people whether the other Germans like it or not.
That's puzzled me. Why did Germany restrict the number of Polish immigrants on Poland's accession to the EU, but welcome Syrian immigration 10 years later?
I wrote no such thing ! Stop changing words.
Edit: In my screen it came up as if I wrote the words in italics.
That is not evidence. On the other side of the equation what we often hear about EU immigrants is that they are forcing locals out of jobs because they are brighter and smarter.
No, normally because they are prepared to work for less and sleep five to a room...
Unless you raise productivity, and by some distance, importing Labour (to increase GDP) is only delaying the inevitable collapse of public infrastructure.
tube line.
ve than the existing population. Some migrants will be. Some will not.
What here are.
Only if those more people generate enough economic activity to cover the total economic cost of those more mouths, does it ?
Correct. Which they do, and then some.
Some do, some do not. The majority of people in this country are net takers, absorbing more in government services and benefits than they pay in taxes. A great many migrants are below the cut off.
Strangely, non-EU countries often use variations of a points system so that they end up with skilled, multi-lingual, useful, economically productive immigrants who are likely to integrate. For some strange reason the pro-EU tendency feels that bringing in vast numbers of badly educated, barely literate non-English speakers is a good idea to support our economic future.
Is there any evidence that EU immigrants do not integrate, do not speak English and are badly educated?
Some are, some are not. But it is clear that people coming in via a points system requiring skills will be more skilled than those coming in without any clearances required. I believe three quarters of Eastern Europeans in the UK work in unskilled jobs.
Yep, generally they do the jobs that Brits will not do. The highest rates of unemployment tend to be in places where there are fewest eastern European immigrants. Again, on here in the old days the refrain used to be that Brits in unemployment black-spots should get on the train or in their cars and head to the places where the jobs are. This is largely what immigrants from the EU do.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro declared a 60-day state of emergency on Friday due to what he called plots from within the OPEC country and from the US to topple his leftist government.
He and his party came up with the expression: "Immigration in tens of thousands rather than hundreds of thousands". No one forced them to. That kept the kippers in.
Now they have been hoisted by their own petard !
That was the worst sort of lie.... a stupid one!
There was no earthly chance of meeting that goal while in the EU, since the EU immigration figure is much higher than 10's of thousands on its own and there is damn all he can do about that. It's what I despise most (out of a reasonably long list) about Cameron, his lazy lying for short term gain relying on most people not being well enough informed to see that it is bullshit.
There is an old gag about how you can tell a politician is lying because his lips are moving, never was a description so true of Cameron, given the huge number of whoppers he has perpetrated over the last decade I am amazed his rep is as good as it seems to be, at least until recently.
(Cameron seems to have something of a "tell" about his lying, if he utters the words "no ifs, no buts" its almost certain to be a lie!)
I know people on here laugh at me about it, but the one that really concerns me is water. We got very close to a major meltdown a few years back with the sustained drought we had. If the rain had held back fro a few more months it could have got very bad. And we will get worse droughts in the future. Look at what is happening in California now. It's frightening.
I agree. I have done a fair bit of consultancy work with water companies and the general lack of sustainable long term water resources is frightening. Sod the HS2. We should be building a water grid to take water from the North West to the South and East of the country.
Could not agree more. Lack of HS2 is not an existential problem. Lack of H20 is.
I once read that a national water grid would be prohibitively expensive, and it makes more sense to build more reservoirs, or even desalinization plants, in the south.
I don't know who's right about this, but either way, it's not a "We don't have enough water to support the population" problem. It's a "We're gonna need to build some more stuff" problem.
Edit to add: Also partly a "We're gonna need to do better at maintaining the current stuff" problem, IIUC.
We lose a lot of water through leaks - but in the South there aren't that many suitable places for large reservoirs.
Suppose we built a 'water main' from Kielder Reservoir to London - 300 miles and suppose it was 3m wide
It would contain 3.5 X 10^9 cubic litres.
The capacity of Kielder Reservoir is 200 X 10^9 cubic litres.
That is not evidence. On the other side of the equation what we often hear about EU immigrants is that they are forcing locals out of jobs because they are brighter and smarter.
I'll let you explain that to the waving EURef voters
(And its mostly not "brighter and smarter" its "cheaper")
As I say down-thread - this government was happy to make up facts about EU immigrants and to label them a problem, so it is reaping what it sowed. I agree that now it is far too late to change tack and that's why I have always thought Leave would win. Dave and his mates are being hoisted on their own petards.
Britain with its current demographic profile can grow without immigrants. Compared to Europe, our demographic profile is actually a lot better due to the immigration in the last 15 years. In Europe it is dire ! Merkel needs the people whether the other Germans like it or not.
That's puzzled me. Why did Germany restrict the number of Polish immigrants on Poland's accession to the EU, but welcome Syrian immigration 10 years later?
A different government maybe and one that realised its predecessor had made a very big mistake?
Yep, generally they do the jobs that Brits will not do. The highest rates of unemployment tend to be in places where there are fewest eastern European immigrants. Again, on here in the old days the refrain used to be that Brits in unemployment black-spots should get on the train or in their cars and head to the places where the jobs are. This is largely what immigrants from the EU do.
So now we pay benefit to the Brit sitting on his arse in front of Oprah, and WFTC to the EU immigrant to top up his wages, because the work doesn't generate sufficient economic value as to enable his employer to pay enough to live on. We enable the employer to solve his problems with cheap imported labour rather than forcing him to considering training his staff better, or investing in plant or machinery.
Unless you raise productivity, and by some distance, importing Labour (to increase GDP) is only delaying the inevitable collapse of public infrastructure.
tube line.
ve than the existing population. Some migrants will be. Some will not.
What here are.
Only if those more people generate enough economic activity to cover the total economic cost of those more mouths, does it ?
Correct. Which they do, and then some.
Some do, some do not. The majority of people in this country are net takers, absorbing more in government services and benefits than they pay in taxes. A great many migrants are below the cut off.
Strangely, non-EU countries often use variations of a points system so that they end up with skilled, multi-lingual, useful, economically productive immigrants who are likely to integrate. For some strange reason the pro-EU tendency feels that bringing in vast numbers of badly educated, barely literate non-English speakers is a good idea to support our economic future.
Is there any evidence that EU immigrants do not integrate, do not speak English and are badly educated?
Some are, some are not. But it is clear that people coming in via a points system requiring skills will be more skilled than those coming in without any clearances required. I believe three quarters of Eastern Europeans in the UK work in unskilled jobs.
Yep, generally they do the jobs that Brits will not do.
You mean that Brits don't want to be doctors and nurses in the NHS?
I mean, the Remain propaganda keeps telling me that all these health workers will be expelled if we Leave.
I suggest you apologise to your Remain controller for going off-message.
The real problem for Dave and the Remaindermen is that they can't talk about immigration. Can't even utter the word. And ironically, for the side playing Project Fear, it is the one fear they can't play. But their opponents can. And it is the Big One.
There was always a high likelihood that this vote would boil down to "Who controls our borders?" Because there's a large number of people worried that if you don't control your borders, you have ceased to become a sovereign unit. You can't plan for education, health, housing needs. All governments - Labour, Coalition, Tory - have for the past couple of decades refused to acknowledge this increased need, in spite of Osborne's future economic projections requiring it in the millions. But provision will have to be made, piecemeal, just keeping these services at a level of "teetering on the edge of failure". But if you have to provide Paul with health, education, housing, then do you have to rob Peter of say his pension payments? Something has to give. There is currently no honesty with the voters about this whole issue. Hasn't been since at least Blair.
People like to suggest this is about bashing Cameron. Certainly not in my case. I wish him well in most all of his ventures. But his handling of the "renegotiation" itself was woeful, compounded by the over-zealous selling of the turd he presented, and the ongoing ridiculous pronouncements on how if we don't buy his turd, WE"RE ALL GOING TO DIE....
Those who suggest Cameron is a repackaged Heath are wide of the mark, save in one respect. Heath called a vote, seeking clarification on "Who governs Britain?" The British people delivered their raspberry of "Not you!!" Cameron is at grave risk of getting the same resounding raspberry from the voters.
Once again MarqueeMark comes up with the post of the day. The upcoming polls could prove most interesting.
Peter and Mortimer, thank you for your kind words. I try to maintain my pb persona of light-hearted banter and snarky responses, but occasionally, the mask slips....
Unless you raise productivity, and by some distance, importing Labour (to increase GDP) is only delaying the inevitable collapse of public infrastructure.
tube line.
ve than the existing population. Some migrants will be. Some will not.
What here are.
Only if those more people generate enough economic activity to cover the total economic cost of those more mouths, does it ?
Correct. Which they do, and then some.
Some do, some do not. The majority of people in this country are net takers, absorbing more in government services and benefits than they pay in taxes. A great many migrants are below the cut off.
Strangely, non-EU countries often use variations of a points system so that they end up with skilled, multi-lingual, useful, economically productive immigrants who are likely to integrate. For some strange reason the pro-EU tendency feels that bringing in vast numbers of badly educated, barely literate non-English speakers is a good idea to support our economic future.
Is there any evidence that EU immigrants do not integrate, do not speak English and are badly educated?
Some are, some are not. But it is clear that people coming in via a points system requiring skills will be more skilled than those coming in without any clearances required. I believe three quarters of Eastern Europeans in the UK work in unskilled jobs.
Yep, generally they do the jobs that Brits will not do.
You mean that Brits don't want to be doctors and nurses in the NHS?
I mean, the Remain propaganda keeps telling me that all these health workers will be expelled if we Leave.
I suggest you apologise to your Remain controller for going off-message.
Are there large numbers of unemployed British doctors and nurses?
Britain with its current demographic profile can grow without immigrants. Compared to Europe, our demographic profile is actually a lot better due to the immigration in the last 15 years. In Europe it is dire ! Merkel needs the people whether the other Germans like it or not.
That's puzzled me. Why did Germany restrict the number of Polish immigrants on Poland's accession to the EU, but welcome Syrian immigration 10 years later?
A different government maybe and one that realised its predecessor had made a very big mistake?
Or they were using German guilt to mask a solution to their demographic crisis.
Yep, generally they do the jobs that Brits will not do. The highest rates of unemployment tend to be in places where there are fewest eastern European immigrants. Again, on here in the old days the refrain used to be that Brits in unemployment black-spots should get on the train or in their cars and head to the places where the jobs are. This is largely what immigrants from the EU do.
So now we pay benefit to the Brit sitting on his arse in front of Oprah, and WFTC to the EU immigrant to top up his wages, because the work doesn't generate sufficient economic value as to enable his employer to pay enough to live on. We enable the employer to solve his problems with cheap imported labour rather than forcing him to considering training his staff better, or investing in plant or machinery.
Not sure that makes sense. If there are not jobs in the north east are you saying we should not pay benefits to people in the north-east who are out of work. The issue is much more about flexibility and the ability/willingness to move to find a job. Unemployment rates in areas where most EU immigrants work and live tend to be low.
There was always a high likelihood that this vote would boil down to "Who controls our borders?" Because there's a large number of people worried that if you don't control your borders, you have ceased to become a sovereign unit. You can't plan for education, health, housing needs. All governments - Labour, Coalition, Tory - have for the past couple of decades refused to acknowledge this increased need, in spite of Osborne's future economic projections requiring it in the millions. But provision will have to be made, piecemeal, just keeping these services at a level of "teetering on the edge of failure". But if you have to provide Paul with health, education, housing, then do you have to rob Peter of say his pension payments? Something has to give. There is currently no honesty with the voters about this whole issue. Hasn't been since at least Blair.
People like to suggest this is about bashing Cameron. Certainly not in my case. I wish him well in most all of his ventures. But his handling of the "renegotiation" itself was woeful, compounded by the over-zealous selling of the turd he presented, and the ongoing ridiculous pronouncements on how if we don't buy his turd, WE"RE ALL GOING TO DIE....
Those who suggest Cameron is a repackaged Heath are wide of the mark, save in one respect. Heath called a vote, seeking clarification on "Who governs Britain?" The British people delivered their raspberry of "Not you!!" Cameron is at grave risk of getting the same resounding raspberry from the voters.
Cameron has spent six years preaching a narrative that high rates of immigration from the EU are destructive. No wonder, then, that people believe it is a real threat. The problem is that, as you observe, his government's entire economic policy - which has been cheered to the rafters by most posters on here - is predicated on high immigration. Cameron and his ministers - whether Remainers or Leavers - are hypocrites. He deserves all he is getting and all that he will get in the future.
Has he? To be honest he avoids the subject most of the time. Immigration can have positives but it's the seeming lack of control on who is allowed to move to Britain that offends people.
Indeed - after his foolish pledge on 'tens of thousands' he's largely avoided the subject - with good reason.
Britain does indeed have plenty of space. Unfortunately it is concentrated in the hilly, wet and windy celtic fringes. Lowland England where most people live is becoming very crowded esp in the South East. Incidentally my solicitor reports that new build flats in a certain Kentish town are almost exclusively being acquired by people with foreign names.
What we are running out of is the ability to administer public services and infrastructure for a growing population.
This isn't true at all, administration scales fine. If you have a problem with it you can add a tier of government, but much of the UK hasn't bothered because there isn't an administrative problem to solve.
Numbers are increasing, but productivity is not. Therefore each person is simply a mouth to feed at some point in statistical terms.
Productivity is measured per person. As you have more people you have more total productivity. There are more mouths to feed, but more people feeding the mouths.
Unless you raise productivity, and by some distance, importing Labour (to increase GDP) is only delaying the inevitable collapse of public infrastructure.
No, public infrastructure generally has great network effects. More people paying for it and using it makes it better. For example, when a tube line is filling up, you can dig another tube line on a slightly different route, which is more convenient for some of the people using the original tube line.
To be honest Edmund, what you write often seems to make sense in theory. The sort of thing you might read in an economics textbook. But the real world is about what happens in practice; and because the real world is inhabited by humans, we have to take human views into account.
Digging a new tube line, to buy into your example, would take about 30 years.
Britain isn't great at infrastructure but it's not remotely as bad as you make out. There are all kinds of infrastructure projects in the UK sit on hold for decades because there isn't enough money to build them, then once there's enough demand (and enough taxpayers to fund it) it gets built. Crossrail and its predecessors were discussed forever. There was never enough money to build it until the high-immigration 2000s. It is actually happening, and it is actually going to open.
So, to precis, we have to have high immigration otherwise we would never build the things we need to build because of high immigration?
Well, it is a view. Not a very persuasive one, but it is definitely a view.
Britain does indeed have plenty of space. Unfortunately it is concentrated in the hilly, wet and windy celtic fringes. Lowland England where most people live is becoming very crowded esp in the South East. Incidentally my solicitor reports that new build flats in a certain Kentish town are almost exclusively being acquired by people with foreign names.
What? You mean like Farage?
Considerably more exotic than that I believe. And generally they don't sport the first name of Nigel.
Comments
That is not a good place to be, as the whole idea of the referendum was to settle the matter for good.
But the bigger point is this: the win was a disaster for the Tories. It would have been far, far, better if they had lost in 1992, seen Kinnock screw up the ERM, and come back into power in 1997 for another 20 years.
And we'd never have had that prize pillock Tony Blair and the 1000 years of terror he and Bush have managed to unleash on the west thanks to their massive egos.
What resources specifically are you worried about running out of?
The prize economically is to alter the growth pattern so that each job created is much higher in terms of real value. This means higher skilled immigration, with higher productivity the key factor. It will also mean that education in the UK has to be raised to an even higher standard, and modernised to fit the market in tech and industry.
It would also be of extreme value if we stopped pricing ourselves out of the industrial world with ridiculous energy costs, meaning that at least some manufacturing base were allowed to thrive, producing high value work for those with fewer academic skills.
There was always a high likelihood that this vote would boil down to "Who controls our borders?" Because there's a large number of people worried that if you don't control your borders, you have ceased to become a sovereign unit. You can't plan for education, health, housing needs. All governments - Labour, Coalition, Tory - have for the past couple of decades refused to acknowledge this increased need, in spite of Osborne's future economic projections requiring it in the millions. But provision will have to be made, piecemeal, just keeping these services at a level of "teetering on the edge of failure". But if you have to provide Paul with health, education, housing, then do you have to rob Peter of say his pension payments? Something has to give. There is currently no honesty with the voters about this whole issue. Hasn't been since at least Blair.
People like to suggest this is about bashing Cameron. Certainly not in my case. I wish him well in most all of his ventures. But his handling of the "renegotiation" itself was woeful, compounded by the over-zealous selling of the turd he presented, and the ongoing ridiculous pronouncements on how if we don't buy his turd, WE"RE ALL GOING TO DIE....
Those who suggest Cameron is a repackaged Heath are wide of the mark, save in one respect. Heath called a vote, seeking clarification on "Who governs Britain?" The British people delivered their raspberry of "Not you!!" Cameron is at grave risk of getting the same resounding raspberry from the voters.
Betfair have a country to score nul points at 7.2 currently.
That looks value as considering both Germany and Austria got that score last year.
Is it true that the level of house repossessions in that recession was the greatest mass forced eviction in the UK since the Highland Clearances?
Unless you raise productivity, and by some distance, importing Labour (to increase GDP) is only delaying the inevitable collapse of public infrastructure.
But the point is that whether we reach the point now, in 100 years or in 500 years, it is not s sustainable model indefinitely and we are surely better doing something about that now rather than when it becomes critical.
In terms of resources we are already screwed. The global slowdown over the last few years has masked it but the UK's vast reliance on imports for basic necessities is, again, not sustainable in the long term. It is one of the reasons that (in spite of my ridicule of the AGW crowd) I think renewables are so important. Oil is a wondrous substance and (particularly the North Sea stuff) is far too important to be burning when there are alternatives around.
GDP per head is increasing less quickly than GDP, if indeed GDP per head is increasing at all.
Digging a new tube line, to buy into your example, would take about 30 years.
And the money from more people being on an already bursting network will likely not be properly assigned to that project.
So by the time any new line was complete, we'd already need a new one and have probably taken on far too much debt.
Rinse and repeat. Therein lies the problem of the unlimited growth fallacy in modern liberal democracies.
That's something I still struggle to comprehend. I wanted to write threads like 'Dear Labour are you phuqing mad?'
This stint will cover the business end of the referendum campaign, which should be exciting.
That said I shall be fleeing the country shortly after the referendum for an overseas holiday, whatever the outcome.
Raise productivity and you can cope with the spike, but that means a higher skilled workforce .
You know, like not having enough money to build a tube line because we're paying the pensions of people who retire today.
Stepping back a bit, given the natural strengths of proponents (government resources, establishment resources, the status quo bias) it really shows how poor the remain strategy has been for us to be joking about things like this and seeing polls at pretty much level pegging.
I might have to write something about it...
If a Brexit UK won't let me back in, I shall use all my Francophile charm and move to France.
We ARE all going to die.
Once they have collected the swag will they be off to the next heist?
Mr. Evershed, speak for yourself. I haven't died once yet.
Anyway, I'm off for a bit. Qualifying's in about 40 minutes.
Edit to add: Also partly a "We're gonna need to do better at maintaining the current stuff" problem, IIUC.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-20728634
If I stick on my sales director hat [my earlier profession], I'd be seriously worried. I'm throwing everything at this - and it's not working.
I've taken our CEO in to impress my client, told tales to woe of how incompetent fellow bidders are, supplied testimonials from Big Names to prove we're better, I've offered discounts and invites to hobnob with celebrities - and he's still looking over my shoulder during meetings...
It is all very well to say that otherwise wages would have risen. Yes, indeed ! Who would have to pay that ? In the domestic sector, people from their earnings and companies whose costs would be going up. What about their competitiveness ?
Well, if each Brit couple had produced 3 children on average, then perhaps immigrants would not have been needed. But I cannot see how Britain with its current demographic profile can grow without immigrants.
Compared to Europe, our demographic profile is actually a lot better due to the immigration in the last 15 years. In Europe it is dire ! Merkel needs the people whether the other Germans like it or not.
That is not evidence. On the other side of the equation what we often hear about EU immigrants is that they are forcing locals out of jobs because they are brighter and smarter.
I exempt Ugandan Asians from this. They knew they were never going back.
The natural resource stuff isn't right, though. Oil is an internationally traded resource that you pay for by working, and you have to send the money you earn to buy it. It doesn't matter where you've migrated to when you burn it.
http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-romanian-crimewave/18207
(And its mostly not "brighter and smarter" its "cheaper")
Now they have been hoisted by their own petard !
“Labour’s performance in 2016 was squarely in line with what one might expect a year into a parliament where the opposition is not going to win the general election,” Baston said.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/14/labour-struggling-attract-working-class-voters-analysis-fabian-society
Edit: In my screen it came up as if I wrote the words in italics.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/14/venezuela-president-declares-60-day-state-of-emergency-blaming-us-for-instability
Corbynism in action...
There was no earthly chance of meeting that goal while in the EU, since the EU immigration figure is much higher than 10's of thousands on its own and there is damn all he can do about that. It's what I despise most (out of a reasonably long list) about Cameron, his lazy lying for short term gain relying on most people not being well enough informed to see that it is bullshit.
There is an old gag about how you can tell a politician is lying because his lips are moving, never was a description so true of Cameron, given the huge number of whoppers he has perpetrated over the last decade I am amazed his rep is as good as it seems to be, at least until recently.
(Cameron seems to have something of a "tell" about his lying, if he utters the words "no ifs, no buts" its almost certain to be a lie!)
Suppose we built a 'water main' from Kielder Reservoir to London - 300 miles and suppose it was 3m wide
It would contain 3.5 X 10^9 cubic litres.
The capacity of Kielder Reservoir is 200 X 10^9 cubic litres.
NEW THREAD NEW NEW THREAD
I mean, the Remain propaganda keeps telling me that all these health workers will be expelled if we Leave.
I suggest you apologise to your Remain controller for going off-message.
What? You mean like Farage?
Well, it is a view. Not a very persuasive one, but it is definitely a view.