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The polls have been so static it’s hard to bet on a LAB lead in 3 weeks – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited October 2021 in General
imageThe polls have been so static it’s hard to bet on a LAB lead in 3 weeks – politicalbetting.com

One of the regular markets that Smarkets is now putting up is whether Labour will get a poll lead within a set period. I got on yes in the first market which covered the whole period between August and the end of the year. This proved to be a winner for as a result of that solitary LAB lead in mid-September.

Read the full story here

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Comments

  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,142
    The polls have the look of Russia's Covid data at the moment. So flat particularly at the Tory line. Bizarrely so.
  • Labour are being outmanoeuvred at every turn. I was sceptical about the three possible Labour defections a few weeks ago, but I now wonder if there was something in it. Political narratives can take a while to filter through to the public, and it's quite clear that the talk's been of Boris being the Tories' Roy Jenkins.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206
    fpt for TimS


    "On the topic of human wanderlust, evolution and freedom of movement. This is something I've long found fascinating. Is there a genetic difference between those people who are happy to stay put, and are rooted in their communities, and those who are forever on the search for new horizons. Citizens of the world. The Paul Young gene. And by extension does this have an impact on politics or are other factors like social class, upbringing and economics much more important?

    There is at least some scientific basis for some of this, e.g. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14100-did-hyperactivity-evolve-as-a-survival-aid-for-nomads/

    The question is does this also drive differences between the somewheres and the nowheres, the migratory urban populations and the sedentary rural ones? Who knows."

    +++++

    I've always thought that humanity can usefully be divided between the farmers and the hunter-gatherers. The 9 to 5 ers and the freelancers. The stay-at-homes and the travel addicts. Immanuel Kant v Bruce Chatwin.

    A lot of human misery is likely created by forcing the natural farmers to move, or by forcing the travellers to stay home and have jobs

  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    fpt
    rcs1000 said:

    Free movement wasn't really a big problem until three things came together:

    (1) The integration of the EU 8, which were very significantly poorer than then existing EU members. When previously poor countries had joined (Portugal, Greece, Spain), they were relatively small, this was 8 countries (including one big one) all at the same time. The UK was also pretty much the only country not to go with transitional controls on immigration. This meant that instead of a few million people being spread out across the whole EU, they came mostly to the UK.

    (2) The UK's benefits system. As far as I can tell, there is no other country in Europe that has either a system that is as non-contributory bases, not one which was so generous with in work benefits system like the UK. Prior to the Maastricht treaty, you could work in any member state, but there was no presumption of benefits. The consequence of this is that (pretty much alone of the countries in the EU), it was possible for a migrant to come to the UK and pick up benefits from day one.

    (3) The Eurozone crisis, which caused a dramatic dip in demand for migrant labour in the Southern EU states *and* led to the exporting their own young.

    Hold on. Are immigrants coming here and depressing wages or are they coming over here and claiming benefits?

    Get the story straight, lads.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279
    Unit 731 — had no idea about it.
  • TimS said:

    The polls have the look of Russia's Covid data at the moment. So flat particularly at the Tory line. Bizarrely so.

    It's quiet... it's too quiet...

    If the true lead is C+4 (C 39-40, L 35-36), you'd begin to expect a Labour lead as the edge of the uncertainty range.

    And yet, nothing.
  • Wow. Frosty's on the war path. Boris's NI deal is as dead as a dodo.
  • sladeslade Posts: 1,920
    Just had my flu jab. Was told that the local GPs are not doing the Covid booster jabs - it will be at vaccination centres.
  • logical_songlogical_song Posts: 9,669

    Labour are being outmanoeuvred at every turn. I was sceptical about the three possible Labour defections a few weeks ago, but I now wonder if there was something in it. Political narratives can take a while to filter through to the public, and it's quite clear that the talk's been of Boris being the Tories' Roy Jenkins.

    "Boris being the Tories' Roy Jenkins"
    so he's going to join the LDs?
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,142

    TimS said:

    The polls have the look of Russia's Covid data at the moment. So flat particularly at the Tory line. Bizarrely so.

    It's quiet... it's too quiet...

    If the true lead is C+4 (C 39-40, L 35-36), you'd begin to expect a Labour lead as the edge of the uncertainty range.

    And yet, nothing.
    I now have Bjork in my head for the rest of the day.
    The polls are strange. The Tory line scarcely wavers. Labour goes up and down to the benefit or expense of the Greens and Lib Dems, but the conservatives just sit still at 40-41%.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,758
    It's of course possible that, in my view, the somewhat misplaced hysteria about accidently killing 20k Brits in today's newspapers just might move the polls but I wouldn't count on it. Firstly, the public are giving the government a great deal more leeway in dealing with this extraordinary situation than the media (who just might, heaven forbid, have a different agenda). Secondly, Labour pretty much went along with everything the government did for the same reasons, it was consistent with the best scientific advice available at the time. Thirdly, at least in my view, it is crap and similar numbers to those who died would have died anyway before the vaccines were available.

    At the same time Labour seem to be going through some sort of existential crisis. They look divided, aimless and somewhat short of ideas. God knows where Boris is going to get his program for his next majority from. The pickings of Ed's Manifesto are getting thin and there is not much else to go on. A random poll can of course produce a result as we saw in September but its not looking likely.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,728
    Leon said:

    A lot of human misery is likely created by forcing the natural farmers to move, or by forcing the travellers to stay home and have jobs

    So cancelling freedom of movement is causing a lot of misery.

    No shit...
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,328
    Leon said:

    fpt for TimS


    "On the topic of human wanderlust, evolution and freedom of movement. This is something I've long found fascinating. Is there a genetic difference between those people who are happy to stay put, and are rooted in their communities, and those who are forever on the search for new horizons. Citizens of the world. The Paul Young gene. And by extension does this have an impact on politics or are other factors like social class, upbringing and economics much more important?

    There is at least some scientific basis for some of this, e.g. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14100-did-hyperactivity-evolve-as-a-survival-aid-for-nomads/

    The question is does this also drive differences between the somewheres and the nowheres, the migratory urban populations and the sedentary rural ones? Who knows."

    +++++

    I've always thought that humanity can usefully be divided between the farmers and the hunter-gatherers. The 9 to 5 ers and the freelancers. The stay-at-homes and the travel addicts. Immanuel Kant v Bruce Chatwin.

    A lot of human misery is likely created by forcing the natural farmers to move, or by forcing the travellers to stay home and have jobs

    Check out any book on the genetic basis of personality. A very readable start is Mousy Cats and Sheepish Coyotes by John Shivik. The science seems to indicate that, across all animal species there is a genetic basis (based on species, rather than individual, survival) for personality across 4 parameters (roughly, 1. lover/fighter, 2. homebody/explorer - your wanderlust, 3. social/solitary, and 4. brave/timid.) For humans, there is a fifth which is roughly reliable/idiosyncratic.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,142

    Wow. Frosty's on the war path. Boris's NI deal is as dead as a dodo.

    He truly has the zeal of the convert. Someone's going to need to rein him in at some point. I think he's starting to believe some of his own hype, like Cummings did. We all saw what happened to Cummings.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,603
    edited October 2021
    TOPPING said:

    fpt

    rcs1000 said:

    Free movement wasn't really a big problem until three things came together:

    (1) The integration of the EU 8, which were very significantly poorer than then existing EU members. When previously poor countries had joined (Portugal, Greece, Spain), they were relatively small, this was 8 countries (including one big one) all at the same time. The UK was also pretty much the only country not to go with transitional controls on immigration. This meant that instead of a few million people being spread out across the whole EU, they came mostly to the UK.

    (2) The UK's benefits system. As far as I can tell, there is no other country in Europe that has either a system that is as non-contributory bases, not one which was so generous with in work benefits system like the UK. Prior to the Maastricht treaty, you could work in any member state, but there was no presumption of benefits. The consequence of this is that (pretty much alone of the countries in the EU), it was possible for a migrant to come to the UK and pick up benefits from day one.

    (3) The Eurozone crisis, which caused a dramatic dip in demand for migrant labour in the Southern EU states *and* led to the exporting their own young.

    Hold on. Are immigrants coming here and depressing wages or are they coming over here and claiming benefits?

    Get the story straight, lads.
    Why not both?

    EDIT:

    The problem seems to be the idea that discussing this is about "blaming" immigrants. Or anyone else making rational choices.

    We have a situation (for example), where for the long term unemployed, the benefits system discourages them from getting work. The kind of low end jobs they are likely to get have hard conditions, and because of the withdrawal of benefits, they don't get very much money out of it.

    This policy could have been designed to make sure people don't get jobs.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,728
    It’s generally no surprise that the UK Govt continues to behave in the way Frost has just set out. But the damage this continues to do is so disturbingly bad. And that’s not even a Brexit point: who wants to work with a country governed only by lies and bad faith?
    https://twitter.com/TanjaBueltmann/status/1447943572624445449
  • Labour are being outmanoeuvred at every turn. I was sceptical about the three possible Labour defections a few weeks ago, but I now wonder if there was something in it. Political narratives can take a while to filter through to the public, and it's quite clear that the talk's been of Boris being the Tories' Roy Jenkins.

    "Boris being the Tories' Roy Jenkins"
    so he's going to join the LDs?
    It's more that Boris is the torch-bearer for SDP-ism within the modern Tory party, so will be in a position to attract Labour centrists who've given up on Sir Keir and think the Corbynites will soon return. Not an exact comparison, I grant you, but there are some clear parallels.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540
    For me the most striking lines of the Frost speech: "There's a widespread feeling in the UK, the EU did try to use Northern Ireland to encourage UK political forces to reverse the referendum results or at least keep us closely aligned with EU....

    "Moreover, the protocol represents a moment of EU overreach, when the UK's negotiating hand was tied, and therefore cannot reasonably last in its current form..."


    https://twitter.com/tconnellyRTE/status/1447941898300166154?s=20
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206
    edited October 2021
    Andy_JS said:

    Unit 731 — had no idea about it.

    Yes, it is amazingly invisible. Quietly hidden under the carpet of history

    When you consider the huge industry dedicated to remembering the Holocaust - the books, the museums, the movies, the art, the tours of the death camps - and yet, on Unit 731 there is almost nothing. And yet it is comparable in horror, and enormous in scale.

    Perhaps it is something to do with THIS


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cover-up_of_Japanese_war_crimes

  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,142
    TimT said:

    Leon said:

    fpt for TimS


    "On the topic of human wanderlust, evolution and freedom of movement. This is something I've long found fascinating. Is there a genetic difference between those people who are happy to stay put, and are rooted in their communities, and those who are forever on the search for new horizons. Citizens of the world. The Paul Young gene. And by extension does this have an impact on politics or are other factors like social class, upbringing and economics much more important?

    There is at least some scientific basis for some of this, e.g. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14100-did-hyperactivity-evolve-as-a-survival-aid-for-nomads/

    The question is does this also drive differences between the somewheres and the nowheres, the migratory urban populations and the sedentary rural ones? Who knows."

    +++++

    I've always thought that humanity can usefully be divided between the farmers and the hunter-gatherers. The 9 to 5 ers and the freelancers. The stay-at-homes and the travel addicts. Immanuel Kant v Bruce Chatwin.

    A lot of human misery is likely created by forcing the natural farmers to move, or by forcing the travellers to stay home and have jobs

    Check out any book on the genetic basis of personality. A very readable start is Mousy Cats and Sheepish Coyotes by John Shivik. The science seems to indicate that, across all animal species there is a genetic basis (based on species, rather than individual, survival) for personality across 4 parameters (roughly, 1. lover/fighter, 2. homebody/explorer - your wanderlust, 3. social/solitary, and 4. brave/timid.) For humans, there is a fifth which is roughly reliable/idiosyncratic.
    It's fascinating stuff. Some turn their noses up at overwrought deterministic theories about evolution and personality, but I say bring it on. It's fun.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,117

    Labour are being outmanoeuvred at every turn. I was sceptical about the three possible Labour defections a few weeks ago, but I now wonder if there was something in it. Political narratives can take a while to filter through to the public, and it's quite clear that the talk's been of Boris being the Tories' Roy Jenkins.

    "Boris being the Tories' Roy Jenkins"
    so he's going to join the LDs?
    And become Chancellor of the University of Oxford? Not quite sure what he'd make of that. All the speeches, some in Latin.
  • TOPPING said:

    fpt

    rcs1000 said:

    Free movement wasn't really a big problem until three things came together:

    (1) The integration of the EU 8, which were very significantly poorer than then existing EU members. When previously poor countries had joined (Portugal, Greece, Spain), they were relatively small, this was 8 countries (including one big one) all at the same time. The UK was also pretty much the only country not to go with transitional controls on immigration. This meant that instead of a few million people being spread out across the whole EU, they came mostly to the UK.

    (2) The UK's benefits system. As far as I can tell, there is no other country in Europe that has either a system that is as non-contributory bases, not one which was so generous with in work benefits system like the UK. Prior to the Maastricht treaty, you could work in any member state, but there was no presumption of benefits. The consequence of this is that (pretty much alone of the countries in the EU), it was possible for a migrant to come to the UK and pick up benefits from day one.

    (3) The Eurozone crisis, which caused a dramatic dip in demand for migrant labour in the Southern EU states *and* led to the exporting their own young.

    Hold on. Are immigrants coming here and depressing wages or are they coming over here and claiming benefits?

    Get the story straight, lads.
    Both are a factor.

    Without universal in-work benefits like housing benefit and tax credits/universal credit then it'd be tougher for someone in a minimum wage job to pay UK housing costs. Still possible especially in overcrowded flatshares, but tougher.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,758
    Andy_JS said:

    Unit 731 — had no idea about it.

    I knew that the Japanese had behaved horribly in Manchuria with rapes, slave girls and general brutality but the industrial scale is a bit of a shock, as is the complicity in the US covering this abomination up. Appalling.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,728

    For me the most striking lines of the Frost speech: "There's a widespread feeling in the UK, the EU did try to use Northern Ireland to encourage UK political forces to reverse the referendum results or at least keep us closely aligned with EU....

    "Moreover, the protocol represents a moment of EU overreach, when the UK's negotiating hand was tied, and therefore cannot reasonably last in its current form..."


    https://twitter.com/tconnellyRTE/status/1447941898300166154?s=20

    Logic seems.mind bending but it boils down to this: the consent of the people who didnt want Brexit but do want the protections of the Protocol doesn't matter.
    https://twitter.com/lisaocarroll/status/1447934347114393605


    We weren't that happy with the deal, we thought the deal was risky, but rather than put it to the public so they could weigh it up, we just ploughed on regardless, risking our country in the process.

    Quite the admission.

    https://twitter.com/EmporersNewC/status/1447944825504997383
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,877
    A quick thought on covid rates among the university students. So far none of our students have tested positive. And yet there is a lot of coughing going on. Freshers flu is clearly part of it, but my working hypothesis is that they just aren't getting tested. I mean, if you feel mostly ok, why risk 10 days isolation...
  • RH1992RH1992 Posts: 788
    edited October 2021
    DavidL said:

    It's of course possible that, in my view, the somewhat misplaced hysteria about accidently killing 20k Brits in today's newspapers just might move the polls but I wouldn't count on it. Firstly, the public are giving the government a great deal more leeway in dealing with this extraordinary situation than the media (who just might, heaven forbid, have a different agenda). Secondly, Labour pretty much went along with everything the government did for the same reasons, it was consistent with the best scientific advice available at the time. Thirdly, at least in my view, it is crap and similar numbers to those who died would have died anyway before the vaccines were available.

    At the same time Labour seem to be going through some sort of existential crisis. They look divided, aimless and somewhat short of ideas. God knows where Boris is going to get his program for his next majority from. The pickings of Ed's Manifesto are getting thin and there is not much else to go on. A random poll can of course produce a result as we saw in September but its not looking likely.

    Bit in bold is definitely important. I saw a Corbynite Twitter thread today that was trying very hard to argue that all of the internet armchair epidemiologists knew better than the scientists all along. They felt that we were morons for not believing accounts like @Mark50104011 with 35 followers back in March 2020 who were saying the Tories were trying to murder the British people public en masse.

    Can you imagine government decisions made by reading social media comments? May as well give Putin and Xi the keys to No 10 now.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835

    Wow. Frosty's on the war path. Boris's NI deal is as dead as a dodo.

    Is he calling for those who negotiated it to be fired?
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,557

    Labour are being outmanoeuvred at every turn. I was sceptical about the three possible Labour defections a few weeks ago, but I now wonder if there was something in it. Political narratives can take a while to filter through to the public, and it's quite clear that the talk's been of Boris being the Tories' Roy Jenkins.

    "Boris being the Tories' Roy Jenkins"
    so he's going to join the LDs?
    Don't think they'd want him.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    Just been stung on the head by a wasp.
    Not happy.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    TOPPING said:

    fpt

    rcs1000 said:

    Free movement wasn't really a big problem until three things came together:

    (1) The integration of the EU 8, which were very significantly poorer than then existing EU members. When previously poor countries had joined (Portugal, Greece, Spain), they were relatively small, this was 8 countries (including one big one) all at the same time. The UK was also pretty much the only country not to go with transitional controls on immigration. This meant that instead of a few million people being spread out across the whole EU, they came mostly to the UK.

    (2) The UK's benefits system. As far as I can tell, there is no other country in Europe that has either a system that is as non-contributory bases, not one which was so generous with in work benefits system like the UK. Prior to the Maastricht treaty, you could work in any member state, but there was no presumption of benefits. The consequence of this is that (pretty much alone of the countries in the EU), it was possible for a migrant to come to the UK and pick up benefits from day one.

    (3) The Eurozone crisis, which caused a dramatic dip in demand for migrant labour in the Southern EU states *and* led to the exporting their own young.

    Hold on. Are immigrants coming here and depressing wages or are they coming over here and claiming benefits?

    Get the story straight, lads.
    Both are a factor.

    Without universal in-work benefits like housing benefit and tax credits/universal credit then it'd be tougher for someone in a minimum wage job to pay UK housing costs. Still possible especially in overcrowded flatshares, but tougher.
    I don't doubt it. What has that got to do with immigration?
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,758
    RH1992 said:

    DavidL said:

    It's of course possible that, in my view, the somewhat misplaced hysteria about accidently killing 20k Brits in today's newspapers just might move the polls but I wouldn't count on it. Firstly, the public are giving the government a great deal more leeway in dealing with this extraordinary situation than the media (who just might, heaven forbid, have a different agenda). Secondly, Labour pretty much went along with everything the government did for the same reasons, it was consistent with the best scientific advice available at the time. Thirdly, at least in my view, it is crap and similar numbers to those who died would have died anyway before the vaccines were available.

    At the same time Labour seem to be going through some sort of existential crisis. They look divided, aimless and somewhat short of ideas. God knows where Boris is going to get his program for his next majority from. The pickings of Ed's Manifesto are getting thin and there is not much else to go on. A random poll can of course produce a result as we saw in September but its not looking likely.

    Bit in bold is definitely important. I saw a Corbynite Twitter thread today that was trying very hard to argue that all of the internet armchair epidemiologists knew better than the scientists all along and that we were morons for not believing accounts like @Mark50104011 with 35 followers back in March 2020.

    Can you imagine government decisions made by reading social media comments? May as well give Putin and Xi the keys to No 10 now.
    It's nice that you think they aren't. 😉
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,877
    dixiedean said:

    Just been stung on the head by a wasp.
    Not happy.

    Imagine how the wasp feels...
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,603

    A quick thought on covid rates among the university students. So far none of our students have tested positive. And yet there is a lot of coughing going on. Freshers flu is clearly part of it, but my working hypothesis is that they just aren't getting tested. I mean, if you feel mostly ok, why risk 10 days isolation...

    Anecdote alert

    There is a very nasty cough gong round at the moment - everyone testing negative so far.

    It is worth considering that at the very highest peaks of COVID, only a small minority of tests were returning a positive result. Even when test were in short supply at the start and being rationed by doctors to only cases that had all the right symptoms.....
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,142
    Scott_xP said:

    It’s generally no surprise that the UK Govt continues to behave in the way Frost has just set out. But the damage this continues to do is so disturbingly bad. And that’s not even a Brexit point: who wants to work with a country governed only by lies and bad faith?
    https://twitter.com/TanjaBueltmann/status/1447943572624445449

    It's noticeable that many of the angriest voices on Brexit and the government's attitude are dual nationals with British and (particularly) French/German parents or heritage. I can imagine why - from their point of view Johnson, Frost et al are directly taking a scalpel to their personal identity. That's as personal as a government policy can get.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,341
    edited October 2021
    I have no view on whether there might be a poll with a Labour lead by the start of November. What I do have a view on is the meaning of the polls and the intention of Labour.

    Labour do not need to be in the lead in the polls to form the next government. They need to do better than 2019, which is not difficult, so as to win 35 net seats, the LDs need to win 10-15 net seats in the southern remain heartlands where they come a good second now, and the SNP to take 2 or 3 off the Tories.

    That could be done, if Labour have the wind behind them, on roughly C 38, Lab 35 LD 12 (LDs having also tactical voting and irregular swing)

    That is SKS as PM. Look at recent polling. And of course with L, LD, SNP and G combined, the centre left would have well over half the votes and some legitimacy.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    Leon said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Unit 731 — had no idea about it.

    Yes, it is amazingly invisible. Quietly hidden under the carpet of history

    When you consider the huge industry dedicated to remembering the Holocaust - the books, the museums, the movies, the art, the tours of the death camps - and yet, on Unit 731 there is almost nothing. And yet it is comparable in horror, and enormous in scale.

    Perhaps it is something to do with THIS


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cover-up_of_Japanese_war_crimes

    It also reflects China's Civil War. And preceding two plus centuries of chaos and weakness.
    The temptation to see 1949 as the beginning of a clean slate was strong.
  • TimS said:

    Wow. Frosty's on the war path. Boris's NI deal is as dead as a dodo.

    He truly has the zeal of the convert. Someone's going to need to rein him in at some point. I think he's starting to believe some of his own hype, like Cummings did. We all saw what happened to Cummings.
    Yes, I think Frosty was Boris's useful bad cop when Boris needed to appeal to the EU-bashers on his own side. I really can't see that being remotely in Boris's interests any more. Frosty is something of a legacy product and will soon be wound up I suspect. Boris will then want the Truss to shine.
  • RH1992RH1992 Posts: 788
    edited October 2021
    DavidL said:

    RH1992 said:

    DavidL said:

    It's of course possible that, in my view, the somewhat misplaced hysteria about accidently killing 20k Brits in today's newspapers just might move the polls but I wouldn't count on it. Firstly, the public are giving the government a great deal more leeway in dealing with this extraordinary situation than the media (who just might, heaven forbid, have a different agenda). Secondly, Labour pretty much went along with everything the government did for the same reasons, it was consistent with the best scientific advice available at the time. Thirdly, at least in my view, it is crap and similar numbers to those who died would have died anyway before the vaccines were available.

    At the same time Labour seem to be going through some sort of existential crisis. They look divided, aimless and somewhat short of ideas. God knows where Boris is going to get his program for his next majority from. The pickings of Ed's Manifesto are getting thin and there is not much else to go on. A random poll can of course produce a result as we saw in September but its not looking likely.

    Bit in bold is definitely important. I saw a Corbynite Twitter thread today that was trying very hard to argue that all of the internet armchair epidemiologists knew better than the scientists all along and that we were morons for not believing accounts like @Mark50104011 with 35 followers back in March 2020.

    Can you imagine government decisions made by reading social media comments? May as well give Putin and Xi the keys to No 10 now.
    It's nice that you think they aren't. 😉
    Fair comment! Maybe I should have said decisions made only by social media comments rather than one of many inputs!
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,758
    algarkirk said:

    I have no view on whether there might be a poll with a Labour lead by the start of November. What I do have a view on is the meaning of the polls and the intention of Labour.

    Labour do not need to be in the lead in the polls to form the next government. They need to do better than 2019, which is not difficult, so as to win 35 net seats, the LDs need to win 10-15 net seats in the southern remain heartlands where they come a good second now, and the SNP to take 2 or 3 off the Tories.

    That could be done, if Labour have the wind behind them, on roughly C 38, Lab 35 LD 12 (LDs having also tactical voting and irregular swing)

    That is SKS as PM. Look at recent polling. And of course with L, LD, SNP and G combined, the centre left would have well over half the votes and some legitimacy.

    Labour would also need not to lose any seats which may well prove a flaw in that plan.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited October 2021
    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    fpt

    rcs1000 said:

    Free movement wasn't really a big problem until three things came together:

    (1) The integration of the EU 8, which were very significantly poorer than then existing EU members. When previously poor countries had joined (Portugal, Greece, Spain), they were relatively small, this was 8 countries (including one big one) all at the same time. The UK was also pretty much the only country not to go with transitional controls on immigration. This meant that instead of a few million people being spread out across the whole EU, they came mostly to the UK.

    (2) The UK's benefits system. As far as I can tell, there is no other country in Europe that has either a system that is as non-contributory bases, not one which was so generous with in work benefits system like the UK. Prior to the Maastricht treaty, you could work in any member state, but there was no presumption of benefits. The consequence of this is that (pretty much alone of the countries in the EU), it was possible for a migrant to come to the UK and pick up benefits from day one.

    (3) The Eurozone crisis, which caused a dramatic dip in demand for migrant labour in the Southern EU states *and* led to the exporting their own young.

    Hold on. Are immigrants coming here and depressing wages or are they coming over here and claiming benefits?

    Get the story straight, lads.
    Both are a factor.

    Without universal in-work benefits like housing benefit and tax credits/universal credit then it'd be tougher for someone in a minimum wage job to pay UK housing costs. Still possible especially in overcrowded flatshares, but tougher.
    I don't doubt it. What has that got to do with immigration?
    Once again it is not immigration or emigration per se that changed pay rates. It is the availability of unlimited immigration that cut real pay rates and prevented real pay rises and the end of that availability that is restricting the supply of labour and causing real and permanent pay rises.

    In-work benefits fuelled the availability of unlimited migration. If you're a poor and unskilled Romanian then are you better off working in a minimum wage Romanian job, or in the UK getting a British minimum wage, plus housing allowance, plus child benefits etc, etc?
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,758

    dixiedean said:

    Just been stung on the head by a wasp.
    Not happy.

    Imagine how the wasp feels...
    He probably got a buzz out of it.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,877

    A quick thought on covid rates among the university students. So far none of our students have tested positive. And yet there is a lot of coughing going on. Freshers flu is clearly part of it, but my working hypothesis is that they just aren't getting tested. I mean, if you feel mostly ok, why risk 10 days isolation...

    Anecdote alert

    There is a very nasty cough gong round at the moment - everyone testing negative so far.

    It is worth considering that at the very highest peaks of COVID, only a small minority of tests were returning a positive result. Even when test were in short supply at the start and being rationed by doctors to only cases that had all the right symptoms.....
    Absolutely - I know some of my tutees with illness tested negative. I just don't believe that all 14,000 students at Bath are currently negative for covid, when the basic maths suggests that's not the case...
  • Leon said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Unit 731 — had no idea about it.

    Yes, it is amazingly invisible. Quietly hidden under the carpet of history

    When you consider the huge industry dedicated to remembering the Holocaust - the books, the museums, the movies, the art, the tours of the death camps - and yet, on Unit 731 there is almost nothing. And yet it is comparable in horror, and enormous in scale.

    Perhaps it is something to do with THIS


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cover-up_of_Japanese_war_crimes

    I wouldn't quite say 'quietly hidden'.

    In addition to the Booker-prize winning novel, you have ...

    (Proper) video nasty "Men behind the sun"
    There's an X-files arc/series of episodes about Unit 731
    one of the Call of Duty games uses the backstory for the zombie mini-game.

    This is clearly not meant to be an exclusive list, just some higher profile media in which it is referenced.
  • DavidL said:

    It's of course possible that, in my view, the somewhat misplaced hysteria about accidently killing 20k Brits in today's newspapers just might move the polls but I wouldn't count on it. Firstly, the public are giving the government a great deal more leeway in dealing with this extraordinary situation than the media (who just might, heaven forbid, have a different agenda). Secondly, Labour pretty much went along with everything the government did for the same reasons, it was consistent with the best scientific advice available at the time. Thirdly, at least in my view, it is crap and similar numbers to those who died would have died anyway before the vaccines were available.

    At the same time Labour seem to be going through some sort of existential crisis. They look divided, aimless and somewhat short of ideas. God knows where Boris is going to get his program for his next majority from. The pickings of Ed's Manifesto are getting thin and there is not much else to go on. A random poll can of course produce a result as we saw in September but its not looking likely.

    It was said repeatedly in spring 2020 that the government's policy was to flatten the curve. That means, inevitably, that the area under the curve (= total deaths) would be the same, but delayed to some extent. The purpose of the delay was to prevent extra deaths that might be caused by overwhelming the health service. "Behavioural scientists" (goodness knows how many such paragons exist) opined that after eight weeks or so a strict lockdown would crumble so it was important not to start too soon or the crumbling would coincide with maximum plague.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,117
    DavidL said:

    dixiedean said:

    Just been stung on the head by a wasp.
    Not happy.

    Imagine how the wasp feels...
    He probably got a buzz out of it.
    Especially as she - not he - isn't a bee so doesn't have to leave the sting behind.
  • Wow. Frosty's on the war path. Boris's NI deal is as dead as a dodo.

    Good.

    What's he said?

    The UK holds all the cards right now so we absolutely should put out maximalist demands. Its exactly what Barnier would have done if he was still in place and held the cards.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,758

    DavidL said:

    It's of course possible that, in my view, the somewhat misplaced hysteria about accidently killing 20k Brits in today's newspapers just might move the polls but I wouldn't count on it. Firstly, the public are giving the government a great deal more leeway in dealing with this extraordinary situation than the media (who just might, heaven forbid, have a different agenda). Secondly, Labour pretty much went along with everything the government did for the same reasons, it was consistent with the best scientific advice available at the time. Thirdly, at least in my view, it is crap and similar numbers to those who died would have died anyway before the vaccines were available.

    At the same time Labour seem to be going through some sort of existential crisis. They look divided, aimless and somewhat short of ideas. God knows where Boris is going to get his program for his next majority from. The pickings of Ed's Manifesto are getting thin and there is not much else to go on. A random poll can of course produce a result as we saw in September but its not looking likely.

    It was said repeatedly in spring 2020 that the government's policy was to flatten the curve. That means, inevitably, that the area under the curve (= total deaths) would be the same, but delayed to some extent. The purpose of the delay was to prevent extra deaths that might be caused by overwhelming the health service. "Behavioural scientists" (goodness knows how many such paragons exist) opined that after eight weeks or so a strict lockdown would crumble so it was important not to start too soon or the crumbling would coincide with maximum plague.
    Yes, and in a world before vaccines there was really very little option. 1-1.5% of us were going to die and 3-4% of us were going to need hospital admission. Everything else is details.

    The winter of 2020 was different because we had a choice. In March 2020 we didn't and pretending that moving deaths around was in some way reducing the death toll is just delusional.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    edited October 2021

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    fpt

    rcs1000 said:

    Free movement wasn't really a big problem until three things came together:

    (1) The integration of the EU 8, which were very significantly poorer than then existing EU members. When previously poor countries had joined (Portugal, Greece, Spain), they were relatively small, this was 8 countries (including one big one) all at the same time. The UK was also pretty much the only country not to go with transitional controls on immigration. This meant that instead of a few million people being spread out across the whole EU, they came mostly to the UK.

    (2) The UK's benefits system. As far as I can tell, there is no other country in Europe that has either a system that is as non-contributory bases, not one which was so generous with in work benefits system like the UK. Prior to the Maastricht treaty, you could work in any member state, but there was no presumption of benefits. The consequence of this is that (pretty much alone of the countries in the EU), it was possible for a migrant to come to the UK and pick up benefits from day one.

    (3) The Eurozone crisis, which caused a dramatic dip in demand for migrant labour in the Southern EU states *and* led to the exporting their own young.

    Hold on. Are immigrants coming here and depressing wages or are they coming over here and claiming benefits?

    Get the story straight, lads.
    Both are a factor.

    Without universal in-work benefits like housing benefit and tax credits/universal credit then it'd be tougher for someone in a minimum wage job to pay UK housing costs. Still possible especially in overcrowded flatshares, but tougher.
    I don't doubt it. What has that got to do with immigration?
    Once again it is not immigration or emigration per se that changed pay rates. It is the availability of unlimited immigration that cut real pay rates and prevented real pay rises and the end of that availability is what is reversing that causing real and permanent pay rises.

    In-work benefits fuelled the availability of unlimited migration. If you're a poor and unskilled Romanian then are you better off working in a minimum wage Romanian job, or in the UK getting a British minimum wage, plus housing allowance, plus child benefits etc, etc?
    You are better off in the UK. Availability of labour has seen nevertheless historic low levels of unemployment both in 2016 (4%) and now (4.6%).

    The discussion has centred upon wage rises. Your position is that with the return of the immigrants wages will go up and if that puts up prices then that is also good (your jocular 4.1% vs 4.0% - how we laughed).

    Mine is that if that is the case then no one is better off in such a scenario plus I have noted that demand will decrease and hence equilibrium will eventually return to pre-"shock" levels.

    Max has noted that per capital demand will be lower with lower wages which of course is true. But demand of course has a multiplier and the contraction means that it is not a 1:1 relationship immigrant out one unit of his demand down.

    You also noted that this has been the case for "many years". To which point I have to ask - what and when was the pre-fall state?
  • RH1992RH1992 Posts: 788

    A quick thought on covid rates among the university students. So far none of our students have tested positive. And yet there is a lot of coughing going on. Freshers flu is clearly part of it, but my working hypothesis is that they just aren't getting tested. I mean, if you feel mostly ok, why risk 10 days isolation...

    Most nightclubs I've been to since July 19 here in Leeds has asked for proof of a negative LFT even if double vaccinated or recently positive.

    Studenty areas around Leeds are nice and low on the gov.uk map so it suggests it's the nasty cold going around. I had it in early August and it lasted 2 weeks (had a negative PCR to confirm it) but at least one person I've known has had it since then and we're in Oct now.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,841
    Boris will win next time because for a huge, overwhelming number of people it doesn't matter how poor someone is at being the leader, if he's on their side he'll get their vote.
    And the Tories still have the basic numbers.
    Labour will be in power the election after this next one though, all governments fall apart eventually.
  • TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    fpt

    rcs1000 said:

    Free movement wasn't really a big problem until three things came together:

    (1) The integration of the EU 8, which were very significantly poorer than then existing EU members. When previously poor countries had joined (Portugal, Greece, Spain), they were relatively small, this was 8 countries (including one big one) all at the same time. The UK was also pretty much the only country not to go with transitional controls on immigration. This meant that instead of a few million people being spread out across the whole EU, they came mostly to the UK.

    (2) The UK's benefits system. As far as I can tell, there is no other country in Europe that has either a system that is as non-contributory bases, not one which was so generous with in work benefits system like the UK. Prior to the Maastricht treaty, you could work in any member state, but there was no presumption of benefits. The consequence of this is that (pretty much alone of the countries in the EU), it was possible for a migrant to come to the UK and pick up benefits from day one.

    (3) The Eurozone crisis, which caused a dramatic dip in demand for migrant labour in the Southern EU states *and* led to the exporting their own young.

    Hold on. Are immigrants coming here and depressing wages or are they coming over here and claiming benefits?

    Get the story straight, lads.
    Both are a factor.

    Without universal in-work benefits like housing benefit and tax credits/universal credit then it'd be tougher for someone in a minimum wage job to pay UK housing costs. Still possible especially in overcrowded flatshares, but tougher.
    I don't doubt it. What has that got to do with immigration?
    Once again it is not immigration or emigration per se that changed pay rates. It is the availability of unlimited immigration that cut real pay rates and prevented real pay rises and the end of that availability is what is reversing that causing real and permanent pay rises.

    In-work benefits fuelled the availability of unlimited migration. If you're a poor and unskilled Romanian then are you better off working in a minimum wage Romanian job, or in the UK getting a British minimum wage, plus housing allowance, plus child benefits etc, etc?
    You are better off in the UK. Availability of labour has seen nevertheless historic low levels of unemployment both in 2016 (4%) and now (4.6%).

    The discussion has centred upon wage rises. Your position is that with the return of the immigrants wages will go up and if that puts up prices then that is also good (your jocular 4.1% vs 4.0% - how we laughed).

    Mine is that if that is the case then no one is better off in such a scenario plus I have noted that demand will decrease and hence equilibrium will eventually return to pre-"shock" levels.

    Max has noted that per capital demand will be lower with lower wages which of course is true. But demand of course has a multiplier and the contraction means that it is not a 1:1 relationship immigrant out one unit of his demand down.

    You also noted that this has been the case for "many years". To which point I have to ask - what and when was the pre-fall state?
    🤦‍♂️

    For the umpteenth time my position is not that the return of immigrants will affect wages. It won't. That is not my argument at all. Immigration or emigration cancels out as new immigrants create demands themselves.

    The "shock" is not Brexit. The "shock" was the expansion of the supply of labour to unlimited levels in 2004. That infinite supply slashed pay rates to the minimum wage level across many sectors that used to pay a factor more than minimum wage.

    Brexit ends the infinite supply of labour which will return us to an equilibrium pre-shock, which is pre-2004 not pre-2020.

    2003/04 was the pre-shock state not 2015, 2016 or 2019. The creation of an infinite pool of cheap minimum wage labour turned the minimum wage into a maximum wage and created the permanent "labour shortage" we've had for seventeen years now.
  • Wow. Frosty's on the war path. Boris's NI deal is as dead as a dodo.

    Good.

    What's he said?

    The UK holds all the cards right now so we absolutely should put out maximalist demands. Its exactly what Barnier would have done if he was still in place and held the cards.
    Basically, he's said the current deal is tragically unworkable - and that the UK only agreed to it because the EU was mighty and Boris was weak.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    DavidL said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Unit 731 — had no idea about it.

    I knew that the Japanese had behaved horribly in Manchuria with rapes, slave girls and general brutality but the industrial scale is a bit of a shock, as is the complicity in the US covering this abomination up. Appalling.
    In a really perverse historical irony, a German called John Rabe became a hero during the Rape of Nanking, saving hundreds of thousands of Chinese lives by creating a semi-official safe zone in the city.

    Despite being the head of the local Nazi party.

    "Finally, with only his status as an official of an allied nation for protection, Rabe did what now seems the unthinkable: he be­gan to roam about the city, trying to prevent atrocities himself.

    Whenever he drove through Nanking, some man would in­evitably leap out and stop the car to beg Rabe to stop a rape in progress -- a rape that usually involved a sister, a wife, or a daughter. Rabe would then let the man climb into the car and direct him to the scene of the rape. Once there, he would chase Japanese soldiers away from their prey, on one occasion even bodily lifting a soldier sprawled on top of a young girl. He knew these expeditions were highly dangerous ("The Japanese had pistols and bayonets and I ... had only party symbols and my swastika armband," Rabe wrote in his report to Hitler), but nothing could deter him -- not even the risk of death."

    "With these women Rabe developed a warning system to protect them from Japanese rapists. Whenever Japanese soldiers scaled the wall of his yard, the women would blow a whistle and send Rabe running out into the yard to chase the offenders away. This happened so frequently that Rabe rarely left his home at night, fearful that Japanese intruders would commit an orgy of rape in his absence."

    After the war, he lived in poverty due to his status as an ex-Nazi. He survived on food parcels and money sent to him from China, where he is now widely regarded as a hero.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/01/the-nazi-leader-who-in-1937-became-the-oskar-schindler-of-china/251525/

    Sometimes, people are complex.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,341
    DavidL said:

    algarkirk said:

    I have no view on whether there might be a poll with a Labour lead by the start of November. What I do have a view on is the meaning of the polls and the intention of Labour.

    Labour do not need to be in the lead in the polls to form the next government. They need to do better than 2019, which is not difficult, so as to win 35 net seats, the LDs need to win 10-15 net seats in the southern remain heartlands where they come a good second now, and the SNP to take 2 or 3 off the Tories.

    That could be done, if Labour have the wind behind them, on roughly C 38, Lab 35 LD 12 (LDs having also tactical voting and irregular swing)

    That is SKS as PM. Look at recent polling. And of course with L, LD, SNP and G combined, the centre left would have well over half the votes and some legitimacy.

    Labour would also need not to lose any seats which may well prove a flaw in that plan.
    Absolutely; I think there is about a 45%+ chance that this will produce SKS as PM, and the figures I give are net. The point I would make is that as of now, apart from insane plans, there can be no other plan for Labour led government and that the polls are perfectly consistent with that as an outcome in 2/3 years time.

    In other words the gulf between Labour victory (+127 seats) and Labour led government (Tories lose 47+ seats to anybody) is immense. The second is a perfectly feasible plan. The outfit that will have noticed this is the Tory party.

    For SKS what looks like headline polling fail is in fact success. He knows this. Don't expect him to let on.

  • Wow. Frosty's on the war path. Boris's NI deal is as dead as a dodo.

    Good.

    What's he said?

    The UK holds all the cards right now so we absolutely should put out maximalist demands. Its exactly what Barnier would have done if he was still in place and held the cards.
    Basically, he's said the current deal is tragically unworkable - and that the UK only agreed to it because the EU was mighty and Boris was weak.
    No shit Sherlock. The 2017-19 Parliament meant he had to get a deal on this because Parliament needed a deal and wouldn't let us out without one.

    Now we have dealt with that, we can replace the Protocol with a permanent arrangement.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,841

    A quick thought on covid rates among the university students. So far none of our students have tested positive. And yet there is a lot of coughing going on. Freshers flu is clearly part of it, but my working hypothesis is that they just aren't getting tested. I mean, if you feel mostly ok, why risk 10 days isolation...

    Anecdote alert

    There is a very nasty cough gong round at the moment - everyone testing negative so far.

    It is worth considering that at the very highest peaks of COVID, only a small minority of tests were returning a positive result. Even when test were in short supply at the start and being rationed by doctors to only cases that had all the right symptoms.....
    Absolutely - I know some of my tutees with illness tested negative. I just don't believe that all 14,000 students at Bath are currently negative for covid, when the basic maths suggests that's not the case...
    I note you have a chilli in your picture and work/live near Bath. I'm an alumni, and we had a chilli eating contest in our halls around the year 2000. I think this is where the chilli festival originated.
  • I mean, even the Japanese Army's common-or-garden warcrimes were pretty horrific.

    Quite a mild film such as A Town Like Alice features death marches, hints at sex slavery and features a crucifixion.

    At least it didn't end after 35 minutes with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangka_Island_massacre

    This was in the news quite recently, can't remember why.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206

    Leon said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Unit 731 — had no idea about it.

    Yes, it is amazingly invisible. Quietly hidden under the carpet of history

    When you consider the huge industry dedicated to remembering the Holocaust - the books, the museums, the movies, the art, the tours of the death camps - and yet, on Unit 731 there is almost nothing. And yet it is comparable in horror, and enormous in scale.

    Perhaps it is something to do with THIS


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cover-up_of_Japanese_war_crimes

    I wouldn't quite say 'quietly hidden'.

    In addition to the Booker-prize winning novel, you have ...

    (Proper) video nasty "Men behind the sun"
    There's an X-files arc/series of episodes about Unit 731
    one of the Call of Duty games uses the backstory for the zombie mini-game.

    This is clearly not meant to be an exclusive list, just some higher profile media in which it is referenced.
    Sure, there is *some* acknowledgement, via a few novels, the odd TV show, a movie or two

    But given the overpowering horror of this crime and its absolute enormity, this is all pretty trifling. Even now, it seems, the Japanese government has not even accepted that anything *bad* happened with its doctors, let alone made any specific apology


    "Unit 731 scientists conducted the most macabre and sadistic experiments on human beings in the known history of medicine or warfare. Thousands died at their massive laboratory at Pingfang near Harbin, China. Tens of thousands died in their field experiments"

    https://thediplomat.com/2015/05/abes-japan-cannot-apologize-for-the-pacific-war/


    https://www.forbes.com/sites/eamonnfingleton/2014/03/09/imperial-japans-abominable-dr-death-and-the-most-disgraceful-war-crime-cover-up-in-history/?sh=742d245675de
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    DavidL said:

    It's of course possible that, in my view, the somewhat misplaced hysteria about accidently killing 20k Brits in today's newspapers just might move the polls but I wouldn't count on it. Firstly, the public are giving the government a great deal more leeway in dealing with this extraordinary situation than the media (who just might, heaven forbid, have a different agenda). Secondly, Labour pretty much went along with everything the government did for the same reasons, it was consistent with the best scientific advice available at the time. Thirdly, at least in my view, it is crap and similar numbers to those who died would have died anyway before the vaccines were available.

    At the same time Labour seem to be going through some sort of existential crisis. They look divided, aimless and somewhat short of ideas. God knows where Boris is going to get his program for his next majority from. The pickings of Ed's Manifesto are getting thin and there is not much else to go on. A random poll can of course produce a result as we saw in September but its not looking likely.

    It was said repeatedly in spring 2020 that the government's policy was to flatten the curve. That means, inevitably, that the area under the curve (= total deaths) would be the same, but delayed to some extent. The purpose of the delay was to prevent extra deaths that might be caused by overwhelming the health service. "Behavioural scientists" (goodness knows how many such paragons exist) opined that after eight weeks or so a strict lockdown would crumble so it was important not to start too soon or the crumbling would coincide with maximum plague.
    You only get to mock past predictions if you can point to yourself getting it right. The meek acceptance of unlimited lockdown was unpredictable until it happened - unless you said different?
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,877
    Pulpstar said:

    A quick thought on covid rates among the university students. So far none of our students have tested positive. And yet there is a lot of coughing going on. Freshers flu is clearly part of it, but my working hypothesis is that they just aren't getting tested. I mean, if you feel mostly ok, why risk 10 days isolation...

    Anecdote alert

    There is a very nasty cough gong round at the moment - everyone testing negative so far.

    It is worth considering that at the very highest peaks of COVID, only a small minority of tests were returning a positive result. Even when test were in short supply at the start and being rationed by doctors to only cases that had all the right symptoms.....
    Absolutely - I know some of my tutees with illness tested negative. I just don't believe that all 14,000 students at Bath are currently negative for covid, when the basic maths suggests that's not the case...
    I note you have a chilli in your picture and work/live near Bath. I'm an alumni, and we had a chilli eating contest in our halls around the year 2000. I think this is where the chilli festival originated.
    My research is chilli related (mostly tangentially, but I have a paper on chilli analysis)...
  • A quick thought on covid rates among the university students. So far none of our students have tested positive. And yet there is a lot of coughing going on. Freshers flu is clearly part of it, but my working hypothesis is that they just aren't getting tested. I mean, if you feel mostly ok, why risk 10 days isolation...

    Where mass LFT testing is being done, students appear to be testing at a rate lower than the general public.

    We've had less than a handful showing any covid symptoms in three weeks, and only one of those positive.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 14,911
    TimS said:

    Wow. Frosty's on the war path. Boris's NI deal is as dead as a dodo.

    He truly has the zeal of the convert. Someone's going to need to rein him in at some point. I think he's starting to believe some of his own hype, like Cummings did. We all saw what happened to Cummings.
    At least Cummings is intelligent. Frost is a second rate hack rescued from some lower tier lobbying gig by his willingness to abase himself at the altars of Boris and Brexit.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,877

    A quick thought on covid rates among the university students. So far none of our students have tested positive. And yet there is a lot of coughing going on. Freshers flu is clearly part of it, but my working hypothesis is that they just aren't getting tested. I mean, if you feel mostly ok, why risk 10 days isolation...

    Where mass LFT testing is being done, students appear to be testing at a rate lower than the general public.

    We've had less than a handful showing any covid symptoms in three weeks, and only one of those positive.
    So maybe genuine then? Maybe they have all had covid at Boardmasters and the like! If so. good news.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,603

    I mean, even the Japanese Army's common-or-garden warcrimes were pretty horrific.

    Quite a mild film such as A Town Like Alice features death marches, hints at sex slavery and features a crucifixion.

    At least it didn't end after 35 minutes with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangka_Island_massacre

    This was in the news quite recently, can't remember why.

    An interesting vignette into Japanese behaviour and the American response to it -

    On Okinawa the Japanese soldiers herded Japanese civilians (some not willingly) into caves. There they hid, intending to kill American soldiers by blowing themselves up when they appeared. Along with the civilians.

    The American marines, when they found out this was happening, instead of simply throwing satchel charges into the caves to kill everyone (or using flame throwers), actually went in (on multiple occasions), to kill the Japanese soldiers in hand to hand combat. Literally.

    This was despite the knowledge of what the Japanese had be up to with respect to POWs.
  • DavidL said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Unit 731 — had no idea about it.

    I knew that the Japanese had behaved horribly in Manchuria with rapes, slave girls and general brutality but the industrial scale is a bit of a shock, as is the complicity in the US covering this abomination up. Appalling.
    In a really perverse historical irony, a German called John Rabe became a hero during the Rape of Nanking, saving hundreds of thousands of Chinese lives by creating a semi-official safe zone in the city.

    Despite being the head of the local Nazi party.

    "Finally, with only his status as an official of an allied nation for protection, Rabe did what now seems the unthinkable: he be­gan to roam about the city, trying to prevent atrocities himself.

    Whenever he drove through Nanking, some man would in­evitably leap out and stop the car to beg Rabe to stop a rape in progress -- a rape that usually involved a sister, a wife, or a daughter. Rabe would then let the man climb into the car and direct him to the scene of the rape. Once there, he would chase Japanese soldiers away from their prey, on one occasion even bodily lifting a soldier sprawled on top of a young girl. He knew these expeditions were highly dangerous ("The Japanese had pistols and bayonets and I ... had only party symbols and my swastika armband," Rabe wrote in his report to Hitler), but nothing could deter him -- not even the risk of death."

    "With these women Rabe developed a warning system to protect them from Japanese rapists. Whenever Japanese soldiers scaled the wall of his yard, the women would blow a whistle and send Rabe running out into the yard to chase the offenders away. This happened so frequently that Rabe rarely left his home at night, fearful that Japanese intruders would commit an orgy of rape in his absence."

    After the war, he lived in poverty due to his status as an ex-Nazi. He survived on food parcels and money sent to him from China, where he is now widely regarded as a hero.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/01/the-nazi-leader-who-in-1937-became-the-oskar-schindler-of-china/251525/

    Sometimes, people are complex.
    The Flowers of War and played by Christian Bale.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,728

    Basically, he's said the current deal is tragically unworkable - and that the UK only agreed to it because the EU was mighty and Boris was weak.

    Bernard Jenkin #Newsnight
    “Brexit Deal was signed at a time when Gov was weak & gripped by a constitutional crisis, the EU took advantage”

    EU trade agreement was signed *year* after his party won a maj 80 seats in election to *get Brexit done* Shameless

    https://twitter.com/JibbaJabb/status/1447683780655947778/video/1
  • @TOPPING

    In 2003 there were 500,000 jobs at the national minimum wage rate.
    In 2016 there were 2,000,000 jobs at the national minimum wage rate.

    The availability of an infinite supply of low-paid labour change the minimum wage from a floor to a cap across many sectors. The end of that means that jobs that were not previously minimum wage jobs can now come off the minimum wage floor.

    Source: Low Pay Commission.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880

    Leon said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Unit 731 — had no idea about it.

    Yes, it is amazingly invisible. Quietly hidden under the carpet of history

    When you consider the huge industry dedicated to remembering the Holocaust - the books, the museums, the movies, the art, the tours of the death camps - and yet, on Unit 731 there is almost nothing. And yet it is comparable in horror, and enormous in scale.

    Perhaps it is something to do with THIS


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cover-up_of_Japanese_war_crimes

    I wouldn't quite say 'quietly hidden'.

    In addition to the Booker-prize winning novel, you have ...

    (Proper) video nasty "Men behind the sun"
    There's an X-files arc/series of episodes about Unit 731
    one of the Call of Duty games uses the backstory for the zombie mini-game.

    This is clearly not meant to be an exclusive list, just some higher profile media in which it is referenced.
    I likened Johnson's policy on care homes to Unit 731 on here to overwhelming acclaim last year.
  • Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 4,784
    FPT: On university lack of COVID. We're 20 days in to term in a lot of places and the city areas in general and student areas in particular remain at very low rates compared with pretty much everywhere else.

    When I looked a couple of days ago, Manchester's 10-14 case rate was half that of Kirklees, so it's an age for age lower rate as well, not just the demographic holes that students leave when they go home, and not just the lesser numbers of young kids and their parents in city areas.

    Still, might there be a hope there is going to be barely any wave amongst the mostly recently vaccinated, last year heavily exposed, student body.

  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    fpt

    rcs1000 said:

    Free movement wasn't really a big problem until three things came together:

    (1) The integration of the EU 8, which were very significantly poorer than then existing EU members. When previously poor countries had joined (Portugal, Greece, Spain), they were relatively small, this was 8 countries (including one big one) all at the same time. The UK was also pretty much the only country not to go with transitional controls on immigration. This meant that instead of a few million people being spread out across the whole EU, they came mostly to the UK.

    (2) The UK's benefits system. As far as I can tell, there is no other country in Europe that has either a system that is as non-contributory bases, not one which was so generous with in work benefits system like the UK. Prior to the Maastricht treaty, you could work in any member state, but there was no presumption of benefits. The consequence of this is that (pretty much alone of the countries in the EU), it was possible for a migrant to come to the UK and pick up benefits from day one.

    (3) The Eurozone crisis, which caused a dramatic dip in demand for migrant labour in the Southern EU states *and* led to the exporting their own young.

    Hold on. Are immigrants coming here and depressing wages or are they coming over here and claiming benefits?

    Get the story straight, lads.
    Both are a factor.

    Without universal in-work benefits like housing benefit and tax credits/universal credit then it'd be tougher for someone in a minimum wage job to pay UK housing costs. Still possible especially in overcrowded flatshares, but tougher.
    I don't doubt it. What has that got to do with immigration?
    Once again it is not immigration or emigration per se that changed pay rates. It is the availability of unlimited immigration that cut real pay rates and prevented real pay rises and the end of that availability is what is reversing that causing real and permanent pay rises.

    In-work benefits fuelled the availability of unlimited migration. If you're a poor and unskilled Romanian then are you better off working in a minimum wage Romanian job, or in the UK getting a British minimum wage, plus housing allowance, plus child benefits etc, etc?
    You are better off in the UK. Availability of labour has seen nevertheless historic low levels of unemployment both in 2016 (4%) and now (4.6%).

    The discussion has centred upon wage rises. Your position is that with the return of the immigrants wages will go up and if that puts up prices then that is also good (your jocular 4.1% vs 4.0% - how we laughed).

    Mine is that if that is the case then no one is better off in such a scenario plus I have noted that demand will decrease and hence equilibrium will eventually return to pre-"shock" levels.

    Max has noted that per capital demand will be lower with lower wages which of course is true. But demand of course has a multiplier and the contraction means that it is not a 1:1 relationship immigrant out one unit of his demand down.

    You also noted that this has been the case for "many years". To which point I have to ask - what and when was the pre-fall state?
    🤦‍♂️

    For the umpteenth time my position is not that the return of immigrants will affect wages. It won't. That is not my argument at all. Immigration or emigration cancels out as new immigrants create demands themselves.

    The "shock" is not Brexit. The "shock" was the expansion of the supply of labour to unlimited levels in 2004. That infinite supply slashed pay rates to the minimum wage level across many sectors that used to pay a factor more than minimum wage.

    Brexit ends the infinite supply of labour which will return us to an equilibrium pre-shock, which is pre-2004 not pre-2020.

    2003/04 was the pre-shock state not 2015, 2016 or 2019. The creation of an infinite pool of cheap minimum wage labour turned the minimum wage into a maximum wage and created the permanent "labour shortage" we've had for seventeen years now.
    Ah fantastic. Thanks v much for clarifying. So all that joshing about isn't it great wages and prices are rising was just you not being serious and nothing to do with any Brexit bonus. I can't even remember why it was brought up.

    And interesting that 2004 was pre-shock. Yes I understand that. For a Brexiter that was Year Zero and le deluge was most unwelcome. As it has been to previous generations.

    Time to post this again:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJX5XHnONTI
  • IshmaelZ said:

    DavidL said:

    It's of course possible that, in my view, the somewhat misplaced hysteria about accidently killing 20k Brits in today's newspapers just might move the polls but I wouldn't count on it. Firstly, the public are giving the government a great deal more leeway in dealing with this extraordinary situation than the media (who just might, heaven forbid, have a different agenda). Secondly, Labour pretty much went along with everything the government did for the same reasons, it was consistent with the best scientific advice available at the time. Thirdly, at least in my view, it is crap and similar numbers to those who died would have died anyway before the vaccines were available.

    At the same time Labour seem to be going through some sort of existential crisis. They look divided, aimless and somewhat short of ideas. God knows where Boris is going to get his program for his next majority from. The pickings of Ed's Manifesto are getting thin and there is not much else to go on. A random poll can of course produce a result as we saw in September but its not looking likely.

    It was said repeatedly in spring 2020 that the government's policy was to flatten the curve. That means, inevitably, that the area under the curve (= total deaths) would be the same, but delayed to some extent. The purpose of the delay was to prevent extra deaths that might be caused by overwhelming the health service. "Behavioural scientists" (goodness knows how many such paragons exist) opined that after eight weeks or so a strict lockdown would crumble so it was important not to start too soon or the crumbling would coincide with maximum plague.
    You only get to mock past predictions if you can point to yourself getting it right. The meek acceptance of unlimited lockdown was unpredictable until it happened - unless you said different?
    My mockery was fairly gentle by most standards. I was simply pointing out that the government followed the advice of behavioural scientists and delayed the first lockdown until it was calculated to have optimum effect. As it turns out they underestimated our indefatigability. Maybe they just guess, like the rest of us.
  • Wow. Frosty's on the war path. Boris's NI deal is as dead as a dodo.

    Good.

    What's he said?

    The UK holds all the cards right now so we absolutely should put out maximalist demands. Its exactly what Barnier would have done if he was still in place and held the cards.
    Basically, he's said the current deal is tragically unworkable - and that the UK only agreed to it because the EU was mighty and Boris was weak.
    No shit Sherlock. The 2017-19 Parliament meant he had to get a deal on this because Parliament needed a deal and wouldn't let us out without one.

    Now we have dealt with that, we can replace the Protocol with a permanent arrangement.
    Funny. My recollection is that you regarded it as a negotiating masterclass - the fabled 'Stormont Optout' being Boris's final piece of brilliance, the magic ingredient that put the issue to bed where every previous attempt had failed.
  • Wow. Frosty's on the war path. Boris's NI deal is as dead as a dodo.

    Good.

    What's he said?

    The UK holds all the cards right now so we absolutely should put out maximalist demands. Its exactly what Barnier would have done if he was still in place and held the cards.
    Basically, he's said the current deal is tragically unworkable - and that the UK only agreed to it because the EU was mighty and Boris was weak.
    Along the way Frost was switched on sufficiently to get agreement to A16 and maybe blindsided the EU
  • TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    fpt

    rcs1000 said:

    Free movement wasn't really a big problem until three things came together:

    (1) The integration of the EU 8, which were very significantly poorer than then existing EU members. When previously poor countries had joined (Portugal, Greece, Spain), they were relatively small, this was 8 countries (including one big one) all at the same time. The UK was also pretty much the only country not to go with transitional controls on immigration. This meant that instead of a few million people being spread out across the whole EU, they came mostly to the UK.

    (2) The UK's benefits system. As far as I can tell, there is no other country in Europe that has either a system that is as non-contributory bases, not one which was so generous with in work benefits system like the UK. Prior to the Maastricht treaty, you could work in any member state, but there was no presumption of benefits. The consequence of this is that (pretty much alone of the countries in the EU), it was possible for a migrant to come to the UK and pick up benefits from day one.

    (3) The Eurozone crisis, which caused a dramatic dip in demand for migrant labour in the Southern EU states *and* led to the exporting their own young.

    Hold on. Are immigrants coming here and depressing wages or are they coming over here and claiming benefits?

    Get the story straight, lads.
    Both are a factor.

    Without universal in-work benefits like housing benefit and tax credits/universal credit then it'd be tougher for someone in a minimum wage job to pay UK housing costs. Still possible especially in overcrowded flatshares, but tougher.
    I don't doubt it. What has that got to do with immigration?
    Once again it is not immigration or emigration per se that changed pay rates. It is the availability of unlimited immigration that cut real pay rates and prevented real pay rises and the end of that availability is what is reversing that causing real and permanent pay rises.

    In-work benefits fuelled the availability of unlimited migration. If you're a poor and unskilled Romanian then are you better off working in a minimum wage Romanian job, or in the UK getting a British minimum wage, plus housing allowance, plus child benefits etc, etc?
    You are better off in the UK. Availability of labour has seen nevertheless historic low levels of unemployment both in 2016 (4%) and now (4.6%).

    The discussion has centred upon wage rises. Your position is that with the return of the immigrants wages will go up and if that puts up prices then that is also good (your jocular 4.1% vs 4.0% - how we laughed).

    Mine is that if that is the case then no one is better off in such a scenario plus I have noted that demand will decrease and hence equilibrium will eventually return to pre-"shock" levels.

    Max has noted that per capital demand will be lower with lower wages which of course is true. But demand of course has a multiplier and the contraction means that it is not a 1:1 relationship immigrant out one unit of his demand down.

    You also noted that this has been the case for "many years". To which point I have to ask - what and when was the pre-fall state?
    🤦‍♂️

    For the umpteenth time my position is not that the return of immigrants will affect wages. It won't. That is not my argument at all. Immigration or emigration cancels out as new immigrants create demands themselves.

    The "shock" is not Brexit. The "shock" was the expansion of the supply of labour to unlimited levels in 2004. That infinite supply slashed pay rates to the minimum wage level across many sectors that used to pay a factor more than minimum wage.

    Brexit ends the infinite supply of labour which will return us to an equilibrium pre-shock, which is pre-2004 not pre-2020.

    2003/04 was the pre-shock state not 2015, 2016 or 2019. The creation of an infinite pool of cheap minimum wage labour turned the minimum wage into a maximum wage and created the permanent "labour shortage" we've had for seventeen years now.
    Ah fantastic. Thanks v much for clarifying. So all that joshing about isn't it great wages and prices are rising was just you not being serious and nothing to do with any Brexit bonus. I can't even remember why it was brought up.

    And interesting that 2004 was pre-shock. Yes I understand that. For a Brexiter that was Year Zero and le deluge was most unwelcome. As it has been to previous generations.

    Time to post this again:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJX5XHnONTI
    🤦‍♂️

    That video has nothing about about what I was saying.

    The quantity of jobs in 2016 was 400% of the quantity of jobs at minimum wage levels in 2003.

    Why? Because in 2003 if you wanted a job filling you had to offer a market rate of labour that attracted someone to fill you vacancy, but by 2016 if you wanted a job filling you could offer minimum wage and someone would come because there was an infinite supply of people willing to work fro that rate.

    Brexit ends that infinite supply of minimum wage labour and means that supply and demand for wages can start to work properly again.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    fpt

    rcs1000 said:

    Free movement wasn't really a big problem until three things came together:

    (1) The integration of the EU 8, which were very significantly poorer than then existing EU members. When previously poor countries had joined (Portugal, Greece, Spain), they were relatively small, this was 8 countries (including one big one) all at the same time. The UK was also pretty much the only country not to go with transitional controls on immigration. This meant that instead of a few million people being spread out across the whole EU, they came mostly to the UK.

    (2) The UK's benefits system. As far as I can tell, there is no other country in Europe that has either a system that is as non-contributory bases, not one which was so generous with in work benefits system like the UK. Prior to the Maastricht treaty, you could work in any member state, but there was no presumption of benefits. The consequence of this is that (pretty much alone of the countries in the EU), it was possible for a migrant to come to the UK and pick up benefits from day one.

    (3) The Eurozone crisis, which caused a dramatic dip in demand for migrant labour in the Southern EU states *and* led to the exporting their own young.

    Hold on. Are immigrants coming here and depressing wages or are they coming over here and claiming benefits?

    Get the story straight, lads.
    Both are a factor.

    Without universal in-work benefits like housing benefit and tax credits/universal credit then it'd be tougher for someone in a minimum wage job to pay UK housing costs. Still possible especially in overcrowded flatshares, but tougher.
    I don't doubt it. What has that got to do with immigration?
    Once again it is not immigration or emigration per se that changed pay rates. It is the availability of unlimited immigration that cut real pay rates and prevented real pay rises and the end of that availability is what is reversing that causing real and permanent pay rises.

    In-work benefits fuelled the availability of unlimited migration. If you're a poor and unskilled Romanian then are you better off working in a minimum wage Romanian job, or in the UK getting a British minimum wage, plus housing allowance, plus child benefits etc, etc?
    You are better off in the UK. Availability of labour has seen nevertheless historic low levels of unemployment both in 2016 (4%) and now (4.6%).

    The discussion has centred upon wage rises. Your position is that with the return of the immigrants wages will go up and if that puts up prices then that is also good (your jocular 4.1% vs 4.0% - how we laughed).

    Mine is that if that is the case then no one is better off in such a scenario plus I have noted that demand will decrease and hence equilibrium will eventually return to pre-"shock" levels.

    Max has noted that per capital demand will be lower with lower wages which of course is true. But demand of course has a multiplier and the contraction means that it is not a 1:1 relationship immigrant out one unit of his demand down.

    You also noted that this has been the case for "many years". To which point I have to ask - what and when was the pre-fall state?
    🤦‍♂️

    For the umpteenth time my position is not that the return of immigrants will affect wages. It won't. That is not my argument at all. Immigration or emigration cancels out as new immigrants create demands themselves.

    The "shock" is not Brexit. The "shock" was the expansion of the supply of labour to unlimited levels in 2004. That infinite supply slashed pay rates to the minimum wage level across many sectors that used to pay a factor more than minimum wage.

    Brexit ends the infinite supply of labour which will return us to an equilibrium pre-shock, which is pre-2004 not pre-2020.

    2003/04 was the pre-shock state not 2015, 2016 or 2019. The creation of an infinite pool of cheap minimum wage labour turned the minimum wage into a maximum wage and created the permanent "labour shortage" we've had for seventeen years now.
    So you're saying that the return of immigrants will affect wages?
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,080
    Scott_xP said:

    Basically, he's said the current deal is tragically unworkable - and that the UK only agreed to it because the EU was mighty and Boris was weak.

    Bernard Jenkin #Newsnight
    “Brexit Deal was signed at a time when Gov was weak & gripped by a constitutional crisis, the EU took advantage”

    EU trade agreement was signed *year* after his party won a maj 80 seats in election to *get Brexit done* Shameless

    https://twitter.com/JibbaJabb/status/1447683780655947778/video/1
    Evidence that he was referring to the Trade Agreement not the Brexit Deal in the statement ? :smile:

    We're back to the pretending about "Oven-Ready Deals" applying to something else.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,764
    Leon said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Unit 731 — had no idea about it.

    Yes, it is amazingly invisible. Quietly hidden under the carpet of history

    When you consider the huge industry dedicated to remembering the Holocaust - the books, the museums, the movies, the art, the tours of the death camps - and yet, on Unit 731 there is almost nothing. And yet it is comparable in horror, and enormous in scale.

    Perhaps it is something to do with THIS


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cover-up_of_Japanese_war_crimes

    If anything, I'd say the IJA were worse than the Mongols. The massacres carried out by the latter were horrible, but entirely pragmatic. They were done to send a message. Surrender and live, resist, and you will be completely obliterated. Most cities chose the path of wisdom, once they saw what the Mongols could do.

    The IJA inflicted cruelty for the sheer fun of it, upon people who had long since surrendered. It was not a case of soldiers running amok in the heat of storming a city, it was sheer, joyful, sadism, encouraged from the top.
  • Wow. Frosty's on the war path. Boris's NI deal is as dead as a dodo.

    Good.

    What's he said?

    The UK holds all the cards right now so we absolutely should put out maximalist demands. Its exactly what Barnier would have done if he was still in place and held the cards.
    Basically, he's said the current deal is tragically unworkable - and that the UK only agreed to it because the EU was mighty and Boris was weak.
    No shit Sherlock. The 2017-19 Parliament meant he had to get a deal on this because Parliament needed a deal and wouldn't let us out without one.

    Now we have dealt with that, we can replace the Protocol with a permanent arrangement.
    Funny. My recollection is that you regarded it as a negotiating masterclass - the fabled 'Stormont Optout' being Boris's final piece of brilliance, the magic ingredient that put the issue to bed where every previous attempt had failed.
    It was an absolute masterclass. An even bigger masterclass than I realised. The Stormont Optout got us over the line - but the inclusion of Article 16 provided another option I didn't realise was there at the time.

    Including that, so that the government can then exploit what it got included to ratchet an even better deal? That is bloody brilliant.
  • Farooq said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    fpt

    rcs1000 said:

    Free movement wasn't really a big problem until three things came together:

    (1) The integration of the EU 8, which were very significantly poorer than then existing EU members. When previously poor countries had joined (Portugal, Greece, Spain), they were relatively small, this was 8 countries (including one big one) all at the same time. The UK was also pretty much the only country not to go with transitional controls on immigration. This meant that instead of a few million people being spread out across the whole EU, they came mostly to the UK.

    (2) The UK's benefits system. As far as I can tell, there is no other country in Europe that has either a system that is as non-contributory bases, not one which was so generous with in work benefits system like the UK. Prior to the Maastricht treaty, you could work in any member state, but there was no presumption of benefits. The consequence of this is that (pretty much alone of the countries in the EU), it was possible for a migrant to come to the UK and pick up benefits from day one.

    (3) The Eurozone crisis, which caused a dramatic dip in demand for migrant labour in the Southern EU states *and* led to the exporting their own young.

    Hold on. Are immigrants coming here and depressing wages or are they coming over here and claiming benefits?

    Get the story straight, lads.
    Both are a factor.

    Without universal in-work benefits like housing benefit and tax credits/universal credit then it'd be tougher for someone in a minimum wage job to pay UK housing costs. Still possible especially in overcrowded flatshares, but tougher.
    I don't doubt it. What has that got to do with immigration?
    Once again it is not immigration or emigration per se that changed pay rates. It is the availability of unlimited immigration that cut real pay rates and prevented real pay rises and the end of that availability is what is reversing that causing real and permanent pay rises.

    In-work benefits fuelled the availability of unlimited migration. If you're a poor and unskilled Romanian then are you better off working in a minimum wage Romanian job, or in the UK getting a British minimum wage, plus housing allowance, plus child benefits etc, etc?
    You are better off in the UK. Availability of labour has seen nevertheless historic low levels of unemployment both in 2016 (4%) and now (4.6%).

    The discussion has centred upon wage rises. Your position is that with the return of the immigrants wages will go up and if that puts up prices then that is also good (your jocular 4.1% vs 4.0% - how we laughed).

    Mine is that if that is the case then no one is better off in such a scenario plus I have noted that demand will decrease and hence equilibrium will eventually return to pre-"shock" levels.

    Max has noted that per capital demand will be lower with lower wages which of course is true. But demand of course has a multiplier and the contraction means that it is not a 1:1 relationship immigrant out one unit of his demand down.

    You also noted that this has been the case for "many years". To which point I have to ask - what and when was the pre-fall state?
    🤦‍♂️

    For the umpteenth time my position is not that the return of immigrants will affect wages. It won't. That is not my argument at all. Immigration or emigration cancels out as new immigrants create demands themselves.

    The "shock" is not Brexit. The "shock" was the expansion of the supply of labour to unlimited levels in 2004. That infinite supply slashed pay rates to the minimum wage level across many sectors that used to pay a factor more than minimum wage.

    Brexit ends the infinite supply of labour which will return us to an equilibrium pre-shock, which is pre-2004 not pre-2020.

    2003/04 was the pre-shock state not 2015, 2016 or 2019. The creation of an infinite pool of cheap minimum wage labour turned the minimum wage into a maximum wage and created the permanent "labour shortage" we've had for seventeen years now.
    So you're saying that the return of immigrants will affect wages?
    NO!
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775

    Farooq said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    fpt

    rcs1000 said:

    Free movement wasn't really a big problem until three things came together:

    (1) The integration of the EU 8, which were very significantly poorer than then existing EU members. When previously poor countries had joined (Portugal, Greece, Spain), they were relatively small, this was 8 countries (including one big one) all at the same time. The UK was also pretty much the only country not to go with transitional controls on immigration. This meant that instead of a few million people being spread out across the whole EU, they came mostly to the UK.

    (2) The UK's benefits system. As far as I can tell, there is no other country in Europe that has either a system that is as non-contributory bases, not one which was so generous with in work benefits system like the UK. Prior to the Maastricht treaty, you could work in any member state, but there was no presumption of benefits. The consequence of this is that (pretty much alone of the countries in the EU), it was possible for a migrant to come to the UK and pick up benefits from day one.

    (3) The Eurozone crisis, which caused a dramatic dip in demand for migrant labour in the Southern EU states *and* led to the exporting their own young.

    Hold on. Are immigrants coming here and depressing wages or are they coming over here and claiming benefits?

    Get the story straight, lads.
    Both are a factor.

    Without universal in-work benefits like housing benefit and tax credits/universal credit then it'd be tougher for someone in a minimum wage job to pay UK housing costs. Still possible especially in overcrowded flatshares, but tougher.
    I don't doubt it. What has that got to do with immigration?
    Once again it is not immigration or emigration per se that changed pay rates. It is the availability of unlimited immigration that cut real pay rates and prevented real pay rises and the end of that availability is what is reversing that causing real and permanent pay rises.

    In-work benefits fuelled the availability of unlimited migration. If you're a poor and unskilled Romanian then are you better off working in a minimum wage Romanian job, or in the UK getting a British minimum wage, plus housing allowance, plus child benefits etc, etc?
    You are better off in the UK. Availability of labour has seen nevertheless historic low levels of unemployment both in 2016 (4%) and now (4.6%).

    The discussion has centred upon wage rises. Your position is that with the return of the immigrants wages will go up and if that puts up prices then that is also good (your jocular 4.1% vs 4.0% - how we laughed).

    Mine is that if that is the case then no one is better off in such a scenario plus I have noted that demand will decrease and hence equilibrium will eventually return to pre-"shock" levels.

    Max has noted that per capital demand will be lower with lower wages which of course is true. But demand of course has a multiplier and the contraction means that it is not a 1:1 relationship immigrant out one unit of his demand down.

    You also noted that this has been the case for "many years". To which point I have to ask - what and when was the pre-fall state?
    🤦‍♂️

    For the umpteenth time my position is not that the return of immigrants will affect wages. It won't. That is not my argument at all. Immigration or emigration cancels out as new immigrants create demands themselves.

    The "shock" is not Brexit. The "shock" was the expansion of the supply of labour to unlimited levels in 2004. That infinite supply slashed pay rates to the minimum wage level across many sectors that used to pay a factor more than minimum wage.

    Brexit ends the infinite supply of labour which will return us to an equilibrium pre-shock, which is pre-2004 not pre-2020.

    2003/04 was the pre-shock state not 2015, 2016 or 2019. The creation of an infinite pool of cheap minimum wage labour turned the minimum wage into a maximum wage and created the permanent "labour shortage" we've had for seventeen years now.
    So you're saying that the return of immigrants will affect wages?
    NO!
    oh, you should have said
  • FF43FF43 Posts: 15,543
    If Frost is going to impose a trade war on us and trash Northern Ireland in the process, he needs a better justification than that pile of unsupported assertions and non sequiturs, I feel.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    fpt

    rcs1000 said:

    Free movement wasn't really a big problem until three things came together:

    (1) The integration of the EU 8, which were very significantly poorer than then existing EU members. When previously poor countries had joined (Portugal, Greece, Spain), they were relatively small, this was 8 countries (including one big one) all at the same time. The UK was also pretty much the only country not to go with transitional controls on immigration. This meant that instead of a few million people being spread out across the whole EU, they came mostly to the UK.

    (2) The UK's benefits system. As far as I can tell, there is no other country in Europe that has either a system that is as non-contributory bases, not one which was so generous with in work benefits system like the UK. Prior to the Maastricht treaty, you could work in any member state, but there was no presumption of benefits. The consequence of this is that (pretty much alone of the countries in the EU), it was possible for a migrant to come to the UK and pick up benefits from day one.

    (3) The Eurozone crisis, which caused a dramatic dip in demand for migrant labour in the Southern EU states *and* led to the exporting their own young.

    Hold on. Are immigrants coming here and depressing wages or are they coming over here and claiming benefits?

    Get the story straight, lads.
    Both are a factor.

    Without universal in-work benefits like housing benefit and tax credits/universal credit then it'd be tougher for someone in a minimum wage job to pay UK housing costs. Still possible especially in overcrowded flatshares, but tougher.
    I don't doubt it. What has that got to do with immigration?
    Once again it is not immigration or emigration per se that changed pay rates. It is the availability of unlimited immigration that cut real pay rates and prevented real pay rises and the end of that availability is what is reversing that causing real and permanent pay rises.

    In-work benefits fuelled the availability of unlimited migration. If you're a poor and unskilled Romanian then are you better off working in a minimum wage Romanian job, or in the UK getting a British minimum wage, plus housing allowance, plus child benefits etc, etc?
    You are better off in the UK. Availability of labour has seen nevertheless historic low levels of unemployment both in 2016 (4%) and now (4.6%).

    The discussion has centred upon wage rises. Your position is that with the return of the immigrants wages will go up and if that puts up prices then that is also good (your jocular 4.1% vs 4.0% - how we laughed).

    Mine is that if that is the case then no one is better off in such a scenario plus I have noted that demand will decrease and hence equilibrium will eventually return to pre-"shock" levels.

    Max has noted that per capital demand will be lower with lower wages which of course is true. But demand of course has a multiplier and the contraction means that it is not a 1:1 relationship immigrant out one unit of his demand down.

    You also noted that this has been the case for "many years". To which point I have to ask - what and when was the pre-fall state?
    🤦‍♂️

    For the umpteenth time my position is not that the return of immigrants will affect wages. It won't. That is not my argument at all. Immigration or emigration cancels out as new immigrants create demands themselves.

    The "shock" is not Brexit. The "shock" was the expansion of the supply of labour to unlimited levels in 2004. That infinite supply slashed pay rates to the minimum wage level across many sectors that used to pay a factor more than minimum wage.

    Brexit ends the infinite supply of labour which will return us to an equilibrium pre-shock, which is pre-2004 not pre-2020.

    2003/04 was the pre-shock state not 2015, 2016 or 2019. The creation of an infinite pool of cheap minimum wage labour turned the minimum wage into a maximum wage and created the permanent "labour shortage" we've had for seventeen years now.
    Ah fantastic. Thanks v much for clarifying. So all that joshing about isn't it great wages and prices are rising was just you not being serious and nothing to do with any Brexit bonus. I can't even remember why it was brought up.

    And interesting that 2004 was pre-shock. Yes I understand that. For a Brexiter that was Year Zero and le deluge was most unwelcome. As it has been to previous generations.

    Time to post this again:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJX5XHnONTI
    🤦‍♂️

    That video has nothing about about what I was saying.

    The quantity of jobs in 2016 was 400% of the quantity of jobs at minimum wage levels in 2003.

    Why? Because in 2003 if you wanted a job filling you had to offer a market rate of labour that attracted someone to fill you vacancy, but by 2016 if you wanted a job filling you could offer minimum wage and someone would come because there was an infinite supply of people willing to work fro that rate.

    Brexit ends that infinite supply of minimum wage labour and means that supply and demand for wages can start to work properly again.
    People throughout the ages have bemoaned immigrants coming to the UK to take our jobs.

    I just wondered when your Year Zero was and it turns out it was 2003, when you were if I might hazard, just becoming politically, socially active.

    Prior to you, exactly the same arguments were made, as Hollie so eloquently points out, about any wave of immigration you care to name. And yet...and yet....wages have continued to grow this whole time.

    The minimum wage is a problem with any excess in the workforce (not just your pool of unlimited immigration) as you describe.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,142
    O/T I just can't see any kind of workable Labour-led government arising from the current situation unless polling suddenly takes a very big turn. It feels like Labour will lose more seats in the Midlands and North next time, almost come what may, and they and the Lib Dems would need to pick up a large number to get sufficiently back into contention.

    The conservatives' poll ratings slump when they look disunited and fight among themselves. They are not doing that now, and won't while they have a huge majority.

    One scenario I could envisage is something in between the May 2017 and Major 1992 result. An earlyish election in 2022 (Boris wanting to capitalise before things take a turn), Tories left with a "working" majority of say 5-10 seats, setting the perfect conditions for Tory internecine warfare and the backbenches of one flavour or another turning on the PM like they did with TM. The difference now would be there is no Boris equivalent waiting in the wings. They would have to turn to a less charismatic leader, because there is no-one in the parliamentary party as charismatic as Boris. He is the Clarkson to the Tories' Top Gear, and once Clarkson left Top Gear the magic died overnight.
  • Farooq said:

    Farooq said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    fpt

    rcs1000 said:

    Free movement wasn't really a big problem until three things came together:

    (1) The integration of the EU 8, which were very significantly poorer than then existing EU members. When previously poor countries had joined (Portugal, Greece, Spain), they were relatively small, this was 8 countries (including one big one) all at the same time. The UK was also pretty much the only country not to go with transitional controls on immigration. This meant that instead of a few million people being spread out across the whole EU, they came mostly to the UK.

    (2) The UK's benefits system. As far as I can tell, there is no other country in Europe that has either a system that is as non-contributory bases, not one which was so generous with in work benefits system like the UK. Prior to the Maastricht treaty, you could work in any member state, but there was no presumption of benefits. The consequence of this is that (pretty much alone of the countries in the EU), it was possible for a migrant to come to the UK and pick up benefits from day one.

    (3) The Eurozone crisis, which caused a dramatic dip in demand for migrant labour in the Southern EU states *and* led to the exporting their own young.

    Hold on. Are immigrants coming here and depressing wages or are they coming over here and claiming benefits?

    Get the story straight, lads.
    Both are a factor.

    Without universal in-work benefits like housing benefit and tax credits/universal credit then it'd be tougher for someone in a minimum wage job to pay UK housing costs. Still possible especially in overcrowded flatshares, but tougher.
    I don't doubt it. What has that got to do with immigration?
    Once again it is not immigration or emigration per se that changed pay rates. It is the availability of unlimited immigration that cut real pay rates and prevented real pay rises and the end of that availability is what is reversing that causing real and permanent pay rises.

    In-work benefits fuelled the availability of unlimited migration. If you're a poor and unskilled Romanian then are you better off working in a minimum wage Romanian job, or in the UK getting a British minimum wage, plus housing allowance, plus child benefits etc, etc?
    You are better off in the UK. Availability of labour has seen nevertheless historic low levels of unemployment both in 2016 (4%) and now (4.6%).

    The discussion has centred upon wage rises. Your position is that with the return of the immigrants wages will go up and if that puts up prices then that is also good (your jocular 4.1% vs 4.0% - how we laughed).

    Mine is that if that is the case then no one is better off in such a scenario plus I have noted that demand will decrease and hence equilibrium will eventually return to pre-"shock" levels.

    Max has noted that per capital demand will be lower with lower wages which of course is true. But demand of course has a multiplier and the contraction means that it is not a 1:1 relationship immigrant out one unit of his demand down.

    You also noted that this has been the case for "many years". To which point I have to ask - what and when was the pre-fall state?
    🤦‍♂️

    For the umpteenth time my position is not that the return of immigrants will affect wages. It won't. That is not my argument at all. Immigration or emigration cancels out as new immigrants create demands themselves.

    The "shock" is not Brexit. The "shock" was the expansion of the supply of labour to unlimited levels in 2004. That infinite supply slashed pay rates to the minimum wage level across many sectors that used to pay a factor more than minimum wage.

    Brexit ends the infinite supply of labour which will return us to an equilibrium pre-shock, which is pre-2004 not pre-2020.

    2003/04 was the pre-shock state not 2015, 2016 or 2019. The creation of an infinite pool of cheap minimum wage labour turned the minimum wage into a maximum wage and created the permanent "labour shortage" we've had for seventeen years now.
    So you're saying that the return of immigrants will affect wages?
    NO!
    oh, you should have said
    The quantity of migrants itself doesn't matter since migrants themselves create new demand. So emigration destroys jobs, and immigration creates them.

    What was lowering wages wasn't the immigration per se it was the supply of possible immigration that meant that the quantity of minimum wage jobs could quadruple in just a dozen years post-EU8 accession.

    Wages will rise now because that infinite pool of possible future migrants has been cut off, so now supply and demand can work within the country for everyone here. Including those EU migrants who've come here already in the past seventeen years and their children etc.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206
    Sean_F said:

    Leon said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Unit 731 — had no idea about it.

    Yes, it is amazingly invisible. Quietly hidden under the carpet of history

    When you consider the huge industry dedicated to remembering the Holocaust - the books, the museums, the movies, the art, the tours of the death camps - and yet, on Unit 731 there is almost nothing. And yet it is comparable in horror, and enormous in scale.

    Perhaps it is something to do with THIS


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cover-up_of_Japanese_war_crimes

    If anything, I'd say the IJA were worse than the Mongols. The massacres carried out by the latter were horrible, but entirely pragmatic. They were done to send a message. Surrender and live, resist, and you will be completely obliterated. Most cities chose the path of wisdom, once they saw what the Mongols could do.

    The IJA inflicted cruelty for the sheer fun of it, upon people who had long since surrendered. It was not a case of soldiers running amok in the heat of storming a city, it was sheer, joyful, sadism, encouraged from the top.
    Yes, almost certainly worse. All done under the lights of perverted science

    I never thought I would find it hard to simply READ about atrocities (visual evidence is always much more challenging, of course). But in this case, some of this stuff is genuinely difficult to absorb. The mind blanks at the evil
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,715
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Unit 731 — had no idea about it.

    Yes, it is amazingly invisible. Quietly hidden under the carpet of history

    When you consider the huge industry dedicated to remembering the Holocaust - the books, the museums, the movies, the art, the tours of the death camps - and yet, on Unit 731 there is almost nothing. And yet it is comparable in horror, and enormous in scale.

    Perhaps it is something to do with THIS


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cover-up_of_Japanese_war_crimes

    I wouldn't quite say 'quietly hidden'.

    In addition to the Booker-prize winning novel, you have ...

    (Proper) video nasty "Men behind the sun"
    There's an X-files arc/series of episodes about Unit 731
    one of the Call of Duty games uses the backstory for the zombie mini-game.

    This is clearly not meant to be an exclusive list, just some higher profile media in which it is referenced.
    Sure, there is *some* acknowledgement, via a few novels, the odd TV show, a movie or two

    But given the overpowering horror of this crime and its absolute enormity, this is all pretty trifling. Even now, it seems, the Japanese government has not even accepted that anything *bad* happened with its doctors, let alone made any specific apology


    "Unit 731 scientists conducted the most macabre and sadistic experiments on human beings in the known history of medicine or warfare. Thousands died at their massive laboratory at Pingfang near Harbin, China. Tens of thousands died in their field experiments"

    https://thediplomat.com/2015/05/abes-japan-cannot-apologize-for-the-pacific-war/


    https://www.forbes.com/sites/eamonnfingleton/2014/03/09/imperial-japans-abominable-dr-death-and-the-most-disgraceful-war-crime-cover-up-in-history/?sh=742d245675de
    As a young teenager I read The Naked Island by Russell Braddon. The descriptions of cold-blooded cruelty were beyond shocking.I could understand why many of my father's friends were initially reluctant to buy Japanese cars.
  • FF43FF43 Posts: 15,543

    TimS said:

    Wow. Frosty's on the war path. Boris's NI deal is as dead as a dodo.

    He truly has the zeal of the convert. Someone's going to need to rein him in at some point. I think he's starting to believe some of his own hype, like Cummings did. We all saw what happened to Cummings.
    At least Cummings is intelligent. Frost is a second rate hack rescued from some lower tier lobbying gig by his willingness to abase himself at the altars of Boris and Brexit.
    I don't normally say this about people, but Frost comes across as a bit stupid, as well as being an out and out careerist who will say absolutely anything if he thinks it will please his master.
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,701
    TimS said:

    O/T I just can't see any kind of workable Labour-led government arising from the current situation unless polling suddenly takes a very big turn. It feels like Labour will lose more seats in the Midlands and North next time, almost come what may, and they and the Lib Dems would need to pick up a large number to get sufficiently back into contention.

    The conservatives' poll ratings slump when they look disunited and fight among themselves. They are not doing that now, and won't while they have a huge majority.

    One scenario I could envisage is something in between the May 2017 and Major 1992 result. An earlyish election in 2022 (Boris wanting to capitalise before things take a turn), Tories left with a "working" majority of say 5-10 seats, setting the perfect conditions for Tory internecine warfare and the backbenches of one flavour or another turning on the PM like they did with TM. The difference now would be there is no Boris equivalent waiting in the wings. They would have to turn to a less charismatic leader, because there is no-one in the parliamentary party as charismatic as Boris. He is the Clarkson to the Tories' Top Gear, and once Clarkson left Top Gear the magic died overnight.

    So who is the Tories Chris Evans ?

    Rishi, Hunt, Truss ?
  • TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    fpt

    rcs1000 said:

    Free movement wasn't really a big problem until three things came together:

    (1) The integration of the EU 8, which were very significantly poorer than then existing EU members. When previously poor countries had joined (Portugal, Greece, Spain), they were relatively small, this was 8 countries (including one big one) all at the same time. The UK was also pretty much the only country not to go with transitional controls on immigration. This meant that instead of a few million people being spread out across the whole EU, they came mostly to the UK.

    (2) The UK's benefits system. As far as I can tell, there is no other country in Europe that has either a system that is as non-contributory bases, not one which was so generous with in work benefits system like the UK. Prior to the Maastricht treaty, you could work in any member state, but there was no presumption of benefits. The consequence of this is that (pretty much alone of the countries in the EU), it was possible for a migrant to come to the UK and pick up benefits from day one.

    (3) The Eurozone crisis, which caused a dramatic dip in demand for migrant labour in the Southern EU states *and* led to the exporting their own young.

    Hold on. Are immigrants coming here and depressing wages or are they coming over here and claiming benefits?

    Get the story straight, lads.
    Both are a factor.

    Without universal in-work benefits like housing benefit and tax credits/universal credit then it'd be tougher for someone in a minimum wage job to pay UK housing costs. Still possible especially in overcrowded flatshares, but tougher.
    I don't doubt it. What has that got to do with immigration?
    Once again it is not immigration or emigration per se that changed pay rates. It is the availability of unlimited immigration that cut real pay rates and prevented real pay rises and the end of that availability is what is reversing that causing real and permanent pay rises.

    In-work benefits fuelled the availability of unlimited migration. If you're a poor and unskilled Romanian then are you better off working in a minimum wage Romanian job, or in the UK getting a British minimum wage, plus housing allowance, plus child benefits etc, etc?
    You are better off in the UK. Availability of labour has seen nevertheless historic low levels of unemployment both in 2016 (4%) and now (4.6%).

    The discussion has centred upon wage rises. Your position is that with the return of the immigrants wages will go up and if that puts up prices then that is also good (your jocular 4.1% vs 4.0% - how we laughed).

    Mine is that if that is the case then no one is better off in such a scenario plus I have noted that demand will decrease and hence equilibrium will eventually return to pre-"shock" levels.

    Max has noted that per capital demand will be lower with lower wages which of course is true. But demand of course has a multiplier and the contraction means that it is not a 1:1 relationship immigrant out one unit of his demand down.

    You also noted that this has been the case for "many years". To which point I have to ask - what and when was the pre-fall state?
    🤦‍♂️

    For the umpteenth time my position is not that the return of immigrants will affect wages. It won't. That is not my argument at all. Immigration or emigration cancels out as new immigrants create demands themselves.

    The "shock" is not Brexit. The "shock" was the expansion of the supply of labour to unlimited levels in 2004. That infinite supply slashed pay rates to the minimum wage level across many sectors that used to pay a factor more than minimum wage.

    Brexit ends the infinite supply of labour which will return us to an equilibrium pre-shock, which is pre-2004 not pre-2020.

    2003/04 was the pre-shock state not 2015, 2016 or 2019. The creation of an infinite pool of cheap minimum wage labour turned the minimum wage into a maximum wage and created the permanent "labour shortage" we've had for seventeen years now.
    Ah fantastic. Thanks v much for clarifying. So all that joshing about isn't it great wages and prices are rising was just you not being serious and nothing to do with any Brexit bonus. I can't even remember why it was brought up.

    And interesting that 2004 was pre-shock. Yes I understand that. For a Brexiter that was Year Zero and le deluge was most unwelcome. As it has been to previous generations.

    Time to post this again:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJX5XHnONTI
    🤦‍♂️

    That video has nothing about about what I was saying.

    The quantity of jobs in 2016 was 400% of the quantity of jobs at minimum wage levels in 2003.

    Why? Because in 2003 if you wanted a job filling you had to offer a market rate of labour that attracted someone to fill you vacancy, but by 2016 if you wanted a job filling you could offer minimum wage and someone would come because there was an infinite supply of people willing to work fro that rate.

    Brexit ends that infinite supply of minimum wage labour and means that supply and demand for wages can start to work properly again.
    People throughout the ages have bemoaned immigrants coming to the UK to take our jobs.

    I just wondered when your Year Zero was and it turns out it was 2003, when you were if I might hazard, just becoming politically, socially active.

    Prior to you, exactly the same arguments were made, as Hollie so eloquently points out, about any wave of immigration you care to name. And yet...and yet....wages have continued to grow this whole time.

    The minimum wage is a problem with any excess in the workforce (not just your pool of unlimited immigration) as you describe.
    Prior to 2004 there was no infinite supply of labour to work for minimum wage, which is why only half a million jobs were minimum wage as opposed to two million a dozen years later.

    If there was a problem of excess supply of workforce then that should be showing itself in unemployment rates. But the UK has been at full employment for a long time, so no there was not an excess domestic supply of labour.

    The excess workforce was coming from abroad, not domestic.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,764

    DavidL said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Unit 731 — had no idea about it.

    I knew that the Japanese had behaved horribly in Manchuria with rapes, slave girls and general brutality but the industrial scale is a bit of a shock, as is the complicity in the US covering this abomination up. Appalling.
    In a really perverse historical irony, a German called John Rabe became a hero during the Rape of Nanking, saving hundreds of thousands of Chinese lives by creating a semi-official safe zone in the city.

    Despite being the head of the local Nazi party.

    "Finally, with only his status as an official of an allied nation for protection, Rabe did what now seems the unthinkable: he be­gan to roam about the city, trying to prevent atrocities himself.

    Whenever he drove through Nanking, some man would in­evitably leap out and stop the car to beg Rabe to stop a rape in progress -- a rape that usually involved a sister, a wife, or a daughter. Rabe would then let the man climb into the car and direct him to the scene of the rape. Once there, he would chase Japanese soldiers away from their prey, on one occasion even bodily lifting a soldier sprawled on top of a young girl. He knew these expeditions were highly dangerous ("The Japanese had pistols and bayonets and I ... had only party symbols and my swastika armband," Rabe wrote in his report to Hitler), but nothing could deter him -- not even the risk of death."

    "With these women Rabe developed a warning system to protect them from Japanese rapists. Whenever Japanese soldiers scaled the wall of his yard, the women would blow a whistle and send Rabe running out into the yard to chase the offenders away. This happened so frequently that Rabe rarely left his home at night, fearful that Japanese intruders would commit an orgy of rape in his absence."

    After the war, he lived in poverty due to his status as an ex-Nazi. He survived on food parcels and money sent to him from China, where he is now widely regarded as a hero.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/01/the-nazi-leader-who-in-1937-became-the-oskar-schindler-of-china/251525/

    Sometimes, people are complex.
    Even some fairly hardline Nazis were sickened by the behaviour of groups like the Ustasha and other local militias.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,728
    We held all the cards but our hands were tied.
    https://twitter.com/seanjonesqc/status/1447957735887286273
  • FF43 said:

    TimS said:

    Wow. Frosty's on the war path. Boris's NI deal is as dead as a dodo.

    He truly has the zeal of the convert. Someone's going to need to rein him in at some point. I think he's starting to believe some of his own hype, like Cummings did. We all saw what happened to Cummings.
    At least Cummings is intelligent. Frost is a second rate hack rescued from some lower tier lobbying gig by his willingness to abase himself at the altars of Boris and Brexit.
    I don't normally say this about people, but Frost comes across as a bit stupid, as well as being an out and out careerist who will say absolutely anything if he thinks it will please his master.
    If he was so stupid how did he manage to get Barnier to agree to Article 16, which he has now used himself to such tremendous success?

    Masterclass of brilliance not stupidity.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,786
    FF43 said:

    If Frost is going to impose a trade war on us and trash Northern Ireland in the process, he needs a better justification than that pile of unsupported assertions and non sequiturs, I feel.

    You're becoming increasingly irrational about this. How does using a provision of a treaty for its intended purpose constitute 'imposing a trade war'? If the EU chooses to respond in a beligerent 'might is right' fashion, how is that Frost's fault?
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    Pro_Rata said:

    FPT: On university lack of COVID. We're 20 days in to term in a lot of places and the city areas in general and student areas in particular remain at very low rates compared with pretty much everywhere else.

    When I looked a couple of days ago, Manchester's 10-14 case rate was half that of Kirklees, so it's an age for age lower rate as well, not just the demographic holes that students leave when they go home, and not just the lesser numbers of young kids and their parents in city areas.

    Still, might there be a hope there is going to be barely any wave amongst the mostly recently vaccinated, last year heavily exposed, student body.

    If you look at the age heat map for england there is a massive gap from 20-to-30 at the moment. This contrasts heavily with the summer wave.

    Young adults ceatainly seem to be missing Covid this time round.
  • Wow. Frosty's on the war path. Boris's NI deal is as dead as a dodo.

    Good.

    What's he said?

    The UK holds all the cards right now so we absolutely should put out maximalist demands. Its exactly what Barnier would have done if he was still in place and held the cards.
    Basically, he's said the current deal is tragically unworkable - and that the UK only agreed to it because the EU was mighty and Boris was weak.
    No shit Sherlock. The 2017-19 Parliament meant he had to get a deal on this because Parliament needed a deal and wouldn't let us out without one.

    Now we have dealt with that, we can replace the Protocol with a permanent arrangement.
    Funny. My recollection is that you regarded it as a negotiating masterclass - the fabled 'Stormont Optout' being Boris's final piece of brilliance, the magic ingredient that put the issue to bed where every previous attempt had failed.
    It was an absolute masterclass. An even bigger masterclass than I realised. The Stormont Optout got us over the line - but the inclusion of Article 16 provided another option I didn't realise was there at the time.

    Including that, so that the government can then exploit what it got included to ratchet an even better deal? That is bloody brilliant.
    Sorry, but what is 'this line' that it 'got us over'? If the whole thing's up in the air again with even a trade war with the EU being mooted, then I'm struggling to see what you're being so ecstatic about. Looks like déjà vu all over again to me.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,764

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Unit 731 — had no idea about it.

    Yes, it is amazingly invisible. Quietly hidden under the carpet of history

    When you consider the huge industry dedicated to remembering the Holocaust - the books, the museums, the movies, the art, the tours of the death camps - and yet, on Unit 731 there is almost nothing. And yet it is comparable in horror, and enormous in scale.

    Perhaps it is something to do with THIS


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cover-up_of_Japanese_war_crimes

    I wouldn't quite say 'quietly hidden'.

    In addition to the Booker-prize winning novel, you have ...

    (Proper) video nasty "Men behind the sun"
    There's an X-files arc/series of episodes about Unit 731
    one of the Call of Duty games uses the backstory for the zombie mini-game.

    This is clearly not meant to be an exclusive list, just some higher profile media in which it is referenced.
    Sure, there is *some* acknowledgement, via a few novels, the odd TV show, a movie or two

    But given the overpowering horror of this crime and its absolute enormity, this is all pretty trifling. Even now, it seems, the Japanese government has not even accepted that anything *bad* happened with its doctors, let alone made any specific apology


    "Unit 731 scientists conducted the most macabre and sadistic experiments on human beings in the known history of medicine or warfare. Thousands died at their massive laboratory at Pingfang near Harbin, China. Tens of thousands died in their field experiments"

    https://thediplomat.com/2015/05/abes-japan-cannot-apologize-for-the-pacific-war/


    https://www.forbes.com/sites/eamonnfingleton/2014/03/09/imperial-japans-abominable-dr-death-and-the-most-disgraceful-war-crime-cover-up-in-history/?sh=742d245675de
    As a young teenager I read The Naked Island by Russell Braddon. The descriptions of cold-blooded cruelty were beyond shocking.I could understand why many of my father's friends were initially reluctant to buy Japanese cars.
    The Knights of Bushido is a good overview. The equivalents in Europe were groups like the 36th SS Brigade Dirlewanger, the Kaminski Brigade, and the Ustasha. These units were basically made up of the scum of the earth, for whom war was just an excuse for murder, theft, rape, and torture.
This discussion has been closed.