The interesting thing about the current political debate is how it is all interconnected.
The public finances are in a terrible state and the economy's growth is anaemic at best. Yet we have nine million working age adults (apparently) who are economically inactive.
The simplistic response becomes "get them into work" - well, yes but how? Apart from the long term sick and the students, you have 1.5 million carers, many of whom would like to work but find it very hard to get the kind of work which works alongside their primary caring responsibility.
An ageing population requires more care and more carers (not just residential or respite but dementia and domestic) but where to get the carers ? If we are struggling to generate economic growth because vacancies aren't being filled, let's fill them but where from? The economically inactive? No, well, what about importing labour?
Immigration? We can't possibly do that - no one wants more immigration though actually the demand is for fewer immigrants not less immigration per se. People like people like themselves and the cultural issue becomes serious when it becomes perceived (or fact) the place in which you live is no longer a place in which you feel comfortable living.
That's when you get into the deeper waters of identity, homogenity, uniculturalism and "re-moralising" (whatever that means).
The problem, in part, seems to be that despite large amounts of immigration, the immigrants aren’t working in care homes.
Maybe they are exactly as “workshy and money grubbing”* as the locals?
*meaning “wants a job that isn’t shit which pays enough to live on”
Ten species singing away (or cawing) in the garden this morning.
The swifts are back.
I use Merlin all the time. It is brilliant. So much so that a lot of the time I don't need it now as I have learnt to recognise the birdsong from using the app.
Latest addition for me today was a Willow Warbler.
Gordon Brown resigned as PM fifteen years ago today.
'Resigned' is an amusing term of phrase, as if he had much choice in the matter.
Gordon Brown lost a General Election fifteen years and five days ago.
Well, in that five days he found out the LibDems wouldn't play ball
To be fair Brown actually knew that the maths did not work and told the Lib Dems to "get lost"- actually a ruder version- when they called him. For a day or two Clegg was open to trying a deal with Labour, but insisted that since Brown had lost, he should give way to a new Labour leader, hence the Mot de Cambronne from Brown. Meanwhile Cameron had offered a full coalition. We kind of knew it was a trap, but were being told that if we did not have deal by Monday, the markets would collapse and we would get the blame. After the Cleggasm the Lib Dems were incredibly disappointed with the final result, so the next four days were a real rollercoaster, from disappointment to shock to pressure, to the Rose Garden love-in.
If the next Parliament is NOC, then the Lib Dems will be massively better prepared. This time, electoral and constitutional change will not be optional.
You were told once by the public on electoral reform. You remember, back when you though referendums were a good idea?
So despite all that has happened you cling to error? Neither good politics nor a good way to analyse things.
I don't think your positively Trumpian threat to change the electoral system without a referendum is good. That's my position. And I don't view any of the three Cameron referendums to have been a mistake. And I would feel that way even if I had not won all three of them.
I often cite my problems with the lib dems is even the name is a lie they are neither liberal nor democratic....the thought that a minor party can force electoral change with no mandate is certainly not democratic
Just as we’ve now - belatedly - admitted that mass immigration makes us poorer, not richer, so we will soon admit that - in many areas - it leads to higher crime
A questionable assertion given the available data.
There’s a summary of the evidence at https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/immigration-and-crime-evidence-for-the-uk-and-other-countries/ Immigration tends to be associated with similar or slightly lower levels of crime. In particular, focusing on the UK, they report: “The share of asylum seekers in the local population is related to a 1.1% rise in property crime but no change in violent crime. A rise in A8 migrants as a share of the population is associated with a 0.4% fall in property crime and has no relationship to violent crime.”
The interesting thing about the current political debate is how it is all interconnected.
The public finances are in a terrible state and the economy's growth is anaemic at best. Yet we have nine million working age adults (apparently) who are economically inactive.
The simplistic response becomes "get them into work" - well, yes but how? Apart from the long term sick and the students, you have 1.5 million carers, many of whom would like to work but find it very hard to get the kind of work which works alongside their primary caring responsibility.
An ageing population requires more care and more carers (not just residential or respite but dementia and domestic) but where to get the carers ? If we are struggling to generate economic growth because vacancies aren't being filled, let's fill them but where from? The economically inactive? No, well, what about importing labour?
Immigration? We can't possibly do that - no one wants more immigration though actually the demand is for fewer immigrants not less immigration per se. People like people like themselves and the cultural issue becomes serious when it becomes perceived (or fact) the place in which you live is no longer a place in which you feel comfortable living.
That's when you get into the deeper waters of identity, homogenity, uniculturalism and "re-moralising" (whatever that means).
The problem, in part, seems to be that despite large amounts of immigration, the immigrants aren’t working in care homes.
Maybe they are exactly as “workshy and money grubbing”* as the locals?
*meaning “wants a job that isn’t shit which pays enough to live on”
The problem is that populists offer simple answers, but the problems of the world are many and complex. There’s no one simple fix that will change everything. Reform UK say you just need to stop immigration. Over on the hard left, they’ll say you just need to tax (or maybe eat) the rich.
There are political decisions to be had over immigration and over tax policy, but just stopping immigration, or taxing the rich more, can only have a very limited effect. You need good governance over dozens of issues, if not hundreds. But the populists ignore that and tell sweet lies (or, actually, often quite ugly lies).
Gordon Brown resigned as PM fifteen years ago today.
'Resigned' is an amusing term of phrase, as if he had much choice in the matter.
Gordon Brown lost a General Election fifteen years and five days ago.
Well, in that five days he found out the LibDems wouldn't play ball
To be fair Brown actually knew that the maths did not work and told the Lib Dems to "get lost"- actually a ruder version- when they called him. For a day or two Clegg was open to trying a deal with Labour, but insisted that since Brown had lost, he should give way to a new Labour leader, hence the Mot de Cambronne from Brown. Meanwhile Cameron had offered a full coalition. We kind of knew it was a trap, but were being told that if we did not have deal by Monday, the markets would collapse and we would get the blame. After the Cleggasm the Lib Dems were incredibly disappointed with the final result, so the next four days were a real rollercoaster, from disappointment to shock to pressure, to the Rose Garden love-in.
If the next Parliament is NOC, then the Lib Dems will be massively better prepared. This time, electoral and constitutional change will not be optional.
You were told once by the public on electoral reform. You remember, back when you though referendums were a good idea?
So despite all that has happened you cling to error? Neither good politics nor a good way to analyse things.
Not an EU flag in sight:
Don't say that you love me
Just tell me that you want me
TUSK!
In order of geopolitical importance and charisma:
1. Tusk 2. Macron 3. Starmer 4. Merz
Donald Tusk is by some way the most accomplished Donald currently running a country.
I'd rank the 3 most famous Donalds as follows for ability:
Tusk Duck Trump
Duck Bradman Sutherland
How can you rate Donald Duck more able than Bradman or Donald Sutherland?
The greatest ever batsman. An iconic movie star who made Don't Look Now. As opposed to a cartoon duck.
????
I believe Trump is preparing to intervene in this discussion.
Just as we’ve now - belatedly - admitted that mass immigration makes us poorer, not richer, so we will soon admit that - in many areas - it leads to higher crime
A questionable assertion given the available data.
There’s a summary of the evidence at https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/immigration-and-crime-evidence-for-the-uk-and-other-countries/ Immigration tends to be associated with similar or slightly lower levels of crime. In particular, focusing on the UK, they report: “The share of asylum seekers in the local population is related to a 1.1% rise in property crime but no change in violent crime. A rise in A8 migrants as a share of the population is associated with a 0.4% fall in property crime and has no relationship to violent crime.”
However in the last couple of decades its a rise in non a8 migrants we have experienced
Prediction. By the time the US Secret Service has ripped this 747 apart with a fine toothcomb looking for hidden bugs/cameras etc, and reassembled it, the ACTUAL Air Force One 747-8 will be ready.... https://x.com/RAeSTimR/status/1921606702970892498
The simplistic response becomes "get them into work" - well, yes but how? Apart from the long term sick and the students, you have 1.5 million carers, many of whom would like to work but find it very hard to get the kind of work which works alongside their primary caring responsibility.
The benefit system punishes carers for doing other work, often quite viciously. The rules surrounding Carer's Allowance are particularly cruel.
And the system isn't set up to accommodate the kind of work carers find most suitable, work that can be done from home without set hours. One lady I know who cares for a disabled relative started making little party trinkets and selling them on Etsy to get some extra cash.
But she had to stop because the DWP was reducing her benefit by more than her profit, because their system doesn't differentiate between gross and net income.
Just as we’ve now - belatedly - admitted that mass immigration makes us poorer, not richer, so we will soon admit that - in many areas - it leads to higher crime
A questionable assertion given the available data.
There’s a summary of the evidence at https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/immigration-and-crime-evidence-for-the-uk-and-other-countries/ Immigration tends to be associated with similar or slightly lower levels of crime. In particular, focusing on the UK, they report: “The share of asylum seekers in the local population is related to a 1.1% rise in property crime but no change in violent crime. A rise in A8 migrants as a share of the population is associated with a 0.4% fall in property crime and has no relationship to violent crime.”
However in the last couple of decades its a rise in non a8 migrants we have experienced
Other studies generally show immigration from all sorts of places is generally not associated with a rise in crime, although there are counter-examples.
As for A8 immigration in particular… well, I didn’t vote for Brexit, so take that up with someone who did.
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.
Yes, it's completely insane.
They are not taking any active steps to stop the most visible form of illegal migration, that causes the most anger among voters, which is the boats crossing the channel. Their war on the migration 'gangs' will be as successful as the 'war on drugs' & the boats will continue to arrive & the hotels will keep filling up.
Instead Labour are stopping migration from the one source, aged care workers, where even a lot of Reform voters might be Ok to have a limited number of migrants.
I doubt many Reform voters are eager to go and work in aged care. They want to stop the entry of migrant criminals, as a top priority, and then the entry of migrants who take good well-paying jobs, such as tradesmen & factory workers. Instead of prioritising this, Labour instead goes & stops the entry of aged care workers.
And, no, a Labour government that is cutting Winter Fuel Allowance, won't be putting any more money into aged care. So, the end result will voters who continue being angry about the boats and are now also angry about the deteriorating quality of aged care services.
See the numbers I posted from the gov (above). Visas for recruited abroad carers have collapsed under scrutiny.
- The care home workforce is 750k - It’s 88% U.K. origin. - So 90,000 of immigrant origin. - at one point, the number of visas for carers was 6 figures. Per year. - Last year, one company arranged for 1200 visas. But employs 20. The BBC found multiple allegations against them of selling non-existent jobs.
I strongly suspect that the government found that very few of the people getting visas to work in care homes were ending up working in care homes.
Very strange that Yvette Cooper isn't saying anything like that, if that's the reason.
But is instead talking about improving carers' pay to make the jobs more attractive to UK workers. I wonder whether there is any kind of plan to fund better pay.
Almost certainly no plan.
The only reason to restrict visas is if there are too many UK nationals chasing limited vacancies.
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.
Yes, it's completely insane.
They are not taking any active steps to stop the most visible form of illegal migration, that causes the most anger among voters, which is the boats crossing the channel. Their war on the migration 'gangs' will be as successful as the 'war on drugs' & the boats will continue to arrive & the hotels will keep filling up.
Instead Labour are stopping migration from the one source, aged care workers, where even a lot of Reform voters might be Ok to have a limited number of migrants.
I doubt many Reform voters are eager to go and work in aged care. They want to stop the entry of migrant criminals, as a top priority, and then the entry of migrants who take good well-paying jobs, such as tradesmen & factory workers. Instead of prioritising this, Labour instead goes & stops the entry of aged care workers.
And, no, a Labour government that is cutting Winter Fuel Allowance, won't be putting any more money into aged care. So, the end result will voters who continue being angry about the boats and are now also angry about the deteriorating quality of aged care services.
See the numbers I posted from the gov (above). Visas for recruited abroad carers have collapsed under scrutiny.
- The care home workforce is 750k - It’s 88% U.K. origin. - So 90,000 of immigrant origin. - at one point, the number of visas for carers was 6 figures. Per year. - Last year, one company arranged for 1200 visas. But employs 20. The BBC found multiple allegations against them of selling non-existent jobs.
I strongly suspect that the government found that very few of the people getting visas to work in care homes were ending up working in care homes.
Very strange that Yvette Cooper isn't saying anything like that, if that's the reason.
But is instead talking about improving carers' pay to make the jobs more attractive to UK workers. I wonder whether there is any kind of plan to fund better pay.
Almost certainly no plan.
The only reason to restrict visas is if there are too many UK nationals chasing limited vacancies.
That's only the only reason if you don't think it's legitimate to make political decisions for political reasons.
Just as we’ve now - belatedly - admitted that mass immigration makes us poorer, not richer, so we will soon admit that - in many areas - it leads to higher crime
A questionable assertion given the available data.
The lump of labour fallacy is back in fashion. Data doesn't come into it
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.
Yes, it's completely insane.
They are not taking any active steps to stop the most visible form of illegal migration, that causes the most anger among voters, which is the boats crossing the channel. Their war on the migration 'gangs' will be as successful as the 'war on drugs' & the boats will continue to arrive & the hotels will keep filling up.
Instead Labour are stopping migration from the one source, aged care workers, where even a lot of Reform voters might be Ok to have a limited number of migrants.
I doubt many Reform voters are eager to go and work in aged care. They want to stop the entry of migrant criminals, as a top priority, and then the entry of migrants who take good well-paying jobs, such as tradesmen & factory workers. Instead of prioritising this, Labour instead goes & stops the entry of aged care workers.
And, no, a Labour government that is cutting Winter Fuel Allowance, won't be putting any more money into aged care. So, the end result will voters who continue being angry about the boats and are now also angry about the deteriorating quality of aged care services.
See the numbers I posted from the gov (above). Visas for recruited abroad carers have collapsed under scrutiny.
- The care home workforce is 750k - It’s 88% U.K. origin. - So 90,000 of immigrant origin. - at one point, the number of visas for carers was 6 figures. Per year. - Last year, one company arranged for 1200 visas. But employs 20. The BBC found multiple allegations against them of selling non-existent jobs.
I strongly suspect that the government found that very few of the people getting visas to work in care homes were ending up working in care homes.
Very strange that Yvette Cooper isn't saying anything like that, if that's the reason.
But is instead talking about improving carers' pay to make the jobs more attractive to UK workers. I wonder whether there is any kind of plan to fund better pay.
Almost certainly no plan.
The only reason to restrict visas is if there are too many UK nationals chasing limited vacancies.
That's the lump of labour fallacy.
Importing people doesn't fill vacancies, it increases the amount of work needed too.
Just as we’ve now - belatedly - admitted that mass immigration makes us poorer, not richer, so we will soon admit that - in many areas - it leads to higher crime
A questionable assertion given the available data.
The lump of labour fallacy is back in fashion. Data doesn't come into it
The lump of labour fallacy cuts both ways. If there isn't a set amount of work that needs doing then you can't assert that we need to import people to do it.
Ten species singing away (or cawing) in the garden this morning.
The swifts are back.
I use Merlin all the time. It is brilliant. So much so that a lot of the time I don't need it now as I have learnt to recognise the birdsong from using the app.
Latest addition for me today was a Willow Warbler.
Mostly for trickier things. I'm not very good on Garden warbler vs Blackcap or Sedge warbler vs Reed warbler without hearing both in a reasonably close timespan but the app has no such difficulty.
It is a good use of technology though. Plant recognition apps are also coming along in leaps and bounds.
Normally I have Mrs Flatlander the walking AI to ask but 90% of the time they do pretty well.
Just as we’ve now - belatedly - admitted that mass immigration makes us poorer, not richer, so we will soon admit that - in many areas - it leads to higher crime
A questionable assertion given the available data.
The lump of labour fallacy is back in fashion. Data doesn't come into it
The lump of labour fallacy cuts both ways. If there isn't a set amount of work that needs doing then you can't assert that we need to import people to do it.
Indeed. Prices are key instead.
If there's too many vacancies then prices are too low. Wages need to rise, unproductive jobs disappear, productivity rises.
If there's too much unemployment then prices are too high. Wages need to fall, the unemployed can work then at lower wages. Productivity falls but more people are employed.
Importing people won't solve vacancies, or create unemployment. That's a fallacy.
I have carers, but at home, and have for two-and-a-half years. Carers aren’t just in Care Homes, but it’s obviously as difficult to recruit and to manage the service in the domiciliary sector as in the ‘residential’. I’ve had Polish, Nigerian, and Zimbabwean carers as well as British and it’s very clear from discussions with both staff and management that recruiting ‘local’ staff isn’t easy.
Because the native population have got used to not doing that type of work.
You could just say they are happy getting more sitting at home claiming benefits
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.
Yes, it's completely insane.
They are not taking any active steps to stop the most visible form of illegal migration, that causes the most anger among voters, which is the boats crossing the channel. Their war on the migration 'gangs' will be as successful as the 'war on drugs' & the boats will continue to arrive & the hotels will keep filling up.
Instead Labour are stopping migration from the one source, aged care workers, where even a lot of Reform voters might be Ok to have a limited number of migrants.
I doubt many Reform voters are eager to go and work in aged care. They want to stop the entry of migrant criminals, as a top priority, and then the entry of migrants who take good well-paying jobs, such as tradesmen & factory workers. Instead of prioritising this, Labour instead goes & stops the entry of aged care workers.
And, no, a Labour government that is cutting Winter Fuel Allowance, won't be putting any more money into aged care. So, the end result will voters who continue being angry about the boats and are now also angry about the deteriorating quality of aged care services.
See the numbers I posted from the gov (above). Visas for recruited abroad carers have collapsed under scrutiny.
- The care home workforce is 750k - It’s 88% U.K. origin. - So 90,000 of immigrant origin. - at one point, the number of visas for carers was 6 figures. Per year. - Last year, one company arranged for 1200 visas. But employs 20. The BBC found multiple allegations against them of selling non-existent jobs.
I strongly suspect that the government found that very few of the people getting visas to work in care homes were ending up working in care homes.
Very strange that Yvette Cooper isn't saying anything like that, if that's the reason.
But is instead talking about improving carers' pay to make the jobs more attractive to UK workers. I wonder whether there is any kind of plan to fund better pay.
Almost certainly no plan.
The only reason to restrict visas is if there are too many UK nationals chasing limited vacancies.
That's the lump of labour fallacy.
Importing people doesn't fill vacancies, it increases the amount of work needed too.
I was talking about care workers. Different point. In general those care workers don't need care.
Just as we’ve now - belatedly - admitted that mass immigration makes us poorer, not richer, so we will soon admit that - in many areas - it leads to higher crime
A questionable assertion given the available data.
There’s a summary of the evidence at https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/immigration-and-crime-evidence-for-the-uk-and-other-countries/ Immigration tends to be associated with similar or slightly lower levels of crime. In particular, focusing on the UK, they report: “The share of asylum seekers in the local population is related to a 1.1% rise in property crime but no change in violent crime. A rise in A8 migrants as a share of the population is associated with a 0.4% fall in property crime and has no relationship to violent crime.”
And neither does GDP per capita data support an "immigration makes us poorer" sentiment.
Course, the Cons did lose control of it under Johnson. I think that's undeniable. Those numbers are crazy.
We won't see any improvement in output for all the extra tens of billions the NHS has been bunged, IMHO.
just money down the drain
Taxpayers money down the drain Malc.
For sure Taz, and never ever any targets to meet re productivity gains etc. In private business they fund the pay rises with productivity or they hav eto cut the number of employees. NHS just grows and grows , total money pit and they are scared to sort it out.
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.
Yes, it's completely insane.
They are not taking any active steps to stop the most visible form of illegal migration, that causes the most anger among voters, which is the boats crossing the channel. Their war on the migration 'gangs' will be as successful as the 'war on drugs' & the boats will continue to arrive & the hotels will keep filling up.
Instead Labour are stopping migration from the one source, aged care workers, where even a lot of Reform voters might be Ok to have a limited number of migrants.
I doubt many Reform voters are eager to go and work in aged care. They want to stop the entry of migrant criminals, as a top priority, and then the entry of migrants who take good well-paying jobs, such as tradesmen & factory workers. Instead of prioritising this, Labour instead goes & stops the entry of aged care workers.
And, no, a Labour government that is cutting Winter Fuel Allowance, won't be putting any more money into aged care. So, the end result will voters who continue being angry about the boats and are now also angry about the deteriorating quality of aged care services.
See the numbers I posted from the gov (above). Visas for recruited abroad carers have collapsed under scrutiny.
- The care home workforce is 750k - It’s 88% U.K. origin. - So 90,000 of immigrant origin. - at one point, the number of visas for carers was 6 figures. Per year. - Last year, one company arranged for 1200 visas. But employs 20. The BBC found multiple allegations against them of selling non-existent jobs.
I strongly suspect that the government found that very few of the people getting visas to work in care homes were ending up working in care homes.
Very strange that Yvette Cooper isn't saying anything like that, if that's the reason.
But is instead talking about improving carers' pay to make the jobs more attractive to UK workers. I wonder whether there is any kind of plan to fund better pay.
Almost certainly no plan.
The only reason to restrict visas is if there are too many UK nationals chasing limited vacancies.
That's the lump of labour fallacy.
Importing people doesn't fill vacancies, it increases the amount of work needed too.
I was talking about care workers. Different point. In general those care workers don't need care.
Workers are fungible. You don't need a degree to be a care worker, you can choose to work in care, or hospitality, or retail or plenty of other jobs.
There is no lump of labour and firms can increase their share of employment by improving pay, or often equally importantly, conditions.
Whilst most of the piece is taken up with a pissing contest with another blogger, I am interested in the prediction of the SNP to get 65 constituency seats at the next Holyrood elections, thanks to some recovery and splut opposition.
If we scrapped our nuclear deterrent, stopped putting up Asylum seekers/illegal immigrants and cancelled our space program, that would save approx £11bn a year which could be used to pay for Nurses/Carers/accommodation for old people who can't look after themselves anymore. I reckon there'd be a significant amount of people who'd rather their taxes went on the latter
The system is broken., and it's best to tear it down and start again. The ageing population/dementia onset is not going away, the rules have changed, so rather than make tiny adjustments that don't really work it's best to start from the beginning with a clean slate
If we scrapped our nuclear deterrent, stopped putting up Asylum seekers/illegal immigrants and cancelled our space program, that would save approx £11bn a year which could be used to pay for Nurses/Carers/accommodation for old people who can't look after themselves anymore. I reckon there'd be a significant amount of people who'd rather their taxes went on the latter
The system is broken., and it's best to tear it down and start again. The ageing population/dementia onset is not going away, the rules have changed, so rather than make tiny adjustments that don't really work it's best to start from the beginning with a clean slate
Is anyone, apart from you in fairness, actually advocating that sort of approach though? I feel like Reform talk the talk on that front but the pressures of public popularity would see them run scared from genuinely trying it, and no other party is surely even close.
Just as we’ve now - belatedly - admitted that mass immigration makes us poorer, not richer, so we will soon admit that - in many areas - it leads to higher crime
A questionable assertion given the available data.
The lump of labour fallacy is back in fashion. Data doesn't come into it
The lump of labour fallacy cuts both ways. If there isn't a set amount of work that needs doing then you can't assert that we need to import people to do it.
I'm not asserting anything one way or the other one on the need for immigration. I do assert that immigration makes the country richer - that should be obvious - and it could be useful for tax revenues for example that help fund a better lifestyle for the population. The data I have seen shows wealth per head is essentially a wash. Each immigrant on average increases the GDP in proportion. It benefits the indigenous population however as immigrant jobs tend to be lower paid allowing the indigenous population more opportunity for a higher paid job. You might be better restricting higher wage immigration than minimum wage ones that everyone focuses on.
We won't see any improvement in output for all the extra tens of billions the NHS has been bunged, IMHO.
just money down the drain
Taxpayers money down the drain Malc.
For sure Taz, and never ever any targets to meet re productivity gains etc. In private business they fund the pay rises with productivity or they hav eto cut the number of employees. NHS just grows and grows , total money pit and they are scared to sort it out.
Well exactly - NHS productivity significantly improved in the 10 years up to the pandemic, but their wages were cut in real terms. If you were to retrospectively link them, you'd have to provide them with a big payrise.
The fact is that we have an incredibly unhealthy population, and the NHS is brilliant at mitigating it. Cuts to public health and primary care are now taking their toll. To fix it, you'd actually see productivity drop in the short and medium-term because you won't see a return on public health for quite a while.
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.
Yes, it's completely insane.
They are not taking any active steps to stop the most visible form of illegal migration, that causes the most anger among voters, which is the boats crossing the channel. Their war on the migration 'gangs' will be as successful as the 'war on drugs' & the boats will continue to arrive & the hotels will keep filling up.
Instead Labour are stopping migration from the one source, aged care workers, where even a lot of Reform voters might be Ok to have a limited number of migrants.
I doubt many Reform voters are eager to go and work in aged care. They want to stop the entry of migrant criminals, as a top priority, and then the entry of migrants who take good well-paying jobs, such as tradesmen & factory workers. Instead of prioritising this, Labour instead goes & stops the entry of aged care workers.
And, no, a Labour government that is cutting Winter Fuel Allowance, won't be putting any more money into aged care. So, the end result will voters who continue being angry about the boats and are now also angry about the deteriorating quality of aged care services.
See the numbers I posted from the gov (above). Visas for recruited abroad carers have collapsed under scrutiny.
- The care home workforce is 750k - It’s 88% U.K. origin. - So 90,000 of immigrant origin. - at one point, the number of visas for carers was 6 figures. Per year. - Last year, one company arranged for 1200 visas. But employs 20. The BBC found multiple allegations against them of selling non-existent jobs.
I strongly suspect that the government found that very few of the people getting visas to work in care homes were ending up working in care homes.
Very strange that Yvette Cooper isn't saying anything like that, if that's the reason.
But is instead talking about improving carers' pay to make the jobs more attractive to UK workers. I wonder whether there is any kind of plan to fund better pay.
Yvette Cooper is quote today saying employers should recruit from the existing pool of care workers already in the UK, including those who arrived on visas but were never placed in roles.
I didn't see the interview, so don't know how explicit it was, but it seems to be suggesting they do think that's a reason to stop the scheme.
Why the heck should any working person accept a lower pay rise than that offered to those who are not working via the triple lock?
Should be self funding, whatever they get has to be down to productivity and cutting out the chaff, that will focus their minds.
Absolutely. Same with pension benefits. Whatever you've fully funded you get, whatever you haven't you don't.
No increases coming from taxpayers.
I paid for 51 years and get a poxy 12K. My private one where I contributed the same or less is multiples of that. Ripped off and 2 years stolen into the bargain.
If we scrapped our nuclear deterrent, stopped putting up Asylum seekers/illegal immigrants and cancelled our space program, that would save approx £11bn a year which could be used to pay for Nurses/Carers/accommodation for old people who can't look after themselves anymore. I reckon there'd be a significant amount of people who'd rather their taxes went on the latter
The system is broken., and it's best to tear it down and start again. The ageing population/dementia onset is not going away, the rules have changed, so rather than make tiny adjustments that don't really work it's best to start from the beginning with a clean slate
Is anyone, apart from you in fairness, actually advocating that sort of approach though? I feel like Reform talk the talk on that front but the pressures of public popularity would see them run scared from genuinely trying it, and no other party is surely even close.
I don't know if anybody else is, I just thought of three things that we spend money on that I personally couldn't care less about (genuine asylum seekers are one thing, but the boat nonsense is just people having us over) and thought we could spend the money on something more tangible.
Basically people seem to want to be looked after at home first, with any extra going on luxuries or helping others. The sense of anger and disappointment is with the government saying there isn't enough money for x,y and z here, then we see us giving £xbn to Ukraine, spending money on a space program, etc etc. I picked three things quickly, I am sure other people would have different priorities
Qatar are giving Trump a luxury jet for use as Air Force One and then to be transferred to the Trump Presidential library before he steps down. This is not a bribe, honest. Also, Trump has a big new property deal in Qatar.
If the midterms happen, and the Dems win big, the Mad King is going to spend the last 2 years being impeached continuously
What a surprise, Pam Bondi and Pete Hegseth have concluded that it would not violate the emoluments clause for Trump to accept a “flying palace” 747-8 jumbo jet from Qatar. https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1921554860215820399
Pam Bondi, former lobbyist for (checks notes) Qatar. That Pam Bondi...
Just as we’ve now - belatedly - admitted that mass immigration makes us poorer, not richer, so we will soon admit that - in many areas - it leads to higher crime
A questionable assertion given the available data.
The lump of labour fallacy is back in fashion. Data doesn't come into it
The lump of labour fallacy cuts both ways. If there isn't a set amount of work that needs doing then you can't assert that we need to import people to do it.
I'm not asserting anything one way or the other one on the need for immigration. I do assert that immigration makes the country richer - that should be obvious - and it could be useful for tax revenues for example that help fund a better lifestyle for the population. The data I have seen shows wealth per head is essentially a wash. Each immigrant on average increases the GDP in proportion. It benefits the indigenous population however as immigrant jobs tend to be lower paid allowing the indigenous population more opportunity for a higher paid job. You might be better restricting higher wage immigration than minimum wage ones that everyone focuses on.
The simplistic response becomes "get them into work" - well, yes but how? Apart from the long term sick and the students, you have 1.5 million carers, many of whom would like to work but find it very hard to get the kind of work which works alongside their primary caring responsibility.
The benefit system punishes carers for doing other work, often quite viciously. The rules surrounding Carer's Allowance are particularly cruel.
And the system isn't set up to accommodate the kind of work carers find most suitable, work that can be done from home without set hours. One lady I know who cares for a disabled relative started making little party trinkets and selling them on Etsy to get some extra cash.
But she had to stop because the DWP was reducing her benefit by more than her profit, because their system doesn't differentiate between gross and net income.
I remember Ian Duncan Smith took quite a while out from his westminster/MP duties to act as a carer for his very ill wife (now thankfully recovered afaik).
He probably had to suffer very severe sanctions from the DWP and Commons for it though.
I can't find any record of such punitive tax-payer recoup though. But he was in charge of all that for ages, so I imagine he's sorted a similar arrangement for regular people.
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.
Yes, it's completely insane.
They are not taking any active steps to stop the most visible form of illegal migration, that causes the most anger among voters, which is the boats crossing the channel. Their war on the migration 'gangs' will be as successful as the 'war on drugs' & the boats will continue to arrive & the hotels will keep filling up.
Instead Labour are stopping migration from the one source, aged care workers, where even a lot of Reform voters might be Ok to have a limited number of migrants.
I doubt many Reform voters are eager to go and work in aged care. They want to stop the entry of migrant criminals, as a top priority, and then the entry of migrants who take good well-paying jobs, such as tradesmen & factory workers. Instead of prioritising this, Labour instead goes & stops the entry of aged care workers.
And, no, a Labour government that is cutting Winter Fuel Allowance, won't be putting any more money into aged care. So, the end result will voters who continue being angry about the boats and are now also angry about the deteriorating quality of aged care services.
See the numbers I posted from the gov (above). Visas for recruited abroad carers have collapsed under scrutiny.
- The care home workforce is 750k - It’s 88% U.K. origin. - So 90,000 of immigrant origin. - at one point, the number of visas for carers was 6 figures. Per year. - Last year, one company arranged for 1200 visas. But employs 20. The BBC found multiple allegations against them of selling non-existent jobs.
I strongly suspect that the government found that very few of the people getting visas to work in care homes were ending up working in care homes.
Very strange that Yvette Cooper isn't saying anything like that, if that's the reason.
But is instead talking about improving carers' pay to make the jobs more attractive to UK workers. I wonder whether there is any kind of plan to fund better pay.
Yvette Cooper is quote today saying employers should recruit from the existing pool of care workers already in the UK, including those who arrived on visas but were never placed in roles.
I didn't see the interview, so don't know how explicit it was, but it seems to be suggesting they do think that's a reason to stop the scheme.
It's possible those people aren't really care workers though
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.
Yes, it's completely insane.
They are not taking any active steps to stop the most visible form of illegal migration, that causes the most anger among voters, which is the boats crossing the channel. Their war on the migration 'gangs' will be as successful as the 'war on drugs' & the boats will continue to arrive & the hotels will keep filling up.
Instead Labour are stopping migration from the one source, aged care workers, where even a lot of Reform voters might be Ok to have a limited number of migrants.
I doubt many Reform voters are eager to go and work in aged care. They want to stop the entry of migrant criminals, as a top priority, and then the entry of migrants who take good well-paying jobs, such as tradesmen & factory workers. Instead of prioritising this, Labour instead goes & stops the entry of aged care workers.
And, no, a Labour government that is cutting Winter Fuel Allowance, won't be putting any more money into aged care. So, the end result will voters who continue being angry about the boats and are now also angry about the deteriorating quality of aged care services.
See the numbers I posted from the gov (above). Visas for recruited abroad carers have collapsed under scrutiny.
- The care home workforce is 750k - It’s 88% U.K. origin. - So 90,000 of immigrant origin. - at one point, the number of visas for carers was 6 figures. Per year. - Last year, one company arranged for 1200 visas. But employs 20. The BBC found multiple allegations against them of selling non-existent jobs.
I strongly suspect that the government found that very few of the people getting visas to work in care homes were ending up working in care homes.
Very strange that Yvette Cooper isn't saying anything like that, if that's the reason.
But is instead talking about improving carers' pay to make the jobs more attractive to UK workers. I wonder whether there is any kind of plan to fund better pay.
Yvette Cooper is quote today saying employers should recruit from the existing pool of care workers already in the UK, including those who arrived on visas but were never placed in roles.
I didn't see the interview, so don't know how explicit it was, but it seems to be suggesting they do think that's a reason to stop the scheme.
It's possible those people aren't really care workers though
She has the startlingly naive idea that there is a pool of care workers to be recruited from just because they putatively came to the country as care workers in the first place even though they have never had jobs as care workers
Kit Malthouse's letter to Palestine has gone down like a cup of cold sick in North-West Hampshire amongst the Tory base.
He's lost both my parents vote to Reform over it.
I'd be especially worried about my father who is as staunch and loyal a Conservative as they come.
So the Tories lose supporters over a rare outbreak of basic humanity in their ranks, in the face of an increasingly ugly attempt to eradicate an entire people?
If that’s the case then I despair. I say that as someone who for several months after October 7th (anyone is welcome to search old posts) was defending Israel’s right to hit back hard at Hamas.
And they lose supporters to a party whose Kent council leader’s first action in office was to ban the flag of Ukraine from council buildings. There’s a pattern there.
If we scrapped our nuclear deterrent, stopped putting up Asylum seekers/illegal immigrants and cancelled our space program, that would save approx £11bn a year which could be used to pay for Nurses/Carers/accommodation for old people who can't look after themselves anymore. I reckon there'd be a significant amount of people who'd rather their taxes went on the latter
The system is broken., and it's best to tear it down and start again. The ageing population/dementia onset is not going away, the rules have changed, so rather than make tiny adjustments that don't really work it's best to start from the beginning with a clean slate
Is anyone, apart from you in fairness, actually advocating that sort of approach though? I feel like Reform talk the talk on that front but the pressures of public popularity would see them run scared from genuinely trying it, and no other party is surely even close.
I don't know if anybody else is, I just thought of three things that we spend money on that I personally couldn't care less about (genuine asylum seekers are one thing, but the boat nonsense is just people having us over) and thought we could spend the money on something more tangible.
Basically people seem to want to be looked after at home first, with any extra going on luxuries or helping others. The sense of anger and disappointment is with the government saying there isn't enough money for x,y and z here, then we see us giving £xbn to Ukraine, spending money on a space program, etc etc. I picked three things quickly, I am sure other people would have different priorities
Putin overrunning Eastern Europe isn't in the interest of the WWC anymore than the elites.
Kit Malthouse's letter to Palestine has gone down like a cup of cold sick in North-West Hampshire amongst the Tory base.
He's lost both my parents vote to Reform over it.
I'd be especially worried about my father who is as staunch and loyal a Conservative as they come.
Malthouse's letter only supported recognition of Palestine as a state, as 149 UN members states now do and as the UK government has supported a 2 state solution.
I assume your parents believe Israel should take full control of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza and support full Jewish settler occupation of Palestinian lands? ie little different to the hardline parties in Netanyahu's Cabinet hence their vote for Reform. However even most Tory voters aren't that hardline Zionist and the oldest ones remember the King David Hotel bombing
We won't see any improvement in output for all the extra tens of billions the NHS has been bunged, IMHO.
just money down the drain
Taxpayers money down the drain Malc.
clapping for the NHS was a long long time ago huh
The fetishisation of the NHS has been going on for longer than that.
Anyway, it was clapping for key workers after the first week.
Indeed. This is often forgotten. It was clap for carers i.e those people who were potentially exposing themselves to covid in order to treat others. Only later did it become 'clap for the NHS' by the cunning swines who managed to appropriate it.
Stewart was in the Labour Party at Oxford, he is basically a social democrat LD who would have been a LD if they had more seats when he stood for parliament
If we scrapped our nuclear deterrent, stopped putting up Asylum seekers/illegal immigrants and cancelled our space program, that would save approx £11bn a year which could be used to pay for Nurses/Carers/accommodation for old people who can't look after themselves anymore. I reckon there'd be a significant amount of people who'd rather their taxes went on the latter
The system is broken., and it's best to tear it down and start again. The ageing population/dementia onset is not going away, the rules have changed, so rather than make tiny adjustments that don't really work it's best to start from the beginning with a clean slate
Is anyone, apart from you in fairness, actually advocating that sort of approach though? I feel like Reform talk the talk on that front but the pressures of public popularity would see them run scared from genuinely trying it, and no other party is surely even close.
I don't know if anybody else is, I just thought of three things that we spend money on that I personally couldn't care less about (genuine asylum seekers are one thing, but the boat nonsense is just people having us over) and thought we could spend the money on something more tangible.
Basically people seem to want to be looked after at home first, with any extra going on luxuries or helping others. The sense of anger and disappointment is with the government saying there isn't enough money for x,y and z here, then we see us giving £xbn to Ukraine, spending money on a space program, etc etc. I picked three things quickly, I am sure other people would have different priorities
Putin overrunning Eastern Europe isn't in the interest of the WWC anymore than the elites.
We do seem to be importing American politics lock stock and barrel
I thought Britain, with its proud tradition of standing up to bullies, might be immune to the whole defund Ukraine campaign, but it seems not.
If people who support Reform want them to win power then they really shouldn't want their party to suck up to Putin. That's really going to put off ordinary people who might consider them and encourage the left rally against them. It's come up focus up groups that Reform curious Labour voters hated what Trump did to Zelensky in the Oval Office.
If we scrapped our nuclear deterrent, stopped putting up Asylum seekers/illegal immigrants and cancelled our space program, that would save approx £11bn a year which could be used to pay for Nurses/Carers/accommodation for old people who can't look after themselves anymore. I reckon there'd be a significant amount of people who'd rather their taxes went on the latter
The system is broken., and it's best to tear it down and start again. The ageing population/dementia onset is not going away, the rules have changed, so rather than make tiny adjustments that don't really work it's best to start from the beginning with a clean slate
Is anyone, apart from you in fairness, actually advocating that sort of approach though? I feel like Reform talk the talk on that front but the pressures of public popularity would see them run scared from genuinely trying it, and no other party is surely even close.
I don't know if anybody else is, I just thought of three things that we spend money on that I personally couldn't care less about (genuine asylum seekers are one thing, but the boat nonsense is just people having us over) and thought we could spend the money on something more tangible.
Basically people seem to want to be looked after at home first, with any extra going on luxuries or helping others. The sense of anger and disappointment is with the government saying there isn't enough money for x,y and z here, then we see us giving £xbn to Ukraine, spending money on a space program, etc etc. I picked three things quickly, I am sure other people would have different priorities
Putin overrunning Eastern Europe isn't in the interest of the WWC anymore than the elites.
We do seem to be importing American politics lock stock and barrel
I thought Britain, with its proud tradition of standing up to bullies, might be immune to the whole defund Ukraine campaign, but it seems not.
Kit Malthouse's letter to Palestine has gone down like a cup of cold sick in North-West Hampshire amongst the Tory base.
He's lost both my parents vote to Reform over it.
I'd be especially worried about my father who is as staunch and loyal a Conservative as they come.
So the Tories lose supporters over a rare outbreak of basic humanity in their ranks, in the face of an increasingly ugly attempt to eradicate an entire people?
If that’s the case then I despair. I say that as someone who for several months after October 7th (anyone is welcome to search old posts) was defending Israel’s right to hit back hard at Hamas.
And they lose supporters to a party whose Kent council leader’s first action in office was to ban the flag of Ukraine from council buildings. There’s a pattern there.
The creatures outside looked from Tory to Reform, and from Reform to Tory, and from Tory to Reform again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
If we scrapped our nuclear deterrent, stopped putting up Asylum seekers/illegal immigrants and cancelled our space program, that would save approx £11bn a year which could be used to pay for Nurses/Carers/accommodation for old people who can't look after themselves anymore. I reckon there'd be a significant amount of people who'd rather their taxes went on the latter
The system is broken., and it's best to tear it down and start again. The ageing population/dementia onset is not going away, the rules have changed, so rather than make tiny adjustments that don't really work it's best to start from the beginning with a clean slate
Is anyone, apart from you in fairness, actually advocating that sort of approach though? I feel like Reform talk the talk on that front but the pressures of public popularity would see them run scared from genuinely trying it, and no other party is surely even close.
I don't know if anybody else is, I just thought of three things that we spend money on that I personally couldn't care less about (genuine asylum seekers are one thing, but the boat nonsense is just people having us over) and thought we could spend the money on something more tangible.
Basically people seem to want to be looked after at home first, with any extra going on luxuries or helping others. The sense of anger and disappointment is with the government saying there isn't enough money for x,y and z here, then we see us giving £xbn to Ukraine, spending money on a space program, etc etc. I picked three things quickly, I am sure other people would have different priorities
Putin overrunning Eastern Europe isn't in the interest of the WWC anymore than the elites.
We do seem to be importing American politics lock stock and barrel
I thought Britain, with its proud tradition of standing up to bullies, might be immune to the whole defund Ukraine campaign, but it seems not.
It's 2015. President Barack Obama has accepted a "sky palace" jumbo jet from the Qatari government, which he'll own after he leaves office. "Everybody relax," he says in an interview with the New York Times. Everyone does. The networks then televise the military parade in his honor on his birthday.
Kit Malthouse's letter to Palestine has gone down like a cup of cold sick in North-West Hampshire amongst the Tory base.
He's lost both my parents vote to Reform over it.
I'd be especially worried about my father who is as staunch and loyal a Conservative as they come.
So the Tories lose supporters over a rare outbreak of basic humanity in their ranks, in the face of an increasingly ugly attempt to eradicate an entire people?
If that’s the case then I despair. I say that as someone who for several months after October 7th (anyone is welcome to search old posts) was defending Israel’s right to hit back hard at Hamas.
And they lose supporters to a party whose Kent council leader’s first action in office was to ban the flag of Ukraine from council buildings. There’s a pattern there.
The creatures outside looked from Tory to Reform, and from Reform to Tory, and from Tory to Reform again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
It is, these are defectors to Reform from the Tories as in their view the Tories are not hardline enough
The Putin stooge has forced Ukraine to accept the offer from Russia but Zelenskyy is now saying he’s going to personally turn up to the meeting and expects Putin to be there .
This will come as a shock to the Kremlin who were expecting only representatives to be there .
On the subject of importing low skilled workers (as carers, etc.), I think that this board is missing the biggest problem.
Marginal tax rates - once benefit reductions are included - are often in the 70-80% range for the poorest. For an unemployed mother trying to get back to work, and currently receiving housing benefit, marginal tax rates can be well over 100%.
Brits aren't stupid: if you offer them the opportunity to work 20 hours a week in a care home, and to end up with less money than they started with... well, they will choose not to work.
If you want to reduce the dependence on the care industry on low skilled, low paid immigrants, then ensure that for people coming off unemployment, that they get to keep 80% of what they earn.
Just as we’ve now - belatedly - admitted that mass immigration makes us poorer, not richer, so we will soon admit that - in many areas - it leads to higher crime
A questionable assertion given the available data.
The lump of labour fallacy is back in fashion. Data doesn't come into it
The lump of labour fallacy cuts both ways. If there isn't a set amount of work that needs doing then you can't assert that we need to import people to do it.
I'm not asserting anything one way or the other one on the need for immigration. I do assert that immigration makes the country richer - that should be obvious - and it could be useful for tax revenues for example that help fund a better lifestyle for the population. The data I have seen shows wealth per head is essentially a wash. Each immigrant on average increases the GDP in proportion. It benefits the indigenous population however as immigrant jobs tend to be lower paid allowing the indigenous population more opportunity for a higher paid job. You might be better restricting higher wage immigration than minimum wage ones that everyone focuses on.
And the band played believe it if you like.
Well, going back to the point about care workers. I'm not sure the country will get behind: "Your grandmother died covered in her own shit because there weren't any care workers. And that's OK because we knocked a couple of digits off a number Reform are banging on about."
I really don't know what Yvette Cooper thinks she's doing,
Stewart was in the Labour Party at Oxford, he is basically a social democrat LD who would have been a LD if they had more seats when he stood for parliament
Kit Malthouse's letter to Palestine has gone down like a cup of cold sick in North-West Hampshire amongst the Tory base.
He's lost both my parents vote to Reform over it.
I'd be especially worried about my father who is as staunch and loyal a Conservative as they come.
So the Tories lose supporters over a rare outbreak of basic humanity in their ranks, in the face of an increasingly ugly attempt to eradicate an entire people?
If that’s the case then I despair. I say that as someone who for several months after October 7th (anyone is welcome to search old posts) was defending Israel’s right to hit back hard at Hamas.
And they lose supporters to a party whose Kent council leader’s first action in office was to ban the flag of Ukraine from council buildings. There’s a pattern there.
The creatures outside looked from Tory to Reform, and from Reform to Tory, and from Tory to Reform again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
It is, these are defectors to Reform from the Tories as in their view the Tories are not hardline enough
Kit Malthouse's letter to Palestine has gone down like a cup of cold sick in North-West Hampshire amongst the Tory base.
He's lost both my parents vote to Reform over it.
I'd be especially worried about my father who is as staunch and loyal a Conservative as they come.
So the Tories lose supporters over a rare outbreak of basic humanity in their ranks, in the face of an increasingly ugly attempt to eradicate an entire people?
If that’s the case then I despair. I say that as someone who for several months after October 7th (anyone is welcome to search old posts) was defending Israel’s right to hit back hard at Hamas.
And they lose supporters to a party whose Kent council leader’s first action in office was to ban the flag of Ukraine from council buildings. There’s a pattern there.
The creatures outside looked from Tory to Reform, and from Reform to Tory, and from Tory to Reform again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
It is, these are defectors to Reform from the Tories as in their view the Tories are not hardline enough
e.g. the new leader of Kent County Council, who doesn't want the Ukranian flag flying.
On the subject of importing low skilled workers (as carers, etc.), I think that this board is missing the biggest problem.
Marginal tax rates - once benefit reductions are included - are often in the 70-80% range for the poorest. For an unemployed mother trying to get back to work, and currently receiving housing benefit, marginal tax rates can be well over 100%.
Brits aren't stupid: if you offer them the opportunity to work 20 hours a week in a care home, and to end up with less money than they started with... well, they will choose not to work.
If you want to reduce the dependence on the care industry on low skilled, low paid immigrants, then ensure that for people coming off unemployment, that they get to keep 80% of what they earn.
But then doesn't working 16 hours and claiming benefits become the local maximum for millions more people? You've only saved 20% on your bill. And that's if the changes don't encourage more people to choose that local maximum. Maybe you save nothing.
Perhaps something time-limited -- some sort of glideslope?
Gordon Brown resigned as PM fifteen years ago today.
'Resigned' is an amusing term of phrase, as if he had much choice in the matter.
Gordon Brown lost a General Election fifteen years and five days ago.
Well, in that five days he found out the LibDems wouldn't play ball
To be fair Brown actually knew that the maths did not work and told the Lib Dems to "get lost"- actually a ruder version- when they called him. For a day or two Clegg was open to trying a deal with Labour, but insisted that since Brown had lost, he should give way to a new Labour leader, hence the Mot de Cambronne from Brown. Meanwhile Cameron had offered a full coalition. We kind of knew it was a trap, but were being told that if we did not have deal by Monday, the markets would collapse and we would get the blame. After the Cleggasm the Lib Dems were incredibly disappointed with the final result, so the next four days were a real rollercoaster, from disappointment to shock to pressure, to the Rose Garden love-in.
If the next Parliament is NOC, then the Lib Dems will be massively better prepared. This time, electoral and constitutional change will not be optional.
You were told once by the public on electoral reform. You remember, back when you though referendums were a good idea?
So despite all that has happened you cling to error? Neither good politics nor a good way to analyse things.
Not an EU flag in sight:
Get a tie you horrid little toerag.
That's to Sir Dress-Down-Friday, not William Glenn.
The simplistic response becomes "get them into work" - well, yes but how? Apart from the long term sick and the students, you have 1.5 million carers, many of whom would like to work but find it very hard to get the kind of work which works alongside their primary caring responsibility.
The benefit system punishes carers for doing other work, often quite viciously. The rules surrounding Carer's Allowance are particularly cruel.
And the system isn't set up to accommodate the kind of work carers find most suitable, work that can be done from home without set hours. One lady I know who cares for a disabled relative started making little party trinkets and selling them on Etsy to get some extra cash.
But she had to stop because the DWP was reducing her benefit by more than her profit, because their system doesn't differentiate between gross and net income.
Very useful points in that response. If we are to get people back to work even if it is only for a few hours per week it must be seen to be financially advantageous.
Kit Malthouse's letter to Palestine has gone down like a cup of cold sick in North-West Hampshire amongst the Tory base.
He's lost both my parents vote to Reform over it.
I'd be especially worried about my father who is as staunch and loyal a Conservative as they come.
So the Tories lose supporters over a rare outbreak of basic humanity in their ranks, in the face of an increasingly ugly attempt to eradicate an entire people?
If that’s the case then I despair. I say that as someone who for several months after October 7th (anyone is welcome to search old posts) was defending Israel’s right to hit back hard at Hamas.
And they lose supporters to a party whose Kent council leader’s first action in office was to ban the flag of Ukraine from council buildings. There’s a pattern there.
The creatures outside looked from Tory to Reform, and from Reform to Tory, and from Tory to Reform again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
It is, these are defectors to Reform from the Tories as in their view the Tories are not hardline enough
Jenrick says hello.
I believe Jenrick lost the last Tory leadership election to Badenoch
Gordon Brown resigned as PM fifteen years ago today.
'Resigned' is an amusing term of phrase, as if he had much choice in the matter.
Gordon Brown lost a General Election fifteen years and five days ago.
Well, in that five days he found out the LibDems wouldn't play ball
To be fair Brown actually knew that the maths did not work and told the Lib Dems to "get lost"- actually a ruder version- when they called him. For a day or two Clegg was open to trying a deal with Labour, but insisted that since Brown had lost, he should give way to a new Labour leader, hence the Mot de Cambronne from Brown. Meanwhile Cameron had offered a full coalition. We kind of knew it was a trap, but were being told that if we did not have deal by Monday, the markets would collapse and we would get the blame. After the Cleggasm the Lib Dems were incredibly disappointed with the final result, so the next four days were a real rollercoaster, from disappointment to shock to pressure, to the Rose Garden love-in.
If the next Parliament is NOC, then the Lib Dems will be massively better prepared. This time, electoral and constitutional change will not be optional.
You were told once by the public on electoral reform. You remember, back when you though referendums were a good idea?
So despite all that has happened you cling to error? Neither good politics nor a good way to analyse things.
Not an EU flag in sight:
Get a tie you horrid little toerag.
That's to Sir Dress-Down-Friday, not William Glenn.
Ties are the most useless items of apparel ever invented. The only time I’ve worn one since I retired has been at funerals, and then with considerable resentment.
Apparently the chess bann by the Taliban's Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is due to it being a possible vehicle for gambling. That might be a justification for banning elections, eh PBers?
Kit Malthouse's letter to Palestine has gone down like a cup of cold sick in North-West Hampshire amongst the Tory base.
He's lost both my parents vote to Reform over it.
I'd be especially worried about my father who is as staunch and loyal a Conservative as they come.
So the Tories lose supporters over a rare outbreak of basic humanity in their ranks, in the face of an increasingly ugly attempt to eradicate an entire people?
If that’s the case then I despair. I say that as someone who for several months after October 7th (anyone is welcome to search old posts) was defending Israel’s right to hit back hard at Hamas.
And they lose supporters to a party whose Kent council leader’s first action in office was to ban the flag of Ukraine from council buildings. There’s a pattern there.
The creatures outside looked from Tory to Reform, and from Reform to Tory, and from Tory to Reform again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
It is, these are defectors to Reform from the Tories as in their view the Tories are not hardline enough
e.g. the new leader of Kent County Council, who doesn't want the Ukranian flag flying.
Remember: R is for Reform, R is for Russia.
I may be wrong but it isn't entirely up to a Council which flags it flies at its main headquarters buildin
When Israel was attacked, there was an instruction sent from central Government to all Councils to fly the Israeli flag - the problem was not many Councils had an Israeli flag and couldn't procure one quickly.
I believe the requirement to fly the Union flag is mandated by central Government - many Councils have their own flag and currently fly the Ukrainian flag as the "third" flag though that can be replaced by other flags such as during Armed Forces week or for Pride.
Gordon Brown resigned as PM fifteen years ago today.
'Resigned' is an amusing term of phrase, as if he had much choice in the matter.
Gordon Brown lost a General Election fifteen years and five days ago.
Well, in that five days he found out the LibDems wouldn't play ball
To be fair Brown actually knew that the maths did not work and told the Lib Dems to "get lost"- actually a ruder version- when they called him. For a day or two Clegg was open to trying a deal with Labour, but insisted that since Brown had lost, he should give way to a new Labour leader, hence the Mot de Cambronne from Brown. Meanwhile Cameron had offered a full coalition. We kind of knew it was a trap, but were being told that if we did not have deal by Monday, the markets would collapse and we would get the blame. After the Cleggasm the Lib Dems were incredibly disappointed with the final result, so the next four days were a real rollercoaster, from disappointment to shock to pressure, to the Rose Garden love-in.
If the next Parliament is NOC, then the Lib Dems will be massively better prepared. This time, electoral and constitutional change will not be optional.
You were told once by the public on electoral reform. You remember, back when you though referendums were a good idea?
So despite all that has happened you cling to error? Neither good politics nor a good way to analyse things.
Not an EU flag in sight:
Don't say that you love me
Just tell me that you want me
TUSK!
In order of geopolitical importance and charisma:
1. Tusk 2. Macron 3. Starmer 4. Merz
Donald Tusk is by some way the most accomplished Donald currently running a country.
I'd rank the 3 most famous Donalds as follows for ability:
Tusk Duck Trump
I think even the Donald who lost his troosers is above Trump in ability.
Judging by his history of convictions, Donald Shmuck *IS* the one who lost his trousers.
Kit Malthouse's letter to Palestine has gone down like a cup of cold sick in North-West Hampshire amongst the Tory base.
He's lost both my parents vote to Reform over it.
I'd be especially worried about my father who is as staunch and loyal a Conservative as they come.
So the Tories lose supporters over a rare outbreak of basic humanity in their ranks, in the face of an increasingly ugly attempt to eradicate an entire people?
If that’s the case then I despair. I say that as someone who for several months after October 7th (anyone is welcome to search old posts) was defending Israel’s right to hit back hard at Hamas.
And they lose supporters to a party whose Kent council leader’s first action in office was to ban the flag of Ukraine from council buildings. There’s a pattern there.
The creatures outside looked from Tory to Reform, and from Reform to Tory, and from Tory to Reform again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
It is, these are defectors to Reform from the Tories as in their view the Tories are not hardline enough
Jenrick says hello.
I believe Jenrick lost the last Tory leadership election to Badenoch
So, there’s hope for some of your members, but not the ones who voted for Jenrick.
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.
Yes, it's completely insane.
They are not taking any active steps to stop the most visible form of illegal migration, that causes the most anger among voters, which is the boats crossing the channel. Their war on the migration 'gangs' will be as successful as the 'war on drugs' & the boats will continue to arrive & the hotels will keep filling up.
Instead Labour are stopping migration from the one source, aged care workers, where even a lot of Reform voters might be Ok to have a limited number of migrants.
I doubt many Reform voters are eager to go and work in aged care. They want to stop the entry of migrant criminals, as a top priority, and then the entry of migrants who take good well-paying jobs, such as tradesmen & factory workers. Instead of prioritising this, Labour instead goes & stops the entry of aged care workers.
And, no, a Labour government that is cutting Winter Fuel Allowance, won't be putting any more money into aged care. So, the end result will voters who continue being angry about the boats and are now also angry about the deteriorating quality of aged care services.
See the numbers I posted from the gov (above). Visas for recruited abroad carers have collapsed under scrutiny.
- The care home workforce is 750k - It’s 88% U.K. origin. - So 90,000 of immigrant origin. - at one point, the number of visas for carers was 6 figures. Per year. - Last year, one company arranged for 1200 visas. But employs 20. The BBC found multiple allegations against them of selling non-existent jobs.
I strongly suspect that the government found that very few of the people getting visas to work in care homes were ending up working in care homes.
Very strange that Yvette Cooper isn't saying anything like that, if that's the reason.
But is instead talking about improving carers' pay to make the jobs more attractive to UK workers. I wonder whether there is any kind of plan to fund better pay.
Almost certainly no plan.
The only reason to restrict visas is if there are too many UK nationals chasing limited vacancies.
I could think of another reason - the visas aren’t leading to people in the actual jobs.
If they are merely enriching the kind of middle man con man everyone so loves, why not ditch them and let the immigration numbers tumble?
They need to go after Farage and even if it’s controversial someone in the Labour Party needs to call him a traitor . Cause controversy by calling him that, have a big argument . It might at least get some media attention .
Apparently the chess bann by the Taliban's Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is due to it being a possible vehicle for gambling. That might be a justification for banning elections, eh PBers?
I thought the Taliban had already banned elections.
Gordon Brown resigned as PM fifteen years ago today.
'Resigned' is an amusing term of phrase, as if he had much choice in the matter.
Gordon Brown lost a General Election fifteen years and five days ago.
Well, in that five days he found out the LibDems wouldn't play ball
To be fair Brown actually knew that the maths did not work and told the Lib Dems to "get lost"- actually a ruder version- when they called him. For a day or two Clegg was open to trying a deal with Labour, but insisted that since Brown had lost, he should give way to a new Labour leader, hence the Mot de Cambronne from Brown. Meanwhile Cameron had offered a full coalition. We kind of knew it was a trap, but were being told that if we did not have deal by Monday, the markets would collapse and we would get the blame. After the Cleggasm the Lib Dems were incredibly disappointed with the final result, so the next four days were a real rollercoaster, from disappointment to shock to pressure, to the Rose Garden love-in.
If the next Parliament is NOC, then the Lib Dems will be massively better prepared. This time, electoral and constitutional change will not be optional.
You were told once by the public on electoral reform. You remember, back when you though referendums were a good idea?
So despite all that has happened you cling to error? Neither good politics nor a good way to analyse things.
Not an EU flag in sight:
Get a tie you horrid little toerag.
That's to Sir Dress-Down-Friday, not William Glenn.
They need to go after Farage and even if it’s controversial someone in the Labour Party needs to call him a traitor . Cause controversy by calling him that, have a big argument . It might at least get some media attention .
Sounds like a job for Angela Rayner, except that would Sir Keir want her to benefit from the subsequent popularity?
Wonderful day for a walk, and when I got there I discovered:
1 - A Victorian / Edwardian fairground, with a Cake Walk, traditional Carousel and fairground organ. 2 - That the main gate was off stream, so I could have got in free without the walk. That will NOT help the City of Nottingham finances.
Apparently the chess bann by the Taliban's Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is due to it being a possible vehicle for gambling. That might be a justification for banning elections, eh PBers?
I thought the Taliban had already banned elections.
Kit Malthouse's letter to Palestine has gone down like a cup of cold sick in North-West Hampshire amongst the Tory base.
He's lost both my parents vote to Reform over it.
I'd be especially worried about my father who is as staunch and loyal a Conservative as they come.
So the Tories lose supporters over a rare outbreak of basic humanity in their ranks, in the face of an increasingly ugly attempt to eradicate an entire people?
If that’s the case then I despair. I say that as someone who for several months after October 7th (anyone is welcome to search old posts) was defending Israel’s right to hit back hard at Hamas.
And they lose supporters to a party whose Kent council leader’s first action in office was to ban the flag of Ukraine from council buildings. There’s a pattern there.
The creatures outside looked from Tory to Reform, and from Reform to Tory, and from Tory to Reform again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
It is, these are defectors to Reform from the Tories as in their view the Tories are not hardline enough
e.g. the new leader of Kent County Council, who doesn't want the Ukranian flag flying.
Remember: R is for Reform, R is for Russia.
We did not fly the flag of the Ottoman Empire to show solidarity in the Crimean War, and we lost 22,000 soldiers in that one. We should get away from these emotionally incontinent displays. Banging pans for the NHS should be an end of it. Good for Reform restoring sanity and good sense back to local politics.
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.
Yes, it's completely insane.
They are not taking any active steps to stop the most visible form of illegal migration, that causes the most anger among voters, which is the boats crossing the channel. Their war on the migration 'gangs' will be as successful as the 'war on drugs' & the boats will continue to arrive & the hotels will keep filling up.
Instead Labour are stopping migration from the one source, aged care workers, where even a lot of Reform voters might be Ok to have a limited number of migrants.
I doubt many Reform voters are eager to go and work in aged care. They want to stop the entry of migrant criminals, as a top priority, and then the entry of migrants who take good well-paying jobs, such as tradesmen & factory workers. Instead of prioritising this, Labour instead goes & stops the entry of aged care workers.
And, no, a Labour government that is cutting Winter Fuel Allowance, won't be putting any more money into aged care. So, the end result will voters who continue being angry about the boats and are now also angry about the deteriorating quality of aged care services.
See the numbers I posted from the gov (above). Visas for recruited abroad carers have collapsed under scrutiny.
- The care home workforce is 750k - It’s 88% U.K. origin. - So 90,000 of immigrant origin. - at one point, the number of visas for carers was 6 figures. Per year. - Last year, one company arranged for 1200 visas. But employs 20. The BBC found multiple allegations against them of selling non-existent jobs.
I strongly suspect that the government found that very few of the people getting visas to work in care homes were ending up working in care homes.
Very strange that Yvette Cooper isn't saying anything like that, if that's the reason.
But is instead talking about improving carers' pay to make the jobs more attractive to UK workers. I wonder whether there is any kind of plan to fund better pay.
Almost certainly no plan.
The only reason to restrict visas is if there are too many UK nationals chasing limited vacancies.
I could think of another reason - the visas aren’t leading to people in the actual jobs.
If they are merely enriching the kind of middle man con man everyone so loves, why not ditch them and let the immigration numbers tumble?
Not really. Either there's a shortage of available labour or there's not. If there is a shortage but visas aren't alleviating that shortage, you need to fix how you do the visas. If there's no shortage you don't need to offer the visas.
Comments
Maybe they are exactly as “workshy and money grubbing”* as the locals?
*meaning “wants a job that isn’t shit which pays enough to live on”
Latest addition for me today was a Willow Warbler.
There are political decisions to be had over immigration and over tax policy, but just stopping immigration, or taxing the rich more, can only have a very limited effect. You need good governance over dozens of issues, if not hundreds. But the populists ignore that and tell sweet lies (or, actually, often quite ugly lies).
https://x.com/TrumpDailyPosts/status/1921634579431018845
My next TRUTH will be one of the most important and impactful I have ever issued. ENJOY!
Prediction. By the time the US Secret Service has ripped this 747 apart with a fine toothcomb looking for hidden bugs/cameras etc, and reassembled it, the ACTUAL Air Force One 747-8 will be ready....
https://x.com/RAeSTimR/status/1921606702970892498
And the system isn't set up to accommodate the kind of work carers find most suitable, work that can be done from home without set hours. One lady I know who cares for a disabled relative started making little party trinkets and selling them on Etsy to get some extra cash.
But she had to stop because the DWP was reducing her benefit by more than her profit, because their system doesn't differentiate between gross and net income.
As for A8 immigration in particular… well, I didn’t vote for Brexit, so take that up with someone who did.
The only reason to restrict visas is if there are too many UK nationals chasing limited vacancies.
Importing people doesn't fill vacancies, it increases the amount of work needed too.
https://birdnet.cornell.edu/
Mostly for trickier things. I'm not very good on Garden warbler vs Blackcap or Sedge warbler vs Reed warbler without hearing both in a reasonably close timespan but the app has no such difficulty.
It is a good use of technology though. Plant recognition apps are also coming along in leaps and bounds.
Normally I have Mrs Flatlander the walking AI to ask but 90% of the time they do pretty well.
If there's too many vacancies then prices are too low. Wages need to rise, unproductive jobs disappear, productivity rises.
If there's too much unemployment then prices are too high. Wages need to fall, the unemployed can work then at lower wages. Productivity falls but more people are employed.
Importing people won't solve vacancies, or create unemployment. That's a fallacy.
No increases coming from taxpayers.
Course, the Cons did lose control of it under Johnson. I think that's undeniable. Those numbers are crazy.
There is no lump of labour and firms can increase their share of employment by improving pay, or often equally importantly, conditions.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crk24dz8ne5o
https://wingsoverscotland.com/the-blindness-of-hatred/
The system is broken., and it's best to tear it down and start again. The ageing population/dementia onset is not going away, the rules have changed, so rather than make tiny adjustments that don't really work it's best to start from the beginning with a clean slate
Was he only ever in the Tory party for career reasons?
https://x.com/restispolitics/status/1921581065228951791
Anyway, it was clapping for key workers after the first week.
The fact is that we have an incredibly unhealthy population, and the NHS is brilliant at mitigating it. Cuts to public health and primary care are now taking their toll. To fix it, you'd actually see productivity drop in the short and medium-term because you won't see a return on public health for quite a while.
There's a child-parent relationship going on there.
I didn't see the interview, so don't know how explicit it was, but it seems to be suggesting they do think that's a reason to stop the scheme.
He's lost both my parents vote to Reform over it.
I'd be especially worried about my father who is as staunch and loyal a Conservative as they come.
Basically people seem to want to be looked after at home first, with any extra going on luxuries or helping others. The sense of anger and disappointment is with the government saying there isn't enough money for x,y and z here, then we see us giving £xbn to Ukraine, spending money on a space program, etc etc. I picked three things quickly, I am sure other people would have different priorities
He probably had to suffer very severe sanctions from the DWP and Commons for it though.
I can't find any record of such punitive tax-payer recoup though. But he was in charge of all that for ages, so I imagine he's sorted a similar arrangement for regular people.
Surely not.
If that’s the case then I despair. I say that as someone who for several months after October 7th (anyone is welcome to search old posts) was defending Israel’s right to hit back hard at Hamas.
And they lose supporters to a party whose Kent council leader’s first action in office was to ban the flag of Ukraine from council buildings. There’s a pattern there.
I assume your parents believe Israel should take full control of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza and support full Jewish settler occupation of Palestinian lands? ie little different to the hardline parties in Netanyahu's Cabinet hence their vote for Reform. However even most Tory voters aren't that hardline Zionist and the oldest ones remember the King David Hotel bombing
I thought Britain, with its proud tradition of standing up to bullies, might be immune to the whole defund Ukraine campaign, but it seems not.
It's come up focus up groups that Reform curious Labour voters hated what Trump did to Zelensky in the Oval Office.
I think we know the answer. Why are the media giving the traitor Farage a free pass .
Fuckers.
It's 2015. President Barack Obama has accepted a "sky palace" jumbo jet from the Qatari government, which he'll own after he leaves office. "Everybody relax," he says in an interview with the New York Times. Everyone does. The networks then televise the military parade in his honor on his birthday.
This will come as a shock to the Kremlin who were expecting only representatives to be there .
I think this is a good move by Zelenskyy .
Marginal tax rates - once benefit reductions are included - are often in the 70-80% range for the poorest. For an unemployed mother trying to get back to work, and currently receiving housing benefit, marginal tax rates can be well over 100%.
Brits aren't stupid: if you offer them the opportunity to work 20 hours a week in a care home, and to end up with less money than they started with... well, they will choose not to work.
If you want to reduce the dependence on the care industry on low skilled, low paid immigrants, then ensure that for people coming off unemployment, that they get to keep 80% of what they earn.
I really don't know what Yvette Cooper thinks she's doing,
But when they heard about all the porn action...
Remember: R is for Reform, R is for Russia.
Perhaps something time-limited -- some sort of glideslope?
That's to Sir Dress-Down-Friday, not William Glenn.
"'I'm a professional cuddler - let me tell you why a hug feels so good'"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj45jd0llgxo
When Israel was attacked, there was an instruction sent from central Government to all Councils to fly the Israeli flag - the problem was not many Councils had an Israeli flag and couldn't procure one quickly.
I believe the requirement to fly the Union flag is mandated by central Government - many Councils have their own flag and currently fly the Ukrainian flag as the "third" flag though that can be replaced by other flags such as during Armed Forces week or for Pride.
If they are merely enriching the kind of middle man con man everyone so loves, why not ditch them and let the immigration numbers tumble?
They need to go after Farage and even if it’s controversial someone in the Labour Party needs to call him a traitor . Cause controversy by calling him that, have a big argument . It might at least get some media attention .
1 - A Victorian / Edwardian fairground, with a Cake Walk, traditional Carousel and fairground organ.
2 - That the main gate was off stream, so I could have got in free without the walk. That will NOT help the City of Nottingham finances.
My point stands.