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Priti Patel has negative ratings even from GE2019 CON voters – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited October 2021 in General
imagePriti Patel has negative ratings even from GE2019 CON voters – politicalbetting.com

One of the reasons I love Opinium polls more than others is the way the firm presents its data. There are far far more cross-heads than with any other firm and poll watchers can spend hours just going through it.

Read the full story here

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Comments

  • MikeSmithsonMikeSmithson Posts: 7,382
    test
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772
    I'd be tempted to aggregate these figures over a few polls. I wonder how stable the differences are given the overall sample size of the poll.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Unconscious bias from those voters.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,281
    I don't understand why Priti Patel isn't more popular.
  • isamisam Posts: 40,731
    In the murky world of Pollsters other than Opinium…

    CON 40 (-5)
    LAB 32 (-2)
    GRN 9 (+2)
    LD 6 (+1)
    SNP 6 (+1)
    RUK 3 (=)
    PC 1 (=)
    OTH 2 (+1)

    Fieldwork 11th-18th October (changes vs 7th-14th June)
    n=1,000


    https://twitter.com/ncpoliticsuk/status/1450155243778592773?s=21
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    FPT

    Any discussion of issues like housing or immigration that doesn't mention demographics and ageing is incomplete at best, misleading at worst. Between 1980 and 2020 the UK population increased by almost 12mn people, or by 21%, to 67.9mn. But over the same period, the population aged 15-64 grew 20%, the population aged under 15 grew 2% and the population aged 65+ grew 51%.
    Think about what this ageing society means for housing: older people in the UK mostly live in their own homes, while children live with their parents. So a society where 21% are children and 15% are elderly (1980) needs less housing than one where 18% are children and 19% are elderly (2020) - even if the population hadn't increased by 12mn.
    Think about what this ageing society means for the labour market: elderly people consume goods and services (and more than children do) but mostly don't work. That means more labour demand, less supply. That means a tight labour market. In the past that excess demand was met by immigration. Apparently that won't happen any more - let's see about that. The pressure to meet this excess demand for labour from abroad will be immense. And in a competitive global economy simply "giving everyone a pay rise" doesn't solve the problem unless it is accompanied by massive investment to raise productivity or delivers an improbably large rise in labour participation.
    Think about what an ageing society means for government spending. Pensions and health are eats up more and more of the budget. Spending on investment (including education) gets squeezed. The burden of taxation on workers keeps on going up. And unlike children, who parents work to support voluntarily, all this taxation on workers is involuntary, breeding resentment and discouraging work. That is why our tax and benefits system abounds with incentive-sapping high marginal tax rates. This is why the elderly now have their own political party, who extracts ever greater resources from workers on the elderly's behalf. And imagine how much greater the burden on each worker would be if we hadn't boosted the number of workers by immigration.
    If you don't understand the demographic pressures underlying all of this, you don't understand anything that's going on in this country, or indeed the developed world more generally.

    What I liked most about the cassette boy(?) attack on theresa may at ge 2017: it didn't end "vote Corbyn," it just ended: VOTE. Which is what you post boils down to.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540
    Andy_JS said:

    I don't understand why Priti Patel isn't more popular.

    Failing to stop cross-Channel migration?
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281
    Andy_JS said:

    I don't understand why Priti Patel isn't more popular.

    Well, I don't understand why anyone beyond right-wing extremists would like her but I acknowledge many do. Baffling to me.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281
    edited October 2021
    IshmaelZ said:

    Unconscious bias from those voters.

    Interesting point, and almost certainly correct to a degree.

    Personally, my bias against her is all entirely conscious, and down to her right-wing views (which I am sure she holds sincerely) and her stupidity (which she cannot really help tbf).
  • Sandpit said:

    Andy_JS said:

    I don't understand why Priti Patel isn't more popular.

    There’s still boats crossing the channel, and she renewed the contract of Cressida Dick.
    The last point especially is a WTF was she thinking moment.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    IshmaelZ said:

    Unconscious bias from those voters.

    You say that, but it is entirely possible that some people will review their own antagonism towards Patel (and other women in politics) in the light of the zeitgeist and some (how many no idea) will no longer feel as intuitively antipathetic towards them as previously.

    We are in the middle of a large scale rebasing of our social attitudes and Patel might be a beneficiary of such process.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    This may be related to her being a cretin.

    "Oh no! A politician has been murdered by a possible Islamic extremist! Quick, ban anonymous posting on the internet!"

    It's not quite the unbeatable classic of US politicians in the wake of schoolkids getting gunned down calling for videogame guns to be banned/regulated while opposing the increased regulation of actual lethal weaponry, but it's not far off.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 14,912
    Andy_JS said:

    I don't understand why Priti Patel isn't more popular.

    I don't understand it either. Her views seem pretty much in line with the average Tory voter, and she has a decent bio and can communicate well. I mean, I wouldn't vote for her in a month of Sundays, but I'm not a target voter.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772

    FPT

    Any discussion of issues like housing or immigration that doesn't mention demographics and ageing is incomplete at best, misleading at worst. Between 1980 and 2020 the UK population increased by almost 12mn people, or by 21%, to 67.9mn. But over the same period, the population aged 15-64 grew 20%, the population aged under 15 grew 2% and the population aged 65+ grew 51%.
    Think about what this ageing society means for housing: older people in the UK mostly live in their own homes, while children live with their parents. So a society where 21% are children and 15% are elderly (1980) needs less housing than one where 18% are children and 19% are elderly (2020) - even if the population hadn't increased by 12mn.
    Think about what this ageing society means for the labour market: elderly people consume goods and services (and more than children do) but mostly don't work. That means more labour demand, less supply. That means a tight labour market. In the past that excess demand was met by immigration. Apparently that won't happen any more - let's see about that. The pressure to meet this excess demand for labour from abroad will be immense. And in a competitive global economy simply "giving everyone a pay rise" doesn't solve the problem unless it is accompanied by massive investment to raise productivity or delivers an improbably large rise in labour participation.
    Think about what an ageing society means for government spending. Pensions and health are eats up more and more of the budget. Spending on investment (including education) gets squeezed. The burden of taxation on workers keeps on going up. And unlike children, who parents work to support voluntarily, all this taxation on workers is involuntary, breeding resentment and discouraging work. That is why our tax and benefits system abounds with incentive-sapping high marginal tax rates. This is why the elderly now have their own political party, who extracts ever greater resources from workers on the elderly's behalf. And imagine how much greater the burden on each worker would be if we hadn't boosted the number of workers by immigration.
    If you don't understand the demographic pressures underlying all of this, you don't understand anything that's going on in this country, or indeed the developed world more generally.

    The UK has been an ageing society for generations and immigrants grow old themselves.

    So what's your plane for when the extra millions become pensioners ?

    Even more immigration in a ponzi scheme which requires ever more housing and ever more infrastructure and ever more taxation ?
    You bung a few quid to a poor country with a warm climate to set up processing centres for applicants to the state pension...
  • This may be related to her being a cretin.

    "Oh no! A politician has been murdered by a possible Islamic extremist! Quick, ban anonymous posting on the internet!"

    It's not quite the unbeatable classic of US politicians in the wake of schoolkids getting gunned down calling for videogame guns to be banned/regulated while opposing the increased regulation of actual lethal weaponry, but it's not far off.

    To be rigorously fair, she's not the only one. I believe there may even be some PBers assiduously hammering that square peg into a round hole.
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,704

    Andy_JS said:

    I don't understand why Priti Patel isn't more unpopular.

    Lefties don't like her because she's an enthusiastic authoritarian. Righties don't like her because she's an ineffective authoritarian.
    Being non white, non Christian, and a woman is a pretty big factor in it.

    The guardian cartoon portrayal of her, given her religion, was extremely offensive,
  • Andy_JS said:

    I don't understand why Priti Patel isn't more popular.

    I don't understand it either. Her views seem pretty much in line with the average Tory voter, and she has a decent bio and can communicate well. I mean, I wouldn't vote for her in a month of Sundays, but I'm not a target voter.
    Gap between what she says and what's happening on the ground?

    If you say you're going to be tough on everything, you had better have a plan to actually be tough on everything.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited October 2021

    FPT

    Any discussion of issues like housing or immigration that doesn't mention demographics and ageing is incomplete at best, misleading at worst. Between 1980 and 2020 the UK population increased by almost 12mn people, or by 21%, to 67.9mn. But over the same period, the population aged 15-64 grew 20%, the population aged under 15 grew 2% and the population aged 65+ grew 51%.
    Think about what this ageing society means for housing: older people in the UK mostly live in their own homes, while children live with their parents. So a society where 21% are children and 15% are elderly (1980) needs less housing than one where 18% are children and 19% are elderly (2020) - even if the population hadn't increased by 12mn.
    Think about what this ageing society means for the labour market: elderly people consume goods and services (and more than children do) but mostly don't work. That means more labour demand, less supply. That means a tight labour market. In the past that excess demand was met by immigration. Apparently that won't happen any more - let's see about that. The pressure to meet this excess demand for labour from abroad will be immense. And in a competitive global economy simply "giving everyone a pay rise" doesn't solve the problem unless it is accompanied by massive investment to raise productivity or delivers an improbably large rise in labour participation.
    Think about what an ageing society means for government spending. Pensions and health are eats up more and more of the budget. Spending on investment (including education) gets squeezed. The burden of taxation on workers keeps on going up. And unlike children, who parents work to support voluntarily, all this taxation on workers is involuntary, breeding resentment and discouraging work. That is why our tax and benefits system abounds with incentive-sapping high marginal tax rates. This is why the elderly now have their own political party, who extracts ever greater resources from workers on the elderly's behalf. And imagine how much greater the burden on each worker would be if we hadn't boosted the number of workers by immigration.
    If you don't understand the demographic pressures underlying all of this, you don't understand anything that's going on in this country, or indeed the developed world more generally.

    You make some interesting points but have missed one key fact. Importing more minimum wage people to do the jobs cheaply is fantastic for the elderly who don't need to buy housing, don't need to work, aren't getting a salary or pay rises and want cheap consumer prices.

    The key thing you and a few others are missing is that if "everyone" gets a pay rise, then its not everyone who gets a pay rise. It is working people who do. Working people get a pay rise, which marginally affects prices, which works essentially as a transfer then from the non-working to the working.

    If the elderly need to pay a decent salary to their carers, or people providing their groceries, or doing their hair, or whatever other services are working to provide for them, then that will reduce not increase the generational divides.

    It will also then require major investment in automation etc so that those workers become more efficient, since they're able to command higher salaries. This isn't just science fiction or crazy economics, its already happened in nations like Japan that has far worse demographics than we do.

    In Japan they're currently facing a situation where children are 12.0% of population and 65+ are 28.8% of population (2020 figures) which is much worse than the 18% and 19% respectively that you quoted.

    We need to be looking at Japan and seeing what we can learn from them on how to handle demographic changes.
  • It cannot be racism considering the most popular politician in the UK over the last eighteen months has the same skin colour as her.

    It must be because she's a terrible human being as well as a terrible Home Secretary.

    Oh, and the fact she's as dumb as a box of rocks.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DrsVhzbLzU&t=3s

    Oh and lest we forget, she had to resign in disgrace for being a national security risk.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772

    Andy_JS said:

    I don't understand why Priti Patel isn't more popular.

    I don't understand it either. Her views seem pretty much in line with the average Tory voter, and she has a decent bio and can communicate well. I mean, I wouldn't vote for her in a month of Sundays, but I'm not a target voter.
    Gap between what she says and what's happening on the ground?

    If you say you're going to be tough on everything, you had better have a plan to actually be tough on everything.
    That reminds me that young Rory had pledged to resign as Prisons minister if he failed to hit a self-imposed target on something or other, but he was moved jobs and the whole Brexit thing really kicked off before he could be judged on the outcome. Does anyone know if the target was ever hit?
  • FPT

    Any discussion of issues like housing or immigration that doesn't mention demographics and ageing is incomplete at best, misleading at worst. Between 1980 and 2020 the UK population increased by almost 12mn people, or by 21%, to 67.9mn. But over the same period, the population aged 15-64 grew 20%, the population aged under 15 grew 2% and the population aged 65+ grew 51%.
    Think about what this ageing society means for housing: older people in the UK mostly live in their own homes, while children live with their parents. So a society where 21% are children and 15% are elderly (1980) needs less housing than one where 18% are children and 19% are elderly (2020) - even if the population hadn't increased by 12mn.
    Think about what this ageing society means for the labour market: elderly people consume goods and services (and more than children do) but mostly don't work. That means more labour demand, less supply. That means a tight labour market. In the past that excess demand was met by immigration. Apparently that won't happen any more - let's see about that. The pressure to meet this excess demand for labour from abroad will be immense. And in a competitive global economy simply "giving everyone a pay rise" doesn't solve the problem unless it is accompanied by massive investment to raise productivity or delivers an improbably large rise in labour participation.
    Think about what an ageing society means for government spending. Pensions and health are eats up more and more of the budget. Spending on investment (including education) gets squeezed. The burden of taxation on workers keeps on going up. And unlike children, who parents work to support voluntarily, all this taxation on workers is involuntary, breeding resentment and discouraging work. That is why our tax and benefits system abounds with incentive-sapping high marginal tax rates. This is why the elderly now have their own political party, who extracts ever greater resources from workers on the elderly's behalf. And imagine how much greater the burden on each worker would be if we hadn't boosted the number of workers by immigration.
    If you don't understand the demographic pressures underlying all of this, you don't understand anything that's going on in this country, or indeed the developed world more generally.

    The UK has been an ageing society for generations and immigrants grow old themselves.

    So what's your plane for when the extra millions become pensioners ?

    Even more immigration in a ponzi scheme which requires ever more housing and ever more infrastructure and ever more taxation ?
    You bung a few quid to a poor country with a warm climate to set up processing centres for applicants to the state pension...
    Encourage oldies to live abroad ?

    Not a bad idea as it would free up some housing.

    But you still have the pensions to pay and the bung would have to be more than a few quid if you want the poor country to take on the health and social care costs.

    And which poor country ? The Club Med lot are too affluent for it to work. MENA are too backward and too dangerous. Eastern Europe is too cold in winter. SE Asia is too far away.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 14,912

    FPT

    Any discussion of issues like housing or immigration that doesn't mention demographics and ageing is incomplete at best, misleading at worst. Between 1980 and 2020 the UK population increased by almost 12mn people, or by 21%, to 67.9mn. But over the same period, the population aged 15-64 grew 20%, the population aged under 15 grew 2% and the population aged 65+ grew 51%.
    Think about what this ageing society means for housing: older people in the UK mostly live in their own homes, while children live with their parents. So a society where 21% are children and 15% are elderly (1980) needs less housing than one where 18% are children and 19% are elderly (2020) - even if the population hadn't increased by 12mn.
    Think about what this ageing society means for the labour market: elderly people consume goods and services (and more than children do) but mostly don't work. That means more labour demand, less supply. That means a tight labour market. In the past that excess demand was met by immigration. Apparently that won't happen any more - let's see about that. The pressure to meet this excess demand for labour from abroad will be immense. And in a competitive global economy simply "giving everyone a pay rise" doesn't solve the problem unless it is accompanied by massive investment to raise productivity or delivers an improbably large rise in labour participation.
    Think about what an ageing society means for government spending. Pensions and health are eats up more and more of the budget. Spending on investment (including education) gets squeezed. The burden of taxation on workers keeps on going up. And unlike children, who parents work to support voluntarily, all this taxation on workers is involuntary, breeding resentment and discouraging work. That is why our tax and benefits system abounds with incentive-sapping high marginal tax rates. This is why the elderly now have their own political party, who extracts ever greater resources from workers on the elderly's behalf. And imagine how much greater the burden on each worker would be if we hadn't boosted the number of workers by immigration.
    If you don't understand the demographic pressures underlying all of this, you don't understand anything that's going on in this country, or indeed the developed world more generally.

    The UK has been an ageing society for generations and immigrants grow old themselves.

    So what's your plane for when the extra millions become pensioners ?

    Even more immigration in a ponzi scheme which requires ever more housing and ever more infrastructure and ever more taxation ?
    Yes and no. In the thirty years to 2010 the % aged 65+ increased from 15% to 17% (+2pp). In the thirty years to 2040 the projected rise is 7pp, to 24%. In the first ten years of that period the rise has already been 2pp. In other words, the ageing of society is taking place at a far faster pace than in the past.
    I am not necessarily advocating for more immigration. I am simply setting out that the alternative is an ever higher burden on working age people, meaning higher marginal tax rates, pushing some to not work and worsening the problem for everyone else. In my view there will be immigration anyway, whatever anyone says, because the economic forces pulling in labour are so remorseless. Even Japan has more than tripled its numbers of foreign workers since 2008.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited October 2021
    If Priti Patel is on a net negative rating amongst 2019 Conservative voters and Leavers at the moment it will be because she has failed to get a grip on the number of boats crossing the channel. If she does get a grip on that and can 'stop the boats', to use a phrase of the former Australian PM Tony Abbott and is able to reduce the number of migrants crossing the channel and ensure that migrants come through the proper channels again then that would certainly boost her score amongst Conservatives and Brexit supporters.

    If she can also crack down hard on jihadi extremism of the type that almost certainly produced David Amess' killer she will boost her score even more with them
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Mr. Taz, that cartoon was terrible.

    Patel remains unworthy to be in Cabinet.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 14,912

    FPT

    Any discussion of issues like housing or immigration that doesn't mention demographics and ageing is incomplete at best, misleading at worst. Between 1980 and 2020 the UK population increased by almost 12mn people, or by 21%, to 67.9mn. But over the same period, the population aged 15-64 grew 20%, the population aged under 15 grew 2% and the population aged 65+ grew 51%.
    Think about what this ageing society means for housing: older people in the UK mostly live in their own homes, while children live with their parents. So a society where 21% are children and 15% are elderly (1980) needs less housing than one where 18% are children and 19% are elderly (2020) - even if the population hadn't increased by 12mn.
    Think about what this ageing society means for the labour market: elderly people consume goods and services (and more than children do) but mostly don't work. That means more labour demand, less supply. That means a tight labour market. In the past that excess demand was met by immigration. Apparently that won't happen any more - let's see about that. The pressure to meet this excess demand for labour from abroad will be immense. And in a competitive global economy simply "giving everyone a pay rise" doesn't solve the problem unless it is accompanied by massive investment to raise productivity or delivers an improbably large rise in labour participation.
    Think about what an ageing society means for government spending. Pensions and health are eats up more and more of the budget. Spending on investment (including education) gets squeezed. The burden of taxation on workers keeps on going up. And unlike children, who parents work to support voluntarily, all this taxation on workers is involuntary, breeding resentment and discouraging work. That is why our tax and benefits system abounds with incentive-sapping high marginal tax rates. This is why the elderly now have their own political party, who extracts ever greater resources from workers on the elderly's behalf. And imagine how much greater the burden on each worker would be if we hadn't boosted the number of workers by immigration.
    If you don't understand the demographic pressures underlying all of this, you don't understand anything that's going on in this country, or indeed the developed world more generally.

    You make some interesting points but have missed one key fact. Importing more minimum wage people to do the jobs cheaply is fantastic for the elderly who don't need to buy housing, don't need to work, aren't getting a salary or pay rises and want cheap consumer prices.

    The key thing you and a few others are missing is that if "everyone" gets a pay rise, then its not everyone who gets a pay rise. It is working people who do. Working people get a pay rise, which marginally affects prices, which works essentially as a transfer then from the non-working to the working.

    If the elderly need to pay a decent salary to their carers, or people providing their groceries, or doing their hair, or whatever other services are working to provide for them, then that will reduce not increase the generational divides.

    It will also then require major investment in automation etc so that those workers become more efficient, since they're able to command higher salaries. This isn't just science fiction or crazy economics, its already happened in nations like Japan that has far worse demographics than we do.

    In Japan they're currently facing a situation where children are 12.0% of population and 65+ are 28.8% of population (2020 figures) which is much worse than the 18% and 19% respectively that you quoted.

    We need to be looking at Japan and seeing what we can learn from them on how to handle demographic changes.
    Japan has tripled its number of foreign workers in the last 12 years...
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165
    edited October 2021

    FPT

    Any discussion of issues like housing or immigration that doesn't mention demographics and ageing is incomplete at best, misleading at worst. Between 1980 and 2020 the UK population increased by almost 12mn people, or by 21%, to 67.9mn. But over the same period, the population aged 15-64 grew 20%, the population aged under 15 grew 2% and the population aged 65+ grew 51%.
    Think about what this ageing society means for housing: older people in the UK mostly live in their own homes, while children live with their parents. So a society where 21% are children and 15% are elderly (1980) needs less housing than one where 18% are children and 19% are elderly (2020) - even if the population hadn't increased by 12mn.
    Think about what this ageing society means for the labour market: elderly people consume goods and services (and more than children do) but mostly don't work. That means more labour demand, less supply. That means a tight labour market. In the past that excess demand was met by immigration. Apparently that won't happen any more - let's see about that. The pressure to meet this excess demand for labour from abroad will be immense. And in a competitive global economy simply "giving everyone a pay rise" doesn't solve the problem unless it is accompanied by massive investment to raise productivity or delivers an improbably large rise in labour participation.
    Think about what an ageing society means for government spending. Pensions and health are eats up more and more of the budget. Spending on investment (including education) gets squeezed. The burden of taxation on workers keeps on going up. And unlike children, who parents work to support voluntarily, all this taxation on workers is involuntary, breeding resentment and discouraging work. That is why our tax and benefits system abounds with incentive-sapping high marginal tax rates. This is why the elderly now have their own political party, who extracts ever greater resources from workers on the elderly's behalf. And imagine how much greater the burden on each worker would be if we hadn't boosted the number of workers by immigration.
    If you don't understand the demographic pressures underlying all of this, you don't understand anything that's going on in this country, or indeed the developed world more generally.

    The UK has been an ageing society for generations and immigrants grow old themselves.

    So what's your plane for when the extra millions become pensioners ?

    Even more immigration in a ponzi scheme which requires ever more housing and ever more infrastructure and ever more taxation ?
    Yes and no. In the thirty years to 2010 the % aged 65+ increased from 15% to 17% (+2pp). In the thirty years to 2040 the projected rise is 7pp, to 24%. In the first ten years of that period the rise has already been 2pp. In other words, the ageing of society is taking place at a far faster pace than in the past.
    I am not necessarily advocating for more immigration. I am simply setting out that the alternative is an ever higher burden on working age people, meaning higher marginal tax rates, pushing some to not work and worsening the problem for everyone else. In my view there will be immigration anyway, whatever anyone says, because the economic forces pulling in labour are so remorseless. Even Japan has more than tripled its numbers of foreign workers since 2008.
    We should have let COVID do its worst.

    In all seriousness, it's interesting how little impact unhealthy lifestyles appear to have on life expectancy. On the whole, people must be living healthier lives than they did in the past, even if the narrative is the opposite. Or, I suppose, we're getting good at keeping unhealthy people alive.
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,704

    Mr. Taz, that cartoon was terrible.

    Patel remains unworthy to be in Cabinet.

    Or in any ministerial position, I fully agree. She’s terrible.

    But the problem with cartoons like that is twofold, it makes her a victim/sympathetic character and people who really should know better are just happy to support it as tv has a go at someone they don’t like.
  • FPT

    Any discussion of issues like housing or immigration that doesn't mention demographics and ageing is incomplete at best, misleading at worst. Between 1980 and 2020 the UK population increased by almost 12mn people, or by 21%, to 67.9mn. But over the same period, the population aged 15-64 grew 20%, the population aged under 15 grew 2% and the population aged 65+ grew 51%.
    Think about what this ageing society means for housing: older people in the UK mostly live in their own homes, while children live with their parents. So a society where 21% are children and 15% are elderly (1980) needs less housing than one where 18% are children and 19% are elderly (2020) - even if the population hadn't increased by 12mn.
    Think about what this ageing society means for the labour market: elderly people consume goods and services (and more than children do) but mostly don't work. That means more labour demand, less supply. That means a tight labour market. In the past that excess demand was met by immigration. Apparently that won't happen any more - let's see about that. The pressure to meet this excess demand for labour from abroad will be immense. And in a competitive global economy simply "giving everyone a pay rise" doesn't solve the problem unless it is accompanied by massive investment to raise productivity or delivers an improbably large rise in labour participation.
    Think about what an ageing society means for government spending. Pensions and health are eats up more and more of the budget. Spending on investment (including education) gets squeezed. The burden of taxation on workers keeps on going up. And unlike children, who parents work to support voluntarily, all this taxation on workers is involuntary, breeding resentment and discouraging work. That is why our tax and benefits system abounds with incentive-sapping high marginal tax rates. This is why the elderly now have their own political party, who extracts ever greater resources from workers on the elderly's behalf. And imagine how much greater the burden on each worker would be if we hadn't boosted the number of workers by immigration.
    If you don't understand the demographic pressures underlying all of this, you don't understand anything that's going on in this country, or indeed the developed world more generally.

    You make some interesting points but have missed one key fact. Importing more minimum wage people to do the jobs cheaply is fantastic for the elderly who don't need to buy housing, don't need to work, aren't getting a salary or pay rises and want cheap consumer prices.

    The key thing you and a few others are missing is that if "everyone" gets a pay rise, then its not everyone who gets a pay rise. It is working people who do. Working people get a pay rise, which marginally affects prices, which works essentially as a transfer then from the non-working to the working.

    If the elderly need to pay a decent salary to their carers, or people providing their groceries, or doing their hair, or whatever other services are working to provide for them, then that will reduce not increase the generational divides.

    It will also then require major investment in automation etc so that those workers become more efficient, since they're able to command higher salaries. This isn't just science fiction or crazy economics, its already happened in nations like Japan that has far worse demographics than we do.

    In Japan they're currently facing a situation where children are 12.0% of population and 65+ are 28.8% of population (2020 figures) which is much worse than the 18% and 19% respectively that you quoted.

    We need to be looking at Japan and seeing what we can learn from them on how to handle demographic changes.
    Japan has tripled its number of foreign workers in the last 12 years...
    From what to what? And what was the UK's in the same time?

    Nobody is proposing zero immigration. Even if we ever had a situation of net zero migration we'd still potentially be increasing our number of foreign workers as people emigrate and others immigrate.

    But Japan unlike the UK have not looked to foreign labour as an alternative to changing demographics. Their primary way to handle demographic changes has been investment. Which is what it should be.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,837
    tlg86 said:

    FPT

    Any discussion of issues like housing or immigration that doesn't mention demographics and ageing is incomplete at best, misleading at worst. Between 1980 and 2020 the UK population increased by almost 12mn people, or by 21%, to 67.9mn. But over the same period, the population aged 15-64 grew 20%, the population aged under 15 grew 2% and the population aged 65+ grew 51%.
    Think about what this ageing society means for housing: older people in the UK mostly live in their own homes, while children live with their parents. So a society where 21% are children and 15% are elderly (1980) needs less housing than one where 18% are children and 19% are elderly (2020) - even if the population hadn't increased by 12mn.
    Think about what this ageing society means for the labour market: elderly people consume goods and services (and more than children do) but mostly don't work. That means more labour demand, less supply. That means a tight labour market. In the past that excess demand was met by immigration. Apparently that won't happen any more - let's see about that. The pressure to meet this excess demand for labour from abroad will be immense. And in a competitive global economy simply "giving everyone a pay rise" doesn't solve the problem unless it is accompanied by massive investment to raise productivity or delivers an improbably large rise in labour participation.
    Think about what an ageing society means for government spending. Pensions and health are eats up more and more of the budget. Spending on investment (including education) gets squeezed. The burden of taxation on workers keeps on going up. And unlike children, who parents work to support voluntarily, all this taxation on workers is involuntary, breeding resentment and discouraging work. That is why our tax and benefits system abounds with incentive-sapping high marginal tax rates. This is why the elderly now have their own political party, who extracts ever greater resources from workers on the elderly's behalf. And imagine how much greater the burden on each worker would be if we hadn't boosted the number of workers by immigration.
    If you don't understand the demographic pressures underlying all of this, you don't understand anything that's going on in this country, or indeed the developed world more generally.

    The UK has been an ageing society for generations and immigrants grow old themselves.

    So what's your plane for when the extra millions become pensioners ?

    Even more immigration in a ponzi scheme which requires ever more housing and ever more infrastructure and ever more taxation ?
    Yes and no. In the thirty years to 2010 the % aged 65+ increased from 15% to 17% (+2pp). In the thirty years to 2040 the projected rise is 7pp, to 24%. In the first ten years of that period the rise has already been 2pp. In other words, the ageing of society is taking place at a far faster pace than in the past.
    I am not necessarily advocating for more immigration. I am simply setting out that the alternative is an ever higher burden on working age people, meaning higher marginal tax rates, pushing some to not work and worsening the problem for everyone else. In my view there will be immigration anyway, whatever anyone says, because the economic forces pulling in labour are so remorseless. Even Japan has more than tripled its numbers of foreign workers since 2008.
    We should have let COVID do its worst.

    In all seriousness, it's interesting how little impact unhealthy lifestyles appear to have on life expectancy. On the whole, people must be living healthier lives than they did in the past, even if the narrative is the opposite. Or, I suppose, we're getting good at keeping unhealthy people alive.
    The latter. Plus the decline in smoking and heavy industrial illnesses and injuries.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,837
    edited October 2021
    Duplicate.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540
    In our focus group this month, swing voters remain forgiving of the PM, but the main thing keeping them from leaving the Tories is a lack of alternative


    https://twitter.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1450377266211528705?s=20

    Clip:

    https://twitter.com/TimesRadio/status/1450378687837261826?s=20
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540
    Those waiting COVID boosters:

    After fuming a bit about my mum's Covid booster, we took the advice of many on here and phoned 119. They booked her into a pharmacy to get the third jab ASAP.

    https://twitter.com/gsoh31/status/1450379640623804417?s=20
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,042
    Thanks for the various VMs last night. I haven't had chance to catch up with them yet as I was out yesterday evening.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 14,912

    FPT

    Any discussion of issues like housing or immigration that doesn't mention demographics and ageing is incomplete at best, misleading at worst. Between 1980 and 2020 the UK population increased by almost 12mn people, or by 21%, to 67.9mn. But over the same period, the population aged 15-64 grew 20%, the population aged under 15 grew 2% and the population aged 65+ grew 51%.
    Think about what this ageing society means for housing: older people in the UK mostly live in their own homes, while children live with their parents. So a society where 21% are children and 15% are elderly (1980) needs less housing than one where 18% are children and 19% are elderly (2020) - even if the population hadn't increased by 12mn.
    Think about what this ageing society means for the labour market: elderly people consume goods and services (and more than children do) but mostly don't work. That means more labour demand, less supply. That means a tight labour market. In the past that excess demand was met by immigration. Apparently that won't happen any more - let's see about that. The pressure to meet this excess demand for labour from abroad will be immense. And in a competitive global economy simply "giving everyone a pay rise" doesn't solve the problem unless it is accompanied by massive investment to raise productivity or delivers an improbably large rise in labour participation.
    Think about what an ageing society means for government spending. Pensions and health are eats up more and more of the budget. Spending on investment (including education) gets squeezed. The burden of taxation on workers keeps on going up. And unlike children, who parents work to support voluntarily, all this taxation on workers is involuntary, breeding resentment and discouraging work. That is why our tax and benefits system abounds with incentive-sapping high marginal tax rates. This is why the elderly now have their own political party, who extracts ever greater resources from workers on the elderly's behalf. And imagine how much greater the burden on each worker would be if we hadn't boosted the number of workers by immigration.
    If you don't understand the demographic pressures underlying all of this, you don't understand anything that's going on in this country, or indeed the developed world more generally.

    You make some interesting points but have missed one key fact. Importing more minimum wage people to do the jobs cheaply is fantastic for the elderly who don't need to buy housing, don't need to work, aren't getting a salary or pay rises and want cheap consumer prices.

    The key thing you and a few others are missing is that if "everyone" gets a pay rise, then its not everyone who gets a pay rise. It is working people who do. Working people get a pay rise, which marginally affects prices, which works essentially as a transfer then from the non-working to the working.

    If the elderly need to pay a decent salary to their carers, or people providing their groceries, or doing their hair, or whatever other services are working to provide for them, then that will reduce not increase the generational divides.

    It will also then require major investment in automation etc so that those workers become more efficient, since they're able to command higher salaries. This isn't just science fiction or crazy economics, its already happened in nations like Japan that has far worse demographics than we do.

    In Japan they're currently facing a situation where children are 12.0% of population and 65+ are 28.8% of population (2020 figures) which is much worse than the 18% and 19% respectively that you quoted.

    We need to be looking at Japan and seeing what we can learn from them on how to handle demographic changes.
    Japan has tripled its number of foreign workers in the last 12 years...
    From what to what? And what was the UK's in the same time?

    Nobody is proposing zero immigration. Even if we ever had a situation of net zero migration we'd still potentially be increasing our number of foreign workers as people emigrate and others immigrate.

    But Japan unlike the UK have not looked to foreign labour as an alternative to changing demographics. Their primary way to handle demographic changes has been investment. Which is what it should be.
    0.5mn to 1.7mn. But the bulk of that rise (1mn) happened in the 7 years since 2013. The overall numbers are not huge (total labour force is 69mn) but it represents an important shift in Japan's stance on immigration. They have done everything they could to avoid letting in foreigners, but even they have thrown in the towel under the weight of their ageing society.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited October 2021

    FPT

    Any discussion of issues like housing or immigration that doesn't mention demographics and ageing is incomplete at best, misleading at worst. Between 1980 and 2020 the UK population increased by almost 12mn people, or by 21%, to 67.9mn. But over the same period, the population aged 15-64 grew 20%, the population aged under 15 grew 2% and the population aged 65+ grew 51%.
    Think about what this ageing society means for housing: older people in the UK mostly live in their own homes, while children live with their parents. So a society where 21% are children and 15% are elderly (1980) needs less housing than one where 18% are children and 19% are elderly (2020) - even if the population hadn't increased by 12mn.
    Think about what this ageing society means for the labour market: elderly people consume goods and services (and more than children do) but mostly don't work. That means more labour demand, less supply. That means a tight labour market. In the past that excess demand was met by immigration. Apparently that won't happen any more - let's see about that. The pressure to meet this excess demand for labour from abroad will be immense. And in a competitive global economy simply "giving everyone a pay rise" doesn't solve the problem unless it is accompanied by massive investment to raise productivity or delivers an improbably large rise in labour participation.
    Think about what an ageing society means for government spending. Pensions and health are eats up more and more of the budget. Spending on investment (including education) gets squeezed. The burden of taxation on workers keeps on going up. And unlike children, who parents work to support voluntarily, all this taxation on workers is involuntary, breeding resentment and discouraging work. That is why our tax and benefits system abounds with incentive-sapping high marginal tax rates. This is why the elderly now have their own political party, who extracts ever greater resources from workers on the elderly's behalf. And imagine how much greater the burden on each worker would be if we hadn't boosted the number of workers by immigration.
    If you don't understand the demographic pressures underlying all of this, you don't understand anything that's going on in this country, or indeed the developed world more generally.

    You make some interesting points but have missed one key fact. Importing more minimum wage people to do the jobs cheaply is fantastic for the elderly who don't need to buy housing, don't need to work, aren't getting a salary or pay rises and want cheap consumer prices.

    The key thing you and a few others are missing is that if "everyone" gets a pay rise, then its not everyone who gets a pay rise. It is working people who do. Working people get a pay rise, which marginally affects prices, which works essentially as a transfer then from the non-working to the working.

    If the elderly need to pay a decent salary to their carers, or people providing their groceries, or doing their hair, or whatever other services are working to provide for them, then that will reduce not increase the generational divides.

    It will also then require major investment in automation etc so that those workers become more efficient, since they're able to command higher salaries. This isn't just science fiction or crazy economics, its already happened in nations like Japan that has far worse demographics than we do.

    In Japan they're currently facing a situation where children are 12.0% of population and 65+ are 28.8% of population (2020 figures) which is much worse than the 18% and 19% respectively that you quoted.

    We need to be looking at Japan and seeing what we can learn from them on how to handle demographic changes.
    Japan has tripled its number of foreign workers in the last 12 years...
    Do you have a citation on this?

    According to this source "there were an estimated 600,000 foreign workers, including illegal laborers, in Japan in 1993, almost tripling to 1.72 million by 2020, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare". So nearly tripled in 27 years.

    I'm curious what the UK figures, and bear in mind that proportionately Japan has double the population of the UK so that would be the equivalent of less than a million foreign workers in the UK in 2020. As we know over 6 million EU nationals alone claimed permanent status recently.

    EDIT: 1.7m foreign workers in total, an increase of just over 1 million in 27 years, is not "throwing in the towel".
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540
    The pace of jabs for the under-16s, on the other hand, really is bizarrely slow. 427,033 England children aged 12-15 have had a covid vaccine *in total*, with the pace last week running at just 11,937 a day.

    With only 15.9% of that age group having been jabbed, govt is now planning a fairly major U-turn with under-16s allowed to access walk-in centres (as in Scotland) rather than relying solely on schools.


    https://twitter.com/HugoGye/status/1450383881031589888?s=20
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 14,912

    FPT

    Any discussion of issues like housing or immigration that doesn't mention demographics and ageing is incomplete at best, misleading at worst. Between 1980 and 2020 the UK population increased by almost 12mn people, or by 21%, to 67.9mn. But over the same period, the population aged 15-64 grew 20%, the population aged under 15 grew 2% and the population aged 65+ grew 51%.
    Think about what this ageing society means for housing: older people in the UK mostly live in their own homes, while children live with their parents. So a society where 21% are children and 15% are elderly (1980) needs less housing than one where 18% are children and 19% are elderly (2020) - even if the population hadn't increased by 12mn.
    Think about what this ageing society means for the labour market: elderly people consume goods and services (and more than children do) but mostly don't work. That means more labour demand, less supply. That means a tight labour market. In the past that excess demand was met by immigration. Apparently that won't happen any more - let's see about that. The pressure to meet this excess demand for labour from abroad will be immense. And in a competitive global economy simply "giving everyone a pay rise" doesn't solve the problem unless it is accompanied by massive investment to raise productivity or delivers an improbably large rise in labour participation.
    Think about what an ageing society means for government spending. Pensions and health are eats up more and more of the budget. Spending on investment (including education) gets squeezed. The burden of taxation on workers keeps on going up. And unlike children, who parents work to support voluntarily, all this taxation on workers is involuntary, breeding resentment and discouraging work. That is why our tax and benefits system abounds with incentive-sapping high marginal tax rates. This is why the elderly now have their own political party, who extracts ever greater resources from workers on the elderly's behalf. And imagine how much greater the burden on each worker would be if we hadn't boosted the number of workers by immigration.
    If you don't understand the demographic pressures underlying all of this, you don't understand anything that's going on in this country, or indeed the developed world more generally.

    You make some interesting points but have missed one key fact. Importing more minimum wage people to do the jobs cheaply is fantastic for the elderly who don't need to buy housing, don't need to work, aren't getting a salary or pay rises and want cheap consumer prices.

    The key thing you and a few others are missing is that if "everyone" gets a pay rise, then its not everyone who gets a pay rise. It is working people who do. Working people get a pay rise, which marginally affects prices, which works essentially as a transfer then from the non-working to the working.

    If the elderly need to pay a decent salary to their carers, or people providing their groceries, or doing their hair, or whatever other services are working to provide for them, then that will reduce not increase the generational divides.

    It will also then require major investment in automation etc so that those workers become more efficient, since they're able to command higher salaries. This isn't just science fiction or crazy economics, its already happened in nations like Japan that has far worse demographics than we do.

    In Japan they're currently facing a situation where children are 12.0% of population and 65+ are 28.8% of population (2020 figures) which is much worse than the 18% and 19% respectively that you quoted.

    We need to be looking at Japan and seeing what we can learn from them on how to handle demographic changes.
    Japan has tripled its number of foreign workers in the last 12 years...
    Do you have a citation on this?

    According to this source "there were an estimated 600,000 foreign workers, including illegal laborers, in Japan in 1993, almost tripling to 1.72 million by 2020, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare". So nearly tripled in 27 years.

    I'm curious what the UK figures, and bear in mind that proportionately Japan has double the population of the UK so that would be the equivalent of less than a million foreign workers in the UK in 2020. As we know over 6 million EU nationals alone claimed permanent status recently.

    EDIT: 1.7m foreign workers in total, an increase of just over 1 million in 27 years, is not "throwing in the towel".
    The data are from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, and I have accessed them via Haver Analytics so can't provide you with a Web link - but Haver are an extremely reliable data provider. They show 717504 foreign workers in 2013 and 1724328 in 2020.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624
    Taz said:

    Mr. Taz, that cartoon was terrible.

    Patel remains unworthy to be in Cabinet.

    Or in any ministerial position, I fully agree. She’s terrible.

    But the problem with cartoons like that is twofold, it makes her a victim/sympathetic character and people who really should know better are just happy to support it as tv has a go at someone they don’t like.
    The cartoon was interesting - an issue among some on the progressive side of things is that they pick up racist memes/comments from minority groups they associate with and then repeat them.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891
    edited October 2021

    Andy_JS said:

    I don't understand why Priti Patel isn't more popular.

    I don't understand it either. Her views seem pretty much in line with the average Tory voter, and she has a decent bio and can communicate well. I mean, I wouldn't vote for her in a month of Sundays, but I'm not a target voter.
    It's interesting that people assume that these judgements are made on policy or competence. That'll be an element but more important is likability. People take a visceral view of people and it doesn't much relate to job performance.

    I was working with a well known female personality for British Rail and she told me that there was literally a top 'top twenty' of female personalities. The higher up the list the more the advertiser had to pay to use them. She went through the top ten and all made sense but there was no obvious metric for why they were in that order. It was just a list that went from 'She's be great' to "She'd be OK'
  • NerysHughesNerysHughes Posts: 3,346

    The pace of jabs for the under-16s, on the other hand, really is bizarrely slow. 427,033 England children aged 12-15 have had a covid vaccine *in total*, with the pace last week running at just 11,937 a day.

    With only 15.9% of that age group having been jabbed, govt is now planning a fairly major U-turn with under-16s allowed to access walk-in centres (as in Scotland) rather than relying solely on schools.


    https://twitter.com/HugoGye/status/1450383881031589888?s=20

    There are two large schools close to me, one vaccinated all its eligible kids 5 weeks ago, the other has no plans to do anything yet. It seems rather odd.
  • FPT

    Any discussion of issues like housing or immigration that doesn't mention demographics and ageing is incomplete at best, misleading at worst. Between 1980 and 2020 the UK population increased by almost 12mn people, or by 21%, to 67.9mn. But over the same period, the population aged 15-64 grew 20%, the population aged under 15 grew 2% and the population aged 65+ grew 51%.
    Think about what this ageing society means for housing: older people in the UK mostly live in their own homes, while children live with their parents. So a society where 21% are children and 15% are elderly (1980) needs less housing than one where 18% are children and 19% are elderly (2020) - even if the population hadn't increased by 12mn.
    Think about what this ageing society means for the labour market: elderly people consume goods and services (and more than children do) but mostly don't work. That means more labour demand, less supply. That means a tight labour market. In the past that excess demand was met by immigration. Apparently that won't happen any more - let's see about that. The pressure to meet this excess demand for labour from abroad will be immense. And in a competitive global economy simply "giving everyone a pay rise" doesn't solve the problem unless it is accompanied by massive investment to raise productivity or delivers an improbably large rise in labour participation.
    Think about what an ageing society means for government spending. Pensions and health are eats up more and more of the budget. Spending on investment (including education) gets squeezed. The burden of taxation on workers keeps on going up. And unlike children, who parents work to support voluntarily, all this taxation on workers is involuntary, breeding resentment and discouraging work. That is why our tax and benefits system abounds with incentive-sapping high marginal tax rates. This is why the elderly now have their own political party, who extracts ever greater resources from workers on the elderly's behalf. And imagine how much greater the burden on each worker would be if we hadn't boosted the number of workers by immigration.
    If you don't understand the demographic pressures underlying all of this, you don't understand anything that's going on in this country, or indeed the developed world more generally.

    The UK has been an ageing society for generations and immigrants grow old themselves.

    So what's your plane for when the extra millions become pensioners ?

    Even more immigration in a ponzi scheme which requires ever more housing and ever more infrastructure and ever more taxation ?
    Yes and no. In the thirty years to 2010 the % aged 65+ increased from 15% to 17% (+2pp). In the thirty years to 2040 the projected rise is 7pp, to 24%. In the first ten years of that period the rise has already been 2pp. In other words, the ageing of society is taking place at a far faster pace than in the past.
    I am not necessarily advocating for more immigration. I am simply setting out that the alternative is an ever higher burden on working age people, meaning higher marginal tax rates, pushing some to not work and worsening the problem for everyone else. In my view there will be immigration anyway, whatever anyone says, because the economic forces pulling in labour are so remorseless. Even Japan has more than tripled its numbers of foreign workers since 2008.
    Isn't there a contradiction there - higher marginal tax rates pushing some not to work against economic forces pulling in labour remorselessly ?

    Now what would worry me is higher employment taxes and unaffordable housing leading to high skilled workers emigrating while low skilled workers arriving because the UK is affluent and with a generous non-contributory welfare state compared with most of the world.
  • HYUFD said:

    If Priti Patel is on a net negative rating amongst 2019 Conservative voters and Leavers at the moment it will be because she has failed to get a grip on the number of boats crossing the channel. If she does get a grip on that and can 'stop the boats', to use a phrase of the former Australian PM Tony Abbott and is able to reduce the number of migrants crossing the channel and ensure that migrants come through the proper channels again then that would certainly boost her score amongst Conservatives and Brexit supporters.

    If she can also crack down hard on jihadi extremism of the type that almost certainly produced David Amess' killer she will boost her score even more with them

    Patel has failed comprehensively in her role including renewing Cressida Dick's contract and her manifestly absurd idea of turning boats back in mid channel with all that involves and endangering those on board

    Those in the border force and RNLI especially (and I include my son in that who is RNLI crew) do not risk their lives to save anyone at sea for a home secretary to actually make if far more likely lives will be lost

    You seem to be locked in some time warp failing to recognise that the conservative party is leaving you behind as Boris tacks left with big spend big state interventions and ordinary people want to see a home secretary who stops migrants crossing the channel, not because they are migrants, but that they risking their lives and those who have to rescue them
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited October 2021
    Journalists can't do numeracy and ecoloons are loons part 975616516 of an ongoing series.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58959045
    Ministers say the subsidies will make heat pumps a comparable price to a new gas boiler. However, the £450m being allocated for the subsidies over three years will cover a maximum of 90,000 pumps.

    Mike Childs, head of science at Friends of the Earth, said the number of heat pumps that the grants would cover "just isn't very much" and meant the UK would not meet its aim of installing 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028.


    Don't these idiots understand anything about the concept of pump priming? According to the BBC you can get a heat pump currently for about £10,000 including installation and this grant will cut it to £5,000. But that's the prices today with it being bleeding edge technology, not much investment in the sector yet and not many engineers working in the sector yet. Bleeding edge technology is always expensive.

    If this works as pump priming, of which there's no guarantee, then in three years time the cost of a new heat pump and installation could be considerably under the £10,000 average it can be today.

    Maybe in 3 years the typical cost is down to £7,000 and you could have a new 3 year scheme for the same budget covering twice as many homes at a £2,500 grant and the net cost would be even cheaper than today (especially in real terms).

    If we're getting to 2028 to get this sector really moving and 2050 to complete the eradication of gas boilers (no new ones from 2035 then circa 15 years for them to die and be replaced) then 90,000 in the next 3 years is a start and not nothing.

    When will journalists or ecoloons ever learn?
  • pingping Posts: 3,724
    edited October 2021
    Ft worried the yield curve is inverting;

    https://www.ft.com/content/45febe54-ca7a-40ff-a615-82960938a66e

    The kind of thing that keeps economists awake at night. Should we be concerned? Possibly.

    I think the most worrying thing is if we raise interest rates and it doesn’t control inflation. Which may well happen.

    Interesting times.
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,257
    edited October 2021

    Andy_JS said:

    I don't understand why Priti Patel isn't more popular.

    I don't understand it either. Her views seem pretty much in line with the average Tory voter, and she has a decent bio and can communicate well. I mean, I wouldn't vote for her in a month of Sundays, but I'm not a target voter.
    Gap between what she says and what's happening on the ground?

    If you say you're going to be tough on everything, you had better have a plan to actually be tough on everything.
    Yep, I think that's it. Her rhetoric makes most non-Tory voters (and some Tory/potential Tory) voters dislike her. For those who like the rhetoric, the lack of delivery makes them dislike her.

    Contrast with Truss, who has - on the face of it, at least - been delivering on her rhetoric.

    Edit: There's also the racism/sexism angle of course, which might apply for some. But Truss is highly rated on Con Home surveys and Sunak does OK, I think. So I'm not convinced those are big factors.
  • FishingFishing Posts: 4,555
    edited October 2021

    Journalists can't do numeracy and ecoloons are loons part 975616516 of an ongoing series.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58959045
    Ministers say the subsidies will make heat pumps a comparable price to a new gas boiler. However, the £450m being allocated for the subsidies over three years will cover a maximum of 90,000 pumps.

    Mike Childs, head of science at Friends of the Earth, said the number of heat pumps that the grants would cover "just isn't very much" and meant the UK would not meet its aim of installing 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028.


    Don't these idiots understand anything about the concept of pump priming? According to the BBC you can get a heat pump currently for about £10,000 including installation and this grant will cut it to £5,000. But that's the prices today with it being bleeding edge technology, not much investment in the sector yet and not many engineers working in the sector yet. Bleeding edge technology is always expensive.

    If this works as pump priming, of which there's no guarantee, then in three years time the cost of a new heat pump and installation could be considerably under the £10,000 average it can be today.

    Maybe in 3 years the typical cost is down to £7,000 and you could have a new 3 year scheme for the same budget covering twice as many homes at a £2,500 grant and the net cost would be even cheaper than today (especially in real terms).

    If we're getting to 2028 to get this sector really moving and 2050 to complete the eradication of gas boilers (no new ones from 2035 then circa 15 years for them to die and be replaced) then 90,000 in the next 3 years is a start and not nothing.

    When will journalists or ecoloons ever learn?

    Utter waste of money. Gas boilers work fine and ours contribute about 0.0001% to global greenhouse gas emissions.
  • In our focus group this month, swing voters remain forgiving of the PM, but the main thing keeping them from leaving the Tories is a lack of alternative


    https://twitter.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1450377266211528705?s=20

    Clip:

    https://twitter.com/TimesRadio/status/1450378687837261826?s=20

    Sounds like @bigjohnowls is having an effect
  • Those waiting COVID boosters:

    After fuming a bit about my mum's Covid booster, we took the advice of many on here and phoned 119. They booked her into a pharmacy to get the third jab ASAP.

    https://twitter.com/gsoh31/status/1450379640623804417?s=20

    It seems that there is local variation on covid boosters.

    There's certainly been many oldies I know who had them quickly and likewise several PBers.

    What I'm curious about is why health and care workers are getting them much slower now than they did for the first two doses.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    isam said:

    In the murky world of Pollsters other than Opinium…

    CON 40 (-5)
    LAB 32 (-2)
    GRN 9 (+2)
    LD 6 (+1)
    SNP 6 (+1)
    RUK 3 (=)
    PC 1 (=)
    OTH 2 (+1)

    Fieldwork 11th-18th October (changes vs 7th-14th June)
    n=1,000


    https://twitter.com/ncpoliticsuk/status/1450155243778592773?s=21

    The key question for the next election is how much of the green polling splits green/LD/lab/DNV
  • FPT

    Any discussion of issues like housing or immigration that doesn't mention demographics and ageing is incomplete at best, misleading at worst. Between 1980 and 2020 the UK population increased by almost 12mn people, or by 21%, to 67.9mn. But over the same period, the population aged 15-64 grew 20%, the population aged under 15 grew 2% and the population aged 65+ grew 51%.
    Think about what this ageing society means for housing: older people in the UK mostly live in their own homes, while children live with their parents. So a society where 21% are children and 15% are elderly (1980) needs less housing than one where 18% are children and 19% are elderly (2020) - even if the population hadn't increased by 12mn.
    Think about what this ageing society means for the labour market: elderly people consume goods and services (and more than children do) but mostly don't work. That means more labour demand, less supply. That means a tight labour market. In the past that excess demand was met by immigration. Apparently that won't happen any more - let's see about that. The pressure to meet this excess demand for labour from abroad will be immense. And in a competitive global economy simply "giving everyone a pay rise" doesn't solve the problem unless it is accompanied by massive investment to raise productivity or delivers an improbably large rise in labour participation.
    Think about what an ageing society means for government spending. Pensions and health are eats up more and more of the budget. Spending on investment (including education) gets squeezed. The burden of taxation on workers keeps on going up. And unlike children, who parents work to support voluntarily, all this taxation on workers is involuntary, breeding resentment and discouraging work. That is why our tax and benefits system abounds with incentive-sapping high marginal tax rates. This is why the elderly now have their own political party, who extracts ever greater resources from workers on the elderly's behalf. And imagine how much greater the burden on each worker would be if we hadn't boosted the number of workers by immigration.
    If you don't understand the demographic pressures underlying all of this, you don't understand anything that's going on in this country, or indeed the developed world more generally.

    You make some interesting points but have missed one key fact. Importing more minimum wage people to do the jobs cheaply is fantastic for the elderly who don't need to buy housing, don't need to work, aren't getting a salary or pay rises and want cheap consumer prices.

    The key thing you and a few others are missing is that if "everyone" gets a pay rise, then its not everyone who gets a pay rise. It is working people who do. Working people get a pay rise, which marginally affects prices, which works essentially as a transfer then from the non-working to the working.

    If the elderly need to pay a decent salary to their carers, or people providing their groceries, or doing their hair, or whatever other services are working to provide for them, then that will reduce not increase the generational divides.

    It will also then require major investment in automation etc so that those workers become more efficient, since they're able to command higher salaries. This isn't just science fiction or crazy economics, its already happened in nations like Japan that has far worse demographics than we do.

    In Japan they're currently facing a situation where children are 12.0% of population and 65+ are 28.8% of population (2020 figures) which is much worse than the 18% and 19% respectively that you quoted.

    We need to be looking at Japan and seeing what we can learn from them on how to handle demographic changes.
    Japan has tripled its number of foreign workers in the last 12 years...
    Do you have a citation on this?

    According to this source "there were an estimated 600,000 foreign workers, including illegal laborers, in Japan in 1993, almost tripling to 1.72 million by 2020, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare". So nearly tripled in 27 years.

    I'm curious what the UK figures, and bear in mind that proportionately Japan has double the population of the UK so that would be the equivalent of less than a million foreign workers in the UK in 2020. As we know over 6 million EU nationals alone claimed permanent status recently.

    EDIT: 1.7m foreign workers in total, an increase of just over 1 million in 27 years, is not "throwing in the towel".
    The data are from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, and I have accessed them via Haver Analytics so can't provide you with a Web link - but Haver are an extremely reliable data provider. They show 717504 foreign workers in 2013 and 1724328 in 2020.
    So that's a 140% increase not a tripling. An increase of a million in that time is real but its not "throwing in the towel" like you claimed. What was the UK's figure in the same period? Bearing in mind that their population is double ours, that aggregated across the entire timespan is the equivalent to the gross immigration we were having every single year in the same time period.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited October 2021
    Fishing said:

    Journalists can't do numeracy and ecoloons are loons part 975616516 of an ongoing series.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58959045
    Ministers say the subsidies will make heat pumps a comparable price to a new gas boiler. However, the £450m being allocated for the subsidies over three years will cover a maximum of 90,000 pumps.

    Mike Childs, head of science at Friends of the Earth, said the number of heat pumps that the grants would cover "just isn't very much" and meant the UK would not meet its aim of installing 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028.


    Don't these idiots understand anything about the concept of pump priming? According to the BBC you can get a heat pump currently for about £10,000 including installation and this grant will cut it to £5,000. But that's the prices today with it being bleeding edge technology, not much investment in the sector yet and not many engineers working in the sector yet. Bleeding edge technology is always expensive.

    If this works as pump priming, of which there's no guarantee, then in three years time the cost of a new heat pump and installation could be considerably under the £10,000 average it can be today.

    Maybe in 3 years the typical cost is down to £7,000 and you could have a new 3 year scheme for the same budget covering twice as many homes at a £2,500 grant and the net cost would be even cheaper than today (especially in real terms).

    If we're getting to 2028 to get this sector really moving and 2050 to complete the eradication of gas boilers (no new ones from 2035 then circa 15 years for them to die and be replaced) then 90,000 in the next 3 years is a start and not nothing.

    When will journalists or ecoloons ever learn?

    Utter waste of money. Gas boilers work fine and ours contribute about 0.0001% to global greenhouse gas emissions.
    If new technology can be ultimately cost-effective and get us using reliable, domestically generated energy instead of Putingas then that's a positive in its own right.

    Considering heating represents 20% of our domestic emissions then a switching to clean heating seems necessary globally if we're going to treat global emissions seriously. And if we can get a leading edge on a technology of the future that could be a good thing to manufacture and export around the world. Instead of importing gas.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 14,912

    FPT

    Any discussion of issues like housing or immigration that doesn't mention demographics and ageing is incomplete at best, misleading at worst. Between 1980 and 2020 the UK population increased by almost 12mn people, or by 21%, to 67.9mn. But over the same period, the population aged 15-64 grew 20%, the population aged under 15 grew 2% and the population aged 65+ grew 51%.
    Think about what this ageing society means for housing: older people in the UK mostly live in their own homes, while children live with their parents. So a society where 21% are children and 15% are elderly (1980) needs less housing than one where 18% are children and 19% are elderly (2020) - even if the population hadn't increased by 12mn.
    Think about what this ageing society means for the labour market: elderly people consume goods and services (and more than children do) but mostly don't work. That means more labour demand, less supply. That means a tight labour market. In the past that excess demand was met by immigration. Apparently that won't happen any more - let's see about that. The pressure to meet this excess demand for labour from abroad will be immense. And in a competitive global economy simply "giving everyone a pay rise" doesn't solve the problem unless it is accompanied by massive investment to raise productivity or delivers an improbably large rise in labour participation.
    Think about what an ageing society means for government spending. Pensions and health are eats up more and more of the budget. Spending on investment (including education) gets squeezed. The burden of taxation on workers keeps on going up. And unlike children, who parents work to support voluntarily, all this taxation on workers is involuntary, breeding resentment and discouraging work. That is why our tax and benefits system abounds with incentive-sapping high marginal tax rates. This is why the elderly now have their own political party, who extracts ever greater resources from workers on the elderly's behalf. And imagine how much greater the burden on each worker would be if we hadn't boosted the number of workers by immigration.
    If you don't understand the demographic pressures underlying all of this, you don't understand anything that's going on in this country, or indeed the developed world more generally.

    You make some interesting points but have missed one key fact. Importing more minimum wage people to do the jobs cheaply is fantastic for the elderly who don't need to buy housing, don't need to work, aren't getting a salary or pay rises and want cheap consumer prices.

    The key thing you and a few others are missing is that if "everyone" gets a pay rise, then its not everyone who gets a pay rise. It is working people who do. Working people get a pay rise, which marginally affects prices, which works essentially as a transfer then from the non-working to the working.

    If the elderly need to pay a decent salary to their carers, or people providing their groceries, or doing their hair, or whatever other services are working to provide for them, then that will reduce not increase the generational divides.

    It will also then require major investment in automation etc so that those workers become more efficient, since they're able to command higher salaries. This isn't just science fiction or crazy economics, its already happened in nations like Japan that has far worse demographics than we do.

    In Japan they're currently facing a situation where children are 12.0% of population and 65+ are 28.8% of population (2020 figures) which is much worse than the 18% and 19% respectively that you quoted.

    We need to be looking at Japan and seeing what we can learn from them on how to handle demographic changes.
    Japan has tripled its number of foreign workers in the last 12 years...
    Do you have a citation on this?

    According to this source "there were an estimated 600,000 foreign workers, including illegal laborers, in Japan in 1993, almost tripling to 1.72 million by 2020, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare". So nearly tripled in 27 years.

    I'm curious what the UK figures, and bear in mind that proportionately Japan has double the population of the UK so that would be the equivalent of less than a million foreign workers in the UK in 2020. As we know over 6 million EU nationals alone claimed permanent status recently.

    EDIT: 1.7m foreign workers in total, an increase of just over 1 million in 27 years, is not "throwing in the towel".
    The data are from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, and I have accessed them via Haver Analytics so can't provide you with a Web link - but Haver are an extremely reliable data provider. They show 717504 foreign workers in 2013 and 1724328 in 2020.
    So that's a 140% increase not a tripling. An increase of a million in that time is real but its not "throwing in the towel" like you claimed. What was the UK's figure in the same period? Bearing in mind that their population is double ours, that aggregated across the entire timespan is the equivalent to the gross immigration we were having every single year in the same time period.
    I said that it tripled between 2008 (486398) and 2020 (1724328) and that the bulk of that increase happened between 2013 and 2020. For a country that had resisted any increase in the foreign workforce for decades this is a really important change. I understand that your love of the Gotcha moment is powerful, but please read my posts more carefully before rushing to accuse me of misrepresenting the data.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624
    Fishing said:

    Journalists can't do numeracy and ecoloons are loons part 975616516 of an ongoing series.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58959045
    Ministers say the subsidies will make heat pumps a comparable price to a new gas boiler. However, the £450m being allocated for the subsidies over three years will cover a maximum of 90,000 pumps.

    Mike Childs, head of science at Friends of the Earth, said the number of heat pumps that the grants would cover "just isn't very much" and meant the UK would not meet its aim of installing 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028.


    Don't these idiots understand anything about the concept of pump priming? According to the BBC you can get a heat pump currently for about £10,000 including installation and this grant will cut it to £5,000. But that's the prices today with it being bleeding edge technology, not much investment in the sector yet and not many engineers working in the sector yet. Bleeding edge technology is always expensive.

    If this works as pump priming, of which there's no guarantee, then in three years time the cost of a new heat pump and installation could be considerably under the £10,000 average it can be today.

    Maybe in 3 years the typical cost is down to £7,000 and you could have a new 3 year scheme for the same budget covering twice as many homes at a £2,500 grant and the net cost would be even cheaper than today (especially in real terms).

    If we're getting to 2028 to get this sector really moving and 2050 to complete the eradication of gas boilers (no new ones from 2035 then circa 15 years for them to die and be replaced) then 90,000 in the next 3 years is a start and not nothing.

    When will journalists or ecoloons ever learn?

    Utter waste of money. Gas boilers work fine and ours contribute about 0.0001% to global greenhouse gas emissions.
    Heat pumps are very good, when they are combined with the right kind of property. They have very low running costs - and make the property owner/user relatively immune to swings in energy costs.
  • pingping Posts: 3,724
    edited October 2021
    Not sure how innovation in ground source heat pump installation can bring the cost down.

    The cost is AIUI, mostly in digging a very deep hole.

    Perhaps doing a whole street at once might create efficiencies?
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772
    There's something seriously wrong with these numbers. To have a +15 score on current Tory supporters but -1 on 2019 Tory voters suggests to me a level of churn in the Tory vote which we are simply not seeing.

    What has been truly remarkable about the Tory vote over the last year and pretty much since the election is how consistent it has been with all pollsters in a surprisingly small band around 40%. The reasonable inference is that this is made up largely of those who still think Brexit was a good idea. They have stubbornly stuck to their guns. How then do we get such an extraordinary difference between current supporters and 2019 supporters? I just don't believe it.
  • NerysHughesNerysHughes Posts: 3,346
    edited October 2021

    Journalists can't do numeracy and ecoloons are loons part 975616516 of an ongoing series.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58959045
    Ministers say the subsidies will make heat pumps a comparable price to a new gas boiler. However, the £450m being allocated for the subsidies over three years will cover a maximum of 90,000 pumps.

    Mike Childs, head of science at Friends of the Earth, said the number of heat pumps that the grants would cover "just isn't very much" and meant the UK would not meet its aim of installing 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028.


    Don't these idiots understand anything about the concept of pump priming? According to the BBC you can get a heat pump currently for about £10,000 including installation and this grant will cut it to £5,000. But that's the prices today with it being bleeding edge technology, not much investment in the sector yet and not many engineers working in the sector yet. Bleeding edge technology is always expensive.

    If this works as pump priming, of which there's no guarantee, then in three years time the cost of a new heat pump and installation could be considerably under the £10,000 average it can be today.

    Maybe in 3 years the typical cost is down to £7,000 and you could have a new 3 year scheme for the same budget covering twice as many homes at a £2,500 grant and the net cost would be even cheaper than today (especially in real terms).

    If we're getting to 2028 to get this sector really moving and 2050 to complete the eradication of gas boilers (no new ones from 2035 then circa 15 years for them to die and be replaced) then 90,000 in the next 3 years is a start and not nothing.

    When will journalists or ecoloons ever learn?

    Are you aware of what is required for a heat pump? Its not just a case of changing a boiler over and putting a pump in its place. Its new pipework throughout a house, new radiators, heat cylinders, control panels etc. An ASHP is not really that cutting edge technology wise so there will not be any major advances coming that will reduce the cost. And when people pickup on the fact that their house will be cold in the winter they will not want one.
  • FishingFishing Posts: 4,555

    Fishing said:

    Journalists can't do numeracy and ecoloons are loons part 975616516 of an ongoing series.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58959045
    Ministers say the subsidies will make heat pumps a comparable price to a new gas boiler. However, the £450m being allocated for the subsidies over three years will cover a maximum of 90,000 pumps.

    Mike Childs, head of science at Friends of the Earth, said the number of heat pumps that the grants would cover "just isn't very much" and meant the UK would not meet its aim of installing 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028.


    Don't these idiots understand anything about the concept of pump priming? According to the BBC you can get a heat pump currently for about £10,000 including installation and this grant will cut it to £5,000. But that's the prices today with it being bleeding edge technology, not much investment in the sector yet and not many engineers working in the sector yet. Bleeding edge technology is always expensive.

    If this works as pump priming, of which there's no guarantee, then in three years time the cost of a new heat pump and installation could be considerably under the £10,000 average it can be today.

    Maybe in 3 years the typical cost is down to £7,000 and you could have a new 3 year scheme for the same budget covering twice as many homes at a £2,500 grant and the net cost would be even cheaper than today (especially in real terms).

    If we're getting to 2028 to get this sector really moving and 2050 to complete the eradication of gas boilers (no new ones from 2035 then circa 15 years for them to die and be replaced) then 90,000 in the next 3 years is a start and not nothing.

    When will journalists or ecoloons ever learn?

    Utter waste of money. Gas boilers work fine and ours contribute about 0.0001% to global greenhouse gas emissions.
    If new technology can be ultimately cost-effective and get us using reliable, domestically generated energy instead of Putingas then that's a positive in its own right.

    Considering heating represents 20% of our domestic emissions then a switching to clean heating seems necessary globally if we're going to treat global emissions seriously. And if we can get a leading edge on a technology of the future that could be a good thing to manufacture and export around the world.
    We have plenty of gas we could extract easily enough. And people always promise all these "green industries", but somehow all the jobs seem to end up in China or Germany - funnily enough countries with strong manufacturing sectors, good infrastructure and expertise.

    I want a switch to lower taxes and less government. Green ecoloonies will never be satisfied.

    Fortunately, I think people are slowly starting to turn against them.
  • edmundintokyoedmundintokyo Posts: 17,136

    FPT

    Any discussion of issues like housing or immigration that doesn't mention demographics and ageing is incomplete at best, misleading at worst. Between 1980 and 2020 the UK population increased by almost 12mn people, or by 21%, to 67.9mn. But over the same period, the population aged 15-64 grew 20%, the population aged under 15 grew 2% and the population aged 65+ grew 51%.
    Think about what this ageing society means for housing: older people in the UK mostly live in their own homes, while children live with their parents. So a society where 21% are children and 15% are elderly (1980) needs less housing than one where 18% are children and 19% are elderly (2020) - even if the population hadn't increased by 12mn.
    Think about what this ageing society means for the labour market: elderly people consume goods and services (and more than children do) but mostly don't work. That means more labour demand, less supply. That means a tight labour market. In the past that excess demand was met by immigration. Apparently that won't happen any more - let's see about that. The pressure to meet this excess demand for labour from abroad will be immense. And in a competitive global economy simply "giving everyone a pay rise" doesn't solve the problem unless it is accompanied by massive investment to raise productivity or delivers an improbably large rise in labour participation.
    Think about what an ageing society means for government spending. Pensions and health are eats up more and more of the budget. Spending on investment (including education) gets squeezed. The burden of taxation on workers keeps on going up. And unlike children, who parents work to support voluntarily, all this taxation on workers is involuntary, breeding resentment and discouraging work. That is why our tax and benefits system abounds with incentive-sapping high marginal tax rates. This is why the elderly now have their own political party, who extracts ever greater resources from workers on the elderly's behalf. And imagine how much greater the burden on each worker would be if we hadn't boosted the number of workers by immigration.
    If you don't understand the demographic pressures underlying all of this, you don't understand anything that's going on in this country, or indeed the developed world more generally.

    You make some interesting points but have missed one key fact. Importing more minimum wage people to do the jobs cheaply is fantastic for the elderly who don't need to buy housing, don't need to work, aren't getting a salary or pay rises and want cheap consumer prices.

    The key thing you and a few others are missing is that if "everyone" gets a pay rise, then its not everyone who gets a pay rise. It is working people who do. Working people get a pay rise, which marginally affects prices, which works essentially as a transfer then from the non-working to the working.

    If the elderly need to pay a decent salary to their carers, or people providing their groceries, or doing their hair, or whatever other services are working to provide for them, then that will reduce not increase the generational divides.

    It will also then require major investment in automation etc so that those workers become more efficient, since they're able to command higher salaries. This isn't just science fiction or crazy economics, its already happened in nations like Japan that has far worse demographics than we do.

    In Japan they're currently facing a situation where children are 12.0% of population and 65+ are 28.8% of population (2020 figures) which is much worse than the 18% and 19% respectively that you quoted.

    We need to be looking at Japan and seeing what we can learn from them on how to handle demographic changes.
    Japan has tripled its number of foreign workers in the last 12 years...
    Do you have a citation on this?

    According to this source "there were an estimated 600,000 foreign workers, including illegal laborers, in Japan in 1993, almost tripling to 1.72 million by 2020, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare". So nearly tripled in 27 years.

    I'm curious what the UK figures, and bear in mind that proportionately Japan has double the population of the UK so that would be the equivalent of less than a million foreign workers in the UK in 2020. As we know over 6 million EU nationals alone claimed permanent status recently.

    EDIT: 1.7m foreign workers in total, an increase of just over 1 million in 27 years, is not "throwing in the towel".
    The data are from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, and I have accessed them via Haver Analytics so can't provide you with a Web link - but Haver are an extremely reliable data provider. They show 717504 foreign workers in 2013 and 1724328 in 2020.
    Note that these numbers will be a bit short because they're based on reports from employers, so they'll be missing self-employed people and people with their own businesses, who hopefully aren't obliged to report themselves to Hello Work (although from the website it looks like we are we are, ruh roh)
  • FPT

    Any discussion of issues like housing or immigration that doesn't mention demographics and ageing is incomplete at best, misleading at worst. Between 1980 and 2020 the UK population increased by almost 12mn people, or by 21%, to 67.9mn. But over the same period, the population aged 15-64 grew 20%, the population aged under 15 grew 2% and the population aged 65+ grew 51%.
    Think about what this ageing society means for housing: older people in the UK mostly live in their own homes, while children live with their parents. So a society where 21% are children and 15% are elderly (1980) needs less housing than one where 18% are children and 19% are elderly (2020) - even if the population hadn't increased by 12mn.
    Think about what this ageing society means for the labour market: elderly people consume goods and services (and more than children do) but mostly don't work. That means more labour demand, less supply. That means a tight labour market. In the past that excess demand was met by immigration. Apparently that won't happen any more - let's see about that. The pressure to meet this excess demand for labour from abroad will be immense. And in a competitive global economy simply "giving everyone a pay rise" doesn't solve the problem unless it is accompanied by massive investment to raise productivity or delivers an improbably large rise in labour participation.
    Think about what an ageing society means for government spending. Pensions and health are eats up more and more of the budget. Spending on investment (including education) gets squeezed. The burden of taxation on workers keeps on going up. And unlike children, who parents work to support voluntarily, all this taxation on workers is involuntary, breeding resentment and discouraging work. That is why our tax and benefits system abounds with incentive-sapping high marginal tax rates. This is why the elderly now have their own political party, who extracts ever greater resources from workers on the elderly's behalf. And imagine how much greater the burden on each worker would be if we hadn't boosted the number of workers by immigration.
    If you don't understand the demographic pressures underlying all of this, you don't understand anything that's going on in this country, or indeed the developed world more generally.

    You make some interesting points but have missed one key fact. Importing more minimum wage people to do the jobs cheaply is fantastic for the elderly who don't need to buy housing, don't need to work, aren't getting a salary or pay rises and want cheap consumer prices.

    The key thing you and a few others are missing is that if "everyone" gets a pay rise, then its not everyone who gets a pay rise. It is working people who do. Working people get a pay rise, which marginally affects prices, which works essentially as a transfer then from the non-working to the working.

    If the elderly need to pay a decent salary to their carers, or people providing their groceries, or doing their hair, or whatever other services are working to provide for them, then that will reduce not increase the generational divides.

    It will also then require major investment in automation etc so that those workers become more efficient, since they're able to command higher salaries. This isn't just science fiction or crazy economics, its already happened in nations like Japan that has far worse demographics than we do.

    In Japan they're currently facing a situation where children are 12.0% of population and 65+ are 28.8% of population (2020 figures) which is much worse than the 18% and 19% respectively that you quoted.

    We need to be looking at Japan and seeing what we can learn from them on how to handle demographic changes.
    Japan has tripled its number of foreign workers in the last 12 years...
    Do you have a citation on this?

    According to this source "there were an estimated 600,000 foreign workers, including illegal laborers, in Japan in 1993, almost tripling to 1.72 million by 2020, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare". So nearly tripled in 27 years.

    I'm curious what the UK figures, and bear in mind that proportionately Japan has double the population of the UK so that would be the equivalent of less than a million foreign workers in the UK in 2020. As we know over 6 million EU nationals alone claimed permanent status recently.

    EDIT: 1.7m foreign workers in total, an increase of just over 1 million in 27 years, is not "throwing in the towel".
    The data are from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, and I have accessed them via Haver Analytics so can't provide you with a Web link - but Haver are an extremely reliable data provider. They show 717504 foreign workers in 2013 and 1724328 in 2020.
    So that's a 140% increase not a tripling. An increase of a million in that time is real but its not "throwing in the towel" like you claimed. What was the UK's figure in the same period? Bearing in mind that their population is double ours, that aggregated across the entire timespan is the equivalent to the gross immigration we were having every single year in the same time period.
    For the UK the ONS gives data back to 1997.

    Foreign born workers
    1997 1.921m
    2021 6.057m

    Foreign national workers
    1997 0.928m
    2021 3.716m

    Plus whatever numbers of illegal workers.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    Sam Freedman makes a great point


    Sam Freedman
    @Samfr
    Really not keen on how extremism leading to murder is being conflated with people making angry criticism of MPs. There is no way to police the latter without straying into censorship as what it an acceptable level of civility on any given topic is subjective.

    The creed to which Amess' killer seemingly subscribed (Militant islamism) is.. remarkably quiet on social media.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624
    ping said:

    Not sure how innovation in ground source heat pump installation can bring the cost down.

    The cost is AIUI, mostly in digging a very deep hole.

    Perhaps doing a whole street at once might create efficiencies?

    There have been, in fact, some big improvements in piling and boring machinery for domestic scale works in the last few years. Driven mostly by reducing noise and vibration, but has the effect of increasing capability for a given cost, as well.
  • FishingFishing Posts: 4,555

    FPT

    Any discussion of issues like housing or immigration that doesn't mention demographics and ageing is incomplete at best, misleading at worst. Between 1980 and 2020 the UK population increased by almost 12mn people, or by 21%, to 67.9mn. But over the same period, the population aged 15-64 grew 20%, the population aged under 15 grew 2% and the population aged 65+ grew 51%.
    Think about what this ageing society means for housing: older people in the UK mostly live in their own homes, while children live with their parents. So a society where 21% are children and 15% are elderly (1980) needs less housing than one where 18% are children and 19% are elderly (2020) - even if the population hadn't increased by 12mn.
    Think about what this ageing society means for the labour market: elderly people consume goods and services (and more than children do) but mostly don't work. That means more labour demand, less supply. That means a tight labour market. In the past that excess demand was met by immigration. Apparently that won't happen any more - let's see about that. The pressure to meet this excess demand for labour from abroad will be immense. And in a competitive global economy simply "giving everyone a pay rise" doesn't solve the problem unless it is accompanied by massive investment to raise productivity or delivers an improbably large rise in labour participation.
    Think about what an ageing society means for government spending. Pensions and health are eats up more and more of the budget. Spending on investment (including education) gets squeezed. The burden of taxation on workers keeps on going up. And unlike children, who parents work to support voluntarily, all this taxation on workers is involuntary, breeding resentment and discouraging work. That is why our tax and benefits system abounds with incentive-sapping high marginal tax rates. This is why the elderly now have their own political party, who extracts ever greater resources from workers on the elderly's behalf. And imagine how much greater the burden on each worker would be if we hadn't boosted the number of workers by immigration.
    If you don't understand the demographic pressures underlying all of this, you don't understand anything that's going on in this country, or indeed the developed world more generally.

    You make some interesting points but have missed one key fact. Importing more minimum wage people to do the jobs cheaply is fantastic for the elderly who don't need to buy housing, don't need to work, aren't getting a salary or pay rises and want cheap consumer prices.

    The key thing you and a few others are missing is that if "everyone" gets a pay rise, then its not everyone who gets a pay rise. It is working people who do. Working people get a pay rise, which marginally affects prices, which works essentially as a transfer then from the non-working to the working.

    If the elderly need to pay a decent salary to their carers, or people providing their groceries, or doing their hair, or whatever other services are working to provide for them, then that will reduce not increase the generational divides.

    It will also then require major investment in automation etc so that those workers become more efficient, since they're able to command higher salaries. This isn't just science fiction or crazy economics, its already happened in nations like Japan that has far worse demographics than we do.

    In Japan they're currently facing a situation where children are 12.0% of population and 65+ are 28.8% of population (2020 figures) which is much worse than the 18% and 19% respectively that you quoted.

    We need to be looking at Japan and seeing what we can learn from them on how to handle demographic changes.
    Japan has tripled its number of foreign workers in the last 12 years...
    Do you have a citation on this?

    According to this source "there were an estimated 600,000 foreign workers, including illegal laborers, in Japan in 1993, almost tripling to 1.72 million by 2020, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare". So nearly tripled in 27 years.

    I'm curious what the UK figures, and bear in mind that proportionately Japan has double the population of the UK so that would be the equivalent of less than a million foreign workers in the UK in 2020. As we know over 6 million EU nationals alone claimed permanent status recently.

    EDIT: 1.7m foreign workers in total, an increase of just over 1 million in 27 years, is not "throwing in the towel".
    We should be allowing prime working age adults (say 20-40) from developed countries (say Canada, US, Australia, New Zealand, the old EU 15) to work here at will. Would boost our working population significantly without acting as a drag on wages or changing the way of life much.

    It would actually be even better than boosting our birthrate because we wouldn't have to support them as kids.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    What's the max water temperature with a GSHP, I like to shower at 48 on the boiler.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,837
    This article contains Gobleki Tepe and knapped flint.
    May be of interest to at least one.

    https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/19/unfreezing-the-ice-age-the-truth-about-humanitys-deep-past
  • FPT

    Any discussion of issues like housing or immigration that doesn't mention demographics and ageing is incomplete at best, misleading at worst. Between 1980 and 2020 the UK population increased by almost 12mn people, or by 21%, to 67.9mn. But over the same period, the population aged 15-64 grew 20%, the population aged under 15 grew 2% and the population aged 65+ grew 51%.
    Think about what this ageing society means for housing: older people in the UK mostly live in their own homes, while children live with their parents. So a society where 21% are children and 15% are elderly (1980) needs less housing than one where 18% are children and 19% are elderly (2020) - even if the population hadn't increased by 12mn.
    Think about what this ageing society means for the labour market: elderly people consume goods and services (and more than children do) but mostly don't work. That means more labour demand, less supply. That means a tight labour market. In the past that excess demand was met by immigration. Apparently that won't happen any more - let's see about that. The pressure to meet this excess demand for labour from abroad will be immense. And in a competitive global economy simply "giving everyone a pay rise" doesn't solve the problem unless it is accompanied by massive investment to raise productivity or delivers an improbably large rise in labour participation.
    Think about what an ageing society means for government spending. Pensions and health are eats up more and more of the budget. Spending on investment (including education) gets squeezed. The burden of taxation on workers keeps on going up. And unlike children, who parents work to support voluntarily, all this taxation on workers is involuntary, breeding resentment and discouraging work. That is why our tax and benefits system abounds with incentive-sapping high marginal tax rates. This is why the elderly now have their own political party, who extracts ever greater resources from workers on the elderly's behalf. And imagine how much greater the burden on each worker would be if we hadn't boosted the number of workers by immigration.
    If you don't understand the demographic pressures underlying all of this, you don't understand anything that's going on in this country, or indeed the developed world more generally.

    You make some interesting points but have missed one key fact. Importing more minimum wage people to do the jobs cheaply is fantastic for the elderly who don't need to buy housing, don't need to work, aren't getting a salary or pay rises and want cheap consumer prices.

    The key thing you and a few others are missing is that if "everyone" gets a pay rise, then its not everyone who gets a pay rise. It is working people who do. Working people get a pay rise, which marginally affects prices, which works essentially as a transfer then from the non-working to the working.

    If the elderly need to pay a decent salary to their carers, or people providing their groceries, or doing their hair, or whatever other services are working to provide for them, then that will reduce not increase the generational divides.

    It will also then require major investment in automation etc so that those workers become more efficient, since they're able to command higher salaries. This isn't just science fiction or crazy economics, its already happened in nations like Japan that has far worse demographics than we do.

    In Japan they're currently facing a situation where children are 12.0% of population and 65+ are 28.8% of population (2020 figures) which is much worse than the 18% and 19% respectively that you quoted.

    We need to be looking at Japan and seeing what we can learn from them on how to handle demographic changes.
    Japan has tripled its number of foreign workers in the last 12 years...
    Do you have a citation on this?

    According to this source "there were an estimated 600,000 foreign workers, including illegal laborers, in Japan in 1993, almost tripling to 1.72 million by 2020, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare". So nearly tripled in 27 years.

    I'm curious what the UK figures, and bear in mind that proportionately Japan has double the population of the UK so that would be the equivalent of less than a million foreign workers in the UK in 2020. As we know over 6 million EU nationals alone claimed permanent status recently.

    EDIT: 1.7m foreign workers in total, an increase of just over 1 million in 27 years, is not "throwing in the towel".
    The data are from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, and I have accessed them via Haver Analytics so can't provide you with a Web link - but Haver are an extremely reliable data provider. They show 717504 foreign workers in 2013 and 1724328 in 2020.
    So that's a 140% increase not a tripling. An increase of a million in that time is real but its not "throwing in the towel" like you claimed. What was the UK's figure in the same period? Bearing in mind that their population is double ours, that aggregated across the entire timespan is the equivalent to the gross immigration we were having every single year in the same time period.
    I said that it tripled between 2008 (486398) and 2020 (1724328) and that the bulk of that increase happened between 2013 and 2020. For a country that had resisted any increase in the foreign workforce for decades this is a really important change. I understand that your love of the Gotcha moment is powerful, but please read my posts more carefully before rushing to accuse me of misrepresenting the data.
    No gotcha, just confused because while my source has the same figure (1.72m for 2020) it has 600,000 for 1993. So that's a near-tripling from 1993.

    It seems odd that the figure was lower in 2008 from your data than it was in 1993 according to my data. And their demographics had already changed worse than ours had between 1993 and 2008.

    There will always be a need for foreign born labour and we should never turn it away, but its not the solution for demographics. They've got over 28% of their population over 65 which is far, far more than we do and they've been able to handle that via investment. That's what we need too, investment and good wages not ever more cheap serfs being imported without housing provided to provide everything at low cost to the people who have taken the countries wealth and don't want to pay a good salary to those who are working today.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624

    Journalists can't do numeracy and ecoloons are loons part 975616516 of an ongoing series.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58959045
    Ministers say the subsidies will make heat pumps a comparable price to a new gas boiler. However, the £450m being allocated for the subsidies over three years will cover a maximum of 90,000 pumps.

    Mike Childs, head of science at Friends of the Earth, said the number of heat pumps that the grants would cover "just isn't very much" and meant the UK would not meet its aim of installing 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028.


    Don't these idiots understand anything about the concept of pump priming? According to the BBC you can get a heat pump currently for about £10,000 including installation and this grant will cut it to £5,000. But that's the prices today with it being bleeding edge technology, not much investment in the sector yet and not many engineers working in the sector yet. Bleeding edge technology is always expensive.

    If this works as pump priming, of which there's no guarantee, then in three years time the cost of a new heat pump and installation could be considerably under the £10,000 average it can be today.

    Maybe in 3 years the typical cost is down to £7,000 and you could have a new 3 year scheme for the same budget covering twice as many homes at a £2,500 grant and the net cost would be even cheaper than today (especially in real terms).

    If we're getting to 2028 to get this sector really moving and 2050 to complete the eradication of gas boilers (no new ones from 2035 then circa 15 years for them to die and be replaced) then 90,000 in the next 3 years is a start and not nothing.

    When will journalists or ecoloons ever learn?

    Are you aware of what is required for a heat pump? Its not just a case of changing a boiler over and putting a pump in its place. Its new pipework throughout a house, new radiators, heat cylinders, control panels etc. An ASHP is not really that cutting edge technology wise so there will not be any major advances coming that will reduce the cost. And when people pickup on the fact that their house will be cold in the winter they will not want one.
    A fair number of newer houses - modern insulation standards, underfloor heating etc - can take a heat hump quite easily.

    When fully modernising an existing property, it is a sensible option to look at.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851
    I'm not surprised by the data in the Header. Ms Patel is a right wing populist lacking the je ne sais quoi needed to really excel in that space. Home Sec is her peak (imo) and in itself represents considerable career over-achievement by a person of quite limited ability. Speaking of right wing populists, I've just been reading about that Eric Zemmour in France, ex TV shock jock, sort of a French cross between Piers Morgan and Tucker Carlson, now a Trumpiste candidate for president. A joke candidate then? I'm afraid not. There are big vibrant rallies in the provinces and a surging enthusiasm amongst folk who are discontented with their lot and blame foreigners and woke liberals for it. Which they are right to do, according to this Zemmour character. He tells them that, oui oui, foreigners and woke liberals are indeed to blame for the lot with which they are discontented. They love him for it, apparently, cheering him to the rafters. They say he’s “not like normal politicians” (natch) and - oh no please spare us - he TELLS IT LIKE IT IS. I do wish some politician would one day be brave enough to tell the sort of people who lap this up how it really is. They'd have my vote, left or right. Anyway, off to betfair to check, and the worst is duly confirmed. He’s clear favourite after Macron. Mon dieu.
  • edmundintokyoedmundintokyo Posts: 17,136

    FPT

    Any discussion of issues like housing or immigration that doesn't mention demographics and ageing is incomplete at best, misleading at worst. Between 1980 and 2020 the UK population increased by almost 12mn people, or by 21%, to 67.9mn. But over the same period, the population aged 15-64 grew 20%, the population aged under 15 grew 2% and the population aged 65+ grew 51%.
    Think about what this ageing society means for housing: older people in the UK mostly live in their own homes, while children live with their parents. So a society where 21% are children and 15% are elderly (1980) needs less housing than one where 18% are children and 19% are elderly (2020) - even if the population hadn't increased by 12mn.
    Think about what this ageing society means for the labour market: elderly people consume goods and services (and more than children do) but mostly don't work. That means more labour demand, less supply. That means a tight labour market. In the past that excess demand was met by immigration. Apparently that won't happen any more - let's see about that. The pressure to meet this excess demand for labour from abroad will be immense. And in a competitive global economy simply "giving everyone a pay rise" doesn't solve the problem unless it is accompanied by massive investment to raise productivity or delivers an improbably large rise in labour participation.
    Think about what an ageing society means for government spending. Pensions and health are eats up more and more of the budget. Spending on investment (including education) gets squeezed. The burden of taxation on workers keeps on going up. And unlike children, who parents work to support voluntarily, all this taxation on workers is involuntary, breeding resentment and discouraging work. That is why our tax and benefits system abounds with incentive-sapping high marginal tax rates. This is why the elderly now have their own political party, who extracts ever greater resources from workers on the elderly's behalf. And imagine how much greater the burden on each worker would be if we hadn't boosted the number of workers by immigration.
    If you don't understand the demographic pressures underlying all of this, you don't understand anything that's going on in this country, or indeed the developed world more generally.

    You make some interesting points but have missed one key fact. Importing more minimum wage people to do the jobs cheaply is fantastic for the elderly who don't need to buy housing, don't need to work, aren't getting a salary or pay rises and want cheap consumer prices.

    The key thing you and a few others are missing is that if "everyone" gets a pay rise, then its not everyone who gets a pay rise. It is working people who do. Working people get a pay rise, which marginally affects prices, which works essentially as a transfer then from the non-working to the working.

    If the elderly need to pay a decent salary to their carers, or people providing their groceries, or doing their hair, or whatever other services are working to provide for them, then that will reduce not increase the generational divides.

    It will also then require major investment in automation etc so that those workers become more efficient, since they're able to command higher salaries. This isn't just science fiction or crazy economics, its already happened in nations like Japan that has far worse demographics than we do.

    In Japan they're currently facing a situation where children are 12.0% of population and 65+ are 28.8% of population (2020 figures) which is much worse than the 18% and 19% respectively that you quoted.

    We need to be looking at Japan and seeing what we can learn from them on how to handle demographic changes.
    Japan has tripled its number of foreign workers in the last 12 years...
    Do you have a citation on this?

    According to this source "there were an estimated 600,000 foreign workers, including illegal laborers, in Japan in 1993, almost tripling to 1.72 million by 2020, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare". So nearly tripled in 27 years.

    I'm curious what the UK figures, and bear in mind that proportionately Japan has double the population of the UK so that would be the equivalent of less than a million foreign workers in the UK in 2020. As we know over 6 million EU nationals alone claimed permanent status recently.

    EDIT: 1.7m foreign workers in total, an increase of just over 1 million in 27 years, is not "throwing in the towel".
    The data are from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, and I have accessed them via Haver Analytics so can't provide you with a Web link - but Haver are an extremely reliable data provider. They show 717504 foreign workers in 2013 and 1724328 in 2020.
    So that's a 140% increase not a tripling. An increase of a million in that time is real but its not "throwing in the towel" like you claimed. What was the UK's figure in the same period? Bearing in mind that their population is double ours, that aggregated across the entire timespan is the equivalent to the gross immigration we were having every single year in the same time period.
    For the UK the ONS gives data back to 1997.

    Foreign born workers
    1997 1.921m
    2021 6.057m

    Foreign national workers
    1997 0.928m
    2021 3.716m

    Plus whatever numbers of illegal workers.
    The Japanese numbers will be foreign national not foreign born, and also exclude illegal immigrants. I'm a little bit surprised how small the difference is, even accounting for the larger population, although there's all kinds of weirdness that potentially confounds the comparison.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    Pulpstar said:

    What's the max water temperature with a GSHP, I like to shower at 48 on the boiler.

    Person on TV last night with a GSHP also had solar panels for hot water on the roof.

    This stuff really isn't cheap - I suspect my solution will be to move to a new home...
  • kinabalu said:

    I'm not surprised by the data in the Header. Ms Patel is a right wing populist lacking the je ne sais quoi needed to really excel in that space. Home Sec is her peak (imo) and in itself represents considerable career over-achievement by a person of quite limited ability. Speaking of right wing populists, I've just been reading about that Eric Zemmour in France, ex TV shock jock, sort of a French cross between Piers Morgan and Tucker Carlson, now a Trumpiste candidate for president. A joke candidate then? I'm afraid not. There are big vibrant rallies in the provinces and a surging enthusiasm amongst folk who are discontented with their lot and blame foreigners and woke liberals for it. Which they are right to do, according to this Zemmour character. He tells them that, oui oui, foreigners and woke liberals are indeed to blame for the lot with which they are discontented. They love him for it, apparently, cheering him to the rafters. They say he’s “not like normal politicians” (natch) and - oh no please spare us - he TELLS IT LIKE IT IS. I do wish some politician would one day be brave enough to tell the sort of people who lap this up how it really is. They'd have my vote, left or right. Anyway, off to betfair to check, and the worst is duly confirmed. He’s clear favourite after Macron. Mon dieu.

    Just wait til Piers storms into favourite for the England & Wales Presidential election of 2034.......
  • NerysHughesNerysHughes Posts: 3,346

    Fishing said:

    Journalists can't do numeracy and ecoloons are loons part 975616516 of an ongoing series.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58959045
    Ministers say the subsidies will make heat pumps a comparable price to a new gas boiler. However, the £450m being allocated for the subsidies over three years will cover a maximum of 90,000 pumps.

    Mike Childs, head of science at Friends of the Earth, said the number of heat pumps that the grants would cover "just isn't very much" and meant the UK would not meet its aim of installing 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028.


    Don't these idiots understand anything about the concept of pump priming? According to the BBC you can get a heat pump currently for about £10,000 including installation and this grant will cut it to £5,000. But that's the prices today with it being bleeding edge technology, not much investment in the sector yet and not many engineers working in the sector yet. Bleeding edge technology is always expensive.

    If this works as pump priming, of which there's no guarantee, then in three years time the cost of a new heat pump and installation could be considerably under the £10,000 average it can be today.

    Maybe in 3 years the typical cost is down to £7,000 and you could have a new 3 year scheme for the same budget covering twice as many homes at a £2,500 grant and the net cost would be even cheaper than today (especially in real terms).

    If we're getting to 2028 to get this sector really moving and 2050 to complete the eradication of gas boilers (no new ones from 2035 then circa 15 years for them to die and be replaced) then 90,000 in the next 3 years is a start and not nothing.

    When will journalists or ecoloons ever learn?

    Utter waste of money. Gas boilers work fine and ours contribute about 0.0001% to global greenhouse gas emissions.
    Heat pumps are very good, when they are combined with the right kind of property. They have very low running costs - and make the property owner/user relatively immune to swings in energy costs.
    The key thing to remember with heat pumps is that a radiator will never be warmer than the water in a normal bath, around 35 degrees, and that during cold spells the heat pump will go into defrost mode regularly and will not provide heat or hot water to the house during that period.
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 4,746

    It cannot be racism considering the most popular politician in the UK over the last eighteen months has the same skin colour as her.

    It must be because she's a terrible human being as well as a terrible Home Secretary.

    Oh, and the fact she's as dumb as a box of rocks.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DrsVhzbLzU&t=3s

    Oh and lest we forget, she had to resign in disgrace for being a national security risk.

    Until recently I took the view that none of this would stop her, she acts from the gut; a populist in the trump mould, the perfect politician for our times. I still have about £4 on her as next conservative leader.

    Unfortunately, it seems that her moment has passed; she is regarded as a dud by her supporters because she talks tough and can't actually deliver anything. Shes had a couple of years trying to sort out the woke home office, had all the weight of Cummings and Johnson behind her, still nothing really changes. The reaction to the Amess murder is probably another nail in her coffin; shes clearly been misled in to going on about politicians safety and online trolling and not the real problem. So her fate unfortunately will be to be hated by the left and regarded as a useless idiot by the right. She's admittedly had a pretty impressive run; but all political careers end in failure.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 14,912
    kinabalu said:

    I'm not surprised by the data in the Header. Ms Patel is a right wing populist lacking the je ne sais quoi needed to really excel in that space. Home Sec is her peak (imo) and in itself represents considerable career over-achievement by a person of quite limited ability. Speaking of right wing populists, I've just been reading about that Eric Zemmour in France, ex TV shock jock, sort of a French cross between Piers Morgan and Tucker Carlson, now a Trumpiste candidate for president. A joke candidate then? I'm afraid not. There are big vibrant rallies in the provinces and a surging enthusiasm amongst folk who are discontented with their lot and blame foreigners and woke liberals for it. Which they are right to do, according to this Zemmour character. He tells them that, oui oui, foreigners and woke liberals are indeed to blame for the lot with which they are discontented. They love him for it, apparently, cheering him to the rafters. They say he’s “not like normal politicians” (natch) and - oh no please spare us - he TELLS IT LIKE IT IS. I do wish some politician would one day be brave enough to tell the sort of people who lap this up how it really is. They'd have my vote, left or right. Anyway, off to betfair to check, and the worst is duly confirmed. He’s clear favourite after Macron. Mon dieu.

    In a political context "Telling it like it is" basically means "Telling people what they want to hear, in a way that confirms their worst prejudices."
  • paulyork64paulyork64 Posts: 2,461
    eek said:

    Pulpstar said:

    What's the max water temperature with a GSHP, I like to shower at 48 on the boiler.

    Person on TV last night with a GSHP also had solar panels for hot water on the roof.

    This stuff really isn't cheap - I suspect my solution will be to move to a new home...
    Probably both bought with government subsidies that will have increased their home value by 5 figures.
  • FPT

    Any discussion of issues like housing or immigration that doesn't mention demographics and ageing is incomplete at best, misleading at worst. Between 1980 and 2020 the UK population increased by almost 12mn people, or by 21%, to 67.9mn. But over the same period, the population aged 15-64 grew 20%, the population aged under 15 grew 2% and the population aged 65+ grew 51%.
    Think about what this ageing society means for housing: older people in the UK mostly live in their own homes, while children live with their parents. So a society where 21% are children and 15% are elderly (1980) needs less housing than one where 18% are children and 19% are elderly (2020) - even if the population hadn't increased by 12mn.
    Think about what this ageing society means for the labour market: elderly people consume goods and services (and more than children do) but mostly don't work. That means more labour demand, less supply. That means a tight labour market. In the past that excess demand was met by immigration. Apparently that won't happen any more - let's see about that. The pressure to meet this excess demand for labour from abroad will be immense. And in a competitive global economy simply "giving everyone a pay rise" doesn't solve the problem unless it is accompanied by massive investment to raise productivity or delivers an improbably large rise in labour participation.
    Think about what an ageing society means for government spending. Pensions and health are eats up more and more of the budget. Spending on investment (including education) gets squeezed. The burden of taxation on workers keeps on going up. And unlike children, who parents work to support voluntarily, all this taxation on workers is involuntary, breeding resentment and discouraging work. That is why our tax and benefits system abounds with incentive-sapping high marginal tax rates. This is why the elderly now have their own political party, who extracts ever greater resources from workers on the elderly's behalf. And imagine how much greater the burden on each worker would be if we hadn't boosted the number of workers by immigration.
    If you don't understand the demographic pressures underlying all of this, you don't understand anything that's going on in this country, or indeed the developed world more generally.

    You make some interesting points but have missed one key fact. Importing more minimum wage people to do the jobs cheaply is fantastic for the elderly who don't need to buy housing, don't need to work, aren't getting a salary or pay rises and want cheap consumer prices.

    The key thing you and a few others are missing is that if "everyone" gets a pay rise, then its not everyone who gets a pay rise. It is working people who do. Working people get a pay rise, which marginally affects prices, which works essentially as a transfer then from the non-working to the working.

    If the elderly need to pay a decent salary to their carers, or people providing their groceries, or doing their hair, or whatever other services are working to provide for them, then that will reduce not increase the generational divides.

    It will also then require major investment in automation etc so that those workers become more efficient, since they're able to command higher salaries. This isn't just science fiction or crazy economics, its already happened in nations like Japan that has far worse demographics than we do.

    In Japan they're currently facing a situation where children are 12.0% of population and 65+ are 28.8% of population (2020 figures) which is much worse than the 18% and 19% respectively that you quoted.

    We need to be looking at Japan and seeing what we can learn from them on how to handle demographic changes.
    Japan has tripled its number of foreign workers in the last 12 years...
    Do you have a citation on this?

    According to this source "there were an estimated 600,000 foreign workers, including illegal laborers, in Japan in 1993, almost tripling to 1.72 million by 2020, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare". So nearly tripled in 27 years.

    I'm curious what the UK figures, and bear in mind that proportionately Japan has double the population of the UK so that would be the equivalent of less than a million foreign workers in the UK in 2020. As we know over 6 million EU nationals alone claimed permanent status recently.

    EDIT: 1.7m foreign workers in total, an increase of just over 1 million in 27 years, is not "throwing in the towel".
    The data are from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, and I have accessed them via Haver Analytics so can't provide you with a Web link - but Haver are an extremely reliable data provider. They show 717504 foreign workers in 2013 and 1724328 in 2020.
    So that's a 140% increase not a tripling. An increase of a million in that time is real but its not "throwing in the towel" like you claimed. What was the UK's figure in the same period? Bearing in mind that their population is double ours, that aggregated across the entire timespan is the equivalent to the gross immigration we were having every single year in the same time period.
    For the UK the ONS gives data back to 1997.

    Foreign born workers
    1997 1.921m
    2021 6.057m

    Foreign national workers
    1997 0.928m
    2021 3.716m

    Plus whatever numbers of illegal workers.
    So taking the 600k in 1993 as the 1997 starting point (I assume it would be roughly comparable) and accounting for the fact that Japan had double the population of the UK so halving their numbers:

    The UK had an increase of 2.79m in 14 years. 200k per year on average.
    Japan had an increase of 1.12m in 14 years. So 40k per year on average, once scaled for population.

    And that's with Japan's demographics being much, much, much worse than the UK's. So if demographics "required" immigration then we'd require much less than Japan not much more.
  • NerysHughesNerysHughes Posts: 3,346
    edited October 2021

    Journalists can't do numeracy and ecoloons are loons part 975616516 of an ongoing series.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58959045
    Ministers say the subsidies will make heat pumps a comparable price to a new gas boiler. However, the £450m being allocated for the subsidies over three years will cover a maximum of 90,000 pumps.

    Mike Childs, head of science at Friends of the Earth, said the number of heat pumps that the grants would cover "just isn't very much" and meant the UK would not meet its aim of installing 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028.


    Don't these idiots understand anything about the concept of pump priming? According to the BBC you can get a heat pump currently for about £10,000 including installation and this grant will cut it to £5,000. But that's the prices today with it being bleeding edge technology, not much investment in the sector yet and not many engineers working in the sector yet. Bleeding edge technology is always expensive.

    If this works as pump priming, of which there's no guarantee, then in three years time the cost of a new heat pump and installation could be considerably under the £10,000 average it can be today.

    Maybe in 3 years the typical cost is down to £7,000 and you could have a new 3 year scheme for the same budget covering twice as many homes at a £2,500 grant and the net cost would be even cheaper than today (especially in real terms).

    If we're getting to 2028 to get this sector really moving and 2050 to complete the eradication of gas boilers (no new ones from 2035 then circa 15 years for them to die and be replaced) then 90,000 in the next 3 years is a start and not nothing.

    When will journalists or ecoloons ever learn?

    Are you aware of what is required for a heat pump? Its not just a case of changing a boiler over and putting a pump in its place. Its new pipework throughout a house, new radiators, heat cylinders, control panels etc. An ASHP is not really that cutting edge technology wise so there will not be any major advances coming that will reduce the cost. And when people pickup on the fact that their house will be cold in the winter they will not want one.
    A fair number of newer houses - modern insulation standards, underfloor heating etc - can take a heat hump quite easily.

    When fully modernising an existing property, it is a sensible option to look at.
    Underfloor heating is by far the best way to use a heat pump, radiators will simply not work during the winter.
  • NerysHughesNerysHughes Posts: 3,346
    Pulpstar said:

    What's the max water temperature with a GSHP, I like to shower at 48 on the boiler.

    Between 35 and 40 on a warm day.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    edited October 2021

    This may be related to her being a cretin.

    "Oh no! A politician has been murdered by a possible Islamic extremist! Quick, ban anonymous posting on the internet!"

    It's not quite the unbeatable classic of US politicians in the wake of schoolkids getting gunned down calling for videogame guns to be banned/regulated while opposing the increased regulation of actual lethal weaponry, but it's not far off.

    It seems to me that a number of politicians are, disingenuously, using the understandable emotions around the murder of Sir David Amess to push for the abandonment of anonymity on the internet when this was not the cause of his murder.

    From what we know his murderer seems to have an Islamist radical. Online abuse is another matter. There are already laws against making threats of violence. Censoring the internet - which some politicians would like to do - is not the answer. It is notable also when some papers abused judges and others, the very same politicians who don't like getting abuse were remarkably quiet about this.
  • paulyork64paulyork64 Posts: 2,461
    kinabalu said:

    I'm not surprised by the data in the Header. Ms Patel is a right wing populist lacking the je ne sais quoi needed to really excel in that space. Home Sec is her peak (imo) and in itself represents considerable career over-achievement by a person of quite limited ability. Speaking of right wing populists, I've just been reading about that Eric Zemmour in France, ex TV shock jock, sort of a French cross between Piers Morgan and Tucker Carlson, now a Trumpiste candidate for president. A joke candidate then? I'm afraid not. There are big vibrant rallies in the provinces and a surging enthusiasm amongst folk who are discontented with their lot and blame foreigners and woke liberals for it. Which they are right to do, according to this Zemmour character. He tells them that, oui oui, foreigners and woke liberals are indeed to blame for the lot with which they are discontented. They love him for it, apparently, cheering him to the rafters. They say he’s “not like normal politicians” (natch) and - oh no please spare us - he TELLS IT LIKE IT IS. I do wish some politician would one day be brave enough to tell the sort of people who lap this up how it really is. They'd have my vote, left or right. Anyway, off to betfair to check, and the worst is duly confirmed. He’s clear favourite after Macron. Mon dieu.

    As Quincel has pointed out, Zemmour is a lay at 2nd Fav. Even if he beats Le Pen to round 2 (one pollster has had him doing in 2 recent polls) Macron beats him by more than he beats Le Pen.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,166
    There's one heating technology that always seems to be neglected in discussions about replacing gas: PAJO. Much cheaper to install than GSHP or ASHP, is complementary to insulation and gives an immediate step down in gas usage without an immediate need to replace the old boiler. Can be combined with TDTT environmental management.

    Should at least be part of the mix as we move to net zero.
  • PhilPhil Posts: 1,919

    Journalists can't do numeracy and ecoloons are loons part 975616516 of an ongoing series.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58959045
    Ministers say the subsidies will make heat pumps a comparable price to a new gas boiler. However, the £450m being allocated for the subsidies over three years will cover a maximum of 90,000 pumps.

    Mike Childs, head of science at Friends of the Earth, said the number of heat pumps that the grants would cover "just isn't very much" and meant the UK would not meet its aim of installing 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028.


    Don't these idiots understand anything about the concept of pump priming? According to the BBC you can get a heat pump currently for about £10,000 including installation and this grant will cut it to £5,000. But that's the prices today with it being bleeding edge technology, not much investment in the sector yet and not many engineers working in the sector yet. Bleeding edge technology is always expensive.

    If this works as pump priming, of which there's no guarantee, then in three years time the cost of a new heat pump and installation could be considerably under the £10,000 average it can be today.

    Maybe in 3 years the typical cost is down to £7,000 and you could have a new 3 year scheme for the same budget covering twice as many homes at a £2,500 grant and the net cost would be even cheaper than today (especially in real terms).

    If we're getting to 2028 to get this sector really moving and 2050 to complete the eradication of gas boilers (no new ones from 2035 then circa 15 years for them to die and be replaced) then 90,000 in the next 3 years is a start and not nothing.

    When will journalists or ecoloons ever learn?

    Are you aware of what is required for a heat pump? Its not just a case of changing a boiler over and putting a pump in its place. Its new pipework throughout a house, new radiators, heat cylinders, control panels etc. An ASHP is not really that cutting edge technology wise so there will not be any major advances coming that will reduce the cost. And when people pickup on the fact that their house will be cold in the winter they will not want one.
    Why would a heat pump require new pipework? If you’re re-using an existing radiator based heating system then the existing pipework should be fine, surely?

    You might want new radiators, but radiators are cheap & modern high surface area rads are hardly any larger than the kind of radiators that are often already in place.

    And you underestimeate the major advances that can be made in reducing per-unit cost as manufacturing scales up. Just because a technology is mature doesn’t mean costs cannot be reduced.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited October 2021
    kinabalu said:

    I'm not surprised by the data in the Header. Ms Patel is a right wing populist lacking the je ne sais quoi needed to really excel in that space. Home Sec is her peak (imo) and in itself represents considerable career over-achievement by a person of quite limited ability. Speaking of right wing populists, I've just been reading about that Eric Zemmour in France, ex TV shock jock, sort of a French cross between Piers Morgan and Tucker Carlson, now a Trumpiste candidate for president. A joke candidate then? I'm afraid not. There are big vibrant rallies in the provinces and a surging enthusiasm amongst folk who are discontented with their lot and blame foreigners and woke liberals for it. Which they are right to do, according to this Zemmour character. He tells them that, oui oui, foreigners and woke liberals are indeed to blame for the lot with which they are discontented. They love him for it, apparently, cheering him to the rafters. They say he’s “not like normal politicians” (natch) and - oh no please spare us - he TELLS IT LIKE IT IS. I do wish some politician would one day be brave enough to tell the sort of people who lap this up how it really is. They'd have my vote, left or right. Anyway, off to betfair to check, and the worst is duly confirmed. He’s clear favourite after Macron. Mon dieu.

    Latest Harris poll for next year's French presidential election.

    First round Macron 24% Zemmour 17% Le Pen 15% Bertrand 14% Melenchon 11% Jadot 7% Hidalgo 5%.

    Run offs

    Macron 57% Zemmour 43%

    Macron 54% Le Pen 46%

    Macron 52% Bertrand 48%

    Macron 62% Melenchon 38%


    https://harris-interactive.fr/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2021/10/Rapport-Harris-Vague-17-Intentions-de-vote-Presidentielle-2022-Challenges.pdf
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,184
    kinabalu said:

    I'm not surprised by the data in the Header. Ms Patel is a right wing populist lacking the je ne sais quoi needed to really excel in that space. Home Sec is her peak (imo) and in itself represents considerable career over-achievement by a person of quite limited ability. Speaking of right wing populists, I've just been reading about that Eric Zemmour in France, ex TV shock jock, sort of a French cross between Piers Morgan and Tucker Carlson, now a Trumpiste candidate for president. A joke candidate then? I'm afraid not. There are big vibrant rallies in the provinces and a surging enthusiasm amongst folk who are discontented with their lot and blame foreigners and woke liberals for it. Which they are right to do, according to this Zemmour character. He tells them that, oui oui, foreigners and woke liberals are indeed to blame for the lot with which they are discontented. They love him for it, apparently, cheering him to the rafters. They say he’s “not like normal politicians” (natch) and - oh no please spare us - he TELLS IT LIKE IT IS. I do wish some politician would one day be brave enough to tell the sort of people who lap this up how it really is. They'd have my vote, left or right. Anyway, off to betfair to check, and the worst is duly confirmed. He’s clear favourite after Macron. Mon dieu.

    I think you are being a little harsh on Zemmour in comparing him to Piers Morgan. He's something of an intellectual (naturally - the French have great reverence for such people) and is rather less strident than Piers (or, indeed, Trump).
    I can't see him winning though. At present, he'll get through to the last two and lose to Macron, just as Le Pen always did. My view is that the only candidate who can beat Macron in the second round is Bertrand - but Bertrand will probably get squeezed out in the first round. The only way the election therefore gets interesting (from a purely spectatorial point of view) is if Macron somehow manages not to get through the first round.
    This could happen - he's not much liked and there are plenty of other candidates - but I don't see it as particularly likely.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842

    Pulpstar said:

    What's the max water temperature with a GSHP, I like to shower at 48 on the boiler.

    Between 35 and 40 on a warm day.
    Thanks,

    Mind is made up then I won't switch till I have to - a future of lukewarm showers forever doesn't appeal.
  • Pulpstar said:

    What's the max water temperature with a GSHP, I like to shower at 48 on the boiler.

    Between 35 and 40 on a warm day.
    What's your source on that? The information I'm reading online says upto 50 degrees.
  • Andy_JS said:

    I don't understand why Priti Patel isn't more unpopular.

    Lefties don't like her because she's an enthusiastic authoritarian. Righties don't like her because she's an ineffective authoritarian.
    Very much this. With that smirk and those policies there is a lot to dislike. Then you look at how effective the Home Office is at actual delivery and she adds incompetence to the performance rating.

    Lets take the people out of the equation though as we try and de-hate politics. Literally anyone could be made Home Secretary and they would fail - the department has a long track-record of indifferent performance at best and open incompetence at worst.

    What I don't understand with the politics of Patel and the government is how they are focused on (and failing with) tactics whilst completely missing the obvious strategic issues.

    Brexit should have made a step change after "take back control" was applied to the border. That means ensuring that Border Force is well staffed and resourced, with mo "whoops" 4 hour queues for Brits to get through Heathrow. Which means having a coherent and visible border policy with Covid. Which means understanding where the practical limitations are with what can be achieved and not gobbing off rhetoric which will be comprehensively failed on delivery because its impossible.

    Yes there is a real issue with these boat people that Tory voters need addressing. So step up patrols on the beaches where they land, have a robust plan to capture and process them and thus squeeze the flow as crossings are never successful in sneaking people in. Instead they have ceded the argument to the Nigel and his dinghy who now has his own reporting platform on GBeebies.
  • NerysHughesNerysHughes Posts: 3,346
    Phil said:

    Journalists can't do numeracy and ecoloons are loons part 975616516 of an ongoing series.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58959045
    Ministers say the subsidies will make heat pumps a comparable price to a new gas boiler. However, the £450m being allocated for the subsidies over three years will cover a maximum of 90,000 pumps.

    Mike Childs, head of science at Friends of the Earth, said the number of heat pumps that the grants would cover "just isn't very much" and meant the UK would not meet its aim of installing 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028.


    Don't these idiots understand anything about the concept of pump priming? According to the BBC you can get a heat pump currently for about £10,000 including installation and this grant will cut it to £5,000. But that's the prices today with it being bleeding edge technology, not much investment in the sector yet and not many engineers working in the sector yet. Bleeding edge technology is always expensive.

    If this works as pump priming, of which there's no guarantee, then in three years time the cost of a new heat pump and installation could be considerably under the £10,000 average it can be today.

    Maybe in 3 years the typical cost is down to £7,000 and you could have a new 3 year scheme for the same budget covering twice as many homes at a £2,500 grant and the net cost would be even cheaper than today (especially in real terms).

    If we're getting to 2028 to get this sector really moving and 2050 to complete the eradication of gas boilers (no new ones from 2035 then circa 15 years for them to die and be replaced) then 90,000 in the next 3 years is a start and not nothing.

    When will journalists or ecoloons ever learn?

    Are you aware of what is required for a heat pump? Its not just a case of changing a boiler over and putting a pump in its place. Its new pipework throughout a house, new radiators, heat cylinders, control panels etc. An ASHP is not really that cutting edge technology wise so there will not be any major advances coming that will reduce the cost. And when people pickup on the fact that their house will be cold in the winter they will not want one.
    Why would a heat pump require new pipework? If you’re re-using an existing radiator based heating system then the existing pipework should be fine, surely?

    You might want new radiators, but radiators are cheap & modern high surface area rads are hardly any larger than the kind of radiators that are often already in place.

    And you underestimeate the major advances that can be made in reducing per-unit cost as manufacturing scales up. Just because a technology is mature doesn’t mean costs cannot be reduced.
    The max temperature that heat pumps kick out is 40 degrees therefore you need significantly more flow to a radiatior to heat it to that temperature and the only way to do this is with bigger pipework and a bigger pump.

    https://omnie.co.uk/heat-pump-pipe-sizing/
  • pingping Posts: 3,724
    TimS said:

    There's one heating technology that always seems to be neglected in discussions about replacing gas: PAJO. Much cheaper to install than GSHP or ASHP, is complementary to insulation and gives an immediate step down in gas usage without an immediate need to replace the old boiler. Can be combined with TDTT environmental management.

    Should at least be part of the mix as we move to net zero.

    PAJO?
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,166
    Phil said:

    Journalists can't do numeracy and ecoloons are loons part 975616516 of an ongoing series.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58959045
    Ministers say the subsidies will make heat pumps a comparable price to a new gas boiler. However, the £450m being allocated for the subsidies over three years will cover a maximum of 90,000 pumps.

    Mike Childs, head of science at Friends of the Earth, said the number of heat pumps that the grants would cover "just isn't very much" and meant the UK would not meet its aim of installing 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028.


    Don't these idiots understand anything about the concept of pump priming? According to the BBC you can get a heat pump currently for about £10,000 including installation and this grant will cut it to £5,000. But that's the prices today with it being bleeding edge technology, not much investment in the sector yet and not many engineers working in the sector yet. Bleeding edge technology is always expensive.

    If this works as pump priming, of which there's no guarantee, then in three years time the cost of a new heat pump and installation could be considerably under the £10,000 average it can be today.

    Maybe in 3 years the typical cost is down to £7,000 and you could have a new 3 year scheme for the same budget covering twice as many homes at a £2,500 grant and the net cost would be even cheaper than today (especially in real terms).

    If we're getting to 2028 to get this sector really moving and 2050 to complete the eradication of gas boilers (no new ones from 2035 then circa 15 years for them to die and be replaced) then 90,000 in the next 3 years is a start and not nothing.

    When will journalists or ecoloons ever learn?

    Are you aware of what is required for a heat pump? Its not just a case of changing a boiler over and putting a pump in its place. Its new pipework throughout a house, new radiators, heat cylinders, control panels etc. An ASHP is not really that cutting edge technology wise so there will not be any major advances coming that will reduce the cost. And when people pickup on the fact that their house will be cold in the winter they will not want one.
    Why would a heat pump require new pipework? If you’re re-using an existing radiator based heating system then the existing pipework should be fine, surely?

    You might want new radiators, but radiators are cheap & modern high surface area rads are hardly any larger than the kind of radiators that are often already in place.

    And you underestimeate the major advances that can be made in reducing per-unit cost as manufacturing scales up. Just because a technology is mature doesn’t mean costs cannot be reduced.
    We Brits like to make everything hard. I've been planning building work on a place in France, and the standard approach there is ASHP. Not considered some kind of cutting edge eco solution, just the norm for new fit-outs. This is in old, stone walled houses. Not that expensive either. Combined with wood burners for the winter, which I accept works less well in a city.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624
    edited October 2021
    Cyclefree said:

    This may be related to her being a cretin.

    "Oh no! A politician has been murdered by a possible Islamic extremist! Quick, ban anonymous posting on the internet!"

    It's not quite the unbeatable classic of US politicians in the wake of schoolkids getting gunned down calling for videogame guns to be banned/regulated while opposing the increased regulation of actual lethal weaponry, but it's not far off.

    This may be related to her being a cretin.

    "Oh no! A politician has been murdered by a possible Islamic extremist! Quick, ban anonymous posting on the internet!"

    It's not quite the unbeatable classic of US politicians in the wake of schoolkids getting gunned down calling for videogame guns to be banned/regulated while opposing the increased regulation of actual lethal weaponry, but it's not far off.

    It seems to me that a number of politicians are, disingenuously, using the understandable emotions around the murder of Sir David Amess to push for the abandonment of anonymity on the internet when this was not the cause of his murder.

    From what we know his murderer seems to have an Islamist radical. Online abuse is another matter. There are already laws against making threats of violence. Censoring the internet - which some politicians would like to do - is not the answer. It is notable also when some papers abused judges and others, the very same politicians who don't like getting abuse were remarkably quiet about this.
    Michael Howard commented that, in his time at the Home Office, whenever there was a big event (terrorism etc), a large pile of proposals would get pulled out. Detention without trial was a hardy favourite, apparently.

    He said that a good Home Sec. would sweep the lot into the bin.

    Interestingly, a similar approach was tried after the Brighton bombing. In the meeting immediately afterwards, a pile of proposals was presented to turn NI into Algeria in 196x.

    Thatcher, with dust from the bomb on her clothes binned the lot. Then authourised the utterly ruthless measures that did for the PIRA in the end.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    FPT

    Any discussion of issues like housing or immigration that doesn't mention demographics and ageing is incomplete at best, misleading at worst. Between 1980 and 2020 the UK population increased by almost 12mn people, or by 21%, to 67.9mn. But over the same period, the population aged 15-64 grew 20%, the population aged under 15 grew 2% and the population aged 65+ grew 51%.
    Think about what this ageing society means for housing: older people in the UK mostly live in their own homes, while children live with their parents. So a society where 21% are children and 15% are elderly (1980) needs less housing than one where 18% are children and 19% are elderly (2020) - even if the population hadn't increased by 12mn.
    Think about what this ageing society means for the labour market: elderly people consume goods and services (and more than children do) but mostly don't work. That means more labour demand, less supply. That means a tight labour market. In the past that excess demand was met by immigration. Apparently that won't happen any more - let's see about that. The pressure to meet this excess demand for labour from abroad will be immense. And in a competitive global economy simply "giving everyone a pay rise" doesn't solve the problem unless it is accompanied by massive investment to raise productivity or delivers an improbably large rise in labour participation.
    Think about what an ageing society means for government spending. Pensions and health are eats up more and more of the budget. Spending on investment (including education) gets squeezed. The burden of taxation on workers keeps on going up. And unlike children, who parents work to support voluntarily, all this taxation on workers is involuntary, breeding resentment and discouraging work. That is why our tax and benefits system abounds with incentive-sapping high marginal tax rates. This is why the elderly now have their own political party, who extracts ever greater resources from workers on the elderly's behalf. And imagine how much greater the burden on each worker would be if we hadn't boosted the number of workers by immigration.
    If you don't understand the demographic pressures underlying all of this, you don't understand anything that's going on in this country, or indeed the developed world more generally.

    You make some interesting points but have missed one key fact. Importing more minimum wage people to do the jobs cheaply is fantastic for the elderly who don't need to buy housing, don't need to work, aren't getting a salary or pay rises and want cheap consumer prices.

    The key thing you and a few others are missing is that if "everyone" gets a pay rise, then its not everyone who gets a pay rise. It is working people who do. Working people get a pay rise, which marginally affects prices, which works essentially as a transfer then from the non-working to the working.

    If the elderly need to pay a decent salary to their carers, or people providing their groceries, or doing their hair, or whatever other services are working to provide for them, then that will reduce not increase the generational divides.

    It will also then require major investment in automation etc so that those workers become more efficient, since they're able to command higher salaries. This isn't just science fiction or crazy economics, its already happened in nations like Japan that has far worse demographics than we do.

    In Japan they're currently facing a situation where children are 12.0% of population and 65+ are 28.8% of population (2020 figures) which is much worse than the 18% and 19% respectively that you quoted.

    We need to be looking at Japan and seeing what we can learn from them on how to handle demographic changes.
    Japan has tripled its number of foreign workers in the last 12 years...
    Tripling a small number equals a small number. I’m sure you wouldn’t deliberately use statistics to mislead so perhaps you can share some absolute figures?
  • Cyclefree said:

    This may be related to her being a cretin.

    "Oh no! A politician has been murdered by a possible Islamic extremist! Quick, ban anonymous posting on the internet!"

    It's not quite the unbeatable classic of US politicians in the wake of schoolkids getting gunned down calling for videogame guns to be banned/regulated while opposing the increased regulation of actual lethal weaponry, but it's not far off.

    This may be related to her being a cretin.

    "Oh no! A politician has been murdered by a possible Islamic extremist! Quick, ban anonymous posting on the internet!"

    It's not quite the unbeatable classic of US politicians in the wake of schoolkids getting gunned down calling for videogame guns to be banned/regulated while opposing the increased regulation of actual lethal weaponry, but it's not far off.

    It seems to me that a number of politicians are, disingenuously, using the understandable emotions around the murder of Sir David Amess to push for the abandonment of anonymity on the internet when this was not the cause of his murder.

    From what we know his murderer seems to have an Islamist radical. Online abuse is another matter. There are already laws against making threats of violence. Censoring the internet - which some politicians would like to do - is not the answer. It is notable also when some papers abused judges and others, the very same politicians who don't like getting abuse were remarkably quiet about this.
    Michael Howard commented that, in his time at the Home Office, whenever there was a big event (terrorism etc), a large pile of proposals would get pulled out. Detention without trial was a hardy favourite, apparently.

    He said that a good Home Sec. would sweep the lot into the bin.

    Interestingly, a similar approach was tried after the Brighton bombing. In the meeting immediately afterwards, a pile of proposals was presented to turn NI into Algeria in 196x.

    Tatcher, with dust from the bomb on her clothes binned the lot. Then authourised the utterly ruthless measures that did for the PIRA in the end.
    Its really telling when Michael "something of the night" Howard stands like a giant over today's succession of Home Secretaries. Its a simple premise - this is Britain. There are things we simply do not do even if a populist crowd demand it.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624
    TimS said:

    Phil said:

    Journalists can't do numeracy and ecoloons are loons part 975616516 of an ongoing series.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58959045
    Ministers say the subsidies will make heat pumps a comparable price to a new gas boiler. However, the £450m being allocated for the subsidies over three years will cover a maximum of 90,000 pumps.

    Mike Childs, head of science at Friends of the Earth, said the number of heat pumps that the grants would cover "just isn't very much" and meant the UK would not meet its aim of installing 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028.


    Don't these idiots understand anything about the concept of pump priming? According to the BBC you can get a heat pump currently for about £10,000 including installation and this grant will cut it to £5,000. But that's the prices today with it being bleeding edge technology, not much investment in the sector yet and not many engineers working in the sector yet. Bleeding edge technology is always expensive.

    If this works as pump priming, of which there's no guarantee, then in three years time the cost of a new heat pump and installation could be considerably under the £10,000 average it can be today.

    Maybe in 3 years the typical cost is down to £7,000 and you could have a new 3 year scheme for the same budget covering twice as many homes at a £2,500 grant and the net cost would be even cheaper than today (especially in real terms).

    If we're getting to 2028 to get this sector really moving and 2050 to complete the eradication of gas boilers (no new ones from 2035 then circa 15 years for them to die and be replaced) then 90,000 in the next 3 years is a start and not nothing.

    When will journalists or ecoloons ever learn?

    Are you aware of what is required for a heat pump? Its not just a case of changing a boiler over and putting a pump in its place. Its new pipework throughout a house, new radiators, heat cylinders, control panels etc. An ASHP is not really that cutting edge technology wise so there will not be any major advances coming that will reduce the cost. And when people pickup on the fact that their house will be cold in the winter they will not want one.
    Why would a heat pump require new pipework? If you’re re-using an existing radiator based heating system then the existing pipework should be fine, surely?

    You might want new radiators, but radiators are cheap & modern high surface area rads are hardly any larger than the kind of radiators that are often already in place.

    And you underestimeate the major advances that can be made in reducing per-unit cost as manufacturing scales up. Just because a technology is mature doesn’t mean costs cannot be reduced.
    We Brits like to make everything hard. I've been planning building work on a place in France, and the standard approach there is ASHP. Not considered some kind of cutting edge eco solution, just the norm for new fit-outs. This is in old, stone walled houses. Not that expensive either. Combined with wood burners for the winter, which I accept works less well in a city.
    It is interesting that adding decent internal insulation and windows is seen as a massive "thing" in the UK, where as it is standard on re-worked properties elsewhere.
  • FishingFishing Posts: 4,555

    Andy_JS said:

    I don't understand why Priti Patel isn't more unpopular.

    Lefties don't like her because she's an enthusiastic authoritarian. Righties don't like her because she's an ineffective authoritarian.
    That ignores the existence of the libertarian right and the authoritarian left.

  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    TimS said:

    There's one heating technology that always seems to be neglected in discussions about replacing gas: PAJO. Much cheaper to install than GSHP or ASHP, is complementary to insulation and gives an immediate step down in gas usage without an immediate need to replace the old boiler. Can be combined with TDTT environmental management.

    Should at least be part of the mix as we move to net zero.

    And what is PAJO?
This discussion has been closed.