Jobabob - what was your vision of the future? Serious question.
Open to globalisation. More freedom of movement coupled with better employee protections and a push for stakeholder economies. Better targeted, modernised education fit for a digitised globalised world. Pro-market, pro-business, reduction in red tape and sales taxes. Progressive personal taxation and a drive towards a multilateral corporate taxation agreement. Secularism actively promoted. Religion consigned to the private sphere. Monarchies, God-given hierarchies, and born-in privilege questioned. Celebration of talent, the family, and hard work. Healthcare properly funded, and free at the point of need. Let private lives be private, and the preserve of consenting adults. Less government in social matters. More government in infrastructure. Nationalised railways. The enforced retirement of Jeremy Corbyn.
Many of those ideals simply could not and would not happen if we remained in the EU.
When my mum and dad left the RAF after the war, age 24, they could get a council house and start a family. My mother didn't need to work. My mother has a carer, age 25, also setting up home. Single room in a shared house - all the rooms are bedrooms - shared bathroom. Will have to work so unlikely to be able to afford kids. 70 years of progress.
That's true across the developed world. In the 1960s, it was almost unheard of married women in the US, the UK, the Netherlands, Japan, Canada or Australia to work.
Now, two working parent families are the norms in all of those countries. Japan was the last, in 2009, two working parent families became more common than one working parent families for the first time.
But then again we all have iPhones, big screen TVs, take Ubers, go on foreign holidays and the like.
Yes, we have become vastly wealthier, live longer lives, and see much more of the world. The fact that most women now see a life outside the four corners of their home is a massive force for good. The 1950s weren't that great, all things considered.
When my mum and dad left the RAF after the war, age 24, they could get a council house and start a family. My mother didn't need to work. My mother has a carer, age 25, also setting up home. Single room in a shared house - all the rooms are bedrooms - shared bathroom. Will have to work so unlikely to be able to afford kids. 70 years of progress.
That's true across the developed world. In the 1960s, it was almost unheard of married women in the US, the UK, the Netherlands, Japan, Canada or Australia to work.
Now, two working parent families are the norms in all of those countries. Japan was the last, in 2009, two working parent families became more common than one working parent families for the first time.
But then again we all have iPhones, big screen TVs, take Ubers, go on foreign holidays and the like.
How many of those (final paragraph) things could we still have if the population of the UK was 10 or 20 million lower ?
It just seems that an ever increasing population inevitably leads to pressure on housing, transport and the environment.
It does.
But remember, if we eliminated the 10m last immigrants from the population, then we'd have more old people being supported by fewer workers.
Our birth rate has been below 2.1 for a long time. Combine that with increasing life expectancy, and rising health care costs and you have a problem.
A thought for those thinking that they can avoid brexit. When people goto the ballot box and win and it still makes no difference they learn the ballot box doesnt work. When the ballot box ceases to work they fall back on other options
Do you really want to tell 17 million people the ballot box no longer works for them? While most will do little more than grumble there will be enough in there willing to go further to exert their will, even if its only 0.1 percent thats still 17000 people.
The type of people who tend to get upset are hard right UKIP and Tory members, I don't really see them turning over cars and setting them on fire in the streets. They will be annoyed but not as irate as the people with incomes in the lower 50% of the population will be when their living standards noticeably deteriorate.
Well go ahead and try and thwart brexit if you wish but I would suggest that it will likely lead to more incidents like jo cox and it will lie at your door for taking the ballot box from those people. The brexit camp has more people in it than pensioners and like most sections of society they will have enough nutters in it to cause a lot of mess
There was a bloke on here whose tag I forget that used to talk about how easy it would be to get hold of a firearm in this country, and to build an explosive device. Was it you?
When my mum and dad left the RAF after the war, age 24, they could get a council house and start a family. My mother didn't need to work. My mother has a carer, age 25, also setting up home. Single room in a shared house - all the rooms are bedrooms - shared bathroom. Will have to work so unlikely to be able to afford kids. 70 years of progress.
That's true across the developed world. In the 1960s, it was almost unheard of married women in the US, the UK, the Netherlands, Japan, Canada or Australia to work.
Now, two working parent families are the norms in all of those countries. Japan was the last, in 2009, two working parent families became more common than one working parent families for the first time.
But then again we all have iPhones, big screen TVs, take Ubers, go on foreign holidays and the like.
How many of those (final paragraph) things could we still have if the population of the UK was 10 or 20 million lower ?
It just seems that an ever increasing population inevitably leads to pressure on housing, transport and the environment.
It does.
But remember, if we eliminated the 10m last immigrants from the population, then we'd have more old people being supported by fewer workers.
Our birth rate has been below 2.1 for a long time. Combine that with increasing life expectancy, and rising health care costs and you have a problem.
But don't you see how your middle class lives have also been affected too. Haven't you noticed your parents have much better homes than you can afford?
Jobabob - what was your vision of the future? Serious question.
Open to globalisation. More freedom of movement coupled with better employee protections and a push for stakeholder economies. Better targeted, modernised education fit for a digitised globalised world. Pro-market, pro-business, reduction in red tape and sales taxes. Progressive personal taxation and a drive towards a multilateral corporate taxation agreement. Secularism actively promoted. Religion consigned to the private sphere. Monarchies, God-given hierarchies, and born-in privilege questioned. Celebration of talent, the family, and hard work. Healthcare properly funded, and free at the point of need. Let private lives be private, and the preserve of consenting adults. Less government in social matters. More government in infrastructure. Nationalised railways. The enforced retirement of Jeremy Corbyn.
Many of those ideals simply could not and would not happen if we remained in the EU.
Admittedly, enforced retirements may well contravene European law Richard. Good evening to you sir.
Was the Lib Dems winning in Richmond really indicative of the country starting to fight back against evil Brexit? Sure, it's a great win for Olney, but if a pro EU party couldn't win there, at this time, against Zac Bloody Goldsmith, when could it?
Zac Goldsmith had a majority of 23,000.
The Liberals had a national poll score of 8%.
So? Let's see how the Lib Dems fare in constituencies that ain't as pro EU as Richmond. You only see what you want to see. Like everyone else on here.
If that were true I wouldn't have won on Brexit and Trump.
When my mum and dad left the RAF after the war, age 24, they could get a council house and start a family. My mother didn't need to work. My mother has a carer, age 25, also setting up home. Single room in a shared house - all the rooms are bedrooms - shared bathroom. Will have to work so unlikely to be able to afford kids. 70 years of progress.
That's true across the developed world. In the 1960s, it was almost unheard of married women in the US, the UK, the Netherlands, Japan, Canada or Australia to work.
Now, two working parent families are the norms in all of those countries. Japan was the last, in 2009, two working parent families became more common than one working parent families for the first time.
But then again we all have iPhones, big screen TVs, take Ubers, go on foreign holidays and the like.
How many of those (final paragraph) things could we still have if the population of the UK was 10 or 20 million lower ?
It just seems that an ever increasing population inevitably leads to pressure on housing, transport and the environment.
It does.
But remember, if we eliminated the 10m last immigrants from the population, then we'd have more old people being supported by fewer workers.
Our birth rate has been below 2.1 for a long time. Combine that with increasing life expectancy, and rising health care costs and you have a problem.
In the US, healthcare and pensions already take up half of the federal budget, and that number is rising every year.
We could have been encouraging women to have more children for the last 30 years as they have in France.
Pro-natal policies around the world would be one of my specialised subjects if I ever went on Mastermind
They are amazingly hard to get right. And when you do get them right (as France has), by giving massive tax breaks to middle class people to have kids, then everyone else screams blue murder.
Zac Goldsmith is out of politics, at least until the next general election. But which party will want him if he decides to return to the fray? He has shown himself to be a loser and a weak campaigner without deep backing, as his local conservative association has shown.
Was the Lib Dems winning in Richmond really indicative of the country starting to fight back against evil Brexit? Sure, it's a great win for Olney, but if a pro EU party couldn't win there, at this time, against Zac Bloody Goldsmith, when could it?
Zac Goldsmith had a majority of 23,000.
The Liberals had a national poll score of 8%.
So? Let's see how the Lib Dems fare in constituencies that ain't as pro EU as Richmond. You only see what you want to see. Like everyone else on here.
If that were true I wouldn't have won on Brexit and Trump.
I forgot, yer some sort of super punter. If you're that in tune with the views of the people, how come you're so incandescent with rage about how they feel?
Zac Goldsmith is out of politics, at least until the next general election. But which party will want him if he decides to return to the fray? He has shown himself to be a loser and a weak campaigner without deep backing, as his local conservative association has shown.
Jobabob - what was your vision of the future? Serious question.
Open to globalisation. More freedom of movement coupled with better employee protections and a push for stakeholder economies. Better targeted, modernised education fit for a digitised globalised world. Pro-market, pro-business, reduction in red tape and sales taxes. Progressive personal taxation and a drive towards a multilateral corporate taxation agreement. Secularism actively promoted. Religion consigned to the private sphere. Monarchies, God-given hierarchies, and born-in privilege questioned. Celebration of talent, the family, and hard work. Healthcare properly funded, and free at the point of need. Let private lives be private, and the preserve of consenting adults. Less government in social matters. More government in infrastructure. Nationalised railways. The enforced retirement of Jeremy Corbyn.
Many of those ideals simply could not and would not happen if we remained in the EU.
Admittedly, enforced retirements may well contravene European law Richard. Good evening to you sir.
Evening Jobabob. Don't get me wrong I agree with a lot if not perhaps all of your ideals as you articulate them. I just think that many of them are incompatible with membership of the EU. For me the great thing now is that these sorts of ideas will be argued on their merits rather than being dismissed as being against some regulation of other.
But don't you see how your middle class lives have also been affected too. Haven't you noticed your parents have much better homes than you can afford?
My house is bigger and worth a lot more than my parents' house. Admittedly theirs is mortgage free while mine is heavily mortgaged. I agree that the Baby Boom benefited from being at the top of a pyramid scheme. But, on the other hand, Generation X has benefited from ultra low interest rates. The Millenials are the ones who have suffered. Yet none of this has much to do with leaving or staying in the EU, why would you think it does?
When my mum and dad left the RAF after the war, age 24, they could get a council house and start a family. My mother didn't need to work. My mother has a carer, age 25, also setting up home. Single room in a shared house - all the rooms are bedrooms - shared bathroom. Will have to work so unlikely to be able to afford kids. 70 years of progress.
Have you seen Cathy Come Home, the film about the housing crisis in the sixties? Getting a council house was not easy then either.
The recent programme in the Black Briton series about a Brixton immigrant family also shows what housing was like for many post war.
Zac Goldsmith is out of politics, at least until the next general election. But which party will want him if he decides to return to the fray? He has shown himself to be a loser and a weak campaigner without deep backing, as his local conservative association has shown.
Even before the by-election, Zac had very few fans (except Sandy Rentool) on here. He lost because no one liked him enough to go out on a cold December evening and vote for him.
It would be rather difficult for the government if they lose the Sleaford by-election to UKIP. There's no way to satisfy both Sleaford and Richmond Park at the same time, in those circumstances.
I am proud I grew up in a country known as a founding mother of democracy. I wonder where we lost our way when people can use sophistry like parliament is sovereign and it was only advice. All power is lent by the people of this country to our parliament...lent not given. You ask us what we want and then say you will ignore it then we can easily revoke the power we lent you
Yep. Thats why I think while leaving the EU is (on balance) a 'bad idea' - attempting to subvert the referendum outcome is a very much worse idea
When my mum and dad left the RAF after the war, age 24, they could get a council house and start a family. My mother didn't need to work. My mother has a carer, age 25, also setting up home. Single room in a shared house - all the rooms are bedrooms - shared bathroom. Will have to work so unlikely to be able to afford kids. 70 years of progress.
That's true across the developed world. In the 1960s, it was almost unheard of married women in the US, the UK, the Netherlands, Japan, Canada or Australia to work.
Now, two working parent families are the norms in all of those countries. Japan was the last, in 2009, two working parent families became more common than one working parent families for the first time.
But then again we all have iPhones, big screen TVs, take Ubers, go on foreign holidays and the like.
How many of those (final paragraph) things could we still have if the population of the UK was 10 or 20 million lower ?
It just seems that an ever increasing population inevitably leads to pressure on housing, transport and the environment.
It does.
But remember, if we eliminated the 10m last immigrants from the population, then we'd have more old people being supported by fewer workers.
Our birth rate has been below 2.1 for a long time. Combine that with increasing life expectancy, and rising health care costs and you have a problem.
It would be rather difficult for the government if they lose the Sleaford by-election to UKIP. There's no way to satisfy both Sleaford and Richmond Park at the same time, in those circumstances.
Maybe the UK is no longer a single demos...
Eeek. That's a scary thought. Time to get back to my video games
But don't you see how your middle class lives have also been affected too. Haven't you noticed your parents have much better homes than you can afford?
My house is bigger and worth a lot more than my parents' house. Admittedly theirs is mortgage free while mine is heavily mortgaged. I agree that the Baby Boom benefited from being at the top of a pyramid scheme. But, on the other hand, Generation X has benefited from ultra low interest rates. The Millenials are the ones who have suffered. Yet none of this has much to do with leaving or staying in the EU, why would you think it does?
Jobabob - what was your vision of the future? Serious question.
Open to globalisation. More freedom of movement coupled with better employee protections and a push for stakeholder economies. Better targeted, modernised education fit for a digitised globalised world. Pro-market, pro-business, reduction in red tape and sales taxes. Progressive personal taxation and a drive towards a multilateral corporate taxation agreement. Secularism actively promoted. Religion consigned to the private sphere. Monarchies, God-given hierarchies, and born-in privilege questioned. Celebration of talent, the family, and hard work. Healthcare properly funded, and free at the point of need. Let private lives be private, and the preserve of consenting adults. Less government in social matters. More government in infrastructure. Nationalised railways. The enforced retirement of Jeremy Corbyn.
Many of those ideals simply could not and would not happen if we remained in the EU.
Admittedly, enforced retirements may well contravene European law Richard. Good evening to you sir.
Evening Jobabob. Don't get me wrong I agree with a lot if not perhaps all of your ideals as you articulate them. I just think that many of them are incompatible with membership of the EU. For me the great thing now is that these sorts of ideas will be argued on their merits rather than being dismissed as being against some regulation of other.
Was the Lib Dems winning in Richmond really indicative of the country starting to fight back against evil Brexit? Sure, it's a great win for Olney, but if a pro EU party couldn't win there, at this time, against Zac Bloody Goldsmith, when could it?
Zac Goldsmith had a majority of 23,000.
The Liberals had a national poll score of 8%.
So? Let's see how the Lib Dems fare in constituencies that ain't as pro EU as Richmond. You only see what you want to see. Like everyone else on here.
If that were true I wouldn't have won on Brexit and Trump.
I forgot, yer some sort of super punter. If you're that in tune with the views of the people, how come you're so incandescent with rage about how they feel?
I don't claim to be anything of the sort. And sensing the will of the electorate is very different to agreeing with it, in any case.
Jobabob - what was your vision of the future? Serious question.
Open to globalisation. More freedom of movement coupled with better employee protections and a push for stakeholder economies. Better targeted, modernised education fit for a digitised globalised world. Pro-market, pro-business, reduction in red tape and sales taxes. Progressive personal taxation and a drive towards a multilateral corporate taxation agreement. Secularism actively promoted. Religion consigned to the private sphere. Monarchies, God-given hierarchies, and born-in privilege questioned. Celebration of talent, the family, and hard work. Healthcare properly funded, and free at the point of need. Let private lives be private, and the preserve of consenting adults. Less government in social matters. More government in infrastructure. Nationalised railways. The enforced retirement of Jeremy Corbyn.
Many of those ideals simply could not and would not happen if we remained in the EU.
Admittedly, enforced retirements may well contravene European law Richard. Good evening to you sir.
Evening Jobabob. Don't get me wrong I agree with a lot if not perhaps all of your ideals as you articulate them. I just think that many of them are incompatible with membership of the EU. For me the great thing now is that these sorts of ideas will be argued on their merits rather than being dismissed as being against some regulation of other.
I take that point. I just think that staying was better than the alternative - which is a bunch of reactionaries leading us into the void. If it was Tyndallite EEAers who held the upper hand then I would be much more equivocal.
A thought for those thinking that they can avoid brexit. When people goto the ballot box and win and it still makes no difference they learn the ballot box doesnt work. When the ballot box ceases to work they fall back on other options
Do you really want to tell 17 million people the ballot box no longer works for them? While most will do little more than grumble there will be enough in there willing to go further to exert their will, even if its only 0.1 percent thats still 17000 people.
The type of people who tend to get upset are hard right UKIP and Tory members, I don't really see them turning over cars and setting them on fire in the streets. They will be annoyed but not as irate as the people with incomes in the lower 50% of the population will be when their living standards noticeably deteriorate.
Well go ahead and try and thwart brexit if you wish but I would suggest that it will likely lead to more incidents like jo cox and it will lie at your door for taking the ballot box from those people. The brexit camp has more people in it than pensioners and like most sections of society they will have enough nutters in it to cause a lot of mess
There was a bloke on here whose tag I forget that used to talk about how easy it would be to get hold of a firearm in this country, and to build an explosive device. Was it you?
Hypothetical question for you. Imagine if the Scots had voted YES and then lots of Unionists had plotted to subvert the result, and then managed, somehow, to get the YES vote "cancelled" through some very dodgy and entirely immoral chicanery in the courts, meaning Scotland was forced to stay in the Union, against her will.
Do you think we would then have seen political violence from hardcore Nationalists?
My guess is Yes, we definitely would. But I could be wrong. Your opinion?
Who would these 'hardcore Nationalists' be? There was a remarkable dearth of violence on the whole during the whole indyref campaign, no pols murdered, no 'outsiders' murdered or assaulted, no calls to arms (apart from some loonball Yoons), few explicit threats of violence.
I'm not keen on making definitive statements about what might have happened, but no, I think acts of political violence in that scenario would be unlikely, except as a last resort against physical repression. Much as I'm not a fan of the UK even I don't think that Westminster would have resorted to that.
When my mum and dad left the RAF after the war, age 24, they could get a council house and start a family. My mother didn't need to work. My mother has a carer, age 25, also setting up home. Single room in a shared house - all the rooms are bedrooms - shared bathroom. Will have to work so unlikely to be able to afford kids. 70 years of progress.
That's true across the developed world. In the 1960s, it was almost unheard of married women in the US, the UK, the Netherlands, Japan, Canada or Australia to work.
Now, two working parent families are the norms in all of those countries. Japan was the last, in 2009, two working parent families became more common than one working parent families for the first time.
But then again we all have iPhones, big screen TVs, take Ubers, go on foreign holidays and the like.
How many of those (final paragraph) things could we still have if the population of the UK was 10 or 20 million lower ?
It just seems that an ever increasing population inevitably leads to pressure on housing, transport and the environment.
It does.
But remember, if we eliminated the 10m last immigrants from the population, then we'd have more old people being supported by fewer workers.
Our birth rate has been below 2.1 for a long time. Combine that with increasing life expectancy, and rising health care costs and you have a problem.
In the US, healthcare and pensions already take up half of the federal budget, and that number is rising every year.
Increased population certainly hasn't helped the US federal budget there.
Surely the answer includes a more sustainable basis for society and less of the wealth consuming and quality of life damaging pyramid schemes.
Doesn't using immigration to support an ageing population only work if the immigrants leave before they themselves are old? Otherwise you need another 10m to support the first and where does it stop?
In the 70s and 80s, Mr and Mrs Average could usually afford to buy quite a nice detached house with a big garden as long as it wasn't in the posh bits of London, Bristol or Edinburgh. Now the same types of people struggle to afford a one bedroom flat, unless you want to live in Rotherham or Accrington.
But don't you see how your middle class lives have also been affected too. Haven't you noticed your parents have much better homes than you can afford?
My house is bigger and worth a lot more than my parents' house. Admittedly theirs is mortgage free while mine is heavily mortgaged. I agree that the Baby Boom benefited from being at the top of a pyramid scheme. But, on the other hand, Generation X has benefited from ultra low interest rates. The Millenials are the ones who have suffered. Yet none of this has much to do with leaving or staying in the EU, why would you think it does?
I'm dating a Millennial at the moment. Smart, articulate, from a nice middle middle class background, with a degree in something pretty useless (intra-cultural studies??)
She's 26. Done long stints volunteering abroad - really hard yakka with deprived kids in Zambia, etc, autistic kids in China. Earned no money but did it for the children and the CV.
Right now she's working in a factory doing admin for £12 an hour. She has debts she can barely maintain let alone pay off. She has no possible route to a lucrative career, she lives back at home with her parents (and hates it), she can't afford to rent in London where the good jobs might be. She's stuck. The idea of achieving a lifestyle anywhere as nice as her parents' seems like a surreal illusion. She says the idea of having a job in something genuinely attractive - journalism, the arts, etc - is seen as something solely for posh people from private schools. Only they can afford to be interns, and earn nothing, for years.
It's a sobering insight for someone like me who grew up in a much more meritocratic society. The combination of globalisation, automisation and mass immigration, and general poshification, has made life prospects very much worse for anyone without family money under 35.
I don't think its immigrants removing jobs from journalism, I think that's the internet.
And based on the dates I went on in my 20s, I don't think anyone working in the arts who didn't go to a Swiss finishing school, has ever been able to afford to live in London.
The fact is that we're all competing on a global basis now. You compete with American, Australian, and Indian authors. I compete with French and Indian fund managers. That's more meritocratic, not less, because the country where you were born no longer gives you an advantage.
Jobabob - but how much is the building cost of your house? The real cost of the house? And the final cost of your home including mortgage interest? Mass immigration is responsible for most of the difference, where you have a policy of free housing for unskilled immigrants, no housing for the working class, and worrying debt for yourself. In the 70 - 80s Margret Thatcher would pay your mortgage for you if you lost your job. How do you feel about losing your job today?
When my mum and dad left the RAF after the war, age 24, they could get a council house and start a family. My mother didn't need to work. My mother has a carer, age 25, also setting up home. Single room in a shared house - all the rooms are bedrooms - shared bathroom. Will have to work so unlikely to be able to afford kids. 70 years of progress.
Have you seen Cathy Come Home, the film about the housing crisis in the sixties? Getting a council house was not easy then either.
The recent programme in the Black Briton series about a Brixton immigrant family also shows what housing was like for many post war.
The West Indian immigrant family did get a nice flat in the 1950s.
Its difficult to imagine a bus conductor and cleaner having the equivalent now.
In the 70s and 80s, Mr and Mrs Average could usually afford to buy quite a nice detached house with a big garden as long as it wasn't in the posh bits of London, Bristol or Edinburgh. Now the same types of people struggle to afford a one bedroom flat, unless you want to live in Rotherham or Accrington.
Nonsense. Firstly in the seventies or eighties there were still lots of semi detached at best if not terraced houses.
Secondly nowadays is still not all ridiculously expenses. My wife and I bought a three bedroom semi in a nice northern town for £120k. Not Rotherham, not a one bedroom flat.
When my mum and dad left the RAF after the war, age 24, they could get a council house and start a family. My mother didn't need to work. My mother has a carer, age 25, also setting up home. Single room in a shared house - all the rooms are bedrooms - shared bathroom. Will have to work so unlikely to be able to afford kids. 70 years of progress.
That's true across the developed world. In the 1960s, it was almost unheard of married women in the US, the UK, the Netherlands, Japan, Canada or Australia to work.
Now, two working parent families are the norms in all of those countries. Japan was the last, in 2009, two working parent families became more common than one working parent families for the first time.
But then again we all have iPhones, big screen TVs, take Ubers, go on foreign holidays and the like.
How many of those (final paragraph) things could we still have if the population of the UK was 10 or 20 million lower ?
It just seems that an ever increasing population inevitably leads to pressure on housing, transport and the environment.
It does.
But remember, if we eliminated the 10m last immigrants from the population, then we'd have more old people being supported by fewer workers.
Our birth rate has been below 2.1 for a long time. Combine that with increasing life expectancy, and rising health care costs and you have a problem.
In the US, healthcare and pensions already take up half of the federal budget, and that number is rising every year.
Increased population certainly hasn't helped the US federal budget there.
Surely the answer includes a more sustainable basis for society and less of the wealth consuming and quality of life damaging pyramid schemes.
Doesn't using immigration to support an ageing population only work if the immigrants leave before they themselves are old? Otherwise you need another 10m to support the first and where does it stop?
Doesn't it depend?
If you assume everyone dies at 80, and you want to maintain (say) five workers per retiree, then given a TFR of 1.5, you'd need to import a reasonable number of 21 year olds every year. Otherwise - because each generation would have fewer children than the last - then the dependency ratio would keep climbing for ever.
Importing 21 year olds gives you 45 years of work before they retire (and a lot of them will return home anyway). Importing 50 year olds means bringing people in who are much less likely to integrate and who can only work for 15 years or so.
When my mum and dad left the RAF after the war, age 24, they could get a council house and start a family. My mother didn't need to work. My mother has a carer, age 25, also setting up home. Single room in a shared house - all the rooms are bedrooms - shared bathroom. Will have to work so unlikely to be able to afford kids. 70 years of progress.
That's true across the developed world. In the 1960s, it was almost unheard of married women in the US, the UK, the Netherlands, Japan, Canada or Australia to work.
Now, two working parent families are the norms in all of those countries. Japan was the last, in 2009, two working parent families became more common than one working parent families for the first time.
But then again we all have iPhones, big screen TVs, take Ubers, go on foreign holidays and the like.
How many of those (final paragraph) things could we still have if the population of the UK was 10 or 20 million lower ?
It just seems that an ever increasing population inevitably leads to pressure on housing, transport and the environment.
It does.
But remember, if we eliminated the 10m last immigrants from the population, then we'd have more old people being supported by fewer workers.
Our birth rate has been below 2.1 for a long time. Combine that with increasing life expectancy, and rising health care costs and you have a problem.
In the US, healthcare and pensions already take up half of the federal budget, and that number is rising every year.
Increased population certainly hasn't helped the US federal budget there.
Surely the answer includes a more sustainable basis for society and less of the wealth consuming and quality of life damaging pyramid schemes.
Doesn't using immigration to support an ageing population only work if the immigrants leave before they themselves are old? Otherwise you need another 10m to support the first and where does it stop?
Exactly.
Or you deny the immigrants full rights - no free healthcare, reduced pension rights etc.
It would be rather difficult for the government if they lose the Sleaford by-election to UKIP. There's no way to satisfy both Sleaford and Richmond Park at the same time, in those circumstances.
Victoria Ayling is the appalling candidate that UKIP chose. There is a pro Brexit Tory, and I expect UKIP to come 3rd or 4th. VA was candidate for last GE in what UKIP thought was the winnable seat of Grimsby.
This was the interview she did on Sunday Politics East Midlands the week before the GE.
In the 70s and 80s, Mr and Mrs Average could usually afford to buy quite a nice detached house with a big garden as long as it wasn't in the posh bits of London, Bristol or Edinburgh. Now the same types of people struggle to afford a one bedroom flat, unless you want to live in Rotherham or Accrington.
And with variations for the housing cycle that continued until 2000.
Fair enuff. And I respect your superior insight into this. I personally believe there would have been violence, it is in the nature of nationalism, when illegally repressed - but you probably know better....
It depends who's doing the repressing. If it was the English trying to prevent it happening then I agree it would lead to violence, but if there was just a bitter internal split it's less obvious that would be the case.
The same thing applies to Brexit - the European reaction on the whole has been to show us the door, not to try to repress our nationalistic urges.
Hypothetical question for you. Imagine if the Scots had voted YES and then lots of Unionists had plotted to subvert the result, and then managed, somehow, to get the YES vote "cancelled" through some very dodgy and entirely immoral chicanery in the courts, meaning Scotland was forced to stay in the Union, against her will.
Do you think we would then have seen political violence from hardcore Nationalists?
My guess is Yes, we definitely would. But I could be wrong. Your opinion?
Yes, probably some violence, but there would probably also have been a huge campaign of non-violent civil disobedience.
But don't you see how your middle class lives have also been affected too. Haven't you noticed your parents have much better homes than you can afford?
My house is bigger and worth a lot more than my parents' house. Admittedly theirs is mortgage free while mine is heavily mortgaged. I agree that the Baby Boom benefited from being at the top of a pyramid scheme. But, on the other hand, Generation X has benefited from ultra low interest rates. The Millenials are the ones who have suffered. Yet none of this has much to do with leaving or staying in the EU, why would you think it does?
I'm dating a Millennial at the moment. Smart, articulate, from a nice middle middle class background, with a degree in something pretty useless (intra-cultural studies??)
She's 26. Done long stints volunteering abroad - really hard yakka with deprived kids in Zambia, etc, autistic kids in China. Earned no money but did it for the children and the CV.
Right now she's working in a factory doing admin for £12 an hour. She has debts she can barely maintain let alone pay off. She has no possible route to a lucrative career, she lives back at home with her parents (and hates it), she can't afford to rent in London where the good jobs might be. She's stuck. The idea of achieving a lifestyle anywhere as nice as her parents' seems like a surreal illusion. She says the idea of having a job in something genuinely attractive - journalism, the arts, etc - is seen as something solely for posh people from private schools. Only they can afford to be interns, and earn nothing, for years.
It's a sobering insight for someone like me who grew up in a much more meritocratic society. The combination of globalisation, automisation and mass immigration, and general poshification, has made life prospects very much worse for anyone without family money under 35.
Yes, I agree with that. We thought we Xers were The Jilted Generation (h/t The Prodigy) but actually we scored from very low interest rates and, paradoxically, being the children and heirs of the very rich, resented Baby Boom. The Millennials have a tough prospectus. It's hard to see where their wealth will come from.
In the 70s and 80s, Mr and Mrs Average could usually afford to buy quite a nice detached house with a big garden as long as it wasn't in the posh bits of London, Bristol or Edinburgh. Now the same types of people struggle to afford a one bedroom flat, unless you want to live in Rotherham or Accrington.
Is there any evidence that Gen X command lower property asset values than the Baby Boom? In terms of equity the Boomers are clearly much wealthier, but they are also much older, and Gen X are the heirs to their assets.
When my mum and dad left the RAF after the war, age 24, they could get a council house and start a family. My mother didn't need to work. My mother has a carer, age 25, also setting up home. Single room in a shared house - all the rooms are bedrooms - shared bathroom. Will have to work so unlikely to be able to afford kids. 70 years of progress.
Have you seen Cathy Come Home, the film about the housing crisis in the sixties? Getting a council house was not easy then either.
The recent programme in the Black Briton series about a Brixton immigrant family also shows what housing was like for many post war.
The West Indian immigrant family did get a nice flat in the 1950s.
Its difficult to imagine a bus conductor and cleaner having the equivalent now.
It was a rented flat, after 5 years in a shared bedsit. Worth watching.
But don't you see how your middle class lives have also been affected too. Haven't you noticed your parents have much better homes than you can afford?
My house is bigger and worth a lot more than my parents' house. Admittedly theirs is mortgage free while mine is heavily mortgaged. I agree that the Baby Boom benefited from being at the top of a pyramid scheme. But, on the other hand, Generation X has benefited from ultra low interest rates. The Millenials are the ones who have suffered. Yet none of this has much to do with leaving or staying in the EU, why would you think it does?
I'm dating a Millennial at the moment. Smart, articulate, from a nice middle middle class background, with a degree in something pretty useless (intra-cultural studies??)
She's 26. Done long stints volunteering abroad - really hard yakka with deprived kids in Zambia, etc, autistic kids in China. Earned no money but did it for the children and the CV.
Right now she's working in a factory doing admin for £12 an hour. She has debts she can barely maintain let alone pay off. She has no possible route to a lucrative career, she lives back at home with her parents (and hates it), she can't afford to rent in London where the good jobs might be. She's stuck. The idea of achieving a lifestyle anywhere as nice as her parents' seems like a surreal illusion. She says the idea of having a job in something genuinely attractive - journalism, the arts, etc - is seen as something solely for posh people from private schools. Only they can afford to be interns, and earn nothing, for years.
It's a sobering insight for someone like me who grew up in a much more meritocratic society. The combination of globalisation, automisation and mass immigration, and general poshification, has made life prospects very much worse for anyone without family money under 35.
I don't think its immigrants removing jobs from journalism, I think that's the internet.
And based on the dates I went on in my 20s, I don't think anyone working in the arts who didn't go to a Swiss finishing school, has ever been able to afford to live in London.
The fact is that we're all competing on a global basis now. You compete with American, Australian, and Indian authors. I compete with French and Indian fund managers. That's more meritocratic, not less, because the country where you were born no longer gives you an advantage.
The underlying thing which many don't want to acknowledge is that almost all PBers had the privilege of being born into nice, middle class families in the Western World.
The advantages that brought for those born in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s was enormous.
Those advantage are steadily diminishing for the younger generations.
Or you deny the immigrants full rights - no free healthcare, reduced pension rights etc.
Open Excel. Create a model where every year life expectancy grows by about 80 days (as it currently does, scarily enough). Now, assume a TFR of 1.6, which is about average for the last two decades. (So, between 20 and 40, each woman has 1.6 children.)
Watch what happens to the ratio between those over 70 and those between 20 and 70.
It's scary.
If you start making assumptions about rising costs of healthcare (and bear in mind that an 80 year old costs 10x what a 20 year old does in annual health costs), then it gets even more scary.
When my mum and dad left the RAF after the war, age 24, they could get a council house and start a family. My mother didn't need to work. My mother has a carer, age 25, also setting up home. Single room in a shared house - all the rooms are bedrooms - shared bathroom. Will have to work so unlikely to be able to afford kids. 70 years of progress.
That's true across the developed world. In the 1960s, it was almost unheard of married women in the US, the UK, the Netherlands, Japan, Canada or Australia to work.
Now, two working parent families are the norms in all of those countries. Japan was the last, in 2009, two working parent families became more common than one working parent families for the first time.
But then again we all have iPhones, big screen TVs, take Ubers, go on foreign holidays and the like.
How many of those (final paragraph) things could we still have if the population of the UK was 10 or 20 million lower ?
It just seems that an ever increasing population inevitably leads to pressure on housing, transport and the environment.
It does.
But remember, if we eliminated the 10m last immigrants from the population, then we'd have more old people being supported by fewer workers.
Our birth rate has been below 2.1 for a long time. Combine that with increasing life expectancy, and rising health care costs and you have a problem.
In the US, healthcare and pensions already take up half of the federal budget, and that number is rising every year.
Increased population certainly hasn't helped the US federal budget there.
Surely the answer includes a more sustainable basis for society and less of the wealth consuming and quality of life damaging pyramid schemes.
Doesn't using immigration to support an ageing population only work if the immigrants leave before they themselves are old? Otherwise you need another 10m to support the first and where does it stop?
It doesn't stop. It's taken half a century for our population to grow 10m and there is zero reason why in a centuries time this country couldn't have a population of 100m or more. We just need a few new cities and investment in infrastructure etc not anything crazy.
When my mum and dad left the RAF after the war, age 24, they could get a council house and start a family. My mother didn't need to work. My mother has a carer, age 25, also setting up home. Single room in a shared house - all the rooms are bedrooms - shared bathroom. Will have to work so unlikely to be able to afford kids. 70 years of progress.
Have you seen Cathy Come Home, the film about the housing crisis in the sixties? Getting a council house was not easy then either.
The recent programme in the Black Briton series about a Brixton immigrant family also shows what housing was like for many post war.
The West Indian immigrant family did get a nice flat in the 1950s.
Its difficult to imagine a bus conductor and cleaner having the equivalent now.
It was a rented flat, after 5 years in a shared bedsit. Worth watching.
Certainly it was rented but would they be able to rent the equivalent today ?
When my mum and dad left the RAF after the war, age 24, they could get a council house and start a family. My mother didn't need to work. My mother has a carer, age 25, also setting up home. Single room in a shared house - all the rooms are bedrooms - shared bathroom. Will have to work so unlikely to be able to afford kids. 70 years of progress.
Have you seen Cathy Come Home, the film about the housing crisis in the sixties? Getting a council house was not easy then either.
The recent programme in the Black Briton series about a Brixton immigrant family also shows what housing was like for many post war.
The West Indian immigrant family did get a nice flat in the 1950s.
Its difficult to imagine a bus conductor and cleaner having the equivalent now.
It was a rented flat, after 5 years in a shared bedsit. Worth watching.
Certainly it was rented but would they be able to rent the equivalent today ?
Quite possibly, they were both working so entitled to tax credits and housing benefit.
This is a worryingly stupid remark from the director of Crowdscores.
To take just one example, yes a working class journalist/writer could easily have afforded to live in London, in the 1980s. I know dozens of examples personally. They didn't even live in particularly dodgy areas: a friend of mine wangled a flat in Regent's Park (yards from where I type this), lots of people squatted (a culture nearly gone), others bought - yes, BOUGHT - cheap flats in Ladbroke Grove or Camberwell or Shepherd's Bush, on fairly average but liveable wages, some made very good livings as 20-somethings.
This is all gone. Entirely disappeared. Partly due to the internet, sure, but also other factors.
Life is simply much more of a bitch for young Brits, however talented or hardworking. It doesn't succour them to know that this is good for young Indians in Bangalore. It doesn't help my daughters.
GO TRUMP.
Errr. Re journalism, my point is that the number of paid journalism jobs has collapsed. Words are a lot cheaper than they were, because people can now read online for free.
Look at the staffs of The Guardian,The Telegraph and the like. The sheer number of people working there has collapsed. Budgets have been decimated. But that isn't because immigrants are taking the jobs. It's because the internet has reduced the value of words.
You used to have to pay to read Sean Thomas. Now you get him for free on Politicalbetting.
I grant you that London housing has reached stupid levels, and immigration is a large part of that.
You are right that May should have triggered Article 50 straight away. But I do wonder if that would not have left us in even more of a mess had the court challenge then been successful and she be told she had not had the authority to do what she had done.
She could have taken legal advice, given a day's notice, let someone go to court, waited for the court's decision, then introduced a bill the same day. Or introduced a bill as soon as she knew someone had gone to court. Sending the letter without considering the legal side, or on the basis of crap legal advice, would have been stupid, but in any case Parliament can legislate retrospectively.
But April will be interesting in France if the Brexit-Frexit dance dominates the election campaign.
In the 70s and 80s, Mr and Mrs Average could usually afford to buy quite a nice detached house with a big garden as long as it wasn't in the posh bits of London, Bristol or Edinburgh. Now the same types of people struggle to afford a one bedroom flat, unless you want to live in Rotherham or Accrington.
And with variations for the housing cycle that continued until 2000.
Yes. 2000 was roughly when it ended. When things started getting WORSE.
One of Brown's first promises upon becoming Chancellor was not to let house prices get out of control... We're still living with the consequences of his failure to tackle the ensuing bubble.
But don't you see how your middle class lives have also been affected too. Haven't you noticed your parents have much better homes than you can afford?
My house is bigger and worth a lot more than my parents' house. Admittedly theirs is mortgage free while mine is heavily mortgaged. I agree that the Baby Boom benefited from being at the top of a pyramid scheme. But, on the other hand, Generation X has benefited from ultra low interest rates. The Millenials are the ones who have suffered. Yet none of this has much to do with leaving or staying in the EU, why would you think it does?
I'm dating a Millennial at the moment. Smart, articulate, from a nice middle middle class background, with a degree in something pretty useless (intra-cultural studies??)
She's 26 It's a sobering insight for someone like me who grew up in a much more meritocratic society. The combination of globalisation, automisation and mass immigration, and general poshification, has made life prospects very much worse for anyone without family money under 35.
I don't think its immigrants removing jobs from journalism, I think that's the internet.
And based on the dates I went on in my 20s, I don't think anyone working in the arts who didn't go to a Swiss finishing school, has ever been able to afford to live in London.
The fact is that we're all competing on a global basis now. You compete with American, Australian, and Indian authors. I compete with French and Indian fund managers. That's more meritocratic, not less, because the country where you were born no longer gives you an advantage.
This is a worryingly stupid remark from the director of Crowdscores.
To take just one example, yes a working class journalist/writer could easily have afforded to live in London, in the 1980s. I know dozens of examples personally. They didn't even live in particularly dodgy areas: a friend of mine wangled a flat in Regent's Park (yards from where I type this), lots of people squatted (a culture nearly gone), others bought - yes, BOUGHT - cheap flats in Ladbroke Grove or Camberwell or Shepherd's Bush, on fairly average but liveable wages, some made very good livings as 20-somethings.
This is all gone. Entirely disappeared. Partly due to the internet, sure, but also other factors.
Life is simply much more of a bitch for young Brits, however talented or hardworking. It doesn't succour them to know that this is good for young Indians in Bangalore. It doesn't help my daughters.
GO TRUMP.
Trump isn't going to fix Britain's retarded housing planning system. The only way that's going to happen is if young British people vote.
Or you deny the immigrants full rights - no free healthcare, reduced pension rights etc.
Open Excel. Create a model where every year life expectancy grows by about 80 days (as it currently does, scarily enough). Now, assume a TFR of 1.6, which is about average for the last two decades. (So, between 20 and 40, each woman has 1.6 children.)
Watch what happens to the ratio between those over 70 and those between 20 and 70.
It's scary.
If you start making assumptions about rising costs of healthcare (and bear in mind that an 80 year old costs 10x what a 20 year old does in annual health costs), then it gets even more scary.
We need a stoic acceptance of euthanasia - with perhaps some financial encouragement for oldies preferring a swift end.
And I really don't see the attractions of living in a nursing home and needing continuous medical care.
In the 70s and 80s, Mr and Mrs Average could usually afford to buy quite a nice detached house with a big garden as long as it wasn't in the posh bits of London, Bristol or Edinburgh. Now the same types of people struggle to afford a one bedroom flat, unless you want to live in Rotherham or Accrington.
And with variations for the housing cycle that continued until 2000.
Yes. 2000 was roughly when it ended. When things started getting WORSE.
One of Brown's first promises upon becoming Chancellor was not to let house prices get out of control... We're still living with the consequences of his failure to tackle the ensuing bubble.
The economic cycle was pointing to a recession about 2000 (and that was still the peak for industrial production in the UK).
But Brown pumped up a huge consumption bubble - firstly for the 2001 election, then the 2003 Iraq invasion, then the 2005 election and finally to ensure he became PM in 2007.
You are right that May should have triggered Article 50 straight away. But I do wonder if that would not have left us in even more of a mess had the court challenge then been successful and she be told she had not had the authority to do what she had done.
She could have taken legal advice, given a day's notice, let someone go to court, waited for the court's decision, then introduced a bill the same day. Or introduced a bill as soon as she knew someone had gone to court. Sending the letter without considering the legal side, or on the basis of crap legal advice, would have been stupid, but in any case Parliament can legislate retrospectively.
But April will be interesting in France if the Brexit-Frexit dance dominates the election campaign.
She could have put an A50 enabling bill quickly through parliament back in September, but now is in a mess of her own making.
The Brexit ship is rudderles, the navigators fighting amongst themselves and the captain dithering.
When you see a picture of the Calais camp, when they occupied that bridge - did you notice the notice held up - it said House. Do you remember when Labour ministers explained that immigrants weren't jumping the council house waiting lists - now we find out foreign nationals take 75% - what is that, about 8% chance of a council house for our working class family, 92% for the immigrant.
In the 70s and 80s, Mr and Mrs Average could usually afford to buy quite a nice detached house with a big garden as long as it wasn't in the posh bits of London, Bristol or Edinburgh. Now the same types of people struggle to afford a one bedroom flat, unless you want to live in Rotherham or Accrington.
And with variations for the housing cycle that continued until 2000.
Yes. 2000 was roughly when it ended. When things started getting WORSE.
One of Brown's first promises upon becoming Chancellor was not to let house prices get out of control... We're still living with the consequences of his failure to tackle the ensuing bubble.
The economic cycle was pointing to a recession about 2000 (and that was still the peak for industrial production in the UK).
But Brown pumped up a huge consumption bubble - firstly for the 2001 election, then the 2003 Iraq invasion, then the 2005 election and finally to ensure he became PM in 2007.
Sadly, it was also the policy of the UK government under Cameron to continue the consumption boom, with the consequence that we have gone from a position - over the last 30 years - where the rest of the world owed us the equivalent of 70% of GDP, to one where we owe 50%.
It's a staggering and scary change, and it will take either real courage, or a catastrophe, to change it.
It doesn't stop. It's taken half a century for our population to grow 10m and there is zero reason why in a centuries time this country couldn't have a population of 100m or more. We just need a few new cities and investment in infrastructure etc not anything crazy.
That is a problem,where are these new cities and investment like new dams for the ever growing population ?
All we are doing is over crowding our poor inner cities with more people,schools full,the nhs in crisis,our roads full,housing,social services cut and I could go on.
If the open border posters on here think this country can carry on with the immigration numbers we have had for the last ten years,you lot are in for a shock.
In the 70s and 80s, Mr and Mrs Average could usually afford to buy quite a nice detached house with a big garden as long as it wasn't in the posh bits of London, Bristol or Edinburgh. Now the same types of people struggle to afford a one bedroom flat, unless you want to live in Rotherham or Accrington.
And with variations for the housing cycle that continued until 2000.
Yes. 2000 was roughly when it ended. When things started getting WORSE.
One of Brown's first promises upon becoming Chancellor was not to let house prices get out of control... We're still living with the consequences of his failure to tackle the ensuing bubble.
Brown needed the economy to grow.
He needed people to borrow (and spend) and to do that he needed house prices to grow.
When you see a picture of the Calais camp, when they occupied that bridge - did you notice the notice held up - it said House. Do you remember when Labour ministers explained that immigrants weren't jumping the council house waiting lists - now we find out foreign nationals take 75% - what is that, about 8% chance of a council house for our working class family, 92% for the immigrant.
Where are those figures from? the most recent that I have seen are 5% of social housing going to immigrants, and asylum seekers are not eligible:
In the 70s and 80s, Mr and Mrs Average could usually afford to buy quite a nice detached house with a big garden as long as it wasn't in the posh bits of London, Bristol or Edinburgh. Now the same types of people struggle to afford a one bedroom flat, unless you want to live in Rotherham or Accrington.
And with variations for the housing cycle that continued until 2000.
Yes. 2000 was roughly when it ended. When things started getting WORSE.
One of Brown's first promises upon becoming Chancellor was not to let house prices get out of control... We're still living with the consequences of his failure to tackle the ensuing bubble.
Brown needed the economy to grow.
He needed people to borrow (and spend) and to do that he needed house prices to grow.
I believe the majority of Leavers would be content with Soft Brexit;
Nothing is going to make Leavers content. They voted for the reinstatement of a lost version of Britain which never really existed and couldn't be revived even if it had. It's the same reason nobody has an iPad in Harry Potter.
When you see a picture of the Calais camp, when they occupied that bridge - did you notice the notice held up - it said House. Do you remember when Labour ministers explained that immigrants weren't jumping the council house waiting lists - now we find out foreign nationals take 75% - what is that, about 8% chance of a council house for our working class family, 92% for the immigrant.
Right, and they all get a free car and a £200/week pension for life, innit.
I'm not sure how this will work, and I'm not sure I agree with Grayling's logic, but apparently he chose the DfT and he is genuinely interested in railways.
Oh God, another car crash in the making. How does this work when different operators, freight and passenger, share the same tracks. Vertical integration will simply create another vast internal market.
That's how it's done in Japan. Seems to work OK, although they do less competition by different operators on the same routes.
When you see a picture of the Calais camp, when they occupied that bridge - did you notice the notice held up - it said House. Do you remember when Labour ministers explained that immigrants weren't jumping the council house waiting lists - now we find out foreign nationals take 75% - what is that, about 8% chance of a council house for our working class family, 92% for the immigrant.
Where are those figures from? the most recent that I have seen are 5% of social housing going to immigrants, and asylum seekers are not eligible:
I believe the majority of Leavers would be content with Soft Brexit;
Nothing is going to make Leavers content. They voted for the reinstatement of a lost version of Britain which never really existed and couldn't be revived even if it had. It's the same reason nobody has an iPad in Harry Potter.
The EU has its origins in the Treaty of Rome, signed in 1958 - such a 1950s throwback!
I'm not sure how this will work, and I'm not sure I agree with Grayling's logic, but apparently he chose the DfT and he is genuinely interested in railways.
Oh God, another car crash in the making. How does this work when different operators, freight and passenger, share the same tracks. Vertical integration will simply create another vast internal market.
That's how it's done in Japan. Seems to work OK, although they do less competition by different operators on the same routes.
Next time you're in London, I'll take you to a restaraunt owned by JR East
When you see a picture of the Calais camp, when they occupied that bridge - did you notice the notice held up - it said House. Do you remember when Labour ministers explained that immigrants weren't jumping the council house waiting lists - now we find out foreign nationals take 75% - what is that, about 8% chance of a council house for our working class family, 92% for the immigrant.
Right, and they all get a free car and a £200/week pension for life, innit.
You've been reading too much Breitbart.
I'm thinking that PB is rather missing a trick. If we want to get rich we should similar pick a subset of our users and pander to their prejudices. We'll get loads of shares and likes on Facebook.
of council houses becoming available, daily mail though.
You have to read these articles carefully, the text is often correct but the headlines are nearly always bogus, eg they found one particular London borough where council houses most went to immigrants and wrote it up as if it was the same everywhere.
I believe the majority of Leavers would be content with Soft Brexit;
Nothing is going to make Leavers content. They voted for the reinstatement of a lost version of Britain which never really existed and couldn't be revived even if it had. It's the same reason nobody has an iPad in Harry Potter.
Soft Brexit is delusional, and not acceptable to he Europhobic right or to the EU. It will be a hard Brexit, perhaps with tarrif free access for manufactures.
A thought for those thinking that they can avoid brexit. When people goto the ballot box and win and it still makes no difference they learn the ballot box doesnt work. When the ballot box ceases to work they fall back on other options
Do you really want to tell 17 million people the ballot box no longer works for them? While most will do little more than grumble there will be enough in there willing to go further to exert their will, even if its only 0.1 percent thats still 17000 people.
The type of people who tend to get upset are hard right UKIP and Tory members, I don't really see them turning over cars and setting them on fire in the streets. They will be annoyed but not as irate as the people with incomes in the lower 50% of the population will be when their living standards noticeably deteriorate.
Well go ahead and try and thwart brexit if you wish but I would suggest that it will likely lead to more incidents like jo cox and it will lie at your door for taking the ballot box from those people. The brexit camp has more people in it than pensioners and like most sections of society they will have enough nutters in it to cause a lot of mess
There was a bloke on here whose tag I forget that used to talk about how easy it would be to get hold of a firearm in this country, and to build an explosive device. Was it you?
Getting hold of an illegal weapon in this country is a piece of piss, if I wanted one it would take about an hour however I doubt it was me that mentioned it.
As to building an explosive device out of common chemicals...well anyone with O level chemistry can do that, tri nito toluene, benzene, napalm and nitro glycerine are easy enough to make with a modicum of knowledge
I am not advocating violence nor even supporting it merely pointing out the logical end point of removing a win from people who voted for change at the ballot box. Some will take that as a reason to take less peaceful action
I'm not sure how this will work, and I'm not sure I agree with Grayling's logic, but apparently he chose the DfT and he is genuinely interested in railways.
Oh God, another car crash in the making. How does this work when different operators, freight and passenger, share the same tracks. Vertical integration will simply create another vast internal market.
That's how it's done in Japan. Seems to work OK, although they do less competition by different operators on the same routes.
Next time you're in London, I'll take you to a restaraunt owned by JR East
When you see a picture of the Calais camp, when they occupied that bridge - did you notice the notice held up - it said House. Do you remember when Labour ministers explained that immigrants weren't jumping the council house waiting lists - now we find out foreign nationals take 75% - what is that, about 8% chance of a council house for our working class family, 92% for the immigrant.
Where are those figures from? the most recent that I have seen are 5% of social housing going to immigrants, and asylum seekers are not eligible:
"The government has encouraged people to buy diesel models through its road tax policy and more than half the new cars sold every year in the UK now run on diesel."
"Labour faces being crushed between Ukip and a resurgent Liberal Democrat Party in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, senior allies of Jeremy Corbyn admitted last night.............
Labour figures fear that the party faces electoral crisis as it loses votes to the Lib Dems in pro-Remain urban and southern seats, while Ukip builds support in its working-class heartlands of the north and Midlands.
Chuka Umunna, the former leadership hopeful, warned that there were now “no safe Labour seats"..................
Labour is braced for another by-election humiliation next week in the Tory-held seat of Sleaford and North Hykeham in Lincolnshire. With Ukip the main challenger, Mr Corbyn’s party faces being driven into fourth place."
I'm not sure how this will work, and I'm not sure I agree with Grayling's logic, but apparently he chose the DfT and he is genuinely interested in railways.
Oh God, another car crash in the making. How does this work when different operators, freight and passenger, share the same tracks. Vertical integration will simply create another vast internal market.
That's how it's done in Japan. Seems to work OK, although they do less competition by different operators on the same routes.
Next time you're in London, I'll take you to a restaraunt owned by JR East
Subverting a democratic vote is a bad idea, though legal, but purely as a thought experiment I struggle with what woukd be reasonabke if there were a rerun vote. It's all very well thinking it should not happen, and I don't expect one, but accepting the possibility is theoretically justifiable (in the sense that, in severely changed circumstances, it would be silly not to confirm), if one happened and was lost, it would be just as valid as the first, or a third, or a fourth. With no barrier, at present, on how many times a question can be asked, relying on democratic endorsement means it could be countered by another democratic endorsement, asking again would be said to be an insult to the first vote, but if it got a different answer, it'd be at least just as valid. We'd have constant neverendums, of course, but I do wonder if we should have some basic thresholds or no early repeat rules, if only to spare a lot of bitching and whining, since as it is, if people think they can politically manage it, there's nothing incorrect about ignoring the vote or going for a rerun, or indeed any second vote loser trying again.
When you see a picture of the Calais camp, when they occupied that bridge - did you notice the notice held up - it said House. Do you remember when Labour ministers explained that immigrants weren't jumping the council house waiting lists - now we find out foreign nationals take 75% - what is that, about 8% chance of a council house for our working class family, 92% for the immigrant.
Where are those figures from? the most recent that I have seen are 5% of social housing going to immigrants, and asylum seekers are not eligible:
"Labour faces being crushed between Ukip and a resurgent Liberal Democrat Party in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, senior allies of Jeremy Corbyn admitted last night.............
Labour figures fear that the party faces electoral crisis as it loses votes to the Lib Dems in pro-Remain urban and southern seats, while Ukip builds support in its working-class heartlands of the north and Midlands.
Chuka Umunna, the former leadership hopeful, warned that there were now “no safe Labour seats"..................
Labour is braced for another by-election humiliation next week in the Tory-held seat of Sleaford and North Hykeham in Lincolnshire. With Ukip the main challenger, Mr Corbyn’s party faces being driven into fourth place."
There are still safe labour seats, but better to be overcautious I guess.
A thought for those thinking that they can avoid brexit. When people goto the ballot box and win and it still makes no difference they learn the ballot box doesnt work. When the ballot box ceases to work they fall back on other options
Do you really want to tell 17 million people the ballot box no longer works for them? While most will do little more than grumble there will be enough in there willing to go further to exert their will, even if its only 0.1 percent thats still 17000 people.
The type of people who tend to get upset are hard right UKIP and Tory members, I don't really see them turning over cars and setting them on fire in the streets. They will be annoyed but not as irate as the people with incomes in the lower 50% of the population will be when their living standards noticeably deteriorate.
Well go ahead and try and thwart brexit if you wish but I would suggest that it will likely lead to more incidents like jo cox and it will lie at your door for taking the ballot box from those people. The brexit camp has more people in it than pensioners and like most sections of society they will have enough nutters in it to cause a lot of mess
There was a bloke on here whose tag I forget that used to talk about how easy it would be to get hold of a firearm in this country, and to build an explosive device. Was it you?
Getting hold of an illegal weapon in this country is a piece of piss, if I wanted one it would take about an hour however I doubt it was me that mentioned it.
As to building an explosive device out of common chemicals...well anyone with O level chemistry can do that, tri nito toluene, benzene, napalm and nitro glycerine are easy enough to make with a modicum of knowledge
I am not advocating violence nor even supporting it merely pointing out the logical end point of removing a win from people who voted for change at the ballot box. Some will take that as a reason to take less peaceful action
Nigel Farage said in speech in america just about one week ago that if Brexit was betrayed then we would have a political revolution not seen since the English civil war.(Doesn't that mean violence)
16.45 in you want to hear that bit ;-) but all his speech was good ;-)
In the 70s and 80s, Mr and Mrs Average could usually afford to buy quite a nice detached house with a big garden as long as it wasn't in the posh bits of London, Bristol or Edinburgh. Now the same types of people struggle to afford a one bedroom flat, unless you want to live in Rotherham or Accrington.
And with variations for the housing cycle that continued until 2000.
Yes. 2000 was roughly when it ended. When things started getting WORSE.
One of Brown's first promises upon becoming Chancellor was not to let house prices get out of control... We're still living with the consequences of his failure to tackle the ensuing bubble.
The economic cycle was pointing to a recession about 2000 (and that was still the peak for industrial production in the UK).
But Brown pumped up a huge consumption bubble - firstly for the 2001 election, then the 2003 Iraq invasion, then the 2005 election and finally to ensure he became PM in 2007.
Sadly, it was also the policy of the UK government under Cameron to continue the consumption boom, with the consequence that we have gone from a position - over the last 30 years - where the rest of the world owed us the equivalent of 70% of GDP, to one where we owe 50%.
It's a staggering and scary change, and it will take either real courage, or a catastrophe, to change it.
It will be catastrophe.
The consumption culture is now too deeply ingrained to be changed.
I think Cameron had a chance to change it but didn't have either the understanding of what needed to be done or the courage to do it.
Subverting a democratic vote is a bad idea, though legal, but purely as a thought experiment I struggle with what woukd be reasonabke if there were a rerun vote. It's all very well thinking it should not happen, and I don't expect one, but accepting the possibility is theoretically justifiable (in the sense that, in severely changed circumstances, it would be silly not to confirm), if one happened and was lost, it would be just as valid as the first, or a third, or a fourth. With no barrier, at present, on how many times a question can be asked, relying on democratic endorsement means it could be countered by another democratic endorsement, asking again would be said to be an insult to the first vote, but if it got a different answer, it'd be at least just as valid. We'd have constant neverendums, of course, but I do wonder if we should have some basic thresholds or no early repeat rules, if only to spare a lot of bitching and whining, since as it is, if people think they can politically manage it, there's nothing incorrect about ignoring the vote or going for a rerun, or indeed any second vote loser trying again.
When you see a picture of the Calais camp, when they occupied that bridge - did you notice the notice held up - it said House. Do you remember when Labour ministers explained that immigrants weren't jumping the council house waiting lists - now we find out foreign nationals take 75% - what is that, about 8% chance of a council house for our working class family, 92% for the immigrant.
Where are those figures from? the most recent that I have seen are 5% of social housing going to immigrants, and asylum seekers are not eligible:
Mentioning refugee's,have the lib dem councils improved the intake of syrian refugee's from none ? (Must have)
Bit embarrassing of the lib dem leader when you give a speech on taking more syrian refugee's and reports your own councils take none - lol
There are still LD councils?
It's a very good question.
There clearly are circumstances where the people could be allowed to 'change their mind'. But equally, there should be no possibility of 'neverendums', so the barrier needs to be high.
When you see a picture of the Calais camp, when they occupied that bridge - did you notice the notice held up - it said House. Do you remember when Labour ministers explained that immigrants weren't jumping the council house waiting lists - now we find out foreign nationals take 75% - what is that, about 8% chance of a council house for our working class family, 92% for the immigrant.
Where are those figures from? the most recent that I have seen are 5% of social housing going to immigrants, and asylum seekers are not eligible:
Well you think the leader of the lib dems giving a major speech on this country not taking enough refugee's would have been in touch with his 9 councils to see how many syrian refugee's they took.
In farron's speech I'm sure he mentioned up to one hundred thousand syrian refugee's we could take except if your lib dem.
One of the world's great wine producers (Ridge) is owned by a Japanese pharmaceutical company for absolutely no reason that I can possibly understand.
Maybe related to the reason Olympus owned a company making face cream?
That's very cynical of you.
After I make a billion dollars out of Crowdscores, I'm going to try and buy Ridge.
Speaking of which I think it's time to resurrect my Draft Michael Woodford campaign. I'm not sure what party he supports but he'd be a great improvement to the current leader of any of them.
It doesn't stop. It's taken half a century for our population to grow 10m and there is zero reason why in a centuries time this country couldn't have a population of 100m or more. We just need a few new cities and investment in infrastructure etc not anything crazy."
That is a problem,where are these new cities and investment like new dams for the ever growing population ?
All we are doing is over crowding our poor inner cities with more people,schools full,the nhs in crisis,our roads full,housing,social services cut and I could go on.
If the open border posters on here think this country can carry on with the immigration numbers we have had for the last ten years,you lot are in for a shock.
Where did Milton Keynes come from? Or new towns like Warrington? I didn't say expand the inner cities I said the exact opposite. New towns and cities rather than increasing inner cities.
Regarding infrastructure we are already in need of new infrastructure and are talking about new infrastructure. A sensible long term solution is to combine the two. For instance there have been to my knowledge no new motorways in my adult lifetime apart from the M6 Toll. However the other day there were conversations here about potential new motorways including finishing the route between London and Edinburgh ... or a motorway between Oxford and Cambridge. If we go ahead with these new roads then how much extra does it cost to add extra junctions along the new route for new towns?
Comments
But remember, if we eliminated the 10m last immigrants from the population, then we'd have more old people being supported by fewer workers.
Our birth rate has been below 2.1 for a long time. Combine that with increasing life expectancy, and rising health care costs and you have a problem.
see: http://www.econdataus.com/wpr_mdc.gif
In the US, healthcare and pensions already take up half of the federal budget, and that number is rising every year.
They are amazingly hard to get right. And when you do get them right (as France has), by giving massive tax breaks to middle class people to have kids, then everyone else screams blue murder.
The recent programme in the Black Briton series about a Brixton immigrant family also shows what housing was like for many post war.
I can't see him returning to politics.
Surely the answer includes a more sustainable basis for society and less of the wealth consuming and quality of life damaging pyramid schemes.
Eeek. That's a scary thought.
Time to get back to my video games
I'm not keen on making definitive statements about what might have happened, but no, I think acts of political violence in that scenario would be unlikely, except as a last resort against physical repression. Much as I'm not a fan of the UK even I don't think that Westminster would have resorted to that.
And based on the dates I went on in my 20s, I don't think anyone working in the arts who didn't go to a Swiss finishing school, has ever been able to afford to live in London.
The fact is that we're all competing on a global basis now. You compete with American, Australian, and Indian authors. I compete with French and Indian fund managers. That's more meritocratic, not less, because the country where you were born no longer gives you an advantage.
Its difficult to imagine a bus conductor and cleaner having the equivalent now.
Secondly nowadays is still not all ridiculously expenses. My wife and I bought a three bedroom semi in a nice northern town for £120k. Not Rotherham, not a one bedroom flat.
If you assume everyone dies at 80, and you want to maintain (say) five workers per retiree, then given a TFR of 1.5, you'd need to import a reasonable number of 21 year olds every year. Otherwise - because each generation would have fewer children than the last - then the dependency ratio would keep climbing for ever.
Importing 21 year olds gives you 45 years of work before they retire (and a lot of them will return home anyway). Importing 50 year olds means bringing people in who are much less likely to integrate and who can only work for 15 years or so.
Or you deny the immigrants full rights - no free healthcare, reduced pension rights etc.
This was the interview she did on Sunday Politics East Midlands the week before the GE.
https://youtu.be/ZDVyqjrsPqU
I saw that interview and put £25 on Melanie Onn for Labour, now the MP for Grimsby, a nice little earner.
The same thing applies to Brexit - the European reaction on the whole has been to show us the door, not to try to repress our nationalistic urges.
The advantages that brought for those born in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s was enormous.
Those advantage are steadily diminishing for the younger generations.
Watch what happens to the ratio between those over 70 and those between 20 and 70.
It's scary.
If you start making assumptions about rising costs of healthcare (and bear in mind that an 80 year old costs 10x what a 20 year old does in annual health costs), then it gets even more scary.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3995754/The-judges-people-week-11-unaccountable-individuals-consider-case-help-thwart-majority-Brexit-Mail-makes-no-apology-revealing-views-links-Europe.html
Look at the staffs of The Guardian,The Telegraph and the like. The sheer number of people working there has collapsed. Budgets have been decimated. But that isn't because immigrants are taking the jobs. It's because the internet has reduced the value of words.
You used to have to pay to read Sean Thomas. Now you get him for free on Politicalbetting.
I grant you that London housing has reached stupid levels, and immigration is a large part of that.
But April will be interesting in France if the Brexit-Frexit dance dominates the election campaign.
And I really don't see the attractions of living in a nursing home and needing continuous medical care.
But Brown pumped up a huge consumption bubble - firstly for the 2001 election, then the 2003 Iraq invasion, then the 2005 election and finally to ensure he became PM in 2007.
The Brexit ship is rudderles, the navigators fighting amongst themselves and the captain dithering.
It's a staggering and scary change, and it will take either real courage, or a catastrophe, to change it.
It doesn't stop. It's taken half a century for our population to grow 10m and there is zero reason why in a centuries time this country couldn't have a population of 100m or more. We just need a few new cities and investment in infrastructure etc not anything crazy.
That is a problem,where are these new cities and investment like new dams for the ever growing population ?
All we are doing is over crowding our poor inner cities with more people,schools full,the nhs in crisis,our roads full,housing,social services cut and I could go on.
If the open border posters on here think this country can carry on with the immigration numbers we have had for the last ten years,you lot are in for a shock.
He needed people to borrow (and spend) and to do that he needed house prices to grow.
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/uk/2009/jun/29/immigration-social-housing&ved=0ahUKEwis48De2tbQAhWBLsAKHflsDswQFggpMAE&usg=AFQjCNFhECfJDj2iQfNnFEXJRSxfKHNQjA&sig2=xii08cv57SIRsBMxFCcXFw
You've been reading too much Breitbart.
Bit embarrassing of the lib dem leader when you give a speech on taking more syrian refugee's and reports your own councils take none - lol
Could you cite a source for your figure?
As to building an explosive device out of common chemicals...well anyone with O level chemistry can do that, tri nito toluene, benzene, napalm and nitro glycerine are easy enough to make with a modicum of knowledge
I am not advocating violence nor even supporting it merely pointing out the logical end point of removing a win from people who voted for change at the ballot box. Some will take that as a reason to take less peaceful action
This is from 2009:
"The government has encouraged people to buy diesel models through its road tax policy and more than half the new cars sold every year in the UK now run on diesel."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/4355041/Diesel-cars-take-decades-to-become-cost-effective.html
"Labour faces being crushed between Ukip and a resurgent Liberal Democrat Party in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, senior allies of Jeremy Corbyn admitted last night.............
Labour figures fear that the party faces electoral crisis as it loses votes to the Lib Dems in pro-Remain urban and southern seats, while Ukip builds support in its working-class heartlands of the north and Midlands.
Chuka Umunna, the former leadership hopeful, warned that there were now “no safe Labour seats"..................
Labour is braced for another by-election humiliation next week in the Tory-held seat of Sleaford and North Hykeham in Lincolnshire. With Ukip the main challenger, Mr Corbyn’s party faces being driven into fourth place."
(Although it's now closed until the Spring! Disaster)
One of the world's great wine producers (Ridge) is owned by a Japanese pharmaceutical company for absolutely no reason that I can possibly understand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_make-up_of_local_councils_in_the_United_Kingdom
Night all.
16.45 in you want to hear that bit ;-) but all his speech was good ;-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rKIPtChdXg
The consumption culture is now too deeply ingrained to be changed.
I think Cameron had a chance to change it but didn't have either the understanding of what needed to be done or the courage to do it.
There clearly are circumstances where the people could be allowed to 'change their mind'. But equally, there should be no possibility of 'neverendums', so the barrier needs to be high.
Getting the balance right is not an easy task.
Almost 160 Syrian refugees welcomed to Bradford under Government scheme
http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/14437456.Almost_160_Syrian_refugees_welcomed_to_Bradford_under_Government_scheme/
Don't read the comment section - lol
After I make a billion dollars out of Crowdscores, I'm going to try and buy Ridge.
In farron's speech I'm sure he mentioned up to one hundred thousand syrian refugee's we could take except if your lib dem.
That's the headline from the Torygraph. What a peculiar way to spell "Another huge City-advised privatisation scam on the railways".
"Stripped of control"
"Win power"
"Improve services"
So glad I don't buy a newspaper.
Regarding infrastructure we are already in need of new infrastructure and are talking about new infrastructure. A sensible long term solution is to combine the two. For instance there have been to my knowledge no new motorways in my adult lifetime apart from the M6 Toll. However the other day there were conversations here about potential new motorways including finishing the route between London and Edinburgh ... or a motorway between Oxford and Cambridge. If we go ahead with these new roads then how much extra does it cost to add extra junctions along the new route for new towns?