I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
His problem there will be that the voters he is trying to con with his phoney concern don't think the low hundreds of thousands is sensible
I doubt it is phoney. I hold a similar view and it is genuine, the numbers are too high recently especially without house building.
And the people who thought the low hundreds of thousands were a problem are the very same people who put someone in charge who brought in close to a million instead, just perhaps their judgment isn't all that good......
That's a nice attempt a smart arse pay off, but I think you should know better than that.
Basically voting for Boris was the only way anyone who wanted what they thought in 2016 would be the straightforward process of voting Leave being recognised. It's to the shame of people like Starmer that they tried so hard to ignore the democratic vote they promised to implement.
The only reason people like Starmer even have power right now because Boris and the ERG wing of the Tories took Leave voters for fools.
I would put it the other way round. The leave voters were fools for believing Boris and the ERG.
At the 2019 GE, Leave voters had a choice between voting Tory, & having their Leave vote implemented, or voting for anyone else and tossing a coin about the referendum result being overturned. So it wasn't a case of being made fools of; Boris did implement the Leave vote, and that's why we voted for him. He didn't do as expected on immigration, but at least we have the ability to do something about it now.
The basic failure in comprehension it takes not to distinguish between the returning the right of the UK Government to set its own immigration policy, and the implementation of a low immigration policy, and why the former is a necessary precursor for, but not a guarantee of, the latter, is quite extraordinary. If I believed that people really didn't understand it (as opposed to irritatingly debating in bad faith), I'd believe I was talking to people who couldn't tie their shoelaces.
Having a lever is utterly worthless if it's apparent the UK Government was never going to use it. And the people who actually wanted Singapore on Thames (the ERG) or just supported Brexit for their own careers (Boris, then eventually Truss and now Jenrick) were never going to use it. The reason the Tories are totally f**ked everyone eventually realised they were a bunch of bullshitting, liars.
But it is now (or will be now) being used. A Government that caused the issue has been chucked out. A Government that gave every impression of failing to get to grips with it has had an electoral shock, and is now playing catch up. That's democracy in action.
The state has made this man a billionaire by paying him to house ‘asylum seekers’, so the money is there to improve conditions for the frail & elderly. A lot of people would be happy to turn the illegal immigrant back half way between us and France and spend the money on our own vulnerable
Britain’s asylum hotel ‘king’ becomes a billionaire
To be honest looking at the details of the apparent immigration policy it all seems rather sensible. I’m curious to understand what Reform would do differently in those areas.
I remember having all day ding-dong on here about a decade ago about why we felt retirement/care homes were only viable if they paid minimum wages to (exploited) foreign staff. It goes back to something verging on communism really - why should the owners of such businesses be so much wealthier than their staff? The excuses put forward were that £x multiplied by x hours meant the business couldn't run if they had to pay staff more, but really we should be asking why the profit margin has to be so big
It's a very fair question. But the bottom line on this is that the more you pay staff and the better the conditions you give them, the higher the cost of supply will be. It is cheaper to make one man extremely wealthy than it is to give hundreds of thousands of people a good salary and a healthy working environment. Basically, if we want great social care we have to be willing to pay for it.
I am sure I say this every time this is debated, but when I was a young child, the hospital next to where we lived was basically a retirement home for gentlefolk. Old people went there to be looked after before they died. This is St Georges Hospital in Hornchurch. We used to take them baskets of food from school. Now it has been knocked down and developed as housing with a Health hub on site. Everything is being knocked down and turned into housing and people say there's not enough of it!
A friend's Dad has just been put in a home as he has dementia - Two grand a week! They can charge that because they basically nick the equity from old people's houses. Something is wrong. Why are diseases that affect the old treated as private healthcare problems? Disgraceful really
Surely the state could do it cheaper than someone who is not much more than a venture capitalist? Don't fund foreign wars, don't buy nuclear missiles. As you said in the past, how can it be that there are people with elaborate tax avoidance schemes, to avoid paying tax on money that they will never spend, and people dying in poverty unable to clean themselves?
That's why it won't change - nicking the equity. Otherwise, you'd have to increase taxes, and those will inevitably fall on people in work.
It's a wealth tax, and the lottery element makes it far more vicious than inheritance tax. A large chunk of my family's wealth has been wiped out by it. There is also a terrible mental health penalty on the person being cared for, as they see their life savings getting wiped out in a arbitrary and personal way. At least a tax is predictable, universal and can be planned around.
The only solution is some sort of compulsory insurance mechanism. In fact, one of my relative invested in a pre-funded home care plan that mitigated some of the damage. No longer available because care costs are uncapped.
The special constable story is a reminder that all this was happening under the Tories. You have to be wary of one off reports in the papers but there are just too many of these cases for it not to be a thing. Why are they doing it? I can only assume it is 'pour encourager les autres.'
That's the Conservatives' fundamental problem. Everything that Labour gets criticised for, the Conservatives were up to their necks in.
And while *a lot* of the problems can be laid at the feet of Boris and his shower of incompetents and crooks, the problems with justice, policing, and defence belong entirely to the Coalition. Limiting child benefits looks like a bad idea, too.
There was no choice but to trim back State spending in 2010, the deficit at nearly 10% of GDP, per annum, was totally unsustainable.
But, one of the first things to go should have been the triple-lock, a higher pensions age, and welfare benefits - and the money spent on Universal Credit simply didn't work. We're all in it together should have mean everyone.
Rather than the Lansley Reforms he'd have been far better in developing a form of social insurance for social care and some health risks, to mitigate the load on the NHS.
And the Overseas Aid budget should never have been deified and boosted like it was. Nor should Corporation Tax been cut so rapidly, with questionable benefit to the public purse.
Here's something I'm sure someone knows, but I'm too lazy to look up.
What was the UKIP/BXP view of the May version of Brexit?
If the aim was to control immigration without the sort of economic hit that would require an immigration bulge to keep GDP up, that was probably optimal.
Johnson, of course, was massively against it. What did Farage say?
For all the criticism she got from the 'true Brexiteers' on here, May had a better understanding of what WWC leavers in Hartlepool and Doncaster wanted from Brexit than JRM, Patel, and Boris ever did.
To be honest looking at the details of the apparent immigration policy it all seems rather sensible. I’m curious to understand what Reform would do differently in those areas.
Probably what Trump is... actively disobey the rule of law and have legal UK residents suddenly appear in some torture dungeon in the third world..
I remember having all day ding-dong on here about a decade ago about why we felt retirement/care homes were only viable if they paid minimum wages to (exploited) foreign staff. It goes back to something verging on communism really - why should the owners of such businesses be so much wealthier than their staff? The excuses put forward were that £x multiplied by x hours meant the business couldn't run if they had to pay staff more, but really we should be asking why the profit margin has to be so big
It's a very fair question. But the bottom line on this is that the more you pay staff and the better the conditions you give them, the higher the cost of supply will be. It is cheaper to make one man extremely wealthy than it is to give hundreds of thousands of people a good salary and a healthy working environment. Basically, if we want great social care we have to be willing to pay for it.
I am sure I say this every time this is debated, but when I was a young child, the hospital next to where we lived was basically a retirement home for gentlefolk. Old people went there to be looked after before they died. This is St Georges Hospital in Hornchurch. We used to take them baskets of food from school. Now it has been knocked down and developed as housing with a Health hub on site. Everything is being knocked down and turned into housing and people say there's not enough of it!
A friend's Dad has just been put in a home as he has dementia - Two grand a week! They can charge that because they basically nick the equity from old people's houses. Something is wrong. Why are diseases that affect the old treated as private healthcare problems? Disgraceful really
Surely the state could do it cheaper than someone who is not much more than a venture capitalist? Don't fund foreign wars, don't buy nuclear missiles. As you said in the past, how can it be that there are people with elaborate tax avoidance schemes, to avoid paying tax on money that they will never spend, and people dying in poverty unable to clean themselves?
That's why it won't change - nicking the equity. Otherwise, you'd have to increase taxes, and those will inevitably fall on people in work.
It's a wealth tax, and the lottery element makes it far more vicious than inheritance tax. A large chunk of my family's wealth has been wiped out by it. There is also a terrible mental health penalty on the person being cared for, as they see their life savings getting wiped out in a arbitrary and personal way. At least a tax is predictable, universal and can be planned around.
The only solution is some sort of compulsory insurance mechanism. In fact, one of my relative invested in a pre-funded home care plan that mitigated some of the damage. No longer available because care costs are uncapped.
Social care insurance seems to me to be entirely logical.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
I think most (if not all) people would prefer sensible migration.
One thing that strikes me is that it seems to be an accepted fact that migrants are good for the economy. I've been reading some of the articles which say this, and I'm not entirely convinced. Plus we have our actual economic history, which doesn't seem to have seen much of a boost - indeed GDP per capita isn't rosy at all. I wonder if the arguments require a closer look? (For example I can imagine that a medium skilled immigrant might displace a medium skilled local, who then goes on to be rather forced into a lower level job, which thus displaces someone else into the unemployed - and they are the really expensive ones for the state.) I'm far from being confident of my arguments here, but I do rather suspect the strong accepted conclusions.
It seems that the government have discovered that the economic basis for mass immigration was flawed all along. The millions of people negatively affected by it for the last 25 years, that were ignored, belittled, called racist and xenophobic by the likes of Gordon Brown, Jonathan Portes, David Cameron etc were right.
Who would have thought it? It was only their lives that were being ruined, how would they know?
That's a narrative which makes no differentiation between net migration of (for example) 160k p/a and 750k p/a. Which is clearly bullshit.
There's a good case to be made for limiting migration to manageable levels - and a serious debate about what that number might be.
Your account isn't that - it's just "immigration is unacceptable".
Skilled inward migration is not only acceptable but desirable. Unskilled mass inward migration of cheap labour with a large amount of economically inactive dependents living off the state isn’t. However criticise that, and as Isam says, these people (as well as the PB happy clappy mass inward migration is cool brigade) label you as ‘racist’ to really shut down debate.
One of the reasons I've tended not to get involved in PB immigration spats over the years.
What gets very little discussion is the two biggest drivers of mass migration into Europe over the last two decades - Bush's 'war on terror', and the Russian sponsored devastation of Syria.
The numbers don’t really support that. Indians and Nigerians weren’t driven to Europe by Bush’s ‘war on terror’.
Numbers 'into Europe' is what Nigelb said.
For example, the 2 biggest sources of foreign-born residents of Germany (the European country with the most foreign-born residents) outside Europe are Syria and Afghanistan.
Germany.
So what. Migration into Germany doesn’t directly impact migration into the U.K.
I remember having all day ding-dong on here about a decade ago about why we felt retirement/care homes were only viable if they paid minimum wages to (exploited) foreign staff. It goes back to something verging on communism really - why should the owners of such businesses be so much wealthier than their staff? The excuses put forward were that £x multiplied by x hours meant the business couldn't run if they had to pay staff more, but really we should be asking why the profit margin has to be so big
It's a very fair question. But the bottom line on this is that the more you pay staff and the better the conditions you give them, the higher the cost of supply will be. It is cheaper to make one man extremely wealthy than it is to give hundreds of thousands of people a good salary and a healthy working environment. Basically, if we want great social care we have to be willing to pay for it.
I am sure I say this every time this is debated, but when I was a young child, the hospital next to where we lived was basically a retirement home for gentlefolk. Old people went there to be looked after before they died. This is St Georges Hospital in Hornchurch. We used to take them baskets of food from school. Now it has been knocked down and developed as housing with a Health hub on site. Everything is being knocked down and turned into housing and people say there's not enough of it!
A friend's Dad has just been put in a home as he has dementia - Two grand a week! They can charge that because they basically nick the equity from old people's houses. Something is wrong. Why are diseases that affect the old treated as private healthcare problems? Disgraceful really
Surely the state could do it cheaper than someone who is not much more than a venture capitalist? Don't fund foreign wars, don't buy nuclear missiles. As you said in the past, how can it be that there are people with elaborate tax avoidance schemes, to avoid paying tax on money that they will never spend, and people dying in poverty unable to clean themselves?
That's why it won't change - nicking the equity. Otherwise, you'd have to increase taxes, and those will inevitably fall on people in work.
It's a wealth tax, and the lottery element makes it far more vicious than inheritance tax. A large chunk of my family's wealth has been wiped out by it. There is also a terrible mental health penalty on the person being cared for, as they see their life savings getting wiped out in a arbitrary and personal way. At least a tax is predictable, universal and can be planned around.
The only solution is some sort of compulsory insurance mechanism. In fact, one of my relative invested in a pre-funded home care plan that mitigated some of the damage. No longer available because care costs are uncapped.
Social care insurance seems to me to be entirely logical.
It does. As does a tax on estates to pay for it. But no party will grasp the nettle and do it. Problem is you will never get cross party consensus as opposition parties will always game to their advantage.
I think I’m getting immune from salmonella and campylob, I haven’t been sick for ages, apart from the scabs on my hands and arms. My friend Snooky says, why don’t I make money from letting the public come and cuddle the lambs and sheep? Because they are not pets is why, they ain’t keen on being petted and are covered in shit and diseases they will infect you with. She’s in the Green Party. Good luck with their world view and grip on reality 🤷♀️
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
His problem there will be that the voters he is trying to con with his phoney concern don't think the low hundreds of thousands is sensible
I doubt it is phoney. I hold a similar view and it is genuine, the numbers are too high recently especially without house building.
And the people who thought the low hundreds of thousands were a problem are the very same people who put someone in charge who brought in close to a million instead, just perhaps their judgment isn't all that good......
That's a nice attempt a smart arse pay off, but I think you should know better than that.
Basically voting for Boris was the only way anyone who wanted what they thought in 2016 would be the straightforward process of voting Leave being recognised. It's to the shame of people like Starmer that they tried so hard to ignore the democratic vote they promised to implement.
The only reason people like Starmer even have power right now because Boris and the ERG wing of the Tories took Leave voters for fools.
I would put it the other way round. The leave voters were fools for believing Boris and the ERG.
At the 2019 GE, Leave voters had a choice between voting Tory, & having their Leave vote implemented, or voting for anyone else and tossing a coin about the referendum result being overturned. So it wasn't a case of being made fools of; Boris did implement the Leave vote, and that's why we voted for him. He didn't do as expected on immigration, but at least we have the ability to do something about it now.
The basic failure in comprehension it takes not to distinguish between the returning the right of the UK Government to set its own immigration policy, and the implementation of a low immigration policy, and why the former is a necessary precursor for, but not a guarantee of, the latter, is quite extraordinary. If I believed that people really didn't understand it (as opposed to irritatingly debating in bad faith), I'd believe I was talking to people who couldn't tie their shoelaces.
Having a lever is utterly worthless if it's apparent the UK Government was never going to use it. And the people who actually wanted Singapore on Thames (the ERG) or just supported Brexit for their own careers (Boris, then eventually Truss and now Jenrick) were never going to use it. The reason the Tories are totally f**ked everyone eventually realised they were a bunch of bullshitting, liars.
But it is now (or will be now) being used. A Government that caused the issue has been chucked out. A Government that gave every impression of failing to get to grips with it has had an electoral shock, and is now playing catch up. That's democracy in action.
Considering where most of the Boriswave came from, we don't need to end FOM to stop them from coming in.
I remember having all day ding-dong on here about a decade ago about why we felt retirement/care homes were only viable if they paid minimum wages to (exploited) foreign staff. It goes back to something verging on communism really - why should the owners of such businesses be so much wealthier than their staff? The excuses put forward were that £x multiplied by x hours meant the business couldn't run if they had to pay staff more, but really we should be asking why the profit margin has to be so big
It's a very fair question. But the bottom line on this is that the more you pay staff and the better the conditions you give them, the higher the cost of supply will be. It is cheaper to make one man extremely wealthy than it is to give hundreds of thousands of people a good salary and a healthy working environment. Basically, if we want great social care we have to be willing to pay for it.
I am sure I say this every time this is debated, but when I was a young child, the hospital next to where we lived was basically a retirement home for gentlefolk. Old people went there to be looked after before they died. This is St Georges Hospital in Hornchurch. We used to take them baskets of food from school. Now it has been knocked down and developed as housing with a Health hub on site. Everything is being knocked down and turned into housing and people say there's not enough of it!
A friend's Dad has just been put in a home as he has dementia - Two grand a week! They can charge that because they basically nick the equity from old people's houses. Something is wrong. Why are diseases that affect the old treated as private healthcare problems? Disgraceful really
Surely the state could do it cheaper than someone who is not much more than a venture capitalist? Don't fund foreign wars, don't buy nuclear missiles. As you said in the past, how can it be that there are people with elaborate tax avoidance schemes, to avoid paying tax on money that they will never spend, and people dying in poverty unable to clean themselves?
That's why it won't change - nicking the equity. Otherwise, you'd have to increase taxes, and those will inevitably fall on people in work.
It's a wealth tax, and the lottery element makes it far more vicious than inheritance tax. A large chunk of my family's wealth has been wiped out by it. There is also a terrible mental health penalty on the person being cared for, as they see their life savings getting wiped out in a arbitrary and personal way. At least a tax is predictable, universal and can be planned around.
The only solution is some sort of compulsory insurance mechanism. In fact, one of my relative invested in a pre-funded home care plan that mitigated some of the damage. No longer available because care costs are uncapped.
Social care insurance seems to me to be entirely logical.
It does. As does a tax on estates to pay for it. But no party will grasp the nettle and do it. Problem is you will never get cross party consensus as opposition parties will always game to their advantage.
It was closed to cross-party under Brown I thought then Cameron pulled back. The other problem is that most think it won't be them, until it is
the thing is he is going to increase temporary workers hugely, which dont count for net migration figures. Net migration numbers will go down (how can they not?) But there will be a surge in temporary workers thanks to the deal with India and likely the one with the EU
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
I think most (if not all) people would prefer sensible migration.
One thing that strikes me is that it seems to be an accepted fact that migrants are good for the economy. I've been reading some of the articles which say this, and I'm not entirely convinced. Plus we have our actual economic history, which doesn't seem to have seen much of a boost - indeed GDP per capita isn't rosy at all. I wonder if the arguments require a closer look? (For example I can imagine that a medium skilled immigrant might displace a medium skilled local, who then goes on to be rather forced into a lower level job, which thus displaces someone else into the unemployed - and they are the really expensive ones for the state.) I'm far from being confident of my arguments here, but I do rather suspect the strong accepted conclusions.
It seems that the government have discovered that the economic basis for mass immigration was flawed all along. The millions of people negatively affected by it for the last 25 years, that were ignored, belittled, called racist and xenophobic by the likes of Gordon Brown, Jonathan Portes, David Cameron etc were right.
Who would have thought it? It was only their lives that were being ruined, how would they know?
That's a narrative which makes no differentiation between net migration of (for example) 160k p/a and 750k p/a. Which is clearly bullshit.
There's a good case to be made for limiting migration to manageable levels - and a serious debate about what that number might be.
Your account isn't that - it's just "immigration is unacceptable".
Skilled inward migration is not only acceptable but desirable. Unskilled mass inward migration of cheap labour with a large amount of economically inactive dependents living off the state isn’t. However criticise that, and as Isam says, these people (as well as the PB happy clappy mass inward migration is cool brigade) label you as ‘racist’ to really shut down debate.
One of the reasons I've tended not to get involved in PB immigration spats over the years.
What gets very little discussion is the two biggest drivers of mass migration into Europe over the last two decades - Bush's 'war on terror', and the Russian sponsored devastation of Syria.
The numbers don’t really support that. Indians and Nigerians weren’t driven to Europe by Bush’s ‘war on terror’.
Numbers 'into Europe' is what Nigelb said.
For example, the 2 biggest sources of foreign-born residents of Germany (the European country with the most foreign-born residents) outside Europe are Syria and Afghanistan.
Germany.
So what. Migration into Germany doesn’t directly impact migration into the U.K.
What matters is migration into the U.K.
So what?
Nigelb's comment talked about 'migration into Europe'
Or do you think that people should only post about things that directly impact the UK?
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
I think most (if not all) people would prefer sensible migration.
One thing that strikes me is that it seems to be an accepted fact that migrants are good for the economy. I've been reading some of the articles which say this, and I'm not entirely convinced. Plus we have our actual economic history, which doesn't seem to have seen much of a boost - indeed GDP per capita isn't rosy at all. I wonder if the arguments require a closer look? (For example I can imagine that a medium skilled immigrant might displace a medium skilled local, who then goes on to be rather forced into a lower level job, which thus displaces someone else into the unemployed - and they are the really expensive ones for the state.) I'm far from being confident of my arguments here, but I do rather suspect the strong accepted conclusions.
GDP per capita is tricky because a working immigrant is almost always going to increase that, unless they bring in more dependents than our current working:non-working ratio.
Not if they're working for minimum wage, unskilled. That means they are devaluing our GDP per capita, especially if that displaces investment in automation that would boost it.
And people don't just need to bring dependents with them, they create them too. People who come without dependents then have kids will need the NHS for maternity services then education etc - all while accruing their own future pension liabilities that should be accounted for too and not ignored. The idea we can just ignore all dependencies and liabilities is utterly absurd.
Back from holiday (or "holibobs" as they are now termed in modern English apparently).
A lot has happened in the last fortnight it would seem and it just keeps on happening.
Looking through the entrails of other people's elections, in Canada, Carney's Liberals have ended with 170 seats, the Conservatives have 143, Bloc Quebecois 22, NDP 7 and a single Green.
Just to note judicial recounts are outstanding in three ridings - we've already seen a Liberal pick up from BQ by a single vote in Terrebonne (the original count had BQ ahead by 44). The Liberals lead in two of the three remaining ridings to be recounted by 12 and 29 votes repectively and the Conservatives lead in the third by 65.
In the key battle ground of Ontario, the Liberals won 70 seats (down eight) and the Conservatives 52 (up fifteen) so Poilievre did what he needed to do there. In Quebec, the Liberals gained nine seats, BQ lost eleven and the Conservatives gained just one.
In British Columbia, the Liberals gained five and the Conservatives six from the NDP collapse. There wasn't much movement in either the Conservative dominated Prairies or the Liberal dominated Atlantic States where expected Conservative gains simply didn't materialise.
Australia saw a crushing win for Labor with Anthony Albanese returned with a clear majority. A 2.5 swing to Labor in the 2pp vote saw Labor won 54.7% to the LNP Coalition's 45.3%.
Labor has so far won 92 seats, by far their best result ever eclipsing the 86 won by Bob Hawke in his third election win. As for the LNP, it's the worst result ever with just 40 seats so far. Eight seats remain yet to declare with Labor ahead in two and the LNP ahead in four. The Greens, whose leader lost his seat, might yet keep a single seat while ten were won by various Independents.
The hoped for Liberal surge in Victoria never materialised while the LNP lost five seats in their Queensland heartland and were driven off Tasmania while they won just six seats in New South Wales.
One Government not much bothered by the perils of incumbency was the People's Action Party in Singapore who won 87 of 97 seats in their general election polling 65.6% of the vote to win their fourteenth successive mandate.
I have no issue if the university and care home sector have to fundamentally restructure themselves due to the demise of cheap immigrant labour/funding.
We are on course for spending up to £100 billion on welfare for 9 million British adults of working age by the end of this Parliament.
I reckon they could maybe try, oh I don't know, doing some actual work.
You might be surprised that largely I agree with you - the welfare system institutionalises a large number of people.
The big issue though as far as I can see it is: you would not employ a lot of these people, I would not employ them; they are unemployable.
We have to find away to solve this though.
I'm not prepared to simply write off 9 million people and accept they are unemployable, and that we owe them a living.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
I think most (if not all) people would prefer sensible migration.
One thing that strikes me is that it seems to be an accepted fact that migrants are good for the economy. I've been reading some of the articles which say this, and I'm not entirely convinced. Plus we have our actual economic history, which doesn't seem to have seen much of a boost - indeed GDP per capita isn't rosy at all. I wonder if the arguments require a closer look? (For example I can imagine that a medium skilled immigrant might displace a medium skilled local, who then goes on to be rather forced into a lower level job, which thus displaces someone else into the unemployed - and they are the really expensive ones for the state.) I'm far from being confident of my arguments here, but I do rather suspect the strong accepted conclusions.
It seems that the government have discovered that the economic basis for mass immigration was flawed all along. The millions of people negatively affected by it for the last 25 years, that were ignored, belittled, called racist and xenophobic by the likes of Gordon Brown, Jonathan Portes, David Cameron etc were right.
Who would have thought it? It was only their lives that were being ruined, how would they know?
That's a narrative which makes no differentiation between net migration of (for example) 160k p/a and 750k p/a. Which is clearly bullshit.
There's a good case to be made for limiting migration to manageable levels - and a serious debate about what that number might be.
Your account isn't that - it's just "immigration is unacceptable".
Skilled inward migration is not only acceptable but desirable. Unskilled mass inward migration of cheap labour with a large amount of economically inactive dependents living off the state isn’t. However criticise that, and as Isam says, these people (as well as the PB happy clappy mass inward migration is cool brigade) label you as ‘racist’ to really shut down debate.
One of the reasons I've tended not to get involved in PB immigration spats over the years.
What gets very little discussion is the two biggest drivers of mass migration into Europe over the last two decades - Bush's 'war on terror', and the Russian sponsored devastation of Syria.
The numbers don’t really support that. Indians and Nigerians weren’t driven to Europe by Bush’s ‘war on terror’.
Numbers 'into Europe' is what Nigelb said.
For example, the 2 biggest sources of foreign-born residents of Germany (the European country with the most foreign-born residents) outside Europe are Syria and Afghanistan.
Germany.
So what. Migration into Germany doesn’t directly impact migration into the U.K.
What matters is migration into the U.K.
So what?
Nigelb's comment talked about 'migration into Europe'
Or do you think that people should only post about things that directly impact the UK?
Migration to Europe is irrelevant to migration to the UK. We are discussing migration to the uk. I’m well aware of what Nigel’s comment was. It was made in a reply to me 😂😂😂😂
It's an absolute disgrace, Labour trying to win back voters that they have lost to Reform. How dare they!
For the record, there's lots of us on the left who think:
a) legal migration has been far too high over the last 5 years, and b) the asylum system is a shambles, and it's ludicrous that asylum seekers have to be housed in hotels and other unsuitable accommodation - it needs sorting.
Maybe, but let’s not pretend the general language of the left in the past decade or so has in any way majored on this - often the opposite. There is a reason why people don’t feel Labour are in tune with their concerns on this. Now they may be able to recover some good standing, but they start from a position of distrust, and the jury is still out.
More than a decade. There was a view on the Left that immigation was to "rub the Right's nose in diversity." Andrew Neather in 2000:
"I wrote the landmark speech given by then immigration minister Barbara Roche in September 2000, calling for a loosening of controls... That speech was based largely on a report by the Performance and Innovation Unit", continued Neather. "The PIU's reports were legendarily tedious within Whitehall but their big immigration report was surrounded by an unusual air of both anticipation and secrecy... Eventually published in January 2001, [it] focused heavily on the labour market case."
"But the earlier drafts I saw also included a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural", he went on to write. "I remember coming away from some discussions with the clear sense that the policy was intended - even if this wasn't its main purpose - to rub the Right's nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date. That seemed to me to be a manoeuvre too far. Ministers were very nervous about the whole thing."
Often quoted but what is the actual underlying source? One bloke who develops a "clear sense" based on "some discussions" despite it not being "its main purpose" but then concedes ministers were "very nervous about the whole thing".
The underlying source is a former Labour advisor and former speech-writer for Tony Blair.
So just some random...
No, who are the people who wanted to rub the right's nose in it, if not Number 10 (ie him) or ministers?
I remember having all day ding-dong on here about a decade ago about why we felt retirement/care homes were only viable if they paid minimum wages to (exploited) foreign staff. It goes back to something verging on communism really - why should the owners of such businesses be so much wealthier than their staff? The excuses put forward were that £x multiplied by x hours meant the business couldn't run if they had to pay staff more, but really we should be asking why the profit margin has to be so big
It's a very fair question. But the bottom line on this is that the more you pay staff and the better the conditions you give them, the higher the cost of supply will be. It is cheaper to make one man extremely wealthy than it is to give hundreds of thousands of people a good salary and a healthy working environment. Basically, if we want great social care we have to be willing to pay for it.
I am sure I say this every time this is debated, but when I was a young child, the hospital next to where we lived was basically a retirement home for gentlefolk. Old people went there to be looked after before they died. This is St Georges Hospital in Hornchurch. We used to take them baskets of food from school. Now it has been knocked down and developed as housing with a Health hub on site. Everything is being knocked down and turned into housing and people say there's not enough of it!
A friend's Dad has just been put in a home as he has dementia - Two grand a week! They can charge that because they basically nick the equity from old people's houses. Something is wrong. Why are diseases that affect the old treated as private healthcare problems? Disgraceful really
Surely the state could do it cheaper than someone who is not much more than a venture capitalist? Don't fund foreign wars, don't buy nuclear missiles. As you said in the past, how can it be that there are people with elaborate tax avoidance schemes, to avoid paying tax on money that they will never spend, and people dying in poverty unable to clean themselves?
That's why it won't change - nicking the equity. Otherwise, you'd have to increase taxes, and those will inevitably fall on people in work.
It's a wealth tax, and the lottery element makes it far more vicious than inheritance tax. A large chunk of my family's wealth has been wiped out by it. There is also a terrible mental health penalty on the person being cared for, as they see their life savings getting wiped out in a arbitrary and personal way. At least a tax is predictable, universal and can be planned around.
The only solution is some sort of compulsory insurance mechanism. In fact, one of my relative invested in a pre-funded home care plan that mitigated some of the damage. No longer available because care costs are uncapped.
Social care insurance seems to me to be entirely logical.
It does. As does a tax on estates to pay for it. But no party will grasp the nettle and do it. Problem is you will never get cross party consensus as opposition parties will always game to their advantage.
It was closed to cross-party under Brown I thought then Cameron pulled back. The other problem is that most think it won't be them, until it is
Yup, and labour kick the can down the road too.
But there will come a time when someone has to bite the bullet.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
I think most (if not all) people would prefer sensible migration.
One thing that strikes me is that it seems to be an accepted fact that migrants are good for the economy. I've been reading some of the articles which say this, and I'm not entirely convinced. Plus we have our actual economic history, which doesn't seem to have seen much of a boost - indeed GDP per capita isn't rosy at all. I wonder if the arguments require a closer look? (For example I can imagine that a medium skilled immigrant might displace a medium skilled local, who then goes on to be rather forced into a lower level job, which thus displaces someone else into the unemployed - and they are the really expensive ones for the state.) I'm far from being confident of my arguments here, but I do rather suspect the strong accepted conclusions.
It seems that the government have discovered that the economic basis for mass immigration was flawed all along. The millions of people negatively affected by it for the last 25 years, that were ignored, belittled, called racist and xenophobic by the likes of Gordon Brown, Jonathan Portes, David Cameron etc were right.
Who would have thought it? It was only their lives that were being ruined, how would they know?
That's a narrative which makes no differentiation between net migration of (for example) 160k p/a and 750k p/a. Which is clearly bullshit.
There's a good case to be made for limiting migration to manageable levels - and a serious debate about what that number might be.
Your account isn't that - it's just "immigration is unacceptable".
Skilled inward migration is not only acceptable but desirable. Unskilled mass inward migration of cheap labour with a large amount of economically inactive dependents living off the state isn’t. However criticise that, and as Isam says, these people (as well as the PB happy clappy mass inward migration is cool brigade) label you as ‘racist’ to really shut down debate.
One of the reasons I've tended not to get involved in PB immigration spats over the years.
What gets very little discussion is the two biggest drivers of mass migration into Europe over the last two decades - Bush's 'war on terror', and the Russian sponsored devastation of Syria.
The numbers don’t really support that. Indians and Nigerians weren’t driven to Europe by Bush’s ‘war on terror’.
Numbers 'into Europe' is what Nigelb said.
For example, the 2 biggest sources of foreign-born residents of Germany (the European country with the most foreign-born residents) outside Europe are Syria and Afghanistan.
Germany.
So what. Migration into Germany doesn’t directly impact migration into the U.K.
What matters is migration into the U.K.
So what?
Nigelb's comment talked about 'migration into Europe'
Or do you think that people should only post about things that directly impact the UK?
Migration to Europe is irrelevant to migration to the UK.
That’s my point. Take it or leave it.
You asked me so what, so I answered your query. You absolute spacker.
This is fantasy economics. Tens of billions in unfunded pledges. Anyone can promise giveaways, but responsible government means not making commitments you can’t keep.
Mail on Sunday not having Sir Keir’s pretend concern about the effects of the mass immigration he & Labour supported but are trying to disown
Labour have tried to face both ways on this for some time now. But in a new White Paper they plan to embrace a ‘crackdown’ ostensibly intended to deport immigrants who commit any crime, and to somehow overcome the ‘Human Rights’ provisions which make deportation so hard and which Labour themselves wrote into British law.
We are also promised less complacency about the questionable economic benefits of mass immigration, which is seriously straining our health, welfare and school systems.
These moves are designed to create helpful headlines. But should we take any of it seriously?
While they thought they were safe from voter anger, Labour energetically pursued an open borders policy.
Now they are scared of electoral oblivion, they try to ape Nigel Farage. How they used to jeer and sneer at those who warned that their policy was foolish and unrealistic, such as the fact-based campaigning body Migration Watch.
Anyone who suggested that the levels of migration were impractically high was dismissed as some sort of bigot.
Well, now Home Office experts are admitting what Migration Watch said many years ago, that net migration has reached such levels that it is the equivalent of adding a city the size of Edinburgh to the population of the UK each year. Who are the bigots now?
As I posted on the previous thread. Thanks to the Boriswave and ILR after Five years, we have a ticking time bomb that will cost up to 234 Billion GDP of low wage workers with economically inactive dependents.
This is something Starmer needs to do something about. He won’t as he, and his party, are fundamentally wedded to it.
For this reason alone the Tories should have a long and tormented road back to power.
Supposedly they are increasing ILR to 10 years and I assume they will raise the bar on those visa renewals which means most won't qualify and will have to return to their home country. They need to act fast though as clock is ticking.
I suspect they will just talk tough, a few small tinkers, wait for fuss to die down then just grant these people,and their economically inactive dependents ILR and go back to telling anyone concerned at the fiscal burden they are all racists. That’s the usual playbook
I'm not so sure, Reform will absolutely crucify then in 2029 if they do nothing.
Doesn’t the polling show they lose more votes to the greens and Lib Dems than reform ?
Considerably more.
Indeed there are some in labour who think they need to go left. Of course that was not a winner in 2019 but who knows in 2029
Given the distribution of votes, going left does not help Labour. There are Green votes left in Red Wall seats, but few Lib Dem votes (they’re battling the Conservatives). But there are 89 Labour held seats where Reform are second, most of which have a sizeable Tory vote left to squeeze. That, plus a swing of 8%, from left to right, since 2024, is where Labour’s problem lies.
Once Reform reaches 25%+, its vote is more efficient than Labour’s.
To continue, if you put a 2017/Canada type result into Electoral Calculus, Reform finish 26 seats ahead of Labour, even when 2% behind.
indeed. Labour's problem isn't that they will lose votes to REFORM necessarily but that the geography is terrible for them vs REFORM.
I remember having all day ding-dong on here about a decade ago about why we felt retirement/care homes were only viable if they paid minimum wages to (exploited) foreign staff. It goes back to something verging on communism really - why should the owners of such businesses be so much wealthier than their staff? The excuses put forward were that £x multiplied by x hours meant the business couldn't run if they had to pay staff more, but really we should be asking why the profit margin has to be so big
It's a very fair question. But the bottom line on this is that the more you pay staff and the better the conditions you give them, the higher the cost of supply will be. It is cheaper to make one man extremely wealthy than it is to give hundreds of thousands of people a good salary and a healthy working environment. Basically, if we want great social care we have to be willing to pay for it.
I am sure I say this every time this is debated, but when I was a young child, the hospital next to where we lived was basically a retirement home for gentlefolk. Old people went there to be looked after before they died. This is St Georges Hospital in Hornchurch. We used to take them baskets of food from school. Now it has been knocked down and developed as housing with a Health hub on site. Everything is being knocked down and turned into housing and people say there's not enough of it!
A friend's Dad has just been put in a home as he has dementia - Two grand a week! They can charge that because they basically nick the equity from old people's houses. Something is wrong. Why are diseases that affect the old treated as private healthcare problems? Disgraceful really
Surely the state could do it cheaper than someone who is not much more than a venture capitalist? Don't fund foreign wars, don't buy nuclear missiles. As you said in the past, how can it be that there are people with elaborate tax avoidance schemes, to avoid paying tax on money that they will never spend, and people dying in poverty unable to clean themselves?
That's why it won't change - nicking the equity. Otherwise, you'd have to increase taxes, and those will inevitably fall on people in work.
It's a wealth tax, and the lottery element makes it far more vicious than inheritance tax. A large chunk of my family's wealth has been wiped out by it. There is also a terrible mental health penalty on the person being cared for, as they see their life savings getting wiped out in a arbitrary and personal way. At least a tax is predictable, universal and can be planned around.
The only solution is some sort of compulsory insurance mechanism. In fact, one of my relative invested in a pre-funded home care plan that mitigated some of the damage. No longer available because care costs are uncapped.
What proportion of that wealth that had been wiped out came from post-tax income that had been set aside?
And what proportion came from unearned increases in house prices to earnings multiples?
People bemoan the fact that the equity in an old person's home is going to fund their own care, rather than an inheritance, but typically the bulk of that equity was never earned in the first place so easy come, easy go.
The country would be in a much healthier place if people were not expecting equity windfalls from inheritances from unearned house price rises - maybe then we could have a saner market and not have NIMBYs trying to inflate their equity value.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
I think most (if not all) people would prefer sensible migration.
One thing that strikes me is that it seems to be an accepted fact that migrants are good for the economy. I've been reading some of the articles which say this, and I'm not entirely convinced. Plus we have our actual economic history, which doesn't seem to have seen much of a boost - indeed GDP per capita isn't rosy at all. I wonder if the arguments require a closer look? (For example I can imagine that a medium skilled immigrant might displace a medium skilled local, who then goes on to be rather forced into a lower level job, which thus displaces someone else into the unemployed - and they are the really expensive ones for the state.) I'm far from being confident of my arguments here, but I do rather suspect the strong accepted conclusions.
It seems that the government have discovered that the economic basis for mass immigration was flawed all along. The millions of people negatively affected by it for the last 25 years, that were ignored, belittled, called racist and xenophobic by the likes of Gordon Brown, Jonathan Portes, David Cameron etc were right.
Who would have thought it? It was only their lives that were being ruined, how would they know?
That's a narrative which makes no differentiation between net migration of (for example) 160k p/a and 750k p/a. Which is clearly bullshit.
There's a good case to be made for limiting migration to manageable levels - and a serious debate about what that number might be.
Your account isn't that - it's just "immigration is unacceptable".
Skilled inward migration is not only acceptable but desirable. Unskilled mass inward migration of cheap labour with a large amount of economically inactive dependents living off the state isn’t. However criticise that, and as Isam says, these people (as well as the PB happy clappy mass inward migration is cool brigade) label you as ‘racist’ to really shut down debate.
One of the reasons I've tended not to get involved in PB immigration spats over the years.
What gets very little discussion is the two biggest drivers of mass migration into Europe over the last two decades - Bush's 'war on terror', and the Russian sponsored devastation of Syria.
The numbers don’t really support that. Indians and Nigerians weren’t driven to Europe by Bush’s ‘war on terror’.
Numbers 'into Europe' is what Nigelb said.
For example, the 2 biggest sources of foreign-born residents of Germany (the European country with the most foreign-born residents) outside Europe are Syria and Afghanistan.
Germany.
So what. Migration into Germany doesn’t directly impact migration into the U.K.
What matters is migration into the U.K.
So what?
Nigelb's comment talked about 'migration into Europe'
Or do you think that people should only post about things that directly impact the UK?
Migration to Europe is irrelevant to migration to the UK.
That’s my point. Take it or leave it.
You asked me so what, so I answered your query. You absolute spacker.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
I think most (if not all) people would prefer sensible migration.
One thing that strikes me is that it seems to be an accepted fact that migrants are good for the economy. I've been reading some of the articles which say this, and I'm not entirely convinced. Plus we have our actual economic history, which doesn't seem to have seen much of a boost - indeed GDP per capita isn't rosy at all. I wonder if the arguments require a closer look? (For example I can imagine that a medium skilled immigrant might displace a medium skilled local, who then goes on to be rather forced into a lower level job, which thus displaces someone else into the unemployed - and they are the really expensive ones for the state.) I'm far from being confident of my arguments here, but I do rather suspect the strong accepted conclusions.
It seems that the government have discovered that the economic basis for mass immigration was flawed all along. The millions of people negatively affected by it for the last 25 years, that were ignored, belittled, called racist and xenophobic by the likes of Gordon Brown, Jonathan Portes, David Cameron etc were right.
Who would have thought it? It was only their lives that were being ruined, how would they know?
That's a narrative which makes no differentiation between net migration of (for example) 160k p/a and 750k p/a. Which is clearly bullshit.
There's a good case to be made for limiting migration to manageable levels - and a serious debate about what that number might be.
Your account isn't that - it's just "immigration is unacceptable".
Skilled inward migration is not only acceptable but desirable. Unskilled mass inward migration of cheap labour with a large amount of economically inactive dependents living off the state isn’t. However criticise that, and as Isam says, these people (as well as the PB happy clappy mass inward migration is cool brigade) label you as ‘racist’ to really shut down debate.
One of the reasons I've tended not to get involved in PB immigration spats over the years.
What gets very little discussion is the two biggest drivers of mass migration into Europe over the last two decades - Bush's 'war on terror', and the Russian sponsored devastation of Syria.
The numbers don’t really support that. Indians and Nigerians weren’t driven to Europe by Bush’s ‘war on terror’.
Numbers 'into Europe' is what Nigelb said.
For example, the 2 biggest sources of foreign-born residents of Germany (the European country with the most foreign-born residents) outside Europe are Syria and Afghanistan.
Germany.
So what. Migration into Germany doesn’t directly impact migration into the U.K.
What matters is migration into the U.K.
So what?
Nigelb's comment talked about 'migration into Europe'
Or do you think that people should only post about things that directly impact the UK?
Migration to Europe is irrelevant to migration to the UK.
That’s my point. Take it or leave it.
You asked me so what, so I answered your query. You absolute spacker.
Ich spacke Du spackst Er spackt Wir spacken Ihr spackt Sie spacken
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
I think most (if not all) people would prefer sensible migration.
One thing that strikes me is that it seems to be an accepted fact that migrants are good for the economy. I've been reading some of the articles which say this, and I'm not entirely convinced. Plus we have our actual economic history, which doesn't seem to have seen much of a boost - indeed GDP per capita isn't rosy at all. I wonder if the arguments require a closer look? (For example I can imagine that a medium skilled immigrant might displace a medium skilled local, who then goes on to be rather forced into a lower level job, which thus displaces someone else into the unemployed - and they are the really expensive ones for the state.) I'm far from being confident of my arguments here, but I do rather suspect the strong accepted conclusions.
It seems that the government have discovered that the economic basis for mass immigration was flawed all along. The millions of people negatively affected by it for the last 25 years, that were ignored, belittled, called racist and xenophobic by the likes of Gordon Brown, Jonathan Portes, David Cameron etc were right.
Who would have thought it? It was only their lives that were being ruined, how would they know?
That's a narrative which makes no differentiation between net migration of (for example) 160k p/a and 750k p/a. Which is clearly bullshit.
There's a good case to be made for limiting migration to manageable levels - and a serious debate about what that number might be.
Your account isn't that - it's just "immigration is unacceptable".
Skilled inward migration is not only acceptable but desirable. Unskilled mass inward migration of cheap labour with a large amount of economically inactive dependents living off the state isn’t. However criticise that, and as Isam says, these people (as well as the PB happy clappy mass inward migration is cool brigade) label you as ‘racist’ to really shut down debate.
One of the reasons I've tended not to get involved in PB immigration spats over the years.
What gets very little discussion is the two biggest drivers of mass migration into Europe over the last two decades - Bush's 'war on terror', and the Russian sponsored devastation of Syria.
The numbers don’t really support that. Indians and Nigerians weren’t driven to Europe by Bush’s ‘war on terror’.
Numbers 'into Europe' is what Nigelb said.
For example, the 2 biggest sources of foreign-born residents of Germany (the European country with the most foreign-born residents) outside Europe are Syria and Afghanistan.
Germany.
So what. Migration into Germany doesn’t directly impact migration into the U.K.
What matters is migration into the U.K.
So what?
Nigelb's comment talked about 'migration into Europe'
Or do you think that people should only post about things that directly impact the UK?
Migration to Europe is irrelevant to migration to the UK.
That’s my point. Take it or leave it.
You asked me so what, so I answered your query. You absolute spacker.
Ich spacke Du spackst Er spackt Wir spacken Ihr spackt Sie spacken
The fact that the UK might have become partially reliant over time on foreign workers to run places like care homes isn't proof that they were needed in the first place.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
I think most (if not all) people would prefer sensible migration.
One thing that strikes me is that it seems to be an accepted fact that migrants are good for the economy. I've been reading some of the articles which say this, and I'm not entirely convinced. Plus we have our actual economic history, which doesn't seem to have seen much of a boost - indeed GDP per capita isn't rosy at all. I wonder if the arguments require a closer look? (For example I can imagine that a medium skilled immigrant might displace a medium skilled local, who then goes on to be rather forced into a lower level job, which thus displaces someone else into the unemployed - and they are the really expensive ones for the state.) I'm far from being confident of my arguments here, but I do rather suspect the strong accepted conclusions.
It seems that the government have discovered that the economic basis for mass immigration was flawed all along. The millions of people negatively affected by it for the last 25 years, that were ignored, belittled, called racist and xenophobic by the likes of Gordon Brown, Jonathan Portes, David Cameron etc were right.
Who would have thought it? It was only their lives that were being ruined, how would they know?
That's a narrative which makes no differentiation between net migration of (for example) 160k p/a and 750k p/a. Which is clearly bullshit.
There's a good case to be made for limiting migration to manageable levels - and a serious debate about what that number might be.
Your account isn't that - it's just "immigration is unacceptable".
Skilled inward migration is not only acceptable but desirable. Unskilled mass inward migration of cheap labour with a large amount of economically inactive dependents living off the state isn’t. However criticise that, and as Isam says, these people (as well as the PB happy clappy mass inward migration is cool brigade) label you as ‘racist’ to really shut down debate.
One of the reasons I've tended not to get involved in PB immigration spats over the years.
What gets very little discussion is the two biggest drivers of mass migration into Europe over the last two decades - Bush's 'war on terror', and the Russian sponsored devastation of Syria.
The numbers don’t really support that. Indians and Nigerians weren’t driven to Europe by Bush’s ‘war on terror’.
Numbers 'into Europe' is what Nigelb said.
For example, the 2 biggest sources of foreign-born residents of Germany (the European country with the most foreign-born residents) outside Europe are Syria and Afghanistan.
Syria != Iraq
Syria was not caused by Bush's 'war on terror' - Islamic terrorists pre-dated the war, hence the war starting, and we never invaded Syria.
This is fantasy economics. Tens of billions in unfunded pledges. Anyone can promise giveaways, but responsible government means not making commitments you can’t keep.
The fact Nigel Farage isn’t denying Mel’s charge says everything anyone clueful needs to know - Reform’s economic and tax plans will work as well as Liz Truss’s
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
I think most (if not all) people would prefer sensible migration.
One thing that strikes me is that it seems to be an accepted fact that migrants are good for the economy. I've been reading some of the articles which say this, and I'm not entirely convinced. Plus we have our actual economic history, which doesn't seem to have seen much of a boost - indeed GDP per capita isn't rosy at all. I wonder if the arguments require a closer look? (For example I can imagine that a medium skilled immigrant might displace a medium skilled local, who then goes on to be rather forced into a lower level job, which thus displaces someone else into the unemployed - and they are the really expensive ones for the state.) I'm far from being confident of my arguments here, but I do rather suspect the strong accepted conclusions.
GDP per capita is tricky because a working immigrant is almost always going to increase that, unless they bring in more dependents than our current working:non-working ratio.
Not if they're working for minimum wage, unskilled. That means they are devaluing our GDP per capita, especially if that displaces investment in automation that would boost it.
And people don't just need to bring dependents with them, they create them too. People who come without dependents then have kids will need the NHS for maternity services then education etc - all while accruing their own future pension liabilities that should be accounted for too and not ignored. The idea we can just ignore all dependencies and liabilities is utterly absurd.
It's more complicated than that. The mean salary is about £38k, while GDP per worker is more like £90k. I'm not sure at what level of salary you can say that someone is contributing to GDP per capita, but it's not as simple as comparing the two measures. Using your comparison, it would be at much less than minimum wage.
Even if you could, minimum wage workers enable other people to make the big bucks. So you cannot allocate GDP by salary. But this is why economic stats are load of bollocks much of the time.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
I think most (if not all) people would prefer sensible migration.
One thing that strikes me is that it seems to be an accepted fact that migrants are good for the economy. I've been reading some of the articles which say this, and I'm not entirely convinced. Plus we have our actual economic history, which doesn't seem to have seen much of a boost - indeed GDP per capita isn't rosy at all. I wonder if the arguments require a closer look? (For example I can imagine that a medium skilled immigrant might displace a medium skilled local, who then goes on to be rather forced into a lower level job, which thus displaces someone else into the unemployed - and they are the really expensive ones for the state.) I'm far from being confident of my arguments here, but I do rather suspect the strong accepted conclusions.
It seems that the government have discovered that the economic basis for mass immigration was flawed all along. The millions of people negatively affected by it for the last 25 years, that were ignored, belittled, called racist and xenophobic by the likes of Gordon Brown, Jonathan Portes, David Cameron etc were right.
Who would have thought it? It was only their lives that were being ruined, how would they know?
That's a narrative which makes no differentiation between net migration of (for example) 160k p/a and 750k p/a. Which is clearly bullshit.
There's a good case to be made for limiting migration to manageable levels - and a serious debate about what that number might be.
Your account isn't that - it's just "immigration is unacceptable".
Skilled inward migration is not only acceptable but desirable. Unskilled mass inward migration of cheap labour with a large amount of economically inactive dependents living off the state isn’t. However criticise that, and as Isam says, these people (as well as the PB happy clappy mass inward migration is cool brigade) label you as ‘racist’ to really shut down debate.
One of the reasons I've tended not to get involved in PB immigration spats over the years.
What gets very little discussion is the two biggest drivers of mass migration into Europe over the last two decades - Bush's 'war on terror', and the Russian sponsored devastation of Syria.
The numbers don’t really support that. Indians and Nigerians weren’t driven to Europe by Bush’s ‘war on terror’.
Numbers 'into Europe' is what Nigelb said.
For example, the 2 biggest sources of foreign-born residents of Germany (the European country with the most foreign-born residents) outside Europe are Syria and Afghanistan.
Syria != Iraq
Syria was not caused by Bush's 'war on terror' - Islamic terrorists pre-dated the war, hence the war starting, and we never invaded Syria.
Fuck off you (vile misogynist obscenity removed)
Ooh, touchy, having a bad day old chap. Never mind. It’s warm. Have a lie down and think about mass unrestricted migration, a Democrat presidency, licking a window and all the other things that appeal.
This is fantasy economics. Tens of billions in unfunded pledges. Anyone can promise giveaways, but responsible government means not making commitments you can’t keep.
The ad hominem nature and whataboutery of Farage's response if of course understandable. But it doesn't advance the argument unless it also manages to give a realistic account of how their policies balance the books. They can't because they don't, and they don't because they can't. Reform's agenda involves people's lives and UK's future. The Economist this week draws attention to the same problem.
I am trying to imagine the howls of apoplexy that would have come from the left if a Tory PM or Farage had tweeted something like that.
I find Tough Sir Keir’s Twitter persona exceptionally cringe, but it does show how much they have realised this issue is hurting them. They might however be better served at quietly getting on with it rather than trying to get into a measuring contest as to who can sound tougher on immigration (because Farage will always, always win that one).
Oh yes, the beauty of the centrist's silence almost calms the anxiety brought on by Sir Keir's bad acting
I would have thought Reform voters would be more put off by the blatant hypocrisy from the nations leading Human Rights lawyer, who signed letters preventing criminals who went on to commit murder being deported recently, as well as campaigning for a second referendum and promising to fight for FOM
Continued FOM would have led, and did lead, to less immigration than Brexit and the Boris wave.....as most of the people who came here did so to work for a few years and returned to their home countries, whereas the immigration we have outside Europe is more permanent.....just saying.....
There is no way of knowing that to be true. FOM meant we had no control whatsoever over who could come from EU countries. If a million had turned up in a year, then a million would be here. Obviously the Boris wave was a disaster, but a government that is actually tough on immigration can lower it to zero if it wanted, and that wasn't possible while we were in the EU - if it had been, we wouldn't have had a referendum, let alone voted to leave
You're a betting man, we had a long sample of what FOM would bring in each year and trends we could extrapolate from. None of that pointed to the kind of migration we have seen post Brexit.
Yes, I agree it is highly improbable, but the fact that Boris messed up immigration post Brexit doesn't mean voting for Leave in order to limit immigration should be a regret. Starmer's phoney rhetoric on immigration grates as he has never said a word against it before, and fought tooth and nail to continue FOM. I don't think he was doing that because he feared higher immigration without it!
It will be interesting to see what the post Boris-wave migration figures are. There's no reason why they should only come down gradually, they should drop like a stone really, to way lower than EU FOM levels
Starmer is probably for sensible migration. He wasn't bothered by the low hundreds of thousands but can see the problem with high hundreds of thousands. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
I think most (if not all) people would prefer sensible migration.
One thing that strikes me is that it seems to be an accepted fact that migrants are good for the economy. I've been reading some of the articles which say this, and I'm not entirely convinced. Plus we have our actual economic history, which doesn't seem to have seen much of a boost - indeed GDP per capita isn't rosy at all. I wonder if the arguments require a closer look? (For example I can imagine that a medium skilled immigrant might displace a medium skilled local, who then goes on to be rather forced into a lower level job, which thus displaces someone else into the unemployed - and they are the really expensive ones for the state.) I'm far from being confident of my arguments here, but I do rather suspect the strong accepted conclusions.
GDP per capita is tricky because a working immigrant is almost always going to increase that, unless they bring in more dependents than our current working:non-working ratio.
Not if they're working for minimum wage, unskilled. That means they are devaluing our GDP per capita, especially if that displaces investment in automation that would boost it.
And people don't just need to bring dependents with them, they create them too. People who come without dependents then have kids will need the NHS for maternity services then education etc - all while accruing their own future pension liabilities that should be accounted for too and not ignored. The idea we can just ignore all dependencies and liabilities is utterly absurd.
It's more complicated than that. The mean salary is about £38k, while GDP per worker is more like £90k. I'm not sure at what level of salary you can say that someone is contributing to GDP per capita, but it's not as simple as comparing the two measures. Using your comparison, it would be at much less than minimum wage.
Even if you could, minimum wage workers enable other people to make the big bucks. So you cannot allocate GDP by salary. But this is why economic stats are load of bollocks much of the time.
Correction - they're not bollocks, they just need to be handled with care.
Among the economically active nine million adults of working age is or are a significant cohort claiming to be "carers" - perhaps 1.5 million or more.
It's clear a number of these carers want to work but it's not easy for them to find work in environments where workstyle practices are rigidly based on office attendance and a 9-5 working week. Indeed, it's often local councils (which provide a lot of part time work) who end up employing carers who do a few hours each week of work from home providing, for example, administrative support for a team of care workers.
Unfortunately, we now have these buffoons from Reform who are so virulently anti-WFH they will drive these carers out of work simply because they can't get to an office or a workplace.
We need to put an end to this nonsense of "presentism" as the only way to work and we also need to see far more private companies employing carers - perhaps we should adopt a quota approach as we do for people with disabilities.
"I am a liberal, centrist dad Remainer. I desperately wish we could rejoin the European Union. I really don’t like Donald Trump. I could go on. But if a general election were held tomorrow, I would seriously consider voting Reform. In fact, Nigel Farage’s party is increasingly likely to get my support.
This is fantasy economics. Tens of billions in unfunded pledges. Anyone can promise giveaways, but responsible government means not making commitments you can’t keep.
The fact Nigel Farage isn’t denying Mel’s charge says everything anyone clueful needs to know - Reform’s economic and tax plans will work as well as Liz Truss’s
Does it matter? Reform is NOTA, and even if a handful of prospective voters do worry about economic plans, why would they vote for Mel's party who dug the hole we languish in today?
Mail on Sunday not having Sir Keir’s pretend concern about the effects of the mass immigration he & Labour supported but are trying to disown
Labour have tried to face both ways on this for some time now. But in a new White Paper they plan to embrace a ‘crackdown’ ostensibly intended to deport immigrants who commit any crime, and to somehow overcome the ‘Human Rights’ provisions which make deportation so hard and which Labour themselves wrote into British law.
We are also promised less complacency about the questionable economic benefits of mass immigration, which is seriously straining our health, welfare and school systems.
These moves are designed to create helpful headlines. But should we take any of it seriously?
While they thought they were safe from voter anger, Labour energetically pursued an open borders policy.
Now they are scared of electoral oblivion, they try to ape Nigel Farage. How they used to jeer and sneer at those who warned that their policy was foolish and unrealistic, such as the fact-based campaigning body Migration Watch.
Anyone who suggested that the levels of migration were impractically high was dismissed as some sort of bigot.
Well, now Home Office experts are admitting what Migration Watch said many years ago, that net migration has reached such levels that it is the equivalent of adding a city the size of Edinburgh to the population of the UK each year. Who are the bigots now?
As I posted on the previous thread. Thanks to the Boriswave and ILR after Five years, we have a ticking time bomb that will cost up to 234 Billion GDP of low wage workers with economically inactive dependents.
This is something Starmer needs to do something about. He won’t as he, and his party, are fundamentally wedded to it.
For this reason alone the Tories should have a long and tormented road back to power.
Supposedly they are increasing ILR to 10 years and I assume they will raise the bar on those visa renewals which means most won't qualify and will have to return to their home country. They need to act fast though as clock is ticking.
I suspect they will just talk tough, a few small tinkers, wait for fuss to die down then just grant these people,and their economically inactive dependents ILR and go back to telling anyone concerned at the fiscal burden they are all racists. That’s the usual playbook
I'm not so sure, Reform will absolutely crucify then in 2029 if they do nothing.
Doesn’t the polling show they lose more votes to the greens and Lib Dems than reform ?
Considerably more.
Indeed there are some in labour who think they need to go left. Of course that was not a winner in 2019 but who knows in 2029
Given the distribution of votes, going left does not help Labour. There are Green votes left in Red Wall seats, but few Lib Dem votes (they’re battling the Conservatives). But there are 89 Labour held seats where Reform are second, most of which have a sizeable Tory vote left to squeeze. That, plus a swing of 8%, from left to right, since 2024, is where Labour’s problem lies.
Once Reform reaches 25%+, its vote is more efficient than Labour’s.
To continue, if you put a 2017/Canada type result into Electoral Calculus, Reform finish 26 seats ahead of Labour, even when 2% behind.
indeed. Labour's problem isn't that they will lose votes to REFORM necessarily but that the geography is terrible for them vs REFORM.
This is many ways arises out of the crisis of having over 400 seats to lose. If Reform are to win 325 seats, and they are not going to win any from the LDs, Labour is the only really large target - Reform will need to take well over 200 Labour seats.
This is obvious, but psychologically I'm not sure it has quite hit home among the voting public yet. For Reform to win. Labour have to be trashed, because the Tories already are.
Footnote: In Scotland Labour will, on current form, get trashed by the SNP as well.
Among the economically active nine million adults of working age is or are a significant cohort claiming to be "carers" - perhaps 1.5 million or more.
It's clear a number of these carers want to work but it's not easy for them to find work in environments where workstyle practices are rigidly based on office attendance and a 9-5 working week. Indeed, it's often local councils (which provide a lot of part time work) who end up employing carers who do a few hours each week of work from home providing, for example, administrative support for a team of care workers.
Unfortunately, we now have these buffoons from Reform who are so virulently anti-WFH they will drive these carers out of work simply because they can't get to an office or a workplace.
We need to put an end to this nonsense of "presentism" as the only way to work and we also need to see far more private companies employing carers - perhaps we should adopt a quota approach as we do for people with disabilities.
That's a good point. Childcare too, out-of-hours GPs etc
"I am a liberal, centrist dad Remainer. I desperately wish we could rejoin the European Union. I really don’t like Donald Trump. I could go on. But if a general election were held tomorrow, I would seriously consider voting Reform. In fact, Nigel Farage’s party is increasingly likely to get my support.
Among the economically active nine million adults of working age is or are a significant cohort claiming to be "carers" - perhaps 1.5 million or more.
It's clear a number of these carers want to work but it's not easy for them to find work in environments where workstyle practices are rigidly based on office attendance and a 9-5 working week. Indeed, it's often local councils (which provide a lot of part time work) who end up employing carers who do a few hours each week of work from home providing, for example, administrative support for a team of care workers.
Unfortunately, we now have these buffoons from Reform who are so virulently anti-WFH they will drive these carers out of work simply because they can't get to an office or a workplace.
We need to put an end to this nonsense of "presentism" as the only way to work and we also need to see far more private companies employing carers - perhaps we should adopt a quota approach as we do for people with disabilities.
I've been struck by the disconnect between the 'so many workshy people' stories and then what I see both as someone recruiting and just regular people on social media (especially the young trying to find job).
We are now seeing 50-100 applicants for posts that would have had 5-10 before. And there are a lot of people almost throwing the towel in trying to find jobs. This one showed up recently and sounded authentic from the original post to a lot of 'yup - same for me' replies :
The stupid home Secretary, wet lettuce cooper, has instantly caused a massive crisis in the UK care industry. You can’t just switch off immigration like a tap that shouldn’t be on - how many zillion care homes now close? where do their customers go other than the NHS bed blocking? What now happens to NHS and hospital and treatment waits thanks to this stupid policy decision?
THERES CONSEQUENCES TO JUST SUDDENLY SWITCHING OFF IMMIGRATION WITHOUT WARNING TO INDUSTRIES.
Not least the horrendous damage of your actual actions not meeting your policy announcements.
The stupid home Secretary, wet lettuce cooper, has instantly caused a massive crisis in the UK care industry. You can’t just switch off immigration like a tap that shouldn’t be on - how many zillion care homes now close? where do their customers go other than the NHS bed blocking? What now happens to NHS and hospital and treatment waits thanks to this stupid policy decision?
Or maybe, you know, they're just engaged in a piece of special pleading.
I wonder if this will mean less work for their German factory until the EU get a deal? If I understand correctly the XWB is made in both Derby and Germany.
The stupid home Secretary, wet lettuce cooper, has instantly caused a massive crisis in the UK care industry. You can’t just switch off immigration like a tap that shouldn’t be on - how many zillion care homes now close? where do their customers go other than the NHS bed blocking? What now happens to NHS and hospital and treatment waits thanks to this stupid policy decision?
THERES CONSEQUENCES TO JUST SUDDENLY SWITCHING OFF IMMIGRATION WITHOUT WARNING TO INDUSTRIES.
Not least the horrendous damage of your actual actions not meeting your policy announcements.
They can begin with reducing churn by improving conditions for their existing staff. In due time, we'll have to start funding care properly.
Of course this touches the third rail of local authority funding, but with Labour's majority they should get on that.
The stupid home Secretary, wet lettuce cooper, has instantly caused a massive crisis in the UK care industry. You can’t just switch off immigration like a tap that shouldn’t be on - how many zillion care homes now close? where do their customers go other than the NHS bed blocking? What now happens to NHS and hospital and treatment waits thanks to this stupid policy decision?
THERES CONSEQUENCES TO JUST SUDDENLY SWITCHING OFF IMMIGRATION WITHOUT WARNING TO INDUSTRIES.
Not least the horrendous damage of your actual actions not meeting your policy announcements.
Care homes pre-dated these visas and they'll survive past them too. Last data I've seen showed shows that 88% of employees in care homes are British anyway.
Supply and demand may mean that wages need to rise beyond minimum wage to fill vacancies. Oh dear, how sad, nevermind.
This is fantasy economics. Tens of billions in unfunded pledges. Anyone can promise giveaways, but responsible government means not making commitments you can’t keep.
The fact Nigel Farage isn’t denying Mel’s charge says everything anyone clueful needs to know - Reform’s economic and tax plans will work as well as Liz Truss’s
Yes, as seems quite possible, Nigel will soon be riding the cheeky-chappie routine straight into Downing Street. But he's got to start getting serious with policy. Otherwise he'll just be Boris mark 2 with added Truss.
The stupid home Secretary, wet lettuce cooper, has instantly caused a massive crisis in the UK care industry. You can’t just switch off immigration like a tap that shouldn’t be on - how many zillion care homes now close? where do their customers go other than the NHS bed blocking? What now happens to NHS and hospital and treatment waits thanks to this stupid policy decision?
THERES CONSEQUENCES TO JUST SUDDENLY SWITCHING OFF IMMIGRATION WITHOUT WARNING TO INDUSTRIES.
Not least the horrendous damage of your actual actions not meeting your policy announcements.
Pretty stupid business decision to base your entire business model on a political hot potato
"I am a liberal, centrist dad Remainer. I desperately wish we could rejoin the European Union. I really don’t like Donald Trump. I could go on. But if a general election were held tomorrow, I would seriously consider voting Reform. In fact, Nigel Farage’s party is increasingly likely to get my support.
‘Every other party seems to be saying to me “Look, Nigel Farage was right, Brexit was always inevitable, we just need to go with it. Trust us with him.”’
a) not every party is saying this b) some of those saying this are lying through their cowardly teeth c) a lot of this is voices in Mr Tyrone’s head
"I am a liberal, centrist dad Remainer. I desperately wish we could rejoin the European Union. I really don’t like Donald Trump. I could go on. But if a general election were held tomorrow, I would seriously consider voting Reform. In fact, Nigel Farage’s party is increasingly likely to get my support.
Interesting that the right wing press is coming out with this "more in sorrow than in anger" drivel. The Times, and The Spectator actually do get it though: the Lib Dems are the existential threat to Torydom, not the US funded, Astroturf RefUkers. But honestly their perfidy could be done with a little more finesse than this staged and obvious nonsense.
The stupid home Secretary, wet lettuce cooper, has instantly caused a massive crisis in the UK care industry. You can’t just switch off immigration like a tap that shouldn’t be on - how many zillion care homes now close? where do their customers go other than the NHS bed blocking? What now happens to NHS and hospital and treatment waits thanks to this stupid policy decision?
THERES CONSEQUENCES TO JUST SUDDENLY SWITCHING OFF IMMIGRATION WITHOUT WARNING TO INDUSTRIES.
Not least the horrendous damage of your actual actions not meeting your policy announcements.
Health and Social Care is done up here in the Lothians no matter what. You can't get care workers out to certain postcodes - on the edge of Edinburgh because of distance, or in the centre of Edinburgh because they can't get parked. When they are in place, they might be booked to spend an hour with a service user - assessed on need - but they have to leave within 20 minutes because they're double or triple=booked over the course of that hour. Beds in the Royal Edinburgh Hospital were closed but there was no corresponding uptick of community support. It's toast.
I was discussing this with some nurses last week - their observation was that that 10 or 15 years ago, people employed in the care sector were there for years and years and built up a skill base, but that's no longer the case. To be honest, non-EU immigration has had a negative impact on that element of it all. But I'm very negative for the future of Health and Social Care here until someone finds a way to fund it.
Golly, I’m old enough to remember a rightwing susurration of pleasure that the volk were returning to churches. Since it was only two weeks ago I don’t even have to be that old.
"Quebec riding of Terrebonne flips to Liberals after recount shows candidate won by single vote Liberals now have 170 seats in House of Commons, two shy of a majority government"
"I am a liberal, centrist dad Remainer. I desperately wish we could rejoin the European Union. I really don’t like Donald Trump. I could go on. But if a general election were held tomorrow, I would seriously consider voting Reform. In fact, Nigel Farage’s party is increasingly likely to get my support.
Jesus. This is going to be about as successful as Joe Rogan etc. voting for Trump to stop wokeness because he's a 'classical liberal'. He's going to f**king hate what they do in government if they get in.
"Reform seem serious about curbing the worst elements of wokeness, which the Tories resolutely failed to do while in government. They appear to actually believe in Brexit, which I’d prefer to what we’ve had before and what we have now: an awkward in between. I’m a rejoiner, but I’m firmly of the opinion that we either rejoin full stop, or genuinely try and make the most of Brexit. Farage seems to be the only leading politician who genuinely wants to attempt the latter in any meaningful sense. Let’s either give Brexit one more go or abandon it. I’d prefer we abandoned it, but given no party is proposing that, why not give Nigel a go?"
What does even giving Brexit a go involve? Given Reform hate the India FTA, for instance, what do they want? The Alternative Economic Strategy? Becoming a full-on client state of Trump's US?
The stupid home Secretary, wet lettuce cooper, has instantly caused a massive crisis in the UK care industry. You can’t just switch off immigration like a tap that shouldn’t be on - how many zillion care homes now close? where do their customers go other than the NHS bed blocking? What now happens to NHS and hospital and treatment waits thanks to this stupid policy decision?
THERES CONSEQUENCES TO JUST SUDDENLY SWITCHING OFF IMMIGRATION WITHOUT WARNING TO INDUSTRIES.
Not least the horrendous damage of your actual actions not meeting your policy announcements.
Care homes pre-dated these visas and they'll survive past them too. Last data I've seen showed shows that 88% of employees in care homes are British anyway.
Supply and demand may mean that wages need to rise beyond minimum wage to fill vacancies. Oh dear, how sad, nevermind.
You havn’t provided any answers to social care crisis in your pirate response.
The Boris, Truss and Sunak governments were not nearly stupid enough to do something as stupid as what Labour announced today - switching off immigration whilst there is a need for it. The last government are known as stupid and unelectable for putting out vibes they would switch the gushing immigration off, whilst actually doing the opposite. Labour have so quickly shredded themselves by making the same mistakes, trapping themselves between fantasy and reality.
To be tough on immigration you first need to get in place mitigation for all immigration you don’t really need. No other way of doing it. Labour have kicked sorting social care crisis into the long grass, just like, for all their bluster, the Conservatives did.
This bolsters what an awful week it’s been for this Labour government. This little period of getting themselves caught with rhetoric they can’t deliver on, caught in no man’s land between EU and Trump on trade, is defining why they lose the next election.
The stupid home Secretary, wet lettuce cooper, has instantly caused a massive crisis in the UK care industry. You can’t just switch off immigration like a tap that shouldn’t be on - how many zillion care homes now close? where do their customers go other than the NHS bed blocking? What now happens to NHS and hospital and treatment waits thanks to this stupid policy decision?
Or maybe, you know, they're just engaged in a piece of special pleading.
750k people work in care homes, I believe.
80%+ are of U.K. origin.
So 150k immigrant workforce.
What’s the turnover? 20% per annum would be crazy high.
30k a year, then.
Interesting, isn’t it?
Edit : for 88% U.K. origin, that’s 18k to find every year, assuming 20% turnover.
"I am a liberal, centrist dad Remainer. I desperately wish we could rejoin the European Union. I really don’t like Donald Trump. I could go on. But if a general election were held tomorrow, I would seriously consider voting Reform. In fact, Nigel Farage’s party is increasingly likely to get my support.
I wonder if this will mean less work for their German factory until the EU get a deal? If I understand correctly the XWB is made in both Derby and Germany.
Why? Worst case scenario - Derby supplies the USA, Germany supplies UK customers
About to pick oldest up from her practice DoE silver expedition. She is lovely 99% of the time but the two things she deals poorly with are heat and lack of sleep. I am nervous. Could be a bumpy few hours until bedtime.
This is fantasy economics. Tens of billions in unfunded pledges. Anyone can promise giveaways, but responsible government means not making commitments you can’t keep.
The fact Nigel Farage isn’t denying Mel’s charge says everything anyone clueful needs to know - Reform’s economic and tax plans will work as well as Liz Truss’s
Yes, as seems quite possible, Nigel will soon be riding the cheeky-chappie routine straight into Downing Street. But he's got to start getting serious with policy. Otherwise he'll just be Boris mark 2 with added Truss.
The special constable story is a reminder that all this was happening under the Tories. You have to be wary of one off reports in the papers but there are just too many of these cases for it not to be a thing. Why are they doing it? I can only assume it is 'pour encourager les autres.'
That's the Conservatives' fundamental problem. Everything that Labour gets criticised for, the Conservatives were up to their necks in.
And while *a lot* of the problems can be laid at the feet of Boris and his shower of incompetents and crooks, the problems with justice, policing, and defence belong entirely to the Coalition. Limiting child benefits looks like a bad idea, too.
The coalition might explain the cuts but how do they resource 6 officers to go and arrest someone over comments on social media?
About to pick oldest up from her practice DoE silver expedition. She is lovely 99% of the time but the two things she deals poorly with are heat and lack of sleep. I am nervous. Could be a bumpy few hours until bedtime.
To give her something to aim for. Tomorrow twin A and Mrs Eek are off to Buckingham Palace for the Gold DoE award ceremony / garden party.
Note the award winner can only bring one guest which is why I'm at home and not sat in Leicester Square watching the world go by.
Second bit of advice, if you do it with Scouts / Guiding you need to wear your uniform so ideally do it through school or by yourself.
“ 1.1 Health and Care Workers, other skilled work routes, and their family members
There were 27,174 ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas granted to main applicants in 2024, an 81% decrease compared to the previous year.
The number of ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas to main applicants increased from 31,800 in 2021 to 145,823 in 2023. The rise was primarily due to an increase in South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi) and Sub-Saharan African (Zimbabwean, Ghanaian, and Nigerian) nationals coming to work as care workers. However, the number of care workers and home carers issued visas have fallen since the latter part of 2023. The fall towards the end of 2023 is likely due to more scrutiny applied by the Home Office to employers in the health and social care sector, and compliance activity taken against employers of migrant workers, as well as the recent policy measures affecting care workers introduced in Spring 2024. The number of ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas issued to migrant workers in a Caring Personal Service occupation fell by 91% to 9,539 in the latest year.”
The stupid home Secretary, wet lettuce cooper, has instantly caused a massive crisis in the UK care industry. You can’t just switch off immigration like a tap that shouldn’t be on - how many zillion care homes now close? where do their customers go other than the NHS bed blocking? What now happens to NHS and hospital and treatment waits thanks to this stupid policy decision?
THERES CONSEQUENCES TO JUST SUDDENLY SWITCHING OFF IMMIGRATION WITHOUT WARNING TO INDUSTRIES.
Not least the horrendous damage of your actual actions not meeting your policy announcements.
Care homes pre-dated these visas and they'll survive past them too. Last data I've seen showed shows that 88% of employees in care homes are British anyway.
Supply and demand may mean that wages need to rise beyond minimum wage to fill vacancies. Oh dear, how sad, nevermind.
You havn’t provided any answers to social care crisis in your pirate response.
The Boris, Truss and Sunak governments were not nearly stupid enough to do something as stupid as what Labour announced today - switching off immigration whilst there is a need for it. The last government are known as stupid and unelectable for putting out vibes they would switch the gushing immigration off, whilst actually doing the opposite. Labour have so quickly shredded themselves by making the same mistakes, trapping themselves between fantasy and reality.
To be tough on immigration you first need to get in place mitigation for all immigration you don’t really need. No other way of doing it. Labour have kicked sorting social care crisis into the long grass, just like, for all their bluster, the Conservatives did.
This bolsters what an awful week it’s been for this Labour government. This little period of getting themselves caught with rhetoric they can’t deliver on, caught in no man’s land between EU and Trump on trade, is defining why they lose the next election.
I literally did provide an answer - if you're struggling to fill vacancies then increase wages. Supply and demand in action, not a novel concept.
"But I don't want to increase prices" - tough shit.
Skilled migration should exist for bringing in talented people with skills. 'Prepared to work for minimum wage' is not a special skill.
About to pick oldest up from her practice DoE silver expedition. She is lovely 99% of the time but the two things she deals poorly with are heat and lack of sleep. I am nervous. Could be a bumpy few hours until bedtime.
To give her something to aim for. Tomorrow twin A and Mrs Eek are off to Buckingham Palace for the Gold DoE award ceremony / garden party.
Note the award winner can only bring one guest which is why I'm at home and not sat in Leicester Square watching the world go by.
Second bit of advice, if you do it with Scouts / Guiding you need to wear your uniform so ideally do it through school or by yourself.
Well done everyone for ignoring @MoonRabbit 's substantive point.
She even put it in ALL CAPS for you.
Are you being sarcastic as I did address it.
Yes there are consequences to the ending of companies ability to import people prepared to work for minimum wage. Wages rising above minimum wage seems the likely consequence.
If you don't like that, then go suck a lemon. You don't have a right to serfs working for minimum wage.
I'm very pro-migration, but we should be bringing in skilled migrants at good wages bringing in actual skills - not enabling firms to hire at minimum wage and avoid any responsibility for pay rises.
Sounds like perfectly normal practice to me; the kind of things parties have done to each other forever.
(Outside the far southwest, are there many Lib-Ref battlegrounds?)
And the challenge for Reform is simple. Up until now, they have prospered by being NOTA. What happens in the parts of the country where they are now AOTA? (Not so much the effect on voters, as the effect on Reform activists. Consider what happened to Lib Dem morale during the coalition years.)
Sounds like perfectly normal practice to me; the kind of things parties have done to each other forever.
(Outside the far southwest, are there many Lib-Ref battlegrounds?)
And the challenge for Reform is simple. Up until now, they have prospered by being NOTA. What happens in the parts of the country where they are now AOTA? (Not so much the effect on voters, as the effect on Reform activists. Consider what happened to Lib Dem morale during the coalition years.)
They'll probably do an SNP and blame Westminster for any problems, while taking no responsibility whatsoever.
Sounds like perfectly normal practice to me; the kind of things parties have done to each other forever.
(Outside the far southwest, are there many Lib-Ref battlegrounds?)
And the challenge for Reform is simple. Up until now, they have prospered by being NOTA. What happens in the parts of the country where they are now AOTA? (Not so much the effect on voters, as the effect on Reform activists. Consider what happened to Lib Dem morale during the coalition years.)
Perhaps the next election will see the whole of the U.K. as a Reform v Lib Dem battle with the other parties making up the numbers.
“ 1.1 Health and Care Workers, other skilled work routes, and their family members
There were 27,174 ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas granted to main applicants in 2024, an 81% decrease compared to the previous year.
The number of ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas to main applicants increased from 31,800 in 2021 to 145,823 in 2023. The rise was primarily due to an increase in South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi) and Sub-Saharan African (Zimbabwean, Ghanaian, and Nigerian) nationals coming to work as care workers. However, the number of care workers and home carers issued visas have fallen since the latter part of 2023. The fall towards the end of 2023 is likely due to more scrutiny applied by the Home Office to employers in the health and social care sector, and compliance activity taken against employers of migrant workers, as well as the recent policy measures affecting care workers introduced in Spring 2024. The number of ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas issued to migrant workers in a Caring Personal Service occupation fell by 91% to 9,539 in the latest year.”
This is main applicants, there are also their economically inactive dependents.
If the Church dies then its legacy buildings can be repurposed to a modern use of the pre-existing architecture. EG you get former Church buildings that now operate as bars or restaurants that tend to get far more patrons than they ever did as a Church.
“ 1.1 Health and Care Workers, other skilled work routes, and their family members
There were 27,174 ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas granted to main applicants in 2024, an 81% decrease compared to the previous year.
The number of ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas to main applicants increased from 31,800 in 2021 to 145,823 in 2023. The rise was primarily due to an increase in South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi) and Sub-Saharan African (Zimbabwean, Ghanaian, and Nigerian) nationals coming to work as care workers. However, the number of care workers and home carers issued visas have fallen since the latter part of 2023. The fall towards the end of 2023 is likely due to more scrutiny applied by the Home Office to employers in the health and social care sector, and compliance activity taken against employers of migrant workers, as well as the recent policy measures affecting care workers introduced in Spring 2024. The number of ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas issued to migrant workers in a Caring Personal Service occupation fell by 91% to 9,539 in the latest year.”
This is main applicants, there are also their economically inactive dependents.
Interesting that immigrant careworkers can raise a family on £25k with no recourse to public funds. Our native £25k earners would have you believe that's not possible.
Sounds like perfectly normal practice to me; the kind of things parties have done to each other forever.
(Outside the far southwest, are there many Lib-Ref battlegrounds?)
And the challenge for Reform is simple. Up until now, they have prospered by being NOTA. What happens in the parts of the country where they are now AOTA? (Not so much the effect on voters, as the effect on Reform activists. Consider what happened to Lib Dem morale during the coalition years.)
They'll probably do an SNP and blame Westminster for any problems, while taking no responsibility whatsoever.
It's what I would be disinterestedly recommend as a strategy, sure. It's the obvious mantra to get to sleep at night. But there is other stuff- where to spend the limited money, where to put the good things and the bad things- where that won't work.
UKIP ran Thanet council for less than a year before internal splits cost them their majority.
I think you may be sidelining the purpose of political parties in a multi party democracy. They aren't a factional decline from a world of agreeable coffee mornings, they are a most effective way of avoiding people killing each other in internal civil strife.
Sounds like perfectly normal practice to me; the kind of things parties have done to each other forever.
(Outside the far southwest, are there many Lib-Ref battlegrounds?)
And the challenge for Reform is simple. Up until now, they have prospered by being NOTA. What happens in the parts of the country where they are now AOTA? (Not so much the effect on voters, as the effect on Reform activists. Consider what happened to Lib Dem morale during the coalition years.)
They'll probably do an SNP and blame Westminster for any problems, while taking no responsibility whatsoever.
It's what I would be disinterestedly recommend as a strategy, sure. It's the obvious mantra to get to sleep at night. But there is other stuff- where to spend the limited money, where to put the good things and the bad things- where that won't work.
UKIP ran Thanet council for less than a year before internal splits cost them their majority.
FPT - isn't the issue that degrees used to be the gold standard for an excellent education and highly skilled worker ready to enter the workforce, and no longer are?
Is a 2025 graduate from a Russell Group university worth the same as a 1995 one?
Well and what does a degree from a tinpot African country really mean anyway, why should someone who went to a nothing university in Nigeria be preferred over a self taught game developer from Japan who went from hobbyist to master of the craft in their bedroom but didn't get a degree. It literally makes no sense to me.
If the Church dies then its legacy buildings can be repurposed to a modern use of the pre-existing architecture. EG you get former Church buildings that now operate as bars or restaurants that tend to get far more patrons than they ever did as a Church.
If a church gets repurposed as a bar, or a restaurant or housing or even a mosque then so what. At least it’s bringing a barely used building back into use. I cannot find it in me to care at all either way.
If the Church dies then its legacy buildings can be repurposed to a modern use of the pre-existing architecture. EG you get former Church buildings that now operate as bars or restaurants that tend to get far more patrons than they ever did as a Church.
If a church gets repurposed as a bar, or a restaurant or housing or even a mosque then so what. At least it’s bringing a barely used building back into use. I cannot find it in me to care at all either way.
I'd go as far as to say its an improvement if derelict abandoned buildings find better, more popular, uses.
"I am a liberal, centrist dad Remainer. I desperately wish we could rejoin the European Union. I really don’t like Donald Trump. I could go on. But if a general election were held tomorrow, I would seriously consider voting Reform. In fact, Nigel Farage’s party is increasingly likely to get my support.
Interesting that the right wing press is coming out with this "more in sorrow than in anger" drivel. The Times, and The Spectator actually do get it though: the Lib Dems are the existential threat to Torydom, not the US funded, Astroturf RefUkers. But honestly their perfidy could be done with a little more finesse than this staged and obvious nonsense.
Don't you like outside the UK? Are you sure you really understand what is going on here?
“ 1.1 Health and Care Workers, other skilled work routes, and their family members
There were 27,174 ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas granted to main applicants in 2024, an 81% decrease compared to the previous year.
The number of ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas to main applicants increased from 31,800 in 2021 to 145,823 in 2023. The rise was primarily due to an increase in South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi) and Sub-Saharan African (Zimbabwean, Ghanaian, and Nigerian) nationals coming to work as care workers. However, the number of care workers and home carers issued visas have fallen since the latter part of 2023. The fall towards the end of 2023 is likely due to more scrutiny applied by the Home Office to employers in the health and social care sector, and compliance activity taken against employers of migrant workers, as well as the recent policy measures affecting care workers introduced in Spring 2024. The number of ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas issued to migrant workers in a Caring Personal Service occupation fell by 91% to 9,539 in the latest year.”
This is main applicants, there are also their economically inactive dependents.
Interesting that immigrant careworkers can raise a family on £25k with no recourse to public funds. Our native £25k earners would have you believe that's not possible.
I believe the Progressive position is that White British are feckless dole bludgers who will only get out of bed for racism or 100k a year.
If the Church dies then its legacy buildings can be repurposed to a modern use of the pre-existing architecture. EG you get former Church buildings that now operate as bars or restaurants that tend to get far more patrons than they ever did as a Church.
If a church gets repurposed as a bar, or a restaurant or housing or even a mosque then so what. At least it’s bringing a barely used building back into use. I cannot find it in me to care at all either way.
I'd go as far as to say its an improvement if derelict abandoned buildings find better, more popular, uses.
Well done everyone for ignoring @MoonRabbit 's substantive point.
She even put it in ALL CAPS for you.
Are you being sarcastic as I did address it.
Yes there are consequences to the ending of companies ability to import people prepared to work for minimum wage. Wages rising above minimum wage seems the likely consequence.
If you don't like that, then go suck a lemon. You don't have a right to serfs working for minimum wage.
I'm very pro-migration, but we should be bringing in skilled migrants at good wages bringing in actual skills - not enabling firms to hire at minimum wage and avoid any responsibility for pay rises.
One of the consequences is taxes going up, isn't it? A lot of those minimum wage care workers are going to be providing publicly funded social care for councils, I think.
(I would be happy with my taxes going up, personally.)
If the Church dies then its legacy buildings can be repurposed to a modern use of the pre-existing architecture. EG you get former Church buildings that now operate as bars or restaurants that tend to get far more patrons than they ever did as a Church.
Presumably the article sets out why it matters. It's not obvious to me either, but I ha en't read the article and it's behind a paywall. I'm willing to entertain the possibility that it might. From this vantage point, the CoE looks like it believes in nothing except identity politics and climate change, but I am only a distant observer.
FPT - isn't the issue that degrees used to be the gold standard for an excellent education and highly skilled worker ready to enter the workforce, and no longer are?
Is a 2025 graduate from a Russell Group university worth the same as a 1995 one?
Well and what does a degree from a tinpot African country really mean anyway, why should someone who went to a nothing university in Nigeria be preferred over a self taught game developer from Japan who went from hobbyist to master of the craft in their bedroom but didn't get a degree. It literally makes no sense to me.
Akra University in Ghana is highly regarded, I believe. The Law Society in the U.K. requires a short conversion course to turn their LLB into a U.K. qualification.
Source - my ex did this and became a solicitor with right of audience in the U.K.
Well done everyone for ignoring @MoonRabbit 's substantive point.
She even put it in ALL CAPS for you.
Are you being sarcastic as I did address it.
Yes there are consequences to the ending of companies ability to import people prepared to work for minimum wage. Wages rising above minimum wage seems the likely consequence.
If you don't like that, then go suck a lemon. You don't have a right to serfs working for minimum wage.
I'm very pro-migration, but we should be bringing in skilled migrants at good wages bringing in actual skills - not enabling firms to hire at minimum wage and avoid any responsibility for pay rises.
One of the consequences is taxes going up, isn't it? A lot of those minimum wage care workers are going to be providing publicly funded social care for councils, I think.
(I would be happy with my taxes going up, personally.)
Indeed by that logic we could cut taxes by cutting minimum wage and make it even cheaper to hire people on minimum wage, but that doesn't mean its the right thing to do.
If supply and demand means the wage clears above minimum wage then you need to pay whatever you need to pay. Nobody has a right to minimum wage labour.
About to pick oldest up from her practice DoE silver expedition. She is lovely 99% of the time but the two things she deals poorly with are heat and lack of sleep. I am nervous. Could be a bumpy few hours until bedtime.
To give her something to aim for. Tomorrow twin A and Mrs Eek are off to Buckingham Palace for the Gold DoE award ceremony / garden party.
Note the award winner can only bring one guest which is why I'm at home and not sat in Leicester Square watching the world go by.
Second bit of advice, if you do it with Scouts / Guiding you need to wear your uniform so ideally do it through school or by yourself.
Ooh, amazing, and massive congratulations to Twin A. Really impressive achievment. Minicookie 1 does it through Altrincham FC. No call for any specific uniform though the black and red kits they have for DoE are quite striking.
If the Church dies then its legacy buildings can be repurposed to a modern use of the pre-existing architecture. EG you get former Church buildings that now operate as bars or restaurants that tend to get far more patrons than they ever did as a Church.
Presumably the article sets out why it matters. It's not obvious to me either, but I ha en't read the article and it's behind a paywall. I'm willing to entertain the possibility that it might. From this vantage point, the CoE looks like it believes in nothing except identity politics and climate change, but I am only a distant observer.
I read the article and it merely stated it mattered, without giving much of a reason why.
The architecture was mentioned, though nobody really is proposing demolishing Churches - them getting repurposed to bars and restaurants keeps the architecture going in a far more productive 21st century use.
PS great game at Anfield. A couple of goals in as many minutes.
If the Church dies then its legacy buildings can be repurposed to a modern use of the pre-existing architecture. EG you get former Church buildings that now operate as bars or restaurants that tend to get far more patrons than they ever did as a Church.
If a church gets repurposed as a bar, or a restaurant or housing or even a mosque then so what. At least it’s bringing a barely used building back into use. I cannot find it in me to care at all either way.
I suspect a lot of them won't be repurposed, though -- churches as buildings are typically not very well suited for other uses, and the maintenance, restoration and conservation bills are enormous.
(I have also seen the argument that medieval churches are not very well suited for CofE worship either -- http://norfolkchurches.co.uk/translation/translation.htm (and the bit about Cawston and Salle that it links to) suggests that the Reformation took out both the need for such large structures and also the funding model that built and maintained them.)
I think you may be sidelining the purpose of political parties in a multi party democracy. They aren't a factional decline from a world of agreeable coffee mornings, they are a most effective way of avoiding people killing each other in internal civil strife.
I think you may be sidelining the purpose of political parties in a multi party democracy. They aren't a factional decline from a world of agreeable coffee mornings, they are a most effective way of avoiding people killing each other in internal civil strife.
There might be a PhD in the following argument - that the Populares and Boni weren’t political parties on any sense was a core problem in the Late Roman Republic.
“ 1.1 Health and Care Workers, other skilled work routes, and their family members
There were 27,174 ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas granted to main applicants in 2024, an 81% decrease compared to the previous year.
The number of ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas to main applicants increased from 31,800 in 2021 to 145,823 in 2023. The rise was primarily due to an increase in South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi) and Sub-Saharan African (Zimbabwean, Ghanaian, and Nigerian) nationals coming to work as care workers. However, the number of care workers and home carers issued visas have fallen since the latter part of 2023. The fall towards the end of 2023 is likely due to more scrutiny applied by the Home Office to employers in the health and social care sector, and compliance activity taken against employers of migrant workers, as well as the recent policy measures affecting care workers introduced in Spring 2024. The number of ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas issued to migrant workers in a Caring Personal Service occupation fell by 91% to 9,539 in the latest year.”
This is main applicants, there are also their economically inactive dependents.
Interesting that immigrant careworkers can raise a family on £25k with no recourse to public funds. Our native £25k earners would have you believe that's not possible.
I believe the Progressive position is that White British are feckless dole bludgers who will only get out of bed for racism or 100k a year.
It's that, or salt of the earth. One chooses based on ones opposition.
A lady who looked after my father after surgery was a full time primary school teacher doing caring in the evenings to save for a deposit. Hard workers do still exist.
Comments
Britain’s asylum hotel ‘king’ becomes a billionaire
https://www.thetimes.com/article/4edf70d9-e3a7-45c1-9f4a-e4b9b70f904b?shareToken=81f9172c4930c33d9375e3aa48dc49dc
It's a wealth tax, and the lottery element makes it far more vicious than inheritance tax. A large chunk of my family's wealth has been wiped out by it. There is also a terrible mental health penalty on the person being cared for, as they see their life savings getting wiped out in a arbitrary and personal way. At least a tax is predictable, universal and can be planned around.
The only solution is some sort of compulsory insurance mechanism. In fact, one of my relative invested in a pre-funded home care plan that mitigated some of the damage. No longer available because care costs are uncapped.
But, one of the first things to go should have been the triple-lock, a higher pensions age, and welfare benefits - and the money spent on Universal Credit simply didn't work. We're all in it together should have mean everyone.
Rather than the Lansley Reforms he'd have been far better in developing a form of social insurance for social care and some health risks, to mitigate the load on the NHS.
And the Overseas Aid budget should never have been deified and boosted like it was. Nor should Corporation Tax been cut so rapidly, with questionable benefit to the public purse.
So what. Migration into Germany doesn’t directly impact migration into the U.K.
What matters is migration into the U.K.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cewd14jvgewo
I think I’m getting immune from salmonella and campylob, I haven’t been sick for ages, apart from the scabs on my hands and arms. My friend Snooky says, why don’t I make money from letting the public come and cuddle the lambs and sheep? Because they are not pets is why, they ain’t keen on being petted and are covered in shit and diseases they will infect you with.
She’s in the Green Party. Good luck with their world view and grip on reality 🤷♀️
The other problem is that most think it won't be them, until it is
Nigelb's comment talked about 'migration into Europe'
Or do you think that people should only post about things that directly impact the UK?
And people don't just need to bring dependents with them, they create them too. People who come without dependents then have kids will need the NHS for maternity services then education etc - all while accruing their own future pension liabilities that should be accounted for too and not ignored. The idea we can just ignore all dependencies and liabilities is utterly absurd.
Back from holiday (or "holibobs" as they are now termed in modern English apparently).
A lot has happened in the last fortnight it would seem and it just keeps on happening.
Looking through the entrails of other people's elections, in Canada, Carney's Liberals have ended with 170 seats, the Conservatives have 143, Bloc Quebecois 22, NDP 7 and a single Green.
Just to note judicial recounts are outstanding in three ridings - we've already seen a Liberal pick up from BQ by a single vote in Terrebonne (the original count had BQ ahead by 44). The Liberals lead in two of the three remaining ridings to be recounted by 12 and 29 votes repectively and the Conservatives lead in the third by 65.
In the key battle ground of Ontario, the Liberals won 70 seats (down eight) and the Conservatives 52 (up fifteen) so Poilievre did what he needed to do there. In Quebec, the Liberals gained nine seats, BQ lost eleven and the Conservatives gained just one.
In British Columbia, the Liberals gained five and the Conservatives six from the NDP collapse. There wasn't much movement in either the Conservative dominated Prairies or the Liberal dominated Atlantic States where expected Conservative gains simply didn't materialise.
Australia saw a crushing win for Labor with Anthony Albanese returned with a clear majority. A 2.5 swing to Labor in the 2pp vote saw Labor won 54.7% to the LNP Coalition's 45.3%.
Labor has so far won 92 seats, by far their best result ever eclipsing the 86 won by Bob Hawke in his third election win. As for the LNP, it's the worst result ever with just 40 seats so far. Eight seats remain yet to declare with Labor ahead in two and the LNP ahead in four. The Greens, whose leader lost his seat, might yet keep a single seat while ten were won by various Independents.
The hoped for Liberal surge in Victoria never materialised while the LNP lost five seats in their Queensland heartland and were driven off Tasmania while they won just six seats in New South Wales.
One Government not much bothered by the perils of incumbency was the People's Action Party in Singapore who won 87 of 97 seats in their general election polling 65.6% of the vote to win their fourteenth successive mandate.
Anyway, That’s my point. Take it or leave it.
But there will come a time when someone has to bite the bullet.
This is fantasy economics. Tens of billions in unfunded pledges. Anyone can promise giveaways, but responsible government means not making commitments you can’t keep.
Reform would do exactly what Labour have done - pretend that there are no tough choices, then break every promise
https://x.com/MelJStride/status/1921216191063896389
I don’t usually respond to minor parties.
But we will take no lessons from the very same people who tripled the national debt in 14 years.
The Tory betrayal is such that I very much doubt you will keep your seat at the next general election.
https://x.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1921262811176477146
And what proportion came from unearned increases in house prices to earnings multiples?
People bemoan the fact that the equity in an old person's home is going to fund their own care, rather than an inheritance, but typically the bulk of that equity was never earned in the first place so easy come, easy go.
The country would be in a much healthier place if people were not expecting equity windfalls from inheritances from unearned house price rises - maybe then we could have a saner market and not have NIMBYs trying to inflate their equity value.
Du spackst
Er spackt
Wir spacken
Ihr spackt
Sie spacken
Syria was not caused by Bush's 'war on terror' - Islamic terrorists pre-dated the war, hence the war starting, and we never invaded Syria.
Even if you could, minimum wage workers enable other people to make the big bucks. So you cannot allocate GDP by salary. But this is why economic stats are load of bollocks much of the time.
It's clear a number of these carers want to work but it's not easy for them to find work in environments where workstyle practices are rigidly based on office attendance and a 9-5 working week. Indeed, it's often local councils (which provide a lot of part time work) who end up employing carers who do a few hours each week of work from home providing, for example, administrative support for a team of care workers.
Unfortunately, we now have these buffoons from Reform who are so virulently anti-WFH they will drive these carers out of work simply because they can't get to an office or a workplace.
We need to put an end to this nonsense of "presentism" as the only way to work and we also need to see far more private companies employing carers - perhaps we should adopt a quota approach as we do for people with disabilities.
Nick Tyrone"
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-this-centrist-dad-is-probably-voting-reform/
This is obvious, but psychologically I'm not sure it has quite hit home among the voting public yet. For Reform to win. Labour have to be trashed, because the Tories already are.
Footnote: In Scotland Labour will, on current form, get trashed by the SNP as well.
Boost to £40bn UK aerospace industry as Rolls-Royce engines and aircraft parts reportedly excused by US commerce secretary
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/may/11/british-plane-parts-exempted-from-trump-tariffs-as-us-trade-deal-progresses
We are now seeing 50-100 applicants for posts that would have had 5-10 before. And there are a lot of people almost throwing the towel in trying to find jobs. This one showed up recently and sounded authentic from the original post to a lot of 'yup - same for me' replies :
https://www.reddit.com/r/glasgow/comments/1kd1a8e/job_hunting_in_glasgow_and_the_uk_feels_like_the/
THERES CONSEQUENCES TO JUST SUDDENLY SWITCHING OFF IMMIGRATION WITHOUT WARNING TO INDUSTRIES.
Not least the horrendous damage of your actual actions not meeting your policy announcements.
Of course this touches the third rail of local authority funding, but with Labour's majority they should get on that.
Supply and demand may mean that wages need to rise beyond minimum wage to fill vacancies. Oh dear, how sad, nevermind.
The Church of England is dying out and selling up
Even if you don’t go to church, this matters" (£)
https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/05/08/the-church-of-england-is-dying-out-and-selling-up
a) not every party is saying this
b) some of those saying this are lying through their cowardly teeth
c) a lot of this is voices in Mr Tyrone’s head
Interesting that the right wing press is coming out with this "more in sorrow than in anger" drivel. The Times, and The Spectator actually do get it though: the Lib Dems are the existential threat to Torydom, not the US funded, Astroturf RefUkers. But honestly their perfidy could be done with a little more finesse than this staged and obvious nonsense.
I was discussing this with some nurses last week - their observation was that that 10 or 15 years ago, people employed in the care sector were there for years and years and built up a skill base, but that's no longer the case. To be honest, non-EU immigration has had a negative impact on that element of it all. But I'm very negative for the future of Health and Social Care here until someone finds a way to fund it.
She even put it in ALL CAPS for you.
"Quebec riding of Terrebonne flips to Liberals after recount shows candidate won by single vote
Liberals now have 170 seats in House of Commons, two shy of a majority government"
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/terrebone-recount-liberal-1.7532136
"Reform seem serious about curbing the worst elements of wokeness, which the Tories resolutely failed to do while in government. They appear to actually believe in Brexit, which I’d prefer to what we’ve had before and what we have now: an awkward in between. I’m a rejoiner, but I’m firmly of the opinion that we either rejoin full stop, or genuinely try and make the most of Brexit. Farage seems to be the only leading politician who genuinely wants to attempt the latter in any meaningful sense. Let’s either give Brexit one more go or abandon it. I’d prefer we abandoned it, but given no party is proposing that, why not give Nigel a go?"
What does even giving Brexit a go involve? Given Reform hate the India FTA, for instance, what do they want? The Alternative Economic Strategy? Becoming a full-on client state of Trump's US?
The Boris, Truss and Sunak governments were not nearly stupid enough to do something as stupid as what Labour announced today - switching off immigration whilst there is a need for it. The last government are known as stupid and unelectable for putting out vibes they would switch the gushing immigration off, whilst actually doing the opposite. Labour have so quickly shredded themselves by making the same mistakes, trapping themselves between fantasy and reality.
To be tough on immigration you first need to get in place mitigation for all immigration you don’t really need. No other way of doing it. Labour have kicked sorting social care crisis into the long grass, just like, for all their bluster, the Conservatives did.
This bolsters what an awful week it’s been for this Labour government. This little period of getting themselves caught with rhetoric they can’t deliver on, caught in no man’s land between EU and Trump on trade, is defining why they lose the next election.
80%+ are of U.K. origin.
So 150k immigrant workforce.
What’s the turnover? 20% per annum would be crazy high.
30k a year, then.
Interesting, isn’t it?
Edit : for 88% U.K. origin, that’s 18k to find every year, assuming 20% turnover.
Note the award winner can only bring one guest which is why I'm at home and not sat in Leicester Square watching the world go by.
Second bit of advice, if you do it with Scouts / Guiding you need to wear your uniform so ideally do it through school or by yourself.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-system-statistics-year-ending-december-2024/why-do-people-come-to-the-uk-work
“ 1.1 Health and Care Workers, other skilled work routes, and their family members
There were 27,174 ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas granted to main applicants in 2024, an 81% decrease compared to the previous year.
The number of ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas to main applicants increased from 31,800 in 2021 to 145,823 in 2023. The rise was primarily due to an increase in South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi) and Sub-Saharan African (Zimbabwean, Ghanaian, and Nigerian) nationals coming to work as care workers. However, the number of care workers and home carers issued visas have fallen since the latter part of 2023. The fall towards the end of 2023 is likely due to more scrutiny applied by the Home Office to employers in the health and social care sector, and compliance activity taken against employers of migrant workers, as well as the recent policy measures affecting care workers introduced in Spring 2024. The number of ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas issued to migrant workers in a Caring Personal Service occupation fell by 91% to 9,539 in the latest year.”
"But I don't want to increase prices" - tough shit.
Skilled migration should exist for bringing in talented people with skills. 'Prepared to work for minimum wage' is not a special skill.
The NOTA party is really getting under the skin of the mainstream parties.
Of course this reeks of making a hostage to fortune.
https://x.com/thisliberalage/status/1921465465215320219?s=61
Yes there are consequences to the ending of companies ability to import people prepared to work for minimum wage. Wages rising above minimum wage seems the likely consequence.
If you don't like that, then go suck a lemon. You don't have a right to serfs working for minimum wage.
I'm very pro-migration, but we should be bringing in skilled migrants at good wages bringing in actual skills - not enabling firms to hire at minimum wage and avoid any responsibility for pay rises.
(Outside the far southwest, are there many Lib-Ref battlegrounds?)
And the challenge for Reform is simple. Up until now, they have prospered by being NOTA. What happens in the parts of the country where they are now AOTA? (Not so much the effect on voters, as the effect on Reform activists. Consider what happened to Lib Dem morale during the coalition years.)
If the Church dies then its legacy buildings can be repurposed to a modern use of the pre-existing architecture. EG you get former Church buildings that now operate as bars or restaurants that tend to get far more patrons than they ever did as a Church.
UKIP ran Thanet council for less than a year before internal splits cost them their majority.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-34517022
(I would be happy with my taxes going up, personally.)
From this vantage point, the CoE looks like it believes in nothing except identity politics and climate change, but I am only a distant observer.
Source - my ex did this and became a solicitor with right of audience in the U.K.
If supply and demand means the wage clears above minimum wage then you need to pay whatever you need to pay. Nobody has a right to minimum wage labour.
Minicookie 1 does it through Altrincham FC. No call for any specific uniform though the black and red kits they have for DoE are quite striking.
The architecture was mentioned, though nobody really is proposing demolishing Churches - them getting repurposed to bars and restaurants keeps the architecture going in a far more productive 21st century use.
PS great game at Anfield. A couple of goals in as many minutes.
(I have also seen the argument that medieval churches are not very well suited for CofE worship either -- http://norfolkchurches.co.uk/translation/translation.htm (and the bit about Cawston and Salle that it links to) suggests that the Reformation took out both the need for such large structures and also the funding model that built and maintained them.)
A lady who looked after my father after surgery was a full time primary school teacher doing caring in the evenings to save for a deposit. Hard workers do still exist.